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physalian · 4 months

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Humanizing Your Characters (And Why You Should)

To humanize a character is not to contort an irredeemable villain into the warped funhouse mirror reflection of a hero in the last 30 seconds to gain “narrative subversion” points. To humanize is not to give said villain a tragic backstory that validates every bad choice they make in attempt to provide nuance where it does not deserve to be.

To humanize a character, villain or otherwise, is to make them flawed. Scuff them up, give them narrative birthmarks and scars and imperfections. Whether it’s your hero, their love interest, the comic relief, the mentor, the villain, the rival, these little narrative details serve to make all your literary babies better.

Why should you humanize your characters?

To do this means to write in details beyond those that service the plot, or the themes, or the motifs, morals, foreshadowing, or story. These might be (and usually are) entirely unimportant in the grand scheme of things. So, if I wrote lengthy diatribes on pacing and why every detail must matter, and character descriptions and thematic importance, why am I now suggesting go free-for-all on the fluff?

Just like real people have quirks and tics and beliefs and pet peeves that serve our no greater purpose, so should fictional people. Your average reader doesn’t have the foggiest idea what literary devices are beyond metaphor, simile foreshadowing, and anecdote, but they can tell when the author is using motif and theme and all the syntactical marvels because it reads that much richer, even if they can’t pinpoint why.

And, for shipping fodder, these tiny little details are what help your audience fall in love with the character. It doesn’t even have to be in a book – Taylor Swift (whether you like her or not) never fills her music with sexual innuendo or going clubbing. She tells stories filled with human details like dancing in the refrigerator light. People can simultaneously relate to these very specific and vivid experiences, and say “not that exactly, but man this reminds me of…” and that’s (part of) the reason her music is so popular.

What kinds of narratives need these details?

All of them. Visual media, audio, written, stage play. Now, to what degree and excess you apply these details depends on your tone, intended audience, and writing style. If your style of writing is introspection heavy, noir character drama, you might go pretty heavy on the character design.

But even if you’re writing a kids book with a scant few paragraphs of setting descriptors and internal narration, or you’re drawing a comic book – if you have characters you want people to care about, do this.

Animators, particularly, are very adept at humanizing non-human characters, because, unlike live acting, every single stroke of the pen is there with intent. They use their own reflections for facial references, record their own movements to draw a dance, and insert little bits of themselves into signature character poses so you know that *that* animator did this one.

How to humanize your characters.

I’m going to break this down into a couple sections: Costume/wardrobe, personality, beliefs/behavior/superstitions, haptics/proxemics/kinesics, and voice. They will all overlap and the sheer variety and possibilities are way too broad for me to capture every facet.

Costumes and Wardrobe

In the film Fellowship of the Ring, there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment where, after Boromir is slain by the Uruk-Hai, Aragorn takes Boromir’s Gondorian vambraces to wear in his honor, and in honor of their shared country. He wears them the rest of the trilogy. The editing pays no extra attention to them beyond a split second of Aragorn tightening the straps, it never lingers on them, never reminds you that they’re there, but they kept it in nonetheless. His actor also included a hunting bow that didn't exist in the book because he's a roamer, a ranger, and needs to be able to feed himself, along with a couple other survival tools.

Aragorn wears plenty of other symbolic bits of costume – the light of the Evenstar we see constantly from Arwen, the Lothlorien green cloaks shared by the entire Fellowship, his re-forged sword and eventual full Gondorian regalia, but all those are Epic Movie Moments that serve a thematic purpose.

Taking the vambraces is just a small, otherwise insignificant character moment, a choice made for no other reason than that’s what this character would do. That’s what makes him human, not an archetype.

When you’re writing these details and can’t rely on sneaking them into films, you have to work a little harder to remind your audience that they exist, but not too often. A detail shifts from “human” to “plot point” when it starts to serve a purpose to the themes and story.

Inconsequentiality might be how a character ties, or doesn’t tie their shoelaces, because they just can’t be bothered so they remain permanent knots and tripping hazards. It might be a throw-away line about how they refuse to wear shorts and strictly stick to long pants because they don’t like showing off their legs. It might be perpetually greasy hair from constantly running their fingers through it with stress, or self-soothing. A necklace they fidget with, or a ring, a belt they never bother to replace even though they should, a pair of lucky socks.

Resist the urge to make it more meaningful than “this is just how they are”. If I’m using the untied shoelaces example – in Spiderverse, this became a part of the story’s themes, motifs, and foreshadowing, and doesn’t count. Which isn’t bad! It’s just not what I’m talking about.

Personality

In How to Train Your Dragon, Toothless does not speak. All his personality comes from how he moves, the noises he makes, and the expressions on his face. There’s moments, like in the finale, when his prosthetic has burned off and Hiccup tells him to hold on for a little bit longer, and you can clearly see on his face that he’s deeply uncertain about his ability to do so. It’s almost off the screen, another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. Or the beat of hesitation before he lets Hiccup touch him in the Forbidden Friendship scene. Or the irritated noise he makes when he’s impatiently waiting for Hiccup to stop chatting with his dad because they have a giant dragon to murder. Or when he slaps Hiccup with his ear fin for flying them into a rock spire.

None of those details *needed* to exist to endear you to his character or to serve the scenes they’re in. The scenes would carry on just fine without them. He’s a fictional dragon, yes, but these details make him real.

Other personality tics you could include might be a character who gets frustrated with tedious things very quickly and starts making little inteligible curses under their breath. Or how they giggle when they’re excited and start bouncing on their toes. Maybe they have a tic where they snap their fingers when they’re concentrating, trying to will an idea into existence. Or they stick their tongue out while they work and get embarrassed when another character calls them on it. They roll around in their sleep, steal blankets, drool, leave dishes in the sink or are neurotic with how things must be organized. They have one CD in their car, and actually use that CD player instead of the phone jack or Bluetooth. They sing in the shower, while they cook, or while they do homework, no matter how grating their voice.

They like the smell of new shoes or Sharpies. They hate the texture of suede or velvet or sticky residues. They never pick their socks up. They hate the overhead light in their room and use 50 lamps instead. They hate turning into oncoming traffic or don’t trust their backup camera. They collect Funko Pops and insist there’s always room for more.

And about a million others.

Beliefs, Behaviors, and Superstitions

*If you happen to be writing a story where superstitions have merit, maybe skip this one.* Usually, inevitably, these evolve into character centerpieces and I can’t actually think of one off the top of my head that doesn’t become this beyond the ones we all know. A few comedic examples do come to mind:

The Magic Conch in “Club Spongebob” and the sea-bear-proof dirt circle in “The Camping Episode”

Dean Winchester’s fear and panic-driven actions in “Yellow Fever” and “Sam, Interrupted”

The references to the trolls that steal left-foot socks in How to Train Your Dragon

I’m not a fan of wasting time writing a religious character doing their religious thing when Plot Is Happening, but smaller things are what I’m talking about. Like them wearing a cross/rosary and touching it when they’re nervous. Having a specific off-beat prayer, saying, or expression because they don’t believe in cursing.

The classic ones like black cats, ladders, broken mirrors, salt, sidewalk cracks can all be funny. Athletes have plenty, too, and some of them, particularly in baseball culture, are a bit ridiculous. Not washing socks or uniforms, having a team idol they donate Double Bubble to and also rub their toes. A specific workout routine, diet, team morale dance.

Other things, too. A character who’s afraid to go back downstairs once the lights are off, or fear the basement or the backyard shed. Or they’re really put-off by this old family photo for no reason other than how glassy their eyes look and it’s creepy. They like crystals, dreamcatchers, star signs, tarot, or they absolutely do not under any circumstances.

They believe in all the tried and true ways of predicting the weather like a grizzled old sailor. They believe in ghosts, vampires, werewolves, witches, skinwalkers, doppelgangers, fairies. They talk to the cat statue in their kitchen and named it Fudge Pop. They whisper to the spirit that possessed the fridge so it stops making all that racket, and half the time, it works every time. They wear yellow for good luck or carry a rabbit’s foot. They’re not religious at all but still throw prayers out to whoever’s listening because, you know, just in case. They sit by their window sill and talk to the moon and the stars and pretend like they’re in a music video when they’re driving through the city in the rain.

Haptics, Proxemics, and Kinesics

These are, for all you non-communication and psych majors out there, touch and physical contact, how they move, and how they move around other people.

Behold, your shipping fodder.

Two shining examples of proxemics in action are the famous “close talker” episode of Seinfeld (of which every communication major has been subjected to) and Castiel’s not understanding of personal space (and human chronemic habits) in Supernatural.

These are how a character walks, if they’re flat-footed, clumsy, or tip-toers. If they make a racket or constantly spook the other characters. If they fidget or can’t sit still in a seat for five seconds, if they like to sit backwards or upside down. How they touch themselves, if they do a lot of self-soothing maneuvers (hugging themselves, rubbing their arms, touching their face, drawing their knees up, holding their neck, etc) or if they don’t do any self-soothing at all.

This is how they shake hands, if they dance while they cook or work. It’s how much space they let themselves take up, if they man-spread or keep their limbs in closer. How close they stand to others or how far. If they let themselves be touched at all, or if they always have their skin covered. If they always have their back to a wall, or are always making sure they know where the nearest exit is. If they make grand gestures when they talk and give directions. If they flinch from pats on the back or raised hands. If they lean away from loud voices or project their own. If they use their height to their advantage when arguing, puff their chest, square their shoulders, put their hands on their hips, or point fingers in accusation.

If they touch other characters as they pass by. If they’re huggers or victims of falling asleep on or near their comrades. If they must sleep facing the door, or with something solid behind them. If they can sleep in the middle of a party wholly uncaring. If they sleepwalk, sleeptalk, migrate across the bed to cuddle whoever’s nearest with no idea they’re doing it.

If they like to be held or like to hold others. If they hate being picked up and slung around or are touch-starved for it. If they like their space and stick to it or are more than happy to share.

Do they walk with grace, head held high and back straight? Or are they hunched over, head hung, watching their feet? Are they meanderers or speed-walkers? Do they cross their arms in front or lace their hands behind them? Do they bow to authority or meet that gaze head on?

I have heard that Prince Zuko, in Last Airbender, is usually drawn sleeping with his bad ear down when he doesn’t feel safe, like on his warship or anywhere in the Fire Nation, or on the road. He’s drawn on his other side once he joins the Gaang. In Dead Man’s Chest, just before Davy Jones drives the Flying Dutchman under the waves, two tentacles curl up and around the brim of his hat to keep it from blowing off in the water.

When they fight, do they attack first, or defend first? Do they touch other characters’ hair? Share makeup, share clothes? Touch their faces with boops or bonks or nuzzles and eskimo kisses? Do they crack their knuckles and necks and knees?

Do they stare in baffled curiosity at all the other characters wholly comfortable in each other's spaces because they can’t, won’t, or don’t see the point in all this nonsense? Do they say they’re happy on the outside, but are betrayed by their body language?

Voice

Whether or not to write an accent is entirely up to you. Books like Their Eyes Were Watching God writes dialogue in a vernacular specific to its characters. Westerners and southerners tend to be written with the southern drawl or dialect, ripe with stereotypical contractions. Be advised, however, that in attempt to write an accent to give your character depth, you could be instead turning off your audience who doesn’t have energy to decipher what they’re saying, or you went and wrote a racist stereotype.

Voice isn’t just accent and dialect, nor is it how it sounds, which falls more solidly under useful character descriptions. Voice for the sake of humanizing your characters concerns how they talk, how they convey their thoughts, and how they become distinct from other characters in dialogue and narration.

If you’re writing a narrative that hops heads and don’t want to include a big banner to indicate who’s talking at any given time, this is where voice matters. It is, I think, the least appreciated of all the possible traits to pay attention to.

First person narrators have the most flexibility here because the audience is zero degrees removed from their first-hand experiences. Their personality comes through sharply in how they describe things and what they pay attention to.

But it’s also in what similes and metaphors they use. I read a book that had an average (allegedly straight) male narrator going off and describing colors with types of flowers, some I had to look up because I just don’t know those off the top of my head. My immediate thought was either this character is a poorly written gay, or he’s a florist. Neither (allegedly), the writer was just being too specific.

Do they have crutch words they use? like, um, actually, so…, uh

Or repeat exclamations specific to them? yikes, yowzers, jeepers, jinkies, zoinks, balls, beans, d’oh!

Or idioms they’re fond of? Like a bat out of hell. Snowball’s chance.

Do they stutter when they’re nervous? Do they lose their train of thought and bounce around, losing other characters in the process? Do they have a non-Christian god they pray to and say something other than “thank God”? Are they from another country, culture, time period, realm, or planet with their own gods, beliefs, and idioms?

When they describe settings, how flowery is the language? Would this grizzled war hero use flowery language? How would he or she describe the color pink, versus a PTA mom? Do they use only a generic “blue, green, red” or do they really pay attention with “aquamarine, teal, emerald, viridian, vermillion, rose, ruby”?

How do this character’s hobbies affect how well they can describe dance moves, painting styles, car models, music genres?

This mostly matters when you’re head-hopping and the voice of the narrator serves to be more distinct, otherwise, what’s the point of head-hopping? Just use third-person omniscient.

If you really want to go wild, give a specific narrator unique syntax. Maybe one character is the ghost of Oscar Wild with never-ending run-on sentences. Just be sure to not go too overboard and compromise the integrity of your story.

In the book A Lesson Before Dying, a somewhat illiterate, underprivileged and undereducated minor has been given a mentor, a teacher, before they face the death penalty. At the end of the book, you read all of the letters they wrote to their teacher. There’s misspellings everywhere, almost no punctuation, and long, rambling sentences.

It’s heartbreaking. The subject matter is heavy and horrible, yes, but it’s the choice to write with such poor English that has a much bigger impact than perfect MLA format.

How to implement these details

Most of these, in the written medium, need only show up once or twice before your audience notices and wonders why they’re there. Most fall squarely under character design, which falls under exposition, and should follow all the exposition guidelines.

These details exist to be random and fluffy, but they can’t exist randomly within the narrative. If you want to have your character be superstitious, pick a relevant time to include that superstition.

Others, like ongoing speech habits or movements, still don’t overuse, especially if they’re unique. A character might like to sit backwards in a chair, but if you mention that they’re doing it every single time they sit down, your audience will wonder what’s so important and if the character is unwell.

And, of course, you can let these traits become thematically important, like a superstition being central to their personality or backstory or motivation. These all serve the same purpose of making your character feel like a real person instead of just a “character”.

Just think about tossing in a few random details every now and then and see what happens. One tiny sentence can take a background character and make them candidates for the eventual fandom’s fan favorite. Details like these turn your work from “This a story, and these are the characters who tell it” into “these are my characters, and this is their story.”

#writing advice #character design #writing tips #writing resources #exposition #writing tools #writing a book

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oyasumicloseyoureyes · 1 year

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I hate it when the Omori fandom shames people who ship Sunnflower because they think it's "trauma bonding", "manipulative" and "abusive", which is simply not true.

Basil isn't "obsessed" with Sunny as people claim, just because a person idolizes someone doesn't mean they're some crazy yandere. He saw one of his closest friends dying in front of his eyes, which left him traumatized, causing all the delusions and the denial. All of the stuff he did (like hanging Mari or "saving" Sunny from Something), he did with good intentions, even if he did end up making things worse. That's his character flaw and it makes him human. He tried his best to protect his friend, and people who say he's toxic or manipulative are just media illiterate.

And the fact that people think that Sunny legitimately hates Basil is so bizarre to me, the game has shown so many times how important Basil is to him. How Sunny dives into the lake, literally risking his own life to save him despite having aquaphobia, or how he wants to find and save Basil in Headspace despite the fact that Basil ruins everything by reminding Sunny of the truth, and it would be easier to forget about Basil altogether, like he did with Abbi, but Sunny doesn't do it because he can't see his dream world without Basil, are all examples of that. He even dreams of hugging him right after Basil stabbed him in the eye, for God's sake.

There are only two moments in the game when the player might think that Sunny dislikes Basil. The first one is when Omori kills Basil in Black Space, but that only happens because Omori wants to protect Sunny from the truth, not because Sunny hates him. The second moment is when Sunny leaves Basil in the bathroom. Again, he does it not because he hates him, but because he's afraid, Basil literally says himself:

"Sunny...W-Why...Why do you look so scared?"

Not angry or disgusted, but scared. Sunny was afraid and it made him leave. And that's Sunny's character flaw, he's afraid to face problems so he runs away from them, hurting people in the process. He didn't abandon his best friend for 4 years on purpose. Only in the final fight with Basil he found the courage to face his fears and stay to save him. Saving Basil is mandatory and without doing it you can't have the good ending and Sunny can't have a healthy, happy life. His healing is tied to Basil and people tend to ignore that.

Omori literally shows that these two care about each other more than anything. And yes, realistically their relationship would be unhealthy at first, but so would every other relationship in the main group, they all have problems that they need to work on, that's why therapy exist. So It's really hypocritical to hate on Sunnflower for being toxic and then ship the other characters.

On that note, If you think people with trauma can't form healthy relationships, don't deserve to be happy and won't ever get better - you're completely wrong.

The whole Sunnflower discourse proves people only see trauma victims through that lens, and completely disregard their previous relationships and characteristics.

Sunny and Basil's struggles make them feel real. Their trauma doesn't have to define them. They can grow and heal and be happy again and if you think otherwise then you completely missed the point of Omori.

#i had to get it out of my chest #stop harassing people for shipping it!#omori #omori basil #omori sunny #omori sunflower #omori sunnflower #sunny #basil #sunflower #sunnflower #sunny x basil

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maxphilippa · 3 months

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i think that the major misinterpretation that people have with taco is that she didn't get attached to mic because of her sad face in the end wanted to show regret because "she hurted her friend". like. no, she wasn't sad because she regretted what she did. she was sad because she's alone again, but she knows very well at the end that she had it coming. the reason as to why taco was so desperate of wanting mic to tell her that she did gain something is because. she SAW pickle in mic, but of course their situation is very different. "Oh but Taco couldn't have done what she did to Mic to Pickle, Mic was fully aware" but she did do that. Mic herself says it. That is pretty much what II is telling you. Taco isn't a good friend, and is not exactly a good person either. Mic was aware that Taco was/is a bad person, but Mic's nature makes her believe in whoever acknowledges her. Taco made Mic feel like she needed her, just the way she made Pickle feel back in s1.

she didn't really change thanks to mic. her faces of "regret" aren't her actually lamenting all of the stuff she did to microphone, but rather just her realizing that she proved what everyone said about her as a result. i will give it to that she might've tried to change, but not because of mic. she wanted to win the prize so she could prove others wrong on her being a loser and a coward, by being a loser and a coward. if anything, mic made her realize that she hasn't changed. she pretty much just ruined everything for everyone who saw her as a friend, and for herself.

taco's whole arc is constantly just downgraded to questionable takes and listen. i do agree that she is heavily flawed as a character. she is morally gray, but ii doesn't portray her as a good person with good intentions, nor she should be really be treated as if she was. neither she had those good intentions with mic at all, i mean, their "friendship" pretty much started because of taco wanting the prize money, taking a part of microphone's prize if she made mic won, you know, an offer. she would get the prize and mic would get recognition. but everyone seems to forget that probably, the main reason as to why she's doing all of this, is because she does regret how she acted on s1. she doesn't exactly regret doing all of that to microphone, and even if she does, it's for the wrong reasons. (that's because she did the exact same thing to you know, pickle, her once best friend, the only person she truly ever cared about)

people do tend to forget that taco keeps sending letters to pickle, and that's often just used for pickle angst and making it his only character trait, but. it's not that. it's the fact that taco keeps on writing those letters, despite fully knowing that she did hurt pickle because of her actions. taco's biggest flaw is that she can't accept that she has ruined everything and wants so desperately to be back on pickle's life because she ended up caring about him deeply as a person. as a friend. but she was never there at all, either.

taco can't seem to understand that she has hurted people badly. sure, she seemed like a "friend" to microphone, and you can argue whatever you want but a fact is that taco IS smart, and she knew that the only way to possibly keep mic by her side is pretending to want to be better, you know, the same way she pretended to be just a odd fella so pickle and her could remain together and have an advance at the game. she played with both of them. because both pickle and mic believed in her but were just used by her for the game.

however, taco does seem to regret the way everything went during-post s1. you can see how she yearns for another chance and is saddened about not getting it, but that's not only for comedic purposes, but that's because the writing is telling you that she won't get a second chance. at least not here.

what i want people to understand is that, yes, taco is a complex character, however trying to sugarcoat what she did is pretty much missing the point of her writing as a whole. she isn't a good person neither was she a good friend. she hasn't grown because she was never able to let go of something that she thinks that she can fix with some words and a prize. she thinks that she can still fix her friendship with pickle, she thinks that she can clear her name (even if she was the one who tainted it), but she only ended up proving knife right. she proved everyone right. she hasn't changed. a morally gray character is that. they're not exactly fully bad or fully good, but it's taco's actions that speak a lot. words are cheap, and taco's title is "The Liar", and that says a lot, because she kept on lying to microphone and to pickle on both of their games. she won't heal unless she lets go.

and i want to be clear here: i do think that taco can go through redemption. i do think that taco can become a better person, but not in the way people portray her to do so. because it just pretty much goes against what her arc has settled in for us, and the other arcs that were involved in hers as well.

taco's arc is meant to be somewhat a parallel with nickel's in a way. hell, even with knife's arc if anything. she treats knife as a simple bully, but when she saw that he became smarter and way more emotionally aware than what she had expected, she felt attacked by that, because he was stable. he became a better person and he was rubbing that on her, and it made her feelings of anger way worse regarding him, but it is true. knife is pretty much everything that taco wants to be, but here's the thing that made them so different:

knife stayed. taco didn't stay.

knife is accepted by everyone in the hotel because meanwhile he hasn't explicitly said that he had a change of heart, he has shown it through actions and a big difference too is that he was there for pickle, even if they weren't close in s1, and taco is on the woods because deep down she is aware that she can't go back. not if she doesn't have something to offer as an direct apology, but here's the problem. whether or not she got the prize, she still wouldn't get forgiven by anyone due to what she said that day.

again. her problem is not being able to let go and to accept when she has messed up badly. she has been lying to everyone but she has also been lying to herself as a whole. she can't keep on doing this because it's just hurting everyone and herself. keeping grudges and holding onto past friendships that were doomed to fall is just hurting her. she is not on the state to keep on trying, she wasn't at all ever.

taco's arc most likely will have closure on a way that fits her character, and i feel like that would be with her letting go of inanimate insanity as a whole and of what she can't fix anymore. her trying to find herself after years of lying to everyone and to herself. she's not a good person. but she can become one. only if she knows what she did was wrong and that her second chance isn't there, and never will be, and if she recognizes that meanwhile she did that damage, she can still become a better person. just not there.

pickle and mic don't owe her anything, especially pickle. taco does owe them an apology, but they won't accept that. the least she could do is to accept their wishes, understand that she needs to leave them and grow to be a better person. maybe, if she does that, she would actually heal.

she doesn't need anyone to fix her. she needs to fix herself.

#inanimate insanity #ii #inanimate insanity invitational #ii 2 #ii 3 #inanimate insanity taco #inanimate insanity microphone #inanimate insanity knife #inanimate insanity pickle #and no. this isn't to bring ship discourse or anything. get that away from my character analysis.#i feel like taco is a really interesting character. it is pretty sad that even if she's popular people don't get her #“she's a complex fem character” yes she is. however you are pretty much missing the point. a character regardless of the gender can do bad-#-things and have a good intention/or a way to try to make up for that in their actions. however she is a case where she can't get closure w #-ith anyone because of the way she is written/the way she was given that complexity. she won't get closure with anyone in the cast at all #because they won't really forgive her since she kept on lying and using them as puppets. she had a change of heart. sure #but that doesn't erase all the pain she has caused #i genuinely do hope she gets her eventual closure by letting go. she does deserve to be okay but not with the cast.#i feel like the best way to put is. she had a good wish (wanting to become friends with pickle and showing that she changed)#with bad intentions and bad actions (using mic to get the prize + lying to her + other bad stuff she has done to the contestants such as h #-arming them without a motive/just because.)#max does analysis

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jacks347 · 17 days

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I feel like hurting people so let's talk about Redacted characters fatal flaws.

David - Obligation

I was originally going to say David's flaw was loyalty but I thought that was too surface level so I dug a little deeper and found something a bit more important. David carries a heavy weight of obligation on his shoulders. He runs the pack and the security company because it's what his dad would've wanted, he works to keep the pack going because people depend on him, he only met Angel cause Caelum made him. Everything in his life is because of feels obligated to keep said things going. He didn't want to be in this situation, he doesn't want to have to work as hard as he does but he knows he has to in order to maintain everything his father left him. David takes on so much because he thinks he has to and that kind of weight will crush him eventually. He's pulling himself in so many directions, something has to give. To put it in his own words, one of these times when he throws himself at the wall it won't be the thing that breaks.

Asher - Optimism

Asher, you sweet sweet bean, your joy will be the thing that destroys you. Asher has the Polites problem (see, I know Greek characters) in where his optimism is the thing that drives the group into a far more dangerous situation. Asher's hopeful belief that they could get through the Inversion almost got him killed. He is the sunshine character, he's the one that everyone expects to be happy, he holds the morale of the pack on his shoulders and that kind of pressure would be enough to make anyone crack. How long will it be until the happy-go-lucky attitude snaps under the weight?

Milo - Dedication

It's easy to say Milo is loyal to a fault. It's hard to say he has a gravely misplaced sense of dedication. Milo feels he has something to prove, he always has. Prove to himself and the rest of the pack that he's useful, he has a place, he has a purpose in this pack. Milo has dedicated his life to proving his worth and that dedication to a harmful cause will be the thing that kills him. Hell, it already almost did. If another event like the Inversion happens, he might not make it out.

Sam - Independence

Sam is an interesting case because his need to be independent won't kill him physically as much as it will mentally. He has worked so hard to make sure other people's actions don't define him that he instinctively isolates himself. He keeps everyone at arm's length so that if and when they do something that hurts the people around them, he won't be caught in the blast radius. But that changes when he meets Darlin, someone who also keeps people at arm's length and doesn't let anyone get close. There's an argument to be made in how Sam seems himself in Darlin and that's why he felt so inclined to help them (beyond just hating Quinn) but not the point I'm making. Sam runs from problems before they can affect him and when the pack dies, he'll be stuck in a problem he can't run from. Sam may not die after the pack is gone but he will fade into the background. Sam will be lost in time, clinging to memories of a time that he let people in as those too eventually fade into the aether of history.

Vincent - Naivety

I heavily considered giving Vincent independence as his fatal flaw too cause it very well could be but we don't do doubles in this house and there is a far more deadly flaw in him and that's his naivety. Vincent is blind to his situation, he doesn't understand most of it because he's been shielded from it. He lacks understanding of what it really means to be a vampire, let alone one in such a well known house. And it's in that where we see his mistake with Lovely. Vincent turned Lovely without fully understanding his own place and therefore doesn't understand the responsibilities he's putting onto Lovely by bringing them into it. It's the blind leading the blind. This lack of real understanding I think will be what tears him apart.

Porter - Peace

Now, this one is hard to explain. How is peace a fatal flaw? Rather simply, actually. You find peace in a situation that you choose not to change. Porter is William's guard dog because he doesn't feel like he deserves to be anything more. He does as asked because he thinks it's all he good for. He had made his peace with the fact that he believes he's not worth anything more than the blood he can spill. Which is wrong and flawed. And it's in that peace in the situation he doesn't believe he deserves to change that will get him killed. If he doesn't convince himself he's worth more than this, it'll be the thing that does him in.

Gavin - Humanity

Gavin's sense of humanity may not necessarily kill him but it will cause an untold amount of pain. Gavin has distanced himself so far from the world of demons in order to choose his own path and be who he is that he's forgotten this world isn't his. Elegy owes him nothing and it'll give him as much. It's the immortal lover problem, he will survive long after Freelancer and the others are gone and it will break him. I've mentioned before that Gavin and Porter are two sides of the same character but what's interesting is how their stories seem to be going in opposite directions until they eventually switch places. When Gavin loses the people that give him a sense of humanity, he will fall to what he believes he has to be in order to survive while Porter is learning that he can be more than what's expected of him and will hold that sense of pride I believe long after Treasure is gone.

Escaped, you're next. Prepare.

#honestly this was a lot of fun #twas a good thought experiment #because it forces you to look at the entirety of a character's story #look at the big picture #more to come #pinky promise #asmr roleplay #redacted audio #redacted asmr #redacted david #redacted asher #redacted milo #redacted sam #redacted vincent #redacted porter #redacted gavin #redacted shaw pack #redacted solaire clan #redacted damn crew

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yuikomorii · 26 days

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might be wrong about this but I think the thing that really differentiates Ayato from his brother is that he actually values life in a ''pure way''. Both Subaru and Shu didn't really have the will to life until they met the MC, Reiji's only will was to overcome his father and become better than his brother due to his jealousy, and even if it doesn't seem like it from the surface both Kanato and Laito were too mindbroken due to their trauma to actually enjoy life in a non-twisted way.

Ayato went through a lot of traumatic experiences just like the rest of his brothers but unlike them, he actually had a pure reason to live, that's why he didn't abandon his brothers and was desperately searching for them when they arrived to Rottienburg (I think that's the name) and prioritized them after he got saved by reiji and was willing to go look for them with no plan ahead and he's never changed. Even after they obviously drifted apart he still wanted to save his siblings (like in Lost Eden) even if they didn't want to save him when he got kidnapped by Kino.

Or when he was the only who saved yui in the anime when she got kidnapped by the mukami (Ik it's only fanservice because the anime shows Ayato as the ml). Or when he was the only one worrying about mc in the Olympics cd when the whole thing crushed down. I know mc has had her effects in everyone (because even reiji got worried in the CD drama when he though someone was drowning, turns out it was just Shu being weird) but at the end of the day, Rejet made it very clear that ayato always was different from his brothers even as kids.

Too long? Maybe, I just like rambling a lot about ayato lol

// This franchise is longer than a decade, it’s time for people to stop pretending that Ayato isn’t different from the rest, because it annihilates his purpose like that. Now I’m not saying that everyone else sucks and Ayato is the only cool character there, it’s just that Rejet wrote him in a way that genuinely gives off main character energy. Heck, even other characters have confirmed that he got *something* nobody else does, which is true.

Credit to: dialovers-translations, tournesolia

One thing about Ayato is that he might roast and prank you, but the moment you need help, he’ll be the first to lend you a hand. He’s by no means perfect, of course, he has flaws and makes mistakes too, but his good qualities are just so many that they’re easily able to outshine his bad ones.

Another example is the DF prologue scene. The most normal reaction would have been fighting with the wolf, as Subaru did, but instead of trying to get rid of it, Ayato used himself as shield the moment he saw it, so as to protect Yui. What makes this scene so powerful is that not only they weren’t a couple back then, but in the other Sakamaki routes, he’s still severely injured. He values life, yet he still sacrificed himself for her, no matter if she dates someone else afterwards, and guess what? Even after waking up from the coma in the other routes, he holds no grudge against her for that, but rather is on good terms with Yui. I would also like to talk about how self-sacrificing he is in the Daylight CD, but I feel like everyone listened to that one already, given that it was the most liked of the Daylight series.

While I understand that some people out there prefer more rational and/or introverted characters, I can’t stand those who deny the essence of a character. And, for all people who blame Rejet for “making him more special than the rest”, let me remind you that he’s the Diaboy who got the worst journey ending. Let that sink in. :”)

#admin

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veespee · 2 months

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Vinnie is *such* a complex character i feel. And he makes me feel very conflicted, but here are some (personal) opinions about him: (kinda an analysis? idk i'm just rambling)

-Firstly, he's the voyeur, although unknowingly. The word “voyeur” has two meanings, the first one is.. we won't talk about it, but the *second* one is: a person who enjoys seeing the pain or distress of others. Now, i don't really think he actually likes seeing people in pain. Of course, he shows remorse and guilt over the deaths of his close ones, and even people he didn't know that where victims, so why voyeur? Why would HABIT describe him as a “voyeuristic fuck”?

So, i may be getting some lore wrong, and i apologize in advance, but it's revealed that he has led everyone to their deaths, due to his insistence to keep filming and find answers. Also, if i remember right, he had intentionally left out footage that caused him to be seen in a bad light, and it showed that he had led Jeff and Alex to their doom.

-Now, of course for any sane person, why would someone do that? The answer is… well, for answers. That's the word he seems to be infatuated with, ’answers’. And it's made pretty clear. He saw what HABIT was doing, he saw the state Evan was in, and he knew. He was fully aware, he's not stupid, and he knew what he was doing. If Evan wasn't going to do what Vinnie was telling him to, then… he was going to summon HABIT. He was also aware of HABIT's intelligence/experience with the human race, which was good for him, since he was going to get his questions answered.

-Now’s the trick question (for me at least), is Vinnie a horrible person? Well… yes, and no? I mean, he did do horrible things, that much can be said. He led everyone to doom, he purposefully ignored people's wishes (Evan's request for Vinnie not to upload the video about Jesse's grandmother dying), and of course, continuing to record after all of these things happened, despite Jeff's and Evan's wishes. But he feels incredibly guilty. “Sometimes you gotta do stuff that you don't agree with, but that's the price you pay. But you gotta remember, sometimes the price is too steep, and you just can't live with yourself... I'm sorry... I'm so sorry to everyone that I've hurt, to everyone that has died, around me or because of me.” (these are his own words).

I honestly believe he's a very, very flawed character. His goal is answers, and he will do anything to get them. He has the drive to get what he desperately wants, even after being tortured by HABIT. And i feel that HABIT has some respect for him because of that. And of course, his role was set from the start. Everything was calculated, and he was fulfilling his role, “the voyeur”, “the guardian”, whatever it may be. Everything happened for a reason, the God Killer was created, Vinnie's “purpose” was completed. I guess he could be described as a pawn, a follower that was blinded by his desperation for knowledge and control, but fell into the traps of the bigger entities at play.

thank you for reading! i apologize if i got any characteristics wrong, i just wanted to get my thoughts out. and this is very yap-y, so here's a TL;DR:

Vinnie is a complex ass character, who's blinded by his search for control and answers. He's guilty and self loathing, but avoids responsibility. Basically… opinions vary about him, you either love him or hate him.

#slenderverse #analysis #poetry #character analysis #ramble #vincent emh #vinny emh #everymanhybrid #emh #vinnie everyman #habit emh #vincent everyman #vinny everyman

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damianbugs · 4 months

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Hi!! First I just wanted to say your fics have been an inspo for me to write my own fics and I enjoy them immensely. Second, I’ve been wandering something and I want to ask something about how Jason Todd is portrayed after his death.

I don’t really understand why so many just kind of lie? Or exasperate who Jason Todd is and isn’t. Like the Cass and Bruce scene in front of Jason’s grave, or that scene in Gotham Knights where Alfred tells Bruce “Jason was determined to disobey him.” I know out of universe it just has to do with the mischaracterization of Jason but I’m having a hard time on finding an in universe explanation. Is it out of guilt? Out of misplaced love? It’s confusing me a bit

first of all, thank you!! i'm so glad i could inspire you that is truly the highest complement i could receive <3

secondly, this is a really interesting discussion! you're right about how in a meta way it's the deeply routed classism in jasons writing, as well as many writers (example: grant morrison) just really hating jason for some reason and doing everything they can to make him absolutely insufferable. not even in a cool evil villain way, but in an embarrassment point and laugh kind of way.

for the purpose of this discussion lets (with much difficulty) ignore the writers predispositions and implications and just focus entirely on what this means for the characters. it's good you mention the cass and bruce at jason's grave scene, because i think that example alone is a good way to deconstruct some of character's (for this post: bruce's) perspective of jason's death.

to summarise before dumping a billion paragraphs developing the point; let's not dance around it and accept that much of people's understanding of jason's death falls into the victim blaming variety, but in such way that the characters don't seem to realise that's how they perceive him, which is almost worse than them purposely retelling it in such a way. as well as that, aside from this indenial misunderstanding of jason, i think this shows the sort of flaws the other characters have.

Detective Comics #790

at first glance this seems like a really touching and emotional moment where bruce is sharing his grief with cass (especially when the entirety of #790 is about bruce struggling to do just that), but then you really read it and you're like what the fuck... why are we standing in front of this kids grave slagging him off? not only are we hearing all of bruce's regrets about how he raised jason as opposed to his son's actual death, but we are dragging steph into this too.

to bruce, jason's death is an accumulation of everything he let the boy get away with finally reaching it's tipping point. that jason's ambition to "prove something" lead to his seemingly inevitable demise.

now i do think it's important to note that WE (the readers) know jason died saving sheila. that despite being beaten, betrayed and left for dead, he tried to save someone and paid the price for it. no one else knows that, because the two people that did are dead. as a result, bruce is left with the facts that;

prior to his death, jason was acting uncharacteristically (<- important point) violent and aggressive towards himself, borderline passively suicidal. bruce himself acknowledges this.

that jason ran away from home in search of someone who may or may not be his mother. this is because losing his parents is a hurt jason has still not healed from and a topic bruce has handled badly in the past (example: willis todd). jason does not trust bruce enough to tell him about this.

once they find his mother, jason is instructed to not get involved in the joker related problem. to the extent of bruces knowledge, jason reveals himself as robin, and decides to get involved despite the instruction not to. either because he again, didn't trust bruce to believe he would handle it, or that jason was trying to prove something to bruce, to sheila, or to himself.

sheila dies, jason dies and bruce is the only one alive from the tragedy with only half the story.

All of this can be found in A Death In The Family, but I don't feel comfortable sharing panels of it given where the story takes place right now.

bruce spends the next few years blaming himself at any given point, but the blame is misplaced. bruce feels as though HIS negligence of JASON'S personality and HIS allowance of JASON'S freedom as robin is what allowed JASON to go and die. instead of seeing what he knows to be true about jason (his empathy, his kindness, his grief and loneliness) bruce can now only see how his allowance of all these things played a part in JASON disobeying him (whether maliciously or not) and dying.

in short, bruce is projecting big time onto his dead kid.

bruce is, as per usual, coping with loss by antagonising it. he did the same with babs, with steph and later on with damian. for a character like batman, who upon failing immediately turns these losses into lessons (for himself and all those forced to comply), it's the only way he seems to 'move on'. if he can understand that jason died because of all the things bruce let him do wrong, then he can convince himself that the guilt he feels for it is necessary. that jasons death is on him and that it mattered.

unfortunately, in order to do that, bruce is indenial about what he LITERALLY KNOWS ABOUT JASON! it's not like he was an absent father to jason in the slightest. but hey, if he can vitiate jason's enthusiasm to help people as jason's impulsiveness to fight (two things that can be true but not in accordance to the context he describes them in), then the blame is on jason for being brash, and on bruce for being lenient.

he shoots jason in the foot and himself in the knee to keep them both down. because, well, jason's dead anyway, and bruce unfortunately isn't. this is the closest thing they'll get to sharing the truth bruce knows he's missing and he knows it's his fault for favouring the mission of his son — so at the expense of jason, bruce lets them both be the lesson to learn from.

it is why jason is used as a cautionary tale, and why bruce is so unstable on allowing people (especially children) into his life emotionally. the second robin is a lesson for any young vigilante eager to join the mission, and batman's part in the death is a lesson for bruce wayne to... be even more emotionally untrustworthy? instructions unclear.

the final part of the grave scene is also important, because bruce is admitting that he is not so different to jason. that "for some of us [Bruce and Cass] there is no turning back". he is projecting these flaws about jason not only because that's the only way he can cope with jason's death, but he is projecting these flaws because regardless of what actually happened, he (and cass) are destined to meet the same fate. jason died for a multitude of reason that bruce may or may not have caused knowingly, and these reasons only exist because bruce knows them to be true in himself and anyone else damaged enough to find themselves on his side of the blurry line.

so, now looking a bit less zoomed in, i think it's unfortunate that jason's time as robin is often perversed by the people who should know better (bruce & alfred), and while it is bad writing on jason's character, it is great writing to show the flaws in the characters around him.

especially how it shows that grief is not always something that can become healed. bruce's guilt about his parents death amounts to something hopeful (batman), but his guilt about jason's death makes bruce cruel and childish.

tldr: no one knows the true story, so they compensate from what they do know — but by doing so they project and misinform existing characteristics of jason in order to compartmentalise the gravity of his tragic death. bruce is unable to cope normally and everyone is forced to follow the same fate, because batman's lessons are rarely wrong, even if they cause ten other problems and misunderstandings to understand.

#did this answer anything idk its exam season who even am i #dc meta #bruce wayne #jason todd #character study #saki anons #saki comic talks #put me in a box with bruce wayne and i will eat his brain #sorry idk where that came from erm

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moondustinfj · 5 months

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MBTI AND ENNEAGRAM ANALYSIS OF INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE CHARACTERS

Part 1

Louis de Pointe du Lac

Mbti

Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perceiving

Infps are highly idealistic, sensitive and driven by their values

Especially because their leading function Fi (introverted feeling) allows them to be in tune with their emotions. Very much so that they are driven by their inner compass. They have a clear sense of right and wrong and it's not likely or easy for them to change their mind about something, especially moral issues

Armand: I would have made this woman a vampire. But I thought it best you have a hand in it. Otherwise you would not give Claudia up. You must know you wanted it

Louis: I loathe what I did!

Armand: Then loathe me, not yourself

Louis: No, you don't understand. You nearly destroyed the thing you value in me when this happened. I resisted you with all my power even when I didn't know it was your force which was working on me. Something nearly died in me! Passion nearly died in me! I was all but destroyed when Madeline was created!

Armand: But that thing is no longer dead, that passion, that humanity, whatever you wish to name it. If it were not alive there wouldn't be tears in your eyes right now. There wouldn't be rage in your voice

Infps are very emphatatic and sensitive. They want to make the world a better place and they try hard to help others

"But why, with this passion and this sense of justice, do you wish to call yourself the child of Satan!" - Armand

Louis: I'm incapable of your detachment. I know what it is, and I do not possess it and I doubt that I ever will. I accept this

Armand: I understand. I saw you in the theatre, your suffering, your sympathy with that girl. I saw your sympathy for Dennis when I offered him to you; you die when you kill

They are introspective and they desire to find their meaning in life

"It's a terrible feeling, not knowing, not understanding, not being in control of your own destiny" - Louis

"I would have to know from what... from what it comes. Whether it came from other vampires...or elsewhere" - Louis

They focus on the big picture and are very intuitive

"No need to tell him what to observe, or what to remember. He always knew such things. Years ago, when I'd done the dark magic on him, I hadn't had to tell him anything; he had savored the smallest aspects of it all on his own. Then later he said I'd failed to guide him. Didn't he know how unnecessary that had always been?" - Lestat

With their strive for authenticity and their sensitivity, they look for ways to express themselves through art and stories

Enneagram

Basic fear: that they have no meaning or significance

Basic desire: to have their own identity and purpose, their meaning

Type fours are sensitive, self aware and reserved. They are also prone to be moody and self conscious. They can suffer from self pity and melancholy

Type fours see themselves as fundamentally different from other people. More than any other type, they are acutely aware of their weaknesses and defiances. They see themselves as uniquely disadvantaged or flawed

And because they see themselves as so different, they feel like nobody can see their true selves and therefore no one can love them for who they really are

"For the first time in my life, I was seen"

They might romanticize pain and bittersweet feelings

"I think to be this happy is to be miserable, to feel this much satisfaction is to burn"

Type fours often feel like there is something missing in them that others possess. This thing can't be properly identified but they feel like there is a hole in them that can not be filled

"If I ever thought we have souls, mine is gone forever"

So they feel like with this thing missing, everyone but them can fully understand who they are and their meaning

Type fours struggle to let go of their feelings from the past. They nurse their old wounds and hold onto their feelings about people who hurt them

4w5 (four wing five): The Bohemian

This subtype is combined with type five. So they're more reserved than the usual type four. But they're also more observant and speculative

"Louis, the watcher, the patient one, was there on account of love pure and simple"

Overall, infps and type fours are generally sensitive, creative, melancholic, empathatic, understanding, authentic, emotionally expressive and introspective people

"Louis, whose green eyes are soulful, the very mirror of patient misery, soft voiced, very human, weak; having lived only two hundred years, unable to read minds, or to levitate, or to spellbind others except inadvertently, which can be hilarious, an immortal with whom mortals fall in love" -Armand

" And it occured to me. If Louis does end his life, if he does bring his supernatural journey to conclusion, how will I ever answer for it to Lestat or Armand? It was the love of Louis which had at times crippled Lestat, and enslaved Armand" - David

"The first thing I'd ever noticed about him-well, after his green eyes that is- was his black hair. No, all that's a lie. It was his expression; the passion and the innocence and the delicacy of conscience. I just loved it!" - Lestat

"If I knew a mortal of that sensitivity, that pain, that focus, I would make him a vampire in an instant. But such can rarely be done. No, I've had to wait and watch for you. And now I'll fight for you. Do you see how ruthless I am in love?" - Armand

"Louis, my handsome Louis, in his dark wool and old fashioned high-collared linen, gazing down on us with a look of thinly veiled amusement, but with a secret in his hypnotic green eyes" - Lestat

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astronomodome · 9 months

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Tumblr Poll Tournaments & MCYT

So a while ago I made a post expressing my frustration with the way a lot of tumblr poll tournaments seem to exclude mcyt characters- or if they are included, people in the notes are rude about it. The first situation of these- the poll organizer including rules against submitting characters from mcyt- is something I can easily quantify. I've crunched some numbers in order to find out two things:

How common is this phenomenon, really?

Why does this happen in the first place?

A note before I start: I'm not blaming the poll organizers for this, and I don't want anyone to get angry at them for excluding mcyt. At the end of the day, it's up to them to curate what they want their poll to be, and if they don't want to deal with the toxicity that often comes with letting mcyt characters run (or if they just don't like it for whatever reason), that's their decision. Trust me- poll organizers have to put up with a lot of shit already, and I don't want to add to it, regardless of their opinions on mcyt. If any poll organizers recognize their own words in the later part of this overview, they can contact me and I'll remove it. This is also why I have chosen not to identify the blogs from which I took the examples- I mean no harm to any poll organizer. They are a symptom of a much larger problem and they haven't done anything wrong except be a little misinformed at worst.

Excluding mcyt characters from poll tournaments really isn't that big of a deal on its own- though it is frustrating- but it does speak to the larger attitude of the general tumblr population towards mcyt. While not without its flaws, this can be used as a metric to measure the extent of this attitude and maybe get a hint of why it exists.

...Please note, also, that most of these polls date back to around March-June 2023, when poll tournaments were a big thing on Tumblr. Not super outdated, but I still should note that opinions might have changed since then.

Also also, be warned that there are examples below of some organizers being pretty toxic! It's not a whole lot, but if you don't want to expose yourself to that, maybe pass on this post!

With that out of the way, let's get started.

Part One: The Numbers

The first thing I decided to do was figure out a rough percentage of how many poll tournaments have a rule that excludes mcyt characters from being submitted. To get a sample batch of poll blogs, I used one of the blogs that pits the winners of tournaments against each other and checked each blog included in that. This ended up being a more tedious process than I had thought, since there's a lot of variation in the way poll organizers, well, organize. I ended up with 123 blogs sorted into three categories.

The first category included tournaments where a rule for or against mcyt characters wouldn't really make sense, for a variety of reasons. Most commonly, the tournament was between letters of the alphabet or animo acids or government agencies, not fictional characters, so I counted them out. There were also a handful of blogs where the contestants were determined by the organizer, not by nomination at all. Combined, blogs that did not fit my criteria made up 60/123 of my samples.

The second and third categories were the blogs that either had a rule against mcyt characters, or didn't. Most of the blogs I looked through had rules I could find, and some were more thorough about it than others. For my purposes, I counted the blog as a no only if they explicitly had a rule against mcyt characters, or clarified later that they weren't allowed. Most poll blogs didn't mention mcyt at all. (This will become relevant later.)

Of the 63 blogs that fit my criteria, 11 (17.5%) of them had a rule against mcyt characters, while the remaining 52 (82.5%) did not.

To me, this seems like pretty good news! I had honestly expected the percentage of blogs that excluded mcyt to be much higher. This is definitely a good sign! But I wouldn't really jump to assuming that mcyt characters would actually be accepted in all of these blogs. I will explain this in the next part of my research.

Part Two: The Examples

The second thing I wanted to find out with this research was why organizers end up having rules against mcyt in the first place. Is it just the bad reputation the mcyt space has (largely a result of one green man in particular)? Let's look at a few examples of poll rules against mcyt characters. Some of them are from my sample blogs and some of them aren't.

Type 1: Not understanding the difference between real people and characters in mcyt

The majority of the rules against mcyt I saw were of this type, and honestly, it's pretty reasonable. It's a pretty major debate in the mcyt community over whether mcyts' characters are separate enough from their content creators to count as fictional. However, there are a considerable number of mcyt characters who are explicitly stated to be different from their cc in the same way as a character in a movie played by an actor is different from the actor playing them. Excluding all mcyt characters for being 'real people' is just incorrect, though I can kinda understand where the organizers were coming from with this one.

It should also be noted that the vast majority of poll blogs had a rule against submitting real people. There's a possibility that some poll organizers might have lumped mcyt characters as real people even if they didn't specify it explicitly. Therefore, an attempt to actually submit an mcyt character into one of these tournaments might be against the rules based on what the organizer thinks. I have no way to quantify this, which is why I said earlier that the results of my initial test might not be accurate.

Type 2: 'Problematic fandom' (toxicity warning for some of these)

This type of rule is usually broader than just mcyt, but lumps it in with other fandoms known for being associated with bigotry (often hp, which is... yeah i'm definitely not going to argue in favor of harry potter but yikes. really? we're as bad as terfy potter? really.) At least one of them let dsmp characters in with the exception of dream, which is a lot fairer than... some of the others.

If we want to give the organizers benefit of the doubt here, we can say that these rules are made to keep the poll less toxic than it would be otherwise... but to be perfectly honest, some of these might be more about that phenomenon of purity culture that has had a habit of popping up in fandom spaces since forever. That's a whole other conversation I'm not ready to have now, but it comes as no surprise to me that mcyt has become a little taboo in some places (likely to a large extent because of dream and all the drama he's generated). There's also no telling whether the poll organizers in these cases even know that there are other smps besides dsmp... but that's besides the point, since there are other dsmp characters that aren't associated with dream at all. Excluding them reveals a misconception about the mcyt genre anyway. And of course, I think we can all agree that some of these are just pretty rude.

Which brings us to our conclusion.

I feel like a lot of the toxicity towards mcyt as a genre and mcyt characters boils down to people either not really understanding what mcyt is (i.e. mcyt -> minecraft youtubers -> real people) or hearing stuff about dream and assuming the entire mcyt space is reflective of that. Of course, it's a frustrating issue that some people think this way. I think it's nice to be reminded, though, that this sort of thing isn't very widespread. Alongside the bad examples, I saw a lot of organizers confronting their preconceived notions: one organizer let in an mcyt character after admitting their 'unfamiliarity with the source material', another allowed mcyt characters 'on the condition that you can explain how they are a separate character' and a few others fiercely defended mcyt characters against toxicity in their polls. Every day we grow as a community and we can't let a few people with misguided notions of what we are keep us down. Keep watching, keep creating, and as Zedaph once said, It's okay to be silly!

#this ended up being a larger project than i expected. i hope it doesnt ruffle anyone's feathers too much #i don't like dipping my toes into discourse-y stuff but i thought this was pretty fascinating #if anyone has any questions or imput feel free to speak up #i don't bite and i love discussion #mcyt #astro speaks #idk what else to tag this as. i dont want to be spamming fandom tags for this #but i also want people to see it since i worked really hard on it #so uh. i dont like to beg for reblogs but if you find this interesting at all please consider reblogging

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cockyballventurez · 9 days

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people often wonder how lan wangji had the willingness to live on for so long despite wei wuxian's death in all adaptations. i often laugh at it because in the story i don't remember him being a robot who only has one purpose to live! he is a person in the context of all of it. he is quite a human character, as is most the cast, but he really points out the very real, often times struggle, human trait of making mistakes. making mistakes in infallible but since characters in high-fantasy are usually portrayed with a main character halo (slight reference to svsss/stallion novels), he was actually a breath of fresh air. He constantly didn't let himself make mistakes and slowly learnt to just be desensitised to everything. Once Wei WuXian came along, Lan WangJi started making mistakes and being more than just a "cocky" boy with fancy titles. Wei WuXian had definitely reintroduced and introduced things to him eg. feelings of love/admiration. He made such a huge impact on him. He allowed himself to strictly apply his own morals in life and not just the Lan Clans. I feel that the elders didn't like this Lan WangJi. They wanted the Twin Jade. The perfect disciple.

They started putting all the blame on Wei WuXian. Even continuing to do so after he died. I bet that Lan WangJi became another huge topic like Wei WuXian did. He used to be "perfect". This is relatable for all students and people who have constantly been praised for their perfect work and manners but the moment they get burnt out they get turned into a bad example. MDZS's depiction of this is surely more extreme in its consequences but it can feel like this exaggeration sometimes. What I wanted to mainly talk about was just how Lan WangJi managed to not just end his life short after Wei WuXian as many people thought that he would attempt to just keep himself isolated like his father did.

Again, I'd like to reiterate that Lan WangJi is a person in MDZS. He is not perfect and has human flaws. His morals are mainly infused with the Lan Clan's meaning that he learnt to let go and to not grieve excessively. Of course after being able to discover himself in a more degenerative light (COUGH wei wuxian COUGH) he had to re-adjust to how he was before Wei WuXian. But only then the " how he was before " is different. He was essentially unable to move much after getting whipped. Which is why he spent the remaining energy on SiZhui. Making sure he got all the good parts from him and Wei WuXian. So WangJi himself would be able to move on in a healthy way. His back was killing him (constantly and literally). SiZhui was the silver lining in his life when he was experiencing the most pain and at his lowest. 13 years later, he turned out to be a great disciple and person. Thanks to Lan WangJi being a "father" to him and likely due to the traits he got from him and wei wuxian, also just being raised in the Lan Clan.

also bear

#mdzs #lan wangji #lan sizhui #character analysis #little rant #i love them #wei wuxian #dadlwj #mo dao zu shi #lwj my sad lover boy #sizhui was raised well #they're so cute #i have no one to talk to abt mdzs #mdzs lwj #mdzs lan sizhui #mdzs wwx #wwx loves being a silly feeling can opener #lwj is a victim of it

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kusokurae01 · 3 months

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Do you remember the ironic post I made about gatekeeping in this community? I'd like to elaborate more on it and how people treat those who dare to have a slightly different portrayal than the common consensus the fanbase has; this isn't about anyone by the way, just a very specific, slightly toxic part of the community. The thing about Hyde is that there isn't anything special going on with him design-wise, people get rancid vibes from him and attempt to explain that by accusing him of deformity although there isn't necessarily anything wrong with him appearance-wise; but for whatever reason, whenever someone designs an Hyde that's either too tall or doesn't fit the general view the fanbase has of him which is that of "frail awkward twink" (because I want to remind you all that this man murdered someone by beating them up with a cane despite his small/crouched frame) people get mildly annoyed. This especially seems to apply to the fact that some people make Hyde "taller than what he is supposed to be", and I personally do not think that's necessarily an issue while designing an Edward Hyde.

The reason Hyde is shorter than Jekyll is because he is supposed to represent how the potion makes him regress to when he was younger and free from the societal expectations that society would have on a man of his actual old age, and as a consequence Jekyll also regresses mentally (and this is probably also why Hyde isn't really capable of feeling shame for his actions, but maybe I'll elaborate on this another time).

IMO what truly is important about Hyde is that the writer makes sure that it is clear that this man is a younger version of Jekyll, not design wise, because I personally believe it isn't the design that makes the character, but rather the way it is written. Hyde should be upsetting (on a writer standpoint) because of his actions, be young and alive in the way he behaves. His design is irrelevant and, I think we should prioritize creativity over being forcefully overly accurate for the sake of not being vagueposted about.

Another thing I want to point out is that Jekyll isn't necessarily evil, just like he isn't necessarily good; the point is that he was repressed by societal expectations and wanted to be free without his good name being damaged, so he created Hyde. And arguably, Utterson isn't the paragon of goodness that people believe he is too, considering that his curiosity leads him to stalk and harass Hyde much like Enfield has done. There's no "good or evil" character and personally I believe that J&H characters' moral alignments can't be really collocated anywhere on the scale of good-evil, because what is exactly good and what is exactly evil? Hyde was created with the intent to do whatever without any damage being done to Jekyll's good reputation. If I recall correctly, one of the transcripts of the book, apparently Jekyll reveled in certain pleasures to the point where people had pushed him away, meaning that these rumors must've been real nasty if people didn't want to talk with him anymore, that's perhaps when Jekyll realized that he needed a camouflage, and he created Hyde— he could also be doing more innocent things like crossdressing (which was illegal and scandalous btw, for both genders because you could get arrested for public indecency, even a woman wearing pants was looked and frowned upon) or exploring his feminine side more, and at first Hyde could've been created for the purpose of exploring another side of himself, and then things escalated quickly the more Hyde gained autonomy, which is why the experiment went out of control and things ended up the way they did.

Also, pop-culture didn't do anything to "ruin Jekyll and Hyde".

Even in the musical, which is considered the greatest offender for making Jekyll a perfect good doctor: Jekyll isn't a saint, he has flaws; he cheats on his wife with a prostitute even as Jekyll, neglects her, has a short temper, leaves and comes late at his own engagement party for the sake of his work and then goes to a brothel, and generally refuses to acknowledge (these are all blatant signs of OCD/depression btw) that he wasn't alone in this, he is extremely hated by the governors for seemingly more reasons besides his experiments and generally seems to be a controversial figure in the medical field. This leads me to believe that some people just want something they can actively complain and have an hate-boner about because we don't have anything else left to do if not stir up issues which do not exist.

Also I just want to point something out, life expectancy for men in the victorian era was 40 years old, there isn't anything relatively wrong with The Glass Scientists making Jekyll 35 years old, because he basically lived everything that he had to live, as grim as it sounds— and there isn't anything wrong with making him conventionally attractive either, because you guys seem to think that a 50 years old is an "old man" even for modern standards, and that isn't true at all. My parents are in their 50s and I can assure you they aren't decaying corpses, let people have their conventionally attractive doctor, it isn't hurting anyone.

Also you can't talk about "respecting accuracy" when you add historically inaccurate things in your alternative universe, this especially applies to how some of you portray LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent characters but I won't go in detail with this because knowing how people are today, even if I am neurodivergent and queer myself, I'd be accused of discrimination nevertheless. The fact that the story is set IN THE VICTORIAN ERA is a crucial point of Jekyll's development as a character and the reason why Hyde came to life.

TL;DR stop gatekeeping y'all are cringe as fuck

#the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde #jekyll and hyde musical #henry jekyll #edward hyde #jekyll and hyde weekly #jekyll and hyde #rambles #txt

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icedragonlizard · 7 months

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Susie Haltmann headcanons

I could basically start this series of tumblr posts where I talk about general headcanons for singular characters of the Kirby series. There's some Kirby characters that I have a LOT of headcanons for, and Susie is one of them. Why not go over many of my headcanons for her right here? Allow me to get started!

Putting a 'Keep reading' tag because it's gonna be a long one.

I mean, Susie is fun to make a lot of headcanons about! Everything underneath the keep reading tag is purely headcanons of mine.

After Planet Robobot's events, Susie has essentially been trying to improve and better herself. Not perfect, as she still certainly has some morality flaws, but better than how she was in Robobot.

She's still corporate-minded, and she still likes to throw money and science at things as her way to solve problems. But she's reconciled with Kirby, and is trying to make up for her past wrongdoings by reviving the Haltmann Works Company and working to shifting it into a better direction and no longer the monster it once became.

Unlike Magolor who moved to living in Planet Popstar after reconciling with Kirby, Susie doesn't ever move to living in the star shaped planet. Instead, she lives in a different planet. Her home planet is where the HWC's main base of operations resides. It's a bit far away from Popstar, but not terribly far away. Kirby and a few others are more than capable of visiting her at her home planet, and she can visit Popstar. She has fast interstellar transportation.

As Susie revives the HWC and become its new CEO, she turns the company's new goal into consensually helping and supplying planets with technology without tampering with their natural resources.

That was the original goal of the company. It was what her father originally wanted to do, and he was going to use Star Dream for that very purpose until everything fell apart with the incident that banished Susie to Another Dimension. Haltmann did not originally plan to mechanize planets, as the only reason he did that was because Star Dream ate up his mind and turned him into its puppet, making him comply with the mechanization plan.

Susie remembers what her father's original goal was, and honors his original desires by shifting the company into that very direction when she revives it. She's doing this without Star Dream, and she refuses to rebuild another machine like that, because she wants absolutely nothing to do with a machine similar to the one that ruined her life.

That she's shifting the company towards the goal that her father initially wanted is also to make up for accidentally causing his death…

Her relationship with her dad is quite complicated. She did build up a lot of resentment towards him for how he treated her when she came back from Another Dimension, and she did have some relief that she finally feels more free after being hamstrung so much when she was working as his secretary. That did have some effect on her mourning.

But at the same time, she really did care enough to try to get him back to normal. She hated what he became, but she thought she was able to save him. When he died, she does truly miss him despite all the resentment she's built up. That being said, what she really misses is her actual dad, and not the freak that was Star Dream's puppet.

She's felt horribly ashamed of herself for killing her dad. When she stole the Star Dream controller, her intention was to humiliate him and maybe even make him cry a bit as revenge for neglecting her so much, but she didn't want to actually hurt him, let alone kill him.

She's had legitimately painful grief over her father's death. She was trying her absolute hardest to get him back to his former self, only to then accidentally kill him instead. She's harbored so much guilt over it. For a while after accidentally killing him, she wasn't able to forgive herself and has even expressed self-hatred over it.

Susie was absolutely not well during the first several months after Robobot's ending. She has cried a lot. It pretty much required becoming friends with Kirby to start improving her mood. Becoming friends with Kirby did actually help, as it did give her some relief to finally have a friend for once in her life, as she hasn't cared about or been cared about by anyone in 10+ years. Kirby is her very first friend.

She's been really afraid of the probability that her dad, in his original mind, wouldn't forgive her for causing his death. This is the biggest reason why she's been really struggling to forgive herself. She's really been trying to make up for his death. She'll always keep that hair clip as a memento of him, and like stated above, she's operating the HWC into doing the original goal her dad wanted.

She thought that after accidentally killing him, the least she can do is to work towards his original desires to make up for it. She's also spearheaded the creation of a statue of him at the HWC's main base of operations. It's a metallic statue, and they paint it.

After doing things to make up for his death, she hopes that her dad in his right mind would forgive her, but she's never been truly assured that he would. That being said, she does sometimes make herself relieved when she does the things she does to make up for his death, but the worry never fully goes away. Some people have tried to convince her that her dad would forgive her, but she's never certain.

Some of the work that Susie has the HWC do under her control includes mass producing phones, computers, robotic toys and statues to give to numerous planets. The company also has a paramedic faction to heal people from injuries! She's having the HWC play around into doing a large number of different things.

She also offers to form Haltworker militias to some planets to protect them. These militias aren't to invade, as they do not harm the planets' denizens and don't intend to take their resources, and instead only mean to protect them from malicious outer forces. Susie still uses words like 'savages', but she no longer uses them to refer to a planet's denizens and instead uses them to refer to outer evil beings, the same kind of enemies that Kirby and others fight. During Star Allies, Susie called the Jambastion cult as 'savages' when they were the enemy, until they turned around in the end.

Many people in some planets are very wary about this technology and don't really want anything to do with it. Others, however, enjoy it, especially when some of those planets were formerly mechanized and are appreciative to see the company not be so bad anymore.

Who are Susie's friends in my headcanon universe, might you ask? They are the following: Kirby, Magolor, Taranza, the mage sisters, Gooey and ChuChu.

With the exceptions of Gooey and ChuChu as they generally don't leave Popstar, the rest sometimes visit Susie at her home planet. They'll even stop by at her office to hang around.

She's also made phones that she gave to Magolor, Taranza and the mage sisters, so she can talk to them whenever without having to constantly move around back and forth to do so.

Her three closest friends are Kirby, Magolor and Taranza. I've already made separate tumblr posts on her dynamics on how she interacts with Kirby, as well as how she interacts with Magolor and Taranza, so I'm not going to go in full detail over them again in here.

I will however mention that while Magolor is the friend that Susie likes to troll around with, both Kirby and Taranza are her two emotional support buddies (with her doing the same for Taranza). Those two have been kinder to her and have comforted her more than anyone else has. They've constantly defended her from others accusing her as a bad person, as they always say she deserves a second chance as she's trying to be better. They've gone out of their way time and time again to provide support for her. She really, genuinely, appreciates the both of them. She treasures them.

Considering she's been having serious mental well-being problems, Kirby and Taranza have done so much for her. Without them, she'd be in a dark place as far as her mental health is concerned. Despite her often liking to be rather stoic, there are times where she can't help herself but feel serious emotion over the kindness those two have shown to her. She's felt moody and unhappy a lot, and she's really thankful that those two have been trying their best to help make her feel better. She's even willing to have hugs with them.

Speaking of which, I really should talk about hugs here. Susie has gone through so long without any hugs. Her mind-controlled father didn't give her any hugs when she returned from Another Dimension. How heartbreaking! But at least she finally gets hugs after Robobot. Kirby has given her a lot of needed hugs, as has Taranza. These hugs really do help her. She doesn't hug anyone else, though, as she doesn't care enough to, but it's perfectly good enough for her to get hugs from only Kirby and Taranza. That's exactly how she likes it.

Of the mage sisters, Zan Partizanne is the one that Susie is closest friends with, followed by Flamberge. This makes Francisca the one she's most distant from, but still considers her to be a friend.

Zan is the most technology-competent of the mages, which Susie really likes, and the two have also come together over their trauma and being workaholics. Susie engages in a mutual troll-around relationship with Flamberge, similarly to how she acts with Magolor. Francisca isn't as interactive, and Susie honestly can't help herself but still feel a bit unsettled by the ice mage's frozen corpse collection. But there's still that element of endearment where the pink-haired girl and the blue-haired girl lovably view each other as weirdos.

Gooey is similar to Kirby and Taranza in that he's also very nice to Susie, although he's not as close as those two since Susie really only sees him when she vacations on Popstar. At first, she was rather weirded out by Gooey until she kept seeing more and more of him. She's warmed up to him, and likes how nice and mute he is. Whenever she relaxes on some bench during one of her Popstar vacations, she welcomes Gooey to relax with her. She considers him a friend. He does make her more curious about Dark Matter, though.

Susie thinks that ChuChu is absolutely adorable. She's glad to see the little octopus whenever she vacations on Popstar. These two pink girls do cute pink girl things together, with ChuChu often riding on Susie's head with her consent. The other animal friends are good with Susie as they don't have hard feelings about her, but ChuChu is the only one she's actually close enough to consider a real friend.

Everyone else that isn't a part of the list I mentioned as Susie's friends is either on neutral or bad terms with her. Examples of people that Susie is on neutral terms with are King Dedede, Adeleine, Ribbon and the other animal friends that aren't ChuChu.

Dedede was pissed off at her at first because of how his castle was destroyed by the Access Ark, but he's warmed up after seeing more and more of her as she's been on good terms with Kirby. Not close enough for Susie to actually consider a friend, though.

You'd probably want to know how I interpret Susie's dynamic with Meta Knight. I'll say it here: for the first couple of years after Robobot, Meta Knight despised Susie. However, his hatred for her has slowly been chipping away over time. Eventually, he no longer actually hates her, but he's still rather conflicted about her as he has yet to actually properly forgive her. At the modern day of my headcanon universe, Meta Knight is basically neutral with Susie, although it's more tense compared to Dedede who is still easier on her by comparison.

Even though he hated her for a while, he's allowed Kirby to pursue a friendship with her. That played a part in slowly getting over his hatred of her. Even though he never properly forgave her, he has witnessed her trying to be a better person compared to before and did give her credit for that. He'd still prefer to not interact with her any more than he has to, though.

He did have an earnest talk with her, as it was basically about how he's fine with her being around Kirby and others, but prefers that she stays away from the Halberd crew. She complies as she'd rather not potentially jeopardize the existing friendships she has by pushing her luck with Meta Knight. She did apologize, and although he hasn't actually forgiven, he no longer has ill-will for her after some point.

People that Susie are on bad terms with even now are Bandana Waddle Dee, Elfilin, Daroach, Dark Meta Knight and especially Marx.

Bandana Dee and Elfilin hate her and don't trust her, and they don't like how Kirby is her friend. They think she's playing him like a fiddle, although they think Magolor is doing that as well.

Elfilin in particular is scared of her. He thought she shouldn't be allowed to visit the Forgotten Land, but Kirby wanted her to visit the place, and with enough convincing, Elfilin eventually begrudgingly allowed it. Her visit went well, since she just wanted to check the place out, and she was stoked to see Kirby having a gun as a copy ability. She managed to get along decently with Clawroline, although how she interacted with others of the Beast Pack is nothing special.

I really should talk about Marx here. Susie absolutely despises Marx. She hates his guts. There are few people she hates as much as Marx. This is because he does awful things to her, including pulling pranks that sometimes harm her, and doing especially vile things such as making fun of her father's death. He's caused her to violently lash out. One time, she viciously beat the shit out of him as revenge for messing with her so much. She is also disgusted at how he bullies her buddy Taranza very similarly to how he bullies her, causing both Susie and Taranza to form a "Marx hate club". Neither of them can stand him.

Magolor may have also pulled pranks on Susie, but he never wants to actually hurt her as he doesn't want to ruin his friendship with her. Marx however doesn't care, as he's willing to harm Susie if it means getting entertainment out of it. Magolor and others have had to stop Susie and Marx from going for each other's throats a lot. You just can't have these two near each other for too long, as Susie will snap. If she were to never see Marx again, she'd be grateful.

I think that all wraps up on how Susie interacts with the rest of the notable cast, in my headcanons. Overall, she's on Kirby's good side, although her relationship with Meta Knight is still very complicated and there's some other notable members in the cast she doesn't get along with, with her worst relationship being with Marx.

As she's the current president of the HWC, she takes vacations sometimes. Her most common vacation spot is by far Planet Popstar, as most of her friends live there. She also gets along pretty well with many waddle dees across Dream Land (not Bandana Dee, though). There's one particular ice cream shop that she goes to just about every time she vacations on Popstar, and at this point she's gotten to know the Chilly snowman individual that works there.

Somebody makes artwork for her company. It's not Adeleine doing it, though, as instead it's a Vividria individual who is a big fan of Susie. Susie was going to pay her money to make artwork, until the Vividira made it clear she wanted to do it anyways without being paid, and Popstar also doesn't even run on currency as Susie had to learn. She certainly appreciates this Vividria making artwork for her, as she'll take the art to the necessary places within her company. There's a reason why I have this headcanon of a Vividria individual being a big Susie fan, and it's because of the Susie goddess statue in Star Allies. That statue itself also exists in my headcanon world, to show how much that Vividria admires Susie, lmao.

Popstar isn't the only planet Susie has vacationed on, though. She and Taranza once went together on a vacation to Aqua Star, one of the planets that appeared in Kirby 64. She also, of course, visited the Forgotten Land with her fellow wave 3 companions.

Speaking of her vacation in the Forgotten Land, the Deedly Dees band invited her to sing for them one time. She did karaoke for the "Welcome To The New World!" song after she learned its lyrics.

As far as post-Robobot Susie's singing is concerned, she hasn't sung "The Noble Haltmann" ever since her father died. The whole reason she wrote (yes, she wrote it!) and sung that song in the first place was because it was one of her methods to try to get her father to remember her, which of course tragically failed. Now, there's no real reason to sing it. Really sad! But she'll do karaoke for songs that people request her to do. She had a "karaoke night" with Taranza and Magolor one time, because they wanted to see her singing.

Her vacations are her moments to chill out and relax. She works a lot when she's at her job. She knows she sometimes need moments to take a breather and relax. That's why she takes vacations! Even though she does take phone calls from her friends while she's at work, as they sometimes call her just to see how she's doing.

There's a little ice cream place in her home planet, at the HWC's main base of operations. The company made it so Susie can just go there whenever she wants ice cream immediately. She also lets her friends have ice cream there whenever they come to visit her.

The 'Susie Weekend Outfit' mask from Merry Magoland is indeed an outfit that Susie likes to wear on some weekends. She makes herself some nice and cozy relaxing time on the weekends.

Now I should mention the history of Susie's birthdays. It is... tragic. She went through most of her birthdays uncelebrated. How could she have possibly celebrated her birthdays when she was stuck in Another Dimension? She didn't, because she couldn't. Her birthdays still went uncelebrated when she returned, because her mind-controlled dad refused to let them be celebrated. Big sad.

But that changed post-Robobot after she became friends with Kirby. Kirby is such a friend in that he asks people what they do on their birthdays. He asked this to Susie and... got a response that made him really sad. He felt like she deserved better, and so he literally made sure that her birthdays go celebrated from now on. She was hesitant at first because she wasn't used to it, but she eventually relented and became so heartfelt about what Kirby has done in now finally having her birthdays be celebrated. She couldn't believe it at first.

Susie's birthdays have eventually evolved into birthday parties at her home. Kirby, Magolor, Taranza and the mage sisters show up for her in these parties. The first time this happened, it made Susie cry. It really made her emotional to see some people show up together for her, because it hasn't happened to her in forever. She gave Kirby a big thank-you hug for making these little parties be a thing for her now.

I'd say that wraps up the headcanons I wanted to go over for Susie! Man, I had quite a huge amount of headcanons here, don't I? I mean, yeah. Susie is fun! She's one of my favorites. Thank you if you've chosen to read all this, hahahahaha.

I'll do this with other Kirby characters, too. I'm already eyeballing to do this with either Marx or Magolor next, as I also have tons of headcanons for them. Taranza as well! But for now, you get Susie.

I look forward to seeing you for future Kirby series headcanons!

#kirby #susie haltmann #susie kirby #kirby susie #susanna patrya haltmann #kirby planet robobot #kirby star allies #kirby's return to dreamland deluxe #magolor #taranza

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everythingbrainrot · 4 months

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it's very interesting how many assumptions we make about mono in little nightmares 2. like, people are very quick to dismiss six as evil for what she did at the end. and i'm not saying the game wants you to think she's morally upstanding, the scene where she eats RK, when she kills the guests, and when she drops mono were presented like that on purpose, justified or not, she is not a perfect person doing perfect things.

so, in that line of thinking, why do so many people see mono as this perfect morally upstanding character? the common perception is that he was just a perfect uwu boy who wanted to help six and got betrayed by her, causing him to become the thin man who only wanted to save his past self.

i mean, aside from the fact that the thin man (aka mono) seems to have potentially kidnapped many other children and also went out of his way to warp and mutate six instead of just stopping her....

we don't really know mono's intentions. we don't know that he didn't know about his TV powers (he wakes up next to a tv in the opening scene). we don't know why he was headed for the tower.

i mean... i'm thinking about the film 'timecrimes' - it came up in a good video essay i watched recently. spoilers: the protagonist has to fulfil the time loop, he has to kill his other selves. he has to make everything go perfectly according to plan.

how do we know mono wasn't just trying to fulfil the loop?

i know there's some flaws with this (namely a lot of mono's reactions to things) and i'm not trying to villainise mono at all. this is a shitty world full of suffering children who make choices to survive, and sometimes these choices are shocking and cruel, hence six's entire character.

but, i don't know. i think it's interesting to look at mono through that lens. what if he needed the loop to go perfectly according to plan? what if he needed to reach that signal tower to make sure he'd be there to power it? maybe, thinking about it that way, six was a means to an end. at best, a friend he wanted to make, but one he knew he could never keep.

#shitty garbage “”“analysis”“”“ time #little nightmares #little nightmares 2 #ln2 #ln2 mono #ln mono #ln six #little nightmare mono #little nightmares six

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picturejasper20 · 6 months

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Watched Disney Wish Spoilers below

First i want to start with saying that King Magnifico is probably the highlight of the movie. His characterization is interesting and different from other recent disney villains. He has an arc and his own motivations that are linked to his development in the movie.

One thing that is interesting is that he starts sort of a good guy that wants to help people to grant their wishes and wants what he believes is the best for his kingdom. This comes from how in his past he lost everything so he wants to others to live well.

But, he is also terribly afraid of losing everything like it happened to him when he was young. As the story progresses he becomes more and more paranoid until he lets himself be corrupted by black (?) magic in attemps to push down everyone who questions him.

And that's great! That's a cool villain arc- a corruption arc- which i feel it is quite rare to see lately. It's a nice way to show how people with good intentions can lose sight of their initial goals over time.

Now when it comes to Asha... she isn't an unlikeable character but at the same time it feels like she lacks real flaws in the movie. As someone else who watched the movie told me ¨her motivations aren't much different if any other character from the town was put in her place¨. Because, yeah, it feels like there isn't much else to her besides that ¨she cares about her people¨ and ¨she wants the wishes to be given back to their owners¨.

She never has to exactly overcome some flaw of hers in the story aside from not knowing Magnifico wasn't looking for the best interests of the people... which is solved three minutes after she learns about it.

I mean, this has been a problem with other Disney female leads in the last years. The main difference, however, is that they had some form of arc in their respective movies.

Moving on to other characters, they didn't feel that interesting nor memorable. Again, i don't hate them but i didn't care much about them either watching the film. I feel the ones outside King Magnifico i did like were the queen a bit and the star character, they were sort of cute.

On last point in terms of characters, Valentino didn't add anything to the movie. He didn't have some purpose nor added in moving the plot forward. I think the film could worked the same if he wasn't there.

Now to narrative and themes. I got to say that it is all over the place. While the message is there, it feels like the movie doesn't dive too much about it leaving you were more questions than answers. For example, there is one part one of Asha's friends questions why they can't just ask King Magnifico to give their wishes back- something that is never exactly given a proper answer.

The pacing is chaotic as well. The first 30 minutes the film jumped from one plot point to the other, having like 3-4 songs in only one third of the movie. King Magnifico and Asha are seen getting along together in one minute and in the next minute they get into an argument and Magnifico decides to consider her now her enemy. It's like the movie doesn't allow time to let you digest what you are watching because it is already jumping to another important thing.

On the ¨everyone is made of stars¨ thing, i found it weird and i didn't fully get what they were trying to say with it. I guess it has to do with one having control of its own destiny? I don't know.

I would say that the biggest offense of Wish is how King Magnifico gets defeated... the characters sing a song and supposedly summon their star power and with that alone they defeat the villain. It almost feels like deux ex machima and dissapointing. There were other ways they could have made the same thing work with a better execution.

A lot of the movie feels like there were some productions issues when making it. It feels like there are scenes that are missing and things that were going to be explored in deeper detail that got cut out.

In all, i wouldn't say that i hate this movie... the thing is that it has plenty of issues. Things that should have been better polished and given more detail. There are some interesting things in here, the problem is that more often than not they don't reach its full potential. I would say that Wish is worth of watching for King Magnifico but everything else is forgettable.

#disney wish #wish 2023 #king magnifico #asha wish

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bonearenaofmyskull · 4 months

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Hi! I love your Hannibal meta and it's such a joy to see you back. The ask about IWTV reminds me, would there be any chance that you might write the Good Omens meta you said you wouldn't do a few months back XD? Or some hints about what you were interested in talking about? I feel S2 added a bit more depth to the characters that hasn't been discussed enough (or I haven't delved into that fandom enough to see) and the Job story did get a tiny bit Hannibal-y with the god questioning and temptation

Thank you! Glad to be back.

No, I'm not qualified to write Good Omens meta. xD But I can give you ONE piece, the sum of my opinion, which is that the commentary about the finale (what I saw of it, at least) made the common fandom mistake of viewing the characters' actions through the ship instead of through the individual characters' personalities and values. They talk about Aziraphale not being ready for an overt relationship, or just frankly condemning him for his betrayal, or that both of them do not have good relationship skills, or the Metatron's manipulations, or idk, something about the coffee being drugged?

But while all these things are important (maybe not the coffee, idk what's up with that), the real issue that I haven't seen talked about is faith. (Not that I've researched it, so my apologies if this is all going to be not new because someone else covered it extensively, and I'm just not in the fandom so I didn't know.)

And not in faith each other but in God, or more specifically, in God's righteousness.

That's the purpose of the Job story in the narrative, to illustrate that difference in their worldviews. Aziraphale has come to the understanding that Heaven is operating in its own interests, but he still believes in God's goodness. Crowley...doesn't.

That's why Crowley can't go with him because that lack of faith means he doesn't believe that Aziraphale (or even the two of them together, if he were an angel again) could possibly set something right that has no righteousness at its core, while Aziraphale must go to right Heaven because what has been happening there is an abomination of God's goodness in his eyes.

Aziraphale was wrong when he thought that Crowley would take the Metatron's olive branch, but his error is so enormous because he can't wrap his head around how to Crowley, Heaven's iniquity is just a symptom of God's own, which Aziraphale just cannot accept. So he chooses to see it as a flaw in Crowley, instead of recognizing that Crowley's moral backbone is (apparently) greater even than God's.

So what Aziraphale is forgiving Crowley for is not the awkward kiss or anything he did wrong in their relationship. He's forgiving him for his lack of faith. And Aziraphale must go, he has to make Heaven worthy of regaining Crowley's faith, and he has to prove that God is worthy of Crowley's faith as well. He's got to save them all: he has to rescue Heaven from its iniquity, God and goodness and the world itself from the grip of Heaven, and, more than anything, he has to save Crowley from his unbelief, from living in that outer darkness that Aziraphale is really starting to see for the first time.

If Aziraphale can just do these miniscule few teensy tinesy itty bitty wee things, then Everything Will Be Okay.

How this will go in S3 --whether Aziraphale falls and Crowley rises, or something else--is going to be largely dependent on how the show decides to handle God's character. Whatever the powers of Heaven and Hell believe on this show, God Herself seems to be a Deist. She was notably absent in S2, and in S1 She was definitely treating creation like a spectator sport. I think the show is going to have to finally answer the question of whether or not the angels and demons are all carrying out God's Ineffable Plan through following it, or through failing to follow it. The fortunate fall, on a celestial scale, perhaps.

As that is revealed, just how benevolent God is should also be revealed, and I imagine that could have some significant bearing on how the Ineffable Husbands' relationship resolves. They're setting poor Aziraphale up for his own crisis of faith, ofc, and Crowley more than anyone knows just how that outer darkness feels. But they're also setting Aziraphale up to understand that the belief in goodness that he misplaced with God is a belief in goodness he can safely place with Crowley instead.

#good omens meta #bear answers #ineffable husbands #good omens #aziraphale #crowley #not hannibal #this is it #this is all i got #don't ask me questions because i don't know the answers xD

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