#Fasting salts

[lounesdarbois]

Cette vidéo de 6 minutes donne la pêche pour tenir bon dans une course qui va durer encore 25 longs jours. Le jeûne obligatoire est comme un tamis qui permet de trier qui est qui dans la masse. Les jours maigres, les jours gras, nous donnent de manger 1 jour sur 2 dans la semaine. Qui en est capable? La pratique religieuse est une course de fond spirituelle, et pourtant très physique. Il y a ceux qui courent... Et il y a les "pélerins non-marcheurs" comme on dit. On verra bien si les grosses dames tartuffes de paroisse toujours pressées de parler auront perdu chacune leurs 30 kilos surnuméraires d'ici le 31 Mars pour mesurer en actes la ferveur dont elles se réclament... Et qu'elles prêchent aux autres!

Ces deux moines remettent les idées en place et replacent les actes réels au bout des idées. Que leur dire à part un grand merci pour l'exemple qu'ils donnent?

[toyastales]

Salt and Pepper Chicken Wings

[ramona-quinn]

Blue's Bedtime Business Song GIFs

Video on YouTube

[twopoppies]

My dad is working on some pre-production details for the Brits. He told me that negotiations are underway regarding the Liam tribute. The Brits want 1D there no matter what. The most difficult option is for the boys to perform. The most viable options are for 1D to be given a special Brit and for the boys to go on stage to receive it or for them to give a special Brit for Liam to Geoff. The latter option is the most likely, although the Brits want 1D on stage, they also want this to revolve around Liam and not 1D.

Interesting. I don’t see them performing. At all. But the other option does seem a possibility.

[sinsydia]

Hi!! I've been scrolling through your blog looking in total awe at your art, the way you draw is such eye candy to me, and I gotta ask - how'd you get started with anatomy? How about coloring?

That is so so sweet!! Thank you!! Im sorry for the late reply, I'm trying to be better at these. But I'm here to answer your questions!

2020, I chose to follow the Michael Hampton Figure Drawing book, page by page. Took about 8 months but what I got from it is; GESTURE DRAWING. So from 2021 and forward (even now) I just do actual human studies. Very quick 10 second drawings over and over. Example below: 2021 vs. 2024

Coloring? Oh man, I don't even think I'm very good at this but what FORCED me to color more was actually background studies. Backgrounds force you to pay attention to lighting and light creates color! I won't go too into since I don't believe I have the experience but color to me gives mood and tone. I copied lots of ghibli and other professional background artist and I think that gave me the best understanding of color. I did take a perspective class back in college and the retained knowledge has helped immensely, even with anatomy! :3

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask! I don't believe in secrets lmao. Hope this helped a little!

[misssimp3]

ALL OF THE BEAST COOKIES ARE CONNECTED TO RELIGION IN SOME SORT OF WAY??

!! LEAKS ABOUT BEAST-YEAST 7 !!

Alright, with the new leaks about Beast-Yeast 7 we can EASILY say that Shadow Milk Cookie also has a religious representation!! Or just religious references!!

We can say that due to this asset, which is I assume "The Tree of Knowledge" which obviously has "The Forbidden Fruit"

(And oh God it fits Shadow Milk Cookie so well due to his virtue, the Virtue of Knowledge)

Because of this, I think it's no coincidence that Beast Cookies will ALWAYS have some sort of religious connection. This makes me wonder, What will the remaining Beast Cookies will represent?

So far we have:

1) Mystic Flour Cookie -> Buddhism (Han Buddhism)

2) Burning Spice Cookie -> Hinduism (Shaivism)

3) Shadow Milk Cookie -> Christianity (Assumably)

So what of the others? What will Eternal Sugar and Silent Salt Cookie represent?

(Oh and also each Beast is also based of a culture too)

And also before moving onto the other Beasts, what is Shadow Milk's denomination? Because both Mystic Flour and Burning Spice is in a denomination within the religion they represent so?? I think Shadow Milk could BE Orthodoxy but to be honest I don't really have any evidence and the leaks are not enough to determine a big thing like this alone, oh and I don't think I know much about Christianity Denominations too so I would like to hear about what some of you guys think as well! :P

THOUGH, I did say that I don't think I have enough evidence to determine which denomination it is, I THINK Shadow Milk Cookie COULD represent the Greek Culture. (Which is also associated with Orthodoxy in a religious way)

As Ancient Greece:

-Is known for having the freedom of thought

AND!

-Puppetry also comes from Ancient Greece

(These might be bit a off a stretch but PLEASE HEAR ME OUT ON THIS ONE GUYS 🙏🙏)

(oh and Shadow Milk Cookie could just be based off of Satan too but uhh still)

BACK TO ETERNAL SUGAR AND SILENT SALT COOKIE!

These one's are hard to be honest, as we hardly ever know anything about them 😭 YET, maybe:

Eternal Sugar Cookie -> Taoism

Why? Well I have two reasons!

1) Yin and Yang

Eternal Sugar Cookie has BOTH angel wings and also a DEVIL TAIL in their design so I think they could represent the balance in Taoism (although I am not quite sure if the tail is the result of their corruption)

2) Immortality

Well not actually immortality, but rather Eternal Life. Taoism is known for people that believes in the existence of an eternal life. And that "death" is just an another phase in life, which could be related to the "Forgotten Sugar Paradise" (as Paradise is already there)

As for Silent Salt Cookie, well things are A LOT More complicated for them. 😭

Honestly, it could be related to a religion that has multiple Gods due to their Virtue being Solidarity but it makes no sense at the same time so I don't think I could say much about them.

Hope that we'll see more of them in the future 🙏

Anyhow, I think that's all I can come up with, looking forward to see if other people agree or have different opinions on this topic too!!

(Y'all I am so invested in them please share some theories >0<)

[larissa-the-scribe]

Tell Me About This Time Loop, Again?

And so it begins... @inklings-challenge

Day 12

In Zo's mind, it never felt like the day was properly begun until Lyn woke up, looked around at the room they'd been staying in, frowned, and said—

Day 13

"Where are we? And why does it feel so... familiar?"

"Well you see," Zo replied, as he always did, peeking at the underside of the egg he was frying, "we're stuck in a time loop."

Day 14

"A time loop?" Lyn swung her feet over the side of the bed, seeming to realize for the first time that she was in one.

"Don't worry, it's clean." After confirming they were, indeed, in a time loop, one of the first things he had suggested was finding a comfortable place to set up camp. Somehow it had worked, and they had ended up there every time things reset. "And there doesn't seem to be anyone around, so I don't think we're stealing or trespassing." 

Lyn raised an eyebrow. 

Day 15

"Well, we might be, but no one minds. It's a ghost town. Everyone seems to have disappeared." And since it was a time loop, they never ran out of cooking gas. Or food supplies. That, at least, was convenient. 

"Disappeared?" Lyn stood up, adjusting her shirt from how it had gotten scrunched up in the night. Despite her attempts to look bright-eyed and alert, he could see the sleepiness that still hung from her eyes. 

Day 16

"Our best guess so far is that it's connected to the time loop." Zo flipped the eggs. If this all persisted, he could open up a fried-egg restaurant once they got out; he was getting an absurd amount of practice flipping eggs.

"That makes sense." Lyn padded over to the window, still barefoot, and pushed the shutters open. "Do we have any evidence, or is that just, well, a guess?" 

Her gaze swept the view, which he knew without looking was nothing more than the empty lines of blocky, one-story buildings and the too-smooth black-top of the streets. The neighborhood was pressed together as if sheltering from the plains beyond the town, with such a veneer of newness covering it all that each house might have been churned out of a factory yesterday. They hadn't been, though, considering the subtle signs of wear and tear inside the houses. 

"Eh, a bit of both. Something weird is clearly going on with the area, and we know time is affected, too, so it's a logical guess that the two are connected. Whether that means some psycho wiped the town out before setting up their experiment, or just that their timey-wimey dealybob messed up physics in general is still up for debate. Do you want toast?"

"Yes, please."

Day 17

"Good. We have to finish the bread before it goes stale." Zo left the 'in case we get to the next day' implicit.

"I'm surprised we still have butter. I thought it would have gone bad in your pack."

"It smells a bit odd, but so far we haven't been affected by it."

Day 18

"Okay, but how do you know we're in a time loop?" Lyn asked, setting the table. 

They were in a ground-level studio apartment, so the dining room, kitchen, and bed were all in the same space. No couch, which Zo took to mean that the owner was either poor or a cheapskate. Either way, it was disappointing. Still, the carpet wasn't bad. He'd slept on worse.

"Because you've asked me that so many times I've lost track of the number," Zo said, "and you seem thoughtful every time, like you're not as surprised as you thought you'd be." 

She nodded and set a fork down carefully, wearing the expression she always did just then, brows squeezing down over far-away eyes.

"In all fairness, though," Zo clarified, "I mostly lost track because I wasn't really counting, and then it seemed pointless to start. It's been over two weeks, though, I'm fairly certain."

Day 19

She smiled, and the tension in her brows eased a bit. "This all does feels familiar. Like, I don't remember the other days, but all of this feels like I should, somehow, know what happens next. But I don't."

"I do know," Zo replied, "and it's getting a bit tiresome."

"Fair."

Zo nodded, slotting toast into the toaster. "Very. Whoever owned this place pretty much only had eggs in their fridge. I'm not sure how many more days in a row I can eat those without losing my mind."

Lyn looked up sharply.

Day 20

"Relax," he said, waving his spatula, "they respawn every day, so I don't think it's even technically stealing. If it is, we can pay them back later. There's a fully-stocked but unmanned convenience store down the road, one which we have very nobly not taken anything from, every single day."

"Good," Lyn sighed. "After all, if we get out today, we wouldn't want to be rewarded by jail for petty theft." She tacked on a fierce look at the end of the sentence.

Zo shrugged, and let Lyn interpret the gesture as she would. "Eggs are almost done."

Day 21

"Good. I'm weirdly hungry. Also, thank you for breakfast."

"Don't mention it," Zo smiled. "It's nothing I haven't done many times before."

[themortaldraw]

july is disability pride month, here's a skord link that Needs Salt

[gentil-minou]

Wait I figured it out

This is the Miraculous Movie sponsored by Agreste Fashion and produced by Gabriel Agreste

This is like basically propaganda released that's like the bare minimum of the canon characters it's his ooc characters

Ladybug and chat noir actually don't do anything and are bad heroes amd gabriel agreste is just a misunderstood father

Guys it's just miraculous as told by gabriel agreste

[riacte]

Alright I love love love Skizz but why did people for FALSE & Skizz instead of False & H???? What???

It is because False gets overlooked even in a False centric poll. This is a pattern. Also sorry for using your ask as a vent post lol.

I love Skizz and his energy, I think he's awesome with people, he is certainly good at the whole "duo thing" buuuut this is not a Skizz duo poll. Or even a Hermitcraft duo poll. It is a False duo poll. I think people voted for Skizz because of Skizz, not False, or even Skizz-False. Like yeah it was funny when Skizz held False hostage in the charity event. But are people voting for moments like that or do they just like Skizz in general?

This was also what I was trying to see with the False MCC poll— 17 is of course iconic as a whole, and especially for Grian, and I would definitely rank it very high in a Hermit MCC poll (possibly right behind Blue9, sorry Orange10). But False had better performances in 29 and 10, and 9 had better chemistry than 17 because she didn't really get spoken over in 9. Or 10 and 29. (Whereas in 17 it was a Thing enough for Pete to mention it afterwards apparently.) 17 has cool False moments of course— SG the one I remember the most— but people don't really bring that up. So did people vote for 17 in a False centric poll because they liked False's performance in 17 and overall team chemistry (things related to and influenced by False) or because they like 17 in general?

It is not that deep but also seeing False's diminishing relevance in the mainstream HC fandom over the years is kinda... disappointing. Someone who's never watched a hermit on MCCReddit will mention False Supremacy. HBomb's chat loves False. Like I don't even know what happened?? False has been posting regularly, always have, she does her builds and collabs and pranks and infrastructure, she won the first event of the season, outsiders love her, and...? Like don't we love our slay cool #girlboss queen of hearts? Or does she need a different fanon archetype now? The mischievous prankster? The silly wet cat? The healer type who loves animals and gives them stupid names? The competitive warrior? Would you still love me when I'm no longer the designated girlboss of the group or whatever

Like ok yeah this is me being bitchy and a gatekeeper and False isn't even the most underrated hermit and she gets her share of love in fanart and stuff but yeah I've noticed the decline. You've got Redditors mentioning Empires people in the crossover in response to someone asking about Empires but not mentioning one hermit who was actually also in Empires. You've got people talking about "Hermitgals" but they replace False and Stress with Lizzie. You've got the fallout of Demise 2. You've got Redditors talking about Rendoc in relation to Ren like his only relevance is being Doc's friend/collab buddy when False exists and she's his favourite hermit. And you've got the False duo poll. Won't even go into the view counts/ sub counts because that's depressing for what feels like at least a third of the hermits (Cubfan you deserve way more). Doesn't feel good.

Back in 2020/21 she got shat on and her achievements ignored by some DSMP fans and now the same thing is happening but it's worse because it's from some HC fans. The call is coming from inside the house. And once again False isn't even the most overlooked hermit. For example Iskall STILL gets horrific hate comments about how he doesn't "deserve" to be a hermit because he plays VH more.

Hermitcraft is popular. I wish the other third of it is more popular.

[squishsquishy]

>> mcdonalds_india

[asurrogateblog]

The Syd Poll

the topic of this poll is one that is frequently avoided in the pink floyd fandom, but inevitably one we all consider – our individual views on what we think caused syd's psychological struggles (and by extension, led to his departure from the band). I think that – at least in this neighborhood of tumblr – this is a conversation we are capable of having in a way that is civil, nuanced, and at least minimally disrespectful to syd.

So, to help facilitate this, here are some ground rules:

let's all assume we have a mutual understanding of the complexities of this. syd could never actually be reduced down to a poll, and all of our viewpoints are limited in various ways

the poll options just serve as just a conversation starter, and responses are not necessarily a statement of absolute beliefs

feel free to discuss as much or as little of your own perspective as you feel comfortable sharing.

in the case that debates break out, please try to assume good intent – and also demonstrate it (unless, for instance, someone is being blatantly insulting beyond a misunderstanding that needs correcting)

please do NOT vote if you are not actually a pink floyd fan with at least basic knowledge about what we're talking about here.

The options I've included below are not meant to be exhaustive, they are simply the "theories" that I have seen most commonly circulated. I have also decided not to include combinations. I'm fairly sure we'd all agree multiple factors were involved. Rather than make the poll too complicated, I ask you to instead select the one that you think is the "most" important to your viewpoint, and clarify further in your tags/comments as you wish.

so. here we go.

READ BEFORE VOTING ^^^^

(note of correction: "late-onset schizophrenia" should just be "schizophrenia". the typical timeline for onset of symptoms is late adolescence/early adulthood, so syd would've been well within that period at the time)

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I was rooting for Gabriel having a redemption arch, but even I know that what we got in the show was anything BUT.

How would you handle it? If you were to succesfully redeem Gabriel? How would you do it?

I'm not opposed to a Gabriel redemption arc, but it would be very hard to do without some serious and careful character development or serious edits to canon. My preference is option two because option one risks something that is a hard no for me: glorifying the cycle of abuse. We'll still talk about both paths because it's worth discussion and we'll start with the easy one, which is rewriting canon to remove the abuse.

Rewriting Gabriel

The easiest way to give Gabriel a redemption is to make him a good father. Someone who clearly loves Adrien in a healthy, non-possessive way. Someone who is at least trying to have Adrien's best interests at heart. Someone who is willing to let Adrien do things that make Adrien happy.

To make Gabriel into this kind of character, we would need to remove all - or at least most - of the manipulation. Things like when Adrien asked to no longer be a model and Gabriel used that as an excuse to make an AI Adrien and then told Adrien that his options were to either tolerate the AI or go back to being a model:

Adrien: Dad, I'm not really comfortable with having my face on all these rings. That's actually why I didn't want to be a model anymore, to avoid that. Do you understand? Gabriel: Of course, I understand, my son. But that's the point; it's just an image, it's not you! And since this image frees you from your obligations, we, the Agrestes, are able to spend more time together. But if you'd rather everything went back to the way it was before, just say the word.

We'd also need to get rid of every moment when Adrien seemed to fear his father like this scene from Illusion where Adrien spilled spaghetti on Gabriel and then immediately started freaking out like he was afraid of being hit or otherwise punished:

Adrien: Yes, I forgot my school bag. (spills the spaghetti on Gabriel’s clothes, but Gabriel remains calm) Oops! Oh, sorry, Dad! You must be so angry! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!

These moments are easy to write because they allow Gabriel to come across as evil and scary without the audience knowing anything about him. In other words, they work wonderfully with the whole "every episode must stand fully alone" rule. But if we ignore that rule and say that Gabriel is allowed to be nuanced, then we can replace this straightforward writing with more complex writing that requires you to watch multiple episodes in order to understand what's going on in the broader story.

In this new version of canon, we wouldn't have to change much story wise. We could keep the same general story beats. The only big change is that we'd see Gabriel struggle between his grief, his love for his son, and his desperation to restore his wife. This would mean little moments of nuance like Gabriel changing his mind about the day's akuma because his planned akuma would knowingly putting Adrien at risk and Gabriel won't do that, so he has to swap plans on the fly, leading to some of his more wacky akumas. This setup allows for a Gabriel who is still a super villain, but he's now a super villain with principles who refuses to let those he loves be harmed in his quest.

A more minor change is that Adrien's fear of his father would be replaced with a more complex setup. Instead of fear, Adrien is now held back grief because he's a teenage boy who is grieving and who knows that his parent is also grieving, but who doesn't know what to do about any of that. In this setup, the father-son conflict is not abuser and victim but two grief-stricken individuals who no longer know how to connect because a vital element of their relationship has forever changed. You know, the kind of setup you'd expect for a family where the relatively young mother died less than a year ago.

I've talked about this kind of setup leading to a corruption arc, but you could also use it for a redemption arc. If Gabriel never goes against his principles and always puts Adrien first even if it means losing Emilie, then you maintain Gabriel as a complex and nuanced character who would believably stop his quest as soon as he learned Chat Noir's identity or was otherwise put in a position to once and for all choose between his son and his wife. (Which could be how we get our next villain if the story doesn't end with Gabriel's lose.)

While I thought that the movie adaptation was too rushed to make it's ending really work, it does show the template for this path. A path I would have personally loved, but it's not the path we got in the show so let's talk about option two.

Redeeming Canon Gabriel

Whether or not he understands what he's doing, canon Gabriel is an abuser. He controls and manipulates his son without any concern for what Adrien wants because Gabriel seems to view Adrien as a perfect doll and not a real human being with his own wants and needs.

Quick senti rant: This is yet another reason that I hate the sentistuff. Because sentimonsters are so poorly defined, that the sentiplot does kind of validate Gabriel's POV and that's not a good thing. This is extra true since Gabriel's part in that plot ended with Gabriel essentially giving Marinette ownership of Adrien by passing on the rings. I talked about it at length here, but I think the only way to make the sentiplot work in the context of canon is for it to end with Gabriel realizing that he needs to view Adrien as more than a doll and I think the only way to really do that is to have Gabriel use the wish to free his son.

Back to the main discussion in which Adrien is a real boy and we ignore the senti complication!

In order for canon Gabriel to be redeemed, he must acknowledge his abuse and make recompense for what he's done. Adrien must also acknowledge his father's abuse and be allowed to decide what that means for their relationship as Adrien is the victim and, when it comes to reconciliation, the victim should be the one calling the shots, not the abuser. This is a complex and nuanced process that would take an intense amount of screen time to make work. I do think you could do it, but once again, it would require Miraculous to get rid of that whole, "every episode must stand fully alone" rule.

Off the top of my head, if I had to take this route, I'd have season five end with Gabriel losing. I also wouldn't let him die or do his grand plan. Instead, I'd have him lose without a big public reveal by having Felix or Nathalie reveal Gabriel's identity to Ladybug and Chat Noir. This would lead to Gabriel being stopped in an epic battle between our two heroes.

Once Gabriel has been subdued and the full story has been revealed (because it would be so much more satisfying coming from Gabriel and not freaking Felix), Ladybug would contact the guardians to see if Emilie could be saved. This is a path Gabriel never had the chance to take because the Guardians weren't around until quite recently. (I'd probably make it so that Gabriel didn't even know that the Guardians were back.) The Guardian's answer would, of course, be yes, but it would require some special lost item or other BS that the heroes need to get/do first.

At the same time, we'd learn that there is a new bigger, badder villain. I'm thinking Tomoe, but Lila, Felix, and/or Nathalie are also options. No matter which one we pick, Gabriel would have knowledge about the new villain that no one else does. Knowledge that is not easily given. In order to save his wife, Gabriel agrees to help the heroes with the new villain and they agree to help save Emilie (they would have done that anyway, but Gabriel doesn't need to know that).

Over the course of this plot line, Gabriel would become less of a recluse and, as a result, he'd get out of his own head and start to regret his actions as he comes to view the heroes as people, not obstacles. This plot line would really lean into the idea that Gabriel never viewed his actions as real because he'd always planned to reset everything with the wish, so what did it matter if he hurt people? It was all just a bad dream that they'd forget once he'd won and set everything right.

Now that his hope of resetting everything is gone and his actions have actual weight in his mind, he'd be incredibly remorseful about the way he treated Adrien, so he'd pull away from his son. At the same time, he'd be bonding with Chat Noir, whose identity was never revealed. This would eventually lead to a reveal whose time and place was fully chosen by Adrien. A reveal that would only take place once Adrien felt that his father had truly changed and come to regret what he'd done.

Bonus element to this idea: the Gabriel-Adrien reveal would be our new identity shenanigan hook, meaning that the love square could reveal themselves without removing that element of the story. It would just have a new main flavor.

The Cycle of Abuse

I mentioned at the top that you have to be incredibly careful about redeeming abusers because it can glorify the cycle of abuse. I wanted to end by talking about what I meant by that as I think that far too many pieces of media accidentally glorify this cycle because they don't put the necessary effort into their redemption arcs. When it's media aimed at teens and adults, I just kind of sigh and stop consuming it. When it's media aimed at kids, I get legitimately upset because the cycle of abuse is already hard enough to escape without media helping you internalize it at a young age where you don't have the skills to understand fiction vs reality.

There are a lot of in-depth articles and books about the cycle of abuse, so I won't go too deep here. I'll just link one article and go over the basics which is that abuse is often not constant. In many cases, it follows a clear pattern in which there's an incident of abuse, followed by some form of reconciliation, followed by a period of true calm and happiness, but that calm and happiness never lasts. There will eventually be another incident of abuse and the cycle will start all over again. It's an existence of the highest highs and lowest lows where the victim has true hope that things will get better only for that hope to be cruelly dashed to pieces again and again.

This cycle is one of the many things that can make it hard for victims to leave or even identify the abuse depending on what form the abuse takes. After all, no one is perfect and we want to support our loved ones. If a person does something mean and then apologizes, we want to believe that apology. This very normal series of events can be paired with the cycle of abuse to keep a victim trapped because they think that they're a bad person if they give up on their abuser who is, "trying to get better," or some other excuse. But that's not what's actually happening. While the abuser is saying what the victim wants to hear and may even mean it in the moment, if they're not actually doing any work to change, then it's just another reconciliation round in the cycle of abuse.

This is why it's so important to have media that tells you that it's okay to give up on people. That their happiness is not your responsibility. It's also a big reason why I like the idea of redeeming character A while not redeeming character B. That setup lets you have that positive message of redemption while also presenting the idea that redemption is never a sure path. You can only redeem those who want to change (even if it's for a selfish reason) and who are willing to put in the work. A thing that you can really highlight and drive home when you do the A vs B setup.

Before we move on, I will note that there are abusive relationships that don't look like the cycle. The cycle is simply a very common pattern. The thing that makes it "special" when it comes to writing is that it's the type of abuse that's easiest to glorify and/or romanticize if you're not careful in your writing, which brings us back to Miraculous.

Miraculous actually demonstrated the cycle of abuse horrifically well in season five. In this season, we see things like Gabriel giving Adrien apologies and permission to call him "dad." Acts of reconciliation that were followed by blissful happiness for Adrien who desperately wants his father's love. But of course, that happiness never lasted. In the end, Gabriel always destroyed it with a new act of abuse because he is an abuser. An abuser who loves his son, but an abuser none the less because love doesn't stop abuse.

Because of this, if you want to write a realistic redemption, then you cannot give Gabriel a simple redemption where he apologizes and everything is suddenly okay. You have to differentiate his "true" apology from the others. You have to make it clear that this isn't just another round in the cycle of abuse both to tell a good story and so that little kids can hopefully internalize the difference between when you need to run away and when it's safe to stick around.

Another important element in getting this message right is allowing the victim character to be the one who is in charge of the reconciliation. Generally speaking, the victim should be super wary about reconciling because - for this to work - they need to be fully aware that there has been past abuse so that they can make a fully informed choice about what that means for them and their relationship with their abuser. It's not a true reconciliation if the victim is totally oblivious to the fact that they've been wronged.

Because of this, the true reconciliation will usually be a drawn out process wherein the abuser and the victim don't reconcile until the abuser has unequivocally proven themself as changed to really highlight the difference between an actual reconciliation and the kind of temporary reconciliation we see in the cycle. This why my hypothetical solution has a love square reveal and Gabriel avoiding Adrien out of shame.

That route allows Adrien to have full control over the situation as Ladybug can accommodate his needs, allowing Chat Noir to have 0 required interactions with his father. All required interactions are handled by Ladybug or other teammates so that all of the interactions that happen between Gabriel and Chat Noir feel like Chat Noir's freely made choice. This setup also allows Adrien and Gabriel to be on more equal footing in terms of power, an extremely important element of reconciliation. A lot of damaged parent-child relationships don't fully heal until the child is an adult and the parent loses their power.

All of the above is why I'm wary of giving abusers redemption arcs into happy close relationships with their victims (I'm much more liberal with redemption arcs into happiness with people they never hurt and/or where they're redeemed, but not super close with their victims). I'm extra wary in the context of children's media as it can be harder for kids to understand nuance and this is an incredibly important topic to get right.

That doesn't mean it can't be done. It can! It just requires a lot of effort to do it right. Most of the time, stories with this type of redemption feel lackluster and honestly make me a little sick to my stomach because it's so common to go the lazy route where a single apology is all that's required. It's why I'm super wary of the whole "enemies to lovers" thing. I like the concept it in theory, but more often than not, it ends up being abuser-and-victim to lovers, which is a hard pass for me. I don't judge people who enjoy that stuff in fiction or role-play settings, it's just not my cup of tea. Be it fiction or reality, I want couples that feel healthy and families/teams that I'd love to be a part of.

Since this was a serious one, let's end on a topical, but humorous short from ProDZ where he very accurately sums up your standard bad-guy redemption and why I don't like it. I love the redeeming power of love, but like all tropes, part of doing it well is knowing what story setups are suited to it and which ones are not.

[forestgreenlesbian]

.

[trivialbob]

Once a year or so I get a craving (well, a small hankering) for Burger King or Arby's. Yesterday's mail supplied me with these two pages of coupons, one for each restaurant. I got hungry.

Both restaurants have locations not far from the brewery I go to. Last night the brewery introduced a new, whiskey barrel aged red ale. I'm fond of barrel aged beers.

On the way there I stopped by BK and used a $3.99 coupon for chicken fries and French fries. Not a bad deal these days; I've seen how high fast food prices can be. That particular BK looks busy during the lunch hour but is depressingly quiet in the afternoons and evenings. There's nothing wrong with it though.

At the brewery I got my beer and sat down at a table. The food I brought smelled good. I ate a few hot French fries and tasted... so much salt. I could not eat many. The chicken fries also were salty, but not so much that I couldn't eat them. Enough salt though that my craving was quashed for another year, at least.

This Halloween themed Whopper on the back of the coupons did not appeal to me at all. A sign posted in the restaurant said the purple color comes from potatoes. The color could have come from grape Jolly Ranchers, purple licorice or Jelly Belly beans for all I care, but seeing that bun made me think of purple windshield wiper fluid and beets. No thank you.

[cthulhubert]

Alright, so bear with me.

Humans have three cone cells in our eyes that are how we perceive color in the world. I often think red, green, and blue, but apparently people studying them use Long, Medium, and Short to be unambiguous (just for one example, if you activate M really strongly and not L or S, the color people report seeing is yellow-green). Each type activates at different strengths to different wavelengths of light. Here's a lovely graphic from Wikipedia showing response levels of each cone type to different wavelengths:

So you can see that if some light activates L some, but not M, we'll perceive deep red, activates them both a bit, we see orange or yellow, depending on the specific amount.

It's interesting that some effect (a specific mix of pigments, or some structural coloration) could be producing some mostly 495nm light, or a blend of some slightly higher and slightly lower wavelengths, and either way we see cyan. (And a good thing, too, otherwise our display technology would be extremely unconvincing.)

Of course, then there's what happens when we get activation of L and S at once, but not M, our eye-brain systems don't infer "yellow-green", because green is specifically what's missing from there: we generate magenta, a non-spectral color. (And when all three activate we get white, of course.)

I found myself thinking about birds, with their four cones.

They're more evenly spaced too, the bastards. (These bastards are specifically finches but I'm under the impression that most birds are similar.)

(Of course, "violet" actually means ultra-violet here. Look at the graphic, their UV cone stops responding where our S cone starts. I would edit this, but spent like half an hour discovering that tumblr doesn't support table under html or code/"preserve formatting" under markdown anymore; so you get a screencap of what I sent on discord.)

Birds could see "vio-green" (accepting name suggestions) as a color region as distinct from blue/indigo as green is from purple/magenta.

Look at that. Two whole ass independent spectral color divisions we don't have, and six non-spectral inferences. Eight whole categories of visual perception more than us. Decadent.

The heart quails to imagine what the 16 color receptors of a mantis shrimp would create. I mean, okay, it doesn't because we've studied their eyes and brains and they don't blend colors the way we do, smooshing them down to a much simpler set of perceptions.

But imagine if we rebuilt our eyes and brains for it! Color indicates chemistry, with that level of subtle blending of characteristics, would vision become like tasting everything we look at?

Please pet the bear that is with me on your way out.