#marginalized characters

[pebblegalaxy]

Exploring Marginality and Love in Lahore: The House Of Clay And Water by Faiqa Mansab

Exploring Marginality and Love in Lahore: The House Of Clay And Water by Faiqa Mansab #Lahore #PakistaniLiterature @FaiqaMansab @PenguinIndia #Sufism #GenderIdentity #SocialJustice #ContemporaryFiction #AwardWinningNovel

The House Of Clay And Water by Faiqa Mansab is a debut novel by Faiqa Mansab, a Pakistani author who has an MFA in creative writing from Kingston University London. The novel is set in Lahore, the city of saints, and explores the lives of three characters who are marginalized and alienated by the society they live in. Nida is a wealthy but unhappy wife of a politician, who seeks solace in the…

[grand-line-shenanigans]

For those of us who cannot comprehend big numbers (me) I have done the math. FOUR FUCKING YEARS. SECUNIT WHAT THE FUCK.

[finleycannotdraw]

Charles: I like your new pants!

Edwin: Thanks, they were 50% off!

Charles, flirtatiously: I’d like them better if they were 100% off.

Edwin: The store can’t just give away clothes for free.

Charles: No, that’s not what I-

Edwin: That’s a terrible way to run a business, Charles.

[ms0milk]

thinking about mithrun dunmeshi who could incapacitate most opponents in hand-to-hand (update: he’s a trained knife-fighter!) but chooses to use extremely fastidious teleportation magic without blinking at how easy it would be to accidentally blow himself or everyone involved, friend or foe, all the way up

(and finding something in all of his lackthereof, to smile about here which only ever happens one more time SPARE me SPEAR me anything love this guy forever)

[ambrosiagourmet]

I dunno, I kinda think that describing an often-viewed-as-autistic character as relatable to everyone is fun and rad actually. I think that the idea of autistic people being relatable to neurotypical people is cool as hell

[the-meme-monarch]

what if there were little guys. what if they were flowers but also vaguely animal shaped. what if they were like the smurfs or perhaps fraggles

edit: hey i drew more of them :]

[canisalbus]

Nervous Machete from my class notes!

we were learning about the spread of christianity.

.

[jesncin]

I really hope this doesn’t come across as rude, but why did you decide to make Lex Luthor, whose motivation is basically racism and xenophobia from my understanding, a person of color? This isn’t like, a criticism, more just, I really like your JL remix stuff and you usually have cool reasons for the stuff you change, so I was surprised by this one

I understand the curiosity! But I have to point out that "you usually have cool reasons for the stuff you change, so I was surprised by this one" made me laugh, haha. Long answer coming because I have a lot of feelings- but the point in the very end is worth it, trust me.

So for one, Lex is Afro-Greek in my version. This comes from the popular headcanon that STAS/DCAU Lex is Black (and his design is based on a Greek man). His character design, skin tone, and Clancy Brown's enigmatic performance became unintentional perceived representation for Black fans (and even DC writers). And now in the Harley Quinn show, that's become canonized! For why they like it, that's not my place to say as a non-Black person- so I listen!

I don't agree that Lex's motivation is "basically racism and xenophobia"- his themes are much broader than that. It's the desire to be the Man of Tomorrow, his jealousy of Superman, the way his intellect alone is a match against Superman's strength. Sometimes that jealousy is expressed through bigotry, but it's all a means to an end for Lex. My approach is: if Lex being Black is something we want to integrate more into his character, what opportunities does that open up narratively? Because there's rich potential for him and the characters connected to him.

When discussing MAWS I talk a lot about how when you're writing a bigoted marginalized character, there needs to be specifity with where that internalized bigotry is coming from. So a change like that for Lex Luthor could, for example; discuss how privileges like wealth can assimilate otherwise marginalized people into the kind of power that harms others in their community.

The ripple affect this has on a character like Superboy/Conner is that we get to see how -even though they're both Luthors- Conner is profiled, othered and further marginalized as a Kryptonian and a Black homeless teen because he doesn't get to benefit from any of Lex's privileges. This is just part of the many reasons why I think Conner would be infinitely more interesting if he didn't look like Kal El despite being a clone. You get to see a new intersection of how the Kryptonian identity intersects with Blackness on Earth. The potential ripple effect for a character like Lena is also really fun! What if she's struggling with her own model minority pressure when she's making up for her brother's crimes? It's all very compelling!

And MOST importantly, in a 3 trillion IQ Lex Luthor-style move-making Lex Luthor Black means that some version of Matt Fraction & Steve Lieber's Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen arc exists in my au. Which famously hinges on the twist that LEX LUTHOR AND JIMMY OLSEN ARE DISTANTLY RELATED. THEREFORE!!! We have now found a convoluted way to have Wacky Renaissance Artist Jimmy Olsen connected to The Manifestation Of Black Excellence Evil Edition Lex Luthor in this au.

[jzargo]

Never has "you praise a male character for the same traits you hate a female character for" been more true than with how fans react to Astarion vs Minthara

[shivroy]

season 1

[visenyaism]

The most compelling thing about daenerys targaryen to me really is that she is the very last one of them. No restoration no encores the prince the targaryens destroyed themselves promising is a little girl who cannot look back so the only home she can return to is the one she makes out of the world for everyone else with nothing to return to. That’s everything…

[fishdiva]

feeling nostalgic

[snapythecroc]

I know it's supposed to be a classic corpse flower but justin had already introduced the corpseanthemum pun and it's such a fun flower to draw

[abyssalzones]

stanford motherfucking pines

[lord-squiggletits]

I think the reason that MTMTE remains the most defining, influential, and loved series in the IDW1 run is fundamentally because, despite its many flaws, MTMTE has the power to make you think and wonder about the world beyond what's shown on the page. The character relationships are so strongly developed that it's easy to care about the characters and easy to imagine further adventures they could go on. While the myriad dropped plotlines, underwritten/underutilized characters, and worldbuilding with weird implications are all fucking maddening at times... even if it makes you mad, MTMTE makes you mad because you care and it makes you want to immerse yourself into a world that feels like it's real beyond what's explicitly shown to you on the page. It's a sandbox of a story where there's so much fertile ground for pretty much anyone with any preferred character archetype, storyline, etc to dig in.

It's just... immersive. That's the best way I can put it. It feels like it could be real and it makes you want to spend more time in it than the constraints JRO had. It makes you want to know more about it and come up with theories on how/why things function or happen the way they do. That's why it's loved and that's why it's the best series in IDW1.

[eldest-of-katts]

okay because people have shown up in my dms talking smack I'm going to make one blanket statement on the 1000 year loli chilchuck thing.

yes, there has been a problem with young girls being put in suggestive positions in anime with the "uhmmm she's actually a bajillion years old" excuse. yes, other characters don't treat chilchuck like an adult. yes, he is short with big eyes.

However, chilchuck consistently acts like a grown man. he- in both the manga and the anime- straight up just is an adult. He looks like an adult when he is any other race during the swaps in the manga. When the other characters get turned into half-foots they look similar to chilchuck. He is explicitly stated to have more dungeon and general life experience than laios, and he acts like it.

The 1000 year loli trope explicitly functions as an excuse to prey on people who are inexperienced and unable to advocate for themselves. Chilchuck is a parent, is a union organizer, has explicit boundaries that he enforces rigidly, and he is treated as an adult man by everyone who doesn't have a fantasy racism-focused character arc/issue.

I can see how if you haven't read the manga and seen that he has an established life that he later reveals (and haven't paid attention to him in the anime lol) you could get a mistaken impression about him. Marcielle does too in the source material! It's part of her character at the start of her arc that she has issues with longevity!

The thing that irks me a little about this interpretation is that it leans into the child-coded discourse that was prominent a while ago (she's short!!!!! but has boob???? ILLEGAL!!1!) and it does a disservice to the themes of infantilization as a policy maneuver hurting the working class.

I saw chilchuck and his labor advocacy for half-foots both as a metaphor for racism (obvious take ik) and for ageism.

The working gen z as a cohort are being infantilized and pushed out of job markets due to infantilization, similar to half-foots in the show. gen z is being maliciously portrayed as too young to vote, enter office, know themselves, know their rights, and take advantage of their resources. Simultaneously, child labor protections and protections against workplace abuse are being rolled back in the US. In Japan, young people are being worked to the bone for nothing and are becoming disenfranchised as a generation while simultaneously expected to be the labor faction that supports the postwar generations in their old age.

Chilchuck's being treated poorly I saw as a clever commentary on the ways infantilization allows for protections to be stripped away under the guise that "oh it's just a job for teenagers- they don't need more than minimum wage" or "let the kids rescue the economy! they're always complaining about that job market!" while simultaneously stripping away rights under the guise of protection- "We can't have that on the internet! think of the children!" "to protect these young people we must raise the age of medical consent for hormones/reproductive health decisions!"

Kui's work with this series spoke to me on many levels, and specifically, the infantilization issue touched me in a way that few other pieces of media have. The struggle to be taken seriously in a stem field as someone young, as someone female, and as someone who had a high-pitched voice to the point I did years of voice training to be taken seriously, chilchuck's character resonated. I (kinda) understand your instinct to think "SHORT! CHILD! RALLY THE MASSES AND KILL THE PEDOS!!1!" but in this case, it's misdirected- mostly because the author was trying to use this misdirection to prove something to you, the reader.

Kui consistently makes cutting commentary on modern issues, the show's take on food neutrality as its headliner, but also the author's takes on cultural issues and the environment (with a focus on our place in the food web as animals). I feel that reducing chilchuck's very conscious position as a tradesman and an activist discounted due to his apparent age down to "1000 year loli ewwww let's send this random tumblr user suicide bait" just displays a lack of critical analysis of the show and a level of disrespect towards Kui and the work as a whole.

TL:DR- stop sending me kys messages I'm fucking that old man