Cat Fight In The Kitchen-Wattpad Rant

Super Relatable Characters

So, I swear I had every intention of having a nice, relaxing summer where I had more time for reading and critiques and weekly ranting/maybe some other story, but then I got a job offer from my hometown that took a lot of time and serious consideration. And after a lot of sleepless nights, long talks, and endless tears (not all on my part), I have decided to accept the job offer, meaning I'll no longer be working with my at-risk kids.

But you know what, they're not at risk anymore (and half of them graduated and half of the graduates got into great colleges, so booyah!). And this is something I need. So with their blessings and encouragement, I have moved completely out of my apartment and back to my house. And then I moved my best friend's stuff out of his apartment (no, he's still not home yet, twelve more days) so another one of his friends could move into it. And this is all while my brother and I are both trying to do remodeling to our houses. So I've had a busy as hell summer.

Anyway, no one cares about my personal life. So here we go. Let's rant about: Super Relatable Characters

Lately there's this huge push to make hyper relatable characters, which is absolutely understandable! I'm totally all for having characters that are relatable and fun to cheer for and read about. But lately, I've seen a lot of acharacters who are so super relatable that they aren't relatable at all. They try way too hard. So let's see if I can come up with a list of common issues I have with super relatable characters and see if I can give you some horrible advice. One two three break!

1. They're "not like other boys/girls"

This is a tell-tale sign that a character is about to get super obnoxiously "relatable" is when they say "I'm not like other boys/girls". And I have a couple of problems with this:

a. Of course you're not. No two people can be exactly the same. And that would be totally boring if they were

b. While I think uniqueness and embracing individuality is of the utmost importance, I also don't understand what's so bad about being like other boys/girls. People are awesome.

I just absolutely hate that phrase. It's so stupid. I'm not like the others. Duh.

But even if you were like other people, so what? Here's the thing, most of the time characters say this to degrade and stereotype other people. "I'm not like other girls. I don't wear high heels to school and get my nails done and I'm not scared of dirt and blah fucking blah." So what if a girl gets their nails done? So what if they wear heels all the time? I don't do either of those things, but it doesn't make me more or less important than someone who does.

So I really wish we could all just move past this now. Instead of focusing on what a character is NOT, try focusing more on what they are. Instead of a character telling me that they aren't like the other girls that wear miniskirts all the time, tell me more about who the character actually is. I don't need to know they don't wear short skirts. I need to know that they have a desire to get into the school of their dreams and they're fighting and taking every chance they can in order to get the scholarships they need to go.

Tell me who they are. Don't describe this stereotypical version of what boys/girls are supposed to be and then tell me that's what they're not.

2. They're walking contradictions

This one always blows my mind and most people don't seem to notice. Sometimes authors get so desperate to make their characters relatable that they throw out "amen lines" (think about when a preacher says something and the congregation all shouts "amen" because they agree). But this super relatableness doesn't fit into the Mary Sue persona and so the character has to become a walking contradiction. Some common examples of this include: