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ackermanshoe · 4 years ago

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March comes in like a lion, it's Portrayal of toxic & healthy relationship and how to compares rivamika + Ereh

Que the longest title everr 😌✨

So before I start on the actual analysis, I recently started watching March comes in like a lion instead of doing my assignments and I half way through season 2. For those of you who haven't watched it, it might be a spoilers so beware of that.

In this analysis I'll be comparing the similarities I found between Rei, Hina and Kyoko.

So watching any anime after being do emotionally attached to rivamika it's only natural that I compare them to the characters with even the tiniest bit similarities in their dynamic but Rei and hina's relationship jump in episode 4 of season 2 really caught me off guard and I was like omg?? Rivamika?? How do I make this about them 😩

Anyway so a little background on Rei's relationship with both girls Kyoko and Hina ( Hinata ). Firstly, i subconsciously placed Rei has Mikasa, kyoko has Eren and Hina as Levi, why? You will know on a minute. Rei is a depressed kid who has known only one way of life and that's through shogi games and after his parents death ( cough cough ) he was taken in by a old friend ( I think ) of his dad's who was also obsessed with shogi. Kyoko is the biological daughter of this man who has "adopted" Rei and later on Rei was came to know Hina and her sisters, they were super supportive of him from the start and having lost family members themselves they related to him on a personal level.

So you see why Eren and mikasa's dynamic matches with Rei and Kyoko and not only as "step siblings" it's also the fact that Rei became somewhat obsessed with her through the time he had spent over at their house, it's toxic and it's been showcased that way ever since kyoko was introduced into the series. Rei thought of her when he heard the word "love" and he even admitted to the fact that having her around is toxic and yet he can't push her away. He said he does not want to stop hearing her voice even tho she , herself is in love with a much older man who is married. Everytime she showed up to his bedroom uninvited and slept next to him my mind went "he is in love with her and their relationship is so toxic why does the author keep bringing her into his life?" Or "girl get the fuck away from him".

Without even thinking too much deep into their physical connection I already knew I would be able to related this dynamic to Eren and Mikasa. Although this series gives us much more depth into the main characters views since it's narrated from his own perspective, and the fact that he metaphorically compared his feelings of being lost and sadness helps me as an audience to understand what's happening much much easier than attack on titan. I personally feel like this kind of series are usually short ( idk how long this is) because it feels like the author knows exactly what he is going for, everything is set in stone.

Going back to Rei's ( mikasa's) relationship with kyoko ( Eren ) it's much much clear how toxic it had become for him in more than just one way. And the show isn't denying Rei of his feelings towards Kyoko and it's not even attempting to distant him from her and yet you just knew there had to be someone better right? That's when they introduced Hina and Kyoko in the same episode, meeting each other and a sense of invisible rivalry gushed over them, especially Hina. She is a happy go lucky girl and extremely sensitive to things to the point it kinda annoys me everytime she bursts out crying ( but hey you can't hate a genuinely good character ).

That's where things get interesting for me maybe because I am on that Levi X Mikasa agenda all the time but just like rivamika their relationship has been portrayed as platonic for the longest time in the seaosns. If I didn't go out of way to search up who Rei falls in love with and it didn't say hina's name I probably wouldn't be making this comparison right now because who wants to have their heart broken for the 2nd time in the same fucking month 🙄.

Anyway so in this one episode Hina comes home crying because of bullying issue at school and as she runs off into the dark streets Rei chases her and eventually catching up to her takes her hand and being able to relate to her problems, comparing his younger self to her present Rei reaches out his hand and God fucking damn it he says "you saved my life..I promise I'll stay with you" ofc I'm making this post now you know the real reason 🤡.

The unseen build up that happen between them reminds me of rivamika, the Portrayal of healthy relationship is rivamika. Hina (in our case Levi ) to Rei is the voice of emotion, she speaks out the feelings that Rei has been surpassing all these years inside of him. Just like how we talked about Levi is the voice of reason, while Mikasa has the impulsive urge to act up. Just like how Levi became the perosn who reasonably always took mikasa's side, he gave her personal reasons to take Erens side everytime have an actual meaning towards the scouts / everyone , he then became someone Mikasa was able to object & voice out her opinion towards because she knew that he would response and guide her the right way and finally he became someone she was able to fully trust.

Much like Hina and Rei, when Hina cried out her heart and Rei couldn't help but go back to his past self and imagine Hina coming to him and giving him a hand, being his saviour. It's much like how Levi saw his past self in Mikasa present ( S1 ), Levi gave Mikasa the hand she needed when she didn't know she needed.

Hina despite being much younger than him, was able to make him realise that he too was shutting out his emotions and was able to let himself be free through Hina when she cried, expressing her frustrations and very human like emotions. In the forest of the giant trees when Mikasa and Levi saved Eren for the first time he told her " we got your precious friend, didn't we?" A slight wake up call he had given her for the very first time, an attack on Mikasa's ego and evoking a different emotions within her. Like telling her it's not only about Eren and getting revenge, risking your life so easily, Levi had lost his entire squad in order to protect Eren so now that he is safe they better leave now.

So the question is did Levi and Mikasa save each other?

What can I say that I haven't said already in here about these two?

"you saved my life" Rei says to Hina as he reached out her hand and the beauty of that scene was the fact that it was delicate and soft despite it not being anything romantic. Remind me of that panel of Mikasa touching Levi's shoulder. How ironic is the fact that I'm comparing Hina, a openly emotional character to Levi who is said to be the most emotional inside?

Levi physically saved Mikasa a lot of the time however emotionally Levi saved Mikasa from being selfish and from herself. What if I said and ignoring 139, that Levi was one of of the biggest reasons Mikasa took the initiative and decapitated Eren that day?

Wait why does it feel like I already said it before lol

Through Levi, Mikasa learnt to trust more, learnt that even though they gave difference not only in height, age and in how they treat Eren ( Levi with force and Mikasa with care ), Mikasa still came in terms with Levi and relied on him, shared her burden with him. I think that's the biggest character twist Mikasa had, the fact that she was ready to draw sword at anyone who treated Eren wrong and everyone was scared of her and then came the grumpy shorty who beat her beloved brother right in front of her but eventually he became the biggest form of support she had in the end. I just can not help but laugh at all the unseen development this ship has had and all the implication of Futher interaction after season 3 between them, it's really obvious they had something going on because imagine you don't talk to someone for like 3 years and suddenly when you engage in battle against , paired up with them suddenly you become the strongest duo known to humanity. +?)!#)# make it make sense.

Sooo now you see the that having toxic relationship with a partner is only natural and inevitable but growing from that, opening your eyes to those who actually care there for you is rather healthy. So moral of the story is guys make sure stick with those who tells you to stay with them, the end.

Omg guys this turned out so much longer than I intended, anyway hopefully y'all liked it. I know it's not the strongest comparison or analysis but I feel like I'm running out of words for what I want to say about rivamika it feels like I'm recycling my sentences from previous analysis over and over again because ✨ lack of content ✨ and my inability to think of something new.

Please ignore all my spelling mistakes I have decided to embrace my mistakes instead of fixing them simply because I'm too lazy 😉

💜💜💜

#rivamika #rivamikacanon #levimika #rivamika analysis #BurnTheScarfMikasa

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heinzpilsnergonewild · 3 years ago

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Vegeta’s Character Analysis Looooooooooong Read

Oh my, what can I say? I just really love to write long essays in a language that isn’t even native to me, lol.

Well, nobody’s perfect, I guess. ... Were you expecting a Cell joke here? I may not be perfect, but that doesn't mean I have to be that predictable.

Ahem, anyway.

This isn't exactly a psychological analysis of the character - more like, hmm, a storytelling analysis. Or something in between, really.

You may not find anything fundamentally new in this text, but I definitely had fun writing it, haha.

It's mostly amateur. I have a useless psychology degree, but not a literature one.

My classic rant about vegebul fics is included, of course.

Summary: proper psychological analysis requires a single continuous personality, which Vegeta simply doesn’t have.

The more I think about Vegeta, the more I come to the conclusion that he is only pretending to be a consistently evolving character.

In fact, he's a bit like 10 different characters in one, which abruptly replace each other (and that's without considering the difference caused by the voice actors’ approach and the changes in his looks). Essentially, Vegeta's a collection of disparate images, arbitrarily lined up by Toriyama and hastily glued together. And the beginning of this line is so far from the end of it that these two extreme images cannot be perceived as belonging to the same person. Well, because human psychology just doesn't work that way.

(Not that Vegeta is unique in this respect – it’s a common feature of characters in long stories that authors compose as they write. Still, his case is quite extreme and interesting as example.)

I mean, take Vegeta in the Saiyan or the Namek arc. He's a complete psychopath. He clearly doesn’t suffer at heart from the unnecessary violence (as, for example, Guts from Berserk). His behavior looks like something natural for him, not an unhealthy defensive reaction. He enjoys it, he smiles happily, killing and torturing weak innocent people. And such a degree of psychopathy is not something that can be healed by a couple of deep personality crises or years of peaceful family life. Vegeta's redemption arc works through strong emotional impact and forgetfulness of the audience, but makes very little sense when viewed in retrospect.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Perhaps the biggest, hmm, splitting of the personality occurred with Vegeta right after the Namek arc. Toriyama had already made a small retcon of the character’s motives before (to include Vegeta in the context of the Freeza army after the Saiyan arc), but it didn't feel that drastic.

You see, until Vegeta was invited to Bulma’s house…..

(Gosh, Toriyama, you could’ve done it more subtly, really. Vegeta killed Yamcha, threatened to kill Bulma, gutted Zarbon in front of her eyes, slaughtered an entire Namekian village... Oh well.)

…Ahem, anyway, right up to Bulma's invitation, Vegeta looked to me like a character who, hmm, has a life of his own? I mean, you have always felt that his motives and behavior were generated by the bizarre social system, not related to the little world of Goku and his friends. Simply put, Vegeta was a natural product of the big space civilization, an organic part of it. His whole personality was formed by it, all his plans, motivation and ambitions were associated with it. And although in the Saiyan arc, he gave the impression of an independent entrepreneurial chief at the head of a small hierarchy, in the Namek arc it was revealed that Vegeta is actually far from independent. He lost his throne and his people, he was in slavery to the tyrant all his life, and wants to take power for himself. So, his social background and the motives caused by it post factum get much more complex. But in short, Vegeta wanted a highest possible position in the hierarchy he knew. In this way, he was… social? His belonging to the Saiyan race was only a small (although important) part of the overall picture. Because the Saiyans were dead, but the Freeza Empire was alive.

But when Toriyama realized Vegeta's popularity and decided to keep him in the story after Namek, it came as a blow to the character's personality. Apparently, the author simply couldn't come up with an elegant way that could keep the character in all its complexity around, and therefore did a very clumsy thing. He roughly cut Vegeta out of his social context and almost forcibly glued him to the main character group like a poorly done appliqué. But although you see rough edges and glue drips, the story moves on rapidly, distracting you with Freeza and Future Trunks, and you don't stop to think about what happened. This is how, almost imperceptibly, Toriyama changed Vegeta's motives (and, consequently, the basis of his personality). Yes, Vegeta's saiyan pride was also significant part of his character previously, but when it became his sole and central motivation after Namek, you feel like a very big and important piece of him has been arbitrarily cut off. This wouldn't have happened if Toriyama had followed the logic of previously established social motives, rather than his desire to make Vegeta a convenient figure. Now, bound hand and foot by the author, the character is forced to behave as the plot requires.

Still, all this can be justified by the fact that Vegeta experienced a deep emotional shock as a result of death, which forced him to rethink his life priorities and wait for Goku (especially in the manga, where he just lived with Bulma for a whole year after Namek, without even trying to use dragonballs) ... And then he waited for the androids (despite the final death of Freeza and his father, which was an excellent chance to try to take over the decapitated empire). Anyway, this rationalization doesn't negate the fact that the character, as a result, has lost a significant part of the fire that he demonstrated in the Namek arc. His new energy, the energy of obsession with surpassing Goku, turns him into a new character – bitter, marginalized and focused on training.

(Ironically, the very splitting that made him a less attractive character in my eyes allowed vegebul to take place. After all, imagining the romantic relationship of the nice Bulma and Vegeta at the height of his villainous ambition is really difficult. That just would be a psychologically implausible story.)

In the Android and Cell arcs, after brief glimpses of the SSJ superiority, Toriyama turned Vegeta into a plot tool, whose personality flaws he could use to spoil the situation favorable for the heroes. As a result, Vegeta continued to be an angry and unhappy character who has lost most of his charisma, but on top of that, he also started to be really annoying. ... Still, also kinda amusing thanks to his truly impressive inability to draw obvious conclusions from the ego bruises he gets.

(If you ask me, the character's biggest contribution to the Cell arc was to ignore the existence of condoms, lol. Although strictly speaking even it was an achievement of Future Vegeta (RIP). But seriously, Vegeta's relationship with Trunks turned out to be one of the few things that I was really interested in about this part of the story.)

And then there was Goku’s death and the 7-year-gap. ... At the end of which Vegeta still didn't look like a happy man who has found his place in the world. Even though he had seven whole years (and a spaceship) to change something. I mean, this is the case when it'd be logical to expect changes in the character, but for some reason they didn't really happen (or they did, but veeery quietly and unstable). I mean, Vegeta trains with Trunks, yes. And he's married to Bulma now, apparently (which we learn only at the end of the arc though). And he hasn’t killed himself yet, which means that he sees some meaning in his existence. Hurray, I guess?.. The problem is that when we first see Vegeta after the timeskip, he keeps walking around with such a sullen expression, as if Goku had died just yesterday. (Remember Vegeta in the Saiyan arc? He smiled quite often. For the wrong reasons, but hey.) Basically, Toriyama tried to sit on two chairs at the same time here - 1) keep Vegeta as recognizable as possible (because he hasn't decided what to do with him yet) and 2) keep him around (which doesn't make sense for the character if he hasn't undergone significant changes during the timeskip). And the result of this hesitant approach is an undesirable effect - it feels as if Vegeta hasn't built a new life for himself all these years, but only waited for Goku to return.

As if the man is unable to evolve without Goku's influence. Until Kakarot does or says something, or is just around, everyone else in Vegeta's life and his own reflection has little or no meaning. Old social ambitions? His wife and child? New insights gained from life on Earth? Pffft. Goku is able to destroy the seven years’ worth progress (no matter how small it may seem) in one day, and at the same time, one fight with him is enough for Vegeta's character development to jump forward explosively. It sounds like a solid ground for shipping, but In fact it’s just a direct consequence of the author's poorly chosen narrative structure.

The thing is, Toriyama tend to avoid romance and slices of life, and shows Vegeta's personality mainly through fights and their consequences. And at the time Goku just turned out to be the only significant character for Vegeta, the fight against whom could be used as an excuse to develop the character in front of the audience. Well, Toriyama couldn't get Vegeta to fight Bulma or himself, you know.

I believe that the plot structure chosen by the author (rapidly changing action events immediately after a long timeskip) is not a very good basis for a redemption arc. For a good redemption, a character had to have screen time during which small changes accumulate gradually, between the big points. And Vegeta simply didn't have it. Besides, the scheme by which Vegeta develops is really messy. Because at first, Toriyama kinda froze his development at the neutral point (thereby partially devaluing the influence of Vegeta's family on him). Then in one moment, the author abruptly reversed even this the-end-of-the-Cell-arc development with Majin Vegeta (this time completely devaluing the family factor, because the betrayal was Vegeta’s conscious decision). God, how I hated the Majin Vegeta idea. And in the next scene, the author made a quick retcon, which gave the family’s influence the status of a ground for Vegeta’s personal growth again for no apparent reason. It's as if a huge bundle of family values was post factum squeezed into the character in defiance of everything that we just saw with our own eyes. This is a complete narrative mess.

But... oddly enough, Vegeta's redemption still manages to work, and work spectacularly. My guess is that it's because by that time the audience is already SO sick of Vegeta, frozen in his bitter anti-heroism, that it desperately wants the author to finally do something new with the miserable guy. Well, at least get him out of his misery. So people are willing to accept it in any possible form.

... And the author chose the form of a powerful emotional catharsis. The explosion was legendary, haha.

I don't even know if this is a good reason to call Toriyama a genius (after all, he found a very clever way out of a difficult situation, in which he found himself thanks to his own bad decisions.)

The only thing I'm sure of is that despite everything I was very sad because of Vegeta's death. I didn't even realize that I had become emotionally attached to this asshole until he made such a spectacular exit, lol. As if something had broken inside of me, and all the analyticity of my mind couldn’t prevent it. I was surprised when I found myself crying really hard - usually my emotions don't reach this level due to fictional stories. (Well, maybe it was due to the fact that my own father was dying of cancer at that time, and the moment just triggered my emotions. ... Oops, it seems a little too personal, doesn't it? Well, at the end of the day, this fact is an integral part of my unique dbz experience. Come to think of it, in dbz, fathers die regularly).

But while this scene greatly affects emotions and forces a new viewer (or reader) to truly reconsider their attitude towards the character for the first time, the absence of a neat gradual movement towards this moment weakens its influence somewhat.

At this point, Vegeta’s character splits once again (perhaps the last time within DBZ). You simply cease to understand who this man really is and who he was before.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, when I look at all the images of Vegeta in general, I come to the conclusion that I like this character the most in the first two arcs and in the end of the last arc. Two directly opposite moral poles.

(Funny enough, because my initial reaction to Vegeta and Nappa was annoyance: "Well hello, the next stereotypical villains who like to chat and laugh maliciously instead of simply killing their victims." (Still, against the background of Freeza, Vegeta turned out to be a much lesser evil in every sense, haha). You see, usually I'm not a person who likes villains. Basically, I only distinguish such characters from others as a result of romance or redemption. It’s only after that I begin to see aesthetics in their villainous charisma as well.)

And now, in retrospective, I believe that at the beginning of the story Vegeta is at the maximum of his vitality and charisma. Especially compared to his ever-crisis moody version (who supposedly lives happily with a loving family). In the Saiyan arc, he's objectively the most powerful character (Freeza didn’t even exist in Toriyama's head at the time). Vegeta is domineering, playful and unpredictable, but most importantly - his self-confidence is fully justified. Oh well, it was good while it lasted. He's really in control. These are, if I may say so, quite exciting qualities in a man, haha. Even if he looks like an evil dwarf in stupid armor and bullies some weaklings. I'd even say his demeanor in the Saiyan arc (especially with the voice of early Horikawa) is suspiciously easy to translate into a sexual context (well, until he loses control and gets hysterical, lol).

The Namek arc, placing Vegeta in a broader context, somewhat spoiled his original image (after all the big words, it turned out that he was running errands for Freeza all this time), but gave him a more interesting background and a strong drive. He had ambitions and a socially significant goal, and he actively and passionately fought for them against a clearly superior enemy. In addition, his inability to defeat Freeza by brute force forced him to use his brains from time to time, and not just pull another power up out of his ass, as is now traditionally done in DragonBall. (Needless to say, I consider high intelligence to be one of the most attractive traits). All this made his position in the plot as interesting as possible. He literally sparkled with energy.

Well, we know what happened next. Brain Death, an eternal chase after Goku, and an off-screen family life on a backwater planet that Vegeta is supposedly happy with. Until he suddenly became a really beautiful character without a proper justification for this (well, at least the explosion was spectacular). Really, I like the general concept of redemption, and yet... the way Toriyama portrays it in the story just doesn't work convincingly enough for me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another point I’d like to cover in this already too long essay ahhh I'm a monster is Vegeta’s personality in fanfiction.

Reproducing (?) Vegeta is a bit like playing with a lego set - his personality and behavior is always the result of a conscious reconstruction, which is based around a specific point on the long contradictory line. Depending on which end of the spectrum the chosen point is, the author is forced to shade facts related to the opposite end, or to give new context to Vegeta's past (or future) actions. It's always noticeable when the author extends the later, sympathetic Vegeta's image to an earlier segment of the story. Apparently, it's possible to kill the person who raised you (with an evil smile on your face) just because the situation was too stressful lol. Likewise, when the authors allow Vegeta to remain a charismatic psychopath, the story wouldn't work without ignoring some parts of the later canon.

(And, of course, there is always a "medium" type of Vegeta - Vegeta from the 3-year-gap, whose personality is almost entirely based on anime fillers. Yay, here comes the promised vegebul rant

Honestly, I'm pretty tired of this "gravity room exploded again woman grrr" type of Vegeta.

Because if you take the manga, we have no idea how Vegeta actually behaved with Bulma and her parents, what his training regimen was, and what he did in his free time besides unprotected sex. People elevate his rudeness and irrational self-torturing to the absolute because of all these filler patterns, but this is just one of the possible versions of the events and the character's behavior during this time (albeit partly canonical). But... there are also alternatives. There are smart Vegeta, curious Vegeta, civilized Vegeta. Honestly - I don't think Bulma would've married him later if there was nothing in his personality that’d make communication with him enjoyable. I mean, she's a rich modern woman, she doesn't need a husband just for convenience and Vegeta is a marginal freeloader anyway. And if we subtract good looks (which people often attribute to Vegeta) from the equation, then the idea that he has no interest in anything other than training and cannot maintain an interesting conversation becomes completely unconvincing. Toriyama clearly didn't attach much importance to the fact of their marriage, and generally avoided romantic scenes as if they were on fire (and, perhaps, did the right thing), but these two just had to be capable of adequate and mutually pleasant personal interaction in order to take this step.

In general, Toriyama's lack of attention to most aspects of the characters' lives other than fighting and training, on the one hand, can be considered a drawback of DBZ, but on the other, it creates a lot of room for fans' imagination. But not everyone uses it. Most authors generally repeat the same tropes over and over again and don't try to look at the three-year-gap from a new angle, although the canon provides all the possibilities for this. Because of this, fics in this genre often seem boring. But in fact, it's not the setting itself that is boring, but only dusty formulas in the heads of the authors.)

Ahem, so where were we?.. Oh yes.

Actually, Vegeta's inconsistency is a very handy character trait for the authors, as it minimizes the chance of accidental OOC. Indeed, it's quite difficult to make someone to behave out of character if he has many different canon versions of himself, lol. On the other hand, this leads to the fact that the character seems to... kinda disintegrate. You never see his whole face, because he simply doesn't have it. As a result, Vegeta turns into a mosaic that must be reassembled each time. And I keep staring at this crazy kaleidoscope like an idiot.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, that's... quite a lot of contradictions in my relationship to Vegeta, haha. Still, life without contradictions would be somewhat boring, I guess.

Thanks for your attention I suppose?..... lol, as if someone really got to this point

The End.

P.S. 1: The antisocial version of Vegeta who doesn't understand stupid human rituals and hates crowds, but puts up with it for the sake of his family is my spirit animal, haha. This is just so damn relatable to my autistic personality. Maybe I'm an alien myself.

P.S. 2: Actually, my favorite dbz character is Piccolo. Yep.

#vegeta #it's really long #3260 words kind of long

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izzy-b-hands · 5 years ago

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Venus As A Boy

I’ve had Venus As A Boy on repeat on Spotify for like a week now, and I finally decided to do something with the energy it gave me, and I ended up here lol. Didn’t expect it to end up Sledgefu, but...it happened!

My love to all who read/like/reblog!

“You draw?”

“You know I do,” Eugene replied, his brow furrowed over the sketchpad in his hand, and readjusted on the couch he was sat on. “Don’t wiggle.”

“You like it when I wiggle.”

“Normally, sure, but not right now,” Eugene said absent-mindedly. “Tryin’ not to mess this up.”

Snafu nearly moved a leg, then didn’t. “You won’t.”

“You trust me that much?”

“It’s just me...sitting in a chair...like I died in it or something. Can’t mess that up,” Snafu replied.

“I bet I could.”

“Shut up,” Snafu grinned. “Be a better picture if we made it more interesting.”

Eugene raised an eyebrow as he put down another line for the texture of the chair. “And how would you do that?”

“Can I show you?”

Eugene kept his eyes on the sketch. “Sure.”

He kept his eyes down, even as he heard Snafu moving. He was mostly just putting the chair down now anyway, so he could alter it as needed for whatever Snafu had planned. And he was curious, for sure.

“Okay, tell me what you think.”

He looked up.

Snafu was nude, his clothes tossed away from the chair across the room, one of the cats already nesting in them. He lounged outstretched across the arms of the armchair, his neck tilted back so his Adam’s Apple stood out, his legs settled carelessly by each other, as if he sat that way every day.

He looked like he ought to be carved for a sculpture, not depicted in a half-assed practice sketch.

Snafu’s eyes were shut, but one popped open and looked at him. “You gonna keep going? I think I can hold this for awhile, but in case I can’t you might wanna start gettin’ it down now.”

Eugene swallowed, and nodded. “Right.”

Snafu giggled, and closed his eye again, readjusting just a bit. “Go for it, artist boy. You got this.”

He ignored the twitching of his cock in his trousers, and tried to focus on the page, to make the lines flow and match the absolute vision in front of him. How could he possibly do that justice?

It was difficult enough not to get distracted just looking at Snafu, watching the slow rise and fall of his lightly haired chest, the soft bit of pudge on his stomach (thanks to a combination of his mother’s recipes and their consistent inability to cut them down correctly, so they made enough for two people rather than for four or more.) The bit of curled dark hair at the base of his cock, which rested against one of his thighs. How his thighs looked so thin, but Snafu knew from experience were all muscle and sinew, strong when they wrapped around his back in bed. His calves delicate but just as strong, and his feet that, it never failed, would find their way under Eugene’s legs on the colder nights to keep warm.

He was art, just sitting there in front of him. How could he replicate a masterpiece?

But he could try, if nothing else. And try he did, until his fingers and wrist started to hurt, until his hands were stained from his attempts at shading the way he needed it to be. Until Snafu finally made a sound.

“Gene, it’s been like two hours. I gotta stretch for a second, okay?”

He looked up as if he’d been smacked, and nodded. “Yeah, right. Really?”

Snafu smiled. “You’re so damn cute, you know that?”

“Well, you’re beautiful.”

Snafu blushed. “Shut it.”

“You are. If you could have seen yourself a minute ago, you’d agree. If I can get this right, you’ll see what I mean, I promise. Forget my drawing, you could be in the museum yourself!”

Snafu cackled. “Stop lyin’ to me like that. Sweet as it is.”

“I mean it,” Eugene stressed, taking a moment to admire the scene as Snafu stretched his arms out, then turned and bent over to stretch his back.

“Then I wouldn’t be here with you,” Snafu said. “That wouldn’t do at all. Can’t put in a museum, darlin’. Just gonna have to admire me here. Like a personal art collection.”

He yawned, then settled back into his pose on the chair. “How much is left, you figure?”

Eugene sighed and hesitated. “Give or take another one to four hours?”

Snafu snorted. “Should I assume four?”

“Depends,” Eugene replied. “On if I keep gettin’ distracted with how pretty you are.”

“Oh, go on.”

“Don’t tell me that, I will. Then this’ll never get finished,” Eugene chuckled. “But you are. Incredibly. From a husband perspective, and an artist perspective.”

“Good. I was afraid you might be biased,” Snafu said, his eyes shutting again.

“You’re gonna fall asleep on me!”

“I swear I will not,” Snafu said, before yawning again. “Just a comfy chair.”

“What do you swear on?”

“Your cute ass, how about that?” Snafu smirked.

Eugene could think of plenty of things he wanted Snafu to do with his ass, but for now, swearing on it as a promise could work.

After all, he had a sketch to finish. Though it was less a sketch now, and more a full-fledged drawing.

He’d incorporated the window looking out to the backyard into the background, trying to better show texture on the wood flooring underneath the chair, to get every little detail he could. To make it as close to what he was seeing as possible.

He zoned in again, only stopping when Snafu coughed.

“Um. I have to piss. And it’s nearly...shit, lemme check my watch.”

Snafu climbed out of the chair and retrieved his watch from his pile of clothes, the cat laying on them not disturbed by his rifling through them. “Evening now. We’ve been at this all afternoon.”

“You go use the bathroom, then come back,” Eugene instructed. “I need to see your wrists, to make sure I got them right.”

Snafu had let one hand rest behind his head, the other arm stretched down to just barely brush the floor, and Eugene needed to be sure he’d gotten the delicate look of Snafu’s wrist just so. It could be finished then, he’d decided.

A few minutes later, Snafu wandered back in, and stood in front of him, a hand smelling of the soap by their bathroom sink stretched out.

He took it carefully, turning it over as he examined Snafu’s wrist, looking for any missed detail.

“Okay. We’re done.”

Snafu smiled. “Can I see?”

Eugene patted the empty section of the couch beside him, and handed Snafu the sketchbook.

Snafu’s eyes went wide. “This...I’m not...”

“What?”

Snafu chuckled. “I’m not that pretty. No way in hell.”

“You are. You just don’t see it ‘cause you’re used to that face of yours, and you don’t see it the way everyone else does,” Eugene said. “I don’t draw things inaccurately.”

Snafu nodded. “That’s certainly true of your bird sketches. But this...”

“Is my best work yet, even if I couldn’t quite do you full justice,” Eugene interjected. “If I put this in an art show, I’d have to bring you with so they could see that the real thing is even more beautiful.”

Snafu kissed him softly, then handed the sketchbook back. “Can we frame it? I mean, that sounds vain, but you did a good job, and if we can’t show it off at an art show-”

Eugene interrupted him with another kiss, and shook his head. “Some art for our private collection. Very rare.”

“One in a million,” Snafu murmured, his eyes still shut as Eugene moved back from their kiss, his dark eyelashes fluttering when he opened them a moment later. “Just like you.”

They both agreed it wasn’t living room art (the questions they’d get from everyone weren’t worth it, better to decide who could see it and when) and so it took a place of honor in their room, on the wall opposite their bed.

Eugene’s choice, that. He could look either way, and see Snafu no matter what.

And if that wasn’t the best personal art gallery he could get, then he didn’t know what would be.

#text post #LeeH writes #Sledgefu

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bartsugsy · 7 years ago

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I hope the use of Seal lyrics was intentional Lo (I mean I'm pretty sure it was lol) cos "my power my pleasure my pain" distracted me from the great meta (to be?) post you were making! But back on topic I feel you on all the unresolved shiz, I just don't think the show think anywhere near as deeply into it as us! I do think more effort is put into Robron (and Coira) then other couples which translates into longer story arcs, so there's still hope.. pleasure and pain... lol!

oh, yk i just can’t resist throwing nonsensical song lyrics into things

the show definitely doesn’t think about this shit as deeply as we do because… well, they’ve got other characters to worry about and we’re all out here like HERE’S 200 WORDS OF META ON THE SIGN IN THE BACKGROUND OF A SCENE WHERE ROBERT AND AARON ARE MAKING OUT

(i say we but that was me. i did that. I DID IT AND I STAND BY IT)

sometimes i do think though that… even if yes, ok, OK FINE, none of these scenes were made to withstand the level of in-depth scrutiny we put them under and no, i never needed to write a 3000 word essay on the confusing characterisation of rebecca white when she’s clearly, in the crudest terms, more plot device than representative of an understandable human and as such it’s all just sort of futile, but… sometimes, just sometimes, i think the bigger picture ideas aren’t actually necessarily off base

ok and i just got this ask from another anon, so hopefully neither of you mind, but i’m going to put this in here, because this ties in to the point i’m going to attempt to make (that’s really just me validating my inability to be succinct and my love of meta) lmao:

anonymous asked:

but i think - because its a soap - robert and aaron are never going to resolve any of their issues in a satisfying way. because if they were resolved and dealt with then the show wouldn’t be able to use those issues for drama. so i can’t really see their reunion addressing any of the january stuff tbh

on some level, i agree with you. i totally do. on another, broader-picture level, i think that… i think i’ve been surprised by the level of cohesiveness in the storytelling for aaron and robert - like, it’s not the most tightly constucted thing in the world by any means, and this is obviously coming out of me coming from the glee fandom, where we had literally no cohesiveness ever and so i’m probably just over-impressed by even the most marginal attempts to write a meaningfully constructed longer form story, but… but i think, given that it’s a soap and given how much content they need to produce and given the inconsistent treatment of a lot of the characters on the show, aaron and robert’s relationship does get a decent amount of care put into it, on the whole, and sometimes that’s visible in the storytelling - like sometimes, a scene will happen that just sort of… slots a lot of things into place and calls back to meta we’ve been writing the whole time and… idk. like, you really do just need to look at rebecca as a character and compare the writing for her over the past year with the writing for aaron and robert, who have much more consistent traits and motivations.

i think this is why i like writing meta for this show. because sometimes there’s a pay off, where the show will specifically highlight things we’ve been talking about and examining and make them explicitly canon. it’s super satisfying. the heavy handedness works (for me) for this purpose. it’s like taking our meta and saying to everyone ‘oh hey, that thing you were reading into is exactly what we were going for’. and the general audience will do this as well - everyone will have an opinion on what’s happening beneath the surface of some stuff, it’s just that they might mention it off-hand to someone they’re watching the show with whereas we sit down and spend three hours typing up an argument to support it based entirely on how we’ve interpreted that last three years of canon and then use it to try and convince people to feel the same way lmaoooo. it’s awesome. but those bigger picture ideas that maybe aren’t called out specifically

like… don’t get me wrong, i don’t believe in the idea that they’re going to call back specifically to the january argument and take a big, in-depth delve into why that specifically happened and why it was some sort of turning point that they ignored in favour of being together and how that ultimately went wrong… i can’t imagine that’s happening lmao, that’s absolutely what our meta is for (which is fine). like… i don’t see them calling back to the specifics in any meaningful way (at most we might get some dialogue parallels bc the show loves those, as we know lmao)

but like… ok, some of this is going to come back to how early on did the show know they were going to break aaron and robert up, in all honesty. we know that iain has been intending to get rid of the whites… probably since the time he started? going by the interviews he was giving at that time? we know rebecca was brought on with some sort of plan in place for her character (to get in between robron lmao). obviously we can sort of… like, chicken or the egg, what came first - lucy announcing she was pregnant and them realising that rob and aaron would have to get married quickly, or iain deciding to go max feeling exploitation and get two weddings out of robron? this is all random extrapolation on events we know, because we can’t pinpoint when it became clear to them that they were going to do a wedding, followed by a big break up, followed by a big reunion and culminating in another, ~~~~real (so to speak)~~ wedding. but at some point, that would have been firmly in their plans.

the january argument -

ok. ok fuck it let’s meta the january argument even though i literally said i wasn’t going to and that i wanted to wait until they got back together idc i don’t listen to me she doesn’t know what’s up

the reason i love the january argument so much as a turning point within the larger overarching story they’ve been telling is because it works so well as this big flashing harbinger of doom that the boys both ignore - it’s built up specifically from problems they have been having since right before they got engaged

and look, i wanna write meta about all the arguments they have firstly from the reunion until ssw and then from in between ssw to the january argument, because i think the stuff that takes place when rebecca is in the village is very pointedly building towards what ultimately happens in january

and i think it’s clever because when you watch it for the first time, the fact that aaron is ultimately driven to violence and puts kasim in hospital and then ultimately gets arrested is what you’re left thinking about - it totally draws attention away from the things aaron and robert are saying to one another and the way that their argument(s) echo previous fights they have had around rebecca and aaron not understanding rob’s bisexuality and rob’s tendency to lie and scheme and rob’s defensiveness around his schemes and how much he has changed and is trying to change vs how much aaron needs from him and just… the ways in which they’ve been slowly falling apart.

(and ok at some point i will write my actual meta where i actually quote the dialogue instead of making vague references to it, although i usually feel like it’s a safe assumption to think that you guys know where i’m sort of pulling these ideas from when i talk about this shit - specifically, stuff i want to talk about includes the things aaron has said about rebecca and robert’s interactions with her, the moment robert talks about his scheme as something that is no longer about andy and absolutely about the money, aaron’s understanding of the robecca kiss, rob talking about how aaron can’t be happy and that he screws things up (which is horrible foreshadowing for kasim), rob yelling about aaron walking away from arguments and not recognising the change rob has made and the way that rob literally brushes his kiss with rebecca under the table, aaron literally saying that he doesn’t like the person he is around robert because of how things have played out with rebecca ec. etc.)

anyway, they just… i’ve fully written about this before, but the kasim stuff acts as a distraction both for robert and aaron - who, before aaron’s arrest, are having a tentative conversation where rob is gently pushing for them to still go to vegas to try and work things out and aaron is absolutely not convinced. after aaron gets arrested and then gets released, the next scene they have is aaron trying to give robert an easy out and robert point blank refusing - over the course of the three episodes, from aaron getting arrested to aaron giving the police a new statement, rob makes multiple references to fighting for their relationship even if aaron doesn’t think it’s a good idea - literally says that he’s not going to stop fighting for them, which is important but also sort of conveniently skims past the point that this argument didn’t occur in a vacuum and at no point have they faced up to what happened to bring them there between the two of them.

when, during the reveal, aaron says that rob was the one who pushed for this, you can sort of see where he’s coming from in a sense. i think aaron’s impending sentencing also made it harder for them to focus on what the real issue was (or rather, made it way easier to ignore, because they were too busy being terrified of losing one another) - but even then, rob decides to throw a surprise wedding because in canon we know that aaron is panicking about leaving robert and losing him completely - which is ultimately what happens, both exactly in the way aaron feared, but also not at all because rob’s motivation to cheat is, as we all know, entirely about aaron (or rather, about both rob’s feelings for aaron and rob’s horrible decision making/tendency towards lashing out impulsively when confronted with things he doesn’t know how to deal with like a normal human and fucking up his and other people’s lives in the process). aaron’s fears that rob would want someone else were unfounded but those fears also sort of led him to underestimate how much of a toll his getting sent to prison would have on robert and so, in the most perverse and unexpected way, his fears about what robert would do given rob’s behaviour up until that point, ended up being spot on.

all this is to make a point that the january argument played a massive role in robert and aaron getting married the first time round and also led them both down a road where they were distracted from what should have been the ultimate sign that things weren’t working and thus didn’t take the opportunity to fix it, rather let things get dangerously and disastrously out of control. i remember a lot of the meta around the time of the jan argument pointing out that things hadn’t been resolved and that they would be resolved at some point - i saw a lot of people talk about an immediate resolution. i think my instinct was that it would take them a little longer - maybe a month max, but that things would be worked out before the wedding. the fact that the wedding wasn’t legal was like this big red herring - it made us all believe that the only reason they’d have a second wedding would be to legalise things. but oh, oh no, no - little did we realise at that point that the whole first wedding was just another distraction (a very beautiful and romantic distraction, but a distraction nonetheless). the first wedding wasn’t a random break from the misery they’d had between that point and ssw, it was a symptom. once again, robert finding a way to push through their issues, to make it more about their love and the fact that they want to be together, and aaron following because that’s what he wanted too - neither of them wanted to deal head on with any of their shit.

uh, taking things right back to my original point of ‘how much of this will we actually see resolved when they get back together’ - i mean, it’s difficult to say? because on the one hand, it depends on what story the show wants to tell with them next and on the other, it depends whether they want to sort of just brush their issues under the carpet and pretend they never happened (worst case lmao). i think, though… i mean, i don’t know, i actually genuinely don’t want to speculate at all on what we’ll ultimately see because down that road leads madness and also an inevitability that we’ll all get it wrong, as we did before with both the jan argument and the purpose of the first wedding, for instance. i think, particularly because it is something i’m looking forward to, i also don’t want to put any expectations on it, really? i’d rather just watch it as open-mindedly as possible. which is also why i want to wait until after i watch it until i really write my meta around this break up, because then i can sort of shape my opinions about what we’ve been shown and where they’ve taken things. i don’t want to try and assume they’ll deal with x or they won’t deal with y or they’ll have them do this or whatever.

having said that!!! that doesn’t stop us from looking at what’s been done so far - the wedding, prison and the ons happened over six months ago now, so we’ve got enough distance from it to say that… look, rob and aaron had so much misery and so many problems from ssw onwards and they ended up going through a massive break up. so big-picture wise, it’s logical that all that misery was intentional. it wasn’t just fuelling the andy plot or whatever, it was there as a build up to ultimately splitting aaron and rob up and making it last a while (even if they hadn’t decided at that point to actually break them up - it’s chicken and egg, they would have known what they’d put them through up until that point and understood that this could realistically ultimately lead to a break up). the january argument wasn’t resolved because it couldn’t be, because that would be counter-productive to the eventual plan of separating them. the first wedding was rushed and not legal and the reason for it being held was literally LITERALLY bc aaron was afraid rob would cheat - because again, that wedding wasn’t going to be the one that lasted. there had to be problems there.

basically - yes we absolutely put more thought into this shit than the show does but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the thought we put into it is… wrong? or will lead to us not feeling satisfied? because the way that things have gone wrong with robron so far have led to a break up. it feels like a safe assumption that they’re not going to go through a massive break up again after they get back together at the beginning of 2018, so on some level somewhere, it seems like a safe assumption that we’re not going to have rob kissing his ex to get money, or aaron doing a miserable 6 week prison stint, or robert knocking someone up etc. basically, i guess what i’m saying is… the pain wasn’t for nothing? it was there to play a function in the story and while i doubt that aaron and rob are gonna get back together and the show is gonna be like ‘ok well their problems are fixed now so that’s nice’, they’re going to be writing with a different eventual goal to the one they’ve had this year?

this wasn’t even ur original question i just took this to an entirely different place lmao. sorry. i guess what i’m trying to say is i’m not particularly concerned about getting a final resolution on rob and aaron’s issues, but the writing for them will change as the direction of their story changes, so. the reason i’m waiting is more because i’m waiting for that direction to stop being “keep them apart” and start being “get them back on track and prove they can be together”. which is sort of… the next step? i guess? regardless of whether or not they have problems (and it’s a soap so u know they will), the story needs to shift from a break up to a big second wedding - the one that you assume will last more than a month (because they’re not stupid - they know there’s only so much you can wring out of a thing and they’re already pushing it). so… yeah. that’s what i mean when i talk about this particular storyline wrapping up.

i could just keep that last paragraph and delete the rest and you would still have your answer but im obviously not going to do that.

#answering anons #....im on my mobile so this isn’t going under a cut im so sorry #i’ll fix it later #long post #meta #god damn @ myself pls shut up for once

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schpiedehl · 7 years ago

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An open letter to Hamilton (etc) fan artists, Re:whitewashing

Hello. Time for another ill-constructed rant on probably already well-tread ground. Specifically whitewashing in fan art (even more specifically Hamilton art though this could be applied to any fandom) and when it is ok. lol jk it’s never ok. PLEASE NOTE: I am an (amateur) artist. I am not ragging on artists because I “don’t understand how hard making art is,” “how hard artists work,” or what have you. These are legitimate problems of representation in fanart (that I have witnessed firsthand) and this is my earnest attempt to elucidate these issues. Feel free to interact with this post as you see fit. I am always free for debate if you disagree, would like clarification, or have anything to add.

+Look out for those embedded hyperlinks for more content

Preface: I am a member of far too many fb Hamilton groups. Sometimes people post their art, apparently forgetting that when you post things online you open yourself to critique. Hilarity ensues.

I often see Hamilton characters (generally portrayed as original Broadway cast members - Lin-Manuel Miranda, Okieriete Onaodowan, Anthony Ramos, etc.) who have been horrifically whitewashed - complete with lightened skin, bizarrely red or light brown hair, lightened eyes, and so forth. The most common defenses for this misstep, from both artists and fans, are personal style and apparent inability to approximate accurate skin tone (“I tried but skin color is hard”). Here’s why both of those excuses are utter bullshit.

1. Personal Style:

A lot of things in life are open to interpretation and all art is inherently interpretive. But the racial and cultural identity of a real life person is not one of these interpretive things. [PAUSE: before anyone says that this is precisely what Hamilton is doing with its casting, don’t.] First of all, I get it, personal style is important to art. Some people trend toward realism while others prefer more abbreviated, abstracted, and/or cartoony styles and part of that is selecting stylized color palettes, interpreting color in new and inventive ways, and playing with light, value, line, form, etc. This is NOT what I am talking about. It is entirely possible to honor a person’s background using relative or approximated shading/tone/coloration and to create beautiful art in the process [example: Chris Vision’s color series]. This little rant is specifically directed at people who "attempt" to depict Hamilton (etc) actors/characters using realistic/semi-realistic color palettes (as in, how they appear irl, accounting for abstraction, drawing style, etc) but fall short when it comes to depicting the actors, particularly in regards to racial background. You can find excellent examples of what I mean at Calling Out Whitewashed Hamilton Art and I’m positive you can find far too many examples in this and many other fandoms simply by scrolling through the tags on Tumblr and Instagram. So without further ado, lightening a person/character’s skin in fanart is racist. There’s really no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Foremost, the practice of editing a person of color to appear more European (skin, hair, eyes, even facial features) intentionally erases the cultural, racial, and ethnic background of the person in question. This is incredibly disrespectful to the actors who portray these characters and works to undermine what Hamilton as a whole is trying to build. If Hamilton is trying to reclaim American history for People of Color, stripping the racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds from the actors represents a rejection of conceit and, perhaps, even a form of appropriation. It is as though “fans” are saying that they want the art that is made by and for POC while simultaneously rejecting the distinctly racialized aspects of that art. When artists depict Lin!Hamilton as white, they are rejecting the Nuyorican background which Lin brings to the character in both writing and performance and projecting faux whiteness upon the character. In doing so, whether consciously or not, they are rejecting the actor’s race as well. Lin is beloved because of the art that he makes which allows many fans to look past his racial and cultural identity rather than accept it as an intrinsic aspect of both the man and his art. Moreover, the ubiquity of this whitewashed art also reveals a lot about what “fans” find visually appealing and acceptable - e.g., the Eurocentric standard of beauty. Whitewashing in art represents not only a rejection of POC’s culture but, obviously, their physical attributes as well. Dark skin is lightened and or whitened, hair is often straightened and/or lightened to a light brown or red hue (with the exception of Laurens, whose features, hair in particular, are often feminized as a form a queer fetishization but that is a rant for another day), and features are changed to appear more European. Often, depictions of characters are changed so much it is nearly impossible to tell that the art is based on any particular actor. In addition to being, again, extremely disrespectful to the actors, this further perpetuates the extremely harmful notion that beauty only exists in European features and sends a direct message to POC fans that their appearance is neither beautiful not accepted by the fanbase of a piece of media that was made by other POC specifically to appeal to them. This seems especially true of dark skinned black individuals who are often completely stripped of the melanin in fan art, further driving home notions of ingrained cultural colorism and anti-blackness. With Hamilton in particular, it is fine to “change” a character’s race if and only if you are depicting a character as a different actor. For instance, while Lin!Hamilton is Latino, Michael!Hamilton is a black man and depicting Hamilton as such, while uncommon among fan communities, is better than fine [*the lack of art of dark skinned actors is another point of contention. Not only are dark skinned actors frequently whitewashed, many are ignored altogether]. Depicting Michael!Hamilton as light skinned or white, however, is obviously not fine. Having established that lightening a character’s skin or depicting them with more European features is inherently racist, the claim that whitewashing is a stylistic choice is invalid. If you make the “stylistic choice” to depict a POC as white, you are racist. End of story. And if you want to do better but find yourself wanting to draw Lin!Hamilton as white, remember that this guy existed and just draw him instead. It’s not that hard. 2. Technical Difficulties:

One of the most unfortunately common excuses for whitewashing in fanart seems to be that, for some reason or another, artists have difficulty accurately approximating actors’ skin color so they presumedly just make something up, This results in Lin!Hamilton and Phillipa!Eliza looking a bit like Snow White, Oak!Mulligan looking a little tan, and so forth. As an artist, I understand that approximating realistic skintones can be rather hard, especially with traditional mediums, but it is glaringly obvious when artists don’t put in any effort. With traditional mediums such as paint, markers, or color pencils, artists can blend to create the colors which accurately (or as accurately as possible given the limitations of certain mediums like watercolors) approximate actors’ skin tones. If the colors dry lighter than intended, the artist generally layer and blend more to achieve a better approximation. If they then scan their image, they can use a photo editor to fix or correct any mistakes. It might not be the easiest to find good matches (speaking from experience, there aren’t a ton of good warm brown toned markers and thus a lot of blending is sometimes required) but, as previously stated, it’s generally easy to tell when someone at least tried to get close to a correct skin tone. With digital art, it’s even easier. Fact: Nearly all art programs have a nifty eyedropper tool which can be used to pull color swatches directly from a reference picture. Even MSpaint has this function. By pulling multiple swatches from a variety of reference images (to account for different lighting conditions), an artist can build a relatively accurate gradiented palette for skin tone. It’s really that simple! And if an artist notices that the color isn’t quite right, it’s nothing a few tweaks to hue and saturation can’t fix! If my tone seemed a bit sarcastic/passive aggressive in that last paragraph, it’s because it totally was. I see this excuse so much more often than I see any other excuse for whitewashed fan art and it is incredibly frustrating but also, as an (extraordinarily mediocre) artist myself, it rings incredibly inaccurate, especially for digital art. I completely understand that it sometimes takes a lot of time to get used to a medium but when an artist’s color palette is literally limitless, there is absolutely no reason (aside from personal, possibly subconscious/implicit but no less real, biases) for an actor/character to be depicted as white/light skinned when they are not. As previously discussed, that is disrespectful and harmful, and really only serves to make the artist (and those that support work) look like a jackass. And look, if you find yourself making whitewashed art, it’s not as though it is impossible to change. When someone criticizes your whitewash-y art, don’t get defensive. Don’t claim that it’s your style or that you don’t know how to color POC. It looks and sounds really fucking ridiculous. Instead, evaluate your art and place it into a cultural context. Take it as an opportunity to improve. And maybe also take the opportunity to learn a little about yourself and your biases. This wasn’t meant to be a call out post and I’d like to end this on a positive note so here are a few wonderful Hamilton fan artists who are worth a look: terror-in-a-dream zzzoehsu linmanwhydididothis mikiprice thegentlehoneybee dorothywonderland maeng

#hamilton #lin-manuel miranda #fanart #fan art #whitewashing #racism #longpost #rant #daveed diggs #Okieriete Onaodowan #phillipa soo #alexander hamilton #anthony ramos #lams #discourse #Renee Elise Goldsberry #john laurens #michael luwoye #jasmine cephas jones

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