It’s worth noting that Kenneth spent the entire episode making the game (and the subsequent fight) as inclusive as possible for JJ and his disabled friends (all of whom were played by disabled actors/actresses).
I think the best piece of character design advice I ever received was actually from a band leadership camp I attended in june of 2017.
the speaker there gave lots of advice for leaders—obviously, it was a leadership camp—but his saying about personality flaws struck me as useful for writers too.
he said to us all “your curses are your blessings and your blessings are your curses” and went on to explain how because he was such a great speaker, it made him a terrible listener. he could give speeches for hours on end and inspire thousands of people, but as soon as someone wanted to talk to him one on one or vent to him, he struggled with it.
he had us write down our greatest weakness and relate it to our biggest strength (mine being that I am far too emotional, but I’m gentle with others because I can understand their emotions), and the whole time people are sharing theirs, my mind was running wild with all my characters and their flaws.
previously, I had added flaws as an after thought, as in “this character seems too perfect. how can I make them not-like-that?” but that’s not how people or personalities work. for every human alive, their flaws and their strengths are directly related to each other. you can’t have one without the other.
is your character strong-willed? that can easily turn into stubbornness. is your character compassionate? maybe they give too many chances. are they loyal? then they’ll destroy the world for the people they love.
it works the other way around too: maybe your villain only hates the protagonist’s people because they love their own and just have a twisted sense of how to protect them. maybe your antagonist is arrogant, but they’ll be confident in everything they do.
tl;dr “your curses are your blessings, and your blessings are your curses” there is no such thing as a character flaw, just a strength that has been stretched too far.
This is such a fabulous flip side of what I’ve always known about villians. That their biggest weakness is that they always assume their own motivations are the motives of others.
I always thought my teens would be the hardest time of my life. They were tough, that’s for sure, but my twenties have just been something else.
I don’t think my 20s are harder than my teens. I don’t want any teens who are struggling to be like OH GREAT and want to give up on everything.
Your twenties are a weird no man’s land. You could be married with a bunch of kids and it’s totally okay and normal. You can be getting black out drunk every weekend and hooking up with random people and it’s totally okay. You can have an amazing job with a future or you can be living with your parents. It’s a weird decade where literally anything goes. You can do pretty much anything and everyone’s okay with it. One you realize that, it’s pretty liberating.
To all my people in their twenties, I want you to know that it’s okay. Whatever you’re doing, wherever you are in life, it’s okay. I know everyone’s in different stages of their lives right now and it’s confusing and you don’t know where you fit in. Relax. It’ll all be okay.
omg so yesterday i put a salt line on the pathway to our front door because i was fucking around and my brother was pretending to be a demon
and today we ordered pizza and the salt line was still there
and my brother went outside to sign for the pizza
and the pizzaman refused to step over the salt line, like he almost did and then he backed up and handed my bro the pizza and left; which is pretty ridiculous because it’s far from our door
so a heads up to everyone i’m pretty sure domino’s is actually run by demons??? kind of like how in men in black the post office is run by aliens
demono
((”Not just pizza”))
((”but eternal damnation”))
Alternate theory: It wasn’t that the pizza guy couldn’t cross the line of salt himself.
He just saw the line of salt and assumed that it was the only thing keeping you and your brother in, and he didn’t want nothing to do with your demon asses
“Obviously ‘bihet’ offends a lot of bisexuals, so we need to come up with a better term for bisexuals in m/f relationships.”
How about… and hear me out… this may sound crazy…. but you… continue to call us bisexual… because (and I realize this gets confusing for you people so read this next part slowly) it turns out we continue to be bisexual regardless of who we’re dating.
Okay, this shit gets me all heated up. I’m just a cisgay dude up in here, but I have Some Opinions about this nonsense.
Bisexual people in relationships with folks of the other gender are not only themselves still bisexual (I’m really ashamed of a bunch of all that this shit even needs to be said, like c’mon), but their relationships are queer.
Yes, I just said that straight people can be involved in queer relationships without they themselves being queer.
The reason for this is simple: folks who are in relationships with queer people will always have to deal with their partner’s marginalization impacting their relationship. Always. Even if their bisexual partner chooses to be entirely stealth about their queerness (and that’s their right, by gods, fight me about it), their relationship is still impacted by that very choice existing. It’s a facet heterosexual relationships never have to negotiate.
Frankly, bisexual folks have to deal with active marginalization from multiple angles: heterocentrist and homocentrist. And in case I actually have to say this aloud? We should not be fucking marginalizing our own, y’all. That makes you a bad person, and you should feel bad.
To sum up: Bisexual folks are queer as hell. Straight folks can be in queer relationships without themselves ever being queer. And FFS please stop harassing bi- and pan-folks already, man. It’s 2018. Find hobbies that are not shitty.
I love this addition to my post so much thank you.