Very few sexy, confident, “aLpHa” personalities are written with any realism because they’re all really the projections, fantasies, and fears of wh*te male “bEtA” writers with an axe to grind.

It makes for a lot of cognitive dissonance—esp the further back you go: the TV of the 70s, 80s, and 90s is utterly dominated by real confident hunks trying to look cool while the words coming out of their mouths are what some proto-incel nerd *thinks* a confident guy sounds like.

See also: 99% of cringey “genius” character tropes—because almost by definition, writers are trying to write a character who’s “smarter” they they are. You can write a decent topical expert if you do enough research, but can you really write a creative “genius” without being one?

This thread has been brought to you by Cheers: the show where actual Sexy Man @TedDanson played a strange mix of his own very real charisma and the neuroses of writers who were good, but nevertheless seemed to think every “hot guy” is a sex addict with profound self-image trauma.

In other words, and in conclusion, I am the only creative genius sexy enough to write both sexiness and genius, like the God who comes before time and exists solely by Her own decision to, willing into being from nothing even rocks I cannot lift and gods even greater than myself

thank you for coming to my @TedDanson Talk

really looking forward to @TedDanson’s comments on this thread