"they could've had a war with the dingles and killed a few of them off in the process"
i'm a massive fan of the dingles, as characters and as a family, i think they're fascinatingly flawed complex characters who are central to the lifeblood of emmerdale and have been for 30 years, and i always have 2 main questions when people post something like this.
(sorry, this will be a long ask, i just want to explain my thoughts)
1. why do you hate the dingles so much?
i can understand not being massive fans of them but there is often so much vitriol thrown at them that i don't understand when they're not much worse than any other family at the moment. plenty of other characters and families (including the kings) also have problems with hypocrisy and abuse, now and in the past, and i never see them receive the level of hate the dingles do, and when they do it tends to be on a character basis rather than as evidence of why their entire family needs to be culled. (and there is some concerningly classist, and, dare i say, white supremacist, rhetoric i've seen parroted in posts about them (not necessarily yours, but people who would agree with you), but i don't want to assume the worst, hence this ask)
plus aaron's a dingle, and he always will be (by blood and by name), and he often acts very similarly to cain and chas, for instance, who seem to get a significant portion of the hate.
2. what dingles would you kill off and why?
i can't think of any except maybe noah who aren't relevant, or any except cain who really deserve it. maybe marlon or sam could go but they're not significantly worse than jimmy. and if they did kill off a dingle or 2, wouldn't that just mean more screen time for the rest of the dingles? which wouldn't solve the oversaturation problem.
(i also don't actually think there's that many of them numbers wise, they just happen to be more prominent in storylines right now, which i can to an extent understand people's frustration with)
i don't mean any hate by any of this, and sorry to single you out, your post was just the latest i've seen. everyone's entitled to their own opinions and i agree with most of your other thoughts on the kings. i just really want to understand why you (and it seems 90% of the fandom on here) think this way about the dingles in particular.
hello anon! firstly, don't apologise for long asks! i find other people's opinions fascinating and i'm always happy to discuss something other than the robron intimacy discourse which currently plagues the fandom. secondly, i am definitely not a white supremacist lmao, happy to put your mind at rest about that one
'they're not much worse than any other family at the moment.' the family with the next highest amount of members is currently the kings with 5 (3 of which are children) and they aren't exactly up to much, so i think this is untrue
'i also don't actually think there's that many of them numbers wise' okay so i looked this up based on the current characters section of emmerdale wiki and these are my findings based on the listed 71 characters
dingles by surname: 16 other dingles by blood: 8 non-dingle surname but married to / dating dingles: 8 direct in-laws of the dingles: 7 that's already 39/71
of those remaining, you can take away 12 non-dingle children (i've counted ivy as a dingle for the sake of the sake) who rarely get storylines / screentime so that's now 51/71
that means only 20 of the adult characters aren't directly linked to dingles. of those 20, both dawn and jimmy have been confirmed to be axed, with rumours circling that billy may leave with dawn. and she will no doubt take her 3 non-dingle children with her too. only 8 of the current characters are not white (which will go down by 2 if billy and evan leave)
my desire for the dingles to be 'culled' is more due to the overwhelming number of them than anything at this point. if they keep axing non-dingles, there'll be no affairs / romances they can do without reverting back to good ol' incestdale. and there'll be no characters left to extort / threaten / whatever them because it'll only be dingles and they don't tend to do that to their own
also, if i may make a generalisation here... a lot of the fandom on here haven't seen non-robron / pre-robron emmerdale, so they don't necessarily know the lore of characters like jimmy, kim, jai, eric, etc. who have all absolutely done terrible things in the past! i'm not denying that and i'll happily ramble about it some other time. the dingles get a lot of 'vitriol thrown at them' in relation to how they treat aaron / robert in any given storyline which is fine but i do agree some of it is harsh
personally, i really like chas. her main character flaw is choosing men over her kids and while i couldn't imagine doing it, i like the consistency and the messiness. i also love belle, caleb, charity and mandy to name a few dingles.
however, my desire to axe characters is dependent on them fitting at least one of these two criteria: boring or insufferable
dingles i would axe: cain, noah, vinny, sam, lydia, marlon dingle adjacents i would axe — bear, rhona, jacob other characters i would axe — joe, rodney, eric, graham, vanessa / johnny, gabby / thomas
those are personal opinions based on who i think have run their course, i wouldn't want to see more of, i find irritating, etc. not everyone has to agree and that's fine. they don't all have to die either; i'm happy for some to take some time off and come back when there are storylines for them. it'd save itv paying them all every week but not using them
it could also make way for some new characters aka more women and poc. give us kammy's seven sisters! they could hire up-and-coming actors who would be significantly cheaper than their current veteran actors
killing off dingles would mean more screen time for the other dingles yeah, but that's fine. not everyone with the surname dingle should be excommunicated from the village. i'd love to see a story of belle navigating losing her brothers after losing her parents. or aaron properly becoming the head of the family. or charity losing her son. or april processing being an orphan. those are just off the top of my head. because they're interesting storylines that would showcase the talents of the remaining dingle actors who don't otherwise get enough time to shine in the throes of caindale
as for aaron being a dingle, this is true. he's very much chas' son and cain's nephew but he's kind and empathetic and loyal in ways they've often proved not to be. i also think (hope) he's going to take the sugden surname when he and robert remarry which won't stop him being a dingle but it'll help boost the numbers for other families, aka the longest running emmerdale family the sugdens
aaron and robert aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination but they're also the central characters in the fandom and therefore people are going to look on them more favourably (apart from the die hard antis). i think it's called 'shipping goggles' or something? and it helps that they're queer representation with a rich, iconic history as well
i suppose it's my turn to apologise for the long response now. cheers if you read it until the end and i hope this helped (all maths is subject to slight error. it's been a long day) <3











