I'm not saying I do this all the time with people and my favorite game but I absolutely do this all the time with people and my favorite game.
In which Aon bitches about liking a book series wherein the character she relates to spends all his time bitching: A Five Act Play: Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series.
@Aondeug and @LadyNighteyes my DEAR AND KIND friend has REPEATEDLY been nice enough to give me books for a certain fandom that's like. the size of the two of us. it's awful. they're werewolves who have gay orgies, this shit should be more popular
nnnnope Spoiler: BECAUSE I'M SLIGHTLY EMBARRASSED Spoiler: NO REALLY THIS IS SUPER NSFW Spoiler: LAST CHANCE TO TURN BACK It's the "Protection of the Pack" series, and it's got an a/b/o theme to it y U P. it's super guy-centric, and my friend and I made up our own fan pack that's all ladies who are into each other and one Very Distressed Omega Guy who just wants someone to touch his dick, PLEASE.
mainly asriel/flowey getting ignored by fans, especially in contexts where he's pretty important. i also feel like people make asriel too sweet and flowey too grimdark? people ignoring that they're the same person in general i guess. also although it was cool at first, and this one is a bit pettier, i feel like i see chara get a lot of flowey/asriel's lines in fanwork, to the point where sometimes i feel asriel's role is a little infringed upon. also tired of the many different iterations of 'asriel says chara wasnt the greatest person and this becomes about how sad this would make chara'. since asriel's a pretty lenient kid with chara and adores them up until this realization, it feels like these comics are kind of missing the point. (i also see a lot of ppl call asriel an ass for this when this is... a really healthy important realization for him) long story short: I Have a Lot of Opinions About Flowey/Asriel also every time i talk about claptrap (yes borderlands claptrap) people don't take me very seriously. sometimes it does in fact, suck to have a gag character as a favourite. especially a gag character whose abuse if meant to be pretty funny and personally falls flat for you.
it feels to me like asriel being considered an ass for that realization might be a result of how that line was part of how the fandom created Wanna Kill Everything Chara, and some of the Soft Chara people projecting their feelings about that fandom interpretation onto what asriel said, treating it as though he was saying that chara was absolutely evil.
@unknownanonymous I really do think that's part of it. Like, I can tell a lot of it is pretty defensive, but it's a little isolating sometimes. 'How could asriel say that about their dead friend!' I think it's buying into this interp of Chara being someone who... was very gentle and accommodating and a hero which... I think people often step up to the bat for Chara when there's anything that talks about them having negative qualities bc theyre afraid of them being thought of as a demon which can be an issue in itself... especially since my interpretation of Chara has always been 'ultimately a lot of negative qualities but that's because they're a brainweird little suicidal kid who successfully kills themself for a revenge plot at the age of 8-12 and doesnt get a chance to grow past that'. hm, there's 'soft chara' and then 'literal demon chara' and I know personally I feel left out of fandom discussions because my thoughts on chara are somewhere in between (not a good kid or bad kid... a Kid. probably a 'bad' kid, but i dont mean that in the loaded way some people do - after all asriel is a 'bad kid'. asriel's words paint us a picture that their relationship wasnt the greatest, or healthiest, and left a lasting impact on him, but i highly doubt a little kid is an Intentional mass manipulator who Wanted to kill Everyone for the Lolz). it's funny people take asriel's words so hard because, we know even though asriel says 'chara wasn't the greatest person' that he still cares about them deeply despite that, and heck, even stays with their grave at the end of pacifist. he's not saying 'chara was a demon' he's saying 'chara was a deeply flawed person who maybe didnt always treat me great/wasnt always right about everything' sorry if im running my mouth on the subject haha i have a lot feelings
Most of my defensiveness is ENTIRELY on Want To Kill Everything Totally Evil Fallen Human. It is their fucking fault and I HATE them. Thank fuck that bullshit has quieted down some and there aren't as many stupid fucking fights. Well no I guess there's also my personal defensiveness because my brother was a "bad kid". As in he literally tried to stab me on multiple occasions and was frankly awful in a wide variety of ways which remind me of the Fallen Human. But I was only upset about it because so many fucking people INSISTED the Fallen Human had to be 100% absolute total evil with no exceptions. Fuck you people and your shit interpretations of fiction.
@Charlie i like your interpretation of chara, them being just a kid with brainweird and stuff, instead of someone who's either exceptionally good or exceptionally evil. and based on what i've observed anyway, that is what at least some of the stuff on the Soft Chara tag on ao3 is like. like, the term is used to say, "chara is not a remorseless mass murderer here," not "chara is a fluffy bunny full of love and hugs and rainbows" (though i fully believe that latter kind of fic/art exists). (and i really wish the Totally Evil Chara people would pick up Hard Chara as a name for that interpretation, 'cause that would make it symmetrical and make my sperg brain happy. Soft Chara and Hard Chara.) and it's cool! i've been in undertale sperg mode ever since december, when i got the game.
@unknownanonymous I have a complicated relationship with soft chara, just because I've seen so many people throw Asriel under the bus for it (say that Asriel was totally ok w everything and is completely free of issues after that! kids who only had fun.) I mean, I think the kid deserves depth, and honestly people who write chara with depth tend to use the soft chara tag more often, but the words sometimes like... make me take a step back and go 'ok what are their thoughts on asriel'. but I think... no mercy mode is complicated, but there is some legitimacy to Chara being more involved there. After all flowey says right away 'oh it's you chara!'. Idk, I think that... emotional emptiness and Bad Kid feeling Asriel relates to Chara on there is important. I think Chara feels a bit betrayed the one person they thought they could rely on disappointed them and they died for nothing. I think Chara's a bit Messed up but not an irredeemable monster i mean... shit.... they're a baby. The way people tend to paint it as them just being it for kicks and not having any feelings for the dreemurrs or anyone in general is ridiculous. idk i feel like when i say 'hey chara did Some things wrong' i get some people going 'yeah they are really an evil SOCIOPATH' which is. a bad comment. or i get 'no theyve never done anything wrong in their life' which would be ok if it was a joke, but a lot of people mean it very strongly. I think another part of my bitterness is I've seen a lot of things that will say 'Chara only wanted to go up there to help everyone' and although that seems to be part of it, it's pretty implied Chara also went up there to hurt people who hurt them (two birds one stone), and as someone who entertained fantasies of doing the same thing when I was younger to people who hurt me I feel sometimes the most #Relatable part of Chara's misanthropy gets lost. undertale's my go-to special interest (it's the long running one since the date of its release... its what i obsess about when im lost) and asriel and chara are my favs so i have a lot to say about them. (i like sans + a lot of others too but gosh people have... a lot to say about sans more articulately than i do)
I have a great deal of salt stockpiled about how the Sans fight is the defining part of the game for so many people. How focusing on the cool visuals of the fight, or the anger and grief and determination driving the characters in it... Leaves the parts of the story about other characters really neglected. Sans tries to clean up the worst timelines, sure; Asriel and Alphys are the ones most essential for creating the situation the game starts in. At least I can always find skeleton art
The Secret World: No one writes porn despite the abundance of material People putting Templar/Dragon/Illuminati in a good/neutral/evil dynamic. As a Templar, I will argue that they're currently a lighter shade of grey than the others but its still very much grey. And Illuminati aren't evil so much as self-centered There's no awful Ray-esque John apologists to mock Edda-Earth: no one had read it except @Nochi @Nochi disagrees with me when it comes to how much of a jerk Adam is in book 3 and is obviously WRONG :p there's no one but us, its a stalemate Critical Role: man it sure is a shame there's no fandom except six people in a Discord channel but if there was, it'd hypothetically be the LGBT discourse and the Keyleth/Marisha hate and in general being extremely scrutinizing about a group of friends essentially doing live improv with dice
