#i dont care when people like problematic characters but i draw the line at characters who take part in s/a in any way shape or form

[amethystblack]

genuine question: why did you say that ages can be up for interpretation if you were gonna keep dialogue in the game that refutes that?

it just makes a really uncomfortable fanbase where theres people who either arent aware of it and ship things thinking its ok, or those that are and just continue shipping weird things simply cus youve said itd be ok. if you were gonna say ages were up for interpretation, you couldve at least tried to pretend that characters that are minors arent.

idk. it just kinda makes me hate the reborn fanbase. and you, for allowing that to be the case. i dont really care that much anymore, cus ive lost interest in reborn. but my point still stands. kinda weird of you

in the first place, i think we originally said that they are up to interpretation within the bounds of what makes sense within the text. i think it's pretty hard to, in good faith, interpret a number of young characters as being an appropriate age to ship even within some leniency.

but you're saying these people 'arent aware of' when the characters 'are minors' like that is still some objective predefined line, which we have objectively said we are not subscribing to. their ages are also generally arbitrary in the first place.

let us also please remember the entire reason that relationships with minors are a problem is because of the imbalance of power leading to deeply controlling and abusive dynamics. let us please also recall that these are fictional characters who are not real and cannot participate in such dynamics of abuse without the guiding hand of the person shipping them. someone who takes deep pleasure in that is probably concerning regardless of what age the characters are.

...but what you're saying here is that you have some notion of what ages the characters are, and you find it weird that i am not participating in the vigilantism of your self-proclaimed objective view of. it does not escape anyone that under the current tinderbrush social climate, this dismissal as "kinda weird" is an implication that i am complicit in some kind of problematic behavior... when, let us remember, the entire reason that we opted out of the ages was because people were immediately being extremely weird in all directions about that very vigilantism.

i am not interested in participating in whatever kind of "weird" shade you're throwing here, and i don't think anyone should be. when real people are involved in the community, we will do our best to make sure everyone is as safe as within our power to influence. as a moderation team we also still generally do discourage people from being "weird" about characters, whether they are underage or not.

if you're uncomfortable with this because it doesn't match up with your preferred lines in the sand and social grandstanding, then it is probably best for you to move on anyway.

cass here. had a part in this decision. tbh i barely know what you're saying, other than that you're mad.

people being weird about fictional characters is, well, always weird. but your concern is really about the fact that we are not drawing an exact line about who's a minor and who isn't. ame originally didn't want to include ages at all because of this sentiment. my counter was that there is at least an age range that the characters feel like they belong in. people are going to want ages, and we need to give them something or people are going to be weird about it. but if we assign them a number as their age, we are making that number up. surely you've met people who do not feel their age. so instead we give a range.

there are safe age approximations that i can make. for example: shelly's in middle school. she's probably 10-12 or so. but she doesn't have a literal actual age because she's fictional. we just have to pick a number that fits. whether it's 10, 11, or 12 doesn't really matter. she's in middle school. end of story. being weird about shelly is not controversial. don't do it. cain is probably in the 17-19 range. that's a safe approximation, yeah? any number in that range would be acceptable from an author standpoint. but now people are going to get real mad about which number he is. "is cain a minor????? is [x] okay now??????????" and listen. this is still easy. the answer is no. don't be fucking weird. it doesn't matter what number we set him as. shit isn't suddenly more or less acceptable because you interpret him as one number or the other. the reality of the situation is that other people think that some behaviors are suddenly acceptable once you pass the magic 18 line, and they aren't. if you think we're okay with more weird shit because of how we set this up, you're wrong, and the vigilantism has gone to your head.

[desiresign]

sending you this so you can ramble abt your blorbos so! seiga for the ask thing ~ aesop

THANKYUUU :DD ough

favorite thing about them

seiga my beloved.i love you... i dont know why.. i like when girlies are kind of evil and have little morals and are unliked by everyone else and .. . I LIEK HERRRRRRRR OK (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)(´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)(´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)(´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

least favorite thing about them

normie answer:omg guys, she violates human rights with dead bodies, omg! scandelous!!! TRUE ANSWER: I WANT HER TO HAVE anything anything a MERCH i will take even the generic anime style type idk idk ouuuou uuuu seiga fumo doesnt exist i want it to be real

favorite line

ええ、腐ってて可愛いでしょ？ yeah, shes rotten and cute, isnt she... (talking about yoshika) awwwwww the oober doober

brOTP

i do like to see her hanging out with the taoists, she certainly isnt that close to them (though much moreso to miko) but i think it could be a funny type relation. guy who hangs around your house and you dont want her around but shes chill. you think about how evil she is while enjoying her lovely dinner she made for everyone.

OTP

i dont ship her with anyone really ,NO BITCHES!!! unless... me!???????!!!!! seiga just doesnt get anyone. but i dont think she really cares about romantic relationships. honestly for the best because she would probably have a moochy relationship considering she likes to hang around other people to get something out of them in return... she problematic aromantic lesbian representation (so true)

nOTP

i dont like seiga x yoshika... well simply, i dont... so yeah no matter what it seems like i say or draw of them, i really dont ship them together XD and dont think of it that way at all. i dont have strong feels about the subject i just dont like it..

random headcanon

i think that during the time yoshika was alive seiga and her never even met, but i think yoshika had heard of her in passing and that inspired her to be fascinated by hermits. which makes things ironic in the end, doesnt it!!

regarding jiangshi, this method was one of the first spells that she learned after ascending to hermitdom and was one of the highest points that led to her being cast as a 'wicked hermit.' yoshika is the only one she has kept around for a very long time because she is her favorite, so she is the only one who gets all of seiga's love and anti-decomposition spells. she loves her very much :3 also, since yoshika says that "we" in relations to her guarding the mauseleum, there are definitely more around. jiangshi do not last very long due to decomposition, so they eventually "die" again and are taken out of seiga's control.

i headcanon seiga as being chubby literally because of a dream. i know that sounds funny but heres a fact about me, im kind of a dream obsessed person sometimes, i really like having dreams and thinking about what my brain is doing. but anyways, i had the dream before seiga and yoshika were even really characters on my love radar, i just simply knew them. i dont know what happened in the dream but they were both there, and i think it took place in my house??

seiga with a pokemon: im not sure about more than this, but one thing for sure im really specific about is her having a luxray!! they can see through walls! so as the wall-passing hermit, it would totally make her life easier with a pet who can see whats going on before action XDc sadly though i dont know others she can have.. WAIT yeah ok i dont know the new pokemon very well but houndstone can also be hers. uoppy

also, seiga fursona is cat, its pretty normie and obvious, well if she didnt wanna be called a cat well ZUN shouldve never called her nyanyan... niang niang nyanyan seiga meowwwwwww meeeeowwwwwww OUAAAAH.

unpopular opinion

shes my best friend

song i associate with them

well desire drive and her theme, old yuanxian and um... yeah yeah... necromantic yeah..... (sadly succumbing to fate)

favorite picture of them

can you can you look at seiga in WaHH for me please

^ sittoing

THANK YOU. AND REMEMBER. SEIGA FOREVER

[coffincataclysm]

I'm really glad that the Yakuza fanbase seems a lot more normal than fanbases for other things, especially video games but to the small percentage that actually sit there and do shit like defend the character who put women into sex trafficking, made one go blind from the trauma of it, and then tried to kill her so that her brother wouldn't find out what he did,,,,,,stay far away from me

[aprito]

hello <3 since i got these asks at the same time i decided to combine my thoughts on them in this post. yet another annoying sjw essay from yours truly on this blog 

before i get into these i think i need to preface why im like. i guess overly hyperfocused on a certain unproblematic base (same age au / platonic canon) for them and avoid the ped0philic content like the plague lol

tw for pedophilia ment, rape ment if that makes you squicky. ALSO THIS IS LONG AND RAMBLY

as i’ve mentioned a couple times already, ive been into the ship since i was 12, back when it was very very common to not only post untagged (nsfw) canonverse content of the two in writing and in drawing but also non con and the like, so you can imagine how bad my first impression online was. thinking back on it ...as a child i found it disturbing but didnt really register how problematic it really was?? (i know, but i also lived in the middle of nowhere and had no one explain this to me) 

skip to 2014 aka me coming back to naruto at 17ish and i had kinda become hyper aware of the fact that there was an increasing amount of people online who had come forward with explaining how fictional problematic content, mostly pedophilia, had been used to groom them into starting relationships with adullts. it was also a time where a lot of people didnt believe these victims, not registering how common it was for minors to be online friends with adults who had no boundaries and no qualms exposing them such content. not gonna get into my personal life here but i was lucky to not having gone through this myself. like... it kinda was my first time truly realising how fiction can EASILY be used to manipulate others irl (and yes i will not argue this, if you dont think fictional media can form and manipulate people’s opinions on attitudes, countries, cultures and virtues, pick up a book about the effects of propaganda media at least once please) 

i, being young, still liking the dynamic but not really the romance, would point this out here and there in the fandom and get into fights with grown adults in their mid 20s who assumed i automatically hated the ship(s) and tried to restrict their freedom of speech or whatever, heard everything from the “age of consent doesnt exist in naruto” to the “sasori looks like a child what does it matter” despite people clearly playing on him being older and experienced. it made me so upset that people were just consuming all this content uncritically and exposing children to it tbh?? not really just sos but a lot of minor/adult ships in naruto in general. and thats where i sat down and thought, i do not want to be a grown adult talking down to children that point out how unsafe the fandom is. theyre absolutely right in drawing these boundaries and calling out adults who defend the uncritical consumption and creation of this content. i do not want to consume or create content that predators could use to groom minors, and i absolutely do want to let younger people in fandom know that i am respecting their comfort zones and want them to have a safe and fun experience. after all, naruto is not an adult show and i think a lot of people forget that!!!! i am not perfect in that regard but its something that i, at the age of 23, am very passionate about and strive towards to.

and i guess thats where same age au was born for me and i have been sticking to it ever since. 

so finally we can move to the first question 

aside from the fact that we both dont like canon sos, i dont think it would work out even if i wasnt prejudiced to it anyways. in all honesty, 35 year old canon sasori is not a redeemable character to me, given the fact that he’s easily amongst the cruelest villains in naruto (torturing and killing and taxiderming people for his own fun personal gain, never for a goal that served anyone but himself. how do you redeem having over 300 corpses in your backpack that you felt absolutely no remorse for killing). sasori was legit one of the only cruel villains that didnt had someone else pull the strings, which sends a clear message on kishi’s part, who absolutely loves to redeem villains LOL.

being that old, he obviously had already been very manifested in what he believed in, even if it was shakey, to the point where the first crack in that world view (sakura and chiyo protecting each other) immediately had him give up on his life all together. that, in my opinion, is not a man who’s going to know what healthy relationships would look like, regardless of it being romantic or not. 35 year old sasori to me has the same appeal as an expired can of tuna and he’s probably very happy 6 feet under. he’s supposed to be a failed gaara in that sense that he had no one to look out for him and therefore was never going to experience anything but a bad ending in life. its fine that hes dead honestly, it wraps up his short character development the best IMO.

adding to that, seriously, sakura was obviously interested in knowing why he was that way, and called him out for being seriously fucked in the head, but it’s weird to me that people assume she had any interest in actively rehabilitating him, let alone starting a serious romantic relationship with him. sakura who’s not only very, uhm, immature and straight forward when it comes to her romantic viewpoints also, as a big bootlicker, wouldnt soil her standing in the village by starting anything with a disgraced and far too gone criminal like sasori. shipping that version of sasori with sakura intimately is still going to set her up for a huge power imbalance that would be difficult to handle imo, even if she was the one in the fight ultimately exerting her power over him. i would still look at it and think damn she deserves better than having to play therapist for man like that lol.

additionally, even if you ignored all of this, you cant really ignore that sasori had already known her as a child, and that had been his first and most impactful impression of her. i dont think that sasori would look at 35 year old sakura and see her as a grown woman and not the little green girl she was in the fight. plus, you easily fall into predatory comparison territory between the “childish” and “womanly” and i have seen way too often in fic just being boiled down to her now being fuckable. a lot of of ships do this and i would just like to remind yall thats it not normal for adults to want to start relationships with children they have seen grown up or known as a child when they themselves were fully grown adults. therefore, maybe if sakura hadnt met sasori before it would be less of a problem? but that also obviously defeats the point of the dynamic and the reason he died in the first place. so yeah, it sounds kind of doomed especially if you were to make it romantic. 

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE SECOND QUESTION

let me preface this that im not fundamentally against age gaps, even if im not super interested in it. after all, colorblind had a 5 yr age gap (with sakura being 21), even if, say, i wrote similar fics today i probably would make it smaller lol. i think it can be handled well if both parties have enough life experience to deal with it, and the author is cautious of where the age gap starts, i think a 10+ year age gap would be fine in a scenario where the younger party (i guess sakura) was at least 25-27ish, meaning she has completed most of her most formative life stages and probably had been in relationships before, meaning she would be able to handle it without having to fear a huge power imbalance. the older the younger party is the less the age gap is going to matter tbh .TsukiHoshino and AngelOfDeath10 both handle age gaps in their fics really well imo, so i do not mind reading about them.

unfortunately, a lot of people in this fandom think making sakura barely "”””legal””””” (18, not even 20 which is hilarious to me because the source material is obviously japanese) because they both cannot stand her being past her “prime years” of being young fertile and fuckable to much older men as well as thinking a 20 year old is automatically old enough to handle that type of relationship. ive seen a lot of unironic takes that believe it will absolve them of callout posts if they throw around age of consent and “shes 18 now suckers!!!” enough lmfao. absolutely hilarious. aging a minor up without aging the adult down seriously reeks of predatory “cant wait until youre 18″ narratives and thats why i find it similarly disturbing as straight up pedo shipping.

ultimately, sasosaku is and will always be a inherently problematic ship in canon, which is why i think it should always be handled a little more responsibly in fandom spaces, ignoring or outright excusing the main problem factor, which is sasori, isnt going to convince anyone that the dynamic in itself is well written and interesting enough to explore in aus, like giving sasori the redemption most of us wanted him to have by aging him down to a point in time where he was still realistically going to allow being positively influenced, similar to gaara. 

so really, what i think is well handled age gap and how most people handle age gap in the naruto fandom are two different worlds at times lol 

tl;dr

canon shippers have never been anything but gross when i was younger and i didnt wanna be like that, even if youre “smart”enough to differenate, actual creeps dont really care and might use your content to blur the lines, sasori isnt rly redeemable so romantic canonverse realistically wouldnt make much sense and is still iffy, age gaps are fine if they are handled well, but given that the dynamic doesnt really need the age gap to still work im not that invested on making that an essential part of my shipping experience.  

thank you for reading and hope this makes sense!

[intoafandom]

uhh do you like kevan miller? wasn't he the one who said "all lives matter"? LMAO it doesn't matter if he's a nice guy in the locker room. if he has problematic lines and political positions, that should be enough. please, educate yourself.

I know I always say that I will never post anything political on my blog, but I’m probably gunna have to make a post about millsy/kampfer/now freddy/hockey culture (just so my followers/mutuals know where i stand on this stuff so i never have to talk about it again lol. Cuz trust me its a whooole thing lol)

Ok so back to Miller. I think I’ve said this before (but on a small scale) that I haven’t been watching hockey for toooo long. I only started watching during the playoffs of the 2017-18 season when a game was just randomly on my tv cuz nothing else was on. Now i cant remember if he was actually playing during the like 5? games that I watched, especially since the only player I could remember was “Tuuk Arask” (which is what I seriously thought his name was lol). Either way, they got eliminated and for some reason I follow the team the entire summer and kept up with their preseason and everything. Which then lead into me watching the amazing 2018-19 season and so on to this day. And again I cant remember if miller was actually playing during that year cuz i only got reeeeally into it on like march 2019. But what I do remember, is that I started watching older games on YouTube in like October of 2018. They weren’t playing yet and theres only so many preseason games and i wanted more hockey as a new fan. So i watched ton of games aaaall the time and miller was a BEAST. And again, as a new fan at this time, i knew literally nothing about the game or players numbers or even their NAMES. Like for context, im a SERIOUS patriots fan, and even I cant name everyone on the team plus their numbers like i can now with the bruins. But anyways, not knowing anything, i just watched for the score + the crazy hits and fights that would happen cuz that’s what draws your attention as a new fan you know? I wasn’t watching for the players, I was watching for the HOCKEY aspect. I wanted to learn and experience what it was. So after watching a ton of older games and getting halfway through the 2018-19 season, I started to actually care about the players and figure out who they actually were as well as their numbers. And i got obsessed with figuring out who they all were and I got so proud of myself for finally being able to identify them on the ice without seeing their faces on the bench. So miller was a part of that group. He was on the roster when i made that little mission for myself. I also have to point out that the 2018-19 season his VERY special for me because its the first time I actually watched an entire season of hockey. I got to experience literally everything except the cup. I got every round of the playoffs, the outdoor new years game, pre season in china, learning the actual GAME etc. The roster is very special to me because they were the first hockey team I ever came to love. Kevan Miller was a part of that team. Like Ryan Donato and JFK and Bjorkie and MoJo etc. I LOVE the people on that roster for something more than just hockey. Its hard for me to explain because it’s a very special thing that I’ve never actually talked about or said out loud and im not going to get entirely into it rn cuz I’ll probably make another post about it with all of the other stuff i said. But basically its pretty much impossible for me to hate the people that were on that specific roster. That’s one of the reasons why I will always like Millsy. Among other reasons as well.

I like that he’s tough as nail and that he isn’t scared of anything or anyone. I like how much of a nice guy he is in the locker room. I think it was pasta? in his recent spittin chiclets interview, (it may have actually been cmac. I cant remember) but one of them mentioned how because of Millsy’s rehab and covid, it was super hard to actually SEE him. Like he was never around. And everyone would get so excited to see him whenever he was supposed to come back, only to get super sad when he wasn’t able to make it due to more surgeries etc. The guys know him the best and if they can get past his political opinions and still love him than that HAS to count for something right? I know Kevan Miller as a pretty great player who’s tough as nails and always stands up for his teammates. He never gives up and battles back. He seems like a great dad and his daughter is adorable for an added bonus lol. I’m not getting into my political opinions and whether or not I agree with his. And honestly I don’t really care about his. I follow him on insta, as i do with every single bruin since the 2018-19 season, and ik the type of stuff he posts. He doesn’t really post a lot of political stuff. He only really does on his story and even then its not that often. Ik a lot of liberals will be like “well if he supports this thing then everything else is bad and i cant support him” I’m not like that. One “bad” thing that they like or one “bad” opinion is not a enough for me to think he’s a bad person. Especially when you consider everything else about him.

Please do not tell to “educate myself.” I like Kevan Miller for many reasons. I know his political views and the stuff he stands for. It’s not that I dont care, it’s that i dont think his political views matter enough when I judge his character. Political views aren’t super important to me and i dont really care to take them into consideration when judging if I like a person or not. Miller can support trump if he wants to or whatever. Its not that I like him because he likes trump, i like him cuz he’s not afraid to say he likes trump. He’s HONEST which not many people nowadays can say. I knew what I was getting myself into when i said i like miller since most of bruinsblr hates him. But im not going to let a group of people decide who I should and shouldn’t like or why I shouldn’t like a person. I wanna decide for myself, even if others get upset by my decisions.

I’ll make a different post explaining everything better.

[ramabear]

Hi :) I'm sure you answered similar questions many times before, but... Well, I happened to be THIS late to the party called siaod. But hey, I'm glad to find such a gem at last. Now to the point! What is your honest view/opinion on boys' relationship? How does it make you feel? I mean, do you find it fascinating or creepy and inappropriate (lmao!) etc? Co-dependency, obsession and such. Now let's keep in mind it's fiction (duhh) we're talking about, not !!! real life cases. That's the whole [1/2

point here since like the majority of people just can't resist repeating stuff like "look children, this is NOT how to date, this is NOT healthy, toxic this and toxic that". Oh really? Lmao. Like chill, just do not read this kind of fiction if triggered or not old enough to draw a line between fantasy and real life. That's a story to read, for the people who find it interesting and enjoyable, not some PSA for fuck's sake. Well, sorry for the rant, hope you get what I mean:) Love; have a good day

do you mean how do i feel abt their relationship in canon? or how do i feel abt their relationship in siaod????? 

bc, obvs, i have different feelings abt canon vs siaod. 

in canon they’re obvs set up as foils to each other, rivals to help each other mature and have character developments and whatever- like u cant deny that narrative, its there from the beginning

in siaod that is turned on its head- so you still have the entanglement of their lives and maturation and character development, but its this,,, twisted and deeply problematic relationship. 

that being said, what i honestly feel is that i’d like to rewrite a whole chunk of the first few parts of the piece. theres a lot i’d like to tweak and change but i dont have the time or energy to do so. its a fic im gonna cap off and probably never look again, which isn’t super common for me, but needs must, yknow?

cause, the truth of the matter is, i just don’t....care abt them as a ship anymore. i have other katsuki ships i like more, some of which are arguably even more troublesome and my izuku ships are, well, mostly nonexistant. my bnha shipping has drastically changed since siaod’s inception. i really wish i’d finished writing it when i was still into katsudeku but w/e man, time rolls ever onwards lmao

[flockofdoves]

wait ok maybe a bad time to start this at 1:30am (<- started this post last night lmao) but i’ve been thinking so much (for a long time but this week i think maybe prompted by jonny saying stuff in the s5 q&a part 3 about fanon character designs getting more homogenous as the fandom gets bigger its really been on my mind again) about my thoughts on the magnus archives character design stuff

(this turned into such a fucking long post my god sorry lol. just writing this for my own purposes really but i feel ridiculous i spent like a good portion of the past day writing this out dkjfhgfd)

like i already said on that other post character design stuff is full of so much under the surface both really silly and almost nonsensical (like ‘oh this character just feels like they have a lot of triangles incorporated into their design’ or the slightly more connected to reality arbitrary ideas people have about what type of character might wear glasses) and stuff thats incredibly loaded and very much connected to real life systems of oppression. so its like. idk. i like drawing people and fashion and harmonizing shapes and the idea of coming up with people who dont exist through abstracted drawings that somehow click and that can feel cohesive even with different angles/expressions/poses/etc is really fun to me conceptually but Character Design(tm) as a thing even outside of established tropes and schools of it that really lean into elements that can uphold gross shit as shorthand just inevitably theres so much to consider in the implications of making a person (visually) and ascribing traits to them (or i guess in this case largely the opposite)

so thats not something id call fun its just important and inevitably a big factor if i’m going to put any of this to words and can only hope i do so non-clumsily when i wanna talk about this on the whole just bc i find the process of how fanon designs get homogenized interesting (and the purpose of it understandable and maybe a bit inevitable in certain contexts) but also regardless of any actual potential problematic implications in any of that just bc i like the creative process of coming up with character designs i like trying to see when it comes to practicing that through applying it to characters in non-visual media i care about how i can break my guides for what they could look like down to their bare essentials between canon description, things i vibe with personally, etc so that if i have all that written down for myself it can be a good starting place for just experimenting with designs (i dont have any desire to settle on any one design for these characters but its just good general practice for this stuff) and maybe pushing a bit against some things that seem to be generally defaulted to mix things up or w/e. so yeah i’ve just wanted to write all this out for myself for a while, so after that long fucking intro fdkgh here goes!

jon!!!

ok so canonically hes born about 1987 and is like roughly 28-31 throughout the series but looks older to the point where he straight up lies and says hes a decade older at one point, he has graying hair, has been described as looking like he hasnt slept in weeks

(this bullet point contains spoilers up to early s4) depending on what part of canon youre describing him in he canonically has scars from worms probably all over his body (post ep 39), a burn scar on his hand (probably right and probably roughly shaped like a handprint) (post ep 89), actually i’m checking on the wiki now and it specifically says melanie stabbed him in the shoulder? but rereading the transcript and another couple parts that i thought potentially could mention it i dont believe it ever actually specifies (maybe the person who wrote that is conflating how both melanie and daisy’s first injuries from the slaughter are on their shoulders? so even if not canon good guess i guess that his scar from thats on his shoulder) (post ep 125) plus also probably on his throat from daisy (post ep 91), somewhere from michael stabbing him (post ep 47), and who knows maybe even something from mike crew (probably not it was just the height part of things not a lightning strike but i saw fanart of him getting a lichtenberg figure scar once from that which was interesting) (post ep 91)

has been described as ‘scrawny’ and ‘little’ which may just be more of a insult but because of that i support manlet jon lol. also because of that tend to think of him as skinny and not very muscular but i’m def not opposed to him being fat i think its really fun when i do see interpretations of him as such esp in juxtaposition with martin its nice having stuff sometimes where its two fat characters in a relationship. but if i’m leaning on every little word to narrow down character design i’d say hes most likely thin and probably short too.

getting into stuff with no real canon basis, i am a fan of him having long hair like a lot of fanon has him with. its a very tangential justification because i know its more the specific events surrounding this this was describing but when he was described as a “grubby jesus” that helped lol

but! my jon hair opinion that seems to differ from fanon is that i think maybe itd make sense with him being described as looking older and stuff to give him a bit of a receding hairline

not sure about glasses either way i think it just comes down to the specific design whether it looks good or not. there is something conceptually funny to me about giving an avatar of the eye glasses and debating whether that “makes sense” or not lol. one time i saw someones design where he stopped needing to wear glasses later on and i thought that was kinda fun

i don’t really care for like. idk. glowing green eyed jon or multiple eyes or w/e. like i get it. idk probably somethings happening when hes doing like the ceaseless watcher thing or like that one scene where he forced a statement out of that person who described him as “all eyes” like the phrase but maybe not just that as a phrase. so that plus the cover art of the show being green and making people probably theme stuff on that color i guess i cant blame people for doing that but idk just like. it feels kinda just Blah and not that novel to see a lot of the time and a bit too tropey or w/e for my personal taste unless people mix it up a bit. so i tend to prefer him just looking like some guy even later on usually. also with just like brown eyes or w/e

okay so this next part is for both jon and martin because i cant fit this into either of their sections because i feel like i cant adequately talk about this without doing it in juxtaposition to one another

this post summarizes basically anything i’m reiterating here far better but basically by nature of this being a podcast written by a white person for whom most of the first characters voiced (who included most of the most frequently appearing characters outside of those described by others because they were reoccurring avatars or w/e long before voice appearances) were from a small pool of people at a majority white company and their family members, even if that wasnt “intentional” of course that pattern happens so much and more productions should be conscious of that from the get go and reach outside their immediate circles to cast more actors of color from the start of their productions if they have the resources to properly compensate them. so basically from there theres no real totally satisfying solution for portraying “aracial” characters acted and written by white people’s race, because the situation just isn’t ideal in the first place

so like, with that in mind, i know its a bit of a mixed bag with jon in fanon being pretty consistently either ambiguously a person of color or specifically south asian, because i know people of color who were excited from fanon going in for him to be a person of color only to realize hes written and voiced by a white guy and has no canon race (which might just somewhat default to him being written as white since theres no active thought to how him being a person of color, let alone any specific race or ethnicity, might affect anything), but then on the other hand, characters with no race given being defaulted to being portrayed as white is absolutely another common issue in fandoms of things like books and podcasts. so personally because of that i would feel weird portraying him as white in my own designs in contrast with how consistently hes depicted as a person of color, but i would be interested in potentially depicting him as other races beyond the default fanon of him being south asian too (although theres def stuff to consider there that doesnt prevent any interpretation but just is there regardless like his dynamic with daisy in like s4)

and then this post expresses things better than i could ever rehash, but because of the stuff outlined in there in my own attempts at character designs i try to avoid making martin white because of the juxtaposition between that and making jon a person of color in their dynamic. not as pertinent and not something i’ve taken in from any fan of color saying it so i’m definitely not dictating this just talking out my thought process, but by extension of this i’ve also tried to consider how colorism in juxtaposition between them might make it sit better to have martin have darker skin than jon. this does get a bit weird though when balancing how martin has a couple really goofy lines implying ignorance about police abusing their power (i guess charitable interpretations could be that hes plenty aware but nonetheless vocalizing shock in the moment of it actually happening in front of him), so even if as one of the few characters i’ve posted designs of before i drew him as black, when i remembered those lines i guess its just an issue of an “aracial” character being defaulted to being written as if hes white, so even if he certainly could still be black (or any race besides white who might not have the luxury of ignorance about police brutality) it just makes clear that by him being written the way he was nothings ideal because theres not necessarily much depth that can be taken from canon to make certain depictions of him as satisfying or well fleshed out as they could be. oh also so inconsequential to the rest of this and i dont care about this at all beyond just latching onto any scrap to base things off of but the fact that martin maybe knows at least some polish i feel like thats not a language most people just know from school (esp as someone who didnt go to college) or w/e so maybe his mom is polish so probably hes part white at least to wildly extrapolate from there? idrc tho its just one more thing to note on the subject depictions of jon and martins races

martin!

canonically the same age as jon (so approximately born 1987 and roughly 28-31 throughout the series)

theres at least like 4 things in canon that can be used to say hes canonically fat, and some of those lines also more just generally describe him as “big” or w/e so while i dont care about sticking to this as much its easy to argue hes tall too (esp that one point where he says a worm “jumped literally 6 feet through the air at my face” which i guess could be approximate or the worm like. arcing lol and also iirc jonny says he doesnt remember writing that line but regardless its another thing to latch onto to narrow down design stuff)

melanie!

canonically has a scar on her shoulder (as of late 2016), probably on her leg too (if not by early 2017 then by early 2018/ep 125), and is described as skinny

(spoilers for late s4) (also eye trauma mention) post ep 155 she’s blind but trying to research what exactly she might look like like would the results of the damage she does with the awl after going to the hospital would her eyes need to be eviscerated vs enucleated? idk. thinking about lydia saying in a s3 extra in retrospect talking about this where shes like ‘it wouldn’t work like that with [an awl]!’ bc . lol yeah idk. or like would she have scarring on her eyelids or anything, would she have glass eyes, would she feel a need to wear sunglasses to protect her eyes or as a visual cue that shes blind (bc idt shed be the type to just wear it to hide her eyes) or not, etc. i’m not sure! one thing i do know for sure though thats a pet peeve in art is that people make her cane have a red stripe on it when it the UK especially a red striped white cane is for deafblind people, so her cane is most likely just plain white (also theres different styles of white canes but from researching i think shed probably make use of a long cane imo)

my biggest non-canon appearance thought about her is just. melanie king butch 💗

i do think its fun when characters get drawn with unnaturally colored dyed hair for no real reason and do think people should have fun with that more but simultaneously the contrarian in me gets annoyed with how common blue grown out roots straight hair bob melanie is. like the fun of the novelty of being ‘fuck it dying this characters hair’ gets sucked out of it from it being so consistent in fanon. also while she def could be a long haired butch or w/e regardless i just wish fanon of her was way more masc for my own self indulgent reasons

basira

i think the only canonical appearance description is the implication that shes not thin by jared when describing her, melanie, and martin, distinguishing melanie as “the skinny one”

hussain specifically as a surname spelled that way while i’m def no expert, from people i know personally and looking online too seems to be most common specifically with pakistani, indian, and bangladeshi muslims so it makes the most sense to have her be depicted as south asian. considering her VA, her being part black could make sense too but also i feel like its kinda a Thing in a lot of media where they’ll barely have black characters but when they do they’ll make them cops so like idk that’d def require more thought to it.

definitely not on authority on this of course this is just me talking through my own thoughts but i feel like maybe the common fanon of her being a hijabi feels a bit just like . theres not much thought behind it for a lot of people doing it? like it feels like ‘she has a muslim name’ -> ‘she’s muslim’ -> ‘she wears a hijab’ and not much else. like theres just like a whole lot that would need to be unpacked with any main character being religious in this series and actually specifically iirc theres a part in season 5 or something where her and jon reflect on the implications of all this on human religion? and both seem a bit agnostic in their approach. and of course theres people who wear hijabs who arent particularly religious (just like obviously vice versa) but for adults in places that arent majority muslim i feel like a main motivator for that would be connection with ones wider community? but basically all of the main characters in this story like necessarily with the themes and how all this was able to happen to them they feel pretty atomized from any real community (she specifically is paralleled with martin in how she latches onto daisy) none of this is at all to say she couldn’t be practicing islam and/or a hijabi but just that if thats how people want to depict her i think it deserves more thought than just drawing her as such (like for one example of how people have done cool things with making characters muslim i appreciate this artists comics about muslim jon (1, 2, 3)) but yeah! idk just something i’ve been thinking about but very much is not something i can act like an authority on of course. because being a hijabi is something stigmatized i do nonetheless feel slightly weird if i were to go against that fanon but idk

part of me is like ‘we dont need more butch cops’ but then the other part of me just defaults to wanting to make every woman gnc lol. for w/e reason i tend to picture her dressing pretty practically in like khaki cargo pants and hiking boots and flannels and such

daisy

canonically theres here starburst shaped scar on the back of her shoulder

(spoilers for mid s4) i dont care to find it now but i feel like once she was described as scrawny or skinny or whatever (not sure how much focusing on muscle vs thinness if so) but if so that was after she came out of the coffin so i dont think that really implies she always looked like that and i think maybe even by contrast could be implying she was muscular before

def think it makes sense to make her white. generally i do see her similar to fanon depictions of her although i do kinda wish in juxtaposition people would make more women look butch besides her. i think when i first pictured her before seeing fanart or anything it was pretty similar in build and hair color and demeanor such as most of fanon but i pictured her with like . you know like the tight bun women in the military wear lol. so its more ambiguous if her flavor of powertripping “tough” white woman is gay or not. but idrc regardless i dont plan on making much art of her

tim

uhhh i think the only canonical description of him beyond his worm scars (post ep 39) is that basira called him hot in comparison to jon and martin lol

ever since i started listening i keep defaulting to picturing him vaguely like tim from marble hornets lol. so like idk i think its fun when he has defined eyebrows and sideburns and stuff. but not even that i’m really Set on i think theres a lot of fun potential designs for him

sasha

canonically has long hair, is tall, and has glasses

(spoilers for either end of s1 or end of s2 depending on if you’ve figured out something. if you know you know lol) like obviously theres weird stuff in juxtaposition if you make not!sasha a different race than her. i think probably regardless theyre the same race considering melanie didnt note that when describing what sasha looked like. idrc about figuring out what not!sasha looks like ig if i ever make art of her i’ll just figure it out

i think this was the first art i ever saw of her like right around the week or so i started listening to the show that was posted and a mutual reblogged it so i think from basically the start thats how i pictured her essentially. but the main parts of ‘long dark hair, glasses’ i internalized from that are so close to just canon so maybe not saying much

georgie

uhhhh i dont think theres any canon description of her? and i dont have very many opinions on what she does look like honestly except that i think she looks very bisexual lol. i like the idea of her presenting pretty gnc but still maybe having some fun with feminine aesthetics too, but honestly making her present totally masc is really cool too

oh also wrt body type stuff. part of me is a bit tired of how sometimes it feels like fat characters only get to be in romantic relationships if its with skinny characters and rarely are there character designs of two fat people together and melanie is canonically skinny (which doesnt really matter i Could ignore it but i like latching onto descriptions just to narrow things down) and jons maybe implied to be which makes jon/martin like that too. but on the other hand idec i care more about just having fat wlw characters so if melanie in all i project on her cant be that then georgie will be

oliver!

only canonical description of him i believe is “tall, black and careworn, deep lines of worry etched into an otherwise handsome face”

uhh beyond that idk.. not really set on this at all but i feel like maybe he dresses like. business goth lol. like idk. well put together casual clothes like nice quality short sleeve button ups and chinos or nice cuffed jeans but maybe darker colors and a bit of a vaguely edgy but not tacky flair (like fucking idk. raven pattern button up or something lol)

i saw some art of him once where he had long locs and also just idk he was like doing that ominous floaty thing which included his hair and that had a nice rhythm in the art together with the black tendrils in the background so i could appreciate him having long locs/braids/twists or something. but def not set on that and ofc theres like a lot of years to depict him between he could have various hair styles

this is hard to really judge but ive seen posts where people are like ‘haha i draw oliver just like i drew kravitz in the adventure zone’ which is like vaguely annoying to me idk lol. but of course i cant Really know if thats what people are doing from depiction alone bc theres no set appearance for kravitz himself but sometimes i get the Vibes thats whats someones doing and its just like. whatever idk. branch out and design another character!!

there are literally soooooo many more characters i really thought i could make a short-ish thing for each character beyond a few necessary addendums but god even on inconsequential shit this post is already SO fucking long lol so i’m giving up for now i’ve done most of the main people plus my favorite side character so its fine i can get back to this later if i really want to