Makeup test for my #cosplay tomorrow. I find it funny that my first #selfie on my account isn’t a glamour shot by any means. XD #writersofinstagram #makeuptest
Hey everyone! Just to give you a heads up, there will be no WAW or FourGodsFriday this week because of my writing schedule and other life events. Segments will be back to normal next week.
He’s gorgeous. Brooding. Bejeweled with countless sequins. He stresses over and over again that he and the female protagonist have a “connection,” are “soulmates,” or something else that you’d generally expect to hear from that one creepy kid who used to stare at you in class. Similarly, in true creep fashion, he uses their supposed connection as an excuse to blatantly stalk her, and is narratively treated as nothing short of a romantic in spite of it because he’s attractive (and sparkly) enough to pull it off.
Examples:
In the Twilight Saga, Edward is canonically over one hundred years old, making it extra creepy that he’s A) hanging around a high school for no particular reason, and B) dating a seventeen-year-old girl. He uses derogatory terms about past lovers, attempts suicide when Bella tries to break up with him, and shows up at her home uninvited to watch her sleep. Moreover, his systematic isolation of Bella from her friends and family is all-too reminiscent of real life abusive dynamics.
Try to avoid a blatant power imbalance. Edward is stressed to be older, stronger, more experienced, and more intelligent than Bella. Sometimes power imbalances are unavoidable due to species differences, but this can be countermanded by giving the human love interest qualities that make them valuable in other ways.
Overall, if you’re attempting to portray a healthy relationship, try to base it on an equal exchange of power and mutual respect.
2. The Christian Grey (i.e. the glorified rapist)
How to spot him:
When I first found out that the 50 Shades of Grey franchise was originally Twilight fanfiction, I initially (incorrectly) presumed it to be a joke. After I’d come to terms with the fact that it was not, my next thought was that it made perfect sense, because Christian is literally Edward Junior on steroids: the same abusive brand of stalker who gets off on a blatant power imbalance, with the added unpleasantries of excessive wealth and bad BDSM etiquette. Oh, yeah. And he’s a rapist.
Examples:
Christian disregards Ana’s request for a condom, stating “her body belongs to him,” threatens punishment when she refutes his attempts to discretely grope her in public, and at one point, ignores her safe word. Throughout the book, Ana is pressured into sex she feels uncomfortable with.
How to avoid him:
If you’re going to write about BDSM, actually study BDSM etiquette.
Healthy BDSM relationships are forged on mutual trust and a consensual, mutually beneficial exchange of power. Even if you are writing about BDSM, if you intend to write about a healthy relationship, be sure to base it off of these values.
Just because a character is dominant doesn’t mean they need to be emotionally callous; Christian completely neglects Ana’s emotional needs, such as her aftercare (i.e. the period of tenderness recommended after BDSM sessions to compensate for the emotional and physically taxing task of surrendering one’s power.)
In short, don’t use kink as a means of excusing emotionally unhealthy and abusive dynamics.
3. The Ross Geller (i.e. the entitled “nice guy”)
How to spot him:
He thinks his hot female friends (and only the hot ones, mind you) are owed to him because he’s “nice,” romantic, and intelligent. However, upon closer scrutiny he really isn’t a particularly nice guy (i.e. he bullied his sister Monica and benefits from enjoys her emotionally abusive parents’ favoritism), is self-centered, and consistently places his needs ahead of her own.
Examples:
The minute Rachel begins to find self-fulfillment in her career, Ross becomes jealous and hounds her at work, accuses her of “not having enough time for (him),” and generally tries to make her feel guilty for being successful and having priorities other than him.
How to avoid him:
Again, I cannot stress this enough: mutual respect. This is literally the foundation of all successful relationships, fictitious or otherwise.
Have your male characters support their significant other’s decisions and allow them to be happy for their success.
Your male character’s significant other is allowed to do things that don’t necessarily involve him. Make sure he understands that.
Intelligence in and of itself does not make a character a better person than his fellows, and intelligence does not have to equate the superiority with which Ross appears to associate himself.
Just look to the healthier couples Friends churned out in its time: Monica and Chandler, for example, love and respect one another’s goals, and are no the less interesting and hilarious because of it.
4. The Sheldon Cooper (i.e. the annoying autism stereotype)
How to spot him:
He’s a bloated paragon of autism stereotypes. He’s got zero regard for the feelings of his friends, considers himself superior to everyone, and is incapable of talking about anything but his own interests. As someone who’s on the spectrum myself, he’s basically my personal pet peeve.
Examples:
“His spot” on the sofa, his need to knock three times before speaking to the person on the other side of the door, etc. These are stereotypical and inaccurate portrayals of some autistic people’s comfort in routine.
How to avoid him:
Research symptoms of Asperger’s in adults (and for god’s sake, stay away from Autism Speaks.) Similarly, try and learn from actually people with Asperger’s, as anti-autism, “cure”-based sentiment tends to run high in allistic academia.
Study the mannerisms of famous people who may have been on the spectrum, such as Albert Einstein, Allan Turing, Leonardo da Vinci, and Sherlock Holmes’s inspiration, Joseph Bell.
If you’re not ready to depict an autistic character, I’m going to say wait. It’s okay to admit to ignorance, and it’s okay to wait to do more research before depicting a certain subgroup.
Try to avoid inserting autistic symptoms into characters to use as comedic fodder.
Asperger’s coded (and confirmed, by creators and cast) characters like Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Bones) and Spencer Reid (Criminal Minds) have their stereotypical moments, but they’re still successfully presented as lovable, intelligent, and productive characters; look to them to see better representation of intelligent, autistic characters in mainstream television.
5. The John Winchester (i.e. the abusive parent with a redemption arc)
How to spot him:
The John Winchester is a textually abusive or otherwise toxic parent who damages his children’s lives for his own purposes, inflicts emotional or physical harm, and is shown or mentioned to be violent, controlling, and/or neglectful. However, his redeeming/sympathetic qualities or otherwise heroic actions lead him to be narratively treated as a benevolent character and “good” parent.
Examples:
In Supernatural, John leaves his boys for weeks on end in motel rooms, sometimes over important holidays (and keep in mind that this was in the 80s and 90s, when child sexual abuse was at an all-time high.) He often places his eldest son as the soul caregiver of his other child, despite the fact that he was a child too at the time, and left them both alone with loaded firearms. He also uses unfairly harsh punishments, such as leaving his young son alone at a boy’s home for an entire summer because he stole food for himself and his brother. His son literally, unironically realized he was being possessed by a demonic entity when it said it was proud of him.
How to avoid him:
Educate yourself on the different definitions of abuse (emotional, verbal, physical, etc.) and what qualifies as each. Psychology Today is a great resource for this (they have some rudimentary definitions here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/child-abuse.)
Feel free to endow abusive parents with sympathetic qualities (in fact, please do; 100% evil characters tend to be campy, boring, and/or unintentionally hilarious) but be aware that no sympathetic qualities negate or justify child abuse.
Please, for the love of God, don’t use the “he was doing his best” excuse as a resolution. Many abusive parents legitimately are doing their best, and many abused children are acutely aware of this. It really doesn’t provide much comfort.
Remember that abused children frequently refuse to turn on their parents, often defending them long into their adulthood. The child’s forgiveness does not equate the parent’s redemption.
Similarly, I’d personally recommend staying away from the “I can finally forgive him” trope as well; it’s done to death, and often frustrating to real-life survivors.
Before the Meninsits™ come for me about this, I am going to be writing a list of female character archetypes as well, and then make lists of positive attributes to include in male and female characters, respectively, to provide a counterpoint. I might also make a part two of this post for all the other characters I hate, because I fear it would get too long.
In the meantime, there will be essays like this published at least once every other week, so be sure to follow my blog and stay tuned for future writing advice and observations!
As all book lovers who thrive on social media or anywhere on the internet, there’s always new books to look forward to, whether they’re a few weeks away, or even a year. While there are dozens of exciting new books to look forward to in the coming year of 2017, I wanted to feature the following books that should be on your radar when it comes to Asian YA.
Note: This list chooses to focus on books that both feature Asian MCs and Asian authors, whether they’re #ownvoices or not, although the majority of the books listed here are #ownvoices. Those that are not #ownvoices or I am unsure about have been indicated with an asterisk. I tried to make it as comprehensive as possible, and if any titles are missing that fit the above qualifications or I made any errors, please let me know as soon as possible!
I hope you found some new books to add to your TBR and are excited about the upcoming releases! I, for one, cannot wait to pick these books up and am patiently counting down the days until I get a chance to read them. Stay tuned for the part 2: the non-YA edition for 2017 books, coming soon.
t h i s p o s t c a n a l s o b e f o u n d o n m y b l o g
It’s going to be a great 2017 reading year!! And please give asianya a follow!
Hi all! A few days ago I posted my current profile for Gen, the protagonist of The Four Gods: Prince of the North. Today, I’m going to cover how you can make your own profiles for your characters! Think of profiles as an optional, but extremely helpful tool to help you get to know your characters better. It’s like an outline, but for a single person in your book.
The Basics
To start off, you need to ask yourself a few basic questions about your character:
What’s their name?
How old are they and when is their birthday? Where are they from?
What is their race and/or ethnicity?
These are questions that don’t require very detailed answers and will open up to the next section, which is…
Physical Appearance
Some authors like to leave their character’s appearance up to the imagination. I’m not personally a fan of this, especially because my characters’ appearances are usually one of the first things I come up with. Some questions you might want to ask yourself are:
What is their hair color/length/style/texture?
What color are their eyes? What eye shape do they have?
How tall are they?
What is their build/body shape?
What does their skin look like? Do they have blemishes and/or scars?
What distinct features does your character have? (These are things like facial features, tattoos, etc.)
These will help you paint a picture of your character if you haven’t already, and it should also help you flesh out your character a little more. For example, in this section I might mention that Fengge has tattoos on his upper body or I might have said for Silas that his smile is always crooked. You can be as detailed as you want here, but unless you already have a good picture of your character, the more details, the better.
What’s going on in there?
So your character has a name and their physical appearance, but now to cover the true meat of the profile: what’s going on in their head?
What hobbies do they have? What other skills do they have?
Likes/dislikes?
Fears?
How do they handle pressure?
Strengths? Weaknesses?
Do they have a religion? If so, what is it, and how devout are they?
This is just a basic intro to some questions you can ask yourself. You can get as detailed as you like, but as with the physical descriptors, the more detailed you can get, the less your character will succumb to inconsistencies.
What else is there?
You can add as much or as little as you want to this! I like to put their social relationships and backstory in mine, but it’s completely your decision on what you think needs to go in a profile because it’s for you and your personal references. There is no right or wrong way, and it’s an option to make your writing journey a little easier.
AUTHOR | HISTORIAN | ARTIST 