hi! loving your art. I was watching your awesome stories/gifs and I was wondering: how did Chang develop his feelings for Tintin? Did he discover them before or after him? How did he react and why? (English is not my first language so if you see a grammatical mistake, I'm sorry. Also, sorry if so many questions made you feel like you were in a philosophy exam)
Thank you so much! As a contrast to the rest of the Marlinspike team I'm writing Chang as someone who makes friends and develops crushes pretty easily!
I imagine he's had a crush on Tintin for some time, possibly from when they first met. He's been at the mercy of his circumstances for most of his life until that point - Tintin basically makes him feel capable of doing stuff.
He's pretty heartbroken after the Blue Lotus. Tintin doesn't contact him for years. Chang is struggling to adjust to his new family and is failing at school, having missed out on a good education for a few years prior. Until Tibet he feels pretty hopeless, he will never live up to the time when he took down a drug ring.
His near death experience in Tibet shakes him out of this rut. He starts to travel and take up hobbies like dance and photography. Didi trains him in some basic martial arts. Tintin makes an effort to actually stay in touch this time. Chang has some abandonment issues as he's frequently lost people throughout his life, so he's someone who's willing to give people second chances, even if they've hurt him badly. Chang thinks he's well over his crush on Tintin when he comes around to Belgium for his studies, but falls for him again very quickly!
Unlike Tintin, Chang is a lot more comfortable with who he is. He's used to being the odd one out and has generally low expectations for himself, so just goes with the flow.
Below I talk a little with how I'm going about writing him and the historical context surrounding this, cw for mentions of racism (sinophobia) and queerphobia:
I'm writing Chang as bi, I thought it would be interesting to explore as Asian men were perceived differently in the 30s compared to today. While Asian men in the West are currently heavily desexualised in the early 20th century they were stereotyped as predatory and deviant. In London a lot of Chinese immigrants were male dockworkers, so when they married white women there was a lot of fearmongering about predatory and disloyal Chinese men.
A lot of depictions of Asian men in Western media reflected these stereotypes (and often used queercoding to push the idea of Asian men being animalistic seducers - General Henry Chang in Shanghai Express (1932) was written to be bisexual while posing as a threat to the white leads). Some examples off the top of my head include Hishuru Tori from The Cheat (1915) and The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). Novels frequently depicted Chinese drug lords with borderline supernatural powers in manipulation.
On the other hand I've noticed how fans frequently depict Chang as someone who's submissive, demure and soft, which ignores how ridiculously brave and proactive he is in canon (stealing documents from police officers, charging into a man immediately after getting shot at by a machine gun, I could go on!). It's a common example of Fandom Racism (not accusing anyone specifically, it's just a trend I've noticed.)
When writing Chang I'm kinda reckoning with two different eras. From a contemporary angle I'm writing him as a love interest, which as an Asian guy I rarely see in media today. I also gotta consider his own time and context, how he would navigate being a queer Chinese guy, and how that would affect his relationship with others and himself.
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I know for sure you made a most showing all of Hunter's official scars from crew art and whatnot, and I straight up cannot find them anywhere, do you happen to have reference photos??? I've looked in so many places (art reference struggle)
OOF. okay, lemme... make like an entire reference post lmaokxjsk
first of all, we've got the Cheek Scar. we all know this one:
(aw he looks so happy. i'm sure it'll stay that way!)
secondly, there's this scar on his left ankle:
it's on the outer side of his leg, located slightly above his ankle, and it seems to kinda "curve around" his leg too, since we can see the scar up-front as well as from the back.
then, there's the scar on his left upper arm. we can see it in the show, in dana's art, and in color design refs for the episode:
(cannot stop thinking abt him wearing the vet clinic t-shirt btw... he definitely voluntereed at camila's clinic at some point........ he must've been so happy. just helping out, taking care of little creatures.. ough. he'd love that..........)
BUT ANYWAY, the scar also seems to kinda curve around the outer side of his arm (similar to his ankle scar) and it's a little bit diagonal.
next! we also see a scar on his right upper arm, although it's only in this scene, so there’s a slight possibility it’s actually an animation error, but nevertheless! it is there, so:
it’s curved around the back of his upper right arm, horizontal.
then we have scars that dana has drawn on him but that aren’t actually drawn in the show:
an x-shaped scar on his right knee, a scar on the outer side of his left calf/on the back of his leg, as well as a diagonal scar on the top side of his left lower arm (peeking out from under his glove).
AAAAAAAANNDDDDDD...... then we’ve got the new scars, too. ow.
so............ he basically got new scars in most places belos’ goo was; probably wherever it was long enough to, uh, literally eat through hunter’s skin.. considering every animal belos had possessed before ended up being a skeleton....... SO..
new scars:
- a scar on his left cheek (similar to his previous cheek scar but mirrored + slightly smaller/shorter).
- a scar on his left ear (it goes allll around the back too), around his ear nick.
- a scar on...... a BIG portion of his right body: it has rather “jagged” lines and it starts and goes over his nose, his entire right cheek (covers a bit of his lower eyelid too), then it continues down to his neck (probably covers the entire right half of it, up-front and from the back), it probably covers his entire shoulder.. at the Least, and then it continues on and ends at his right upper arm....... uh
- a scar on his left arm. it extends from his wrist to mid-upper-arm (and also has jagged lines).
.........so! i’m in pain, i’m in agony, i’m in agony and pain and i just want him to be hAPPY.
but yeah! these are all the scars. i think
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The tragedy of Jim Lake is something so close to my heart. This poor boy is shoved down a path he didn't ask for, a path he can't escape, and he goes down it willingly! He smiles and tells everyone that its his duty, his purpose, an honor to fight for people who scorn him every time he makes a mistake. He never celebrates when he defeats a foe, just washes his hands, takes a deep breath, and gets ready for the next fight. Over the course of the series you see him lose more and more of himself, of Jim, and is eventually left as The Trollhunter. He's just a legacy by the end of it, the bright eyed boy we started the show with nothing but a fond memory.
His own name isn't even his, he's a Junior.
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