#hottest characters

[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.

[evevsy]

shine

[lilhawkeye3]

Alicent Hightower, Criston Cole, Harwin Strong, Daemon Targaryen, and now Mysaria?

Rhaenyra is an absolute MENACE and her pussy game is unmatched, I am in awe

[maishiia]

Underrated sapphic media? Fried Green Tomatoes is first on my list

[viwifey]

ARCANE 2.06 - “THE MESSAGE HIDDEN WITHIN THE PATTERN”

[arcane-hotties]

Hottest Arcane Character, Women's Bracket: Round Three

Sevika vs. Mel

Please reblog for sample size. Voters are encouraged to add propaganda, screencaps, gifs, etc. to their reblogs.

[tillidrown]

??????????????this is so attractive

[milariro]

I just had to make a joke about Vox's victory. If you don't know yet, Vox won the hottest Hazbin Hotel character poll on twitter. And That was really fun!

[fenharel]

"Did you know the Evanuris once numbered many more than those whose names survived in the elven pantheon? One warlord was particularly cruel. I sought to free his slaves, but so fearsome was his reputation that none would join me." "What did you do?" "I made people laugh at him."

[diabloku]

husband(s) ⁉️

the malewives are fightiiiing

[show-tunes]

Genuine question what version of this guy do you think is more of a hear me out

[musubiki]

its been a while since my last summer mochi 🌺🏖️

[podcastwizard]

fucking BEGGING all of you to watch My Lady Jane if another one of my shows gets cancelled i cannot guarantee anyone's safety

[booasaur]

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters - 1x09

[eirianerisdar]

As a Chinese person from Hong Kong I'm going to officially say this absolutely blows my mind. Here's why.

In the video, Charles and Carlos were plainly copying calligraphy stroke-by-stroke from a large image in front of them. What makes Carlos' attempt so impressive is that he's effectively gotten nearly all the proportions, starting and ending brush pressures and tail-offs, and the structure right. It's not perfect. But it's damn well near perfect.

Compare it to Charles': Charles didn't do a bad job at all, and has successfully copied many of the requisite features, but he has seen each stroke as a line, as many people who write Chinese characters with ballpoint pens do nowadays - point A to point B, with natural loss of shape and flow in between. It's not necessarily a problem. Charles is writing the characters. But interestingly, Carlos isn't writing at all.

On rewinding the video you see why Carlos' was shaped so perfectly. He doesn't know Chinese. He doesn't know anything about stroke order, or speed. But he knows detail.

If you look at his hands as he writes he separated each stroke into a shape. Then he did his level best to recreate each shape as carefully as he could by pressing the brush until he could see it formed the right thickness of the line.

He didn't write, like Charles did. He painted.

If this is how good Carlos is at copying a language he does not know I wonder how amazing he would be at painting if he actually spent time to learn.

[ferretteeth]

what people don't understand about Criston Cole is that he's under a lot of pressure from being the hottest man still alive in the show