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nikethestatue · 2 months ago

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I wrote an ask to you several weeks ago with some thoughts, as someone working in publishing with marketing/PR. I see Elriels are still being harassed for simply picking up what SJM/BB put down and it saddens me. Sometimes it feels like this fandom needs adult supervision. I'm in my mid-30s and never feel as old as whenever I venture into this fandom.

This might be really long but since you are one of the biggest Elriel accounts I hope it would be alright if I provide some very general knowledge about media-publisher relations that I think a lot of people would benefit from knowing. I am absolutely no ACOTAR insider. Everything I say, I only say as someone who has worked within publishing/PR for a long time (never with anything ACOTAR related!) and who has been following this upcoming release closely out of an interest in the publishing side of things.

In general, this is all you need to know:

What the publishers back = what reputable media outlets mention.

This is simply standard industry practice. It is no secret. Every single thing about a high profile book release is carefully coordinated between publishers and media outlets. It serves them both. Publishers manage expectations by shaping the narrative surrounding their releases, all to maximise sales and foster a positive reception of the release. Reputable media outlets maintain their credibility with readers and their relationships with publishers by not publishing random nonsense.

Fandoms often seem to lack self-awareness about their importance amd influence on publishing decisions. While publishers certainly keep an eye on fandom discussions, their primary focus is not on fandom-driven narratives (fanon) and preferences but on the massive casual readership, which drives the majority of book sales (and SJM is HUGE).

Fandoms are disproportionately populated by readers who were dissatisfied with canon, who seek alternate narrratives or ships. This is what makes fandom spaces so dynamic, but it doesn't reflect the general readership. Fandom is a tiny fraction of it. Publishers are very aware of this. So fandom theories and fanon ships will never be acknowledged by a publisher unless it serves a strategic purpose. Why? Bevause every PR and marketing decision is made to guide expectations in a way that maximizes book sales. Acknowledging fanon doesn’t serve that goal. It only risks confusing casual readers, weakening pre-orders, or generating negative buzz.

In fact, media-publisher relations can work to "combat" spiraling fandom narratives ahead of major releases by adjusting expectations rather than fueling speculation. This is, I think, why BB has never entertained the ship wars: because the only narrative they care about is the one in the books. They want the general readership to have appropriate expectations, not to confuse them.

So (and here is simply how I judge these events), why has an Az-Gwyn-Elain love triangle never been mentioned anywhere reputable, despite it dominating fandom discourse? Well, you guessed it. Because it doesn't exist to BB. It is a fandom creation. A gwynriel ship is simply not part of BB's narrative surrounding the upcoming release, as seen in the past year's media coverage. It's Elain and Azriel all the way. Even Lucien barely receives an honorary mention. We're talking the credible, reputable sources here (like TIME, E! News, etc). The only sensible conclusion is that BB wants the casual readership to focus on Elriel. Becasue, again, the last thing a publisher wants is confusion ahead of one of the biggest releases of the last decade.

To the Elriels that feel harassed and tired: You are not delusional. You’re picking up exactly what SJM and BB are putting down. Don’t let anyone bully you into thinking otherwise. When people call you insecure for being excited about Elriel's media attention, it is a deeply naive view. There’s no “winning” the ship wars because there was never a competition, at least not from the publisher’s perspective. There is one narrative, one endgame couple, and no other ship was ever a real contender. Fandom discourse may create the illusion of an open-ended outcome, but publishing doesn’t work that way. Writing is not the throw of a dice. Writing and producing a book of this scale is a years-long process involving immense financial investment and coordination betweem multiple large actors. The story’s direction is set long before fandom discourse begins, and no publisher would gamble that investment on shifting fandom opinions that reflect neither the general readership nor, and most importantly, the author's vision (which is what they have invested their money in).

Sorry for coming to you on anon to say all this. I just feel for Elriels and want them to know this. I'm sick of seeing them gaslit and ridiculed and questioning their own perception of reality. I'm not active in this fandom and don't really want its attention directed at me (I've seen too much over the years) so I prefer being anonymous.

I say this is standard industry practice but of course, always take what I or anyone else say with a grain of salt. Especially someone who anonymously claims to have credentials of some sort. None of this information about the industry should be difficult to confirm with a little bit of research (and please do look into this, double check what I've said, because the more you know about publishing, the less susceptible you will be to gaslighting!).

Thank you so much for this!

Everyone: PLEASE READ -- super interesting. But also kind of confirms what we've been saying all along. Nothing is accidental and of course everything in terms of publicity runs through BB and from them.

And you are so right about fandom usually being against canon and making up alternative options for their fave characters. I see it even with couples outside of Elriel/GA. Look at Nessian, and the stans who weren't happy with Cassian, and moved on to Eris (as if he is a better choice?! WTF). Same with Bryceriels, who weren't happy with Hunt, and now made up Azriel and Bryce connection. The anti Rhys campaign, and pro Tamlin one, because 'Tamlin is sad' and therefore Rhys is the devil. Many such examples.

This is really informative and I think would bring some calm to Elriels who've been hassled like hell in the past few weeks.

#elriel #pro elriel

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olderthannetfic · 4 months ago

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Question. Possibly naive question at that. So I totally understand and respect why ao3 doesn’t allow any mentions of monetization of fanwork. But I am wondering — how do we feel about fanfic commissions as a concept? Obviously I would never dare mention it on Ao3, 99% bc of the TOS and 1% cuz it seems gimmicky, but also, like, it’s very much a thing I do. . . Are fandoms opposed to fanfic commissions? Or is it more of a “legally I can’t endorse this but you do you”?

In the kind of LJ culture that built AO3, people did that for charity, like Fandom Trumps Hate now. Making actual money from your fic just wasn't done in those circles. In older zine circles, people "covered costs" only, but sometimes, those "costs" included a hell of a lot more than other fans approved of. On one end, it meant the literal printer's bill; on the other, it meant some pay for the editor's time and the gas to get to a con on top of the table fee, registration, and hotel room. In the 2020s, different parts of fandom are all over the place in attitudes towards selling fic in various ways.

Personally, I find it weird and distasteful. If I needed to earn money fast, I'd do original fetish commissions. If I want to write for money overall, I'll do what I do now: original novels with some of the same vibe my fanfic has.

When too much profit motive enters hobby spaces, the social atmosphere changes. A knitting meetup at a yarn store works okay, but someone trying to sell their hand dyed yarn at a meetup in the park tends to mess with the vibes. Someone else's dinner party is not an appropriate place for mlm shit. etc. etc.

Fanfic spaces are even more vulnerable to having the social scene ruined. There is already, inherently, a certain amount of pressure to write what is popular. Adding a direct profit motive exaggerates that even more.

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elvenscout · 2 months ago

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The himbofication of Jayce in the Jayvik community is honestly so frustrating to see.

It feels like the fandom took the idea of Jayce being a big ol' puppy for Viktor (& Mel) too far and removed his canonical intelligence.

This man can be an idiot sometimes, but hes not some big, dumb uwu himbo. He's only an "idiot" bc of his naivity and his ignorance, of which he tries to learn from time and time again.

Throughout season 1 he constantly makes the wrong decision bc of ignorance, or from naively trusting the wrong people because he believed in the good in others.

And while Jayce drops everything for Viktor, this is only up until the point he believes the Viktor he knew is gone, and is now committing atrocities that his Viktor never would have done.

He's a man trying to do his best and constantly failing, but never giving up even amidst all his failures. He's someone who loves science and found understanding and an equal for the first time in his life with Viktor, and never imagined he would lose that.

Yes he would do anything for Viktor, but not at the expense of the world. He surrenders himself in the end bc he failed and he can only hope that he alone will be enough to change Viktors mind. Even if this means he has to die to change his mind. He wants to save Viktor, because he knows this is not him. Because he wanted his Viktor back.

And anyways, he was initially labeled a "puppy" toward his romantic interests in the sense of puppy love: pure and innocent and naive love. He has heart eyes for those he cares about, and trusts them completely, because in his mind, why shouldn't he? He's someone who just wants the best for everyone, and can't imagine how others don't think that way. He has to unlearn this in the cave, when he's forced to reflect on how everything went so wrong.

Jayce can at many times be naive and ignorant, but he is not a himbo.

He's an intelligent, compassionate and flawed individual who wants to believe in the best in others, and has to learn that's just not how the world works.

#jayce arcane #jayvik #jayce talis #jayce x viktor #arcane #arcane spoilers #my opinion on the matter #the himbofication of jayce has really put me off the fandom #and i damn well love jayvik #hes also just labeled a puppy for being a soft tender man #and the fact we himbofy that in a world lacking complex and tender men is so belitting #men can be soft and tender without it making them dumb

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scholarinbookland · 26 days ago

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Jimin as a Method Actor

As a nerd, when I write a think-piece or analysis, I have to define my terms and goals for this piece to start out. My post is about how I think, while not trained in the Method, Jimin really embodies method acting in music videos and on stage.

Method Acting: Common to popular misconception, Method acting is not about being “in character” throughout the course of an acting project. Instead, an actor who uses “the Method” draws upon either past emotional memories or a deep analysis of a character’s motivations to embody the truths of the role that they are playing.

The Jimin quote that gave me this impression was when he told WeVerse Magazine in the interview dated 7/31/2021, “I never noticed before but the songs do sound different depending on what I’m wearing. Sometimes I danced all excitedly when I wore casual clothes, but when I wore a suit, something about the song sounded sexy. There’s a different vibe when I dance alone versus when I dance as part of a group, so I visualize how I should dress to make my dancing look cooler every time.” This response tells me that he uses costuming to get into character on stage, and it’s always a slightly different character that still fits with the theme of the story. There are several videos on YouTube comparing how he changes the vibe of GoGo, Boy With Love, and Dynamite among others depending on the styling. It’s a sort of “obvious in hindsight” thing that made me watch a lot of Jimin fancams and really look at the subtle differences he incorporates.

The whole interview is really interesting, especially coming from the puff-piece prone in-house magazine, because Jimin is very open about his process. He mentions earlier in the interview that he had to modify his process for the English trilogy, and that it was more difficult for him to dance to concept-less songs.

I’m paraphrasing, but he described the Butter dance as difficult to execute at first before he had to find the groove through amalgamating the approaches of other members to the song. The way he contrasted the two song groupings was interesting: previous songs and albums were “a concept” where he “wanted to show off something about myself in that context”; the English trilogy was based in “following the feeling of conveying the feelings I want to share with others”. In short, he struggled without enough storytelling in the dance to develop a character to embody on stage. In my book, that’s Method acting.

You even see it in RunBTS episodes. I think the production team of that show is aware of it, because he’s way more prone to acting whiny/silly and doing aegyo when he’s been styled really young or cutesy, and much more adult in his playfulness/mischief when dressed his age. It’s all in the way he holds himself, in my opinion. It also makes him a great model, because he can sell any outfit concept.

I think it’s also why his parts are generally the most-replayed in Music Videos, despite not being one of the two fandom-designated actors. Every time you see him in a music video, even if it’s a short part, he is firmly in character, defined by the song concept, album concept and the outfit in that scene. Look at LY:Her for example. There’s a clear difference between the Intro: Serendipity Jimin and the DNA Jimin, despite them being on the same album and sharing a common theme of idealistic, naive love. Serendipity is about the dreaminess of first love, expressed through the character of the Little Prince. In DNA his character is still dreamy at times, but overall resolving to convince a partner of your commitment and he is much more naturalistic (by which I mean less ethereal) in his portrayal of the DNA character.

He stars in Intro:Serendipity, playing a character that apparently Koreans compared to the Little Prince. It’s a French science fantasy novella (I read it as a pre-teen) about a child prince who learned life lessons as he travels across planets, eventually ending up on Earth and sharing his experiences with the narrator. The whole music video seems to be based upon that character and novella, and Jimin does a really good job of portraying a dreamy, slightly otherworldly feeling in that performance, including staying composed and calm while doing stunt work. Instead of relying on dance and costuming, here he is actually acting wordlessly as he lip-syncs to the camera, and he made an iconic piece of art. I love this music video.

In DNA he is one of the seven member cast, with four outfit changes and choreography to set the tone for the performance. He is almost entirely a supporting character in this music video, so I’m judging the four character variants purely on split-second vibes. Anyone reading this has seen the music video, so I’m calling the outfits sparkly jacket, white sweater with red stripe, yellow jacket, and navy heart shirt. In the sparkly jacket he has a slightly untouchable, suave vibe, in the white sweater he smirks a little, in the yellow jacket he’s dancing playfully and is a little bro-y in the non dancing couch scene, and in the heart shirt he’s back to a dreamy character like Serendipity but with an extra edge. I don’t even know if the differences are intentional or subconscious, but it’s deeply impressive and makes him a phenomenal dancer to watch on screen. I’m a ballet fan, so wordless character embodiment is a favorite medium of acting to watch.

If you go through all their music videos and focus on Jimin, he’s always doing this. He’s got an idea in his head about what his character is, how it relates to himself (see the above quote about how he approaches concepts), how his character interacts and plays off of the other members, and how the styling influences the character’s presentation. Even more impressively, it’s all in micro expressions, not overacted or very noticeable at first glance. In other words, he quietly plays his character in the background when not in focus, but takes over the scene when it’s his part.

He definitely leaned into this tendency in his solo work. He kept the sets and abrupt scene changes fairly minimal in his four solo music videos, with 3/4 having one set and Like Crazy having 5 interrelated sets (dreamy blue intro, house, club, bathroom, black set with couple) that tell a story. The reason I think so many of his fans, especially the ones who got into BTS pre-English trilogy, love his music videos so much is because of the deeply well-thought out storylines that influence the sets, costuming, and scene changes. I’ll probably follow this post up with a Like Crazy storyline MV analysis of my own, through the lens of what his character is portraying as opposed to declaring what he’s trying to say, but this is a long enough ramble as it is. But overall, I think that Jimin’s method acting ability is a important contributor to his IT factor that many fans overlook when trying to explain his stage presence.

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silverthehedgehogexplained · 4 months ago

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Explaining Silver the Hedgehog's Backstory

One of the most confusing subjects in the Sonic fandom is Silver’s backstory, the chronology of Sonic 06 and how it affects the characters. So in this post I’ll go over what we know about Silver’s backstory, its effects on his character, his involvement with Blaze and how the ending of Sonic 06 affects them.

Silver was born 200 years into a devastated future ravaged by the Flames of Disaster Iblis. The sky was always dark and the world was filled with endless wastelands ravaged by constant disasters and hostile Iblis spawn. The people are exhausted and live without hope. Iblis rampages and burns everything in its path. Silver has fought against Iblis for most of his life and tried to find the source of the disaster for just as long but no one could tell him how the world came to ruin.

This backstory informs Silver's character in the following ways:

Silver is a warrior. He is proficient in and enjoys fighting, has very aggressive determined expressions with constant fists and is a noted fighter(Shadow describes him as a fighter in Team Sonic Racing) whose power is respected by Sonic and Shadow. Silver is extremely powerful and capable of defeating small armies of enemies and giant monsters by himself. This stems from his apocalyptic background in the hostile future filled with Iblis minions and disasters such as flame tornadoes that he had to battle constantly. When you surprise him in Generations he is instantly ready to fight and angrily looks around, he comes from a world where all manner of Iblis spawn could attack at any given moment. It is explained in Silver's introduction story on Sonic Channel that Silver fought and struggled for half his lifetime, indicating that Silver fought against Iblis and its forces from a very early age.

Silver is naive, he has a black and white perspective and tackles things bluntly. He expects people to believe and cooperate with him when he says he’s from the future or explains outlandish things about his mission. He is earnest, he has no filter and acts unrefined when talking to people(which in Japanese is signified by his use of the informal "Ore" and "Anta" to address himself and others when he speaks). He sometimes takes things literally, misinterprets things or doesn't get jokes. He can also be unfamiliar with things in Sonic's time period. We don't know how people lived in the apocalyptic future or what they did and didn't have access to but it seems to be very rudimentary, destitute and even militarized as one of the glimpses into Silver's future from Sonic Pict shows him eating calorie bar rations that are described as apple flavored. Related to the above, Silver likely spent the majority of his time fighting.

Silver is also very pragmatic. He has a straight to the point mindset and hates distractions, frivolous details or just things getting in his way. As a survivor there is no room for pointless things for him.

On the flip side of that however, Silver is also wide-eyed. He loves challenges and experiencing fun new things he never had access to and is said to engage in cheerful activities following the historical change of 06.

Silver is incredibly optimistic and hopeful. He was able to fight through the hopeless ruined future world because he had the hope for a blue sky and the determination to keep fighting when everyone else had given into despair.

Most importantly of all however is Silver's deep love and drive for peace and prosperity. Silver is a very empathetic person that cares deeply for the state of the world and people around him. Note the beginning of his story in 06 where he expresses outrage at the state of his future with dark skies, endless wastelands and people that live in despair then contrast that with his later dialogue throughout the series where he expresses love for blue skies, beautiful vistas or just places where people live happily. Something as simple as a desert is beautiful to him simply because there is no destruction and the people are happy. Silver particularly loves and desires to protect smiles and blue skies because he came from a world that is stated to be filled with darkness and despair according to Sonic Team's Sonic Channel stories. Silver fights for peace and prosperity for the world and its people because he has experienced quite literal hellish suffering and devastation.

I also want to emphasize that Blaze isn't part of Silver's backstory and he didn't have her in his life in the apocalyptic future. Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka confirmed that Silver and Eggman Nega originate from the future while Blaze originates from her dimension and writer Ian Flynn has confirmed that Sonic Rush takes place before Sonic 06 with these answers on his podcast.

"I can't get too much into it because this is kind of internal stuff that has not been clarified publicly but Sonic Rush comes first, the Blaze of 06 is the Blaze of Rush and she doesn't die, she turns into Burning Blaze and warps back to her own dimension and forgets the events of 06."

"I don't know how much I can get into it without being given the official go-ahead, but Blaze is not from Silver's post-apocalyptic future. She is from her own dimension and it's extremely nuancey, but she doesn't really see or interact with Sonic until like the very very end of Silver's campaign. It's...an incredibly narrow loophole but she doesn't necessarily know that it's Sonic they're after. Again I'm sure someone can tear that apart very easily but suffice to say, I believe the intention is that she doesn't know that Silver is targeting Sonic specifically and she has no interaction with him or really anybody else in the main cast for that reason."

Meaning that Silver and Blaze only met shortly before the events of 06 and Silver faced the ruined future on his own before that point.

Things are gonna get a bit complicated here but Blaze only temporarily appearing in the future before being ripped away from Silver actually ties into their Tanabata parallel. In the story of Tanabata, Orihime(the princess) only descends to the world of Hikoboshi(the cow herder) for a short while before they are separated for neglecting their duties. At the end of Silver's story, Silver neglects his duty by refusing to seal Blaze away and so they are separated, only to ever meet again when crossing paths in Sonic's world.

When arriving in Wave Ocean, Blaze notes the world of the past. This is because Blaze seems to actually have amnesia.

According to Ian Flynn, the reason why Blaze was kept away from the cast besides Silver in 06 is as a narrow loophole to keep her from realizing it was Sonic they were after. In a 2012 Q&A for the Sonic Boom convention, Sonic Team Creative Officer Takashi Iizuka stated that the characters in 06 had amnesia and at the end of the Metal Virus arc in IDW we learn that rough inter-dimensional travel can cause amnesia which happens to Sonic when he crashes into Blaze's dimension. Blaze then reawakens Sonic's memories by reminding him of his super form, something that Blaze was kept from in 06.

What happens with Blaze in 06 as I understand it is that at some point prior to the events of the game Blaze was transported to the future where she developed amnesia upon arrival before joining Silver in his war against Iblis. They are deceived by Mephiles into trying to assassinate Sonic before Silver learns the truth and returns to the future to seal Iblis away, he is unable to do so however due to not being a compatible vessel and Blaze seals Iblis and herself away instead. Following the defeat of Solaris and the subsequent historical change, Blaze warps back to her Dimension and forgets the events of 06(according to Ian Flynn).

Silver also warps back to the future and forgets the events of 06 but not his apocalyptic life under the devastation of Iblis, only the events of 06 itself and his original partnership with Blaze which was clarified in his Fast Friends Forever profile that states he can't remember how his future was restored(as in the events of 06).

So yes, the ending of Sonic 06 doesn't change Silver or Blaze's backstories. Silver is still the apocalyptic warrior from Sonic 06 and Blaze is still the imperial princess from Sonic Rush before and after the events of 06.

The endings of both Silver’s Story and the Last Story of 06 tie into the game’s themes of duty, sacrifice and exchange.

“Do we have to sacrifice something in order to gain something?”

To gain something you have to lose something, to become a hero you must be willing to make sacrifices. Blaze sacrifices herself to save the future and in exchange for the peaceful happy future he always wanted, Silver, alongside everyone else, loses their memories of the events of 06.

But Silver's duty doesn't end there. He continues to protect the peace of the future as new disasters and changes in the timeline occur, and just like with Iblis, Silver will continue fighting them for a peaceful world.

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thomas-jefferson-miku-binder · 7 months ago

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I hate Mel Medarda discourse because she’s an insanely well-written character with a lot of depth, but people almost always have only two things to say about her: 1) evil girlboss or 2) never did anything wrong. both make me want to krill myself 🦐

In front of you, there’s a female character born of war who rejects the physical brutality of her family’s name and the regime she was born under. except said violence never really goes away because if it ever does leave, nothing else would remain

This character can and will reproduce the hatred she has always known, just in more palpable ways, ways where she’s allowed to look away — or even better, ways where she’s so distanced from the action itself that where she “looks” doesn’t even matter

It’s also so interesting to think that maybe Mel doesn’t dislike physical violence because it’s “bad” but simply because she does not excel at it The thought that if Mel was maybe stronger or a more skilled fighter, she would be just like her mother tickles my brain. yaaaas Although, to me, that's a more "what-if" scenario than the actual characterization Arcane deceipts

By the way, I do not think Mel is a monster. She clearly does try to be what she considers a "good" person, but the violence she’s always known sometimes escapes (just like in the Viktor scene above — she does not like to be disagreed with).

Sooo insane that she’s a diplomat/politician because yes. what other job in the world would allow her to exercise that repressed violence while also giving her the sense of duty—of goodness.

Mel is stuck at the scene of the execution form her childhood. All she does is repeat the same scenario in her head with different outcomes: sometimes one where she saves the prisoner, another where she doesn’t hesitate (that being the keyword here) to kill her

This reverberation of the violence she suffered is just her manner of coping with that traumatic scene. a way of lessening the pain without actually confronting its cause.

I feel like I need to clarify that no, I do not think Mel is “evil”. I don’t even think she is intentionally manipulative (most of the time), I think she handles people the only way she knows how to, which is probably one of the only reasons she survived Noxus at all (as, to how I see it, there's only a certain extent your House will guarantee your protection in Noxus).

I know the fandom talks a lot about Viktor and Jayce being idealistic, but I rarely see people mention how Mel is just as romantic. Jesus- that’s literally a huge source of conflict with her mother: Ambessa thinks Mel is naive, which to her means weakness, which to her is unacceptable.

I hate that Mel Medarda is forced to be subjected to fandom spaces, because, no, she is not a small bean. no, she’s not an evil girlboss.

Do I believe she is a good person? I think she tries to be (even if her notion of goodness is so heavily aligned with honor, too), and that tells me a lot more about her character than how successful she is at it

#bringing some of my twitter rambles to here because i think it makes semi sense #cali speaks #mel medarda #arcane #arcane: league of legends #lol #league of legends #meta #character analysis

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ckret2 · 8 months ago

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Your fic has given me "sees Bill as an actual rounded character now" disease so all of the funny fanarts that reduce him to just the pathetic ex guy or to looser idiot triangle i found funny before annoy me slightly now and I'm blaming you

that's honestly hilarious because I'm having the opposite experience

I wasn't deep in Gravity Falls fandom during the peak Tumblr Sexyman Bill Cipher years—I watched the show one time and forgot about it for ~4 years—but I was close enough to see it happening on my dash. And the suave, sophisticated, infinitely in-control Bill characterization was ubiquitous throughout tumblr—the "tailor-made to dom in an x reader fic" characterization where 90% of the emotions he demonstrates are "smirking" and "brooding but in a cool way." (those are emotions now.) Some works would go as far as to say that Bill's mind was simply too alien to be relatable to a human. Most of the works featuring him with Ford depicted Ford as completely enthralled with Bill, naively worshiping the ground he floats over, while Bill was usually depicted as cool, distant, disinterested, at best faintly amused by his human toy. In fanworks like that, the idea that Bill could possibly have been distraught by losing hold of Ford was unthinkable.

And that was common enough—the cool, aloof villain—that it's jarring to go from absorbing that via osmosis for years to rewatching the show and remembering oh right, he's a bit of a dweeb that hollers at people through sock puppets and freaks out when the cops bust in on his red solo cup party.

By the time I started my fic in 2023 the sexyman Bill had died down enough that I found other folks exploring his goofy side, but it still seemed like any time I ducked in on ao3 looking for Bill-centric works, I still saw echoes of that old fanon characterization more often than not.

So for me? It's been great seeing fanworks depicting Bill as an emotionally devastated, blubbering mess over losing his favorite pawn. It's been great seeing fanworks that allow him to be a loser, a failure, a dork, sometimes bumbling or in over his head or sticking his foot in his mouth. Hell yeah! This is what I've been missing for years!

Maybe it'll get annoying eventually but right now it just feels like it's finally balancing him out.

#anonymous #ask #meta #bill cipher #gravity falls #(also im really into the most feared arrogant & overpowered villain in a work being reduced to a despondent wreck over someone much lower)#(gotta be one of my favorite tropes)#(BUT that's just my personal tastes)

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flightfoot · 6 months ago

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How Alya's mistreated by the saltdom and the writers

I've written this for the @yall-hate-kids-tourney, but figured that I'd publish it on my own tumblr as well for an easy reference point for others who want to illustrate how badly Alya's been treated - mostly by the fandom, but she's been somewhat screwed over by the writing as well. I've written it so that even people who have never heard of Miraculous before can understand my problems with the way Alya's often depicted, and I will probably use this essay for that purpose repeatedly in the future. It's over 4500 words, so buckle up!

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The amount of hatred Alya gets in the fandom is absolutely insane. There are over 800 fics tagged with "Alya Cesaire Bashing", and that's just the ones that actually TAG it - many of them either use a a non-canonical tag or just take their demonization of her as canon. It's not just that a lot of fics bash her either, but that the fics that bash her are disproportionately popular. If you go through the "Miraculous Ladybug" tag on AO3 and sort by kudos, I'd say around a third of the top 500 most popular fics use this gross caricature of her in order to justify inflicting some sort of insane punishment on her, or at least replacing her with "better" friends and leaving her to wail in despair.

Basically, Alya is the best friend of the main character, Marinette. She's really into superheroes and aims to be a reporter someday, to the point that the first time a supervillain cropped up in the series, she immediately got out her bike and cycled after him so that she could be there when a superhero showed up to fight him (Lois Lane would be proud). She runs a blog called the "Ladyblog" which reports on what the superheroes are doing, and sometimes makes some fun videos, like about the most impressive feats of one of the superheroes.

More relevantly though, she acts as Marinette's support a lot of the time, often being the one to push her to confess her feelings to Adrien, to help her with plans she comes up with, to talk things out with if she's having trouble processing something, and trying to act as the voice of reason if Marinette's gotten to into her own head. It can sometimes head into Black Best Friend territory of having her mostly stick around to support her bestie, but she DOES get a decent amount of screentime and focus at least.

Then the first episode of season 3 aired, and the fandom went BALLISTIC.

This character, Lila, debuted back at the end of season 1 as being this attention-seeking liar who pretended that she knew a lot more famous people than she actually did, including being best friends with Ladybug. Alya, being a naive 14-year-old, believed her and put Lila's interview on her blog. Since Marinette IS Ladybug, she knew this was not true, though she was initially more freaked out about the possibility that Adrien (the boy she has a crush on) would find her supposedly amazing life to be entrancing and that Lila would steal Adrien away from her, to the point that she actively wanted to stop Lila and Adrien from spending time together to prevent Adrien from falling for her.

Fast-forward to Chameleon, the first episode of season 3, and Lila's back and lying some more, this time about having Tinnitus (which would mean that she needs to sit at the front of class, next to Adrien). The class has a whole seating rearrangement in order to accommodate the move, and because some of them just wanted to change seats. Since Marinette was late that day, she didn't get to give input, so she wound up sitting alone at the back of the class, instead of next to Alya like she usually did. She's upset by this, but can't prove that Lila doesn't actually have the disability (she doesn't even have evidence that Lila doesn't have hearing problems, it's just that her story of how she supposedly got the disability is suspect), so she puts up with it for the class period.

Then lunch time rolls around and Marinette tells Alya and Alya's boyfriend, Nino, that Lila's a lying liar who lies. Alya asks why Marinette hates her so much, since she barely knows Lila (this isn't the first time that Marinette's nitpicked at Lila's stories, but she's never actually managed to prove that Lila's lying, Lila's good at coming up with explanations for any hole Marinette exposes in her tales). Marinette tells her how, after Lila first arrived at school, she followed her and Adrien, eavesdropped on them, and then saw Ladybug show up and tear into Lila for not knowing her. (Presumably that's what she says, the episode skipped past her actual recounting of what she saw). Alya and Nino are more concerned with the fact that she stalked Lila and Adrien, with Alya also being skeptical that what she heard might have been out-of-context, given how common out-of-context eavesdropping is in fiction for causing issues, with Alya saying, "A good reporter always verifies her sources. Can you prove she doesn't actually know Ladybug?"

Since Marinette can't actually prove anything without revealing that she's Ladybug, she decides that the sane and reasonable thing to do is to throw a wadded up napkin at Lila while she's eating lunch, and when she catches it (Lila's pretending to have a sprained wrist), to loudly declare that she obviously doesn't have a sprained wrist. Lila quickly pretends that catching it did actually hurt, the classmates Lila was sitting with scold Marinette for hurting her, and then Marinette goes off to seethe in a bathroom, where Lila finds her and threatens to turn her friends against her if she continues trying to expose her lies.

Then at the end of the episode, Adrien goes to sit with Marinette at the back of the class to keep her company, the teacher thinks that Marinette ALSO has hearing issues so she's brought back to the front (and away from Adrien again), Lila pretends that her hearing has been fixed so she can sit at the back with Adrien, and Alya spots that Marinette looks miserable about sitting alone at the front, so she chooses to sit next to Marinette to keep her company and everyone ends up going back to their old places, except that Lila's sitting at the back of the class now.

And that's it. That is, for the most part, what kicked off the entire Alya hatred and demonization onslaught. While there ARE more things that happening in following episodes, they have a pretty small effect on the demonization Alya's put through, almost all of it is derived from Chameleon and hasn't changed much since then.

So for starters, in fanfics Alya is often made to ditch Marinette constantly to hang out with Lila instead. This never happens. She's often exasperated when Marinette starts talking about how Lila is awful and points out that she doesn't have proof of that, but she doesn't avoid Marinette, and the closest she ever comes to hanging out with Lila outside of class events is when she called Lila over to babysit hers and Nino's younger siblings when Marinette canceled at the last minute.

But most Alya-bashing fics don't just leave it there. Oh no. If you look through a bunch of the most popular Miraculous fics, you'll see Alya made out to be some sort of ringleader for the class in bullying Marinette, hitting her, pinching her, poisoning her, destroying her things, saying nasty, heinous things to her, the works, and inciting the rest of the class to do the same, sometimes to the point that even LILA is shocked at her cruelty. Usually in these cases, Chloe, who is canonically the class bully (and Marinette's bully in particular) is inexplicably Marinette's primary protector against the eeeeeevil Alya, becoming Marinette's best friend and support and basically taking on Alya's canon role and some of her personality traits, despite the fact that canonically, Chloe's as susceptible to Lila's lies as anyone else, and that in season 5 Chloe actually became Lila's partner in crime in trying to hurt Marinette in particular. (I don't like how Chloe's treated in canon, but that's a different story).

I've never even seen any justification given for why Alya's so frequently made to be outright violent or cruel towards Marinette, it's just widely accepted in fiction now, even with nothing pointing to her ever being malicious like that. There ARE other things Alya canonically does that I see her taken to task over though, but that fall apart when you examine them.

One of the biggest offenders is criticism towards Alya over how she handles babysitting. In Christmaster, Alya and Nino pick up Nino's little brother after Marinette babysits him for them while they're on a date, in Timetagger, Marinette's slated to babysit for them while they're on a date but cancels at the last minute, so they call Lila over instead, and then in Simple Man, Marinette books herself to babysit Alya's and Nino's younger siblings and the daughter of one's of her mom's friends, a little girl named Manon, all at the same time.

Alya receives heavy criticism for not paying Marinette for her babysitting, for having Marinette babysit for her secretly behind her parents' back without their knowledge, and for pressuring Marinette to babysit for her even though Marinette's so busy.

A few problems with this.

1. We see babysitting happen several times, sometimes with Alya helping Marinette with babysitting Manon and sometimes with Marinette just babysitting Manon without anyone else's involvement. At no point is payment brought up, and yet the absence of such a discussion is only ever used to demonize Alya.

2. There is no evidence that the babysitting Marinette does for Alya's sake is done behind her parents' back, the only thing pointing to that is a lack of Alya ever flat-out saying that she has her parents' permission to have Marinette babysit for her, but there's no evidence of sneaking around. MARINETTE, however, DOES canonically ditch her babysitting duties by having Alya babysit for her without the parent's knowledge. In Prime Queen, Marinette accidentally double books herself to do an interview as Ladybug at the same time that she's supposed to be babysitting Manon, so she calls Alya over to watch the interview with her, lies to her that she's just gonna go downstairs for a few minutes to talk with her parents and for Alya to please watch over Manon while she does that, and then leaves to do the interview while Alya watches over Manon the whole time. Nadja definitely didn't know that this happened, because she was surprised and worried when Alya and Manon called in during the interview with Marinette nowhere to be seen. In addition to this, in Simpleman, Marinette foists off all the children she's babysitting onto her grandpa against his will so that she can run off and help with Adrien's photoshoot after he calls her. The people demonizing Alya for supposedly having Marinette babysit for her secretly are not upset about the examples of Marinette canonically doing these things.

3. Of the three times that Marinette has, to date, been scheduled to babysit for Alya's sake (Christmaster, Timetagger, and Simpleman), for Christmaster she spent the next several hours after finishing with babysitting making Adrien's 50th birthday present (he's currently 14 years old), so I wouldn't say she was pressed for time, for Timetagger, she literally called Alya at the last minute to say she was too busy to babysit and Alya said it was no biggie and made other arrangements, and for Simpleman, Alya offered to cancel her date and take care of her younger siblings herself the instant she saw that Marinette was already babysitting Manon, and Marinette told her to go ahead and go on her date and that she'd look after her siblings.

So clearly, the people clutching their pearls about how horribly irresponsibly Alya is handling babysitting and how she's wronging Marinette in the process don't actually care about babysitting ethics here, because otherwise, Marinette would be getting the brunt of the hatred, not Alya. Despite this, I've seen a fair number of posts in the past tearing into Alya's babysitting for the reasons I already gave, and a bunch of fics that make it so that Alya pressures and guilt-trips Marinette into babysitting for her when she's struggling to keep up with all her work, only to have her parents find out and be horrified by how Alya's lied to them about who's been doing the babysitting and that Alya's been getting an increased allowance because of that, so they pay Marinette out of Alya's allowance and ground her, take away privileges, just have this be used as an excuse to punish Alya for supposedly wronging Marinette.

And then there's the subcategory of Alya demonization towards her for putting up Lila's interview on her blog without verifying that Lila was telling the truth. Admittedly, this was foolish, but she's 14. Retractions exist for a reason. And yet, fics frequently have her reputation be completely destroyed because she put up one interview that had a false statement by the interviewee in it, and sometimes even to be completely blacklisted from ever being a journalist in the future, things that are completely insane and would have even the most storied and well-respected of reporters be unable to ever get a job.

She also frequently gets demonized and bashed for "believing Lila over Marinette". My major issue with this: what she's specifically believing Lila over Marinette for is on the topic of "is Lila an awful person". I don't think it's unreasonable to have a higher standard of proof for believing that someone is an awful person than for believing that your friend might just have some biased interpretations. Alya thinks that Marinette doesn't like Lila mostly because Lila has hit on Adrien, Marinette's crush, before. This isn't unreasonable considering that Marinette's first reaction to Lila is to freak out about her stealing Adrien away, and that when this other girl, Kagami, started hanging out with Adrien, she freaked out about that too. Specifically, she called a meeting of all her female friends to try and stop Kagami and Adrien from going away together to London for the weekend in Backwarder, helped Chloe in trying to get Kagami covered in food at a fancy red carpet movie opening in order to drive her away and steal her seat next to Adrien for the movie, and when she and Kagami were paired up for a "friend-making game" where the goal was to locate where Adrien was in Paris and the prize was to spend time with him, she pretended to genuinely want to be Kagami's friend so she could sabotage both of them and prevent Kagami from spending time with Adrien. So it's not like the belief that Marinette might be unfairly biased against Lila because she's made moves on Adrien is an unfair assumption.

In addition to that, on the occasions when Lila HAS tried to frame Marinette for something, Alya hasn't believed it, or hasn't been shown to believe it at least. In Ladybug, Lila tries to frame Marinette for cheating on a test, for stealing a necklace from her, and for knocking her down the stairs. Despite the evidence Lila planted, Alya doesn't believe it and investigates to try and find out what really happened. She doesn't uncover any solid proof, but she still believes in Marinette. She doesn't believe that Marinette's assumption that Lila's behind this is necessarily correct, since Marinette's leaping to that without presenting proof, but she doesn't believe that Marinette's the culprit either. And in the two following cases when Marinette's framed, Alya never actually gets a chance to say what she believes after the accusation is made against Marinette.

Just... the amount of demonization towards Alya TO THIS DAY, often for things she NEVER EVEN FREAKING DID, is absolutely insane. Even over 5 years since Chameleon aired, fics with Alya being made into this malicious, awful bully so that Marinette can get some new friends to publicly denounce her, get her arrested, or otherwise be punished are frequently on the front page of the most recently updated fics on AO3, and are often some of the most popular ones. If you go to "Fandom-Specific plot" on Tvtropes, saltfics like these have multiple files going through all the common salt tropes. When looking through fics, I frequently search for Alya's name because she's often the first person to be unfairly demonized, so if she's safe, then everyone likely is.

I suspect that racism plays a major factor in this. It doesn't make sense that Alya's often painted as being a violent, malicious bully and leader in getting the rest of the class to physically hurt and terrorize Marinette, I haven't even seen analysis arguing that she'd do that... but it tracks with the "Black Brute" archetype. This becomes even more obvious with Chloe, who's white and canonically DOES do some of this stuff, taking on Alya's canon role and some of her personality traits in these sorts of stories.

Then there's the standard Alya's held to for how she handles her blog. It's way higher than anyone would hold real-world reporters to, much less 14-year-olds. But it makes sense if you factor racial bias into account, and how Alya, being Black, is going to be held to a higher standard than anyone else, and be punished more for failing to meet that standard.

For things like the babysitting double standard, it makes no sense if you're actually looking at the stated criticism, given that the same criticism isn't leveled at Marinette... but it makes perfect sense if you're going off the assumption that Alya, as Marinette's Black Best Friend, is supposed to solely function as her support and that she's simply fulfilling her duties by always being there for her when needed, including for babysitting, but that if Marinette ever attempts to repay in kind, then Alya's being unfair towards her because Alya's obligated to always support Marinette, but that relationship is supposed to be a one-way street. Alya is supposed to function as Marinette's support, never the other way around.

And as for the way Alya's demonized for asking for evidence before believing that Lila's lying, well... again, Alya's expected to act as Marinette's support, and her "failing" that in any way, even if it makes sense from her point of view, is viewed as a betrayal. She's supposed to be loyal to Marinette, and only to Marinette, not to think for herself or to have multiple other friends or values that she needs to weigh. And anything that she does to go against that "justifies" Marinette intentionally trying to hurt and punish her for failing to live up to her role.

In conclusion, the way Alya's treated by the salt side of the fandom is grossly unfair, often has little connection with anything she canonically did, and has some gross racist implications, and is likely at least partially spurred on by racism, especially with how common and popular it still is to this day.

Addendum: How Alya is screwed over by the writers.

While Alya is primarily screwed over by the fanbase, there are some aspects of the writing that exacerbate her ill treatment. In season 4, Marinette confesses her secret identity to Alya, letting her know that she is Ladybug. Despite now knowing why Marinette was so convinced that Lila wasn't friends with Ladybug, and that Lila's interview stating that she's best friends with Ladybug is a lie, the subject just... never comes up, even when Lila starts being important again. It's not that Alya's ignoring what Lila lying on those subjects means, it's more like the writers just completely forgot that Lila told those particular lies, since Marinette doesn't bring them up either. This creates an inconsistency with the fanbase, who really, really, REALLY haven't forgotten those lies.

There ARE ways to explain this - Lila lying about being friends with Ladybug in order to try to boost her reputation, especially when she's the new girl, isn't really all that heinous. Marinette lies a lot as well, even if you don't count lies told to protect her secret identity or other "necessary" lies, sometimes out of embarrassment, sometimes to to try and prevent someone's feelings from getting hurt, and sometimes because she thinks it's the fastest, easiest, or most certain way to get the outcome she wants. And yet, even though Marinette lies a lot, she's not ostracized for that since it's usually not for malicious reasons - foolish reasons at times, but rarely malicious. It would make sense that Lila too, wouldn't be thought too badly of for merely lying in an attempt to make friends.

None of that actually comes up though. Alya later, in Confrontation, states that, "Marinette, you know we'll always believe you. But every time you've accused Lila, there's been no evidence. And at worst, it was just a misunderstanding." Marinette doesn't say anything about the previous times Lila has been proven to lie, so it seems like either it was decided offscreen that the more understandable lies she's told don't matter, or that the writers just plain forgot about them.

There were other opportunities created by Alya knowing Marinette's identity that were ignored. Alya concludes that Adrien backing up Marinette's statement that Lila's bad news was just due to him wanting to defend his girlfriend. This is also a bit of a writing flaw, while wanting to back up his girlfriend's stance IS a decent reason for Adrien to be biased against Lila, this is Adrien we're talking about here. He's nice and understanding to a fault, and is known for giving people the benefit of the doubt and second chances. It makes far less sense to believe that he'd believe the worst of Lila, even if Marinette does, than it does for Marinette to be biased against Lila. That being said, Adrien wouldn't have been present for Lila's more indisputable threats and statements directed against Marinette, so he can't actually verify for sure whether or not there could've been some misunderstanding.

There WAS, however, someone who was always with Marinette, and who could actually back up Marinette's statements more definitively.

Tikki. She was present for every threat Lila made, for everything she ever claimed. While it's possible that both Tikki and Marinette may have misunderstood Lila in the same way, it's far less likely, especially since Tikki would have had different biases from Marinette. Tikki could be an important witness. Yet that never comes up, is never proposed, because that would end the plotline too quickly.

Alya was also screwed over in the immediate aftermath of Lila being exposed, though not by the writers per se? There was a short scene planned after Lila's exposed where Alya apologizes for not believing Marinette about Lila being a liar and generally an awful person, we've even got leaked footage of it, but it appears that it was cut somewhere between being written and voice acted, and the episode being aired.

All of this only really affects detailed arguments about how well (or poorly) Alya's story arc with Lila was handled, its affect on the actual fanfiction produced about Chameleon salt was minimal, I saw no change in its frequency, severity, or general handling of the characters with any season after season 3. I highly doubt that even the changes I suggested here would have done much to persuade the saltdom against Ron the Death Eatering Alya, especially since a lot of the hatred against her has so little to do with the show.

There IS some hatred thrown at Alya for non-Lila related reasons - well, reasons that aren't DIRECTLY Lila related, most of that hatred still stems from people hating her for Chameleon stuff and then retroactively justifying it by looking back at other things she did that irked them. The most common one (that actually has some sort of argument to it, not the "Alya's a horrible babysitter and is abusing her friendship with Marinette" nonsense I listed in the main essay) is that Alya's pushy about getting Marinette together with Adrien.

This is more a product of Alya's usual role in the story than anything. I mentioned in the main essay how Alya sometimes falls into "Black Best Friend" territory, and this is one of the biggest examples. One of her most common roles throughout the series is as the person who pushes Marinette to actually confess to Adrien, to hang out with him, to pursue her romantic desires even with her anxiety holding her back, and to be honest with herself during the times when she's trying to deny her feelings for him. She's Marinette's sounding board whenever she's having an anxiety spiral about... actually, just about anything, and acts as the voice of reason when Marinette gets in her own head too much.

Thus, Alya sets Marinette and Adrien to end up somewhere alone together, or tries to push her to talk to him, or to be honest during the times when she tries to "move on" from Adrien by denying that she still has feelings for him (which is blatantly untrue). She IS okay with Marinette dating someone else though, if she honestly seems to want to do that. She had no problem with her dating Luka, for instance. She DID protest Marinette's seemingly sudden interest in Chat Noir, but that was mostly because Marinette seemed to be grabbing at her new attraction as an attempt to run away from her feelings for Adrien, something that Tikki ALSO noted.

That's another thing - Alya's the character who's most frequently thrown into this role, but she's not the only one, nor even the most extreme one. A new character that was introduced for the Miraculous New York Special, Jess, observed how Adrien and Marinette acted around each other, and decided to try to get them to confess their love by faking a supervillain attack on them, with the supervillain kidnapping anyone that no one loves in order to compel Marinette to FINALLY confess to Adrien. (Alya thought it was stupid, but agreed to help since it might actually work). When Marinette, Adrien, Luka, and Kagami went out to the wax museum together, Luka intentionally locked Adrien and Marinette in a room together so that Marinette would stop running away and would be forced to talk to Adrien. Marinette is written in such a way that other characters are compelled to meddle in her lovelife, because otherwise she'll continue making her own extreme plans and pining away, but never actually confess her feelings.

So while Alya could be said to be "pushy" to an extent, it's mostly for Marinette's benefit. I would like if this was a less frequent role for Alya - I think it does her a disservice, since it locks her firmly into Marinette's orbit rather than emphasizing who Alya is as her own character. Most of the hatred towards Alya for this is tied up in "Die For Our Ship" being directed at Adrien though, with Adrien bashers hating that Alya's trying to set Marinette up with what they see as an inferior option. Ironically enough, while Alya's role in this situation is one of the primary examples in the show of her being treated by the writers as a "Black Best Friend" who exists to serve Marinette's character, it's actually one of the cases where I think racism is a pretty minor part of the hatred by the fanbase over it, since I think that's mostly motivated by hatred towards the Lovesquare.

In conclusion (again), there is an issue with the writers bending Alya's character in order to tell a particular story, particularly a Marinette-centered story, while ignoring how little sense that makes with what happened earlier on in the plotline, or how it centralizes Alya's role and character around Marinette in ways that exacerbate already existing writing patterns in media.

#alya cesaire #ml analysis #ml fandom salt #miraculous ladybug

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sodapopper · 1 month ago

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I have something to say about Soda, and y’all are not going to like it. But I have to speak my truth.

I absolutely love that as a fandom we’re starting to humanize him and recognize his character for more than just a comedic bystander. But sometimes it feels like the pendulum now swings too far in the other direction, and some of these takes have turned him into a completely different character.

Yes, Soda is more than just his sweetness. He’s got anger and recklessness and grief, too. But exploring and developing that hidden depth shouldn’t be at the expense of his compassion and good-nature, which are still fundamental parts of his character. The sweetness doesn’t stop existing just because he’s also capable of darkness. They can and should coexist: that’s the entire point of complexity.

I keep seeing posts that use Ponyboy’s unreliable narration to argue away Soda’s sweetness, and I’ll be honest, it irritates me. Ponyboy is misguided, but he’s not outright wrong about what he observes. Darry is hard and cold. Johnny is frightened and nervous. Dally is tough and mean. And Soda is reckless and compassionate. Ponyboy might miss the subtlety of motivation (Darry is harsh, but not because he hates his brother) but he’s truthful about what’s externally obvious.

And yes, Ponyboy idolizes Soda, but the cause of his hero worship is rooted in Soda’s kindness towards him. If Darry were more emotionally present, Ponyboy would likely idolize him, too. But Ponyboy’s hero worship doesn’t cause him to erase Soda’s flaws. In fact, he calls them out on multiple occasions—Soda’s recklessness, his academic failures, his inability to take anything seriously. Pony is even embarrassed by Soda when Cherry asks about him dropping out.

Similarly important to note is that Ponyboy isn't the only one who puts Soda on a golden pedestal. Darry is equally guilty of idealizing his brother, and it's because of the emotional labor Soda does for his family; not because Ponyboy has crafted a completely different version of his brother for the readers.

The fandom wants a complex Soda, and so do I. But complexity doesn’t equate darkness! His core traits don't need to be erased to prop up a version of the character that’s unrecognizably gritty and twisted. Soda is interesting because he’s kind. He’s interesting because he’s emotionally intelligent. He’s interesting because he listens. These things don’t make him perfect! They’re both his strength and his weakness.

Soda who lets himself be walked over. Soda who keeps the peace at the expense of voicing his honest opinion. Soda who hides pain with a manic glimmer in his eyes. Soda who holds it in until he can’t. Soda who explodes in grief or anger when pushed to his breaking point. Soda who can’t sit still. Soda who embraces his “stupidity” like a badge of honor to hide how much it hurts. Soda who nobody really knows, because he protects himself by focusing on others. Soda with a fear of abandonment. Glass child Sodapop. Beautiful and invisible. Slowly being killed by the pressure of a role he’s not strong enough to perform.

And yes, he's also angry. He's also reckless. He's also easily distracted and can't sit still and likes to fight. But good characterization happens when you explore these traits within the context of the other ones. The gentleness and roughness are not mutually exclusive; they can and should go hand in hand.

Instead of “oh I bet Ponyboy is lying, Soda probably yells at him all the time,” consider: what in Soda’s life would be hurtful enough to push him to yell at Ponyboy? Instead of “Ponyboy’s naive, I bet Soda drinks like crazy,” consider: what deeper motivation might keep Soda from drinking?

That's complexity.

Of course everyone has a right to interpret the character differently. And I'm not arguing against headcanons and aus—I just wish we could recognize them as headcanons, instead of trying to twist canon into supporting our own personal characterization. The dark takes are certainly interesting, and fun to toss around. But please, don't discredit the rich depth of his canon characterization as "not gritty enough;" Soda doesn't have to drink, scream, or be Dally to be interesting.

Make him go feral, please—but consider doing it in a way that makes sense for his character, and expands on who he is, instead of erasing it.

#im tired boss #can and will write an essay on how fandom abuses the “unreliable narrator” thing #ponyboy not understanding his brothers is not an invitation to discredit everything he says #what character starts their story knowing everything?? that’s the whole point of a character arc #“soda doesn’t drink” was not an opinion yall #and also it’s INTERESTING okay #in a town of guys who’ve been drinking since they were toddlers here’s one who doesn’t #explore that #dont erase it #sodapop curtis #bawl baby sodapop curtis #the outsiders #the outsiders musical #the outsiders movie

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elfdragon12 · 2 months ago

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I think a major part of the Prowl Problem™️ is that there is a portion of fans who are less interested in the Transformers franchise and more interested in the Transformers fandom.

Some folks watch or read one Transformers stories, maybe two or three if they're ambitious, and then spend the rest of the time reading fanfiction. This isn't strictly a bad thing. I enjoy some fanfiction, write it myself, and think there are some really insightful writers out there. However, there is a lot of fanfiction that isn't particularly good and has a lot of mischaracterizations. Fanfiction writers are hobbyists and often teenagers or young adults without a whole lot of writing experience. Because of this inexperience, nuanced characters with a lot of depth get flattened to caricatures or basic tropes, some of which having little to do with the original character. I started writing stories when I was about 13. That's how it goes. The problem comes up though that a certain portion then become so caught up in fanfiction that they start taking it for canon. Prowl is often written by fans as an angry table-flipping prick, so it must be canon that Prowl is always an angry table-flipping prick.

This is something we see a lot with young Optimus Prime, Orion Pax, a lot. Even before Transformers One, fandom has commonly depicted Orion Pax as a clueless ingenue in comparison to Megatron's more worldly nature... Except that's... Not really been true. The closest to that was Orion Pax in the G1 cartoon, but, even then, the guy wasn't some little waif. He was a blue collar dock worker. Young Optimus of TFA may have believed the propaganda, but wasn't depicted as especially naive otherwise, usually he was pretty intelligent. Aligned/TFP Orion Pax, during his amnesia, suspected that his "friend" wasn't telling him the truth after a fairly short time. TF1 Orion Pax may have been headstrong and reckless, but he was intelligent and curious. He knew something was wrong while D-16 was satisfied with the status quo.

Fanfiction is not canon. It can be fun and sometimes pretty insightful. However, it's written by fans and often does not reflect canon material.

Fandom Prowl does not speak for all 40 years of Prowl within the Transformers franchise.

#transformers #Prowl #TF Prowl #Orion Pax #Personal opinion #Fandom

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hrizantemy · 1 month ago

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I just realised something... When Reese's cup was trying to find ways to save Feyre, he first went to Hellion and asked him to search his libraries. At first thought makes sense, until you remember that Thesan is the best healer in Prythian. Did they ever ask the dawn court to help? If so, why not? Why go to librarians over doctors? Some of the best doctors no less. I want to say that he's being stupid, but I think that calling either him or feyre stupid/naive takes away from their characters.

Excusing Rhysand's horrible behaviour because 'he suffered for his friends and family and city' doesn't make him a good ruler. It makes him a good friend (even though the IC's interpersonal relationships are hella toxic, but you can still love someone or be toxic, despite that) but, he still rules over the Hewn city and Illyria too. Managing a part of your territory but not all isn't how an effective ruler works. In fact, history shows that sometimes the worst people can be the best rulers, and vice versa. The argument also doesn't really hold up when looking at his words and actions. Good people don't decide that an entire community of people are bad, and thus deserve to be treated well. He can't be morally grey because then he isn't a good a person.

Using Feyre's age as an excuse for the things she does doesn't support any argument in her defence. 'Feyre is young and doesn't know the intricacies of governing, so obviously she can't take an active role improving the Hewn City and Illyria'. Well, then she isn't as perfect for the position as her stans make her out to be. Using the same excuse for why her destroying the spring court and facing no punishment is okay meets the same issues. It doesn't make her this strong, capable woman getting her lick back. She isn't cunning or powerful. She's a liability. If she's so young and naive that she'll pull stunts like that with no care for the repercussions, then she isn't someone who can be trusted with information of any kind, because if she takes it badly or doesn't like it, she'll throw a fit, because she doesn't know better.

I'm not sure if you've read marvel comics or seen the animated series, but it feels like Rhys is trying to be somewhat like Dr Doom. He's the genius ruler of a country called Latveria, and his whole shtick is that he somehow saw the future. But in that future, humanity always ended up destroying themselves or being destroyed by someone else if he wasn't ruling it, thus began his constant campaign to rule the world. He's a terrible person, without question, and absolutely a dictator. Free speech, and right to protest aren't a thing there (but they also don't exist in the night court, so meh). However, while it does depend largely on the writer of any given story, his people don't starve. For the most part, they have a decent quality of life. What makes doom interesting where Rhysand is more annoying is that nobody pretends he's a good person, or a benevolent ruler. His people don't starve, which is more than can be said for other countries in the MCU or even other courts in Prythian. But he's still an awful person, and the stories lean into that. They don't argue that 'oh, his people don't starve, and he loves them, so cut him some slack' the way people make similar arguments for Rhys. That's part of what makes Rhys less interesting and more insufferable.

Rhysand: The Propaganda Prince Who Thinks He’s a God

Rhysand is marketed—both in-universe and by the fandom—as the ideal ruler, the dream man, the morally grey prince who sacrificed everything for his people. But the cracks in this narrative are more than superficial—they’re structural. And what becomes increasingly frustrating isn’t just Rhysand’s behavior itself, but the way the story bends to make him always right, always justified, always the victim or savior, never the villain.

Let’s talk more about the Hellion vs. Thesan issue, because this is the perfect microcosm of the problem. Feyre is pregnant and dying. Rhysand’s first reaction is to go to Hellion—yes, a High Lord of great magical knowledge, but not a healer. Not a physician. He chose dusty books over living experts. He chose a man whose court is about power and indulgence over the one dedicated to healing and medicine.

And that’s where it gets real: Rhysand doesn’t want help. He wants control. Thesan might offer real solutions, but they would come with accountability, with oversight, with humility. Rhys wants the solution, but only if it’s his solution. He only asks for help when it reinforces his superiority.

Compare that to characters like Lucien, who gets villainized for surviving abuse, not groveling for forgiveness fast enough, and existing with a moral compass that doesn’t align with the IC. Lucien doesn’t rule anyone, doesn’t hold immense power, and yet gets more criticism from fans and characters alike than Rhys ever does.

Even Tamlin, who is undeniably flawed, was allowed to be challenged by the narrative. His arc showed consequences. He fell. He was wrong. Rhysand? Rhys can lie to Feyre’s face, hide life-threatening information from her, isolate her from her sisters, make military decisions that result in cultural genocide (yes, I’m talking about Illyria), and still be treated like the golden boy.

The bar is so low it’s underground, but only for him.

Let’s also talk about Nesta, who arguably has the most realistic and meaningful arc in the series. She’s messy, she’s angry, she lashes out—but she grows. She’s punished, yes, but she’s allowed to be a person. Rhysand, in contrast, is never punished. He punishes others. He decides Nesta should be “rehabilitated” but nobody ever questions how he governs. How he’s ruled Illyria for five hundred years and allowed the abuse of females to flourish. How he’s let Keir terrorize Hewn City and now wants Feyre to smile through political dinners with him like that’s justice.

If we go outside ACOTAR, your comparison to Dr. Doom is still spot-on. But let’s take it a step further.

• Magneto from X-Men is a character who commits atrocities, but we understand his motivations. The story doesn’t pretend he’s a saint. His pain is valid, but his actions have consequences.

• Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender struggles with loyalty, honor, and the pull of power. He is not protected by the narrative—he has to earn his redemption.

• Daenerys Targaryen (until the final season, which we don’t claim) was portrayed as a liberator with terrifying potential. The tension lay in whether her power would corrupt her. She had followers who loved her, but not unconditionally—and when she crossed lines, people reacted.

Rhysand, in contrast, is surrounded by yes-men (and women), and the narrative refuses to let him fail. There’s no tension. No fear. No possibility that he might not be right. And that makes him boring.

Let’s also talk about how the fandom treats Rhys compared to characters of color or female characters. Emerie gets masculinized. Lucien gets demonized. Nesta gets dragged through the mud. But Rhysand can literally erase memories, manipulate information, and allow oppression to continue for centuries, and it’s okay because he’s hot and “suffered.”

Rhysand is not a morally grey character. He is a tyrant coated in glitter. The problem isn’t that he’s manipulative, or controlling, or negligent. It’s that the story won’t call it what it is.

Final Thought: The most damning thing about Rhysand isn’t his actions—it’s the lack of narrative accountability. If the series owned him as a flawed, self-serving ruler who hides behind the mask of benevolence? He’d be fascinating. If characters questioned him, if Feyre ever called him out, if the IC had fractures that weren’t hand-waved away? That would be compelling. But instead, we get endless adoration. Unquestioning loyalty. And any challenge—like Nesta’s rage—is framed as a threat, not a justified reaction.

So no—he’s not like Doom. Doom at least admits he’s ruling with an iron fist. Rhysand thinks he’s wearing a crown of flowers, but it’s forged from the bones of everyone he left behind.

Feyre Archeron: The Girlboss That Never Grew

Feyre’s entire arc is built on this idea that she’s “just a girl who learned to fight.” That she was poor and powerless and clawed her way to the top, and that makes her worth rooting for. And in A Court of Thorns and Roses, sure—she was scrappy, resourceful, and deeply flawed in a way that felt honest. She made bad choices. She was traumatized. She had no good options.

But as the series progressed, she didn’t grow from those flaws—she was rewarded for them.

Take her decision to destroy the Spring Court in ACOWAR—a political sabotage campaign that ultimately weakened a key ally right before a war. The story frames it as cunning. Payback. Her “strong woman moment.” But there are no repercussions. No fallout. She’s not criticized. She doesn’t even second-guess it.

Feyre acts like a spy in a court she once called home, tears it down, and never once reflects on how that might affect innocent fae, Tamlin’s people, or the broader war effort. Instead, the narrative coddles her. She’s “doing what she has to do.” She’s “young and learning.” But that excuse is paper-thin when she’s simultaneously praised for being “the most powerful High Lady in history.” If she’s powerful enough to go to war and command armies, she’s old enough to face consequences.

You nailed it earlier when you said that using her age as an excuse only highlights that she shouldn’t be in power. If she’s so inexperienced that she can’t govern, can’t lead, can’t understand the stakes of her actions—then she is a liability, not a leader.

And then there’s her treatment of Illyria and Hewn City. Feyre claims to care about justice. Freedom. Autonomy. She came from nothing and supposedly understands pain and oppression. And yet she does nothing when it comes to the Night Court’s darkest corners. Illyrian females are still mutilated. Hewn City still thrives on cruelty. But Feyre just… attends a party, wears a sheer dress, and calls it diplomacy.

The reality? Feyre only wants to be a ruler when it’s convenient, glamorous, or affirming. She wants to paint. She wants to build a family. She wants to be loved. And that’s valid—those are human desires. But the story insists she’s also this revolutionary political force. That she’s brave, clever, unstoppable.

She’s not.

She’s reactive. Impulsive. Emotionally volatile. She lashes out when she feels powerless and sulks when things go wrong. She refuses to listen to people she disagrees with. She has no political foresight and no cultural awareness. And that would all be fine—if the story treated it like a flaw. But it doesn’t. It excuses her, worships her, lets her off the hook again.

Compare her to characters with real narrative tension.

• Zoya Nazyalensky from Grishaverse becomes powerful because she learns. She’s arrogant, yes, but her flaws are explored and challenged. She has to reframe her thinking, unlearn prejudice, adapt.

• Katniss Everdeen is deeply flawed, traumatized, often confused and angry—but she’s aware of it. And we are aware of it. The narrative doesn’t coddle her. She doesn’t want power and is broken by being forced into it.

And let’s talk about class and privilege, because Feyre fans love to bring up her poverty in book one like it gives her moral high ground forever. Feyre hasn’t been poor since chapter ten of book one (not even). She lives in a mansion, gets the finest clothes, can paint all day, and be worshipped as a goddess. She doesn’t interact with the common people. She doesn’t serve her court. She doesn’t lift a finger to fix the systemic issues her rule presides over. She’s effectively a queen in a castle, pretending she’s still the underdog.

It’s not that Feyre is a bad person—it’s that the story won’t allow her to be anything but a good person. There’s no room for self-doubt. No space for humility. No accountability. The things she does that hurt others are either brushed off or reframed as noble sacrifices. And that flattens her. She could’ve been raw and real, someone who learns in public, who wrestles with power and trauma. Instead, she’s locked in a narrative where she always has to be right.

Final Thought:

Feyre is a character who could have been a woman learning to lead. But she’s written as a woman who is already perfect at it—and that’s where her story dies. Growth is impossible when the world already revolves around you. The more the narrative tells us she’s powerful, wise, and beloved, the more we feel the hollow echo of what she could’ve been if she’d been allowed to fail.

She’s not a ruler. She’s a character in a fantasy built to flatter her, not challenge her. And that’s why so many of us feel tired—not because she’s flawed, but because we were never allowed to see her flaws matter.

#anti acosf #anti inner circle #anti acotar #anti rhysand #pro nesta #anti feysand #nesta archeron deserves better #anti cassian #anti azriel #anti amren #anti nessian #anti morrigan #anti night court

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echolynn13 · 2 months ago

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Top 10 SFTH Characters

I told y'all it was coming, and here it is; my Top 10 favorite characters in the SFTH universe

10. Peter (The Milkman)

This kid knows how to twist a fucking knife, huh? He doesn’t even know what’s going on and somehow he manages to metaphorically stab David 37 times in the chest /ref. Peter is also my favorite example of Tom playing a traumatized child, he just does it so well here. I genuinely love the scene where David tells him his mom's not happy and he immediately apologizes and wants to go Go-Karting with her. Idk how Tom can portray that kind of character that well, but I'm glad we get to see it so frequently- Plus it was iconic of him to sing 'Tomorrow' twice, once while he was running for his life.

9. Mario the Sheep (The Lighthouse)

Everyone’s favorite inbred, part-human, cocaine using sheep that loses his mind (alongside Sam) throughout the storyline. There's not much to say about it other than the fact I love comic relief characters and who's more comic relief than this guy? It was also fun to watch Sam slowly die inside once the sheep was made a main character, that was great-

8. Marty (The Evil Make-A-Wish Kid)

Another instance of Sam’s portrayal and delivery making his character memorable as hell. The smirk and the voice he chose to use for all of his lines make Marty one of my favorite villains in their plays (OLM doesn’t count, I see her as more morally grey than anything). He's a great combination of being played for laughs and genuinely doing evil things. This kid lights his mom on fire and all he has to say about it is "I'm gonna miss games when I'm dead." It might be my favorite line in that play tbh, along with "Congratulations. You killed the kid"

7. Andrew (All Eyes On Nigel)

Along with the Janae type nerds (spoiler for later 🤫), I also have a soft spot for the naive/inexperienced characters, especially when they get a little fucked up by the end of their storyline. Andrew is a prime example of this in the SFTH universe, being all excited about his job as an officer, before being taken hostage and being given drugs starting to sound like a favorite character of mine from a different fandom...

6. Donnie (The Detective v The Christmas Tree Bandits)

THE ADHD icon. He’s far from the only SFTH character with diagnosed ADHD and idk about you but he’s the representation I wanted fr- and now he’s dead :( Even if his death wasn't as emotional of a scene as y'all made it out to be, it still makes me sad and I will be living in denial about it with the rest of you for while.

5. Janae (The Neighbor's Under The Bed)

Janae is the textbook definition of the ‘character way too smart for their age to an unrealistic level’, therefore she has to make an appearance on my favorites list. She also has the line "My Seismogram IS TRUE" which is such a good quotable line, I'm never getting over that-

4. Jimmy (Toby’s Secret Pocket)

Ah, the Fan Favorite Tom character who can’t get through a door if his life depended on it. Who can blame the audience for latching onto him? "I was just gonna say it's the racism" "I get lonely sometimes" "STOP IN THE NAME OF THE LAW" I mean, how can we be expected to not love him?

3. Old Lady Marjorie (The Unrelenting Aubergine)

I think everyone knows why she’s here. 1) She's another villain/morally grey character from Sam, 2) At least half of her witchery is just drugs, and 3) She slaps AJ- I mean James- 3 times, causing Sam- I mean Marjorie- to turn bright red from laughter. Absolute Cinema.

2. Amanda (Clarissa's DIY Wedding)

Tom’s other hopeless romantic gay character, I’m sensing a pattern in my favs- I've mentioned how much I love that Tom went straight for 'yearning lesbian' with this one in my other post, but I'm gonna talk about it in more detail because I can. She loves Clarissa so so much, but because she doesn't think the feelings are reciprocated (true or not-) she will make sure Clarissa and Mark have their wedding and that, above all, Clarissa is happy. This fact makes me love her more, but also makes me so very sad..

There were a few characters that didn't quite make it to the Top 10, so before we go to Number 1, here's a few:

Honorable Mentions

Scottish Robin (The Midnight Mystery) He would've been #10 but I had to add Janae so he got demoted

Aside from the general chaos he is, I love Robin from a meta standpoint, because it’s one of those moments that shows that Luke and Sam have the same exact sense of humor. Luke 100% did the “WE’RE GOING DOWN TO CHIPPY” bit purely to make Sam laugh, and boy did it work. Also the joy in Robin/Luke screaming “BATMAN” at the top of his lungs is great, he is in his element lmao

Caravan Brothers (No, I Always Loved That Caravan!)

Before I realized they’re called the Caravan Brothers in the fandom, I fully just called them the incest brothers because I think that gets the vibe across. Technically, I think the O’Hands Brothers would also be accurate. Weirdest fucking brothers I’ve ever seen, but in an iconic way. Besides, I always love another chance for Luke to go gremlin mode for a character.

Big Hans (Oh My God, Is This A Joke?)

So he might've made it to the main list, but something about putting a nazi character in the top 10 wasn't sitting right with me, so he’s in the honorable mentions instead (At least it's not Xavier-) To be clear I just like how he was immediately introduced as a 'pocket-sized aryan' that was absolutely fucking Ze Blackberry, then in his next scene his vibe had shifted and he was oddly fond of the French accent/language for some reason?? “Don’t make friends with them!” “Why not? :(” Bro was literally just happy to be there.

1. Derek (The Unrelenting Aubergine)

Surprising no one, Derek Gangles is everything to me. I have no idea what makes me like him more than any of their other romantic characters, there’s just something about how Tom plays him that makes him so endearing. I think part of it is how he seems to be constantly in awe and admiration of Titch, loving him in such a (relatively) innocent way. “Are we gonna have kids?” I can hear the puppy eyes in his voice, are you kidding me??

#sfth #shoot from the hip #sfth luke #sfth tom #sfth sam #sfth aj #oh my god is this a joke #the unrelenting aubergine #clarissa's diy wedding #toby's secret pocket #the evil make a wish kid

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