#this is about a particular character that they apply to

[gayaest]

Hey, so I mean this entirely in good faith and just want to see where you're coming from.

When you draw pictures of people (OC), why do you only list their name, age, disabilities, and race (and some other stuff sometimes)? not likes or interests or hobbies or a look into their life? Is there somewhere else for me to find out more?

Personally, I don't find those to be the most interesting things about a character or a person or an object or anything like that, and I don't typically base characters around it (not saying you do, just not sure why else they take precidence over other aspects of their character)

I love your art and hope youu have a nice day!

I’ll try to answer this in the best way possible, but my wording might be off because I am more ill than usual, so bare with me.

1. Experiences with creating Original Characters is not a monolith — what you like to do with characters may not be what another creator likes to do with them. Some people never make backstories for their characters and keep them mainly for designs. Some people like to create backstories, and both of these things can exist and are okay. What you personally find interesting isn’t the same for everyone.

Even if I do have backstories for many of my characters, not all of them are even close to finished yet or even fully fleshed out, I often start with basics and go from there. If you are interested in the backstories of my characters, I have a toyhouse in which I post them.

2. Race, Culture, Age and Disability is a huge part of a lot of people’s lives, I can attest to that for myself. A lot of what I put down as “descriptors” for my characters are for people to get the absolute “bare bones” of who this character is, kind of like a bio on social media. It may not personally interest you, but Culture is a huge aspect on how people develop and think, the way people grow up and who they are around influence their thoughts, likes, dislikes, career, life choices and more. I find that many people from different cultures are often very happy at the representation of their culture being present if done respectfully, and causes a lot of happiness to feel seen.

I have a particular interest in researching humans, cultures, disabilities and diversity. You don’t have to have those interests, the same way I don’t particularly have to have an interest in “likes vs dislikes” of a character.

It would concern me if someone doesn’t care about peoples race or ethnicity, the same way it concerns me when a white person says “well, I don’t see color”, it erases the diverse experience of being human. It erases culture, experience, struggle and more. A lot of POC, myself included, find solace in knowing someone may understand a specific experience of what it’s like growing up a certain way. That we are not alone in our struggles.

And this all relates to Disability as well. Able-bodied people are not going to understand the life of a disabled person they haven’t lived in. Growing up disabled, becoming disabled later in life, in general /being/ disabled is a different way of life than the average person. We have struggles and experiences not everyone can relate to — which means by sharing this in a description of a character — it can actually tell a lot about what they’ve been through and understand.

Other disabled people may not understand what life is like for another disabled person — I have had numerous asks and messages by other disabled people and able-bodied people alike telling me they are happy to see representation of a specific disability, or that they discovered a disability through my artwork and they were able to research it or even apply it to their medical training. This is a huge reason for why I do what I do.

I’m glad this is a question in good faith — Thank you for liking my art, and i hope you have a good day as well.

If you have anymore questions, I have an FAQ:

[chujo-hime]

Southern archivist here jumping in to add some additional information, since I know not everyone in this fandom is American and might not be fully aware of what this flag represents.

As the most recognizable symbol of the Confederacy, the Confederate flag needs to be understood as representing the Confederacy and what it stood for the same way the Nazi flag represents Nazi Germany. Both are white supremacist symbols, and both have long been used as symbols of threat and intimidation against targeted communities. This is something I can't emphasize to y'all enough - the Confederate flag has always been a symbol of anti-Black racism and displaying the flag has always been an explicit act of intimidation against African Americans. It doesn't matter if we're talking about the 1920s, the 1960s, the 1990s, or today. It's the reason why the resurrected KKK flew the flag all across the country in the 1920s. It's the reason why the pro-segregationist Dixiecrat party used it as a symbol of their party in the 1940s. It's the reason why Georgia incorporated the flag into their state flag following the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v Board of Education in the 1950s. It's the reason why a white supremacist posed with the flag in a bunch of photos before going and committing the Mother Emanuel Massacre in 2015. And it's the reason why German neo-Nazis fly the flag today.

All of this may come as a surprise to those of you who aren't from the United States. Most of you have probably come across older American television and movies that treat displaying the Confederate flag as a "quirky Southern thing" (looking at you Dukes of Hazard). A full explanation for why a hate symbol could be presented as a regional quirk in American media for most of the 20th century is a topic that's far larger than this post and is something I would not feel comfortable writing about without a shit-ton more research. So I'll sum it up this way: white, non-Southern Hollywood frequently used the Confederate flag as a visual shortcut, telling the audience that they could apply a whole range of negative stereotypes of Southerners - that Southerners are bigoted/racist/ignorant/uneducated/stupid/backwards/etc - to a particular character or characters. Of course, this visual shortcut came at the expense of Black audience members, who - in the best case scenarios - were given no consideration at all, or in the worse case scenarios, forced to watch the filmmakers' own anti-Black racism play out across the screen. The flag and the hate it represents should have never been trivialized that way back then, and it should never be used like that now.

I have seen something VERY troubling in this fandom this morning and it needs to be said that displaying a confederate flag is an act of hostility against black and brown people. It’s not a quirky southern thing. It is an extremely offensive hate symbol.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to read about characters who are racist, especially when they’re being romanticized.

Just because you see a character with a southern accent, let’s not choose to make him a racist. That is also incredibly offensive.

[raayllum]

Hi. I don't mean this to be confrontational at all and apologize if I come off that way. I'm asking purely out of curiosity.

I feel like I rarely see you post any TDP critical takes or engage with TDP critical takes made by others unless you're rebutting those takes. I believe (unless I'm mistaken) you even said once or twice before that you have the "tdp critical" tag blacklisted. I was wondering if there was a particular reason for that. Whether you were just uncomfortable posting anything negative regarding the show given that you're primarily a fanblog or maybe you simply lack takes that are actually critical of the show or for some other reason.

It's absolutely fine if you don't want to share or engage with criticisms of the show. I was just curious why for such an active blog that's even existed since the very beginning of the series I see most exclusively positive takes shared regarding the show by it.

Not confrontational at all! TLDR at the bottom because I'm sorry in advance for how long this is.

It's because of 3 main things:

1) It's my blog so I only really engage and focus on (to the best of my ability) takes that I agree with. Occasionally I rebut more critical takes, but most of my stuff I post is things I wanted to write regardless (like my "why Callum made his choices in 7x02" meta) and then discourse came after I'd started writing the thing privately, but it was still a topic I thought was fun to explore. If people posted critical stuff that I agreed with, I'd probably reblog it, but it has just yet to happen, and I'm not too interested in generating it myself (more on that in a second).

2) I have a background as and was trained to examine things like an English major; I also tutor/teach humanities and literary analysis (and a surprising amount of math) for a living. This does not by any means make me an authority, but it does mean I approach stories from a very specific good faith lens that I think the majority of fandoms in general just... don't? Or at least seem not to, as far as I can tell, but maybe I'm wrong; I don't know what's going on in anyone else's head. (This also does not mean that anyone who's an English major has to or should think this way, or does; this is just how I personally internalized further what I learned from my degree and how it aligned with what I'd already been inclined to do with stories since like, childhood.)

What I mean, therefore, at least (and more elaborate thoughts on it here in terms of the perspective I'm coming from) is that because of my lifelong inclinations of 90% of the time Enjoying Canon / my background, I typically go into stories assuming two things: first, that the story is exactly what is supposed to be; and two, if something doesn't work or make sense to me, I assume first that I'm wrong, and I go looking for reasons about why the story would do this before I pass judgement on it. This can apply to character beats / characterization, execution, plot, etc. just about anything. This doesn't mean that the story can't be 'wrong' (or 'bad'), just that it's never my initial assumption.

My search for reasons/answers also does not mean that I'm going to magically be able to deduce reasons, or that any reasons I find are objectively correct and/or intentional or have to work for anyone else; sometimes I can't find the reasons (which to me is my biggest indicator that a story is not for me or no longer for me). Sometimes I find the reasons and it still isn't 'good' or is still not my preference (a good example would be when I thought a TV show randomly paired 2 characters together that I was a not a fan of in their s4, and I still don't like them together, but when I got to S5 I was like "Oh yeah, for plot reasons, of course you'd pair them together, that makes perfect sense") but I know I'm giving things a fair shake. I'm engaging with the story as is, which is my primary interest, not necessarily what I expect or even want the story to be. No piece of media promised to be my ideal; I entered in the story contract of being along for THEIR ride and gauging if the loop-de-loops are a thing I'd enjoy, but they're not going to (nor do they need to) tell my story to be 'Good'.

I've shipped things or enjoyed ideas that would 100% make a story worse if it was canon, and I didn't want them to be canon! I didn't need them to be, either. I'm interested in learning, growing, and adjusting with whatever is presented to me, and if I can't do that (or am no longer enjoying doing so) then it's time for me to go. This doesn't mean I never approach stories from a lens of 'here's what they could do better' (I'm not a big fan of She-Ra or The Owl House, which are both notoriously popular, and I have Thoughts on both of them; I can talk all day long about how structurally broken but fun Frozen is, or how poorly butchered the Star Wars sequel trilogy is) but that's usually when a story has a persistent flaw to me on a structural or overarching basis—consistent tonal issues (which I don't take seriously even for shows like Shera that I think have them, because I'm the adult choosing to watch stuff made for children so of course the tone's not for me) or broken lore, ableist/racist writing, or too many underdeveloped characters or retcons. A single scene, episode, or season (depending on the percentage of the show it is, if it's a full third or something than yeah that's more of an issue)—depending on the severity of the fumble—is probably not going to be enough for me to be pissed about it.

Part of this also stems, I think, from giving stories the grace that I'd want my own to receive some day, but I digress.

I also know from my experiences as writer is that sometimes the choices I (or a story has made) won't work for everyone, wasn't made to work for everyone, and what I dislike about a thing is 100% a choice that the author was making On Purpose that they love, and well - it's their story, isn't it? So holding space for "this is how I subjectively feel, this is what I think the story was trying to do, here's why I feel it didn't quite hit that goal, or did have the pay off to set up (just not in the manner I'd predicted" is like, important to me to all hold simultaneously as separate things that can occasionally overlap.

3) As stated before, I do have critiques—quite a few, actually—for TDP (a few I've briefly touched on here before, such as its lack of female-female relationships) but generally speaking I've never seen anybody else have the same ones.

Part of this is undoubtedly because I don't go looking, but I've also been in the fandom for 6+ years and have seen a Lot of critique for the show to the point it all gets redundant/recycled (hence the blacklist because I've never agreed with any of it) and I do think—not all—but a lot of is just... not that well founded in the text or just not very well expressed, which makes it harder to understand where people are coming from. I've written before about different types of fandom critique (vague/assumptive vs more specific critique which I think is more communicative/productive) but I know for myself, my critique is going to be Consistent for the whole show and specific about why I think what I think. If something bothers me in one season, I'm gonna meticulously check to be like "is this in other seasons? did it bother me then? if so, why or why not?" and if I'm not being consistent on that basis in terms of where and why I'm levelling critique, that's gonna change my mind.

For example, I think S6 repeats a lot of dialogue / ideas, sometimes almost if not directly back to back in scenes, and sometimes in exceedingly similar ways, particularly at the Starscraper sections of the story. For example, Kosmo explains that "on every moonless night, a blizzard rages and shrouds the heavens" and then Kosmo repeats the exact same information like 7 minutes later in the exact same way: "for centuries on every moonless night, a blizzard rages and shrouds the heavens." And it would be one thing if these repetitions were like, in different episodes, because not everyone is going to binge or watch the previously on, and you gotta get audiences caught up. That's why Karim and Miyana have a similar discussion/repetition in 4x08 and 4x09 respectively, but we're in the same episode in S6, we like Just learned this. I don't necessarily know what information we'd put in the 2nd instance with Kosmo instead (maybe highlighting his desire to see the stars, foreshadowing that he'll be timeblind further?) but I've looked for a reason for the repetition, and while I think it's a cool idea for Kosmo to have a tendency to repeat things as a character quirk / set up his affinity for being timeblind (because to deal with alternate timelines is to deal with repetition until things branch off) it's not a satisfactory reason for me.

Or like, S2 has my least favourite pacing in the show, because while I adore the flashback episodes and they're really fucking important for theme (my number one fave thing!!) they do cause the middle of the season to more or less grind to a halt in terms of the main storyline when 2x04 was already more of a transition / filler episode (which we needed after the Moon Nexus arc, 2x04 is one of my fave eps in the season, but it would typically be a transition episode to move us into a new plot section of the story, & that's not quite what happens here, so the pacing drags a lil).

But I don't think season 2's pacing is bad. I don't think 6x04 is a bad episode or that Kosmo is a poorly written character. It's just not my personal preference, and I think I'm a lot more cautious about using that metric (my enjoyment, my preferences, how relatable it is to me, etc) to discern how "good" a story is quality wise. A story can be a great story even if there is nothing relatable in it to me or if it makes me deeply uncomfortable, because art can exist for a lot of different reasons and my limited-ass white western perspective or personal story preferences is not the be-all end-all. I think TDP is a beautiful example of rejecting punitive punishment, and I've gotten more pro-abolish prisons as I've gotten older, but some of my own works have characters who chase revenge and that's the portrayed as the right thing to do, because not everything has to line up perfectly or have a singular way in which to align. It's interesting to explore a variety of viewpoints and that's the whole reason I write.

None of this means I never use my personal preferences or enjoyment as a metric, but that's usually when I'm making recommendations to people or just talking about my personal feelings, and I don't tend to lean on those much when it comes to Analyzing a story other than a jumping off point of "Huh this scene made me emotional, I wonder why? [examines the narrative for set up and pay off]". Cause I think I do, ultimately, consider myself a meta blog, and that's always been my #1 in fandom ever since I got into fandom at 12 years ago, that's what I love doing and engaging in.

If people wanted to have Actual Discussions of "this character beat felt ooc" and they could present their evidence from the text (similar scenes where a character responded differently or something or whatever), and I could say "oh, interesting, that felt in character to me because of XYZ" and I would present my evidence for the text, and we would go back and forth both having a good time before probably respectfully agreeing to disagree, I'd love to engage just for the discussion, I love character and characterization analysis. One of the most fun times I ever had was arguing both for and against the "S4 Rayla is a fake/illusion" theory before the season released because it was fun to consider and counter stuff. I have one friend who's also autistic and back in university we would just swap contrarian story viewpoints for like, an hour on something we had both read, and it was the best. (That friend loved the end of Game of Thrones, which like no one fucking liked, and also has S4 and S7 as like their top 2 TDP seasons, which isn't even true for me, god bless their soul.)

But I would say at least 70-85% of the time when people are critiquing a thing, while it might be coming from a consciously analytical standpoint, that's not what they want to express or that's not how they express it (or at least, not in a way that I can personally understand). They want to vent, and I've definitely done that before with stories myself, I get it. Sometimes a story pisses you off and you just gotta vent. But I'm not going to engage with someone who's venting unless I agree, and if it becomes clear that they are after I do engage because I think maybe they're not venting, and then they are, then I'm just gonna leave 'em in peace. I hope they're having a great time / get whatever they need out of the process.

I also just... am not going to post things I don't agree with. I'm not gonna pretend to have critiques I don't. If I have a critique on... anything that I felt was worth posting about, I would. I don't think I do. Like, I walked out of S4 feeling so happy and excited and content with the season as a whole, MUCH more than I felt when first walking out of S6 or S7, but like I process that shit privately and now I really do like those seasons, so? Yeah.

I think a lot of my disdain for Heavy constant critique comes back to like, I remember being like 13-14 years old and being so excited to come onto tumblr and find out what the ATLA fandom was analzying, because it's in many ways the show I reverse engineered literary analysis from (Katara-Azula was an early, apparent, and favourite foils dynamic of mine, for example) and there's so many lovely things about it. At that point my fandom experiences had been like a really small fandom of a show that wasn't that good but we loved it for what it is, and HTTYD, which had a very thoughtful thriving community of analyzers, and they would debate episodes and ideas in a very friendly manner even if they didn't always agree. So getting on ATLA tumblr and seeing nothing but hate for so much of the show for miles, and seeing so much hate for all the specific things that I loved the most, and that were the most meaningful to me and that I was stupid or childish to like or enjoy or get excited about them, broke my heart honestly. And I just never want to be that or potentially contribute to that for anyone else; I really don't. And at a certain point, if your critique does align with the majority takeaway, you gotta ask yourself if you wanna or really need to toss your hat in the ring and if you'd be adding anything to it, because sometimes we don't all need to comment on every single particular XYZ thing has commented on (no I didn't like the Crowlord jokes in S4, I don't like his character in general, he's also barely in the show, my dislike does not matter to me; the story uses him for comedic relief, he objectively fulfills that role even if he doesn't subjectively work for me, it is small potatoes, I'd rather focus on the more interesting, more prominent things that I love).

TLDR;

Thus far, every time TDP has done something I went ??? about, I've found a reason + one that worked for me, or it's small enough that it's a nitpick. If I don't love all parts of canon, then I stop enjoying it, and if I stop enjoying it, I leave the fandom. If I'm in the fandom, then I love and appreciate all parts of it, even if things may not always necessarily align with my preferences. I'm interested in seeing what the story is doing and focusing on that with my blog, my primary interest is not based in what I want it to do (not saying that's where anyone who does critique the show is coming from or that it's lesser to do so, this just how I'm conceptualizing the difference in mindset, but maybe I'm wrong about where the divide is or what the mindset is). 90% of the time whatever the show does I end up liking more or finding more interesting anyway, and I've also never had anything align with my specific brain more than TDP has. Kinda simple as that, in some ways.

[forget-me-not-automaton]

Ya ever just look at someone’s oc and not say or comment anything but in your head you just-

I love this fucking thing. oh my god mother of character design???? I want to ruffle up their hair and give them hugs and smooches!!! How is there only one “would” comment??? This is asinine they are the ABSOLUTE source of carnal need,, They scare me to death but in the hot way I want to waltz with them in a fancy ass ballroom and feed them soup when they’re sick and-

[da-cti]

This line from the Invictus poem by William Henley seemed extremely fitting for season 2 Arthur. Alt version without the black borders under the cut

[agenericplaceholdername]

You raise a lot of good points. Measuring Lloyd's abilities by the success of his students shows he isn't a terrible one (Sora is proof) but not a great one (Arin is proof). Much of my original post was a counterargument to this (very common) point. It is still pretty funny that Arin does Spinjitzu after a minute of Ras's teachings but that's definitely an oversimplification of all of Lloyd's work.

As for the other Ninja, I totally agree that Kai is more mature and developed than Lloyd. That being said, Wyldfyre doesn't always listen to him (see her sneaking on the Bounty). I will also push back on the idea that it's reasonable that Wyldfyre hasn't yet learned Spinjitzu, if you think it's unreasonable that Sora hasn't learned Spinjitzu. She hadn't unlocked her powers at all when Lloyd first met her, having only discovered their existence hours beforehand, while Wyldfyre had been using hers for years when Wyldfyre started training. I think Wyldfyre would probably love to learn Spinjitzu given how much she loves fighting. I included Cole only because he taught Frak (in ~10 seconds no less) how to use an entirely different elemental power.

That being said, solely in the context of the story, I think that Kai is probably better qualified to be a teacher, though I think it's hard to tell only because we spend more time with Master Lloyd, so Kai's potential struggles aren't part of the story.

I think your idea of Lloyd learning to delegate responsibility would be a fine story to tell. We did spend an episode on that ("The Temple of the Dragon Cores", S1 E11) but it was played for laughs. That being said, it doesn't answer your original point in the tags -- "why is Lloyd unsuccessful for no particular reason," unless the answer is: he's just naturally bad, other people are just naturally better at teaching. I don't think that would be a particularly satisfying resolution on its own.

I think the show is going in the direction of saying that Lloyd's desire to be like Wu is his big problem -- it leads Sora and Arin to sneak out in "Crossroads Carnival," it leads him to take on too much responsibility in "The Temple of the Dragon Cores," and his greatest fear is not living up to Wu in "Beyond the Phantasm Cave." In S2P2 the title of Master is given to him by Egalt and Rontu, who tell him he'll live up to the legacy of Wu. Just a few episodes later he learns that Wu caused the Merge and he loses one of his students. S3 is supposed to bring back a student Wu lost, so I think(?) the endpoint of this arc is Lloyd learning he doesn't have to be just like Wu; he can be better.

I don't think this is solved just by delegation either -- Lloyd makes the correct move to have Kai train Wyldfyre. Most of his stress in S2 comes from the visions he's having and his fear about letting down the people he cares about. So long as he's the Green Ninja, I don't think that is going away. I like the idea of Lloyd having less "main character energy" on paper, but a story about someone learning to put less pressure on themselves works better when we see them turning down help from others, which (aside from in "The Temple of the Dragon Cores") Lloyd isn't doing. He even asks Egalt and Rontu to be the Ninja's masters in "Enter the City of Temples" and they turn him down.*

This explanation also doesn't explain why Lloyd failed with Arin either, but I think it comes closer. Lloyd rigidly applied Wu's teachings while being unable to understand that Ras's ideas (while very flawed) are not without merit. Upon hearing that Wu caused the Merge, he barely acknowledges it. Like Wu was (literally) family to Lloyd, Lloyd sees Arin as family, yet Arin doesn't see Lloyd that way (or at least is trying to avoid seeing Lloyd that way, since that, to him, would be an insult to his parents). Lloyd's connection to Wu is the root at the "Lloyd's greatest asset" thing I mentioned earlier, since Wu is literally Lloyd's family.

-----------------------------

*I totally get the idea that it would be a better story if Lloyd wasn't delegating work already, and he would have to learn to delegate. My take is that I'm gonna wait and see what the narrative settles on (and if it settles on nothing, then I'll be disappointed).

Maybe Lloyd just shouldn't be a master.

He's clearly not very good at it. He's been trying it since season 5, and his first real students both take FOREVER to make any progress. Sora takes a whole season to unlock her powers, but apparently isn't taught spinjitzu in any of that time- the literal first thing we see taught to any of our characters in the original show. Arin somehow makes backwards progress with Lloyd, and then after doing like three poses with his friend seems to get it instantly.

Like... seems like he's just not very good at teaching. Maybe he should hand the position over to Kai, he's got a natural knack for it, a lot more experience, and a much higher success rate as far as I'm concerned. Master Kai for the win.

[electroniccollectiondonut]

I have not been in this fandom long enough to reasonably judge others' takes however. "EPIC fans are so silly to characterize odysseus as feeling guilty for his actions don't you know he's a war criminal" is definitely a wild one. like first of all to each their own so settle down and let people enjoy things ok. and secondly making choices with a bad outcome, even knowingly and deliberately, does not exclude the possibility of feeling bad about it later. in fact it makes for a much more in depth character because then you get to explore what he does or doesn't feel guilt over, and why, and if that guilt ever edges into regret or not.

[impmansloot]

tired of you guys thinking that giving a character a benefit of the doubt, assuming that things might be more complicated than it seems, and liking morally gray characters is poor media literacy/comprehension. Atp these words stopped meaning anything, it's just an awfully convenient tool to imply your opponent's dumb (unlike you!), and unfortunately most times it's thrown in an argument, in specific fandom cases especially, it just boils down to "you're reading it wrong/not the way I like so you must be stupid"

[izzyhandsonthosetiddies]

You think because you like him he can do no wrong. I like him because he does horrible things. We are not the same.

[mwolf0epsilon]

I was just gonna comment but my thoughts got way too long for that...

Honestly, if the CGI era did anyone dirty it's definitely with the way they consistently present Gordon as just a big huffy bully.

They completely disregarded his personal growth in the first couple of season episodes (which for the fans has cemented the fact both eras are two separate timelines of sorts, where some things from the model era have indeed happened and been brought up, but others remaining weirdly ambiguous), and don't seem overly pressed with looking to the Railway Series to get a feel for his actual character all that much...

Heck, they even decided to overwrite some of his relationships without any real reason to do so (the most egregious of these rewrites being how his and Thomas's alliance gets tossed, and how he seems to resent/be jealous of his only remaining brother).

Sure, there are moments where I can see some of Gordon's original personality shine through to some extent (with Gordon coming to Thomas's immediate defense in Hero of the Rails, as well as Gordon being able to concede to the fact he wasn't being fair to Spencer in Confused Coaches and both of them finally letting go of their rivalry, leaving hope for better days where they're not at each other's buffers trying to prove who's top dog), and there are two examples here that I personally think still apply to him just having his ego bruised and lashing out due to embarrassment.

In Old Reliable Edward, Gordon's initial banter with Edward seemed more like he was attempting to tease him rather than straight up insulting him maliciously (and we know the OG Gordon and Model Series Gordon could spit out some pretty nasty things to Edward before he grew as a character, so in comparison those were pretty tame comments and just seem like Gordon has difficulty joking if it's not at someone else's expense in some way). He only actually doubles down and gets rude after he made a silly mistake and got laughed at for it, and unfortunately Edward was just an easy target for him to lash out at because Edward is always looking out for others. So Edward pretending to be indifferent to him being stuck later on, feels wholly deserved and fairly in character to me.

Henry Gets the Express is more of an uplifting Henry episode than it is a Gordon episode, but it does showcase Gordon's protectiveness of the express as his defining job. It's not too out of character for him, because it takes a very long time for Gordon to grow up enough to gracefully bow out of this particular duty, and getting huffy about someone else taking his place, mimicking him, and then being told to his face he's actually second best at the one thing he thinks he's the greatest at? Yeah, I'd be upset too... Been there Gort. I think as a study of his character, it gives ample opportunity for people to realize Gordon's less than agreeable behavior seems to stem out of a lot of personal insecurities and a desire to prove himself as being something grander than he actually is (which, considering in the Railway series he's conceived as a prototype to a narratively-doomed line of engines, makes a whole lot of sense to me). A trait he shares with Spencer, who was conceived as his foil via being his worst characteristics cranked up to 11.

But, if there's an episode here that you nailed as being needlessly cruel and degrading to Gordon... It's definitely Forever and Ever...

Not only is the attempted moral of this story an absolute disaster, it's also delivered by a character that ultimately isn't experiencing the same thing as him. As a character, Nia is incredibly receptive to change and is willing to make leaps of faith that could be downright reckless. Gordon, on the other hand, is not. He's consistently shown as having issues with accepting change, or even being downright afraid of it (which looking back on the Railway Series, makes complete sense considering what Diesel, the at the time face of modernization, brought to his attention and how it personally affected him). He's not comfortable leaving his corner where he feels safe, and a part of that comforting blanket is the way things have always been set up at Tidmouth Sheds.

By having Nia compare her situation to his, not only was she being demeaning, but she's basically the mouthpiece for the "feeling upset that your friends are moving away is stupid, and you should be ashamed for feeling that way" message that the show-runners presented in this episode... Not only is it a very callous thing to teach to young children, it also makes it seem like struggling with change is a skill issue and that Gordon feeling justifiably sad when the dynamic he's come to rely on takes such a big shift, is somehow laughable and that everyone should relish in seeing him squirm for being 'stuck in his ways'... It really cuts back on the whole teaching kids about empathy, doesn't it?

Another episode that makes Gordon out to be nothing more than a bully is The Other Big Engine, where we get a pretty good picture of what CGI Thomas thinks of Gordon... And it's honestly not great.

I was so incredibly baffled when I saw it that I wondered if the CGI era producers ever even saw Down the Mine or read any of the books at all... It's an absolute disgrace of a mischaracterization on both Thomas's and Gordon's part, and it peeved me to no end...

Anyway, this got pretty long, but like... God.

I love Gordon so much as a character and it pains me that he eventually became the butt of the joke in the CGI era in ways that aren't even funny... It makes me glad AEG Gordon is more like the grown-up Gordon who gave up the express in the later Railway Series books. Patient and ready to be a model/guide to younger engines, like Edward at the beginning of said series. Much better than just Mean Old Bully Gordon Who Deserves Everything Bad...

I dont like how CGI!Gordon keeps getting dunked on in episodes. it pains me to watch how reverted his character is and how little sympathy anybody has for him in favor of everyone wanting to watch him squirm so much. it’s like he never got past series 1-2.

Old Reliable Edward, Henry Gets the Express, Forever and Ever

similar reason as to why i dislike Edward the Really Useful Engine- this should’ve ended after Exploit but nooooo we gotta keep the edward v gordon conflict going for some reason 😭

Edward the Really Useful Engine, Edward’s Exploit

as weird/OOC the HiT era is, it’s surprising that Edward & Gordon are capable of being on good terms (even in a learning segment) and is able to show Gordon’s growth as well as the other engines showing respect to him back in a GOATED episode (Respect for Gordon)

Edward the Great, Edward Strikes Out, Who Respects Whom?, Respect for Gordon

[4lph4kidz]

best advice i can give anyone about fandom is that by participating in fandom everyone has failed step one and is wrong about everything. okay in all seriousness though: try not to take things personally. i know what it's like and i have been there but someone representing the fictional character you like in a way you do not like is not actually a personal attack against you and i would encourage you to work against feeling that way as much as possible

[novadreii]

rewatched arrival for the hundredth time. this movie never fails to gut punch me with its approach to determinism. louise embracing her future that she knows every moment of, despite the tremendous loss and pain it contains, with open arms. she doesn't hesitate, or ruminate on how she can try and change it. she accepts it all, the good and the bad, because what she gains is worth it, so many times over for her. she steels herself against a certain future and runs forward to meet it all, to love, learn, and lose, and trusts and leans on herself to live through it all. because that's what life is; it's the joy and the suffering. to try and isolate the joy alone is madness, futility in its purest definition.

comparing her line of thinking to a palindrome (how she named her daughter, hannah), the movie kept emphasizing, "it's the same backwards as it is forwards." it doesn't matter if you can see the end; life is the same whether you live it "forwards" (without knowledge of the future) or "backwards" (with foresight). it doesn't change the significance of your life experiences; to try and avoid certain future pain just because you have the knowledge of it is a zero sum game. you think you win because you avoided pain, but you also avoided the joy that preceded it. the metamorphosis. so you still lose if you try to win, and vice-versa.

all you can do is rush forward and take it all head-on. see this whole beautiful mess as your one most precious gift; this one life, this one chance, a laughably miniature blip on the colossus that is linear time, to experience all there is to feel before you return back to an eternity without perception. it's all worth it, because only in living a full-fledged life open to everything it has to offer does the experience of living turn out to be greater than the sum of its parts; it's in trying to beat the system (avoid pain) that we actually lose.

"if you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?"

"maybe i'd say what i feel more often. i...i don't know."

[revenantghost]

I love so many Trigun creations of so many flavors, I can't choose a favorite. But there's something so special about that warm and tender feeling you get when you see something, have to sit back or step away, shut your eyes, and think, "God they're so fucking stupid."

[afantasyoffiction]

this is. ugh. this is SUCH GOOD ADVICE for SO MANY REASONS and it can be applied to everything in writing, but specifically writing fantasy

start with something, with anything. and then just...keep thinking about what that means. writing, as the brilliant @nossumusstellae described, is just creating consequences for vibes.

e.g. worldbuilding: my fantasy realm of Amkora has five and a half dukedoms, just bc thats how the map worked out. from that coincidence of drawing, i gave the four corner dukedoms a season. this led them to a climate-based name, a main trading produce and economic proficiency on the basis of said climate and a relative wealth and prestige on the basis of said economics. the central dukedom is the capital, meaning it's the richest and most diverse bc all trade runs through it. the half dukedom is the product of a civil war and the effectively colonial ransacking the king led on rebellious dukedoms. BAM. i now have a political, geographical and historical system (this evolved over several years but u get my point)

fun fact! character arcs are the exact same. e.g. one of my characters (not telling you who. u can guess) spent their childhood locked inside a manor house. usually, it was locked in a particular room. now whenever i put them in a Situation, i can tell when a plot line will or won't work on the basis of whether or not i can see their character accepting it: they wouldn't stick around the royals in the capital, for example, because all the parties make them claustrophobic. they do however have curious knowledge about goings on in the city because they spend a lot of time on the roofs.

tl;dr: how to design worlds and characters? pick a Fun Vibe and then overthink the consequences

Fantasy isn't my forte. How does one go about creating a whole world from scratch?!

[starflungwaddledee]

Uh... There is a song (with or without lyrics) that you related to Starstruck, Bandee or other character...?

ohhhh soooo sooo many!! dozens. hundreds!

i have songs for starstruck, i have songs for all my canon faves, i have songs for different individual scenes and different individual relationships and different individual story arcs.... songs for the extremely specific scenes that i see in my head. songs that i have constructed very elaborate amvs to that i will never be able to make...

i'd be happy to share some, but you might need to be a bit more specific!

edit: when i say 'more specific' i mean you could do things like "starstruck + bandee song" or "(character) angst arc" or something. i just say this because i have so many and i'd love to share some with you but this would help me to narrow it down!!

[skiddlecat]

you hate this female character for toxic behavior you would love her for if she were a man. just saying