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helenofsparta2 · 1 month ago

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kind of related to your post about zoe just now but: what do you think of the hunters in general? I've got a lot of thoughts on them myself.. most of them not that positive lmao lots of "could have been good, but very poor execution" and "sounds cool on the surface, but very questionable when thought about more"

First of all, thank you for the question :)))

Oh god, this might become a slightly longer post, because I have a lot to say about the hunters of Artemis.

From what you’ve written, it sounds like we might have a very similar opinion. I personally think they are one of the worst-written parts of the original Percy Jackson books. I love their idea, I love their basic concept, but their execution was pretty atrocious.

There are four main points regarding them that I want to talk about.

The portrayal of Artemis (though this one is by far not as bad as the others)

2. The behaviour of the huntresses

3. Bianca

4. Lacking Development

Artemis

Now, I know that the gods and goddesses of the Riordan verse, are sanitized caricatures, and shouldn’t be compared to their actual myth versions. I think everyone in this fandom has at least heard some well-founded criticisms regarding the portrayal of Ares, Athena, Aphrodite, Apollo or any of the other gods.

I even understand why Rick Riordan made most of the decisions that he did. Obviously, the gods had to be sanitized for a book series primarily aimed at children, and, to be fair to him, even if their characterizations are a far-cry from their myths and sometimes overly stereotypical (Aphrodite), they are fulfilling the roles they have in this story as deeply flawed, but powerful individuals, because of whose careless mistakes and pride demigods, and other ‘lesser’ beings have to suffer.

And I actually do not hate Artemis’ portrayal that much, if we exclude the behavior of her hunt, and the initiation of Bianca. Her taking Annabeth’s place in holding the sky and her loudly arguing against killing Percy and Thalia at the winter solstice was a great portrayal of her being a patron goddess of children, and the idea of including the hunters of Artemis as a group of girls, both from mortal and immortal parents, who have been hurt by the world, and found a safe place with one another is actually really great. Generally, whenever she appears in the books, I have the feeling she is handled with far more graze and respect than a lot of other godly beings.

However, as someone who very much loves Greek mythology, I just want to point out some small parts, which are not entirely accurate, though, again, I understand Rick’s reason for omitting them in the context of what he wanted to do with her character and the hunt , and I acknowledge that even in ancient times, there existed a variety of different interpretations of the gods.

(Please note, that while I read original sources like the works of Diodor, Apollodorus, Hesiod, and Euripides, I am not a classicist, and that my knowledge of the greek gods primarily stems from personal research and my own interest. If anyone knows more about Artemis, please feel free to correct me if necessary)

While Artemis is primarily the goddess of the hunt, and in later interpretations of the moon, she is not only the protector of girls, but the patron goddess of children in general and a goddess closely linked to childbirth.

Yes, she expects her followers to remain chaste, but to say that she is completely against men would be a grave mistake. Male followers of Artemis did exist in mythology, most famously Orion, who later became a constellation, and Hippolytus, the son of Theseus and the Amazon Hippolyta.

So, her cold behavior towards Nico and her degrading words towards boys in general is an attribute primarily added by Rick Riordan.

Though, like I said, I understand making certain changes to gods and goddesses, or rather choosing different interpretations of them to have them fulfill a certain role in a book series, so Artemis portrayal itself doesn’t bother me that much.

But if we’re talking about the hunters themselves, things easily take a turn for the worse.

The behavior of the hunters

Now, I understand the hunters point in the story.

A huge theme of Titan’s curse is to explore the difference between old ideals of what heroism entails and the modern take on it, represented through Theseus and Herakles on one side, and Percy on the other. The hunters, and especially Zöe, represent a group, who have suffered through the actions of those old, primarily male heroes, and have developed a strong bias against all boys and men as a result. A bias, Percy is supposed to break in this book.

This, in itself, is a pretty awesome concept. But, like I said, the execution mostly failed.

Most of the Hunters of Artemis in Titan’s curse were written without any nuance, without development and without any sense of self reflection.

To express it plainly, they completely suck. And that hurts to say, especially as someone who is asexual-sex-repulsed and aromantic, because, like I said, they could have been an absolutely amazing part of the overarching story and theme of the book series, but with the way Rick Riordan wrote them, they suck. They’re insufferable. They’re a group of immortal teenagers with a superiority complex, who act the way right-wing republicans and trump supporters think feminists act like.

They’re completely antagonistic towards the campers at camp half-blood for absolutely no good reason, act really childish and immature, and their overwhelming bias against every male character, especially Percy and Nico, is just plain annoying and goes to a point, where it makes them act like absolute idiots and assholes.

Zöe’s behavior at the meeting to decide who should go on the quest to save Artemis is a pretty good representation of everything I dislike about the hunters.

She doesn’t want to take campers with her on the quest, even though the oracle plainly stated that them working together was the only way for them to succeed:

“You’re missing something as usual,” Thalia said. “Campers and Hunters combined prevail. We’re supposed to do this together.”

“No!”, Zoe said. “The Hunters do not need thy help.”

Immediately afterwards, she makes fun of Silena Beauregard (who is around 14 or 15 at the time, might I add.):

“Percy is right,” Silena Beauregard said. “Two campers should go.”

“Oh, I see,” Zoe said sarcastically. “And I suppose you wish to volunteer?”

Silena blushed. “I’m not going anywhere with the hunters. Don’t look at me!”

“A daughter of Aphrodite does not wish to be looked at,” Zoe scoffed. “What would thy mother say?”

And then, she decisively refuses Percy’s help for the quest, even though he is objectively the best person for the job. I really can’t reiterate enough that Percy is the most accomplished hero present at that meeting. He has successfully led two quests, one to stop a civil war between the gods, the second to recover the golden fleece. Even in comparison to Thalia, Percy is more accomplished and has gained more respect within the mythological world.

As I walked back through the city of the gods, conversations stopped. The muses paused their concert. People and satyrs and naiads all turned towards me, their faces filled with respect and gratitude, and as I passed, they knelt, as if I were some kind of hero. (The lightning thief)

Yet Zoe refuses his help to save the goddess she serves and increases so the risk of failure, simply because he is a boy.

“Oh,” Grover said, suddenly aware of the problem. “Whoa, yeah. I forgot! Percy has to go. I didn’t mean… I’ll stay. Percy should go in my place.”

“He cannot,” Zoe said. “He’s a boy. I won’t have Hunters travelling with a boy.”

Another huge problem in their characterization is their immortality. Here I want to focus again on their ongoing beef with camp half-blood, because, yes, while the campers also act pretty antagonistic in return, I think it’s important to note that most kids at camp half blood are between the ages of 10 and I’d say maybe 17 years old, while the huntresses are immortal.

Now, it’s obviously possible that most of them are still teenagers and haven’t been part of the hunt for that long, but considering the fact that Zoe is over 3000 years old, and could very well be older than most Olympians, the chance of most hunters being older than at least 30, is pretty high, which makes their behavior seem even more ridiculous.

And obviously the whole situation with Bianca paints the hunters in the worst light possible.

Bianca

There are already some pretty good and detailed posts on tumblr regarding the subject of Bianca and the hunters, so I don’t want to dig into this subject too deeply, because this post is already way too long, but you can’t possibly write about the hunters without mentioning her.

The hunters, especially Zoe and Artemis convinced Bianca to join them in a moment of huge distress. Bianca was a twelve-year-old, vulnerable girl, who just found out she was a demigod, almost got kidnapped by the manticore, and watched a girl fall down a cliff, yet they expect her to swear allegiance to them after only a couple of minutes of knowing them.

They paint her this beautiful picture of having no responsibility and a new family, telling her exactly, what she wanted to hear without giving her even a moment to breathe or give her time to talk to her brother or fully think this through.

I want to point out that at this point in time, Artemis had already decided that she needed to go after the monster alone, and knew, that her hunters would spend some time at camp half-blood. But instead of giving Bianca these couple days/ weeks to accept this new reality of the mythological world and get to know both camp half-blood and the hunters, she wants an answer at this very moment,

Yes, Bianca’s answer was rash, and yes, I do think it’s rather cold that she didn’t first talk to Nico about it, but it’s pretty plain to see that she was overwhelmed and pretty much manipulated during this entire conversation.

Later, Zoe decides to take her with her on the quest, even though Bianca is completely unprepared for it. She is probably, aside from Nico, the most unprepared person in the entirety of camp half-blood to go on a quest.

I don’t think I have to explain how terrible of a decision that was.

The hunters are objectively the worst thing that could have ever happened to Bianca and the main reason why she died.

Lacking Development:

Now, all of this, every single flaw I just pointed out, could have actually worked out, if there would have been some sort of change in the hunters’ way of thinking and an acknowledgement that their opinions on boys and males in general are misguided and lead to more harm than good during the course of the books.

Especially after their actions led to Bianca’s death.

Them seeing how much love Nico had for his sister and how much he suffered from her death could have been a great moment for some character development.

But nothing happened.

Camp half blood and the hunters grieving together at the end of Titan’s curse for both Zoe and Bianca could have resulted in a genuine moment of friendship between the two groups, leading to understanding and change.

But nothing happened.

The only person who took responsibility for Bianca’s death at the end of Titan’s curse was fourteen-year-old Percy. The only person who cared enough about Nico to search for him and make sure he was safe, was Percy. The hunters didn’t care at all. Took no responsibility whatsoever.

All that happened at the end of that book was that Thalia became a huntress, and that Zoe and Artemis acknowledged Percy as a hero.

This, while admittedly, a great moment for Percy’s characterization and also somewhat for the character development of Zoe, had very little effect otherwise.

Because, in the end, Zoe and Artemis treated Percy as if he was the exception. As if they had been only wrong about him, and not boys in general. They didn’t revisit their line of thinking, they didn’t self-reflect and they didn’t acknowledge that their bias was utterly flawed, and that they should treat male demigods generally better.

She (Zöe) grasped it contently. “You spoke the truth, Percy Jackson. You are nothing like… like Hercules. I am honored that you carry this sword.”

Then, she (Artemis) turned to me. “You did well,” she said. “For a man.”

Percy Jackson is fundamentally a story about the circle of abuse, and, Percy specifically, breaking that circle, but nothing of note happened with the hunters.

Because even if Zoe had confronted her own bias, (and there is admittedly an argument to be made that she did) she would have been the only hunter to do so. And she died.

Thalia becoming the lieutenant of the hunters as someone who is best friends with Percy and Grover, and who misses Jason more than anything, could have confronted this distorted line of thinking, but the other hunters remain pretty much unchanged in the last Olympian and The Lost Hero.

There were hugs and greetings al around- or at least Thalia was friendly. The other hunters didn’t like being around campers, especially boys, but they didn’t shoot any of us, which for them was a pretty warm welcome. (The last Olympian, chapter 10)

“Oh, no way,” Leo said. “We’ve been sitting in a cave and you get a luxury tent? Somebody give me hypothermia. I want hot chocolate and a parka!”

Phoebe sniffed. “Boys,” she said, like it was the worst insult she could think of. (XXXVI Leo, the lost hero.)

Conclusion:

So, yeah. They had huge potential, both as individual characters and as part of the overarching plot and theme of Percy Jackson, but their execution was absolutely abysmal.

The only possible positive thing I could say about them is that they are at least better than the Amazons (though that is not particularly hard)

I hope my rambling was understandable, it's already pretty late:')

#percy jackson #pjo hoo #rick riordan #pjo #hunters of artemis #titan's curse

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glitchedsoftware · 3 months ago

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well its been long enough so here it is -

My personal thoughts and issues with Sammy Lawrences characterization in Dreams Come to Life

little disclaimer im obviously gonna be pretty negative in this so if you like the books good for you!! i just want to put my thoughts on the matter out there its just some silly indie horror game book and i wouldnt take others opinions TOO seriously lol also spoilers for dctl of course

also another little edit - a majority of this was written before the graphic novel came out,, not like that changes anything rlly just yk remember im exclusively talking about the original novel here

Lets start with the most obvious point first - the racism/misogyny

The idea that Sammy's racist and misogynistic mainly stems from two parts from the book - the part where Sammy refers to Tom by his first name instead of "Mr Connor" to which Tom replies quote "Not used to giving someone like me respect?" and the part where he refers to Abby by her first name with Buddy directly stating how he wonders if this could mean Sammy has some sort of bigoted views.

Now of course he does consider if this is just a habit of his, but it is pretty unclear if that's the case. This weirdly vague and ambiguous way of writing a fan favorite character to be racist and misogynistic is just generally very weird to me. Before anyone tells me I am aware of the fact a former kindly beast member claimed that Toms race had nothing to do with it and Sammy just said that because he's a repairman or whatever, but that still doesn't remotely change the fact that it can easily be read as Sammy being racist.

(Also even in said screenshot they said how could be easily interpreted as that. Also they didn't even write the book obviously so that whole point just falls flat.)

To be fair, there is a line from Buddys first encounter with Sammy in which he also refers to Joey by first name, which could imply Buddys other conclusion was correct and that its just a habit of his.

However, I'd argue this small details pretty easy to miss (even I almost forgot about it while writing this) especially considering the only other people he refers to by any sort of name was Tom and Abby. That paired with the other two scene previously stated still make this very easy to misinterpret and even considering this, very confusing on if Sammy was written with the intention of him being racist. Also Sammys bigotry in this book being conflicted by literally one word kinda speaks for itself. It's just super weird and definitely should have been handled better. If you don't know how to write topics like this with the amount of care they deserve then you don't need to write them. On another note, Sammy being racist or misogynistic just wouldn't affect the story or world building in any sort of meaningful way. Whether he was supposed to be bigoted or not, it has no bearing on the story or characters. Any time It's even slightly implied this could affect someone it's just super underdeveloped which makes this whole thing just feel completely pointless and unnecessary. It really does just come off like it was just thrown in there to "make it more realistic to the time period" instead of working it into the story in any meaningful way that actually works, or any sort of commentary on that sorta thing other than just "racism and misogyny exist".

On a related note, I saw someone speak out about how they interpreted specifically the scene with Tom to be intended not to show that Sammy's racist, but to show how Tom would assume that it was about his race considering he's of course a black man in the 1940s and has clearly faced discrimination over that before. I could almost see how that could be perceived, but that along with the part with Abby really makes me contemplate if that was really the intention behind that scene. Also, as I said before, it isn't really expanded on how that would affect Tom. I get that that could just be because Tom is supposed to be more of a rude abrasive kinda guy, I'm not expecting him to cry over it or something. I just feel it should have either been a bit more developed on, or not been there at all. I'm all for subtly, I love how the subtle misogyny is shown in BatIM with the Alice angel merchandise not selling as well as other products, but if that's what they were going for I think this was a bad way of doing it. If you wanted to portray how this kind of bigotry affects people, maybe choosing the rude asshole character who doesn't really seem to give a shit wasn't really the best idea. (Also who's in the games implied to be classist but that's a whole other conversation) Sorry for the little detour away from discussing just Sammy, I just felt it was important since I do get where that point was coming from, I just still feel like the execution of it all was FAR from perfect.

Also overall the idea that Sammy would be racist or misogynistic is just awfully misunderstanding Sammys character and it just really fails at what its trying to do. Sammy is shown to have had a genuinely strong relationship with Susie (whether you interpret it as romantic or not) and never shown to have seen women as less than, quite the opposite actually. I saw someone say Sammy being bigoted doesn't make sense because "he doesn't respect anybody" and I heavily disagree. I think it doesn't work because he does care so much about people. In the cycle Sammy isn't shown to be selfish at all, like he's not just trying to free himself but also others (albeit through sacrificing Henry, and even then describes that as seeming "cruel"). You know it's "he will set us free". Whether he himself knows or not, Sammy does care about people deeply so him being bigoted just really doesn't work at all.

I just generally thought the topic of discrimination was handled pretty bad. I could go on and on about this subject alone, but hopefully I was able to get my point across.

Now with that out of the way I can discuss just the general mischaracterization and demonization of Sammys character

This obviously being a more broad subject makes it a little difficult to start so let me just start with this- I believe that Sammys character get heavily dumbed down to just being an asshole. I of course have no problem with Sammy being a bit of a dick considering the sort of sarcastic tone he's shown to have had in certain audio logs, but the problem arises when that is practically all he is shown to be. Looking through every scene with him, all he ever did was just be super rude to everyone and eventually go insane and kill people and talk about worshiping Bendy or whatever with little depth. This, in my opinion, makes him both weak as a character and antagonist. I mean, Buddy only first met Sammy the DAY he got infected by the ink. He never even knew what Sammy was like before that incident which REALLY makes the line "I just know that Sammy isn't Sammy anymore" make no sense. Buddy never knew Sammy, he only knew the one dimensional character we got in Dreams Come to Life.

After looking through all of Sammys characterization outside the novels I can clearly deduce that Sammy was never even explicitly the sort of condescending asshole hes shown to be in Dreams Come to Life, but was just a bit blunt and stern due to the stress of working at the studio. I get that some people just chock up his behavior to the fact that he had been drinking ink at the time or whatever, but again the fact we're never shown how he was before that just makes this feel like overall bad writing to me. It just feels like a very poor attempt at writing Sammy that lacks any sort of nuance his character was shown to have. Characters have intended purposes, and I believe Sammys was to display a character who was so overworked it drove him to insanity. Part of the reason he even worships Bendy is just because the unhealthy hours he would spend working forced him to have to see his stupid face everywhere, not the whole ink addiction thing the book goes with. It's one thing to make him unnecessarily rude, but the thing is that they never really deviate from him being just that, which just left his character feeling very flat and lackluster to me. Buddy being an "unreliable narrator" doesn't excuse this both because Buddy only states that he sometimes forgets the order of events, not the actual events themselves, and, as I said before, it never deviates from this view of Sammy. I don't even think Buddy was supposed to be an "unreliable narrator" in that way as I've heard people excuse this for. If all of Sammys mischaracterization was because of that, than like half of the book would just be Buddy completely making shit up, which clearly isn't the case. The book just genuinely tries to portray Sammy in some of the worst light ever.

All that along with the the whole implied bigotry thing I just discussed really makes it seem like they tried dehumanizing Sammy as much as possible, which really goes against one of the core messages of BatIM. Sammy just being some asshole who got addicted to ink and went crazy because of it is FAR less interesting or emotionally compelling than him being an abused overworked employee and a prime example of what working at the studio can do to someone. Stripping him of that in favor of making it that he's always just been a total dick just completely misses a lot of the point of Sammys character and even BatIM as a whole. It's not just a game about "ooh scary ink" or whatever, it's also a game about corporate greed, capitalism and obviously how big corporations abuse and manipulate their minimum wage workers. And that's what Sammy is. He's not "evil" he's just a victim of a highly unhealthy work environment. Sammy being overworked to death (literally) is something that is barely, if at all, developed on in the book weirdly enough, despite being a very interesting part of his character that they had every opportunity to explore. It feels almost like they explicitly tried making Sammy so unsympathetic so he could be a more "evil" antagonist which, in turn, makes him a very poorly written antagonist lacking depth and completely missing anything that made his character so interesting. Again they just took Sammy being a bit irritable and sarcastic and wrote him as being a genuinely bad person, which really bugs me for sorta personal reason I'll get into in this next section.

Why this matters (to me)

I feel its of importance that I discuss how writing an implied mentally ill/neurodivergent character in such a demonizing way can, whether intentional or not, come off as ableist. TO MAKE THIS CLEAR I am NOT stating Adrienne Kress is ableist. This is overall just a much larger issue in general that definitely could have a discussion of it's own. However I will be briefly talking about it since it does unfortunately relate to dreams come to life.

As I said before, Sammy is a victim. Yes, he's still a morally grey character who generally does bad things with good intentions, but hes still a character. The way Sammy is shown to act and have acted in the past is very likely because he was mentally ill and possibly autistic. Taking an actually nuanced character like that who was clearly just extremely mentally unwell and writing it that he's some evil irredeemable asshole has always just rubbed me the wrong way. As an autistic person myself, I've always kinda had issues with regulating my emotions and coming off as "too blunt", so seeing a character who also has those traits be warped into being a "bad person" just. Really sucks.

When I read Dreams Come to Life, I had always sorta read Buddy as being autistic, all though this coding could have been unintentional. For instance, he's shown to not fully get some social cues and mentions feeling like people would kinda talk down to him for not getting certain things. This being the case really confused me for a bit as to why Sammy was demonized for also displaying traits of autism until it finally hit me as to why that is. It's likely because Sammy shows symptoms that are unfortunately far more stigmatized by society. Lack of emotional/impulse control can obviously lead to someone being more prone to lashing out than other people would, and I hate how just in general people or even characters who do that are labeled as "bad people" since that clearly isn't true. Again, he's not evil or whatever, he's just extremely stressed and overworked. That's all it ever was.

Sorry for getting a bit personal, in case it wasn't obvious I'm just very passionate about this character (and franchise in general) and just wanted to discuss how I personally perceived certain things. I'm sure I wasn't supposed to read into it THIS much and I know I'm probably stretching with this. Again, I VERY HIGHLY doubt Adrienne Kress intended for Sammys writing to be read as ableist, just felt like getting my thoughts out there (regardless of how insane I probably sound)

Conclusion

To sum it all up, I just found Sammy character to be heavily flanderized and lacking a lot of the things that I personally loved so much about him, as well as finding the way bigotry was portrayed to be very nothing. It just overall didn't build on what we know about Sammys character in game in any interesting way, at least to me. Despite how long this was, I honestly don't really mind people who enjoy the books, this wasn't some personal dig on anyone of course lol. Hell, I'm even friends with some people who like Dreams Come to Life!! I've tried putting different perspectives into writing this, and I've obviously concluded that this, on top of just a bunch of general issues with the book, have just made me personally unable to like it. I'm fine with people liking the books, however I do wish people would actually criticize them more than they do. Like, you're allowed to criticize the things you like, especially with a franchise as flawed as Bendy lmao

Anyways that's pretty much it. Thanks for listening to me ramble about this silly little series I'm hyperfixated on <3

#autism be damned my boy can. write a god awfully long post about bendy and the ink machine.#batim #bendy #bendy and the ink machine #sammy lawrence #long post #kai please shut up #this post has been in the works for a couple months so if i worded anything poorly pls lmk lol

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fancifulplaguerat · 1 year ago

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Something I struggle to reconcile with Daniil’s character is his attitude towards violence, because he’s this impassioned doctor claiming he wants to save everyone but at the same time is pretty quick on the draw across all three routes. E.g. in the Bachelor Route, the player can say that Daniil doesn’t want others to die for him; that it’s his job to preserve lives, not waste them; and tells Saburov that Artemy couldn’t be a killer, because why would a *doctor* kill anyone? but then the next conversation he’s expressing delight when Andrey tells him he can kill marauders with impunity. Thinking about it more, though, I don’t think it’s necessarily that dissonant given how Daniil’s character is constructed within this “destroyer” idea, and I think his motivations are pretty consistent as well.

I feel Daniil is the most emotional healer—he’s very wear-it-on-your-sleeve and seemingly easily swayed by emotion, considering how he reacts to Simon’s death/Aglaya’s betrayal. He’s not altogether impulsive, since he’s conscientious and sometimes even refuses to act without ensuring whether he’s right, but he’s clearly partly motivated by emotion. For one, he often to lashes out at people—there are frequent dialogues in his route where he can snap at someone and then say a variant of “Sorry, I lost my temper.” I don’t think Daniil is necessarily an angry person, but reactive and in a situation where he’s constantly under pressure/being prevented from doing what he needs to be done, so obviously he’d often be frustrated and angry. I also don’t think him acting violently is because he wants to take his anger out on others, and rather his sense of justice allows him to justify violence on the grounds of who “deserves” to be punished or to die. For example, in the Haruspex/Changeling Route he only threatens to kill Artemy or use violence against Simon Kain’s murderer because eye-for-an-eye; the killer deserves to be punished, because that’s just. Daniil also expresses anger and disdain towards those who kill others, so it seems to him, killing a murderer is just righting a wrong.

Outside his motivations, I also think Daniil’s tendency towards violence works within his broader characterization as a fighter/destroyer. He’s indirectly characterized as an apt fighter in both the Haurspex/Changeling Routes, and rhetoric of ‘fighting’ is constantly used to describe his research and actions within the town. On Day 1, both Maria and Katerina describe his fate as a battle—Maria says, “a truly terrifying battle is ahead of you [...] You will fight a foe that few can defeat” and Katerina says, “I’m talking about a very particular battle... You are one of the combatants, Bachelor Dankovsky [...] you will have to fight to the death.” I also want to point to this dialogue with an herb bride, which I know is in common, but:

Herb Bride: How are you smart? Smart people are four-eyed nerds... bulgy heads on stunted legs. Cunning, cautious, weak, old even... no, you are not a smart man. You are a warrior.

Player: You can be both.

Herb Bride: Really? I thought you can only have one. Your eyes are throwing needles, and your teeth are clenched fast. You've got the face of a man who can sweep down anything that stands in his way. The face of a destroyer.

Player: Correct. This is the true purpose of smart people [...] I destroy death.

Herb Bride: Oh... So that's why there are always sparks of hatred in your eyes. And that's why your smile is so spiteful.

I’m still debating my opinions on the implications here, but I feel it’s partly related to the game’s pessimism about miracles/utopias. Specifically that in Daniil’s attempt to attain utopia:defeat death, he can only cause more destruction, as in Kaspar’s infamous “You may mean well, but you bring evil and destruction all the same [...] Your heavy hand will crush us all—even if you were only grabbing us in order to pull us out of the abyss.” The sentiment that Daniil is solely a destructive force even when he tries to do good is echoed all over the game, which frankly makes me upset because I’m too attached to this tortured little fellow. Daniil does what he thinks is right just as Artemy and Clara, but he doesn’t even get the privilege of attaining his goal like the others do in their endings. The Bachelor ending is really only a symbolic victory for Daniil; Thanatica is burned down and he hasn’t really gotten any closer to beating death. For all intents and purposes, Daniil loses even in his own ending, and I have all sorts of thoughts about that but. I shall tuck it away for another day

#I have so many thoughts about Daniil and the Kains #pathologic #patho classic #daniil dankovsky #patho.txt

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bisupergirl · 4 months ago

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oh sorry, also are there any comics i should avoid completely because the gp recognises them as being completely ooc or just not a sensical comic for supergirl?

and i was thinking of collecting the series of graphic novels that start with supergirl vol 1 - reign of the cyborg supermen. is that a good comic run? i have no clue when it comes to kara haha.

also, one last thing i promise! what is kara's true personality? like as kara danvers but also as supergirl. do they contrast each other? is she a geek or is she still just as powerful but in different ways when she's kara not sg? if that makes sense

again im so sorry for all the questions, kara is a character that really intruiges me and i really want to know the canon version of her. (unfortunately i loved the cw version of her, no matter what any one says) but i know that's nkt exactly correct.

im so sorry if ive bothered you, and i will be eternally greatful if you manage to answer my questions. thank you so much!

YES THERE ARE. Anything you see written by either Jeph Loeb or Joe Kelly should be avoided at all costs. This includes Superman/Batman (2003) #8-13 and Supergirl (2005) #0-19. Basically anything written between the years 2004 through 2007 should be avoided like the plague. The early 2000s was truly an evil era for Kara... she was oversexualized to hell and back and really didn't have any sort of characterization beyond "sexy teenager". The only thing that I think is somewhat worth reading from those years is Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes (2004) #16-36, but even that isn't super necessary if you don't want to slog through it just for her.

Aside from that.... this is just my controversial opinion, but I REALLY dislike everything Mariko Tamaki has written for Kara. This includes Supergirl: Being Super (2017) and the Supergirl Special (2023). I've just found that she has a very boring and uninspired take on Kara... Nothing she's written gives off the vibe that she's actually read any of Kara's comics. Being Super specifically irks me because it's literally just "what if Kara... was Clark!", and that's just not remotely interesting to me... Obviously nothing she's written is on par with the truly heinous shit that Loeb and Kelly were doing with Kara, so I don't want it to seem like I'm putting them on the same level! A lot of people DO like her Supergirl comics, I'm just not one of them.

Steve Orlando's run of Supergirl (2016)—which includes Reign of the Cyborg Supermen—was written specifically to appeal to fans of the CW show, so I imagine that if you like CW Supergirl, you'll also probably like that comic. I don't necessarily want to say that you shouldn't read it (since you like CWSG), but it's not something I recommend since the way that Kara's characterized there is quite different than any other comic version of her—past or present. If you do want to read something from Supergirl (2016) I recommend Marc Andreyko's run! It's spans from #21 to #36 (although I don't suggest reading past #33) and is collected in Supergirl vol. 1: Killers of Krypton and Supergirl vol. 2: Sins of the Circle.

As for her personality:

Kara is very headstrong and stubborn—she doesn't back down from her beliefs even if it means coming into conflict with her authority figures (like Clark, her mother, her employers, etc.).

She's also incredibly compassionate and protective—even in her early days as Supergirl when humans would reject her, she wasn't directly scornful of them and she'd still go out of her way to use her powers to keep them safe.

Relating to that, she's also very empathetic—there's been multiple storylines where Kara sees herself and her experience in the person she's helping, and it inspires her to do whatever she can to help them.

She's often driven by her anger and devastation of what happened to Krypton. The fury and nearly inconsolable despair that she feels for the mass death that was caused by Krypton's destruction is such a huge driving force for everything she does.

In regards to her interests: they change pretty frequently between continuities, but Pre and Post Crisis Kara was depicted as being very artistic in a lot of different areas! Kara used to have a passion for acting: she went to drama school, starred in two films, and went on to star in a soap opera. She was also very into fashion and used to wear so many cute outfits :'). Additionally, in Post Crisis continuity, she was a painter and even contemplated joining the Art Guild on New Krypton just like her father did. Recently she hasn't been shown to be that artistic and instead has an interest in history (Kryptonian history, that is). Before Krypton's destruction she was invited to study at the Society of Historical Science, and she actually preferred history to applied science. She does have a lot of scientific understanding (both because she's apart of the House of El and because Krypton is so scientifically advanced), but I've always loved that she's shown a consistent interest in the humanities rather than science!

As a quick aside, Kara has had a couple different human identities over the years: she was Linda Lee Danvers (sometimes just referred to as Linda Danvers) during Pre Crisis continuity, and that was her most fleshed out and meaningful identity imo since it lasted for around 26 years. During Post Crisis she briefly went by Linda Lang, and then in the Rebirth continuity she'd go by Kara Danvers to match the CW show. All that to say, she really doesn't differ that much in personality when she's in her human identity than when she's Supergirl! Aside from pretending that she doesn't have powers, she's still just as incredibly headstrong and compassionate and protective when she's [insert human ID here] as she is when she's Supergirl.

Okay now I'm just going to drop a few reading guides / comic recommendations that I've made here if you're interested!

Ultimate Supergirl Reading Guide Supergirl Storyline Recommendations Pre Crisis Supergirl Recommendations

#asks #kara zor el #i already said this in my last answer but i promise asking me about supergirl doesn't bother me at all!#i love yapping about her <3

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a0random0gal · 9 months ago

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If you had the chance to change something about the dance of the dragons (TV show or book), what would it be? For example, how a character dies, which team a house is on,or an entire character personally. How would you change it to make the story better, in your opinion?♥️🖤💙💚

Ohh anon i've got a list.

When it comes to the tv show there are a few choices the writers made that just don't sit right with me.

Laenor

I do like the characterization they went for, he's a pretty cool dude who really loves his weird, dysfunctional family. What I really don't like is how they handled his death.

See I truly can't stand it when a character is sugar coated just because they're the protagonist and thus must be righteous and always objectively correct.

So to witness the writers white wash his murder, having him flee to essos instead of being killed by Rhaenyra pisses me off. I get that after showing them being good friends it would be very odd to have her kill him.

But that's the thing, they should have opted for a more ruthless Rhaenyra in the first place!

Laenor's death in the books (at least for me) was the first instance of Rhae Rhae making morally wrong choices in order to pursue her ultimate goal. It was compelling! Here she just takes the easy way out, without having to make a tough choice.

Also his survival really fucks her up when you really think about it. Now all her sons are bastards since her marriage to Daemon isn't valid, and for the upcoming season 2, how are they going to handle Addam and Seasmoke? Laenor is still alive, his dragon won't accept a new rider. This doesn't make any sense and just causes plotholes what the actual fu-

Sidenote: After Laenor's very moving speech on how he was done goofing off and was now willing to really step up for Rhaenyra and their family it's super strange to imagine him ditching them all immediately afterwards Lol.

Rhaenys

My gosh, where do I even begin with this woman?

She too is pretty cool at the start, but then episode 9 rolls around and I roll my eyes.

She's so hypocritical. She tries to shit on Alicent for "toiling in the service of men." When that's all she does in the goddamn story!

She wants Baela to get Driftmark, tells Corlys about it, he shuts off the whole plan cause he wants a kid who he's not even related to on the driftwood throne, and when she complains about it he dismisses her.

So what does feminist Rhaenys do about it?

She... submits to her husband, something she conveniently forgets about when talking to Alicent. My god. Just remove this entire exchange, it hurts to watch.

And the coronation scene, Jesus Christ! It was so cool in the books, why did they have to ruin it? Had they replaced it with something better I wouldn't have complained, but this is just, the worst.

Rhaenys shows how badass she is by.... Brutally crushing hundreds of small folks to death and almost slaughtering the greens.

Cool, cool, absolutely necessary. Thanks Sara.

And you know what's even more infuriating? When she flees to Dragonstone to inform Rhaenyra of all that happened. She says she didn't kill the greens cause she didn't wish to start a war. I'm sorry what?

That would have ended the war at the start! As glad as I am that Rhaenys didn't barbecue them it makes absolutely no sense!

If she had killed them there would have been no dance in the first place!

I hate these dumb show only moments. They needlessly complicated an already complicated story and just mess everything up.

There's probably other stuff I could rant on, like how Aegon was made a rapist sorely to make the audience think:

Oh look! The greens are so baad, they believe a rapist alcoholic douche should be in charge instead of our empowered dragon queen, they sure do suck!

Or how house Velaryon was disrespected and mistreated by D*emyra but still somehow decided to support Nyra's claim.

They didn't really have a motive to be greens though, so I think they should have stayed neutral. Their fervent black support makes no sense.

The writers really should have given them more reasons to back up the blacks or had their beloved queen treat them better so that their loyalty made more sense ( I mean holy hell I wonder how they will handle the two betrayers and Corlys's arrest lmao).

But other greens have already shat on these awful decisions and I won't beat a dead horse.

Book

When it comes to fire and blood I surprisingly have very little complaints, except of course, the Jaehaera situation.

My poor baby deserved better, I've made a post about it in the past

(where I ranted and said stuff I kind of regret now, don't post while very angry guys I don't recommend it)

tackling how the little queen was unnecessarily killed off and how her death genuinely adds nothing so why was it added? God I get upset just thinking about it lol.

Some people say George did it cause he needed Aegon's kids to be born after Viserys's, and apparently he couldn't fathom a married teen not having kids until her 20s, which is veery weird.

The more plausible theory is that he got rid of her cause he wanted more Velaryon queens to showcase how close they used to be to the Targs.

Which is something I had understood already thanks to Alyssa, the sea Snake and all the Velaryons who were masters of ships but whatever.

#hotd #house of the dragon #hotd critical #anti team black #pro team green #rhaenyra targaryen #asoiaf #aegon ii targaryen #corlys velaryon #laenor valeryon #rhaenys targaryen #rhaenys velaryon #jaehaera targaryen #fire&blood #hotd season 2 #thanks for the ask! it was lots of fun to answer lmao

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miss-oranje-disco-dancer · 4 months ago

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why do people write leon into incest/ rape stories? I get that people think he's hot but there is literally no aspect of his character that would warrant that kind of characterisation. I would just like to understand why out of all, you could have written shit like this about villains but not Leon, he would never do that. And I'm not talking about fics that showcase Leon's trauma and how he turned mean or does questionable things, sometimes I really enjoy reading those. It's only when those stories are only fabricated purely because of kinks that it disgusts me. Porn without plot, no explanation given, just him being a pervert and an asshole. Genuinely why do people write that and still claim to be resident evil fans, still claim to understand and love the characters. It doesn't add up to me at all. This is not directly at you specifically but just at people who do this and since you have written content in that category, I would love to hear your explanation. :(

why do people write leon into incest/ rape stories?

i think everyone's reasons are different, and ultimately, as long as it's just fiction, it doesn't really matter what someone writes about.

some people write dark content because they're into it, some people write it to cope with past trauma (there is quite a bit of overlap in those two categories). it's an avenue for exploration of these ideas that doesn't hurt anyone. whether that be in terms of exploring your own feelings or just trying to challenge your writing abilities and be creative.

I get that people think he's hot but there is literally no aspect of his character that would warrant that kind of characterisation.

i think his characterization is complex and a lot of people get it "wrong" (but i'm not here to argue about his characterization). i also have written him in ways that i would consider "ooc" - both in dark content and in fluff. i feel like i see people often complaining about leon being 'mischaracterized' in dark content, but people are not critical of him in fluff (or fluffy smut).

this is not to say that we need to be critical or stick to canon - if we wanted to stick to canon entirely, then we wouldn't create fanfiction at all. we're writing to explore situations that are not portrayed in the source material.

i think it's fun to make posts analyzing characterization and i think it's fun to write both in character fic and out of character fic, but i think those two things (analysis and fiction) should be separate.

would just like to understand why out of all, you could have written shit like this about villains but not Leon

you sure could write about the villains! a lot of people have written fics about wesker, for example. i personally don't find a lot of the resident evil villains that interesting, and if i did, i honestly think that humanizing them would make for a more interesting concept than showing their evilness.

he would never do that

correct. he's not real, so he wouldn't *do* anything.

It's only when those stories are only fabricated purely because of kinks that it disgusts me.

that's absolutely a fair opinion. i have kinks/topics that i'm uncomfortable with too. i have a low tolerance for "ick" i would say, so like vomit, scat, cannibalism, tentacles, etc. i can't read those things because it makes me feel nauseous. i don't read those types of stories for that reason!

i personally don't have a kink for noncon or incest. i have written incest on commission before because i am fine with other people enjoying it. i have written stepcest once, however (and while i think my point may have been too subtle for the audience to notice), it was supposed to be more than a "pwp" fic. it was supposed to showcase his manipulation of her.

the noncon that i have written has been not kink related and i think when you read it, it's pretty obvious. a lot of that was coping with personal trauma.

the thing is though, i don't have to justify this to you. i'm honestly just yapping about my content because i enjoy it atp

why do people write that and still claim to be resident evil fans, still claim to understand and love the characters.

i do understand and love the characters! i have played most of the mainline games for hundreds of hours (4 platinum trophies thus far!). i understand when i'm writing them ooc. i've written characters *way* more out of character than i have leon. for example, i made brad and richard both super homophobic in a fic when there's no evidence to say that they are.

i think it's fine to write characters ooc! also, characterization is kind of complex. just because something isn't said in canon, doesn't mean it isn't true (or isn't implied). for example, jill, in my eyes (and many others), is a lesbian. chris is also very queer-coded. though, neither of them are outright stated to be queer. i have written chris in straight relationships (as have others) despite the fact that i believe he is gay.

tl;dr

while it is interesting to analyze why people enjoy certain things, there's no sense in shaming people for what they enjoy when it's not hurting anyone else. writing about a fictional character doesn't hurt anyone because the person being written about isn't real.

so basically, in conclusion, does it really matter? (no)

#asks

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gophergal · 6 months ago

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Author Commentary - I Know Where To Look (Chapter 2)

Howdy, y’all! Welcome back to another commentary post, this one will be a lot shorter than the last (probably?) I know that’s ironic given the extra length of the chapter, but this one just required less interesting research and decisions.

When does the fic take place, by the way?

So, I have a very specific headcanon for when canon materials take place in TF2 that may slightly contradict actual canon. Because of that, I am of the opinion that the Mercs were hired in ‘64, and this fic starts in May of that year. All of the Meet The Team videos take place between 64 and 68.

For your convenience, a list of relevant (and not so relevant) HC ages for characters as of 1964:

Heavy is 40, as mentioned in the chapter (his birthday is in October)

Medic is 46, though he looks young for his age despite going grey (This is relevant. Also his birthday is in March)

Scout is 19

Sniper is 22 (wear some fucking sunscreen, man)

Spy 42

Engineer is 38

On that note, I’m also taking advantage of the fact that MtT is in universe PR, so keep that in mind when characterization and events contradict them. I see the mercs’ personalities in MtT as exaggerations of what they actually have going on, and I think that is somewhat supported by the way they are presented in the comics, but I would never claim that is 100% the “correct” interpretation.

For example, Pyro at this point creeps almost everyone out, but only scares Scout. The fact that their own team is terrified of them in MtP is an exaggeration. Also Pyro related: you might notice that I typically use they/them for them, but in dialogue and prose, he/him is used. That will change, it’s just a result of the team assuming that Pyro is a man, since the rest of them are men. It’s just something that will change as the team gets closer.

Heavy’s backstory memory in the shower was just something I came up with on the spot. It felt right. Might have been projecting a bit about the whole “seeing your deceased parent in your reflection” thing. Who knows. Either way, every time I’m reminded of the characters’ who’s backstories we know, I’m just reminded of how if tf2 wasn’t comedic the damned franchise would just be a drama.

Also, the “victory round” (I’m blanking on what it’s actually called in the game, but you know when the winning team gets crits at the end?) fills me with genuine rage and I almost want to punch my laptop whenever I play tf2. However, if I did that I wouldn’t be able to write/draw more Red Oktoberfest queerness.

That Kotlet cooking scene is based on this recipe. I’ve never actually made it myself because meat has gotten really expensive, but it does just remind me of meatloaf. That’s all

“Horse Feathers” is something my maternal grandfather used to say all the time instead of “bullshit” or “goddamnit.” I thought it would be funny to make Engie talk like my papal *shrugs*. Speaking of Engie, he ISNT HOMOPHOBIC I PROMMY. That man is aspec and an eternal third wheel. He’s just uncomfortable with being involved in non-practical problems.

#gopher rambles #fanfic commentary #team fortress 2 #heavymedic #red oktoberfest #tf2 heavy #tf2 headcanons #long post

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amporella · 2 years ago

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KYLE BROFLOVSKI, STAN MARSH, AND THE FEMININE/MASCULINE QUESTION

(Or; In defense of feminine Kyle and masculine Stan)

(OR or; how Matt and Trey's outdated views prove their intentions for their characters...

...part 1.)

Normally, I would kick off the part of an essay like this above the ‘read more’ with a short summary, but given the complexity of this topic, I don’t think I can summarize it in the way it deserves in just a paragraph. Instead, I’ll start with this: it’s been a little over a year since I was freed from Tumblr shadowban hell, and nearly as long since I made my first original post on South Park tumblr. Since then, I’ve developed a pretty obvious brand in support of feminine Kyle, but I’ve never actually posted a meta justifying it. As such, consider this not a response to any discourse related to it, or a way of undermining the valid opinions that are being and have been shared, but instead as a long-overdue explanation as to why I see Kyle the way that I see him, and why I believe that interpretation is equally valid and equally progressive.

Thanks to everyone who’s shared their time and thoughts with me over the past year, regardless of how long I’ve known you, and let’s get into it!

INTRODUCTION:

Okay, HERE’s the introduction! As I type this from top to bottom, I expect it to turn out fairly long, so bear with me here: we’re going to need some exposition to explain the way I plan on going about this. I’m going to try and be concise!

i. A Bit of Background

Feminine Kyle has been a controversial topic within the South Park fandom for well over a decade, cementing itself as arguably one of the oldest ‘fanon vs canon’ debates within the fandom. Supporters, a wide group consisting of some of the most notable artists and writers in the fandom, insist the evidence is there; naysayers argue that not only is it not there, but that the mere existence of feminine Kyle reinforces old yaoi tropes, homophobia within fandoms, and most recently, antisemitic stereotypes.

For better or worse, such a portrayal has dwindled in popularity within recent years, with fanart and portrayals from the earlier fandom days becoming the subject of ridicule. Several other portrayals accompany feminine Kyle into forced obscurity - jock Stan and edgy Craig, to name a few - but only the former has drawn such politically charged discussion. Needless to say, there is plenty to discuss when examining its validity. I intend to try and cover all my bases, but first, some clarification:

This is not an unbiased analysis: this is a meta in staunch support of feminine Kyle. As such, not every single moment for or against such a portrayal will be mentioned here: I intend here to establish why feminine Kyle is a reasonable interpretation, not why the opposite may also be true. I also do not intend to prove that feminine Kyle is absolute fact, or the only valid interpretation; while I personally choose to base my portrayal off of what I’ve listed here, choosing to disregard it is also a perfectly fine conclusion. These characters are ten, after all; there is no objectively correct way to portray them!

Secondly; this is a Kyle-centric meta, but it’s also going to include a fair bit of Stan. Declaring Kyle feminine has no point if we have no character to contrast him against; femininity requires masculinity to mean anything, and vice versa. There has to be some point of reference. As a result, this meta will unintentionally make a declaration on Stan’s femininity as well; just like above, accept and reject it as you wish! ‘Correct’ characterization in the South Park fandom is understandably murky.

Speaking of characterization, we first need to discuss why a long-winded meta like this one is even necessary. Why can’t we decide whether Kyle’s feminine? Surely that should be pretty obvious, right?

ii. Why can’t we come to an agreement?

Well… not really. That’s the problem!

Nearly everybody in this little section of the South Park fandom (by which I mean the non-dudebro section) is progressive, which is a good thing. But that also makes femininity a really difficult concept to nail down. Here’s what Oxford Languages has to say about it:

Okay, straightforward enough. But what attributes are characteristic of women? That’s where we come across our problem; there really aren’t any. Many of the traits (at least personality wise) society used to consider characteristic of women are misogynistic stereotypes, or exist solely as a way to justify gender roles; as such, we can’t designate femininity based on personality traits, which is a great thing for society as a whole and a bad thing for the simplicity of my South Park meta.

Consider this example: being easily grossed out to the point of fear was, in the past, considered to be a trait typical of women. Consider all those boomer comics you’ve seen about women being afraid of mice. Surely then a reasonable conclusion would be that Kyle’s irrational disgust/fear of pee would be a feminine trait. But that conclusion actually isn’t reasonable, because we now know that isn’t necessarily a female-exclusive trait; as such, that interpretation is misogynistic and can be disregarded. Do you see what I mean? It’s really not that easy.

But I actually have a way to make that work. It is going to require some inception. Keep that in mind while we segue to another relevant question:

iii. What is effective characterization?

We talked about characterization a little bit above, but now we need to talk about it again: namely, how do you characterize a character? How many times will I say the word character in this essay?

This question doesn’t just apply to South Park: I mean this for all shows, but most specifically the long ones, and the ones with questionable track records in episode quality. We have all watched something and thought “he would not fucking say that”, even when the person who made him fucking say that was the creator themselves. How do we reconcile that with our vision of a character, especially when such a character assassination is often unintentional? Do we take everything the character does or says at face value by rating all of their behaviors as equal in the characterization scheme, or do we look deeper?

I think the answer needs to be the second one: we need to take characterization by intention, rather than what the character actually says. Generally, a creator will have an intention for their characters, whether that’s in personality, arc, or both. They typically have a plan for some aspects of the character, even in episodic shows like South Park, and they try not to diverge from that plan. For example, Kyle’s reaction will often differ as he is faced with differing events (as real life people do), but he reacts in a similar way, fueled by his consistent morals: he never responds in a Kyle way one episode and in a Cartman way in another. He always reacts like Kyle would, and rarely wavers from his fairly consistent characterization. It is clear that when planning Kyle’s responses to things, they do not start with a blank slate.

That’s the perspective we need to take on when viewing this; we need to look at these characters from the way Matt and Trey intended for them to be looked at, and we need to look at them with the perspective that Matt and Trey had. Segue over: let’s go back to the main point. Keep that in mind.

iv. How do we fix our dilemma?

You don’t really need to keep it in mind, because I’m going to say it again right here: we need to view the characters with the perspective Matt and Trey had. This applies to everything characterization related, including femininity. What makes Matt and Trey’s perception of femininity different from our own?

Well, that’s easy: they’re from a different generation, for one. They’re old white guys, for another. They naturally have different views on femininity than we do, because they have different (often shittier) views on women than we do! Matt and Trey have had some good takes, but their takes on women rarely fall into that category. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to deal with those takes for now if we want to draw a conclusion, because those are what we have to go by when deciding femininity.

We’re putting on the Matt and Trey goggles for this meta. What do they think femininity is? How would they portray a feminine character? What would a feminine character look like in their eyes? When judging characterization by intention, which I plan on doing throughout this meta, we need to Become Old White Men.

(That same reasoning is why I’ll essentially be using women and feminine people interchangeably throughout this essay; Matt and Trey tend to associate femininity exclusively with women or flamboyant gay men, and the way they portray them is often the same. Needless to say, those terms are not interchangeable in real life; I only use them as such here both because of the above reasoning and to try and shorten this behemoth of a meta.)

From Matt and Trey’s perspective, it would be much less ludicrous that women would be more easily grossed out; that is the common consensus among men of their generation, and they haven’t proved themselves to be more enlightened than the rest, so we’ll go with that common consensus. From their perspective, Kyle disliking pee would be a feminine trait; therefore, giving that trait to Kyle implies that, in that episode, Matt and Trey viewed him as feminine and intentionally portrayed him that way. This argument becomes stronger once the rest of his traits are considered, which we’ll do throughout this essay. From this point forward, I'll clarify that this is from Matt and Trey’s point of view less often for brevity; assume that unless I clarify it's from mine, it's from theirs.

Understandably, there may be some issues with this, namely: doesn’t temporarily taking on this perspective and then proceeding to label Kyle as feminine based on stereotypes imply that you agree with those stereotypes? To which I say: no, not really. You can take the intention (femininity, in this case) and disregard the bad that comes along with it: you can essentially claim Kyle as a feminine character without acknowledging what may be flawed reasoning on behalf of the creator, and choose to draw your own conclusions based off of that. I’ll explain this in more detail at the end.

So, that’s the introduction! But we still have one more thing we need to talk about before we can move onto the actual meat of the essay.

We need to talk about creek.

THE CREEK INTERLUDE.

Why do we need to talk about creek in a Kyle-centric meta, besides that I like talking about creek? The answer is that Matt and Trey’s views on creek answer a very reasonable question, that being: Why do we have reason to assume that Matt and Trey would intend for any of them to be feminine? Why do we have reason to believe the idea of femininity in relation to their male characters would even cross their mind?

Creek is our reason!

i. The Masculine/Feminine Divide

Consider Matt and Trey’s audio commentary for Put It Down, starting at :52. "One person wanting, which is usually the woman... who flips out a bit more about things emotionally, and generally the man is a bit more, like... not responsive to emotion, and just wants to problem solve. And we have had experience with that…"

Through that commentary, Matt and Trey have already assigned ‘roles’ to Tweek and Craig within the context of the episode; namely, Tweek being the woman and Craig being the man based on their behavior throughout the episode. Obviously, the stereotypes they suggest above very often aren’t true, and a gay man in a relationship is in no way ‘the woman’ regardless of femininity, but they reference them nonetheless, and this helps our case for three reasons:

It confirms that Matt and Trey view some characters as more ‘woman-like’ than others, even just within the context of a single episode: ie, more feminine than others. It shows that they take femininity into account when viewing character behavior, and it is possible they have done so with other male child characters than Tweek.

Furthermore, it shows that the above behavior is intentional; they’ve intentionally made one character more ‘woman-like’ than the other. Matt and Trey admitting that they “have had experience with that” implies that they, on some level, based the episode off of their own experience: hence, Tweek was intended to play the role of ‘the woman’ from the beginning of the episode. It is therefore possible they intended this with other episodes.

The parallels between Stan/Craig and Kyle/Tweek, and on a larger scale, style and creek as relationships, are obvious. The fact that creek exists in the Matt and Trey collective brain as a masculine/feminine relationship implies that their platonic parallel, Stan and Kyle, has the potential to exist in the same way.

I don’t personally think that Tweek is at all intended to be feminine throughout the series in the same way that Kyle is - Tweek’s meth-driven paranoia is a far cry from Kyle’s natural neuroticism (a trait which, while not inherently feminine, is obviously such within the eyes of Matt and Trey) - but within the context of that episode, the point stands. It also gives us something to look for: contrast. If Kyle is feminine, going by Matt and Trey’s way of portraying relationships, he must have a masculine counterpart. This part is easy.

STAN MARSH, ALL AMERICAN BOY:

When looking for traditional masculinity within the main four, Stan is our guy. Despite possibly being the most sensitive out of the group, the remainder of Stan’s traits, behaviors, and interests line up exactly with the typical perspective of what masculinity looks like. His consistency with this makes Kyle’s deviation even more remarkable.

i. Personality

So far, we’ve mostly talked about masculinity and femininity in reference to personality, so it only makes sense to start there with Stan. First, let’s consider the trait that Matt and Trey explicitly mentioned they consider masculine:

“Not responsive to emotion, and just wants to problem solve.”

We don’t even need to look through the series for evidence of this one: South Park Studios themselves confirmed it on Stan’s SPandMe results, a quiz intended to connect quiz-takers with their respective South Park character.

“You are an average all-American person, and despite your crazy surroundings, you remain levelheaded.”

Remaining levelheaded in crazy surroundings essentially boils down to being not responsive to sudden, situation-driven emotion, especially in the context of Put It Down, where Craig is able to step back from Tweek’s emotion-driven response to a crazy situation and consider it in a levelheaded way. Stan often tends to perform the same duty for Kyle as Craig does for Tweek in that episode, serving the role of someone to vent to in stressful situations.

Now that we’ve checked Matt and Trey’s explicitly mentioned perception of masculinity off the list, let’s consider some other traditionally ‘masculine’ personality traits: regardless of whether they’ve been explicitly mentioned, it’s a fair assumption that they’ve considered a few other traits within the ‘masculinity’ vein.

Quick to Threats: Stan has a tendency to be levelheaded, as mentioned above, but when angered he can jump straight to threats of violence; this serves as a contrast to Kyle, who tends to respond verbally instead. Consider this moment in Passion of the Jew:

While Stan actually gives Cartman a fair amount of time to ‘take it back’ before he resorts to active threats of violence, he still does so much quicker than Kyle has ever done in the past; Kyle, by comparison, tends to insult normally. Stan, when pushed by Cartman, responds with threats within a few lines of dialogue: Kyle, when pushed by Cartman, has only legitimately snapped a few times over the course of 25 years of harassment.

Another example would be in Cash For Gold, where Stan jumps to telling the jewelry salesman to kill himself without any prior conversation; unlike Kyle, who typically makes efforts to negotiate first, Stan resorts to threats.

Also consider Stan’s behavior in Stick of Truth, in which upon the character’s arrival into the Elf Kingdom, Stan is immediately ready to get into a fight to defend Kyle; as the character approaches Kyle, he threatens them by punching his fist. His method of protectiveness often boils down to violence on behalf of the people he cares about, and he takes personal affronts, or affronts to those people, extremely seriously. Kyle, on the other hand, is defensive rather than offensive in terms of protectiveness, and cares more about the wider populace instead of mostly the people directly relevant to his life; we’ll get into that more later.

This is a trait heavily associated with masculinity throughout history, and throughout media: masculine characters in shows, books, and movies are often the ones shown to pick fights rather than verbally negotiate. This trait is even shown through Craig, who’s already established as “the man”; throughout the first few seasons especially, he threatens other characters once aggravated instead of communicating.

Leadership Ability: Obvious disclaimer is that this trait in particular is not exclusively male, or even largely male (just like every other trait I’ve mentioned), but the world continues even to this day to associate leadership qualities with traditionally masculine qualities, and I have reason to believe that Matt and Trey do the same thing. Let’s go through a few episodes in which Stan is staunchly placed as the leader for some examples:

Stan, as a character who is often the protagonist of the show as a whole, naturally falls into the leadership role within The Boys. In this way, he once again serves as a contrast to Craig, who is obviously the leader of his own game; the official wiki goes so far as to call them Craig and Those Guys. An example of this would be in South Park Is Gay, in which Stan approaches Craig first to try and one-up him, and another more subtle example would be in Good Times With Weapons, in which Stan’s leadership is demonstrated just by him being front and center in front of Craig’s door.

He also serves as the lead detective in Lil’ Crime Stoppers, and tends to be the leader of his respective sports team, being chosen as both quarterback and pitcher in football and baseball respectively. On a larger scale, Stan becomes Captain in Whale Whores, where he is revered for actually making things happen in comparison to the previous Captain.

South-park-meta also has a great description of why Stan’s a leader which you can find here, which mentions a few things that I haven’t.

Stan in a leadership role comes up over and over again, and while I normally wouldn’t consider this a strong enough piece of evidence to bring up on its own, Stan’s other masculine traits (which I’ll be getting to shortly, outside of the personality department) make me believe that it’s intentional. This is especially relevant when the leadership within the girls is also considered: while the groups of boys tend to have a very obvious leader, the girls fluctuate often between Wendy and Bebe, with Matt and Trey unable to even keep the leader of the Pleases and Sparkles Club consistent. The fact that the boys tend to have leaders and the girls don’t leads me to believe that Matt and Trey do see leadership as a masculine trait.

Superficiality & Ego: To be clear before we start this section, I do think that Stan is legitimately very sensitive. He is my sensitive little guy. But he does have a tendency to be superficial with some issues, often unable to grasp the bigger picture, especially when failing to grasp the issue tends to benefit him specifically.

Consider his behavior in A Scause For Applause. Initially, Stan has no clue who the farmers are or what they stand for, and is labeled a hero simply because he likes his wristband and doesn’t intend on taking it off. However, as soon as he essentially becomes a celebrity, he pretends to be extremely passionate about the cause, despite the fact that it is all “bullcrap” to him. Stan is hugely empathetic, but only towards people that are close to him, or issues that are relevant to him (such as the whales, as he loves animals): he couldn’t care less about the farmers in Belarus, but relishes in the attention he’s getting because of it.

Another example of this would be in Butterballs, where Stan behaves in essentially the same way: he joins the anti-bullying campaign not because he is passionate about the issue, but because he’s being taunted and he wants to prove that he’s a leader, or, as Bucky Bailey says, a “big man”. His pride is extremely important to him, which is part of the reason why he steps up. As Stan starts to make the anti-bullying video increasingly about him, Kyle sees through him and points it out.

Once again, his ego drives him rather than genuine passion for the issue: his actual interest in it is superficial at best and serves only to fuel his ego. Both qualities are heavily associated with masculinity, and toxic masculinity in particular: as Stan gets pissed at Kyle in both episodes, that side of him and the anger accompanying it begins to show. We’ve now accepted those traits are generally bad, but they were often praised as a key part of manliness in the past: them continuing to be associated with masculinity in Matt and Trey’s mind would be very plausible.

ii. ‘Manly’ Interests

Stan’s one of the most fleshed out characters throughout the series in terms of interests, but he does have one that shows up more prominently than any other: sports! I’ve gone into exactly how frequently it pops up for him in my Jock Stan meta, so I won’t go into it now, but I highly suggest reading that if you’re interested. Furthermore, that’s also why I’m not going to be using basketball as a masculine justification for Kyle; from what I’ve found, it’s just not as relevant to his character.

Sports are widely considered to be an interest associated with men, and particularly, masculinity; while the gender split among people who are passionate about sports is much less divisive than the media would lead you to believe, few people associate anything other than women’s sports with women. Football in particular is typically considered a man’s sport, and has its heavy associations with toxic masculinity: the traits valued within football tend also to be the traits that our society values specifically within men, those traits typically boiling down to strength and competitiveness. As mentioned above, the desire to compete and show off (particularly with Craig, also considered to be the respective ‘leader’ of his group) is a trait much more heavily associated with Stan than Kyle; it leads me to believe those traits and his interest in football paired together are not a coincidence.

Another one of Stan’s larger interests are animals, which he consistently feels passionate about, but more specifically dogs. He’s shown to love Sparky dearly, with the first Stan-centric episode of the series having Stan’s crisis about Sparky as a main factor, and he even accompanies Stan in Stick of Truth for one of his attacks. I mention this because while a love of animals is often associated with women, or femininity, dogs specifically are consistently associated with men; when the term “man’s best friend” was coined, they were not considering ‘man’ as the wider mankind. Dogs are so heavily associated with masculinity that people naturally assume dogs that they meet are male, and that the large majority of dogs in fiction ARE male. The association between dogs and masculinity is actually a necessity for Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride to work as an episode: Stan valuing “butchness” and wanting Sparky to behave in such a way acts as his main conflict throughout the episode.

While this last one is not quite as relevant to Stan’s overall character as the previous two, it’s frequently brought up as a “counter” to Stan’s sportiness, so I still find it relevant to bring up. Board games, which are certainly less associated with manliness than sports, are still an extremely male sport, particularly dominated by white males (with 93% of board game designers being white men); I am inclined to believe that Matt and Trey knew this, which was why Nichole, and the rest of the girls, stood out so much. They even address this within the episode, which has most of the boy gamers (excluding Stan, who is more open to girls joining the group) rejecting the girls who want to play. Even Stan’s least traditionally masculine interest is centered around manliness within the episode.

Is it coincidence that when Matt and Trey selected interests for their characters, they chose interests heavily associated with masculinity for Stan? Probably not. Again, these interests aren’t necessarily male-exclusive, nor do they even necessarily lean towards men in reality, but from the perspective of two older men like Matt and Trey, they ARE masculine traits. The fact that Stan is given those traits specifically while the other characters are not is heavily indicative of their intention; namely, to make Stan an obviously masculine character.

iii. Appearance

I swear we’re almost done with an insanely long Stan section in what’s supposed to be a Kyle meta. I may have to change the title.

The last thing we’re going to be looking at with Stan in regards to masculinity is appearance: how does he present himself? When he chooses roles in games, how traditionally masculine are they? Let’s start with his Stick of Truth role: Stan Marshwalker.

During Stick of Truth, Stan serves as Kyle’s devoted, protective knight: as I already mentioned above, he’s ready to pick a fight with the player just for looking at him. But even beyond his behavior, his appearance is undeniably masculine; knights were the ideal of manhood and masculinity for quite a long time, hence the trope of a knight saving a princess from a castle. Especially back when knights were a Thing, there was nothing more traditionally masculine than waving a huge sword around and fighting a dragon to defend someone’s honor. Stan doesn’t defend the honor of any princesses in Stick of Truth, but he does offer to duel Tolkien on what’s implied to be Kyle’s behalf, which could be easily interpreted as a parallel.

The knight motif comes up again in the episode Make Love, Not Warcraft, in which Stan’s selected character is this: a muscular, masculine presenting knight. I’m leaving this section a little short because I’m going to be bringing it up again when we get to Kyle , but keep Stan’s appearance here in mind.

Stan’s next most relevant character is Toolshed, from Stick of Truth:

Stan’s TFBW costume, who is essentially a handyman, is less ingrained in society as traditionally masculine than a knight, but still is a heavily male dominated field: in the United States, 96% of handymen are men. While less symbolic than a knight, handymen can be considered masculine even considering only that trait; they are heavily associated with men, which is essentially the definition of masculinity from the Matt and Trey perspective.

Stan has a ton of alter egos throughout the series, but we’re already at 4k words so I’m going to keep this section as brief as I can. The only other real thing of note here is that Stan seems to associate ripping off his sleeves with strength, as he opts to go ripped sleeveless in both Good Times With Weapons and as Stan The Man in W.T.F.

iv. Conclusion

What can we conclude from the above information, and how does it have any relevance at all to Kyle?

Firstly, we can conclude that Stan Marsh, in personality, interests, and appearances, was given traditionally masculine traits by Matt and Trey. Furthermore, we can conclude that due to Matt and Trey’s mention of masculinity and femininity within Tweek and Craig, this is not a coincidence; his masculinity was intentional. Finally, we can assume that Matt and Trey genuinely believe these traditionally masculine traits to be legitimately masculine: as in, it is unlikely they gave him these traits with any other intention than making it clear he was a masculine character.

Okay, so we’re done with Stan! Mostly. He’ll come up a little more later. But why did we need to spend this long talking about the character who isn’t even the main guy in this essay? I know I talked a little about it above, but surely I have more of a reason than that? Well, it’s because of what Matt and Trey said in the commentary for Kenny Dies, around the 42 minute mark.

“A couple weeks before this, the idea was that we were going to kill Kyle, remember, and we'd make it a big thing - we'll kill Kyle, and Butters will step in... it always seemed to us that Kyle and Stan were really similar... so let's kill off one of those two."

As of Season 6, Stan and Kyle were too similar. In order to justify keeping Kyle on the show, they needed to draw an actual distinction between the two of them. Before this point, Stan had already been established as South Park’s masculine, golden football boy since his very first episode, so what would be the most effective way of differentiating Kyle from Stan in a consistent way?

The answer would be to give Kyle feminine traits to contrast Stan’s masculine ones. It required leaning hard on some aspects of the character, but it obviously worked: Kyle is still here, widely loved, and often very different than the way he was before season 6. If we can prove that Stan was intentionally given masculine traits, we have even more of a reason to believe that Kyle may be given feminine traits to separate their personalities, and we’ve already proved that! Now we need to prove that Kyle was actually given those feminine traits, and we’ll start right now.

...by which I mean tomorrow, when I post the second half of this. Please hold your applause and/or complaints until then, because you really need the second half to tie the whole thing together and actually come to some concrete conclusions.

You can read part 2 here!

#south park #kyle broflovski #stan marsh #south park meta #meta #WOW putting all these images in sucked #this is the mostly stan part BUT kyle is relevant so i'm tagging him too #kyle's part and the conclusion coming out tmrw!!#as well as acknowledgements

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sometimes-love-is-enough · 2 years ago

Text

Let’s talk about 16th century Italian theatre.

No wait come back I promise this is actually related to Sanders Sides

So, last night I was talking with some friends about an AU I’m currently working on. I’ve been away from the Sanders Sides fandom for a good while now, but recently my hyperfixation reactivated and now my brain is so ready to write a ridiculously long longfic with a convoluted premise and horrifying implications. (I’m like 25k in. Having the time of my life. No doubt I’ll talk about it more later. This isn’t about that.)

Since I’m not the sort of person who usually writes AUs - I prefer to stick to canonverse, and canonverse-adjacent fics - I eventually brought up how worried I always am about characterization of the Sides in AUs. Because although I do adore an AU; I devour Love and Other Fairytales like candy and think about Lavender For Luck all the time and don’t even get me started on WIBAR, when it comes to my own writing, I secondguess myself a lot. I don’t like to stray too far from canon concepts and characterization. I get worried when I don’t draw enough connections to things that happen in the series, because it feels like a betrayal of the source material - if I change a character dynamic from how it’s usually portrayed, I spend entirely too long thinking about how to make it work.

And someone else said, well, I don’t usually worry about that sort of thing very much anymore.

And I said, why not?

And they said, well, I haven’t watched the actual show for ages. I mainly treat the Sides as stock characters for the stories I write, and my brain fucking exploded.

...Exploded in a good way. I have to stress this so, so hard. My personal opinions on writing characterization and AUs apply just to my writing. I judge my own work entirely too harshly and work too hard at Getting Characterization right, and that doesn’t apply to other people’s work or AUs at all, I enjoy them all without a problem. This meta isn’t about OOC being a bad thing, or AUs that are completely removed from their source material being a bad thing, because they aren’t, not at all, they’re a form of creative expression just like any fanwork. And if someone starts getting on your case about that sort of thing, just... just block them.

Anyway, where was I. Exploding brain? Ah yes.

So a few other people chimed into the conversation at this point, agreeing that in a lot of cases, the Sides for them were stock characters with fun names, established personalities and tropes to play around with, and part of the fun for them at this point came less from interaction with canon and more about interactions with friends and fellow writers. Which is very different to how I do things. I was fascinated, and my brain had one big delighted thought, oh shit! You’re treating the Sides like Commedia Dell’arte characters! I get it now!

(Disclaimer: I haven’t done drama or theatre for a good while now. If I make a factual mistake, either patiently bear with me or gently correct me.)

Commedia Dell’arte was a form of Italian improv theatre that was first popular in the 16-18th centuries through Europe, and didn’t have any proper established plots or scripts. The actors were almost never the same from performance to performacne, the comedy was over-the-top and often satirical and absurd in its physicality, it focused on plots about romance and jealousy and love. Emphasis on an ensemble cast. Very stylized, very distinctive. Here’s one beng performed in Venice, for the Vibes.

[image description: a photo shot of two masked people in period costume conversing on a small wooden stage, taken over the heads of a crowd in Venice.]

The key, the thing that ties all Commedia Dell’arte together? The stock characters. There’s a list of all of these character archetypes, all with specific names and associated masks assigned to them, and when you’re performing this sort of theatre, all the actors pick one of the archetypes and put on a mask and work out what the situation is, and bam, you’re on the stage and off to the races. You’ve got the servant of two masters, the stuttering statesmen, the Sad Clown (relatable), the utterly obsessed lovers who won’t stop making doe eyes at each other on stage from behind those masks of theirs.

Pretty freaky-looking masks, admittedly. Look at that nose on Naso Turco, the sly servant!

[image description: eight blue-and-black stylized Commedia Dell’arte masks, all labelled with their roles]

And the thing is, audiences would recognize these archetypes upon seeing them - it wasn’t so much about having characters that were perfectly ported from one story to another, like you might have in adaptations of fairy tales, it’s more about the archetypes. The personalities. Their status, and the way they interact with one another. Apparently all of the original cast of stock characters (you can find a list of them on Wikipedia, or maybe elsewhere) were "originally intended as a kind of characteristic representative of some particular Italian district or town." They’re representations of archetypes. You might even say that they’re conceptual representations.

Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s not hard to see where I’m going with this.

In Commedia, stock characters are almost never played by the same actors because the cast is always different, and might be an entirely different theatre troupe - so the way of recognizing certain archetypes is by their clothing style, or other symbolic context clues.

And that’s exactly how you recognize the Sides in fanworks when the AU is too far divorced from canon to understand them otherwise. If you’ve changed their ethnicity, or genderbent them, or given then a different species, you look for the context clues because at this point you’ve learned to read them like a language.

If it’s just fanart, or the names haven’t been brought up yet, how do you tell it’s Roman? Well, Roman’s costume is pretty distinctive, even when modified - and failing that, even if he’s just in jeans and a t-shirt, or even if he’s an indistinct jello-y blob floating in the distant reaches of space - he’s going to be the red blob. They’re color-coded for our convinience. Virgil’s stormclouds and spiders, Janus has his snakes and almost always has something going on with one side of his face.

Do you find this delightful? I hope you do. Because I do. I find it really, really delightful, and I’d never put conscious thought into this before last night. The Sides aren’t quite as flat and archetypal as the colorful cast of Commedia Dell’arte - they’re more fleshed out, for one thing, and even if writers don’t always pull on it, there’s canon backstory and plotlines to draw from. But they’re still archetypes, deliberately so in the context of canon. Someone in the server I was discussing this in summed it up really nicely - [..] we have Roman the artist, we have Janus for all the drama and deception, we have clever Logan to represent the science spirit. We have Patton for the morale lessons. We have Virgil for the memento mori style, and we have Remus for all the gore and dark comedic relief.

Which is such a great updating of all of the classic theatrical archetypes. Because (although Italian improv theatre is still performed! People still use these old roles and costumes, but it’s definitely more historical than modern) the idea of servants and masters and cunning peasants and all the complicated dynamics between these roles, well... it isn’t super relevant to modern storytelling. When Commedia Dell’arte is performed nowadays, it’s almost never hashtag-relatable in the way it used to be. You know what’s more relatable? Archetypes of the nerd who doesn’t acknowledge his emotions, the grumpy loner with a heart of gold, the theatre kid who won’t stop singing. You can take those and all of the rest and shove them into all manner of situations, and you can make some really cool stories out of that.

(National Theatre has a really nice video breaking down this theatre form a lot better than I can, with details I didn’t include here. Check it out here if you’re interested. It also includes details about the various archetypes’ physicalities and movements, which I think is kind of interesting, because in canon Sanders Sides the character’s physicalities are terrifyingly recognizable. That’s not really relevant to the idea of AU Improv Theatre, though, so I won’t poke any further at that thought. ANYWAY.)

I’ll level with you: some of the things people write in this fandom, I just don’t vibe with and I don’t get, and I’m okay with that. It’s the maxim of Mind Your Own Business, I just don’t interact and I keep on moving in my own lane. But, like... maybe I don’t need to get it. I’m pretty sure there were people in 1600s Europe who showed up to a Commedia Dell’arte performance and went ‘no, this one isn’t for me, did you see how they absolutely butchered the characterization of the Innamorati? Disgraceful’. But for many other people, maybe that particular performance just hit the spot, because they’d always wanted to see an interpretation just like that, that diverged from the norm just a little bit. And even if nobody in the audience at all liked it, maybe the performers were having enough of a blast that it more than made up for it.

And if not any of that - well, there’s always the next show!

[image description: four masked Commedia Dell’arte performers crowded around a prop cafe table, exclaiming dramatically over a menu that they’re all bent over.]

I don’t know if my brain will ever be chill enough to let me write something completely separated from canon. (Although... now that I’m typing that, I recognize that the chessboxing AU is not so much separated from canon as a tragic widower of a dinosaur-related apocalyptic divorce. Okay. Nevermind. Still, you probably get where I’m coming from.) And I’m probably not going to stop treating characterization like I’m going to be sentenced by a vicious panel of judges to a cruel and untimely death if I get the slightest bit of it wrong, but... I don’t know. The realization that it’s all comes back to this makes me happy, somehow. Just generally joyful about the state of the fandom, and the things that people create, and the community that’s been built up around it.

Commedia is all about exploring stuff in improv like love and romance and dynamics, and isn't that exactly what we're doing as writers? Throwing character archetypes together and making them kiss and talk to see what will happen? It's not really improv, but it's not like we have any stage to act on except the AO3 posting page.

We didn't set out to make the characters from a web series into stock archetypes that so many people pick up and play with to Work Out Our Issues With. (Writing is free therapy. We all knew that already.) That was definitely not the original intention of Sanders Sides - or any similar fandom, actually. (I know TSS isn’t the only one this happens in, not even close.)

But, hey, we're humans, and it always comes back to us wanting to play. And there's nothing new under the sun, not really. Of course given an infinite internet sandbox and a goofy web series about some guy’s identity crisis, we would accidentally reinvent the original Italian comedy theatre. That’s kind of brilliant.

You know what, I think 16th century Italians would enjoy Sanders Sides AUs a lot. I bet they’d make some pretty banger masks for the boys to wear.

God, I wish I had a time machine.

#sanders sides #sanders sides meta #min goes off the rails #(a tag that has not seen use for a while! i don't write much meta these days)#this may be deeply pretentious but also it hit me like a ton of bricks. i get it now. i get it

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galaxymagitech · 11 months ago

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In Nightwing (1996) there’s a character named Tad Ryerstad who actually bears a startling amount of similarity to Jason Todd; it’s like DC took a crack at the Red Hood arc several years early. And I find it interesting, because I have very different opinions on the two characters but on the surface level, it’s really difficult to spot the difference.

Tad actually has two backstories. The first one given is that he was abandoned as a baby/young child and the kids in a group home named him Tadpole, which is where he got the Tad from. The second backstory is given in a later comic. He was raised in poverty and his father was abusive to his mother and possibly him. (Jason’s father is often portrayed as abusive in fanon). Tad’s father was a criminal. When Tad’s father was killed by a drug lord he betrayed, Tad’s mother was arrested and he was sent to foster care. (Willis Todd was a criminal killed by Two-Face, the guy he worked for. Jason was left orphaned at a young age.) He was possibly abused there and ran away and had difficulty surviving on the streets. (Jason Todd also ran away and was homeless.)

But Tad wasn’t picked up by Batman. Instead, he became a vigilante of a sort on his own. He beat up bad guys and then took their money for himself to survive. He started small, but eventually develops a superhero identity of “Nite-Wing” and starts going after the big fishes of Blüdhaven. He’s angry and hurt by his past. He thinks that superheroes are bleeding hearts and jail in Blüdhaven is a revolving door. So, convinced that they’re irredeemably evil, he kills the criminals he fights, putting him into conflict with Nightwing. Sound familiar?

Now here’s the thing. From Tad’s first appearance I hated him. Because very early on, he gets it wrong. He sees a Black guy following two white children and assumes that he’s a pervert attempting to kidnap them. He attacks and kills the man and leaves, without ever realizing that the guy is the kids’ uncle. That may have been racial profiling, but given Tad’s characterization it honestly may not have been, because he destroys a neonazi group and in a later comic, he sees a white guy waiting in the snow and randomly grills him about what he’s dealing. The guy insists that he’s not selling anything and is just waiting for his brother, but Tad thinks the guy’s trying to trick him. There is literally no reason for Tad to think the guy’s dealing anything just like he had no reason to think the guy with the kids was a pervert, but he kills him. After Tad leaves, the guy’s brother shows up. Now, Tad has a very simplistic mindset and doesn’t seem entirely sane. He assumes the worst of everyone because of his past. Tad genuinely doesn’t know that he’s making mistakes.

But I’m left wondering, is that all that separates him from Red Hood? The fact that Jason hasn’t gotten the wrong person but Tad has? Because their motivations are so similar: anger, a troubled past, hatred for people who do the wrong thing, disillusionment with people propped up as heroes (Batman for Jason and cops for Tad), and a belief that jail isn’t permanent enough. I don’t think one character being good and another character being evil can be separated by a mistake, right? Jason can’t be morally better because he’s smarter.

And yet, I like Jason Todd. Tad is pretty easy to hate; he could easily be an allegory for police violence if Dick wasn’t simultaneously training to become a cop. But I like Jason Todd and I can’t figure out what the huge difference is. Is it just that he’s more correct about identifying criminals? Or that he is snarkier? Or he just seems more interesting so I like him more? I think maybe this is why the Batman writers thought Jason would be hateable, because DC Batman-related comics pulled off “angry vigilante guy who kills criminals because jail isn’t secure and he doesn’t trust authority” as evil before and figured it would be easy to do it again.

I don’t know. Maybe Jason’s motivations are actually different and more complex. Or maybe I should actually hate both of them. I try to constantly question my perception of things and this really got me thinking.

#batman #nightwing #dcu #jason todd #tad ryerstad #vigilante #meta #philosophy #text post #morality

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dateamonster · 1 year ago

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what’s your opinion on monstrous transformations (both fast and slow), and also more controversially what do you think about having monsters/nonhuman characters serve as minority allegory (as opposed to society’s hate for them being being an allegory)

ohhh hold on this is a rly good question i think abt a Lot actually.

ok getting the first bit out of the way, love a good monstrous transformation. fast, slow, its all good. i personally like gradual slow shifts the most but its a situational thing. transformation is one of those things that like just always has to be symbolic. even more than the degree to which Everything is symbolic ya know. so like context rly matters when it comes to how to invoke it most effectively.

MOVING ON

i think from the phrasing of the ask ur looking for something more along the lines of like. for example shapeshifters as representation of nonbinary people or aliens as representation of different cultures rather than like monsters vs humans as allegory for racism. but im also not sure you can meaningfully separate the two! the latter i think is more overused so it like registers more as an immediate red flag, but its like. if the aliens from avatar werent being violently invaded by humans it wouldnt make like their reskinned stereotypical indigeneity anymore tolerable i dont think.

which isnt to say i think every story that draws connections between fantastical fictional species and real world people are inherently bad. i dont really think theres any trope that i believe cant be handled well by anyone under any circumstance. the super easy fix to bad rep via monster or fantasy creature characters is basically just have actual humans who also represent those same identities and communities and experiences so that the audience isnt drawn to connect the traits of any one group with your fictional species.

the harder fix is to like seriously analyze why you want this character to be a monster and what that says about them and what that says about you and your own experiences and biases and what you actually want to communicate with the inclusion of this character. and when applicable hire a sensitivity reader. its kinda crazy how many pieces of media seem to prefer half-assing the hard way over just doing the easy thing and not assigning the status of token minority to a literal monster.

of course once again all of this is ya know circumstantial. im speaking to like my own experiences and the things ive observed. and its weird too! bc im also speaking as someone who like is trans and nonbinary and thinks of myself and my gender expression as inherently intertwined with monstrosity. and as someone who is autistic and thinks of myself as a changeling. and as someone who is a fat person who represents themself with a pig themed sona. if i talk abt cringeass hollywood blockbusters engaging in High Fantasy Racism i feel like to be fair i kinda have to talk about independent own-voices creators who write stories and make art about their own identities in the lovely language of monstrosity. theres not rly a way to draw a hard line around the former without the risk of catching some of the latter.

so umm as usual i dont rly have a snappy all encompassing answer for how i feel abt this kind of characterization. im simply too much of a Nuance Enjoyer. i do i guess think this is something that generally turns out better when it is someone making art about their own experiences, but also unless i believe minority artists are a monolith, which i dont, i need to accept that artists will inevitably make stuff that is beautiful and resonant to some people and totally repugnant and offensive to others, and that both of those responses can be like totally justified and correct. thats art babey!

anyway slight digression but i think any case where a character feels more like an allegory than a fully fleshed u know Character is gonna flop for me no matter how relatable it is. tbqh, id rather more ppl try and fail to make beautiful grotesque frightening sensually moving monsters out of their lived experiences and their empathetic connections with others than succeed at creating bland toothless universally approachable Good Rep tm. if u know u know. if u feel me u feel me. that is all.

#ask

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horizon-verizon · 2 years ago

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I agree with you that the show is bad in terms of writing and characterization, and probably i won't even watch the next season, but if I'm being honest you seem to hate the show so much why are you still searching for posts related to the show and respond to it if it's bother you this much?

FIRST

I don't actively or habitually search for the show or anything related to it in Tumblr with the purpose of fighting with others or proving how smart I am.

I do reblog with corrections, counterarguments, or praise if I feel strongly enough about what's being said AND if I have the energy

posts about it pop up in my feed in the "Based on what you liked!" list because I don't block their tags

OR I get asks about the show's characters and/or writing.

I write of the main experience I have to write against the claim that I "search" for HotD posts as if it is a continuous action. This is what usually happens. And the person sending the asks about HotD are usually those who only ever watched the show and never read the books, are antis, or have skimmed the books and read the wikis instead of actually doing some independent thought and deeper research with comparative analyses.

It is less common/rare for me to begin a discussion from an original green stans or an avid HotD lover. *EDIT* Now, as of 2023, there are asks with links to posts by others (mostly made by green stans) that the asker asks me to consider/think about and respond. I mostly respond to those already responding to others or to those who make comments and reblogs of my own posts, like what happened in my Sansa POST and one Daemon/Nettles POST.

I’m saying, anon, that it could be a lot worse. I could become a greater menace to others on this blog than you presently think.

SECOND

Before I started writing original posts or answers to asks, I collected various team black and team green posts, and I still do so today. Why? Because I actually wanted/still want to know the arguments each team makes. Because in general, I like and want to hear how people think about things.

I came to Tumblr wanting to collect posts and make a blog I can use to reference material and arguments but still have more personal freedoms to do this. (Which is also why I refuse to put “anti” tags just for the sake of “politeness”.)

I basically want to make my blog a reference point thus I will force myself to add stuff about HotD/greens’ opinions as much as I can stomach.

I want to know what logic they present, where does it fall short, what maybe-good points they make, how much they actually know about history, human psychology -- how much I know and need to know about somethings after reading, etc.

Which is related and goes into my next reason....

THIRD

It’s not a matter of superficial “like” and “dislike”. The show “bothers” me more than a matter of bad writing and bad characterization.

After watching the show, you get more people feeling justified by their already existing illiteracy/refusal to learn (beyond their conservatism) and their theories about the canon material. (POST).

You even get people mixing up the show’s events and portrayals and changes with the canon, thus there are people out there with ideas of what this story/part of the Westerosi history is about when they are simply ill-informed or dead wrong.

It’s twisting the narrative, checking all the boxes, to make it more “modern”, “palatable” to performative activism, or/and (thus) make it a lot more marketable to more people. To follow up and revitalize the fervor for the horrid ending of GoT (which was itself sexist as hell) without actually keeping the substance and philosophical/political weight of the original story that lets us know the greens were the unequivocal villains.

Here are a few reblogs/posts/articles by me and others about the actors, marketability, how HotD fails at some things, etc.: POST, POST (you can go to the “performative activism” part), POST, POST, POST, POST (you should really get into this one, it begins to explain how the writing itself doesn’t support accountability), POST, POST, POST, POST, POST, POST (this one talks about Hollywood and Rhaenyra and feminism). Your choice to read all or a few or none.

And after listening to the “neutrals” AND what non “neutrals” say about “neutrals” (of both teams), I found that there is no such thing as a “neutral” unless you really never or never watched/read any ASoIaF product and thus have no existing opinion about its themes and characters and events. But then you’re not a fan, you’re just someone who knows the fandom exists.

Unless you are like the former brideoffires (Tumblr)/starlight and seafoam (Twitter), who looks at the F&B characters--esp Rhaenyra--as set up to Dany's story and recognize the larger composite picture of misogyny-leads-to-great conflict/Dany-is-the-fixture (to put it very simply).

When you read about the Dance and if you know anything about civil wars and how/why they happen, you should know that you can almost never philosophically or ideologically not pick or at least favor a side. It’s nearly impossible once we are acquainted with why the sides are fighting and the historical details of how this civil conflict happened in the first place, specifically when one side has done nothing to the other before, nor present any true, future threat. Of course things change, as they do in the Dance where the sides commit war crime after war crime & lose more of their own kids, but it was very clear the greens began it through the sexist usurpation to gain power for themselves; they also had little to actually fear from either Rhaenyra or any lord if she had ascended peacefully.

Again, unless we don't know, we can't fully care, and once you start actually caring, then you take a side and form strong opinions. In civil wars, there exists hatred or the need for dominance within the territory itself and it usually comes from a particular background that cannot be ignored but can also be messy and conflicting.

Plus, I found that most of the neutrals (not all, one still has to listen to why one says they are "neutral") are really people who think the greens are in the moral right, are the “fun” and “better-developed” characters, or are the more politically savvy. Yet also refuse to look any deeper to see how their arguments make no sense for the story the show rips off of. Basically, team-greeners who refuse or don’t know they are wearing the cape, or are trying to hide it to make team blackers look stupid or get one on them and seem “reasonable” while actually trying to push forward this narrative of “soft femininity wins all”, conservatism, conformity, patriarchy, etc.

This following is only in the observation that there are sympathy-changes made for them while the blacks and Rhaenyra are not only similarly dumbed down but also the writers have been trying to assign them certain negative traits or behaviors that can't be feasible as to what we understand them before the show existed.

HotD is actually fostering that sort of bullshit with its refusal to:

**(in context of the next 3 pts.)**Alicent and Aemond as they are: entitled, sexist, classist, blood purist people who intentionally attack and target Rhaenyra for the sake of power and male privilege

working behind the faux romance/friendship of Rhaenicent.

dumbing Rhaenyra down, watering her passion down

removing almost every character's accountability or drive for power (female for this one) by making them more reactive than active and even then there not much of a substantial or meaningful reaction

sexistly making Alicent a dumber and more sexually abused version of herself, giving all of her accomplishments or actions to her father, Otto. Benevolent sexism.

Thus I cannot ignore the show or its glaring faults. It has such popularity and influence over how people think about women, children, who deserves what and how/why, and how people express themselves and live with such cognitive dissonance, that I feel I have to say something against it. Even if it’s a dumb Tumblr post.

#asoiaf asks to me #hotd comment #fandom commentary #hotd fandom #asoiaf fandom #hotd neutrals #anti neutrality #hotd #house of the dragon #asoiaf

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