#[[ replies tag ]]

[sackrtd]

heyy u mentioned in a recent rb that rtd was only "writing for ppl on tiktok" could u elaborate maybe? idk what that means nd i dont read a lot of interviews esp with That Man

It's symptomatic of a wider problem in TV/film these days. It's the norm of TV nowadays to deliberately be written for people who are only half paying attention because they're on their phones:

Lila Byock, who has written for the HBO series “The Leftovers” and “Watchmen” (and had previously been a New Yorker fact checker), lamented, “What the streamers want most right now is ‘second-screen content,’ where you can be on your phone while it’s on.

Bateman said, "I’ve heard from showrunners who are given notes from the streamers that 'This isn’t second screen enough.' Meaning, the viewer’s primary screen is their phone and the laptop and they don’t want anything on your show to distract them from their primary screen because if they get distracted, they might look up, be confused, and go turn it off. I heard somebody use this term before: they want a 'visual muzak.' When showrunners are getting notes like that, are they able to do their best work? No."

Content slop and how the industry has stagnated with absolutely nothing new, with old franchises/villains etc being rehashed over and over, the Disney/Marvelification of it all - which RTD has said he wants

I can just feel all of this while watching RTD2. the costume change scenes being the exact same shot, perfect for making shorts each ep, Omega, Sutehk, the Rani all being defeated in one short #badass moment that can be put nicely in a tweet/tiktok etc, the ragebait of bringing back Tennant, now Piper, the absolute lack of care towards the story, character consistency (Juno Dawson: "I didn't know who would be playing Belinda at the time of writing the script. I knew she was a nurse in her thirties, but that was it, that's all I had to go on. But the good news is, with any companion, he or she is always you. They are the audience. They are the person being swept along into an extraordinary adventure."), dealing with legacy characters well, dealing with the NEW characters well, the over expositing to make sure the people who are on the "primary screen" don't get confused about what's going on.

Susan Twist, Mrs Flood, the Snow around Ruby, the 4th wall breaks, Susan, Rogue, oh look Billie Piper is back as the Doctor, no she's not... is she? all these mysteries that they tease and tease and tease and it's just key jangling to get us to be oooh... whats going to happen next ? but it doesn't matter because RTD doesn't care, he's not doing it all for a good story he's doing it to keep people clicking next episode.

[ID screenshots taken from Doctor Who Unleashed episode 7.

RTD: it’s very much kind of internet-age storytelling where…

Stefan Powell: was that deliberate?

RTD: yes. You just hope it will generate content.

End ID]

[maxwell-grant]

Since he’s probably Oswald’s closest Marvel equivalent, being a relatively-unpowered crime-boss who semi-frequently becomes Mayor… any thoughts on Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of Crime?

It's a comparison that's frequently made by Big Two fans and it's easy to see where it comes from, certainly they're the most iconic gangster/mafioso villains in their respective companies, but I don't think Kingpin is the closest Marvel has to Oswald because A: If anyone has a prior claim on Comic Book Gangster, it's definitely him, and B: They simply don't work in comparable or equivalent fashion. You can even boil down a key difference to the fact that The Penguin is inherently a small man trying to be bigger, and The Kingpin is the biggest man who ever lived. That's not a joke about their sizes, that's how they operate as characters and villains: Oswald is underestimated, ridiculed, diminished, and driven in large part because of it. He is the underdog, he slips under the radar, he slips through the cracks, he is a cockroach who lives to thumb his nose and pull the rug under the bigger bastards who think they can step on him. Wilson Fisk IS the bigger bastard who steps on people, he is the biggest bastard in the world.

He is an unsurmountable force of crime at the top of every possible advantage that a criminal can possibly weaponize, he is a titan of wealth and privilege as willing and capable of crushing your skull with his bare hands as he is of murdering your entire social circle with a phone call. He is "the ill intent", the biggest and strongest gangster of all time, and even if there are bigger and stronger bastards than him, they certainly aren't gangsters like him, they certainly aren't meeting him in his playing field of choice. There isn't really a DC equivalent to Wilson Fisk - there were certainly attempts to make Luthor and Cobblepot more like him, there's no shortage of imitators or knock-offs like Blockbuster and Tobias Whale, but the Kingpin is a league of it's own among comic book gangsters. Like Luthor and Joker and Doom, like the top dogs of the genre, he's become an Archetype in his own right.

I talked about his Spiderverse version a little while back in regards to how much I liked him in that movie and what his design represented about him, Fisk as this black hole obelisk who drains the color of every room he's in and suffocates the world visually as well as metaphorically, far from the most interesting character in the movie but one that you can pin all these other more interesting things on, and I think that's also applicable to a lot of what he does as a Spider-Man villain. Now, he's a GREAT Spider-Man villain, easily one of the best, his arcs in Ultimate Spider-Man alone should be more than enough proof of concept for that, but even if he's not necessarily the most colorful or intimate or dangerous villain to hang a Spider-Man story on, he is maybe the most villain to hang a story on - the entirety of Marvel's street level vigilantes and organized crime exists under his shadow, and you can blow up his scope to the moon and back as a way to build up all the other characters you can squeeze more dramatic stuff out of. Whether it's in TAS, where he is so undisputably atop the pecking order that everyone else is bouncing off his fixed presence, or in the Insomniac games, where he stood tall as Peter's main villain for 7 years until the game begins with his downfall as a way to kick off all the strange new threats he'll be up against, Wilson Fisk is The Crime Man to rule all Crime Men, as entrenched and emblematic and secure in his kingdom of Manhattan as Dracula is to Transylvania and Dr.Doom is to Latveria.

Unlike the vast majority of Spider-Man villains who regularly enjoy redesigns and rewrites and do-overs, official and fan-made alike, Wilson Fisk is practically the same character in every iteration, there's very little need to seriously rethink or readjust who he is and how he does things because he is perfectly simple and perfectly timeless - we have now two Ultimate Spider-Man comic runs that have brought significant overhauls and revisions and new spins to established Spider-Man characters, and in both of them, Wilson Fisk is a major character, and he is completely and utterly unchanged from how he already works in the mainline universe. Even if you don't want to use Wilson Fisk, you can't neglect Wilson Fisk, you have to show how he fits into things, you have to show what he's up to or how he allows or makes way for what's happening without him, you have to give him his cut. This imutability of his is another thing I'd say is a major difference between him and Penguin - Oswald demands change, he demands growth and adaptability, he demands different surroundings more suited to him, he wants to grow and grow and make a nest that's suitable for him, he can't fit into existing systems so he breaks them to remake them as his own. That is simply not the case with Wilson Fisk.

Unlike The Penguin, unlike some of the other great comic book supervillains, Fisk has no intention whatsoever to change anything about how the world works - as far as he's concerned, it worked just fine up until these costumed irritants arrived, and even they just became another part of his conglomerate in time. Fisk really doesn't have or need any kind of big philosophy to justify himself, rather, he takes it as fact that he's operating under the way the world works and under a merit he's achieved by being the man he is. He is content within society's morality, because he is at the top of society and therefore that morality will always bow to him. The legions of costumed enemies orbiting his life are merely dissidents going against the order of things that places him at the top, tools to be used and bugs to be squashed and little more.

And this is true even of those whose power and scope stands above his own - they are not players in his game, and if they are, they are distractions, diversions, things that he can deal with. When he loses to billionaires like the Stromms in Zdarsky's run, when he has to playy ball with bigger villains, when he is ousted in a power play, it is humiliating, and he doesn't deal well with humiliations - but he can take humiliations, he knows he can give back, he can ultimately rebuild his pride as he rebuilds his empire time and time again. Spider-Man is annoying and powerful and infantile and annoying and an enemy and really really annoying, but he is no existential threat. He is not terribly concerned about Spider-Man, which is part of what makes him such a fun Spider-Man villain, that he never sees it coming when Spidey gets serious and just brings him down (peak example of this being Back in Black), that he is this larger-than-life bully/shitty grown-up who actually can and must be defeated. And if a lot of what makes him a fun and great Spider-Man villain is contingent in the ways that he doesn't lose sleep over Spider-Man, part of what makes him a stronger Daredevil villain is the precise opposite: he desperately wishes he could be this dismissive towards Daredevil, who is for all intents and purposes weaker than Spider-Man. It's his relationship with Daredevil that brings out the best of him as a villain and the worst of him as a person alike.

Against Spider-Man, the Kingpin is a very strong enemy, the figurehead of the kind of crime that is Spidey's daily routine, a powerful and oppressive force ruling over NYC who is nevertheless a step down from the Green Goblin or Dr Octopus or the Symbiotes and all those other genetic nightmares and obsessed masterminds that plague his life. No matter how clever or vile his schemes are, Spider-Man can still beat them, and Spider-Man can ultimately always triumph over him in a fight, and Fisk can always rebuild because Fisk builds empires as easily as most people breathe, and things rarely if ever get personal between him and Peter. Against Daredevil? There IS no bigger threat than Kingpin (well, The Hand I guess, but they're boring as shit), Kingpin is the mountain that Matt always crashes against in due time, and it is always personal. The Kingpin is his biggest and strongest enemy, able to run mental laps around Matt and someone that Matt cannot in fact beat in a fight, their battles are drawn out miserable slugfests where Fisk usually thrashes him around like a ragdoll with few conclusive victories and whatever victory Matt has is hard-won and usually via cheap shot.

Matt has an infinitely harder time dealing with Fisk than Spider-Man does, which is part of why it is Kingpin's appearences in Daredevil comics that made him comic book villain royalty: Matt has no real advantage against him other than his senses. He has no intellectual advantage, no physical advantage, and he can't even claim to be more determined or driven, Fisk is fueled by an equally horrendously powerful will and protectiveness towards what belongs to him, This City. There is nobody and nothing in the world that Matt hates more than Fisk, and there is nobody and nothing in the world that Fisk hates more than Matt. They've taken turns shattering each other to the point that those slugfests are the least of each other's offenses against each other.

Even besides the sheer accumulated history they have against each other, it's in the way they unforgivably violate each other's vision of the world. If the Kingpin was the invincible man of vision who loves the city and must steer it even if smaller people disagree with him, if he was truly so secure and untouchable at the top of the world, he wouldn't be having such a colossal hard time dealing with this one guy and he wouldn't be reduced to a base animal thug every time he shows up, let alone lose and be humiliated. If Wilson Fisk was as correct as he needs to be, if the strength of his love for Vanessa/the city/what belongs to him was as powerful as he wants it to be, Daredevil would never get the upperhand on him.

And if Daredevil is a man who dedicates himself 100% all the time to protecting the city and it's people, if Daredevil commits unlawful deeds to preserve human life and fight for justice, if Daredevil struggles with the innate contradictions and hypocrisies and nature of what he is and does but can nevertheless push past them all to do the right thing for others, every second the Kingpin lives, every second Fisk lives because he lets him, chips away at the assurance that he's doing the right thing, that he isn't just wasting time. If Daredevil's vision of the city was correct, if Daredevil was right about his beliefs and worldview, there wouldn't be a Wilson Fisk out there getting away with the things he does. They hate each other for that same fundamental reason: If the world was ruled by the principles I need it to be, in order for me to be who I am and do what I do, you wouldn't exist, and you wouldn't be in my way again and again.

As a Spider-Man villain, he is one of the greats, a core component of his world, a highly versatile and even necessary figure to have and an excellent villain to dictate proceedings. As a Marvel Universe villain, he is an indispensable facet of any criminal element, the Mt.Fuji that the streets of Marvel rest upon, someone who can be added to any storyline and be grafted into many characters to oppose or assist them, or even create and kill them. As a Daredevil villain, he is undeniable as one of the top supervillains, bordering on main character a lot of the time. An implacable unstoppable force of nature as well as a villain of history and brutality and drama and a character who brings intrigue and tragedy and even complexity, even as it all ultimately comes down to that raw hatred between them, the splinter in each other's eye, an infection in their world that just keeps taking and taking and taking without stopping.

It is an unforgivable offense to Wilson Fisk that there is a man out there so beneath him that he cannot break, cannot bend, cannot stop, and who makes such a mockery of everything he's built himself to be by existing, just as it is unforgivably offensive to Matt Murdock that there is a man out there named Wilson Fisk who thinks he has the right to be who he is, and do what he does. To be a man who not only cannot care about human life in any capacity other than what he thinks belongs to him, but whose continued existence attests to a world that validates him, that doesn't care about those lives either, where there is no accountability and no justice and no salvation that cannot be bought and sold. Fisk isn't just an embodiment of cruel, bottomless indifference, he stands for a world that agrees with him.

It would take too much work to defeat him, he just walks unscathed if you do, and even if you defeat him there will just be someone else to step in temporarily. And so it is with a heavy heart that the people of New York accept that the blood of countless runs through the streets, so long as the big man gets to give them their cookie at the end of the day for their hard work and agreeability. He is too big, too clever, too strong, and too invincible - and that's why Peter needs to stop him, that'd why Matt can never stop trying, that's why they can never let him be, otherwise Marvel New York would just be regular New York.

They'd have to accept a world where Wilson Fisk gets away with everything, and who could live with that?

[highdio]

Someone told me, that Dio in part 3 is not consistent with Dio in part 6. That he acted hedonistically in 3, meanwhile in 6 he was "retconned" into being self aware and more philosophical/calm, you know the usual. That his goals in Part 6 were retconned from his goals in Part 3 (wanting to drink blood of the Joestarts), i argued it is character development and Araki was just improving his character, i see it as a whole picture not just dividing him to parts. What would you respond to them?

I think two things are happening here: 1) Araki definitely wanted to explore a different aspect to DIO in Part 6 while at the same time 2) we see DIO in Part 6 at his most at ease, in the company of an actual friend. I think it's easy to reconcile what we know about DIO from Part 3 with how he acts in Part 6, rather than needing to retcon new traits onto the character. Everything DIO does in Part 6 could have taken place during Part 3 without changing the character.

Also keep in mind that DIO's acts in Part 3 are performative: as an example, remember how he manipulated Hol in 'Shooting DIO?' DIO is theatrical: the shadow over his face for most of Part 3 visually indicates that he's withholding, that he's presenting only the parts of himself he wants to show in order to manipulate others. In Part 6 DIO has no shadow (except for his first reveal and that's for the sake of the reader: DIO then leans forward toward Pucci with his face shown fully for the rest of Stone Ocean). The shadow or, in Part 6, the lack thereof becomes a visual metaphor: in Part 6 we're getting to see sides to DIO we didn't get to see as much if at all in Part 3. (It's also interesting to view DIO's "openness" with Pucci and the vulnerability it implies as another form of manipulation, if you want to go down that path).

So I agree with you: different aspects to the same character. Not inconsistent, and I do think, like you said, it reflects a shift in Araki's focus as a writer.

[astirastyr]

hi! so - and i hope this isnt too weird of a question, im asking out of genuine curiosity - which books or like, media?, would i need to consume in order to get most of the lore fueling your (fanart?) drawings and ponderings? it all looks so interesting but i mostly dont have any idea who is who, or what are the dynamics, or whats happening but id like to learn, at least the basics.. okay, if you ever get to answering this thank you!! and have a lovely day! oh and your artstyle is seriously wonderful to look at even tho i dont know whats happening

Hi, Anon!

First of all, thank you so much for your kind words! If only you knew how much it warms my soul to think that someone might be interested in something just because of my drawings! That's one of the reasons I draw: I'm a very depressed person and it's very hard for me to appreciate my work, and when I see messages like yours, I feel like I'm doing it for a reason. Thank you very much!

Regarding your question!

The short answer is Ancient Rome.

A more detailed answer: all my recent drawings and reflections relate to the lives of historical figures, namely the iconic people of the late Roman Republic (specifically, around 120-50 BC, the collapse of the Republic). 

Unfortunately, I can’t recommend any great sources because most of the information I got was from a podcast, and it’s in Russian. I’ll leave the link just in case, because it’s truly amazing—if you happen to know Russian or want to try it with a translator! I’d recommend it no matter what. ROMA. Падение Республики - YouTube

However, if you haven’t delved deeply into history before, you could start with Colleen McCullough’s The Masters of Rome series or HBO’s Rome. Both are great! They’re not entirely historically accurate in some places (especially the TV show), but they’ll give you a good sense of the basic aesthetic and vibe! I can also recommend Alexander Nemirovsky—some of his books might be available in English.

Wikipedia can also be helpful in certain cases! Not only are the articles themselves quite informative, but you can find various interesting sources there as well.

As for the specific people I’ve been drawing so far, there aren’t too many yet (but I really hope there will be more):

Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) – a renowned orator, statesman, and philosopher of the late Roman Republic, famous for his speeches and his writings on rhetoric and politics.

Lucullus (Lucius Licinius Lucullus) – a Roman sullan general and politician best known for his military victories in the Mithridatic Wars (..and for hosting lavish banquets that became legendary in Rome.)

Clodius (Publius Clodius Pulcher) – a controversial and populist politician who clashed with the Roman elite, notorious for his street gangs and for playing a key role in Cicero’s temporary exile.

Crassus (Marcus Licinius Crassus) – one of the wealthiest men in Rome and a member of the First Triumvirate with Julius Caesar and Pompey, ultimately meeting his end in the disastrous Parthian campaign.

Sulla (Lucius Cornelius Sulla) – a dictator and military leader who seized power through force, instigated the brutal proscriptions against his enemies, and then voluntarily retired from his dictatorship—an almost unique act in Roman history.

Catulus (Quintus Lutatius Catulus) – a conservative Roman politician and consul noted for his opposition to prominent figures like Julius Caesar and for his involvement in the crackdown on Catiline’s conspiracy.

Catiline (Lucius Sergius Catilina) – An ambitious Roman senator best remembered for leading the Catilinarian Conspiracy (63 BC), an attempt to overthrow the government that was famously thwarted by Cicero.

Hope this helps!!!

[drjohndisco]

@one-loving-creature

Okay, it doesn't quite actually have what I said it did, but it's still odd to have one up if it's been months.

[neutralmonster]

do you agree that the The Batman joker needs to be Taylor Lautner

well, the The Batman movies have elected to keep Batman as a rich cishet white abled guy, and then they turned Joker into someone who is physically othered while also casting Barry Keoghan in the role... the optics are already Not Ideal, is my point. so, in that specific circumstance, I don’t think that recasting this specific Joker as Native American would be a good idea, no.

that being said, I think he’d be an interesting choice to play a Batman villain, especially since he’s been out of the spotlight for several years now. I don’t know if he’s got a good Joker performance in him, but he might make a fun Killer Moth?

Killer Moth was introduced in the Silver Age as “the Batman of Crime”, complete with his own Mothmobile and themed gadgetry. so you can play on that real world history between the actors that way, with Lautner acting as Pattinson’s dark mirror. and in the 90s, Killer Moth did develop the ability to shift into a more animalistic mode, so you could play with that in a way that feels distinct from, say, Man-Bat.

obviously he doesn’t have to look exactly like that, but having Lautner as a were-moth could be a fun idea.

(I would cast him as a full-on regular werewolf, but Batman actually doesn’t have any memorable werewolf villains unfortunately).

but regardless, I doubt Killer Moth would ever get to headline a Batman film. so, honestly I think, if we were to bring Lautner into The Batman, he should play a civilian friend of Bruce’s, probably an original character created for the film. superhero movies don’t have enough civilian friends as-is; it’d be nice to give Bruce one. and maybe you could have him be a park ranger who Bruce knew in high school, wink wink nudge nudge

anyway, while I’m here, I think Kristen Stewart would be a truly fantastic Batman villain. you might think Poison Ivy, just because Stewart is famously bi, and she’d probably be great at that, but I think the ideal role would be Nocturna, a Batman villain who is (a) a vampire, (b) bisexual, and (c) is a ridiculous character who makes grand speeches about the true nature of monstrosity. I think Stewart would have a lot of fun with that

[luobinghelovebot]

good evening kind tumblr user luobinghelovebot, i have devoured svsss this week and consequently fallen into bingqiu hell. i was wondering if you would be so kind to give this lowly one some fic recs? preferably modern aus as i'm in the mood for those rn but rly if there’s anything you think someone MUST read i would be happy to receive them 🙏🏼🫡

oooh my lovely i am absolutely honoured u came to me for this !!!! I dont rlly read a lot of modern aus bc its not my vibe BUT i do read some occasionally and so here are some of my recs !!

Assume its bingqiu unless i say otherwise but also i love so many ships in this fandom so just included them all 🫡:

Asmr artist!binghe my beloved

Cumplane forum au...

This retransmigration fic oh my god

And this one

Hannah montana au (just trust me)

bingyuan...

Another cumplane one

f/f/f bingliushen pwp

another retransmigration fic

bingliushen but lmy&lqy 🥺🥺 i love siblings

Cumplane were married before transmigrating

Moshang arranged marriage....

sqq makes a r/relationships post

binghe/sqq/he xuan/xie lian/hua cheng from tgcf

Florist binghe/librarian sqq

Another retransmigration 🙈

Aaand one more

Not a modern au but this is my fave sv fic at the mo, or maybe this

also i do bookmark literally every fic i read, mark them by recs and favourites SO i can give u this link for all my faves of faves for sv. And this one for all the recs. Or feel free to sleuth all my bookmarks ofc! Happy reading 🥰

[dailydrwhopolls]

wait I don’t think I understand the question: “is your favourite doctor the main character of your favourite series?” like…did you mean are they your favourite character of your favourite series?

no i mean is your fave doc the current doc/main character in your fave series? E.g. If your fave series is series 10, your fave doctor is 12, or your fave season is s1 and your fave doctor is 1, then yes. If your fave dr is 9 but your fave series is series 5, then no. I am curious how much your fave doctor impacts fave series or vice versa 👀

[coelenterata]

1. Your YOTP is great, I'm so glad I found it, and you're absolutely correct we need more Robin/Vickie

2. Prompt: You pick, either Steve and Robin reminiscing about a day at Scoops OR Robin and Erica painting their nails together

Thank you! I'm glad I got to do yotp for everyone else who wanted Robin/Vickie fics!!

Also I love Erica, but you say Steve and Robin and it's gonna be Steve and Robin —

+

"Top three things you don't miss about Scoops," Robin says, when Steve collapses against the counter, free finally of trying to recommend movies to the weirdest-smelling old lady in Hawkins, and he groans again, and she pokes him, says, "go, go, you invented this game—"

"The stickiness," Steve says, immediately, then pauses, touches the counter, grimaces, but Robin doesn't get to deduct points before he leans back to look at the ceiling and continues, "the mopping, and the hat, and that you hated me, remember when you made me clean up all that blue ice cream—"

"First of all, I didn't hate you," Robin says, because they've talked about all their secret pettinesses and also she loves him too much to make him think that she could ever at any point in the timeline hate him, and secondly, "and also I made you do it because it was your kids, I'm pretty sure it was Dustin who had an argument about the blue ice cream with that guy—" and thirdly, something, she knows there was a third point, but Steve groans loudly and then the door opens and he groans again quieter and gets himself upright and polite again, and back they go to their slightly less sticky work at Family Video.

[astariicn]

This has become something of a ritual. He feels the pangs of hunger, the weakness, the exhaustion his curse causes....and he goes to Alkas. Tonight's feed had been no different in that sense, but this time, after a particularly delectable sampling of Alkas' blood, Astarion had locked eyes with the other. It was only brief, but he'd not been able to resist the pull of temptation and had leant in again,lips grazing cheeks, corners of mouth and then. . .

Astarion revels in the moment Alkas' goes in for more, the feeling sending sparks flying through his entire body. He presses closer, tongue running quickly over the other's lip to taste the blood on lips other than his own.

Then they part, and he's left a little dazed but very definitely happy. He spies the blood seeping from the wound on Alkas' neck, reaches a hand out and brushes it away with his thumb. He's half tempted to lick the digit clean, but he's pleasantly full and isn't inclined to tease (not too much, at least. Not yet. )

" Undeniably." He answers, lips tipping upwards as he uses a finger to attempt to lift Alkas' chin, wanting a better look at him. " dessert was wonderful, darling. "

@bhaalswn from x

[fullbottles]

wait that's fucking crazy. i assumed they were discussing the upcoming 2nd drb but now that you mention it you're right. what in the fuck is this anime going to be about then

[sackrtd]

I miss Heaven Sent...

look at her.... 🫶

we truly peaked when dr who was allowed to slow down and just be peter capaldi for 45 mins

[maxwell-grant]

Any thoughts on Namor? I was going to ask about whether he counts as villain, but given that part of Namor's whole Thing is wrapped around the fact that he hops back and forth over that line all the time, I'm not sure it's a question that can be answered.

He was made king before he was even born; it was something that he didn’t have a choice in, it was destiny. - Ryan Coogler

"HE IS THE PENDULUM THAT SWINGS BETWEEN THE POLARITIES OF DEVIANT AND ETERNAL, X-51. HIS IS THE SECOND FACE OF MAN." - Earth X #0

I've spoken before on Namor and his Weird Tales pulp horror debut story, and I can't really get into how I feel about Namor as an F4 villain without giving thoughts on Namor himself. The short version is I think Namor rules, and in a better world, Bill Everett would be better remembered as a foundational creative force for the entirety of the Marvel Universe, just based on the creation of Namor. I think he's the Rosetta Stone by which the core of the Marvel Universe is first seen and is subsequently translated and reiterated, and I think it's also extremely self-evident why he got so many revivals and why he gets to stick around in ways guys like Jim Hammond and Ka-Zar didn't.

Not just for the history of Marvel but for the comic book superhero as a concept, he is tremendously significant as well as very compelling, and in the context of Lee-Kirby F4, in large part because he already ruled as a character beforehand, he makes for a really dynamic villain/anti-hero/force of nature who consistently made for some of their most fun stories. The problem here is that the influence of said villain run ended up affecting Namor for the worse in ways that seriously drag him down as a character, to the point he is very consistently at his absolute worst and most limited whenever he has to share a story with them. He's FAR from the worst Fantastic Four villain, not even close, but I can't think of a character I'd like to see lees as a F4 villain than him. It truly pains me to say I'd sooner have another Blastaar or Psycho-Man F4 story than a Namor F4 story, and to get into why we have to talk about Namor's history.

See, as much as I like discovering and doing pop culture paleonthology, I'm generally not in favor of propping up characters mainly through what historical importance or possible influence they had, because that, on it's own, just doesn't make an interesting character, and in fact usually marks a character as having failed to retain relevance or popularity, when all that matters about them can only be spoken about via the past tense and not what they do or mean now (Wonder Woman, and her inarguable decline of popularity, is unfortunately a relevant example of this). I think it's often one of the sadder ways to try and prop up any old character you like, and I bring this up mainly for context's sake.

I don't think this is truly applicable to Namor - his historical significance has always taken a backseat to his mercurial alliances and troubled personality and that other thing and all that's usually defined him since the 60s up to his modern appearences, and it's certainly not the thing most writers use him for anyway, for better or worse. But in his case, it is absolutely necessary to bring up because of how significant it was to his comeback, and to understand why I argue Namor is one of the most important characters for the Marvel Universe as a project and shared story. In the Sub-Mariner, introduced as an "Ultra-Man of the Deep", we have one of the first and most significant responses to Superman.

(Excerpt taken from Bill Everett: Fire & Water)

Timely's big innovation, which was to serve the embryonic Marvel well and help to distinguish it from DC, was to come down from Olympus and give voice to the elements themselves by personifying the forces of nature as heroes.

Prince Namor of Atlantis, the Sub-Mariner, was the creation of seventeen-year-old Bill Everett. Superman sometimes flouted the law, but decent people had nothing to fear from the essentially upstanding Man of Steel. Prince Namor was different: This half-human terrorist was prepared to inundate the just and unjust alike as he rode on whaleback at the foaming apocalyptic crest of the devastating mega-tsunami that he unleashed on New York in his first adventure.

Namor was the face of JD insolence, awaiting rock 'n' roll, Marlon Brando, and James Dean to ratify his power. Driven by passions and brief allegiances, Namor faced the entire world with a fuck-you snarl, committing acts of high anarchy on a scale undreamed of by terrorists in the real world. There was no shortage of sea stories, tales of Atlantis, storms, piracy, dynastic succession, and imperial vengeance from which to draw inspiration for Namor's fertile new fantasy playground. - Supergods, by Grant Morrison

Even all the way back in 1939 in his murderous beginnings, Namor already felt like a Marvel character in every way that matters, the forerunner to all the tools Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko would use to revolutionize the superhero. Bill Everett just doesn't get enough credit for how profoundly he beat everyone to the punch, all the Wolverines and Hulks and Venoms and Magnetos, descendants of Marvel's primordial super menace. Everett would eventually look back on these early Namor stories as too raw and unpolished, describing them as mostly the ventings of an angry young man, and sure enough the Sub-Mariner would quickly team up with the Torch and join the fight against the Nazis and transition into superheroics proper. But even as Namor gained solo titles, even as he became more of a household name, that unpredictability and edge to the character still remained. Namor was always a character of intriguing extremes and an irreconcilable duality, from his birth in-universe as well as out of it, up to everything that would define him for the following 80+ years.

When Everett is happy, Namor will save kids whose yacht sunk and cooperate with police while receiving accolades from the public as if he’s freakin’ Superman. When Everett is pissed about something, Namor will contemplate stealing world-destroying weapons from the villains so he can wipe out the human race himself! Sometimes Namor will be perfectly friendly initially, but be falsely blamed by humans, join up with the villains, then turn his back on them at the last minute.

Just like the gods of Greece, Namor can be mankind’s friend in some stories, in others; he can be its worst enemy over something petty. Everett may not have thought much of it, but he was doing something unique among superhero comics: Creating a character that the reader is fascinated by not so much because of the question of what others will do to him, but because of what he’ll do to others, and because watching Namor rage at the humans allows the reader (and his creator) to blow off some steam of their (his) own - Outofthequicksand

And speaking of said duality, it's also important to highlight the extent to which Namor was indeed, from day one, coded as biracial and placed in opposition to the "white race", particularly in his earliest comics that openly placed him at war with "the white man". I'll defer here to the resident Namor expert @imperiuswrecked, who has covered this aspect of Namor more extensively. This will come into relevance later.

It's important to establish the history and significance that Namor had prior to the 60s, that he was Marvel's first star character (Captain America has a much, much spottier track record until his proper comeback) but one without a consistent title to be in, because it's that very same history and significance that caused him to be brought back and remain an inviolate mainstay of the universe from the moment there was a universe for him to live in and return to. When Timely becomes Marvel, when the Fantastic Four revolutionize the superhero and begin the building blocks of the new shared universe, Namor can enter right out of the gate to add history and intrigue and turmoil to this new universe.

DC��s heroes were authoritarian in character and concept. They were authority figures, whether formally or informally. They were solidly in favor of established authority. Marvel’s heroes, however, were the opposites of DC’s characters. They rejected consensus and conformity. They were usually alienated from society and felt themselves to be men and women apart. They were the products of tragic beginnings, but unlike DC’s characters, the Marvel superheroes were never allowed to forget the tragedies that birthed them. They had uneasy relationships with the public, who often turned on them. They had uneasy relationships with the forces of authority.

Even Marvel’s villains were granted two dimensions, leaving them villainous but flawed in recognizable and understandable ways. Marvel’s heroes, villains, and stories were often ambiguous, and ambiguity was an entirely new concept in superhero comics - The Evolution of the Costumed Avenger, by Jess Nevins

Marvel can now repurpose it's old comics and it's oldest icon for texture in the new ones - we can discover that the Fantastic Four are entering a world that already beheld the Sub-Mariner, "the world's most unusual character", and forgot about him, that saw the mighty war hero enter a hypnotized slumber and, once awakened, find himself in the world of the atom bomb and the destruction it wrought upon his old life and people. Now, all the might of the former superheroic Namor is turned against "humanity", and with him an endless oceanic bestiary under his command, and a mandate to reconnect with what's left of his people and let nothing in the world get in his way.

And thus Namor takes on a newfound role - on top of being their first continuity deep cut, he is now the complicated/sympathetic/nuanced baddie who can become an ally, the first ambiguous villain of Marvel. The first of it's villains who displays a capacity to become an ally or reform, soon to be followed by the likes of Hawkeye, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Black Widow. And the moment a bigger menace enters the scene via Doctor Doom, the new greatest villain of their world, Namor can now be an opposing force of conflicting alliances and loyalties, assisting Doom and turning against him on the same story.

For the rest of the Lee-Kirby run, he will go on to become arguably the 2nd greatest Fantastic Four villain of the time, one reserved for special occasions in the same way Doom is, but one who demands entirely different considerations writing-wise because he is, fundamentally, not a true monster or villain, just an opposing force of mercurial allegiances but unwavering commitment. Traits that in the past made him a game-changing but inconsistent hero, here make him into a unique but difficult villain, one who unfortunately often does fall into routine as he is simply not built for the kind of long-term commitment to direct antagonism that Doom or the others are. But at his best in the Lee-Kirby run, he is incredibly fun to read about.

I simply do not get tired ever of all the weird animals and monsters and contraptions and underwater set pieces that Namor as a villain in this era brings with him in every appearence, he appeals really strongly to the ocean nerd in me and the palenthology nerd also, because Kirby absolutely was cracking open the picture books for reference, I was not expecting a Dunkleosteus and a Xenacanthus to show up when I started this run. I was so happy to find them in here, and wait you mean to tell me that Namor was piloting a fucking Mosasaurus??? Why isn't he doing that more often??? There is just a consistently enjoyable unpredictability to Namor's arsenal in this era, whether it's the monsters he summons or him pulling new weird powers related to sea creatures. Him having "the powers of all creatures who live beneath the sea" is one of those typically over-the-top early Marvel developments (like the Lizard having the powers of all the lizards on Earth) that I DEARLY miss and wish would come back, because they promise infinitely wilder possibilites than anyone's ever taken advantage of.

With the Marvel Universe underway and his newfound role, Namor now exists in a dual-role: He grows away from being a full-time Fantastic Four villain and rejoins his kingdom and ostensibly returns to something akin to his original role, but the world has now changed and changed Namor with it. Away from Everett's hands and from Lee-Kirby's vision, there are now significant competing ideas of The Sub-Mariner, and the following decades will be defined by this push and pull. He reattains a solo title, but only sporadically. He joins the Defenders, a team with fellow self-contained weirdos who defy superhero convention, and go on adventures to map out the weird corners of Marvel. He retroactively forms the Invaders, defining the vision of 1940s Marvel with Cap and Hammond, and his flooding of New York would go on to become a formative catastrophe in the history of this world. Subsequent Fantastic Four writers will drag him back again and again to diminishing results, he fights the Avengers and joins the Avengers, he gets pulled into the X-Men orbit because of his mutant connections, and when the 2000s mega-arc initiates, he is tapped to join the Illuminati, where he now must adjust to the rest of the Marvel Universe playing in his pool and worse, fucking in it.

As the Illuminati forms, as events like Civil War and Secret Invasion and Dark Reign proceed to twist and darken the universe and all of it's heroes, as the Marvel Universe starts to reckon more and more with it's nature as The Bastardverse it has always fundamentally been, the primordial bastard must step in to respond accordingly. When representatives of the world convene in the shadows to steer it, Namor has to be invited, even if only to clash against them. When the mutants go to war with the Avengers and attain godhood, they bring him in, so he can be goaded into going on a rampage and do what they all were always going to do. And when the Illuminati has to turn truly monstrous for the sake of saving the multiverse, when it's time for Reed Richards and T'challa to drown their doubts and principles and commit to monstrosity for the sake of saving their worlds, there they must bring in Namor again, because he has been doing it longer than any of them. Because amidst everyone else grappling with moral complications and tough choices, he is the only one who is perfectly fine with who he is and what he's doing and what needs to be done. His new job is to give these people a license, and the warning that comes with it.

He gives the Illuminati a license to be villainous in the name of a greater good (surely, they can never be worse than Namor, they all think), and he warns them of the path this will inevitably lead to. He gives them a warning about how justified the Hulk will be when he comes after them all. He gives the Phoenix Five a license to drop the Miracleman act and go to war, and the early shot that warns them all of what's to come next. He gives T'Challa a license to be the monster he needs to be to save the world, and when that fails, avenge his people by taking him down. He gives the Cabal a license to pick up where the Illuminati left off and, to his horror, show Namor what real shameless monstrosity looks like, and at the end of everything, he's there to help T'Challa in his last stand, putting everything aside to distract Doom even at the cost of his own life.

And as a result of his antagonistic dynamic towards Black Panther and Wakanda culminating in this arc, Namor's deal became significantly informed by his status as a pseudo-Black Panther villain, and thus we, at last, reach the latest and most significant development regarding Namor: his role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Ryan Coogler and Tenoch Huerta to me granted the character an emotional context here that clarifies everything he is, and all that shapes his thought. He’s not angry at the surface world and its clownshit in abstract. It’s not just the anger of a distant warrior-king of the oceans. It’s the anger of the colonized, of the Othered.

What Ryan Coogler and Tenoch Huerta did is give him specificity. He’s not just a broad-strokes figure in White hands, for White writers to write as an archetypal broad-strokes morally murky angry bastard guy. No, there’s a specific history to this guy, there’s a cultural specificity and context to his very existence.

I like this Namor a lot. The character finally makes an emotional sense, to me. I understand him. I relate to his rage, as I'm sure plenty of people do. - Ryan Coogler’s Namor and Specificity

Namor in Wakanda Forever has been touted as a complete reinvention of the character, which isn't quite true: while many of the Mesoamerican traits and specific signifiers are indeed new, and certainly do a LOT to recontextualize and breathe new life into every facet of his character, Wakanda Forever Namor is less a reinvention of Namor as much as it is a synthesis of Namor. It is all the prior Namors we have discussed here unified and blended into one: He is the avenging villain/troubled anti-hero who has incredibly justified reasons to wage war on humanity for the sake of his people, he is the emburdened child king of a wronged underground civilization, he is the noble but troubled romantic figure who swings between monster and savior on a dime, he is the fun over-the-top supervillain with an endless supply of underwater trickery who will go on a rampage if he feels spurned or betrayed, he is the folk demigod who floods the great noble city in a life-shattering calamity, and he is the righteous bastard here to stake his ground on these new political backstabbing games that superheroes engage with now, dragged away from his kingdom and people so he can play the primordial shadow the righteous bastard anti-heroes of new must defeat or work with and, at minimum, recognize within themselves.

And he is, at last and once more, the righteous fury of The Other. He is no longer just coded as a POC character or implied to be, and he can now fully resume his original aims. He can now once again be at war against "the white man", against the colonial forces that have ravaged his home and people, and this no longer has to be subtext. He can fully embody a power fantasy of retribution against your oppressors without having to be allegorical about it, but because he is no longer alone in being such, he can now clash against and be in dialogue with another character who also represents such a power fantasy. He can bestow upon Shuri the hunting license to be like Killmonger, but he is no mere oppressor, and even if he himself deserves vengeance, he is what he is to protect something greater than himself, and for the sake of their people, they must sacrifice even their own vendettas. He warns that they must hang together, or be hanged separately.

And so Namor achieved this new form, and funny enough, one that ties him into the greatest legacy of the Fantastic Four. Where as he was once the 2nd or 3rd greatest/most popular Fantastic Four villain, he is now the 2nd or 3rd greatest/most popular Black Panther villain. Outside of these specific stories that can afford him a clear arc to work with, does he work as a reocurring Black Panther villain? No, not really. But he was T'Challa's most personal enemy on the biggest story either of them were ever a part of up until that point, and then his MCU debut that revitalized and redefined the character happened with him as the villain in the Black Panther sequel, so he's undeniably already there. Although as much as I throughly loved Wakanda Forever and what it did with Namor, I have absolutely zero desire to see him come back for anything unless it's the same team at the helm (I am not optimistic and indifferent towards Avengers: Doomsday for a variety of self-evident reasons, and unfortunately he is one of them).

Yes I was supposed to be talking about Namor as a Fantastic Four villain, guess it's time to ruin the fun and shoot the elephant in the room: In the context of Lee-Kirby F4, I actually think Namor and Sue's thing is mostly fine. Not good, but fine, for what it is at the time. I think there's a lot of things that I give Lee-Kirby F4 a pass for that I otherwise wouldn't on other comics and not simply because of goodwill, but because even a lot of it's problematic / outdated elements I think are useful signifiers, interesting points of contrast and discussion, or thematically relevant for the time period and what F4's aims were, although that's certainly not a blanket pass for everthing (there are good reasons why nobody has bothered to textually address how misogynistic Reed was to Sue in that era). Namor and Sue's thing, from day one, existed in the service of an exoticized "romance with the alien monster/foreigner" pulp trope that was already outdated and problematic then, but doing a 60s superhero/sci-fi take on the pulp tropes and cliches that Lee and Kirby grew up reading about was central to the whole thing, Sue's complicated feelings about Namor made it a shlocky pseudo love triangle instead of a one-sided creep obsession, the kid-friendly tone meant that things hardly ever got too uncomfortable or like actual assault (although still a little too close).

Fantastic Four was built atop their prior experience with monster comics and romance comics, a monster romance was kind of inevitable, and when Reed and Sue properly got together and married, while Namor's subsequent appearences still brought it up, it would get gradually phased out as the Sub-Mariner drifted more into uneasy ally/heroic status. That, in itself, should have been the end of it, but evidently it was not. Every decade, someone decides to reiterate this plotline, and every decade, it reflects worse on them. On Sue, it was a misogynistic reputation as someone who deep down wanted to cheat on Reed, it was being known as a character who had nothing exciting going on with her life besides the horny fishman, and on Namor's end, it's a pop culture reputation as a sleaze and a womanizer and a creep who revolves around his obsession with a married woman who does not want him. That was the thing Namor was and is known for, the main joke of every pastiche, and unfortunately it seems like not even Wakanda Forever was able to change that in the long run. I'm not sure what could, at this point.

I'm gonna be upfront here, part of the problem is that Sue Storm has always gotten the short end of the stick, and as a result has always been considerably less developed than the other 3. In the Lee-Kirby F4 era, unfortunately is is true that Namor was the only thing Sue had going on until she and Reed got married, and then the marriage was the only thing she had going on. Her lack of foundation is the original sin of Lee-Kirby F4, and things only got worse for her when said foundation was later provided by John Byrne, a putrid man who left everything he ever touched toxic for generations after to deal with. To this day, Sue Storm functionally does not have a foundation the way the other 3 have, and that's why the default with her still exists defined around either Reed, or Namor. Even Hickman couldn't think of much of anything for Sue to do other than to beat up Namor and get involved with Atlantean politics, on the one part of the book she got to have her own adventures. It's a problem that goes beyond whatever tiresome shtick she and Namor have, and it drags them both down.

And it's not like Namor playing the heel is a bad thing, that's been inseparable to his deal since day one. But it was already lame enough in the comics when he was a cool compelling versatile character constantly reduced to a shlocky trope or a creep. It's infinitely worse now that Marvel has, in the wake of Wakanda Forever, a clear interest in acknowledging Namor as not-white, in making him more explicitly indigenous, in having him exist as a principled rival/enemy within the Black Panther side of the world. I think having him be that, and doing the Sue thing, is just a complete fucking misfire on every level, just an unthinkably bad idea to combine the two, taking the allegorical exotic pulp racism of the 60s dynamic and doing it without the allegory / feeding into extremely dangerous and bigoted stereotypes against indigenous / brown-skinned men, really just shooting out the character's knees and making him too detestable for anyone to even want to see him be anything but a prop to be knocked down. I'm certainly not saying I want him and Sue to be magically chaste friends (although, again, that is a dynamic Namor can have just fine with other characters), I just don't think there's any redeeming this even if he goes back to looking like a white Dwayne Johnson. I think the best case scenario is him never interacting with the Fantastic Four again or at least until they figure out what they want out of him.

So yes, I think Namor absolutely does count as a villain - he is not just a villain, but being a villain, being able to play the villain and play the hero in varying measures, is a core part of what he is and does. Namor is a character that I think will probably never be particularly or especially popular again for similar reasons as to why some of the pulp characters I talk about or Captain Marvel or, shit even the Fantastic Four, face difficulties in that regard - their deal has been replicated endlessly and absorbed into what everyone else around them does, and even if they remain unique and dynamic characters, their cultural import and significance will never truly translate to them being a thing most non-comics people have reasons to know or care about. But even if Namor will never be a particularly important character for the Marvel Universe on an ongoing basis, I do think he is an extremely important character for understanding the Marvel Universe and how it works. Even past whatever he means for Marvel - in many ways, I'd still argue he is The Marvel Superman - the purer, more primal or powerful strain of what the others are trying to be and do.

Whether he is hero or villain, whether he leads the charge or takes a backseat, whether he is right or wrong, he is The Guy. The universe comes from him and around him, if not in-universe then outside of it. The universe is shaped like him. He comes to tear down the order of things and brawl with whoever tries to stop him, to meet brothers in arms and war against new enemies and guide his monstrous children to their futures. The DC heroes aspire to be like Superman, the man from the stars who wants others to rise and meet him there, while the Marvel heroes deny the Namor within them, the man from the depths who beckons them to the abyss where he lives. Because the truth of the Marvel Universe is not joining hands in the sun as the people of tomorrow, it's the avenging sons and children without love flooding New York City and fighting each other atop the ruins.

Rather than slap a symbol on an altruistic strongman’s chest, like so many other characters in Superman’s wake, Everett eschewed those impulses, pulling instead from legend and literature to craft a unique character. In an odd way, this gives Namor and Superman a deeper kinship than his caped imitators, as the Last Son of Krypton was also inspired by mythos, literature, and, some theorize, profound personal heartbreak.

Superman is the immigrant who never knew his destroyed homeland, and fights so that his new homeland does not suffer the same fate, while the Sub-Mariner is the product of two races, and cannot find peace within himself until his peoples find peace with each other

It is appropriate Superman came from another star; he is a kind of unsullied messiah. Namor, however, is a demigod, fully in tune with his sometimes visceral passions, and fully aware that sometimes that leads to trouble. But he is alive, and this is his nature.

a bastard son, a half-breed prince his underwater race never fully trusted, and a super-powered anomaly the human race always feared, leaving Namor forever at odds with both worlds. He has all the power and uses it for vengeance – although sometimes, reluctantly, for a common cause, as well.

Fighting between self-interest and emotional nobility, he is a reflection of us. - The Brilliance of Bill Everett’s Sub-Mariner, Marvel’s Superman

[highdio]

Pleeease, write your thoughts about the musical lol. I really like your Dio meta posts <3

Just a disclaimer: this is really opinionated but I don't like to drag media for its own sake. There were lots of things to like in the Phantom Blood musical, just ... Dio wasn't one of them. Also, Mamoru Miyano threw himself into the performance he was asked for, so it's hardly his fault. It's just always amazing to me that people feel the need to rewrite Dio into someone else when the way Araki's written him is already perfect, complete and a lot of fun.

So, where to start? Basically, the Phantom Blood musical re-writes Dio, giving him a different personality and different motivations through OOC stage direction along with a bunch of original dialog and scenes. What results is a version of Phantom Blood where "Dio" is just a normal guy without charisma who had a bad childhood and spends most of the story being miserable. Dio as he's written in canon has an uncommon charisma and appeal that's allowed him to remain relevant as one of those 'all-time great' villains. Scene after scene in the musical prove that its creative team either didn't read the manga or just really didn't like Dio.

fwiw Araki wrote Dio as thoroughly fleshed-out, with consistent traits and behaviors and consistent motivations behind his actions. He also left a paper trail of interviews and author's commentaries that develop Dio even more fully beyond the manga. So there's really no excuse for media that treat Dio as some sort of empty vessel waiting to be filled by narrative cliches we already know and expect.

It's annoying too, because, along with its OOC content, the musical is peppered with occasional manga-consistent moments. It's like the musical is camouflaging its Very Bad Take on Dio by having Mamoru Miyano periodically re-enact the canon character's most famous panels. The musical wants simultaneously to take credit for bringing Araki's vision to life on the stage, while at the same time completely undermining its most important element: a capital V "Villain" who, according to Araki, "accepts and embraces his evil nature, and follows his dark path without hesitation." This is the biggest change the musical makes to Dio: musical!Dio has none of the confidence that allows canon Dio him to move so decisively and destructively through the narrative.

Musical Dio is introduced by a scene where he's bullied on his way home, before breaking into a song about how terrible his life is, where "everything is always taken from [him]" ("it's hell …I feel nauseated …[I'm] under a cloudy sky.") The song is alternately tearful and hopeful. "I'm going crazy from being robbed!" he laments and then pollyannaishly muses, "hey, Joestar, can you turn my [cloudy] skies to blue?"

If Dio being introduced as a sad sap and self-described perennial loser hoping for any break sounds attitudinally unfamiliar that's because it is. Araki went in the opposite direction: he started his story by subverting the cliche - wide-eyed poor boy victimized by circumstance leaves his sorrow-filled life hoping for a new start - and instead gave us a kid with surprising, even sinister agency. Dio is not just given a hero's upward narrative arc (something Araki crafted very deliberately), he's introduced improbably in his first scene from a position of control. This fact is important because in the manga it's a position he won't lose until four chapters and nearly 100 pages in, when Jonathan finally fights back. From the time young Dio is introduced - reading a book with his back turned to his bed-ridden father who he's secretly poisoning -

- to the time he's systematically broken down his adoptive brother's spirit by alienating him from his friends, taking Erina's first kiss, and of course kicking his dog, Dio is shown as being in control and on top (Erina drinking the muddy water is the only exception). It's OOC to imagine 12-year old Dio feeling sorry for himself because at the time he's introduced, he's already made a habit of getting what he wants. By the time he sets off for the Joestars after killing his first dad, he's already developed full confidence in his abilities and the inevitability of his rise to riches (something Araki has him explicitly state and then underscores with a panel illustration of a steam train signaling the rise of Modernity).

But the writers and director of the musical don't find this characterization interesting enough or something. So they lose the canon entirely and in its place they invent a version of Dio who's despondent. And they didn't get Araki's steam train memo so they miss the Modernity theme (even though Araki's tied Dio so tightly conceptually to the idea of the Modern that he has him "use a 20th century boxing technique in the 19th century"); instead they double down on class difference being determinative. It never occurs to them that Dio is written specifically by Araki with the freedom to move outside of his social status because he sees it as artificial (the "evil elite" monologue later reveals Dio thinks of the whole social contract thing is arbitrary and voluntary).

Throughout the musical, Dio (although it's not fair to Mamoru Miyano since he isn't responsible for writing this mess, let's use mamoDio from now on because it's easier) seems to idolize the Joestars for what he calls their "beautiful blood." Not "beautiful" because usable calories for the vampire he will become but "beautiful" because noble. The Joestars' noble status and the honor that's apparently behind that status become the shining "star" toward which mud-bound mamoDio flailingly, failingly reaches. I don't need to tell you that in canon Dio doesn't have respect for nobility.

"Mud and stars" is heavy-handedly introduced as a dominant theme of the musical. According to the play, Jonathan, noble and bright, looks to the stars while human Dio, pathetic, conflicted and even confused, can only see life as a mud-soaked prison.

Now, the mud and stars thing was only used in Part 1 as a single text element on a Volume 1 illustration but, in spite of its marginality, it's becomes a liturgical text for some fans looking for an explanation for Dio's actions beyond what Araki gives them in the actual narrative. To this sort of fan, a guy who embraces his inner talent for evil and never had the misfortune of developing a moral compass isn't the right type of villain because he's unapologetic. If the villain doesn't have excuses how can you apologize for him? So they need Dio and by extension Araki to give them a "good enough" reason to accept Dio's ever-escalating atrocities. If the reasons Dio has for doing the things he does lie outside of what's considered good or acceptable, they are simply rejected and new reasons are invented in the hope of making Dio much less objectionable.

Now, like I said earlier, Araki's repeatedly told us in his writings that Dio has an upward narrative trajectory, not a downward, "mud"-bound one. The mud and stars duality fails to describe the narrative journey of the two main characters: both look upward to transcend their circumstances and travel along a shonen manga hero's rising path. (In fact, it's Jonathan who needs a good push to realize his potential, something Dio happily provides). And it's Jonathan, not Dio, who Araki first gives a downward arc, being handed defeat after defeat for those first four chapters before gaining his footing and progressively rising to Dio's challenges. "Mud and stars" isn't just a bad choice of metaphor, it's a misleading one.

Back to the musical, mamoDio is the exact opposite. An air of sadness and insecurity haunts his performance. An original scene where George presents the mud and stars dilemma as a lesson highlights Dio's lack of confidence and the depression that lurks behind it, as Dio bemoans how people doomed to "struggle and die" cannot possibly summon the hope it takes to look up to the stars (he's talking of course about himself).

Likewise, and here's where mamoDio's failure as a character really comes into full relief, seven years after this, when Dio's machinations are revealed and he's about to be arrested, before he uses the stone mask, mamoDio drops to the floor and spends the better part of a musical number in tears, bemoaning his sorry life ("I'm trapped in a prison covered in mud… no matter how hard I struggle I'm crushed…") and his lack of noble blood.

(btw this is after the manga scene where Dio fake cries; here, mamoDio is genuinely distraught).

Contrast this to the actual scene in the manga. His expressions in these panels are memorable because of how assured Araki draws him. Dio's entire world - his poisoning scheme, his grab at what one can assume would have been the entirety of the Joestar estate - is about to end but instead of despairing, he launches into a philosophical soliloquy. His body language is haughty: this isn't mamoDio crawling on the ground and decrying his upbringing and lack of noble blood, instead this is a man who apparently, almost irrationally, perceives himself as noble. When he uses the mask, Dio is smiling widely. Metaphorically speaking, he's looking at the stars.

When mamoDio uses the mask? He's on his knees. He's in tears. On one night he interjects, "Mother…" In short, he's conflicted.

One of these depicts Dio. The other does not.

Now obviously the writers and director of the musical must think making these seismic changes adds something to Dio's character. But (and I feel like this is a theme whenever I write these things) I'd argue it only makes him more basic. It makes him predictable and formulaic, someone we've seen in countless other stories.

(Oh! and did I mention mamoDio repeatedly calls himself "useless"!! Because he does this.)

Now, because mamoDio has no confidence and as a human acts out of desperation, when he becomes a vampire he still isn't Dio. Mamoru tries to make his vampire Dio evil and scary by expending a lot of energy, running about the stage and sticking out his tongue ad nauseum. When you look at how Araki has Dio move physically throughout the manga, it's the opposite of kinetic. Dio is a point of fixity who's charisma draws others toward him (ask me for more on this if you want because there's enough here for its own post).

Now for the worst of the worst: at the very end of the production, after the manga ending that features Jonathan's death and Dio's (presumed) defeat as a head imprisoned in Jonathan's arms, the musical takes an original twist in which, following a finale number featuring most of the cast, mamoDio is lead offstage by Jonathan. You read that right. mamoDio is hunched over, resigned, and Jonathan seems to take on a paternal role. Although the lyrics would have you believe this has something to do with "two fates becoming one," it's clear from the stage direction that any embers of Dio's ambition are being tamed and extinguished as Jonathan takes Dio's grasping hand, subdues him, and leads him docilely into the darkness.

It turns out Dio's vampire arc was just a phase, a hurt and lonely child lashing out and making a mess for attention.

His body language here is obscenely out of character. Consider the following because, as I said in the opening, in spite of what all these re-writes of Dio would have you believe, Araki crafted Dio with specificity and consistency: Araki only draws Dio (with very few exceptions) 1) standing tall, looking down at you; 2) back turned, looking back and down at you; or simply 3) back turned, (performatively?) ignoring you. Dio is never on the ground except when he's knocked down (think, young Jonathan finally fighting back in the Joestar home or, much later, Jotaro stopping time and landing those punches). By constrast, mamoDio has spent an incessant amount of time of the ground, crouching, kneeling,, bowing, hunched down. Who is this guy? So his hunched-down exit in the final moments of the production, literally being led by Jonathan (controlled??), is so amazingly stupid that if I didn't have a gif as proof, you might think I'm just making this stuff up:

There's plenty more to unpack that I won't address here: ghost Dario. The lack of grave-spitting. The complete absence of true joy or leisure expressed by Dio especially during his vampire era: no woman eating her baby, no owlcats, no Poco's sister. No chaise lounge. No roses(!). No fun. Not for Dio. That would be too manga-consistent. That might mean Araki wasn't giving us the appropriate message that bad guys are actually just sad guys.

tl;dr Dio isn't in the Phantom Blood musical. He's replaced by a normal guy who's motivated by a lack of self-esteem and despair that he wasn't born into an upper-class household, or something. He's boring. The result? There can be no Part 3 in this musical's world (and presumably no Parts 4, 5 or 6, no Giorno, no Jolyne, … you get the picture) because mamoDio just gives up. It's a nicely produced little tale about Jonathan Joestar and some random other guy who at some point gets a funny green coat.

[astirastyr]

Hello! I am a newbie at my Ancient Rome obsession (just a bit over a year) and I wanted to say that your art was the first one I've found here and it brought me so much joy! Love to see all your historical figure interpretations and hope to see more of what you'll come up with.

P.S.: love the "ROMA. Падение Республики" podcast too - it's the main reason I've started researching the history of Rome in the first place. So I guess we're also sharing the same language (:

Hi!!!!!!! Ahhh I’m always so happy to know I have people from my own country following me!!!!!!! Привет!!!! :> And YES, just YES Roma 🥹🥹🥹❤️❤️❤️❤️— ahhh we absolutely need to bring “Roma” to more people, it’s such a huge source of inspiration and knowledge!!

If that’s the case, then I’m a newbie too haha! My obsession has been going strong for about 8 months now!

Thank you so much!! I really hope I can dive back into it again soon — things have been a bit hectic with some personal stuff and university work, so I haven’t been drawing as much as I’d like to :( If you searching for a great art you should defenetly check @bambasbatenthusiat, @sforzesco and rivaeri.bsky.social (@rivaeri_) / X !!

[drjohndisco]

@vampireautism

Oh shit! Now, this is a can of worms I never expected to get asked about!! Like, me? You're asking me, Basil, formerly tumblr user autistic-scott-summers (circa feb. 2020), this question?

Now, he isn't canonically autistic but he is heavily coded as neurodiverse.

Basically Scott got brain damage from falling out of a plane and this activated his mutant abilities. Said mutation is to shoot concussive force beams from his eyes that originate in a punch dimension (yes, really.)

Us right now:

I can't think of a panel, but I'm sure he's canonically said something along these lines at some point.

(I believe it also has something to do with the sun, as well, but that could depend on whatever comic run you're reading? [Shrugs])

Uh, anyway, here's some canon related headcanon evidence bullet points from off the top of my head:

he's logical and straight laced.

repeats meals (mostly soup.)

rigid and often repetitive interests.

has been noted by others as participating in solitary activities for hours at a time.

takes his responsibilities very seriously.

can't always articulate emotional related thoughts well.

needs to stick to the plan at all costs.

literal, often when he doesn't need to be.

(And a bunch more that you can probably find in my tag for him. Sorry this has taken so long to answer!)