#theyre really pretty in my opinion

[zackcollins]

Sipping on café con leche (via his Instagram)

[blighted-lights]

do you ship ravage and drift? you draw them a lot and they're always so touchy lol

nah. they're really touchy amicas, tho. probably because im always touchy with my friends and it just kinda rubs off on my art. ravage is my Me character so i do end up giving him traits i have. one of those is being touchy with people he cares about 🤷‍♂️. he's especially touchy with drift as when they were grouped together in the dead end (which is where they met in my brain), ravage spent a lot of hours curled up in drift's car alt with laserbeak and buzzsaw for shelter. that touchy aspect never really left their dynamic.

and besides,

drift/deadlock's candle has always been lit for someone else.

(plus an extra doodle of them)

[firefl1ezz]

i just. hit s+ rank in splatoon and i never honestly thought this would happen?? am i cool now.. do i get to be a part of the s4? do i get to be watered down to my running joke all the time?

[shreddits-less-popular-opinions]

Real pretentious for rusties to call themselves burgundy…you don’t see any other caste arguing about what they’re called :////

}:0|

[tothechaos]

i saw an abba cover band tonight and honestly most of the performance was spent imagining what im sure is some absolutely insane interpersonal drama

[bunnihearted]

🏩🧸🎀🪞

[hivepixels]

.

[nerosdayinanime]

drawing my au sabitos- this ones swap au :)

I only really have 1 full scene for this au- and it started from me thinking him & Shinjuro both being depressed drinking buddies, lamenting about their deceased dark-haired beauties

When Sabito became a pillar he turned the water estate into a sort of training hub for all breath of water users, to try and help more people to mastery. He pretty regularly spars with people in his downtime, makes comments and tries coaching people from the sidelines very often

Most people are kinda weirded out by him- hes aggressive and stern, very snarky, but he never takes off the mask and it makes him look perpetually sad- sometimes he has this air of melancholy around him, listless, the mask fits in better when hes in those moods. But aside that hes usually very kind and genuinely tries to look out for the skayers under his roof, very hospitable as long as they stay out his shit.

So hes very well received, but no one has seen his face- ever. They have all kinds of rumors and theories about why he wears it, what his face looks like, what the mask is even supposed to mean. Some of the more daring(/disrespectful/immature) inahbitants try to sneak a look in the mornings before he puts it on- but he's always wide awake, sightless blue eyes of the mask staring them down from an inch away the moment they open it

Anyways, one day he's out in the yard sparring with a higher ranked slayer in front of a group doing their own training and whatnot too- theyre both intensely into it, movements hard to keep track of and training swords clashing so loud it echos in the area. The slayer accidentally aims at his mask, the mood changes with a sudden pressure in the air when Sabito deflects the swing and reaches towards them in a flash- a harsh grip in their hair and yanking them so theyre centimeters from his face

"Don't touch the fucking mask."

Everyone drops dead silent at the utter malice dripping through his tone, a moment passes as Sabito realizes what he did and lets go of their hair. He gently ruffles it and straightens his back instead of posturing over them

"I deeply apologize. ...I think i should call it a day." he says in an uncharictaristically quiet voice before putting his training sword up and going to his room

NO ONE bothers him for the rest of the day, or the day after, they give him plenty of space and try their best not to prod at him or tick him off like they usually do- the slayer who was sparring w him was scared shitless and tries their damndest to stay out of his way and not piss him off again. They've never seen him genuinely angry like that- he gets pissed off and annoyed plenty, daily even, but that sudden cold fury over the near hit of his mask was terrifying to witness.

[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?"

[the-trails-we-blaze]

I finally finished the latest patch, and WOWIE!!! (thoughts will go into tags)

[orcelito]

Ykno the suckiest thing about being broken up with for someone else is that like. Well I'm doing generally fine, all things considered, but I Am kinda sad thinking about the things I've lost and all the casual affection that I can't have now.

But she's out there having all the affection she wants from her coworker, and it's just like. Damn this feels so skewed and SO unfair.

[cdroloisms]

C!quackbur 👀👀

they should get tntduo's name outta their damn mouths that's for sure

[apple-os]

ppl who like making friends solely with one-note cardboard boxes who will hang out with them when it's convenient and never open up about who they are as people and what their lives are like dni

[gibbearish]

am finally back home and can say without a doubt that i am just fundamentally not built for long distance travel however the train was much nicer than planes

[blackcatbard]

it really shouldnt be such an issue, but god it really feels kind of pathetic when the only compliments you get from strangers have to be prompted by a third party, and even then the most i ever seem to get is an "i like your shirt" :')

[gemwolfz]

fuck yes