#TSP is going to be the first fandom I think I've had the best & worst time in funnily enough

[vellichorom]

You absolutely don't deserve it with the mischaracterization. :(

All the ocs you make are so wonderful and full of personality. I'm so sorry they get reduced down to single traits or made fun of.

I personally love checking in with your blog seeing your ocs.

They may not be my absolutely favorite ocs of all time. But I can still tell the thought you put into them!!

Keep drawing them if they make you happy!

huuu hweeb..... thank youou........ that genuinely means a lot to hear,

i feel very bashful referring to thierry AS an OC ( although let's face it, he's Pretty Much my OC by this point or very easily could be ) but GOD. it's like...

as i began to rise in popularity, i noticed a very Significant escalation in my narrator being used as the butt of numerous jokes; painted as this slobbish pig, horrible person nobody can stand to be around be it for attitude or " smell " & just get treated TERRIBLY. numerous asks getting sent to me asking if he bathes or describing him as someone who doesn't, numerous other jokes painting him as this homely bum or incompetent-

fucking sad-ist themselves referring to thierry as homeless-lookinh at least twice to my face,

getting kicked around by people & characters in roleplay alike & just! so disrespected & reduced to jokes, mischaracterized to hell & back & having this be assumed as his canon. it's genuinely upsetting.

& it's like, yeah- this is the fandom that sees the narrator as ONLY a twink sexyman, i GUESS anything else that breaches the norm wouldn't be nearly as respected, but my god !!!!!! i seriously wonder if some people think i created thierry's design as a joke, to LOOK homely or unrespectable, to BE the punching bag for everyone else.

when in reality, i'm just sharing my perspective, made with love & dedication, with other people & it's getting shit on for reasons i'm not even sure about, & it makes ME feel terrible as a creator & feel bad about my interpretation. THANKFULLY, this isn't everyone & this perspective IS very well loved & i do appreciate that from everyone who's ever made that known - INCLUDING YOU ANON, it means SO much more than i can say & especially in these harder periods.

but it seems like now thierry's gotten this reputation AS a joke, AS lesser than the character he's supposed to be, so stuck to him as a character that it's hard for ME, the creator, to chase? even if it's been awhile since anyone's directly made a " huehue stinky " joke at me.

& it sounds so STUPID being mad about that when i type this out, but the reality is that people are taking unfunny stupid jokes & using that to characterize MY character rendition & impression of him & to see that is EXTREMELY DISCOURAGING.

this isn't even the first i've had to address the disrespect i face, this is just the first i've made it public on tumblr. i've had to say how much i hate this treatment at LEAST 3 times in private discord servers & continue to scream over people when they insist upon it otherwise. it's REALLY made me unhappy to be apart of this fandom in the latter half of my being here,

but. i'm not going to let that get me down forever, i know i won't.

just, you know? if there's anything to take from this? be nice about people's characters & make your jokes ( if so the creator allows ) but don't act like that's all the character is reduced to, & listen when a creator tells you stuff about them & don't reduce them down to whatever trait you think is funniest for the meme ???? just be respectful ?????

[give-soup-please]

I can't sleep. A few thoughts on fictional characters. (long personal post)

Yeah, I should be in bed. I told my friends I was logging off. But I tried to sleep, and got caught up in memories of the past. It happens a lot when you're me.

So I didn't leave my parents place until I was 20, right? I've lived an approximate fourth of a human's lifespan in a bad home. And there are a lot of real people I could credit for helping me hang on long enough to get out. They more than deserve the credit that I could give. They all deserve their own happy endings and the best that life has to offer, there's no question of that.

But for a majority of my life, fictional characters also helped share the burden. My list of comfort characters is long. The first comfort character I had was when I was four years old. There was this movie that almost no one's heard of, called Doogal, also known as The Magic Roundabout. This was a bad kids movie, but when you're four, you're not exactly in a position to notice quality or do an analysis.

I've been through a lot of stuff that I don't talk about, partially for privacy reasons, partially for safety, and partially because I don't like to discuss all my trauma on a blog where anyone can read it. What I can say comfortably is that fictional characters have always acted as an anchor for me. They've kept me tethered, despite everything.

There were many times I came close to making a permanent mistake because life was too hard. I have a few... attempts under my belt. Nothing stuck, obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be typing this. But I've been caught in this loop tonight about the power fictional characters have over our lives.

I pay attention. I lurk a lot over a broad variety of tags. TSP isn't my only fandom, though it is my main one right now. And I keep seeing these connections. I'm not the only one who's used characters to stay alive when things have been at their worst. Far from it. There are thousands of us, who have either been stuck in abusive situations or currently are, and we grip tight to these characters in order to have something, or someone who... Cares. Loves. Pays attention. There are so many ways to fill that blank, more than I have the ability to describe.

The thing is, I can't work out why. I mean, I can understand the need for the things our families can't provide, better than most. But why- or how, do they have this power? What is it about fictional characters that makes them have this ability? What does it mean to scream for help, and for a fictional character to lend a hand? I've been thinking about this for a while, and I can't come to any solid conclusions.

Do we use fictional characters to cope because a part of our brain knows that someone needs to be kind to us, despite all the things we've been told?

Do we use them to cope because our traits are recognizable in them?

Is it more metaphysical and spiritual than that? Can they see into our world at all? How many of us have discovered the media we needed at exactly the right time? How many of us have found something life saving in the most unlikely of fandoms? Is this fate? Is it chance? Do these characters in some universe watch us struggle and think, "I can lend a hand."?

Again, thousands of us have had these experiences. Undertale saved my life. Good Omens saved my life. Welcome to Nightvale helped me keep my sanity during the pandemic. Don't get me started on how many times Star Trek has given me something to live for. Redwall and Chronicles of Narnia too. I've been in a lot of different spaces. The perfect piece of media to distract and consume and daydream about, to get us through a few months. Again, and again.

I didn't know peace until I left home. But these worlds provided some small version of it. How did they do that?

I don't have any answers. Maybe the answers aren't important, but they feel important.

And I'm not ashamed that I use characters when tensions and stress or high. They've stuck with me since I was four years old, and I don't think they're going anywhere. Believe me, I've tried to rely on them less, and push them away in extreme circumstances. They won't leave me behind, even if I asked them to. I did. They refused point blank.

How is it that they've got a better grip on the inside of my head than I do?

Now chances are, relying on them is just what my brain learned to do to cope. But there's always a romantic part of me that wants to believe it's more than that.

I still can't get over it. How do fictional characters hold this much sway over us? I mean- I consume headcanons almost as much as I write for them. I've saved hundreds of them to my desktop to read when things are hard. And while I can't claim that those posts were lifesaving as much as the media was, they helped. They brought comfort. They brought relief.

Why? Why do these characters matter so much to us?

I have dozens of stories I could tell. Picturing Aziraphale with his wings stretched out, protecting me until I fell asleep. The narrator giving me comfort after dealing with my abusers. Julian Bashir and Garak helping me during recovery. Papyrus being proud of me for accomplishing things. Cecil Palmer helping me calm down from a panic attack. Fantasizing about living at Redwall Abbey, while stuck in a dangerous home. All of them helping me get back to my feet after being knocked to the ground again and again. All of them, and many others holding the line while I battled with my own brain to stay alive.

How were they able to convince me to stay, when I had no desire to do so? How did reading them saying kind things and writing them being kind to others help me believe I was deserving of kindness? How did loving them so deeply transfer to wanting to love myself?

None of it makes sense, but even if I wasn't invested in keeping myself here, they were.