#I usually don't like

[mzminola]

Possibly because other Teen Wolf actors have wound up playing DC characters, brain has decided to picture Tyler Posey when imagining a live action Nightwing and you know what that works pretty dang good.

Tyler Posey knows how to play a charismatic leader with a sunshine smile and sometimes goofy sense of humor who can be absolutely terrifying in defense of loved ones so yes. Good job brain.

[captainjonnitkessler]

Sometimes I wish we would start calling out the performative radicalism on this site for the poser bullshit it is. "Remember, it's always morally correct to kill a cop!" "Don't forget to firebomb your local government office!" "Wow, it sure would be a shame if these instructions on how to make a molotov cocktail got spread around!"

Okay. But you're not killing cops or firebombing government offices. You are posting on a dying microblogging website to a carefully-curated echo chamber that has radicalized itself into thinking that taking the absolute most extreme position on any subject is praxis but that anyone discussing the most practical way to effect actual change is your sworn enemy. You do not have the street cred OR the activist cred to be talking about killing cops, babe.

[calicorobin]

beanbag chair psychology

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[bixels]

me too, luna.

[bberry005]

absolutely losing it at the polar opposite perspective we get on darth vader during rebels. kanan and ezra encounter him and there's a dramatic lead up to the cameo and they're like "who the FUCK is that???". they fight him and lose terribly. at least until they drop several tons of heavy machinery on him. but then he survives! and then they're like "if that won't kill him what can?!" "not us. let's go!". there's no drama, no extremely emotional dialogue, no agony over the man he used to be and the monster he became. just "hey what is that? a SITH LORD? that sounds like 1-800-NOT OUR PROBLEM!!!" and then they go back to doing whatever they normally do

[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.

[hinamie]

I'll give them shelter like you've done for me

[factual-fantasy]

I found this drawing prompt a few days/weeks ago and it was the PERFECT prompt for my Welcome Home AU XDDD It captured my versions of the neighbors perfectly!

I also poured a lot of effort into the artwork this time around. I think it paid off!! :))) So colorfulllll 💞💞💞

[setsunas-genshin-edits]

Oh noo 😐 my hand slipped

[cardo-de-comer]

smiling friends! ...well at least one of them is smiling

also some process

[synoicus]

In this case, I'll make my own justice

[toxxtt]

playing around with some historical french fashions on furina (+ neuvi).. I think she should always get big silly hats

18th+19th century mens fashion is one of my fav fav fav things is ever so this was fun 🫡 love being fashion history neurodivergent

[lucabyte]

On autonomy, and what it means to be Obliged to Help.

Bonus:

[ktnasr]

TW: Blood

[merrigel]

I want it back = I drag its dead weight forward