#I don’t generally insult people’s intelligence but this man is just constantly loud and wrong and there is no way to get through to him

[boag]

My mom and her bf got into an argument earlier bc he was being ignorant as fuck and I called him dumb and left the room but he was still pissed off about it and I heard him yell “she called me Mr Magoo!” and my mom was like “babe I was the one who called you Mr Magoo first” and he said “well didn’t she send you that meme of Patrick and say it was me?” and I fucking snorted 💀 Context:

[gosh-mr-big-brain]

Superheroes My Ass

    “I told you this was a bad idea.”

    “Shut up,” Tony hissed, squinting to see past the faint trail of light being emitted from his dying, disappointment of a flashlight. “And no, you did not. I distinctly remember you saying to me, ‘Wow Tony! Going into this dark and possibly deadly cave sounds like a fantastic idea! Why didn’t I think of that? No wonder people call you a genius!’”

    Rhodey remained quiet beside him but Tony could practically see the familiar look of annoyed distaste that was now, most likely, digging itself into the other man’s exasperated features.

    “I may be paraphrasing a little.”

    At that, Rhodey could no longer control himself and released a loud snort, the light of his flashlight swinging in a wide arc with the movement of his body. Tony turned himself and his own flashlight to the side just in time to see the annoyed expression melt into one of amused fondness. “Maybe just a little, Stank, maybe just a little.”

    Tony grinned back, his entire expression brightening into one of delight, pleased to make his friend smile despite the undesirable circumstances they were currently stuck with. “Anyways,” he began, turning so that he could actually see where he was going. “It doesn’t matter whose fault it is-”

    “Yours,” Rhodey muttered, playing it off as a loud, intense burst of coughs.

    Tony swung the flashlight back around, himself in tow, and pointed into directly into his friend’s face. Unfortunately, it hardly had any effect on the other man given the fact that it was so dim that you could barely even see with it. Tony always had been one for the dramatics, even when lost in a cave. “Oh, I’m sorry, Rhodey. Did you say something?”

    He blinked in surprise, the gesture large and over exaggerated. “Who, me? Of course not, Tony! Why would I ever even attempt to interrupt your brilliant genius?” Rhodey protested pressing his free hand against his heart, his eyes a little too wide and tone a little too insulted to be sincere.

    Tony squinted, eyeing him with deep suspicion. “Whatever, Rhodes,” he started, twirling around to face the extreme darkness that threatened to swallow the two friends whole when the lights of their flashlights finally deemed it fit to go out. “Back to what I was saying before-”

    Another snort, this one smaller and more controlled. “I think we have more pressing issues than that, Tones,” Rhodey drawled, waving his own dim flashlight through the air so that the light bounced all around the rocky corridor that they were currently passing through.

    “That’s what I was talking about!” Tony defended, shooting a look of contempt over his shoulder in his friend’s general direction. “You know that’s not the conversation I meant, you asshole.”

    “Mmm, sure Stark. We both know how desperately you want to go back to talking about Parker’s science fair entry. Look at you! Who would have ever thought that Tony Stark would ever become such a proud Dad?” Rhodey teased, his tone light and joking as he ran a hand along the cavern wall. “Not me, that’s for sure.”

    “Okay, first of all Peter’s entry is really cool so you can shut the hell up and second of all, I would be really offended right if it weren’t for the fact that we’re lost in a f*cking cave!” Tony retorted, his voice raising to a near shout and echoing all throughout the corridor as he finished speaking.

    “And whose fault is that?” his ‘best friend’ of nearly 30 years inquired, a sugary sweet innocence caked all throughout his words.

    Reflexively, Tony rolled his eyes despite the limited amount of irritation currently coursing through his body. “We are not getting back into this, Rhodey,” he warned, jabbing a shadowy finger in his direction. Stupid normal people flashlights that his idiot bot forgot to charge. Stupid DUM-E who, for some reason that escaped even his level of intelligence, couldn’t perform any simple task to save his life. Stupid hiking trip Rhodey decided to drag him on as part of his rehabilitation and without any of his awesome technology nonetheless because ‘It’s not a real hiking trip if you’re on your phone the whole time’. Tony grumbled all this in his mind, entirely ready to blame anyone and everyone for his current predicament. God, he’d kill for a canister of coffee right now… One that wasn’t mixed with fresh motor oil because DUM-E just loved constantly disappointing him

    “It’s a bit too late for that because, as you so eloquently phrased it, we are currently lost in a f*cking cave!”

    Tony glowered into the darkness, unwilling to give his friend the satisfaction of turning to face him. “Thank you, Captain Obvious. Maybe you could be slightly more helpful and think of a solution other than aimlessly wandering around in almost complete darkness because I, for one, don’t really feel like dying in this stupid cave,” he announced, spontaneously pounding the rock wall with his fist in an act of belated irritation.

    “You’re not alone on that one, man,” Rhodey conceded, placing a steady hand on the other man’s shoulder to help calm him. “Dying in this cave would be quite the anti-climatic ending for Iron Man and War Machine,” he sighed, the sound of his breathing awfully loud in the nearly silent cavern.

    The two friends remained this way, standing side by side, for several long moments, all banter and clever quips suddenly stolen from their very lips. Only a crushing hopelessness remained, hanging heavily through the air, eating at their very souls...

…

    “Tony?” Rhodey? What the hell are the two of you doing? Honestly! I leave you alone for one night and somehow you end up lost in a cave in the middle of nowhere!”

    Rapidly, the crushing hopelessness melted away into relief and the slight twinge of guilt that always came with a lecture from Pepper Potts. Oh, and a small, yet strong, dose of absolute terror as well because Pepper Potts was always, and especially in lecture mode, incredibly intimidating.

    “Pep?” Tony responded, his voice growing louder and much more optimistic. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought you had a press conference in California!”

    “And I thought the two of you weren’t complete idiots. Apparently we were both wrong,” Pepper berated, finally coming into view. And by coming into view, Tony meant her huge, blinding, proper (Take notes, DUM-E, take notes) flashlight came into view. And, to try and put some perspective in their next actions, they had been dealing with stupidly dim, uncharged flashlights for the past two and a half hours they had been embarrassingly lost in this extremely dark cave. Long story short, their reactions to the sudden increase of light did not reflect either their age nor their experience as beloved, courageous superheroes.

    The Invincible Iron Man and War Machine both flinched, eyes squinting as the radiant glow enveloped them. Tony was so taken aback that he stumbled backwards, clumsily tripping over his own two feet and easily taking Rhodey down with him in the process.

    “Honestly.” Pepper rolled her eyes, her dark silhouette barely visible in the dazzling light. “Superheroes my ass.”

[tumblunni]

How do I write an autistic villain without demonizing autism by accident? ;-;

I’m not really sure why you’re messaging this to me. I’m really sorry but I’m not an expert on like.. political stuff about autism stereotyping, just because I’m autistic. And it depends on which country you live in, I know that america has a far more visible sort of cultural presence for stereotypes, due to the whole Autism $peaks controversies. I dont live in america and I’m not super smart or anything, so yeah this is a disclaimer that this is just my opinion and you should probably research answers given by other people too. And maybe ask people about the specific circumstances of what you’re writing, like the context of the setting of the story and what the villain is like, etc. I’d be happy to chat to you about that if you need help! (but again, im no expert, lol)

ANYWAY!

My opinion on the subject is that having an autistic villain is perfectly fine, as long as you’re not villainizing autism. Like...* Don’t make the autism the reason theyre a villain.* Don’t make people scared of them because of the autism, rather than because they’re a villain.* Don’t treat their autistic traits as scary or inherantly villainous.* Don’t make anyone insult them for their autism and act like its justified because they’re evil.

And similarly its bad form to do any of that stuff in regard to any sort of minority really. An example that always bugged me is how Excellus from Fire Emblem Awakening is scary and evil because he’s a murderous monster, yet everyone in the game constantly insults him for the fact he acts ambiguously gay/transgender/effeminate. Like, there’s way too many jokes about people finding him ‘disgusting’ because of some random thing he can’t change, like a sexuality, race or mental illness which plenty of non-evil people have too! It also lessens his impact as a villain because the characters barely even address the actual villainous things he does, and he doesnt seem to have any motive at all. They just ride on the whole ‘the audience will find him gross’ thing as a crutch and forgot to bother writing a good villain.

Oh, and your concerns are indeed valid, yo! Sometimes it is important to think about the context you created a character in, even if you didnt intentionally create any negative messages within your writing.It’s just that the case where a character will be seen as villainizing [minority trait] for being a villain... that’s kind of only in a very specific circumstance? its just that this specific circumstance is very very common in mass media nowadays.It’s ‘The Smurfette Principle’.If you only have one character of a minority in your cast, its easy for an uninformed audience to pick up messages that you’re saying ALL members of that minority are the same as them.If you only have one autistic character and he’s the villain, then you might accidentally be villainizing him. In a world where autistic characters being villainized for their autism is already very common, people could just assume you made them autistic for the same reason all those other writers did- because they think it’s ‘scary’. It feeds the stereotype even if you didn’t conciously intend it that way.

So a very very easy way to fix this problem is just to add multiple characters of a minority into your story, filling various roles from villain to hero to helpful npc. or anything you can think of!

Another good quick fix is to have your villain be autistic, but portray their autistic traits as sympathetic/relateable/a humanizing aspect of them. Not just portraying it as something neutral that doesnt make them scary, but going out of your way to add some scenes showing how they’re just like anybody else. Or even making it one of their redeeming traits!It doesn’t have to outright be something like ‘yo being autistic makes me inherantly good and childlike’, which is a stereotype all to itself, lol. But you could show them experiencing predjudice from another character, in a way that makes the audience sympathise. Honestly having a character attack them for being autistic instead of being a villain would be a good way to do this, as long as that character is actually shown as being wrong for what they’re doing. Or simply showing the villain having common autistic traits, facing common problems, doing common everyday things... that can be enough to portray autism positively. Have them shown doing this stuff outside of the situation of them being villainous. It makes them feel more human and less of an abstract symbol of evil. And because these small glimpses of normality are lightening the mood, they become seen as a positive aspect!

KIND OF AN OFFTOPIC TANGEANT SORRYJust my personal experience as an autistic kid experiencing this story... I personally headcanoned Cyrus from pokemon as autistic. Not because he’s ‘scary and emotionless’, but because his backstory was relateable to me as an autistic person. It’s said that his parents were emotionally abusive, and that he had nobody to turn to because everyone thought he was ‘a creepy kid’. And he was able to find solace by obsessing over repairing machines in his bedroom, and apparantly has trouble understanding people because they can’t be fixed as easily. Stuff like maths and science are kind of a stereotypical Special Interest for autistic children to be given in fiction, I guess because it makes you seem more intelligent when you obsess about that instead of video games, norse mythology, or collecting tiny novelty spoons from around the world XD (Yeah i was a weird kid.)So yeah sorry I went a little offtopic there, but the point is that it might have been by accident instead of intention but that villain has a lot of traits that read as autistic. And when i first played Diamond and Pearl I actually disliked him a lot because of that, I felt like they were villainizing someone who seemed relateable and potentially redeemable. I mean, he seemed pretty depressed too! Give that man some therapy! But when I played Platinum and got to learn his backstory I started to feel like the writers actually did want us to feel sympathetic to him, because of how all those ‘scary’ traits were presented so sympathetically. Like.. the backstory isn’t that he became evil because he was an autistic kid who did creepy things like obsess about machinery and suck at social contact. No, he became a villain because he was abused by his parents, him being ‘weird’ is just intended to make it clear here that he didnt deserve it. It makes him pitiable, it makes him relateable, it makes you feel so much more frustrated that nobody listened to him and saved him from that hell, and nobody even seems to remember him fondly, just because he was ‘weird’. And hell, even his ‘emotion is evil’ philosophy seems very relateable to me as an autistic child. It seems like he learned to seclude himself to avoid angering his parents. That’s the impression I got from his final scene in Platinum, where he finally acts angry at you for beating him, then gets angry at himself for expressing emotion and forces himself to go back to how he usually talks. I get a bit pissed off whenever I see fans of the series claim he actually IS emotionless, lol! This scene made it clear to me that this is just a guy who WISHES he was emotionless, somehow seeing it as the only way to be free of pain. Someone who struggles to deal with his own emotions, or feels like he’s disgusting when he expresses them. And this is VERY relateable specifically to an autistic kid who suffered from an abusive parent! “Quiet Hands” is a kind of common concept that autistic kids might experience, that’s the name for a popular ‘parenting technique’ that really fucks people up. Focusing on making your kid never ‘act autistic’, rather than actually helping them understand things. ‘Quiet Hands’ is specifically about slapping or smacking your kid whenever they show stimming behaviour. (Hand flapping being a common way this symptom can manifest.) We’re taught never to be too loud, and to always always have to restrain ourselves to avoid embarassing our parents. We have to try and learn how to act like ‘normal people’ and become scared of harmless parts of our own brain just because theyre ‘embarassing’, leading to even worse emotional problems as an adult. i mean seriously how is it logical to tell a kid who has troubles with social interaction that they shouldnt even practise it?? Plus its a huge mess to teach these kids to do way more emotional labour than neurotypical kids are expected to do, and then treat them like they’re below average intelligence for not being able to do twice as much as everyone else...

ANYWAY! That’s a thinG! Sorry I went rambling off there about how a particular fictional character touched my heart, lol!I just kinda wish he could be canonically autistic, or if I had similar canonically autistic characters to relate to, instead. So i think having more autistic villains can’t be bad, we’re so badly in need of more autistic characters in general! And villains have a unique perspective of being able to hit our emotions the hardest. I think its easier to cry over someone who has a sad backstory of how they became evil, compared to anything else!So yeah what I was trying to say before I went offtopic is that if the backstory is ‘became evil because autism’, then people will complain. But if the backstory is ‘became evil because someone mistreated them because autism’ then that’s a good way to make people sympathise with autism. Aaaaand I’m bad at explaining this, because autism XD Well, i mean, my personal symptoms and lack of diagnosis til I was an adult means that I’m still working on learning how to communicate correctly, I don’t mean every autistic person writes terrible tl;dr advice posts that degrade into pokemon XDOh man i feel embarassed now, you asked me such a polite question and I didnt know how to answer it very well...I just hope maybe I inspired you to go out and do more research, rather than putting you off with my nonsense!