#symbolic importance to characters

[marronje]

I promised and I did it

I call this ✨strawberry Ochako✨

Not perfect, but I tried to make it practical (I just wanted to give Ocha some cool pants)

(my rambling about the og design which started it all)

Special thanks to @lily-claw, your input was major here haha (maybe that's why I've stolen the "KILL WITH MY KNEES" idea y'know XD)

And these are with the massage points if any of you are curious

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

The world if people stopped applying their understanding of "conservatism" and "religion/christianity" through a very modern, deeply American view onto Death Note (a manga from the Early-mid 2000s which is very much set in the cultural and societal context of early-mid 2000s Japan and all that entails):

[rainbow-arrow]

*leans into microphone* hey. hi. in season four we got a parallel set of stories iconically called 'truth' feature luka (and his relationship with marinette), and 'lies' featuring kagami (and her relationship with adrien). *crowd begins to grow uneasy* at the end of season five and the special, kagami's role in continuing lies is solidified in standing by marinette in her choice of not telling adrien the truth. *grips microphone tighter as booing begins* now, based on the foil and parallel logic, we will see a similar parallel regarding luka's role in continuing the truth that is solidified in standing by adrien-- *gets dragged off the stage*

[ki1ldeer]

My like bi annual drawing of Heidi, sponsored by winter

[wackywatchdotcom]

also idk how many other ppl have had the same idea. but i like to think that c&a does NOT actually stand for cain/caine and abel. i think its meant to evoke those names but i feel like if they do ever reveal what that stands for its gonna be completely unrelated names that happen to have the same initials

[bitsbug]

iterator puppets but they’re puppets

[flight-of-icarus]

Me spreading propaganda for everyone to read Absolute Superman 🌀🌀🌀

(There is something about this version of superman that really struck me and had such a big impact on my brain)

[sunnysaystuff]

facts:

sirius was a bully

james was a bully

snape was a bully

sirius & james literally created snape's worst memory (yes, it was his worst memory because it led to him losing lily, but it was still caused by them!!) his instance of childhood bullying obv affected snape seriously if it was still the worst thing to happen to him 20 years later!!! and sirius tried to MURDER SNAPE.

snape traumatized children and joined a terrorist organization created to cleanse a minority!!

none of these things were okay!!

.yes j & s "grew up" & "mostly" stopped being bullies going on to fight against evil. doesn't change the fact that they did cruel things as teenagers and that s literally tried to murder someone!!

yes snape also fought against evil and risked himself to give dumbledore information that would end the war. he did redeem himself for joining the terrorist organization by being a key part of its destruction, but he still bullied children. as an ADULT MAN, he was literally traumatizing small children so terribly that one of them saw him as their greatest fear.

s & j never redeemed themselves for bullying snape. they never apologized or completed that arc in a way that we could say gave them literary absolution.

snape never redeemed himself for being a bad teacher who traumatized children. from a literary standpoint, he was redeemed for his joining the terrorist organization in the first place yeah. but he never redeemed himself for the harm he did to poor kids like neville.

when i think about it, i see two scales: j & s bullying someone so terribly they traumatized him for life (as teenagers), and snape bullying an eleven year old into seeing him as his worst fear (as an adult).

this is how i see it. these are the power imbalances involved—james and sirius were popular, rich jocks, and snape was a poor, antisocial nerd with no friends other than a girl who was canonically very popular, who he idolized to the point of obsession. and snape was a tall, looming figure in a position of power over a shy, eleven year old neville.

weigh them if you really want to. but i don't think it has to be a competition about who was worse as much as it should be an acknowledgement that all parties involved made mistakes, and these mistakes contributed to their overall characters and symbolism within the hp universe.

[spacesapphi]

One of the drawing requests that was posted in the comments by @twinky-loserboy !

Charlie's always there when he needs to vent, she's so real for it

[anonymous-dentist]

If you’re writing a qCellbit who’s a goth emo edgy bad boy type, make him ridiculously into online chess or something. Have him have a detailed excel spreadsheet of every horror movie he’s ever watched ranked and analyzed. He has a terrarium filled with dirt in his bedroom for his pet worms. He has entire Wikipedia pages memorized. Yes, he looks like he’d try and kill you, and sure he has a collection of pocketknives, but he practically lives at the library and is on first name basis with the old ladies gathering there for their book club once a week. He’ll beat the shit out of you if you mess with his family, but he doesn’t make a hobby out of being violent. His actual hobbies include puzzles and escape rooms and criticizing escape rooms for being too easy and getting stuck in escape rooms because he thought the solution was too easy but it was the wrong solution and he’s too embarrassed to try anything else.

[sludgekludge]

THANK YOU your criticism of fizzarolli is spot on! i never understood why blitzo has a close childhood friend that he performed with whos life he ruined in the fire that he reconnects with later in life (and also has connections in the lust ring) but also a sister that he performed with whos life he ruined in the fire that he wants to reconnect with later in life (and also has connections in the lust ring)

vivziepop, if you removed the childhood crush thing, these would be the same character.

THAT'S WHAT IM SAYING YOU GET IT!! YOU GET IT

sure, their personalities are different, but their functionality in blitz's story is so similar it baffles me. a big issue both these shows have is the redundancy of some of the cast. you can delete fizz and reassign his roles to other characters and have everything work fine - even the stolitz parallel in fizzarozzie could be re-attributed to like, bee and tex, who blitz knows through loona (those characters are both relevant to loona as well, so two birds one stone, less characters cluttering everything up), and the whole 'failed romantic arc' thing… verosika is right there. so blitz could also know bee and tex through her...

furthermore, BARBIE AND VEROSIKA LITERALLY APPARENTLY KNEW EACH OTHER WHICH IS LIKE, THE CONNECTION IS RIGHT THERE WHAT ARE YOU DOING ITS RIGHT THERE WHY DID WE MAKE A WHOLE NEW CHARACTER!!! WHY DID WE MAKE A WHOLE NEW CHARACTER AND THEN THIS RIDICULOUS CONVOLUTED REASON AS TO WHY THEY WERE IN THE SAME PLACE AT THE SAME TIME IN OOPS!!! VIVZIENNE POPSICLE!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!! WHY ARE WE STILL INTRODUCING ALL THESE REDUNDANT CHARACTERS WITH 1 MILLION OVERLAPPING TRAITS!!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

[heartslobbf]

hater alert! far too many people say that juri’s character arc ‘isn’t about her being sad about being gay, it’s about being sad about unrequited love that happens to be gay’ and. well. that is not true and by saying that you are completely flattening the brilliance of juri’s character arc which literally culminates in her being able to accept her own lesbianism despite her unrequited love, despite all her shame and self-loathing, despite this pursuit by Some Fucking Guy to try and ‘save’ her from these feelings. like if you think juri’s entire character is just ‘sad about shiori’ how do you appreciate even a modicum of the emotion packed into that final juri duel. it is both about shiori and, even broader, her lesbian identity and what that means to her intrinsically as a person, removed from romantic relationships and just purely as like. you know. Who She Is. the idea that even when juri’s locket is cut from her neck she is still a lesbian that’s still who she is and she cant change that and, crucially, she doesn’t want to even as she is agonised by these feelings. that’s why she forfeits the duel!!!! she’s clocking out she’s quitting she’s saying no!!!!!! this is me and ive got to be ok with that this is me and i can accept that this girl might not love me and i can keep living despite that. like. god im so normal arisugawa juri im so sorry that no one understands you and your intrinsically unapologetically lesbian storyline like i do

[knockknockitsnickels]

ML Characters as Minecraft Blocks

Let's fuckin go

Marinette: Cobblestone (in tribute to the cobblestone tools you keep using because you "don't want to run out of iron" even though mining with a cobblestone pickaxe is a pain in the ass)

Adrien: Wood planks (specifically the kind you forget to bring with you into the mine until you've got no torches, no tools, and no way to rebuild either of them)

Master Fu: The humble dirt block that you used to reach a high place and then forgot about

Alya: Crafting table (she helps to move the story along. In this season you also forgot to bring her into the mine)

Nino: Jukebox (He likes music, and I just like what he brings to the atmosphere)

Gabriel: Sculk shrieker (he makes bad things happen)

Chloe: Sculk sensor (she enables bad things to happen)

Kagami: Redstone (it takes a while to learn how she works but she's very cool)

Luka: Copper (he keeps getting new features but you can't make a pickaxe out of him)

Felix: Crimson planks (Huge crimson fungus trunks can be either thick or thin: thick trunks grow up in a 3×3-plus shape, with stray stems sometimes in the corners, while thin trunks grow straight up as a 1×1 column. To determine the size of huge crimson fungi, a random integer is chosen between 4 and 13 [inclusive]. There is then a 1⁄12 chance of that integer)

Lila: Infested stone (full of silverfish)

[wackywatchdotcom]

got reminded of it ... but i think about the symbolism of jax' model a lot bc i think its subtle!!! but its there

and i think the crux of it is that jax' model is very much a prey animal, something that contradicts his general tendency for reckless, mean bullshit. there could be something there about him having front-facing eyes too. and iirc gooseworx said the farm was a lie which i do take into account but also i think it helps w his generally very 'natural' or real-world-nature design components and ideas being evoked. he has clothes and these clothes are very minimal and hes a real animal fairly closely associated with farming or hunting and is very humanlike and his pocket just Has Mulch in it. even if the farm isnt real theres definitely something his design is evoking here

that and an idea ive thought of is that rabbits are VERY much animals that operate on instinct. they do a lot of things based on an immediate need, typically for survival, at least in the wild. and i dont know if id describe jax as fearful (some could argue he is in his own way, which i dont disagree with, but i think the implications can be a bit loaded- but theres many ways a person can be fearful) but he definitely operates on what he immediately wants. he wants to have fun. so he DOES. it doesnt matter what that entails. he wants control, so he takes it out on the others. it doesnt matter what that entails. etc etc. hes also running from something and i think the image of a rabbit fits that well

i think its deliberate that jax is the only design that actually revolves around an animal that we see. theres dobby and that worm on a string in the back but of the main cast its ALL humans or items, jax is the only one whos an animal (and probably still intended to be toy-like, but none of the others have distinct animals theyre meant to be). and it feels purposeful in a way i genuinely think about a lot. i cant place what its implying for certain because i genuinely dont think we have enough information on jax to fully understand his thought processes, but it does make him very connected to the real world, but in a distant way

[beatcroc]

hey mecha, do you think you could beat metal sonic in a 1v1

[likealittleheartbeat]

Why in the first season do we have the motif of Zuko stealing Katara’s mother’s betrothal necklace? Some point to a romantic subtext being read into this that, they argue, later gets ignored in order to prop up a problematic relationship for Katara with Aang, the protagonist. But if there’s subtext to be read in the theft of a betrothal token from a subjugated female by a male imperial representative, however, it’s the subtext of rape.

Why is it that it’s the women in the southern water tribe are gone? Ostensibly because they were the benders—but there’s a darker undertone, especially when we consider the clearly made analogy to indigenous peoples in North America, where even to this day native women are 2 times more likely to experience rape than those from other races. The fact that the necklace was her mother’s illustrates this legacy and connection, pointing us back to the original invasion of the tribe by the Fire nation, the attack on Katara’s mother by a single soldier inside their home (allowed in in order to protect Katara) and how Zuko’s actions at the beginning of the series echo it. This is not an auspicious place to begin a relationship if that’s what the writers were planning. Traditional enemies-to-lovers arcs usually involve prejudice but usually tied to pride, less so that kind of sexual violence. Despite Romeo and Juliet coming from warring families, it’s never implied that Romeo committed war crimes in the first act, especially not against the girl who falls for him, so we should perhaps be clued in that something different is going on in Katara and Zuko’s dynamic.

The intense rage, fear, and defense Katara puts up against Zuko in the finale of the first season (right after she has had to face the misogyny among her own people) is evocative of her response to his assaults throughout the first season. If this was not enough, we then have the rape of the moon spirit and the sacrifice of Yue for her people happening in the background, all pointing us back to the gendered violence of the empire Katara’s living under and fighting against. Her battle is not passionate because she secretly loves Zuko. She is doing everything within her power to protect herself and the spirit (literally the Avatar and figuratively within herself) that she has kept kindled despite the violent attempts to wipe it out—Zuko eventually prevails and steals a precious thing from her again…

When Katara and Zuko are imprisoned together during “The Crossroads of Destiny,” often seen as the peak of their romantic tension, they discuss their mothers, and Katara learns about the loss of Zuko’s mother (which we’re encouraged by the symbolism in the first season to read through the symbolic lens of gendered abuse and sexual violence, only now it’s domestic and internal rather than imperial). Zuko’s shift to a pitiable victim of abuse has softened his monstrous face for us, and the same happens to Katara in the catacombs, to the point where she’s willing to share a spiritual token with him.

It’s remarkable in the scene that, after being interrupted, there’s an effort made to remind the audience of Aang and Zuko’s continued antagonism—they glare at each other despite being in the embrace of the person who cares most about them in the world. And in the next scene, it’s revealed that Katara and Zuko’s reconciliation is actually not enough to transform Zuko’s loyalties. His desires for Aang and the redemption he can offer are too great.

In fact, throughout this couple of scenes, Zuko shows no interest in possessing or learning about Katara. She spouts off her grievances without his request, and then he shares his own loss only in defense to Katara's accusations and self-recognition in her stories, not as consolations for her pain. And Katara is moved by his vulnerability because she is so eager to see more evil within imperial power. She wants to hear the truth about how even those within it are injured. With all the feminine fantasy of being able to fix the behavior that toxic masculinity has induced, she suggests her spirit water might alleviate the scar Zuko bears--no forethought about preserving it for her own needs. Zuko doesn’t even request or accept the spirit water she offers him. It's all Katara. You'll be hard pressed to find a moment where Zuko expresses desire for Katara in this scene, a definite difference from his sexual aggression towards her in the first season. We as an audience are actually moved by his lack of desire her and what she has to offer because Katara is finally free from his predation (though it was only his initial violence that makes this neutral kind of freedom feel heartening).

The eventual gesture of Katara healing Zuko in “Sozin’s Comet” is free of his desire as well, unless you count the desire to protect a non-combatant, which has been Zuko’s reoccurring theme throughout the series, Katara or no (when he chooses the safety of his crew in "the storm," his advocacy for the lives of the fire nation soldiers that led him to banishment, etc.). The suggestion of rape arises here again with the penetrative nature of lightning, but the show has really complicated it’s gender dynamics by having Azula direct it, pointing to imperialism as the core concern rather than a simplified feminist reading. When Katara heals him, it's after she's cared for herself and defeated Azula now, and the words exchanged are "thank you," words of cordiality and comradery. They touch, but they are touches of equal counterparts rather than romance.

Reading romance into the simple refusal to commit colonial rape seems like a fairly low bar. This is neither what Katara nor Zuko are seeking out over the expanse of the series. They are looking for the transformative hope, action, and balance that the Avatar embodies, which, if anything allows them to stop fixating on each other and the dynamic of feminine colonized victim and masculine imperial patriarch that their world would have them locked into forever.

Aang does not go back in time to fix it all, but he brings an acceptance of reality that still allows for change. And this applies to the emotional states for the characters. Finding balance. Their griefs are not gone but not totalizing, either. They don't have to obsess or ruminate on it, or on the person who embodies the "problem" for them. The balance that the Avatar brings (and the fantasy that the show concludes with) is not a world in which the violence of colonialism never occurred but a world in which emotional release is possible from the intensifying dynamics colonialism forces its subjects into to sustain itself.