#reblogging this here too

[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.

[sheepgirlmaidtummy]

man. this whole thing pisses me off because like. even when people talk about staff having a history of hating trans women, that this isnt the first time, without fail black trans women are forgotten to be included again and again. im not surprised this caused such an uproar when the popular white woman gets deleted. nobody should be, its been that way like forever. some cunt in my inbox got annoyed i called rita a sex worker (lol? okay)

but i mentioned that in my post because so many black trans women have gotten removed from this site for their sex work alone, regardless of if it "broke community guidelines" or not, especially when tumblr live and the ads on this website are so fucking horny. idek what to say rn because like. this wont get as many notes as the posts talking about her will. the exploding car thing is gonna get more attention than the trans women on this site you dont actually care about listening to. ive been talking about how unfair it is to be a black tgirl on this site for years and nobody cares.

i love rita, we talked abit the other day and she's doing fine, dont get it twisted and think i hate her or some bs, she's a big fucking reason im not fucking homeless.

but part of why her deletion got to #1 trending on tumblr for multiple days in a row is that she's white

[cecil-real]

hey!! the finished assignment I posted about procrastinating before!! ＼⁠(ﾟo ﾟ⁠＼⁠)

this image has been burned into my retinas.

[juniemunie]

[Abandoned by the Lightners, his heart became cracked with hatred.]

Hitting a lil' too close to home?

[i-like-forcefem]

I love the idea of calling new girlies “wet” instead of having precum so much

Who cares that you haven’t had bottom surgery yet??? You’re a girl who made a mess in her panties because she’s so so horny, and what do you call that?

That’s right a wet girl!!!

[breezemoonriver]

My contribution to the fandom 👍

[originalartblog]

Apparently much-needed reminder that reposting artists' art (by saving the images or screenshotting them and reuploading them yourself) on other platforms without the artists' expressed permission and without credit is theft and an insult to their passion and craft. You are profiting (in views, in attention, in feedback) from someone else's work and ideas, who do not get that feedback for sharing their creation.

If you are an art reposter, you are a thief and I have no respect for you.

[btsjk-biased]

Yoongi 🩶 Love Yourself: Tear (for @yooboobies)

[ video source cr. namuspromised ]

[arcanegifs]

Happy 2025, everyone! May the Arcane brainrot continue to live on 💙

[daikunart]

[tatretot]

hellooo danandphilgames buddies!! happy belated 10 year (more like 5 but shhh) anniversary :-)

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Marvel's Squirrel Girl: The Unbeatable Radio Show! | All of Erik Lehnsherr's Call-In's

Episodes featured: The Fate of My Universe The Sinister Six Are No More Who Would Win In A Fight? Unbeatable

Full Podcast Playlist (Spotify)

Credits below:

Written by: Ryan North

Directed by: Giovanna Sardelli

Voice Cast: Milana Vayntrub - Squirrel Girl/Doreen Green Crystal Lucas Perry - Nancy Whitehead Leo Sheng - Koi Boi/Ken Shiga Davied Morales - Chipmunk Hunk/Tomas Lara-Perez Erica Schroeder - Tippy T. Squirrel Rob Nagle - Erik Lehnsherr

Key Art: "Squirrel Girl Infinity Comic (2022)" by Derek Charm - Doreen, Nancy, Ken, Tomas, Tippy "Magneto (2023)" by Todd Nauck - Erik

[disastertwins9000]

@thefearlessleader

i’ve got your back, and if your legs don’t work you can borrow mine :)

[marblerose-rue]

click for better quality!

mothwing (and hawkfrost)

[viyojo]

Happy Graduation!! ✨ 🎓 🎉

[palms-upturned]

I’m late to this whole debacle but for the record, I have been messaged by people in Gaza who thought that I was involved in the fundraiser vetting process and sent me photos of their government IDs and documentation. I know a little of what Hussein, Nairuz, Ahmed, Ibtisam, and others use to vet people and make sure that they’re legit, and that’s part of why I confidently cite them as a source. To try and discredit them and smear them as scam artists, along with the genocide victims that they’re trying so hard to help, is fucking beyond the pale.

The reason I’ve been inactive on this blog and focusing instead on compiling resources in order to bring more ppl onto the fundraiser blog is that the work I was doing was spiraling into a 12-hour a day endeavor with just myself, and it was making me so physically and mentally ill that I could barely move or think, so I had to step back and figure out a better way to organize things. And I’m not even doing the actually hard part of this work. I do not vet people. I do not have any skin in this game as a white USAmerican. It’s not my family who are dying in Gaza. I also have not been targeted for harassment or account bans. I literally cannot fucking fathom the physical and mental strain that Palestinian bloggers on this platform have been going through nonstop for nearly a year now.

I still remember being shocked when I saw that Hussein had come back to tumblr after having to take a break due to having a heart attack. Ibtisams, who vetted people and organized all sorts of fundraising efforts all while grieving her father and little sister killed in Gaza, was forced to come back to tumblr to make a statement about how she was in an inpatient facility because people had the gall to impersonate her in order to scam people. Ahmed literally escaped Gaza because of a very well documented fundraising effort here on tumblr, no thanks to the cunts at GoFundMe who made things as difficult as possible every step of the way, and has since spent time and effort helping other people who had hopes of sharing his success. Calling these people scammers is fucking unbelievable. Some of you wouldn’t know solidarity if it bit you in the ass.

If getting messages in your inbox from people trying to escape a genocide makes you uncomfortable, fucking suck it up. Or disable your inbox, I guess. Do literally anything else besides using your platform to direct harassment and slander at people who are trying to survive a genocide. This website is already quite literally engaging in tech apartheid by targeting users in Gaza so constantly, you don’t need to gleefully join in by tagging staff and asking them to terminate people. Fucking unconscionable behavior. I hope that it will follow everyone involved for the rest of their lives.