In a Facebook post dated February 12, 2016, Reynolds introduced McGrath as “the biggest Deadpool fan on earth” and “the funniest, potty-mouthed Canadian mercenary I’ve ever met.”
“He was also the first person ever to see the Deadpool film. Like Wade Wilson, Connor’s trying to put cancer in his rearview mirror,” Reynolds wrote. […] “I called Connor, ‘Bubba.’ And he called me ‘Bubba 2.’ We met because he loved Deadpool. In a certain sense he WAS Deadpool. Or, at least everything Deadpool aspires to be; balancing pain, fearlessness, love and a filthy (filthy!) sense of humor in one body. I wish he could’ve stuck around a lot longer.”
McGrath was treated to a special screening of the then-unreleased film from his hospital room in Edmonton, Alberta. It told the story of Reynolds’ Wade Wilson, a mercenary who is diagnosed with terminal cancer before undergoing an experimental procedure that leaves him with regenerative abilities. […] McGrath’s cancer did not respond to conventional chemotherapy and the boy passed away in April 2016.
one of my favorite things is how badgers and coyotes will hunt cooperatively. as in not just like happening to go after the same thing at the same time but actually combining efforts to bring down prey; coyotes are faster and can chase down prey species, while badgers are adept at digging them out of their burrows
Male Protagonists to Avoid in your Writing: An Illustrated Guide.
1. The Edward Cullen (i.e. the glorified stalker)
How to spot him:
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.
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, be sure to follow my blog and stay tuned for future writing advice and observations!
Updating with the link to the female counterpart post, because people keep asking me for it. Read it here!
No ok but I actually met him. Several of my colleagues and students were hired to do some assessments for several manmade and natural ponds on his property. He wanted to maintain them with several different fish populations so that kids nearby could fish and have a good time.
While we were working he rode up in his four wheeler with a terrified look on his face. I never thought I would see a former football player on the verge of tears, but boy howdy he nearly was. Several of us stop what we were doing and go over to see what was up.
“I was running the tractor through the field and almost hit a fawn.” He says.
Now, for reference, it’s pretty common to have farmers run over and kill fawns. The defense mechanism of fawns when they are young is to lay down low and not move…which obviously isn’t great for when there’s a tractor. It happens all the time, but it can be pretty bloody. It’s not a pretty sight.
So, thinking that maybe such a gory scene unnerved him and that we may have to dispose of the body, I say “Mr. Brown, is the fawn still alive?”
He says “Yes, I took it to the barn…but I’m afraid the mom won’t take it back because it has human scent on it.”
The myth about “human scent” is a common one, but it’s just that…a myth. But still, this guy was absolutely terrified that this little deer was going to live the first few weeks of its life without a parent. He was distraught.
Luckily my professor/boss was like “Don’t worry Mr. Brown, if you return the fawn relatively close to the spot that you found it, the mother will come back. The human scent thing is just a myth. The fawn will be alright, just be sure to keep the barn quiet so that the fawn doesn’t panic.”
Mr. Brown’s face lit up and he let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God” he said “I was so worried.”
And that’s the story of how I met the sweetest man ever: Mr. Jason Brown.
If y’all use a decent box mix and use melted butter instead of vegetable oil, an extra egg, and milk instead of water, no one can tell the difference. I sure as hell can’t.
Also, if you add a little almond extract to vanilla cake, or a little coffee to chocolate cake, it sends it through the roof.
This concludes me attempting to be helpful.
yo I can vouch for this I’ve done this for the last few cakes I’ve made and holy crap it makes suuuuch a difference the cake is still fluffy, but it also seems more dense, and it doesn’t dry out like at all you can leave it uncovered on the counter all day after being cut into, and it won’t get all crusty and dry this is an amazing way to take your cakes to the next level
Because most of us spend the majority
of our time indoors, NASA conducted a
Clean Air Study to determine which
common houseplants are the best for
filtering harmful toxins like ammonia
and formaldehyde from the air.
**Please note: Several of these plants are known to be toxic to cats, dogs and other pets. If you are a pet owner, please do check the toxicity of plants before introducing them to your home.**
themusechronicles 