#I will delete this if I find OP's post

[osophobic]

questions for your ocs

Want to make your characters have more depth, but don’t know how? Well I found a series of questions months ago, maybe a year ago, idk. POINT IS, it’s a great questionnaire for a new oc or oc you’re having trouble with. 

NOTE: this was posted by someone on tumblr, I just can’t find them nor do I remember the name. If anyone knows, let me know, and I will delete this and reblog OP’s post instead.

1. What would completely break your character?

2. What was the best thing in your character's life? 

3. What was the worst thing in your character's life? 

4. What seemingly insignificant memories stuck with your character?

5. What is your character reluctant to tell people?

6. How does your character feel about sex? (this isn’t too important imo, but it depends on story)

7. How many friends does your character have?

8. How many friends does your character want?

9. What would your character make a scene in public about?

10.  What would your character give their life for?

11. What does your character pretend or try to care about? 

12. How does the image your character tries to project differ from the image they actually project?

13. What is your character afraid of?

14. What is something most people in your setting do that your character things is dumb?

15. Where would your character fall on a politeness/rudeness scale? 1 - 10

There’s a couple more questions but I can’t find the screenshot of the post. AGAIN, these aren’t made by me, credit goes to OP. Let me know if anyone knows who they are, thank you.

[chongoblog]

hey have you heard of this cool niche internet comic called homestu

Stu? At home? So like?

[moongothic]

Crocodile and dragon meeting because Ivankov introduces them is a cute au idea….you go to the queer pope for magic HRT and through whatever compulsive small talk they decide that you would be *perfect* for their less powerful token cis bestfriend

Describing Iva-chan as the Queer Pope is so fucking funny though oh my god

Part of me feels like it'd be funnier if Ivankov assumed both Croc and Dragon were straight, so they were introducing the two so they could literally be Just Friends (esp because you'd assume they aren't each other's type to begin with)

So when Iva-chan then accidentally walks in on the two smooching they just

[puppyeared]

i had some free time today so i decided to compile some useful pages ive saved over the years and made a resources page on my blog ^_^

[kiki-or-bouba]

i wanted to id this post but i cannot for the life of me find it and i have reason to believe it’s been obliterated from the site

which i’m personally devastated about. but screenshots do exist, so. Kiki

[in-death-we-fall]

[lord-squiggletits]

Idk if my previous posts were unclear but I don't remotely hate any Optimus version that isn't IDW or think they suck. Every Optimus is good and there's a fan (or multiple fans!) of every version of OP no matter how obscure or underrated (as well as all the other characters).

What's more questionable (or at least annoying) is when fandom ignores canon character personalities in favor of writing specific archetypes that are either out of character or repetitive/stereotyped to the point of annoyance. As an example of this, it would be a female character being called the Team Mom just because she's a woman existing in a group of (primarily male) characters even if she's not remotely motherly or nurturing. Or, as a more topical example, how often I've seen Transformers ships where even though both characters are canonically masculine (or gender neutral), fanartists love to turn one of the characters small and weak (or even outright feminine) to turn the ship into Strong Dominant Seme and Sweet Cute Uke to fit a specific kink or romantic fantasy, even if it's a disservice/OOC to portray those characters like that.

In other words, a fandom's popularity of certain characters, ships, headcanons, etc is often more informed by tropes and forcing canon to adhere to one's personal tastes, as opposed to approaching canon and trying to understand it on its own terms. I'm not talking about the quality of the source material, but rather the way that the fandom interprets the source materials in ways that don't make any sense, approach it in bad faith, or just generally don't care about canon at all. So I'm not saying one OP is better than another, my problem is when fandom consistently focuses on certain stereotypes or flanderizations of a character, and then any character that doesn't fit the popular (often stereotyped) mold is ignored or virulently rejected. In other words, I think popular fandom often does a DISSERVICE to characters whether they love them or hate them, it just takes different forms.

So, just as an example, I think one fandom caricature of Optimus that I see a lot (and heavily dislike) is making Optimus some sort of shrinking wallflower type who's innocent, sweet, and virginal, in contrast to an opposite caricature of Megatron that's big, strong, dominant, and rugged, and making ship art that forces the characters into some kind of seme/uke or borderline heteronormative romance. Despite the fact that canon Optimus (in, say, TFP for example) is tall, broadly built, deep voiced, dignified, assertive, and strong (physically and morally), completely incorrect interpretations of him as a shy feminized uke type are still pretty common to find. And it makes you ask yourself why it is so many people make MOP ship art of them of The Small One and The Large One or The Small, Cute One and The Big, Violent One when it's completely different from canon. It feels as if such fanart is made by people who just want to see seme/uke style slash ships, and if canon doesn't give them what they want, they'll simply trash it and replace it with their own version, even if it's completely OOC.

So when I said in my other post that people don't like IDW Optimus because he can't be fit into caricatures like happy dad or shy twink, I'm not saying it to say "other OPs who resemble that suck," I'm saying it to express "Fandom tends to simplify characters into easily palatable and comfortable tropes, and when they encounter a character they can't do that with, they respond by ignoring or even hating on that character."

Other versions of Optimus have the problem where fandom turns them into a stereotype instead of the actual character they are, e.g. portraying TFA OP as some poor abused damsel with no self confidence and crippling anxiety being abused by his superiors, and then they talk more about this fake uwu smoll bean cinnamon roll version of TFA OP than they do about actual canon TFA OP. And honestly I can't think of any prominent content/meta about G1 OP that isn't just "he plays basketball and does funny one liners and is Team Dad/Grandpa." (Hell, you even get that with non-Optimus characters that get simplified to just sexy twink, old grandpa, comedy relief, evil ex, Diversity Win-- She's A Lesbian, third wheel to the favored ship, etc even though there's way more depth to them than just their surface level stereotype.)

IDW OP's problem is that he can't be stereotyped like that so instead the fandom ignores him. He's not small, so they can't stereotype him as a skinny twink getting topped by a burly uke. He's not jovial or happy go lucky or extroverted, so they can't stereotype him as Team Dad or Comedy Relief. He's assertive, blunt, and has a temper, so they can't stereotype him as a shy wallflower in need of protecting. He makes catastrophic mistakes and is responsible for bad things happening, so they can't stereotype him into a sweet cinnamon roll who has never done anything wrong in his whole life or The Infinitely Wise and Kind Paragon. There's no Big Bad Authority Figure who was mean to IDW OP and traumatized him, so they can't excuse the bad things he did as "he's traumatized so he couldn't help it" and wave away his flaws as "it's his abuser's fault, they made him this way." IDW OP has the kind of depression where he's grumpy, shut off, and angry-- as opposed to the shy, sad kind of depression that just stares forlornly out of the window in a beautifully tragic way-- so they can't make him into a sad woobie kicked around unfairly by life.

Or I guess they just stereotype IDW OP as "evil bastard with no redeeming qualities that's mean to everyone for no reason, plus the writers forced everyone to like him just because he's Optimus Prime" even though that isn't accurate either.

Put bluntly, IDW OP forces fandom to contend with the idea that someone can be a good person with good intentions but still fuck up on a massive scale and maybe end up hurting more than they helped. IDW OP is messy, ugly, flawed, mean, stoic, closed off. When IDW OP has mental breakdowns or has his feelings hurt, he's loud and angry and harsh, and the consequences of what he did while he was unwell continue to haunt him long after. In other words, he actually experiences negative emotions the way a real person would, and sometimes when he's under the influence of negative emotions, he lashes out or does stupid things (like a real person might) instead of inoffensively crying in a corner somewhere. He isn't sanitized enough for a fandom that only wants Perfect Pure Good Optimus Who Never Hurts Anyone Even By Accident, so instead of IDW OP's mistakes and dark moments being treated as the logical end point of a person put in constant no-win situations until he breaks, he gets treated as if his mistakes and flaws make him an irredeemable bastard with no good qualities who should've fucked up less often to make fans actually like him.

And this is all in a fandom where 90% of the characters are war criminals and a good half of them have massacred organic planets. But god forbid IDW Optimus ever make a bad decision in a stressful situation. Or be mean to someone. Or have a character arc about how blindly idolizing people as paragons ends badly for everyone involved because no one can be that perfect. He is simply The Worst Optimus Ever and there's absolutely nothing about him worth discussing.

And just to be clear, the problem isn't the fact that some people don't like IDW OP, or he's just not their thing and they don't care.

The problem is the fact that he's consistently and actively hated by the fanbase who makes a concentrated effort to say he sucks and make sure none of their fan works ever include him. It's literally at a level where I stopped looking in the Optimus tag on this website because I was tired of people randomly going "and btw IDW OP sucks and I want to drown him in a ditch" in posts that weren't even about IDW, and I stopped looking for MegOP fic on AO3 because most of it is IDW Megatron/clearly TFP or G1 inspired continuity soup Optimus. Places that are Optimus friendly for Optimus fans, where I could reasonably expect to find positive conversations, but instead get sucker punched by hate about the character The Space Is About. And I can't even have conversations asking about why they do, bc the way 90% of them talk, I can tell they literally just didn't read the comics or deliberately misinterpreted the story.

I find it bizarre and frankly, tragic, that the hate train for IDW OP is so pervasive that people actively erase and replace him from fan works IN THE IDW UNIVERSE in a way that no other character is targeted in. I have tried so hard to understand why IDW OP gets this sort of hate and erasure when other characters who were as bad or worse than him have perfectly normal takes about them that go "yeah he kinda sucks but he's cool and I like him" or "who cares if he's problematic IRL, it's a story." The only conclusion I can come to is that because Optimus Prime (TM) has a specific brand image and is locked into being a cultural icon, he's held to a standard of The Ideal Perfect Hero instead of the way better standard of "Is he an interesting, well written character?"

[pinkeoni]

That’s it it’s over I have to delete my blog

[aftg-heritage-posts]

aftg heritage post

@iserenademefan

@smalliinsaneone

@thepalmettofoxes

[morphestic]

🐰

Speaking of bunnies

This post is so real because me too.

[cyberspacebear]

i cannot for the life of me find this one post that's like "i feel like nick is a genuinely mean-spirited, bad person and only tries not to be because he knows people don't like it", but i've been thinking about it a lot. when i first saw that post i was like stupid, shit take, moving on, but the more i think about it i realize they were right. op if you're out there i want you to know that you're based

[maxellminidisc]

People that act like bi women sharing the sentiment of attraction towards another women with their boyfriends is ALWAYS inherently predatory make me insane. A bi woman and her boyfriend agreeing someone is pretty or attractive to themselves is not remotely the same as fucking unicorn hunters and people who harass lesbians into a threesome.

[frogs-in3-hills]

edgeworth definitely bought him this suit right like this things gotta be worth thousands of dollars. look at it. it’s obscenely well tailored. look at the texture of the material and how it wrinkles and folds that is a QUALITY suit this is like worsted wool or something. look at the sort of roundness of the wrinkles and the way it catches the light and the weight of the material. also it’s hard to see but the buttonholes look really nice too

major major upgrade from his sad polyester suit or whatever from the first games like. what was that

also he doesn’t know how to tie a tie yet. the jacket is too big for him. kinda cute. he apparently just got it because his favorite color is blue and like, thinking about How He Was At That Age it makes sense that he would buy this. also he does not have a lot of money ToT like there is a watsonian explanation for the existence of this suit it’s just like…… damn i have my issues with DD phoenix but at least his design is banger

[gideonisms]

excuse me tlt lesbian desire callout post??

Yeah, about a year and a half ago, someone said "show me where the real lesbians are in this book," putting into motion a series of events that, not to be too sincere on this hellsite, would become the highlight of my year and a half,

[sunshinepop]

[theloyalpin]

today’s mood 💘