#back when the entire fandom had a Very Specific Mental Image of bro and even if i'm not a hs anymore

[lesbrarians]

people rbing my hs strider apt layout to tell me that bro sux:

[randomshipperhere]

Some of my favorite Markiplier Ego videos

(That isn’t ADWM, WKM, AHWM, WMW, DAMIEN, or AHWM) and the reasons why in preparation for ISWM countdown. I’m super excited you guys. After being teased for years, It’s almost here!

Kinda hope my wish of hearing Dark sings comes to life even if it’s just him humming.

ISWM Countdown- 7 Days.......

Danger in Fiction | Chapter II & Danger in Fiction: The Host

I am on my knees praying and begging that Mark gets another proper villain role where he interacts with another person in a creepy manner in the same way he did in Chapter 2 because that shit was fucking amazing. Y’all remember the fucking edited gifs people used when he stands up from that chair? Good times, good times. People should seriously make more horror edits of Mark, thirst edits ain’t cutting it for me. The editing, pacing, and acting of the video is incredible! Like shit bro, it still holds up to this day in that VHS horror kind of way.

and The Host video? Good Lord, as short as it is, the creepy nature of the lighting and unnatural movement. Familiar items casting an eerie glow and *chef’s kiss*

Google IRL + 360 video + Google Gets An Upgrade

Boy did he used to be my number 1 ego in 2015... Look I just love the comedy of both Google IRL videos a lot.

“my giant man toy... that came out wrong”

“what can you do?” “kill”

“did you say poo the fishes?”

“I can’t kill you if you keep asking questions!” “why not?” *breaks*

4th wall break looking into the camera, his stupid evil looking face, annoyed grumbling while doing a task, very technically I did the objective. He’s so fucking passive aggressive and I like that. Hey there robot man, I’m free this weekend.

Bing is a fucking himbo and I cherish he dearly. The way Google just flipped him off with such a deadpan face makes me laugh every time. Little Bing is a cute chaotic thing. Gosh.

Van vlogs + Don’t remember +  go back to sleep...

1st POV videos outside of the with Markiplier series. Amazing! Specifically talking about the last two because I remember this shit so clearly.

Don’t remember came out my time zone like early in the fucking morning and I was one of those bitches that was just waiting for a jump scare that never happened but holy shit when Dark talked I was like “okaaaay okay. I see what you’re doing” not really but I was just happy to hear from him again in some form. The fandom knows those two are teasers for Damien but I just really like them because SPOOKY rather than lore significance.

For Don’t remember, do Ctrl+U, Ctrl+F then search: keyword ;)

In the Damien explanation stream he said that go back to sleep was his like idea board on what the aesthetic of Damien was supposed to be and I just had this mental image of Mark creating a private board on his pinterest or something and it just makes me smile like a dork. 

Raspy Hill

This is probably his first time actually doing a complete sketch of sorts with the Darkiplier character and I’m disappointed a lot of Mark ego vids forget to add this when this was in every dark playlist prior to 2017. I just love whenever Mark does villain roles. Also these little skits add so much spice to the video. You can even see old comments saying how they missed Mark doing this. Oh, if you only knew what the future had in store.

relax

It’s not even a moment. This entire vid is a fucking joke but whether you like it or not, it IS canon. For a former *coughdamiencough* and up until now, rather refined gentleman to have this awkward in between phase of being a really crappy edge lord is so comedic. It’s just so much cringier BECAUSE former short appearances like Don’t blink or Don’t move he’s actually still creepy.

This was just deadass Mark taking a piss on an essentially fan character for a milestone video. Like can you imagine?! in Markiplier TV headquarters this HAS to be an unwritten rule of things to never speak about. An interesting thing to note is that the signature makeup is done in this video. And while he doesn’t have the suit, he did wear a white tie in this. It’s like… a merge of fan interpretation of the time with his own in the mix.

Don’t Play This Game

Heaven for fucking bid me from laughing so much. Once again Dark is just our beloved emo. Moments like this and Date are just so underrated and underutilized. If you don’t understand what I’m saying, well… nobody does. Seriously though. It’s a very unrelated video and can be considered non-canon considering how little it brings to the table but the fact of the matter is, he decides to just actively show up in this random short video to say the state of his mind.

Do you WANT someone to understand you? There’s like a few hundred thousand willing volunteers and I’m one of them Dark.

My therapist, Dr. Plier

Worst News Doctor shows how bad he is at his job. Showing and telling unrelated things instead of getting to the point. I still fucking love his dry humor. Especially when he tries to cheer Ryan.

In my therapist, I love how he’s shown to be a slightly better but pretty dorky therapist. Guess he had more than one doctorate agree and is better at this second job. He’s dressed down and looks nice (ahh Mark always wore that fit in 2017 too…) in it. He loves doing dad jokes which is an incredibly loveable gap moe from how he reacts in Worst News Doctor and Markiplier TV. I don’t follow much of the ego fanfics but if you incorporate said dad jokes in your fanfics, I love ya.

I also like how Dr. Iplier just knows random info. Pretty general knowledge, no relation to the session but it does lift your spirits up. He’s also an incredible listener here which is just fascinating. Makes me wonder if he adopts a different personality depending on which doctor profession he’s in. Like as a Doctor he’s just bad fucking news, a surgeon, always frustrated, as a therapist? More calm and collected.

Surgeon Simulator IN REAL LIFE

When the video came out no one could fucking tell if it was Mark or Dr. Iplier acting as Mark or even Dark pretending to be Mark. Fans were divided on that. You can still see old comments where they think it’s Dark. I think we can say it’s just Mark right? right? Favorite thing about this video is Matt’s excitement and Mark slowly getting aggressive and annoyed throughout the video. Red hair was seriously a wild era.

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That’s about it. I am very biased towards certain egos and not ashamed. Among these, it’s the google videos that I rewatched the most. Once again, I am asking Mark to please play villain roles. Not morally gray characters but full on baddies. 

[ardenttheories]

And onto that odd little meta piece I was talking about. It’s really more of a fandom observation.

Despite not knowing what Bro looks like, the entire fandom seemed to gravitate towards two ideas: Twunk, or Hunk. Every piece of fanart I’ve seen usually has him thickly built, trim down the waist but broad shouldered and coiled with muscle, or at the very least with some sort of defined musculature that usually isn’t present on other characters. E.g. x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

You’ll also typically find a theme with the artist’s choice of expression or facial features; strong jaw, sharp nose, often frowning. 

And this all comes from...

This sprite. A sprite, mind you, that’s exactly the same as this:

And yet the expression of this character is wholly different. 

He’s often drawn slimmer, with slanted shoulders and either a thin dorito-waistline or a relatively similar shoulder to hip ratio. He often has more curved features - his jawline, his nose - and his expression almost always determined or soft. E.g. x, x, x, x, x, x

And for emphasis: this is how two artists chose to draw them side by side. E.g. x, x

It’s also very rare to see people draw Alpha Dave the same height as Bro. From memory - and I got into Homestuck roughly during the height of the Alpha kids’ popularity - most of the fanart I saw with any instance of Bro and A!Dave in the same image had a pretty fair height difference. 

Again: this comes from the exact same sprite. When you layer Bro’s sprite over A!Dave’s, you’ll be able to fit them together pixel to pixel (except, of course, the arm - A!Dave’s got his arm up holding the sword, unlike Bro - and the jawline - which is much more curved than Bro’s, but when we actually see Alpha Dave’s sprite in canon, it isn’t really long enough to focus on this tiny feature [especially when you consider that Grandpa Harley has the same face shape, but people still draw him with a defined jawline]). 

So, why so different? Why would people draw these two characters so wildly different when, for instance... 

Both Moms are drawn almost exactly the same. 

It’s pretty obvious when you think about it, but it’s also an incredibly important thing to note if you ever plan on creating your own characters. 

Character interactions define how we view characters that have yet to be introduced or do not have a wholly set image. 

When we think of Bro, we have to be realistic: we know absolutely nothing about who he is as a person, or what he looks like, besides the information that we get from Dave. So, when we get the information that he’s physically abusive, that he has cameras around the entire apartment, partakes in puppet snuff for the sake of a pornographic website, leaves such pornographic paraphenalia around the apartment for a young Dave to see, and that he’s emotionally closed off and distant, we immediately start to form an image of him in our minds that’s based on what we can define as an amalgamation of toxic masculinity and male abusers. 

It’s not exactly hard to imagine why the most common fanart of him circulates as a tall, imposing, broad figure who barely smiles and would be incredibly hard to get around in a small, dark alley. 

We also need to remember, of course, that Dave is a child while he describes Bro. An adult is almost always going to be tall and imposing to a child - is always going to be stronger and physically more capable than a child. 

Bro could be the most average joe you’ve ever met, but because we learn about him from the viewpoint of a child who quite literally cannot fight back, the image of him becomes tilted to the buff end of the spectrum. 

He becomes someone we would fear seeing. Someone who could overpower us, and not just a child under his care. He is big and strong because that is how Dave sees him, and that is how we come to understand him as a character.

Big, strong, violent, with sexual overtness and a lack of emotion. It’s pretty much the only way you can imagine him, even when his sprite is incredibly lacking in detail. 

So, why the softness for Alpha Dave? 

Pretty simply, because we already know who Dave is by the time Alpha Dave is introduced. People already had an idea of what Dave looked like, who he’d be when he grew up. People had already decided that Dave, being so different from Bro, being such a hero, would never be able to achieve the same sort of toxic masculinity that Bro did - would never have the same shape, the same musculature, that comes with that toxic imagery. 

 We also got told about him by a young teen who absolutely idolised him. Who emphasised his good traits and spoke about how absolutely badass he was. 

The connotations with Alpha Dave are so much more positive than with Bro. That in and of itself would have changed how people drew him. But when you combine him with the concept that he’s Dave, the Dave that went through all that abuse and came out the other side hating everything that Bro stood for, it’s hard not to draw him as Bro’s nigh complete opposite. 

So, he’s smaller. He’s got less of that musculature that people associate with toxic masculinity (the ability to overpower someone smaller), and he has a much closer shoulder-to-hip ratio (something that makes him take up less space, and come across as less imposing). He smiles more, he emotes more, he’s much more emotionally open - and even when he’s meant to be “cool”, it’s often with some sort of smug or determined look, not the ever-present blankness or snarl that we see from Bro. 

He loses all of the traits that we’d associate with an abuser. Instead, he becomes a pretty ordinary hero - someone who can stand up and fight back, but isn’t overly heroic or powerful. Someone who might still struggle, but can handle things. 

This is despite the fact, of course, that we know nothing about Alpha Dave’s upbringing or life besides what Dirk tells us - and Brain Ghost Dirk, at that. Unreliable narrators are not a good place to find valuable information, and, once again, the in-comic sprite is literally the exact same as Bro’s.

Fandom perception is an incredibly powerful thing. 

So, what about Dirk? How does he fare in all of this?

Dirk’s actually a weird figure in everything, and this comes down to a very simple yet paradoxical concept:

We already had ideas on who Bro was, yet we actively get to see who Dirk is. 

It’s very hard to go into something expecting one person and getting another. We can see all those notes in Dirk that we saw in Bro - the toxic tendencies, the hyper masculinity, the divorced note from people and emotions - but we see them within the specific framework of a teenager with mental illness. 

This isn’t just an asshole, abusive adult. This is that adult’s younger self in a better mindset to try and do good by the people he loves. We see this time and time again - when he says how much he cares about Roxy, when he expresses his guilt that he couldn’t be romantically invested in her, when he shares the fears he holds of his splinters, when he admits that Bro is exactly what he could be and is genuinely scared of being - that he is the foundation of Bro, but not Bro in a very important way. 

It’s also needless to say that people connected with Dirk in the exact same way that people connected with Dave. When you look at a lot of vent art involving him, it’s almost always about mental illness - anxiety, impulsive or intrusive thoughts, a desperate need for control in life, self harm or a dislike for oneself - and a fair bit of generic art revolving around Dirk includes some sort of deeper mental struggle. 

He’s a victim, in a similar way that Dave is, but he’s also just far enough that he could be a villain. 

You find that a lot of fanart therefore shows this paradoxical nature. 

In some, he’s softer. The ratio between his hips and his shoulders is narrower, his jawline is more curved. E.g. x, x, x, x

In others, he’s sharper. He’s drawn with more defined muscle, with a stronger jawline and broader shoulders, and though he’s definitely slim you can definitely see just how close he is to becoming the same figure as Bro. E.g. x, x, x, x, x 

And in others, he’s an odd mix of both. A brooding figure with a softer jawline, but still imposing and sharp in his own right - or even the complete opposite, with sharp features and defined shapes, but slimmer and smaller, much less imposing. E.g. x, x, x, x, x, 

So, I think we can make a pretty firm observation that the way Dirk is drawn reflects how the artist views his journey and his struggles. Whether he’s his own person, closer to Bro, or somewhere stuck in between. 

As you can see from most of this art, there’s a few ways that people draw Dirk; raring to fight and smug/confident, fairly sombre and down, almost tired, or standoffish and closed off. Even this is somewhere in between the way people view Bro and Alpha Dave. 

So, it’s then interesting to take a look at the Epilogues. 

New art of Dirk was produced in line with the Meat Epilogue. And while I really only know of one piece that catches my eye every time I see it, I think it’s important to point out that, in almost all of these images, one of two body types appear for Dirk:

1) Broad, muscular, tall. He takes up space and commands attention. Sharp features, wider shoulders.

2) Smaller, less imposing, yet somehow intimidating in just the expressions he makes and the way he holds himself. If you can imagine any fuckboy you’d be scared of being cornered by at a party, you’ve got a good idea of this style of fanart. 

In other words, either tipped way more to looking like Bro, or so close to looking like something you’d be scared of IRL - which perfectly reflects how uncomfortable he feels within the narration of the Epilogue, and some of the more questionable things he has happen in it. 

I also want to just add in as a side note: almost all of the links I added about Dirk go to Pinterest for sake of ease for people to find other images for reference, since I’m really just collecting the art I like most. On most of the Dirk ones, scrolling down will reveal the aforementioned vent art; on most of the Dave ones, scrolling down will reveal much softer, sweeter pieces of art involving him and people he’s loved throughout the comic. Just something interesting to add into this discussion - think about what that means for how people view either Strider.

So, what was all of this about?

Honestly, it’s me just pointing out how important character opinions and preconceived ideas are to the way people view other characters. So much of the way we see Bro is influenced by how Dave sees him and our cultural understanding of what toxic, hypermasculine male abusers look like. So much of the way we see Alpha Dave is based around our understanding of Dave, and what little we can fill in from Brain Ghost Dirk, rather than on who he actually is as a person (and we could be wrong; we could be very, very wrong). So much of the way of the way we see Dirk is influenced by Bro, and yet by what we see in canon. 

If we had different ideas and different opinions from different characters, we might draw each of them wildly different. But it is this specific combination of lack of physical description and cultural association/character perception that ensures we draw them the way they are. 

[marvellouslymadmim]

Neither Timid Nor Tame. Let’s talk about how you approached making good on all that TENSION and slow burn you set up. Did you feel the pressure? Did it come to as satisfying an end as you hoped? How do you approach writing smut? Anything you find particularly challenging when approaching it?

(*cue Salt-N-Pepa’s Let’s Talk About Sex in the background*)

Did you feel the pressure? The entire series was the first thing I’d written (or at least published) for about 2-3years. I had written longfics, slowburns, and smut before, but this was writing for a new fandom, a new set of readers, and an entirely new dynamic. So there was a lot of pressure, not just directed at this particular fic. I wanted to give the readers some emotional fulfillment (I honestly hadn’t expected anyone to get as invested in the series as they did, and that was a beautiful surprise), and I wanted to know, as a writer, that I could successfully and truthfully end such a long storyline without tripping at the finish. 

There was also a bit of added pressure because I find writing first time sex to be more difficult. There’s the added layer of learning boundaries and each other’s bodies that becomes more of a second-hand language in longer, established relationships. And because I’m very big on upholding my responsibility as a writer to truthfully portray characters as close to their canon selves as possible, that means creating situations that will get them to react in the way that I want. 

So yes, I definitely felt the pressure.

Did it come to as satisfying an end as you hoped? It did, I think. Looking back there are parts of the dynamic that I wrote that I don’t think hold as true for the idea of Hecate and Ada’s personalities that I hold now, but for the portrayals I gave of them in that particular series, it fits. I had originally planned to have the piece end much earlier, but the ending never felt quite...whole, so I followed them around for a bit longer, and found the ending we have now, which I truly love because it’s soft and a bit full circle. The series starts and ends with Dimity and Hecate, and starts and ends with Hecate having entirely different views of her relationship with Ada. And I think it ended where I generally like to end my long fics: with enough of a story “ended” to feel a sense of satisfaction, but with the sense that there’s still so much left ahead for the characters. How do you approach writing smut? I don’t think I have a set approach to writing anything, but if I really try to break it down, it starts with simply...sitting with the characters. Getting to truly know them and their personalities. Once you understand their pasts and their motivations, writing becomes extremely easy. So sometimes writing smut, you go “Oh, this would be nice”, but then you have to also go “ok, but would X actually do that? And if they did, how would that look from an emotional standpoint?”  I always try not to get too technical, though I do have several books on sex positions which I consult when describing things, because mentally, I need to know where everyone’s hands are, at any given time. I think it’s safe to say that I often go deep-diving into character’s heads during sex, which honestly is why I love writing smut. I’m not too focused on the acts themselves, I’m much more obsessed with the motivations and emotions behind them. And I think that’s a great place to be.  I don’t find gratuitous, disconnected smut to be appealing (gimme that history and connection, baby!). So when I write it, I make sure it’s true to the characters and their dynamic, that it’s also mirroring or addressing something else outside of the actual acts, and that it serves a narrative purpose.  If in my writing, there’s a moment where a “saucy bit” kind of fades to black before the action, that’s generally a sign that, in my opinion, whatever happens next isn’t going to give us the kind of insight into this dynamic that fully serves the story I’m telling.  I have zero clue if that actually answered your question, btw.

Anything you find particularly challenging when approaching it? Ooh, yes. Sometimes it’s not easy, finding a balance between mining the character’s thoughts/motivations and actually focusing on the action. Pacing is extremely important in smut scenes, more so than others, I’ve found. So finding that balance and keeping that pace is something I’m far more aware of during smut (and what contributes to longer write times, I feel like). 

As mentioned before, first time sex is always more of a challenge. Because not only are you learning how the characters work together in this setting, they’re also learning that, too. And there’s the undercurrent of constant “oh, am I asking too much? am I giving enough?” that tends to lessen in longer term partnerships. 

I also am really aware of...certain aspects of fandom culture which can turn a smut scene into an objectification of the actor’s body, and I really try to look at my work through a certain lens, in that regard. Because I don’t want that, I don’t want to even be tangentially related to that in the least. The appeal, for me, is the connection between two fictional characters--it’s the connection between them that makes the scene “hot”, not the mental image of two naked actors. So while I write from that standpoint, I also edit from the standpoint of “could this be...misused?” I don’t know if any of that makes sense, but I hope it does.

Also, there’s a bit of a challenge in deciding what shows up in smut, too, I think. I studied human sexuality and let me tell you, standing in front of a college classroom talking about these topics really put me in a place of having zero issues talking about them at any given point. I don’t have a lot of squicks and our home as a “No Kink-Shame” rule, which means anytime someone seems to be a bit judgmental about a (legitimate, consensual) kink, we shut it down, regardless of whether we “get” it or not. I believe human sexuality is amazingly vast and varied, and if something just does it for you, go for it (keep it safe, sane, and consensual, folks). But sometimes, you have to hesitate from bringing that into fiction, for various reasons. Fanfic is interesting because you really are writing for an extremely specific audience, and you have to honor that and be aware of it.  Come at me, bro: inbox random-ass questions about my stories, itemized number lists be damned.