Maybelle's Revised Character Archetypes
Author: Maybelle, aka Jody Wallace
Original Publication Date in Love Notes: August 2004

Hi, folks. I’m the Grammar Wench’s cousin Maybelle, and she don’t know I sorta borrowed her computer and email to tell y’all something. When I’m done, just don’t let on I was here, okay?

What I want to talk about is something I just read. These brainiac ladies by the names of Tami Cowden, Caro LaFever and Sue Viders published this book called The Complete Writer’s Guide to Heroes & Heroines, see? People’s raving about it, like they do that thing Deb Dixon wrote, something about field goals and conflicting motivations. Football’s great and all, especially if the home team’s winning and your man ain’t cruising the cheerleaders, but I don’t see what it has to do with writing books.

Anyway, when I told my cousin she should write my life story cuz maybe she’d finally get published, she gave me this glare that could freeze ice, you know the kind I mean, and handed me a stack of books. “Do it yourself,” she said. This Heroes & Heroines book was shortest, so I read it first, and I have to tell you. Them ladies got it sorta wrong. If y’all is writing your books based on the fake people in here, y’all ain’t talking about real folks at all.

When I told my cousin that, she got pretty mad again and ranted something about John Ray fiction being larger than life and people in books not supposed to be like the neighbors. I don’t know who this John Ray is, but let me show you what I mean, and you decide for yourself.

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Let’s do the men first and get them out of the way. Lord knows it’s hard enough to shift their butts when you’re trying to clean around them, but need a drippy faucet fixed or your car worked on, and they ain’t nowhere to be found.

The Jerk-Off (aka the Chief): I would have called this guy something that starts with an “a”, but I don’t know how much cussing you let people do in your club. Jerk-Off’s got to be the boss of everybody, he knows everything, and he ain’t never wrong. If he’s your man, you better hope you don’t gain no weight and you never make him wait, or you’ll hear about it. If he even comes home nights. He’ll mostly work late. Luckily, he really is working, and not working his secretary. And he’s got money and a nice car, so that’s a bonus. However, if this guy ain’t in charge cuz some other Jerk-Off is, he’ll be real hateful, so step easy, girlfriend.

The Horndog (aka the Bad Boy): The one your mother warned you about and the one she was seeing on the side when your Daddy was at work. He needs a haircut and he’s probably got himself a little record. The trick to understanding the Horndog is that he cops this attitude because he knows it’ll get him more women and it’ll rile the JerkOffs of the world, whom he hates with a red hot passion because they put him in jail or repo’d his Harley or whatever. You can’t trust him around your girlfriends, especially not if he swears up and down he loves only you. Even when this guy ticks off the police, he don’t care cuz he’s always got some old gal dumb enough to come bail him out. Use him for sex when your JerkOff forgets you exist, but use about three condoms.

The Wuss (aka the Best Friend): Aww, you know this softie! He’ll go see the latest chick flick with you if you can’t get your girlfriend to go because she’s chasing after some Horndog or Jock-Itch. He ain’t a real achiever at work and his car’s not impressive. You’ll be lucky if it don’t break down when he’s carrying you to the mall. Poor guy never dates, though, and he’s chubby. Just like a teddy bear. He actually wears that sweater his Granny knitted him and has several cats. On purpose, not ones some girl left when she took off. If you ever get drunk and give him some, he’ll be yours for life. Just be sure you want that life because he might turn into a stalker if you dump him, and all your friends will be mean to you for hurting him. Not that they’d go out with him.

The Slimeball (aka the Charmer): This one's real good looking, but watch out. He’ll sell you the shirt on your own back and leave you naked. He might seem like a Horndog, because he’s always flirting, but he’s smooth as Exlax from his facial to his pedicure. He’s down with the cops, too, unlike the Horndog, and anyway, he can talk them out of arresting him if he crosses the line. His big objective is getting away with stuff, not getting women. Though he don’t turn women down, let me tell you, especially if they can bring the bling. The key to the Slimeball is he’s jackass lazy and don’t want to do any honest work for what he’s got. If this one’s late at
the office, you might as well call your lawyer, honey, because whatever he’s up to, you ain’t gonna like it.

The Poser (aka the Lost Soul): What can you say about this guy? He’s always gloomy, always in a rotten mood. Sure, he’s romantic at first, but then he decides — not because of anything you did — that you’re gonna leave him. Most of the time he won’t take you out, he just wants to sit home and brood. If there’s any clothes in his closet that ain’t black, it’s because it’s yours, or the red dress from some other hoochie that he can’t throw out because it inspires him. He writes or plays guitar or whatever, and he’s practically broke. He has some dead-end job at a convenience store while he’s waiting for his big break. Truth is he’s ticked because he ain’t as rich or important as Jerk-Off, so he decides the world is out to get him.

The Geek (aka the Professor): This guy will make you feel dumb as a bottle of peroxide. He works for Jerk-Off in a tiny cubicle and never sees the light of day. He’s real pale and wears glasses. People get rich off this man, though he’s not all that wealthy himself. The Geek don’t even care — he’s too busy being smarter than everybody else. He actually enjoys working. He’s like that guy on Star Trek with the pointy ears. He thinks taking you out is illogical if you’re already dating, but let him tell himself that when you ain’t around to take out. The good thing is, he won’t never cheat and he’s pretty good in bed if you get him to read a bunch of them sex books first.

The Jock-Itch (aka the Swashbuckler): Used to be, Jocks just played football or basketball and stuck close to home, but this new breed spends all their time doing extreme sports or mouthing off about extreme sports. What’s wrong with football, I ask you? Who wants to be all obsessed with something you gotta go to Colorado for, anyway? And rock climbing. How boring is that? This guy can nail a girl, sure, but he’s also Mr. Commitmentphobe. I would have called him that except for the reason he is that way. He thinks women and any other possessions cramp his extreme lifestyle. He never sticks around anyplace long enough to have somebody cook for him, so he’s skinny as hell and sometimes kind of smells.

The Thug (aka the Warrior): This guy loves to fight. He wants to bust somebody’s onion on a regular basis. If he can’t get somebody to pay him to do it, he’ll drum up a crusade, like save the air, so he’ll have an excuse to kick ass. Most Thugs is pure physical, but there’s a few too
scrawny or weak so they find other ways to fight, with their so-called brains. He’s one of the only archetypes happy to mess with Jerk-Off. The difference is the Thug don’t care if his butt gets kissed, and after he wins a fight, he takes off to find another one. If you’re dating a Thug,
sure, he’s probably built, but every time you go out, he’ll raise some ruckus with the guy in the truck next to you, and you’ll spend the evening listening to him bitch about it, if you ain’t at the station. Again. He won’t fight much with you, though, cuz he’s kind of a sucker for sex.

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Okay, that’s the men. As we all know, women is more complex than men, and smarter to boot. It’s just that we have to let men think they run things or they’ll all turn into Posers or Jock-Itches and we won’t have nobody left we can talk into doing the dirty work. The day we get a woman president is the day all the men’s weenies will probably shrivel up. At least for a while. They’ll get over it.

Anyway, here are Maybelle’s Archetypes for Women. Maybe you’ll recognize more of these than you did the pretend folks in the Heroes & Heroines book. And let me tell you, if you write stories about these characters, Oprah will probably start her real book club back up. Only please give them a happy ending. Or a bad one if they deserve it. And if you want to write a great book that’s sure to be a best seller, you can contact me about the rights to my biography. You would not believe the things that have happened to me.

The Bitch (aka the Boss): I noticed on Tami Cowden’s Web site she’s got the Bitch up as her number one Villainess. I thought about changing this one to the Maneater to avoid looking like a copycat, but the Bitch only eats men who’s in her way. Y’all know this woman. Tight power
suit, no sense of humor, only cooks gourmet stuff nobody wants to eat anyway. She’s climbed her way up whatever ladder she decides is worth climbing by using everybody’s heads as rungs. She works long hours and she’s rich as all get out — without alimony. In a group, she talks more than anybody else and she’s bossy as hell. And is this woman ever critical! It’s a wonder she has any friends, but her friends plus her man is all too scared to leave her. She takes time out from her upward mobility to wreak vengeance every now and then.

Note: The significant thing is lots of women have an inner Bitch. They keep her tucked away because she’d probably refuse to go back if they let her out. She’s hardheaded that way. And then they’d just be a Bitch all the time, which ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Ho (aka the Seductress): Maybe deep inside, the Ho hates men and wishes she could settle down, but we all got choices, right? And she chooses to use sex as a weapon, as a bribe, and as entertainment. She don’t want to boss everyone around like the Bitch, but she loves nothing more than taking the Bitch’s man and turning him into a pretzel. She’s got no use for other women except as an avenue to their men. Only make friends with this woman when you’re single and don’t ever tell her who you’re crushing on, or she’s sure to addict him to her coochie. She cannot be trusted. Why does she do you that way? Because she can.

Note: Do women have an inner Ho? No, just an inner Bitch whose goal happens to be getting laid. They keep her locked up even more tight than the regular Bitch because then they’ll get a bad rep for being a slut. That gets even more tiring than being a Bitch, let me tell you. I could relay plenty of stories.

The Nobody (aka the Spunky Kid): She sits around making sarcastic comments and eating ice cream, which don’t get her no attention and no men. It only gets her a bigger butt. She wishes she could be more like the Bitch or the Ho, but the Nobody don’t have the guts it takes to be that way. Plus she just ain’t that coldhearted. She’s no threat to your man or your place in society, and she sure ain’t any competition for your job. She will even let you take credit for her ideas without speaking up. She’s good with kids and animals, too, so get her to babysit for you while you go out with the guy she’s been crushing on — probably a Slimeball since girlfriend has horrible taste in men. However, that will make you a Bitch or a Ho, so you decide if you wanna go there before you play her that way.

The Space Cadet (aka the Free Spirit): Do not ever go to dinner at this woman’s house or she’ll have you eating grass and tofu and stuff like that. This chick is a real nutcase, and she’d lose her head if it weren’t attached to her neck. She’s a sweet girl, if totally airy fairy. She can’t
ever finish nothing, not even a movie with that Brad Pitt in it. Not even when he’s supposed to appear buck naked near the end of the film. She seems like she’s not from this planet most of the time, and she can’t drive worth crap. If you come to her with a man problem, she’ll toss your runes or play Tarot cards instead of settle in for a good dish and carton of Rocky Road. She won’t even let you call him when you’re drunk and mad. Her advice is always to feng sooey your life because your spiritual is cluttered. The fact is, girlfriend is dumb as a rock, poor thing.

The Whiner (aka the Waif): Whatever bad happened to you, worse stuff happened to her. Whatever is going on in your life, her life is more mixed up. She can’t do nothing for herself but complain and snivel, and everything is somebody else’s fault. At the same time, she thinks everybody’s got it better than she does and can’t see that most of her mess is self-made. She will not tell you if your butt looks big in your new jeans because she’s too busy worrying about her own butt. It’s enough to send her to Rosie, your Space Cadet girlfriend, and have Rosie tell her to feng her life. The Whiner’s got a spine like cooked spaghetti when it comes to men — though not women. Women she knows how to use, leaning on that “sister power” thing. She is constantly broke and will mooch the shoes off your feet if you ain’t careful. And then lose them.

Note: Alongside the inner Bitch is the inner Whiner, and she’s in every single woman, not just a lot of them. She gets out a lot more, too. Seems kind of funny to think of all these people living inside you, but I did tell you women were more complex than men, right? It’s because us and Whitney and Chaka, we’re every woman.

The Control Freak (aka the Librarian): You may think a Control Freak tries to organize the world, but not this one. She ain’t a Bitch because she’s got no use for other people as long as they stay out of her hair. Her stuff has to be just so, and she’s got her nose in some book or at the computer most of the time. If she says she’s going to do something, she does it in triplicate and she expects other people to be exactly like she is. When we turn out to be human beings instead of robots, she’s confused and withdraws even further. Girlfriend never has any excitement, so do her a favor. Get her drunk, call up your cousin the Horndog, and sic him on her. She sure ain’t gonna get a man herself. She uses too many big words when she talks so hardly anybody can understand her when she's sober.

The Treehugger (the Crusader): About as much fun as cleaning prison toilets. This chick has got the weight of the world on her natural unbleached cotton clad shoulders, or she thinks she does. She actually writes letters to congressmen and editors. Just mention the upcoming elections, like whether or not you should cancel your spa day to vote, and she’ll get so mad she spits. Which is kind of funny, unless you’re in public and people start staring at you. Her interest in men only extends to men who think the same way she does. She’s pretty narrow minded when it comes down to it. Worse, she don’t shave and she’s a horrible shopping buddy. Take a nice little Nobody instead — or a Bitch if you want to get your shoes half price.

The Baby Momma (aka the Nurturer): Girlfriend just wants to get her hooks in some man and start popping out babies. This chick can cook like your grandmother, and her big butt proves it. Hell, she can probably even sew, and somehow she always manages to hold down a job. She makes a great friend but she can’t say no to anybody, not even other women. She’s got no self-respect and she’s sick a lot. The only time you’ll see her scream and yell is if somebody hurts one of her kids or one of the people she considers family. Then she releases her inner Bitch and scares the patooey out of everyone. If you love her, fix her up with a Wuss and keep the Horndogs and Slimeballs far, far away. Offer up your own body as a sacrifice if you simply must.

Well, that’s it. Now don’t tell them ladies who wrote Heroes & Heroines that I pointed out the flaws in their system, because I think they’re probably Control Freaks and it would rattle their cages they didn’t consider these things. Since they do so many useful things for you writers, you don’t want them withdrawing and refusing to write more books. I mean, it would take a Control Freak to be enough of a genius to think up all that stuff. I couldn’t have come up with it to start with, but I have a knack for turning silk purses into something more useful. It’s come in handy during my short but colorful life. Which would really make a good book, when you think about it.

And especially don’t tell my cousin the Grammar Wench I done this article. I don’t want her releasing her inner Bitch on me, if you don’t mind.

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MCRW member Jody Wallace wears many hats — wife, mother, editor of the Science Fiction Romance newsletter, MCRW webmistress and creator of quirky characters like Maybelle.

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