#As separate characters

[canisalbus]

✦ Freshly ordained ✦

[robotrebelranch]

Other favorite funny oc thing is making a for fun AU that turns out 2 be more like testing ideas in Canon. Like a virtual machine

[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.

[ruporas]

trigunned the hades or hadesed the trigun (id in alt)

[jakkenpoy]

[freshfrenchtoast]

Kageyama's backstory only being revealed near the very end of the series is really interesting from a meta perspective.

For reference, his chapter is 387 out of 402. That's 96% of the way in.

To contrast, other characters like Tsukishima and Yamaguchi's backstories are shown in Chapters 87-88.

Now, we do get the explanation for his "King of the Court" title in Chapter 6, at the start of the series, but we don't see how he got to that point, or why he started playing volleyball in the first place like Tsukishima's and Yamaguchi's stories show.

It creates this situation where, despite being the deuteragonist, the character our protagonist, Hinata, is practically glued to the entire series, we barely know anything about him.

We don't even know he has a sister until that point whereas other characters' siblings like Natsu, Saeko, Akiteru, Alisa have all made appearances way before then. Even Oikawa's sister, though we don't see her, we at least know she exists because of Takeru.

He's both closed off to us (the audience) as well as the other characters in the series, and this results in them finding him rude or disliking his character in general (see: the "Kageyama is abusive" discourse that somehow keeps popping up even now).

Chapter 387 takes place in 2018 and was published in 2020 so it takes him 6 years of in-universe time and 8 years of irl time to really open up.

And the catalyst for all of this is Hinata fulfilling his promise of beating him.

You see, another thing to note is that, whenever Hinata thinks of Kageyama, he's always looking at him from behind.

His internal image of him is someone who's always up ahead, someone he needs to catch up to, meaning Hinata can only see one side of him, he cannot see all of Kageyama until he catches up and passes him.

Which he finally does here.

In this shot Hinata is finally the one who's looking back at Kageyama. At this moment, Hinata (and by extension the audience) can see him for all he is, can see how he was just a lonely boy who's been waiting for someone to meet him where he is, to keep running alongside him and not quit the race.

Someone he doesn't have to go easy on. Someone who would actually tell him to hurry up instead of slow down for a change.

His someone better.

[artificialgirl]

These things are to me what that pelvic V is to normal people like. I swear to god this design element is too good (realistically functional) (physically attractive) for me not to add abdominal supports like this to nearly every character I make. Than you Ippei Gyōbyu and Naohiro Washio for your service

[words-writ-in-starlight]

listen I expected literally Nothing from the D&D movie okay, like I can't make it clear enough that I expected the most soulless money grab with a good cgi budget imaginable, I went in having already gone through every stage of grief and landed on acceptance and LISTEN

I fucking CRIED during this dumb RPG movie. it wasn't just "not terrible" it was objectively good with a clever plot and compelling characters and sincere emotional beats. this movie loves D&D so fucking much and it NAILS the "a bunch of goobers try to be cool and accidentally discover The Power Of Friendship And Also Great Violence" classic D&D party vibe. their barbarian's last name is fucking Kilgore and my entire family cried in the theater.

I hope they make twelve of these motherfuckers.

[juniemunie]

[Abandoned by the Lightners, his heart became cracked with hatred.]

Hitting a lil' too close to home?

[riovidalupdates]

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

A reminder that Kathryn Hahn and Aubrey Plaza are human beings. Just because they share a safe space to support/be apart of the LGBT community, it does not mean to invade their personal life.

Stalking, publishing their personal information, and suggesting they both need to file divorce from their husbands is beyond disgusting!

As much as I love what we are receiving from them both, it’s equally embarrassing to see the community and those who are in stance with the community, become a form of parasite that fall deep in the hole of parasocial relationships, fetishizing, and losing a form of morals for these people to fit your narrative.

Do NOT try to find the playlist they created. If they decide to share it, it should be on their own time.

Do NOT invade comments of how they need to leave the men because you want them to fuck each other to fit your weird fantasy.

Do NOT belittle them down for not having the physical attributes of other sapphic beings.

Do NOT forget that the entire problem with all fandom(s) create self destruction because people become entirely disgusting when they can’t accept a boundary drawn between them as fans and the actors.

Anyone invading that aspect of privacy is purely pathetic and I hope never earn any bit of success in your career if you think anything that I mentioned is okay.

[canisalbus]

Warm and languorous dogs.

[bobcat-pie]

one time in an rp server i watched someone (vocally) make an asexual character, then one rp later give up and change the character's sexuality because they "couldn't do it" (make a character without a romantic arc)

i have never thought of someone as weak-willed as them in that moment

[critai]

4321

[leminaus]

haiii

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

LUO BINGHE CASUAL SENSHI COSPLAYER

OH, ABSOLUTELY.

(context)

[dp-references]

Named Casper High Students

In Danny's class

Also probably in Danny's class

Not in Danny's class

Pic 1: We all know these people.

Pic 2: Girls names are from Tucker's PDA in Beauty Marked. You can find fandom wiki pages for all of them except for poor Annie who for some reason seems to have no mention.

FANON: Agent F (Brittany)

Boys names have come up in conversations. Nathan has been called both Nathan and Lester. His full name could very well be Nathan Lester regardless of if the two different names were on purpose or they simply forgot he already had a name. (Or you could make them identical twins.)

Pic 3: We all know Jazz. Others are one-off characters who have a name but we see them only once. Spike appears in the Mystery Meat with Jazz:

"Spike, you have to open up to your parents! Be true to yourself and them."

Nate makes an appearance in Attack of the Killer Garage Sale :

"Here's your pizza, Sam."

"Thanks, Nate."

Lyle is a band kid from Splitting Images :

"Hi. I'm Lyle. Wanna help me clean my spit valve?"

This is his instrument