#the posts suck to look at

[todostoast]

moment of silence rn for everybody who has mommy issues

[crustaceousfaggot]

No nuance allowed. Put your nuance in the tags, I just want a yes or no answer

[tossawary]

This is petty fandom salt, BUT... I've been chewing on this phenomenon that I've been calling "Fandom's Darling". It is related to things like "Author's Darling" and "Mary Sue / Gary Stu" and "Protagonist Halo" and all that jazz, where one character gains a peculiar narrative weight in a story.

"Author's Darling" is when a writer has a favorite character, and the world and all other characters sort of get... warped to put the Darling in the spotlight. It's most noticeable in TV shows with multiple writers, when a character you personally like suddenly has their previous characterization destroyed to make another character look good somehow. Every other character might become weirdly incompetent. The Darling's feelings are treated as The Most Important Feelings in any given situation. The logic of the fictional world seems broken past suspension of disbelief in order to validate this one character's beliefs or skillset or some other fantasy. And so on.

"Fandom's Darling" is what I've been calling the pattern where a fandom essentially crowns a New Protagonist for their fanfiction stories (it's often a side character rather than the original protagonist, but it can also happen to protagonists). This character becomes the self-insert for all sorts of indulgent fantasies, gaining special powers or backstories, and/or becoming the focus of extreme whump, and/or hooking up with all the various hotties, starring in all sorts of tropey AUs, and so on. They're not always an obvious Mary Sue version of themselves, but the character's original personality and interpersonal relationships tend to get warped or dropped completely, and other characters tend to become a little flat around them. I call it "Fandom's Darling" because it's not just one self-indulgent fantasy fic (you do you! Have fun!) with characterization choices that I don't vibe with (I have neither the time nor the desire nor the authority to police anything, I am just venting), but rather a prolific mini-fandom of sorts revolving around this empty doll / fanon version of the chosen vessel character, so it becomes a little unavoidable.

I am salty about this (mildly frustrated) (imagine a soft sigh of disappointment before I just go do something else) because you are FUCKED if you actually liked the canonical version of this character and their interpersonal relationships. It's almost worse than liking an obscure character that no one cares about. There's about a thousand fics starring your fave, but maybe only about a dozen of them are actually rooted in any kind of recognisable canon.

[fanaticalthings]

just another night in gotham

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[starwarjotta]

looking for someone on Tatooine

[adaume]

👔 Suit picking!

[upon-the-snow]

early mornings after nightmares

[umblrspectrum]

do you ever like wanna make something cool but you dont know how so you just sit around like a moron for 5 hours straight pretending you know how

me neither

on a more serious note i know ad astra as a whole isnt over but i still want to thank daybreaker for their fics. what friends are for was the very first md fic i ever stumbled upon when trying out ao3 for the first time, and prior to joining the server i was checking it near daily for uploads. god knows if i'd be as deep in ao3 as i am now if it werent for this story and convenient timing. Thanks for the story.

[nhyhu]

INTRODUCING...

HOTGUY AND CUTEGUY!!!

[eclecticwordblender]

yes we need to un-condition ourselves about the obsession with anti-ageing but the quickest way for you to retain your youthful glow is to stay as far away from males and have as little contact as possible with them.

[sqrkyclean]

beach ball

[amphibianaday]

day 1765

[fence-time]

🎵chill lofi-cyberpunk beats to eat soup to🎵

[saryasy]

[ambipotentsbestie]

okay my one qualm about the pjo episode today, that I just HAVE to address, is that they did not utilize the ingenious cinematic tool that is The Montage enough.

the lotus casino IS A MONTAGE. They are meant to be doing things!!!!! Many things!!!! Playing games and going to water parks and having spa treatments and stuffing their faces!!!! Annabeth plays a sims game!! Percy figures out that they’re stuck!!! Not this they know from the start and get out in twenty minutes business.

like…………. a montage would’ve been perfect, in fact they could’ve kept in the rest of the episode and new stuff they added, it wasn’t even a forty minute episode! Montage would’ve fit PERFECTLY.

thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[izel-scribbles]

@kaynes-bloody-feet i see ur vision

pre-s1 crew

t4t bella and arthur canon

^ i might do an actual drawing with that one

anyways, more vampire au (john in a dress!!! john in a dresss!,!)

@moookar instead of writing an outline i just drew these. yeah

last page ayeeeeee