#personal favorites: 'homenagem ao malandro' by chico buarque and 'malandro' by elza soares

[iangallagherisadeadman]

I made a post another day about how I can't comprehend those imagines people write about Lip cause they're just describing a totally different character, Lip has never treated none of his romantical partners that way so I just do not understand where that comes from, and therefore I said I can't understand how people are attracted to him.

I do stand by what I said but it kept me thinking, cause I received some answers and now I do see what the appeal is: Lip is a malandro.

I don't know if there's an equivalent translation for the term cause I believe it is essentially a Brazilian thing but a malandro would be this man who always has the upper hand since he's streetwise and has some brains which leads to the ability to take the best of every situation. Like a rascal? A scoundrel?

A malandro lives life kind of freely, lightly; he fits the space he is put in, he is a natural. He would avoid the complicated and to compromise, wants to live an easy life, and his motivations can be perceived as laziness. The term is associated to young criminal men usually — no good thing could come of someone like this —, and there's this appeal of this boyish man, a bad person but not necessarily a bad boy, who knows how to have a good time and is always breaking rules, the men no father desire to their daughter, the way he's a promise of a good time for any women, that leads to his attractiveness.

A malandro also has the gift of the gab (which I love cause in portuguese we say "ser bom de lábia" or "ter lábia" which directly translates to "have a lip" in the meaning of having its ways with words, knowing how to speak and convince and even fool someone easily).

Just from this description, Lip fits it better than any other shameless character.

there's how he made money easily: often scammed people like the northwest guys to work for free, later to visit Fiona's club, then when he was a trainee stealing money and taking their tablets and all, also selling weed and fireworks, selling homework and school projects and then the SAT thing — he never really gets a conventional job or source of income, and when he had aka s5 construction he left it to travel to Miami.

then his dating: he first got with Karen with the whole dirty tutoring and even madly in love with her he never really wanted her as a girlfriend; Mandy was flirting and having sex at his little sister's sleepover, and then she kind of made herself his girlfriend and he let her cause it was comfortable for him; Amanda's parents hated him and later she did too cause he gets sick of her and kind of ghosted her; he was smartfunny and had a quick mouth and got into his professor Helene's pants; i don't really remember Sierra but he was the cute boss younger brother etc.; and Tami was the easy fuck. The point is, he doesn't compromise, he's the promise of easy good sex, he cheats and lies.

and other stuff like he was not only a genius but smart, making good connections with older and powerful people like his professors; the way he never really looked forward to college or any other accomplishments really and he hated the pressure and expectations people had with him; how he was always committing delicts by breaking things, getting expelled from school, stealing, working with JimmySteve, underage drinking, etc.