#They are so two sides of the same coin coded

[kandelia-mangrove]

Can we talk about how in the show Lestat and Armand are framed as narrative foils. Armand and Lestat who are both so aggressively theater kids, but Lestat who acts, who draws in the attention and holds it, and Armand who directs, who shapes and manipulates the narrative. Armand and Lestat's obsession with Louis and his love and frustration with his melancholy over Lestat and Claudia respectively. Who both felt second in his heart. Who fear loneliness above all else. Lestat taking what he wants to excess - no impulse control, and Armand letting things happen to him and trying to manipulate situations to get what he wants but never taking it. Armand, who even in the end, so much more powerful, never physically imposes himself on Louis. Armand who seeks complete control in subtle insidious ways. Lestat who seeks control in the physical. Armand and Lestat brought into vampire life in horrifying ways tangled up with SA. Armand who still talks about his maker with reverence, Lestat who hates his maker. Armand who pours all of himself into his partner, willing to shape himself into what they desire but ultimately needing control to feel safe. Lestat who pours all of his love into his partner but unwilling to change himself and ultimately cedes control in moments to maintain the relationship. Armand who clings to his breaking apart relationship for 77 YEARs, Lestat who let Louis go. Lestat and Armand who watch Claudia die, but one as a father and one as a murderer. Lestat and Armand so intense in their love but Lestat so painfully external and Armand so painfully internal as characters. Both constantly acting and putting on a face. Lestat as Mozart and Armand as Salieri (in the flashback scene!). Armand who loves routine and structure and repetion, Lestat who craves change and excitement. The calling cards are echos, who learned from who. Armand teaching Lestat the vampire gifts, Lestat teaching Armand a new way to live. on and on....

[nenoname]

Details in Stan's letter that still haunt me

(how long will I continue thinking about a two page letter that's technically not even that long because Stan's handwriting is fricking large? .....you don't need to worry about that.)

The bro code only shows up in the Lost Journal pages, and to me Stan's message feels like it purposely echoes Ford's "miss you" in the college photo (and for some reason the message doesn't appear in the website version of the photo?) ....or alternatively Stan simply noticed how distressed Ford was about this entire thing and wanted to support him in a way so he can be sappy but without the kids knowing, or both!

Stan's claim about the Oregon lottery contradicts what the Lost Legends website said about Tate McGucket's ability to predict the winning numbers!! ...but also breaking into the Lottery HQ is definitely a very Stan thing to do and it's not the first time small gags have been retconned

Despite spending most of his letter nonchalantly destroying him, the taunt about ripping a dollar bill in half is the only part where Stan is directly responding to Bill. Maybe it's the two of them having similar ways of thinking but it's rather specific considering Bill taunts the reader about it...

And after Bill spends an entire book calling Ford Sixer despite normally using a pretty wide range of nicknames for him, Stan then spends his letter mainly referring to Ford as Sixer, even though post-Weirdmageddon he tends to use a mix of nicknames. And it's not like he'd gotten to see Bill himself for long, let alone see him steal that childhood nickname (that is only used twice in the actual show btw!). Did Ford tell him what happened or...?

With all this and the website's "still on your mind" message, what I'm getting at is my tinfoil hat theory of Stan somehow seeing some of the pages the irl readers saw, even when it should be personalised to the specific reader, and he's been lying about it for some reason. Considering that the book flat out doesn't make an attempt at convincing Soos, I find it a stretch that whatever Bill was telling Stan via the book was an attempt to convince him either.

Wouldn't be the first time Stan's skimmed through a book and lied about what it meant to him.

(...Now I kinda wanna see a story about the family reading their versions of the book and making fun of it while Stan is improvising every single one of his pages and blatantly ignoring Bill's attempts to mock and taunt him)

But also I'm fascinated by the letters that only showed up on the website (aka the Soos+Wendy+McGucket+Pacifica ones). I'm assuming that Mabel had stuck them on after Stan's letter... but they were basically eaten by the book itself because seeing Stan's letter kick-started Bill's breakdown which takes up the rest of the book

[cowinthestars]

first day in waste management

i've been brainrotting about tfone for so long, literally since it came out but the thing that got me to get off my ass and start doodling some stuff from the movie was watching it again but this time with my dad and some of my best friends!!

anyway happy holidays, and there will be more tfone doodles coming soon cus i got a few more ideas i wanna share :D

[mossterunderthebed]

i think there is a part of me that died at seventeen. of course, this also means there is a part of me that will live forever at seventeen.

[sle3pyc]

A bit of an analysis on q!slime as a character throughout Purgatory

So q!slime obviously lost his mind and was the first to lose himself (changing skin, gas mask cult) he also found himself a family that he never really had before. Even before quesadilla island he was alone and then on the island he forced himself into isolation because he blamed himself for tilín.

during purgatory he learned that he didn’t need to have JuanaFlippa around to be happy, he even had a second chance with q!Marianna. But he had a family, one that was brought together by their struggles and they all needed each other.

But then, when they were all together facing down the eggs he was the first to step back and look at what was happening. And you could see that he realised he was losing his family, that they had more important things to worry about now. So as soon as he could, he ran and made his way to the boat because he HAD to get back to JuanaFlippa because he needed her again.

Anyway his character is so tragic and I need more people to be interested in his lore because he’s excluded from so many things for some reason

[narutosux]

i want to talk about the frank castle, mr The Punisher, of my dreams

the version of the punisher that is canon to me in my heart and idgaf about reality because men wrote him anyway and i dont respect men in general. im also going to talk a tiny bit about daredevil because to me they are literally two sides of the same coin they're literally bbc merlin and arthur and im this woke ass dragon going "two sides of the same coin go freaky on each other"

In my heart of hearts, Frank Castle is an anarcho communist. He is a hardcore anti-establishment commie who believes that revolution cannot come without bloodshed. He respects and cares about the wellbeing of Daredevil, Matt Murdock, and other heroes who have similar goals, because they do want revolution and change, but they don't have the balls to actually kill wholesale like Frank. Frank sees himself as the only one willing to actually get shit done, and he's okay with being an attack dog. He's used to it, because its what the US government used him as when he was a Marine.

The concept he would ever respect the police, a violent force used to oppress lower classes and protect capital, is LAUGHABLE. It's foolish. I ignore iterations of the Punisher who is fine with killing drug addicts because they're "breaking the law", and I believe in versions of Frank Castle that kills CEOs of pharmaceutical companies for pushing opioids as harmless drugs. I think the Punisher of the 80s might focus on street level drug offenses, however I think he would learn that the problem is systemic and tearing the leaves off a tree won't kill it, you have to attack it at the root.

I believe that he would work willingly with Daredevil A LOT... Obviously, Frank Castle is more than capable of doing investigative work on his own, and he's great at planning, however I think that both men recognize their ability to work well as a team and function together. Frank is willing to work with him on jobs where he can admit that killing isn't NEEDED, even if it would do things a whole lot faster.

Frank Castle, without a single doubt in my mind, HATES the US Military Industrial Complex, and the enforcement of violence. He accepts violence because it's all he's ever known. He's a good trained attack dog, and it's where he feels comfortable, but he's both a dog and his own master, and he feels he can only make up for the attrocities he's helped commit by righting the wrongs he's done. He's single-minded, headstrong, focused on his goals of destroying in order for rebuilding a better version of the world. Allowing people to take time to change means they can fuck up and harm others in the meantime. He's not willing to risk that.

Another piece that I did like from the version of him where he was the leader of the Hand, I really liked the idea that Maria was planning to divorce him right before his family was slaughtered. I think it would make him recognize just how little of life he had, and it would make him even more angry at him failing to protect them and failing to be a genuinely good husband. But, he also recognizes that it was never love, it was a role he thought he was supposed to fill. I just don't think he really loved her. Love doesn't look like what he put Maria through.

He knows how to fill roles, but he doesn't know who he actually is. Something quite similar to Matt Murdock, who feels he's the Devil, but also doesn't know who he is when he's Matthew. They're both constantly trying to fill roles in other people's lives, or fill the roles they think that they're supposed to be in, but they don't actually know who they truly are as people.

I think that's so powerful, for these two men who are so full of conviction and so firm in their beliefs but when it comes to thinking about who they are as people, they don't know themselves. But, they know each other. I think they know each other better than they know themselves, but they don't recognize that it's because they see so much of themselves in the other man.

Sorry, but you can't convince me they aren't completely fucking obsessed with each other. Daredevil sometimes wishes he could be the Punisher. He wishes he could just kill the evil he has had to hear for years and years and years and years of his life. But he knows it would never solve anything, it would only make him as bad as the evil around him. The Punisher wishes he could see a world where redemption is possible, he wishes he had that scrap of humanity left in him still. I think when he works with Daredevil he feels himself growing weaker and he has to run away and can't stay with him long, because it makes him recognize that he might not have the resolve to kill. He also fears he might taint Matt Murdock. He might eventually actually convince him to kill. And that scares him. Frank Castle taints everything around him, even his bloodsoaked, mangled children. Even his wife Maria, brought back from the dead, still covered in bullet wounds and beautiful as ever. He drove her to kill.

One day he might ruin Daredevil like that too, and the only saving grace of that moment would be that Daredevil would finally put down the sick dog that is Frank Castle.

[streets-in-paradise]

Troy is for the straight girls who like x reader, while TSOA is for the straight girls who prefer yaoi fics of canon characters.

[lessnearthesun]

Thinking about The Goldfinch and literally EVERYONE is wrong about Kitsey but me. You all just don’t understand her and hate to see a hot girl winning

[littlematchagirlll]

an old friend and i met up in person and wound up talking about good omens (ofc). they listed a few reasons why they are just like crowley, and i listed a few reasons why i am just like aziraphale, and then i noticed...

they were wearing all black. black shirt, black pants, black docs, black hair. the only exception was their grey socks, which had a giant, green letter C on them.

i was wearing a beige corduroy sweater over a white turtleneck, jeans, beige socks, white shoes, blonde hair.

we laughed so hard when we realized we even dress like them on accident

[skeleticals]

ok so we are basically certain that codeflippas one and only mission is to corrupt slime like a virus infecting him day by day.

[rosenbergi]

- WIP -

Rain Code AU-ification is happening as we SPEAK!

[distopea]

How does Gabriele feel about protecting civilians during his missions as an undercover agent? What does collateral damage mean to him? How much is he focused on his goals? Would he able to sacrifice civilians to get the Cleaners?

@lured-into-wonderland

Well, to answer all these questions, I must first talk again about Gabriele's primal ambition. It's somehow complex and a bit long!

He's someone following a goal, a life mission. He has picked a side and he will remain truthful and loyal to that side. When he was undercover, his side would always remain in justice, and he was following the orders from the police to take down a whole organization. His goal had never changed; he was determined to succeed with his mission. 

However, where things are blurry remain in the fact that he wasn't a regular cop; he was undercover. It meant gaining the trust of people he would betray in the end; it was composing his whole existence with two personalities. It was then always a matter of balance between what could serve justice and what was a necessity for the mission. Of course, he would always try not to imply innocent or external people, he doesn't like to have blood on his hands, but it would definitely be a fake statement to say that he has always made sure to protect everyone around him. Once again; it's about finding a proper balance in the mission, and if something serves him for the main success of his goal, he can have dirty hands from time to time. 

Gabriele is someone radically focused on his goals; his colleagues say that he's a "rabid dog". He never stops chasing after what he has decided to focus on. After losing the ability to come back to his homeland (Italy), he already has the sensation that he has lost everything, and he has the sensation that only work and his goal can save him. 

Yet, he's not undercover anymore; he's the main investigator in charge of the "Cleaners" file, but he's not hiding under another identity nor working for the group to spy on them either. With those massive changes, we could expect that he wouldn't have those dangerous methods from when he had no choice but to prove himself to the mafia in order to gain their trust and respect. However, Gabriele is tainted with his past life and he follows other codes he's not even aware of; and in front of a wall, chasing after that form of bloody justice, I have a feeling he would be able to sacrifice more than civilians for the success of this new goal. 

[mullets]

prev prev reblog reminded me of kaejean & my unending thoughts on them

[illegiblewords]

More aesthetic style sets! Hit dark academia, light academia, cottagecore, kawaii, lolita, princesscore, clowncore, baddie, goth, and weirdcore this go.

[coffeepaintwater]

shen yuan, luo binghe and shen jiu the most explosive trio to ever trio i fear (there are two duos in these trio and hint hint both of them feature sy lol)

also this is basically fanart for Shen Yuan of No Relation on ao3 by Gemi bc i'm binge reading/listening to it and it's so good!!! the characterisation is so on point it dragged me back into the svsss fandom by my hair. the character study tag 100% deserves its' place there.

notes, bc how could there not be??:

i saw a post that said that any svsss fanwork's inaccuracy to history can be attributed to airplane's lazy pidw world-building and. yeah. basically.

i was thinking what would the disciple robes look like to both seem regal to the commoners (as described in 99% xianxia novels) and good to train in and i realized that there shouldn't probably be more than two layers anyways because it isn't even really accurate. also, i like the interpretation that each disciple has a subtly different uniform, but i just can't picture how that would work???? 100% the rich kids and older disciples who can actually earn some money would add accesories to their robes, but for shen yuan and luo binghe, i just couldn't imagine where they'd get anything like that, besides the hair pins ning yingying made/gave them (sry if i mix some shit up, i've read 20 chapters in 2 days okey have mercy). plus, with a world that focuses on social standing as much as pidw/svsss does, i think that the sects would naturally aim to recreate that hierarchy in their own society.

with the example of cang qiong mountain, yue qingyuan would have the highest rank, and (as syonr showed!!!) probably boast the biggest estate on the peak, inheriting all the wealth the previous sect leaders had accumulated. and while from what i understand, being a sect-affilated cultivator means your payment is basically getting fed, clothed and having a roof over your head in the sect instead of idk, coin, yue qingyuan would still have monetary means because of, surprise surprise, inheriting it. so, clothes just on the better side from the other peak lords perhaps

next in the food chain would be the other peak lords, except that we see that even the peaks have different 'rankings'. so, while on the outside each peak lord carries the same authority, shen jiu would have been able to be as he was in canon (MASSIVE side eye btw) and no one would have been really in a place to kick him in the gut and say he was a fucking asshole, for example, besides yue qingyuan. that is, from a purely theoretical stand-point, bc all hierarchical order is sometimes broken but that's besides the pointttt. the point is, they would have freedom to dress however they wish and while i believe the disciple robes remain unchanged since the founding of the sect (bc svsss universe is implied to be a largely unadvancing society, regarding anything besides cultivation), the peak lords most likely don't have one set uniform, besides each peak being color-coded apparently??

there was a post i was inspired by (https://www.tumblr.com/svsssfanonarchive/736782613008809984?source=share) that confirmed that the peaks (or at least three of them, but we don't get much of the others anyways) do in fact have the disciples wear robes of one color. qing jing favors greens and teals (see the post for more details pls pls pls it's so good) BUT i love adding white to my art bc i feel like a fabric this vibrant and light would fit the scholars there. also, white seems like the furthest one could get from the gutter to me, bc while it is the color of mourning, it's also the color of purity and shen jiu would take the chance to put one more barrier between shen qingqiu the peak lord and shen jiu the slave. don't ask why i put shen yuan in better robes; there's no reason other to make him more like a mini shen qingqiu lol

the head disciples could probably get modified uniforms or a layer more, to make them really stand out. and i'm not touching on the hall masters and senior disciples bc NOPE. not my problem for now

last thing, fu yue my love, my beauty, my life force, WHICH CHARACTER ARE WE TALKING ABOUT FOR FU?????? i decided on these ones bc there were the closest i could get to the meaning Gemi intended but :(( i have a gut feeling the first character is wronggg

[writingwithcolor]

The protagonist of my story is pressured into killing, should I refrain from making her Jewish to avoid stereotyping?

@run-remi-run asks:

Hello, I'm developing a teen character living in Michigan and have been considering making her/her family Jewish; however I'm worried they'll fall into the evil Jewish person stereotype. The teen is the protagonist of her story, but she is pressured into killing at least one person. I understand that villains in media being portrayed as Jewish or with Jewish features has furthered antisemitism, and I understand my character isn't exempt from this just because I see her in a positive light. Should I refrain from making her Jewish?

This doesn't fit the stereotype

If the whole idea is that she’s pressured into doing bad things, that doesn’t fit the stereotype or trope at all because the trope has us as evil masterminds but in your scenario she’s the one being manipulated. The negative trope isn’t just “Jewish person does something bad” it’s a lot more specific than that. -Shira

Any Michigan influences?

Commenting strictly as a Michigan resident: is there any reason why you included the character’s Michigander origins in your question? Is there something about Michigan that’s influencing how you think a Jewish character might be depicted or viewed by others in your story? I’m asking not to be interrogatory, but out of curiosity and need for clarification.

–Jess

Evil Jewish person stereotype

Shira’s answer speaks directly to this and a lot more concisely, but I wanted to take a minute and go deeper into the phrase “Evil Jewish person stereotype,” for the sake of helping break down what’s actually happening and why it works the ways that it does.

There are two forces at work here, not unrelated to each other but not identical either. One is the portrayal of evil characters using tropes that suggest Jewish coding, and the other is a cultural suspicion of Jewish people’s motives and actions. They’re two sides of the same coin, perhaps, but I’d like to look at them separately, since the difference--that one refers to fictional characters and the other to actual people--matters in the context of reading and writing fiction.

Jewish coding in Villain characters

There are aspects of a character’s physical appearance that can suggest Jewishness even as we acknowledge that Jewish individuals don’t necessarily match those looks. Those might include a hooked nose, hair that is curly or red, a sallow complexion, an angular face. These attributes are not inherently bad: a text portraying them is antisemitic when these attributes are a visual signal of bad motives or are only present in bad characters and not good ones. Although not at issue here, it’s worth noting that these attributes can also raise questions in settings where all Jewish characters have them, because the flip side of these attributes being used to denote Jewishness is the erasure of Jewish people who don’t have these looks. 

 There are also aspects of a character’s personality that are repetitions of historical accusations against Jews, justifications for violence or persecution rather than reflections of genuine events. These might include greed, arrogance, bloodthirstiness, and a willingness to hurt or kill children for personal gain. These tropes have accrued over centuries in spite of the fact that every single one of them runs counter to any genuine Jewish values because ultimately, they’re not based on real-world actions by real-life Jewish people, but a product of leader after leader over time riling up their followers into dehumanizing a minority population, for the usual reasons people have for dehumanizing minority populations. 

Jewish coding in villain characters is not necessarily the same as stereotyping Jewish people as being evil. It does however support and maintain unconscious antisemitic biases. That is to say, when you meet someone who is Jewish, you’re not necessarily thinking “Mother Gothel was coded with Jewish tropes so this Jewish person probably is evil,” but if someone shows you a picture of a person with a hooked nose and curly hair and says “this person is greedy and hurts children,” exposure to Mother Gothel and other fictional villains on the same model might make you less likely to say “That doesn’t sound right.” 

Meanwhile, back in Michigan

Like Shira said, your character is not the mastermind of the murder she’s being forced into. Rather, she’s a victim of whatever character or circumstance is forcing her into it. As long as that’s apparent in your narrative, you’re not supporting an existing harmful trope or stereotype. I would treat the concept differently if this were, for instance, a dark narrative of a remorseless killer. In the current climate I would also advise against any imagery of a Jewish person of any age or agency killing a child or person of color of any kind, as that is the latest iteration of the medieval blood libel in modern times.  I would even have pause in this situation, where she’s not the author of her own act but does commit it, if she does not experience remorse or if she enjoys doing it. What matters here is her motive. 

If this character is Jewish, then that’s going to affect her approach to the incident in certain ways. While Christian and Christian-influenced secular culture regard “good” and “bad” as the ultimate thing to worry about, even at the cost of martyrdom or murder, Judaism places life as the highest value. There are very few of the laws and customs of Jewish life that one is not expected to break in order to avoid death, but one of those is murder. Now, Jewish characters make choices that aren’t perfectly consistent with Jewish law all the time, so what I’m asking is not to not write this, but to write it on purpose.

What does it do to your character?

Who is she before and after?

How many of us could truly choose to die rather than kill in her situation?

Does she own perhaps a necklace or decor item with the word “חי” on it?

What does seeing it do to her?

In what other ways does her Jewishness make her interesting and relevant as a character?

If it’s just curly hair and matzah ball soup on an otherwise Christian character, why bother. But if you’re willing to put in the time to research Jewish attitudes toward life and death and how they differ--even and especially in a teenager’s schema--from the Christian and Christian-influenced majority conception, then there’s room for an interesting narrative here. 

-Meir