#and not even just cutter

[castielsprostate]

god i want to kill google by ripping its throat out with my teeth and grabbing its heart with my bare hands and ripping it through its ribcage

[i-seeaspaceshipinthe-sky]

David Tennant and Robert Sheehan in Bad Samaritan (2018) the bolt cutters saga

[lovwren]

I cannot begin to explain how much minkowski and hera’s friendship means to me

[yearningaces]

Why would you even make a character that's so fucked up?? Like he's super toxic tbh

I'm assuming you're talking about Declan the Hallewell

Answer: because fictional fuckery is allowed as it is ✨fiction✨

Declan isn't real, I'm not parading around a real human killer the way TV media and movies and documentaries do. I'm literally saying here's my fucked up character he's not a good dude, he's actually a step above evil only because his job is to hunt evil but damn if he isn't the epitomy of the world ending villain who fucking LOVES his spouse.

And I think that's beautiful

[lesbianfakir]

Everyone shut up about toxic yaoi, nothing you write about will ever be HALF as insane as what Walter White and Jesse Pinkman had going on.

The world’s most toxic codependent relationship has already been written and it involves a man destroying everything his surrogate son figure holds dear to maintain his psychological grip on him. Walt did everything in his power to break Jesse just to get to keep him at the end of the day. He chose to let Jesse’s girlfriend die and then held him and comforted him through the grief. He risked his life to save Jesse’s and then used that as leverage to manipulate him into becoming a killer. He berates and lies to and abuses Jesse but in the quiet moments you realize he loves Jesse. Jesse is family, and Walt would do anything for his family. He despises Jesse but he loves him as a son. He’ll ruin Jesse’s life and then put his own on the line to save it. They try to kill each other but they can’t live without one another. And in the end Walt succeeded! Jesse will never be free of Walt’s shadow for as long as he lives. CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME WHY ARENT WE TALKING ABOUT THIS

[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?"

[commsroom]

the way pryce degenders hera as a form of control feels even worse because there are a few occasions where she doesn't. "make it so she can't say her favorite word or give her a new recurring nightmare" and "trying to be the most adorable girl at the county fair"... it's reflective of pryce's general attitude towards others (less that she doesn't recognize their autonomy and more that she enjoys taking that autonomy away), and the particularly vulnerable position hera is in with even the most fundamental aspects of her identity, but it's also. just such a trans experience of womanhood. that even the people who want most to deny her any respect or recognition as a woman will still sometimes implicitly think of her that way and deride her within that context.

[greaserink]

Tmi but having your workplace send you home for crying too much is such a humiliating feeling somebody take me out back

[raayllum]

absolutely baffled that someone would look at ships like viren/aaravos and claudia/aaravos and go “ah yes, these two ships between someone who is an ancient evil and purposefully manipulates everyone around them, as well as a dark mage he would always be significantly older than and has had an equally unbalanced power dynamic with, and the deal breaker is the Age Gap with claudia is bigger” like?? do you even Hear yourself??

like to be clear whatever makes you uncomfortable makes you uncomfortable, nothing wrong with that, block tags/people and curate your experience all you want, but there’d be a power imbalance (which is what people are allowed to like about any given ship, tbh!) regardless of any existing or non existing age gap that is Probably More Concerning, so to focus on one thing rather than the other while acting like there’s a moral slant to it is just

[quenthel]

like there is a lot to say abt fandom that is negative (crowd mentality, lack of nuance, bullying, stark belief in societal norms so it becomes a very traditional space etc) but i think the main reson its not for me is bc a lot of ppl just use "canon" as something to be disregarded. which is like (morally) completely fine i just do not get it bc like... the story whats its in like... the actual written text the things happening is surely the thing to like abt any actual... uh... story? right? so to disregard it all to just idk play around in it to me is just not appealing at all. like at that point i would just move on and write my own original story heavily inspired by the original thing...

[iqmmir]

Huh

[taniushka12]

Being completely honest w/ yall the two top characters for whom I have gender envy / lust are cutter w359 and zane alwake2, which tells you everything you need to know abt me tbqh

[honeynclove]

Hi <3 could you please draw my boy Finn? I'm very unhinged about him and it's neat your so keen to hear about other people's characters (me tbh, they're all so creative and interesting)

hihi one finn coming up‼️ I liked the ref I saw with his hair down sooo

[un-pearable]

watching fiona n cake bc it’s been 95% of my dash for the last week and you have no idea how much it killed me when i finally realized the demagicified fiona & cakeverse is literally just a coffee shop au played straight