Love your analyses on all things brio. You observe things so much deeper than I do lol
Why do you think rio didn’t kill beth after she said she lost the baby? I don’t think he ever truly believed she was pregnant but wanted to get her to admit that herself and stop lying to him but once the whole pregnancy game was over why didn’t he kill her?
You are keeping me FED with these asks, you know that, right? Just like, who cares about my boring regular life when I can think about Brio all day. 🥰🥰🥰
The psychology of Rio (and Beth) is basically what keeps me coming back to these insane characters. On the one hand they’re so over-the-top toxic and crazy, but on other hand they are also both so relatably human. I talked about this particular part of season 3 in this post, discussing Rio’s feelings about Beth’s imaginary miscarriage. Where he suddenly realized that while he still felt anger, he also felt other emotions for her, which complicated his murderous plans.
And isn’t that just so relatably human? This cycle of abuse couples keep perpetuating, not knowing how to extricate themselves. The initial draw of Beth for Rio was rooted in juuuuuust enough validation to get him hooked. There are lots of jokes about Beth’s magic vagina that got Rio acting crazy. And it’s true in part. It isn’t the vagina though, it’s HER. She fulfilled something in him that he felt was missing, and that he somehow craved. We can’t pinpoint exactly what that specific craving was, but Rio is very much attracted to Beth’s life. Even Manny Montana described the Brio relationship this way, and I fully agree. The freedom and power that Beth envies in Rio is reflected by a similar envy and craving in Rio for the freedom of balance and privilege Beth has and takes for granted. That feeling of “you’re just like me but you have what I can’t” is gotta be crazy-making. I can see why he became obsessed. Sat outside her house at all hours of the night, just feeling the vibes. Trying to understand how a monster like her can hide in plain sight like that while he himself has given up everything for his kingdom. I imagine he had his own moment (or many moments) like Beth did in his closet, just examining her existence and trying to understand how she is who she is.
Given all that, given that compulsive attraction that’s so deeply rooted in his own psychology, in the absence of immediate and strong emotion, I don’t see how he could ever bring himself to kill her. He can’t even leave her alone, much less get rid of her forever. Because she serves a psychological purpose. She validates for him the absence of that maternal domesticity that he for whatever reason needs. Like people with “daddy issues” seeking endless validation from powerful men, Rio NEEDS Beth to validate his own humanity to himself. Rio’s personal self-outlook, I think, is rooted in a lot of darkness and shame. He masks it with playing to things he thinks are his strengths – his meticulousness, his leadership, his intelligence, even his attractiveness. But deep down I don’t think he likes himself as much as his cocky demeanor would lead us to believe. I think he grieves the loss of the child he was and the dreams that boy had to give up. Rio always felt he had no choice. That he HAD to be like he is and denied himself an enormous amount of happiness because he believed that was the consequence of being king. And then he sees Beth who hasn’t given up those things, who has the privilege of both ruthlessness and softness, and he cannot kill that. That would be like killing a part of himself. A part he’s always wanted for himself.
For the same reasons Beth can never kill Rio. They are linked. They feed each other’s inner child and they validate each other’s most secret desires: to be seen, to be understood, to be given permission to be themselves without losing all they’ve built. And it was this specific relationship that was in my mind when writing Rough Night. Their giving in to who they each always wanted to be and achieving happiness in the process. A fix-it.
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Ok y'all it's time to join the party (very late) on my latest deep obsession, which THIS TIME I am going to allow myself to pursue instead of killing the joy (because of how intense it can get) and share with you!!
And that obsession is Epic: The Musical.
Holy smokes man this thing has remolded my brain, it just somehow hits all of those things which I desperately love in media
Firstly. The music is absolutely exquisite. And not even in the ways you'd normally think! Like--there's such wonderfully detailed soundscaping! The musical follows Odysseus on his journey home, and the songs themselves contain beautifully done effects that basically make the listening experience into a movie in your head. Monsters, crashing oceans, the underworld itself--and not only is this included in non-muscial sound design, it's incorporated into the music itself. The realm of the wind gods uses flutes as the main instrument--because it's a WIND instrument I'm losing my mind
PLUS there's the additional elements of musical "Easter eggs," thematic connections, leitmotifs, instrumentation identification, musical callbacks and even foreshadowing like come ONNNNN it's so well done
All of this with the added bonus that the songs, while cohesive, do not all sound the same, and do not feel like normal musical theater songs. They are the perfect mix between modern music, orchestral arrangements, and a musical theater jam, because they are 1. SUPER great to belt along to, 2. Very much linked together (as explained above) and 3. Very unlike the standard, vocal-focused empty pop sound we're used to (theater) while keeping the innovative, ear-wormy, modern (pop) beat that often feels out of place in theater!
And lyrically this musical is super strong. I spent a ton more time on the music (and will likely write more at length later) because that is what got me obsessed with it, but there's also much to praise lyrically! Unlike most modern "non-theater" musicals, while you can tell at places that it has been influenced by (the ever-present) Lin-Manuel Miranda, it feels authentically unique and independent. So many songs have genuinely profound lines (check out Just a Man, the second song in the saga) and the pop elements never lend themselves to empty repetition. Everything sung or said has a purpose, which I am obsessed with. Yes king go off give us everything
Finally (for now) there's just the genuine love that the creator(s) have for this musical. Jay Rivera-Herrans is the brain behind it (he wrote the entire musical over several years) and like...just look at what he shares about it on his Instagram. He gets so EXCITED!! And not like PR excitement, this is like legit "I'm making silly noises because I can't contain myself" excitement!!! He reminds me of me in that sense because he has SO much love and passion for what he does and the nuance in it and the people who enjoy his work, and he shares that in an unfiltered, real, authentic way, and we need to see more of that in the world.
Anyway, if you haven't heard of it and are now interested, it's pretty easy to catch up--there are 5 of the 9 sagas out right now, but only half of the songs, and Spotify has a playlist or two that has them all in order. It's only an hour and eight minutes worth of listening and I have just listened to it through twice in two days; it really does not get old. And then if you go to Jay's Instagram the rabbit hole is deep!! And he explains a lot of the lore and symbolism and intentionality/Easter eggs in the musical!! I went through all of the content he posted, pretty much...
So there's my official hawking of Epic (if only I had gotten in on this earlier!! The "Get in the Water" song that was trending a while ago?? That's from this!!) and you should go listen to it!!!!
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Labeling this one mature cause it’s artistic nudity, which isn’t something I usually draw but yippie! Scar and anatomy reference! :3
I have explanations of where most of these scars come from, so I’ll go through them :)
The massive one covering his whole upper back is the one Dracula gave him and the one that bares the curse. I tried to make it kinda gnarly looking, but still distinctly claw marks. There’s a couple other scratches near it from other creatures.
The ones on his arms come from a couple things. I imagine he uses his arm bracers a lot to block things and sometimes hits are still enough to leave a mark under them. The scars also come from an effect of the curse: rotting. Rot usually starts at extremities and would leave some nastiness there, probably exacerbated by moving a lot. The first three images have the legs not visible but I usually put something similar there too.
Speaking of, the very large ones on his lower legs in the fourth image are burn scars from the scene of X68000 and Chronicles where the rooms before Dracula set on fire! I guess some of it might also be from walking in the cursed swamp too.
Most of the random smaller ones are just generally from fighting monsters. Tbh I’d be more surprised if he didn’t have any scars from having axes and bones and fire and fleamen thrown at him all the time lol.
In the third image there’s a couple bite marks and yeah those are from Drac too. I’ve seen some folklore about vampires being able to drain people long distance or while not being entirely corporal and yeah that sounds like something he’d do through the curse just to make Simon’s life worse. Idk, I have the novel Dracula and I should be reading it for other ideas for stuff tbh. This one might change entirely eh who knows. Either way, I think the curse’s ultimate goal was to make him suffer and then turn him after he dies from it so I wanted to add some more implications that he’d become a vampire if he failed to break the curse.
There’s some other things of note that aren’t scars. I try to make him look a little frailer and thinner in Simon’s Quest cause well yeah the curse. I don’t think it’s noticeable here since the fourth image isn’t the Simon’s Quest design and he doesn’t look much wider whoops. I’ll have to try to keep how ripped he is more consistent in later drawings 💀. Uhh I also try to make his eyes look significantly more tired, way larger eye creases and a bit of dark. If this was a colored drawing there’d be a little red under his eyes and he’d be paler than the last image. Just details to make him look sick ig.
Yeah, these are mostly doodles just for me to look back at and make sure I’m drawing him consistently d(^^ ).
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well i've caught up on the double. which means i am depressed!!!! at least [redacted]'s death scene was homoerotic. (me fully weeping: at least this is being directly paralleled with a het lovers death scene. at least [other stuff i am redacting for spoilers but just trust me bro].) anyway to pass the time until 29 drops does anyone want to help me with a reference post i'm writing about the names of jiang li's family members? let's play a game called Name That Hanzi! wherein i give you an image of some hanzi and you give me text versions that i can copy and paste. i did my best but i hit a wall on this one. here's the image:
[ID: Screencap of Jiang Li from The Double showing her title card with her two names, Jiang Ruoyu and Jiang Li. The names are also displayed in hanzi. /end ID]
so far i've got 姜若雨 for jiang ruoyu on the left, but i'm not confident about those second and third characters (like those strokes are not even all in the right direction. but maybe it's the script?). and on the right we have 字 (zi, courtesy name), SOME CHARACTER THAT HAS STYMIED ME (help me studio audience), and 梨 (li).
(also sidenote is it just me who totally missed that she has a courtesy name? and that apparently it's li that is her courtesy name, and it's the other name, ruoyo, that no one ever uses? also sidenote of the sidenote the ruo character is the same one in her sister ruoyao's name. so maybe they have a generational name? their dad and his brothers all share a character as well (yuan, 元). their little brother bingji doesn't have ruo in his name though. so maybe not.)
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here’s all the useful/random things i’ve found on the internet in one place (i’ll also be updating this from time to time to add new stuff)
piracy:
(btw make sure to AT LEAST have a few ad blockers before u start pirating and if u can get a vpn)
nikfilecabinet — their entire account has a lot of useful shit ive just mostly used their piracy section
does the dog die — u can look up triggers that are in movies/tv shows (not directly related to piracy but though id throw it in here anyway)
books:
communist manifesto — it like 50 pages just read it
stone butch blues —
it is frequently discussed as a difficult yet essential work for LGBT communities, as it "never shies away from portraying the anti-Semitism, classism, homophobia, anti-butch animus, and trans-phobia that protagonist Jess Goldberg faced on a daily basis—but it also shows the healing power of love and political activism."
fucking trans women — (cw for lots of nudity obviously)
a zine by trans women, about the sex lives of trans women. It is an educational and instructional tool as much as it is a creative exploration of how we have sex.
all animorphs books — kids are able to morph into animals and have to save the planet or something idk i haven’t finished the first book yet
spanish for beginners — speaks for itself
an indigenous peoples history of the us —
it describes and analyzes a four-hundred-year span of complex Indigenous struggles against the colonization of the Americas
electronic furby manual — a l l h a i l f u r b y s
misc:
native languages — they have lots of reliable info on native things and links to tribal sites
scarleteen — they have articles on tons of important things relating to sex ed, including things on queer sex, stuff relating to being trans/intersex, having sex while disabled/having a disabled partner, safe sex, consent, u get the picture
mending/fixing/taking care of clothes — they also have stuff about “upgrading” clothes (remaking, resizing, etc.) (also i got this from this twt thread that has other stuff too if u wanna check it out)
breast cancer self exam patient education for post mastectomy trans patients — just in case twitter finally blows up here’s the pdf
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i love that i have been journaling in some form for so long now because it's so fun to look back at what went through my head a few years ago.
I just love seeing how much i have changed and grown, like my bullet journal is a lot more minimalistic than it used to be because in school i didn't have that much time to draw so coming up with cool bullet journal pages and themes was like my main crative outlet and then i started using my sketchbook more and somehow filled like 5 sketchbooks in the last few years and my bullet journal less complicated because a) i know what works for me now and b) i'm creating other things now.
And before that i had diaries filled with cute mundane stories and flyers from events, notebooks that were somewhere between a sketchbook and a diary (i really wanted to be Nikki from dork diaries....) where i was planning outfits and figuring out how to be cool at the age of like... 12..., an entire school issued planner filled with nothing but silly commentary about school life by me and my friends because i fucking HATED that planner but we had to buy it (catholic school girl rebel phase i know) and just.... i'm glad that i have a little archive of my life so far...
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