#wanda the thaumaturge

[polvsketchbook]

*smiles at you in polish*

[hrefna-the-raven]

The Thaumaturge - favourite quotes

or at least the ones I managed to screenshot while playing^^

Of course that quote would come from Russia's greatest love machine xD

When asked if his father died of heart failure....

When asked to present himself^^

Ah yes Wiktor and Auburycy are something else^^ loved those sidequests^^

Ariel really loves Wiktor^^

Gotta love Wanda <3

Send onions, seems more reliable than the post nowadays^^

[drowningparty]

spoilers for one of the endgames but crying in wanda

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

I'd like to bring up a second the way Intersectionality works in the Thaumaturge.

The Thaumaturge is a game set in 1905 Warsaw, Tsarist Empire. It presents a universe where everything is the same but some people can be Persona Users. This is a genetic condition inherited from parent to child.

Of course Thaumaturges are a Magical Minority seen with distrust if not outright oppressed, especially in the notoriously fucked up Tsarist Russia.

You can, playing the game, see a lot of parallels with IRL discrimination in the game. At one point you find a book called "The Precepts of the Masters of Thauma" or something, which is word for word an adaptation of the Protocols of the Elders if Zion but for Thaumaturges, you find a letter by a British man talking about how superstitious easterners were, and how it was a proven fact one could "fix" Thaumaturges with a lobotomy, you see a mother force an exorcism on her Thaumaturge child for "acting up" and being weird to her because "the devil stole him from me," again a lot of parallels with real life minorities and their oppression.

Except...

The protagonist of the game is Wictor Szulski. He's high bourgeoise, his father is a rich polish businessman, his mother is the sister of a high ranking russian officer in Poland. He lives in a grand, posh house, not having to work, always settling his debt by writing a cheque his sister will pay, and the one time he committed a major crime, his father and his connection instantly bailed him out, before he started a pleasure trip to France as a teenager and then all around the world.

He is still oppressed, he is still mistrusted, he is still victim of discrimination, but the thing is, he is so high bourgeoise he has it way better than others.

Contrast Ariel Rofe or Madame Samira, two other Thaumaturges he meets. Rofe is Jewish, Samira is... I think she's Romani, the first one lives in the slums, the other has to pretend to be a Charlatan Medium just to get by.

Contrast his Non Thaumaturge Sister Ligia, who is his same social class and yet is ostracised and mistreated for her gender, for her desire to take over her father's business, for her feminist leanings.

Contrast Wanda, the Socialist Leader, and all other left leaning characters in the game calling him out for his privileged position even if you try to play him as the most socialist possible.

Contrast the Doctor, a Tatar, a Muslim, a Polish Man, a Thaumaturge who supports the first and only female doctor in Warsaw.

Contrast the Lechites, a Nationalist Polish Independence group who is trying to create a "Pure" Poland, erasing all other foreigners and minorities from it.

The game is rife with parallels to real life minorities, while also talking at length about real minorities and how that intersections with one another.

And how those minorities can also be exploited, exploited by Fear, and by Power.

And how the only way to win, truly win, is to stay united as a community, together, united, against the overwhelming weight of authoritarian power, but again without tolerating those who wouldn't tollerate us in turn.

Case in point, Wanda shooting the Lechites dead if you give her the chance, despite their alleged common goal of a free Poland, because you shouldn't exchange a tyranny with another.

[augustheart]

the state of trans characters within dc is...like...truly disheartening. 

like i know we’re all excited about jess (and rightly so, genderbend earth and all) and i know there are trans characters that dc has, believe me, i know that, i really do know that, i am a walking fucking encyclopedia for lgbt dc characters, i know the trans ones. okay? i know. but if you just open dc wiki or comic vine or whatever the hell and you look at dc’s trans characters, you will notice patterns in the negative spaces, and they’re upsetting! they really are!

i know about trans characters you probably don’t--i know about mel from american virgin, one of the surprising handful of trans characters from the vertigo imprint. (he dies.) i know about starbright, one of the surprising handful of trans characters from the vertigo imprint. (she appears in a singular issue.) i know about hilde, one of the surprising handful of trans characters from the vertigo imprint. (she is a transmisogynistic caricature.) i know, of course, about kate godwin (dead), lee serrano (written off; a Special Issue), alysia yeoh (written off), victoria october (background), porcelain (written off), ystin (written off; and with transness a recent retcon), wanda mann (dead). i know. and i know if you look at them written out like this, it might seem like a lot. you may even notice some i’ve missed. (to name a few more: ones like dr. thaumaturge. the aerie. echo. suzie su.) (a reforming vigilante, and a far background one at that. a sympathetic protagonist, i will give tom taylor that much. a literal nightmare. a transmisogynistic caricature.)

it’s not a lot. it’s not. marvel is no better, of course marvel is no better, but i’m not talking about marvel. i’m talking about dc. do you see a pattern? do you see it, if you tilt your head and squint? maybe it’s apparent. maybe you see the lack of living trans men, the lack of well-written, mainline trans women (their mere existence in dc’s comics is not some kind of privilege they hold over trans men. do you see the notations--dead, a caricature, written off. a dc tv show holding valuable representation and some characters who have fallen through intolerance’s cracks--only to be torn away later, of course--do not a presence make), the morally grey background nonbinary characters with scant appearances even when they are written well.

this isn’t to say all of these characters are bad. i like (love) many of them. i love coagula, i love porcelain, i love starbright. many of them are written well. but they are never a permanent fixture. “make your own characters instead of imagining existing ones as trans” look what happened to kate godwin. “beg for scraps of representation or you will starve” i will not let cis people pat themselves on the back for characters who die, who are Very Special Issues, who are caricatures. “they already exist, just look for them!” i know, i know, i know, i cannot stress how much i have looked, how little i have found, the way what i have found has turned out! 

i will not pretend i haven’t told others to look and they will find for the characters who i think genuinely are good--the coagulas, the aeries, the victoria octobers, the alysias, the starbrights. i love them so, so dearly. i hold them close to me because they are the best we have gotten. this isn’t to disparage the good characters. the ones written with as much compassion as possible, though sometimes a bit clumsily--i will take a hundred lee serranos over one suzie su. a hundred background victoria octobers over one hilde. even if the execution is sometimes off, the genuine desire to help make change is a sentiment to be encouraged.

but look. look at them. look how when they make us heroes, they trip and stumble over themselves--transness comes from an alternate universe, it is a slate wiped clean and shuttered away as soon as the run ends, it is something that...well...are you sure you said heroes, would you mind being a villain? (i love the morally gray characters, i do! look at my fucking url! but where the hell are all these trans heroes coming from, that people feel comfortable making so many of us villains--sympathetic and protagonistic or not?) look at how many, as i said, simply vanish from pages, whether into the aether or into a coffin. 

there has been some change. i cannot stress enough how much i love some of these characters. how well-written i think some of them are, at least in their motivations and backstory and interactions with others if nothing else. there has been change. but it’s not enough. i don’t know if it will take a major retcon for a popular character to finally give us a trans person who won’t vanish after the writer who put their all into making a new character the fans will love with their transness and not despite it. i hope it doesn’t take that. i still wait with bated breath for every new trans character, i hold and polish them like quartz crystals and i love damn near each and every one. 

but i’m so tired of it. i’m so, so tired.

the state of trans characters within dc is...truly disheartening.

[polvsketchbook]

upyr, play długość dźwięku samotności

[drowningparty]

I love wanda how many tsarists do I have to kill to impress wanda and make her forgive my sins (thaumaturge born into money)