#WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHARACTERS

[quarter-lif3crisis]

Voltron | 2016

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[charbroiledchicken]

"you're the writer, you control how the story goes" no not really. i wrote the first sentence and then my characters said "WE WILL TAKE IT FROM HERE" and promptly swerved into an electrical fence.

[kensatou]

(✿◕‿◕) die (ꈍ ꒳ ꈍ✿)

[blackkatdraws2]

[⚠️The Amazing Digital Circus SPOILERS] This episode was interesting!

[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.

[allynabean]

group selfie 📸!! im obsessed with the final girls or the four ggggs or whatever they’re calling themselves <3

(plus their weird creaky neighbor. bigb my beloved)

[kwadlayns]

talk to me in french, talk to me in spanish 🍒

[havenshereagain]

DPxDC Idea

Danny working at Wayne Enterprises as some sort of engineer, uses the in-house app for all his blueprints and stuff

He starts getting notes from a coworker in-app, and assumes its this annoying older guy in his department who constantly undermines him because of his age, despite his education and past achievements (i feel like in this AU the Fentons react well to the reveal and they work together on a number of non-lethal ecto inventions that have Danny's name attached to them)

Except one day his coworker mentions never using the app, and Danny suddenly realizes there's only one other TD he could've been arguing with in the notes of the app

[d20outofcontext]

[clownowo]

been replaying the Portal series I think this is where its heading

[egophiliac]

queen of diamonds, upright + reversed 💎

I've redone this like eighty times, I have to just be done with it now and stop staring at all my mistakes oh no 🫠

[dyleeart]

How s4ep11 should have ended

[rollaroundincompliments]

Okay obviously what K did is fucking insane but also a perfect escalation of their "I can fix him" energy from season one and the extreme consequences of that belief

[venduri]

Only you could accomplish such art, Celebrimbor

Assad Zaman as Celebrimbor from JRR Tolkien's The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales

[sea-buns]

i feel insane