#(based on stereotypes but i mean they all are)

[aarbeaz]

I'm a byler truther all the way but I sometimes I don't like the fandom wars between mileven and byler. mileven doesn't make sense, sure, but some people genuinely like it. Some people genuinely enjoy it. Something we need to understand that not all people who don't like gay ships are homophobic, and it's not fair to anyone to accuse someone of hate crimes when they're just trying to enjoy a ship.

Even if byler is canon, let milevens enjoy their ship, man. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's horrible. Same for anyone who hates on other ships for no reason. Shut up you're a horrible person.

Also I get that some milevens are rude. Well, news flash: I've met way too many rude bylers for this lifetime. Nobody is perfect, no fandom is perfect. And if we're rude to someone because they're rude to us, when will the cycle end? You can't stereotype an entire community based on one person - that's borderline racism.

Goes both ways. Peaceful coexistence is possible. Live and let live.

“ships should at least make sense.” no. ships can make sense, sure. but they’re just fictional characters we play with for fun. they’re fantasies, not a fucking thesis paper. so no, they don’t always have to make sense. they just have to make you happy (or horny).

let people enjoy (fictional) things however they want to enjoy.

[zellkernchen]

Lord of The Flies but Girls

Currently thinking about a fem! version of Lord of the Flies because it seriously would not go the same ways as with the boys. Especially looking at it in a more "literal" level. Hunting is used as a way to represent the "primal" side of humainity/ of the boys, so what would be the girl equivalent? Obviously, one could also use hunting but it doesn't feel too personal as it does with boys if you get what I mean. Maybe something that should also match with the stereotypical idea we have of 1950s girls (since I am going off that LoTF takes place somewhere in between 1945 and early 1950s). The violence with the girls should be more psychological; verbal insults, bullying, isolation all taken to the extreme. And another thing: Character- wise, there could be two ways to create these genderbent versions of the LoTF boys. You could either… a) Not change their original personality at all, which could in turn slightly alter dynamics between the girls. b) Slightly alter the girl's personalities so that in turn their power dynamics mirror the boys'. As much as I think that both concepts are just as interesting, I'd still prefer to create a genderbent AU based on option b. Though this is just a personal preference. As I've said two sentences before, both ideas are good. If we go with option b, the character who would have the most changes by far would be Jack (or in this case Jackie/ Jaquelline I guess?). She'd probably have to fit more of a "mean girl" stereotype I think. But I'm not sure.

[scoobydoodean]

Oh, I see. You and all your little friends are just too DUMB to understand. Too low IQ. The arguments sure is convincing.

I’m not kidding they really are saying somewhere out there that Kripke couldn’t possibly understand what it means to be blue collar because to do that, you’d have to have read about the value of a linen coat (which is not directly related to any of this btw) from Marx’s Das Kapital. Kripke of course couldn’t possibly have read it, and if you haven’t read it, you can’t possibly understand anything about class. You have to have read Theory™️ to understand what it means to be *looks down my nose at people who I assume Have Not Read All The Books That I Did* blue collar *sips from tea cup with my pinky out, chortling*

[yellowcry]

Me: *Casually checks rtc wiki page for Natalia*

Me:

Me: Is calling her waist eleven times out of ten not enough????

Like I even checked, there's not such a thing as Muruska? And what is it supposed to be? It's not connected via - so it's separate from the name and surname. And the form is wrong for the patronymic name. It should have suffix -ivn- or -yivn- and no it couldn't be a middle name. Ukranians don't have these.

[self-loving-vampire]

I should clarify that the dig against HPMOR was just an example of how badly this kind of idea could go, and because I really don't like HPMOR, not that this was specifically what the OP was suggesting.

My argument is also not that you should write escapist fantasy (which I think is trash), that you should make stories where people are unaffected by their society, or that you should write stories where sexism doesn't exist.

It is that you should not have a stereotyped or narrow view of what someone's life may be like based on something like gender when women are infinitely varied. Even calling this variety "exceptions" reduces that variety into "normal women who are shaped by sexism in these specific ways" vs "exceptional women who are not."

You made a comparison to racism and I think that's probably illustrative of what I mean to say here as well: Not everyone of the same racial or ethnic group has the same experiences with racism and even the ones who do may still feel differently about those experiences.

It's the same if you want to write a character who has experienced child abuse. You can totally have that be a factor in why they behave the way they do and research possible consequences of child abuse, but once do that you may realize that not only is "abuse" a category encompasses a huge range of things that will naturally have very different effects but also that even the same type of abuse can have very different effects in different people based on all kinds of other factors you have to take into account.

There isn't one singular abuse narrative that represents everyone. Some people were abused by parents, others by classmates. Some people were beaten as discipline and strictly monitored, others were neglected. Some people react to abuse by becoming more aggressive while others become withdrawn, insecure, and submissive instead. Some people were just never abused at all despite being in social categories that are more likely to experience that (such as disabled people and queer people).

It's like that with women as well, that's why just "write them like normal human beings like you would do if they were men" is more applicable advice in my opinion. A lot of this stuff (like "what women are physically and emotionally attracted to") doesn't really have a simple answer you can just discover through research because it is built on subjective experiences that are unique for each individual woman, even if you were to narrow it specifically to cishetero women.

That is what I meant. Not "people completely separated from society" but "the ways in which individuals engage with their societies are incredibly varied and you can't just invent clearly defined and universally applicable "male socialization" or "female socialization" because that's going to be different based on time, place, and etc."

Occasionally you'll see a writer question like "how do you write women?"

And the answer that's given is often "WOMEN ARE PEOPLE".

I just ... I don't think that this is a good answer? It's true, but I think it's not that likely to help men convincingly write women unless they're starting from "women are magical unicorn creatures". Which, yeah, sure, some men are starting from there, and "just write a person" might actually improve their situation.

I think a lot of men fail with "ah, just switch the pronouns". They write women whose socialization and life history is unacknowledged. Women who have not suffered harassment, discrimination, male attention, etc. Women who wear makeup but don't ever think about the makeup. They get the texture of the emotions wrong. They get the history wrong.

And for a single character, I would argue that sometimes this just doesn't matter. An individual can go against the grain, and have their own quirks and foibles. You can have a woman who wishes that she were a man. Though ... a woman who wishes that she were a man because men have the "better" gender role would be quite distinct from a man, right? In terms of her internal motivations and backstory and stuff? All people live within a society, and are shaped by that, and by their socialization, and their gender role, and their reaction to all that.

So for writing women, you have to know what it's like to grow up as a woman, to be seen as a woman, taught as a woman, all that stuff. You can and should do research on these things! You should read stuff that women have written about what it's like to be a written, how it feels to be looked at by men, what female friendships are like, what women are physically and emotionally attracted to, the particular texture of fear and anxiety that women often have around men in certain situations, the emotional labor that women are expected to do, all that and more. There's a lot to it! And as with most research, most of it will not make it to the page, it'll be a thing that you think about, and then it becomes part of the background texture of the character.

And yes, this is the same approach that you take to all character writing, whenever you're trying to write someone who isn't yourself, when you have to think hard about internal experiences of other people and marshal an understanding of the circumstances of their life.

So I think "women are people" can serve that role, and at a really basic level, writing women is like writing any character with traits you don't have, but there's also a bunch of specific stuff that naturally would come up during research and talking to women that could help a lot more than just "idk, do your own research, just make sure they're not unicorn fairies".

[lollytea]

I am just as nitpicky as anybody else when it comes to characters I'm obsessed with. But I don't find people who mischaracterize them nearly as annoying as people who write condescending posts about others who mischaracterize them which seem more motivated by feeding their own superiority complex about Being The One Person to Understand Mr Blorbo rather than giving any constructive advice.

[justabunchofdragons]

"relationships between 19 and 29 year olds are not inherently bad!!! normalise not being morally affronted whenever you see this!! people can have common interests!!" "and i do think that romantic relationships with this age gap are WEIRD but thats not important" i mean. okay.

[nexus-nebulae]

oh my god. that one "oc" we wrote who had DID that we came up with before our syscovery. that was not an oc. oh my god cody and blake why did you take five years to make yourselves known to us-

[worstsequence]

who else is here on this day thinking about eddie lovey dovey free with affection known dustin for not even a year uses his dying breath to tell him he loves him munson

[jujutsukaisen0]

i also think its insanely ridiculous that the main issue people take with der schuh des manitu is the fact that winnetouch being a flamboyant gay guy must mean the entire movie is homophobic (despite winnetouch having a boyfriend who is in fact Not flamboyant?????) and not the very obvious other thing we should be worried about

[alaskan-wallflower]

yall i don’t know how many times i need to say this but i don’t want to get political on my blog. stop asking me about my opinions on wars. any political asks will be deleted and blocked. i’m not putting up with that. i don’t know how many more times i need to say it but i don’t want to involve politics on my blog. respect that.

just because i post about why antisemitism and tokenism in fanon is bad doesn’t mean i want to talk politics. and stop assuming my viewings on politics because i talk about antisemitic stereotypes portrayed in fanon and why they’re bad. i’ve never posted anything political on my blog other than an awareness post about sudan’s wifi being cut. i’ve never posted anything about the war. so stop asking shit like ‘WhY dO yOu SuPpOrT aNd FoLlOw PrO (insert political viewing) bLoGs If YoUrE pRo (insert opposing political issue)”

i’ve never talked about the war, nor politics. so stop asking and assuming. you’re making an ass out of yourself.

[lutenants]

one day i will explain further about lutes self approval as a 'weapon' as opposed to a human.

[jackienautism]

im just bitter but the next time i see someone refeer to kaitlyn as "the normal one" is the day i finally kill

[comerosas]

i think its actually crazy how it took just ONE trans guy making childish soft twee music to turn it into a stereotype for the entire community. cavetown has irreparably damaged the reputation of every trans guy out there because when people say "ftms making music be like" they just mean the one singular ftm

[abigailbozarthart]

Torg art dump! It's a genrebending tabletop RPG of variety pack characters with reality powers trying to save Earth from extradimensional invaders from various genre flavored worlds, each with their own twist. My dad runs a couple games of it- on in the pulp action Nile Empire, another in the primeval Living Land. Our Nile group is a super cleric of Horus-Re who used to be a pyramid toaur guide, a braniac German aerospace engineer with super smarts and a lightning ray gun, a psychotic berserker demon slaying Russian gunman, a Japanese policeman who's a minor wizard, an elven archer/ranger with a wolf and a small dragon, and a psionic electroninja with demontechnoswords. The Living Land group is made up of a hockey mom turned warrior barbarian life priestess, a lizardman beastmaster, a blind teenage French white witch from a place called the Cyberpapacy, a paleontology professor turned Indiana Jones-esque explorer with a whip and fedora and everything, and a lucky truck driver.

This is normal for Torg.

OC rant time! The super braniac and the truck driver are both mine. Heidi Eklund the aerospace engineer, weird cat lady, and eclectic aunt was visiting the Great Pyramids on vacation when the Maelstrom Bridge of the Nile Empire dropped and the Reality Storm engulfed the land in the axioms and laws of another world. She transformed into Captain Quasar!, superhero of mighty brain and wielding a goofy zappy ray gun she called the Ultrazonic Fulmonizer. She has since invented a couple more gadgets; the Electrokinetic Replusion Shield Generator (a force field) and her much less fancy but signature duct tape guantlet. She loves witty combat banter and bonkers over the top pun cascades, and has an almost beat poet style even in battle. Her nemesis is Professor Plasmo, who also wields SCIENCE, but for evil, not good!

Captain Quasar! is my favorite tabletop rpg character I have ever played, which is funny because she started as a pregen character for a two session intro to the game but became Mine. I love her so much that she became something of an online persona. Now that I've actually designed an intentional persona, she's not the main one anymore, but she is 100% an aspirational character (mostly by accident) and remains a major persona for me. There is so much nice art of her by other lovely artists; it can be beheld and gazed upon here. https://toyhou.se/22797747.captain-quasar-heidi-eklund

Bud is just a dude! He's just a guy! He's very American- pretty stereotypically so in fact, except that he's probably a lot nicer and more polite than average. He does not seem like the type of guy to be of much use on an adventure into dinosaur infested jungles, And Yet. He has a knack for...whatever needs to get done, most of the time, and is just vaguely lucky, plucky, and hard to keep down, with an indomitable positivity and relentless spirit. He supports his companions and is a tremedous help to have around, even if he's not usually the one doing dramatic stunts and wild combat maneuvers. He definitely pulls his own weight, lack of pizazz or no, and is decently capable with a gun and in melee, and can handle himself and a variety of tasks. He doesn't lose his head easily, and is overall fairly sensible and insightful. But you wouldn't guess it, because he's not exactly the brains of the operation; school smarts were never his specialty, and he's never claimed to be clever.

[papermonkeyism]

Like seriously! That is multiple sets of sharp!! *wild gesticulating at a picture!*

Reading the last book in the Icewind Dale trilogy, about halfway through the book. Okay, I can shrug off random dragon cameos that have no relevance to anything in the story, the flat characterization and the flimsy worldbuilding, but my suspension of disbelief just got overloaded and snapped by a camel.

The protagonist party are in the stereotypical fantasy south (tm) and have bought camels to proceed on their journey, and one of them gets bitten by his dromedary to show what a nuisance the animal is, and the book describes it as having "blunt teeth", and boy my brain ain't taking it.

Like, excuse the entire fuck out of me, have you SEEN dromedary teeth??? Those things have FANGS! And they are VICIOUS!

I'm just flashbacking to the news many years ago when a dromedary killed a wild ass stallion in the Helsinki zoo, that's not a harmless little nuisance, that's a huge arse beast fully capable of maiming you.

Seriously, google dromedary skull and marvel at their weaponry, that's such a great design.

"Blunt teeht" my arse...