#I'm not tagging the characters

[trashiiplant]

another one of these but rw

[jin-zixun]

Ok I just... Alright so Xue Yang. Takes revenge against the entire Chang Clan, took everything away that Chang Ci'an had because he took Xue Yang's finger, because Xue Yang's own person was all that he had. Xue Yang didn't have any family, so whatever Chang Ci'an had (ie his own family and sect) was equivalent to what Xue Yang lost in his own mind.

Xue Yang is actually the same as Nie Huaisang. Or rather, Nie Huaisang is the same as Xue Yang. Nie Huaisang takes revenge on Jin Guangyao in the same way because Jin Guangyao took away Nie Mingjue and Nie Mingjue was all that he had (whether that's true or not or if he's actually justified in thinking that... Not the point) Remembering that Nie Huaisang was only a half-brother though and the brothers lost their father young... I think to Nie Huaisang it would be easy to see Nie Mingjue as all he had.

But I also think, post-canon, he'd have to go through realizing he actually had a lot more to lose. Because the difference between him and Xue Yang is mostly one of circumstances, and the position of higher privilege tends to come with a certain level of ignorance...

But I think there's something to it, that through his revenge schemes Nie Huaisang doesn't become Jin Guangyao, a person Nie Mingjue had a complicated relationship with and couldn't understand and ultimately wanted dead because he wouldn't follow Nie Mingjue's path for him and do what Nie Mingjue told him was righteous. He becomes Xue Yang, the person Nie Mingjue unequivocally wanted dead for his crimes (equivalent to the crimes Nie Huaisang commits) to the point where he was willing to turn on his sworn brother for not killing him extrajudicially against his father's orders.

And also, maybe without even realizing it, Xue Yang went from being completely on his own to being considered someone who belonged to Jin Guangyao enough to be worth killing in revenge. And that's kind of tragically beautiful tbh.

[duin-i-guess]

I made a tier list of how i think aphmau characters would react and turn down your confession

[lu-is-not-ok]

Realised I never posted this, so I decided to rectify that fact and spread my Poly-bus agenda.

[krypthed]

uhh yeah uh yeah uh uh yeah. yeah

[loveletterworm]

It is done (enough)!

I would hype it up more but this is really really simple. It randomly generates a set of symbols, colors, and a word, and then the expected thing to do with those is you draw some sort of character based off the result you get. So it's just an art challenge toy thingy.

There are also some practical features like you can lock parts of the result in place to rerandomize the rest, or hide parts of the generation you don't care about (like if you want to pick your own colors or hate the words being there)

You can try it out over on itch.io!

It should run in browser, but there's also a downloadable version for Windows if you want to use it offline. (No mac/linux versions for now, because I don't have appropriate computers to test those on and I...don't want to deal with mac's developer accounts or whatever their problem is...)

Here's something I made from one of the results I got for the sake of example:

(It's a bit of a rushed drawing sorry I just wanted to get the actual generator out there)

I hope everyone has fun with it :]

[kottkrig]

People liking your personal OCs is still such a crazy feeling, I've been doing this for years and ppl asking about them still fills my entire heart with warmth and idk how to handle it

You enjoy this fictional guy I made up for fun?? Whose only content is random artwork or writing made by me and a handful of other artists at most? They have no show/book/game with a large fandom, it's just one person with an art blog?? I love u

[strawbunnydoesart]

✨💫Quick WIP of @kianamaiart 's lil magical girl character! I literally love her design sm (her monotone and "I'm done with life" expressions are my favorite shdgjshaksjsj) ⭐️

It's a bit messy and I need to work on the contrast more so it's easier to read,, but I think the overall composition and colors are nice :)) I might work on it a bit more but ehhhhh what if I said I don't wanna

[aphel1on]

i have such a love for characters who descend into madness or villainy out of deep, deep empathy. characters who fundamentally cannot cope with the cruel realities they find themselves in and blow up about it in spectacular fashion. fallen angel type characters with tears of outrage in their eyes. characters who break before they bend, and break so badly they splatter blood all over their noble ideals. every variation on it gets me so good

[littledragonx777]

So I was watching David Baron play security breach with randomized missions and I got to thinking. Playing the game like this requires a lot of deloading the map and time travel. I started to wonder what aspects the characters would have to pull this off and I came to the conclusion that Freddy is a void player (jumping while getting into Freddy causes the map to deload.) and Gregory is a time player. (You can only pick up items to move time outside of Freddy.) Moon hates it if you time travel and will hunt you through the timeline if you do. So he's also a time player. Now is sun and therefore eclipse also a time player like moon or do they have a different aspect? If they have a different aspect it would have to be something that works with time so maybe space?

Also what are their classes? Would Gregory be a bard? Because he's being a menace and messing with the timeline for funsies thus mocking the timeline? Yeah thinking about it like that he seems like a bard of time.

[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.

[bllmak]

house of cards

[duin-i-guess]

If anyone is curious, this is how a randomized Aphmau danganronpa went,

this is probably obvious but originally Sasha was the protag and Dante was the support, but both died so I spun the wheel and got Garroth as the new protag and Lucinda as the new Support.

[ceceru]

Costume partyyyyyyyy!

[bixels]

Learning that fans hated Applejack and called her "boring" is crazyyy to me because I genuinely, unironically believe AJ's the most complex character in the main six.

Backstory-wise, she was born into a family of famers/blue collar workers who helped found the town she lives in. She grew up a habitual liar until she had the bad habit traumatized outta her. She lost both her parents and was orphaned at a young age, having to step up as her baby sister's mother figure. She's the only person in the main gang who's experienced this level of loss and grief (A Royal Problem reveals that AJ dreams about memories of being held by her parents as a baby). She moved to Manhattan to live with her wealthy family members, only to realize she'll never fit in or be accepted, even amongst her own family. The earlier seasons imply she and her family had money problems too (In The Ticket Master, AJ wants to go to the gala to earn money to buy new farm equipment and afford hip surgery for her grandma).

Personality-wise, she's a total people-pleaser/steamroller (with an occasional savior complex) who places her self worth on her independence and usefulness for other people, causing her to become a complete workaholic. In Applebuck Season, AJ stops taking care of herself because of her obsessive responsibilities for others and becomes completely dysfunctional. In Apple Family Reunion, AJ has a tearful breakdown because in she thinks she dishonored her family and tarnished her reputation as a potential leader –– an expectation and anxiety that's directly tied to her deceased parents, as shown in the episode's ending scene. In The Last Roundup, AJ abandons her family and friends out of shame because believes she failed them by not earning 1st place in a rodeo competition. She completely spirals emotionally when she isn't able to fulfill her duties toward others. Her need to be the best manifests in intense pride and competitiveness when others challenge her. And when her pride's broken, she cowers and physically hides herself.

Moreover, it's strongly implied that AJ has a deep-seated anger. The comics explore her ranting outbursts more. EQG also obviously has AJ yelling at and insulting Rarity in a jealous fit just to hurt her feelings (with a line that I could write a whole dissection on). And I'm certain I read in a post somewhere that in a Gameloft event, AJ's negative traits are listed as anger.

Subtextually, a lot of these flaws and anxieties can be (retroactively) linked to her parents' death, forcing her to grow up too quickly to become the adult/caregiver of the family (especially after her big brother becomes semiverbal). Notice how throughout the series, she's constantly acting as the "mom friend" of the group (despite everything, she manages to be the most emotionally mature of the bunch). Notice how AJ'll switch to a quieter, calmer tone when her friends are panicking and use soothing prompts and questions to talk them through their emotions/problems; something she'd definitely pick up while raising a child. Same with her stoicism and reluctance at crying or releasing emotions (something Pinkie explicitly points out). She also had a childhood relationship with Rara (which, if you were to give a queer reading, could easy be interpreted as her first 'aha' crush), who eventually left her life. (Interestingly enough, AJ also has an angry outburst with Rara for the same exact reasons as with EQG Rarity; jealous, upset that someone else is using and changing her). It's not hard to imagine an AJ with separation anxiety stemming from her mother and childhood friend/crush leaving. I'm also not above reading into AJ's relationship with her little sister (Y'all ever think about how AB never got to know her parents, even though she shares her father's colors and her mother's curly hair?).

AJ's stubbornness is a symptom of growing up too quickly as well. Who else to play with your baby sister when your brother goes nonverbal (not to discount Big Mac's role in raising AB)? Who else to wake up in the middle of the night to care for your crying baby sister when your grandma needs her rest? When you need to be 100% all the time for your family, you tend to become hard-stuck with a sense of moral superiority. You know what's best because you have to be your best because if you're aren't your best, then everything'll inevitably fall apart and it'll be your fault. And if you don't know what's best –– if you've been wrong the whole time –– that means you haven't been your best, which means you've failed the people who rely on you, which means you can't fulfill your role in the family/society, which makes you worthless . We've seen time and time again how this compulsive need to be right for the sake of others becomes self-destructive (Apple Family Reunion, Sound of Silence, all competitions against RD). We've seen in The Last Roundup how, when no longer at her best, AJ would rather remove herself from her community than confront them because she no longer feels of use to them.

But I guess it is kinda weird that AJ has "masculine" traits and isn't interested in men at all. It's totally justified that an aggressively straight, misogynistic male fandom would characterize her as a "boring background character." /s

At the time of writing this, it's 4:46AM.

[posalis]

"You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself." Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale