#antagonise a male character

[queersouthasian]

"BLs have mediocre female characters"

I can name like 10 well written female characters in different BLs but not one mediocre male character in a GL

[total-feminism-takes]

Yeah yeah tdi writers when it comes to female characters could be better but can we please focus on the fandom? Y’all have no excuse as to how you treat these characters!!!

Hello some of the best written and intriguing characters are female, some of the best dynamics include females but y’all are too busy with your male characters and male ships and your internalised misogyny I mean what who said that???

But fr to go onto some of my most hated things in the fandom because I’m in a whingey mood and want to complain and this blog is great if it’s okay I’m gonna dump these here;

Courtney haters need to SHUT UPPPPPPP!!!! I don’t care if you think she’s badly written she’s not and especially not for tdi standards y’all just want to complain about an interesting female character there’s sooo much to her you can just dig into it’s delicious I love her!! And yet she’s still antagonised by the fandom??? I’m not gonna act like she did no wrong and wasn’t the villain because hello did we see action but it’s more nuanced that her being annoying and evil! Y’all just need to look at her more!!!

Svetlana is ALWAYS neglected by the tdi fandom hello she’s one of the alters we see the most yet everyone hates her!! Why!! She’s not my favourite sure I prefer Vito, Manitoba and maybe Mal maybe but come on! She’s a part of the gang too stop ignoring her!!!

People who hc male characters as misogynistic are icky stop itttttt!!! It’s not fun!!!! I have more to talk about this later but I hateee when people say that male characters are misogynistic when either they’re clearly not or they make such a deal of it cough Ezekiel. I’m fine with it being a joke once again I will make fun of Ezekiel till the day I die but when people low-key make the male characters misogynistic it’s like why! Especially when it’s male fans sorry had to be said.

Can we please not ignore platonic male and female friendships pretty please!!!!! We saw how many of the male and male friendships were fake and caved in on themselves we saw the downfall of the guys alliance why do we act like it’s only the females?? I swear the male and female friendships are the only normal ones in the show bar like Gwen and Duncan because they had to do that but hello we all love a bit of DJ and Heather why do we act like we don’t???

The way tdi fans treat the male x male relationships compared to the female x female relationships is soo gross leave them alone please! They can be just as good!!! You don’t believe me well gwourtney has just as much potential as any male x male relationship but y’all don’t want to hear that! And they’re all so fun hello?? Mkulia did more for the homosexuals than anything pride ever did (jokes). Also you can have your toxic yuri like you have your toxic yaoi y’all just can’t understand that there isn’t as critical of a difference between females and men as you like to act there is oops sorry

The way y’all treat Dawn… sighs. She’s not some cute little garden fairy especially not after tdi she definitely doxxes people on Reddit if they’ve wronged her she definitely leaked Scott’s ip address after tdi. Like yeah she’s nice and a good person and likes animals but let her have fun too please

The way roti fans treat zoey is despicable. They treat her either likes she’s the devil and evil and poor little Mike zoey is so hypocritical and evil and mean, or they treat her like she’s a two dimensional piece of cardboard. Didn’t want to say this but she had some of if not the funniest lines in roti. Yeah she sucked in AS but everyone did and im predicting people treated her like this before AS even came out.

Uh TL;DR treat the female characters like how you treat the males please they’re not that different you just hate women.

Uh take this all with a pinch of salt if you do any of this you don’t hate women im just being hyperbolic but there is clearly some issues with the way you view women if you do any of this. Sorry it’s true I’m sending anonymously because I fear this will strike a nerve.

❤️

[blueinkedfrost]

Be an isekai for Rashta from Remarried Empress.

You're an average twenty-first-century woman armed with plot spoilers

You start out reincarnated as a child slave, you're looking forward to years of abuse, forced labour, and rape at the hands of your slave owners/kidnappers

You're also going to give birth to your rapist's child with no or minimal medical treatment, hooray, at least you'll survive as per the plot spoilers

You finally escape your owner, run into the Emperor, he's your only chance to leave slavery

Congratulations! You're part of the royal court as the Emperor's mistress now ... but you're in a nest of vipers with your only resources being the Emperor's feelings for you and your knowledge of the plot spoilers

Also your owners have your firstborn child and are going to blackmail you as much as they can

You can try not to antagonise the Empress, but she's never going to like you because you're sleeping with her husband

You're probably mad at the Emperor and Empress and you have every reason to be - they're the politically powerful leaders of this horrible slave society!

Your fantasy at this point is probably a people's revolution where both Emperor and Empress get the guillotine and slavery gets outlawed, but you're a normal twenty-first-century person, you probably don't know how to organise one of those things

You might be able to use plot spoilers, recommend the Emperor do policies that counter the secret conquest plans of the neighbouring empire, except your power depends on the Emperor viewing you as brainless and compliant, so this might not go the way you hope

Since you're now the main character there's a chance the male lead, the other Emperor, will get attracted to you, but you offer him zero political benefits so he's not going to marry you

You'll give birth to your second child, the Emperor believes it's his but it's the wrong gender for what he wants in an heir

At least you'll get the best of period available midwifery this time, hope your doctor remembers to wash his hands

You're not going to have another child with the Emperor, he's infertile, so good luck organising a discreet affair with another man, it will probably get you killed if the Emperor finds out

Your best chance is probably ask the Emperor to marry you off to some rich and tolerant nobleman, this was done in RL history to royal mistresses

Now you're married and permanently free from slavery, hopefully you can pay a final ransom to your former owners to get custody of your firstborn child and send him somewhere safe

You might get really lucky and have a son with your husband that the Emperor believes is his, but probably you don't even want to go through childbirth again

Hopefully retire to a luxury life with your husband, join or create a local abolitionist society and support it with your wealth

Mediocre happy ending

[mmmaruda]

I already wrote one post about kavetham but it was rushed, and also, I think some of the things I mentioned weren't canon. So I'm here again writing a short analysis about fictional men. Actually, it will be mostly calling out the genshin fandom out on infantilisation and feminisation of gay men or not stereotypically masculine men. (I might link down below some fanfics that I think do kaveh and haitham justice, so bear with me)

Before I even begin I have to mention that I don't play genshin so my perception of kavetham could be flawed. But at the same time when I look what the fandom did to them I can proudly say that I have a better grasp on their characters. Also English is not my first language, so if you see any mistakes please point them out.

Kaveh is a well-known architect who graduated Kashahewar with honors. Sumeru NPC'S describe him as talented and a genius. Many people wish to meet him in person. After all, he singlehandedly brought back pride to Kashahewar.

Fandom loves to diminish Kaveh's accomplishments and effords only to turn him into a loving housewife or an incapable baby man who needs a strong leader. To the people who think Kaveh would be stay at home spouse and would stop designing architecture, with full offence you are stupid. If he was hooled up in one place he would eat through the bricks like a rat just to get out.

To add to the stereotypes of gay men, Alhaitham is perceived as some short of cold sugar daddy. Mind you, he is very much autistic coded. Also just because he doesn't need help from others doesn't make him any less autistic. He is constantly dehumanised because he 'doesn't show emotions', many people on spectrum struggle with showing emotions or controling them.

Fucking albeism.

People love to antagonise Alhaitham in order to make Kaveh a victim which he is not. Kaveh fights just as ugly and viciously as Alhaitham. They are both to blame for the state of their relationship, too proud to apologise and finally talk.

I like to think of them as predatory cats because of the way they fight, claws, teeth. All that.

How many times a gay ship falls victim of toxic heteronormativity. Making one guy hyper feminine and the other masculine. If a man is slightly feminine that doesn't make him weak, dependent on others or not capable. Stop treating typically feminine traits or things associated with women as worse. Yes, Kaveh worries about his reputation, his looks, aesthetics and generally how people perceive him. It's not very "alpha male"of him but does that make him less of a man? Gender roles and heteronormativity is fucking sexist, linked to clasism and racism. So stop with this shit, do you really support lgbt or do you have some weird fethishes? Are you an ally or is it all for show.

Most of kavetham shippers are girls who insert themselves in Kaveh's place and in order to relate to him they make him ooc. Most of you have this fantasy of having an older man taking care of you which is fine but just because you have daddy issues you don't have to take it out on gay people.

Another thing I see people talk about is how weak and helpless Kaveh is. Mehrak weilds his claymore for him but that doesn't mean he's feeble. Why would he chose this type of weapon if he couldn't weild it? Also he works as a architect whose job is to design as in to draw on paper. He needs his hands to be in top condition. But Alhaitham is a scribe and fights with swords, well he also does the bare minimum when it comes to his job. Unlike Kaveh who puts 100% in every single project of his.

He may be nice but he has his own opinions and is not afraid to voice them. He is a very opinionated person. Who fights what he thinks is right. Kaveh would not cry if Haitham was mean to him, he would be offended. Because he is angry, he's frustrated with his work, his life, and past.

Kaveh is a selfish man. It's painfully ironic how by being selfless he is actively being selfish. His acts of kindness are a way for him to stop from feeling guilty, he's punishing himself by sacrificing things for the better of others. Of course it's not always but often enough, he does this without even knowing it. It's something Kaveh doesn't realise or doesn't want to admit. By being extremely selfless he hurts not only himself but also his close ones. Image seeing someone you consider family self-destruct. That's why Alhaitham is so frustrated with Kaveh. He does throw occasionally some jabs at Kaveh about the way he lives but it's never too serious. He does that because Kaveh doesn't accept help, he feels as if he was undeserving of it. Alhaitham is frustrated but never angry at him. He deeply cares for Kaveh, otherwise he wouldn't offer to live with him. Althaitam is very patient and emotionally intelligent person, he just doesnt bother with social norms and anything that is a waste of time. He wants for Kaveh to admit that all of his problems don't come from his misfortune but rather his idealism and guilt. By Alhaitham's logic if Kaveh accepted the truth his life would drastically get better. No matter how hurtful and hard to accept it, truth is the truth. Telling yourself kind lies isn't hoing to change anything. That's why it's so hard for Kaveh to pay off his debt. Giving away his money because he's such a 'good' person. It's hard for him, he doesn't have a support system. I'm pretty sure he never had one. His mother too busy working, rasing him and dealing with her own depression.

Kaveh is a renowed architect with years of practice and experience. Whenever I see people think he only desings decorative buldings that aren't practical my blood boils. He is master architect, he knows how to desingn buildings that are practical yet beautiful. Of course his clients pay him well. He is the Light of Kashahewar, people fight to get their commission done by him. He's probably very picky about them and the clients he works with and I can see him redirecting his potential clients to other architects from the goodness of his heart. That's a very Kaveh thing to do. He earns money buy spends it in dubious ways.

Also people froget he's batshit insane.

He's probably out there licking walls and bricks. From our perspective he would be architecture major. Those people are weird and depressed, spoiler alert they are as bad after graduation. Btw to people who make those tiktok vids where two characters pass each other notes in class, Kaveh would not ask Alhaitham what is the answer to a match question. Wake the fuck up. Kaveh is a walking calculator, literally. So what if in your au he's not an architect, then he is in STEM or just really good at match. Why? Because you cannot change all the traits of the characters in your au or it's becoming an oc.

Besides Kavehs isn't interested only in architecture but also in mechanics. He didnt make Mehrak but repaired it, which makes him knowledgeable in many fields other than architecture.

This is the type of a genius who doesn't drink or eat until they complete this one specific task. Thinking about styles of windowsills probably turns him on. He's brilliant but he's also a loser and self-destructive. He's smart but naive. Istg if i see another person making him unintelligent, I'm this close to blocking half of the fandom. One of Kaveh's most important character traits is kindness, guilt, altruism, and intelligence. He is the type to strive for knowledge to be well rounded, just because. Kaveh would read all the books about launguistics just to argue with Alhaitham. Hes petty like that. Also I feel like he wouldn't stop at designing buildings. This guy probably has atomic bomb plans casually stored in his room. A big part of what shaped Kaveh's character while growing up is not only his father death but his mother's misery. I actually think but his mother's misery. I actually think his mother emotional state affected him more than his father death. Lots of peopel make Fahrnak some antagonist that abandoned Kaveh because he reminds her of his father. Y'all just love to vilanize women, to add character depth to male characters you make female characters evil. You know who makes this type of shit content? Vivziepop. Shit ass content, do better. This is the same thing as the cheating trope in mlm when one male character cheats with a woman. Bifobia, sexism and fethishsacion.

I will add something ab alhaitham and more haikaveh all that mirror shit later. Actually if someone will remind to me to move my ass and end this I would be thankful really.

but his mother's misery. I actually think his mother emotional state affected him more than his father death. Lots of peopel make Fahrnak some antagonist that abandoned Kaveh because he reminds her of his father. Y'all just love to vilanize women, to add character depth to male characters you make female characters evil. You know who makes this type of shit content? Vivziepop. Shit ass content, do better. This is the same thing as the cheating trope in mlm when one male character cheats with a woman. Bifobia, sexism and fethishsacion.

[unchronology]

I also need to tell you about this lad, sorry

The other character from my younger days that I was excited to recreate was this fella, Zalteesh the Imperial Agent. There's just something inescapably cool about the Agent story, so I don't at all mind doing it again.

Way back when I first heard the male Agent's voice, it was so thick with Recieved Pronunciation that I knew I wanted to subvert the cliche by giving him south Asian ethnicity, to somehow play around with the trope of empire being all about white dudes doing white things.

Plus he got that funky twiddly moustache, so that's good too.

But somewhere along the way between the game's launch and today they revamped all the crafting recipes, and the imperial officer uniform you can make has significantly worse colours than the original. Boo! Luckily I still have the original iteration of the character, and he can still make the older version, which looks considerably sexier.

Anyway, it's fun to roleplay the Imperial Agent as well. I play him as reasonably patriotic, though more to the Empire itself than its rulers, who he considers a bunch of psychotic lunatics. But I have him being polite to everyone, as it's a bad idea to antagonise folks who can crush your trachea with a wave of the hand.

[alien-hybreed]

Character Profile: Riptor

Story: Lizard Brain

Species: Human (formerly), Mutant Lizard (current)

Civilian Name: Leigh Bigsby

Appearance: 20'7" upright, almost 34' long from head to tail. Thick green scales with large bone plates and spines down the length of his back.

Personality: Leigh was a timid and squeamish individual. As Riptor, he is relentless, possessed by an animalistic fury and hunger that drives him.

Distinctive Features: Hemipenal dick so good it made a Superheroine gladly turn into his Lizard-Wife for life. Saliva contains paralytic venom that seems to prime human bodies for successfully Lizard DNA

Motivation: almost completely reduced to base-instincts, Riptor destroys, feeds and mates like a wild animal possessed with the cunning of an intelligent human.

Relationships: Lizard-Hayley (Mate)

Status: At Large.

Gender: Male

Likes: Quiet, Lizard-Hayley

Dislikes: Being antagonised, loud noises, urban environments

Powers: Borderline Invulnerability, Titanic Strength, Superhuman Speed

About: Created in a freak lab accident where his human form was contaminated by radioactive ooze, the scientist known as Leigh Bigsby ceased to exist almost immediately. His DNA contaminated by the ooze, Leigh experienced a near immediate transformation into the reptilian beast known as Riptor.

Over the course of that fateful first day, Riptor grew to tremendous size and power as his body continued to mutate before it finally stabilised.

The Protectors attempted to subdue him as the disorientated beast rampaged through their city. It was during this encounter that Riptor met the superheroine who would become his mate.

Vulnerable, longing and seeing her as an equal, immediately imprinted on Captain Meteor, bit her and took her to a secluded hideout where he could supervise her transformation and cement their bond. So far, all efforts to subdue the two monsters has been completely ineffective.

[haydenigmatic]

RO named Odette *exists*

My female MC: "Odile" and male MC: "Siegfried"

OMG Swan Lake, I love the possibilities for your characters, in one hand as a female MC you could antagonise Odette (who knows maybe an enemies to lovers kind of thing) and as a male, the doomed love story with again some turns, ah the possibilities are endless.

[neverlearnedtoread]

Forging Silver Into Stars

⭐⭐⭐⭐; its genuinely really great to see an author get better and more subtle with their writing and characterization over time

Oh?? 👌😉😏

one of kemmerer's greatest strengths is the robustness of her worldbuilding - not only does emberfall feel distinct from karis luran, in culture and in setting, this alternate universe intersects with the 'real world' without losing its believability. i respect an author with the complexity to write about characters from another world with their own prejudices interacting with characters from the 'real world' without tripping over their own setting

lgbt romance that's sweet, heartfelt, not shortchanged, OR overplayed! in fact i did like all the romances in this story and the range they displayed. i have my favourites but they were all both distinct and at least passably interesting to me

women who get to be complex! i will forever mourn what lia mara could have been (viciously politically savvy with a moral core, usually a male character's archetype from fiction ive consumed) but i did like her interactions with the more cynical callyn

'side character gets a POV in the spinoff' book! i don't feel like it was a cash grab or because the author was too afraid to write something new, the plot AND the narrative voice was distinct from the original trilogy without feeling too removed from its events.

No.. ❌🤢🤮

another character from the original series continues on his era of becoming more annoying since bk1. grey...your character was way more fun when you didn't have as much responsibility. i liked you as an antagonising force / source of tension for tycho in his book but your bullheadedness is really not fun on its own merit. i definitely dont miss the days you were a POV character!

lots of travelling; not something i hate, personally, but it may feel a bit time-consuming to go back and forth like a pingpong ball. the travelling aspect feels enough a part of the narrative for me not to get frustrated by it, but given that only ONE character moves from place to place, while the other two stay in a relatively non-important setting for the most part, it might feel quite jarring to switch POVs

This is a spinoff from a trilogy (Cursebreaker Trilogy by Brigid Kemmerer, starting with A Curse So Dark and Lonely) - pretty unavoidable spoilers for the ending of that trilogy up ahead!

Summary: Some years have passed since Grey was crowned King of Emberfall and married Lia Mara, the Queen of Syhl Shallow. They now live in the Crystal Palace, trying to keep the peace with a populace that despises their king-by-marriage for his magic as much as they despair at their queen for her nonviolent diplomacy. Grey's young friend Tycho has been promoted to King's Courier, ferrying messages both public and secret between the royals to ferret out any rumblings of unrest before it can boil over. On one of his usual trips back and forth between the two kingdoms, he stops by a sleepy little village called Briarlock and meets two locals, Callyn and Jax. Syhl Shallow natives, they have different perspectives on how things have changed since King Grey and Queen Lia Mara took their thrones, and are suspicious and charmed in turns by the young lord in their midst.

Concept: 💭💭💭 I have decidedly mixed feelings about the Cursebreaker Trilogy - like a rollercoaster it took me up (bk1), then downnnn (bk2), then rolled flat (bk3)! So I was pretty cautious about reading this spinoff. Tycho was relatively interesting in the original trilogy, but mostly in relation to Grey, and I...did not leave the original trilogy loving Grey as a character. He got boring when they gave him responsibility.

Execution: 💥💥💥 I don't think what Kemmerer wants to explore with this fantasy world (fantasy politics through a modernist moral lens) is ever going to be what I want to explore, but I can appreciate that she's getting better at showcasing the conflict she wants to build in her stories. Having only non-royal POVs in this story really helped make the story feel more real to me - when you're not one of the big movers and shakers (even Tycho, for all his proximity to power, feels the limit of his influence when they strip him of his rings and Grey refuses to listen to his counsel), you're gonna feel resentment for the Big Guys making the choices. They're the ones holding your lives in their hands, and for all their best intentions, they may not treat you well all the time! I definitely felt like this was her best book I've read yet, because Kemmerer wasn't just telling me the conflict and how it was gonna go - she was able to show it to me through the character's actions and situations.

Personal Enjoyment: ❤❤❤❤ I will be honest, I skimmed Callyn's AND to a lesser extent Jax's POV until the end because I just really wanted to read about Rhen from an outside POV that wasn't Harper's. I would apologise but I promised myself when I started writing these book reviews not to say sorry for stuff I don't regret, and me picking favourites regardless of rational thought falls firmly under that. I did truly come to enjoy the final conflict AND tycho's POV for its own merit, tycho's personality in particular was really fun to see in action, but the middle section where callyn is living her 'maybe-this-shady-guy-isnt-manipulating-me' denial era didn't ever get easy to read.

Favourite Moment: Any Rhen moment but especially that part with him being gentle and sweet with Harper when Tycho first tells him about the tournament idea. Tycho's description of their relationship being quiet and sweet was SO CUTE in general - the idea that Tycho finds Rhen pretty difficult to be around at first, but admits you'd have to be blind not to see he's besotted with Harper - I sigh every time

Favourite Character: I'm a Rhen apologist through and through but Tycho actually went over so well with me in this book. That bit when he rounds on Grey to berate him for not thinking shit through and running off without a plan? SAY IT LOUDERRRRR. I have truly enjoyed seeing Kemmerer grow as a writer and write Tycho with this level of nuance - his eventual realisation that he gets along well with Rhen, despite their history, his cautious but earnest courtship with Jax, even his ever-shifting relationship with the Syhl Shallow royal family both in public and private settings, all of it felt like it fit together and informed Tycho's characterization as a whole without conflicting with any other part of it.

[hyperdemona]

Adah dosent look malayali much

Tbh I thought so too. Haven't watched The KeRaLa FilEs, not planning to.

Hate how the Malayalam movie industry regularly casts Non-malayali and North Indian women to play Malayali female characters and then dubs the dialogue (bcs these women can't speak a lick of proper Malayalam🙄) all because they have fairer skin. They NEVER do this with males, they are almost always actual Malayali men. Bcs Dravidian/South Indian women are more brown-skinned or not as conventionally attractive according to Bollywood-standard Indian ideals. More proof that the movie industry is primarily intended for a male audience self-inserts who want to imagine themselves having a hot gf who looks north Indian.

I know The KeRaLa FilEs is a Bollywood film and not by the Malayalam movie industry, but anyways, Adah Sharma won't ever pass for a Malayali woman lmaoooo. She doesn't even pass for a half-Malayali. She's just another lying Bollywood shill cast specifically to antagonise us and look pretty so that the film's idiot Hindi audience can still feel bad for us while finding us sexy (bcs the Muslims be trafficking every other Malayali woman to Afghanistan apparently🙄) . So basically they can only feel sorry for the alleged Malayali women who are being trafficked if we look like Adah Sharma🙄. I'm a Jihadi conspiracy bot btw, pay no attention to what I'm saying.

[anxiousheart7]

As much as I get and agree with this point, Ive long since thought that Astarion was the unexpected breakout character and nobody really expected him to be the one everybody gravitated towards in the game.

He shares a lot of traits with characters like Spike from BTVS - another enigmatic character who came in as snarky foil to antagonise the heroes, but turned into fan favourite and was elevated from there. And I do think that Astarion was clearly modelled at least partially on the Spike blueprint.

He had some attention, but I really noticed that around June he started to come onto my radar through TikTok edits (I didn’t even know they were making BG3 before this point). And he was instantly engaging for me. I then started delving down the rabbit hole and by the time the game came out, I was invested.

But for me, everything I saw in the promo campaign in the run up and the subsequent post-launch content suggests to me that he was never expected to become the figurehead for the game.

In a lot of the early access footage I’ve seen and pre-release promos I noticed a few things:

Lae’zel is the only companion character featured in the intro cutscene. Similarly in the behind the scenes videos, many of the showcases focused on Shadowheart above the others and Gale seemed to be framed as the male lead, shown further in the first animated promo where he was the de-facto leader.

Astarion was always tucked in the back. On the ensemble image from the earlier marketing campaigns, he’s got his back turned and he’s off to the side, whereas Lae’zel is up front with the other two also centred as though he was supposed to be this option but less appealing than the more ‘good aligned’ characters.

Then I saw an updated banner closer to release and after the first wave of TikTok videos where people were really zoning in on the date scene and suddenly he’s front and centre and, although their image sizing have all been enlarged, they are more evenly prominent when compared with the earlier banner. Wyll has even been enlarged here to showcase his character more when compared to the older image.

It only seemed that once the interest in Astarion really started to take off, the attention went onto him.

I’m not sure what it was that really sparked his x-factor. Whether it was Neil’s superb performance, the engaging story, his dialogue in particular or all of the above, but for some reason, once Astarion Airlines took off, everyone was on board.

Now, I’m not disputing the point this OG poster is making. I do think that Wyll and Karlach especially deserve more love and attention than they’ve had. I like the themes they touched upon with his story. I felt that Karlach had so much potential to really explore and I wonder if she had less development time than the others (I know she was a release only story). This certainly seems to be the case considering the

I think the main issue is that character-wise, when the anti-hero character is so strong like this, you need an equally compelling and balanced hero archetype. Jack Sparrow and Will Turner are another example of this. Jack’s iconic at this point, Will is a strong hero but is definitely overshadowed at times by Jack. But they still bounce well off one-another.

Spike worked because for the majority of his early seasons he was on the sidelines, popping in and out to roll his eyes and snark at Buffy. It worked because the other cast shared that snappy dialogue and dynamic characters.

Whilst we do get this to some extent with the more ‘good’ aligned characters, they might not feel strong enough to pull the focus back in equal measure at the moment.

I do think it is unfair of me to imply that the creative team behind the game weren’t expecting the fan reaction to sway in this direction. I’m sure they had some inkling of what might come, but I don’t think they expected this as it has been.

But we’re in the eye of the storm. Astarion’s fan community is in a fever pitch right now so it feels like he’s dominating the space. I wonder if we revisit the game in a few months time once it’s settled a bit, we might see a little more of how the others develop. With there being so many interesting pieces of dialogue still to be uncovered, I’m sure we’ll deepen their stories as much as we have with our beloved vampire spawn.

I wish every day that Larian heard people freaking out about Astarion and went “yeah cool we made a good character” and then KEPT DEVELOPING THE OTHER CHARACTERS JUST AS MUCH. People liking Astarion shouldn’t have meant working less/cutting other characters content and writing. I love the concept of Wyll just as much, but we never get to know Wyll which is why it’s so much harder to write for him. Gale was supposed to have Tara in camp but we never got that content.

Astarion’s story is so so important, but every other story was (and is) important too. I hope with patches comes some more cut content, but even more than that I hope we get some more resolutions for the characters. I want Lae’zel to have the option to align her belief in herself, not any god. I want Karlach to be able to take apart a steel watcher, to find what makes them tick and try to apply it to herself, it doesn’t even have to work I just hate that the game alluded to it and then it went nowhere. Larian, your character design is amazing, I love all of your characters and wish you gave all of them the same love you gave Astarion.

[mycological-mariner]

For the game, 4, 16, 35, B

I’ve talked about Fred a few times before but never Tredwen (my oldest OC, Age of Sail, and proto-oc for all others to come after)

4: How easy is it to earn their trust?

Not at all. All relationships are transactional, everyone wants something, nobody ever says what they mean, etc. The only character he kind of trusts in a non-professional manner and thinks of as an old friend rats him out to the Admiralty. The only person he genuinely WANTS to trust is actively trying to kill him.

5: What makes their stomach turn?

Watching someone die. He’s done a great deal of killing people, as an officer and a mutineer, the violence is impersonal and you don’t need to stop and think because you’ll die too if you do. After the mutiny, he was cast adrift with only a 12 year old midshipman who died in front of him due to wounds over the course of several days and Tredwen couldn’t bring himself to do what needed to be done to give him a peaceful death, either.

35: How do they treat the things their friends come to them excited about? Are they supportive?

Well, he’s a cold bastard so no one ever tries. The friend that betrays him is always talking about his daughters and Tredwen just suffers silently through it. He does try and take an interest in the natural world and medicine and suchlike because the kidnapped med school graduate gets excited about those things (and he also feels bad for abducting the wrong person). He is trying to make an effort.

B: What inspired you to create them?

Oooh. Like I said, probably my Oldest oc. It’s been over a decade and he’s gone through a ton of iterations before becoming Jaded and Cynical Old Bastard With a Death Wish. I was reading a lot of maritime adventure books and my favourite was Jack London’s The Sea Wolf. And I was also really into Thomas Cochrane?? I used to read his autobiography aloud to work on my tongue-tiedness pre ops. I could rattle about him for hours (still can but you’re more easily excused at 10 years old).

But I can tell you the precise moment that really inspired this character: I was 11, I had made up my mind to become a sailor and one day even a captain, I went during my turn on the computer to find out what qualifications you needed and I got hit with a page saying basically “If you take seizure medication, have ever taken seizure medication or are epileptic, you’re disqualified.” I went to my room and cried. I was on 6 AEDs at that time! And so, Tredwen was born. Originally a fun, chaos-causing, curious, ex-Navy pirate captain. I was 11. But then I did get older, life just got worse, and he changed into a more world-weary, depressed, cynical and honestly kinda suicidal smuggling captain (still a Navy mutineer though) who was also a total cad. Male slut. Also moved the time period from 1800-1813 to the 1760s. Some things that DIDNT change over the years are: he’s Cornish, he antagonises the RN at every opportunity, he used to be a child miner before joining the RN, was a mutineer, and whatever is Going On between him and his 1st mate (who in early drafts was his bosun? Either way it’s kinda gay), oh and also the whole trans thing.

[professor-schrodinger]

Schrodinger character sheet.

Race: Cat Man (anime style, references)

Male human with cat ears and a cat tail. Sharp teeth, sharp nails and cat eyes. Average physique.

Colors - Caucasian skin, half black half white short well kept hair, black ears with white tips, white 'domestic breed' long tail with a black tip, green eyes with gold flecks.

Clothing Preferences - semi casual pants black with blue stripes on either side of legs, white collared shirt, black vest, long brown coat with hanging cloth belt attached, sneakers shoes white with red detailing, black leather gloves wrist length, purple tie at half mast.

Wears simple round glasses with basic silver frames.

Age: Unknown. Looks in late 20s.

Height: 5'7

Weight: 160lbs

Personality: Eccentric, smart, easilly distracted, kindly, verry curious and eager to research anything, always seems unbothered by anything - very hard to antagonise or make angry, will defend himself with vigor and may accidently go overboard sometimes, is completely uninterested in attacking anything, research always comes first, loves grapefruit and will eat it peel and all. Has a habit of conversing with himself during other conversations. Considers hostility counter-productive.

Background: Schrodinger doesn't remember anything before his 'accident'. In his original place of existence, he was a very talented arcane mage. He taught arcane arts and theory of quantum reality in his home city.

One day, on the brink of a breakthrough in his research of laylines, mirror image spells and raw arcane crystals, he managed to fracture his own reality, stuck in a state of existing everywhere and nowhere at once.

So powerful was the concussion of this split, that it destroyed the island he was on, and sent tsunamis with waves hundreds of feet high inland, obliterating every coastal country. Schrodinger himself was destroyed as well, but found himself unscathed elsewhere. That elsewhere was Mythosia, the cosmic level powersurge and mythology surrounding his name having been sucked into the world through a crack in the aether.

Once a human, the Schrodinger of Mythosia is a cat man, incorperating mythology and magic, like all denizens of the world. As far as he is concerned, he has always been the way he is, and finds no reason to question his own existence.

True to nature, he is everywhere and nowhere on Mythosia, though his personal reality doesn't reach past the planet. In otherwords, there is no Schrodinger left in his original world. His existense was relocated to the 'reality' of Mythosia. The form he adopted upon the fracturing of his personal reality (cat man), is now his permanent unchangable physical form. Traveling to any other 'reality' or 'dimention' will not alter his appearance or set abilities in any way. Nor can he exist in more than one general reality or dimension at once.

In this case, a full general reality would be a world. Within that, a single dimension would be the current form of world reality. Visiting an alter dimension would constitute a new reality, thus erasing his existence from all others. Until he returns to any.

(In k terms, he could not exist on Mythosia at the same time as existing in Kaerwyn, but in kaerwyn he could appear anywhere at all, in different locations at the same time, per his personal reality flux. In dimensional terms, if he was to travel through time, he could not exist in the previous current time he came from.)

[laoih]

It's really sad how Amazon butchered the Elves in their Middle-earth fanfic series.

Sure, to each their own interpretation – but I don't have to like each interpretation, and as far as I am concerned, Amazon's imagination is very poor when it comes to Elves.

Almost none of the male Elves has long hair. Instead, they have weirdly modern hairstyles. In the North, almost every Elf-women aside from Galadriel is veiled. In the South, the Elves are occupiers of human villages. Elven soldiers are a joke – they easily get tricked, captured and killed by Orcs in the South and easily get taken out by the troll in the North.

And those Elves that were originally created by Tolkien... it's a mess.

Galadriel, one of the oldest Elves, coming from a house of kings, is portrayed like a moody child throughout the show. She constantly talks about her pain but shows no empathy or concern for the opinions of feelings of others. She antagonises everyone she meets for no apparent reason. She demands to see the manager at least twice. People tell her that she's behaving poorly, but decide to admire her anyway because the series demands it. She manipualtes others to get what she wants. In the 6th episode she suddenly wants to torture and kill her prisoners. In the 7th episode out of nowhere Galadriel suddenly feels guilty for what happened in Mordor for no reason. And the show tries to give her a character arc from not being able to let her dagger go in episode 1 to letting it go in episode 8, but the reason behind what happens in 8 has nothing to do with what happens in 1, so this isn't actually a character arc at all. She just stays the annoying, childish, dislikable character that she's been from the start.

Gil-galad is just as badly portrayed as Galadriel. He is constantly dressed all in gold instead of silver. He lets Elrond write his speeches, as if he doesn't know what to say by himself. He shipps his political opponents off to Valinor. He somehow believes that the Elves will all fade and die by spring because a tree is losing leaves. He seems to know darkness is spreading, but pretends it's not happening, ignoring the signs of trouble that have been found. And he comes up with super dumb strategies to get Elrond to spy on the Dwarves in Khazad-dûm, and even tells Elrond to break his oath. Sure, Gil-galad is not a very well-developed character in Tolkien's texts, but this is just not him.

Celebrimbor is almost worse. He is an old man, spending most of his time suddenly remembering random stories that he can tell Elrond about his father. At times he actually looks like he is tired or slightly disoriented because of his age. He is supposed to be a master smith, but doesn't know how alloys work. Gently coaxing mithril to be combined with gold and silder imply means dropping the mithril piece into the liquid gold and silver mix. And the Three Rings are not the height of his craft, but a relatively sponatous project because the plot says the Elves will soon fade or leave Middle-earth. Everything about this is just horrible.

Elrond is probably still the best portrayal of Tolkien's Elves. He is somewhat sympathetic at least. Yet even he has to suffer from the poor writing of this show. The legacy of his father is acknowledged, but Elrond is still not considered an Elf-lord. He is portrayed as someone ignoring his friend's marriage and the birth of his children. He lies to his friend, he spies on him, and tries to discover his secrets despite it being obvious that they are supposed to stay secret. He swears an oath to his friend to protect his secret, but later on breaks it, even though the show tries to make us believe he didn't.

Finrod is barely shown in the show, but the few bits and pieces are more than enough to mess up this character as well. Finrod here talks in dumb metaphors, and then gives his sister questionable advice – advice that Sauron would later used to build his argumentation on! In addtion, even though his death stays very vague, the show images that imply that his heroic end has been changed.

I have love the Elves ever since I was a child and listend to a radio play of The Lord of the Rings on the radio. This show can't expect me to like it if it treats the Elves like this.

[udawo]

This and also I'd like to add that if you in durarara fandom you shouldn't hate ,like, any of the characters (except for the characters that meant to be hated or disliked, like Adabashi, Morita or Horada(who is pathetic , even if he helped somehow in SH series, I still don't have an idea why the author made him return in the series, even though I know Narita isn't one of the people who'd just return a character without any kind of development or role for them). Ryohgo is a very good writer to me, who knows how to play with a lot of characters in the series, and you could name any character and I know what to say about them and I say a lot. Even female characters (male writers often known for not knowing how to develop female characters properly) are all well written and I don't know why some of people still think that Anri is bad written (if I could write a whole article in English about her whole story, I would)

If we're talking about characters who antagonised in the series, you never should believe in anyone's opinion there, even if it's a character or yourself, and I know that sounds weird, but let me explain myself. Because when you trust, for example, Celty's opinion about Aoba - you know, she still thinks in SH that he's the one to blame for Mikado's actions (I wouldn't agree with that, but sadly we're not talking about Mikado's development or Aoba's unfinished arc), but you see, if we won't talk too much about it, she (and also Masaomi) sees the situation from her angle. If you want to understand the character in drrr completely, you should look at him from different angles. Even your own first opinion on character doesn't count (we all know only Ryohgo is right; when he suddenly returns a character in SH series and you think that's a poor move, you just don't know why, but then Narita develops him in the most interesting way, and you just ...🧍)

I like almost anyone in drrr series and I can't tell why someone would hate on any of them. It's not even about the novel, the anime showed almost all of the main points, so you can just watch and understood almost every character.

If we're talking about Izaya (YEAH I KNOW IT'S A POST ABOUT IZAYA FIRSTLY...),I would say that he's interesting and even more interesting in his own novels (moment with the gun in the second novel, when he's shown as a human being with his own moments when he's truly scared or at least nervous.)

That's a great thing Ryohgo gives us a character and doesn't show only bad or only good traits of their. And fans should probably use that thing, since drrr is full of complicated characters and it's fun to analyse them, really.

Oh, well... I never write something big in Tumblr, and English isn't my first language, but I tried to collect my thoughts...

How about the dumb fucking post you might have seen today eh?

If you hate Izaya you should leave the fandom like I have no other advice for you.

"Izaya is irredeemable"

You have no ability to read into a character's depth, why they do what they do, how their trauma affects them and made them the way they are. And you clearly, CLEARLY never read the novels. If you did, you would know he is CANONLY redeemable and is currently in a self improvement arc.

Izaya is the way he is because at every stage of his life he was denied VITAL love and emotional validation. I just don't understand your inability to see this and think the way you do.

Also, Izaya is not a pedophile. What the fuck are you on about?

The problem with people like you is that you think because a character did a bad thing they are not WORTH looking into. You are wrong. One can like a character without condoning their actions.

[floriannas]

What Exactly Gothic Is

(Let me preface with trigger warnings, because Gothic makes a point of delving into dark themes: murder, abuse, racism, homophobia, incest, ableism, misogyny)

I have seen certain posts about what the definite characteristics of gothic fiction are that, I hate to say...felt either incomplete or inaccurate. And that has bothered me enough to make my own post about, at the very least, my understanding of this genre. 

Some things to get out of the way:

Gothic does not have one fixed definition. It is fluid and nebulous, and while all literature reflects its society, genre changes massively depending on where it was written. Canadian Gothic is not Welsh Gothic is not American Gothic. Victorian Gothic is not contemporary Gothic is not Regency Gothic. Nineteenth century British gothic is often in response to the drastic technological changes of the industrial revolution. Welsh Gothic has a lot of focus on the disenfranchised and the coal mining industry. Where and when your WIP is, and where and when YOU are writing it, is going to define it. 

We cannot talk about Gothic as a genre without talking about the racism that much of it is rooted in. We cannot ignore Charlotte Bronte’s dehumanising description of Bertha Rochester, a creole woman. We cannot ignore that Edward Hyde’s physical description is less ‘white’ than Henry Jekyll’s. We cannot ignore Heathcliff’s identity as a racially ambiguous villain. We cannot ignore just how bigoted in every way Dracula is. We CANNOT ignore the whiteness of much of the ‘feminist’ gothic literature, either. This is something you must be aware of if you're writing Gothic - it is not integral to gothic fiction but as I will explain, the traits of the genre lend themselves to antagonising marginalised groups.

Gothic is not just gothic horror. It can be horror, but it is still a genre in its own right and the horror is not mandatory.  

This post is about gothic as a literary genre. I will not be talking about Ostrogoths, Visigoths, gothic architecture or art, and - for once - I’m not talking about the Goth subculture either, the two actually have almost nothing in common.

Some frequent, though not all required, characteristics of the gothic (this is NOT a checklist. I cannot stress that this is a genre purposefully WITHOUT a clear definition):

Familial trauma - the ending of family lines (the presence of the aristocracy is common in Gothic, this trope perhaps most blatantly depicted in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher), hauntings - not necessarily literal but metaphorical. There’s often a secret, or some kind of terrible incident that has been covered up, amongst a family that is inevitably unearthed. Marital trauma is very common - as seen in Jane Eyre with the original ‘madwoman in the attic’, the mystery surrounding the titular character in Rebecca, the secret room of The Bloody Chamber, the murdered husband being literally unearthed in House of America. 

The setting is everything in Gothic. It often has a presence enough that it is a character in its own right. Key things about the setting is that it’s typically old - or at least old enough to have a turbulent history - and typically remote, ‘feral’, in amongst nature and separate from civilisation. The latter is very often executed in a racist and/or xenophobic way in Gothic classics. Think very critically of what is considered ‘civilisation’ and what is not. Dracula being a novel about white Christian Britons being threatened by an Eastern European vampire? Don’t replicate that. You will also see the ‘sublime’ (see below) here, and motifs of decay (which can be linked to the ending of a family line easily!), and themes surrounding imprisonment and escape. Gothic fiction loves pathetic fallacy - whether a storm, fog, rain or bitter cold, the weather is absolutely there to set the tone.

Repression. This can be of a trauma, but repression of sexuality can feature too. I have seen it asserted that homoeroticism is a key component in Gothic, and while it can feature, I would not say entirely agree, for a number of reasons. There is often a focus on ‘taboo’ sexuality, a categorisation which places LGBT people with taboos such as incest (which features often in some forms of Gothic). Homophobic tropes such as the predatory gay villain (e.g. Dracula’s obsession with Jonathan Harker and Mrs Danver’s obsession with Rebecca) are fairly common, and a general treatment of homosexuality as immoral or depraved especially older texts, so let’s not act like it’s always been a LGBT friendly genre. Something either hidden away or repressed that is then discovered is a huge, huge, component to most gothic fiction. 

Misogynistic gender dynamics are often present: the combination of a young, vulnerable and innocent woman with an older male ‘Byronic Hero’ type love interest is common. The Victorian template of ‘bad’, ‘promiscuous’ or otherwise ‘improper’ woman reaching a sticky end is well loved. And then there’s Poe’s sinister obsession with ‘beautiful dead woman’. Don’t forget the intersection of ableism and misogyny with the ‘mad’ women like Bertha Rochester and Miss Havisham (though Eleanor Vance of The Haunting of Hill House is a sympathetic antidote of this trope.) The way women are written is something I’d very much like us to move beyond. 

The sublime: this is everywhere. That something, especially the wilderness, is beautiful and massive enough to be incomprehensible. 

Doubles or doppelgangers. Often as a ‘darker’ reflection of the protagonist - such as the hero and villain having close parallels, or the heroine as a foil to her husband’s mysterious dead first wife. It doesn’t have to exist just in this way, but the motif of the doppelganger is one Gothic fiction likes a lot.

‘Otherness’ or monstrosity. ‘Otherness’ and ‘Othering’ is something that is a crucial part of literary theory - what the narrative deems strange, unfamiliar, not like us, and so most depictions of monsters will also be Othered. Considering how almost all of the time in the Western literary canon this is a vehicle for racism, please think critically. Frankenstein’s monster has a more nuanced approach to what society defines as strange, or monstrous, how monstrosity is created, and self fulfilling prophecies. 

Cultural anxiety. This is by no means unique to Gothic but the genre is shaped by what the society of its creation is afraid of. This - like Frankenstein or The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - can be scientific advancement and new discoveries we do not yet understand, but the problem arises that for a lot of Western Gothic this has been marginalised groups. 

The Uncanny. As found in various forms of horror - same with the fear of the unknown, but often in Gothic - that something resembles something else enough to recognise at least what it ‘tries’ to be, but not enough for it to be truly familiar. This is a really effective way to make any person, place, or thing unsettling.

I think I’ve covered most of my notes - please take my first bullet point into consideration as this will inevitably be a bit UK centric. The thing about gothic is that it doesn’t really have one fixed meaning, so you have a lot of freedom. Bonus: if you want to read a really good gay feminist Gothic short story, ‘The Resident’ by Carmen Maria Machado is one of the best pieces of fiction, ever. 

[pinkiepiebones]

Dewdrop and Aether for the character bingo??

Assuming, of course, that these are my interpretations of the ghouls as characters and not the, uh, "fanon" stuff, or the musicians behind the masks, yes?

Fire Guitar Fellow

Honestly, as I've written it^, it is actually quite an intimidating and mysterious ghoul. It's horns appear oddly scaly, it has a penchant for shapeshifting a mouth on it's ghoul faceplate and then giving itself long, needle-like teeth... It seems to enjoy antagonising Special, too, possibly because they are close to the same "age." The Fire ghoul in my head is nowhere near the "feral bastard him eat a soap" idea of it the fandom writ large seems to have. Sorry.

Aether

My Aether... I'm pretty sure that, along with Special, it might be the ghoul I've had a set idea for it's horns the longest. Pronghorn antelope horns just fit it, somehow. My Aether ghoul is as close to cordial as a ghoul can be, and might be more attuned to the feelings of humans with whom it has has an extended time. Then again, Aether ghouls as a whole might just have a knack for feeling emotions. My Aether has on more than one occasion exhibited full ghoul "happiness" on stage,* requiring the road crew to retool the stage theatrics yet again to hide future "bursts," and Archbishop Necropolitus Cracoviensis to yet again retool the helmets he designed for the band.

^ [All ghouls are sexless and genderless by design and largely referred to as "it" or "them." Special, being Special, bucked this tradition by chosing to present himself as and identify as male.] * [In the case of Aether ghouls, their approximation of human happiness causes their skin/outer layer to suddenly look as though it is covered in a shimmery, purplish glitter which shows through any glamours the ghoul has up. Aether is not the only ghoul who has displayed ghoul happiness while on stage- for a while in the Prequelle era, Cumulus would regularly float. Those flowers and fencing bits that contained the Ghoulettes back then? Visual obstructions to hide the fact that the ghoul had to be tied down with extra cables and pulleys by the road crew. Such is the fun if working with animated primordial Hell ooze demons, one supposes.]