#I've never heard of her

[thatiranianphantom]

The solution seems so incredibly simple that they all spend more than a few minutes mentally kicking themselves for not thinking of it sooner.

Particularly Bess, the self-proclaimed #1 Nace shipper in the world (the description makes both Nancy and Ace cringe.)

It wouldn't even take magic that advanced, Bess and Addy assure them. It's not a break, and Temperance was clear about wanting to torture Nancy and Ace in specific, not the rest of them.

(George mumbles under her breath about how the neverending pining and longing glances were absolutely torture for her, and how "that bitch cursed all five of us".)

Nancy and Ace both struggle to believe it could be so simple. That the agony that they both experienced in those five weeks could have easily been undone.

But evidently, it could have been. Temperance was vague about the parameters surrounding the curse, and according to Bess, "a vague disclaimer is nobody's friend."

So they don't break the curse, in specific. In the millionth example of Nancy's friends coming through for her, they agree to shoulder the burden.

And with what does turn out to be a relatively simple ritual, the curse is transferred between all three of them. Now, a death curse links Ace with George, Bess and Nick.

And that should be enough, but that Nick, ever the responsible one, insists they can't let Nancy and Ace go (they'd been edging towards the door, slowly walking closer and closer together with every step) without testing if they've been successful.

This time, however, the vagueness surrounding the curse parameters absolutely do not work for the crew.

Gestures and words were, by Nancy and Ace's testings, not included within the curse. But physical actions were.

"The curse was active when Nancy and Ace went to kiss. So that means...we need to replicate that scenario in order to test if it's active on us," Bess explains, though the eagerness that before surrounded the ritual is distinctively gone from her tone.

"Couldn't Nancy and I just kiss again to test if the curse is off us?" Ace offers, and Bess looks sorely tempted before shaking her head.

"That'd show us if the curse is off you two, but not if it's been transferred to us. No, we have perform....a physical gesture of love with Ace." Now, there is an unmistakeable note of disgust in Bess' tone.

(And again, Nancy is endlessly grateful for her friends, because absolutely nobody looks enthused about this but they step forward anyway.)

They line up three glass bottles fished from the recycling on the mantle, insurance, a warning singal.

Characteristically, Nick offers to go first. Get it over with, he says. He slides into Ace with a hesitance that is so entertaining that Nancy covers her mouth to stifle the giggles. Nick clears his throat at least six times in the thirty seconds it takes to be face-to-face with Ace. He seems not to know what to do with his hands, his fists opening and closing, but settles on putting his hands on Ace's shoulders.

"Like a football huddle, just like a football huddle," they hear him mutter under his breath. With great hesitance, he presses his forehead against Ace's and goes in for the kiss when the first bottle shatters.

Nick jumps back instantly, much farther than was probably necessary.

"Well," he says, clapping Ace on the shoulder. "Better to have loved and lost, I guess. Bess, your turn."

"Yes, I suppose it is," Bess groans. She tiptoes up to Ace, keeping her legs a great distance away and leaning her upper body in slightly.

Nancy can see her shake her head, hear her whisper "do it for the Nace account. Do it for the people of Twitter." She can see Bess fight a shiver as she leans in towards Ace, such that they may as well be kissing from different zip codes. Bess' eyes are squeezed tightly closed and her lips are puckered when the bottle finally shatters."

"Oh, thank god," she gasps, jumping back.

("This is such an ego boost," Nancy hears Ace murmur under his breath.)

"And that just leaves..."

George lets out a very extended groan as she reluctantly stands. The room they're using at Icarus Hall isn't huge, and Nancy has seen George move quickly, but somehow it takes her at least three minutes to cross the room and stand within 100 feet of Ace.

"George. Pleasure to finally see you," Ace grins, and she fixes him with a glare.

"You know what? Maybe I can handle a bit more pining."

"George," Bess warns.

"Fine." She inches in closer, bit by bit, somehow managing to get half her body closer while the other half moves further away. Her whole face is puckered in disgust, and Nancy can see her holding her breath as she gets close enough to Ace to kiss.

"This has gotta be close enough for a freaking death curse," she mutters under her breath, but evidently, it is not, because the bottle remains uncracked.

Nancy has seen George approach a sea spirit with more enthusiasm, but she finally gets close enough that she is a breath away from Ace, and mercifully, the bottle shatters.

She leaps away in an instant, wiping her face.

"Oh my god, lips of Ace," she gasps. "I need a palate cleanser. I need..."

George looks around frantically, before her gaze falls on Nick. Determined, she strides up to him and pulls him into a passionate kiss, with more tongue than was probably needed among company.

The kiss seems to go on and on, but George looks significantly calmer after, and nobody misses the look that passes between her and Nick after.

"Better?" Nick whispers, his gaze on George. She nods, a small smile quirking at her lips and a pregnant moment passes between them.

It's broken by a low whistle. "Soo..." Ace starts.

"This was...great. Really flattering. Super ego boost."

"And we both just...really appreciate the...support," Nancy cuts in. "Looks like a...really successful curse transfer. Top notch. But, uh, if nobody minds, we have a broken curse to celebrate, so we're gonna..."

She waves a hand vaguely in the direction of the door which she and Ace are rapidly stepping towards, and a few seconds later, they're gone.

Another long moment passes before George breaks it. "Do you think Nancy realizes this is her house?"

Nick casts a look out the window. "Or Ace realizes he's our ride?"

[mercifultehlu]

Hello. Hi. Hey. I come bearing moicy fics.

So. I pretty much did Nanowrimo in October (by accident) for this intensely plot heavy spooky fic about these pretend lesbians (mind the rating, it's E for Every reason tumblr hates). I blame the moicy brainrot, this one Halloween lecture I had in uni that taught me way too much about fictional physiology, and the existential dread of the inky blackness of space, and there's your summary packed full of spoilers (if you squint hard enough to close your eyes). It's finished now, and it's cool, I promise, said the completely unbiased author.

Regards,

Polymorphic

If E fics intimidate you (same tbh), then I also have a moicy fic that shoves the hc they were exes into current canon (they only touch through angsty osmosis). Writing this one healed my delusional soul. 

Thank you for your consideration, 

Dear Shadow

[starfira]

Just remembered that time when a girl was mean to me in college so I stole her shower caddy 4 times over the course of a few months cuz she was stupid and kept leaving it in the dorm hallway

[vaguely-concerned]

are. are you telling me that if the romanced mage warden dies and alistair is king, he deadass stares greagoir down over her dead body and grants the circle of ferelden its autonomy after ordering it rebuilt somewhere safer. first you have to deliberately leave him behind so he won't die for you and then he does that for you once you're gone, even when you're broken up??? absolute and literal king behaviour of the highest order????? the actions speak louder than words of it all??????? I think I hauve covid

[lilbit-of-kizzy]

So I randomly found a shiny Chancy today lol

[gayofthefae]

Girl, I'm so sorry, but if you he really was gonna tell her he loved her before Argyle interrupted them, I would not want somebody to say to me

"I guess, I just, I don't know, I guess I just wanted to say that I love you."

You guess you love me? What, you don't know? Be sure then come back to me.

[trashyshrew]

[antiyourwokehomophobia2]

I wonder why lesbians are the only sexuality where a subset of us will have sex but refuse to be touched by our partners. Like. No other sexuality has that, I'm pretty sure.

[ooowyn]

return of the starwars disease

[essektheylyss]

You know what's hilarious, if Ludinus was indeed a young man being traumatized by the end of the Calamity. Deirta Thelyss is almost certainly older than he is.

This is not relevant but I think Essek should bring this up, just to be a bitch about it.

[shitpostingkats]

Okay I'm back on grinding out money pins in NEO (as you do) and I'm sorry was anyone going to tell me that the overpowered Gatto Nero pins are each named after a season and the flavor text says they're engraved with the words "seasons greetings"

Implying they were released as seasonal promotions, And, someone in the UG, who had access to pins, would be able to collect them, and be able to tell what time of year it was, perhaps important because their grasp of the passage of time is shaky, wherever they are. And perhaps they could read the pin, and be protected, not just by the power of the psychs, but by knowing that, somewhere, somewhere in the real world, the person who made the pin is trying to say hello?

Or was I supposed to notice on my own and come up with this elaborate headcanon on my own?

[tarmac-rat]

Eyesets so good they might genuinely make me change my 4-year-old preset

[toastery]

alright guys, this game is killing me, i just had sex with minthara for the first time after the goblin party and then she put a knife to my throat with intention to kill and now im just in love with her, like yaaassss drow babe with deep seeded fear and horror and death in your past and very soul, ill follow you to moonrise and crush everything you believe and have put your faith into, we'll be broken, but beautiful together

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

The fandom can't make up its mind on what's supposed to be a joke and what's supposed to be serious because the show can't either half the time. It's a tonally disjointed mess that wants to have absurd over-the-top humor as well as a plot and moments of drama, romance, and angst that demand you see the characters as people and feel for what they're going through. Except you can't do that without also treating the dumb bullshit in a somewhat grounded way. Like, you're still dealing with the same characters. You can't just go "Oh, that? Let's ignore that!" the moment it's no longer convenient to you. You've opened this can of worms and now you have to sleep in it. So, every character flip-flops between two different versions of themselves depending on what the writers need in any particular scene.

This is not to say surreal humor can't be used right alongside characters you're supposed to empathize with, Teen Titans (not Go) did that and it worked. It's just that the absurdity can only come from the setting (Mad Mod, Mother Mae-Eye, pretty much anything Control Freak is in) or from designated joke characters (Date With Destiny). Teen Titans never had the main characters acting in clearly absurd ways as the butt of a joke unless those characters were brainwashed somehow, because the writers knew that would ruin any of the more grounded moments they wanted to write. The writers of Miraculous missed the memo on that one.

I don't disagree. A perfect example is Derision where the show takes all of the bad jokes about Marinette's crush and decides to take them seriously as if you can possible take them seriously without making Marinette come across as unhinged and dangerous. You can't, which brings us to the topic at hand: how do you even begin to understand these characters when the show is constantly making character-breaking choices?

My approach - and the approach I recommend others take if they're going to keep watching the show - is to focus on the characters' cores and reject anything canon does to violate those cores. I don't argue for this stance because I love the characters so much that I only want the good things to count. I take this stance because, if you don't, then the characters fall apart. There is no way to make them work as fully realized characters while embracing every choice canon has made. Miraculous has massive characterization issues that go well beyond the humor.

For example, Adrien has multiple moments of terrible behavior that are played in a serious manner such as the moment in the episode Frozer where he tries to start a fight with Ladybug in the middle of an akuma attack because she wouldn't accept a rose from him earlier:

Setup

Ladybug: I can't accept this rose from you. I told you already. I'm in love with someone else. Cat Noir: I know, M'lady. But if he weren't here, would things be different between us? Ladybug: Well, you know, I can't even begin to imagine him not being here. I'm sorry, Cat Noir. I really gotta get going, and you better do the same. (Swings her yo-yo to head back home; Cat Noir is sad, looking downwards, with one petal of the rose falling.)

Payoff

Ladyice: Cat Noir. We need to set up a trap for whoever turned the city into a giant ice rink. (throws yo-yo) Icecat: (bitterly) My feline instincts prefer to track and observe before I attack. You go your way, I'll go mine. Ladyice: Please don't tell me you're mad at me about the rose. Icecat: There may be a certain chill now between us. Ladyice: I get it, but we should really focus on saving Paris right now. Icecat: We don't always have to do everything together, after all. It's not like we're a couple. (skates away)

There's no way to argue this off as a bad joke. While Adrien has every right to feel hurt, those feelings don't excuse him acting like a pouting child in the middle of an akuma fight. It doesn't excuse him acting like this at any point! Ladybug is not a villain for telling him no. She wasn't even mean about it!

I clearly fully agree that Adrien looks awful and selfish here, but I'd still argue that it's not something that should be used to define Adrien's character if your goal is to tell the "ideal" version of Miraculous. "Ideal" being the version that canon seems to be going for based on the overall picture we can sort of make out if we back way, way, way up and look at the extremely abstract picture canon is clumsily painting.

Unless canon is going to do something monumentally stupid, Adrien is Marinette's endgame romantic interest. It's also clear that there is no plan to cut him from the team. He's going to be Chat Noir for the rest of his life or at least well into his adulthood. This means that he is supposed to be a good hero who deserves his miraculous just like he's supposed to be a charming and cute romantic lead. These are the two things I keep in mind when trying to shift through canon to figure out what writing choices I should fully embrace and what writing choices I have to either ignore or treat as true flaws that get an actual character arc. In my book, either approach is fine because most of the characters are deeply flawed at this point and you can't give them all arcs without bloating the story to nonsense levels.

My goal with this approach is never to say, "oh, that moment shouldn't count in terms of how people feel about the character." It's more, "that moment goes so hard against who this character is very clearly supposed to be that I can't take it into account if I want to tell the kind of story that Miraculous is trying (and clearly failing) to tell."

As an example, let's list off Adrien's worst behaviors. The things that make him look terrible:

He sucks at communicating his needs and feelings, leading to multiple moments where he gets mad at Ladybug for things she's totally unaware of

He has quit or considered quitting without warning multiple times and only one of those was because of something he did "wrong" (NYC Special)

He puts his feelings before the safety of Paris on multiple occasions, even going so far to purposely miss akuma fights to see what happens

He is incredibly pushy about his crush, often ignoring Ladybug's feelings on the topic by continuing to bring it up even after she asked him to stop

There have been multiple instances where he almost cataclysmed multiple people in a fit of anger

His love for Ladynette isn't strong enough to let him break free of things like akumas and nightmare dust even when he's looking her in the eyes making him a pretty crappy romantic lead

People will argue that some of this behavior makes sense for his character because of the abuse that canon has technically introduced, but that the writers seem blissfully unaware of. I don't disagree with that argument, but that doesn't change the fact that none of this is acceptable behavior for a hero and Adrien is a hero who keeps doing these things. A sad backstory doesn't give you the right to behave poorly without consequences.

At the same time, if I fully embrace these elements of canon, what I get is an Adrien salt fic where he loses his miraculous for good while Marinette finds her real true love or even just a non-salty fic where Adrien leaves for his own meatal health and gets replaced by someone who can handle being a hero right now. Canon's not writing either of those, so the only way to engage with these flaws while enjoying canon or aiming for the same end goals as canon is to say, "I guess this doesn't count" or "I guess I need to tone this way down and work through it via a character arc" or even "I guess that was just a bad joke maybe?"

That is the essence of what I mean when I call myself a writing salt, character sugar blog. It comes from looking at canon and seeing that there's simply no way to embrace the worst moments and the best at the same time. We're not dealing with a coherent plot and/or complex characters. We're dealing with a nonsense plot that will warp the characters to bizarre shapes to make random ideas work even if those idea go wildly against canon's end goals.

As an example, Glaciator and Frozer should not exist in the same universe or, at the very least, something should explain why Chat Noir randomly changed his stance on Ladybug's crush from acceptance to pushiness. As is, the pieces don't fit together. The behavior is too contradictory. Remember, this is how Glaciator ends:

Perhaps Ladybug will love me someday. I mean, like, I love her. I have to believe. In the meantime, her friendship is the best gift of all.

Where did this version of Adrien go? Why did he regress in Frozer? There's no in-universe reason. It happened because the writers weren't ready to let the love square date or grow close, but they also wanted the love square to cause drama, so Adrien ends up looking terrible just like Marinette ends up looking terrible when it's her turn to cause love square drama. Her terribleness takes a different flavor so it can be hard to realize that this is a systemic issue, but that's what it is. It's deeply frustrating, but it also clearly stems from cheap writing and not quality characterization.

This is also why my stance is that canon as a whole only supports my Doyalistic core-character analysis style of approach. The writing is too poor quality to do Watsonian analysis where you embrace the full picture and try to put it all together. The closest I'll get to Watsonian analysis is pointing out how much the writing botches a Watsonian take by showing you all the way the writing contradicts itself, twisting into a nonsense pretzel of frustration where the payoffs never satisfy! (See the season four rant for an example or anything where I talked about Chloe's supposed damnation arc.)

There are even characters where canon is such a total mess that you can Doyalistically argue for two separate takes! Gabriel is a perfect example. He is all over the place and his ending was so poorly handled that you can make strong arguments for writing him as a cold-hearted villain or a sympathetic villain without the end result feeling like it spits in the face of canon because both takes maintain his one core element: villain.

That's the big thing I keep in mind when I look at the characters and the lore and the plots and try to come up with versions that the average fan would like. I don't think that there's one true version of any of these things, but I do feel comfortable saying that there are versions that will very clearly only appeal to people who are salty about a specific thing that canon did poorly. That's not who I want to appeal to in my adaptions, so while I'm not going to argue that those takes have no backing in canon, I will argue that those takes are not supported by canon as a whole. Embracing them requires you to take the worst parts of canon at face value while ignoring what canon is clearly trying to do with the overall story.

I get the appeal of that, but it's not fun for me because that approach feels like rolling around in the mud with the pigs. I don't want to sink to canon's level! I want to have fun! That's why I talk about how to make canon into its best self, not its worst self. If you want its worst self, just go watch the actual show. I will be shocked it if disappoints you.

[vim-flam]

I love learning something and understanding a reference in a song lyric I hadn't realised was a reference at all.

ohhh. so that's what "somewhere, they're meeting on a pinhead, calling you an angel, calling you the nicest things" means.

[grntaire]

generally i'm still pretty anti-singing live for movie musicals just bc filming schedules are generally so gruelling that even pro theatre performers would find it grueling however. the stark difference in quality between les mis and wicked actually so insane.