“we Need More Complex Female Characters” You Couldn’t Even Handle Her

i've been rewatching ed edd n eddy and its got me thinking about what their unseen parents are like

The last part really resonates with me because recently I've disconnected almost entirely from franchise movies, current releases, anything in "the industry". At this point, the wells of Hollywood and big-budget videogames have been irreversibly poisoned for me and the only way I can connect with art anymore is either when it's something created by individuals, small teams, anything independent, or it's something I've created myself (and I am an individual). I think once you take that step back you really see how bad it's gotten. I feel like corporations have taken such insane steps to commodify and reduce what is, at its core, the very medium of human expression. All the talk of "IP" and "content" and "canon" and "consuming", is so sterile and lifeless, and I feel like the normalization of this kind of language is seriously affecting how people relate to anything creative. Someone else said it better than I ever could- "why on earth do you let a company buy the right to determine what you think and feel? Make them "the legal owners of what happens in your mind?""

I love the practice of requisitioning, remixing and reworking books, comics, movies etc. through any means you like, but I hate hate hate the way so much vocabulary that used to be rooted in individual creativity has been taken over by this kind of fucked up deference to mainstream publishing and ip.

easy example: everyone calls the characters they work up for their projects 'OCs' now. that genie is out of the bottle, I'm not even going to try and cram it back in. it's universal terminology. but I do want to reflect - why is the default position to assume that when someone says 'my characters' they mean something derivative, unless they specify 'my Original characters'?

similarly, all character relationships are 'ships'. but what's wrong with that? you say, it's just short for 'relationship'. and you would be right, by merit of completely ignoring the fandom ancestry and common understanding of that term in order to win an argument. because you know as well as I do that 'ships' aren't 'relationships', they're hypothetical romances that the speaker is rooting for. so why do I keep seeing people talk about shipping their OCs? why is a hypothetical relationship entertained and enjoyed by the creator of the work described using fan terminology?

I have for real no joke seen people talk about their 'headcanons' for their own characters, in their own stories. that's not a headcanon babe, that's canon!!! that's YOUR WORK. moreover, why are we even talking about the canonicity of your personal original writing? this isn't the star wars extended universe, why are international franchise IPs setting the baseline for the relationship you have with your writing and the terminology you use to conceptualise it?

tbc this is not a 'fandom brainrot' post. because I don't think it's fanwork that's the root of the problem. I think it's the insidious creep of capitalism and the ever more draconian weaponisation of copyright law that has rewritten our capacity for talking about creative work so that it revolves at all times around ownership and precedent. there is a deep learned anxiety about describing fictional works as fictional properties, that echoes in our vocabulary as we constantly make clear what is owned and what is not, what has been established on the record and what exists in the realm of speculation.

the reason 'fandom brainrot' is such a compeling stand-in for this issue is that it's really just one step downstream from all that voracious rent-seeking behaviour by publishers. if the only things you ever read or watch are in the milieu of those franchise copyright lawyers, that is the understanding of fiction-as-property you develop. if you're not exposed to a broader spectrum of art and artists, living and dead, who talk about their work as work - as expression, as experimentation, as a personal process and as a shared space with their audience - you will quickly be alienated from your own creative practice by design.

the point i want to make is this: going off the beaten track, exploring outside the franchises and bestsellers and box office babies, is not just a matter of good taste. imo it is a necessary act of solidarity with artists who still live, work and speak as individuals. it's a healthier environment for you as an artist. you deserve a relationship with your own work, not a ship.

All You Need by ObliviaWrites

Released: January 2025

16k words; 3 chapters

Notable Tags: Class-C, Bimbofication, Vampirism

Status: Complete

A tribute to the incredible horny potential of Class Cs, featuring a bitter terran lapsed academic and the deadbeat affini neighbor whose attention she just can't seem to shake. Catamina Prince knows that something in her life needs to change. Since the affini arrived, her academic career has been in a downward spiral, her frustrations with the new status quo grow by the day, and she's never been more alone. Her annoying neighbor, Gracie, will not stop telling her to take it easy and sample her hospitality, but what does Gracie know? Catamina knows herself and she knows what she needs. Right?

...January's been a good month.

Class-Cs, or "bonding enhancers", are very hot. Citation: this fic. This is a beautiful corruption fic, about a Terran who really needs to chill out at least a little bit, and so gets an implant that dispenses class-Cs to help with it. Against her will, naturally. It is an extremely hot story, running that delightful border between dubcon and noncon, with a heaping helping of love potion.

Also, if I may offer a bit of paratext: Oblivia also made art of Gracie, reposted here with permission. Gracie looks like she stinks good.

LIke. Damn. Girl can get it.

Time to beat up the King.

—

Theory that Rouxls Kaard is actually kinda OP (and that he talks in butchered English because whatever he says in normal speech can automatically become a rule)

Lady Detective Reinhold is on the case! 🎀🔎✨

Some HDG art I drew recently :)

An "independent Terran" telling her strangely supportive friend on the Overnet all about how much she secretly wants to be domesticated by the Affini that just moved into the hab next door, blissfully unaware that they're one and the same.

Sharing all her deepest most intimate fantasies, asking if the Affini would like it if she started wearing companion dresses (her "friend" seemed incredibly enthusiastic about this one for some reason), confessing the desire to just give in and beg to become her floret is getting harder to resist every day, no idea she's been telling all of this to her soon-to-be Mistress until it's far too late.

Look y’all can hate MJ from the Tobey maguire trilogy idc but don’t let one of your reasons be that she was “always screaming” or that she was “always a damsel in distress”. Like??? Yeah she was constantly thrown into dangerous situations and didn’t have powers to defend herself against people that attacked her.

I know for a fact that y’all would scream if you were hanging onto a collapsing piece of building for dear life too. 🤨

been thinking about this concept for a while that when Morti starts transitioning  Rick gets a shock at realizing she reminds him of a younger Beth now

give that man a pussy. give that woman a dick. give him tits. give her a chest so flat you could stack cards on it. Grow up. get real