#for a bland woman that is kind of a robot in lore but that just feels bleh | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

guideaus · 1 year

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late tristamp 8 thoughts

the voice filter thing makes rem (?) outright sound like a robot

i see knives and vash have different origins

sc-fi that has shit be like the most transparent tablet or whatever is so funny, its reminds me of d/bh (🤢🤮)

hate knives being less enthusiastic. i think them being different isnt automatically bad, and even if he was like hitting puberty before vash and maybe going through adolescence he still deserves respect, but it does kinda hint that he's the "bad" one. and i hate that evil/good twin shit lol

this cutting straight to the fall kind of makes it interesting. at least makes you go "oh, wow, i wonder what happened" as opposed to starting the show off with it

tristamp might be assigning more guilt to vash concrening knives? if knives is telling the truth. in the manga and anime knives just fucking... hacked smth idk, while here knives makes it sound like vash let him in on a little secret to the "explode all ships" button he instantly regretted

i cant take his voice actor seriously though

rem didnt shove them in diff clothes in this adaptation??

this makes it a bit more gruesome, vash being near the corpses instead of the twins watching afar

i wonder how tristamp will make knives here if he isnt even attempting to deal w vash and he gets easily taken away

this woman just knows to look for plant characteristics?? its not even a surprise thing during a doctor's checkup??

i can see theyre changing the lore w the seeds ships if theres just casual people walking around fine like there wasnt a cataclysmic event just then

they handcuffed a child... what are they gonna do, put him on trial?

is this woman a fucking plant expert. i thought they were all regarded as top-secret lab experiments, esp w vash and knives being the first "independents". why does she know. or is she info dumping

Either knives and vash are much younger, or conrad did get an intentional life extending thingy

orange not changing rem's name is so funny. knives got nai, but her last name is still just "save" added onto her first name. why not seibrem!!!

also we're the same height :)

the guy (brad?) is really annoying.

what the fuck is their food

rip luida's appearance. orange said "not cute anime waifu? GROSS."

i genuinely wonder why they put brad and luida here. are they just trying to take a short cut between making vash visit his home and connecting the backstory

IS LUIDA LYING ABOUT REM?? DID REM NOT HELP ANYONE?!?!? AM I UNDERSTANDING THAT SCENE RIGHT???

this ep also has the problem of the world looking lifeless, itd be understandable if it was explained (everyone else died, theyre hiding, etc.,) but it seems like its literally just luida and brad here. I genuinely cant tell if shes lying abt other survivors or orange cant afford more models to show them lol

are they trying to make vash repeat after knives. or is it unintentional? i feel like vash wouldnt want to copy knives after the fall tho lol. i might be reading too into it, but they did choose almost the exact same words, so..

why are they keeping vash locked up lol. wouldnt luida just trying to have him help with like... whatever someone can imagine is going on there (idk, orange wont show us anything) to possibly sway him even if he has ulterior motives. he's not even hurt, theres no reason she'd act nice and do that, i feel if vash wasnt depressed atm he'd become scared of them. theyre treating him like a decorative plant

we finally barely see bland people BUT HOW ARE THE PEOPLE SAYING HOW GROSS HE LOOKS WHEN HE LOOKS JUST LIKE THEM FSDGHDHS??? in the 90s anime, it made sense when ppl were freaked out by watching how quickly they aged around them, but theres no reason for them to be acting like this to him. he's locked up, so that one thing where ppl assume "locked up" = "they must have done something to deserve it (his treatment)", couldve come into play, but calling him gross lol?? maybe making fun of his outfit at most or smth but??

WHY DO THEY ALL WANT HIM DEAD SO BAD FJHDJD??? its not even a "this is against the rules" thing (which could work bc in this universe, they were all alive pre-fall), but they just want him dead for some reason...

more bland people

vash is a plant empath

WHY ARE THEY SO OPPOSED TO HIM LMAO

i don't think i like the presentation of rem's iconic speech. there's no context shown for it, i was scared luida was gonna take it, but here its just loosely connected. in fact, i don't think it really matches at all. originally it was about rem and vash wanting to die, they argue you have something to live for, and vash uses it to be hopeful and say people can change even when they've done bad. here it gives off the impression that vash can live to be useful to the humans, therefore he'll finally earn their respect (which is bad lol). even if its related to vash's apparent guilt of knives being able to drop everyone from the sky, its not clear enough. the audience doesnt know the context

SHE SAYING IT AS SHE'S DYING?? why would she think either kid would ever hear it, lol. i feel it doesnt fit any situation in tristamp, im more focused on the plant than what she's saying, so frankly its kind of leaving my mind as shes saying it despite me already knowing it

the plant reminds me tristamp elendira looks like that :/

i guess vash's power here is healing steven universe style, but just through minimum contact ig

he now has an appetite (trying to live), his handcuffs coming off, and a new bed. absolutely feel like a reward for his actions... it feels bad... that absolutely gives him new problems and i dont think it was intentional. thats not good for a 2 y/o, lol. somehow orange repeated the manga's introduction better here than in the reboot's own 2 first eps...

the stuff with tristamp wolfwood and brad just isnt funny. in the manga/anime, brad had that immature attitude to show off in front of jessica, he was also jealous of vash for being an older bro type and jessica had a crush on him, so he felt like the competition. here he's just... being an asshole? the "yeah, he did something useful, i guess he can get a bed now" doesnt feel like a lot. luida too, she apologizes, but doesnt explain why they did that (and that its inexcusable)

so is he using up his powers in tristamp too, or.

HOW ARE THE RESIDENTS STILL CONCERNED ABOUT HIM. BY THE TIME HES A TEEN THEY SHOULD BE REVERING HIS ASS?? or abusing him

hes a little lanky teen, awww

why did they give him a jacket that's too big, lol. its like they found a random one advertising their company and just let him have it. and not a single other character has a similar jacket

OH MY GOD BRAD IS BACK TO BEING IRRATIONAL. no "Hey, kiddo... what's this?" COME ON. luida collapses too, like werent you the smarter, nicer one??

vash runs away out of fear, so ig maybe he would have done that before.

why did vash kind of hide his running away letter. hes copying rem

brad is back to feeling guilty?? what the fuck is going on. pick one. frankly, itd make sense for him to think "running away" = "guilty" with how he started

i dont know why they cut to the present for 30 seconds just to go back in time again

it sucks no one was nearby when vash woke up, but that might be hard for orange. idk why they cant have more than 3 characters in a scene

#personal #trigun stampede spoilers #anyways not the worst tristamp ep but like still a lot of things

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

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Infinity Thoughts

So I have something of a tradition of reading comics that will in some way tie into upcoming Marvel live action films. To this end with Avengers: Endgame approaching I read through, among other things, the TPBs ‘Avengers vs. Thanos’. ‘Rebirth of Thanos’, ‘Infinity Gauntlet’ and ‘Infinity’ volumes 1-2.

For the most part I rather enjoyed them. My respect for Jim Stalin grew and I’d argue Infinity Gauntlet may well be Marvel’s finest ever crossover event story of all time...Then I got to Infinity.

Hooooooooo-boy.

This was a lame story.

To be crystal clear the trades I read through collected the main issues of the event plus the tie-in issues of Avengers and New Avengers. Since all were written by Jonathan Hickman the tie-ins are actually essential to the reading experience and I was never exactly lost reading the story. There was a brief but well done reference to the Guardians of the Galaxy tie in issues that weren’t collected but that was it.

You know how I said my respect for Stalin grew through reading this stuff? Ell my respect for Hickman sunk...even lower than it already was.

First off reading Infinity seems to have been a waste of time for my personal purposes. Whilst I do not know what Endgame has in store Infinity War took precious little from this story. It just borrowed 4/5 of Thanos’ inner circle of henchmen (Corvus Glaive, Prixima Midnight, Ebony Maw) and also the Outriders, those four limbed footsoldiers Thanos uses to invade Wakanda. Speakin of which the mere idea of Thanos invading Wakanda was also borrowed from this story but it plays out drastically differently.

That’s not really a problem with the story just a personal complaint I had.

On the flipside something I can’t really complain about but will point to as a problem is that to follow the main story of Infinity you HAD to pick up the tie-ins I mentioned. A well written event shouldn’t price gouge you like that. Noticeably Infinity Gauntlet didn’t. Reading all 6 issues was a satisfying experience unto itself, I never felt like I was missing anything.

But saying Stalin is a better cosmic writer than Hickman would be redundant.

Another problem I discovered after the fact with this story was how the first 15 pages of Infinity #1 are literally just reprints of New Avengers #6 and the Free Comic book day Infinity issue. So 15/54 pages were stuff you’d either read before or could read for free.

This isn’t even getting into the writing problems in general. First of all Hickman had this insufferable habit of within issues themselves having like chapter breaks in the for of entirely blank pages with a grey title and symbol at the top. So you know...nice that you are paying for nearly blank pages amidst your £4+ comic books.

Second of all Hickman has this habit of like throwing meaningless lore at you.

In Infinity #1 for example he throws at you the brief backstory of this planet you have never seen before nor will see again as though it means something, complete with flashbacks and exposition about this planet’s great champion who’s already dead courtesy of the guy delivering the narration. And when I say it’s meaningless lore I mean Hickman has the guy say “Whatever happened to your proud champion to won the Water Wars and untied the tribes by defeating the Great Beast of Pol?”

Like...who gives a shit no one knows where or what Pol is or what the Water Wars were. The best part is that this is all adding up to this planet giving Thanos’ henchmen a tribute of several dead people.

Basically it stretched out 11 pages with meaningless lore to communicate Thanos is bad, Thanos has bad henchmen, Thanos’ demands defeated planets pay him tribute in dead people. Seems like you could accomplish that in maybe 4 pages at a push, especially for a villain everyone knows about already.

What makes this all the more confusing is that Thanos isn’t even really the central plot or threat in the story. This is in spite of being on the covers, mentioned in the solicits, the story’s name referencing stories that explicitly involve him and the story frankly existing because of his post-credits scene in Avengers 2012.

The story’s central conceit I guess is that it’s a war on two fronts.

Captain America leads most of the Avengers into space to join the Kree, Shi’ar, Skrulls, Annihilus and other alien races in a war against the army of the Builders. Meanwhile the remaining heroes (including Iron Man and the Illuminati) have to contend with Thanos who has invaded Earth looking for the sole remaining Infinity Gem and the last of his children, the half-Inhuman Thane.*

Essentially in spite of the advertisement Thanos is really just one of two antagonists in this story. And frankly clearly the one Hickman is less interested in compared to the Builders, whom shockingly, just so happen to be his own creations.

What follows is essentially a cosmic war story all about military strategy and game theory and so on, with very smart people doing very smart things.

Now in fairness conceptually this isn’t a bad idea whatsoever.

So what if Thanos is just one of two antagonistic forces. So what if it’s a war story. Those are ideas that can be done great right?

Yep...except...they aren’t.

Let’s talk about Thanos first.

His central motivation to kill his half Inhuman son is contrived and whilst it COULD have worked it just doesn’t.

As the lead in issues to Infinity Gauntlet make clear with Nebula, who claimed to be Thanos’ granddaughter, Thanos finds the idea of reproducing an affront to his nihilistic beliefs.

Thnos of course is in love with Death. As in he sees Death as a woman he’d like to make out with. To this end he committed his life to mass slaughter to win her love.

Thus entirely logically his creator Jim Stalin established that Thanos would not seek to have any offspring because, duh, if your goal is to kill as many people as possible you aren’t going to create MORE life.

So on the most basic of levels, Thanos even having any children seems out of character.

But it could have worked because the story does establish Thanos has killed his other children too. So it is entirely possible to argue that Thanos, whilst no celibate, made a point of killing his off spring to balance the scales, possibly even seeing his kids as mistakes of his youth before he’d entirely committed himself to Death.

Except the story doesn’t say anything like that. Thanos simply states the idea of Thane existing keeps him awake at night. In other words one of the 2 central antagonists has at best vague motivations.

To make matters worse Thanos is defeated via a total dues ex machina. Basically Thane undergoes a mutation as a result of Black Bolt unleashing a Terrigen mist throughout Earth, this causes him to inadvertently and instantly murder everyone within a certain radius by waving his left hand. He can only control this with the help of a containment suit one of Thanos’ inner circle, Ebony Maw provides. Maw acts as a kind of evil mentor/advisor to Thane, think Wormtongue from the Two Towers but more powerful and sinister, but we’ll get to him in a minute.

Anyway Thane is captured by Maw and presented to Thanos and whilst Thanos and his last surviving inner circle (they’re called the Black Order btw) Proxima Midnight are beating the shit out of the Avengers. Maw then says some shit about wanting to see if Thane has evolved and how he’s the only one who can beat Thanos. So Thane waves his right hand and encases Thanos and Proxima in a great big amber cube.

Oh and this comes out of exactly nowhere!

That’s the resolution to the final issue by the way. THAT is how this 2 volume event friggin ends. Pathetic.

More pathetic even than the already pretty pathetic motives and characterization given over to Ebony Maw and the entirety of the Black Order.

Look, the idea of Thanos having an elite entourage as opposed to just hordes of gneric nameless thralls** is a good one.

The idea of them worshipping him and/or Death is fine.

But beyond their looks we get little characterization from any of them. Glaive and Midnight are offhandily established as married. Black Dwarf is just a big dumb warrior thug. We get a mini-monologue about Supergiant’s childhood and why she follows Thanos in the pages just prior to hear death towards the end of the story. And Ebony Maw...nothing. We have no reason for why he acts against his master or what the fuck his agenda is.

What little we know of the Black Order comes from I kid you not a mini Marvel Handbook segment randomly inserted into the story that gives you like a short paragraph on each member and their abilities.

So you know...literally telling us instead of showing us who these people are and to boot it’s not even actually part of the story.

Then the story has the audacity to say that Thane, Hickman’s new underdeveloped character has and will become even worse than his Dad. His Dad who I will remind you literally caused universal genocide when he snapped his fingers and killed half the universe’s population...and THEN murdered all the cosmic beings. Oh but Thane is worse because he...can trap people in amber...?????

There is also precious little characterization or development lent to Thanos in the entire story, whereas the events its trading off of (Infinity Gauntlet, etc) absolutely did. Here Thanos is the big bad villain and little else. He isn’t even the biggest threat nor does he comprise the majority of the panel time.

That distinction goes to the Builders.

Oh lord...the builders. Who also count among their ranks the Gardners known as the Ex Nihili, the Alephs robot soldiers and exist in the superflow of the multiverse having created the Starbrand and other cosmic tools to shape the evolution of species across the universe.

Did any of that sound bland, boring, meaningless and simply pretentious mastabatory science fiction talk?

Well that’s only because it is.

Marvel has a robust cosmic lore to them. The first generation of that was really installed by Lee and Steve Ditko in Doctor Strange and to a much greater extent Lee and Jack Kirby in Thor, Fantastic Four, Avengers and other titles. That’s where we of course get guys like Galactus.

The second generation I’d argue was Jim Stalin who set up Thanos, Drax the Destroyer Adam Warlock, the Infinity Gems and also Chris Claremont along with his collaborators who birthed the Phoenix Force and the Shi’ar and so on.

The third generation was Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Keith Giffen. These guys added a few things to Marvel Cosmic but really their forte was more adopting stuff already in the Marvel universe and expanding it or using it in interesting ways. The best examples of this being their Magnum Opus, Annihilation which made Annihilus a Big Bad for the Marvel Universe, and ESTABLISHING the Guardians of the Galaxy that the movies took inspiration from. Whilst they didn’t necessarily create any of the Guardians they were the guys who essentially made them the space Avengers.

Hickman is essentially the headliner for the fourth generation and by far and away the most creative.

And by creative I mean he is very good at dreaming up ideas. He’s a classic ‘Big Concepts’ science fiction writer.

Where he falls down is in executing said concepts.

Whilst the past generation of Marvel Cosmic creators vacillated between going for something sweepingly epic or else fun and bombastic or something in between, Hickman’s work is devoid of the fun bombast of a Silver dude riding a surfboard in space but is also if anything trying way too hard to be ‘Epic Cosmic’ than anything the older creators did. And they at least were doing it at a different time when standards for comics were different.

Let’s take the Galactus Trilogy and Infinity Gauntlet as an example. In the 1960s presenting us a science fiction comic book antagonist who was an allegory for God was really impressive and him engaging in a debate with the Watcher about the nature of humanity was deep stuff.***

Similarly the Infinity Gauntlet was concerned with the burden of Godhood and acted as something of a bizarre love story between Thanos and death, the ultimate character study of the Mad Titan.

Hickman in Infinity though mostly just throws Big Science Fiction Concepts (tm) at you and expects you to be impressed by their mere existence, as though ‘the Avengers fight a big space war’ is something to be impressed by in 2013 when we’ve had how many stories like that?

Worse his Big Concepts aren’t just expected to be impressive via their mere existence but are also just...rather dull. There is little personality to the boringly named Builders and only slightly more in the pretentiously named Ex Nihili (Hickman loves throwing around very impressive big nonsense words for his science fiction crap, God forbid they be something simple and/or silly but memorable like ‘Galactus’, ‘the Infinity Gauntlet’, ‘Annihilus’, etc). The Gardners/Ex Nihili kind of look interesting but the Builders themselves are just the most boringly designed aliens ever.

When you see the Watchers or the Celestials you BUY that they are the oldest race in the universe, you buy they are cosmic beings on a higher plane than mere mortals. The Builders are just grey vaguely buggish dudes. Their footsoldiers the Alephs are worse. They’re generic Terminator rip off robots.

The art throughout the story looks pretty but it’s design sense is lame at best and it has the eternal problem of so many 2000s/early 2010s comics that the art looks beautiful panel to panel but is also stiff and looks like a series of very pretty portraits that lack life or the illusion of movement. Comic book art shouldn’t be a series if paintings next to one another conveying the highlights of a scene but an organic flow from one panel to the next creating the illusion of movement. Want to see this done well in a big event story? Check out Mike Zeck on Secret Wars or Perez/Lim on Infinity Gauntlet. Or hell anything Ron Frenz draws.

Okay, they look boring, they sound boring, their concepts aren’t used that effectively BUT...surely the Builders storyline has merit? Surely this cosmic war story is at least a good war story.

Well...yes and no.

The military strategy used in the story is pretty realistic and well thought out, speaking as someone who isn’t familiar with military strategy history or stories rooted in that stuff.

If nothing else the core concept of Thanos attacking Earth whilst the Avengers are off fighting on another front and the X-Men are divided (because of Schism) is basic and interesting use of strategy.

And the space warfare for the most part seemed reminiscent of Star Trek, speaking as someone who’s got novice knowledge at best of that franchise.

Here is the problem though...it’s also painfully dull for anyone who isn’t hyper into that stuff.

Which would be fine...if the story was solely contained within the main Infinity book.

I’ve long defended Secret Wars 1984 on the grounds that as it’s own mini-series it wasn’t obliged to follow thematic conventions or writing conventions of the solo or team titles, it could be it’s own sandbox. So if it wanted to be a light war story/series of fun action set pieces, fine.

So if Infinity wanted to be an Avengers space military strategy comic book for 6 issues okay fine. Except it wasn’t, it roped in Avengers and New Avengers into it too.

And at that point the tie-ins at the very least needed to have something more. You know like...personality.

The single biggest problem with pretty much any Hickman story I’ve read is that far too often the characters talk stiffly and unrealistically, with a coldness to them, a functionality. There is precious little personality or emotion to them. Even when the art is showing us emotion you simply see it as opposed to actually connecting with it.

There are only the briefest of smatterings of truly emotional or personable moments in the entire story and as a consequence they kind of stick out like a sore thumb. Smasher and Cannonball hooking up (out of nowhere in the story like there was no inclination they had the hots for one another earlier) and Sunspot quipping about it is the most human moment in the entire story closely followed by Manifold expressing exhaustion over constantly fighting.

The closest thing to a charismatic character in the entire story is friggin Maximus the Mad!

How do you do that in a story with Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Panther, Reed Richards, Namor and friggin Thanos!!!!

All this and the story exists for anything but a genuine creative drive. It exists because

a) Marvel needed to make bank off of Thanos’ cameo in Avengers 2012

b) Marvel needed to remind people Thanos exists after his cameo

c) Marvel needed to workshop some possible concepts for the then inevitable Thanos movie on the horizon

d) Marvel needed to amp up the Inhumans via their stupid cloud unleashed in this story so they could begin their dastardly master plan to supplant the X-Men with them

Ugh. I recommend you simply skip this story wholesale.

*The other 5 Infinity Gems were destroyed

**By the way in Stalin’s stories Thanos’ armies comprised of a diverse group of alien baddies. Here...there are different kinds of aliens but they seem to be a few species who all look the same. Hardly what Stalin and other artists rendered, which gave you an idea of the scope of Thanos’ travels.

If we’re going to be paying more money for comics nowdays could they maybe put in at minimum the same effort as cheaper comics from 40 years ago!

***The Watchers and Celestials by the way, Jack Kirby creations, get supplanted by Hickman as the oldest and most powerful race in the universe for the sake of his boringly named ‘Builders’

#Thanos #Infinity #Marvel Infinity #Avengers #The Avengers #Jonathan Hickman #jim stalin #Jack Kirby #black order

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scorpio-karma · 6 years

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Your top 10 favourite WoCs in TV shows?

Sorry I’m getting to this late, but I was at work when I got it and I work long hours also I’m usually tired after, especially for this ask. I always knew peripherally that there aren’t that many WOC are on TV, but this ask kinda made realize exactly how few.

Now it’s been a hot minute since I’ve watched TV in general, except for a few select shows here and there it’s been about 3 years since I’ve watched a new show and that includes Netflix because I don’t have Netflix so this was a particularly hard question because I had to a) remember what I used to watch in TV when I watched TV and b) were there WOC on that show? The answer to that question was often no (Charmed, Supernaural,) and then if they did have WOC I had to think did I like that character and the answer to that was also no (Dreama from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Emily from Life With Derrick).

So in no particular order just the order I thought of them in, here’s my top 10 WOC in TV:

1. Bonnie Bennett from Vampire Diaries

I kind of put her on here begrudgingly because though I absolutely love her character she’s a character you have to love in spite of the writing. You can find many a meta from me and many others on how badly she was treated, so I’m not going to get into that and focus on the reasons I like her. For one she’s a witch which as a quality in general doesn’t count for much unless you’re me and absolutely love witches and have watched a lot of things specifically because there’s a witch in it. It’s literally the only reason I watched Charmed and Sabrina the Teenage Witch as a kid. So due to that fact she was always going to be my favorite character. Two she’s the most practical which again is not trait that means that much unless you’re me. It’s a quality I’ve always valued in characters and is probably the biggest reason why I hate Elena and characters like her. And lastly she was a character who was just teeming with potential which is why I spend so much time talking about her.

2. Qetsiyah from Vampire Diaries

I also put her on this list begrudgingly and love her for the same exact reasons as I love Bonnie except for one add addendum, she’s played by Janina Gavankar, my girl crush. She to me is one of the most beautiful women on the planet, so pretty much anything she’s in I am biased, but I do love what she adds to anything she’s in. She has this presence that I don’t quite know how to describe, but she always has my attention. She’s is such a force of nature and I guess I love this role specifically because she is a force of nature–the entire show’s lore is ingrained in this character. When I think about season 5 and how shit it was I realize that what I remember the most and in the greatest detail is her–she for me was the only good thing about that season.

3. Rachel Pirzad from Alphas

Most of my followers probably have no idea who she is as this was a short lived show on Syfy and I honestly only watched it because I had a crush on Ryan Cartwright at the time. If I’m ever into some obscure show that’s usually the reason. Anyway from that show my favorite characters were Gary (Ryan Cartwright’s character) and Rachel the girl with the ability to enhance her senses. Not only was she beautiful but I identified with her character a lot in being introverted, and her issues with people touching her, plus I loved how they incorporated her family and how that effected how she approached the world. She was often scared with legitimate reason to especially as a Iranian woman in the U.S, but was brave as well.

4. Tia and Tamera from Sister Sister

Now this is really bringing y’all way back, but when I think about shows that shaped my childhood this one sticks out in a big way. I don’t know if this phenomenon has ended but I remember as a kid Twins being a big deal in the entertainment world. Mary-Kate and Ashley, Zach and Cody, that basketball twin movie on Disney channel, that other model twin movie on Disney Channel, The Parent Trap, the list could go on. I don’t see this as much any more but I also don’t watch children’s TV anymore. And of that era my favorite set of twins was Tia and Tamera, and not necessarily because they were black and the only ones I could identify with, but because they were the only ones I found consistently entertaining. The draw from them wasn’t that they were twins, sure that was the premise of the show, but that wasn’t what the entire show was about past the first season. The majority of their shenanigans didn’t revolve around “we look exactly the same” it actually spent a lot more time on their differences and individuality.

5. Mona Thorne from Half & Half

Another one that’s from way back. A character from a show on a channel that doesn’t exist anymore. This is a character I liked for two reasons. One, she was then underdog which for me in general is kinda an automatic like from me, and two I identified with her on many levels. If you don’t know the premise of the show it’s about two half sisters who reconnect later in life. Their related through their father who’s very rich and had very different childhoods due to this. I identified with Mona because that was essentially kind of my childhood. While my dad isn’t rich but definitely lives in a income bracket higher than me and my mom I understood what is was like watching my half-siblings live a more privileged life than me. I was a lot less bitter because I understood living in a higher bracket meant living with my dad which I didn’t want, but she was one of those characters that spoke to me.

6. Bessie Lovin from Damnation

A recent one, finally. I quite love how her character and story was handled. She’s a whore, but her value is in her intelligence. She has her own story arc and unlike a lot of shows, for a secondary character you learn a lot about her. Plus her relationship with Creeley was just the sweetest thing. I even made an edit about it. She was hands down my favorite character of the short-lived series.

7. Astrid Finch from The Tomorrow People

Another one I put on here kind of begrudgingly because the show she comes from isn’t that great, but when I think about her impact years later I realize she and John (my ship) were the best part of the show and the only two I actually wonder about since the show was cancelled.

8. Geena Fabiano from Unfabulous

I’m putting her on here tentatively because while the actress is a WOC the character is not, or at least had no indications of being anything other than Italian. I’m one of the few people who really liked Anna on TVD and she is the entire reason why. Honestly the only reason I ever watch TVD in the first place was because I recognized Nina from Degrassi and the only real reason I stayed for the rest of the season (let’s be honest S1 is really cheesy) was because I recognized other actors from shows/movies I used to watch like Jasmine Guy from A Different World, Kelly Hu from X2, and Malese Jow from Unfabulous. I guess what I loved about her is how confident and outspoken and how completely fearless she was to be herself. She made for a great best friend for Addie, but in a weird twist of events because I usually root for the underdog, I wanted a show about her instead of Addie. I mean she just did a whole lot more than Addie.

9. Skye/Daisey Johnson from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

She’s a character I didn’t like that much at first and that’s because in the beginning she’s set up like a literal Mary-Sue. I’m not talking about the loose term used, I’m talking about the origin of Mary Sue. In the pilot she’s set up like those fanfics where an person is dropped in some universe and gets to live out their dream of seeing Superman, or something to that effect, and those are just not my cup of tea, I didn’t even finish the season, I didn’t actually pick up the show again until the show was well into season 4, but she grew on me. In a weird way I do kinda miss her season 1 self, but I understand why she’s not–she’s had quite a bit of development over the years, she’s no longer the naive optimist anymore which is more my speed as a character because I like pragmatism in characters. She does annoy me from time to time when she doesn’t do the practical thing, but I realize emotions rule people’s decisions a lot more than logic.

10. Rosa Diaz from Brooklyn Nine Nine

She is literally the epitome of qualities I like in characters. She’s for one badass, very pragmatic, but I love about her most is that even with all of that she’s not a robot. There’s a balance to her character you don’t get to see often with characters like this which is what I identify with because I’m quite apathetic but at the same time empathetic which is a weird contradiction but I’m full of them. She’s kinda a contradiction but it seems to go together seamlessly.

Honorable mentions:

1. Lana Lang from Smallville

Weirdly I don’t hate her, and I say that because she has a lot of qualities of a character like Elena Gilbert, constantly the Damsel in Distress, but anyone who watched Smallville would know that if you’re not Clark Kent every character is essentially a damsel in distress, so that’s not really a quality that can be annoying in that context. Another thing that annoys me with Elena is that her actions rarely meet what’s said about her. There’s a lot of over hyping when it comes to Lana’s character as well, but for the most part she met those expectations or clarified that she wasn’t. I found little contradiction with this character. The reason she didn’t make the list for me is that she’s just a little too bland for my liking.

2. Angela Moore from Boy Meets World

As far as token characters go she’s not a bad representation. Her story lines didn’t revolve around furthering other’s (white) characters development. She wasn’t known as the best friend, or the ugly one. There is an immediate attraction from Shawn to her and even Cory to a degree because he too recognizes her beauty. BMW was a very white show so I’m very sure she was added to meet their diversity quota, but what I liked about that is that she wasn’t added begrudgingly–the was some real effort put into adding her as a character. Plus I like that they didn’t do what shows normally do which is cast the lightest black girl they can find when they’re told they need diversity. They committed to it and then at the same time kinda of not when I think about her break up with Shawn. The only reason she didn’t make it in the top for me is because I don’t really remember much about her. I watched a lot of BMW but I’m very sure I missed a lot of episodes and I can’t quite remember her introduction. Her identifier for me was Shawn’s girlfriend, and I guess I kinda wanted more.

3. Shirley Bennett from Community

Community is one of my favorite shows of all time and I do love Shirley in all her Evangelist glory, but she’s not my favorite. When it comes to community there’s not a single character I hate–they’re all great–but Shirley doesn’t really rank high for me. She’s definitely not a bad representation or even a token character because out of all of them she seemed the most real to me who was the only character who had anything important going on outside of the group. In fact that’s kinda the running gag of the paintball episodes–the show makes the situation so epic and series but the reality is that the real world has things going on and it’s usually shown through her who has children and a husband that takes presidence over them but that never stops her from giving to her all. She’s actually really bad ass. The reason why she didn’t meet the ranking is just that she’s not a character I overly identify with, but she rather represents more someone I know.

#my top 10 #woc in tv

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