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i-am-just-a-kiddo · 2 years

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10 characters

tagged by @talays-portkey ❤ I chose 10 characters from 10 different things that I consumed this year and liked. I’m gonna say a few things about each and try to keep it short.

tagging @intyalote, @the-cloud-whisperer, @not-saying-revolution-but, @cortue, @isabellaofparma, @sassyassassy. Have fun, there’s no rules!

continues under the cut:

Sean /Not Me: The Series (2021)

Not Me, as a whole, breaks me in the best ways possible. And Sean - he’s just everything to me. In my opinion, one of the most beautiful character arcs you can give me is having a character find a few more reasons to live. Make them start cherishing their life as a thing that should be protected and you have me on the floor sobbing. And Sean is this to me - comfort and pain wrapped in one person.

Jim Jimenez /Our Flag Means Death (2022)

Do you know how hard it is to choose only one character from this damn show? I love them all so much, with my entire heart. But Jim is my special kid okay. It truly hits diffently, seeing them having their own arc in this silly little show, being just as silly with their crewmates, but also being badass and cool off the side and also having such a precious friends to lovers romance alongside everything. My beloved.

Ayukawa Ryuuji “Yuka”/ Blue Period (2021)

This anime wrecked me, everything about Yuka wrecked me. Their story made me cry for two hours straight and unlocked something in my brain. I don’t know how to explain.

Shen Yi /Under The Skin (2022)

With everything happening this year, I almost forgot I watched this show, but everytime I remember it, I’m so incredibly fond. It’s rare to watch a crime show that feels comforting, but this one does it! And I attribute a lot of it to this lovely protagonist, because he is so warm, sensitive and charismatic. I loved watching Shen Yi and going through all these cases from his point of view. He just feels like such a comforting presence and honestly, more protagonists should have this characteristic. Let them be gentle!!

Guillermo de la Cruz/ What We Do in the Shadows (2019-?)

As someone on this hellsite put it - he’s the most character ever. Last week I finally caught up with the new season and I’m all here for Guillermo’s emancipation arc! Fuck it up son!!!! I’m cheering you on, keep doing your hot girl shit!

Vegas Theerapanyakul & Pete / Kinnporsche: La Forte (2022)

Yes I’m cheating again but what are you gonna do about it. I couldn’t choose between these two because I find them both equally as engaging and interesting. If you’ve been following me - you know. You know the insanity I feel for these two. Who would’ve thought comfort is stored in the toxic BDSM couple. Emotional support fucked up men. Truly on the top of the list for this year.

Striga /Castlevania (2017-2021)

Listen it doesn’t need much - give me a queer muscly lady with a huge sword and the coolest action sequence of the series and you have me sold. My actual favourite is Alucard, but I feel like we, as a society, should appreciate love and go crazy over Striga a bit more. Like, she’s right there!!

Lucifer Morningstar /The Sandman (2022)

I just think they’re neat. Once again a show full of wonderful, beautiful characters, but Lucifer simply lives in my mind rentfree. @ netflix I beg, please renew this show so we can get the sequel with Lucifer going apeshit. I’m on my knees.

Wen Ning / The Untamed (2019)

Sooooooooo I’ve been rewatching this curse of a show for the past week while lying sick in bed with covid and. AND. After three years the pain truly does not get better. Once again, I did not know who to choose for this - every single character in this god forsaken show deserves their own spot. But I somehow ended up on my darling, my boy, my favourite Ghost General. His story arc fucks me up so badly every time and yet it is one of the most beautifully tragic things. He’s a red thread, pulled through the entire story, and it makes my heart bleed. (and yes @the-cloud-whisperer, I’m gonna come back to you soon and finally scream with you properly)

👑 Louis de Pointe du Lac / Interview With the Vampire (2022-?)

2022 has not ended yet but I know this guy takes the crown. I’ve been a fan of the Vampire Chronicles since I was 15 and finally. FINALLY. I get what I fucking deserve. And FINALLY here is a Louis that I adore - one that is charismatic, one that feels raw and real, and one I can finally love and be invested in. This show truly made me fall in love with his character when before that, he always paled in my affection to Lestat. He always kinda bored me in the books and the movie adaptation. As my friend put it: we all want to be Lestat but actually we are all Louis. But here is he at last, my highest quality blorbo: Louis de Pointe du Lac, resident disaster man full of existential despair, wrath and love. This show is all I’ve been thinking about and I will not apologise.

#this took me four hours to make #i am still not on top of my game sigh #but at least i can do more than just lie in bed all day #tag game #personal

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popchoc · 28 days

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Victory stands on the back of sacrifice.

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anglerflsh · 7 months

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get Apollo'd idiot @sheerunfilteredhubris

#[.art]#^ if the didascalia is unclear this is meant to be a portrait of sorts. Of my friend. Technically of the greek god too but same thing #Juno #<- goes in my tags soley in this way I don't have a clue of what else to put on here #with added closeups! This took me one afternoon and some. I think about four hours in total if I add up all the last-minute editing #it was going to have a more complex background but it ruined the constrast and the shapes got lost in it so I had to scrap that #alas I don't think this will work as a way to achieve endless youth but we can't /all/ turn art into devil deals #no I'm not going to stop making that joke. I think it's hilarious.#also my soundtrack for this was the Hozier youtube automated playlist. we are not escaping with our lives I fear /j #is it neoclassical or more baroque? The main inspiration was the first but the harsher contrast reminds me of the second #ah well. You can tell me that. I can't analyse my own art #my art #greek mythology #classical mythology #painting #apollo #<- i'm putting these tags back here so it doesn't show up in the search it's just for my blog organisation

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dennisboobs · 8 months

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In case anyone wanted to know what shampoo/conditioner/deodorant/etc. Dennis uses, I'm fairly sure I've identified most of what's in here.

Shampoo: Alberto VO5 (Unknown scent. Possibly Tea Therapy - Vanilla Mint Tea or Ocean Refresh)

Note: Pretty sure there's an Ass Kickers United sticker on the top of the cap. My money's on tea therapy, vanilla mint goes better with the conditioner.

Conditioner: Herbal Essences - White Strawberry & Sweet Mint

Deodorant: Speed Stick GEAR (Unknown scent. Only back label is visible. Possible scents: Fresh Force, Cool Motion, Clean Peak)

Toothpaste: Crest Classic

Shaving Cream: Nivea

Seems to have a sponge and a rolled up towel in the center compartment. Two toothbrushes and a small makeup palette with brushes in the outside pockets. Not sure about the sunscreen/lotion. Could be an old bottle of Coppertone or Goldbond (it's extremely difficult to find older designs from around when the episode was shot to cross reference).

#iasip #it's always sunny in philadelphia #dennis reynolds #this is purely for fanfic purposes lmfao #can i brag and say i called the fruity mint shampoo #strawberry mint is SO dennis it's insane #guy who smokes menthol cigarettes and drinks creme de menthe. ofc he also has mint shampoo.#also i can definitely see him enjoying the tingliness on his scalp #charlie's got a sandalwood scented body wash + shampoo combo btw. and keeps it on the kitchen table. i am nnnnnnot making a full post tho #ada speaks #this took me four hours.

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crybaby-bkg · 10 days

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I started crocheting my first blanket today and my hand hurts so unbelievably bad and I’m not even a quarter done with it 🫡🫡

#it’s about five feet across #so I’m thinking five feet down but like. MY LORD!!!!!!#it took me like four hours just to get about 8 inches done #NOT EVEN A FULL FOOT YET?????#and I tried putting my brace on but it made it hurt worse sidhdkfjf #also sorry I’ve been so disconnected on here lately #I feel like I don’t belong here anymore which is no one’s fault #but it makes me very sad bc I miss being active on here and actually enjoying everything #I just feel very apathetic which could just be my Prozac LOL #sorry I’m rambling but I will post a pic of my blanket when I finish!!#which will probably take weeks lmao #—in store chit chat! 🍫

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telekitnetic-art · 1 year

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Have you seen the formline art in splatoon? It's present in a variety of salmon run decals and on some of the locker graffiti. Idk if the Devs just googled "salmon art" and got indigenous art and decided to copy it or what. Not sure how I feel about it personally.

Long post incoming, gonna put a break here. Also sorry for the late response, I wanted to take a couple days to formalize my thoughts together before responding fully.

I have, I remember noticing in 2018-2019 (when i first started playing splatoon 2) how much one of the decals/graffiti located on the ruins of ark polaris back in 2 sort of resembled a formline bear and salmon. (near the logo in this screenshot, I couldn't find a clear picture online)

Back in 2019, it was pretty easy to think of it as coincidence or a stretch for a comparison. But with splatoon 3's salmon run decals, the resemblance is far easier to see, specifically with the TS-ORBRS graffiti and the TS-SCHL graffiti.

(also this was the best image size I could find for the graffiti images, sorry)

A couple of the banners have the designs on them as well:

The website Sealaska Heritage has info such as textbooks and an online doc about formline art (specifically geared towards Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian nations' style) with lots of info about formline art, and the Seattle Art Museum website has an info sheet (with credits listed as being from the Sealaska Heritage site as well) breaking down some of the basic shapes of formline art.

with this chart, you can definitely begin to notice the similarities between the Salmon Run graffiti and formline art. the ovoids, crescents, and u-shapes appear noticeably in some of the graffiti such as ORBRS and SCHL.

For perspective, here are some formline pieces featuring salmon or fish from various Indigenous artists from various nations.

"sk’ug sdang" (Two Dog Salmon) by Robert Davidson (Haida)

"metal medallion", by Crystal Kaakeeyáa Rose Demientieff Worl (Tlingit Athabascan)

"Salmon People" by Alano Edzerza (Tahltan)

"Jumping Chum" by Stephanie Anderson (Wet'suwet'en)

"Salmon" by Art Thompson (Nuu-chah-nulth)

And that's literally just the surface of dozens of Indigenous artists from the PNW.

With these pieces, you can begin to see the resemblance that the graffiti designs have. A lot of the heads follow the pattern of utilizing ovoids for both the head and eyes, and u-shapes for the bodies and crescents to fill in specific areas are also common. For example, TS-SCHL has a small school of fish where the bodies are entire ovoids.

However, there are a couple flaws in the graffiti designs too. With a few of the designs, you can see they utilize the u-shape (see the formline shape breakdown from Sealaska again) in designs like TS-WHP and TS-SMFR. I can't speak for every Indigenous formline artist ever, but from how I've been taught to design formline art from my family, the u-shape should connect to the rest of the form instead of free-floating. I drew a quick example here:

you can see similar mistakes with a different kind of u-shape with TS-RLPL and TS-C0HK.

Another very specific mistake that takes a bit of squinting to make out is that ovoids are sort of top-heavy, for lack of a term I can't think of right now. The line or the area should be thicker on the top then the bottom. This mistake is frequent in the graffiti designs utilizing ovoid or ovoid adjacent face or body shapes, like TS-ORBRS, TS-C0HK or TS-SCHL.

Full disclaimer, I am not an expert at formline art. I've been practicing it under the tutelage of my aunt and father for about 3 or so years now, and there are definitely cultural variations that come into play as well. My culture's formline art style can look completely different from someone who is Haida or otherwise. This critique of the graffiti designs is based off my knowledge and skill at formline art, as well as critique and feedback that I've gotten from family. Formline art isn't just something you look at and replicate, there is a specific process of utilizing the shapes and negative space that you need to account for too. Some shapes have their own rules for how they're used as well.

Despite the beginner mistakes, the clear resemblances are pretty definitive proof that a good section of the sticker/graffiti designs for the salmonids are meant to be, or at the very least based off of or inspired by, formline art.

Splatoon's lore has a lot of elements of taking inspiration from real life culture (which is sort of one of the main elements of the story, the squids and octos are basing their society off long dead humans). Hell, Shiver and Frye are two prime examples of Splatoon working in real world culture into their setting and characters.

With that in mind, using an art style that's exclusive to an ethnicity of people as inspiration or baseline reference for the game mode that's all about taking natural resources from a species that in-game dialogue tends to treat as dangerous and lesser-minded is... not a good choice. Especially an ethnicity that has historically been ravaged and attacked by settlers for natural resources.

Now, technically if you do digging into lore for salmon run, you can find out that the salmonid are not as simple-minded as the dialogue in-game (I am staring directly at the deep cut big run announcement dialogue we've gotten so far -_-) makes them out to be. The salmonids do trades and commerce with the octarians for equipment and gear. That's why they have such technically high tech gear, like the scrappers with their shields that actually resemble octarian shields and the flyfish with their missiles and flying aircraft. That's also why power eggs show up in the story mode; they're from the salmonids' trades with the octarians.

So the salmonid could technically be as just as smart as the inklings, which is why the dialogue and some of the portrayals of the salmonid are confusing and contradictory (shiver's dialogue from the first big run, that one promo picture of an inkling walking a smallfry on a leash????). I think a good bit of the fanbase sort of thinks of the little buddy we get during the game as a pet, and I'm sure that much more of the fanbase/playerbase doesn't really care about the lore whatsoever. Salmonids sort of have a similar vibe to me as hilichurls from Genshin Impact, where the lore tells you that they're smarter than people assume while NPCs talk of them as less intelligent monsters. And you're also caught in this paradox where killing/fighting them feels morally wrong but the gameplay loop has you continuously doing that while also telling you on the downlow that you should sort of feel bad about it.

Rassicas did a really good video on translating salmonid lore from various interviews, which is where I learned a lot about the salmonid lore that doesn't really get explained/brought up in the game.

The usage of formline art in Splatoon has me sort of mixed on my opinion, because besides using an Indigenous art style for an enemy species that are considered lesser in intelligence by the NPCs, Indigenous art and culture as a whole has suffered a lot under colonialism. I don't know how much awareness whoever is reading this has about Indigenous history and colonialism, but Indigenous culture as a whole was banned in North America by the respective governments from being practiced by the respective cultural groups. Things such as ceremonies, regalia, and even practicing formline art were banned from being used by Indigenous people. Non-Indigenous people however were free to use it, which is why a lot of bastardized versions of Indigenous regalia and culture exists. You can see it in non-indigenous spiritual practices utilizing Indigenous practices and terminology like spirit animals and dreamcatchers, and sports teams utilizing Indigenous culture in its labelling and mascots. That is where cultural appropriation comes into play. And before I get anybody commenting about this, the salmonid formlines don't count as "cultural appreciation" because as far as the info available is concerned, there wasn't any Indigenous people that were consulted for the designs. And even if there were, I again have mixed feelings about Splatoon utilizing an Indigenous art style as a design piece for an enemy character in the franchise.

On another note, this isn't the first time Indigenous cultural appropriation has popped up in the Splatoon franchise. There was actually a headgear that was unreleased in the first Splatoon game called "Warrior Headdress", and you can guess what it looked like.

Yeah. That was all levels of yikes and I'm thankful as hell that it didn't make it into the game (technically it's not in the game as a wearable item, but you can spot it at the very back of the headgear shop ingame)

So Splatoon has utilized Indigenous culture as inspiration beforehand with the games, so it's not much of a stretch anymore to think that the salmon run graffiti designs were based off formline art or was an attempt at formline art.

I'm not really sold on the idea that the salmonid are meant to be representative of Indigenous people though, nor do I believe that utilizing formline art for the salmonid was a malicious decision. But it was a slightly ignorant decision at best, because again using Indigenous specific art for a species of enemies that gets fought for their natural resources and is referred to by some of the NPCs as basically being lesser-minded animals is really not a good decision.

This whole thread is not meant as a guilt trip for anyone who likes the salmonid lore, has bought any of the salmonid graffiti stickers, or enjoys salmon run, nor is it an accusation of the devs for maliciously misusing Indigenous culture. I actually really enjoy salmon run for it's PSP and concept, but this design aspect gives me mixed feelings as an Indigenous person. And to be honest it's hard to label intentions or the thought process because there isn't any info available on the development of salmon run and those graffiti designs specifically. So it's hard to know if the devs employed an Indigenous artist for feedback or if they indeed just looked at some formline art of salmon and tried to replicate it or used it as inspiration. I'm inclined to believe the latter judging by the beginner formline mistakes seen in some of the designs. There is an art book coming out soon for Splatoon 3, so maybe that will give more info.

To wrap this all up, I don't think there is really anything to be done about the designs. The game has been out for a while and I don't know if the game would change the designs at this point. I also don't think this should stop people from buying the sticker designs in game or playing salmon run. However, it is important to learn about the context of these designs so that you know why they exist and why they can be harmful, and so devs and creators can avoid making the same mistake in the future, and so Indigenous issues with cultural appropriation can be made more aware in the public space and not be ridiculed by non-Indigenous people. And again, I am just one Indigenous person so there may be other opinions from other Indigenous people on the graffiti designs and how they should be handled or viewed.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading and have a good day!! Be sure to check out some actual Formline art made by Indigenous people, like the ones I listed near the top of the post!

#long post #salmon run #indigenous discussion #cw cultural appropriation #whoof that took a while to write #I really don't think this whole situation is one of maliciousness #but one of ignorance.#the devs had the foresight to (almost completely) remove the headdress item from the first game #so good on them for that #I just sort of wish they'd thought through using Indigenous art for the salmonids a lot better.#I wish the salmonids had a different sticker design entirely tbh #graffiti is such an open-ended style concept so they could've found lots of inspiration there #instead of using an Indigenous specific art style #(and making beginner mistakes while doing it)#also if you're here to cry cultural appreciation or about how “oh this is preserving Indigenous culture actually” I'm gonna need you #to walk back out that door.#I did not spend four hours writing this whole post to deal with “but cultural appreciation actually!!!” chuds.#Look up the definition of cultural appreciation vs cultural appropriation and get back to me.

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alangdorf · 8 months

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The aforementioned Forgotten Land cutscene redraw, which I ended up overpainting (for the first time in over three years) to make it all nice since I’m using it as my desktop background!

#art #digital #Kirby #fecto elfilis #kirby gijinka #had to do a lot of listening to stuff this weekend so I figured it was as good a time as any to get around to this piece #the painting part was somehow both more and less painful that I expected it to be?#flats took like four hours though lol #could definitely stand to streamline my process but what else is new #also could stand to use csp to make color adjustment and the stars easier but I’m too stubborn as usual #like the Forgo pic I like how the colors/shading turned out on this better than my Magolor stuff because I put the background in first #though admittedly the coloring on this one is not as accurate as it could be because it made me too sad to muddy up the cape

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mattodore · 4 months

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if i can get these hair ties to work first try i'll be unstoppable

#river dipping #blender #got home and immediately opened blender where i've been for the last few hours #i made some draft hair ties which were just circles i popped into s4s and tested in cas #took me at least four attempts to figure out how to get the uv maps to work but now that i've got it!!#i'm working on the actual hair ties i want. i just finished getting both hair ties all nice and snug with matthias's wrist #so now i'm onto the actual uv mapping and vertex assigning...#i'm going to make three packages one with both hair ties joined and two with them separated then i'll merge them into one #i'll also scale them down and fit them onto theo's wrists after #like... they ARE for theo's hair after all so he should get to wear them too lmao it's just... yk. matthias's acts of service...#gotta make sure he has them on him at all times so he can put up theo's hair for him #now that i'm thinking abt it tho theo is right handed unlike matthias... so for him the hair ties should be on his other arm...#i think you can mirror meshes right??? idk if i can't figure that out i'll just make new ones #...also hello <3 i've been offline for most of the day #would feel weird not saying hi here bc of it lmao #.....had to change the caption bc i was like. ykw maybe i shouldn't say that abt someone i don't know just bc they made something #<- tags typed after looking through the guy's likes on twitter lmaoooooooooooooo

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morhido · 1 year

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au where luz introduces the hexsquad to social media in the human realm

#girl help the last four took me over an hour just to add in all the text and icon thingies lmao #this was actually super fun though. might make this a series who knowsss #also amity's not mad or anything she just has rbf #toh #the owl house #toh amity #amity blight #toh gus #gus porter #toh luz #luz noceda #toh hunter #hunter noceda #morhiarty

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ahkylous · 7 months

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When your uncle is talking to an alien in a language you dont understand and you kinda just want to go home.

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autoneurotic · 10 months

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the flesh and the start of the stranger! nikola’s page will be a circus tent on one side and a stage on the other, and you’re gonna help her get ready for the dance! (every piece with a gold brad is detachable and i’m going to put an envelope on the circus tent page to hold The Body Parts)

#the flesh page took me like four hours #just fingers patience glue and embroidery floss #nikola orsinov #the stranger #the flesh #doll #paper craft #fiber art #meat #tma #magpod #the magnus archives #the magnus archives fanart #fan art #fan artist #board book #book making #2023 #autoart

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kyouka-supremacy · 1 year

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Shin Sōkoku - BSD Chapter 105: In the Closeted Room

#FINALLY had time to make this #atsushi nakajima #ryūnosuke akutagawa #sskk #bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd ch 105 #bsd edit #my edit #mine #I know it's not going to show in the tags but this is my bsd blog!! And I've looked forward so much to the day I'd finally be able to–#read a new sskk scene with my eyes!!!! So long I tell you!!!!!#I dreamed so often the moment I would make my first sskk edit!!!!!!! I won't post it on any secondary blog I need this on *my* blog!!!!!!!!#That is to say. This is between me and you followers (╥﹏╥)#Technical considerations now redrawing Akutagawa's coat was something... Not for the coat itself but because I'm not used to solid black–#stuff with white lineart so like. I made the lineart normally black thinking I'd just invert colors later right?#Wrong I ended up with 40 layers and no idea of what was were also because I can't see a white lineart akdnfvejdndvwkdvej #Something something going out of your comfort zone is fun but also it took me around thirty minutes to make the lineart–#and then little to four hours just to fill it/make the adjustments/basically figure out what was where in the sea of layers and white lines

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eatmy-customjorts · 11 months

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another night out on earth

#tbhk #art #toilet bound hanako kun #jshk #digital art #minamoto teru #teru minamoto #dedicated as a tribute to remy's balls that i ran iver with my car #sorry #file is titled oopsies #this takes place like right before that one art i made of him sleeping #i soent FOUR HOURS trying to find a song to caption this with #then ended up using the song that inspired me to make this LMAO #not that hard to guess but if you guess it you can have a kiss idk #as per usual #pls dont let this flop it took me so long #i realized i was making stuff for the likes and so i did this because i genuinely wanted to #thank u tumblr #love u tumblr

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missbrunettebarbie · 6 months

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CW’s Gotham Knights sorting

Attention: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Turner Hayes

The first thing that hit me about Turner before he was framed for Bruce’s murder is that he was genuinely happy with his life. I expected a lot of Main Character AngstTM from him, the way most protagonists are written especially on the CW, but there was none (or very little) of it. And it’s not like Turner doesn’t have sources of angst: his parents are dead and he went overnight from the son of cleaners to the adopted son of a billionaire -and all that implies- without any explanation. You can see it clearly in Gotham Academy (and in the city at large) that he isn’t very liked. Actually it looks like most people resent him for ‘getting uppity’ and rising above his station. Just look at how Brody treats him in the beginning or how the people of Gotham are ready to believe the worst of him overnight. But Turner doesn’t care. He has his best friend, Stephanie, he has Cressida and he has Bruce. He loves them and they love him; more than enough for a Snake primary. Sure, Bruce may be a bit too busy and it’s annoying, but Turner can always distract himself with a party. Classic hedonistic young Snake.

Turner’s arc is all about betrayal and how one deals with it. Turner is slowly, over the course of the series, betrayed by almost his entire inner circle: Bruce, Cressida and even his dead parents. Interestingly enough he is the person who doesn’t betray anyone even when they turned their back to him. At the end of episode two, Turner is the one who went to save Duela from the Talon despite the fact that she abandoned him to certain death. I don’t think Duela was entirely in his inner circle at this point (although I think she, Cullen and Harper were slowly getting there from the very first pilot when they handed him the lockpicking tool for his handcuffs, thus including him in their escape), but I think it was important to Turner that he will not be the kind of person to leave behind someone who might rely on his loyalty. Another moment that comes to mind is finding out that everyone at the Gotham Gala is gonna be gassed to death. His first reaction? “Stephanie is there!“

Like all healthy Snakes, Turner adopts Bruce’s morality as his own. And he’s so successful that I almost wondered if he was an Idealist for a while. But what sold him as a Snake for me was him saving Cressida versus not saving Joe Chill. Cressida had helped the Court to kill his father and frame Turner for the murder but Turner saves her because ‘this is what my dad would do’. So he blows up his cover to save the woman who helped raise him and betrayed him in the worst way possible, despite the odds being overwhelmingly against them. But when he finds out Joe Chill had been framed by Thomas and Martha Wayne’s murders and will face the death penalty….he does nothing. Despite the fact that Joe was arguably more of an innocent than Cressida, Turner doesn’t even have a throwaway line later on about wishing he could have helped him. (This plus the way he has zero remorse over killing the Talon also made me rule out Badger as a primary.) That’s because Turner is Bruce’s son in all the ways that matter, but he is not his heir in this show. He’s too much of a Snake to ever be.

His secondary is somehow even more obvious than his primary: this is the guy who had argued that they need to stick together from day one, who said that what makes them different from Joe Chill is the fact that they have each other, who was literally introduced to us extending a hand towards Brody when the latter lost the sword fight. He is such a Courtier Badger that for the first half of the show it almost overshadowed his primary. Not to mention, he is an amazing manipulator. Look at the beginning of episode two; after failing to convince Duela to trust Stephanie by vouching for her, he pivots: “[Put the knife down] or you might kill the one person who could prove we were set up.” He realizes Duela needs a self-serving reason to stop threatening Stephanie and he gives it to her. The same hyper awareness of emotional situations shows up again in episode thirteen when he wants to convince the group to have faith in Duela. The rest of the Knights are somewhat derisive that someone with Duela’s past and parentage could ever become a self-sacrificing hero…at which point Turner reveals his own parents’ secret: they were assassins sent to kill the Batman, and if they don’t trust Duela because of who raised her, they shouldn’t trust him either. And it works like a charm as the group gives into Turner’s wishes.

Duela Doe Dent

Duela is such a complex character, I wasn’t sure of her sorting till the very last minute. I think what’s important to look at in order to figure her out is her mom. Duela idolizes Jane Doe and wants nothing more than to be like her. And Jane is the ultimate hedonistic Double Snake. So of course Duela has a Snake secondary that is always ready for a con. But at the end of the day this is just the model she wears because of her mother. One of the themes of the show is trying to live up to your parents’ expectations and what that does to you. And modeling Jane’s Snake sec I think made Duela to feel a bit invisible. In episode eight when she talks about how her mom had so many identities even she herself forgot who she really was, it’s the first time when she doesn’t talk about her with admiration, but with fear. Duela is similarly terrified of losing herself while trying to live up to the legacy of being the Joker’s daughter. Deep down under that playful Snake, there is a Lion Secondary that is as blunt as they come. Her plan B when rescuing Turner in episode nine? A bomber vest to kill everyone if needed. Her reaction to evil!Harvey? To taunt him by throwing the truth in his face. Turner is dying from radiation? Duela tells him as soon as she finds out, against everyone else’s wishes. As Turner says she ‘has no grasp on social clues’, ‘she always tells the hard truths’ and ‘she’s always…Duela’. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence it’s this last line that makes her kiss him. This is the Lion secondary being overjoyed at someone liking Duela for who she is, not who she tries to be. Her fighting style (punches and knives to throats), her way of gathering information being kidnapping and torture and her tendency of giving Turner a reality check whenever he needs it are also evidence that support a Lion secondary. Her idea of a distraction is also hilariously straight-forward: she escapes from the police by pointing out how she’s trying to pick her handcuffs. (Sidenote: Turner and Duela’s ‘not offended’ game, aside from giving us THE most romantic line in the show, it’s also very Lion-coded IMO. There is very little you can say to a Lion secondary that will offend them as long as you are honest and it’s clear your intentions aren’t malicious.)

When trying to figure out Duela’s secondary I realized that she is incredibly healthy for a girl raised in Arkham by a conwoman. Sure, she’s extremely self-serving and would climb over anyone to get what she wants, but she has no regrets about it. It’s a tough world and everyone is in it for themselves. Except Duela is in it for her and her mom. (And she thinks the same must be true for her mom.) She’s a Snake primary who can’t be with Her Person. So she’s a little burnt. She doesn’t let herself get too close to anyone because what’s the point? Everyone leaves you eventually. Jane is the only person that had been there for Duela so she is the only one allowed to be in her inner circle. But than episode two happens and Duela abandons Harper, Cullen, Carrie and Turner to save her own skin. So when the invincible assassin comes after her, Duela is all alone. Except no, because suddenly the others are there and they are saving her life. She tries to clumsily thank Cullen for it, but he points out that if it wasn’t for Turner, they would have left her for dead. This is the switch that puts him on her map and slowly but surely, her Snake latches onto him. “I don’t care about Gotham, I care about Turner.” Duela and Turner’s first conflict in episode 11 is a deeply Loyalist one: she wants him to run away with her and her mom because she only cares about these two people, but Turner’s inner circle has expanded to include the others, so he can’t just leave. And the girl who’s already kinda burnt takes it as a betrayal and leaves without him. But she does come back when she realizes her mom is safe, but Turner is in mortal peril; or tries to. I find it interesting that her reaction to seeing the others imprisoned is to say ‘Even little bird’. And that’s because Carrie is the other person she bonded with.

Duela heals completely in the last episode when two things happen: Harvey promises to be her dad and commits a great sacrifice for her…and Turner comes to save her despite still being under the impression that she was never gonna come back. Her delighted expression when seeing him says it all. I always thought the Twelfth Doctor’s speech ‘Do You Think I Care for You So Little that Betraying Me Would Make a Difference?’ is every Snake’s dream, especially a burnt Snake’s, and Turner gave her this exact speech with his actions. Duela’s last scene mirrors Turner’s attitude during the whole show.

Harper: Duela, do you even care about the people?

Duela: No. But Turner did. And I cared about him.

She has adopted her loved ones’ morality and is willing to act on it. She’s a healthy Snake now despite all the tragedies that have happened to her.

(I am unsure about this, but I do wonder if Duela might have had a Bird primary model filled with nihilistic beliefs that she gets rid off by the end of the series. It would explain some of her more Idealist-like scenes, like when she is upset Joe Chill -the patron saint of small thieves- was actually set up. Or when she has to be comforted by Turner after saving the lives of kidnapping victims: “Just because you did a good thing doesn’t make you a good person.” The fact that this phrase makes her smile happily was hilarious.)

Harper Row

Harper is another Lion secondary that can’t be anything else but what she is. She’s blunt and forceful and makes her opinion known. She may be a genius but she is no Bird as she has none of the Bird sec traits. Sure she does research when needed, but she doesn’t show any particular inclination towards it outside life and death situations. As proven in the last episode, when she’s in a fight she goes for the biggest weapon. The way she stands up to Stephanie’s mom by throwing the truth in her face is also a very Lion move.

Harper is another Loyalist and for a while I believed she was a Snake with only Cullen as her person. After all, everything she does was and is for him. But she’s actually pretty miserable. Which is why I think she’s actually a Burnt Badger. @wisteria-lodge has this to say about Burnt Badgers: “[the Burnt Badger ]has decided that communities are unsafe, unpractical, and the only way to be safe is to be alone - or to try and be content with a much smaller community than the one they want. For this reason, Burnt badgers tend to look like miserable Snakes.” We sadly don’t get a lot of interiority for Harper (another reason to hate the cancellation), but I think her behavior towards Stephanie and especially Stephanie-Turner when contrasted to Duela’s is telling. Harper and Duela both have a crush on a person that has a very deep relationship with someone else, to the point that one can mistake the relationship as romantic. Which Harper does and starts resenting Stephanie and pushing her away in order to protect herself. She’s too scared to let herself get attached, typical Burnt Badger behavior. Meanwhile Snake Duela is just happy there is someone else prioritizing Turner like she does.

After their names are cleared, Harper says she might enroll in Gotham Academy with Stephanie, which to me shows that she’s looking to build a community.

Cullen Row

Cullen is the only one, alongside Stephanie, that is willing to deviate from their quest of proving their innocence in order to catch an art thief. While Harper refuses to risk her life in order to ‘recover trinkets for the rich’ and Turner says it’s not a priority, Lion primary Cullen has embraced his role as a hero of the city and thinks it would be unethical to not try and catch the thief and recover the stolen art. He’s also the one that wants to clear his name in the pilot because ‘I am the one who chose the damned thing’. If Turner wants to prove his innocence because he doesn’t want to be remembered as his own father’s killer and Duela and Harper don’t want to risk their lives in order to clear their names, Idealist Cullen is the only one who wants to do it because it’s the Right Thing to do.

I oscillated between Snake and Bird for his secondary, but I went with the former because deception is his go-to method. Need to trade the electrum for Turner but don’t want to give it to the Court? Just create a fake one. (And that scene is such a contrast with Lion sec Duela whose solution is to try and cut the powerful space rock with a run-of-the-mill knife LOL) Need evidence from the police station? Pretend to be a cop. In the pilot, when they knock out the cops chasing them, Cullen is the one that uses their station to keep the other cops from finding them.

Stephanie Brown

Stephanie is a Lion primary who is pretty much being gaslighted by her parents. She knows your mom being so drunk and drugged she can’t even stand at your school function is wrong, just as wrong as your dad using his money and status to supply her addiction just to keep up the picture of the perfect family. Stephanie does everything her parents tell her to, including ‘dating a guy with the right last name’. Except that’s not entirely true. Stephanie rebels in her own quiet way from the pilot when she helps Turner and keeps helping him and his friends after they become fugitives. You can see her Lion primary both loves the rebellion and the fact that she gets to be a hero, to truly do something good. As I pointed out before, aside from Cullen, Stephanie is the only one who believes it’s their duty as heroes to recover stolen art.

When she lets her father go to prison instead of giving Lincoln her friends’ location, Arthur Brown frames it as a Loyalist conflict: me versus them. But Idealist Stephanie doesn’t see it that way. What she sees is that her father is going to pay for his crimes, while her friends are innocent.

Her secondary was a bit harder, because I think it had been a bit burned by playing the perfect daughter, but I settled on Lion secondary. She and Harper communicate with each other in an easy and blunt way, like Lions do. She also has the Lion tendency of picking a strategy and just sticking with it, no matter how ill advised it might be. In her case it is using her hacker skills despite almost being arrested in the second episode. She’s also incredibly honest (when Brody asks about what she thinks about his dad, Stephanie just repeats that she thinks his mom is nice), uncomfortable with deception and goes after what she wants once her Lion primary has picked a path (see how she kissed Harper both in episode 11 and 13).

Carrie Kelly

Carrie is Bruce Wayne’s student when it comes to vigilantism and his true heir in the show. She is another Lion primary, and a Paragon one at that, just like her mom and her mentor. Like Turner’s and Duela’s, her story is about rising to your parents’ expectations, but in Carrie’s case, she surpasses them! Dr. Kelly is Gotham’s best surgeon who has double shifts at the hospital because this is the right thing to do and her drive has rubbed onto her daughter. So of course Carrie picks up on her mom’s, and later, Bruce’s, desire to save people and protect the city. As such when the opportunity arises she becomes Robin, Batman’s partner. Dr. Kelly is shocked her daughter would become a vigilante, but as Carrie points out she had been raised to do the right thing. This is also why she saves Turner and co in the pilot: she knows they are innocent and as such needs to rescue them. She’s still a young Lion who has quite the idealistic view and we see in the episode ‘More money, more problem’ -where she manages to put a mob boss behind bars only for him to be released by corrupt officials- that Gotham’s harsh reality could easily burn her. Thankfully I think the creation of the Gotham Knights would help prevent this.

As for her secondary, first things first: this girl is not a Lion. She steals the journal pages in episode two and keeps the secret about Batman killing Turner’s parents for the next eight episodes without much effort. She doesn’t have any Bird or Snake traits, which leaves Badger secondary, something that fits her quite well. I would say she is a Bookkeeper Badger, the other side of the coin to Turner’s Courtier Badger. Wisteria says about them: “A Bookkeeper Badger shows up and does the work. They are dependable, they are thorough, they don’t like cutting corners (Badgers consider cutting corners on something that they actually care about immoral.)” This perfectly describes Carrie.

Brody March

Brody doesn’t get that much interiority, so it’s hard to settle on a primary to him. I am oscillating between a heroic Badger or Lion as he turns on his parents when he realizes they are doing terrible things. I am gonna go with Badger primary, mostly for how much it seems like a community is important to him. When he joins the Knights in episode 12 he immediately considers himself one of them: “We would be fine.” There is also the way he seems to have quite the social life at Gotham Academy. This is mostly implied, but from the very first episode, while Turner is positioned as the outsider who will never get over the stigma of being ‘from the slums of Gotham’ and as such never truly belong in the upper class, Brody is the ‘guy with the perfect family name’ as Stephanie puts it. Everything he does is to live up to this family name, but unlike Stephanie, he genuinely wants to do so, it isn’t just pressure from his parents. You can see the first peak of the more heroic Badger when he does volunteer work at the hospital with Carrie and is bothered by the people left to suffer and wants to help them.

Brody and Turner’s pre-show relationship is fascinating and I’m sad it never gets fully explored. It’s clear they were somewhat close to each other, probably mostly because of Stephanie, but they are also clearly rivals in a lot of aspects: when it comes to swordfighting, to Stephanie’s affection and just to social status in general. Being the Bruce Wayne’s son, Turner is somewhat socially above Brody and pretty much all of the other students and you can see it irks them as they certainly feel he doesn’t deserve it. Brody believes Turner is capable of murdering his own father for money for…nine episodes, I think! And unlike most of Gotham, Brody clearly had enough of a rapport with him to have some doubts, but he doesn’t. I think these are the dark tendencies of a Badger to give into prejudice.

As Turner’s foil, Brody is another Badger secondary, but like Carrie -with whom he forms an organic friendship- I think he’s more of a Bookkeeper. While Turner may have been introduced to us in the pilot offering his hand to Brody, Brody is introduced when he accepts said hand, showing his fair play. His reaction when he is in uncomfortable situations (the gala, when he discovers the hidden camera with the recorded evidence) is to ask a friend (aka Stephanie) for help.

TL;DR

Turner Hayes - Snake who picked up Bruce’s morality/Courtier Badger

Duela Doe Dent - somewhat burnt Snake (with maybe a nihilistic Bird model)/Lion with a healthy Snake model

Harper Row - burned Badger/Lion

Cullen - Lion/Snake

Stephanie Brown - Lion/burned Lion

Carrie Kelly - Paragon Lion/Bookkeeper Badger

Brody March - Badger/Bookkeeper Badger

#sortinghatchats #gotham knights #gothaam knights cw #turner hayes #duela doe #duela dent #harper row #cullen row #stephanie brown #carrie kelly #brody march #this took me FOUR hours to make!#this show has given me brainrot #meta #my thoughts

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