wanted to draw the girls from hunchback of notre dame 1 and 2 dancing cause they both have a red dress and i thought it would be cute
+ it always seemed likely to me that one of the triplets in beauty and the beast was only pretending to go along with her sisters... and due to that she’s good at playing a role but not so much at being herself so when she gets an interest in belle she suddenly turns real shy
do not erase the caption, use or rePOST my art (reblog ok)
482 notes
·
View notes
Thoughts on toxic yuri?
One of my very favorite storytelling concepts, I love it when women make each other worse. <3
I do think it's important, for me anyway, to note the difference between a dynamic that's toxic in one direction versus something that is mutually toxic. The first one doesn't really interest me a whole lot, usually because it means one character suffers constantly without being allowed to do anything else--at the very least, it will come across as the more ""normal"" character not really being that into the relationship in question. I need BOTH parties to be unhinged.
The important thing for any fictional relationship (though we're specifying toxic yuri here, obviously) is that it's interesting. If there is no limit to what the women can do within a dynamic, then there are an infinite number of ways for that dynamic to go. And while you can learn a lot about a character through examining their values and positive qualities, you can learn just as much (if not more) by considering their flaws. And those flaws really come out in the case of toxic yuri; characters get to show the uglier parts of themselves in this context, which I am always a fan of. A fraught, complex relationship, when written well, can be a really great way to psychologically explore the characters: what inspires them to act this way? why do they think this behavior is acceptable? if they don't think it's acceptable, why do they keep doing it? what do they think about the concept of love as a whole? how far would they go for intimacy or to be understood? how do they view other people in general? and probably most importantly, what led to them developing the beliefs underlying their actions in the first place?
From a more "psychologically, why do people enjoy this" standpoint, mutual toxicity often goes hand in hand with extreme obsession, extreme jealousy, and a willingness to forgive a whole lot of horrible shit. Which, yeah, in real life you don't want to be in a relationship like that. But I think there's a lot of emotional resonance in exploring those feelings. The idea that someone will never leave you. That they think so intensely about you specifically that they'll break anything and anyone to stay with you. That even if you're the worst version of yourself, someone will still want you because that's still you. Someone knows exactly how to fuck you up because they genuinely understand you. Things in fiction that we would never want in real life can be incredibly interesting or even cathartic to witness from a distance. I think we all feel things that scare us sometimes (or even simply feel an innocuous emotion so intensely that it scares us), and looking at unpleasant feelings within fiction can help identify, parse out, process, and successfully cope with those feelings. And I think, at the end of it all, a lot of people want to matter to someone, in some way. It makes sense that some creators would take that concept-of meaning a great deal to another person, of affecting them deeply-to its absolute extreme through writing.
(And also, consider. That I am very gay. And that horrible women are very attractive.)
9 notes
·
View notes
So based on the interview going around twitter, the whole semi plot was phoebe's idea of a common MIL fantasy of your DIL loving and craving your approval? But the actual execution... yikes. it seems more like something Ted Bundy would dream. Like it was just the wish-fullfillment that the person who has been indifferent to you for years, hurting your feelings, is actually deeply obsessively in love with you! Then you get to be the cold and indifferent one to hurt them back.
P U T A N G I N A M O K A
*pinches my nose bridge* not you, anon. who deigned that psycho interview-worthy? get help asap
do click on that db write-up i linked, before you proceed please and thank you
flinched as soon as i saw @suika28 tweet that about 30 (?) minutes before the finale aired. that's me who admittedly has known her WILD history. the nerve to admit queerbaiting:
“they don’t have mutual liking of each other but rather, the mother-in-law hates the daughter-in-law’s affections. […] the homosexual story didn’t develop, don’t worry.”
i guess that's the one consistency im sunghan has. she does not care.
after all, when the production was still <durian fairy>, streets were saying it's a romance between the two and she put out a statement definitely disavowing that. the third teaser came out and, well, the seas parted; the sun was rising in the west! in a stilted ensemble, jang semi was the only one consistently getting to show development... and by that, i meant baek doyi was considering her confession every waking moment.
despite south korea being its usual meninist self, ~the couple with the epic love story~ from my perspective was thriving. such unconventional yet ardent affection resonating with its found audience. garnering international attention & support for the actresses who are both generous with the fanservice. fun times.
then, the nightmare aka the second half came out to be.
you already said it, doyi's tragedy / comphet heel turn 'twas all to hurt [semi] back. to insult decades of feeling unlovable. i'll walk it off, eventually, but that nasty backhand might as well be directed at me.
to be clear: i do not blame the characters, they were used as mouthpiece - puppets to im sunghan's innate, did-not-even-have-to-think-about-twice hatred of not just lesbians but women in general. nor do i blame the leads, they've evidently shown more enthusiasm to go beyond for semidoyi; how could they have foreseen the first half was just a sick dare?
makjangs are Not the place to go to if one wants some moralizing from a kdrama but who thinks funding sweeping harmful generalizations is all okay???????
15 notes
·
View notes
I just want to say, that I agree with almost all of your Critical Role takes and you have 1000% better and more nuanced takes than all of Twitter and I greatly appreciate it! The takes over there regarding Liliana and the gods are just wild and you bring some much needed sanity to the content I see
Thanks! I hope you don't mind because I've been thinking about this re: the Twitter takes but the thing about Twitter and Liliana specifically that I've seen is that there's this really bizarre fetishization of like, the fact that she is a (white) southerner (this also weirdly happened for Birdie though to a much lesser extent, and the person who spearheaded that wasn't even American so I have to assume this is a specific corner of Twitter Culture At Large). And like, here's the thing. It's true that fantasy tends to be very British in its accents, and it's also true that accents in a fantasy world are used to convey the same things we'd assume in our world - RP British for educated, southern American for rural, Cockney for rougher types, etc.
It's also true that laying the exact socioeconomic parallels from our world onto, say, Liliana and Orym (who reads to me as non-regional but I, like Liam, am from the Northeast originally) is a recipe for disaster. Or rather, it's not, but it is going to reaffirm your own biases, some of which are dangerous to reaffirm.
There was a popular post on Tumblr a while back, probably not long after Trump was elected, of someone talking about how they were convincing a relative with the confederate flag towards socialism by appealing to the idea of "isn't in unfair how uneven wealth distribution is and how a small group has so much control" and a number of people were rightfully like "uh, maybe you should focus on the racism" or "hey OP ask your relative who they think that small group in control is because I'm getting a really bad feeling they're going to say it's The Jews." And I feel that a lot of the empathy for Liliana from those spaces feels like that OP. Or in other words: I get that you see your relatives in Liliana. Unfortunately, I cannot help but see me and mine in Orym.
You see someone trapped by circumstance and desperation in a dangerous ideology. I see the fact that I haven't gone to a synagogue in easily 6-7 years without there being a security guard present and usually, the doors locked with someone looking through the window to let you in, and then in the sanctuary there's been an installation so that you can quickly bar all the doors in case an alarm goes off or you hear shots in the lobby.
I think there's a great case for seeing yourself in Imogen, who is in a painful struggle with the fact that her mother does love her very much but is in dangerously deep and has done a number of incredibly terrible and harmful things. That latter point is important, incidentally; I get that cult members sometimes rise through the ranks but all but the leader are being manipulated. But the fact remains that a brainwashed person can still commit atrocities, and in this story, they have, many times over. It's especially true because like...sure, plenty of people are like "I lost my relative to a cult and I just want them back and I couldn't harm them," but also, as we've seen, this cult can and will harm Imogen! Plenty of people are also like "yeah I gotta cut them off, it hurts but unfortunately my horribly bigoted and violent relative, while a victim of brainwashing, is a threat to me too." It's not even the full picture of the Temult side of things, let alone the picture that includes the Vanguard's victims.
I also think the Southern gatekeeping is unhinged because it's like. guys there's QAnon members and other cults across the country; the Confederate flag example above was actually notable in that OP wasn't even Southern so you couldn't even write the flag off as deeply misguided heritage but rather was explicitly being used as a hate symbol. It's awfully presumptive to assume all southerners have the same experience (especially since the Temults are portrayed, physically and in accents, as white southerners, not that the experiences of white southerners aren't also incredibly varied). It's awfully presumptive to assume that people find Liliana threatening because they have no personal experience with people like her; often, it's because they have all too real experience with people like her, and it says something even worse about you if you can say "but you guys, I see me and my family in Liliana" when people are telling you that they see them and their families in Orym. I would not, personally, publicly admit that one's empathy extends to the people who remind you of your family but runs out before it reaches their victims. Nor would I publicly admit that I assume everyone who disagrees with me clearly has never had personal experience with this topic.
I should also note that, as I've noted a number of times before, that these are fictional characters and not real people. Twitter seems to be really fucking bad at grasping that. Like, yes, this is the other thing; I do not think that OP should kill their Confederate flag-toting relative, whereas if Imogen did so to Liliana I'd be like "hell yeah." The former is a real person who I do hope gets deprogrammed, just, you know, maybe adjust those priorities; the latter is a fictional character in a story.
41 notes
·
View notes