anyways let's un-derail this thread with my accidentally super lgbt board lmao. happy pride month? i ended up just ranting about the characters but you can see how what i talk about is what i want to incorporate. adhd moment
my new character in the making obviously. good exercise for finishing it lmao.
spoiler warning for the following media of course
1. Dorian Pavus from Dragon Age: Inquisition
Well obviously visually. I like to do that because there's treasure troves of character art. Besides that though, Dorian is a really great character and I've been wanting to replay DA:I for a while anyways. Dorian's character story is all about him being a gay "stereotype", or more specifically, how precisely he
is not one despite being easy to write off as one if you don't delve into his arc.
To be honest
{this} entire character analysis can explain him better than I ever could. But I like his struggle with his cultural background and how he both loves and hates it. I find it interesting that he's a self-punishing type, but not in the usual way that I've already played out IC lots and gotten tired of. He chose to exile himself from his homeland.
Taurean is going to have a lot of personal angst over being at the crux of a unique cultural intersection. With one foot in each world, he doesn't feel he belongs in either at all. Like Dorian, he has in a sense made himself a social outcast (however imo probably a good thing for him overall). I'm also going to incorporate a lot of Dorian's wit and how he uses it as his defense. Being loud in personality as an armour, etc.
Being on the sexuality struggle bus he's also going to have a lot of Dorian's flirting-but-oh-yikes-ew-don't-actually-be-interested energy.
2. Saint Germain from Castlevania (TV Show)
Okay I don't love how they ended his arc like everyone else. I don't want to talk about it.
But I adored Saint Germain pre.... that shitty line lmao. I love his appearance and voice actor, and that he's based on the real Saint Germain (not a saint, also just his surname), who basically just wandered around to European palaces, scammed them into thinking he knew stuff, people thought he was a noble, and when he died it was realized he basically didn't own shitall.
REALLY love that he's a wizard but puts on a charlatan travelling-scholar type front, with an end goal.
I love the dry snark Saint Germain has in the show, his interactions with the main cast. Love the mystery as well, but that's not something you can really have with a new character right off the bat. I'd like to have that alchemical/magical/whatever knowledge mystique Taurean later though. Another one to potentially incorporate later is Saint Germain's general story of "how far will you go for x", with it starting small and devolving into absolute depravity to achieve a goal. We'll see how that really goes though.
I'm just a sucker for mysterious forbidden knowledge tragic dad. I'd like it if Taurean grew in knowledge and took on Saint Germain's good and bad traits eventually, especially his impatience and arrogance.
3. Nadia Vulvokov from Russian Doll
Fucking fantastic show about generational trauma, complex trauma, and general mental health.
Taurean is going to have a lot of internal struggle with his family and coming from two different cultures. Both of his parents suffered issues like all people do, and like all parents unfortunately do, passed some of those onto their children.
I adore Nadia's mannerisms in Russian Doll, and how her personality is layers of self-defense since childhood. Her growth from resisting addressing her traumas or looking inwards interests me a lot, and how she went from resisting to accepting the ways the universe fucks with her.
She's sarcastic, brash, and can command situations. She isn't afraid to tell people exactly what she thinks of them because she just very much is out of shits to give which is hilarious. She copes with guilt through every outlet imaginable, but overall is just very relatable and comforting for anyone with childhood trauma. She's okay with who she is, including how messed up she is by what she has been through and what her family has passed down to her.
I like that she's also selfish and avoidant and generally obviously has insecure attachment issues. Just love how much of a dick she is. A lovable dick. She has very deeply ugly moments, because like everyone, she is a person with issues and traumas and it's just dope. I like concepts addressing generational trauma a lot because of my own history, and the fact that it's something I see affects every single person I know.
4. Lito Rodriguez from Sense8
I really like Lito's story, especially starting as a closeted and famous gay man in South America. I don't think issues of queerness are addressed nearly enough through cultural lenses, especially for men and how masculinity is treated and almost internally regulated in different cultural communities.
Lito is overdramatic but deeply loving and just. I love explorations of masculinity, maleness, and emotions. He's a man that feels deeply, is invested in the arts, but has to carry a masculine edge to be accepted and safe in his industry and society. Stories of people, especially men, becoming more in tune with their authentic selves and becoming okay with feeling resonates a lot with my own experiences of transness so it hits good.
I love that he's in a loosely defined sorta non-monogamous relationship, that doesn't feel the need to define itself fully to its viewers but just gives it as what it is. That emotional intimacy can be romantic and familial without needing inherent sexuality.
5. Klaus Hargreeves from The Umbrella Academy
MY LOVE, MY BOY.
The Umbrella Academy is another fantastic show about familial and complex childhood trauma. Out of seven siblings, Klaus is the disaster child. He's hedonistic and rebelled against his abusive father by intentionally failing him, instead of vying for his father's affection. Not that there's anything wrong with that, as really, all the kids in the show are different facets and responses to trauma and abuse.
But I like it and find it interesting; almost self-sabotaging in a way to have the people who hurt you see you as no longer useful and write you off. In that sense, no longer being emotionally at their behest.
Klaus is extremely hedonistic, is an addict, unapologetic leech, and he's dismissed a lot by his family in the beginning. He's the child that calls out and acknowledges the abuse. In that sense the disruptor and motivator for his siblings to process and achieve emotional growth and closure. I like disastrous, explosive characters that motivate. Like a personification of The Tower major arcana card. Despite his shortcomings, he's surprisingly sometimes the most level-headed with suggestions. He has a really good intuition and insight a lot of his family is otherwise blind to because of them working through their own stuff still.
I also of course adore Klaus for his queerness and gender non-conformity, and the beautifully tragic love story he goes through. And his dry sarcasm and wit as a coping mechanism.
He's okay with not being okay because he was really fucked up by his upbringing. I vibe with that hard, and also, it makes for great character exploration.
6. Elektra Evangelista from Pose
An absolute trans icon of media. Spit on me and murder me, mother.
But for real, Elektra Evangelista is a
fantastic character. This is what LGBT+ people mean by wanting good representation. She's a complex person. Often an outright asshole. But an asshole shaped by the uninhabitable world and times she lived in, a black trans woman in the midst of the AIDS epidemic that the government turned a blind eye to and let so, so many people die because of their deviation from the assumed "norm" (happy pride month lol).
Elektra wields her beauty, intellect, and tongue mercilessly, taking care of herself by any means necessary. She's a tragic and damaged person, so damaged that most of her screentime is her peacocking around face beat to the gods and dressed to the nines, posturing to find security and status in the only community she can be apart of. She's nearly comically cutthroat, always primed to stab backs, but Blanca acts as a fantastic foil and sister to her, forgiving her every single time in a patient and kind yet exhausted manner. Blanca can't begrudge Elektra for her struggles, because they are the same struggles they both face together as black trans women in America in their time period.
Elektra is so gorgeous and cunning, and has some absolutely chilling, ugly,
raw emotional moments. It's so heartbreaking and fantastic. And I can't wait to do that in-character.
Of course, I love her cattiness too. But fuck, she's just so complex.
7. Bonus Round! Pray Tell from Pose
im too lazy to write this right now. but i love pray tell too. devastating wonderful beautiful loving stories. pose is fantastic and will wrap you up in a warm blanket of love and then punch you in the face
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TL;DR i'm a traumatized homosexual idk what you expected