#teen!stone

[the-whispers-of-death]

teen!sylvester and teen!butcher are literal babies and i love them <3

sigh. now remembering teen!stone x teen!kali,,,, my beloveds, they deserve to be okay and alright together. id kill for them.

Teen!Stone is trying hard not to smile as Teen!Kali tries his best to make Stone laugh. He's so in love with Kali, you see. So he can't help but smile in his presence.

They are in fact cute.

[yrkhn]

Vic and Dick. 2022

[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.

[ashoss]

this is making me irrationally mad. wdym you don’t know which robin.

[timbit-robin-art]

Get rhythm gamed, idiots (part 1).

[notyournightsky]

when you show up to the biggest batman hater competition and your opponents are the titans

[wobubling]

🆕 Teen Titans

[why-i-love-comics]

Primer: Clashing Colors #1 - "Color Me Impressed" (2024)

written by Jennifer Muro & Thomas Krajewski art by Gretel Lusky

[cheerpuppy14]

That's cold man

[the-whispers-of-death]

okay now im just imagining stone trying to reach out to sylvester once hes of age, and just wanting a little reunion

shame he probably never got a phone and has to dig DEEP to even hope to find sylvester's number

at least this is sorta kinda maybe a good ending? more like a neutral one. but still, better than him being stuck w bharat 24/7

Young Adult!Stone who has no clue what to do with technology and doesn't know where he'd find a phone book with numbers of people in the UK: How do I find this man???

The thing is that he probably still ends up in the military because he still doesn't know what else to do with his life. (Wow being in foster care until he's eighteen and not being out on the streets until he's eighteen does not change how he ends up, welp.) So he probably, magically, ends up on another base where Sylvester works.

Reunion in the form of fate.

[jhonnyhotbody]

I love the titans very much

[swiftlark]

teen titans (2003) x textposts: 1/?

[aslyran]

Looking out for a sign

[timbit-robin-art]

Here’s a fun idea I’ve always had: Teen Titans Junior High.

[t4tails]

holy 20 year old cartoon batman

[wobubling]

They’re the best there is!