Wish I was flying. @icarian-avis - Tumblr Blog

Has anyone drawn fanart yet of Gareth with Lynette wearing a shirt that says "I went to Camelot and all I got was this lousy kitchen boy"? That totally needs to exist.

no one yet! : D hopefully someone will see this and take a shot at this amazing idea

dunduntheibispainter

@fuckyeaharthuriana made it come true. Here is an unamused Lynette wearing that shirt while from afar is a lovestruck Gareth. Hope you like it ♥️

Oh and also I'm trying to expand my social media presence a bit more as I'm trying to start doing commissions. So if any of you want to follow me on other platforms I'm icarian-avis on Pinterest and Bluesky. Instagram isn't happening anymore because it was pissing me off big time. I'm going to have a website whenever i finish coding it

Dnd character design commission!

#dnd #dnd art #dungeons and dragons #commission #art #digital art #character design #my art

Sorry i totally stopped posting for forever i deleted tumblr for not spending hours on my phone purposes and have not been logging on when i do art-

#critical role #caleb widogast #essek thelyss #fanart #art #mostly pastels #mixed media #my art

Design for a pc in the campaign i’m dming

#dnd #art #dungeons and dragons #my art

lefay-if

Trying to create the family tree for everybody in my story and this was irrationally funny to me

I just thought to myself, "Well, we don't need to go that far"

jazzgard

my readthrough only lets me get fleeting glimpses of characters (every time i drop in on hal his life is in fucking shambles and he is either breaking up or getting back together with carol ferris), but even so. this progression really is something.

can-of-w0rmz

I think a lot of the people who position themselves as ardent lovers of Frankenstein and are loudest in their criticisms are primarily ardent lovers of ~Sad Gay College Dropout Victor~ who doesn't really exist in the book itself but certainly exists in the nebulous paratextual realm populated by..... Tumblr takes on classic literature.

Frankenstein is a book that does not require you to love or like or sympathize with Victor to faithfully adapt. it's one of my favorite books and I've wanted to beat him to death with his own lab equipment since 2010. and I think that this adaptation brings the sublimated feminist rage that Mary Godwin felt at the state of her own life (particularly in the 1831 edition, brought together after Percy died) to the forefront in ways that aren't easily squared with the idea of Victor as a ~vulnerable wide-eyed pathetic neurodivergent goth~ who looks like a lost kitten in the rain :((((( and since this is a website that has a serious problem with defaulting to uplifting men especially men like that I do think that del Toro's choices are at odds with their preferred reads.

but they aren't unfaithful choices! he is doing interesting things with the text of the book! he loves and understands the text of the book; he has read the book multiple times since adolescence.

I am not particularly sure what your intentions were with this ask as it seems a mess of different opinions on different topics merged into one view and treated as equal, and I have made it very clear from my account that I have not seen Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation, will not see it until I have stopped working on my own adaptation, and therefore can make no reasonable comments in good faith concerning it’s actual content. All I can go of off is the public reaction to the film, and I hold firmly in my opinion that I do not like the ideas it seems to put forward from that, and that I find those ideas in contradiction to the intentions of the original novel.

Given this,

Whilst I fully concede that you do not have to like the character of Victor Frankenstein to enjoy and be a fan of the novel, likability is a vastly subjective topic, and I believe that most people who do dislike him do so for misguided reasons. Your idea of the ‘made-up’, tumblrised version of Frankenstein’s character that people who do find him likeable on the internet usually perceive is a confusing amalgamation of readings and ideas which both hold ground, and do not.

The idea of Frankenstein as a ‘college drop-out,’ for one thing, is silly and misleading given the different role that universities played for the wealthy in the 18th century, and takes which follow this line of thinking are usually anachronistic modernisations of an idea which was not present in the original novel, I’ll give you that. But ideas like “sad”, “pathetic”, “vulnerable” — unfortunately, whether you like it or not, these things really are core elements of the text and I strain to see how you could fail to notice them?

I’m noticing you’re proceeding adjectives like these with others, “gay”, “neurodivergent” — and if what you’re attempting to say is that people on the internet yaoi-fy or oversimplify and instantly forgive Victor’s character, actions and motivations to fit into a haphazard armchair diagnosis, which was only made to project onto his character, then yes, I would agree with you. But most of the people doing these things are 15 year olds, who, frankly, grow out of it. If being kind of cringe online as a teenager is a crime, especially if it leads to more people actually getting into classic literature on a higher level when they do mature, then I just can’t get behind that. And, for the record, generally when these ideas do come from adults, a lot of those posts tend to be jokes? A person is allowed to make silly comments on the internet without it negating their actual nuanced understanding of the text, but I digress.

On its own, Frankenstein’s lack of agency is a core part of the text, and key to MWS’ presentation of her own womanhood through his character. Failure to acknowledge that for exclusively completely ridiculous pop-feminism Buzzfeed ‘hate all men’ ideas of MWS as an individual is only completely ironic, as you can’t complain about people being anachronistic about a 19th century novel to better relate to it and then only turn around and do the exact same thing in a different direction. You mention the 1831 text, and I can tell you’re implying that same old tired “PBS was a controlling misogynist and only after his death was she truly free to write!!” take which is frankly utter bullshit with no grounding that I can find. MWS adored her husband, and, although undoubtedly immensely talented and a total genius, was not a ‘professional’ writer in the way that PBS, who had been an accomplished poet for many years by the time she began writing her first novel, was. She was glad of his edits and his help. The 1831 text of Frankenstein was not a bold, daring, never-seen-before feminist take on the original text, it was a watered down, censored version of the novel where the vast majority of progressive, controversial and political themes were dashed.

I agree that Tumblr has an issue with refusing to properly engage with or interrogate the actions of their delegated tumblr sexymen, and there is misogyny present in this undoubtedly. I do also think that this is an issue with Frankenstein’s character by some people. However, just because a flawed framework on how to approach a character is applied to many characters and wrong results are taken from it, does not inherently mean that each character treated this way are equally mischaracterised in the exact same way.

Whether you like it or not, Frankenstein’s character is intentionally feminised, and his lack of agency is vital to the plot. He, for all intents and purposes, takes on the role of the gothic heroine, one key example being his inability to have any real power or say due to his psychological fragility, he is deemed ‘hysterical’ and stripped of any credibility —

The gates were open; and I hastened to my father’s house. My first thought was to discover what I knew of the murderer, and cause instant pursuit to be made. But I paused when I reflected on the story that I had to tell. A being whom I myself had formed, and endued with life, had met me at midnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain. I remembered also the nervous fever with which I had been seized just at the time that I dated my creation, and which would give an air of delirium to a tale otherwise so utterly improbable. I well knew that if any other had communicated such a relation to me, I should have looked upon it as the ravings of insanity.

I think people are uncomfortable with this idea primarily because they can not conceive of a character or person of the male sex feeling this way, and this is a threatening idea to them. A character born male could never be truly passive, it can only be weaponised incompetence, power is inherently given to every member of the male sex and any person suffering in this manner can only be pretending. But this a silly idea. Patriarchal oppression is not only something that effects people born of the female sex, and it will equally crash down upon those who are incapable of upholding it. Especially given the sci-fi setting which lends MWS the ability to thrust Frankenstein into a distinctly female biological experience in the creation and birth of The Being and it’s consequences, throughout the novel, Victor is equally a victim of this oppression as someone the female sex might be, and that, also, does not negate the responsibilities that he does have. This abject aggression to the notion of a passive Victor Frankenstein is a distinctly TERF-ish take. Women are beautiful divine souls who can do no wrong ever, and every person born male is satan on earth. MWS being a proto-feminist does not mean that she would have been JK Rowling’s number one Twitter follower, come on now people.

Regardless, given these biases torn out of the way, people love to take this extract as an example of Victor’s ‘selfishness’, but this is frankly a ridiculous idea which makes so little sense considering how much pain it causes him and how determined he previously was before having the revelation that he would not be believed — an idea confirmed at the end of the novel.

I trembled with excess of agitation as I said this; there was a phrenzy in my manner, and something, I doubt not, of that haughty fierceness, which the martyrs of old are said to have possessed. But to a Genevan magistrate, whose mind was occupied by far other ideas than those of devotion and heroism, this elevation of mind had much the appearance of madness. He endeavoured to soothe me as a nurse does a child, and reverted to my tale as the effects of delirium.

How, in good faith, can you hold up Victor’s reasoning surrounding his silence at Justine’s trial as self-absorbed whining when MWS goes out of her way to prove that his assumptions are entirely correct? You may put forward the idea that by this point in the novel he’s degraded from the actions of The Being — and this is true, however practically, his passivity amongst his family members and the nervous fevers he suffers prior to this point indicate the strength of the exact same outcome had this occurred at any other point in the novel.

What then became of me? I know not; I lost sensation, and chains and darkness were the only objects that pressed upon me. Sometimes, indeed, I dreamt that I wandered in flowery meadows and pleasant vales with the friends of my youth; but awoke, and found myself in a dungeon. Melancholy followed, but by degrees I gained a clear conception of my miseries and situation, and was then released from my prison. For they had called me mad; and during many months, as I understood, a solitary cell had been my habitation.

How can you entirely scorn and disregard all ideas of Frankenstein being a remotely mentally ill or ‘sad’, feminised character when he is, quite literally, institutionalised and abandoned as a result of his instability? How can you perceive him only as a completely mentally stable and competent man when so, so much of this novel is dedicated to his madness and anguish that I frankly just don’t have time to cover it all in a blogpost and I’d highly recommend that people just give the damn book a reread?

Frankenstein is a passive agent in the vast majority of his life, with the only exception of his monster. His marriage is not arranged by him, it is arranged by his mother, “I have often heard my mother say, that she was at that time the most beautiful child she had ever seen, and shewed signs even then of a gentle and affectionate disposition. These indications, and a desire to bind as closely as possible the ties of domestic love, determined my mother to consider Elizabeth as my future wife; a design which she never found reason to repent,” and by the point of adulthood, he is so entrenched in the childish, romantic domestic dream in an almost Rankian longing for the strongest source of comfort he has ever known in his mother, through Elizabeth, that he is incapable of choosing anything else, and which strengthens as he is thrust further into madness, “you well know, Victor, that our union had been the favourite plan of your parents ever since our infancy. We were told this when young, and taught to look forward to it as an event that would certainly take place,” and incapable of coming to terms with the sexual reality, “I must perform my engagement, and let the monster depart with his mate, before I allowed myself to enjoy the delight of an union from which I expected peace,” as both creation of Being and Bride arguably serve as a recreation of the perverted, incestuous arranged marriage between Victor and Elizabeth, “she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation,” contrasting with the marriage between Felix and Safie, in which arrangement and wishes of the parents are forsaken for their genuine love and devotion, “The Turk quickly perceived the impression that his daughter had made on the heart of Felix, and endeavoured to secure him more entirely in his interests by the promise of her hand in marriage, so soon as he should be conveyed to a place of safety. Felix was too delicate to accept this offer,” and in which the relationship between Safie and her mother serves as a direct contrast to the relationship between Caroline and Elizabeth. True, Victor’s avoidance may be interrogated as a reasonable flaw depending on your perspective, but none of these are proactive traits. Between Victor and Elizabeth, there is no masterminding oppressor and victim, and there is no wholesome love story. There are two adult children playing a twisted game of house. The marriage, particularly, is key in Victor’s passivity and the radical themes of the novel, as the Shelleys were distinctly opinionated regarding this very topic, and gothic incest is certainly not unexplored ground for MWS (see, ‘Mathilda’, (1959)). This sexual naïveté on Victor’s part following this, also, is a distinctly feminine source of turmoil.

And this isn’t even mentioning the additions to the 1823 text, in which the novel is specifically altered to further feminise Frankenstein’s character,

my voice became broken, my trembling hands almost refused to accomplish their task; I became as timid as a love-sick girl, and alternate tremor and passionate ardour took the place of wholesome sensation and regulated ambition.

Then gazing on the beloved face of Elizabeth, on her graceful form and languid eyes, instead of feeling the exultation of a—lover—a husband—a sudden gush of tears blinded my sight, & as I turned away to hide the involuntary emotion fast drops fell in the wave below. Reason again awoke, and shaking off all unmanly—or more properly all natural thoughts of mischance, I smiled (…)

I heavily disagree with watering down Victor’s character into a blameless children’s cartoon, as Tumblr is apt to do, but the idea that portraying Victor in any sense as someone sad, lacking in agency or feminine is in juxtaposition to the intentions of the original novel is completely ridiculous. He is.

Now, if we want to discuss flaws, then Frankenstein certainly has flaws aplenty. He is heavily classist, he desecrates graves and tortures animals, he does not interrogate his psychological needs which could both be viewed as something he can not help and as a reasonable flaw depending on your perspective, and his creation of the monster was morally wrong. There are plenty of reasons to dislike him without creating a false narrative, and plenty of reasons to like him without creating a false narrative. However, it is virtually impossible to hate Victor and like The Being, as they are essentially mirrors of each-other — if the creature isn’t worse, given the fact that he is not only a mirror of Frankenstein’s true feelings but also his deepest fears and terrors. That is my primary issue with public perception of Frankenstein after the Del Toro film.

Frankenstein is a feminist text, but watering down every complex theme or nuance to turn it into an early 2010s ‘feminist’ Disney-movie-owned-breakdown-esque ‘man or monster’ daddy issues book is just reductive and silly.

And for the record, not only was MWS a feminist, but a queer herself who was friends with multiple crossdressers. So. Y’know. Definitely wouldn’t have been JK Rowling’s number one follower.

gailyinthedark

Age 15: medieval fantasy

Age 38: primary sources for daily life in britain 407-577 ad

Various oc things. aorry havent posted in formillion

#digital art #drawing #oc art #dnd art #my art

byjove

I love when Sir Kay says something mean and nasty and one of the other characters is immediately like ‘Sir Kay! That was a mean and nasty thing to say!’