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As you might be aware I have big feelings about all besnouted creatures, but recently something has been grating on me. Sometimes, when people draw a snout animal, they draw the snout as a nose with the mouth as a separate entity underneath. This is a stylistic choice I greatly dislike because a snout or trunk is, by definition

A COMBINATION OF THE NOSE AND UPPER-LIP.

You can see here that the snout is not a separate entity from the mouth in these mammals, but is a fleshy protuberance emanating from the upper jaw. 

You can see in this illustration how a more anatomically accurate snout position gives an anthropomorphic pig a degree of charm that an inaccurate snout position does not.

Snout positioning can make or break a character design for me.

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all the tips I found for drawing a fantasy map are like :) “here’s a strategy to draw the land masses! here’s how to plot islands!” :) and that’s wonderful and I love them all but ??? how? do y'all decide where to put cities/mountains/forests/towns I have my map and my land but I’m throwing darts to decide where the Main Citadel where the Action Takes Place is

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so it turns out great tits can and do kill and eat both other birds and small mice when food is scarce, particularly during winter, and i just cannot get over this picture. it looks like the kind of photo hunters take with their kills. i’m losing it

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This isn't a fantasy, this isn't a fetish, stop being polite to the rabid dog barely restrained by a frayed chord. That chord gets thinner by the minute and soon that dogs is going to rip us apart unless we put it down first. Eat the cops, eat the politicians, eat the rich

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Methods of Death & How They Feel

Drowning: When victims eventually submerge, they hold their breath for as long as possible, typically 30 to 90 seconds. After that, they inhale some water, splutter, cough and inhale more. Survivors say there is a feeling of tearing and a burning sensation in the chest as water goes down into the airway. Then that sort of slips into a feeling of calmness and tranquility. That calmness represents the beginnings of the loss of consciousness from oxygen deprivation, which eventually results in the heart stopping and brain death.

Heart Attack: The most common symptom is chest pain: a tightness, pressure or squeezing, often described as an “elephant on my chest”, which may be lasting or come and go. This is the heart muscle struggling and dying from oxygen deprivation. Pain can radiate to the jaw, throat, back, belly and arms. Other signs and symptoms include shortness of breath, nausea and cold sweats.

Bleeding to Death:  Anyone losing 1.5 litres – either through an external wound or internal bleeding – feels weak, thirsty and anxious, and would be breathing fast. By 2 litres, people experience dizziness, confusion and then eventual unconsciousness.

Fire: Burns inflict immediate and intense pain through stimulation of the pain nerves in the skin. To make matters worse, burns also trigger a rapid inflammatory response, which boosts sensitivity to pain in the injured tissues and surrounding areas.As burn intensities progress, some feeling is lost but not much. 3rd degree burns don’t hurt as much as 2nd degree burns.

Decapitation: Very quick. Consciousness is said to continue for a few seconds after decapitation. It’s thought to be painless. But the separation of the spinal cord and brain may cause severe pain.

Electrocution: Higher currents can produce nearly immediate unconsciousness. The electric chair was designed to produce instant loss of consciousness and painless death, but that’s debatable. It’s been proposed that prisoners could instead be dying from heating of the brain, or perhaps from suffocation due to paralysis of the breathing muscles instead of electrocution itself because the skulls of the wall are a thick and powerful insulator. 

Falling from a height: Another instantaneous death. Survivors of great falls often report the sensation of time slowing down. The natural reaction is to struggle to maintain a feet-first landing, resulting in fractures to the leg bones, lower spinal column and life-threatening broken pelvises. The impact traveling up through the body can also burst the aorta and heart chambers. 

Hanging: The rope puts pressure on the windpipe and the arteries to the brain. This can cause unconsciousness in 10 seconds, but it takes longer if the noose is incorrectly sited. Witnesses of public hangings often reported victims “dancing” in pain at the end of the rope, struggling violently as they asphyxiated. 

Lethal injection: . First comes the anaesthetic thiopental to speed away any feelings of pain, followed by a paralytic agent called pancuronium to stop breathing. Finally potassium chloride is injected, which stops the heart almost instantly. Eyewitnesses have reported inmates convulsing, heaving and attempting to sit up during the procedure, suggesting it’s not always completely effective.

Vacuum (In Outer Space): When the external air pressure suddenly drops, the air in the lungs expands, tearing the fragile gas exchange tissues. This is especially damaging if the victim neglects to exhale prior to decompression or tries to hold their breath. Oxygen begins to escape from the blood and lungs. Human survivors from NASA often report an initial pain, like being hit in the chest, and may remember feeling air escape from their lungs and the inability to inhale. Time to the loss of consciousness was generally less than 15 seconds.

(Source & More Information)

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FAMOUS AUTHORS

Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.

The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.

Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.

Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.

Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.

Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.

Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.

Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.

The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.

Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.

Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.

Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.

Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.

Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.

TEXTBOOKS

Textbook Revolution: Find biology, business, engineering, mathematics and world history textbooks here.

Wikibooks: From cookbooks to the computing department, find instructional and educational materials here.

KnowThis Free Online Textbooks: Get directed to stats textbooks and more.

Online Medical Textbooks: Find books about plastic surgery, anatomy and more here.

Online Science and Math Textbooks: Access biochemistry, chemistry, aeronautics, medical manuals and other textbooks here.

MIT Open Courseware Supplemental Resources: Find free videos, textbooks and more on the subjects of mechanical engineering, mathematics, chemistry and more.

Flat World Knowledge: This innovative site has created an open college textbooks platform that will launch in January 2009.

Free Business Textbooks: Find free books to go along with accounting, economics and other business classes.

Light and Matter: Here you can access open source physics textbooks.

eMedicine: This project from WebMD is continuously updated and has articles and references on surgery, pediatrics and more.

MATH AND SCIENCE

FullBooks.com: This site has “thousands of full-text free books,” including a large amount of scientific essays and books.

Free online textbooks, lecture notes, tutorials and videos on mathematics: NYU links to several free resources for math students.

Online Mathematics Texts: Here you can find online textbooks likeElementary Linear Algebra and Complex Variables.

Science and Engineering Books for free download: These books range in topics from nanotechnology to compressible flow.

FreeScience.info: Find over 1800 math, engineering and science books here.

Free Tech Books: Computer programmers and computer science enthusiasts can find helpful books here.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

byGosh: Find free illustrated children’s books and stories here.

Munseys: Munseys has nearly 2,000 children’s titles, plus books about religion, biographies and more.

International Children’s Digital Library: Find award-winning books and search by categories like age group, make believe books, true books or picture books.

Lookybook: Access children’s picture books here.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

Bored.com: Bored.com has music ebooks, cooking ebooks, and over 150 philosophy titles and over 1,000 religion titles.

Ideology.us: Here you’ll find works by Rene Descartes, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, David Hume and others.

Free Books on Yoga, Religion and Philosophy: Recent uploads to this site include Practical Lessons in Yoga and Philosophy of Dreams.

The Sociology of Religion: Read this book by Max Weber, here.

Religion eBooks: Read books about the Bible, Christian books, and more.

PLAYS

ReadBookOnline.net: Here you can read plays by Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and others.

Plays: Read Pygmalion, Uncle Vanya or The Playboy of the Western World here.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: MIT has made available all of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, and histories.

Plays Online: This site catalogs “all the plays [they] know about that are available in full text versions online for free.”

ProPlay: This site has children’s plays, comedies, dramas and musicals.

MODERN FICTION, FANTASY AND ROMANCE

Public Bookshelf: Find romance novels, mysteries and more.

The Internet Book Database of Fiction: This forum features fantasy and graphic novels, anime, J.K. Rowling and more.

Free Online Novels: Here you can find Christian novels, fantasy and graphic novels, adventure books, horror books and more.

Foxglove: This British site has free novels, satire and short stories.

Baen Free Library: Find books by Scott Gier, Keith Laumer and others.

The Road to Romance: This website has books by Patricia Cornwell and other romance novelists.

Get Free Ebooks: This site’s largest collection includes fiction books.

John T. Cullen: Read short stories from John T. Cullen here.

SF and Fantasy Books Online: Books here include Arabian Nights,Aesop’s Fables and more.

Free Novels Online and Free Online Cyber-Books: This list contains mostly fantasy books.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Project Laurens Jz Coster: Find Dutch literature here.

ATHENA Textes Francais: Search by author’s name, French books, or books written by other authors but translated into French.

Liber Liber: Download Italian books here. Browse by author, title, or subject.

Biblioteca romaneasca: Find Romanian books on this site.

Bibliolteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes: Look up authors to find a catalog of their available works on this Spanish site.

KEIMENA: This page is entirely in Greek, but if you’re looking for modern Greek literature, this is the place to access books online.

Proyecto Cervantes: Texas A&M’s Proyecto Cervantes has cataloged Cervantes’ work online.

Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum: Access many Latin texts here.

Project Runeberg: Find Scandinavian literature online here.

Italian Women Writers: This site provides information about Italian women authors and features full-text titles too.

Biblioteca Valenciana: Register to use this database of Catalan and Valencian books.

Ketab Farsi: Access literature and publications in Farsi from this site.

Afghanistan Digital Library: Powered by NYU, the Afghanistan Digital Library has works published between 1870 and 1930.

CELT: CELT stands for “the Corpus of Electronic Texts” features important historical literature and documents.

Projekt Gutenberg-DE: This easy-to-use database of German language texts lets you search by genres and author.

HISTORY AND CULTURE

LibriVox: LibriVox has a good selection of historical fiction.

The Perseus Project: Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library features titles from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in English and original languages.

Access Genealogy: Find literature about Native American history, the Scotch-Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more.

Free History Books: This collection features U.S. history books, including works by Paul Jennings, Sarah Morgan Dawson, Josiah Quincy and others.

Most Popular History Books: Free titles include Seven Days and Seven Nights by Alexander Szegedy and Autobiography of a Female Slave by Martha G. Browne.

RARE BOOKS

Questia: Questia has 5,000 books available for free, including rare books and classics.

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

Books-On-Line: This large collection includes movie scripts, newer works, cookbooks and more.

Chest of Books: This site has a wide range of free books, including gardening and cooking books, home improvement books, craft and hobby books, art books and more.

Free e-Books: Find titles related to beauty and fashion, games, health, drama and more.

2020ok: Categories here include art, graphic design, performing arts, ethnic and national, careers, business and a lot more.

Free Art Books: Find artist books and art books in PDF format here.

Free Web design books: OnlineComputerBooks.com directs you to free web design books.

Free Music Books: Find sheet music, lyrics and books about music here.

Free Fashion Books: Costume and fashion books are linked to the Google Books page.

MYSTERY

MysteryNet: Read free short mystery stories on this site.

TopMystery.com: Read books by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and other mystery writers here.

Mystery Books: Read books by Sue Grafton and others.

POETRY

The Literature Network: This site features forums, a copy of The King James Bible, and over 3,000 short stories and poems.

Poetry: This list includes “The Raven,” “O Captain! My Captain!” and “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”

Poem Hunter: Find free poems, lyrics and quotations on this site.

Famous Poetry Online: Read limericks, love poetry, and poems by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Lord Byron and others.

Google Poetry: Google Books has a large selection of poetry, fromThe Canterbury Tales to Beowulf to Walt Whitman.

QuotesandPoem.com: Read poems by Maya Angelou, William Blake, Sylvia Plath and more.

CompleteClassics.com: Rudyard Kipling, Allen Ginsberg and Alfred Lord Tennyson are all featured here.

PinkPoem.com: On this site, you can download free poetry ebooks.

MISC

Banned Books: Here you can follow links of banned books to their full text online.

World eBook Library: This monstrous collection includes classics, encyclopedias, children’s books and a lot more.

DailyLit: DailyLit has everything from Moby Dick to the recent phenomenon, Skinny Bitch.

A Celebration of Women Writers: The University of Pennsylvania’s page for women writers includes Newbery winners.

Free Online Novels: These novels are fully online and range from romance to religious fiction to historical fiction.

ManyBooks.net: Download mysteries and other books for your iPhone or eBook reader here.

Authorama: Books here are pulled from Google Books and more. You’ll find history books, novels and more.

Prize-winning books online: Use this directory to connect to full-text copies of Newbery winners, Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer winners.

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“fiction is a place suitable for exploring dark topics” and “immoral acts shouldn’t be glorified and normalized in fiction” are statements that can and should coexist

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Resources For Writing Sketchy Topics

Medicine

A Study In Physical Injury

Comas

Medical Facts And Tips For Your Writing Needs

Broken Bones

Burns

Unconsciousness & Head Trauma

Blood Loss

Stab Wounds

Pain & Shock

All About Mechanical Injuries (Injuries Caused By Violence)

Writing Specific Characters

Portraying a kleptomaniac.

Playing a character with cancer.

How to portray a power driven character.

Playing the manipulative character.

Portraying a character with borderline personality disorder.

Playing a character with Orthorexia Nervosa.

Writing a character who lost someone important.

Playing the bullies.

Portraying the drug dealer.

Playing a rebellious character.

How to portray a sociopath.

How to write characters with PTSD.

Playing characters with memory loss.

Playing a pyromaniac.

How to write a mute character.

How to write a character with an OCD.

How to play a stoner.

Playing a character with an eating disorder.

Portraying a character who is anti-social.

Portraying a character who is depressed.

How to portray someone with dyslexia.

How to portray a character with bipolar disorder.

Portraying a character with severe depression.

How to play a serial killer.

Writing insane characters.

Playing a character under the influence of marijuana.

Tips on writing a drug addict.

How to write a character with HPD.

Writing a character with Nymphomania.

Writing a character with schizophrenia.

Writing a character with Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Writing a character with depression.

Writing a character who suffers from night terrors.

Writing a character with paranoid personality disorder.

How to play a victim of rape.

How to play a mentally ill/insane character.

Writing a character who self-harms.

Writing a character who is high on amphetamines.

How to play the stalker.

How to portray a character high on cocaine.

Playing a character with ADHD.

How to play a sexual assault victim.

Writing a compulsive gambler.

Playing a character who is faking a disorder.

Playing a prisoner.

Portraying an emotionally detached character.

How to play a character with social anxiety.

Portraying a character who is high.

Portraying characters who have secrets.

Portraying a recovering alcoholic.

Portraying a sex addict.

How to play someone creepy.

Portraying sexually/emotionally abused characters.

Playing a character under the influence of drugs.

Playing a character who struggles with Bulimia.

Illegal Activity

Examining Mob Mentality

How Street Gangs Work

Domestic Abuse

Torture

Assault

Murder

Terrorism

Internet Fraud

Cyberwarfare

Computer Viruses

Corporate Crime

Political Corruption

Drug Trafficking

Human Trafficking

Sex Trafficking

Illegal Immigration

Contemporary Slavery 

Black Market Prices & Profits

AK-47 prices on the black market

Bribes

Computer Hackers and Online Fraud

Contract Killing

Exotic Animals

Fake Diplomas

Fake ID Cards, Passports and Other Identity Documents

Human Smuggling Fees

Human Traffickers Prices

Kidney and Organ Trafficking Prices

Prostitution Prices

Cocaine Prices

Ecstasy Pills Prices

Heroin Prices

Marijuana Prices

Meth Prices

Earnings From Illegal Jobs

Countries In Order Of Largest To Smallest Risk

Forensics

arson

Asphyxia

Blood Analysis

Book Review

Cause & Manner of Death

Chemistry/Physics

Computers/Cell Phones/Electronics

Cool & Odd-Mostly Odd

Corpse Identification

Corpse Location

Crime and Science Radio

crime lab

Crime Scene

Cults and Religions

DNA

Document Examination

Fingerprints/Patterned Evidence

Firearms Analysis

Forensic Anthropology

Forensic Art

Forensic Dentistry

Forensic History

Forensic Psychiatry

General Forensics

Guest Blogger

High Tech Forensics

Interesting Cases

Interesting Places

Interviews

Medical History

Medical Issues

Misc

Multiple Murderers

On This Day

Poisons & Drugs

Police Procedure

Q&A

serial killers

Space Program

Stupid Criminals

Theft

Time of Death

Toxicology

Trauma

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Link for full article below.

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“What? Like, a disabled protagonist? How would that even work? How could someone with a disability be the hero in an action show?” local anime trash boy wonders while sitting next to his box sets of Full Metal Alchemist, showing no hint of irony or self awareness. 

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stuff I like

- when the person kidnapped by the villain is all ‘no one’s going to come for me’ and 

- someone does, but it’s the person they’d least expect

- EVERYONE COMES because wow, maybe I am depressed because I didn’t think I knew this many people, much less that they liked me

- no one comes and the villain gets pissed on their captive’s behalf and treats them better than their former associates did

- they rescue themselves and everyone’s so impressed but the person yells because I AM CAPABLE AND YOU SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST NOTICED I’D BEEN KIDNAPPED

- they get rescued by a deus ex machina, preferably their dad/mom/grandma/old associate who is exponentially cooler than the heroes 

basically, I like it when people get rescued and get validation

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“I’m finally going to write! I have a great idea!”

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Okay, obscure pet peeve time, since a lot of stories I’ve read – both professional and fan-written – get this one wrong:

A sanitary sewer is where stuff you pour down the sink or flush down the toilet goes. It has predictable, constant flow, a closed structure, and is typically not human-accessible without excavation unless it’s combined with or routed through a storm sewer (see below).

A storm sewer is where stuff that goes down the drains and gutters in the streets ends up. It has irregular flow (to the point that it may be completely dry for portions of the year, depending on the climate), a non-closed structure that may incorporate open watercourses (e.g., creeks and streams) as portions of its network, and – owing to the need to provide adequate surge capacity during periods of high precipitation – may have main tunnels that are large enough to walk upright in.

In most cities with well-developed infrastructure, these two sewer networks are entirely separate. The pipes that comprise the sanitary sewer may be routed through portions of the tunnels that comprise the storm sewer for ease of access, and breakages or overflow in the sanitary sewer network may result in waste being periodically dumped into the storm sewer, but in general, the kind of sewer you can walk in will have you wading through rainwater, not waste.

Certainly, this doesn’t mean storm sewers are clean – you’ve seen the sorts of things people dump in the streets! – but it does mean your protagonists aren’t necessarily going to get covered in shit just from walking through a sewer.

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people talk all the time about “primal instincts” and it’s usually about violence or sexual temptations or something, but your humanity comes with a lot of different stuff that we do without really thinking about, that we do without being told to or prompted to

your average human comes pre-installed with instincts to:

Befriend

Tell story

Make Thing

Investigate

Share knowledge

Laugh

Sing

Dance

Empathize with

Create

we are chalk full of survival instincts that revolve around connecting to others (dog-shaped others, robot-shaped, sometimes even plant-shaped) and making things with our hands

your primal instincts are not bathed in blood- they are layered in people telling stories to each other around a fire over and over and putting devices together through trial and error over and over and reaching for someone and something every moment of the way

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anyway!! if you’re a gentile wishing you received more education on Judaism in your school system, i would recommend checking out jewfaq.org. it’s free and a great introductory resource, even if the design looks a little dated 

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Writing Jewish characters, and what to avoid

Anonymous said:

Do you have any advice for writing a Jewish character? Maybe a list of things to absolutely avoid doing?

Before I launch into the list of things to avoid, I want to say that the reason I love this blog so much is that they’re always responding to “how to write an X character” posts with “make sure they’re well-rounded outside of just that.” In other words, write a Jewish character so distinct that you could have two Jewish characters and they’d be different enough from each other that the reader could tell them apart.

I’m not saying you have to have two Jewish characters, just that if you have two Jewish lesbians in the same story, for example, then you can’t fall back on “Jewish” or “lesbian” as a way of defining the character and have to start building an actual personality. The book I’m writing now has three Jewish lesbians, plus a bisexual woman, and they have different interests, histories, outlooks, and roles in their world.

Read things by Jews. Try to stay away from anyone who seems to be too self-hating or “antisemisogynist”, i.e. that thing where Jewish men criticize Jewish women, which is dangerous because their intra-community misogyny gets picked up by the Gentile (non-Jewish) world and taken seriously because “oh, it’s their own people, so they must know.” No, it’s [some] men oppressing women, just as everywhere else.

Not all Jews are white or white-passing Ashkenazim. That’s something Gentiles often forget. So don’t think your Jewish characters have to look like me (or me with black hair.)

Some of us are atheists and still identify as Jews because of the way we often think of it as a tribe. Some of us feminize all the God nouns and verbs for feminist reasons. Some of us are very traditional and wear long skirts and sleeves. Some of us go to temple every week but have never, ever kept kosher (Hi. Nice to meet you.)

Here are all the stereotypes about us and, in a few cases, how I’d suggest getting around them if you find yourself written into a corner.

-Please don’t write us being either needlessly cheap (in other words, the character can afford to do X, but just doesn’t out of irrational stinginess) or cheap in a way that directly hurts others (in other words, not giving low-paid service employees a cost of living raise.) If for some reason your plot HAS to go there, it would help take away some of the anti-Semitic implications of rehashing these tropes if there are lots of other Jewish characters who aren’t acting like this or are acting in direct opposition to this. For example, if your greedy business owner won’t pay his employees above minimum wage, have the workers standing up to him and/or maybe a more generous owner from a competing business be Jewish as well. This is a character you would hurt us to write unless there are plenty of examples to the contrary showing that you don’t mean we’re all like this. This is the specific lie used to hurt us the most, in the past 150 years.

Note: broke college kids or struggling working-class people being cheap is different. Can you see why?

-Please don’t write us being the human version of the Volturi from Twilight. There is no secret Jewish conspiracy through which we control the media, banks, and politics. I used to joke that Jews don’t control the media because if we did, I’d have a book deal. I now have three book deals, so I need a new joke, but trust me, I’m in charge of nothing. Even my cat doesn’t obey me. She listens to my spouse, but not me. I think she thinks my spouse is the Mama Cat and I’m one of her littermates.

-Please don’t write a Jewish woman whose sexuality seems to be directly affected by the amount of money her partner is either making or buying her presents with. I’m not really sure there’s a way to fix this. It’s worse if she herself is already financially comfortable; I’m not really talking about a struggling single mom with three kids and a low-paid service job who’s turned on because a guy in an expensive suit offered to pay for her kid’s violin lessons. I’m talking about that caricature of a rich woman who’s used to good things that she didn’t earn herself, who requires more good things that she didn’t earn herself.

-Anything in which we are lizards or dragons is gonna have to be done delicately. I did it (spoiler, oops?) but that’s something that probably takes insider finesse. I mean, my dragon is definitely and unequivocally one of the good guys. A bad Jewish dragon would be playing into some of the most bizarre stereotypes I’ve ever encountered. (Google David Icke; I haven’t the stomach.)

-If you’re writing something with gore or fantasy violence, try to stay away from anything that evokes blood libel, the medieval myth that we use the blood of Christian kids to make ceremonial food. Vampires are also something that needs to be done with finesse because of the way “bloodsucking” can also be a metaphor for the stuff in the first bullet point, profiting financially off the hardship of others. (Side note: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter frames the white slave-owners in the American South as literal vampires who fed on their human captives. I thought this was a BRILLIANT metaphor because, well, it’s practically not even a metaphor.)

Some other less spectacularly awful stereotypes that you’d be doing us a favor to stay away from: our men being wimpy mama’s boys, our women being frigid after marriage, our women being tremendous nags, any gender but especially women being exceptionally whiny, and reducing the entire religion and culture down to “not eating pork” and “having a different winter holiday.”

If you must write a weak-willed man who dotes on his mother and lets her boss him around, please write at least two other Jewish male characters who aren’t like this, so that he doesn’t wind up representing all our men. If you must write a Jewish woman with a low sex drive, please make it clear she’s asexual or demisexual or something – or having a medical issue – and write her as a fully realized character and recognize that men are never, EVER “owed” sex anyway.

-Shira