#outside fandom criticism

[virtuouswhitehatorganization]

Both White And Black Hat Would Agree On One Thing: Gabriel Can Go Suck It

Black and White Hat wouldn’t agree on everything but even they wouldn’t like what happened at the end of Miraculous. Mostly because Black Hat would think he went pussy at the end and turned face. Also White Hat would roll his eyes because Gabriel was certainly not the good father he thinks he was and again not trying to reveal himself as the villain to his son was cowardly. In the end, both wouldn’t be happy how things turned out. 

Not to mention the fact that the show redeems him while not doing anything for Chloe who got her redemption arc shut down due to the creator being petty and childish as hell. And worst of all this is only the first arc, which means they dragged this out so long with mediocre pay off. It make you wonder how many more arcs they are going to go through and it will be a nothing burger. Austic is leaving, but I don’t really have anymore hope for this waste potential of a show. 

[bruciemilf]

One of my biggest gripes about the dc fandom is how simplified and stripped down ‘child soldier’ became as a term.

Like, ya’ll, I don’t think forcing a rich guy to take you in and make him teach you martial arts is equal to having your entire childhood ripped from the root up for military purposes. That’s just me tho idk

[cosmicredcadet]

All this aroace character shipcourse has proven to me that a majority of people that interact in fandom cannot actually interact with characters and media outside of shipping and genuinely I believe you need to learn how to interact with media outside of shipping.

[howlsofbloodhounds]

I wonder if one of the reasons the fandom seemingly propped murder up as “better” than killer (morally) in the earlier years not only because killer accepted the deal and worked with the human (and they didn’t realize it was coercion), and because a lot of them mistakenly believed he did it just because of fun, but also because—from what I can see—we don’t actually see or are shown Murder’s crimes.

We’re told that they happened and why Murder believed he had to do it, but we don’t really see it depicted. As opposed to Killer, where we see his crimes and actions drawn out in comics, and we see both his reactions and his victims reactions to what he’s doing, especially Papyrus and Grillby.

[justaboutsnapped]

tumblr whites who haven’t listened to a lick of rap before not like us talking about a hugely influential black rapper who weaves politically poignant narratives about his own lived experience as a black person in america, systematic racism, etc: haha he’s so quirky he’s so petty he’s like a trickster god an old god a fae god oooooh he’s a dragon slayer get it cause drake-

[cdroloisms]

always absolutely fucking hilarious when sbiers in their self-righteous need to assert themselves as better than everyone else in the same way they've done since 2020 even when they're apparently 'out of the fandom' and consider the whole thing cringe and dead (skill issue, methinks) go all um acktually no one cared abt any of the lore except for c!sbi. like well for one thing i don't know of a c!sbi personally speaking i'd like for you to point out to me where character sleepy boys inc ever like, existed, because it certainly wasn't in any dream smp i watched like is there even a single moment where the four of them interact together alone??? and secondly, it's always reeeeeeally obvious when they mean this as a diss on The Other Side Of The Fandom (read, dream team and co) when two-thirds of the dream team just did nawt have any interest in being part of the 'main characters' in the first place and would much rather do their own thing and roleplay in ways that wouldn't get picked apart for ages on twitter dot com, and the other member of the dream team played a character so integral to the lore that even c!inniters will often name him before they name their own goddamn guy because they cannot keep his name out of their mouths (see, the meme i saw like literally just yesterday that boiled down to me, after learning the dream smp lore: i need to kill c!dream). like bro yall are c!inniters you're not fooling anyone you think that the entire story revolves around this one teenager being abused and then completely ignore the months of abuse that was shown on screen for us before exile. "c!sbi" like cmon now guys the ao3 pages are like, right there, we all know who ends up being the villain for ur sbi fanfic that has its foundations in a dynamic that literally never existed in canon.

like "no one cared about anyone's lore except for wilbur and tommy--" well yes they were in fact some of the main fucking characters. imagine someone going up to you and going "well no one cared about the lore in the star wars original trilogy except for luke and leia" like damn really?? (now imagine this same person trying to convince you that darth vader's role was unimportant, actually.) like yeah the dream smp involved a lot of separate storylines and each of those storylines might've had their own "main cast" of characters but i'm also not blind bro, the story that started at the start of the fucking server and the start of the fucking lore was ABSOLUTELY the "wilbur-dream-tommy" triangle that is, in fact, the story that the l'manburg revolution was built on and the story that remains the throughline literally until tommy and dream have their confrontation with a nuke coming down over their heads, something that the characters themselves acknowledge with the repetition of the idea of tommy and tubbo against dream. LIKE ALKJSDFKJSADF yeah bro there were main characters in the tommy-dream-wilbur story an that's also the story that people tended to be invested in in the beginning, to the point where even other self-contained stories in the dream smp absolutely referenced and emulated it (cough cough, las nevadas). like, why are we acting like it's at all groundbreaking for people to be invested in THEEE fucking story the one that first started to exist because at the time basically no one else was part of The Roleplaying Trio and then slowly got padded out and developed as the server developed more and more into the lore server?

and it's the fact that none of these people, too, would deny that they care about ex. c!schlatt in manberg, right, or c!quackity in relation to c!wilbur's deal, etc etc whatever. like breaking news you gaf about The Story as a dream smp fan wow am i supposed to be like, surprised. do you want a medal. LIKE LKJASDJF

[fangharel]

If you had any compassion for other writers you would take that post down. Your defensive "apology" is not enough to fix what you broke by making accusations like that with no hard evidence. So many new writers will be too scared to post their writing now because bitches like you will accuse them of using AI because they use the same adjectives more than once. Fuck you

i'm about to lose my sense of humour and my table manners.

no, "using the same adjectives more than once" is not a sign of ai and no one has fucking claimed that it is. picking my post apart limb for limb because you're timid and far too worried about what hypothetical accusers could accuse your hypothetical fic of is so fucking woe is me.

real writers had their work stolen by the bot that generated that fic. real artists had their art chewed up and shat out by that thing. do try to restrain yourselves from making this about you and focus instead on the real issue at hand.

i apologised for causing unnecessary anxiety and i meant it. i genuinely do believe that i should have worded that post better, and i do understand why someone with little knowledge of ai could read it and get scared. but the people who are attacking me (some even agreeing that the fic is ai and still attacking me because they don't like the way i wrote that post) in premature defence of their own fics are getting on my nerves fr.

what the lot of you seem to not understand is that no, weirdly paired adjectives aren't necessarily a sign of ai. repetitive structure at paragraph- and sentence level are not necessarily a sign of ai. "quick writing" is not necessarily a sign of ai.

but weirdly paired adjectives and repetitive structure at paragraph- and sentence-level and an insane output rate of content all added together within the same work? yes, that is a fucking sign of ai.

jesus christ, i did not think i'd have to spoon-feed you the point like this. my next apology post will be for overestimating your critical thinking skills.

and before you come at me: no, this post is not scolding the people i was apologising to in my last post. getting anxious is not something i blame anyone for, and as i said, the fault is mine. this post is @ the people who are turning that anxiety into a dull little butterknife that they're trying to stab me with

[celtrist]

I really want to see a more fucked up version of Charlie in canon. Like, okay, I am a die-hard for sweet bubbly girls in media. But I always see how some people make Charlie actually, oh I dunno... demonic? And it's so refreshing for her type of character. I could honestly see her having low empathy (and we kinda see this with how she handled Angel's situation or even Vaggie's nervousness about taking control on an activity). An exploration of that trait (if it was intended) would be interesting to see for a protagonist, especially when her main goal is about helping others. I would love to see her actually have a level of difficulty in understanding others' feelings from the other residents, sinners, and even her father.

But give her a fucked up side. Not a "she gets more power when she's angey uwu", but a "oh, she's a little fucked in the head". It would give so much to her character that she just doesn't have.

@/murmurmurena (don't wanna bother them so slash there we go) has some fun ideas with Charlie. I highly encourage people to check their stuff out! So many fun dark ideas with her character while also still keeping to her canon personality pretty well! Personally, I think Charlie being a bit more naive to her own messed up traits would work best but her also being aware of these traits can make for some interesting character for her.

THIS FIC, "A Game Between You and I". RIGHT HERE WITH THE FIRST CHAPTER. A bit of spoil for the fic here: but I love how they handled Charlie’s absolute ignorance as to why the idea of Russian roulette is horrifying to Angel Dust. It doesn't feel like her being intentionally malicious or aware that she's the odd man out here. This is also a pretty old fic going by only the pilot, but the point still stands that it was such a fun take for her character!

Charlie is one of my favorite characters in the show in part of the POTENTIAL she could have as being the most bubbly sweetheart character while also being the most messed up character in the show. I can't say I have strong confidence with the show's writing and fully expect them to stick with Charlie being the "nice girl but oh no, don't get her angry or she gets scarwy". Which isn't bad for a character mind you, there's just so much more potential to Charlie outside of that trope, especially when you get into the theories of her either being a doll, Roo's biological daughter, or what have you. And for the MAIN CHARACTER of the show, it would be not only interesting but also bring the spotlight back to her.

There's really no question that the side characters steal the show, particularly all the male characters. If I'm honest, Charlie does not feel like she gets a lot of love from the show itself when she's supposed to be the main character. She feels far more flat compared to the rest of the characters (again, the male cast in this "female-lead" show has more depth than most of the female cast currently. I wouldn't be pointing this tidbit concerning the genders of characters if it weren't for the fact Viv defended Helluva's lack of development with their female cast by saying "Hazbin is a female-lead show and Helluva is a male-lead" and Hazbin ended up with it not feeling female lead (to me) and the male cast just completely stealing the show. I don't normally care about gender stuff, especially since I do personally lean interest towards male characters. But using one show as a defense for poor development of the female characters, and then that show not really holding up with no very interesting well-developed feeling female characters irritates me. It's just very clear that these shows don't seem to care much about the female cast :/)

If you like how Charlie is written that's totally fine. PERSONALLY, I just think they're missing so much opportunity with her character by just making her the standard female character type. I honestly don't have a lot of faith they'll actually do something with Charlie's character though. She's a pretty static character in S1 being the same from start to end. Not changing or learning anything to create any development. What does the end of season Charlie do that start of season Charlie wouldn't do? Fight back? Because we see with the pilot (which is the “first episode”) that Charlie does fight people if pushed like with Katie Killjoy and even Valentino. Static characters can work in media depending on the show or their role. But Charlie is the MC of a show about “bettering one's self”. So to have her as a static with not a lot of strong dilemmas for herself (like we see with Angel Husk Al and even Vox) seems silly. Plus, considering Hazbin is telling a whole story and it's not a fun episodic thing, characters are expected to grow on some level. Or else, what was the point of their hero's journey?

[corvidaerook]

I'm realizing that I think my biggest pet peeve about people's interactions with asexual characters anywhere on the spectrum is when they use the word "finally."

With datv, I see people say their Rook is finally having sex with Lucanis in the late-game romance scene, and it bothers me. The phrasing just makes it sound like Lucanis' feelings don't matter, and that his comfort in his own relationship after a year of torture is less important than their Rook doing what they want.

As an ace guy, if someone phrased it like that about me, I'd dump them immediately, no warning, no take-backs, we're done. There would be no way I'd ever enter a relationship without discussing that first, and if they know my feelings and still wanna act like I'm somehow holding them back? Then okay, go find someone else. I'm not playing that game and I'm definitely not gonna be guilted into doing something I'm not interested in (or in Lucanis' case, not yet interested in.) Don't ignore my feelings about our mutual relationship.

And none of this is to say that people should feel bad for having more needs than their partner, but acting like that's their fault? Like they're being unfair for not giving up sooner? Like they owe you sex? Like somehow, a year of torture, a demon in his head, his entire life being turned upside down, him facing the whiplash of losing his Grandmother and getting her back and then losing his cousin/brother to an unbelievable betrayal isn't enough of a reason for him to not be in the mood, beyond just the fact that he shouldn't need a laundry list of excuses? In general, it just makes me think about how people seem to think consent after coercion is still consent. Like, if you're guilting someone into saying yes, it isn't a yes.

And with Lucanis, the thing that bothers me is that he'd probably feel like it's on him that his partner feels that way. He basically says that he feels insecure about not being the romantic that Illario is, and in the dessert scene he implies that he feels like he's "not enough" (with Rook immediately saying he is, so even their Rooks know better, even if they don't,) and then people are talking about him in a way that would a thousand percent confirm those feelings for him.

I know he's just pixels, it doesn't actually matter, but it's just wild to see people say they love him and then ignore a fundamental part of his character because the nonexistent relationship isn't moving fast enough. And frankly, if a Rook is one that wouldn't be able to handle waiting for Lucanis to be comfortable without guilting him about how long it took, I can't really see how that relationship would work long-term in general, sex or not. So much of Lucanis' romance is about him needing time, space, and support to adjust to things; Spite, being out of the Ossuary, Illario's betrayal, his new role as First Talon. That's the whole thing about the Mind Ossuary, is that it's Rook being able to delve through all of the shit his mind has come up with about him and say, "You're worth it" even though it takes work and time to help him be comfortable enough to make the deal with Spite. A Rook who can't be patient with him just doesn't seem compatible in the first place.

And I'm definitely getting into dangerous territory but I think this is especially true when we take into consideration a Lucanis who winds up hardened because Treviso gets Blighted. That's an example of Rook not showing up for him when he needs them the most, and he shuts down their romance immediately because of it. To me personally, from an aspec perspective, I can't imagine him not being hurt enough to close off a romance by a "finally, give me your body already" vibe.

This all sounds like me being sensitive, and it kind of is, but I'm just so tired of people acting like aspec/arospec characters are somehow wrong or unfair for not being willing to do everything exactly like their allo partners want them to. They don't owe their partners sex, period. I don't think people say it maliciously (at least most of the time, some of the "fixing Lucanis' writing because it's trash and he's too hot to be wasted like that" takes aside,) but it comes across that way to me because it's the exact sort of thing I hear about myself and other aspec people in real life, and it hurts to know that we can't even escape that in fiction with the very few characters we can honestly genuinely see ourselves in like this.

[sondheim-girly]

All ace does is dance, eat hot chip, and lie

[arson-09]

elaingate has been sending me to the mf stratosphere. my phone is over heating from the amount of posts im liking and reblogging. Its the perfect mix of goofiness and joke posts and really good posts about the acotar fandom and its strange love of canon. I love it here

anyway this is giving tamlain is it not? maybe i should make some art just to be silly and petty

[galedekarios]

i wasn't going to say anything more about the ama, but... i just found out that there are ppl who think the devs villainised s*las in veilg*ard&the ama

[tategaminu]

I'm gonna be blunt, the amount of people pissed at the ten babies joke or being super against rayllum marrying and having kids is really concerning

[mikuyuuss]

Me when the writer made a ""questionable"" writing decision and 90% of the fans hated it.. except for ME, I LOVE IT, maybe the so called questionable writing decision was made for me bc the author was reading my mind, or maybe I'm just so big brained nobody, except for like 3 people, understands it like I do-

[thousandyearphantombunker]

CW: I'm mean here about shows and stuff people like

syndrome from incredibles, Thanos in the comics, mad hatter from Batman, tighten from Megamind, frollo from Hunchback of Notre Dame, Red Hulk, parasite from superman and Ozai all of these villains are pathetic but they work for some reason I cannot place. A lot of stories try and write villains that are pathetic but also scary and it doesn't work- I love Starscream he can be an amazing character (he can be sympathetic or a straight up monster he can be lame but still threatening etc) and I like most versions but God can writers screw him up and he can fall flat (i love tfp i swear but god i hate their starscream! He just didn't work for me! Megatron and knockout are cool tho) Belos for some reason doesn't work for me at all- I know he should be scary while the fandom is wrong about him being a colonizer/cult leader/a dictator (he's not stop using words you dont understand the meaning of)and how insane it is that he's in a kids show (watch more cartoons there's villains darker than him) he's still trying to commit genocide and he's abusive and he's at his core got very little depth or complexity- he's really just an isekai character gone wrong- a pathetic guy with a hero complex and emotional baggage who becomes a villain- but he just didn't work for me. Neither does Jacob Hopkins- he's just Ronaldo from SU if he was written to be a straight up hate sink. I'm a lesbian latina with autism and was raised with a different sect of christan beliefs from him- I know historically this guy would have murdered me and i know he should work but something about him didn't stick the landing! The main thing I think about with belos isn't 'wow this guy is a great villain' it's 'can y'all stop being weirdly ableist toward this old man' or 'why do so many of y'all wanna fuck this man he's ugly' and dont get me started on mcu villains - their version of the mandarin, she-hulk's dumb men rights activists on reddit (seriously that's the scariest villain you can come up with? Like revenge porn is evil but really? I don't like the term man-baby- I have personal issues with how the term has been used in ableist ways- but yeah erm man babies on reddit are the best you can do for a villain? That's freaking stupid) and OMG Sutur in Ragnarok was terrible etc etc- these villains all suck!

How do you write villains that are pathetic but still work? How do write villains who are at their core whiny insecure losers but still work as detestable threatening villains? Like marvel made a character whose whole thing was that he's an incel work but so many other stories fail to write that stuff. Part of me thinks it's because these stories are desperate to make their villain into a hate sink joke but still make them scary and it fails but Tighten and Red Hulk are right there and there's no way the writers weren't purposely writing hate sinks with them! And they work! Why doesn't belos?

[invinciblerodent]

Omg a fellow Rook enjoyer. It's so nice to see some positivity in this hellscape fandom. I am getting so tired of weeding through posts criticizing Rook as being "incurious" but then they also complain that Rook asks too many questions? And that Rook is too nice and they can't be evil but also Rook is too mean (to Solas specifically)??? Like, Rook is your character??? Your player character? That you're supposed to use your imagination to play? If you don't like the character you made maybe that's a skill issue???

Lol, that's exactly how I feel about it, that it's 100% skill issue- and honestly, that's probably one of the pieces of critique that I find the most frustrating. (Well. You know, not accounting for things that are, idk, blatantly sexist, racist, queerphobic, xenophobic, ignorant, or interpreting the source material in a way that' it's just straight-up incorrect and makes me wonder whether the person even played the same game that I did.)

And, if you don't mind me going off for a bit here... too nice, too mean, too incurious, talks too much, blank slate, predetermined; the simple fact that all these contradictory pieces of criticism can coexist as things people say with their full chests, as if they were objectively true, should, I think, be in itself a sign that what the person is saying it not really about the game... but about predetermined expectations they had, ones which they just can't seem to move past.

I think this utter lack of a consensus indicates that fundamentally, deep down (in my experience, not just in this fandom, but in most, and especially those that have a fairly low barrier for entry, and/or a roleplaying element, like many video games) lies a kind of... unwillingness, maybe, to take a piece of pop culture as the art it is, and engage with it as it is.

This kind of thing, it's... annoying, and disappointing, and it just keeps repeating itself, over and over, with each new popular game, and I'm genuinely beginning to think that the culprit might just in part be that people look at video games, and don't see them as pieces of narrative fiction they were invited to step into, but as something that they expect to be tailor-made for them specifically- and one of the easiest ways to give that critique, that "it's not what I would have written for myself", an air of legitimacy is through the protagonist- the piece of the puzzle that they were invited to draw themselves.

The Inquisitor was called a bad protagonist, because they didn't have every potential background imaginable, and it wasn't verbally acknowledged very often, but also because accessibility for new players and the customizability of the character was prioritized, so they were made to be able to ask many questions, and not to volunteer many opinions and personal insights. (Which, in a game in part about imposed identity and a contrast between perception and self is really interesting, but that's a whole other can of worms.)

Not long later, Ryder in ME:A was called a bad protagonist, because their singular background was written in a way that tied intimately into- and was central to the story, and they had a couple comments and asides that showed that they had a personality folded into who they are, which limited player flexibility to the expected degree, but added more concrete narrative element to their journey as a character.

Tav was called a bad protagonist, because BG3 took that piece of inspiration from DnD too, and left the creation of the protagonist to the player fully, as one would in any regular campaign- but the Dark Urge character was praised, because their background was narrowly defined and central to the story, they got a lot of extra content specific to them, and we got to learn many of the details of their pre-written life prior to the game's events.

And now Rook is called a bad protagonist, because, let me check my notes here... they have a fairly wide range of potential backgrounds that are not super defined for the sake of player flexibility, they have a handful of potential dialogue options that relate to their chosen background (mostly to reiterate information we already had about them from those blurbs), they have different types of relationships with certain characters depending on who you chose they were prior to the game, and they have three whole traits(!) that are defined about every version of them: that they have a respect for life, that they don't have much respect for authority, and that they're the protagonist of a game that's broadly about compassion and teamwork.

It's all contradictory, but it's still all the same, because the only thing these comments all have in common is that they are based not on what these games are, but on what the player saying them wanted them to be. It's determined not by the content and the merits of the art, but by the speaker's judgement on whether what they saw fit into what they wanted to see, and it's summed up neatly by words like boring, and bad, and bland- words that are entirely subjective, not really supported by any specific part of the text, and purposefully impossible to disprove.

That grinds my gears as someone who loves the Dragon Age setting and story, as someone who loves creating characters and making up little arcs for them (wouldn't call myself a writer necessarily, but in this respect I suppose I might be), and as a person who is just broadly a Literature Enjoyer.

Sigh. I need to stop talking because I'll keep going for hours if I'm allowed, but the bottom line is...

Games are art, and roleplaying is improv.

More people need to learn to just say "yes, and".