#ive been hyperfixated on something else lololol

[pansy-picnics]

Not to derail the convo too much but i want to add my own input onto this….it sucks bc there are multiple VERY clear reasons why yong and nuru are both pushed aside, but i feel like everyone is afraid to say the quiet part out loud.

- Nuru is a black girl

- Yong is an asian kid

- nuru and yong werent really pitched as main characters to begin with. Maybe they wouldve been, had the pitch been fully realized, but we can only really make educated guesses based on the little information we have. The entire story was really built around varian and hugo, fundamentally- and yeah, obviously we only have the brief outline, but said outline doesn’t really mention nuru and yong like, at all. Doesnt mention any character arcs for them, any prominent relationships, any development theyd have over the series- not even their reactions to hugos betrayal or their involvement in the final fight. its all just about varian and hugo. We can only ever assume, at any given moment, that theyre just….There. And so thats how everyone writes them- as background characters to varigo.

i dont think its wrong to build a story around one character, i mean kay and anna really just did it for fun and i dont see any problem with that- but when people try to make it into a fully realized story, it doesnt really work because there are basically only two main characters and two guys who are just There. so instead of the VAT7K Fandom we just end up getting The Varigo Fandom. i honestly do think its why so many people come and get hyperfixated on it for a few months and then leave. There just isnt really any content to work with, because there are only 4 characters and people are only fully utilizing two of them.

-Did i mention theyre a black girl and an asian kid next to a yaoi couple featuring White Boy #3567488 and Kind-Of-Racially-Ambiguous-Probably-White Onceler Jr because the implications there are Not Great.

I joke, i love them all, i promise, but it is really something that bothers me a lot, especially since ive been here for so long and i dont really consider myself “in” the fandom enough to like, get super obsessed with any of the characters and make 1000 fics and drawings of them. If anything vat7k is kind of like the tts dlc to me. Im mentally ill about varigo and i love nuru and yong to bits and have SO MANY thoughts about them but they just usually stay in my head because i dont have the energy to expel them in any efficient way LOLOLOL. At the end of the day i consider myself more of a tts fan than anything else.

bc nuru and yong never really had any substance to begin with, people cant usually get super attached to them past a surface level, and it gets REALLY frustrating.

- When it comes to nuru, im like, the whitest girl imaginable so i dont want to talk out of turn here but i do want to mention it bc nobody else seems to be willing to- the way nuru is made into either the mature “mom friend” of the group or the “sassy best friend” is something that makes my blood BOIL, because they both feel SUPER stereotypical considering that shes a 16 year old black girl!!! i’ve talked to my friend, who is black, about it a lot (Id tag him here but hes Not in the fandom so i dont want to drag him into this LMAOAOAO) but weve discussed how black girls are “adultified” by mainstream society and quite literally robbed of their childhood and innocence. they’re treated as “mature for their age” and are expected to act as such…..It makes the way people portray nuru as the “mature one” rlly gross to me 😭. and luckily i dont see that “mom friend nuru” AS often anymore, but when people dont do that, i feel like they kinda just turn her into the “sassy voice of reason” which just feels like a whole black best friend trope to me…..😭 Guh. I think just the best anyone can do is actually make her a fully realized character!!! She feels so one note so often 😭

- And yong…I feel like he so often just gets made to be the Baby of the group and the comic relief (which is DEFINITELY because hes also a fat kid but thats a Wholeee other can of worms (eye twitching)) And like that can be fun sometimes, but also i feel like the main appeal about team radical, at least to ME, is that theyre all just stupid petty teenagers who are unparented and sent on a little coming of age quest and they all probably immediately start beefing with each other like its fucking lord of the flies. Yong is Twelve Years Old guys. Have you ever met a twelve year old? Theyre at that age where theyre like weirdly edgy and think theyre the Shit and that every adult around them is a fucking idiot. Yong has the potential to be soooo fucking funny past just being the cutesy little baby of the group and i feel like people just arent really willing to explore that. And like he can still be the more emotionally open one too! I feel like he starts out a lot more silly and more of that steven universe type hes usually portrayed as, but the longer he spends with the gang he just quickly becomes equally as deranged as them LOL. Id love to see a much more mischievous yong whos sweet but also a Very insecure 12 year old and kind of a shithead. I think it’s such an untapped market.

Idk i dont think that if you just Can’t get attached to nuru or yong that you’re like…Bad or like. racist or whatever Thats not what im saying at all!!! bc i do think that kay and anna for all their amazing work on the pitch did kind of contribute to the problem bc of the way nuru and yong are shown, or, well. not shown in said pitch lol. And i also think that everyone should consider the implications these characterizations have and like…Try and challenge themselves to branch out a little more!! and i also feel like a lot of people who ARE nuru and yong fans already arent very loud in the fandom, cuz like, with how varigo centric the community is i think its just assumed by default that nobody cares….and if thats you i want to encourage you to please PLEASE speak up and make more content about them bc people DO care!!!! it is a niche that so many people are willing to invest in!!! Especially me!!! Please please please please im on my knees plea

Guys I NEED to rant about my thoughts on Nuru because i love her <3 ramblings ahead

Like I feel like in almost every fic i read, she's just like, a side character that's there to make whitty remarks to Hugo and be the levelheaded one. If she has an insecurity or problem it's usually pretty surface level and solved quickly, or only mentioned once or twice. I think there are SO many aspects of her character that are so cool.

Okay first, I think we sometimes forget that she's a nerd just like the rest of the gang. Yes, on the outside she's definetly the most 'normal' one, but I think we should concider the fact that she's the only girl in the group, and she's literal royalty. She was raised with a completely different set of standards than the other three. I don’t think I've really ever seen anyone cover that. I feel like she would get called "mature for her age" when she's only 15/16, and almost always gets critisism when she talks back with her own ideas (like her concerns about the meteor shows for example). I feel like out on her journey, she would finally get the freedom to just be herself, and be a kid and be able to rant on about her intrests with the rest of the group. It could be a struggle at first, but it would be awesome to see her getting more comfortable with the group the longer they spend together! Nerds encouraging nerdy rants lol

Since she is a kingdom figurehead, you could also argue that she always has a lot on her hands (especially since she's very proactive when it comes to science and solving problems). This could bring up a need to be productive, or always feeling like she needs to make the right decision, even for the littlest things.

I also feel like a lot of the time she's potrayed as the "right" one, who is 100% right when it comes to stuff like arguing with Hugo. Since they're opposites when it comes to class, they often are compared through that lense. I think it's cool just having Nuru tell Hugo off for judging a book by its cover, but I feel like they have a lot more in common than they realize. I think it would be interesting to see Nuru judging a book by its cover too. Maybe not to the degree that Hugo does, but I feel like calling out both their judging would not only call out character flaws, but it also enforces that even though they hate eachother and would never want to be like the other, they have a lot of the same flaws.

Also, being sheltered in a palace her whole life, I think she might think kind of black and white sometimes, and while she knows when people are just being mean as an act, she might struggle when it comes to people like reformed criminals.

Maybe she's able to be meaner to Hugo because she justifies it by telling herself he's criminal, and therefore bad, possibly glossing over the reasons he might be like that (maybe it crosses her mind, but she tells herself it's not a good enough reason, because stealing is still stealing, and he literally steals EVERYTHING. Even little trinkets and stuff he definitely doesn't need!). When they find out about Varian's criminal history, maybe she reexamines her views on morality and how she used to see people, because by her standards, Varian is a 'bad guy' who's caused harm to SO many people, but he's also the kind, caring, helpful friend that she's been traveling with who would never willingly hurt anyone.

Moving on to Amber x Nuru, I honestly never find myself liking the ship because Amber isn't developed enough which is fine. I don't think every character has to be a magnificent work of art. Side characters are side characters, but their romance is usually written like: "wow that girl is cute! I have a crush now!" Which is cool, but then that's about as far as it gets, then timeskip! Or offscreen they're a couple now. I know it's a side couple so it won't have as much devlopment as something like Varigo, but I never really see their dynamic play out in different situations. Like I don't know how to explain it, but it feels like they solely exist to be a couple? Amber sometimes just feels like an extention of Nuru, and their relationship feels surface level a lot of the time.

I feel like too often she's just watered down to the nice, smart, grounded friend, and I don't know I just think there’s so much more to explore with her. She’s not just some side character. She's literally part of the main cast! Even in fanart I feel like she doesn't really get a lot of stuff besides funny art and just like, pictures meant to look pretty. Unlike something you get a lot with characters like Varian or Hugo.

And honestly I get it. Some characters you just don't take an intrest in. I know I find Varian, Hugo, and Nuru more relatable than I find Yong, but I feel like part of that is developing their characters rather than just seeing them on a surface level. Ofc there are exceptions and there are some stories that dive deeper into Nuru's character out there! I just happen to see this A LOT.

Wow i said "surface level" a lot didn't I 😭😭

Anyway thank you for reading my rant i wanna know what you guys think!!

[kandidandi]

jingles pathetically onto stage takes out my bag of goodies and shakes it around gitm by @venomous-qwille

+ some dumbass doodles as a palate cleanser