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wingsoffireconfessions · 6 years

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What do you guys think of cringe culture? I remember writing up my own dragons for WOF when I read it a lil while back, and I found a few of the drawings and I kinda cringed but remember how happy I was and I kinda wanna go back to it (mildly nervous of what ppl would think but still)

oh you have come to the right person for cringe culture talk

short answer:

it’s stupid, fake, and all-around bad

long answer, and boy is it long:

the problem with cringe culture is that is almost inevitably directed at children having harmless fun. think of something cringey; chances are, you thought of “ten year old’s bad op oc” before, for example, “40 year old man getting into debates about anime on the internet”*. chew on that for a sec. why is a child having innocent fun…

…a bad thing?

it’s really not! like, children interacting with their favorite media(s) by making a character - often a self-insert, we’ve all been there - is literally enjoying the story so much that they want to be a part of it. that’s good! that’s GREAT, even! that’s a sign you’re doing a damn good job as a writer / artist / filmmaker / etc - your fans are so hyped about your world that they’d want to exist in it.

but then the people in fandom who have already learned that OCs To Have Fun With Are Bad** pass that lesson on to the next decade of tweens who made something for themselves and had the judgement of the digital world come down on it like the hand of god.

my first notable ocs were;

- a silver dragon, who could heal herself from the brink of death because she drank from a pool of molten silver, who also lost an eye and was super scarred because she was always getting in fights to do good. she had extensive, elaborate, unnecessary adventures and, of course, a tragic parenthood arc because i had been reading warriors books

- a half-dragon, half-pegasus mlp oc who literally angsted so badly he unleashed town-flattening destructive power that was absolutely never explained, and then died, and then ended up alive again because i decided that was too sad. this was the entirety of his story.

- a human who drops out of school and drives away to a nearby town, where she’s given shelter by an elderly werewolf woman, falls in love with the werewolf’s adult granddaughter, and they open a small town cafe where they all live happily ever after, as far as life allows. the physical manifestation of Death is also there.

those can all be very cringe if looked at by someone who wants them to be. but, of course, with only a few alterations you could plausibly use these descriptions on the superhero Wolverine, Anakin Skywalker, and… well, okay, I can’t think of an equivalent for the last one because I’m making the gay fantasy slice of life book I want to see in the world, but 2/3 isn’t too bad. it probes my point, which is, essentially:

when the ‘cringey’ ideas are done by skilled producers and are meant to be seen and responded to by the world, cough and the characters are straight white cis men cough people will accept them.

when the ‘cringey’ ideas are done by children or other, less skilled creators, generally for a small audience or just to self-indulge, and don’t say minority content doesn’t play a part here bc it often is included as cringe for being minority, people will make entire blogs dedicated to mocking them for not being up to the same standard that their million-dollar-production-value source material has.

basically what im getting at here is like… the only cringey thing about cringe culture is that people still use the term, like, genuinely. it’s fake! you’re just putting a goofy name on mocking children on the internet! bake a cake or something!

so long as it’s not hurting anybody, what’s the hecking point in acting like it’s the end of the world that someone has an oc with a rare pigment mutation and powers unexpected for their species and has an angsty backstory where their family cast them out***?

if what you’re doing isn’t harmful, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. if you love something, love it. just don’t expect to be catered to if it’s not a media directed at you**** and don’t get in the way of the actual target audience enjoying it*****.

just be normal! just be a person enjoying something. i assure you that such a thing happens all the time. there are people who like star wars that don’t know what the word fandom means, and god some days i wish i were them.

*adults doing freaky shit are, in fact, the only people who deserve the term

**they have often learned this by being a part of the decade prior to the one that they are teasing. anyone who gets super upset about “””cringey””” ocs more than 10 years after having that phase needs to turn off the computer and go for a walk

***just so none of you get any ideas, this sentence is genuinely me describing one of my current OCs, Drifter

****looking at you, bronies

*****also looking at bronies; there used to be a designated safe search cleanup event bc of all the nsfw content of cute cartoon horses. as far as i know, this has not changed.

#cringe culture #long post #mod posts #wings of fire #wof #anonymous #ask

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