The Value of Minor Characters

As I’m sitting here trying to write a story utilizing a very popular, very minor character, I find myself thinking of all the posts I’ve read complaining that minor characters...well, exist, basically. I can’t count the number of cries I’ve heard, in every fandom ever, that boil down to “OMG this character had so much potential and they only got, like, two lines! Why did the creator not bother to do more with them that’s so unfair!”

Look, I don’t know how to explain this, but not every character can be a major character. Story telling needs minor character. It needs characters that only exist to further the plot. It needs characters to just stand in the background looking aesthetic.

Yes, these characters can still speak to you. Whether they have five lines or none, they can still catch your attention and your imagination. You can want to know about them.  You’re looking at the person whose favorite FFVII character was Chocobo Joe. Dude got one, very forgettable monologue when you first got to the Golden Saucer and after that? He just rode a really big black bird in a race..........and got kinda pissy when you started beating him repeatedly. But he didn’t say he was pissy. You just had to notice that his racing style got pissier. And yet I’ve written fanfiction about him! Drawn fanart! Commissioned fanart! That pissy racing totally won me over!

What I do not do is wonder why he wasn’t a major player. There wasn’t room for him to be a major player. The game didn’t need another major player, it needed a pissy chocobo jockey that just raced and...that’s it.

The fact that the two, throw away Gundam pilots were there for an episode and died is not a travesty. The fact that the one background student didn’t become Harry’s bestie is not injustice. The fact the maids and hallboys got barely any lines (and most of those were cut) is regrettable, but not a sign that Julian Fellowes did not value them. In fact, if I wanted to go hunting I could find more than one comment in the complete scripts that boil down to “And they cut the hallboy’s lines again and I felt so sorry for the actor because we were really blessed to have people in minor roles who actually took those roles seriously! Hallboys, maids, you are appreciated, I promise! Someday I will get you an actual line!”

And from a fanfiction writer’s perspective, that’s actually really great! It gives us anything from a blank slate to work with, to someone with just enough personality to really pick it up and expand on! They wouldn’t be as fun if they were major characters and we knew every detail of their lives! Hand me a story with one, main character, and ask me to name my favorite character and I will name....not the main character.

Each.

And.

Every.

Time.

So rather than bemoan the universal injustice that kept your favorite character from taking over the entire narrative - or at least taking their place as second in command - enjoy the fact that you or the fandom creators, if you’re not a creator yourself, have the freedom to build the character out and make them pretty much anything without worrying about canon. Appreciate the fact that these characters made the world they lived in richer, even if they only had three lines and one dance. Stop viewing them as under utilized and view them as the vital part of the narrative they are.

Stories would not be worth reading without them.

The Silt Verses my absolute beloved: I'm relistening and was so excited to get back to Chapter 17, and the way that most of the episode just sweeps over you with an unexpected degree of kindness. Important to be reminded that kindness — or something like it — is possible, even in this brutal world.

been rewatching gravity falls and this got me thinking-

would dipper allow bill to possess his body at least once? :0

Only if it were necessary for something! Dipper might trust Bill enough to use it for a limited amount of time if he has to, but no good could come from letting him joyride.

.

you ever just see a take so bad you consider deleting Tumblr..?

I keep seeing like 5 different ways that people are wanting to help tumblr, change tumblr or fight against tumblr and I have still yet to see anyone make any concrete ideas as to what it is people are supposed to do in order to keep the site from being monetized & become something it's not.

If the site does not pay off it's debt, it will eventually cease to exist. If you don't petition for change, it will continue to label queer bodies as mature and sexual, continue to remove BIPOC folk from it's premise and continue to allow white supremacists to infiltrate this site.

So what's the options? What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to change a site without everyone sitting down and actually talking about what change means and how to get there?

I see so many people just tossing out ideas that in theory do work in one way or another, but might not fix all the problems so there HAS to be something that can fix things without disenfranchising half the communities on this site?

There's so many "don't do this, this hurts these people and now your a horrible person for suggesting this thing." When most the people on this site have no idea who most of each other are and why or how it would effect people.

Give actual insight as to what could be done to get Staff to pick up their fucking big boy pants and do their job. Going around and telling people that they are horrible people for trying to suggest a solution or the people who share those solutions in an attempt to help isn't going to help anyone.

This isn't aimed at one post or idea in particular either, I've seen NUMEROUS ideas floating around that in theory could work for one thing or another and all there is, is people shooting these ideas down without actually backing up with something that might work.

Half the people on this site are children who have no idea how websites work on a corporate level, the other half are adults who've been on this site since they were children and just want the site to stay online and not disappear. There's disabled people who need this site (I'm one of them) to keep having a social life, there's artists who need this site to contuse having any form of recognition, there's writers who've got their entire portfolio on here and people who's entire blogs are dedicated to helping queer and trans kids learn about themselves and communities dedicated to finding people like themselves so they don't feel so alone in this world.

So what is it? What are we supposed to do? Without money the site fades away, with strikes you completely disenfranchise entire groups of people, without fighting against the staffs changes, current policies and lack of care about the white supremacists and TERFS that run rampant then people are still going to get harassed, reported into the ground and completely removed from the site for no reasons at all.

So if you have any fucking ideas then please actually tell people because at this point, everyone's trying to not get people to do one thing or another and yet no one is backing up these ideas with actual action that will work.

just finished reading delilah's statement, there was a lot of things in it that was either only tangentially related to the allegations or straight up unnecessary to put (in particular: putting in media references and cc metrics several times as flavor text, detailing the don turnt situation with no claims of whether or not permission was granted by the affected party, namedropping certain ccs who had nothing to do with the allegations, and putting the tweet and yearbook photo of one of the ppl who put forward that zam was a bully with no claims of whether or not permission was granted) which contributed a lot to the 47-page length

honestly so far what im getting is that there was a Lot of toxicity on multiple sides like not even just between zam and delilah

you ever think you're doing amazingly and then one day pulls the entire thing apart and you've gone back three steps and feel like shit again

Airi playing an important role in the story but also the fact that she's the only proof of oda kazuha and saito tooru's existance on earth is wow

every female character in recent history (not animated) tries to be Marguerite Krux (multidimentional, allowed to be a real person with real feelings and reactions and, most importantly, flawed, imperfect, and allowed to make mistakes and learn) so hard and yet they miss the target by half the distance between here and the sun, when everyone in studios should just understand that perfect doesn't mean better, quite the contrary

Wouldn’t it be great if rich men just didn’t create systems with the sole purpose of oppressing women?

Elizabeth Fraser has a beautiful voice . I should be allowed to replicate it but can’t (has no formal voice training)

there’s so many languages i wish i could learn all of them 

i fucking hate gjinkas

sims werewolf pack trailer omfg

making myself moody by contemplating the clan Revallen left behind