#the characters have depth! thats whats compelling!!!

[pointsfortrying]

Ah lads here we go again. Chat, who's going to tell them

[fardf150]

the thing about sitcoms is that many of them rely on a certain amount of genuinely sweet and emotional arcs/episodes, yet a lot of the actually good ones are funny because most or all of the cast are just godawful people

[ataleofcrowns]

Just wanted to pop in and say like, I found all of the routes to be really romantic, but I was pleasantly surprised by X’s.

The sheer social intelligence X has, means that every interaction feels so layered, and they’re so used to people only picking up on the parts of conversation they want to. I love that their autonomy is so fiercely important to them, and that it’ll never change. There’s strength in standing for yourself even if other people don’t realize thats what you’re doing. There’s a beauty in something or someone being strong enough, capable enough, loved enough that they’d never need you and deciding you have meaning in their life, but that you won’t change the meaning of their life.

I didn’t expect to dislike X, but I didn’t expect to like them as much as I do.

It was breathtaking to get a glimpse, if you will, of their nuance, and it felt like a gift to surprise someone who isn’t used to being surprised.

I can truthfully say that your IF is the only one where I’ve found every RO compelling and magnetic and full of depth long before mc gets involved. It’s not their burgeoning feels for mc that make them so, but it’s what makes those feelings and scenes so powerful. It’s also why they don’t loose their appeal as good friends either. I enjoyed all of their routes, enough that I could probably write an essay on all of them, and I’m looking forward to playing all their routes to completion.

Always great to see X getting some love in my askbox, I'm so glad you were able to appreciate all those aspects of their character!! X hides a lot beneath their exterior, and peeling all those layers back is the best part of their route imo 💖🥰

Happy to hear you enjoy the others as well! It was a priority to me to design each potential love interest as someone who was already grounded in the setting with histories and motivations of their own prior to the MC arriving. As great as an impact as MC has on them in each route, they're still their own individual people with their own desires and goals and perspectives.

To me personally, nothing feels as hollow and pointless as reading a romance where there is nothing to the love interest except for being obsessed with the MC. I get bored of that dynamic VERY quickly. So, my personal distaste for that definitely had a hand in informing my development of the characters in my own game haha.

[dopscratch]

mugshot meme with the trio :) i love fishlegs which reminds me....

INCOMING BOOKS-MOVIES RAMBLE- even if you only know the movies please stick around, i cant make you but maybe you'll find the rest of this interesting

SO, so so so. i love the movies (well the first two...) but i will never forget their transgressions on the original plot

they took away hiccups Heroic Hair why would you do that he's nothing without his Heroic Hair

they swapped hiccup and fishlegs's personalities why would you do that why would you take away my nerd protagonist my nerd self is weeping

hiccup and fishlegs are no longer best friends why why would you do that to me i live for their loser friendship its just like me

they took away camacazi and made a mid love interest i dont care what you say astrid is mid tier never liked her much apologies i also dont like love interests so take my opinons with a grain of salt

in the movies toothless is actually Super Cool and hiccup also becomes Super Cool and earns massive respect and is not a laughingstock ever since the very first movie which hurt his appeal to me in the movies since, believe it or not, i am a Loser and hiccup also being a Loser and Becoming A Hero The Hard Way was very compelling to me

hiccup is the Absolute Main Character in the movies and the supporting characters don't get much spotlight while in the books it's a pretty well balanced group which i like

snotlout is no longer hiccups cousin and is just comic relief which is a HUGE missed opportunity for drama and depth that i loved in the books

villains in general are sort of mid tier throughout (except viggo viggo was cool. also i love dagur he's the best)

WHERE'S ALVIN

dragons are no longer complex. i loved their society of sorts and their unique morals (generally selfish, cruel creatures who have full knowledge of their actions and just don't care- though have the capacity for kindness) and their whole language and the fact hiccup knew that language because he is a Nerd

HICCUP'S LANGUAGES!! GUYS WHO ONLY WATCHED THE MOVIES, DID YOU KNOW HICCUP IS FLUENT IN AT LEAST 4 LANGUAGES?? HE KNOWS NORSE, DRAGONESE, FRENCH, AND LATIN!! WELL YOU DO NOW

HOOOOLY CRAP the story is SO much darker i'll avoid huge spoilers but let's just say. war. slavery. torture. death. surprisingly generous amounts of blood.

more main-line content- technically yes the shows and other companion materials count for the movie-verse but some things are questionably canon and all that. meanwhile you have 12 whole books that are irrefutably canon and are incredibly well-connected especially through the end.

thats everything that my brain feels like spitting out now. there's obviously more (ESPECIALLY in regards to my uh... opinions about the third movie) but im too lazy to do anything about it at the moment

overall all two movies and the shows are still good and i cherish them so my smack talking is pretty lighthearted. still love the books more though

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

I saw your post about "feel free to vent" and god, I don’t even think that I love that pathetic guyfailure in your way, but I follow you and read your posts, because they bring me joy (although I don’t always agree with everything you say) and you’re one of the few people who’s willing to talk about how unhinged, pathetic and entirely deranged jiang zongzhu is. I’m so fucking tired of jc fandom, the way they turned him into something entirely unrecognisable from his canon self, turned him into weepy little bitch with gaping hole for every single "gege" on the block to fuck.

They make me genuinely hate him. I see that oc!jc committing identity fraud and I hate him. I hate him so much. My only content in this fandom is the novel, it’s the only thing that provides me with content. How fucking delightful he is there? I don’t fucking get. Jc stans say you’re a fucking jc anti or whatever the fuck, but no one actually hates jc more than his fucking stans do. the fucking torture of watching your fave being flandarised. their fucking omegaverse rotten brains yelling and crying about his tiny waist and childbearing thighs. Have you seen the art of him? What kind of caricature they turn him into? Fucking twink that will be blown away by the wind and his "geges" that will catch him midair and fuck everliving fuck out of him because uwu he did nothing wrong, he’s innocent, he’s little precious baby boy meowmeow tsundere. They yell so hard about how misunderstood he is, but they’re the ones misunderstanding his character most. They have no respect for canon material. Most of them haven’t read the fucking novel because they HaTe wAnGxIAn sO mUcH, they pick up disgusting fanon bullshit and run with it claiming it somehow to be canon.

Canon!jc would fucking rip that oc!jc in tiny little shreds, torture him violently and vomit on his corpse.

what have they turned his relationship with jin ling into? what are they fucking doing to that precious golden brat? why no one fucking enjoys their canon relationship that don’t lack complexity and depth. Why do they turn him into weird kid obsessed with his uncle? who has no life outside his uncle, who fights "jiujiu stealers" like it’s his full time job??? Jin ling is his own character, he’s going through so much, his fucking family is insane, he’s dealing with bullying, he’s working his ass off to impress his uncle who put high expectations on him.

what they turn "geges" into? they come and yell how lwj has no personality, that he’s just a "top" but then they do exactly the same shit with other characters? they’re genuinely making me hate lxc. I despise xicheng with burning fucking passion. I’m in a ooc competition, and xicheng stans are my opponents *insert squidward here*

chengxian makes my fucking blood boil because THATS ONE WAY TO ENTIRELY MISUNDERSTAND BOTH OF THEIR CHARACTERS AND TURN COMPELLING "BROTHER" CONFLICT INTO THE MOST BORING FUCKING SHIT THAT THE EARTH HAS WITNESSED. they way they just go OMG WWX LOVED JC SOOOOOO MUCH LWJ HATES JC BECAUSE HE KNOWS WWX LOVES HIM MORE THAN ANYTHING, HIS SACRIFICE IS AN ACT OF LOVE, HE LOVED HIM, HE DID IT OUT OF LOVE. why would they entirely erase wwx’s character development like that? wwx’s entire fucking arc is about learning to see his self worth, learning that the life he had at lotus pier wasn’t it, FUCKING HELL yllz literally was comforting himself with thoughts of never meeting the jiangs. My guy literally was lying there unable to sleep and was thinking about how running away from dogs and being a beggar is infinitely better than the jiangs. It’s literally in the fucking book. I don’t fucking GET IT.

I remember one time mentioning that of fucking COURSE, the manhua would erase the "golden core reveal" as in how jc lost it, because ultimately wangxian is the most important part of the story and jc is some guy wwx finally gets rid of in order to digest his traumas in a safer space and find happiness elsewhere because clearly he wasn’t happy at lotus pier. and they fucking??? came up with an AU???? as a response to me????? where wwx comes back to lotus pier because HE LOVES JC MORE THAN ANYTHING WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO very good argument, very nice talk.

I’m so fucking sick and tired, I muted jc’s name and tag on twitter and here even though I genuinely like the guy. It pains me. It causes me fucking brain damage. I want to enjoy my fandom experience, I want to be able to talk about this dudenobody and have fun. I so hate being here, I want to be free.

I’m so sorry to vent like that. 😭

I will use this as a general jump start of fandom griping regarding this entire debacle since this, this right here, should not be a normal thing that fandom has to send anonymously due to being scared of the vitriolic backlash received.

I have been nice, I have been sarcastic, I have been a troll, and despite my initial kindness and patience when I first started interacting with this fandom, I was met with consistent death threats and homophobia about a fictional male character and why I am less then patient now for Jiang Cheng stans. Other people should not HAVE to apologize for not enjoying a completely made up fandom persona and getting bit at for this. By all means go ahead and enjoy a fanon persona, by all means ask for supporting evidence when someone is arguing they do not like a character.

I interact with other Jiang Cheng fans just fine outside of this, they are not the ones I speak of in this. The ones I am addressing are the vitriolic ones that are angry about anything close to being taken as "anti" regarding an in story antagonist that does exhibit antagonistic behavior time and again with leading text and citations. It doesn't matter if he is someone that is enjoyed, somehow it's "wrong".

And hey. I DO disagree on several different interpretations in this fandom, but NONE of them have ever garnered the hate I have gotten in my 3 years in this fandom the way I chose to discuss Jiang Cheng. When told to use another tag, it was done, but again it was done incorrectly, when I stopped using anti at the behest of other fans, I did because hey, it was able to reach a wider audience, that did enjoy the character himself and wanted deeper understanding outside of fanon only that pervaded the tag meant for "Jiang Cheng".

I certainly do not deny his instances of kindness, but how dare I ascertain that all if this in context is not a reflection of positivity for him within the plot he is meant for, no matter time and again saying he has an opening for himself to do better in the future for others that have yet to be hurt by him, or are willing to salvage what they still have.

I should not have to be told I just want to fuck a dude as a "joke" and a comeback because of how I go and point out what he's like in the work. That is casual homophobia and shockingly sexual harassment. Or be told to think of it as a sibling who uses drugs and it's therefore alright to demean said character, or deny the blatant abuse this character exhibits or uses because he also had been abused by an adult.

I do not need to be tolerant of a side of fandom due to all the above treatment and others deal with.

[prettyboykatsuki]

i have many many many critiques about wylls story, most of them being about the fact it's just so lackluster in game when compared to other companions which is a shame. because wyll to me is and has the potential to be an even more emotionally compelling companion. and he was early access!! he was so gritty in ea please bring him back larian i beg of thee. the way he was rewritten has stripped him of so much nuance and depth. wyll to me is such a wonderful character to me because of what he represents, which is heroism so down to his core he never gives up on it even when he ought to

his goodwill and nobility are ceaseless. at the center of his story is betrayal trauma, his agency over himself vanished into thin air. mizora turns him into a monster and there is no turning back. he has become the thing he's despised, the things he's hunted for his entire life. and we know so little about that canonically because of the way his story is set up but its hinted time and time again that he struggles with his reality deeply and even that cannot make him turn away from the city he loves so much.

if larian would go back to clean up and fix his story (which im truly praying to god they do) i want them to touch on what wyll must be going through as he continues to try to ground himself and deal with his newfound reality. i want them to touch on the abandonment he experiences because of his father and the inevitable burden his title as blade and hero has on him. because these things obviously compel him, they're hinted at all the time but they were completely stripped of him in final release and its fucking disheartening... larian please im begging you. thats the love of my life. please.

but for now i will do it with fanfiction and gather enough wyll fans to make a fuss about it . peace and love

[mister-eames]

DUUUUDE! I am in love with your last ask/answer about Arthur but I am the greediest of all gremlins and now NEED your Eames version of this answer. What's Eames' reasons behind why it takes so long for him & Arthur to get together? Does he have his own version of he doesn't think he has a chance? Or whereas Arthur knew he had feelings for Eames & decided to lock them up in a box and hide them away, is Eames not aware of his true feelings for ages? Idk! I love this! No pressure of course!

Thank you for the question! Eamesie, my dearest darlingest Eames. I love him so much.

I don't know how well I'm going to articulate this (spoiler, not great), but here goes!

I suppose, at the forefront, is that my interpretation of Eames is him being incredibly vulnerable and guarded. Sensitive. He's a cancerian, I will die on this hill. There's a pervasive sadness to his character. It's in his body language, the way he speaks, the way he interacts with the other characters, how he is all ready to retreat at the first sign of warfare in the dream.

On this, and coming back to the concept of them being two sides of the same coin: where Arthur uses his persona like a weapon to ward people away from his heart, Eames has a thousand shields around his.

Eames is the overly cautious one. Arthur is the hothead with one hundred contingency plans and a smart mouth, but Eames is the one hiding under layers and masks and personas and misdirections and flowery words and tricks. Eames is not afraid of loving someone, as such, but he's profoundly aware of how deep his well runs when it comes to the depth of his feelings---and he knows without a doubt, were he to surrender to it, he would never be able to climb out of that well again.

If it doesn't work out he thinks there would be a part of him left with Arthur always, even if Arthur didn't know it - even if Arthur didn't want it.

If it doesn't work out, Eames believes 'well Arthur would just pick himself up and move on like nothing even happened' (not true, but he doesn't know that) meanwhile Eames would be riddled with craters in his very being. It's doomed to hurt, he thinks. That's a terrible bet to take.

Besides, what he has now with Arthur is fine. He's never had so much fun pulling pigtails before. Why rock the boat?

Does Eames think he is worthy of Arthur? Yes. Eames knows he would give anyone he loved his all - and it's just that - that's the scary part for him. Giving it his all. Losing himself when he has the option of being self assured. Sure, Eames has insecurities too, perhaps about his body, about being 'too much' for someone else, but at the apex? He has something inside him that would rupture easily, irreparably, and he's built a fortress within a fortress within a fortress to protect it.

In short, Arthur = love is a whole ass feeling, but not worth risking the pain/rejection/facing my own insecurities. Eames = love is a whole ass feeling, I will presumably decimate myself by giving in, therefore I should not. It's not that Eames is more in love with Arthur than he is Eames, but Eames' line of thinking very much leans towards catastrophising.

Neither Arthur or Eames are wrong in the way they think, but nor are they right. They place the riskiest bet with each other - their own soft sides and vulnerabilities. They admit to themselves, this person, this thing means something. But admitting that to each other would be passing a point of no return.

I also think thats what makes the pairing so compelling to me - whether the events of the film are pre-relationship, established or exes-trying again, its so clear to me how inextricably intertwined these two are. In the way way they seem to have a piece of each other without explanation - the way they tease each other, their banter, how they talk shit about each other to others, their little tête-à-tête - 'be back before the kick', 'merry chase', their nicknames? hello?? who else talks like that in the movie??

They have evidently carved a part out of each other without realising it. You might as well dive in, boys.

[v-arbellanaris]

tbd later but i keep seeing people just try to go on and on abt how ppl are morally reprehensible or whatever for Not Liking f characters and i just wanna say there's definitely. ABSOLUTELY. some people in fandom that need to fuckign check their misogyny. there absolutely is and ive been talking abt it on various different blogs and things like that since '09.

but.... idk is that constructive? or helpful? to attach morality to the gender of the characters that you like? idk! this shit fucked me up bc i would like... deny that i liked m characters. like i used 2 feel soooo guilty for liking m characters???? for YEARS??? and i rly felt it was my moral obligation to Like f characters and it was SO forced... and the truth is that a lot of the time ppl write f characters with v little depth and v little intrigue bc they dont want to make Statements abt women overall bc every f character written is somehow supposed to Represent multiple someones and even when theyre """"problematic"""" or """villainous""" or whatever its in a way thats designed more for them to be unlikeable instead of morally complex or morally compelling. ppl who write m characters usually dont bother to think abt the Optics (esp when theyre white m characters) and so all of the lovely complexities come through and its clear from the story n narrative that its unrelated to their identity, or if it is related to their identity, its because of how they relate to it (rather than the relation between identity and action being that being x means you do y or that BECAUSE you're x you do y). in all honesty there's v few f canon characters that have that kind of complexity (part of the reason im always writing my own - ive been writing ofc x canon character fics for actual decades, long before i joined this fandom) and the v few f characters that do have tht complexity are probably side characters or characters not directly relevant to the plotline. and bc theyre so preoccupied w writing these characters as like... a stand-in for Minorities or whatever, they're so careful to strip any potential conflict or moral ambiguity from them in a way that leaves me feeling not v compelled to care - compared to, lets say, m villains who almost always still have that shred of humanity left to compel me to care so much about them bc i can see myself in them, f villains usually dont get that. there's exceptions to this - i can think of a lot of comics characters for e.g. - and i love those exceptions, but they're exceptions.

and idk i feel like we should also acknowledge that like... ignoring that these f characters are badly written or lack compelling (notice i specify COMPELLING here like its not rly enough for them to have a husband or a kid or whatever that's not compelling???) humanising moments because ppl treat f characters like they're supposed to Represent All Womens and 2. this makes them less compelling than m characters like 80% of the time and 3. that these critiques should be anchored in "FUCKING DO BETTER". what could we change abt how we write and engage with f characters? talk about that as much as the critiques or whatever that we have for f characters in the first place bc people are much more willing to give up on trying to write f characters if theyre told "this was shit" vs "this could use with some improvement - what abt this? or that?"

like idk i think there's a more productive way we could be talking abt this

[birbs-n-cats]

Im really curious on your thoughts on monkey mk = evil mk

That take makes me sick but I'm curious on your opinion on this or on lmk in general

It disrespected everything that swk had ever done.

Bc it absolutely reduces him as one note character by implying mk monkey form as evil. Do you get how disrespectful that is to the original novel? Bc i assure you not even og swk was considered absolutely evil.

I know im talking mainly about swk but by implying mk monkey form as evil disregard why swk never had the will to changed himself. Bc all that layer of complexity of being something that defied the natural order if what make swk the stone monkey be much more compelling than evil me bc form is evil!! Bc hes a monkey but actually he isnt hes a stone monkey. Oh so hes a yaoguai? But then not really bc he became part celestials? But then again no bc he *is* quite malicious and brutal but that because his actions is not because its in his nature then again he managed to receive enlightenment and gained buddhahood sooo…he all of it at the same time as hes not just simply one or the other.

Bc honestly by saying mk monkey form is evil is just like saying swk’s human form is evil!! Like huh?! That just out of nowhere—theyre still they same person.(despite the fact swk will never ever have a human form but pls bared w me)

Mk is still just mk—he cant just simply become evil when its just himself becoming apart of him again. Also it makes his circumstances be like the og novel of swk v lemh except it mk n his monkey form.

What makes a demon a demon is in his actions to be quite malicious and brutal to humans and disregards their lives to the point of eating them to achieve a higher standing of power. (Like og bdk, OG the camel ridge trio, FUCKING OG LEMH AND WHITE BONE SPIRIT SO MANY OTHERS

And thats why swk was considered evil in the sense he was being brutal and malicious in his actions and would have continued that path of destruction if weren’t for his redemption arc being the journey to the west.

And mk never got to the point of disregard lives bc theyre beneath him and that why his monkey form shouldnt be considered evil bc its a monkey form. Had he did then it should have been shown throughout the show that he was being corrupted in his actions due the addiction of powers way before his monkey form was ever reveal.

Actions dictate the nature of a person’s not their state of being.

(Ima edit this once i get a full night sleep but yeah, jttw is complex that i do reccomemd @journeytothewestresearch for more in-depth info

[destinysbounty]

Which villain do you like?

Ooooh i like a lot of villains! Garmadon, Morro, and Harumi are all obvious answers, of course, i mean those are i think the top 3 fandom faves. If i had to rank them id say Harumi is my favorite out of the three, because i find her rawness so compelling. Like, shes what Lloyd couldve become if he hadnt gotten a proper support system, and thinking about how she and Lloyd are such incredible foils for each other makes me wanna start biting things. Shes so messed up and i love that about her. Part of me wants her to get therapy but the rest of me wants to see how much worse she can get.

So i guess, if you forced me to choose just one villain to call my absolute favorite, id say Harumi. But i feel bad about snubbing all the other delightful villains in this show! I gotta hand it to Ninjago, they really know how to craft a dazzling rogues gallery.

As for underappreciated/underrated villains i love:

Nadakhan. He is SO slimy, and he makes me SO uncomfortable, but honestly thats what makes him work as a villain think. Some Ninjago villains are lovable, tragic, or sympathetic, but hes just a horrible person and youre rooting for his downfall the whole time and its awesome. Also - sky pirate genie who becomes a pirate to compensate for how he can only grant other peoples wishes but never his own, deciding to take by force that which he cannot have, is such a great concept. Really his whole characterization, motivation, and general aesthetic are all very solid, and its a shame Skybound ended up as....messy, as it was. Because the season brings up some amazing themes, characters, and plot lines, but doesnt execute them as well as they deserve.

Aspheera. Not a lot of depth to her, but idk i just love her energy. Shes just my silly little war criminal and i find the pettiness between her and wu delightful

The Mechanic. I 100% support the theory that he was one of those background pirates on Captain Soto's ship who made a life for himself in the modern world by working for Chen. Idk im a sucker for characters who are tangentially woven into the plot - hes there, and the ninjas' actions have direct consequences on his life that turn him into a far more personal enemy. Also, i think the Mechanic should be a Pixal villain. Honestly i think she deserves her own personal villain just in general - poor girl deserves a nemesis 😭😭- and i think the Mechanic fits well into that position. Also, him becoming a major antagonist in Prime Empire and Crystalized was such a satisfying payoff imo. Hes rising up the criminal ranks, im so proud of him. My horrible guy, off to torture nindroids. They grow up so fast

Miss Demeanor. Is she really a villain? I dont care, shes wonderful. Shes got a fantastic vibe and design. Also, "blah blah blah - FIREBALL!" lives in my head rent-free. She honestly deserves more love and i will die on that hill. Shes not a main villain but shes the main villain of my heart and thats what matters.

Actually i change my mind, Miss Demeanor should be Pixal's nemesis instead so they can have rivalry tension. Think Detective Conan vs Kaito Kid type of frenemy action here. Also i just??? Think they would play off each other really well? Lego please hire me so i can write a Pixal focus season where she has funky lil nemesis rivalry with Miss Demeanor. I can make it happen. It would be amazing, you know itd be amazing.

Anyway, thanks for the ask!

[hikari-ni-naritai]

10 5 fandoms - 10 5 characters

tagged by @disciple-of-frost lets fuckin go no idea how in depth im suppsoed to get so it will probably Vary Wildly

FFXIV - FORDOLA!! everyone knows im a zero simp but fordola is just extremely important to me for WoL lore reasons. and also similar personal reasons. i want her to show up more

Otherside Picnic - sorawo - i was very tempted to say runa urumi here just to continue the trend of Very Evil Girls Who Are In Jail Now And Getting Better but sorawo is really a lot more important to me. shes like some really solid ace lesbian representation in a way that i can relate to, shes convinced shes Super Normal and Has No Trauma like me (even though shes wrong and im right), and ive also become basically completely disillusioned with romance in favor of a relationship i have a hard time defining.

PMMM - homura - as much as id like to pick madoka bc shes #goals i cant really deny that homura is more important to me and i like her more and relate to her more. i too would give up my humanity and spend 10 years in a time loop and lose my attachment to everyone else if it meant saving one person i cared about. i also would use my powers to steal guns from yakuza lockers and make pipe bombs.

do i even have a 4th thing i like? ah right Arknights - kal'tsit - i dont play the game anymore but kal'tsit is such a compelling fucking character. shes immortal and has seen basically every horrible thing thats ever happened and shes so jaded and angry ESPECIALLY when it comes to dr arknights but like. even after thousands of years, shes still completely dedicated to doing good and fixing the world as much as she can. like she may hate every step of the process but she is not going to stop no matter what. thats so important to me.

uhhhhh. swampletics - old boot.

i am suppsoed to be working so i cant bother thinking about who to tag but if anyone sees this and wants an excuse to talk about their characters they like please consider yourself legally and irrevocably tagged! <3

[elpublico]

Hello! I've been following you for a while and have been wanting to ask you: who exactly is this Federico Garcia Lorca, you seem to like him a lot and I was wondering if you might want to explain why you love him so much. Also why don't you like Salvador Dali (cause I think that has something to do with Lorca? lol) Anyway no pressure if you don't want to answer. I like your blog a lot, have a nice day! :)

first and foremost, thank you very much :-) <3 

ive written an absurd amount here, so uh tldr lorca is a spanish writer whose work i enjoy very much, i dont like dalí because of his support of facist systems and because he was an asshole plain and simple, and they are related in that they shared a weird intense homoerotic bond from roughly 1924-1929

and a more in depth explanation below should you care to read! warning it is quite literally 1.5k words. sorry

okay. let us begin

a very basic bio: federico garcía lorca was a spanish creative best known for his plays and poetry, though he was also a talented musician, draftsman, and theatrical director. he was born in 1898 and is considered part of the generación del 27, a loosely defined collection of spanish creatives and intellectuals interested in modernism emerging in the 1920s and 1930s. he was assassinated at by francoist forces at the start of the spanish civil war in 1936 due to his support of and connections to the republican government, leftist politics, and his somewhat public homosexuality. 

i have serious, academic answers for why i like him but also silly ones so i’ll start with the silly ones. he was a weird fucking guy. most modernists are weird guys but he’s weird in a unique and dare i say somewhat charming way. he played a game with his friends where he’d pretend to be dead and everyone would pretend to have a funeral for him. when he was a kid he play Catholic Mass and make his family cry during his sermons. he had a jesus complex and wrote a play about his jesus complex. weird guy i love studying his weird brain. also he was that fun type of 20th century homophobic homosexual that was like “guys relax im a cool homosexual i dont like drag” thats extremely easy and fun to ridicule (see: ode to walt whitman). this is especially bold of him since he has the world’s worst taste in men.

on a more serious note i do genuinely enjoy his poetry (and plays, but i’m not well-versed enough in theater to give an informed review), and i think its a particularly poignant and unique version of modernism. and it is both easy and fun to make fun of his loser ass homophobia, but i think generally his work portrays a far more nuanced and compelling depiction of struggling with internalized homophobia that what you see in “ode to walt whitman.” as i am interested in both modernism and queer art, he’s one of those touchstone creatives that forms the basis of this line of inquiry in my personal research interests. also, i think his drawings are severely underrated as examples of spanish modern art and in terms of the material culture of modernism and warrant more in depth scholarship than what currently exists, which is generally just as a coda to his written work.

this is something of a meta-reason, but something i’ve also become interested in as i learn more about lorca is the way in which he has become martyrized in historical and contemporary discussions. i mean like people really create Narratives out of this guy’s life. even as early as 1939 we have people like william carlos williams championing him as the martyr of the spanish civil war to galvanize support in the usa among the literary community (if anyone is interested in reading williams’s essay hit me up i have a pdf). ian gibson’s (lorca’s biographer and the guy who uncovered the details surrounding lorca’s assassination) biography is very much constructed as a narrative of an smoothed over and idealized character. i started thinking more seriously about this after watching the film bones of contention, where lorca is shown as patron saint of lgbt people oppressed under francos rule and of all those who killed during franco's rule. the director of the fundación lorca, who is his niece (great-niece?) expressed in this documentary that the family did not want his bones to be found and reburied, because there is such a strong symbolic connection to him amongst those still fighting for government recognition of the true devastation of facist rule. if they find his bones and rebury them with family, there is the concern that the government will use this as propaganda to suggest that they have dealt with all the repercussions of facism and will not diligently follow up with how fascist power is still a systematic issue. i don’t know if this makes sense, as i haven’t articulated this yet and i still don’t really know what to make of it. there’s just something about the loss of humanity here, that his family could not and cannot properly grieve him because in this horrific death he has become a symbol of resistance. and even as people use his image to delve into queer art and history and as facist resistance, there are also people working in the opposite direction, claiming him as like, a neutral historical presence that like, whether he would have wanted that or not, just isn’t true or even ethical when talking about him today. 

and as we talk about narratives i feel this is a good time to shift to dalí who is like The Narrative Guy. as mentioned previously, lorca and dalí were doing some type of gay shit for a little while there (what kind of gay shit is still up for debate). they met in madrid at the residencia de estudiantes, then became very close around 1925, when lorca first visited the dalí summer home in cadaqués. lorca visited again in 1927. they kept a regular correspondence, of which we have relatively few letters, esp those penned by lorca to dalí, and had a particularly fruitful artistic exchange in the years they were friends. lorca drew more (and exhibited his drawings in barcelona), and dalí wrote more. they shared symbols and had this sort of theoretical artistic dialogue through the analysis of saint sebastian. lorca’s head and references to lorca can be found in many of dalí’s paintings of the period, and lorca wrote his "ode to salvador dalí" (which unfortunately kind of slaps) some scholars even go as far as calling this dalí’s lorca period and lorca’s dalinian period.

in 1928 (i think?) luis buñuel (spanish filmmaker who was friends with both of them) begins to turn against lorca, supposedly because he found lorca’s work too traditional/conservative but also probably in large part also due to the fact that he was gay and that he was being gay with dalí. buñuel goes up to dalí, goes “hey i hate lorca don’t you hate lorca haha,” dalí pens this really critical and kind of rude letter to lorca saying his freshly published gypsy ballads was too traditional/conservative and he needed to be more modern etc etc it’s all very high school. dalí pulls away from lorca, goes to paris and collaborates with buñuel on un chien andalou and l’age d’or, lorca goes to new york, and they don’t see each other again until 1935 or 1936 i don’t remember the date. i guess now is as good a time as ever to say at this point in time dalí had ostensibly communist politics and affiliations, but going into late 30s/early 40s as he becomes more successful financially, he cozies up to the fascist franco regime and catholic church and other such institutions so he can live comfortably in spain. he espouses a lot of racist shit that (in my opinion) he only said to further his own career. later on in his life he does a lot of sketchy stuff relating to prints to earn a quick buck. so you know. i dont like him LOL

anyway to bring this back to lorca and narratives, dalí is understandably a key component in understanding the development of lorca’s work but a lot of what he’s said following lorca’s death just cannot be taken at face value. he claims lorca was entirely apolitical in his 1942 autobiography (obviously to make dalí’s own horrendous politics easier to swallow), and in a later interview he presented their relationship in a way that makes lorca look like a pining fool and kind of predatory. this has very clearly influenced lorca scholarship, though i think more and more people are looking at dalí’s comments more critically. in trying to manipulate his own self-image, dalí has had an insane influence over lorca’s narrative, which. grinds my gears.

i hate to end on dalí but i have no more to say lol. but at least i am spreading the word that dalí fucking sucks. gonna cite/link some shit here in the interest of transparency:

biographical details for both mostly pulled from my recollections of ian gibson’s biographies of the two (frederico garcía lorca: a life and the shameful life of salvador dalí) i will also say my understanding of dalí’s personal motives comes pretty much exclusively from gibson’s biography and its thesis, that dalí’s entire life revolved around masking and coping with his own personal sense of shame. very biased point of view but i don’t care enough about dalí to bother reading more about him. even just writing this post bummed me way the fuck out. too much dalí. i will also say i encourage everyone to NOT read gibson’s dalí biography, there’s a really transphobic section that violates the privacy of someone in dalí’s life. she’s a public figure and i’m sure it would not be hard to find speculation elsewhere, but you know. it’s just gross and all i can do is my best to prevent more people from speculating about this woman’s genitals

read a good article a while ago that sums up dalí’s racism but i can’t find it so here are some other articles providing more details, some of which i am only learning about now lol:

el pais: https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-09-06/the-day-dali-invented-a-racist-religion.html

vice: https://www.vice.com/en/article/8qwp9v/its-really-surreal-how-salvador-dal-was-a-fascist-who-hit-women

if you are ever looking for a painfully mediocre period drama, i suggest little ashes in which robert pattinson plays dalí, making some of the most confusing acting choices of his entire career.

if you’re gonna read a lorca biography i suggest leslie stainton’s lorca: a dream of life. i haven’t read it all the way through, but it’s written more for a general audience than gibson’s hyper detailed version, and stainton isn’t afraid to point out tomfoolery on the part of lorca.

a selection of lorca poems:

fable and round of the three friends: https://hellopoetry.com/poem/623292/fable-and-round-of-the-three-friends/

ballad of the spanish civil guard: https://www.poesi.as/index214uk.htm

the guitar: https://poets.org/poem/guitar

if you made it this far i'm sorry

[themetalvirus]

You could say a lot of things about shadow but boring? Huh?How? What maybe does get boring is seeing him everywhere repetitively(valid) due to his popularity and i don't think that must be cause he's boring🤷🏾‍♀️sorry but he's got the range, he has the flavor(that isn't for everyone)

personally i think its fine if someone finds shadow boring. its not a personal attack on you, me, or our enjoyment of shadow. he's an easy to understand character that has been combed through over and over again for years by the fanbase. i can understand how one would find that tiresome. i can understand how sega using him as a marketing gimmick for material he isn't even in (his presence in the sonic frontiers twitter takeover) would be tiresome.

there is a (sometimes flawed...) general consensus on how shadow is Meant To Be and thus there is a deluge of samey content of him saying and doing similar things. a lot of content about him lacks depth or doesn't have much that is new to say. that isn't bad - i enjoy a lot of the shadow content i see, even if it says something i have seen before, and i like seeing how different people tackle the same subject matter - but it is not for everyone

some people just dont find him compelling and i think thats fine 👍 i find him compelling and that is also fine

[ankhisms]

ok beloved mutuals and friends who like ex aid im kissing you on the cheeks and patting you. now look away im going to complain but also am not wanting to be mean bc i know a lot of u love it so look away

the little devil on my shoulder who loves to torment me and be like AH HA! WHAT ABOUT THIS? GOTCHYA! CHECKMATE KES YOU ARE IN FACT A HORRIBLE HORRIBLE PERSON said earlier well you love enter and hes a very weird eccentric villain type character, so why do you dislike the weird eccentric ceo villain guy in ex aid? which is a fair question to ask i think. to be transparent i am not wildly attracted to the veo villain guy in ex aid like i am with enter and escape but aside from that i find gobusters premise and world and stakes at hand to be more interesting and compelling and thought provoking than ex aid and that includes enter and escape as characters! i have a lot of thoughts and questions about them! the entire concept of avatars in gobusters is fascinating and brings up a lot of philosophical questions for me! theres depth there beyond just being a little silly and goofy and saying random french phrases. with the ceo guy in ex aid he just has always felt... very flat. thats overall a complaint i have about ex aid where i like some of the characters bc they felt less flat but a lot of the cast of characters felt very one dimensional to me and that especially goes for the villain guy. this also could just be due to me not liking medical drama shows in general and not being a video game person but anyway i always just felt annoyed with the ceo villain guy. i will note two things though: i respect his actors performance in the role especially knowing that the guy wasnt much of an actor beforehand everythimg ive seen of him was a good performance! also i used to have a mutual (but they deleted 💔💔) whos favorite character was the ceo villain guy and i genuinely liked to see their thoughts on him and posts about them bc i like seeing ppl talk about the things they love especially if i care abt them and also they gave him a lot more depth with their thoughts so it was like ok i like your version of this character better than the actual character in the show gnmgmg which is how i feel about ex aid a lot in general? i enjoy a lot of fan content of ex aid! theres a lot of great art i love seeing the creative things my friends have made of it and i like seeing my friends talk about what they like about it!! i like it so much it makes me happy to see everyone talking about something that they love even if i dont feel the same way about the show yknow (:

anyway. is it possible that im biased about liking enter more than the ceo guy because im wildly bisexual? yes. but also i just find escape and enter to be more interesting and fun characters

[foreverautumn89]

@lovipop2049

I agree that Jonathan is very ship-able. 😊

Oh I know exactly why for me but it would take too long to write out each dynamic of every Jonathan ship/why its so complex and compelling and why it works so well even though they're all different and I'm not sure that people care to read that super long post.

Another big thing for me is its because Jonathan is the perfect submissive [and a mouthy sarcastic smart mouth] so he makes every story fun and adds an element of humor and he is such a complex character that his story just fits with a lot of people and you always have a million different directions to take the story in because of their dynamic. He has a lot of chemistry with people too.

He also invites this whirlwind of emotional ups and downs into every single ship because of his past/his abuse/his trauma and how hes overcome it and how he still needs help overcoming the rest of it [the self loathing/feeling worthless]-there are so many headcanons/stories with him that have so much depth and are so emotional. It makes you feel sad because of what hes gone through, but then happy and appreciative of whoever hes with that makes him feel special and shows him the love and appreciation he always deserved but never got until now. And there are funny moments when he is being a sarcastic/sass mouth especially in the case of Stonathan because Steve can handle Jonathan's sass because hes been for years and he has to deal with it from the kids too [most of who were raised by Jonathan].

And whether intentional or not, the things they say or do to him and how they react to him in canon comes off as flirting with him and/or that person definitely having a thing for him [like Steve, Tommy, and Argyle for example] and there is a lot of potential in every Jonathan ship that has never been explored to its full potential.

Then there are the ships that are so fluff filled and sweet like Jargyle, Eddithan, even Stonathan in plenty of cases]. And the Hurt/Comfort ships that Jonathan feels like hes worthless and doesn't matter because hes been told that all his life and then his significant other shows him why that mindset is completely wrong and Jonathan is the most important person in the world to them and a lot of other people[mainly the kids/their group].

Also, I could go into a lot more detail why each ship hinges on why Jonathan is essential to making it great, but that goes hand in hand with the post I referred to above that it would be too long no one would want to read it. It's a lot of information.

Also Jonathan deserves all the love in the world, never gets it, but he does in these ships and that warms my heart. He is adorable and its nice to see him so loved and appreciated by these characters especially since the ships usually include these characters loving Jonathan for exactly who he is and appreciating/valuing him so much and loving his weirdness and showing him why he is so special and important, even though hes been told all his life [by nobodies who don't matter] that the opposite is true.

I also love all the throuple/moresome potential. You merge two ships together or three of these ships together ext and its a whole new ship with a whole new dynamic that is just as exciting.

[[I'm sorry. I didn't expect this message to be so long but thats me it starts off as two little paragraphs and then keeps growing.]]

[euyrdice]

hi i saw ur post about villains and asking for advice! i dont rlly write so i apologise for my limited scope but i think its worth considering just very compelling motives or a path to villainy. i personally find a compelling villain like u said is humanised it grounds their villainy in something real and gives actual backing to their motives when done well. the capability for kindness and regular human qualities also makes their capability for evil even more terrifying and in bringing them closer to the audience, even blurs the lines of what separates a villain from regular people that anyone can be like that. regular people, the assumed good may also possess similar qualities within them which brings up interesting questions of what the separation is, and if its arbitrary.

but ofc a good villain doesnt exist alone, i find when a villain is able to reflect off of the protagonist they can be at their best. they actually have something to oppose rather than a faceless city of helpless unrelated citizens. like u said u liked shigaraki right? shigaraki and midoriyas backstories could be mirrors, their mentorship under all for one and all might also act as mirrors. yet they descend dramatically different paths in life. im not rlly going in depth cuz i dont rlly know abt bnha but being able to examine both sides allows both sides to shine

now like villains i think by definition r Villainous. they cause some sort of harm n terror but antagonists dont have to be evil! a hero can be an antagonist in a story about a villain (sorry if this is redundant im sure u alr know this)

this is just a ramble lol sorry!!!

my friend!!!!!!! hello!!!!!! so good to see u lab :-) <3333

im so sorry for this response being quite late i hope u know i wasnt ignoring u!!!! it was my first week back to classes and its been So Much. i wanted to wait to respond until i knew i could do so with full attention bc this was so kind of u! so hello!!!

i think you’re so right!! I’ve been working on a story for my creative writing class and one of my characters is a villain/anti-hero, and i as the writer struggled to figure out how to make them likable, even for me. which doesn’t make for good writing, because a writer should love their characters! but highlighting the human aspect as you suggested will be really helpful i think, especially because that's what i personally am usually so drawn to in any character. and like you said their regular human qualities make them so compelling and terrifying. kindness in villains is always SO interesting i love those slivers of empathy and gentleness esp with how they contrast to everything else. i really love the idea of blurring the lines between what makes them a villain and just like anyone else… i saw a quote while researching that was something along the lines of “the most terrifying villains are the ones we could imagine becoming.”... making the villain as relatable and human as possible i think will be really helpful for me!!

i also love what u said about the qualities being so similar that the separation is questioned, and if it's arbitrary!!! i had to look up what arbitrary meant ngl djfjsdfhfd but thats so so interesting lab!!!! what really makes them a villain? does everyone view of them as a villain? i could also see these questions really rattling the protagonist/heroes view and making them question themselves and their perspective of the world and morality.

good villain doesnt exist alone love that love that. relationships are my favorite part of any art really and i love thinking about the villain in relation to other meaningful characters, most especially the protagonist they are against. ooo the villain reflecting off of the protagonist… i dont think you’re alone in finding thats when they’re at their best! characteristics in the hero that can be found in the villain, just used in different ways or at different extremes or in completely contrasting directions.... hmmmm. are you drawn to more villainous characters in media? i’d love to know which ones you like! i don’t really know a lot of villains tbh… other than in bnha and magneto i rarely pay deep attention to them, which i really should start doing.

ur soo right with the mirroring protag and antag in bnha… shigaraki and midoriya’s paths are so similar it’s heartbreaking and v well done i think. and something that draws me to shigaraki is his backstory, and how tragic it is, and the tragedy in knowing that shigaraki could have been like midoriya if he had met someone like allmight instead of all for one. i think theres something there i can use..

the villain by definition has to be Villianous… so simple but so true and what i think im struggling with. u didnt ask for this dfkjsd but i think i want my protag and villain to be drawn to one another, and maybe like an enemies to friends to teammates thing… but im questioning how i can believable get there when areas in their morals contrast so deeply ect ect wah wah whatever

ALSO DONT APOLOGIZE!!!!!!! AT ALL!!!!!! thank you so much for this. like so so sincerely thank you so much. you didnt have to write this but you went out of your way to help me and i appreciate it so much and it means so much to me. thank you for being so kind to me. i love speaking with u. ALSO SO SORRY I HAVENT SENT THE ASK ABOUT KISE IVE BEEN NOT GREAT LATELY WITH SCHOOL AND STUFF IM REALLY SORRY

also have u ever though about writing? i think you’d be really good at it :)

also you’re like so cool??? like you’re just so in depth and attentive with analysis and i luv talking w u and i just think u’re so cool. u drew me a lovely kise and loona picture, so here is my attempt at izuki because i know u love him. except he’s EVIL here and wearing an evil collar and cape and he hates puns (mwahahaha)…

cannot thank you enough for going out of your way to help me lab :-) means so so much. you're a star and i hope the world is kind to u forever. pls never stop talking with me and i hope its ok for me to randomally pop in your asks and blog and bother u dsjfkhsdf