I’ve noticed a pattern in fandom where people flock to stick Popular Characters into two extremes of morality: Popular Character has either never done anything wrong in their entire lives, or they’re a stinky bastard murder man but beloved regardless. People seem much more comfortable with characters who can easily slot into one of these two extremes. It’s the characters who fall somewhere in the middle that tend to freak people out.

There are some circles of fandom where people seem absolutely terrified at the prospect of a character who is good but makes questionable decisions, or who is bad but has a noble or admirable goal. Characters who don’t slot easily into “all good” or “all bad” end up getting their edges filed off so they fit one or the other. One character will have a past of truly dreadful sins ignored and washed clean by fandom at large, but another is villainized and has their actions nitpicked and misinterpreted to turn them irredeemable. Stereotypes and oversimplification turn complex characters into one-dimensional caricatures. This is annoying as shit, not only because it turns nuanced stories into thoughtless Goofus and Gallant-level morality fables, but it eventually devolves into fans judging each other for their opinions on fictional people.

Stories are a lot more interesting when characters are allowed to be multi-faceted; neither all good nor all bad. Even heroic characters have flaws and can have bad opinions, bad ideas, or just plain make mistakes. And even the worst and most despicable villains are more interesting if there is some level of relatability to them, some glimmer of understandable motivation or human emotion in their actions or beliefs.

In conclusion, everyone is entitled to like or dislike characters for their own reasons, but my problematic favs are the best, actually, so there.

you're allowed to be transmasc and be in touch with your femininity.

you're allowed to be transfem and be in touch with your masculinity.

you're allowed to be genderqueer and be in touch with your femininity.

you're allowed to be genderqueer and be in touch with your masculinity.

you're allowed to be cisgender and be in touch with your androgyny.

you're allowed to be a cis woman and be in touch with your masculinity.

you're allowed to be a cis man and be in touch with your femininity.

basically, you're allowed to be whatever the fuck you want and fuck what other people think about it.

my brother is trying to learn how to braid hair and he’s practicing on me 😭

Kakegurui characters & asking them to get you pads, except they're all mean about it

Cape name: blabbermouth

Legal name: XXXXX

Classification: master 2 / shaker 4 / thinker 1

Description: blabbermouth has the ability to force anyone within a 30 foot radius to tell any and all secrets they have been keeping. While blabbermouth is confined to a 30 foot radius, any limitations on the amount of people they can control have not been found as of yet.

Background: XXXXX’s trigger event was induced from an anxiety spiral after XXXXX’s group of friends fell apart due to internal drama, leaving them without friends or many relationships.

After the trigger event XXXXX took on the cape name blabbermouth and joined a group of small time villains know as the feudal lords which consisted of armada, master of none, freez ‘er burn, and king karma before the addition of blabbermouth.

Confrontation: while blabbermouth is well adept at sowing chaos and stoking resentment by forcing unpleasant truths to come to light, they are otherwise an average human being. When fighting they typically hang back and let their teammates do the heavy hitting while they induce discord in the ranks of enemies so if you manage to cut them off from their group they are easy to take down.

the spider gwen comic was so good about having the stupidest gwen name puns ever i miss it. i also miss that they stopped spelling em jay's name as em jay and now she's just mj like everyone else. it was fun & quirky it fit her so well. if i was writing ghost spider i would bring that shit back. i would make em jay call gwen the "gwendly neighborhood ghost spider."

is it normal to all of a sudden (for no particular reason) want to absolutely ruin my friendships and go totally radio silent?

i had we stopped at perfect days as my blog title for so long that sometimes i'll see the poem somewhere and it feels like someone saying my name

So many amazing but unfinished Jori FF on FFN, I wonder what happened to them authors 🤔. Are they still active? Do they still ship Jori? Did they lose motivation and decide to just stop writing? Are they doing okay? Did they move to another fandom? Anyway, I was just wondering, I got into the fandom not so long ago so I didn't know about the existence of these amazing people or their works until recently. But now that I do, I just want to say that even though we never got to talk/interact I still want to thank you all for your contribution to the fandom and I still wish you all well and that wherever you are and whatever you all are doing, I hope you're doing well.

Echo should explode and die

13 Random things about me:

-I was really into tumbling rocks and I still have all the supplies -I live off instant noodles. Pho, ramen, chow mein, I love all of it. -I collect funky teapots and coffee mugs. -I make custom patches for my own jacket (I even sold a few) -I collect clowns. This includes dolls, statues, jack-in-the-boxes, etc -I use to go to the library 3 times a day when I was a kid. I never wanted to be anywhere else. -I collect Batman comics, movies, and merch. (no one is surprised) -I love baking from scratch when I have energy. -I did a lot of landscape paintings in high school. I would sell them. -I used to do theater in high school -I have no sense of time. -I love going fishing. -I need glasses but never really wear them

brain slightly to the left today

"ew people who like popular things are so basic"

The movies that we watch from different decades all mostly encapsulated the most popular, trendy, "basic" interests and styles of that decade, and yet we love them! We think they're so cool ! We look back and think "wow, they were really doing something, weren't they?" If you're "basic" in this decade, one day your kid will ask you if you did TikTok dances, or if you listened to Taylor Swift, or if you wore athlesiure to school, and you'll say yes, and they will be filled with joy because back then, they actually did that! Woah!

Um. You're brilliant and so is your writing. That's all.

Thank you 🥺😭🥰

sorry, just having a mini sexuality crisis and wanna vent abt it:

sexuality is so confusing bc i def don't experience attraction the same way most ppl do. i've identified as bi bc i've been attracted to women (jodie whittaker as a prime example of this) and i've def found men attractive before (tom holland, matt smith, colin morgan, etc.) so i know i'm not completely straight and bi fits well enough, but i've never experienced crushes or been attracted to anyone in like, real life. most of my what i would call crushes have been celebrities or fictional characters, not people that i know irl or personally. which is why i sort of identify with demisexual as a label too, bc maybe i just need to know someone on a deeper and emotional level to develop any kind of feeling?

i've sort of thought i could be asexual before but i'm genuinely not sure.

idk. it's just confusing when i've never actually been in a relationship or ever had a crush on anyone that i know personally.

music is so good i don’t think i could live without music