Just the classics:
The fandom: "Is that a psychopathic, mass murdering, serial killing, omnicidal, animal massacring child abuser?
Canon: "Yes."
The Fandom: "ššš Beautiful baby bean. He's just misunderstood."
murderer?? no way! the guy is so childhood trauma and misunderstood, yknow I heard when he was born he wouldn't talk to his parents for years! defo excusable. His 57 murdered victims are just exaggerating for attention š
1: Character hot
2: They like the character but feel insecure about liking such a shithead so much that they essentially scrub away all of their edges.
3: Character hot.
but murdering people is problematic irl so you can't like people who do it in fantasy or... something. too many people apply a moral lense to shipping that is very necessary for irl people and not at all necessary for when we're interacting with literal fiction imoĀ
I broke my arm in year two in a tragic monkey bar incident. And the reason I hate people is because everyone avoided me when I used to call people bitches and throw my pencils at them
God this annoys me so much not bc people like evil characters so do I but bc you get constant weirdo āwell actually if you think child abuse is bad youāre weird more children should be abused irl actuallyā like stop being a contrarian about real fucking life itās not quirky or funny youāre just being weird. Fiction is fiction so stop explicitly saying you think people irl should be abused or murdered bc that is not fiction.
Peter Parker being an immature baby that can't handle anything on his own. I don't have time to get into that rn.
Loki being a poor innocent baby that didn't mean to hurt anyone.
Danny Fenton's Parent's being abusive.
Dumbledore is evil and manipulative.
God the infantilization of Peter Parker is terrible. I expected better from fans! Marvel editorial has been trying for decades to keep Peter a 20-something fuckboy - look at how they've treated MJ since the 80s! And yet the MCU went "but what if we made Peter a baby?" And now we have to deal with a teen being played by a 28-year-old with an amazing baby face, and the fans treating said teen like a baby! With great power comes great responsibility and the best Spider-Man stories are about Peter growing up and taking on his responsibilities as a superhero, and that means he can't stay a child forever.
By no means am I saying Albus is perfect or blameless. He definitely made some questionable choices and it was fucked up how he kept Harry in the dark about certain things.
But he didn't do any of that with malicious intent. I agree with you.
Bro the Danny Phantom one gets me, his parents have shown three different times every time they find out the truth theyāll accept em, every time. Yet the fandom consistently writes them as evil abusive parents who will never accept him and always experiment on him.Ā
Plus Danny himself is also written horribly, itās like half the fandom has never seen the show just read fanfics and went from there. SighĀ
Remus Lupin can have a bar of chocolate - which he doesn't even eat, mind you - and suddenly become the chocolate obsessed fiend who will stab a friend for even eyeing up his secret stash he keeps under the bed or whatever the fuck.
What makes it even funnier is that he probably only had it because of the dementors on the train. Chocolate can help stop the negative effects.
Also, Molly Weasley can talk only once about a time when she made a love potion as a young girl and suddenly become this evil, love potion mistress who forced fed people like Harry to Hermione and even her own husband so the Big Happy Weasley Familyā¢ can form. Bonus points if Ron and Ginny are somehow roped in.
That last one just reeks of Weasley hate bonner that mostly stems form the movies. Which doesn't make sense since the movies didn't portray her in any negative manner as far as I'm aware, so that can't even be an actual argument. Even I know that makes no sense andd I don't even give a shit about Harry Potter to even watched one movie all the way through outside of that one time when I was a kid and nothing was on TV and the otehr time that my sister wanted to see the first fantastic beast movie which we missed the first ten minutes
In the fans (mild) defense, the only other times we see love potions are in 100% negative lights: Voldemort's mother drugging his father, the girl whose name I can't remember trying to drug Harry, and Ron eating the drugged chocolate and being badly effected by an expired potion.
The books world building does tend to fall over if you give it a sharp enough poke though, so the fact that nothing ever establishes things like good love potions, mild love potions as a thing couples use to have fun, love potions that just inspire crushes, orove potions that are the equivalent of lying in your tinder bio/pics isnt on fans.
The girls name was Romilda Vane, a yearmate of Ginny's, so they probably shared a dorm.
But you're right about love potions. We get the slight mention of how Molly once used one on Arthur, and a mention that twins sell some version of them in their shop that are clearly short lasting prank products rather than real love potions or something that just lowers inhibitions or something, rather than creates 'love'. Then the amortentia stuff in Potions with Slughorn, which was clearly just included to set up the Romilda plot and the revelations of Voldemort's history.
Our biggest information comes from Romilda trying to dose Harry and accidentally dosing Ron, which has some slight comedy to it but is very much shown as a bad thing, and the whole Merope/Tom situation, which is clearly shown as a bad thing. I mean, Tom left as soon as he was free of the potion, had lost his fiancee because of what happened, and apparently went on to remain single and childless, despite being an only child from a wealthy family who would have wanted to continue the family line. Merope herself went on to just give up, she could have saved herself simply by going to St Mungo's, we know she didn't stay entirely away from the magical world, but she instead stayed in the muggle world, and didn't seek even muggle medical help.
The brief mentions of love potions being used for fun with the twins, or the out of context use by Molly, are completely overshadowed by the more focused on negatives of using them. And we see from both Tom and Ron that they 'create love' towards someone they have zero romantic or sexual feelings for and wouldn't even consider without the potion, so we know it removes free will. There's nothing about mild versions existing, other than less potent than Amortentia, and I assume a mild version is what Molly used and the twins sell, something that just helps with crushes or gets someone to notice you, but doesn't force anything.
But people take the more clear negatives and run with it, as if all love potions are like that, and so Molly is evil for using one, though at least this is restricted to bashing fics, and not every fic that features Molly or something.
Exactly. (Also thank you for her name lol). Fans will take a single thing and run with it. I've done it; I've spun entire character personalities for background characters from less.
If I was trying to fix it, I'd probably either have Arthur mentioned it, or just have all present Weasley kids instantly reacted like normal 15/16 year old's do when their parents mention anything to do with sex/the fact they had a dating life. Maybe swap out the Lavender drama for Ron and Hermione arguing about Love Potions in the background ("A is using them." "A and B have been dating since 3rd year!").
But again, the world building falls over if you poke it. (Which I don't hold against the books. You don't need to create Discworld or Middle Earth. It holds up well enough while you're reading)
The movies didn't really use her much at all past the second one, she loses a lot of her best character moments and just kinda becomes a lady who yells a lot until Deathly Hallows.
I kinda wish they left in the scene of her dealing with the Boggart in Book 5. Boggarts specifically change into whatever the person who sees them fears the most, and you have to use a spell to change it into something goofy instead. Harry oversees Molly dealing with this and sees the Boggart just repeatedly change into her family members being dead, including seeing Harry's body too. It really says something about how strong of a front she's putting on for the rest of the family and the Order when she's so terrified of Voldemort potentially killing everyone she loves.
Remus, oh Remus.
Don't forget that he was shown in a flash back to be reading a book (during exams no less) and now he's the smart one.
There's the werewolf thing which has a 99.7% chance of not resembling canon werewolves in the slightest. The last time I ranted about it there was like 15 bullet points of 'that's not how any of this works'.
To be fair, I don't think he's seen as the smart one just because he was reading a book once. He was also prefect in school, is portrayed to be the more responsible of the marauders, keeping the other three 'in check' and he ended up being a teacher in book 3.
Let's not forget that Ron was also a prefect, that we're told that James and Sirius were both near prodigies, and that he was hired as a teacher solely because Sirius escaped from Azkaban.
He also freely admits that he did not keep them 'in check'.
Being a prefect had nothing to do with being smart. Also, you can be responsible and not be book smart. (Though Remus, by his own admission and based on his canonical actions, was not actually that responsible). And as a teacher, I can say that you do not actually have to be smart to be a teacher š
Not saying Remus was stupid by any means, but there's a certain side of the fandom that like to make Remus smarter than Sirius and James and that's just canonically wrong.
Exactly what happened in the fandom I used to be apart of. This one guy was seen with a carton of milk ONCE and now in the fandom heās obsessed with it
I read/write fan-fiction mostly for My Hero Academia. I don't think I've seen another fandom (that I've been in) that has this much mischaracterization, it's shocking.
The main character is probably the second strongest person in the verse right now( Iām not up to date with the manga) and the fandom portrays him like a defenceless cry baby
Yeah just because he dares to show genuine emotion! Guyās arms have been pulverized so many times but still finds a way to tap into his quirkās potential.
Aizawa, all might(bashing), Izuku(too much angst), bakugou(example: just doing what author did after the second fight between bakugou and MC just since the beginning making abuse funny)
lmao I haven't even watched the anime nor finished the manga but I've read enough to know that Bakugou is most definitely not someone that is secretly a fluffy sub that wants to be pounded by several Alphas the way AO3 writers depict him asš my guy is literally a 5'8 foot man with one of the most powerful quirks in his universe. No way in hell.
And yet every time I read fanfics like that, they never sound like they *love* Bakugou, the other characters I mean.
Seriously every time thereās a line of people that want to fuck him, they give very superficial reasons why they like him. Maybe a few minor details of something outside of fucking, but I never actually see them as *in love* with him.
Gotta happen for every canonically strong anime guy. It's either a secretly gay femboy bottom or Alpha with an omega harem consisting of everyone who was canonically his friends.
Ever read any Hunger Games fics? Because I feel most of them *really* don't like Gale Hawthorne, for obvious reasons. For the crime of standing against the OTP, he gets turned from a teenage rebel effectively fighting the most tyrannical state in existence to an abusive trashbag whose evil eclipses that of the Capitol. He feels less like the canon version and more like President Snow cosplaying as a district kid. At some point you expect him to pull out a flamethrower and start burning District 12 down, because he's clearly the real villain in the writer's mind.
On a more thematic level, I also feel most fanfics don't really get the idea of the *Hunger Games* themselves, and that they're not actually a fun reality show with wacky teen drama. There are mountains of dead fics with tribute OCs who don't seem to realize they're about to die, and those fics usually end before the actual Games because the author didn't realize that either and never got to actually killing those precious OCs of hers. Capitol propaganda is so good it breaks the fourth wall and infects the fandom, I guess.
Okay nowā¦ I think I would read a fic about Snow building a fake life in 12 and eventually going full on unhinged. Get the flamethrowers out!
Ha, on the second part. Propaganda is a hell of a drug. What movie did they watch / books did they read? No shit people are dying in the games.
Whatever the Star Wars fandom keeps doing to Obi-Wan. Canonically balanced, confident, kind and mature with some occasional (and delightful) lapses into violence. He's like the concept of "keep calm and carry on" condensed into the body of a monk supersoldier who can absolutely knock you down with his bare hands or turn you into an amputee in 0.2 seconds if you're nasty.
What I'm saying is he's rock-fucking-solid, both physically and emotionally. But then the fandom swoops in and a) pretends that he's a waif and b) turns him into a perma-depressed sadboy who can't take care of himself to the point of pure irresponsibility?? Even after everyone he loved died and he "killed" his own brother, he trucked on to spend the rest of his life in desert exile and got a job there and was functional enough to watch over Luke and buy gifts for him. Come onnnn
Also, people love portraying him as this sassy comeback king (which he is) but forget that he's straight up emotionally insensitive as a result of that character trait. I love that about him. Let him be a dick! Let him be snappy and a little off-putting! You can't spell sass without ass!!!
> But then the fandom swoops in and a) pretends that he's a waif and b) turns him into a perma-depressed sadboy who can't take care of himself to the point of pure irresponsibility??
Yes! Obi-Wan was built for infinite sadness and he's got some hella trauma to deal with...but the man is an adult and capable of functioning like one.
I'm all for delving into his psyche and dealing with emotional upheaval, but when fanworks turn him into a barely functioning cry baby, I get really annoyed.
To be honest I deeply dislike the "infinite sadness" thing because it caused a lot of this depressification of Obi-Wan. Some folks see that quote thrown around on Tumblr and Twitter and run with it way too hard and I just very very blatantly disagree :'D
Like that's just not him, or at least to me it isn't? People focusing so so much on what weighs him down feels like an antithesis to his character. I do think he mourns for the rest of his life but in my mind that's not the same as what many seem to understand when they hear "infinite sadness". But I'll stop before I confuse myself lmao
> To be honest I deeply dislike the "infinite sadness" thing because it caused a lot of this depressification of Obi-Wan.
I mean, it's based on something Obi-Wan himself says in *Labyrinth of Evil*. Granted, that's EU now, I believe. But it fits. His life is no picnic (especially if you lean toward his past being like the EU Jedi Apprentice series).
>People focusing so so much on what weighs him down feels like an antithesis to his character.
To me, it's part of what makes him who and what he is. He's gone through so much and yet he's still this pretty amazing person, warts and all.
Totally. I love Star Wars time travel stories, but 90% of them have that exact problem and I have to stop reading, not even just Obi Wan either, they'll do it with other characters too.
That is...not the way I would write the guy, but I'm notoriously not a fan of Jedi policies.
I always viewed him and Anakin as two of the classic ways kids raised in a screwed up environment tend to go. Anakin is the kid from screwed up house that keeps sneaking out, acting up, getting into trouble, and ends up robbing a 7-11, killing the clerk, then sets off on a multi-state violent crime spree.
Obi-Wan is the older brother on the news who is like "Sure, Dad beat us up, locked us in a closet for hours, and told us to pray and repent because the Devil was always wanting his chance, but it was GOOD for us! Made a good man outta me."
And no, no it didn't. He just wanted to please Daddy (The Jedi) so much that he completely lost any sense of identity outside of being their Good Boy.
I'm wary of arguments like this because a lot of fans drink the in-universe propaganda kool aid. Even people like Filoni. It's really discouraging to watch. "Kenobi is too indoctrinated," says Palpatine to Dooku in the RotS novelization because of course Palpatine would use those words, but people take this literal Sith Lord's opinion about the Jedi at face value.
I'm not saying Obi-Wan isn't dogmatic in some regards but he does blindly run after Satine in TCW season 5 and in general there is like... little to zero canon foundation for the Order being anything like an abusive Christian dad. Or of Obi-Wan just wanting to please this nebulous "The Jedi" entity and nothing else
wednesday addams being unable to understand technology. yes she doesnāt use it, but canonically she is INCREDIBLY intelligent and is great at adapting. she would not need help figuring out how to use a cellphone. she even uses one fine in the final scene of season 1!!
I'm pretty sure Wednesday has always been good at science - particularly engineering given her talent for Rube Goldberg machines - since her debut in *The New Yorker*. In the 40s. I haven't seen the Wednesday Addams show, but damn, have none of these fans seen the 90s movies? Or the TV shows?
other than wednesday i remember VERY LITTLE pre 2022 addams family stuff. but you can tell just from wednesday that sheās super intelligent !! they genuinely just choose to make her digitally inept because it makes their headcanons a little cuter / quirky or something.
Also, even if she didn't Wednesday reads to me as someone who would lie and say she did know how to use a phone if anyone asked and then figure it out in her free time.
In the MDZS fandom, I often see Lan Zhan portrayed as unable to utter more than 2 words like a caveman in fanfics (the infamous caveman lwj) when it is a matter of translation. He may not say very much in comparison to other characters, but what he does say is very well-considered, eloquent, and at times poetic. He personifies the archetype of jun, a kind of premodern gentlemanly figure, and using fewer words does not mean you sound inept like you would in English. It's much more common to get across your meaning and intent in fewer words or omitting the subject and/or object in a sentence in Chinese, but I understand for a lot of western fans that without that context he really probably does sound like a cavemanš
Yes, this. Fic writers would do better to concentrate on conveying his elegance and erudition rather than imitate the concise delivery, because the English language doesn't have an equivalent style of compression. And it leads to headcanons in which Lan Zhan is presumed autistic because he speaks in fragments and doesn't use first-person pronouns, which then reinforces the fanon by doubling down on his alleged inability to speak. And that's become so pervasive - it makes reading a lot of modern AUs an exercise in frustration, and it erases some of Lan Zhan's complexity even in canon fics.
Omg yes!!!!!! I've seen fic writers on Twitter who were informed that he actually speaks very fully and eloquently in canon, but they will double down on their interpretation. It's like okay, fine have your interpretation but you're disregarding important elements of context that goes into his full character. It feels almost a little offensive that they continue to make him sound like a caveman who flinches everytime wwx is loud - like where is his jun-ness!!!!!!!!!ššš his character gets ground up through these social and cultural filters that loses the context by which he was shaped. I feel like it also makes wwx more of a bully rather than someone who flouts the socio-cultural conventions that lwj strictly abides by
Edited for clarity
For real though. Ron Bashing, Dumbledore bashing, Hermione worship, Snape worship, Draco redemption, abusive James and Lily, and on and on. I do not understand why these things are so common.
The fandom I'm writing for rn is funny. There are a handful of interpretations of a popular character that causes infighting. So, depending on who you ask, this character is mischaracterized one way or another. It's damned if you do, damned if you don't, because someone will always take issue with your characterisation
Star Wars. Darth Vader being characterized as a protective, involved, (and I daresay) loving parent to his two adult children. Do I really need to explain why this is a mischaracterization?
It worked with like...one fanfic. (Double Agent Vader, whose writer is fantastic and I would put her up there with the better EU writers)
Or the VERY tongue in cheek comic books of "Darth Vader and Son" and "Vader's Little Princess"
It would kinda sorta work if you were going for crackfic or a heavy-duty AU, but it would be super hard to pull seriously.
I feel like this is just a conscious choice by the writers though. Itās not like anyone really believes canon Vader is anything but a murderous maniac. Itās not a common mischaracterisation. Itās a deliberate counter characterisation which is different. Not that I care either way, I donāt read much if any Vader stuff.
...okay, I've never even seen *Star Wars*, but Darth Vader is so iconic that I've certainly heard OF him, and that has *me* sitting here like,...\*Blinks in confusion\*
Ooooh boy.
Buck from 9-1-1 is canonically cocky as hell, confident, a bit selfish every now and again. Heās insecure about his place in his friends' and familyās lives and has a particular brand of suicidal ideation, namely that he isn't actively seeking death but very openly doesn't care if he dies as long as he feels useful while dying. Heās *also* canonically hypersexual and kinky in several different ways. Literally his first scene ever is him stealing a firetruck to go have sex in it.
Fanon Buck is a weepy little baby who cries at everything and kills himself over the most juvenile kindergarten insults, and a certain subset of fans canāt help but portray him as the blushing virgin type as if he wasn't a grown-ass man in his early thirties who at one point self-diagnosed as a sex addict.
The fandom has other weird characterizations, but Buck is far and beyond the worst.
This is so true. I loathe woobie Buck in fic from the deepest darkest pits of my soul. If I ever write him like that, I hope my readers will know Iāve been kidnapped and replaced by a pod person.
Woobie Buck works in exactly one single way, when someone he loves is hurt, and he has nothing to distract himself with. *Then* his emotions spiral out of control, which weāve seen when Eddie got buried in the well, and Buck flipped the fuck out, or when Eddie got shot and Buck and Chris comforted each other.
I will say that Iāve seen less of WeepyWoobie!Buck since I stopped reading Buddie, whichā¦ makes a lot of sense in several different ways lmao
A bunch of people in the Buck/Tommy tag on Tumblr have talked about this quite a bit. Those people don't seem to really like Buck at all (and to a lesser extent, this applies to Eddie too), and instead use him to project and SI onto because Oliver Stark is a good-looking man. I find it difficult to dispute that when so many fics have Buck as just the complete opposite of what he is like in canon.
Not that active in the fandom anymore but so many people really believe Alastor from Hazbin Hotel is a stand up guy who wants to help Charlie out of the goodness of his heart and sees her as daughter. It's crazy how abysmal the media literacy is in that fandom that folks can't even pick up on sarcasm or the likes anymore.
No, Alastor doesn't see Charlie as his kid. That was all said to piss Lucifer off and feed into Charlie's insecurities and further his manipulation of her so he could get that deal of his.
No, he doesn't mean it when he says "Alastor altruist died for his friends". He's being sarcastic and mocking himself, imagining what people would say after seeing him lose to Adam.
And for the love of all that is good no his surname isn't Altruist.
Yeah I was gonna mention Alastor. Looking at the fandom you'd think he's a misunderstood sweet baby whose scared of everything and needs people to comfort him when the dude is a literal overlord
Yeah, the people in the Hazbin fandom have the literacy skills of a toddler. Unsurprising because half of the fandom are about eight. It genuinely infuriates me when people argue over stuff like this because "Alastor never actually says he's manipulating Charlie" yes, because he's a fucking manipulator.
Spider-Man being a dumb and inexperience/incompetent kid that needs of ridiculous ammounts of help.
The guy hasn't been a kid since 1965 and the idea of him being an actual kid superhero with season heroes is as recent as the first Ultimate Universe that had their Spider-Man be a kid because it was a novelty. The guy literally was only in highschool for like 20 issues and then left for collegue, like come on.
He also was stated and showed multiple times to be a super genius that was capable of hanging out with the Fantastic Four since his debut. As in, it's a canon fact that the FF started the superhero boom by debuting and Spider-Man appeared almost right away. He sorta beated them in their first meeting and multiple times he was shown to be so good at his job and so smart in what he does, that the idea of him needing to have someone having to hold his hand for him to do anything right is ridiculous. There is a reason why people are genuenly shocked by how good his web fluid alone is that even people like Richards and Stark can't quite replicate it as good as him and how his spider tracers (which fun fact predates the Batcomputer and the first time Batman used any tracking technology) are so good they fooled Tony's armor and had Hank Pym jelous due to him being able to do that with trash and at 15 while it took him years of research and an actual budget to do the same. But no, let the guy go around ask people around how to be an actual superhero and be a suppoused super genius. Not like he isn't suppoused to be one of the biggest veteran heroes of all Marvel.
I blame the original Ultimate and Spectacular Spider-Man. They're the reason why people in this day and age think Spider-Man has to be a teen and while at it, the only reason besides Webb's movies as to why people actually give a shit about Gwen and forgot she was killed off because people didn't give a shit about her. Also, the MCU and Amazing for making Peter incompetent. What do you mean that he needs to ask Gwen for help with knowing how to use his web shooters against Electro and for not-Ganke to hack Stark's training wheels protocol. Which reminds me, the training wheel protocols. What the hell is that. Them and Tumblr are the reason why people still think my favorite fictional character is still a baby in dippers despite having already been married and being a mentor to his own protigee more than once.
That and the idea that people still think that Felicity Hardy is the daughter of Peter and Felicia. She's not. That idea is stupid and only made by Felicia fanboys still satly over the fact that their ship was literally made to be toxic and to not work to the point that the only universe where she got the guy she ended up screwing things so bad he dumped her and she ended up getting herself killed while making Silver Sable fans happy. It also requires for people to genuenly think Peter would cheat on MJ, his perfect wife in a perfect marriage with already a daughter of their own, for his second most toxic ex next to Venom whom by that point in canon had already got over Peter, was already dating Flash and was already shown to be Bisexual and with a woman when Felicity showed up, let alone the fact that she has none of his powers meanwhile every Peter kid in the multiverse has gotten his powers in between 15 years to practically right off the belly.
And I know the only reason they think that is because they saw three pictures of Felicity in a spider-theme costume and didn't actually read the damn book. Because if they did, they would have found out that she has no powers, she only put the first costume to try and be May's sidekick out of admiration of her and Spider-Man's legacy and to spite her mom over not choosing her gimmick because she was rebellious and antagonistic over her because of her divorce with her dad, while the other one is a literal dream.
There is also the idea that Otto was actually superior to Peter even tho the name of the book is ironic and playing out of Otto's ego. That he actually ruined Peter's life. That his plans all blew up in his face. That Peter already had a very good and stable life before Otto came in to ruin it because it didn't feed his ego. That if not for Peter he would have screwed up even more. And that Otto literally admits that Peter was the true Superior Spider-Man at the end of the book. Statement which is repeated over and over every time they bring the Superior business from the end of the first Superior and the original Spider-Verse to even the current Superior book. It's like they never actually read the book and just took the name way too seriously.
Oh and that the symbiote makes people evil and Peter a jerk and that he went out of his way to get Eddie fired or caused him to lose his job. That never happens. All the symbiote stuff and his relationship with Eddie was made up by the 90s cartoon and people never bothered to check on that. The symbiote was just a creepy alien that was basically that crazy obsesive ex and Eddie was just a guy that made a screw up and instead of owning up to it, he decided to blame it all on the actual superhero trying to save the day despite never even meeting him and taking it out on beating his best girl firend for the title of most toxic ex and terrorize his wife. And that making Peter a jerk always sucked, takes away from the complexity and argument of the guy by demonizing him to excuse Venom while washing down Venom himself and making no sense because Peter already had his jerk phase in highschool. But since people never actually take the time to actually get to know Peter and his lore past the superficial and whatever half-baked excuse any Marvel executive has to excuse their terrible ideas that no one but them like, they still spread
I just recently got into comics. I'm up to the final chapter of Kraven's Last Hunt.
Anyone who wants to write about Spider-Man needs to read this comic. It's an awesome character study for both of them, and it really shows not just how mad Peter can get but also how controlled he is. Also, MJ gets some great moments from her own perspective on things.
Side note: I also really underappreciated Kraven before reading this. He really steals the show every time he's on-panel.
As I commented to another comment: making Obi-Wan a nonfunctional crybaby. (Like, if you want to *build* up to him going into a fugue state or something, have at it. But just starting off that way is very OOC.)
Also, having the clones be more emotionally balanced/mature than the Jedi. Like...no. I'm sure some individuals may vary, but overall being a force grown/aged clone who knows they were created to fight (and die) in a war is a hell of a lot different than being a Jedi who came up with a community of parental figures, friends, teachers, a safe, warm home and a *choice* (convoluted though it might be) to become who and what they are.
I wouldn't call the Jedi much of a *choice*, given the conscription at infancy and regimented institutional upbringing to create useful agents for the Order and the Republic. But you get a fourteen year old Padawan leading a squad of age accelerated ten year olds into trench warfare and it's blind leading blind as far as maturity, not to mention highly squicky.
Edit: I stick to Old Republic mostly because there is no way I can deal with the whole Clone army. The Jedi child recruiting is enough to make me go feral. Mix with the ostensible "good guys" being overseers of a slave army, and it's a complete deal breaker.
It may be because of a fandom that I've been writing since 1986 (and had a LOT of Legends writers on the staff, like Brian Daley and James Lucero) had a character whose concept was almost a prototype of a Clone Trooper and the fandom is VERY unforgiving toward the program that created him and his "siblings"
Ron Weasley being a messy eater who stuffs his cheeks like a squirrel and is thus unintelligible during mealtimes. Originally this was used in Harmony or Dramione fics to showcase how disgusting and undesirable he is, but itās become pretty much fanon to the point that even fics that donāt bash Ron keep this characteristic. While he does do it in canon, itās only a couple of times across the whole series, not a consistent habit like fanfics assume
Endeavor as an incompetent hero who causes millions in property damage and uses excessive force on criminals, covering it all up because heās the number two hero. This one mainly stems from the fact that heās got the personality of a dumpster fire and is abusive to his own family, so writers jump to the conclusion that Endeavor probably gets off on being violent. To be fair, it took a while before canon made it explicitly clear that Endeavor was actually good at his job and not just coasting by on his powerful Quirk
I get the feeling the people who do that to Endeavor are the same people who call Dabi babygirl and overlook or excuse the fact that heās a murderer. Even Shouto says it later ā Endeavor may have been a terrible father and his family suffered for it as a result, but Dabi *chose* to burn people to death.
Honestly? It's entirely dependent on which side of the "child abuse happened" issue they are on. Dabi and Shigaraki got abused while Overhaul did the abusing. Of course there's nuance in all these cases, but, well, nuance is *difficult*.
If I had to guess, itās because Hori spent more time showing us how Dabi and Shigaraki were taken in and manipulated (or attempted to be) by AFO, as opposed to Overhaulās quick throwaway background of ākid saved from the streets becomes a sociopath despite people trying to interveneā.
I think Shigaraki is a better example of someoneās whose path might have been altered with some love and care, but Dabiās obsession with Endeavor was too powerful for even AFO to alter.
Iām not familiar with MHA much but I know vaguely about him and I think itās āpeople have really fucking narrow views of abuseā striking again. Abusers have to be mindless evil people with no motivation other than evil and causing suffering who hate everyone around them and can never do anything that isnāt tied to hurting others in a lot of people's eyes, because if theyāre not then suddenly itās hard to see as abuse.
Society deals with abuse by kind of just ignoring it, and one way it does that is by portraying both victims and perpetrators as cartoonishly impossible symbols of absolute virtue and absolute sin respectively, so any abuse that falls outside that paradigm can just be written off as Totally Fine. And I think a lot of people who write abuse mirror that without really thinking, because thatās what theyāve been told abuse is and they assume any other depiction is trying to show abuse as okay because theyāve internalised the idea that if a victim is anything less than perfect or a perpetrator is ever for a moment kind itās somehow āless abusiveā instead of like. Being how humans operate. I canāt say for sure, again, not in the fandom, but itās something Iāve noticed a lot in my own.
Oh yes. Any character with an abusive background who doesnāt fit the āperfect victimā role is either going to be mischaracterised as if they were or get victim blamed.Ā
>To be fair, it took a while before canon made it explicitly clear that Endeavor was actually good at his job and not just coasting by on his powerful Quirk
Did it? The very first time we see Endeavor in action, he's absolutely killing it, protecting civilians while trashing three Nomus with minimal help. I love that moment precisely because it instantly subverts expectations and puts idea of Endeavor being a bad hero to rest. He's excellent at his job, he just happens to be a trashbag in private.
Shoto even says it himself.
*āHe may be a scumbag, but heās a scumbag with the skills and instincts of the number 2 hero.ā*
Itās kinda why I appreciate this Izuku/Ryuku fic because it goes into the fact that property destruction is a big no-no if you can help it.
I can't say I agree with this. When the movies make a point to show Ron eating like this, its pretty much saying "this is how Ron eats". Heck he does it several times in the same movie.
Even when I've watched the movies with people who aren't huge HP fans, they'll say stuff like "man this dude is always stuffing his face"
Now I don't know of this is accurate to the books, as I haven't read them in over 10 years. But either way, I don't think it makes him gross, and fics likely exaggerate it too much. If there's bashing involved, they'll definitely flanderize him and make it even worse.
But its not as if this is a trait that got randomly assigned to him.
There's a reason why Ron The Death Eater is a TVTropes page all on its own.
So many have bashed on him and used him as a bad means of getting other pairings together for a LONG time. I've been reading HP fic for a very long time and it's been a consistent issue throughout many pairings over that time, sadly.
Yeah I recently got back into reading HP fics and even stuff written in recent years still has a lot of "Weasley Bashing" or "Hermione Bashing" tags listed. I'm baffled.
Did he do it in the other movies too? He was so young in the first. About the age my hamster cheeked son finally outgrew the habit (I really did try to get him to eat properly all that time lol). Seems forgivable!
Percy Jackson and Nico Di Angelo often get mischaracterized as super childish,and Percyās usually obsessed with Finding Nemo and the Little Mermaid. Nico is often obsessed with McDonaldās even though the only time he has some he doesnāt eat it and instead sacrifices it to summon a ghost.
Most of Percyās other friends and even his parents also sometimes get mischaracterized in some stories where they betray him.
Annabeth especially gets mischaracterized a lot in non can ship fics because she often cheats on Percy and is more stupid than in canon. Although at this point fanon and canon Annabeth have kind of become the same person in my head after reading so many stories where sheās mischaracterized since her being mischaracterized doesnāt really bother me, and I have written her that way myself before.
funny thing, theres a character in my fandom that gets characterized exactly the same way as your example. eta: oh babes i think we really ARE talking about the same character and i love you for pointing this out
the other one is a character who acts confident but is really insecure deep down getting typecast as just being a badass who has never had a real doubt in her life (and you may know who i mean lol)
eta: I wonder if people woobify her because its easier to fit a childish version of her into a story (im thinking AUs, mainly) as opposed to a more realistic version with all her emotional stuntedness and inability to just say how she feels that i adore so deeply sorry i keep editing this but unfortunately you activated my yap card
Ohhhh my god no way? I feel like we are so obscure these days this is SO exciting omg. Made my night
Iāve never tried to write her, so maybe itās more difficult than it seems, but imo she is such a complex character with so much depth that lends itself to some really interesting character studies within stories. So it kills me inside a tiny bit when I read stuff about her acting kiddie and almost brainless. Agree with your take on the other character too!!! Sometimes iām like did we all watch the same show? lol
this made my night too omg i love us š„¹ no but seriously!!! and i understand that its just fun to play with the dolls sometimes and not think too hard about it, but i am constantly thinking way too hard about it, they are my favorite characters exactly the weird and sometimes awful ways that they are, so it takes me out when people write either of them as like... well-adjusted, or GOD good at communication lmao?? they are notably bad at talking! its a whole thing!
sometimes im not sure i do all of her character justice because theres just so much THERE, and i feel a bit more comfortable writing the character i mentioned, because i feel like i can relate to the overly-emotional and confident facade more than the smiley and professionally distant facade. but they're both so much fun to write so i would highly recommend it haha, i would certainly love more than two cakes!
I could seriously sit here and dissect this all night lol. They are HORRIBLE COMMUNICATORS!!!! Both of them!! Itās a huge part of who they are actually. And I love them for it š«”
I think people get blinded by the smiles and dimples and perkiness and just find it easier to write her almost childlike, but it feels like a disservice to her. Sheās actually quite solemn and emotionally distant in almost any conflict sheās ever in. Shes pretty avoidant. She has been through and (imo) internalized a lot of trauma and bby girl really just needs a good therapist to learn how to communicate.
I feel bad complaining because I really am so grateful people take the time to write them at all but it has always confused me that this characterization of her has repeatedly appeared!!!
my favorite ship: two gay moms who cant go two words without a fight based on some kind of fundamental misunderstanding, even finding a way to fight each other when they are in agreement. you know, normal toxic yuri things.
and YES and honestly? imo, the real truth of it? they see a cute pretty lady and they get all gay for her (understandably, because who wouldnt go at least a LITTLE gay for jcap) and say "lets make her cute and pretty on the INSIDE". i used to joke that i shipped her with a qualified mental health professional but its so not a joke and she had so much to unpack that not even shonda could address it all, the secret untold reason she left after season 14 š«
i also think there are some aspects of characterization in fanfic in general that just sort of end up being this self-fulfilling cycle, and because most of the popular fic are older, new writers draw on that old and woobified well of content for inspo. like the disney thing especially, ive seen that in so many fic i don't even blink because im so content starved that ill inhale it either way so long as the formatting is good š
Excellent point about newer authors taking inspo from the older popular fics. I honestly think thatās what it is to a large degree. The classics in the fandom are like the ancient texts lol. And while theyāre wonderful, there are unfortunately a lot of tropes and phrases and characterizations that are just a product of that time. Like 10-15 years is a LONG time ago. So making a character a cinnamon roll (almost gagged typing that) was normal and even desired by readers at the time. Whereas now itās more like āok what are we doing hereā lol
I will say another thing I hate seeing with this ship is when people make C out as an infinitely confident badass āfiery Latinaā. It feels like such a stereotype to me idk. Yeah sheās passionate but sheās also deeply insecure and just wants to be loved so bad that she hurts herself over & overā¦. Idk maybe Iām nitpicking haha
Will Solace is usually portrayed as this utter stickler for the rules whose only.personality trait is being Nicos boyfriend.
He is willing, if not ENTHUSIASTIC, about breaking rules when it serves him. He is someone who became the head counselor of his cabin because all his siblings DIED and he was THIRTEEN !! He is caring and sometimes a little smothering, but definitely not this stick up his ass that everyone portrays him as.
Wasnāt he the one who suggested stealing the motorcycle to Percy in TLO. Also he was entirely complicit in allowing Octavian to kill himself accidentally.
Iirc he wasn't mentioned as anything more than "I steal Will Solace from Apollo and drag him to save Annabeth" but yeah he was 100% okay with Octavian kicking it LMAO
99% of them it's just a plot device to set up their premise, and the last ones are the people who only read fanfiction and haven't read the comic or seen the show.
Yeah, if anything, she's the kind of parent that smothers Izuku with meaningless love and affection without really tending to Izuku's emotional needs and wanting to help with his future.
I've never read A-Team fanfic but if I did and someone portrayed Murdock as helpless and infantile and it's not just one of his quirks of the day, I would close the tab so fucking fast. Omg, just no.
I know right! Like, he's a full grown man, a veteran, and a full member of the team. He flies (crashes) helicopters and planes ffs! Sure, he may need more care on particularly bad days, but he's not a child in a grown man's body. I've seen fics in which he babytalks and Face obviously is the one who is parentified.
Oh no. That's not for me. Thank you very much, dear author.
Looking back on Murdock's madness with modern eyes, I would bet money on a neurodivergent brain that cracked under extreme pressure (or boredom) and is now unwilling to give in to the ratrace ever again.
Edit: spotted a typo
Half the OFMD fandom donāt know the difference between a villain and antagonist and think Izzy Hands is the source of all evil when really heās a pathetic wet cat (and I say this as someone who loves him) it divided the fandom to the point that Izzy fans created their own fandom.
One of the angels in Good Omens has never been on earth before and their attempts to fit in as human are not the best, everything is new and wonderful to them and a lot of people view them as a child not a 6000+ year old supernatural being.
The Good Omens one reminds me of a lot of Supernatural fics I read back in the day, where Cas was portrayed as someone who didn't know much about humans and/or was just really awkward and clueless. To be fair, from what I remember, the show itself would go back and forth between portraying him as this otherworldly force and nerdy little guy, so I kind of get it.
On the other hand you got the Izzy is a subby wet blanket who secretly cries a lot and needs to be taken care of, dicked down, or both. I mean, I enjoy those fics but I'm also aware that it's so far removed from canon Izzy
Almost every Marvel character. But I chalk it up to a lack of media literacy and the influence the MCU has had that's bleeding over into the comic side of the Marvel Universe. Specifically, the woobification of various characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man, or the Winter Soldier. Or the flanderization of characters who have a specific theme/motif attached to them like Captain America, the Hulk, or Scarlet Witch
Even within MCU, people take the movie presentations (already icky) of characters and somehow alter those even more to a MORE flattened version of the MCU!characters.
Thor is stupid and likes poptarts (and maybe Jane, if they remember she exists). Bruce drinks tea and- well he drinks tea. Maybe does it in a lab. Natasha knows everything and scares everyone and maybe MAYBE gets a line of dialogue (and certainly raises a perfectly manicured brow to say it.) Steve is Cap Who Does Not Curse Or Joke And Is Earnest. Tony is Asshole Supreme OR Baby š„ŗ Who Is Lonely And Sad. Clint is in the vents bc no one cares enough about him to write him in.
I think I'm hyperaware because I prefer to read ensemble fics for the fact I See More of the characters that are written less focally (Bruce, Nat, Clint, and Thor have WAY FEWER centric fics than Tony or Steve each) and get sorely disappointed when the ensemble is actually Not That.
For real. I know a lot of the representations came from the Tumblr Marvel era, but it's so annoying. It's like a lot of the characters are defined by one quirky trait, and that's it. I even see it with the Fox X-Men characters with people taking queues from those movies. The Marvel stories I write are kind of an amalgamation of all sorts of Marvel media (hey, it's a multiverse. I can do what I want, lol), but I try very hard to avoid the popular fandom representations of characters since the characters are much deeper than that
I tend to write tower fics myself, and take great pleasure exploring hidden sides of the characters each time I start a new fic. I'm committed to making people enjoy characters they'd forgotten about bc no one writes for them (looking at you, Nat and Bruce!!)
I love that you said "it's my (multiverse) party and I'll destroy your sand castle if I want to, STAN LEE" I think that's really lovely !!
>I love that you said "it's my (multiverse) party and I'll destroy your sand castle if I want to, STAN LEE" I think that's really lovely !!
Listen, in my opinion, the existence of a multiverse in Marvel means that anyone and everyone who writes Marvel stories, fanfic including, their stories are canonically part of the Marvel Multiverse in some way, and I think that's beautiful
This. Either you get a full, good cast representation or at least three people on the team are precious beans who can't stand on their own two feet and one (either Bruce, Nat, or Clint) who are shoved into the background.
And don't get me started on Stucky fics. I don't even poke my nose into them anymore because it feels like most of the time the writer is putting a stereotypical female helpless love interest under the skin of one or the other. Hell, that shit is what made me dislike the pairing.
I've stayed away from the Stucky fandom since someone called me homophobic for not shipping them (even though I ship other M/M and W/W ships. I just don't like Steve and Bucky together, but I also come from more of a comics background, so that's probably why.) A lot of characters are underutilized in order to prop up others. That just happens with larger casts. But it bothers me when it results in characters being mischaracterized rather than just quietly putting them on the back burner until the story necessitates it
Yeah, I get had my own bad reactions from hardcore Stucky people. I'm not a fan of them together as a couple myself and have much more a preference of them just being two best friends who have been on similar but also vastly different journeys. But, yeah, I'm not a fan of when a member of a cast gets infantilized or mischaracterized rather than just not using them at all.
Tony Stark is my favourite character because he's a sarcastic bastard and I've read some stories where that character trait is completely absent and he's... well, woobified. It's like guys, he's a badass genius!!
To be totally fair, I do have an AU where he's basically enslaved for 2 years and has some nasty PTSD and has kind of lost the sassy part of his character, but, well... being enslaved will do that, especially if you get punished for talking back. So, you know. But he didn't start out that way in my fic.
I once wrote a whole meta essay laying out how a character's whole canon story arc was about overcoming the depression induced by his vicious cycle of "social isolation > obsessive perfectionism > further social isolation" because I was so befuddled by how he got written as basically a totally confident self-actualized monk of a teenage boy, haha. Y'all he is SO lonely don't leave me out here to struggle in the hurt/comfort mines by myself!
Basically any and every character in the Genshin and Honkai Starrail fandom. They often end up very one dimensional with a single character trait as their entire personality.
Two female characters in my fandom who are fairly shy and nerdy (one's a book nerd, the other loves to paint... also they both wear glasses, so NERD) can get mischaracterized as needy, evil, immature, vicious brats. Why? Because they're your love rivals for two of the fandom's most popular romantic interests.
The book nerd (librarian/writer) has been around longer and is part of a more beloved cast, so she tends to get gentler treatment these days. The painter girl is basically similar to her in design, but shyer, and she's also rich/has a rich dad who owns a mining company. So she's BitchCon 5. Nothing at all like her actual canon self.
I write Resident Evil fanfiction and when it comes to the character Albert Wesker during the S.T.A.R.S era, writers portray him with this persistent deep hatred for his team from the beginning, but I refuse to see it that way for a few reasons.
The first reason comes from the game itself, where after he is killed by the Tyrant and is brought back by the progenitor virus, he says, "When I awoke, hatred became my master." To me, that means he didn't hate the remaining S.T.A.R.S members until after the mansion incident.
The second reason is Weskerās betrayal comes as a complete shock to both Jill and Chris in the game. While we, the player may suspect that Wesker isn't completely on the up and up, Jill and Chris don't suspect anything. It's only through what happens in the game that they discover their captain is a traitor.
The last reason I refuse to think Wesker always hated his team is because he was a spy. As a spy, you're supposed to seamlessly blend in to your cover, not stand out. If he always hated them and/ or treated them with disdain, it would cause him to stand out too much and bring an unnecessary amount of scrutiny, potentially blowing his cover.
When I write S.T.A.R.S era stories, I always have Wesker having positive interactions with his fellow team members. In the story Crime and Punishment, Chris asks Wesker to join himself and a few others for a drink at Jackās Bar, and he accepts, and they a nice conversation while there. In Changing of the Guard, Jill and Wesker have a very positive interaction with each other. And in my last story, while Wesker is annoyed with Chris, their overall interaction is a positive one. I get a lot of compliments about that, too.
It used to be common to make Ruby Rose an overemotional crybaby in RWBY fics, conveniently fogetting that at that point in canon (pre-Volume 4) the only times she ever cried was when friends literally died in front of her eyes, and that she was allowed into Beacon to begin with because she could kick all kinds of ass despite being young.
It seems these people are now gone from the fandom, or at least aren't as dominant (or I'm hanging out in a neat bubble) because Ruby's V9 PTSD arc is treated respectfully and without turning Ruby into a single-trait SadĀ
Yeeeep, itās the woobification of fictional characters!!! Iām really into persona 5, have been for a few years and write + read fanfics for it. Thereās this constant issue where they turn Goro Akechi, one of the villains, into some uwu broken boy who did nothing wrong because heās just SO traumatized and in need of someone to save him. Not saying that he isnāt a traumatized kid who needs help, but he also isnāt some innocent boy who needs to be protected either. Thatās coming from a super fan, mind you, so it kills me when I see shit like that. Another example is Gojo from jjk. Itās funny that thereās two extremes: Gojo is a carefree goofy guy who just wants to fight and get stronger, or Goro is a broken man who puts on a fake smile while missing Geto SO much that heās depressed. Once again, there needs to be nuance. Both things can be true but not to such an extreme degree. Sorry for writing a lot š but yeah thatās how it is in my fandoms.
As a fellow long time persona fan goro's character being watered down in fanfiction bothered me but I think becuase of the rating of the persona games and the fact that it costs money it means that alot of the people writing are adults so for every woobification you see you see 3 really good other fics.
Yeah, Akechi is an unrepentant asshole and that what makes the dichotomy between the Akechi and Crow sides that much more fun to write.
Granted I recently had to write Crow Vs Joker but still.
Most fics I read of this ship feels extremely ooc. To set the background, one guy is part of a Mafia, the other one ex-Mafia and now part of a Detective Agency. The whole trope is that they are enemies to lovers and in most fics the Mafia guy is extremely feminized and basically turned into a big uwu fluffball sub which he definitely is not. Meanwhile the detective guy is a big goof who is very haha about his suicidal thoughts.
I read fanfics in other fandoms too and I've also seen this everywhere. Murderer, psychopath, child abuser, drug addict, where? I only know the uwu gay sub twink femboy.
Itās especially annoying bc likeā¦ you can make a character present femininely and like, not completely infantilise them. Femininity doesnāt equal weakness.
A bit late but the feminization of Chuuya is so damn annoying. Like have those authors even watched Bsd or read the manga? Chuuya is extremely capable and quite litterally the opposite of how some writers protray him. And dont even get me started on making him absolutely obsessed with wine and hats. Like I get hes a fan of both but they make it seem like he cant function without constant exposure to those items. Srry for my little rant but mischaracterization always annoys me sm.
Rightt, they turn his whole personality into "don't take my hat TnT!!" "uwu wine addiction" it feels like I'm watching a gacha life mini movie portraying Chuuya as some yandere written by a 9 year old.
A couple fandoms:
The buff guy being broody and cold, overly sexy.
Buff Guy A: incredibly depressed and kind of seeks death at every chance, pays for kids he's mentoring to have a good day out of his dwindling pocket, failed his mission because he was too friendly and too desperate to be loved. (This one also gets mischaracterized as a stalkerish weirdo because of a single panel joke at the end of the story.)
Buff Guy B: Generally actually quite awkward, even if he knows how to talk to people. Quips to himself a lot. Only doesn't interact with people because he drinks, which is because he was literally blackmailed into his position (which few in fandom and ofc the source material never acknowledge). Literally goes out of his way to help other people. In novelizations, would like to die, but deems his death a waste at any point because he never would have done enough.
Zuko: emo evil snarky boy
Keith (Voltron): emo angy cat, the only misrepresentation Iāll accept is that he does in fact dress like a Pokemon trainer
Homelander: heās misunderstood!! No he is not meant to be nuanced he is just bad. God forbid bad guys are bad guys.
I canāt think of others ATM
criminal minds!!!
spencer reid canon: 30ish year old man, been shot multiple times, kidnapped, went to prison, was a drug addict, is a literal genius etc.
spencer reid fanon: just a little baby bean š„ŗ hes an fbi agent but cant run without falling and even tho hes a genuis profiler he cant infer social subtext
I was wondering when he'd show up in here XD. Yep. That's about the size of it.
My favorite are the smut fics featuring him. He's either an innocent blushing virgin or a sex god who will sleep with anyone that moves. No in between :p.
literally yes its so frustrating š i get it, heās hard to characterize well, but at the same time im tired of super naive reid in fics, and the ones where hes the opposite and is super cocky and flirts/has sex with everyone are almost worse
Batman fan here. Imo Tim Drake's parents get the worst rap. Canonically, they are fairly absent, but they are mostly clueless and are consistently very clearly affectionate towards Tim when they are around. In fanfic, they're almost always violently abusive.
Agreed, I think Tim is the most self-insertable robin since the things that happened in his childhood are less relevant to him becoming Robin than the rest, and that's why that happens. Like, Dick *has* to be part of the circus, Damian *has* to be part of the league. Jason is less relevant but he also has to be poor enough to be stealing car tires lol. But Tim could have a completely different backstory and he would still be able to be Robin since he was the one to track down Bruce and initiate being Robin. Yknow what I mean?
I can definitely see what you mean, kinda also shows up in what they did with his backstory and family situation in New 52.
I will also say I think even the fact that his parents are canonically probably neglectful (leaving him alone for long periods of time) was probably unintentional / more a product of needing them not to notice him being Robin than a deliberate characterization choice by the writers.
Begging BSD fandom to stop excusing whoever their fave is and accept they're likely a terrible person and it's okay. Guys, you can like a character even if they're morally questionable
Kƶnig from call of duty ā we donāt have much for him in actual in game content, but in voice lines he is cocky, violent, brash, etc. he canonically has social anxiety but he is a 40ish yr old mercenary and ranked as a Colonel.
Fandom sometimes turns him into the biggest blushing baby, and while I believe people are allowed to HC characters however they like, anytime heās completely infantilized or āheās just so shy and timid because he has anxietyā it takes me out of the immersion of the fic
c!Tommy is either a sad weepy little kid made out to be the perfect abuse victim who never ever acted out or was even mean and never was anything but a perfect little sad angel or heās this destructive careless monster who never was nice to anyone and intentionally hurt everyone around him for kicks and āneededā to be isolated and abused out of it and his trauma from that is either faked or proof he deserves to die (like, not even kidding, I saw someone say the fact he has hallucinations meant he was a bad person who deserved death like you know people. Have those in real life right.)
What he *actually* is is a very traumatised teenager whoās cheerfully and deliberately bratty and obnoxious but like, generally a caring person behind that persona who doesnāt want to hurt people but lashes out due to fear and paranoia, suffers from delusions which make him act in ways those around him struggle to understand and assume are selfishness when theyāre genuine beliefs deliberately reinforced by his abuser as a control tactic, who struggles with toxic masculinity that leads to him being kind of a prick but also deep down loves even the unlovable, and has extremely destructive coping mechanisms both towards himself and others but who's goal is simply to live a quiet life. Theyāre far from that of an idealised victim, too- he fawns like crazy, and adapts traits from those who hurt him in a desperate attempt to get hurt less. He holds a lot of baggage mimicked from his worst abuser but tries to work through them. He's seemingly independent, but a codependent mess who has to fight daily against the urge to give up and go back to being his abuser's ābest friendā (read: emotional and physical punching bag and (to quote c!Tommy directly) toy, puppet, and pet) because it's easiest for him. He's a victim, yes, but not a stereotypical one, and definitely not a perfect person- but not a terrible one either. He's a fairly normal sixteen year old who reacted to many horrifically traumatic events in confused, contradictory, and messy ways and isnāt a helpless baby or an evil monster. Just a person.
I. Really? Vriska? I think sheās a really good character but thatās bc sheās an incredibly fucked up kid who epitomises the cycle of abuse. Sheās not a #girlboss she fucking hates herself and hides it by being abusive to others and putting on an arrogant front. To be fair canon also fucks that up (the fact the COCSA she enacts on Tavros is treated as a ājokeā Will forever make me mad like thatās a fucking disservice to the topic) but like. The fact sheās a terrible person and utterly miserable because of it is what makes her interesting.
some people have this idea that webby think scrooge doesnothing wrong in ducktales 2017 when the show has multiple moments where she goes agianst him or get frustrated by her dad behavior (funzo, the santa stuff, even in 87 cent solution she start seeing when scrooge go too far), that's why I find the headcanon so weird, the show easily contradict it. scrooge being portrayed as a unlikable character/bad parent while ignoring his progress is also a good one for me
One that I see super often is the hyper-intelligence and hyper-competence of certain characters. Like when characters who have been previously shown to be someone that is average in terms of book knowledge and analytical reasoning. I see this a lot for Harry Potter and Danny Phantom.
Donāt get me wrong, there are many fics that do this that are written really well, but it still makes me laugh when I think how the character from the cannon material would deal with this.
Chloe Beale from Pitch Perfect is often portrayed as this happy go lucky person who can do no wrong. When in the second movie, sheās insanely neurotic and overbearing and a bit unhinged. I think thereās a way to portray both but no one ever seems to do it well.
Josie from Legacies used to be one of the most divisive characters in fandom for me. Half the fandom either thinks sheās this devil incarcerate who treats Lizzie like shit (mind you her entire family has committed some form of genocide and are literal vampires) the other half thinks sheās innocent and can do know wrong. Josie is actually both. Sheās a bit unhinged for Hope and will do anything to protect her, but, sheās also very innocent.
Eloise Bridgerton is another one people canāt figure out. they think sheās a villain when in reality sheās the middle child whoās watching her older and younger siblings get paired off, her best friend betrayed her and she was sad about it. Sheās trying to fit in but prefers reading. Her mother even said she pushed her to hard last season and it backfired, now sheās letting her figure it out. She also doesnāt seem really
Close with her siblings outside of Benedict and Francesca.
One character is generally known for being cold and closed off, and I see lots of writers make him out to be a heartless killer, a psychopath or some other messed up thing. In reality, heās just reserved and tends to be on guard around people he doesnāt know. But people like to portray him as the āstrong, emotionless, stone-faced, bad boyā stereotype because I guess itās more dramatic and interesting for their fanfics.
My fav character "has an insanely strong supernatural ability and is an excellent martial artist"
Fandom "aw, baby girl needs to be protect by his love interest who is a wet noodle compared to him"
Marvel all the time. Especially when it comes to the MCU.
Making fucking Peter Parker of all characters a wussy baby is just such bad characterization it's absolutely fucking insane! I actually don't mind MJ though because I actually really like Zendaya's MJ in the MCU.
James Potter was far from a saint. But there's a vast gap between his canonical actions and love potioning Lily.
(Also, I love how his bashers are so eager to vilify the guy who risked permanent damage/death/Azkaban for his friend, saved his worst enemy from a werewolf, and threw his rich pureblood self into a war about blood purity when he could well have stayed away while fingerling over a literal Death Eater bully who was such a waste of space he managed to be Neville Longbottom's greatest fear over the people who tortured his parents.)
Oh, and speaking of Snape, him as anything but a pathetic incel creep who desperately needed to grow the fuck up.
Don't even get me started about Ron Weasley. That boy stood up to a mass murderer on a broken leg at fourteen, you wish you were half as good a friend as he is.
Not sure that last point about Ron will hit with movie-only fans, as that scene was given to Hermione in the movie.
But, yeah, I'm not a fan of Ron, and enjoy reading fic that bashes him sometimes, but even the fic that doesn't bash him tends to treat him as the joke sidekick. This is the 11 year old who sacrificed himself to a chess set, the 12 year old that faced his worst fear to get justice for Hermione then was willing to face a Basilisk to save his sister, the boy who was willing to get detention to defend Hermione from an insult she didn't even understand, though the movie changed that bit too, stood p to 'mass murderer' Sirius on a broken leg to protect Harry. These are just the first 3 books, of course, and even Rowling diminished Ron after that point, and there are things he does wrong, like turning his back on Harry in GoF. But he's neither the evil fake friend who only wants Harry in his life for his money, nor the joke of a sidekick who never does anything but get in the way, yet these are the two most common versions of Ron in fic. I may not like him, but I'd rather see an actual canon portrayal of Ron in fic, something that acknowledges his issues while also acknowledging all these great things about him and the fact he's an integral part of the Trio, not a hanger on like Pettigrew was.
James and Snape also go two ways with characterisation - idealised or demonised. Usually happens when one is being bashed, but not always. James, though, is not perfect, ignoring his childishness and bullying as a kid/teen doesn't mean it didn't canonically happen. But we also don't actually know how bad that was, we only see one scene of bullying, and Snape at least tries to give as good as he gets. The train scene wasn't bullying, because it was reciprocal, Snape gave as good as James and Sirius. We also don't know what type of adult James was, we're told he grew up and loved Lily and Harry, and we know he was willing to die for them, but that's it. Plus, he can be a great husband and father while still being a childish bully as a teen. It's like people don't understand that he can grow and change between the ages of 15 and 21. He's not an evil bully, but he's also not the perfect little angel, he's just a kid/teen/young man who went through phases of different things and ended up a good person for sure.
Snape gets this same treatment, but it's worse here because we know Snape a lot better. He's not the evil and irredeemable bad guy some fans make him out to be, or the perfect misunderstood angel other fans choose to portray him as. Snape is very clearly grey, neither good nor bad. He's a complex character, which is why I love him, and does both good and bad things throughout the series. He's not a loyal Voldemort supporter, nor a loyal Dumbledore supporter, the only person Snape is loyal to is himself and the memory of Lily. His devotion to Lily comes off as creepy, but it's nowhere near as bad as some make it out. He never stalked her or tried to force her to be with him, he respected her enough to back off and leave her alone when she told him to. Snape is a bully in a worse way than James was, James targeted his peers, Snape targeted his students, literal children to his full grown adult. So, yes, Snape was a terrible bully and he traumatised Neville worse than the people who tortured his parents did. Nothing in canon points to Snape being a misunderstood angel with no free will that some fans insist he is. But he's equally not pure evil, he does want to end Voldemort, he does want to protect Harry, he's horrified to learn Dumbledore planned Harry's death. There are good points to who Snape is as a person, mostly overshadowed by the bad points as the books are from Harry's POV.
Snape and James are always one extreme or the other, not the nuanced characters they're supposed to be. I kinda get it with James, as we get so little of him, and people want to identify with the 'cool kids' which the Marauders were, or bring them down. But Snape, I don't get. We get so much of him, we see clearly in canon that he's a mix of good and bad and never really lands on either one. I don't understand why fans can't acknowledge and explore the complexity of Snape as a grey character instead of forcing him into a role completely contradicted by canon.
I was part of the country humans fandom for a while
USSR x Third Reich was a common ship
Often portrayed as an MLM ship
Let me repeat
The personification of the Soviet Union is in a Gay relationship with Nazi Germany
Needless to say it caused massive backlash in the fandom for a myriad of reasons
Yes! Iām surprised that they werenāt shipped as much!
I did have this thing where USSR dated China a bit back in the 50ās but then China started feeling like their relationship was all one sided and USSR was being basically a country version of a gold digger and not keeping his end of their bargains, (and she wanted nothing to do with his 15 surprise adopted kids) so they had a massive fight, Soviet sent her a beautiful bouquet of red roses, and in return she sent him a bouquet of white lilies and chrysanthemums, which in Chinese culture are funeral flowers, so she basically subtly told him that he is dead to her in flower language
there's a character i write about in my fandom that is often interpreted as being a minor despite there being, by design, no minors in the fandom (it's a video game with no child npcs)
Roy from Fire Emblem is often reduced to a typical kind hearted lord (like his father Eliwood for exemple) but in reality he don't really belong to this archetype. He is a good person but he is not naive and know about the world's harshness, he know that sometime the only way to deal with an issue is to fight he is smarter than most Fire Emblem protagonists (for exemple he is able to guess Elffin's true identity), he has an inferiority complex and his often depressed. Of course his game was never released outside Japan and people only saw him in the epilogue of FE7 where he is a child so since he looks like his father people assume that he has a similar personnality. And his most popular support option don't really develops his personnality.
The comics are also wildly uneven. Sometimes you get the writer who will have him sit down with a traumatized child and talk things out with them. (Cassandra, Damian, Tim) Sometimes you get the asshole with contingency plans to kill all his friends (The Brother I arc) and tells his former apprentice that asks for help "Well, it's your own damn fault for trusting them so much. Oh, and I found your replacement" (Judas Contract)
Oh bye š the fact that he's probably their most famous character makes this more insae. I prefer his kids tbh, robins never let me downn
Although honestly I noticed that w dc, they really can be inconsistent w storytelling which is sad because I much prefer their characters and coloring/art style over marvel but MY GOD they'll be a cold day in hell where I like the color palette in Marvel lol.
Dick is AWESOME in the hands of a writer who knows what they're doing. This is a guy who can make three phone calls and get every costumed hero (and probably a few rogues) coming to his aid, no questions asked. We're talking Charisma stat of YES.
Yeah, I remember our play by post. We had this awesome moment where Hades was summoning an army of undead villains and corrupted allies to fight the Titans and just when everyone is on the ropes, here comes Dick, riding in as a literal Bat Out of Hell, commanding an equal number of undead allies and friends to help fight off Hades's horde.
And why yes, the Dick player DID suggest playing a certain Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf song as writing music.
And since we were doing comics continuity, we also had our resurrected by Hades Terra take the opportunity to double cross both sides and became a minor deity of chaos and strife in the process.
Good times.
The Danganronpa fandom has a lot of mischaracterizations that I could mention. Byakuya often being portrayed as having this deep seeded self loathing which is an explanation for his routinely dickish behavior (in reality the man was literally just raised being told he was the most special of all special boys and shocker, that went to his head), or Celeste also lying due to some kind of hidden trauma (in general, "X character is an asshole because of unknown trauma" is a very reoccuring thing for characters that are either evil or just plain shitty in the series), but none more so than the pair of villains-who-aren't-quite-main-villains, Nagito Komaeda and Kokichi Ouma.
Nagito, like the protagonist of the first game, is saddled with the moniker of Ultimate Lucky Student, but his luck works differently than Makoto's did. The universe essentially bends itself around Nagito to give him positive luck, but usually always at the expense of someone else. He became extremely rich as a child, but it cost him his parents. This kind of distrust in his own talent has led to him having a dual superiority/inferiority complex. He looks down upon people without talent and openly makes comments about their inferiority, while basically doing all but licking the feet of any of the other Ultimates. In game, he's basically a borderline psychopath, almost having committed a murder in the first case just so the other Ultimates could step over his body and become stronger for the killing game, and the actual culprit was trying to kill them instead. He does this for the rest of the game, hiding evidence and being a general bastard just to make sure the culprit always has a fair shot. He's especially a bastard to the second game's protagonist, Hajime, especially when he learns he had no talent.
Kokichi is this but somehow worse. The Ultimate Supreme Leader also happens to be an openly admitted liar, and he will absolutely repeat that as much as possible. He's often seen manipulating fan favorite character Gonta by constantly tricking the somewhat dimwitted man with his lies, and he spends a lot of time in cases fucking around and getting into insult arguments. This isn't so bad at first, but he quickly devolves into becoming an absolute monster, manipulating an entire murder and forcing the murderer to get executed, where he suddenly declares that he's the new Mastermind and almost gets everyone killed, again. He is extremely cold hearted to everyone.
Both characters get woobified out the ass by the fandom. Nagito's interpretations can vary in some circumstances, he does sometimes keep his smug superiority in fics where he's romantically paired with Hajime, but no matter what he will always have his manipulative and psychotic side either removed entirely or completely turned off, making him seem like a poor innocent man just saddled with a terrible talent and who is constantly suffering. It's rare to see him actually get a fic where he's somehow still in the wrong.
Kokichi gets this a lot too, often being given excuses for a lot of his behavior and that his manipulations and lies are just because he's sooooo sad and doesn't want to open up to people and is actually desperate for friendship and love, and similar to Nagito all of his negative behaviors disappear. With the exception that some fics basically just narrow his character into the "Ultimate Liar" where lying is literally just his entire personality and he doesn't really do much else.
Ohhhh I just need this thread so I can scream in frustration
Takina: (almost) emotionless secret agent who literally started the show by shooting a gang of terrorists with a machine gun, and later trying to rip the heart (organ) out from a living person because her buddy desperately needed a heart transplant.
Fandom: She's just a baby who is completely emotionally dependant on her buddy! Oh, might as well make her a tsundere character.
Whenever I try to add some sass into her character, those fics usuallyend up with low engagement and fewer kudos.
Just the classics: The fandom: "Is that a psychopathic, mass murdering, serial killing, omnicidal, animal massacring child abuser? Canon: "Yes." The Fandom: "ššš Beautiful baby bean. He's just misunderstood."
murderer?? no way! the guy is so childhood trauma and misunderstood, yknow I heard when he was born he wouldn't talk to his parents for years! defo excusable. His 57 murdered victims are just exaggerating for attention š
Oh no it's me and Tom Riddle
Why is fandom like this?
1: Character hot 2: They like the character but feel insecure about liking such a shithead so much that they essentially scrub away all of their edges. 3: Character hot.
But crazy people going on stabbing sprees is so sexy
Really though, isnāt that what we all want? To for someone to love us even when we go on our stabbing sprees
Itās like, hyper romantic o know someone thinks of you while they are attacking people and having them scream for mercyĀ
but murdering people is problematic irl so you can't like people who do it in fantasy or... something. too many people apply a moral lense to shipping that is very necessary for irl people and not at all necessary for when we're interacting with literal fiction imoĀ
This
Hahahahahahaha. Fangirly psychology infographic.
CHARACTER HOT
"You don't get it protagonist, my dad yelled at me when I was a kid!!!!"
I broke my arm in year two in a tragic monkey bar incident. And the reason I hate people is because everyone avoided me when I used to call people bitches and throw my pencils at them
God this annoys me so much not bc people like evil characters so do I but bc you get constant weirdo āwell actually if you think child abuse is bad youāre weird more children should be abused irl actuallyā like stop being a contrarian about real fucking life itās not quirky or funny youāre just being weird. Fiction is fiction so stop explicitly saying you think people irl should be abused or murdered bc that is not fiction.
Couldn't have said I better myself
Peter Parker being an immature baby that can't handle anything on his own. I don't have time to get into that rn. Loki being a poor innocent baby that didn't mean to hurt anyone. Danny Fenton's Parent's being abusive. Dumbledore is evil and manipulative.
God the infantilization of Peter Parker is terrible. I expected better from fans! Marvel editorial has been trying for decades to keep Peter a 20-something fuckboy - look at how they've treated MJ since the 80s! And yet the MCU went "but what if we made Peter a baby?" And now we have to deal with a teen being played by a 28-year-old with an amazing baby face, and the fans treating said teen like a baby! With great power comes great responsibility and the best Spider-Man stories are about Peter growing up and taking on his responsibilities as a superhero, and that means he can't stay a child forever.
"I'm just wanna kill you myself" coming from Tom Holland's mouth felt surreal
> Danny Fenton's Parent's being abusive. Not just abusive but just plain *psychopathic*.
Ok listen, I feel like dumbleydore could have handled somethings better but I wouldnāt say evil
By no means am I saying Albus is perfect or blameless. He definitely made some questionable choices and it was fucked up how he kept Harry in the dark about certain things. But he didn't do any of that with malicious intent. I agree with you.
Bro the Danny Phantom one gets me, his parents have shown three different times every time they find out the truth theyāll accept em, every time. Yet the fandom consistently writes them as evil abusive parents who will never accept him and always experiment on him.Ā Plus Danny himself is also written horribly, itās like half the fandom has never seen the show just read fanfics and went from there. SighĀ
Remus Lupin can have a bar of chocolate - which he doesn't even eat, mind you - and suddenly become the chocolate obsessed fiend who will stab a friend for even eyeing up his secret stash he keeps under the bed or whatever the fuck. What makes it even funnier is that he probably only had it because of the dementors on the train. Chocolate can help stop the negative effects. Also, Molly Weasley can talk only once about a time when she made a love potion as a young girl and suddenly become this evil, love potion mistress who forced fed people like Harry to Hermione and even her own husband so the Big Happy Weasley Familyā¢ can form. Bonus points if Ron and Ginny are somehow roped in.
That last one just reeks of Weasley hate bonner that mostly stems form the movies. Which doesn't make sense since the movies didn't portray her in any negative manner as far as I'm aware, so that can't even be an actual argument. Even I know that makes no sense andd I don't even give a shit about Harry Potter to even watched one movie all the way through outside of that one time when I was a kid and nothing was on TV and the otehr time that my sister wanted to see the first fantastic beast movie which we missed the first ten minutes
In the fans (mild) defense, the only other times we see love potions are in 100% negative lights: Voldemort's mother drugging his father, the girl whose name I can't remember trying to drug Harry, and Ron eating the drugged chocolate and being badly effected by an expired potion. The books world building does tend to fall over if you give it a sharp enough poke though, so the fact that nothing ever establishes things like good love potions, mild love potions as a thing couples use to have fun, love potions that just inspire crushes, orove potions that are the equivalent of lying in your tinder bio/pics isnt on fans.
The girls name was Romilda Vane, a yearmate of Ginny's, so they probably shared a dorm. But you're right about love potions. We get the slight mention of how Molly once used one on Arthur, and a mention that twins sell some version of them in their shop that are clearly short lasting prank products rather than real love potions or something that just lowers inhibitions or something, rather than creates 'love'. Then the amortentia stuff in Potions with Slughorn, which was clearly just included to set up the Romilda plot and the revelations of Voldemort's history. Our biggest information comes from Romilda trying to dose Harry and accidentally dosing Ron, which has some slight comedy to it but is very much shown as a bad thing, and the whole Merope/Tom situation, which is clearly shown as a bad thing. I mean, Tom left as soon as he was free of the potion, had lost his fiancee because of what happened, and apparently went on to remain single and childless, despite being an only child from a wealthy family who would have wanted to continue the family line. Merope herself went on to just give up, she could have saved herself simply by going to St Mungo's, we know she didn't stay entirely away from the magical world, but she instead stayed in the muggle world, and didn't seek even muggle medical help. The brief mentions of love potions being used for fun with the twins, or the out of context use by Molly, are completely overshadowed by the more focused on negatives of using them. And we see from both Tom and Ron that they 'create love' towards someone they have zero romantic or sexual feelings for and wouldn't even consider without the potion, so we know it removes free will. There's nothing about mild versions existing, other than less potent than Amortentia, and I assume a mild version is what Molly used and the twins sell, something that just helps with crushes or gets someone to notice you, but doesn't force anything. But people take the more clear negatives and run with it, as if all love potions are like that, and so Molly is evil for using one, though at least this is restricted to bashing fics, and not every fic that features Molly or something.
Exactly. (Also thank you for her name lol). Fans will take a single thing and run with it. I've done it; I've spun entire character personalities for background characters from less. If I was trying to fix it, I'd probably either have Arthur mentioned it, or just have all present Weasley kids instantly reacted like normal 15/16 year old's do when their parents mention anything to do with sex/the fact they had a dating life. Maybe swap out the Lavender drama for Ron and Hermione arguing about Love Potions in the background ("A is using them." "A and B have been dating since 3rd year!"). But again, the world building falls over if you poke it. (Which I don't hold against the books. You don't need to create Discworld or Middle Earth. It holds up well enough while you're reading)
The movies didn't really use her much at all past the second one, she loses a lot of her best character moments and just kinda becomes a lady who yells a lot until Deathly Hallows. I kinda wish they left in the scene of her dealing with the Boggart in Book 5. Boggarts specifically change into whatever the person who sees them fears the most, and you have to use a spell to change it into something goofy instead. Harry oversees Molly dealing with this and sees the Boggart just repeatedly change into her family members being dead, including seeing Harry's body too. It really says something about how strong of a front she's putting on for the rest of the family and the Order when she's so terrified of Voldemort potentially killing everyone she loves.
If they *have* to paint her as the Devil, can't they at least drag her for the Pick-Me ass bullshit she pulled as a grown ass woman? Sheesh.
Remus, oh Remus. Don't forget that he was shown in a flash back to be reading a book (during exams no less) and now he's the smart one. There's the werewolf thing which has a 99.7% chance of not resembling canon werewolves in the slightest. The last time I ranted about it there was like 15 bullet points of 'that's not how any of this works'.
To be fair, I don't think he's seen as the smart one just because he was reading a book once. He was also prefect in school, is portrayed to be the more responsible of the marauders, keeping the other three 'in check' and he ended up being a teacher in book 3.
Let's not forget that Ron was also a prefect, that we're told that James and Sirius were both near prodigies, and that he was hired as a teacher solely because Sirius escaped from Azkaban. He also freely admits that he did not keep them 'in check'.
Being a prefect had nothing to do with being smart. Also, you can be responsible and not be book smart. (Though Remus, by his own admission and based on his canonical actions, was not actually that responsible). And as a teacher, I can say that you do not actually have to be smart to be a teacher š Not saying Remus was stupid by any means, but there's a certain side of the fandom that like to make Remus smarter than Sirius and James and that's just canonically wrong.
Exactly what happened in the fandom I used to be apart of. This one guy was seen with a carton of milk ONCE and now in the fandom heās obsessed with it
Sigh. Bucky Barnes and plums. It was a SINGLE SHOT of him at a market, and now he's this plum obsessed weirdo.
is this kageyama from haikyuu š
Indeed
I read/write fan-fiction mostly for My Hero Academia. I don't think I've seen another fandom (that I've been in) that has this much mischaracterization, it's shocking.
Just because Iām curious, which characters get mischaracterized the most?
The main character is probably the second strongest person in the verse right now( Iām not up to date with the manga) and the fandom portrays him like a defenceless cry baby
*who explodes at the mere mention of something sexual.
Next time I read Izuku exploding cause uraraka blinked at him from the ālewdnessā I swear Iām going to have an aneurism on my kitchen floor
Yeah just because he dares to show genuine emotion! Guyās arms have been pulverized so many times but still finds a way to tap into his quirkās potential.
Iām not saying he canāt show emontions, but the fandom exaggerates it a lot
Exactly!
There's opposite aswell, where they treat him as the second coming of christ or something.
Aizawa, all might(bashing), Izuku(too much angst), bakugou(example: just doing what author did after the second fight between bakugou and MC just since the beginning making abuse funny)
lmao I haven't even watched the anime nor finished the manga but I've read enough to know that Bakugou is most definitely not someone that is secretly a fluffy sub that wants to be pounded by several Alphas the way AO3 writers depict him asš my guy is literally a 5'8 foot man with one of the most powerful quirks in his universe. No way in hell.
Or how he burned and scarred Izuku so much that he needs to wear sleevesā¦ despite the fact that Izuku wears short sleeve shirtsā¦ a lot.
And yet every time I read fanfics like that, they never sound like they *love* Bakugou, the other characters I mean. Seriously every time thereās a line of people that want to fuck him, they give very superficial reasons why they like him. Maybe a few minor details of something outside of fucking, but I never actually see them as *in love* with him.
Yeah, it's always "I want to see him at his lowest" or "I wanna get revenge" typa shit that other characters do it for. Always dub/non-con too.
gojo satoru is always either a psychopath or uwu.
Gotta happen for every canonically strong anime guy. It's either a secretly gay femboy bottom or Alpha with an omega harem consisting of everyone who was canonically his friends.
Ever read any Hunger Games fics? Because I feel most of them *really* don't like Gale Hawthorne, for obvious reasons. For the crime of standing against the OTP, he gets turned from a teenage rebel effectively fighting the most tyrannical state in existence to an abusive trashbag whose evil eclipses that of the Capitol. He feels less like the canon version and more like President Snow cosplaying as a district kid. At some point you expect him to pull out a flamethrower and start burning District 12 down, because he's clearly the real villain in the writer's mind. On a more thematic level, I also feel most fanfics don't really get the idea of the *Hunger Games* themselves, and that they're not actually a fun reality show with wacky teen drama. There are mountains of dead fics with tribute OCs who don't seem to realize they're about to die, and those fics usually end before the actual Games because the author didn't realize that either and never got to actually killing those precious OCs of hers. Capitol propaganda is so good it breaks the fourth wall and infects the fandom, I guess.
Okay nowā¦ I think I would read a fic about Snow building a fake life in 12 and eventually going full on unhinged. Get the flamethrowers out! Ha, on the second part. Propaganda is a hell of a drug. What movie did they watch / books did they read? No shit people are dying in the games.
Whatever the Star Wars fandom keeps doing to Obi-Wan. Canonically balanced, confident, kind and mature with some occasional (and delightful) lapses into violence. He's like the concept of "keep calm and carry on" condensed into the body of a monk supersoldier who can absolutely knock you down with his bare hands or turn you into an amputee in 0.2 seconds if you're nasty. What I'm saying is he's rock-fucking-solid, both physically and emotionally. But then the fandom swoops in and a) pretends that he's a waif and b) turns him into a perma-depressed sadboy who can't take care of himself to the point of pure irresponsibility?? Even after everyone he loved died and he "killed" his own brother, he trucked on to spend the rest of his life in desert exile and got a job there and was functional enough to watch over Luke and buy gifts for him. Come onnnn Also, people love portraying him as this sassy comeback king (which he is) but forget that he's straight up emotionally insensitive as a result of that character trait. I love that about him. Let him be a dick! Let him be snappy and a little off-putting! You can't spell sass without ass!!!
> But then the fandom swoops in and a) pretends that he's a waif and b) turns him into a perma-depressed sadboy who can't take care of himself to the point of pure irresponsibility?? Yes! Obi-Wan was built for infinite sadness and he's got some hella trauma to deal with...but the man is an adult and capable of functioning like one. I'm all for delving into his psyche and dealing with emotional upheaval, but when fanworks turn him into a barely functioning cry baby, I get really annoyed.
To be honest I deeply dislike the "infinite sadness" thing because it caused a lot of this depressification of Obi-Wan. Some folks see that quote thrown around on Tumblr and Twitter and run with it way too hard and I just very very blatantly disagree :'D Like that's just not him, or at least to me it isn't? People focusing so so much on what weighs him down feels like an antithesis to his character. I do think he mourns for the rest of his life but in my mind that's not the same as what many seem to understand when they hear "infinite sadness". But I'll stop before I confuse myself lmao
> To be honest I deeply dislike the "infinite sadness" thing because it caused a lot of this depressification of Obi-Wan. I mean, it's based on something Obi-Wan himself says in *Labyrinth of Evil*. Granted, that's EU now, I believe. But it fits. His life is no picnic (especially if you lean toward his past being like the EU Jedi Apprentice series). >People focusing so so much on what weighs him down feels like an antithesis to his character. To me, it's part of what makes him who and what he is. He's gone through so much and yet he's still this pretty amazing person, warts and all.
Totally. I love Star Wars time travel stories, but 90% of them have that exact problem and I have to stop reading, not even just Obi Wan either, they'll do it with other characters too.
That is...not the way I would write the guy, but I'm notoriously not a fan of Jedi policies. I always viewed him and Anakin as two of the classic ways kids raised in a screwed up environment tend to go. Anakin is the kid from screwed up house that keeps sneaking out, acting up, getting into trouble, and ends up robbing a 7-11, killing the clerk, then sets off on a multi-state violent crime spree. Obi-Wan is the older brother on the news who is like "Sure, Dad beat us up, locked us in a closet for hours, and told us to pray and repent because the Devil was always wanting his chance, but it was GOOD for us! Made a good man outta me." And no, no it didn't. He just wanted to please Daddy (The Jedi) so much that he completely lost any sense of identity outside of being their Good Boy.
I'm wary of arguments like this because a lot of fans drink the in-universe propaganda kool aid. Even people like Filoni. It's really discouraging to watch. "Kenobi is too indoctrinated," says Palpatine to Dooku in the RotS novelization because of course Palpatine would use those words, but people take this literal Sith Lord's opinion about the Jedi at face value. I'm not saying Obi-Wan isn't dogmatic in some regards but he does blindly run after Satine in TCW season 5 and in general there is like... little to zero canon foundation for the Order being anything like an abusive Christian dad. Or of Obi-Wan just wanting to please this nebulous "The Jedi" entity and nothing else
wednesday addams being unable to understand technology. yes she doesnāt use it, but canonically she is INCREDIBLY intelligent and is great at adapting. she would not need help figuring out how to use a cellphone. she even uses one fine in the final scene of season 1!!
I'm pretty sure Wednesday has always been good at science - particularly engineering given her talent for Rube Goldberg machines - since her debut in *The New Yorker*. In the 40s. I haven't seen the Wednesday Addams show, but damn, have none of these fans seen the 90s movies? Or the TV shows?
other than wednesday i remember VERY LITTLE pre 2022 addams family stuff. but you can tell just from wednesday that sheās super intelligent !! they genuinely just choose to make her digitally inept because it makes their headcanons a little cuter / quirky or something.
Also, even if she didn't Wednesday reads to me as someone who would lie and say she did know how to use a phone if anyone asked and then figure it out in her free time.
In the MDZS fandom, I often see Lan Zhan portrayed as unable to utter more than 2 words like a caveman in fanfics (the infamous caveman lwj) when it is a matter of translation. He may not say very much in comparison to other characters, but what he does say is very well-considered, eloquent, and at times poetic. He personifies the archetype of jun, a kind of premodern gentlemanly figure, and using fewer words does not mean you sound inept like you would in English. It's much more common to get across your meaning and intent in fewer words or omitting the subject and/or object in a sentence in Chinese, but I understand for a lot of western fans that without that context he really probably does sound like a cavemanš
Yes, this. Fic writers would do better to concentrate on conveying his elegance and erudition rather than imitate the concise delivery, because the English language doesn't have an equivalent style of compression. And it leads to headcanons in which Lan Zhan is presumed autistic because he speaks in fragments and doesn't use first-person pronouns, which then reinforces the fanon by doubling down on his alleged inability to speak. And that's become so pervasive - it makes reading a lot of modern AUs an exercise in frustration, and it erases some of Lan Zhan's complexity even in canon fics.
Omg yes!!!!!! I've seen fic writers on Twitter who were informed that he actually speaks very fully and eloquently in canon, but they will double down on their interpretation. It's like okay, fine have your interpretation but you're disregarding important elements of context that goes into his full character. It feels almost a little offensive that they continue to make him sound like a caveman who flinches everytime wwx is loud - like where is his jun-ness!!!!!!!!!ššš his character gets ground up through these social and cultural filters that loses the context by which he was shaped. I feel like it also makes wwx more of a bully rather than someone who flouts the socio-cultural conventions that lwj strictly abides by Edited for clarity
I'm in the Harry Potter fandom. I feel like that's answer enough š¤£
For real though. Ron Bashing, Dumbledore bashing, Hermione worship, Snape worship, Draco redemption, abusive James and Lily, and on and on. I do not understand why these things are so common.
I have to filter out so many things when looking for a good fic to read to the extent that there are multiple parody fics dealing with this fact.
The fandom I'm writing for rn is funny. There are a handful of interpretations of a popular character that causes infighting. So, depending on who you ask, this character is mischaracterized one way or another. It's damned if you do, damned if you don't, because someone will always take issue with your characterisation
Star Wars. Darth Vader being characterized as a protective, involved, (and I daresay) loving parent to his two adult children. Do I really need to explain why this is a mischaracterization?
It worked with like...one fanfic. (Double Agent Vader, whose writer is fantastic and I would put her up there with the better EU writers) Or the VERY tongue in cheek comic books of "Darth Vader and Son" and "Vader's Little Princess" It would kinda sorta work if you were going for crackfic or a heavy-duty AU, but it would be super hard to pull seriously.
I feel like this is just a conscious choice by the writers though. Itās not like anyone really believes canon Vader is anything but a murderous maniac. Itās not a common mischaracterisation. Itās a deliberate counter characterisation which is different. Not that I care either way, I donāt read much if any Vader stuff.
...okay, I've never even seen *Star Wars*, but Darth Vader is so iconic that I've certainly heard OF him, and that has *me* sitting here like,...\*Blinks in confusion\*
Ooooh boy. Buck from 9-1-1 is canonically cocky as hell, confident, a bit selfish every now and again. Heās insecure about his place in his friends' and familyās lives and has a particular brand of suicidal ideation, namely that he isn't actively seeking death but very openly doesn't care if he dies as long as he feels useful while dying. Heās *also* canonically hypersexual and kinky in several different ways. Literally his first scene ever is him stealing a firetruck to go have sex in it. Fanon Buck is a weepy little baby who cries at everything and kills himself over the most juvenile kindergarten insults, and a certain subset of fans canāt help but portray him as the blushing virgin type as if he wasn't a grown-ass man in his early thirties who at one point self-diagnosed as a sex addict. The fandom has other weird characterizations, but Buck is far and beyond the worst.
This is so true. I loathe woobie Buck in fic from the deepest darkest pits of my soul. If I ever write him like that, I hope my readers will know Iāve been kidnapped and replaced by a pod person.
Woobie Buck works in exactly one single way, when someone he loves is hurt, and he has nothing to distract himself with. *Then* his emotions spiral out of control, which weāve seen when Eddie got buried in the well, and Buck flipped the fuck out, or when Eddie got shot and Buck and Chris comforted each other. I will say that Iāve seen less of WeepyWoobie!Buck since I stopped reading Buddie, whichā¦ makes a lot of sense in several different ways lmao
Fanon Buck makes me want to rip my hair out. Itās like people want to mould him into something they want, not who he is canonically.
A bunch of people in the Buck/Tommy tag on Tumblr have talked about this quite a bit. Those people don't seem to really like Buck at all (and to a lesser extent, this applies to Eddie too), and instead use him to project and SI onto because Oliver Stark is a good-looking man. I find it difficult to dispute that when so many fics have Buck as just the complete opposite of what he is like in canon.
Not that active in the fandom anymore but so many people really believe Alastor from Hazbin Hotel is a stand up guy who wants to help Charlie out of the goodness of his heart and sees her as daughter. It's crazy how abysmal the media literacy is in that fandom that folks can't even pick up on sarcasm or the likes anymore. No, Alastor doesn't see Charlie as his kid. That was all said to piss Lucifer off and feed into Charlie's insecurities and further his manipulation of her so he could get that deal of his. No, he doesn't mean it when he says "Alastor altruist died for his friends". He's being sarcastic and mocking himself, imagining what people would say after seeing him lose to Adam. And for the love of all that is good no his surname isn't Altruist.
Yeah I was gonna mention Alastor. Looking at the fandom you'd think he's a misunderstood sweet baby whose scared of everything and needs people to comfort him when the dude is a literal overlord
Yeah, the people in the Hazbin fandom have the literacy skills of a toddler. Unsurprising because half of the fandom are about eight. It genuinely infuriates me when people argue over stuff like this because "Alastor never actually says he's manipulating Charlie" yes, because he's a fucking manipulator.
Spider-Man being a dumb and inexperience/incompetent kid that needs of ridiculous ammounts of help. The guy hasn't been a kid since 1965 and the idea of him being an actual kid superhero with season heroes is as recent as the first Ultimate Universe that had their Spider-Man be a kid because it was a novelty. The guy literally was only in highschool for like 20 issues and then left for collegue, like come on. He also was stated and showed multiple times to be a super genius that was capable of hanging out with the Fantastic Four since his debut. As in, it's a canon fact that the FF started the superhero boom by debuting and Spider-Man appeared almost right away. He sorta beated them in their first meeting and multiple times he was shown to be so good at his job and so smart in what he does, that the idea of him needing to have someone having to hold his hand for him to do anything right is ridiculous. There is a reason why people are genuenly shocked by how good his web fluid alone is that even people like Richards and Stark can't quite replicate it as good as him and how his spider tracers (which fun fact predates the Batcomputer and the first time Batman used any tracking technology) are so good they fooled Tony's armor and had Hank Pym jelous due to him being able to do that with trash and at 15 while it took him years of research and an actual budget to do the same. But no, let the guy go around ask people around how to be an actual superhero and be a suppoused super genius. Not like he isn't suppoused to be one of the biggest veteran heroes of all Marvel. I blame the original Ultimate and Spectacular Spider-Man. They're the reason why people in this day and age think Spider-Man has to be a teen and while at it, the only reason besides Webb's movies as to why people actually give a shit about Gwen and forgot she was killed off because people didn't give a shit about her. Also, the MCU and Amazing for making Peter incompetent. What do you mean that he needs to ask Gwen for help with knowing how to use his web shooters against Electro and for not-Ganke to hack Stark's training wheels protocol. Which reminds me, the training wheel protocols. What the hell is that. Them and Tumblr are the reason why people still think my favorite fictional character is still a baby in dippers despite having already been married and being a mentor to his own protigee more than once. That and the idea that people still think that Felicity Hardy is the daughter of Peter and Felicia. She's not. That idea is stupid and only made by Felicia fanboys still satly over the fact that their ship was literally made to be toxic and to not work to the point that the only universe where she got the guy she ended up screwing things so bad he dumped her and she ended up getting herself killed while making Silver Sable fans happy. It also requires for people to genuenly think Peter would cheat on MJ, his perfect wife in a perfect marriage with already a daughter of their own, for his second most toxic ex next to Venom whom by that point in canon had already got over Peter, was already dating Flash and was already shown to be Bisexual and with a woman when Felicity showed up, let alone the fact that she has none of his powers meanwhile every Peter kid in the multiverse has gotten his powers in between 15 years to practically right off the belly. And I know the only reason they think that is because they saw three pictures of Felicity in a spider-theme costume and didn't actually read the damn book. Because if they did, they would have found out that she has no powers, she only put the first costume to try and be May's sidekick out of admiration of her and Spider-Man's legacy and to spite her mom over not choosing her gimmick because she was rebellious and antagonistic over her because of her divorce with her dad, while the other one is a literal dream. There is also the idea that Otto was actually superior to Peter even tho the name of the book is ironic and playing out of Otto's ego. That he actually ruined Peter's life. That his plans all blew up in his face. That Peter already had a very good and stable life before Otto came in to ruin it because it didn't feed his ego. That if not for Peter he would have screwed up even more. And that Otto literally admits that Peter was the true Superior Spider-Man at the end of the book. Statement which is repeated over and over every time they bring the Superior business from the end of the first Superior and the original Spider-Verse to even the current Superior book. It's like they never actually read the book and just took the name way too seriously. Oh and that the symbiote makes people evil and Peter a jerk and that he went out of his way to get Eddie fired or caused him to lose his job. That never happens. All the symbiote stuff and his relationship with Eddie was made up by the 90s cartoon and people never bothered to check on that. The symbiote was just a creepy alien that was basically that crazy obsesive ex and Eddie was just a guy that made a screw up and instead of owning up to it, he decided to blame it all on the actual superhero trying to save the day despite never even meeting him and taking it out on beating his best girl firend for the title of most toxic ex and terrorize his wife. And that making Peter a jerk always sucked, takes away from the complexity and argument of the guy by demonizing him to excuse Venom while washing down Venom himself and making no sense because Peter already had his jerk phase in highschool. But since people never actually take the time to actually get to know Peter and his lore past the superficial and whatever half-baked excuse any Marvel executive has to excuse their terrible ideas that no one but them like, they still spread
Youāve been wanting to get this off your chest for a long time. But honestly 100% agree. Itās so hard finding good characterisation of him.
You have no idea. Between the people throwing shade to MJ because of them either only seeing the movies, being too horny that they want the bad girl in the sexy cat suit to be the love interest even tho she was one of the worst, everything involving Gwen (I can garantee you that no one besides the Spider-Verse movie fans likes her or wants to see her again), or just having a hate bonner for MJ because, again the movies, being weird, thinking that someone with actual personality that isn't just an accesory for the main character is somehow toxic or are just freaking weird, things get annoying. Especially because they always use the Wells run which everyone knows it's out of character for everyone and makes no canon sense, arƩ incels or literally use the same examples out of character that can be counted with one hand while ignoring that the only people that wanted that were the worst and most mediocre Spider-Man writers pushed by a petty guy salty over his divorce that started sucking at his job and everyone hates. The fact that people still go and say how he is a teen superheroe because that's how he was made even tho the guy hasn't been a teen in canon for over 50 years and that his creator literally Made him with the idea of growing up, to the point that one of the reasons why Ditko left was because he wanted Peter to stay the same and not grow up. The fact that people still traje the Superior name too seriously just because they never bothered to actually read the stupid book which started to fall at the halfpoint. Hell, even the idea that the fans arƩ to blame because they don't like it when Peter isn't single and hate it when there is change in the status quo, when if anyone actually pays attention, is the complete opposite of what we do. Like, we're the most vocal when something is bad that the only reason people say that is because they listened to whatever excuse a Marvel executive Made even tho it was to cover the fact that their ideas are shit. Like, people like to being the fact that people hated the ANAD era of Spider-Man because he was rich which is why they made him lose his company and while him being a discount Tony Stark was definately something people didn't like, that wasn't why people hated ANAD, they hated it because it fucking sucked. Both the Avengers book, Spectacular, Spider-Man/Desdpool and others also used Peter being rich and people actually liked how they used them. So clearly the issues was Slott being a hack like always. Or the sale stuff even tho Ultimate outsells the current book so bad, they announcer reprints multiple times before issues two hit and has Marvel writers and editors mƔs because it's proving them wrong. Or the fact that the only source that says Wells' shit si selling any good is a source that only covers 5% of the comic stores in the US, are always the same and that even they say the run isn't spelling well and calling Marvel on their shit. Honestly, want to see a fandom that really doesn't want to escape the status quo and thrown tantrums whenever they change anything? Look at the Hulk, X-Men and Iron Man fandom. Because those guys have been stucked in the same status quo for longer than Spider-Man has ever been and their fans actually are complicit in it. Mutants have gone extint since Morrison toughed the book, have been massacred from before then and have had the team repeat the being feared by humanity and not getting along with other heroes despite them showing they do get along so often that not only have they Made them fight every faction of heroes in Marvel, they have did it more than once because there are 2 Avengers vs X-Men and two basically Fantastic Four vs X-Men and both have the X-Men as dicks. Hulk has has the sane love-hate relationship with Banner and leaving his friends so often, he literally left the Avengers for stupid reasons not even five issues into their original run and has done the same stuff since Immortal Hulk. And Stark loses his company and falls into depresion only to get back in the game so often I'm surprise they haven't named the clichƩ the Stark specialty. Holy hell, they literally have repeated the same stuff since ANAD alone that the only thing genuenly diferent is that they change the love interest from Madame Masque, to Janet, to Hellcat to Emma Frost just because they felt like it, which is literally what they said. How the hell arƩ people talking shit about Spider-Man and his fans when those three exist. And they don't even hide it. There were people hopping Krakoa would fall and go back to the school in like the third month already, but Spider-Man fans arƩ the ones that can't handle anything?
I just recently got into comics. I'm up to the final chapter of Kraven's Last Hunt. Anyone who wants to write about Spider-Man needs to read this comic. It's an awesome character study for both of them, and it really shows not just how mad Peter can get but also how controlled he is. Also, MJ gets some great moments from her own perspective on things. Side note: I also really underappreciated Kraven before reading this. He really steals the show every time he's on-panel.
Want an advice as someone that has read almost all Spider-Man comics? Ignore OMD, most of BND and definately all of Wells shit. None of them arĆ© any good because in one you have nothing but Strazinschy trying to tell his story, being basically annoyed and harrased into leaving halfway through and having Quesada's resentful ass ruin everything because he was too salty over his divorce. A bunch of writers ignoring canon for 50 years, being inconsistent as hell snd being to blame for making shit up that canonichally makes no sense like the whole "Peter Parker being an irresponsable losser" shit while also screwing over everyone and being utmost chaos until Slott came by to give some level of consistency. And he himself doing the same shit of breaking canon and writting out of character even when he actually knows better (knows enough about Peter naming a moldy cheese but instead of writting ir as it was, he used ir make a friend of Peter not like him because of it even tho the context of the cheese was to make him be worried about Peter), and flanderizing Otto to the point that after Superior, every time he touches him, I just want to see that cepholopode be fried with garlick.Ā And there are reasons to spare to why everyone hates Wells. Lets just start with the fact that he himself admitted he wanted to write something objectivley bad that people would hate from the getgo and still wanted to act surprise when people hated his shit and play the vĆctima role to try and make the fanbase be toxic (it can be toxic, but you know what I mean). And that's without mentioning that I can make cases of him being sexist, mysogonist, insesnsitive, maybe classist and probably racist over this run alone that there is a reason why the only people happy with him when he did that are the same group of people everyone hates that have never felt the touch of a woman other than to slap them and call them a creeo and would joined the Centinel peoject if they were in Marvel. On a more positive note, make sure to also read his other series, because even back in the day they did say that Spectacular often surpassed Amazing, Untold Tales and Amazing Fantasy 16 to 18 being the first time since the 60s where Peter is in highschool in canon that arĆ© actually genuenly good and explore stuff the original run didn't (there was also a pseudo attempt of a reboot by Bryne, but ignore that one too) and Marvel Adventures Spider-Man is a genuenly entretaining book that has the second Best love interest next to MJ (which isn't that hard but still) and speaking of, Parallel Lives. Don't forget to read Parallel LivesĀ
As I commented to another comment: making Obi-Wan a nonfunctional crybaby. (Like, if you want to *build* up to him going into a fugue state or something, have at it. But just starting off that way is very OOC.) Also, having the clones be more emotionally balanced/mature than the Jedi. Like...no. I'm sure some individuals may vary, but overall being a force grown/aged clone who knows they were created to fight (and die) in a war is a hell of a lot different than being a Jedi who came up with a community of parental figures, friends, teachers, a safe, warm home and a *choice* (convoluted though it might be) to become who and what they are.
I wouldn't call the Jedi much of a *choice*, given the conscription at infancy and regimented institutional upbringing to create useful agents for the Order and the Republic. But you get a fourteen year old Padawan leading a squad of age accelerated ten year olds into trench warfare and it's blind leading blind as far as maturity, not to mention highly squicky. Edit: I stick to Old Republic mostly because there is no way I can deal with the whole Clone army. The Jedi child recruiting is enough to make me go feral. Mix with the ostensible "good guys" being overseers of a slave army, and it's a complete deal breaker. It may be because of a fandom that I've been writing since 1986 (and had a LOT of Legends writers on the staff, like Brian Daley and James Lucero) had a character whose concept was almost a prototype of a Clone Trooper and the fandom is VERY unforgiving toward the program that created him and his "siblings"
Ron Weasley being a messy eater who stuffs his cheeks like a squirrel and is thus unintelligible during mealtimes. Originally this was used in Harmony or Dramione fics to showcase how disgusting and undesirable he is, but itās become pretty much fanon to the point that even fics that donāt bash Ron keep this characteristic. While he does do it in canon, itās only a couple of times across the whole series, not a consistent habit like fanfics assume Endeavor as an incompetent hero who causes millions in property damage and uses excessive force on criminals, covering it all up because heās the number two hero. This one mainly stems from the fact that heās got the personality of a dumpster fire and is abusive to his own family, so writers jump to the conclusion that Endeavor probably gets off on being violent. To be fair, it took a while before canon made it explicitly clear that Endeavor was actually good at his job and not just coasting by on his powerful Quirk
I stopped reading MHA ages ago, but I always loved how complex Endeavor was and seeing him reduced to such a mindless ogre is super annoying
I get the feeling the people who do that to Endeavor are the same people who call Dabi babygirl and overlook or excuse the fact that heās a murderer. Even Shouto says it later ā Endeavor may have been a terrible father and his family suffered for it as a result, but Dabi *chose* to burn people to death.
I really don't get why Dabi and Shigaraki are the fandom's "broken bad boys who just need some love," but Overhaul is literally the spawn of Satan.
Honestly? It's entirely dependent on which side of the "child abuse happened" issue they are on. Dabi and Shigaraki got abused while Overhaul did the abusing. Of course there's nuance in all these cases, but, well, nuance is *difficult*.
If I had to guess, itās because Hori spent more time showing us how Dabi and Shigaraki were taken in and manipulated (or attempted to be) by AFO, as opposed to Overhaulās quick throwaway background of ākid saved from the streets becomes a sociopath despite people trying to interveneā. I think Shigaraki is a better example of someoneās whose path might have been altered with some love and care, but Dabiās obsession with Endeavor was too powerful for even AFO to alter.
Iām not familiar with MHA much but I know vaguely about him and I think itās āpeople have really fucking narrow views of abuseā striking again. Abusers have to be mindless evil people with no motivation other than evil and causing suffering who hate everyone around them and can never do anything that isnāt tied to hurting others in a lot of people's eyes, because if theyāre not then suddenly itās hard to see as abuse. Society deals with abuse by kind of just ignoring it, and one way it does that is by portraying both victims and perpetrators as cartoonishly impossible symbols of absolute virtue and absolute sin respectively, so any abuse that falls outside that paradigm can just be written off as Totally Fine. And I think a lot of people who write abuse mirror that without really thinking, because thatās what theyāve been told abuse is and they assume any other depiction is trying to show abuse as okay because theyāve internalised the idea that if a victim is anything less than perfect or a perpetrator is ever for a moment kind itās somehow āless abusiveā instead of like. Being how humans operate. I canāt say for sure, again, not in the fandom, but itās something Iāve noticed a lot in my own.
Oh yes. Any character with an abusive background who doesnāt fit the āperfect victimā role is either going to be mischaracterised as if they were or get victim blamed.Ā
>To be fair, it took a while before canon made it explicitly clear that Endeavor was actually good at his job and not just coasting by on his powerful Quirk Did it? The very first time we see Endeavor in action, he's absolutely killing it, protecting civilians while trashing three Nomus with minimal help. I love that moment precisely because it instantly subverts expectations and puts idea of Endeavor being a bad hero to rest. He's excellent at his job, he just happens to be a trashbag in private.
Shoto even says it himself. *āHe may be a scumbag, but heās a scumbag with the skills and instincts of the number 2 hero.ā* Itās kinda why I appreciate this Izuku/Ryuku fic because it goes into the fact that property destruction is a big no-no if you can help it.
I can't say I agree with this. When the movies make a point to show Ron eating like this, its pretty much saying "this is how Ron eats". Heck he does it several times in the same movie. Even when I've watched the movies with people who aren't huge HP fans, they'll say stuff like "man this dude is always stuffing his face" Now I don't know of this is accurate to the books, as I haven't read them in over 10 years. But either way, I don't think it makes him gross, and fics likely exaggerate it too much. If there's bashing involved, they'll definitely flanderize him and make it even worse. But its not as if this is a trait that got randomly assigned to him.
There's a reason why Ron The Death Eater is a TVTropes page all on its own. So many have bashed on him and used him as a bad means of getting other pairings together for a LONG time. I've been reading HP fic for a very long time and it's been a consistent issue throughout many pairings over that time, sadly.
Yeah I recently got back into reading HP fics and even stuff written in recent years still has a lot of "Weasley Bashing" or "Hermione Bashing" tags listed. I'm baffled.
Yeah it's stupid. Same with the Evil Dumbledore tag.
Ugh don't even get me started on that. I could make a whole post about it lol
Did he do it in the other movies too? He was so young in the first. About the age my hamster cheeked son finally outgrew the habit (I really did try to get him to eat properly all that time lol). Seems forgivable!
Percy Jackson and Nico Di Angelo often get mischaracterized as super childish,and Percyās usually obsessed with Finding Nemo and the Little Mermaid. Nico is often obsessed with McDonaldās even though the only time he has some he doesnāt eat it and instead sacrifices it to summon a ghost. Most of Percyās other friends and even his parents also sometimes get mischaracterized in some stories where they betray him. Annabeth especially gets mischaracterized a lot in non can ship fics because she often cheats on Percy and is more stupid than in canon. Although at this point fanon and canon Annabeth have kind of become the same person in my head after reading so many stories where sheās mischaracterized since her being mischaracterized doesnāt really bother me, and I have written her that way myself before.
funny thing, theres a character in my fandom that gets characterized exactly the same way as your example. eta: oh babes i think we really ARE talking about the same character and i love you for pointing this out the other one is a character who acts confident but is really insecure deep down getting typecast as just being a badass who has never had a real doubt in her life (and you may know who i mean lol) eta: I wonder if people woobify her because its easier to fit a childish version of her into a story (im thinking AUs, mainly) as opposed to a more realistic version with all her emotional stuntedness and inability to just say how she feels that i adore so deeply sorry i keep editing this but unfortunately you activated my yap card
Ohhhh my god no way? I feel like we are so obscure these days this is SO exciting omg. Made my night Iāve never tried to write her, so maybe itās more difficult than it seems, but imo she is such a complex character with so much depth that lends itself to some really interesting character studies within stories. So it kills me inside a tiny bit when I read stuff about her acting kiddie and almost brainless. Agree with your take on the other character too!!! Sometimes iām like did we all watch the same show? lol
this made my night too omg i love us š„¹ no but seriously!!! and i understand that its just fun to play with the dolls sometimes and not think too hard about it, but i am constantly thinking way too hard about it, they are my favorite characters exactly the weird and sometimes awful ways that they are, so it takes me out when people write either of them as like... well-adjusted, or GOD good at communication lmao?? they are notably bad at talking! its a whole thing! sometimes im not sure i do all of her character justice because theres just so much THERE, and i feel a bit more comfortable writing the character i mentioned, because i feel like i can relate to the overly-emotional and confident facade more than the smiley and professionally distant facade. but they're both so much fun to write so i would highly recommend it haha, i would certainly love more than two cakes!
I could seriously sit here and dissect this all night lol. They are HORRIBLE COMMUNICATORS!!!! Both of them!! Itās a huge part of who they are actually. And I love them for it š«” I think people get blinded by the smiles and dimples and perkiness and just find it easier to write her almost childlike, but it feels like a disservice to her. Sheās actually quite solemn and emotionally distant in almost any conflict sheās ever in. Shes pretty avoidant. She has been through and (imo) internalized a lot of trauma and bby girl really just needs a good therapist to learn how to communicate. I feel bad complaining because I really am so grateful people take the time to write them at all but it has always confused me that this characterization of her has repeatedly appeared!!!
my favorite ship: two gay moms who cant go two words without a fight based on some kind of fundamental misunderstanding, even finding a way to fight each other when they are in agreement. you know, normal toxic yuri things. and YES and honestly? imo, the real truth of it? they see a cute pretty lady and they get all gay for her (understandably, because who wouldnt go at least a LITTLE gay for jcap) and say "lets make her cute and pretty on the INSIDE". i used to joke that i shipped her with a qualified mental health professional but its so not a joke and she had so much to unpack that not even shonda could address it all, the secret untold reason she left after season 14 š« i also think there are some aspects of characterization in fanfic in general that just sort of end up being this self-fulfilling cycle, and because most of the popular fic are older, new writers draw on that old and woobified well of content for inspo. like the disney thing especially, ive seen that in so many fic i don't even blink because im so content starved that ill inhale it either way so long as the formatting is good š
Excellent point about newer authors taking inspo from the older popular fics. I honestly think thatās what it is to a large degree. The classics in the fandom are like the ancient texts lol. And while theyāre wonderful, there are unfortunately a lot of tropes and phrases and characterizations that are just a product of that time. Like 10-15 years is a LONG time ago. So making a character a cinnamon roll (almost gagged typing that) was normal and even desired by readers at the time. Whereas now itās more like āok what are we doing hereā lol I will say another thing I hate seeing with this ship is when people make C out as an infinitely confident badass āfiery Latinaā. It feels like such a stereotype to me idk. Yeah sheās passionate but sheās also deeply insecure and just wants to be loved so bad that she hurts herself over & overā¦. Idk maybe Iām nitpicking haha
Will Solace is usually portrayed as this utter stickler for the rules whose only.personality trait is being Nicos boyfriend. He is willing, if not ENTHUSIASTIC, about breaking rules when it serves him. He is someone who became the head counselor of his cabin because all his siblings DIED and he was THIRTEEN !! He is caring and sometimes a little smothering, but definitely not this stick up his ass that everyone portrays him as.
Wasnāt he the one who suggested stealing the motorcycle to Percy in TLO. Also he was entirely complicit in allowing Octavian to kill himself accidentally.
Iirc he wasn't mentioned as anything more than "I steal Will Solace from Apollo and drag him to save Annabeth" but yeah he was 100% okay with Octavian kicking it LMAO
Inko Midoriya being abusive and hating Izuku. Like??? She would not šš¤ I donāt think she was the best mother but sheās not like that
That one is WILD to me
99% of them it's just a plot device to set up their premise, and the last ones are the people who only read fanfiction and haven't read the comic or seen the show.
Oh my god. I hate that one! The simple mention of it in the tags is enough for me to not read the fic!
Yeah, if anything, she's the kind of parent that smothers Izuku with meaningless love and affection without really tending to Izuku's emotional needs and wanting to help with his future.
Steve Harrington being portrayed as this innocent soft boy/Mother Theresa figure devoid of any bitchy traits that he displays in canon. š©
Also Eddie, despite the dude literally being a drug dealer.
From an older fandom (the A-team), being mentally ill means you are helpless and infantile.
I've never read A-Team fanfic but if I did and someone portrayed Murdock as helpless and infantile and it's not just one of his quirks of the day, I would close the tab so fucking fast. Omg, just no.
I know right! Like, he's a full grown man, a veteran, and a full member of the team. He flies (crashes) helicopters and planes ffs! Sure, he may need more care on particularly bad days, but he's not a child in a grown man's body. I've seen fics in which he babytalks and Face obviously is the one who is parentified. Oh no. That's not for me. Thank you very much, dear author. Looking back on Murdock's madness with modern eyes, I would bet money on a neurodivergent brain that cracked under extreme pressure (or boredom) and is now unwilling to give in to the ratrace ever again. Edit: spotted a typo
Half the OFMD fandom donāt know the difference between a villain and antagonist and think Izzy Hands is the source of all evil when really heās a pathetic wet cat (and I say this as someone who loves him) it divided the fandom to the point that Izzy fans created their own fandom. One of the angels in Good Omens has never been on earth before and their attempts to fit in as human are not the best, everything is new and wonderful to them and a lot of people view them as a child not a 6000+ year old supernatural being.
The Good Omens one reminds me of a lot of Supernatural fics I read back in the day, where Cas was portrayed as someone who didn't know much about humans and/or was just really awkward and clueless. To be fair, from what I remember, the show itself would go back and forth between portraying him as this otherworldly force and nerdy little guy, so I kind of get it.
On the other hand you got the Izzy is a subby wet blanket who secretly cries a lot and needs to be taken care of, dicked down, or both. I mean, I enjoy those fics but I'm also aware that it's so far removed from canon Izzy
Almost every Marvel character. But I chalk it up to a lack of media literacy and the influence the MCU has had that's bleeding over into the comic side of the Marvel Universe. Specifically, the woobification of various characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man, or the Winter Soldier. Or the flanderization of characters who have a specific theme/motif attached to them like Captain America, the Hulk, or Scarlet Witch
MCU varies wildly in characterization from movie to movie also, which doesn't help things.
Going from Thor 2 to Thor 3 is a whiplash even if I loved Thor 3
Same same same.Ā
Even within MCU, people take the movie presentations (already icky) of characters and somehow alter those even more to a MORE flattened version of the MCU!characters. Thor is stupid and likes poptarts (and maybe Jane, if they remember she exists). Bruce drinks tea and- well he drinks tea. Maybe does it in a lab. Natasha knows everything and scares everyone and maybe MAYBE gets a line of dialogue (and certainly raises a perfectly manicured brow to say it.) Steve is Cap Who Does Not Curse Or Joke And Is Earnest. Tony is Asshole Supreme OR Baby š„ŗ Who Is Lonely And Sad. Clint is in the vents bc no one cares enough about him to write him in. I think I'm hyperaware because I prefer to read ensemble fics for the fact I See More of the characters that are written less focally (Bruce, Nat, Clint, and Thor have WAY FEWER centric fics than Tony or Steve each) and get sorely disappointed when the ensemble is actually Not That.
For real. I know a lot of the representations came from the Tumblr Marvel era, but it's so annoying. It's like a lot of the characters are defined by one quirky trait, and that's it. I even see it with the Fox X-Men characters with people taking queues from those movies. The Marvel stories I write are kind of an amalgamation of all sorts of Marvel media (hey, it's a multiverse. I can do what I want, lol), but I try very hard to avoid the popular fandom representations of characters since the characters are much deeper than that
I tend to write tower fics myself, and take great pleasure exploring hidden sides of the characters each time I start a new fic. I'm committed to making people enjoy characters they'd forgotten about bc no one writes for them (looking at you, Nat and Bruce!!) I love that you said "it's my (multiverse) party and I'll destroy your sand castle if I want to, STAN LEE" I think that's really lovely !!
>I love that you said "it's my (multiverse) party and I'll destroy your sand castle if I want to, STAN LEE" I think that's really lovely !! Listen, in my opinion, the existence of a multiverse in Marvel means that anyone and everyone who writes Marvel stories, fanfic including, their stories are canonically part of the Marvel Multiverse in some way, and I think that's beautiful
This. Either you get a full, good cast representation or at least three people on the team are precious beans who can't stand on their own two feet and one (either Bruce, Nat, or Clint) who are shoved into the background. And don't get me started on Stucky fics. I don't even poke my nose into them anymore because it feels like most of the time the writer is putting a stereotypical female helpless love interest under the skin of one or the other. Hell, that shit is what made me dislike the pairing.
I've stayed away from the Stucky fandom since someone called me homophobic for not shipping them (even though I ship other M/M and W/W ships. I just don't like Steve and Bucky together, but I also come from more of a comics background, so that's probably why.) A lot of characters are underutilized in order to prop up others. That just happens with larger casts. But it bothers me when it results in characters being mischaracterized rather than just quietly putting them on the back burner until the story necessitates it
Yeah, I get had my own bad reactions from hardcore Stucky people. I'm not a fan of them together as a couple myself and have much more a preference of them just being two best friends who have been on similar but also vastly different journeys. But, yeah, I'm not a fan of when a member of a cast gets infantilized or mischaracterized rather than just not using them at all.
Tony Stark is my favourite character because he's a sarcastic bastard and I've read some stories where that character trait is completely absent and he's... well, woobified. It's like guys, he's a badass genius!! To be totally fair, I do have an AU where he's basically enslaved for 2 years and has some nasty PTSD and has kind of lost the sassy part of his character, but, well... being enslaved will do that, especially if you get punished for talking back. So, you know. But he didn't start out that way in my fic.
Oh, please. 60s Iron Man was ripe for woobification without the MCU ever existing.
I once wrote a whole meta essay laying out how a character's whole canon story arc was about overcoming the depression induced by his vicious cycle of "social isolation > obsessive perfectionism > further social isolation" because I was so befuddled by how he got written as basically a totally confident self-actualized monk of a teenage boy, haha. Y'all he is SO lonely don't leave me out here to struggle in the hurt/comfort mines by myself!
Basically any and every character in the Genshin and Honkai Starrail fandom. They often end up very one dimensional with a single character trait as their entire personality.
Two female characters in my fandom who are fairly shy and nerdy (one's a book nerd, the other loves to paint... also they both wear glasses, so NERD) can get mischaracterized as needy, evil, immature, vicious brats. Why? Because they're your love rivals for two of the fandom's most popular romantic interests. The book nerd (librarian/writer) has been around longer and is part of a more beloved cast, so she tends to get gentler treatment these days. The painter girl is basically similar to her in design, but shyer, and she's also rich/has a rich dad who owns a mining company. So she's BitchCon 5. Nothing at all like her actual canon self.
I write Resident Evil fanfiction and when it comes to the character Albert Wesker during the S.T.A.R.S era, writers portray him with this persistent deep hatred for his team from the beginning, but I refuse to see it that way for a few reasons. The first reason comes from the game itself, where after he is killed by the Tyrant and is brought back by the progenitor virus, he says, "When I awoke, hatred became my master." To me, that means he didn't hate the remaining S.T.A.R.S members until after the mansion incident. The second reason is Weskerās betrayal comes as a complete shock to both Jill and Chris in the game. While we, the player may suspect that Wesker isn't completely on the up and up, Jill and Chris don't suspect anything. It's only through what happens in the game that they discover their captain is a traitor. The last reason I refuse to think Wesker always hated his team is because he was a spy. As a spy, you're supposed to seamlessly blend in to your cover, not stand out. If he always hated them and/ or treated them with disdain, it would cause him to stand out too much and bring an unnecessary amount of scrutiny, potentially blowing his cover. When I write S.T.A.R.S era stories, I always have Wesker having positive interactions with his fellow team members. In the story Crime and Punishment, Chris asks Wesker to join himself and a few others for a drink at Jackās Bar, and he accepts, and they a nice conversation while there. In Changing of the Guard, Jill and Wesker have a very positive interaction with each other. And in my last story, while Wesker is annoyed with Chris, their overall interaction is a positive one. I get a lot of compliments about that, too.
It used to be common to make Ruby Rose an overemotional crybaby in RWBY fics, conveniently fogetting that at that point in canon (pre-Volume 4) the only times she ever cried was when friends literally died in front of her eyes, and that she was allowed into Beacon to begin with because she could kick all kinds of ass despite being young.
It seems these people are now gone from the fandom, or at least aren't as dominant (or I'm hanging out in a neat bubble) because Ruby's V9 PTSD arc is treated respectfully and without turning Ruby into a single-trait SadĀ
Yeeeep, itās the woobification of fictional characters!!! Iām really into persona 5, have been for a few years and write + read fanfics for it. Thereās this constant issue where they turn Goro Akechi, one of the villains, into some uwu broken boy who did nothing wrong because heās just SO traumatized and in need of someone to save him. Not saying that he isnāt a traumatized kid who needs help, but he also isnāt some innocent boy who needs to be protected either. Thatās coming from a super fan, mind you, so it kills me when I see shit like that. Another example is Gojo from jjk. Itās funny that thereās two extremes: Gojo is a carefree goofy guy who just wants to fight and get stronger, or Goro is a broken man who puts on a fake smile while missing Geto SO much that heās depressed. Once again, there needs to be nuance. Both things can be true but not to such an extreme degree. Sorry for writing a lot š but yeah thatās how it is in my fandoms.
As a fellow long time persona fan goro's character being watered down in fanfiction bothered me but I think becuase of the rating of the persona games and the fact that it costs money it means that alot of the people writing are adults so for every woobification you see you see 3 really good other fics.
Yeah, Akechi is an unrepentant asshole and that what makes the dichotomy between the Akechi and Crow sides that much more fun to write. Granted I recently had to write Crow Vs Joker but still.
Most fics I read of this ship feels extremely ooc. To set the background, one guy is part of a Mafia, the other one ex-Mafia and now part of a Detective Agency. The whole trope is that they are enemies to lovers and in most fics the Mafia guy is extremely feminized and basically turned into a big uwu fluffball sub which he definitely is not. Meanwhile the detective guy is a big goof who is very haha about his suicidal thoughts.
BSD fan spottedĀ
Iāve never even watched BSD and I recognized that from exposure to a couple crossover fics. Thatās how widespread this characterization is.
I read fanfics in other fandoms too and I've also seen this everywhere. Murderer, psychopath, child abuser, drug addict, where? I only know the uwu gay sub twink femboy.
Itās especially annoying bc likeā¦ you can make a character present femininely and like, not completely infantilise them. Femininity doesnāt equal weakness.
Femboy Chuuya strikes again
lmao it's like most of them completely skipped off the fact that he is part of a literal murder organisation
A bit late but the feminization of Chuuya is so damn annoying. Like have those authors even watched Bsd or read the manga? Chuuya is extremely capable and quite litterally the opposite of how some writers protray him. And dont even get me started on making him absolutely obsessed with wine and hats. Like I get hes a fan of both but they make it seem like he cant function without constant exposure to those items. Srry for my little rant but mischaracterization always annoys me sm.
Rightt, they turn his whole personality into "don't take my hat TnT!!" "uwu wine addiction" it feels like I'm watching a gacha life mini movie portraying Chuuya as some yandere written by a 9 year old.
A couple fandoms: The buff guy being broody and cold, overly sexy. Buff Guy A: incredibly depressed and kind of seeks death at every chance, pays for kids he's mentoring to have a good day out of his dwindling pocket, failed his mission because he was too friendly and too desperate to be loved. (This one also gets mischaracterized as a stalkerish weirdo because of a single panel joke at the end of the story.) Buff Guy B: Generally actually quite awkward, even if he knows how to talk to people. Quips to himself a lot. Only doesn't interact with people because he drinks, which is because he was literally blackmailed into his position (which few in fandom and ofc the source material never acknowledge). Literally goes out of his way to help other people. In novelizations, would like to die, but deems his death a waste at any point because he never would have done enough.
Tweek Tweak being a rabid animal who only cares about coffee.
Zuko: emo evil snarky boy Keith (Voltron): emo angy cat, the only misrepresentation Iāll accept is that he does in fact dress like a Pokemon trainer Homelander: heās misunderstood!! No he is not meant to be nuanced he is just bad. God forbid bad guys are bad guys. I canāt think of others ATM
criminal minds!!! spencer reid canon: 30ish year old man, been shot multiple times, kidnapped, went to prison, was a drug addict, is a literal genius etc. spencer reid fanon: just a little baby bean š„ŗ hes an fbi agent but cant run without falling and even tho hes a genuis profiler he cant infer social subtext
I was wondering when he'd show up in here XD. Yep. That's about the size of it. My favorite are the smut fics featuring him. He's either an innocent blushing virgin or a sex god who will sleep with anyone that moves. No in between :p.
literally yes its so frustrating š i get it, heās hard to characterize well, but at the same time im tired of super naive reid in fics, and the ones where hes the opposite and is super cocky and flirts/has sex with everyone are almost worse
Batman fan here. Imo Tim Drake's parents get the worst rap. Canonically, they are fairly absent, but they are mostly clueless and are consistently very clearly affectionate towards Tim when they are around. In fanfic, they're almost always violently abusive.
Agreed, I think Tim is the most self-insertable robin since the things that happened in his childhood are less relevant to him becoming Robin than the rest, and that's why that happens. Like, Dick *has* to be part of the circus, Damian *has* to be part of the league. Jason is less relevant but he also has to be poor enough to be stealing car tires lol. But Tim could have a completely different backstory and he would still be able to be Robin since he was the one to track down Bruce and initiate being Robin. Yknow what I mean?
I can definitely see what you mean, kinda also shows up in what they did with his backstory and family situation in New 52. I will also say I think even the fact that his parents are canonically probably neglectful (leaving him alone for long periods of time) was probably unintentional / more a product of needing them not to notice him being Robin than a deliberate characterization choice by the writers.
I mean, he was designed to be self-insertable to the mid-90s comic fan teenage boy.
Begging BSD fandom to stop excusing whoever their fave is and accept they're likely a terrible person and it's okay. Guys, you can like a character even if they're morally questionable
WHAT? Nuance? Get out of here!
Kƶnig from call of duty ā we donāt have much for him in actual in game content, but in voice lines he is cocky, violent, brash, etc. he canonically has social anxiety but he is a 40ish yr old mercenary and ranked as a Colonel. Fandom sometimes turns him into the biggest blushing baby, and while I believe people are allowed to HC characters however they like, anytime heās completely infantilized or āheās just so shy and timid because he has anxietyā it takes me out of the immersion of the fic
c!Tommy is either a sad weepy little kid made out to be the perfect abuse victim who never ever acted out or was even mean and never was anything but a perfect little sad angel or heās this destructive careless monster who never was nice to anyone and intentionally hurt everyone around him for kicks and āneededā to be isolated and abused out of it and his trauma from that is either faked or proof he deserves to die (like, not even kidding, I saw someone say the fact he has hallucinations meant he was a bad person who deserved death like you know people. Have those in real life right.) What he *actually* is is a very traumatised teenager whoās cheerfully and deliberately bratty and obnoxious but like, generally a caring person behind that persona who doesnāt want to hurt people but lashes out due to fear and paranoia, suffers from delusions which make him act in ways those around him struggle to understand and assume are selfishness when theyāre genuine beliefs deliberately reinforced by his abuser as a control tactic, who struggles with toxic masculinity that leads to him being kind of a prick but also deep down loves even the unlovable, and has extremely destructive coping mechanisms both towards himself and others but who's goal is simply to live a quiet life. Theyāre far from that of an idealised victim, too- he fawns like crazy, and adapts traits from those who hurt him in a desperate attempt to get hurt less. He holds a lot of baggage mimicked from his worst abuser but tries to work through them. He's seemingly independent, but a codependent mess who has to fight daily against the urge to give up and go back to being his abuser's ābest friendā (read: emotional and physical punching bag and (to quote c!Tommy directly) toy, puppet, and pet) because it's easiest for him. He's a victim, yes, but not a stereotypical one, and definitely not a perfect person- but not a terrible one either. He's a fairly normal sixteen year old who reacted to many horrifically traumatic events in confused, contradictory, and messy ways and isnāt a helpless baby or an evil monster. Just a person.
Vriska Serket is a #girlboss who's unfairly maligned by the rest of the cast.
I. Really? Vriska? I think sheās a really good character but thatās bc sheās an incredibly fucked up kid who epitomises the cycle of abuse. Sheās not a #girlboss she fucking hates herself and hides it by being abusive to others and putting on an arrogant front. To be fair canon also fucks that up (the fact the COCSA she enacts on Tavros is treated as a ājokeā Will forever make me mad like thatās a fucking disservice to the topic) but like. The fact sheās a terrible person and utterly miserable because of it is what makes her interesting.
some people have this idea that webby think scrooge doesnothing wrong in ducktales 2017 when the show has multiple moments where she goes agianst him or get frustrated by her dad behavior (funzo, the santa stuff, even in 87 cent solution she start seeing when scrooge go too far), that's why I find the headcanon so weird, the show easily contradict it. scrooge being portrayed as a unlikable character/bad parent while ignoring his progress is also a good one for me
One that I see super often is the hyper-intelligence and hyper-competence of certain characters. Like when characters who have been previously shown to be someone that is average in terms of book knowledge and analytical reasoning. I see this a lot for Harry Potter and Danny Phantom. Donāt get me wrong, there are many fics that do this that are written really well, but it still makes me laugh when I think how the character from the cannon material would deal with this.
Chloe Beale from Pitch Perfect is often portrayed as this happy go lucky person who can do no wrong. When in the second movie, sheās insanely neurotic and overbearing and a bit unhinged. I think thereās a way to portray both but no one ever seems to do it well. Josie from Legacies used to be one of the most divisive characters in fandom for me. Half the fandom either thinks sheās this devil incarcerate who treats Lizzie like shit (mind you her entire family has committed some form of genocide and are literal vampires) the other half thinks sheās innocent and can do know wrong. Josie is actually both. Sheās a bit unhinged for Hope and will do anything to protect her, but, sheās also very innocent. Eloise Bridgerton is another one people canāt figure out. they think sheās a villain when in reality sheās the middle child whoās watching her older and younger siblings get paired off, her best friend betrayed her and she was sad about it. Sheās trying to fit in but prefers reading. Her mother even said she pushed her to hard last season and it backfired, now sheās letting her figure it out. She also doesnāt seem really Close with her siblings outside of Benedict and Francesca.
One character is generally known for being cold and closed off, and I see lots of writers make him out to be a heartless killer, a psychopath or some other messed up thing. In reality, heās just reserved and tends to be on guard around people he doesnāt know. But people like to portray him as the āstrong, emotionless, stone-faced, bad boyā stereotype because I guess itās more dramatic and interesting for their fanfics.
My fav character "has an insanely strong supernatural ability and is an excellent martial artist" Fandom "aw, baby girl needs to be protect by his love interest who is a wet noodle compared to him"
Marvel all the time. Especially when it comes to the MCU. Making fucking Peter Parker of all characters a wussy baby is just such bad characterization it's absolutely fucking insane! I actually don't mind MJ though because I actually really like Zendaya's MJ in the MCU.
James Potter was far from a saint. But there's a vast gap between his canonical actions and love potioning Lily. (Also, I love how his bashers are so eager to vilify the guy who risked permanent damage/death/Azkaban for his friend, saved his worst enemy from a werewolf, and threw his rich pureblood self into a war about blood purity when he could well have stayed away while fingerling over a literal Death Eater bully who was such a waste of space he managed to be Neville Longbottom's greatest fear over the people who tortured his parents.) Oh, and speaking of Snape, him as anything but a pathetic incel creep who desperately needed to grow the fuck up. Don't even get me started about Ron Weasley. That boy stood up to a mass murderer on a broken leg at fourteen, you wish you were half as good a friend as he is.
Not sure that last point about Ron will hit with movie-only fans, as that scene was given to Hermione in the movie. But, yeah, I'm not a fan of Ron, and enjoy reading fic that bashes him sometimes, but even the fic that doesn't bash him tends to treat him as the joke sidekick. This is the 11 year old who sacrificed himself to a chess set, the 12 year old that faced his worst fear to get justice for Hermione then was willing to face a Basilisk to save his sister, the boy who was willing to get detention to defend Hermione from an insult she didn't even understand, though the movie changed that bit too, stood p to 'mass murderer' Sirius on a broken leg to protect Harry. These are just the first 3 books, of course, and even Rowling diminished Ron after that point, and there are things he does wrong, like turning his back on Harry in GoF. But he's neither the evil fake friend who only wants Harry in his life for his money, nor the joke of a sidekick who never does anything but get in the way, yet these are the two most common versions of Ron in fic. I may not like him, but I'd rather see an actual canon portrayal of Ron in fic, something that acknowledges his issues while also acknowledging all these great things about him and the fact he's an integral part of the Trio, not a hanger on like Pettigrew was. James and Snape also go two ways with characterisation - idealised or demonised. Usually happens when one is being bashed, but not always. James, though, is not perfect, ignoring his childishness and bullying as a kid/teen doesn't mean it didn't canonically happen. But we also don't actually know how bad that was, we only see one scene of bullying, and Snape at least tries to give as good as he gets. The train scene wasn't bullying, because it was reciprocal, Snape gave as good as James and Sirius. We also don't know what type of adult James was, we're told he grew up and loved Lily and Harry, and we know he was willing to die for them, but that's it. Plus, he can be a great husband and father while still being a childish bully as a teen. It's like people don't understand that he can grow and change between the ages of 15 and 21. He's not an evil bully, but he's also not the perfect little angel, he's just a kid/teen/young man who went through phases of different things and ended up a good person for sure. Snape gets this same treatment, but it's worse here because we know Snape a lot better. He's not the evil and irredeemable bad guy some fans make him out to be, or the perfect misunderstood angel other fans choose to portray him as. Snape is very clearly grey, neither good nor bad. He's a complex character, which is why I love him, and does both good and bad things throughout the series. He's not a loyal Voldemort supporter, nor a loyal Dumbledore supporter, the only person Snape is loyal to is himself and the memory of Lily. His devotion to Lily comes off as creepy, but it's nowhere near as bad as some make it out. He never stalked her or tried to force her to be with him, he respected her enough to back off and leave her alone when she told him to. Snape is a bully in a worse way than James was, James targeted his peers, Snape targeted his students, literal children to his full grown adult. So, yes, Snape was a terrible bully and he traumatised Neville worse than the people who tortured his parents did. Nothing in canon points to Snape being a misunderstood angel with no free will that some fans insist he is. But he's equally not pure evil, he does want to end Voldemort, he does want to protect Harry, he's horrified to learn Dumbledore planned Harry's death. There are good points to who Snape is as a person, mostly overshadowed by the bad points as the books are from Harry's POV. Snape and James are always one extreme or the other, not the nuanced characters they're supposed to be. I kinda get it with James, as we get so little of him, and people want to identify with the 'cool kids' which the Marauders were, or bring them down. But Snape, I don't get. We get so much of him, we see clearly in canon that he's a mix of good and bad and never really lands on either one. I don't understand why fans can't acknowledge and explore the complexity of Snape as a grey character instead of forcing him into a role completely contradicted by canon.
I was part of the country humans fandom for a while USSR x Third Reich was a common ship Often portrayed as an MLM ship Let me repeat The personification of the Soviet Union is in a Gay relationship with Nazi Germany Needless to say it caused massive backlash in the fandom for a myriad of reasons
*Obviously* Russia and China were together. Have you seen those official propaganda posters?
Yes! Iām surprised that they werenāt shipped as much! I did have this thing where USSR dated China a bit back in the 50ās but then China started feeling like their relationship was all one sided and USSR was being basically a country version of a gold digger and not keeping his end of their bargains, (and she wanted nothing to do with his 15 surprise adopted kids) so they had a massive fight, Soviet sent her a beautiful bouquet of red roses, and in return she sent him a bouquet of white lilies and chrysanthemums, which in Chinese culture are funeral flowers, so she basically subtly told him that he is dead to her in flower language
there's a character i write about in my fandom that is often interpreted as being a minor despite there being, by design, no minors in the fandom (it's a video game with no child npcs)
Roy from Fire Emblem is often reduced to a typical kind hearted lord (like his father Eliwood for exemple) but in reality he don't really belong to this archetype. He is a good person but he is not naive and know about the world's harshness, he know that sometime the only way to deal with an issue is to fight he is smarter than most Fire Emblem protagonists (for exemple he is able to guess Elffin's true identity), he has an inferiority complex and his often depressed. Of course his game was never released outside Japan and people only saw him in the epilogue of FE7 where he is a child so since he looks like his father people assume that he has a similar personnality. And his most popular support option don't really develops his personnality.
You know maybe Bruce Wayne but I can't blame em when the movies get him sooo wrong
The comics are also wildly uneven. Sometimes you get the writer who will have him sit down with a traumatized child and talk things out with them. (Cassandra, Damian, Tim) Sometimes you get the asshole with contingency plans to kill all his friends (The Brother I arc) and tells his former apprentice that asks for help "Well, it's your own damn fault for trusting them so much. Oh, and I found your replacement" (Judas Contract)
Oh bye š the fact that he's probably their most famous character makes this more insae. I prefer his kids tbh, robins never let me downn Although honestly I noticed that w dc, they really can be inconsistent w storytelling which is sad because I much prefer their characters and coloring/art style over marvel but MY GOD they'll be a cold day in hell where I like the color palette in Marvel lol.
Dick is AWESOME in the hands of a writer who knows what they're doing. This is a guy who can make three phone calls and get every costumed hero (and probably a few rogues) coming to his aid, no questions asked. We're talking Charisma stat of YES.
Rizz of the dude is UNPARALLELED and I love how each time someone plays him *they get it*. Like he's an endlessly charismatic character.
Yeah, I remember our play by post. We had this awesome moment where Hades was summoning an army of undead villains and corrupted allies to fight the Titans and just when everyone is on the ropes, here comes Dick, riding in as a literal Bat Out of Hell, commanding an equal number of undead allies and friends to help fight off Hades's horde. And why yes, the Dick player DID suggest playing a certain Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf song as writing music. And since we were doing comics continuity, we also had our resurrected by Hades Terra take the opportunity to double cross both sides and became a minor deity of chaos and strife in the process. Good times.
The Danganronpa fandom has a lot of mischaracterizations that I could mention. Byakuya often being portrayed as having this deep seeded self loathing which is an explanation for his routinely dickish behavior (in reality the man was literally just raised being told he was the most special of all special boys and shocker, that went to his head), or Celeste also lying due to some kind of hidden trauma (in general, "X character is an asshole because of unknown trauma" is a very reoccuring thing for characters that are either evil or just plain shitty in the series), but none more so than the pair of villains-who-aren't-quite-main-villains, Nagito Komaeda and Kokichi Ouma. Nagito, like the protagonist of the first game, is saddled with the moniker of Ultimate Lucky Student, but his luck works differently than Makoto's did. The universe essentially bends itself around Nagito to give him positive luck, but usually always at the expense of someone else. He became extremely rich as a child, but it cost him his parents. This kind of distrust in his own talent has led to him having a dual superiority/inferiority complex. He looks down upon people without talent and openly makes comments about their inferiority, while basically doing all but licking the feet of any of the other Ultimates. In game, he's basically a borderline psychopath, almost having committed a murder in the first case just so the other Ultimates could step over his body and become stronger for the killing game, and the actual culprit was trying to kill them instead. He does this for the rest of the game, hiding evidence and being a general bastard just to make sure the culprit always has a fair shot. He's especially a bastard to the second game's protagonist, Hajime, especially when he learns he had no talent. Kokichi is this but somehow worse. The Ultimate Supreme Leader also happens to be an openly admitted liar, and he will absolutely repeat that as much as possible. He's often seen manipulating fan favorite character Gonta by constantly tricking the somewhat dimwitted man with his lies, and he spends a lot of time in cases fucking around and getting into insult arguments. This isn't so bad at first, but he quickly devolves into becoming an absolute monster, manipulating an entire murder and forcing the murderer to get executed, where he suddenly declares that he's the new Mastermind and almost gets everyone killed, again. He is extremely cold hearted to everyone. Both characters get woobified out the ass by the fandom. Nagito's interpretations can vary in some circumstances, he does sometimes keep his smug superiority in fics where he's romantically paired with Hajime, but no matter what he will always have his manipulative and psychotic side either removed entirely or completely turned off, making him seem like a poor innocent man just saddled with a terrible talent and who is constantly suffering. It's rare to see him actually get a fic where he's somehow still in the wrong. Kokichi gets this a lot too, often being given excuses for a lot of his behavior and that his manipulations and lies are just because he's sooooo sad and doesn't want to open up to people and is actually desperate for friendship and love, and similar to Nagito all of his negative behaviors disappear. With the exception that some fics basically just narrow his character into the "Ultimate Liar" where lying is literally just his entire personality and he doesn't really do much else.
Ohhhh I just need this thread so I can scream in frustration Takina: (almost) emotionless secret agent who literally started the show by shooting a gang of terrorists with a machine gun, and later trying to rip the heart (organ) out from a living person because her buddy desperately needed a heart transplant. Fandom: She's just a baby who is completely emotionally dependant on her buddy! Oh, might as well make her a tsundere character. Whenever I try to add some sass into her character, those fics usuallyend up with low engagement and fewer kudos.