trying out drawing more realistic cats š JayFeather is one of my favorite characters.
THEYRE DONE THEYRE DONE SAY HI TO THE RANBOO FURSUIT!!!!
@ranboolivesaysstuff
This is soooooo fucking true. Every word. And is a bring pet peeve of mine especially when people do include Kristen into a sbi fic but kill her off so that Phil has a reason to be sad or to be a bitch like I wanna have fanfic with kristen in it but sheās always either dead or sheās there but sheās not talked about or barely shown so you forget sheās even in the story. And Niki is usually just very one dimensional, the nice bakery girl that always there to comfort but sheās so much more than that. You can write her being nice but also having other personality traits itās not hard.
anyways yāall should write more dark sbi fanfics where Kristen is the mastermind behind it all.
I have read a lot of DSMP fanfics in the years Iāve been in the fandom. Iāve read popular fics, unpopular fics, fics that have since been deleted, and everything in between. And unfortunately, there has been a trend Iāve notice in this fandom.
This fandom really doesnāt like itās female characters.
Now, not every single fic in the fandom fails its female characters, but the ones that donāt tend to be the exception, not the rule.
And no, this isnāt going to be a long post demanding people write fics only focusing on the women of the DSMP. Side characters and supporting casts make up important roles in stories as well, and so this discussion will apply to every single fic in the fandom, because the issues arenāt just the women not being the main characters, but how writers treat them in their fics.
Also, I am gonna be using the terms male and female characters a lot. I know a few characters donāt fit this binary, and I donāt want to exclude them, but I donāt want to over-complicate this post, especially given how different these characters are treated. Ranboo is a character that has no concept of gender, but the fandom mostly treats them pretty well, with exceptions of course ā though that can be explained by most of the fandom simply treating Ranboo as a male character. Whereas Eret⦠oh, some of the things Iāve read could be itās own post. Weāre just gonna keep it simple for now.
Letās start with the one point that infuriates me the most: fridging.
For those of you who donāt know, fridging is a term that refers to the trope of a female character dying in order to further the a male characterās story, usually via providing them with motivation. This is bad because it basically turns the female character into nothing more than an object. Fridging has been criticised for many, many years now, ridiculed as much as the equally appalling bury your gays trope.
And damn, have I read way too many fics where women are fridged.
Obviously, you can kill off female characters, thatās not the issue. But when you have a character die, and itās only done for the sake of either getting your male characters to do something, or to give them something to whine about, itās not a pleasant reading experience.
Of course, it could be worse. In one fic I read where a female character was fridged right near the beginning of the story, two other female characters are introduced and later die. There was a male character these two women had helped out in the very short glimpses of screen time. When they die, youād expect that male character ā who was just saved by one of them, by the way ā would mourn them, right? What actually happened is that male character mourned a different male character. A character that he literally doesnāt know and never spoke to. His thoughts are literally how if they had met they might have been friends. Not a single thought is given to the two women who died ā again, one of them just saved him before dying.
Even in their deaths, female characters arenāt treated like individuals. Theyāre objectified by their deaths. Theyāre either not worth mourning or caring about. Or, theyāre only worth attention because of how their death furthers the male characters development.
Now, letās talk about passive characters, active characters and character agency.
Character agency is a characterās ability to affect or progress the story. Active characters have agency and actively affect the story. Passive characters have no agency, and are affected by the story.
The DSMP is mostly filled with active characters, due to the nature of how the story is played out. But for the sake of an example, letās bring out Tommy. A time where Tommy was being an active character was when he gave up the discs for Lāmanburgās freedom and right to exist. This affected the plot greatly, as without that there wouldnāt have been a Lāmanburg. A time where Tommy was a passive character was the exile arc. Tommy was kidnapped by Dream, and forced to live out his exile where Dream placed him. This wasnāt Tommy making a decision, this was Tommy being affected by the plot which was being shaped by those around him. Tommy had no agency in these moments.
Iāve noticed that despite the female characters canonically having a lot of agency and being very active characters, female characters are often turned into passive characters. They donāt drive or contribute to the plot in any way, the plot just happens to them.
Now, you might be under the assumption that itās simply just because the women are rarely the main characters. After all, itās impossible for side characters and supporting cast members to be active characters, right?
WRONG! Itās not that hard to give characters agency. If a character is included in a scene, they should have a reason to be there. They should have a purpose, a motivation, a goal. They should be making choices. Yet way too often female characters are, at best, just going along with what the male characters say or do. At worst, theyāre just basically cameo appearances, a way for the writer to pat themselves on the back for being so diverse without actually putting in effort.
There is also the fact that when writers are picking out their cast, they make some⦠interesting choices. Female characters rarely get the chance to actively being involved in what the male characters are doing.
Why are SBI fics so⦠determined to only have male characters in the family? SBI has no basis in canon, and the characters themselves have meaningful relationships with female ones. Kristin is literally Philzaās wife and canonically Wilburās mother. Niki has a lot of history and lore with all SBI members, all mostly beginning positive at the beginning.
Youād think that since SBI fans love family dynamics, theyād be down with including more members, right? After all, more characters means you can really explore new and interesting dynamics. After all, if youāre focusing on a family dynamic, itās better to have a decent sized cast to work with, and five or six allows for more dynamics to form. But when SBI fans want to throw in two characters into the mix, the go with Tubbo and Ranboo. Which is especially confusing given how many fics keep the Beeduo marriage, giving an unintentional incesty angle.
But why does it have to be the male characters? In SBI, why not Niki and Kristin? That adds in a Mother and a Daughter/Sister character, which can add in new relationship interactions. That could be interesting, and actually add in some new twists to a part of the fandom with over 20K fics on Ao3.
Itās not just in family dynamics. In AUs, roles in stories that could be fulfilled by anyone are typically given to male characters. These roles might be needed for the story, but they donāt rely on any dynamics, duos or anything, just simply picking any character who isnāt already part of the plot. And, it would be easy to give a female character a role like this and allow them to progress the plot. But itās always a male character.
A common defense Iāve seen SBI writers specifically use is that they donāt include Kristin because they want to write a story where Phil/Wilbur/Techno/A combination of all three/etc arenāt being great family members, and Kristin just wouldnāt allow that. It was just too hard and didnāt work. I used to think this was true, until I sat down and wrote my own fic where Wilbur and Phil donāt have a healthy relationship⦠and Kristin is there⦠fitting seamlessly into the plot, while not supporting Philās actions entirely.
It really wasnāt hard at all, and the only assumption I can come to is that these other writers⦠donāt really want to try.
There are no real magic solutions to these problems. Fanfics are free, the writers donāt owe anyone a perfect piece of fiction.
But I donāt think itās too much to ask that the writers behind these fics stop and reflect on why theyāre making the choices they do. To sit down and consider if their reasoning behind decisions⦠are actually excuses to hide behind.
Writers can do whatever they want, but as someone who reads fics even more than I write them, Iām getting tired and bored of this. Is it really too much to ask for where a female character just⦠can exist? And contribute to the plot?
These are ramblings from someone who is tired, and itās probably not put together the best, but hopefully this can at least be a starting point for getting at least a part of the fandom to really think about their approach to fanfics and specifically female characters in them.
We have been through many wars before, but this war was not like the ones before it. Our lives were turned upside down. We became displaced from one place to another. We are the Anas family, residents of northern Gaza, specifically in the Shujaiya area. In the first week of the war, we fled our home because everyone considered our home to be in a dangerous area. We moved to the Rimal area, specifically in the middle of Gaza. There, we received the news that our home, which contained all our beautiful memories, was bombed. Suddenly, it was gone!!! Just thinking that your home, which you worked hard on and built from scratch and took a lot of your life, was gone in less than a second ! After a while, we left the sands to the Al-Zawaida area because of the heavy shelling. We stayed there for about two weeks, and then the terrorist army asked us to go to Rafah. We actually fled for the fourth time to Rafah and stayed there for two months, some of the most difficult days of our lives, as there was no way or means to live a normal life. šš After that, because of the invasion of Rafah, we moved to Deir al-Balah. Now, we are in very difficult and oppressive circumstances.
INNITERS THAT LIKE ISEKAI/TRANSMIGRATION, HEAR ME!
this is threadcutter. itās the second part of an ultra long tommy-transmigration fic. it updates regularly and itās peak fiction. the author wanted the fic to be spread for their birthday so here it is! go read the first part and then read this! or if youāve read the first part, continue it here!! ALSO IF YOU SEE THIS PLEASE REBLOG!
Watched it ends with us and it wasnāt as bad as I thought it was like the expected it to totally glamorize the abuse and make seems like it okay and then a total one 80 and be āno, no we said it fine earlier but its actually badā but they didnāt really do that. If anything the movies bad because the dialogue is cringe and stale. And the scenes are all so awkward and boring and have such a forced vibe to it, like do yāall want to even be acting like now? And the skip in between the past and present is confusing because it never says itās the past. Usually movies will have something like āin 1982 during marchā but it didnāt have anything like that. And I feel like if anyone who hasnāt read the book or knew anything about it would be so confused. like the one scene of her writing a letter to Ellen. They never talked about that. It was so random.
I hate Colleen Hoover so much she doesnāt deserve a movie. Her books upset me so much especially ugly love and honestly anyone who decides to write a love story between step siblings doesnāt need a fucking movie. Like that was not needed the book would be just fine without that. It wasnāt even the main love story or anything she just did for fun. Every Colleen Hoover books make me think she hates woman. Anyways November 9th is worse and I will in fact spit in Colleen Hoovers face if I ever met her. Back on topic āit ends with usā is at least 5/10 and I hope a Colleen Hoover book is never made into a movie again.
So I just watched Sweet Tooth on Netflix right. It's literally a dsmp AU turned TV series I fucking can't-
Exhibit A: Literally. Every. Animal. Hybrid. On. The. SMP. Without fail. Like seriously it was freaky, with almost the exact same (If not similar) character designs.
Exhibit B: Main character is a passionate blond child who wears red and gets a new family member every 5 seconds, has daddy/family issues, abandonment issues, and gets their trust abused/taken advantage of consistently. Like bruh.
Exhibit C: Reluctant Dadā¢Ā collects edgy children like pokemon cards.
Exhibit D: Children forming a government/cult and it going horribly fucking wrong.
Exhibit E: Child torture porn. Like seriously leave the damn kids alone the both of you christ.
Exhibit F: W h ere are the adults??? And how are they all this dumb?????
Exhibit F (continued): Orphans. So many orphans.
Exhibit G: Fascists.
I really want someone to write a fiction of a Sweet Tooth AU that would s l a p.
Kitt is better than Kai and we should talk about it
is tumblr a safe place for me to say that i love kitt azer
it makes my day every time i see someone reblog/like my old allium duo art so heres a small doodle as a token of my appreciation c:
spotify wrapped is out and everybody is always posting their top 5 songsā¦.. letās see some love for number 6 that didnāt make the cut. rb and add your number 6