#i'm serious though!!!!!

[ahollowgrave]

hey come here

reblog your own work. reblog it as much as you want. the dashboard is chronological (mostly) so you gotta put it back out there!! ok bye

[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.

[egophiliac]

2025 is the year of the DRAGON SLIPPERS

[idolomantises]

I was just complaining about Dandadan fans being weirdly against shipping but after seeing the BNHA fandom's behavior uh. i get it now.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS x Brazil (1985)

(Yes. Real movie dialogue)

[bixels]

tarpit site.

[crimeronan]

shoutout to the poly people who never found those "every poly triad is a fat girl and two gross neckbeards" memes funny or cute & who have had to see that shit All Over reddit and ifunny and tumblr and twitter for the past Fucking Decade. may all of our creative endeavors and joy get 10,000 times more traction than an article written by a monogamous person who's defending poly people by saying "don't worry, fellow monogamous kids! i too think the poly community is irredeemably fucking irritating!! :)"

[unityrain24]

please. i want to draw. i want to write. i want to imagine

[future-crab]

It's been said before, it will be said again, but it's still worth saying: the fact that art centering on straight romance is allowed to just be bad, but art with queer romance in it always has to be indicative of A Serious Problem With the Way We Tell Queer Stories makes being a queer person making queer art deeply stressful

[kirby-the-gorb]

[mobius-m-mobius]

#so unserious 😂💖

[secondbeatsongs]

going through some old logs, and I need you to understand just how truly unhinged early 2010s RP omegle was.

genuinely you could stay on there for hours with just one person, hashing out complex traumatic backstories, drawn-out love confessions, detailed action scenes...collaboratively describing graphic violence, past abuse, comfort, hurt/comfort, hurt/no comfort, any number of sex acts...and then one of you would be like, "oh haha it's 2AM! I have to sleep :(" and the other person would say, "omg saaaame. :( gnight!!!" and then you'd exit the chat and never speak to each other again, and this was. fine.

you could just spend an entire evening shoving your wretched, bleeding soul into a chat log with someone you'd never meet or learn the name of, achieve some form of emotional catharsis, and then go about your day or night like this was an average way to spend your time.

I'm really normal about this, actually

[itsindiana]

i think we don't talk about what the driving force behind each batcher is enough. like if u think abt it hunter often acts out of fear ( not cowardice , fear that his ppl will get hurt duh ) , while crosshair often acts out pain , tech acts with logic , wrecker with love , and echo ? echo acts out of being true hater

[sleepyorc]

People talk about the war on christmas as if that's a real thing but they ignore the fact that christmas decorations go up in stores well in September, before Halloween has even happened, and the Halloween sections in stores have gotten smaller and smaller in my experience too. The real war is on Halloween, and baby, we need the Skeletons to fight alongside us once more.

[egophiliac]

why idia is being ignore in the event?

aw, I wouldn't say he's really being ignored! he does get some longer scenes in part 3 (I know you sent this before that came out and I'm just catching up now, sorry! :'), including an excellent bit where he's like "yeah I only eat snacks and cup noodles, why" and Trey's grandma instinct immediately kicks on so he can try to convince Idia to eat some protein. just once. please. don't you know how BAD all that sugar is for your TEETH --

Halloween events in particular are a bit of a balancing act, because they deal with way more characters than usual, and the main focus is supposed to be on the SSR guys. I find that they do usually try to give everyone some spotlight at different points though! so I expect Idia will get more scenes later on too, especially once the shit really hits the fan. >:D

(if you're looking for good Idia events, he has SSRs in Ghost Marriage and Glorious Masquerade, and he gets to do a lot in Kelkkarotu and Wish! he is one of the ones who doesn't tend to get a lot of event cards, alas. :( I guess it can be hard to justify him actually leaving his room ever, but it's always super fun when he's in events and is forced to have (1) single social interaction with another human being.)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

With the end of season two comes a second redraw!

[Nov 2022] [June 2023] [June 2024]