"Scott was just a regular guy until one bite changed his life forever." A rant.

Firstly, the new "Teen Wolf" TV series is coming out on June 5th. That's five days from now. I am so pumped.

I know it's going to be terrible. It will be full of melodrama and teen angst and privilege denial; you know, the usual. I'm hoping, at least, that it will be the kind of terrible that I can stand to watch instead of the kind of terrible that makes me throw up my hands and wail in despair.

It's not looking good, though. I was browsing the promotional website and I found this gem:

Scott was just a regular guy until one bite changed his life forever.

At first I was like...
And then I was like...

It boggles my mind how the phrase "just a regular guy" is still considered a valid descriptor. It shouldn't, I realize, but it does. It really bugs me that this descriptor is being applied to this Scott guy, who judging by the promo videos is anything but regular. I mean, he's...

1. White.
2. Straight.
3. Cisgender.
4. Completely able-bodied and -minded(as far as I can tell).
5. Middle-class.
6. Late teen-aged.
   
7. Conventionally attractive.
8. A sports player (lacrosse, specifically).
9. A citizen of the United States.
   

Do you know anyone who is like that? Anyone at all? I certainly don't. And I'm not just saying that because I hang around queer circles. I'm saying that because I have never (knowingly) met a human being who was that privileged. For instance, nearly my entire extended family is low-class. Most of us are not conventionally attractive (a few of us are bald, in fact), nearly every one of us who would actually admit to it is gay, bisexual, or pansexual, several of us are gender-nonconforming, the majority are over the age of forty, and nearly all of us are disabled somehow. It's the same basic thing on the Internet. You run into a few people like Scott, and a lot more people who are outside the cishetero demographic, physically or mentally disabled, poor, homeless, conventially unattractive, into unconventional fashion, members of plural systems, non-white, and/or non-States citizens. Most of us don't fall under all of these categories, but very few of us fall under "none."

So when these guys say that Scott is "just a regular guy," it occurs to me that it has no real-world applications whatsoever. Scott may be regular for someone with as much privilege as he's got, but he's not regular as a human being. Regular people, near as I can tell, aren't almost completely perfect until we get bitten by werewolves. Regular people want to be cheerleaders but don't make the cut. Regular people are lesbians. Regular people are middle-aged, single bookworms who wouldn't know how to date if the opportunity was staring them in the face. Regular people become construction workers because they can't afford college. Regular people become independent, then run out of money and have to live in their parents' basement. (True story.) Regular people are smart enough to be lawyers but aren't because even if they wanted to, they haven't had the opportunity. Regular people fall in love for reasons that don't make any sense, with people whom they have no business falling in love with for actual reasons that have nothing to do with societal expectations, and sometimes it works out anyway but usually they just break up. Regular people don't make the same predictable mistakes over and over - instead, they make ridiculous, embarrassing, mind-blowing, life-ruining, and/or trivial mistakes that most writers aren't creative enough to think of.

So until you can make your characters at least as normal as the casts of Buffy and Angel, don't call your protagonist "just a regular guy." The only thing regular about Scott is that he is exactly the kind of person people use as a cheap protagonist.