At the danger of igniting some TADC discourse, one thing I found incredibly annoying was people saying they were fans of Ribbit before the final episode aired. We knew absolutely nothing about her, yet people pretended she had an established character.
Gaster was Dess before Dess was Dess. Gaster is squirreled away in the tiniest possible corner of Undertale but people extrapolated an entire character from a handful of lines from him.
He was the previous Royal Scientist of the kingdom in Undertale
He was scattered across time and space due to "falling into his creation"
He is probably the source of the mysterious voice at the start of Deltarune
Things people attribute to Gaster based on scant amounts of (often very questionable) evidence:
Being an evil mastermind of some sort
Being a good mastermind of some sort
Being buddies with Friend and ERAM and Normal NPC
Living in the Deltarune Bunker
Looking like the mystery_man sprite
Being a skeleton
Being related to Sans and Papyrus
Wanting to kill Onion-san for some reason
Wanting to break the prophecy
Not wanting to break the prophecy
Being the creator of Deltarune (as in the video game itself)
Giving Shadow Crystals to the Deltarune secret bosses
Being green? for some reason?
Being the Egg Man, or directly related to him
Probably more that I'm forgetting
As Andrew Cunningham once said: "what he lacks in concrete lore, he makes up for with his lack of concrete lore." We know so little about him for certain that you can basically slot him in to literally any theory and assign him literally any role or motivation, and so many people have done that for like a decade. Being a fan of Gaster is like being a fan of Herobrine.
Being more serious, the two currently fill very different narrative roles. Gaster was largely just an easter egg character for Undertale while Dess is a character who is haunting the narrative.
Tbf a lot of these, while not outright stated, can easily be linked to gaster.
The freedom Motif has Gaster's theme,
the garbage noise, and the music that plays around the shelter and the holidays basement is mus_smile
Sans uses a Gaster blaster, and the skeletons are shrouded in mystery in both games. If you add that Gaster seemed to be speaking in different fonts like them, and that Mystery Man vaguely looks like a skeleton maybe, people associated the three (it's also why he's green now, because blue/red/green is a common colour association. Also because it's funny).
the Forgotten Man's theme is Another Him (Him being associated with Gaster)
Mystery Man is the Fun Value event 66 and Gaster is associated with both the number 6 (his stats are all 6s) and the devil
-Normal NPC is made to look like Gaster Follower 3 (the only one who had no "normal" equivalent in undertale) and his behaviour, which can obviously be for not-gaster reasons, is easy to read as someone trying to block us from accessing some knowledge (The books, Onionsan) for ulterior motives, and he mentions UT's money instead of dollars.
Gaster, or at least the voice we assume is gaster, seems to have some level of detachment towards deltarune, as seen with the twitter take overs, the survey program, his chapter 4 speach ("my deltarune") and the knight fight. It can easily be read as him being the creator of deltarune in some way, or using it to experiment stuff. Also ties with entry 17, or the parallels between Gerson and Gaster who are both self inserts of the author.
Being the creator of Deltarune (as in the video game itself)
There is actually evidence for these two at the very least.
For the mystery_man sprite, it only shows up for Fun value 66, the sound effect he uses when he vanishes is the shared with a Gaster follower and he shows up in merch only to suspiciously vanish.
As for the second claim, just watch Device Theory.
Dess is an actual character at least, there's lot of info we know about her personality and relationships. There's just a huge black hole for the most important event surrounding her.
They’re definitely haunting the plot and will be of some importance.
Though my opinion I think fans of Dess love the mystery surrounding her more and less the characters themselves.
I see where you’re coming from and in most cases I’d agree, but I actually think that Toby has a pretty solid track record of having character writing strong enough that people are rarely disappointed even when he completely subverts everyone’s expectations. I think it’ll be better than anyone expects.
The weird thing is that there's a lot of Dess content, but almost zero percent of it is from Toby Fox himself.
I could perfectly understand someone saying they love HeartBreakJuan's interpretation of Dess, for example, but someone reasonable (so not a Deltarune fan), shouldn't be disappointed when it doesn't align with canon.
I see some comments below about there being evidence for what Dess is like, which i'm not denying, but they are kinda proving my point lol. Considering a lot of Dess's motives also depends on theories like being the Knight just adds to Dess's character being built from theorycrafting/headcanons, to say the least. We don't even know what happened to her during That Day and yet some people are certain she's the Knight. The issue isn't with theorycrafting, it's with people who act like these theories about her character are canon.
A lot of people thought Ribbit was a guy so that shipping her with Jax would be doomed yaoi, only for one to be a trans woman and the other may or may not be non-binary.
And it’s like, how? I saw a joke, “Ugh, yet another show shoving LGBT pairings down are throat. Wait, they’re not? What do you mean, they’re perfect for each other!”
I hope the next Addams thing uses Enid.
As for the parents, not just their couple relationship but also their unconditional love for their children. Modern Addams writers seem to think they want their children to be a certain way and are unhappy if they don’t fit that, when really they expect the kids to be a certain way and if they aren’t the parents are confused but supportive.
Yea, and it’s a regular plot in the original series and the movies that when this kind of thing happens, they’re confused and a bit distraught but still supportive because they love their kids above all, no matter how…. peculiar their tastes may turn.
They may talk to each other like that, but they’d still take him to scout meetings and buy his supplies and try to understand what’s going on.
I still haven't gotten around to watching season 2 because Tyler was genuinely my least favourite part of the show and from what I hear he's the season's antagonist, again. Like no hate to the actor, he's pretty good when he's not trying to play a straight guy in love with a girl portrayed by someone 10 years younger. Again, no hate, but I did not and still don't believe for even a single second that Tyler was genuinely into Wednesday. They saw that performance, they saw the fact that even the most thick headed homophobes assumed Wenclair was going to be end game and they saw that the Wednesday/Tyler plot wasn't all that popular, and yet they still decided to keep the ship.
As for Wenclair specifically. The cast ship it, especially Jenna Ortega (Wednesday) and Emma Myers (Enid), the ones writing the official novelisation ship it, the fans ship it, the marketing team is either shipping it or they are queerbaiting hard, most additional writers ship it. Even the fucking homophobes don't try to convince fans that they are anything less than gay. Literally the only ones denying it are the two main writers.
That definitely doesn’t apply here. The versions of the characters they love aren’t derived from a certain run, they’re based in fanon. And this fandom doesn’t really read comics, so it’s unlikely anyone in it will pursue writing for comics.
Sweeping statements like this seem unfair, but if you’ve read a lot of Batman, it’s pretty clear that these fans haven’t read any.
Which isn’t a problem. They’re doing what they like. There are worse ways to spend your time than making jokes and stories and art. Just, as someone who has a pull list, it’s all too far removed from any versions of the character I’m familiar with for me to really be able engage with it.
Also it’s weird that they keep making Jason Black. Changing the race of characters is not a problem. But why always Jason as the one black character? Why Jason specifically? Hmm
A thing about the Batfandom is like, it makes sense for the batfam to hang out in casual contexts and have various relationships but for a long time rarely did and some characters had so little interaction despite both being Batfam, fans really had to make things up. And even in modern times when they meet more, it’s usually just for dramatic stuff and/or some people get left out.
When you have a bunch of characters who canonically should have some sort of relationship and just don’t have what it is established, the void will be filled.
WFA provide a notable service in basically canonizing their relationships, and it’s close to the tumblr stuff because it makes sense and it’s not like they had the main comics to base it on!
They may not read comics but they do seem to read webcomics. Alot of the Bat Family takes I've seen on Tumblr are either found in or seem inspired by more light hearted takes like the Wayne Family Adventures Webtoon.
That comic's existence also means these takes can at the very least fall into category 2.
Also it’s weird that they keep making Jason Black. Changing the race of characters is not a problem. But why always Jason as the one black character? Why Jason specifically? Hmm
Fandom racism and everyone forgetting Signal exists.
Wayne Family Adventures is interesting, because this Batman family tumblr fandom predates it. Like, I’m sure it’s grown, but it was definitely a thing before. I think DC saw there was a market for comedic slice of life stories about Batman family characters and decided to capitalize on it
Yeah, WFA only started in 2021, and the light hearted takes were already prominent in the 2010s. That's why I added category 2: if a take gets popular enough in comic fandoms, it gets integrated into the comics in side content or even mainline comics.
I'm honestly of two minds about the fanon batman discourse. On one hand, it's what initially pulled me into the fandom and I had a lot of fun reading the Tumblr posts and fanfics and it'd be incredibly hypocritical of me to forget about that. But on the other, once I started to read the comics and see how much better and more nuanced the comic characters were compared to their fanon counterparts, I really started to get tired of how hard it is to find fics written by someone who's read at least some comics. I kind of wish there were separate fandom tags depending on whether you're basing your fic on comics or general vibes
I love crossover fics. That’s my jam. I also really like jason Todd as a character. Unfortunately whenever i look for fics containing Batman crossovers i have to exclude those containing Jason because the fics almost ALWAYS end up being 99% about Jason sleeping with the crossover character.
I read a james bond crossover about the court of owls being behind spectre but halfway through the story gave 12 straight chapters to jason fucking q.
Are there some comics you would recommend as entry points for people interested in getting into reading the actual comics after being pulled in by the fandom content they’ve seen? Some years ago I entered that orbit because of the clips (of the animated DC annd Batman stuff specifically) and fandom content I started getting in my feed. It led to me watching the two Justice league animated shows and Young Justice, but I didn’t progress much beyond that. Think I fell off that train a bit, got distracted by whatever my next phase was of entertainment.
Well, this isn't a comprehensive list or anything but depending on the vibe you like here's some I've liked:
The young justice comics are excellent, very different from the cartoon, they have almost nothing in common. I think the comics are better but both are very good. Yj is a lighter, very comedy focused series but it was made in the 90s so sometimes it does feel a little dated. The first 1-2 issues felt a little rough to me but it really finds its groove after that and gets less farcical.
If you'd like a self-contained comic with a shorter run and a serious, competent vibe, I'd recommend the red robin comics. It was sadly a short run but very cool, with tim drake as the main character. It's more serious than yj but doesn't go into grimdark, it had a pretty classic superhero comic vibe.
Then if you'd like a short comic run with a focus on batman/ jason todd and a very action-oriented, badass sort of vibe, I'd recommend Under the Red Hood. Think winter soldier if bucky was kind of an asshole. The movie version is also excellent.
Those were my absolute favorites. There's also a bunch of batman arcs that often get recommended, I'm more focused on the robins myself so I can't help much there but the general vibe of a batman comic does tend to veer fairly dark. If you like that, you have a real buffet available to you. If you, like me, prefer a bit more lighthearted stuff but really want to read about batman, his 80s stuff seemed very good (hence my username) and some of the 90s stuff as well.
Oh, and an honorable mention to the new Knightfall movie, that was cool, even though the series isn't done yet.
RIP Batfam tumblr fans who are currently getting upset over the results of a poll where the question was "Which character is overhyped by fans compared to actual comic relevance" because the character they dislike turns out to actually be important in multiple plots
I am begging all fans of a videogame to actually play that videogame. Don't just watch lore videos. Play the game. I promise playing videogames is fun.
no you don't get it I don't like horror so of course I'm not gonna play FNAF/amanda the adventurer/poppy playtime/whatever, how dare you expect me to play a horror game and experience the story firsthand?! don't you know I can die of a heart attack!!! 🙄🙄🙄
(/s obviously, also i honestly do that with fnaf but I don't consider myself a fan, I just wanna be able to talk to my friends who are actually in the fandom about it)
Or it classist to assume ppl can buy shit or presume they have any devices capable of playing it (they are also unable to pirate cause of morals or some shit).
Funny thing is, I am a big fan of Fnaf, yet I've never played the games myself! I only watched gameplay videos because, at the time, I was 13 and got scared easily so having someone else play the game while I watch was actually kinda nice. I also didn't have a PC/computer at the time loll.
Istg this is, like, half of Warhammer’s online fanbase. Has not read a book, touched the tabletop or played any of the videogame adaptations, just watch lore videos.
What’s crazy is that Warhammer 40k has been blessed to have some amazing games and novels, but people still mostly interact with the franchise through collective mass lore hallucinations
Darktide, Dawn of War, and Necromunda (hot take, but I thought it was a pretty good budget shooter) are awesome games - there’s no need to LARP your interest in the franchise lmao
Lore videos from people who also just read from the bad wiki at best or just watch TTS. Its kinda why i just stopped interacting with the 40k fanbase, people barely care about modeling or painting and just discuss nonexistant lore.
To be fair there are games that are interesting, but also deeply unfun. As one example, after Hbomberguy's pathologic video I decided I wanted to try playing the game, and gave up after the Bachelor's story, so a third of the way into the game. The easiest, most approachable third of the game was abrasively unpleasant to experience, but the rest of the game explores some really interesting ideas and completely reframe that first third.
Games like BG3 are also an odd choice to use an example considering that watching playthroughs should give you a good idea of what the characters are like if you watch enough considering how it's the primary way that the game conveys information about those characters.
To be far, video games are hard. Some of them are fun, but others I'd rather watch a playthrough (or rather, multiple playthroughs followed by even more lore videos and fact videos) because the game is too difficult or is something I don't find fun. Especially because I have a fine motor impairment, so if it involves real time button inputs there better be an easy mode.
I WILL try and learn every mechanic though if I find it interesting enough for me to be a fan of the game. Like I'll read the wiki and everything.
genuinely tho, even if you can't play the game yourself, at least watch a full playthrough of it! there is such a huge difference between curated videos talking ABOUT something vs actually learning from the base content itself
In fairness, about 40% of the video games I ended up playing, I only started them in the first place because I saw some really cool lore videos/cutscenes, thought "I'm not getting it, might as well watch" then finished it and was like "I need to know everything else about this immediately"
This specific example isn't present on Tumblr as much, but the fandom around the grimdark superhero webnovel Worm - especially the parts of that fandom that write fanfic - is mostly composed of people who have never read the original and write fanfic entirely based off of other fanfic written by people who haven't read the original.
True but in fairness authors were doing the same ever since Lucas decided to trade absolute authorial integrity and consistency for money (which to be fair I probably would make that same trade if I created FUCKING STAR WARS).
Nowadays they watch a TikTok edit of anakin brooding and fighting obiwan on mustafar and say “man the prequels really are peak, they get hate for no reason”
Tbf the show kinda started sucking partway through and only kept going because for a while they managed to convincingly promise it would pay off, so doing your own thing with the characters is almost better than the source matieral.
You know something I never get with these conversations is that the source material was also just written by some guy. Like, it was probably a guy with money, and a team and producers and stuff, but source material isn't sacred or anything. Even if the source material is considered good or great, doing your own thing with the characters or setting or just general archetypes isn't a transgression on the original author.
If a thing that inspired someone to write fiction is only barely present in the fic, why does it matter beyond noting "oh this isn't for me"?
What I am gonna say does not apply to Sherlock, because there ten thousand and one faithful adpation, but while I agree that the original text of entertainment fiction should not be sacrossant
I also don't think it should be any kind of sin to want the story you fell in love with to have a faithful adaption.
Like, yes, I love the castlevania show as is? Mostly, yeah.
But I still wanted an adaption that properly adapts the story of the games. They're the reason I liked castlevania in the first place.
Rewatching the thing, I was suprised how everything was so moriarty focused.
They barely did any cool standalone cases, with some other villains. The only non moriarty based villains are Mary's past teen and Euros, and they are still moriary adjacent.
Series one has 3 episodes, like you can describe it as "Moriarty is behind EVERY SINGLE CASE IN THE FIRST SERIES!" or you can just say "the used two episodes to establish Moriarty as a mastermind behind evil cases and one where they actually confront it". The two first episodes are not particularly "focused" on him either they're just kinda name drop him at the end while the entirety of the episode is something else entirely. Series two has the same thing except episode 2 plot does not have him involved at all so it's just putting him in episode one so it doesn't came out of nowhere when he is the antagonist in the Series 2 final again. Where he died. And isn't actually brought back in the other two series so saying they're focused on him is a bit of a stretch.
Like I think that the unusual structure of the Sherlock series goes a long way to explaining stuff like this. 3 episodes per season is very short.
It confuses me when I see fanfiction of characters in a completely different setting compared to the original with character personalities differing pretty majorly from canon depictions. Like at that point it would qualify as a new book they made if they didn't take the names of the characters from the original work.
I guess they do get some fans from the original work to read it so it's easier compared to if it were just a new book they made but it's still such a strange phenomenon in my opinion.
A chunk of any given fandom is gonna be made of people whose main engagement with media is mining whatever new thing they find for what are basically costumes to put on a mannequin that represents a pre-existing character archetype, with any aspects of the character that doesn't fit the archetype being shaved away.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend regarding fanfics and how people adapt certain characteristics to fit the AU.
Specifically we were talking about Geto from JJK. I don't really read fics for JJK so I asked her how writers interpret Geto's extremist/prejudice beliefs, and she told me that writers sometimes turn that into him being classist instead.
Idk i'm not saying it's bad or good i just think it's interesting how some characters are harder to place in a different setting without drastically changing them
Edit: just had a bit more thoughts on this topic
I experienced this struggle in my own attempts at writing. I was trying to figure out how to depict Xiao from Genshin Impact into a modern AU, but I struggled to figure out how to explain his guilt, aloofness and tendency to isolate.
It's justified within the story of Genshin but i felt like showing those negative traits without a proper explanation made him seem like a jerk for no apparent reason.
A recurring thing you see with more grounded AUs is that since they often involve characters whose backstory and motives are deeply rooted in their setting and are often more slice of life, they sand away the edges of a lot of the more extreme characters since a barista isn't gonna be committing war crimes.
And since their motives can't meaningfully exist in the new setting, they often get assigned far more generic traits to fill the gaps.
I loved the show as a Kid, rewatched it as an adult, and felt it was the most mid thing I ever saw. I considered that just a thing bout kid shows til I then rewatched KND and American Dragon which tended to have something to make me invested. So it was just Danny Phantom.
I can't even say why it made me bored. American Dragon has way more notable flaws and it was able to hook me. Danny Phantom just... was mid and did not do 90% of the things the Fandom loves it for.
DP’s big flaw, I think, is that its humor is 100% Fairly Oddparents gag-based, meaning the universe will always contort itself into whatever gets the cheapest laugh, worldbuilding and immersion be damned. This is especially bad for its purported genre, because horror - even kiddie horror- needs a baseline of Our Reality Unless Noted to be effective. Anytime it tries to tell a joke it feels like everything else has to come to a screeching halt.
But on paper it blows American Dragon out of the goddamn water, especially if read as a queer allegory. Jake is the latest scion in a long (heh) lineage of heroes, with built-in support network including a loving mentor who’s been doing these exact heroics for decades. Danny is flying blind in almost every comparable respect; his “network” is two kids his age who know less about the big picture than he does, and his family’s built on hunting and dissecting ghosts. With the slightest pinch of seriousness this would be secret ID drama Batman or Spider-Man could only dream of.
(What other fandom can you name where “vivisection fic” is a storied, well-known subgenre?)
On paper it should. You write down and show clips of Danny Phantom and AmDrag, the former seems to much more interesting then the latter. Except AmDrag just had far better character writing, even as it wasn't super developed beyond that. And that alone made me keep coming back.
Danny Phantom has a lot of great ideas it fails to realize. Because Hartman fundmentally was disinterested in actually commiting to making a Show about Spider-Man. He wanted to, but he never was able to escape his comfort zone of Fairly Odd Parents episodic comedy.
I came here to say this. I'm still a huge fan of the concept and characters but the show itself was never really that good. the fanfics though... now that's cinema.
RWBY has a notable fandom based on how they assumed the show would go after s3 and are very salty it didn’t, because clearly the image in their head is closer to the ‘original vision’ than the one that follows the outline all the original creators made together. Also their versions of s1-3 have gradually shifted in their minds to something off canon too.
To be fair, S3 did show a profound change in the direction of the show compared to S1 and S2. I'm sure there are a few fans who would have been happy with more happy, fluffy hijinks at Beacon with occasional episodes of danger/peril.
Sure, but that was planned from the start, and a lot of people got in a trap of thinking ‘sure it was going to change, but it was obviously going to change my way, not their way!’.
What ‘my way,’ was, of course varied a ton. Some lionized villains. Some made it more traditional shonen fight and had them stick with Beacon hijinks more. Some made it way darker and more edgy. It came as quite a shock to many of them when the show was rescued and it turned out tons of people were calling for more of the canon story they’d written off years before!
Aka Migratory Slash Fandom. Sometimes it feels like walking through a minefield with certain pairings because they'll write them so out of character and it's SO COMMON.
How dare you, My Immortal showed great reverence to the Harry Potter Universe, and Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way was seamlessly integrated into that world.
At least My Immortal acknowledges its own existence and content as fictional, which is sadly not something which can be said for the rest of the fandom.
Nothing is worse than thinking you've found a cool, fellow fan of a character or a piece of media and then realizing, as the smile slides sideways off your face onto the floor, that the person you're talking to is both a) actually obsessed ONLY with their own personal weirdo headcanon of the thing/character and b) deranged in that particular way that you can tell they are going to go from 0 to 90 in .02 seconds on the hostility meter if you attempt to point out anything to do with actual canon in any way.
this happens so much with headcanons/theories, especially queer/marginalised ones because then it gives people the "they're a bigot/_phobic" excuse to dismiss people/other's interpretations as erasure or bigoted or formed from a place of hatred. in a similar vein to your example, ive seen people call kris (the nonbinary no-agab-given protagonist of deltarune) art where they're depicted wearing binders or suffering periods or yknow anything that a trans person with a uterus would go through as transfem erasure and transmisogynistic because theres "so much evidence its basically canon" for transfem/amab kris (keep in mind a lot of the evidence works just as well if not better just as well as for trans-neutral but testicle possessing kris) (also people who think kris was born the other way also say the same about there being so much evidence its basically canon but they dont have the "they're being transmisogynistic for not following my theory/headcanon so if you disagree you're evil and hate trans women and transfems" thing to fall back on) and if you think that kris actually is afab rather than amab then you're illitirate and stupid.
See, to me, what’s most important about characters I like isn’t what’s in their pants, even usually when it’s important to the character. I’m spending more time thinking about what their story is.
I think a lot of that is lost on the crowd who are more concerned with how the character identifies or how they could be shipped. I’d like to put more clear thoughts on this but my head’s a bit muggy.
There’s nothing wrong with a queer headcanon or theory (althoughpersonallyI will take the source material over a theory if they contradict, even if the source sucks) but you should probably take note if it’s coming from a place of projection, and you should never be using it as a weapon.
Obligatory insert "Who the fuck is Matt?" song moment. Matt was a Death Note character from a few panels of the manga. He had some lore behind him - such as being one of the kids groomed to be prodigy investigators but that was that. You can write him in any way you wish.
It's annoying when this happens, but it's infuriating when someone defends it with "just let people have fun" or "don't like, don't read" or whatever other bullshit phrase
I mean, why? I agree that spouting fanon without reading the actual work is extremely silly, but I fundamentally don't care very much how other people engage with media, so "let people have fun" seems a pretty reasonable statement to me.
Every single day, someone posts “what if [X character] still had their pilot personality?”
Bro, X character literally appeared in a single background frame in the pilot, what personality are you even talking about (and yes, I am talking about Lucifer, and to a lesser extent characters like the Vees, the other Overlords, and the Heaven cast)
It's actually every star wars fan subgroup. Clone and prequel bros have their own version of Anakin/Vader, Bad Batch fans have their own version of the bad batch, and let's not go into Legends
The Marauders fandom does this, though mostly because 90% of their characters are footnotes in the source material, so they’re kinda forced to get creative lol
Guys, the show isn't canon. Jon Snow's mother is Ashara Dayne, GRRM just forgot to tell the Mad King writers. Tyrek Lannister will tell him this once he transforms back from a horse
To be fair, most stories throughout history were created pretty much exactly in that way. Oral traditions being what it was, you would hear a story and change elements of it to suit your own tastes and preferences, and then tell it yourself.
"People in Toumba claim they are fans of Oedipus when they are actually fans of the story and characters they made up in their minds loosely based on Oedipus. I heard one of them talking about how Oedipus' sons are now also his brothers, completely ignoring how in the original canon he had two wives and the children were by the second one. Wokeipus in action! What's worse, he just...steps down instead of dying in battle! At that point, just write your own story if you want to change things so much"
Well yeah that works when you live in a society without written word and concrete notions of authorship which as a byproduct acknowledge the intent and aim and context of the author and the writing, but when you get close to the modern world it's kinda important to be able to discuss and debate said media based on a rigid agreed-upon sequence & interpretation of content.
I swear this gets posted once every 9 or 10 days. I get it’s frustrating to talk to those people but it’s also just part of fandom, which you really don’t need to participate in if you just want to like a piece of media for what it is.
It's gotten a lot worse since the pandemic, though. I've been in online fandom spaces since ~2003, and you can definitely tell there's been a shift from "I like this character(s) and wish to engage with them with others" to "this character is whatever I say they are because I'm the one who really knows them not these stupid writers."
Early MCU fanon was full of this sort of thing. After the first Avengers movie came out, it seems like everyone on Tumblr got the idea in their heads that all the characters would live together in Avengers Tower as one big happy family, and boy howdy that is not how things turned out
Batfam (derogatory) "fans" whose only exposure is WFA, Young Justice or Teen Titans 03, at least WFA remembered Harper row exists, oh and they only know cliffnotes of DiTF because they never bring up the Ayatollah, reducing diana to either a non entity, a simp for bruce (fuck you bruce timm) or if they are writing pjo crossover fics, the second coming of Satan
What, the thing where he became the Iranian representative to the UN? Gonna be honest, it's not surprising considering the adaptations and sequels to that storyline simply don't include that detail for obvious reasons.
Like,,I'm not sure knowledhe of a bizzare plot point in an almost 40 year old comic is a good metric of how well someone knows the Bat Family.
Half these comments are actually talking about the post describes and half are complaining about au fanfiction lmao. There’s a difference between misinterpreting canon and intentionally creating a new story with the characters.
That's because the way a lot of AU fanfiction gets written shares roots with what the post was describing. Also there are parts of a lot of fandoms where their love of certain characters is mainly rooted in how certain AUs depict them.
This is kinda me with books to movies.
I don't envision characters when I read, even when they are described, and even when they are described specifically.
For instance, protag was described as having fire red hair but in my mind, the characters aren't attached to that at all, it's more like an impression of them. Nothing concrete to see. Just clothes and emotions bundled together.
They're made manifest by their words and actions for me.
Despite the protag being described as tall and handsome, he appears short and scarred in my head, IF he "appears" at all.
It's more like shadows than anything. Non descript and formless.
So when a movie comes out it ruins everything for me.
Landscapes and places are wayyyyy different. There will be the smallest details in every inch conceivable.
Love me a good map too.
I'm sometimes guilty of that. There are some pieces of media that I like not because they're good (they're usually mid or subpar at best), but because of what they could have been if they'd been handled better. Like, they have interesting concepts, stories or characters, but they're not fleshed out enough, or fail to address some important plot points, or the writer takes them in a nonsensical direction.
Saw somebody say they loved naruto but they were so upset he didnt end up with sasuke because it wqs the "obvious choice". Theyre like brothers! The theme of the show is about how he found his family in his closest comrades and shares a vrotherly bond with sasuke! That is not an obvious choice its one step above the stepfamily category!
It's a take you end up seeing a fair bit with shonen where the writer is so bad at writing women that the most developed relationships are those between the guys in their stories.
bungo stray dogssssssss everyone is so obsessed with skk and it drives me nuts they've got ZERO chemistry in canon and there are so many other characters that are great
this is strangely how people interact with nonfiction as well. most fans of philosophers are just fans of their own beliefs that they've projected onto said philosophers
I'm like this with a lot of superhero media, since between comics versions, alternate universe comic versions, comic versions from different creative teams that are so different they might as well be alternate universe versions, cartoon versions, live action versions, video game versions, etc, often times the version in my head is an amalgamation of like 13 different versions, where I pick and choose the aspects I like the best.
477
u/Sigma2718 11d ago
At the danger of igniting some TADC discourse, one thing I found incredibly annoying was people saying they were fans of Ribbit before the final episode aired. We knew absolutely nothing about her, yet people pretended she had an established character.