#i hope your storywriting is going well and you have a great day!

[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!

[hgthephoenix]

Do you think there’s more to Lance’s one-sided rivalry with Keith when they were at the Garrison ? Why do you think he started the rivalry ?

ooh, good question.

i definitely think there’s more to their rivalry xD here’s what i think:

first off, i don’t think it started right away. we’ve gotten flashbacks from their very early days at the garrison, all from Keith and Shiro’s perspectives, and based on those, it doesn’t really seem like Lance considered Keith his “rival” yet.

the one interaction we see between them in that scene is Lance warning Keith, in his own ridiculous way, about the consequences of his reckless actions.

both of them, at age ~13 or so, are MUCH less mature than they are now, but still, this is a huge reflection of where they ended up. Keith being impulsive, and Lance being the one to step in and (much more successfully) calm him down.

believe it or not in that interaction, which was probably one of their first, their dynamic was just a early version of their current relationship. they still had a LONG way to go, but Lance then was trying to help Keith out, just like he does now :’’)

Lance isn’t in any other part of those flashbacks. that episode was focused on Keith and Shiro, with a little Hunk/Keith interaction thrown in there, possibly to foreshadow the development they get later on in the season. we see Hunk’s scared reaction to Keith and James’s fight.

but we DON’T SEE LANCE’S.

Lance WAS there, he’s the one farthest over on the left:

but they chose NOT to include him in the fight scene. they included Hunk, but not Lance. 

to me, this means that we’re going to get moments of Lance at the garrison in s8, maybe even this scene again but from his perspective. i wouldn’t be surprised if this scene was not only a big moment in Keith’s character arc, but also in Lance’s.

in this scene, Lance definitely didn’t consider Keith his rival. they had yet to be sorted into groups based on their abilities, and were being evaluated by the staff, probably to see where all their individual strengths lay. but i do think that Lance was already a little jealous of Keith’s abilities here, albeit annoyed.

at some point after these flashbacks, Hunk was made an engineer, Keith a fighter pilot, and Lance a cargo pilot. and what was Lance’s biggest dream?

when Lance was made a cargo pilot, he must have been FURIOUS. 

but why pick on Keith? easy, he wanted to be just like Keith, the best pilot in their class. he admired him immensely, but obviously didn’t want to say that out loud, he couldn’t even admit it to himself, so he settled on creating their “rivalry.” and what exactly prompted this decision?

well, seeing how Lance was given Keith’s position as a fighter pilot after he got kicked out, i’m guessing that he was next in line for the spot. Keith and Lance may have been competing for the final fighter pilot spot. Keith, although he was the best flyer, had many discipline issues that obviously made the staff wary of making him a fighter pilot. Lance, on the other hand, had less skill, but was seemingly a good student (that we know of). 

and as we know, the staff ended up choosing Keith, probably causing Lance to single him out and make them “rivals.”

if this is true, i have no idea. to me that seems like the best explanation based on what we currently know, but i could be completely wrong of course lol.

i do really think that we’ll get the true answer in s8 though. why? because of what we got for everyone else’s flashbacks.

for Pidge, her arc is about family and perseverance. we got flashbacks about her efforts to sneak into the garrison to find Matt, and individual memories she had of him and her that were important to her.

with Hunk, his arc is about bravery and believing in himself. his flashbacks were with his family, and how he started believing in his engineering and mechanic abilities. we also got that one of a younger Hunk at he garrison, looking worried because James and Keith were causing trouble.

with Shiro, we saw how seemingly perfect his life was pre-Kerberos, and how he selflessly helped and mentored Keith. but we saw how even great leaders like him have flaws, and that even Shiro does not have a perfect life, what with Adam and his degenerative disease.

Allura, we haven’t gotten SPECIFIC flashbacks for, and i wouldn’t be surprised if we got more in s8. but we HAVE seen her interact with her father’s hologram in s1, and saw her as a baby, during Coran’s story of the paladins of old. her interactions with her father were about leadership, the premise of her arc.

Keith, we got flashbacks of his infancy with Krolia and his dad. then we learned how Shiro took him in and the influence he had on Keith. Shiro helped him learn to believe in himself, and became the brother he never had.

i guess i’m trying to say that they don’t just stick flashbacks in for no reason. everyone else’s flashbacks were important parts of their stories, and Lance’s will be too. and with Lance, the most important thing to him was being a fighter pilot. so we will definitely learn more about his journey at/leading up to him becoming a fighter pilot, which no doubt will include how Keith fits in and how he started the rivalry.

their stories are intertwined.

Lance’s flashbacks are going to include this, no doubt. there’s no way they would leave this huge plot hole: the storywriters are great, and they definitely haven’t overlooked this, especially since they included information about everyone else’s pasts in great detail.

holy shit i feel like i got so off topic…i tried to answer your question and of course it got more detailed. whoops. 🙄🙄🙄 anyway, i hope this post suffices. have a good day, and KICK. ; )

[just4penguins]

Everyone loves the ending of AHKJ, KJ's speech to Clo, the twins making up, and all the characters are seemingly happy. Everyone cries, everyone's happy, roll credits and it's a great ending to a great show. Or is it? This is the part where I have to disagree. Let's just be honest, Clager is redicuolous. Clo spends 3\4 of the show hating Sage, while crimson's off dating him, and youre going to tell me Clo suddenly loves him? And Sage himself has yet to show he likes clover other then proposing.

That, my friend, is exactly what I, and a bunch of my friends, have been disappointed about. I mean, it is true that Clover has to go, if they want to keep it in the same universe as the movies. And I cannot blame, if she is not gone then explain why wasn’t she beating up Alex at first sight. But there are a whole lot of better ways to make her leave. As what King Julien said, I expected her to leave with a noble death while protecting King Julien. That would’ve been, in a way, a whole lot better and makes much more sense than this.

When in the world did Clover and Sage fell in love I just cannot get it. Sure, people will say Exiled, and according to the story, yes. But seriously, before Exiled she would love to kill him, so to speak. He is, admittedly, kinda annoying at times when you need a straight answer and all he do is babble poetically. And suddenly in a blink of an eye they’re about to kiss on a tree it just blows my mind.

To me at least, it just doesn’t make sense for them to go from hating each other, to marrying each other, in just how many days that was. When they do get married, they won’t last because it’s a literally unsuitable pairing, really. Clover will end up being annoyed of Sage again and all that she likes of him is his muscular handsomeness and whatnot. They will end up fighting a lot, and well, Clover might end up regretting it and leaving the kingdom going back to her home only to realise that things have gone haywire without her. And that is probably when she will realise her mistake. Unless is the plot for the AHKJ movie we’re hoping for then it’s not so bad, it can teach you a lesson about how love can be dangerous xD

If they don’t want to kill Clover as it is a kids show, then understandable. What you could do instead is probably something that makes much more sense, like leave temporarily for like a mission or something so she doesn’t have to appear in Madagascar. OR JUST MAKE IT A SEPARATE UNIVERSE LIKE HOW IT WAS MEANT TO BE.

It’s one of the things that disturbs me the most about the ending of AHKJ. Although, one thing that I am quite certain about, the storywriters, animators, and most of the crew, still ship Jover and they only made that ending because they have to. I mean, King Julien falling down into Clover’s house, slo-mo Clover turning around with special effects, compliment on her looks, and protecting her from Crimson, fight me if you say that I am wrong to think that the crew ship Jover.