#even when that media does include main characters of color | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tocomplainfriend · 4 months

Text

I am mad

Yup!

Bro shut up, she is white - being Latina is not a race, is an not the same as color skin. And she is a second generation immigrant too. So like... this isn't like a Salvadorian person doing a cartoon, is a daughter of Salvadorians... That grew in the USA. Being Latino doesn't mean you aren't white, you can be any race and Latino. Still wouldn't make up for the lack of representation or the existing racism. In the piece of media that's "diverse".

Salvadorian is not a race, LMAO. That's crazy- you think someone from Argentina who is white, is not white cause of their nationality??? Being Latino and having that culture does not equal a race. It's in itself a racist thing. This Latino = Race is terrible, It also comes from the idea of the "You are not Latino because you are not brown", assuming all people from Latino America are brown by default. You know how much has that happen to me? -AND MANY OTHER PEOPLE.

(I'm Latino btw)

I already have an older post about it, but - you can really see the lack of diversity in the show a lot. (Will talk about it even more other day).

Again the main thing you get is MEN, hypersexual skinny queer men (cis). You won't get to see female characters being well written, thought all the season 1 and all the episodes we got rn of season 2. All characters are skinny and similar body types and repetitive design choices. Funny enough, shows that lack of human characters still have better race-coding that helluva. (and well in hazbin you'll get POC characters that are gray, lack all ethic features... even when they are humanoid. So that is great.)

Bro you could, you imagine a character being black and having different textured hair, and you go to hell... AND EVEN THO YOU ARE HUMANOID- your hair became straight and spiky, and you are now a light gray? If you build a world like that... it just seems like the perfect racist excuse to delete ethic features out a POC character because you don't want to draw them. "Not going to a single hint of their race/culture unless it revolves on their death"... If the character became a fucking coin with dot eyes, maybe (not really, shows with no human/humanoid characters still are capable to race-code their characters). But all of these characters are humanoid- why do none of them have their different characteristics? Also, this is about a real person in the real world choosing how to design a character.

This tweet also implies that a black character when they were a life they had ethic features, but lose them when they go to hell. Which is even more fucking stupid.

If a white person with straight hair goes to hell, and their hair remains straight (assuming it has nothing to do with their death), why wouldn't there be black people with textured hair? This is dumb. This goes back to the fucking thing of "No black people in fantasy media", In the same way, it's stupid for fantasy stories to revolve around white people characteristics in fictional species and people in that world- not including all the rest of diverse human characteristics POC people have it's crazy. The biggest problem here is why the fuck all Viv's sinners characters (main characters designed by her) that are supposed to black (or mixed like Alastor) have 0 characteristic. THEY ARE HUMANOID, THEY AREN'T EVEN ABSTRACT OR AN ANIMAL OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. She didn't want to draw that nor change designs, and wanted to justify the whole concept of Alastor even using Voodou.

HOW ARE ALL THE ANGELS THAT VIV WANTS TO BE BLACK (black voice actors specified, or are race specified) HAVE NOTHING??? LIKE HELLO THE 'I'm such a nice angel character girl' HAS SPIKY STRAIGHT HAIR??? SHE IS AN ANGEL AND BLACK, WHY DIDN'T YOU DID HER HAIR TO BE CLOUDS- It's THE EASIEST SHIT YOU COULD’VE DONE.

BOOM! A FUCKING TROLL FROM A KIDS MOVIE WITH DIFFERENT HAIR. BOOM! THE FUNK TROLLS ARE SO EXPLICITLY BLACK CODED.

---

Bro, you know this whole thing of people with textured hair have to forcefully straighten their hair or wear wogs to a job... because people consider it ""Unprofessional"" cause racism? The erasure and discrimination of POC people and their features is a problem. That's why it is important to people represent all of those things:

(Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur)

The only reason of why Alas tor is even mixed is purely cause Viv used the Voodou symbols because she thought they were creepy and edgy. It's sucks that all the angels and sinners that are supposed to be black have nothing.

#vivziepop critique #vivziepop critical #helluva boss criticism #helluva boss critique #helluva boss critical #hazbin hotel critical #hazbin hotel criticism #hazbin hotel critique #anti vivziepop #antiblackness

742 notes · View notes

raven-at-the-writing-desk · 4 months

Note

Just like how kalim embodies scarabia's mindfulness in his own way, how do you think other boys embodies their respective dorms spirit?

For the sake of ease and consistency, I will be using the official TWST localization's terms for each dorm's core value.

Please note: these are my personal interpretations; even the definitions of each dorm’s “spirit” is not explicitly defined within official TWST materials, so I’ll be running with my own definitions before covering each NRC student. Additionally, since I’ll be covering 22 characters in this post I may not have time to get into painstaking detail for each one.

***Main story spoilers (including late book 7) below the cut!!***

The Queen of Hearts' Spirit of Strictness

Literally speaking, strictness refers to following rules or beliefs exactly. There is rigid enforcement of these rules or beliefs, and very few, if any, exceptions or mercy granted.

Right off the bat, it’s easy to see how Riddle aligns with the spirit of strictness. He is the embodiment the law in Heartslabyul, serving as both judge and executioner to his students. Riddle insists that the rules—no matter how nonsensical—be followed, and he does not hesitate to unleash his wrath and collar those who step out of line. He is strictness itself. Beyond book 1, we do see Riddle trying to be more patient and flexible—however, the fact remains that he upholds rules and continues to have trouble with circumstances where he has to think independently or without a set of instructions to refer to.

Trey is known for frequently indulging others and behaving in a manner which some may call kind. The twist here is that Trey’s strictness is present in the “big brother” role he adopts when dealing with his peers. He’s generally more lenient than Riddle, but Trey often alludes to the fact that he shouldn’t be underestimated or thought of as a nice guy. There are moments when Trey gives others their comeuppance for misbehaving (such as in his dorm uniform vignettes, where he deprives first years of cake for complaining about his same-y baked goods). The thing is, most don’t see it coming because he’s typically so… nice. When he wants to be stern and put his foot down, he certainly can—it just isn’t something that happens a lot, since he’s more mild-mannered than his classmates.

Cater is strict with his public image, specifically how his peers view him. This is most obviously seen in his obsession with social media. He's constantly taking pictures and posting, being heavily involved on Magicam—a space where he can control the narrative about the type of person he is and the life he has. Cater keeps up this front in real life as well, acting cheery and sociable with his classmates while masking a far less motivated and sad side to his character. (This is implied in his Lab Wear vignettes, where a mandrake he infuses with his own magic becomes gloomy and huddles into itself.) There are occasions when Cater expresses that he is lonely or that he wishes he had more friends growing up, but he never fully opens up about his true nature. He strictly keeps that part of himself locked up tight and is seemingly afraid of what others would think of that persona.

Like Cater, Deuce is strict with himself. In Deuce's case, this arises from a past of delinquency and the desire to reform and to be an honors student that his mom can be proud of. Because of these goals, Deuce tries very hard to excel in class (but often falls short) and to behave in a way that he believes honors students would. This means changing the way he looks (he let his natural hair color come back in; it used to be bleached blonde), the way he speaks (not using foul language), the way he dresses, and, most importantly, the way he acts. Of course, his temper gets the best of him at times and his delinquent self bubbles back up (like in book 1 when the eggs were ruined), and Deuce is currently working on better repressing that.

Ace is probably the most carefree and the least stereotypically "strict" of the Heartslabyul group. Instead of having a focus on enforcing rules, Ace is usually the one breaking or defying them. How, then, does he embody the Queen of Hearts' spirit of strictness? I believe it comes through in some of Ace's most iconic scenes: the ones where he is calling others out on their bull crap. Time and time again, it's Ace that is bluntly telling others what they're doing or saying is hypocritical or wrong, or that they haven't truly taken accountability. He does this no matter who he is facing, be that his own dorm leader (book 1), an undead bride (Ghost Marriage), or Malleus Draconia himself (Endless Halloween Night). Ace has his own set of morals and beliefs, and he speaks them loud and clear without imposing as harshly as Riddle does.

The King of Beasts' Spirit of Persistence

Persistence is when one continues their course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition. In other words, there is an obstacle in the way of achieving a goal, and one persists in the face of that obstacle.

Leona is a somewhat strange case to make for persistence because initially he comes off as a very lazy character. We quickly learn that though he appears unmotivated, he’s comfortable scheming and thinking multiple steps ahead to cut out difficult or unnecessary work. There’s no doubt that Leona has had a challenging childhood, feeling like he was always being compared to his brother and never recognized for his own talents. We feel the effects of Leona losing this hope as late as book 6, when Leona says that Jamil is capable of change, unlike himself. Some fans even speculate that Leona’s dialogue implies he has fallen into depression as a result of frequently being dismissed and put down in spite of his efforts to be seen. Even when Leona is dealing with such trauma, he cooks up a plot to return his dorm to glory and to support its future. He, the lowly second born prince, wants to prove himself and his team of misfits, as being worthy of respect and admiration. When the plans fall through, Leona is quick to give up (which seems to go against the idea of Savanaclaw’s persistence). However, I would say this is part of his character growth in book 2. Later in the main story, Leona also throws in the towel quickly—but it doesn’t contradict his development; he knows when to strategically retreat in book 6.

Ruggie comes from an extremely impoverished background. He has had perhaps the least “cushy” life out of the entire NRC cast. Even so, Ruggie was able to study and work hard enough to earn decent grades, get multiple part-time jobs, and pick up many useful survival skills. He’s street smart and knows that what he lacks in strength he can make up for by sticking to someone who is strong (Leona). (Their relationship is mutually beneficial!!) Ruggie knows that just having money isn’t sustainable in the long run, so he’s hauling ass now to make something of not only himself, but also for all the people in the slums.

Jack embodies persistence through the events of book 2. At first, Jack tries to get Leona to see reason by letting him know that he genuinely is a figure Jack admires. He’s put in a moral dilemma when Leona argues that even if they play dirty, he has good intentions. If Jack interferes, he is messing with the future job prospects of his dorm members. Jack wrestles with the question before ultimately coming to the conclusion that he has to tell others about it—and, what’s more, put his own pride as a lone wolf aside to confront Leona and stop to his machinations.

The Sea Witch's Spirit of Benevolence

Benevolence may refer to meaning well or general kindness and compassion. It involves a willingness to help others and caring for them.

Azul, being at the head of the operations at Octavinelle, passes himself off as a benevolent man who will listen to your woes and grant your wishes. In fact, he does—but at a price. The shady ring he’s running is NOT wholly benevolent; the deals can definitely come across as malevolent in book 3 (when Azul wrote the contracts in such a way that the loopholes could fuck clients over). The deals themselves (assuming no foul play), however, are neutral since both parties agree to the terms. Contracts are written with the idea that they will benefit the clients. And Azul is, of course, also seeking out benefits for himself, as that is the nature of business dealings.

Jade represents a kind of benevolence associated with acts of service. He’s Azul’s right-hand man and information broker—furthermore, much of how Jade presents himself alludes to being a butler or some other supportive role. Jade just generally behaves in a way which benefits others. He acts demure and servile, then uses the trust he has gained through service to ply what he wants out of others. Jade does it so sweetly and so expertly that his prey don’t usually notice, or willfully overlook it, being far too impressed by his abilities to fixate on his ulterior motives. This strategy works even on notoriously stern individuals such as Vil (Jade Dorm Uniform vignettes).

Floyd gives “free hugs” :) is… well, ironically, the “kindest” of the trio in a weird way. While this is highly dependent on his mood, the fact of the matter is that Floyd is the easiest to read in terms of “telegraphing” his actions. If he’s in a bad mood, he usually will not hide it. You know what you’re signing up for as soon as you see him. He also typically doesn’t put forth an effort to manipulate or to scheme like Azul or Jade would; Floyd would prefer to be direct and get it over with already. That, in a sense, is the mercy that he offers: something swift and plain to see.

The Sorcerer of the Sands' Spirit of Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a state of being aware of oneself and the present moment. A mindful individual can aknowledge and accept one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. Mindfulness may also extend to being aware of others and perceiving their own states of being.

Kalim is not viewed as the most intelligent or crafty of leaders, but where he shines is in his ability to welcome and to bond with his dorm mates. His emotional intelligence is extremely high, which proves itself to be a useful skill in getting to know others and to earn their trust. Kalim has made a name for himself in Scarabia because he is always there to listen and lend a helping hand to his dormmates. He is unabashedly open about his own emotions too, crying when he is sad and trying hard when he is frustrated or dissatisfied. He often asks to know what is wrong when he senses upset within his classmates and wants to do what he can to rectify those situations. This is peak mindfulness--not only is Kalim acutely aware of his own emotional state, but he's also pretty consistent with sensing those in others (the one big exception here, of course, is Jamil). Sometimes Kalim can be blindsided by his own blind faith in others or his overeagerness causing him to blurt things out unintentionally. He's definitely not perfect in this regard--however, there's plenty of room and willingness to grow and to learn (something which Kalim has expressed both in book 5 and in birthday vignettes).

Jamil more readily fits in with a less savory interpretation of mindfulness. He thinks ahead and uses what he knows of others to manipulate them or put himself in an advantageous position. This notably occurs in book 4 (when Jamil plans to use the feedback of Yuu and the Scarabia members to dethrone Kalim), as well as in events (like Beans Day, where he plans to entrap Kalim when Kalim cooks a fragrant lunch that Jamil purposefully packed for him). He uses what he notices or knows about others (Azul’s shadiness, rumors about Lilia being a bad cook) to avoid interactions which could be less than beneficial to him. Jamil’s main fault is that he fails to recognize people’s strengths (something which Leona calls him out for in book 6), and instead focuses mainly on their weaknesses, shortcomings, and how those could be exploited (mostly because he’s in a position where he cannot outright act in certain ways without suffering some consequences). Jamil is aware of these potential consequences and finds or plans workarounds for them. However, he is also mindful in a more conventional sense too. He’s usually the competent one in Scarabia’s leadership and fulfills the organizational tasks that Kalim doesn’t. The duo is like sun and moon; they balance each other out.

The Beautiful Queen's Spirit of Tenacity

Simply put, tenacity is determination and endurance. One is persistent in maintaining, adhering to, or seeking something valued or desired. Each of the members of Pomefiore knows what they want, and they are stubborn in their pursuit of it.

Vil makes it clear in book 5 that he wants to win VDC/SDC, thereby proving to himself and to the world that he is capable of more than playing the part of a “villain”. He already had high standards for himself prior to book 5 (exercising, doing skincare, maintaining a healthy diet, etc.), but you can see how single minded Vil is toward this one goal. He drives his team members hard and even cancels a major job offer from his manager so he can dedicate all his time and energy into seizing the win. And how many times has Vil lost in the past??? Countless, I bet. Yet here he is, trying again and again, even when he knows that happy endings aren’t guaranteed and his efforts may not bear fruit after all.

Rook pursues any and all things beautiful!! He used to just be content admiring beauty, but with Vil’s prompting, Rook soon also found value in beautifying himself. It means Rook can also put beauty out into the world, and helps him better appreciate other works of art. This man is infamous around campus for his… admittedly creepy and unnerving habits. He follows people around, documents them in photographs, memorizes their personal details, etc. His keen eye has also earned him praise though—Vil can comfortably rely on him for honest feedback, and Neige recognizes him as a dedicated member of his fan club. Rook is nothing if not determined and dedicated to his craft.

Epel is tenacious too, but in a way that Vil would not approve of in all circumstances. Epel is stubborn in his thinking and refuses to let go of his hometown roots. He’s very proud of where he comes from, so he puts up a fight with Vil when Vil demands that Epel address his upperclassmen more politely. Epel sees the command as a threat to himself, and a challenge to the hometown he loves. Additionally, it takes Epel a while to reevaluate his deeply ingrained views on gender norms. He’s all-around very strong-headed!

The King of the Underworld's Spirit of Diligence

Diligence is when one is involved in careful and persistent work or effort. This principle generally governs all of STYX, the blot research organization operated by the Shroud family. Their job is a thankless one—they do such important work, yet it isn’t recognized by the general public due to STYX’s secretive nature.

Idia, as the temporary acting director of STYX in book 6, gets involved in their research. There’s many Phantoms kept in the STYX facility, so there are many safety precautions in place and care taken to ensure no one is harmed. (Ironically, it was Idia’s lack of diligence that led to Ortho’s passing.) Outside of book 6, one can say that Idia has a diligent personality, at least when it comes to his hyperfixations. He becomes dedicated to media that captures his interests to the point where it actually incentivizes him to leave his room (Ghost Marriage) and overcome his meek stutter to speak confidently and lecture people (first Halloween event, his Dorm Uniform vignettes, etc.).

I believe Ortho is diligent in being Idia’s emotional support both before and after Ortho is officially recognized as a separate student. He cheers Idia on and encourages him to touch grass socialize, wishing nothing but the best for his big brother! Ortho wasn’t always like this either; he used to be quite stiff and monotone, and had to learn how to emulate emotions by carefully observing and absorbing media. His motivation in book 6 is also fueled by diligence—Ortho worries about what he can do to support Idia’s wishes, and this is ultimately what drives him to taking over STYX and unleashing the Phantoms. Then, in Fairy Gala: What If, Ortho stubbornly tries to come up with his own ideas regarding the theme of evolution rather than rely on others for answers. He works hard to developing his own concept and is able to put on a show-stopping performance with it!

The Thorn Fairy's Spirit of Nobility

To be noble can refer to strength of character, mind, and/or literal position, birth, rank, or social status. No matter which definition you go with, I think they could all apply to the members of Diasomnia.

Regarding noble status, Malleus and Silver are both princes. Lilia and Sebek may not be nobles themselves, but they (in addition to Silver) serve royalty and have close personal connections to people in high places, be it via friends or via family. Diasomnia is very well-connected.

Beyond superficial nobility, one can say that those in Diasomnia are noble in character as well. To begin with, Lilia has sacrificed himself for his country on multiple occasions. This isn’t limited to going to battle, but also ferrying his princess’s egg to safety, traveling the world for knowledge on dragon eggs, and going so far as to give up his own life force to hatch Malleus. And what does Lilia get for all of this? Banished from the capital, screamed at, shunned—all because he is a nobody, a bat of no status. Despite this, Lilia does not become bitter nor hateful, he instead opens his heart and mind to the world and seeks to instill others with the same wisdom. Through all the tragedies he suffered, Lilia rose stronger than ever rather than sinking to the same levels as the narrow minded senators that rebuked him.

Silver is, perhaps, the most overtly noble in character. He extols the virtues of listening and getting along with others, often serving as the peacemaker between parties (typically between Sebek and their peers, but we’ve also seen Silver smoothing things out between all of NRC and diurnal fae). He also assumes the best of others and is ready to leap into action to protect them at a moment’s notice. His kind and gentle nature attracts many forest animals to him, who can likely sense the purity of Silver’s heart.

Sebek’s brand of nobility isn’t geared at others in general but rather is pinpointed on one person (that being Malleus). He is noble in the sense that he dedicates himself to his prince. It’s no secret that practically everything Sebek does is to “live up” to perceived standards so as to not shame Malleus or the Draconia royal family—from doing well academically to dressing neatly and throwing himself into training… Sebek’s passion and eagerness is what makes him stand out. It could also be said that he fiercely defends his friends and those who have earned his respect (albeit maybe not worded in the most tactful ways). That, too, in a sense, is honorable.

Finally, we have Malleus. What can be said about him that hasn’t already been said? He is the prince of a nation, so there are many people looking to him for leadership. As such, Malleus must always conduct himself in a manner that puts his country’s best face forward and expects the same of others. Indeed, he reprimands Sebek for behaving in poor taste and instructs him to apologize to Leona, the prince of another nation. However, what is most telling about Malleus is his impetus for Overblotting. He deludes himself into thinking “this is what is best for everyone”. In his mind, he frames forcing everyone into dream states so they can stay forever and have their happily ever afters as the “good” and “noble” thing to do. He’s definitely not doing this for himself, he argues, it’s a gift for everyone. And throughout book 7, Malleus tries to gaslight others into this belief too 💀 when bro’s already convinced himself of this and refuses to see otherwise—

536 notes · View notes

piratecaptainscaptainpirates · 3 months

Text

There's definitely a conversation to be had about the presentation of real historical figures in historical fiction, I think. As both a professional historian (PhD student 🤘🏾😔) and a man of color, I'm a bit more sensitive to this than a lot of people, and for me it always comes down to the question - what real harm is being done here?

And that's where I think OFMD does well enough for me to be comfortable. If you look at the fact that the show is based on real-life terrible people who did awful things and participated in the slave trade and you don't wanna fuck with the show, that's completely understandable, but I find it so much more palatable than (for the easy comparison) a piece of media like Black Sails (I actually like Black Sails, believe it or not, but there are a lot of things about how it treats many of these same figures that make me uncomfortable).

Now, yes, OFMD is hand-wavey with the slave trade in the Caribbean. None of our main characters own slaves or directly reference the slave trade (again, this is a romcom, I'd be shocked if they did). For me, this works alright for two big reasons. First, there are things that I think you can include in a romcom and have it still be a romcom, and a thoughtful, respectful depiction of the slave trade would take the show firmly out of romcom territory. Second, the show doesn't pretend racism doesn't exist, it treats its characters of color as three-dimensional people, and we always get the last laugh when racism is depicted. The very first episode sets the scene by having racist English Navy officers demean and call a Black character "slave" and they immediately get their asses kicked for it. Compare this to a show like Black Sails, where one of my main criticisms is how we're expected to sympathize with characters who actively participate in the slave trade and own slaves.

My other thing here is the people OFMD is working with are both heavily mythologized and not treated with any degree of historical accuracy. Many of our characters who are famous pirate names you might know are nothing like their real-world counterparts (take pirate queen Zheng Yi Sao, who wasn't even born yet when the show takes place). We know so little about any of the real people, anyway, that OFMD doesn't even bother trying to get anything right.

Like I said, I'm a professional historian and I love working with the golden age of piracy. That's a big reason I was drawn to this show in the first place! And if there's one thing I know, it's that pirates have been made into legends. We know very little about the real people, and in pop culture they're just myths.

The characters in OFMD are basically fictional characters working with the loose mythology based around the real people.

Now, back to my big thesis here: are the real, awful people benefitting in any way from OFMD taking these characters and making them into the good guys? Realistically, no, I'd argue. Most people with any critical thinking skills know that real pirates were not good people. Many people think Blackbeard is a made-up generic pirate character as it is. I've been to the real-life Stede Bonnet's grave site (NOT for the show, this was years before it aired and I was visiting the archives there to see the trial documents for a research project), and the historic marker there says he was "brought to justice." No one is wataching this show and thinking "oh those real guys must have been pretty great dudes!" because it's not about those real people.

This show isn't trying to change your perception of the real people, it's showing you fictional characters with the same names. One of our characters is runnig around in crocs, this show isn't trying to teach you about history or the real people and it's obvious.

If you're put off by the premise, I get it! But I just don't buy the idea that OFMD is putting anything harmful into the world just by existing.

#ofmd #our flag means death

529 notes · View notes

autumnslance · 2 months

Text

Normally I'd agree many Final Fantasy games have rather young protagonists. It's because they're usually single-player JRPGs made with the assumption of younger players, and like most Young Adult media, create characters that cater to that, even if it ends up with teens running the world and fighting in wars. And for many players, the first time playing these games is in childhood/adolescence/very young adulthood. So it's YA anime.

Final Fantasy XIV does not fall into that same mold, despite the "Teen" rating for legal and distribution purposes.

The majority of the FF14 cast, including the bulk of the main characters, are between 20 and 40 years old (the Scion Archons, Ishgard Elf Husbands). Many other characters are between 40 and 80 (Ishgard's Counts are all late middle aged to elder dads/grandpas, Gaius is mid 50s, Jehantel and Ran'jit are elderly, all still active). The younger characters (especially with any authority or special position) like the Leveilleur twins, are actually outliers. And the youth of the characters between 16 and 20 years old tends to be plot relevant, where that inexperience and naivety causes problems and drives story (Nanamo's arc at the end of ARR into HW, Alphinaud and the Crystal Braves, Ryne's determination of self in ShB, etc).

Characters have a variety of appearances; some characters in the same age ranges look very different. Varis is only 4 years older than X'rhun but Varis's model shows the stress and disagreeableness of his life a lot more than the RDM trainer's. Cid's in his mid-30s but with the beard looks older--and without it he has a baby face (hair color doesn't matter, cuz they do keep the anime trope of "everyone's got white or silver hair"). Lalafell are designed to be anime-cute halflings so it's hard to tell their adult ages even if they've got facial hair like grandfatherly Papashan. The pad'jal of course look like kids, but the youngest main pad'jal is A-Ruhn in his late teens; all the others are adults stuck in adolescent bodies. E-Sumi is a few hundred years old. Kan-E uses various methods to look older so other leaders and people from outside Gridania will take her seriously as an adult. The padjal introduced in the StB WHM quests is a child, and that's the plot; she's not in charge of anything, or has any particularly advanced-for-her-age skills. She's just a kid having a really rough time.

This inability to determine age by looking and assuming isn't just due to limits of the game engine and character creation options; it reflects real life. I met my work team for the first time in person recently; one person looked older than I know them to be, thanks to months of stress and health issues. While all of them were shocked to remember I'm in my 40s as according to them, I "look much younger". Most people are actually pretty bad at guesstimating ages based on appearance, due to the variety of folks' lives.

Speaking of kid characters, many of the children we interact with, like the Doman Adventurers, are between 12 and 14 and act much younger. Khloe has this going on too, with her age "corrected" to 13 (when previously listed as 10), but she acts way younger to me. Most of the actual child characters are treated like children, and it's not until they get to 14-16 (Honoroit, Leveva) that we start to see them treated like maturing adolescents and having some rsponsibilities, but still young and prone to the kind of choices one expects of less experienced and more emotional youth.

As a MMO, FF14's primary audience is actually adults; teens do play the game, but also age up with it if they keep playing. If a 15 year old began playing with ARR's release, they're in their mid-20s now. Having a primarily adult cast, and treating child characters like children, and adolescents like young people figuring out how young adulthood works, makes sense for this game.

FF14's time bubble is also part of the issue; a developer tool to keep it so they don't have to worry too much about character ages, new models so often, or how long things take in game. Timelines are then intentionally left malleable for the players' benefits, to create our own stories and determine how long things take for our WoLs and their tales. Some folks have their stories pass in real time, some compress it to a year per expac, some expand it out even longer. So the ages the characters have listed in the lorebooks and rarely in game (which is then reflected in online resources), is a starting baseline. Personal headcanons as always should be applied (including changing around some character ages to fit one's own story if necessary).

Also, FF16, made by the same team, has a brief prologue/tutorial section where the main trio is between 10 and 15, guided/trained by adult characters, experience the inciting incident trauma--and then we spend the majority of the game with the main cast in their 20s and 30s. The game also has a mature rating, featuring some sexual situations, lots of violence, and stronger language than other FF games. It's made for adults, and its cast reflects that.

So it is a matter of audience expectations; for a MMO, you're going to have an older and aging player base, and the varied ages of the cast reflect that, as do their varied appearances and experiences as adults. The young characters are treated closer to how their youth should be; still with respect for those in positions like Nanamo, but also prone to errors due to inexperience that drive story. In other FF titles, which were made to be more YA-focused, a teen and young 20s cast were treated much differently. But even in the single-player FF titles, if they are made with adult players in mind, their cast and stories likewise reflect that.

#final fantasy xiv #audience #time bubble #ages #aging #cast #gang's all here #literary analysis #I agree most FF games don't have main casts outside the teens but there's reasons for that #and one can't really fit FF14 into that same mold when the cast is this large and varied #yes this is kinda in response to another post but not putting them on blast

154 notes · View notes

fernsnailz · 10 months

Note

Not sure if you’re familiar with Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time but I feel like Sonic Prime is the animated version of that game like the plot/style doesn’t really fit Sonic games while Crash both stays in that arcade jungle setting AND has the shattered time and space themes which they focus heavily on the recent game. The villains already are a bunch of scientists and I feel like either the team from Crash games or someone specific like Nicholas Cole just slapped Sonic Prime on the script for a Crash Netflix show and edited some characters

okay i understand the point you’re trying to make, but unfortunately you sent this ask to someone who works in animation and i need to set the record straight here: that is not how TV animation works

first, you’re right that Nicholas Kole worked on both Crash 4 and Sonic Prime! he’s also done work for the Spyro series, some Disney projects, and a bunch of other cool stuff. however, he specializes almost entirely in character design and concept art. this means that he helped develop specific parts of the visual look for Prime REALLY early on, such as designing some of the characters like Knuckles the Dread. however, that was likely the extent of his involvement in the show. character designers and concept artists normally do not edit the script, and often these artists draw their concepts before the script is even finished.

this is all stuff that happens VERY early in a show’s development, so Kole’s work on the show is probably multiple years old by now. and yeah, that jungle art DOES look a bit like the stuff that he did on Crash 4… because that’s just what Kole's art style looks like. he uses bright colors and varied shapes in a really distinct way on EVERY project he works on, which is probably why they hired him on Prime!

but even if that concept art was inspired by Crash, the jungle universe doesn’t even look like the concept art in the final version of the show! because it was concept art!! it was meant to be an exploration in styles, not a definitive look at the final product. this jungle below is a COMPLETELY different look than what was explored in the concept art. it sooooorta looks like the style of Crash 4, but it's FAR different from the initial concepts presented earlier.

(any person who modeled and painted this environment would ALSO have to be a dedicated Crash fan if they wanted to just turn Sonic Prime into Crash Prime)

and so far, this is completely ignoring the fact that the jungle concept art included in the ask probably isn't even Kole's. it looks very different from his style to me, and as far as i can find no artist has actually been credited for the leaked Prime concept art floating around. Kole has only mentioned his contributions to the character designs on Prime.

this is all a HUGE tanget from the actual argument you're trying to make in this ask, and i apologize for that - but my main point here is that this is a trend i see a lot in online fandoms, where people really like to place blame for issues in media onto one specific person and say "hey it's THIS guy's fault that this show is bad." what a lot of people don’t seem to understand is that these are collaborative art forms. there are so, so many people who worked on Prime, all the way from the first draft of the script to when it was being exported for Netflix, and a lot of these people probably don’t even show up in the credits! if there’s something you don’t like about this show, it’s unfair to single out a specific person to blame because TV shows are not made by one person. they come from a team of artists all working together to try and make something great, not one of the concept artists trying to turn the new sonic show into Crash 5. Nicholas Kole is a single character designer that worked on Prime. he is not solely responsible for an artstyle that you may dislike, because he is not the only person that developed the artstyle. there is no specific person to blame here.

regardless, i can’t really say much about your main point concerning the similarities between Crash 4 and Prime because i don't know as much about Crash series. my instinct is to just go “yeah of course they’re similar, multiverse stories with brightly colored rocks are the big trend in all franchises right now and they’re both 3D platformers from similar eras of gaming that have always featured cartoon talking animals fighting evil scientists, so of course they’ll seem alike.” but hey i mean what do i know

that's all, please know that this isn't meant to be an attack against you or anything! i'm just really used to seeing people blame individual artists and animators for stuff that isn't their fault, and i'm just. kinda tired of it. i will also spare you from my second ramble/disagreement about a sonic game or show in the crash style. because i think that would look fuckin INCREDIBLE

#blease.. if you're going to critique an animated project then have a basic understanding of how the animation pipeline works #hello welcome to my nicholas kole defense post in this essay i will explain how animation for TV is made #fernasks #long post

167 notes · View notes

lurkingshan · 7 months

Note

Since you've watched a lot of kdrama, what are common things you've seen in kdrama that have been consistently ported into K-BL, and what is your assessment of that approach?

Ooh, interesting question. So first, let's acknowledge a few things:

Korean bl is short format, with even the longest shows (Light on Me, The Eighth Sense) not even half the length of a standard kdrama (16-20 hours), and most clocking in around 2-4 hours

Kbl operates under much smaller budgets and significant constraints around casting as compared to mainstream kdrama

Kbl often draws from webtoons and manwha and mostly does not have the kind of auteur writers and directors behind it that you get in kdrama (Hwang Da-Seul is the most consistent creator in genre with Where Your Eyes Linger, Blueming, To My Star)

All that said, there are a few features of mainstream kdrama that have definitely ported over into kbl despite these constraints:

Slick production values and strong use of setting and color: even the cheapest kbls still look decent, and there is always intentionally behind the setting and use of color palettes to set the tone and feel. Korea has a very well-developed film industry and it shows. Color Rush, Semantic Error and Blueming were fantastic examples of this: even within more familiar school romances, the settings felt specific and the use of color to communicate character and themes was striking. I also think often of Our Dating Sim and Choco Milk Shake and the very effective characterization work achieved through design of the apartments.

Sound production and music on point: the home of kpop is not going to be caught sleeping on the OSTs. Nearly every production has original songs and given the leads of these shows are usually idols, they're often the ones on the tracks. And when they use music that is not original, like in The Eighth Sense, it's a very intentional choice to set mood and tone. Korea is not going to let a boy who can't actually sing take the mic (*side eyes Thailand*). To My Star is a great example of memorable OSTs even in a fairly low budget production, and Wish You and Sing My Crush showed us what kbl can do when it decides to bring the full kpop treatment to bear.

A keen understanding of the international audience: kdrama production is a big part of South Korea's explicit goals to take the global media landscape by storm, and kbl is included in that. It's not a coincidence that Korea decided to step up its game in this arena shortly after Thai bl exploded (shoutout to 2gether and pandemic lockdowns). Kbl follows trends and explicitly caters to international audiences in a way jbl does not. The Eighth Sense was basically a case study in marrying kdrama sensibilities and western aesthetics for maximum international attention.

Second leads and valorization of unrequited love: you and I have discussed this one a lot because this is a feature of kdramas that will never die and that kbls also clearly love. Korea loves a one-sided love story and culturally, there is a certain dignity afforded to owning your feelings and being honest with the object of your affection, even when there is no hope of reciprocation. Often second leads don't get the guy/girl because they hesitate or hide their feelings until it's too late: the trope is used to underline the important of honesty and effort as well as providing a catalyst for the main lead to make their move. In Korean culture, the trying is what matters much more than the succeeding. We are meant to like most second leads and see them as honorable and dignified for their sincere feelings toward the protagonist. Second lead syndrome is a thing for a reason. It's also just a cheap and easy way to create drama so you'll often see it in the lower budget kbls. Second leads showed up recently in kbls like The Tasty Florida, Jun & Jun, Oh! Boarding House, Bon Appetit, etc. We also sometimes see kbls playing with the idea of unrequited love in the main pairing that is actually requited, like in Our Dating Sim.

Love triangles: relatedly, Korea loves them a love triangle, and they are uniquely good at doing it well when they want to. Light on Me is a fantastic example of a narrative where you can legitimately see the protagonist liking and ending up with both the main and second lead. And that is rooted in the way the narrative treats Daon with dignity even as it punishes him for his hesitation in reciprocating Taekyung's feelings (see above). When you have a strong second lead who engenders real sympathy with the audience, love triangle excellence is achieved.

Workplace romances: kdrama loves workplace romances, and we have seen kbl start to move into that space recently with shows like Roommates of Poongdock 304, Love Mate, Our Dating Sim, Jun & Jun, and The New Employee. Kdrama workplace romances run the gamut, but they often feature chaebol characters paired with a "normal" aka not wealthy person, and we are starting to see that more in the bl genre as well, as we discussed a bit yesterday. I believe @nieves-de-sugui commented on your post about how the rich/poor romance fantasy trend in recent bl may be coming in from kdrama. I think there's some truth to that, but really it's a foundational romance trope that predates kdrama by literal centuries, and is absolutely rooted in heteronormative patriarchal dynamics that assume men are breadwinners and caretakers for women (translated to seme/uke dynamics in bl). Often in kdrama the chaebol character is unable to live an authentic life due to the demands of filial piety and the expectations tied to their wealth, and I do think that dynamic is ripe for enrichment when you layer on gay identity in a homophobic society. But that requires shows leaving the no homophobia bubble, which few kbls have done.

Physical intimacy squarely in the middle space: comparing to heat levels we see across the spectrum of dramas, I think kdrama and kbl are pretty consistent in that they tend to land right in the middle of the spectrum. It's rare to see straight up dead fish kisses from romantic leads anymore (though it still happens, wincing at Unintentional Love Story), but they are also not going to be serving authentic sex scenes. What you get instead is very pretty open-mouthed kissing that feels more realistic than, for instance, the pure jbl lane, but still polished and aesthetically pleasing. Think Semantic Error, Blueming, Roomates of Poongdock 304, Love Mate, To My Star 2, Jun & Jun. This seems to be where the genre is landing and I don't expect heat levels to get any higher for kbl, as this is right in line with mainstream kdrama. The Eighth Sense offered a less polished version of intimacy that felt right in line with its grittier sensibilities.

So, after that long list, on to your second question: my assessment of this approach is that kbls are doing fairly well for themselves when you consider the constraints they are operating under. Look at a show like Love Tractor stacked up against something like Hometown Cha Cha Cha. These are both based in the classic romance trope of a city slicker coming to the country and falling in love with a humble working person. But where HCCC has 16 hours to build a quasi-enemies to lovers narrative with a rich community of side characters, LT has 3.5 hours to achieve the same thing. So it makes sense that it would fall back on well-worn tropes and story beats it knows the audience will recognize to help save time. These shortcuts help the audience ground themselves and get invested in the stories quickly.

One thing I'll say is that kbl mostly stays in the romcom lane with very occasional ventures into melo, and despite what casual observers think, kdrama actually has a lot more to offer than that. It's a giant world with stories based in every possible genre, tone, and style, and Korean media is particularly adept at embedding romance plots that actually work in all kinds of stories including action thrillers, horror, crime narratives, mysteries, supernatural and fantasy epics. I'd love to see kbl try this, though of course it would require the resources and runtime to do it successfully. Here's hoping they get the chance.

#bestie i hope you wanted a dissertation #because i have zero chill on this topic #kdrama #korean bl #shan answers

86 notes · View notes

a-weird-cryptid · 1 year

Text

Exactly one week ago, I visited France for a day. I'm extremely bad at French, even though I've been learning it in school for 4 years by now. But when I saw this comic, I immediately fell in love with it and I just HAD to buy it.

So here's a little review of the graphic novel so far!

The art style is simple, yet gorgeous and really effective at expressing what's going on. And the colors are extremely vibrant, working together to create a wonderful harmony. Page one alone is a good example for that.

The story is, without spoilering too much, about a teenage girl going to a new high school, while struggling with mental health issues. Said, can be interpreted as undiagnosed DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder). It shows real life issues and scenarios that people with this rare dissociative disorder can find themselves in. And it does that in a very simple and easy to understand way as well. (The fact that they used the main character's hair to be able to seperated the different alters by just looking at them helps a lot as well. Though canonically in the story they of course don't change) Even in French. But I think this comic is also available in English.

I really like to see that something like DID finally has some representation outside of movies like "Split". And I'd love to see more good representation like this comic. Because representation matters!

I can't objectively judge how accurate this representation is, though, since I'm not in a position to do so. But based of my own research, it's so far pretty realistic.

I'm about half way through it (no spoilers please!) and I'll prob review the second half when I'm done reading the comic. So far, these are my fav panels/pages.

(Little spoiler warning of course)

For anyone's who's interested about learning more about DID or mental health in general:

I can highly recommend watching Sci Show Psych, Patrick Teahan LICSW and, for German speakers, psychologeek. All of which can be found on YouTube and partly even other social medias.

And of course, reading scientific papers (using Google's filter option) about those topics or even the DSM-5 (which can be downloaded for free on the internet) can never hurt. Just make sure to use good and reliable source. And always be a bit sceptic when reading things on the internet.

Edit/Update (though I might include this since this post is still getting likes, etc): The second volume of Elles seems to be, from what I've heard, pretty misinformative about DID. For more on this, see this ask I answered.

For more reviews, discussions, original stories/series and more, check out my master list of series.

#can anybody tell me why the French have so many different beautiful looking comics in general?#like how dare they to write so gorgeous looking things in a language so hard to understand and learn?#if you think germans count weird you haven't seen how french people do it #wanna know what's 91? it's 'quatre vingt onze' literally transled 'four twenty eleven'#yes you read that right #they literally start doing maths at some point just to count stuff (4×20+11=91)#mental health #did osdd #comic books #art #elles comic #elle(s)#mental heath awareness #aveline stokart #kid toussaint

196 notes · View notes

squishfest · 1 month

Text

Hello hello!!! My official blog intro because I felt like making one to explain my deal here and what for people to expect because I have nothing better to do E)

Link to my non-agere main - https://www.tumblr.com/screwboltz

Link to my non-agere board account - https://www.tumblr.com/boltzboards

Hello!!! My name is Lars! Or you can call me Fest, by my Tumblr tag!! :3

🚓I am a diagnosed autistic sixteen year old in my big age!

🚑 I am an age regressor, and my little age is exactly seven years old!!!

🚇My pronouns are He/Him, I am a boy, and my neopronouns are Volt/Voltz/Voltage!!!

🛺I am very masculine in my style, I style myself with more of an 80's jock-like clothing style! Meaning lots of bandanas, old band tees, jeans and converse-style sneakers! I even have a shag mullet-esque haircut!!

🚂I enjoy a lot of things! Mostly robots, hockey, soccer, machinery, metal and nu-metal music!

🚚I grew up in the outer suburbs with my grandpa and other men in my family, such as brothers, cousins, uncles, and more. So I'm quite masculine, alot different from usual age regressors!! And my regression comes as a form of comfort from having to grow up too fast in a setting where I had to take care of younger family members while I was still in elementary school!!!

🛻I can be very rowdy and overly excited with a lot of things! I've always been a bright colors and outdoorsy boy :]

🏈This blog is made to be an escape account for me whenever I'm feeling down or just bored! I won't always be regressing when I post, but sometimes I might be!

🏒As a primarily masculine regressor, most of my posts will fit into more stereotypically masculine-boy themes!!! But of course I will here-and-there make posts with softer/more feminine themes!! But I'm a boy and I just love robots and destruction!!!

⚽I will make primarily stimboards and moodboards, but once in awhile I may upload ramble posts about my interests and other subjects, but all will always be SFW!!

⚾I can take any kinds of asks!!! Wether it's simple questions, moodboards and stimboard requests, or just simple conversation starters! They will always be open, but that doesn't mean I'll always automatically respond! If I don't answer yours within a month, it's most likely because I didn't want to/didn't feel comfortable to!

🤖The biggest one, quite obviously, Transformers!!!

🔩Furry fandom!

🛸Cookie run, oven break & kingdom

🚀Alot of metal bands, but most notebly: Fear Factory, Powerman 5000 & Static-X!!

⚙️Funkeys

🔨Pokémon

🔗Object show community, multiple shows!!

Requests I will happily accept!!:

🦅Stimboards, moodboards, and maybe outfit boards!!

🦘Regressor and/or Caregiver themed character boards!

🐐 Agere/caregiver drawings of fictional characters!!

🐄Any child-based medias!

🐕Petregressor/petdreamer based requests

🐎Requests for fandoms I am not apart of!

🐒Character themed boards with more than one character

🐖Boards of oc's, fictional characters, songs/bands, animals, toys, and more!

Requests I will not do!!:

🐊Boards based around 18+ media and graphic 13+ even with regressor/caregiver themes! ((Aka no hazbin hotel/helluva boss, Southpark, Stranger things, The Walking Dead, most horror media, etc.))

🦕No themes with triggering topics!

🦖Absolutely NO KINK/NSFW!! This is a child-friendly blog, AND I MYSELF am a minor in my big age!!

🐢No themes of real people who have not given permission to be requested/included in agere areas! This does not include music bands.

If you're request doesn't fall under the no-do list and hasn't been replied to in over a month, it's most likely for a personal reason!

12 notes · View notes

psalmsofpsychosis · 2 months

Text

So, i finished watching Batman (2022). Long story short, it's wonderful. The cinematography and the atmosphere are simply impeccable, it's got one of the best productions i have seen in blockbuster superhero movies in the last decade. The flow of the movie is perfectly executed and choreographed; it's a truly seamless visual experience, eye candy to the bone, and the story is intriguing and lovely and pleasing to the senses too. It's a reasonably well made movie.

It also does quite remind me of my main point of disdain towards live action Batman depictions post-Batman&Robin, which is, i think fellas take Batman way too seriously.

Listen, the guy walks around with fucking pikachu ears on for fucks sake. I dont think that straight up looney tunes comic relief is the right flavour to put in the live action batmanverse blender, even though it has the potential to be incorporated very well, but. There's a certain quality of offbeat, paculiar weirdness to Batman, a quality of almost playful and offputting bizarre wit, there always has been. He's got a fucking sith pikachu mask on. It's very human, very endearing almost. it's an element of imagination and wonder which is something Bruce Wayne has, even when it's corrupted to only include doom and gloom scenarios.

and the comics successfully translate that subtle wit and uncomfortable quality of all the characters, including Batman, by incorporating acidic colors, borderline hallucination-esque imageries, warped character designs, the whole thing feels like the worst acid trip you've ever had in an alley behind a bar and that's how the tone carries. It's how the worldbuilding and the characters feel congruent and authentic. The colors also give Batman a dynamic personhood by depicting his unceremonious humanity as much as they buff him up. There's a fun and gore-ish, psychopathic sincerity to the comics.

and the movies absolutely take that element out and all you get is the most "just some guy" artless character depictions and Batman himself doesn't feel human. he is written way too seriously for a guy who has pikachu ears and wears his underwear on his pants.

And this is by no means a Batman (2022) problem; it's a persisting trend of live action superhero media progressively stripping their stories of heart and soul because executive fellas have cought the "THIS IS A BIG FUCKING DEAL!!!!! EVERYTHING IS SO SERIOUS HERE!!!!!" disease and think giving superhero narratives their color and humanity back somehow makes them less poignant and significant. There's no sense of dynamism and wit to the batman movies, and the tone and atmosphere of Batman (2022) is fucking gorgeous, it's a singular experience, but it feels so out of place with Batman. It feels like Batman's costume belongs to another movie entirely, something more playful and weird.

#Emphasising that this is not a criticism of The Batman (2022). I love the movie and i geniunely appreciate what it accomplished #on both aesthetical and narrative fronts. It's a very good movie #i guess i'm just tired of the grimdark #this piece is also probably influenced by me having entered Batmanverse from the ass-end of it also known as Gotham TV #but Gotham deeply contextualises Batman as an identity #because they hone in on Bruce's morbid sense of wonder and curiosity so much #that by the time he becomes Batman you're certain that there's a fucked up child living inside his head #and that child likes to have weird fun and get in trouble #i mean #bro how are you gonna throw ''they think i come from the shadows; but i am the shadows'' dialogue at me without acknowledging #even the least bit of irony and play. like cmon sith pikachu is talking #anyway #yeah #comics remain the superior superhero-centric media #save Gotham series. the only live action Batman portrayal that had the grace of not taking itself too damn seriously #Batman #batman (2022)#Batman meta #sort of??

8 notes · View notes

thankskenpenders · 2 years

Text

Comic-Con has come and gone! It’s been an exciting time for Sonic comic fans with news about the upcoming Scrapnik Island miniseries, a live mural painting from Adam Bryce Thomas, Gigi Dutreix, and co., and more. Also, Penders was there

For a while now Penders has been saying that SDCC 2022 would be where he released the new hardcover reissue of Mobius: 25 Years Later with an added extra chapter and a few names changed, now packaged as The Lara-Su Chronicles: Beginnings. (Before anyone asks: yes, he has the rights to rerelease his old Archie Sonic stories following the lawsuit, and yes, he says he’s going to pay the artists royalties. Kudos to him for that, at least.) While I take every creative endeavor the guy announces on Twitter with a massive grain of salt for obvious reasons, I thought this one might have some small hope of actually happening because it’s mostly just a collected volume of some comics that already exist and not a whole new graphic novel

So, did that happen?

Nope!

But he did show off a new build of the iOS-exclusive The Lara-Su Chronicles motion comic app, which is the main way he plans on releasing these things. He’s shared a few new videos on Twitter, too, so let’s take a look at those. This is what he’s been working on all these years

Let’s tackle these in chronological order. First up: the M25YL “remaster.” (I'm just linking directly to the original tweet because Tumblr won't let me upload more than one video.)

From that first page it's immediately obvious that the hand lettering is gone, replaced with a font. Between the few character names changed to maintain consistency with TLSC and the many translations he's doing, digital lettering is probably just easier on that front. I won't knock him too much for that, although the fact that he kept the same random words bolded is funny to me

No, what really knocks me on my ass here is when we get to the second page and we see that the new motion comic format and the need to show more of the backgrounds means that not even this "remaster" is safe from Ken's horrible fucking photo backgrounds. Here's a direct comparison of how he ruined this panel, originally drawn by Steven Butler and colored by Jason Jensen:

I should add in here that I don't hate the use of photo backgrounds on principal. You can do some really cool things with mixed media! As is true of basically everything in art, any technique can be cool if it's used with the right intent. I was a Homestuck reader in its heyday, and it made cool use of color-altered photo landscapes and images taken straight off the internet mixed with the cartoony characters and original elements. But this is not that. This isn't trying to be mixed media or alternative or counterculture or whatever, it's just a shoddy attempt to save time on a hamfisted tribute to Silver Age comics

It's also worth noting that Angel Island, which looks extremely tiny here, is in fact the same shitty image Penders has been using as his personal logo for years

Next up, an excerpt from The Storm, the prologue chapter starring Geoffrey that will be included with the rerelease of M25YL. He's been posting previews of this for years

This one also has voice acting! Bad voice acting!

When asked what happened to Geoffrey's signature accent, Penders said that he only had access to an American actor, and that he'd rather not have him use a fake accent. The audio is apparently also temporary, although how much will or won't be changed in the full release is impossible to predict. Either way, the wooden voice acting does Ken's typically clunky dialogue zero favors here, and it continues to baffle me that he thinks all of these motion comic bells and whistles are somehow worth all the added time and effort when it's been over a fucking decade and he still hasn't released the first of seven planned volumes

Also noteworthy here is that we actually see the point where the timeline-altering energy wave or whatever hits? I guess? I assume that's what's happening, because the art style deliberately changes from Ken's best approximation of what he thinks Archie Sonic looked like (which already isn't great, although the dog girl is almost kinda cute) to his new style for TLSC, which. God. Look at that profile view of Geoffrey

Lastly we have a preview of the opening of The Lara-Su Chronicles: Shattered Tomorrows, AKA the actual first volume of the series. It's the scene of Lara-Su walking on the beach and shedding a single tear over how Knuckles is dead, as one does

It's not as noticeable in the video, but I need to link to the full res version of the shot of Lara-Su sitting on the rocks so you can appreciate how truly fucking horrendous the jpeg artifacting is. At the risk of referencing Homestuck too many times in one post, this is truly some Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff level shit. I don't know how he did this

And, at the very end we have a special guest appearance from the one, the only... the unlicensed likeness of Anthony Mackie that he is still fucking using for this character. Despite his appearance changing slightly in other art, this page still very much just uses a redraw(?) of Mackie's IMDB profile photo

And that's it! If you've been following the updates on this project for years like I have, you may have noticed something

None of these pages are actually new!

I'm pretty sure we've seen every single one of these before. Some of them are from years ago. If there's actual new material in this preview build of the app beyond the addition of speech bubbles to some of these pages, it's not present in these videos. Penders says that his next priority after recharging from the con will be releasing TLSC Beginnings (the M25YL rerelease + that Geoffrey chapter), but it's hard for me to believe he's anywhere close to releasing anything in the state these previews are in, unless he's secretly sitting on a whole bunch of pages that he just didn't want people to read for free at his con table

As usual, though, Penders claims that the responses from Comic-Con attendees were positive, particularly in comparison to the constant dunking he's subjected to on Twitter. People were even buying his prints. (He also posted a photo of Karl Bollers visiting his table. I don't know what Bollers thought about the app.) My kneejerk reaction is that I find this kind of hard to believe, but it's also like... I dunno, people are just generally going to be polite at a con, nine times out of ten. Most people are not going to walk up to someone at an artist alley and be like "hey bro your prints look like dogshit." It isn't the place for that. They don't wanna cause a scene by getting into an argument in the middle of their expensive con trip. I also don't doubt that there are a lot of people out there who probably see the old Archie Sonic comics he always has for sale at cons and go "oh hey I've heard of that" or "oh I read some of those as a kid!" and then realize he was one of the writers and wish him luck on his new endeavors, blissfully unaware of decades of obscure Sonic drama. And while it's well documented that I don't like the guy or his work, I don't think that's a bad thing! People are allowed to be polite to him. I do not want him to get pelted with fucking tomatoes every time he goes outside

But the thing is, most of the feedback the guy's getting is either polite well-wishing within the context of a busy convention, or people spamming him with pictures of Donkey Kong and telling him to retire on Twitter. And so he's shutting out the latter, and taking the fact that people aren't beating his ass in the QRTs at the SDCC show floor as a sign that he's on the right track, and that Twitter is just full of haters looking for ammo

And like. He's not wrong on that last point! People blame him for all sorts of shit he didn't actually do and take many things wildly out of context and spam his replies for fun

But Jesus Christ, my guy. You've been working on these comics for a decade and the art looks like this

#tkp post

213 notes · View notes

writingwithcolor · 2 years

Text

Adding a Black Woman to a Small Human Cast With Many Aliens

@blazednarancia69 asked:

Half Alien Black Princess

I’m working on the early stages of a comic idea and I was wondering if you had any tips for people struggling to be as inclusive as they want when they have a small cast to work with- it’s a SciFi piece, and my story involves a lot of alien/human interaction, and there are really only 4-5 ‘main characters’ that are fully human. While they’re all POC, I’ve realised that my main human cast lacks any Black women.

There is a Black man in the main cast, and there are some secondary/tertiary Black women characters who show up throughout the story. One of the other main characters is a half-human, half-alien princess who is a dark skinned Black woman, but I don’t want to contribute to the existing trend of a ton of SciFi casting WOC and Black women in particular in exclusively alien roles but not including them in the human cast.

My proposed solution: Black lesbian and Black Mexican women characters, Black character works for the Black-coded Alien princess

A lot of my human characters are from the American southwest (California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, etc), and several of my main human cast have Mexican-American heritage. Two of them are adult siblings, an older brother and a younger sister, with a white dad and a Mexican-American mom. I decided a while ago that I wanted their mom to end up with a girlfriend/wife (in either a healthy polyamory way or a divorce way, NOT a cheating way, to be clear), and I’ve always pictured the girlfriend as a Black lesbian in STEM with a caffeine addiction and a cool shoulder tattoo- I’m thinking, now, that it would make sense to have her be the younger sister’s other bio mom. That way, I have a mixed Black & Mexican woman in the main human cast, plus I get to include a blended family that has half/stepsiblings with a healthy, positive dynamic, which is super important to me as someone who grew up never seeing families like mine except in ‘evil stepfamily’ situations.

Light skin and dark skin power dynamics

That ‘solution’ does make me worried about running into issues with the half-alien princess being darker skinned than the human woman; even though there are other aliens of her species with varying skin tones, I’m worried it might come off as exotifying dark skin. Then again, if I make the Black human woman darker and the half-alien princess lighter, I end up with a darker skinned Black woman working for a lighter skinned Black princess, and there’s some pretty obvious and colorist issues there, especially since the princess is meant to be, like, ethereally beautiful and graceful, as princesses tend to be, and the human woman is (and I mean this endearingly) a walking disaster. It’s probably relevant to mention that the Black man in the main cast is already dark skinned, so it’s not like there wouldn’t be ANY dark skinned Black humans in the main cast if I go with making the human woman lighter, but even that can have problematic connotations- I know a lot of media will feature dark skinned Black men but only light skinned Black women.

[ask redacted and headers added for readability]

First of all, your efforts to include dark-skinned Black women are appreciated! One can’t be expected to represent every race, ethnicity or underrepresented group in one story, as it’s generally just not feasible. Of course, making the full and conscious effort to be inclusive of under and misrepresented races and backgrounds in your current and future works is nice and very welcome in terms of representation - and it’s what we’re all about here!

Now, there are situations where I personally believe that it’s important to make that extra effort, and your story presents such situations.

Men of X race are there; the Women of Color are not

I take special note when there’s a man of a certain race that is included but not Women of Color of that race as well. It’s a trend for Black men / Black women especially or, as you noted, if she’s included and in a romantic way she often needs to be light. Or, if a dark-skinned Black woman makes an appearance, she’s the best friend or comedic relief and not seen as particularly desirable or someone to care about beyond being entertainment or even a punching bag.

Non-humans of X race exist, but humans of X race do not

It’s eyebrow-raising to me when stories include Black-coded aliens and non-humans but no humans in a story where indeed other humans exist. It’s insightful for you to take note of that as well.

A story is set in a region where the population is mostly X race - but they’re not in the story

Now, this situation actually doesn’t seem to be implied in your story, but it’s worth mentioning for others. A story that is featured in, for example, Nigeria or even Fantasy Nigeria that has no Nigerian, Black or African-diaspora people in general in the cast (or are just minor background characters)…..oh no.

So! It’s great that you took notice of the matter and decided to do something about it in your story.

Black mom and Black / Mexican daughter

Your solution to add a Black mom to the story sounds fine. Keep in mind the mammy and your typical tropes that can come from Black mothers in stories.

I may be getting some details cloudy, but it appears there’s a dark-skinned Black Mexican daughter from the relationship? And this Mexican + Black daughter serves a Black-coded alien princess that you’re not sure should be dark or lighter skinned? I hope I got that right!

There’s indeed power dynamics there if you go to the Black-coded princess with light skin. If you’re not wanting to create that dynamic or explore it in the narrative, you could always make them both darker skinned. There are many shades of brown and very brown skin. They don’t need to be the same shade or tone of brown.

Also, I think it’s okay for the alien princess to be graceful and the Black character to be a “walking disaster” as you say, as 1) Black characters need not be perfect 2) There are more Black women characters. And this is, again, made better if the princess doesn’t have to be light skinned.

Also, disclaimer as I’m not Mexican: but having a prominent Mexican character that is not in a servitude role would most likely be welcome! I’ll let Mexican followers comment on that.

Thanks for your thoughtful question.

~Mod Colette

#Black #Black Mexican women #Black women #mixed race #aliens #supernatural beings #Black aliens #power dynamics #asks

244 notes · View notes

respectthepetty · 1 year

Note

I guess I have a question, which you may have answered before, but why are characters specifically colour-coded red and blue more often than other colours?

You also often refer to those colour-coded red as red rascals and those blue as blue boys, but do those colours always tie in with similar personalities? (Are there such few colour-coded personalities?!)

I lied. There are multiple questions lol

@sliceduplife - Well, hell-ooooh!

I love you for these questions, so let me dive in!

Quick Facts:

We color code the shit out of everything, all the time. We, as humans, are trained to do this. Think about your favorite cartoons growing up - PowerPuff Girls, Winnie the Pooh, Care Bears, Power Rangers, y todo. Color coded.

Therefore, we associate those colors with emotions and personalities: Yellow is happy. Blue is reserved. Red is passionate. Green is prosperous. Et cetera.

The written word came before mass visual media, so colors are still, even today, deeply embedded into literature. Harry Potter: Hufflepuff - Yellow = Happy; Ravenclaw - Blue = Reserved; Gryffindor - Red = Passionate; Slytherin - Green = Prosperous, Game of Thrones, and Scarlet Letter.

This tradition of color coding has continued into visual media - Heathers (each Heather has a different color), The Breakfast Club (each student has a different color associated with them), Pirates of the Caribbean (each character has a specific color), Bridgerton (each family has a color scheme that also shows their alliance)

Even stores and brands align with a color to promote certain characteristics that are associated with that color: Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola, Walmart vs. Target, Hulu vs. Netflix

Are there such few colour-coded personalities?

This is not Pantone. How many colors do you want, homie?! Since humans like categorizing items, we like to keep it simple or black and white (hehe). Colors aren’t solely the character’s entire personality, but they do help visually emphasize certain aspects of a character’s personality without it having to be explicitly stated. Characters are dynamic, but the colors help us see in a quick glimpse what are their core traits.

Also note that I downplay a lot of terms. When I use my terms like Blue Boy and Red Rascal, know that is my fun and simple way of categorizing the characters. Normally, professionals speak of hues, secondary and tertiary colors, tones, undertones, and schemes (mono, complementary, analogous, triadic). I already write too much. Ain’t nobody got time for me to be even worse.

Do those colours always tie in with similar personalities?

If people are doing their jobs correctly, yes.

Think about parents of sextuplets. They tend to buy the same item in six different colors, and each kid is designated a specific color. It can reflect the child's personality. It helps the kids not fight. It helps the parents keep track of the items. It helps maintain order.

That’s what most color coding does. It’s the wardrobe department’s way of maintaining order on a set that consists of several people needing several different outfits each day. On a set like Between Us where there were FIVE couples plus other side characters or My School President where we have a band and a student council, it helps to color code the main characters, so the department can instantly spot when someone isn’t wearing the right outfit for the scene or has the wrong item.

But the colors aren’t randomly selected. Wardrobe, as well as hair and makeup, set design, colorists, lighting, and many other departments, must work with the Director of Photography/Cinematographer to ensure that the colors and style align to the character. In Manner of Death, Bun, a Blue Boy, wore mostly collared shirts because he has a by-the-book personality, while Tan, a Black Brooder, wore crew neck shirts, even under button-up shirts to show his uninhibited nature.

If people are communicating, there will be clear plan for the style of a character which includes colors based on personality traits or situational needs. 609 Bedtime Story tied a color scheme to the different universes instead of a specific person: blue and black to Dew’s world; green, red, yellow to Mum’s world; purple to the in-between world. The colors were still carefully selected because Dew’s world is cold and isolating, Mum’s world is full of life, and the fantasy world is where the blues and reds meet.

Semantic Error’s colors were necessary for the plot because (I’m not using technical terms here) red, the color Sang Woo hates, is the color of an error, while green is the color of a command, and blue is the color of what should occur when the command is inputted, which is why they were a Green Guy and a Blue Boy because they work together to complete the task. Genius!

That’s why the cinematographer has to communicate with all the departments it oversees and the director to make sure the outfits, the lighting, the sets, and the post-editing all align to the director’s vision.

Would Legally Blonde’s Elle Woods wear brown? No! Pink is an integral component of her personality, and all the departments worked hard to make that clear.

The colors mean things! They add details to the narrative and reinforce the plot. Even if the character isn’t wearing the color consistently, the colors in the scene matter.

Why are characters specifically colour-coded red and blue more often than other colours?

Opposites attract.

On the color wheel, the complimentary colors are red/green and blue/orange (as well as yellow/purple but nobody cares about my faves). They are opposite of each other. HOWEVER, when color was introduced into film, the primary colors were the easiest to produce: red, blue, and yellow. These three colors when combined in various ways, make every other color possible. We now have cyan (blue-green), magenta (blue-red), and yellow. Not going to make this technical, so know that it boils down to convenience. If a company is going to spend a lot of money on filming, if a mistake happens, color-wise, the easiest mistakes to fix are going to be the ones involving these colors.

Also, blue and red represent opposite personalities. Red is spontaneous while blue is consistent. Red is passionate while blue is reserved. Red is dominant while blue is passive. Red is energetic while blue is calming. Red is fire while blue is ice. Red is the sun while blue is the moon. If the plot includes two people who are at conflict or appear as opposites, red and blue are the colors to demonstrate it.

However, America does love a good Red Rascal and Black Brooder in a romcom.

#Asian QLs #The colors mean things #the cinematography #color coded boys #background noise

55 notes · View notes

methaim · 10 months

Text

This was originally going to be a post about literary criticism but bc the OG post was about Nimona, this is now a Nimona post lol

So let me start off by saying that I love literary criticism, and the reason I love it is because when done right, there's obviously so much passion behind the criticism and analysis. When done right, the spirit of "there are no right or wrong answers" you hear in English class lives on. But it's all dependent on perspective and the lens you view a piece of media through. That's why you can disagree with someone's literary criticism without them being entirely wrong.

I bring this up bc I was looking through the Nimona tag and saw someone's analysis of the film. As I was reading it, I disagreed with their analysis, but they weren't entirely wrong considering the evidence they used. I won't be linking to the post bc I don't want to start any beef with OP, I'm merely observing a phenomenon when it comes to literary analysis and criticism and why perspective matters.

Spoilers for Nimona under the read more.

So OP claimed that Nimona was misogynistic, and based on their evidence their analysis wasn't entirely wrong. They stated that one of the main characters was a man (Ballister), a gay romance between two men was prominent (Ballister and Ambrosius), and that the main antagonists of the story were women (The Director, who was nameless throughout the film save for her title, and Gloreth). They also implicitly claimed that the movie didn't pass the Bechdel test (which save for the backstory scene with Nimona and Gloreth, isn't entirely untrue, but it doesn't mean it wasn't a good movie). Given this evidence and only this evidence, then their argument isn't necessarily incorrect: in Nimona, women are antagonistic and the story primarily revolves around the story of a man trying to reclaim himself after being wronged by a woman. At first glance, this doesn't scream "feminist media."

However, this analysis would be what I would consider from a feminist lens perspective. In terms of analysis, OP did a great job providing evidence and explaining how that evidence supported their claim.

But I still disagreed with their analysis. And that's because I viewed the movie and analyzed it from two different lenses: a queer lens and a racial lens. Now, again, when doing literary criticism and analysis, it is important to choose which lens you're looking at the film from. Choose too many and you contradict yourself if you aren't trained to write a review (OP wasn't writing a review, they were writing a critical analysis).

The thing about Nimona is that, in my opinion, it isn't a feminist movie; it's a movie that deeply criticizes institutional violence while also being an allegory for transness. A feminist message isn't at its core, but that doesn't mean the movie can't be viewed from a feminist lens, especially if viewed from an intersectional feminist lens.

A lot of people have already pointed out that The Director is supposed to be representative of White women, i.e. the violence inflicted due to White women's fear of those they deem "dangerous"(i.e. non-White non-cisheteronormative individuals, sometimes even extending to All Men including White men but especially men of color). Not only does her fear wrongly villify a man of color (Ballister), but it also directly causes the death of a Black woman (The Queen). This could be seen as a criticism of the current radical feminist movement in which anyone who isn't a White women is immediately a target of White women's fear.

While this movie does explore racism and the role of race when it comes to intersectionality, I've seen most people describe the primary internal conflict as representative of the divide between cis queer people and trans people. This is the queer lens perspective I mentioned when it comes to critical analysis; while the role of race is a theme that is explored in this movie (and I'll try to get into it as much as I can in a Tumblr post), there is a focus on the queer—specifically trans—allegory. Ballister is a gay man and this is explicitly showed rather than implied; his romance with his love interest (Ambrosius) is an important plot point in the movie. He is implied to be cis (narratively speaking) given his initial treatment of Nimona and his inability to understand her and his initial rejection of who and what she is. Although he grows to accept her for who she is by the end of the movie, it's a learning process that ebbs throughout, and his progress reverts at the climax of the movie (when he calls Nimona a monster and reflexively grabs his sword when she shows anger). This is reflective of how even cis queer people can be insensitive to trans peoples' experiences and have much to learn. There's another great Tumblr post out there about how Ballister, although vilified, still has a chance at redemption if he chooses to reject Nimona (the bar/restaurant scene), but Nimona has been demonized and has no chance at redemption bc she has only ever been viewed as a monster. This reflects the divide between cis queer people and trans people in terms of societal treatment; while non-heternormative monogamous couples are being more widely accepted (in the United States at least), trans people are being further demonized as evident from the current political climate.

OKAY so this started as a commentary on the nature of critical analysis but now this is just my Nimona analysis and honestly I'm excited to talk about the racial implications in this movie bc they were apparently. Obviously Ballister is a Brown man (voiced by Riz Ahmed, most likely modeled after him as well) but I have been wanting to speak about Ambrosius for so long bc I have seen very little about his racial implications given that he is explicitly Asian (revealed in behind-the-scenes/making-of) and also modeled after Eugene Lee Yang, an openly queer Asian man (love him <3). Obviously we know the racist implications of Ballister being vilified for 1. being poor/a commoner (explicit reason in the movie and 2. a Brown man (implied). He's up against a White woman in power who is driven by fear (which is why I didn't agree with the feminist analysis of the movie). BUT AMBROSIUS. He's an Asian man, and I personally have not seen many explorations of racism faced by Asian Americans in popular media (not that it's not out there, I just don't think it's very common). There was something about Ambrosius being placed on this pedestal that he didn't ask to be placed on and also leading the search for Ballister. Obviously he did this so that he could bring Ballister in safely since someone else might try to hurt or kill him. But the fact that 1. Ambrosius was seen as an ideal knight and 2. he was being manipulated by a White woman made me think of the stereotypes placed on Asian Americans (there's a reason we're known as the silent and invisible minority). Ambrosius' race played as much of a role in the story's implications as Ballister's race did and as an Asian American person I was so drawn to it. I don't know if it was intended by those who worked on the movie but it just. I'm losing the words for it but it really did mean a lot to me as someone who constantly feels like I'm not allowed to talk about my experiences in any circles when it comes to regards to my race/ethnicity. It all boils down to "Asian person being set up as a model for others (i.e. other races) to aspire to by White society who only wish to use their Asian-ness as a tool." NOT TO MENTION the scene in the car with Ambrosius' meltdown, things he wanted to say but couldn't because The Director had certain expectations from him... THAT hit me hard as well. Someone else please do a deeper analysis about this because all I can do is scream about it without being completely coherent.

Anyway, if you read this far, thank you! Again, this started as an observation on the nature of critical analysis as a whole but spiraled into my own analysis about Nimona. I'm sorry if it seemed messy and rushed, this wasn't well thought-out, it was more of a stream-of-consciousness ramble. I would love to hear your own thoughts, or see other analyses of Nimona. Also if you know the OG post I was talking about PLEASE don't harass OP, from what I could see I don't think think they were a TERF or radfem I think they were just analyzing from a strictly feminist perspective.

#nimona #mine #fandom crit

27 notes · View notes

jewishvitya · 1 year

Text

Content warning: a picture of Nazi propaganda

Okay, so, I had a couple of replies from someone who seems genuine. These are all points either I or other people made before, but I'll try to collect them in a way that makes sense.

I'm not going to reiterate the list of antisemitic issues in the goblins narratively, I did that twice, here and here. I'm going to talk about why it's antisemitic despite this being a fantasy race with traits that commonly go together. I hope you'll forgive me if I'll repeat or quote things I said in other posts. I'll also use examples I've seen given by other Jews, like I did with theineffableshe (from tiktok) before. So, credit to her.

Fantasy and SciFi are speculative fiction. They take us out of our own world and our own familiar reality to allow us to explore ourselves. All stories we tell are stories about people. We only understand our own minds. You can't imagine a color that you never saw, you can't create a reality that isn't grounded in human experience.

That's why very often the struggles and the traits of a fantasy race are pulled from the real world. Either the real struggles of real people (with some exaggeration or magical/futuristic elements), or the caricaturized traits that were applied to a real group of people.

This is not inherently bad. This is just how stories work. All stories are derivative - they all pull from the stories we told before.

Here is what you said:

If you seriously connect jews with generic greedy goblin characters with huge noses that work in banks, then it honestly sounds to me like YOU are the one being filled up with these prejudices.

But here's what I need you to understand: we don't think we look like the goblins. We don't relate the goblins to ourselves. We relate the goblins to how we were portrayed in the past, to demonize us.

Goblins in other pieces of media can look very different. Because those are fictional, they can be made to look like anything. And they look like antisemitic caricatures.

To illustrate, here's a comparison between the game and Nazi propaganda.

The first picture is from theineffableshe. She traced some of these from stills of the game, and some of these from antisemitic Nazi propaganda.

I know which is which - because I've seen all of the originals. But if you never saw them before, do you think everyone would be able to tell which ones are from HL and which ones are 1930's propaganda?

And the two on top? One of them is the trophy you get for killing Ranrok, the main antagonist of the game. The other, is again, antisemitic propaganda.

Just a reminder that I'm not blaming Rowling of writing intentional antisemitic caricatures into her books. This is more complicated than that, and that complexity is what this post is about.

I showed in two posts the narrative similarities between the goblins and antisemitic propaganda. Here, I showed a bit of the visual similarities.

It's the collection of all the traits that creates the problem.

And you understand this. I felt encouraged when I saw you say:

This discovery honestly makes me feel uncomfy. Sure, it's just a generic animal horn, which isn't solely special to jews, but it kind of does start piling up.

Which is exactly the point. You get it. I just want you to see that it's still true if you disregard the horn.

You also said this:

Most greedy characters are portrayed ugly, which oftentimes includes large noses. And greedy people working in banks isn't a huge jump.

Greedy characters being ugly, ugly characters having large noses and greedy people working in banks are all stereotypes that are portrayed in media fairly often- How exactly is this case in particular offensive?

So. I'll start by saying again that the original books had no problem with the goblin's noses. They weren't even described. The antisemitism was in the other traits. But in these messages from you, there are a couple of issues: what we consider ugly, and equating beauty with goodness. For that, I'll get into the issue of the noses.

Beauty is cultural. I have a Chinese friend and we had long conversations about it, because it's something that fascinates me. The beauty standards around them are very different from those around me. We spoke about how it influences art and fashion and make up. You can see similar things throughout history. What we consider beautiful or ugly is not neutral.

I'm not talking about personal taste right now. I'm not saying "if you have certain preferences, you're a bad person and there's something wrong with you." I'm saying that culturally, some beauty standards come from racism. Others come from classism and prejudice towards poor people. Others, from ableism and prejudice towards sick and disabled people.

That's why the idea of ugliness being tied to evil is not neutral. People in reality treat beautiful people better. They're more likely to be assumed kind, to be assumed innocent if accused of crimes. It comes from a concept of purity, an assumption that moral corruption will be visible on you.

And it wasn't invented by white supremacists, but it aligns with their ideology. White supremacists put on a pedestal traits they consider better and purer. And traits that don't fall into that idea of racial purity, were the ones seen as ugly. If marginalized people's traits are considered ugly, and ugliness is equated with immorality - marginalized people are seen as immoral.

Exaggerating the phenotypical traits of a marginalized group to dehumanize it, is common. It's how racist (and transphobic, etc) caricatures are created. In terms of phenotype, Jewish people can belong to any race. There is no one way a Jewish person looks. But Jewish people tend to marry other Jewish people, so sometimes we don't completely look like the non-Jewish populations where we live. This was the case for Ashkenazi Jews in Europe. We were more likely to be shorter, to have darker and curlier hair, darker eyes, and there's much more. The "Jewish nose" is part of that.

European Jews were not considered white, they were racialized, and being racialized meant being subhuman. So the traits that the Nazis associated with us were demonized.

"They're shown as ugly, and that includes a big nose" is not a neutral thing. It has a very heavy history of white supremacy and antisemitism.

When you ask "it's a well established trope, so how is this case in particular offensive?" you assume every other case is harmless. I'm not accusing every single creator who made hooked-nosed villains of antisemitism. I'm saying that the pattern has pretty bad origins.

These traits that you listed commonly go together - but why? Most real rich people who hoard money don't fit that collection of descriptions. So where did this come from?

We pull narrative tools from the stories told to us, and we do that without always thinking about how those tropes interact with the real world. The idea of greedy bankers has been tied to the demonization of Jewish people for a very long time.

Rowling wanted to write a bank, and she wanted to make it magical, and she reverse-engineered her fantasy bankers from there. But when she did that, she did write an antisemitic fantasy race.

Goblins are portrayed in many different ways in folklore and in media. Goblin is originally a term used for a collection of creatures that have different traits, not all of them associated with love of treasure. They can be tricksters, but not necessarily bloodthirsty. And since it's such a varied mythology, there's no reason for them to look like this. There's no reason for them to be only loyal to each other. To either not care about human lives or enjoy the idea of humans getting hurt - which we see in the books.

She pulled more from antisemitic stories than she pulled from real folklore. And it was enough of a problem that antisemitic producers were able to pick up where she left off and make it as bad as they did.

So you're exactly right. It's how it piles up. I just hope you can see that the issue goes very deep.

#riki babbles #hogwarts legacy #HP #JKR

50 notes · View notes

blood-and-poetry · 9 months

Text

Hot take I'm seeing quite a few posts confused over why Deadloch isn't trending or much more popular on tumblr because "tumblr is so gay and so feminist". And I am sorry to say this but tumblr isn't the "lesbian website" or the "feminist website". Tumblr loves men just as much as the rest of society does, its user base just loves them in a very online way which makes it look a bit different at times. It has always been this way, starting with shipping every two white dudes in close proximity to each other, over worshipping old male Hollywood actors to downright MRA and anti-feminist talking points in the recent past in "progressive leftist" spaces on here. All done in very uwu political correct tumblr speak of course.

And it's really that simple. Media with two (often times white) guys standing close to each other will always be more popular on here than anything women- or lesbian centric, no matter how many theoretical tumblr approval boxes said media ticks. There is a reason why lesbian shows get canceled left and right. Even if lesbian shows are trending for one or two days there is just no genuine interest from a majority of people (on tumblr and anywhere else). Men overall are rarely interested if it isn't made with the male gaze in mind or focusses on men, straight women aren't interested, even many bi women (don't come at me I am bi) aren't interested because they don't see other women (and often times themselves) as complete and potentially interesting people/characters (how often I've seen women on here saying something along the lines of "my favourite characters are all men but it's just because these characters are so good! Pure coincidence. I would definitely love a female character but I just have never found one I am that obsessed with. Not my fault, they are all written in a bad/boring way").

Doesn't matter how often the word "queer" is thrown around here, all of this has always been the same and it won't change. Which is.. fine? I have never expected it to be something else. A website that isn't specifically designed for lesbians but only attracts lesbians would be magical. But a website thats designed for nerdy people and especially women of that kind will attract.. nerdy people/women. Consisting of the same groups of people that exist in real life, including lots of women attracted to men. I have my little bubble here in which I mainly see lesbian content but the things on my dashboard rarely reflect what's trending or the content of popular posts.

I am not bitter about this because it has never been different (here or anywhere else) but I am surprised that people are still thinking that this website would worship a lesbian-lead and female-centric show when it would be entirely out of character for tumblr as a whole to do so. I mean maybe this is all about the show being australian. Maybe people don't like Australia. I also get that crime shows aren't THAT popular either but I guarantee you, if Dulcie and Eddie were dudes this show would be trending so hard.

Deadloch is a fantastic show. It looks amazing, has fantastic humor, the drama is great, the plot is great, there is a good message behind everything and the show also sprinkles in some of tumblrs top ten greatest political correct catch phrases. The main two characters are played by lesbians, another actress from the main cast is bisexual. One of the main characters is a lesbian and there are several other lesbian characters in the show. The other main character is a woman of color (who SHOULD be same sex attracted but sadly seemingly is not which makes me cry). Almost all important characters are women. Amazingly written by the way. There are plenty of women of color, indigenous women especially, playing important roles. All female characters are complex and nuanced people and their suffering isn't used for shock value or to push forward the plot. The two main female characters are both over 40 years old! What the show doesn't have is the same two decent looking men standing in close proximity to each other. And there really isn't any arguing against my little rant here because the only thing I accept as proving me wrong is a lot of people watching Deadloch or overall more women centric and lesbian centric stuff :) Thank you :)

#mp

13 notes · View notes