#and tbh tbh. most persona characters they say i strongly disagree with

[fellhellion]

idk if you’ve played Persona 5 but one character that gets a lot of hate online is Yuki Mishima? But I’ve never understood it bc like, he’s just a chronically online teenage boy. That’s like, the target audience for the Persona series. Yeah he’s cringe and a fanboy for Joker and kinda pathetic and accidentally offends his friend with his attempts to socialize but like. Wasn’t that most guys and gals at his age?

Does it hurt to have your past reflected back at you? Is it easier to deny his humanity than extend a hand of sympathy?

(This is the same fandom that forgave the likes of Akechi and Adachi, I guess being cringe is a bigger sin than being evil?)

hi hello i am so sorry i am so late replying to this fkjdhjf

i think, at least imo, when it comes to character hate of really any variety, it comes down to what characteristics you find aggravating or repulsive, and why you find them so.

That there are people who think someone palpably wanting to be your friend/your approval is the worst sin and the most cringe action possible, is imo at least kind of a silly line imo to draw on your character love -> hatred scale, and one I think can be a result of just. not offering compassion to characteristics that u can find personally annoying, sure.

i wouldn't even personally characterise mishima as pathetic tbh; i think there elements to his behaviour that have deep roots in trauma as well an inexperience with social skills, that influences a lot of the behaviour that gets characterised as 'cringe'. there are elements to his behaviour tho (like personal boundary pushing w joker and futaba) which i think are deeply inappropriate, but that's the label I'd apply to them.

and i understand the perspective of those who are extremely offput and uncomfortable with those elememts in particular.

w really any character, my view is that i try to be open to understanding, if not always agreeing, of why people have different views to me on what they find sympathetic or interesting about these characters, unless i have a fundemental disagreement about the why of their sympathy/lack of (e.g. for mishima, i don't personally think the fact of someone desperately wanting to be your friend and not sensing u just don't. feel as strongly abt it, is something that warrants hating that character, it's just a slightly awkward fact of that relationship that gives it texture and complexity)

akechi and adachi are interesting examples in that regard because regarding akechi, he saw at least in the western fandom a huge swing in opinion from vanilla -> royal, and it wasn't until royal that the fandom appeared to transition from divisive love and hate camps to just. overall a majority of the fandom enjoying his character. this was imo because the nature of goro's actions as essentially a hitman are, funnily enough, easier to abstract as elements of a story both due to the way in which these actions came about in the first place (he 'approached' shido as a literal child + the overhanging threat of death for non compliance) and the way in which. no one irl has suffered a physic murder yknow? fdkfhj

re adachi, honestly it's not a fandom perspective i overall understand myself (while I don't think people have 'forgiven' him per se, i think he's largely considered a joke and that arguably sands off discussion of what motivates his actions), my view is that it's honestly likely come from the sheer amount of time the majority of persona fans have had to sit with the story of 4. so what retains the largest amounts of staying power are jokes at adachi's expense, even if imo i do think people underscore the misogyny motivating his actions as much as like. nihilism and callous disregard.

ultimately! all of this to say i like to personally evaulate character hate/dislike on a case by case basis and just. stay away from people w whom i fundementally disagree w.

[sweetfloatapartment]

i dont usually add on to posts but i'm really passionate about all this like. it INFURIATES me that atlus has a record of doing this, where to varying degrees they show how the police are horrible and corrupt and then one of the main characters is like UwU i'll be a cop!!! it happens in persona 4 with chie and in p2EP with tatsuya (to a degree) as well as makoto in persona 5. it drives me insane because not only is it out of character, it just. undoes either 1. character growth or 2. the??? message of the story??? the writers can be SUCH cowards. Literally Stop Making Main Characters Bootlickers!!! anyways i have more thoughts on this in the notes ajdjkdjd i have a lot to say. makes me wanna rewrite their ending arcs. i already have in my head, but, yeah.

Atlus: so the cops r terrible and useless, they beat up teenagers, theyre all corrupt and let ppl in power get away with anything, all of the criminals in game are dealt with by a bunch of teenagers bc the police 1. dont care or 2. are incompetent, the justice system is heavily rigged, the one cop character related to a main character died a pointless death in the line of duty and accomplished nothing of note, a rag tag group of teenagers had little to no issue with tracking down a dangerous criminal while the police barely made an effort, multiple characters r shown using the corrupt system for their own benefit, the police literally drug a teenager and force him to sign a confession while threatening him with violence, a character is literally corrupted by the justice system bc its just that bad

Also atlus: well makoto weally wants to be a cop 🥺👉👈 twust us shes gonna fwix the system so its okay for her to be boowicker

[relaxxattack]

ayo! (wait this might be a bit of a jumpscare dishdks i apologize) i’m op of That Post and was wondering what your opinions were on the whole woobification thing? /gen

because it’s a Tiny Bit widespread within the dream apologists to sort of,, overdramatize stuff like l’manberg hurting him. like they’re not a 100% wrong but if you look at it subjectively you can see some sort of bias going into that sort of thing that makes the character’s mistreatment a bit more blatant and intentional which,, it really wasn’t? and there wasn’t That Much of it either. especially on twitter (tumblr is much better about it) people just jump to conclusions it seems and yeah. since you brought it up i was wondering if you wanted to write a bit about it from your perspective!

we’re kinda from different corners of the fandom but i still notice that once you are too attached to a character you start taking certain evidence and giving it more weight than it actually has. there’s a blurry line between “taking away a character’s humanity” and woobification and it’s extremely difficult to find a balance when said character shows pretty much nothing of his emotional life (e. g. putting up the intimidating villain act in front of only c!tommy, pretty much everything he does making rational sense with no emotional subtext) and a lot of the fandom instantly jumps to one side or the other while it’s like.

we don’t know by far enough to say “he’s traumatized” or “he isn’t traumatized” or “he was villainized and it hurt him” or “l’manberg didn’t affect him at all”

as a very analytical person people constantly jumping to conclusions grinds my gears, but that’s about it for my own view of the situation - sorry for the rambling.

in general i agree with you that both dehumanization and woobification is Bad and i really hope getting Actual Context sorts this out (e. g. him saying he was betrayed by his friends doesn’t mean it wasn’t partially his fault or that they were allowed to leave him, but it also shows that he did care about that happening. mentioning the cat doesn’t mean anything about what happened to c!tommy but it also shows that he did care about what happened to it. it’s just always interesting to get more information about the way he feels because he usually does a very good job at hiding it.) because man.

it’s like being stuck between a rock and a hard place, especially if you also are attached to the character and are expected to automatically agree with everything the people on “your side” say. it just ends up with everyone being mad and the character being mischaracterised overall.

oh wow hello! i didnt expect the op of the post to find me you’re right lol

and yes i agree! you seem to have a lot of very good thoughts tbh.

and by woobification, i mean exactly what you’ve already pointed out— the people who will say l’manberg purposely villainized dream, the people who will say wilbur faked his mental illness to manipulate dream, the people who are pretty much always talking about how badly dream was treated by people who were acting only fairly for themselves, usually.

for example people who act like dream was a perfect peacemaker before tommy showed up, or that tommy started most conflict. these are just actual lies that are told by c!dream himself to justify his abuse of tommy, and people fall for them incredibly easily because not a lot of people watched early dsmp and know that truthfully it was chaotic even then, and that dream was chaotic too. not to mention wilbur soot tried very hard to secede peacefully with l’manberg and dream jumped directly into war with no warning. and then people say he was forced into their war when, no, he started it.

theres also people who will say like, dream and sapnap for example are such good friends. i’m sure they cared for each other, but dream on multiple occasions has done horrible things to sapnap with no regard for his feelings (like leading fundy to sapnaps pets during the petwar, leading tommy to sapnaps pets during the other petwar and encouraging him to kill them, handing mars over to tommy to use as leverage against sapnap, etc). george he’s been less awful too but he certainly spoke over him and ignored his feelings enough that george felt hurt. he had places in his hall of attachments for beckerson and mars. george and sapnap were right to walk away from being treated like that.

there’s also what you just said here — “dream puts on a villain persona for tommy”— but honestly he acts like that around quite a few people (example: eret) and it’s usually when he’s revealing crucial info, which leads me and many others to believe that ‘persona’ is actually a more truthful version of him.

there’s the fact that he really isn’t safe for people to be around (or at least he wasn't before the prison) because he was planning to come up with ways to control every single person by stealing and threatening their attachments (some of which were not items but were living animals, or a real breathing person).

and then people will say dream was doing exile to enforce rules, or to keep the peace— when it’s very clear in canon it was a deliberate plan to get tommy on his own and into the prison. (from the way he was framing tommy for multiple crimes, and having sam set up the prison, and kidnapping tommy instead of correctly exiling him, all at the same time).

not even going into how he wants to kill and revive people for fun or make tommy immortal.

it’s just— ignoring all these actual facts and saying “oh he misses his friends, let’s get him some friends now” reminds me of like. when people would put flower crowns on pictures of serial killers. and then, there’s hardly anyone on the server who wasn’t subject to dream’s plans, so there’s absolutely no one i would be okay with him interacting with.

just remembered about the torture thing, and wow i still hate it so much. it’s someone’s sick revenge fantasy twisted into a way to get a manipulative villain sympathy, and it’s just gross to me on every account. i do think dream is traumatized-- just not by l’manberg, which was a conflict he started on his own terms. i would think l’manberg did affect him, because he was scared of losing control.

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again— my ideal ending for dream would be for him to be sent far away from dsmp to an island full of therapy animals and super strong therapists who have never met him before. and for him to get a shit ton of therapy until he becomes a halfway normal person. and then eventually he could get integrated into society again; but a different one with new people. (although maybe dteam + bbh + puffy can visit him, they might still like him.)

none of the people on the server (who have all been affected by dream) should be burdened with befriending him or rehabilitating him— look how that turned out with sam! sam had a personal grudge towards dream and it ended with the poor dude being tortured every day; and sam himself falling into corruption and literally cutting off his boyfriends arm. like we can all see thats fucking awful right?

no one who was affected by dream should have to deal with him ever again. and contrary to popular belief, that includes a LOT more people then just tommy. dream isn’t just tommy’s antagonist, hes almost everybody’s.

the only person on the server who might also be able to stand to help dream is techno, and that’s from sheer lack of ability to give a shit. but techno is probably THE furthest thing from a good therapist there is lol, and dream needs better then that.

this kind of just ended up being a rant about my thoughts on c!dream, so im so sorry op. especially since it was probably negative for you. i hope you’re doing very well.

i guess in the end it’s true what you said— people will highlight or ignore things based on what characters they like, and it’s especially easy to do in this fandom, where half the content doesn’t even get watched and then we become a big echo chamber of half-truths.

considering dream has hurt so many of the characters i care about, i almost can’t understand how he could be someone’s favorite or comfort character— but he is nonetheless, and it would be unfair of me to be rude about that.

essentially it just bothers me to see someone who was a perpetrator of accurately portrayed abuse and manipulation (using both those words in their actual definitions, not just as random buzzwords lol) being given the flower crown edit effect. especially since he’s hurt the characters i care about a lot.

ANYWAY all of that being said (this got LONG im so sorry op) i am so so excited to get dream’s pov, because although i disagree with his actions strongly i actually find dream’s character very interesting and cool, and watching his POV is going to insanely fun. i cannot wait to see what theories get confirmed or denied

ALSO incase it wasn’t clear this is all /nm at you! you seem lovely and smart, and neither of us can help what characters we get attached to :]

[writsgrimmyblog]

RPF is a different thing to most fandoms tbh. It IS weird to write and read fiction about real people and as you're using them for your fandom pusuits they can give whatever opinion they feel like giving IMO. And i LIKE rpf .

Thanks for this anon. I think we differ in that I don’t think it’s weird to read and write fanfiction about real people, it’s something people have been doing for centuries and all kinds of classic works of literature and well-known authors have a past engaging with RPF and transformative works in general in some form for a very long time. I’d be grateful for some thoughts about why exactly it’s so weird and how these celebrities are being used, a word which carries negative connotations and makes certain assumptions about self-gratification or drivers behind writing fanfiction? People are inspired to tell stories and create characters based off real people all the time, in the world of original fiction as well as fanfiction. Writers often draw on conversations, traits in individuals they find compelling and their own subjective experiences.

I think there’s a blurring of the line between fact and fiction which creates problems with RPF and see this coming from within fan communities as well as outside of them. The ‘real people’ we tell the stories about are characters created from a public persona the celebrities put out there and then those people (and their public personas) get placed in fictional settings. The characters are ultimately fictional ones, inspired by those real people and an awful lot of RPF involves totally alternate universes, High School AUs, fandom crossovers, zombie apocalypses and countless other examples. At this point, these people that feature in fan driven stories are to all intents and purposes completely fictional characters. I might write a lot of fanfic about Grimmy but I am perfectly aware the ‘Grimmy’ I write is fictional, constructed from bits of public knowledge and my own head canons and fictional settings. I do not know, and I’m not entitled to know, anything about him other than what he chooses to put out there, just because he inspires me to write fic. When fanfic is kept within fandom community spaces and doesn’t strain into entitlement, harassment and forcing fictional head canons onto celebrities themselves, I see little problem with it. I firmly believe we have no right to invade the privacy of these celebrities, to invade their personal space or to assume on any level that we are ‘owed’ something from them. 

I do, however, feel protective of our spaces. The fandom communities we operate in and the works produced within them. I feel both qualified and entitled to opine on those spaces and the way media, celebrity and pop culture interacts with those spaces, which is what my post was ultimately about. I completely agree celebrities can say whatever they like about fandom, but I am also completely within my rights to say if I disagree with their conclusions. Celebrity commentary on fanfic all too often strays into ‘protect the kids from moral harm’ observations or the insinuation that fandom endeavours are vacuous and silly, much in the same way the mythical fangirl gets viewed and absent obvious instances of invasion of space and boundary crossing, I feel very strongly about defending the fangirl. There’s a tendency to misunderstand or stereotype the fandom demographic which gets trotted out in the media and poorly researched pieces which then perpetuate that cycle and make people in fan communities feel less ‘safe’ in a space which should be creatively open - it’s our space and our community and we have a responsibility to interrogate and shape it in a way which is comfortable for people within it.