It's really fucked up when you treat characters like people and people like characters.

No seriously it's REALLY fucked up when you treat characters as if they were real live people while you treat people like they're just characters.

I'm gonna go ahead and repeat: it is super, duper, extra scooper fucked up when you treat a character as if it were a living person while treating other human beings who are interacting with you like they are merely characters who can be written out of your personal story if you just find a remark mean enough.

You. You get it.

ETA wait why does this have 18k notes

nothing will change your perspective on a character like someone who is batshit obsessed with them

how i feel when someone convinces me a character is so awesome by constantly talking about them and i find a new found appreciation for that character and i would have never come to that realization without them

do you ever become obsessed with a character and you just go "of fucking course its that one" at yourself because you are so incredibly predictable

I can imagine The Characters to any song

I mean I know a certain level of projection on fictional characters and situations is inevitable and even healthy, but sometimes you got to step back into the real world to remind yourself that Character X is not your shitty parent/abusive ex/asshole boss/bully from high school, and that people who like Character X are not personally victimizing you.

op is getting death threats now probably

hey so we put your morally grey character in a fandom. yeah half the fanbase makes them into a perfect angel who did nothing wrong and the other half depicts them as a cartoonishly evil villain who hurts people for fun. no we dont know how to explain that people can do bad things for good reasons or good things for bad reasons. sorry man

I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:

Fictional characters are objects.

They are not people. You cannot "objectify" them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot "disrespect" them, because they are not real.

I know this has good intentions, so I will just add the "how you treat them, even as objects of fiction, can speak about your own character, be careful out there"

Your addition is actually completely antithetical to my message. It is literally the opposite of what I am conveying.

Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.

How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be "careful".

It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a "slippery slope" to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming "dark" fanfic.

I can write tentacle noncon of my favorite character all day long and be a fierce anti-sexual assault advocate in real life because what I do in my head is not the same thing as what I do in real life.

These tags were too perfect to not include

Also in my head I can do parkour, which is how we KNOW fantasy and reality are very different

(gripping the skink with both hands, pale and feverish, sweating and shaking as I look at myself in the mirror) “killing a character is a valid writing choice that can be a crucial plot mechanic and lend beauty and depth to the story as a whole” (wretches up blood into the sink) “even when it’s my favorite character”

I also drew it

letting a traumatized character have their happy ending where they can recover from their trauma will always be a thousand times more powerful than killing them off for shock value

If you can't be bothered to learn the difference between a rock and a mineral, well...

Based on a submission from stubeardsly.

Want me to doodle your D&D party? Commissions are open! Check out my profile for the posting, or e-mail yourdndstories at gmail subject 'Doodles' for more information.

hrghh another long and difficult day... TUMBLR!! fetch me a photo of The Fictional Character .....

the bond between a girl and their favorite fictional man is both an unstoppable force and an immovable object

lmao

Well this tracks with my school experience 🤣 blame the writers LOL

the phantom of the opera and the hunchback of notre dame? opposite ends of same spectrum 

And beauty and beast falls somewhere in the middle

someone do a graph

you rang?

I couldn’t resist

This is the science I’m here for

love characters who are like "this is how the world works. this is how it has to be (because if i'm wrong i have to face what i've done // if i'm wrong i have to face whats been done to me) "

This trait is much more endearing in fiction than in my mother.