#I suck at tagging people.

[roninkairi]

You can only reblog this today.*

*PLEASE READ THE TAGS

[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.

[sandflakedraws]

re : how each brother reacts learning that they can't go back

you'll have to pry the "all the Brozone Bros knew what happened at the tree" headcanon outta my cold, dead dead dead hands.

[royalarchivist]

Slimecicle: Whoever said "yaoi is dead" dude, I think you need to put on your freakin'– your bi-focal lenses. Anything's possible.

💗💜💙

[maddisandy]

what do they fill horror podcasts with i swear. its like i start one and i blackout and suddenly its a week later and i've listened to eight hours of episodes every day since then

[kiwinatorwaffles]

the pushback against the discord mobile update shouldn’t be based upon “if you can get used to it” or not. some people might like it. some people might get used to it faster. but a lot of people won’t. and the point of the pushback is that discord keeps thinking they can change this shit and get away with it.

nobody asked for discord to change its color to a brighter blue. remember that? we all got used to it. but that was one of the first instances of the userbase just tolerating a useless change.

later came the dreaded username change. nobody asked for that. in fact, it caused a fuck ton of trouble. remember the markipkier username situation? yeah. but we all just “got used to it.” i don’t hear anyone talking about it anymore. we moved on, even though it really fucking sucked.

now it’s a complete overhaul of the mobile app that removed pretty much everything people liked about discord in the first place. removing the right swipe to see members and pins just made everything clunky and slow. the swipe to reply they replaced it with doesn’t even work all the time. the nice and cozy gray is now colder and darker, which would be fine, but there’s literally a midnight mode that they just released out of beta after 7 years. (edit: i actually used the app for a little more and realized just how fucking hard it was to read anything with the new contrast. it's a genuine accessibility issue. jesus)

they removed the community. want to see which friends are online? fuck you! click the top of the channel that is much slower and cumbersome than just swiping! want to see the funny and/or important messages you pinned? too bad, because we’re cutting off longer messages and hiding links/images that were attached to the message. and also, you can’t see who sent the message in a dm or group chat. also^2, you have to click into the channel and click into ANOTHER tab to even access the pins. fuck you.

regardless of if you like the changes or not, the point of protesting isn’t due to personal preference. it’s that discord keeps thinking they can change this shit that nobody wanted and get away with it. staying complacent will just let them know they can roll out changes and their userbase will still stick around, even if they hate it. which is not true. because users (including my friends and i) and even NITRO USERS are considering jumping ship to alternatives that don’t hate its userbase.

don’t let discord think it’s invincible. send feedback (go to settings and appearance, and there will be a button), even if it’s likely they won’t read it. review them in the app store. if there’s enough genuine feedback that outlines the faults and focuses on the performance and usability of the app, there’s a chance they might change Some things. because we don’t WANT to move and leave all our friends and communities, but a lot of us will have to if the situation gets worse.

the best case scenario is that they let us choose the format we want, but considering that this is discord we’re talking about, i don’t think it will. the least we can do now is to make sure at least some things get changed back for accessibility and convenience.

[abyssal-ilk]

it is very important to me that vivienne does not give a personal fuck about celene if you allow her to be assassinated. she doesn't have any approval change no matter the outcome– she doesn't have any approval change period throughout the entire mission. no matter the outcome of the ball she is emotionally completely unaffected either way, and we know this because of banter between her and cole. there isn't any "hurt" for cole to latch onto, and he admits that it confuses him to vivienne. which makes sense why he would be confused! vivienne had known celene for twenty years at that point!! but the only time we see any sort of feeling between vivienne and celene is vivienne's bitter feelings of being replaced by morrigan and then dorian teasing her a bit when, in the case of celene surviving, vivienne puts on the fake polite game mask and says she was thankful to have a part in saving her.

vivienne has a lot of very deep connections with other people but despite knowing her for twenty years, celene is NOT one of them. and i think about it a lot

[tiredyke]

every time queer discourse surges on this site everyone is so quick to jump to “it was actually the evil lesbians who divided us” because y’all heard the term “political lesbian” and never bothered to figure out what that meant

[pigswithwings]

but genuinely if you default to saying that random people and things have psychosis as an insult. you gotta change that. you have to think about why you say that. "this is psychotic" stop that shit. "these people are psychopaths" stop it. stop it what the hell. come on. real people have psychosis you think they aren't already associated with negative things? you think that helps anyone?

[amelia-yap]

through the heart!

[chernychnyi]

reposting some PH favorites

[creativitysloyalservant]

i have decided to break my lack of original posting on this blog to bring you my Thoughts on Rot in Paradise. because i played it as soon as i got up this morning and i have scoured for some opinions after finishing it, and now i have my own!!

(and also i posted this on twitter but twitter has such a Shit wordcount that i'm also posting my things here with More Detail)

so! spoilers under the cut, please go and play the game if you haven't. it takes literally an hour (it only took nearly 2 hours for me because i like voice acting by myself and exploring every nook and cranny) and it's also free. so maybe come back into the tag once you're done.

okay, so i noticed quite a number of people being confused and disappointed on the lack of an explanation for the monster. it's brought up in the story as the central thing driving the plot, but it's never explained on what "she" is, why she's compelling people to eat a ton of fish-related food or hell, metal, and why this doesn't impact June at all.

but you know what I think?

i think that that's the point. the focus of rot in paradise isn't supposed to be on the monster.

yeah, it's the thing that pushes the plot along besides June and the gang going on vacation in this island. it's what's causing that uneasiness from the moment that guy grabs June's arm at the drinks, to the sheer unnerving feeling of witnessing people going to the ocean to get Raptured basically. i know i personally felt a chill when i saw that one dude literally eating chains and the other hauling an anchor, as if they're trying to make themselves heavier so they get taken by whatever She is.

but that's not the main point! the main conflict is about June and her friends.

as people have pointed out, this game is about toxic friendships and relationships! it's foreshadowed in the conversation that June has with the gang about her cousin (which i will also get into), and it carries it through the way her friends are horribly warped by this ocean Creature. June goes on a silly little vacation trip with her friends only for them to become so so different from themselves that they lash out at her and even hit her in McCoy's case.

but she still sticks it out with them. through the whole game, even despite their verbal abuse, despite being slapped, despite them being people that she can hardly recognise. she stays with them for the whole game, up until the point where you are given the two options at the very end. and she could still stay with them.

because they're still her friends. she cares about them even if they still hurt her. from the way June still tells Carmen to tell June if she needs anything after Carmen literally tells her to shut up and leave, the way June worries about Vonnie eating seafood even though she continues to stuff herself despite being implied to either hate or make an active choice to not eat seafood, to the way June still trudges out to sea screaming for McCoy to come back to the shore as he wades further in even after he slapped her until her nose bled.

it mirrors the conversation about her cousin, the reason for why June was looking forward to the vacation. that while she did comfort her cousin through all of it, June clearly says that "they were dickheads, and she should have ditched them a long time ago".

but it's funny, isn't it? that June, an outsider to her cousin's friend group, easily sees the pain that her cousin's friends are causing her, and immediately calls it as it is. that her cousin should have left the second they hurt her.

and yet now, when her friends hurt her, even though this was a quick and sudden change that happened in a span of three days, June still sticks around. her friends are dickheads right now, and we can see that in the way they interact with June, but she still stays.

because they're her friends. and how could she just leave them like this if it's something that's causing them to be this way?

so no, i don't think the monster is supposed to be the main picture. we don't need to know what it looks like, or why it needs to do this to the islanders, or how it's even doing it in the first place. it adds to the scariness of the game, as per the Spooktober Game Jam, sure, but that's not the point. might be a bit disappointing to some, but that's not the point.

the point is about June, and the choice that she needs to make at the end of the game.

it's a choice on whether she chooses to be pulled deeper into the tides and be with the friends who hurt her and will continue to hurt her in this way,

or to leave them to their fates, whether deserved or not, and resurface to a world where she's alone without her friends.

and even though the first choice hurts much more in the long run, doesn't the second hurt even more in the moment? knowing that you're alone at the end of all of this?

even if it is the right choice, i'm sure the pain must be unbearable in the moment.

[magic-worms]

quick medic drawing :)

[mossy-aro]

i hate to be a Downer but no i don’t think making the tenth generic post abt how ‘true love’ is and always will be the most powerful force in the universe and that nothing else compares gives you a personality actually. sorry.

[twitchyglitchy]

What do I have to do to get out of here? Who do I have to beg on my knees to so I can leave?

Get me out of my house

P@yPal: twitchyjayson

Current Goal: $55/$800

[laufire]

jason's lazarus pit was golden jason's lazarus pit was golden jasonslazaruspitwasgolden jason's lazarus pit was golden JASON'S LAZARUS PIT WAS GOLDEN

AND PIT MADNESS IS *NOTHING*