Dramatic Heaux

"I play for both teams so I always win."

[thecollectibles]

Art by Daniel Conway

[powerfulwizard]

Me: Hi

Bisexual character written by a straight person: Oh! I don’t like labels. I don’t like to pick sides. I just like people. I like to shop at two different grocery stores. I like to eat at Burger King and McDonalds, if you know what I mean. Let’s just say I wear two different socks. I prefer ketchup AND mustard on my hamburgers. I’m just gonna say that I own two different pairs of underwear. I don’t want to be like one of those people, but how about I just say that I like to drink my coffee from two different mugs?

[wang--fire]

Bi person irl:

[cozetty]

my partner is paying for my two favorite stuffed animals to go to the hospital so they can be like new again and his reasoning was "they take care of you while I'm gone so they have to be in good shape"

[asiwaswalkingallalone]

[livingstills]

[peachypalm]

[commandtower-solring-go]

Friend posted this to facebook unironically. What the fuck

[commandtower-solring-go]

HIS LEFT AND RIGHT SIDE ARE ENTIRELY EXPOSED. QUICK, VAX THe BASTARD

[andmyvape-deactivated20260103]

Takin the shot boss

[camilicy]

Full page ✨

[redrola]

[nicollekidman]

[mysharona1987]

[mysharona1987]

[spuffygifs]

You’re all covered with her. The narrative hints at Spike’s feelings towards Buffy.

(requested by @ontaskvvidogast)

[littlealienproducts]

[largishcat]

fictional character discourse would be more fun if we all internalized the fact that characters are narrative tools, not people. once we have that basic fact down, we can start talking about what story the author is trying to tell using these characters, whether they’re successful, whether the story itself is successful and by what means we are measuring success—which are all really fun and interesting things to discuss! but we simply cannot get to that point unless we first accept that fictional characters simply do not have thoughts, feelings, opinions, or any agency on their own. a fictional character has more in common with the fictional chair theyre sitting on than with a real person

[disassociationstations]

Some one explain this to me like I’m five

[queeranarchism]

I’ll try:

The way we talk about characters in stories would be better if we really understood that characters are just tools that writers use to tell a story.

Once we understand that, we can start talking about how the character is used to tell the story, about whether we think it’s an interested story, and about what makes something an interesting story to us.

Which are all really fun and interesting things to talk about.

But we can not do that unless we accept that characters are not people. They do not have thoughts. They do not have opinions. They do not make decisions. They only exist as tools to tell the story.

Other tools in a story are things like a chair in a story where people sit, or a palace in a fairy tale, or the sun in a story about a hot dessert. A character is like that chair, that palace and that sun: only a tool to tell the story.

A character is not like a real person. A real person can be ‘good’ or bad’ (or both) because they do good or bad things (or both), a character can only be a useful tool or a not useful tool to tell a story.

So when we hear something like “I like this character”, what we should hear is “I like this tool because it is an interesting tool to tell an interesting story”, we should not hear “I like this person and approve of their actions and would do similar actions”.

[elliegrine]

I’ll expand on that as people in the notes are going “well I like thinking of them as people” and while you’re reading the thing itself then yes, you’re supposed to! It’s called suspension of disbelief.

But when you critique the story you need to stop suspending that disbelief and look at the story through another lens, just like @queeranarchism says.

The same is true for writing. While the phenomenon of your characters basically “having their own life” in the writers head is pretty common, they are still only figments of your imagination. They are just as fictional as the chair they sit on and so are any of their actions. Your fantasy supervillains only do fictional crimes, hurt fictional characters and don’t necessarily reflect you in any direct sense. Their “actions” do not matter outside of the function they fill in the story.

[queeranarchism]

YES!

And you can be critical of stories. They are reflective of the values of the author. But you can only see those values clearly when you look at the story as a story.

Example: J.K. Rowling really shows her fatphobia in the Harry Potter books by portraying a lot of unlikable characters as fat, and emphasizing their fatness at the exact moments when she wants you to dislike them. Aunt Marge is the obvious example. Aunt Marge ‘sausage fingers’ get described as she is abusing Harry in order to amplify the sense of disgust that you have for her. It’s clear that J.K. Rowling is using ‘fat’ as a stand in for ‘bad’. Fuck JKR.

That’s a valid critique of a story.

When you do not suspend disbelief, what you get is discourse between people who go “Harry Potter is a fatphobe because he is clearly judging Aunt Marge for her fat. Everyone who defends Harry Potter is wrong. Fuck you fatphobes!” and people who go “Harry Potter did nothing wrong! Aunt Marge is clearly an abuser. Anyone who brings up fatphobia here is protecting an abuser! Fuck you abuse apologists!”

Which doesn’t go anywhere and just ends up being a way to be angry to each other over things that are not real.

[hempkitty]

can someone please be proud of me like fuck I’m trying

[ambiguities]

[depsidase]