#and it haunting me constantly

[utterlyazriel]

https://wishingforatypewriter.tumblr.com/post/749027610476036096

Made me think of you

FSKLFDKFSJ its true...... why you gotta read me for filth like that though

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF 4 nightmares haunted all the Afton kids..

[ministarfruit]

day 24: plagued by the horrors ♡

(femslashfeb prompt list)

[peace-hunter]

Hi! I love your Ghost Primes with Optimus AU! It’s so good.

I have a question though, do the Decepticons know that Optimus can see the 13 prime ghosts or do they just get increasingly confused each time they fight?

Thank you for the lovely artwork!!

oh they Know something funky is going on for sure lmao

a little more serious answer: they can tell something is going on with optimus and they desperately want to pretend it's not. they don't want to know how he's aware of things he shouldn't be, how he knows stuff that should have long been forgotten, how he seems to be more familiar with them than he should be. how sometimes he speaks and it's like the dead are talking through him. how sometimes he will answer to empty air and somehow they can just tell what he's responding to. who he is talking to.

they Know. and they really, really want to pretend they don't.

they already carry the guilt of failing them once. the idea of doing it once more is unbearable and they'd rather deceive themselves than face it. they'd rather their friends stay dead and gone than think of them seeing what they've become.

haunted au

[rrogueamendiares]

i just wanted to hold you in my arms

[captaindelafere]

Mike Faist & Zendaya CHALLENGERS (2024), dir. Luca Guadagnino

[unmerrymagdalene]

Actually you know what, I’m not gonna wait until the poll finishes because you cannot convince me that Sydney and Sirris have a fully good parental relationship-

This isn’t me saying their relationship is fully bad obvi! It’s clear that Sirris cares for Sydney and their well being, but like-

Sirris is openly sex positive to a debatably obsessive(?) intense degree. Sydney, at the start of the game, is not. Sydney works at the shop, despite the fact they’re openly embarrassed by everything. Sydney goes to the Temple routinely, while Sirris just drops them off and barely steps foot inside. Sirris does have some reservations about the Temple and hey, and it’s also the same place where their late partner/Sydney’s other parent was mainly at, which is a whole can of worms that is never overtly talked about.

They clearly love each other, but they (probably) do not talk about stuff beyond a surface level. They’re both treading on very thin ice. What the fuck is going on with them-

[alienssstufff]

Your gegg is soooo cuteee 💘💘 I don't know how you do it but you draw this specimen perfectly

ty! the secret is egg :]

[thetwilightroadtonightfall]

I couldn’t resist making another design based on the movie dress!! I think it came out cute 💖

musical version

Notes:

I’ve essentially merged Eph’s outfit with Glinda’s once again, seeing as this is the “main” or most iconic design. If/when I get around to the other outfits I think I’ll just tweak them to make them entirely new standalone fits

I wanted to somewhat incorporate the curves/rounded parts of the ML logo in the dress proper since it lines up pretty well with the bubble/circular detailing. The crown’s the same as in the previous design, except now with added details to match Glinda’s in the movie

Sparkles or dandelions? Who can tell

slay 💅✨

…and bonus 3am doodles

[canisalbus]

Trying to imagine if the Pope in Machette's universe is, like, a Pomeranian, and thus shrinks down to a fraction of his original size when wet. Like it rains and everyone is like 'oh, Your Holiness. Oh no'

.

[descendant-of-truth]

If I may throw my hat into the ring here, I think the source of a lot of problems in the writing of Miraculous can be boiled down to its confusion over its target demographic.

There are two very clear audiences the show is trying to cater to:

Grade school girls around 5-10

Teens/young adults around 15-20

And this results in some. unique conflicts in the show's internal logic.

Because it's a superhero show for little kids, it's full of fun, bright colors, wacky villain-of-the-week designs, and the characters are all very straightforward with exaggerated personality traits. The cheerful, clumsy, scatterbrained girl protagonist, her utterly charming and goofy (but slightly clueless) love interest, her cool best friend, her mean bully, etc.

This extends to the romance; the show is so comedic that Marinette's nervous crush and Cat Noir's flirting are played up for laughs. Their more "problematic" behaviors read as cartoon shenanigans first and foremost, which I do think was the intention - they're both shown as being more than a little ridiculous for acting this way, so they're not exactly trying to encourage people to emulate them. They're allowed to be genuinely wholesome, too, because it's nice to give the kids something to go "aww!" at, but it's not meant to be more complicated or deep than that.

And of course, it's gotta follow a sweet and simple episodic formula! A conflict in Marinette's civilian life, an inciting incident to get a side character upset enough for Hawk Moth to turn into a villain, Ladybug and Cat Noir show up, there's fun banter, Ladybug uses her Lucky Charm to figure out a wacky solution to the problem, and boom! The day is saved, Marinette and/or someone else learns a moral, and we get a cute little end screen showing all the key players of the episode.

The one aspect of the show's setup that's a little more serious is the fact that Adrien has a super controlling and distant father, but even this is something that doesn't necessarily break the kid-friendly tone for the first season or two. Superhero shows in particular like to put in some stuff that's a little more emotionally challenging for the viewers, even when they're mostly comedic, so it's not totally out of place here.

For example, while they tend to have more grounded tones overall, Spider-Man cartoons are aimed at kids and regularly keep the conflict between Harry Osborn and his father, Norman, intact; often including the plot point of Norman being the Green Goblin, a notorious villain. It's a similar deal with Adrien, and his dad secretly being Hawk Moth.

You can easily anticipate drama coming from this, but the show primes you to expect it to work out fine in the end because every other conflict so far has been wrapped up in a nice little bow once the episode's over. Though I will say, the choice to have Hawk Moth be Gabriel instead of his own, separate character is perhaps the first sign of the tone shift to come.

And, uh. it sure is a shift.

See, Miraculous does not start out with what you'd call a... plot. It vaguely alludes to there being more going on behind the scenes, but the only thing it really tries to get you invested in is the Love Square dynamic. Marinette and Adrien dancing around each other while fighting crime IS the plot, and it's clearly going to end with a cool final confrontation with Hawk Moth.

You expect it to end like... well, like the movie. Identities are revealed, Gabriel realizes the error of his ways when he finds out he's been fighting his son this whole time, and they may or may not make up but he almost definitely gets arrested. Marinette and Adrien kiss, roll credits.

This is not what happens, because the plot the writers actually had in mind is complex in a way that I would argue is meant for the same audience as YA novels. And with that plot comes a lot of darker, weightier traits to these otherwise silly characters.

Marinette isn't just scatterbrained and nervous, she has debilitating anxiety and an increasing need to be in control of everything due to the stress she's under. She has panic attacks on-screen. She's not just great at strategizing, she also knows how to manipulate people, and does so with increasing frequency - and to Cat Noir at times, no less. Her positive traits haven't gone anywhere, she's still loving and creative and sweet and doing her best to help everyone she can, she just. has all of that other stuff going on, now.

Adrien isn't just a charming, goofy, clueless love interest with a gazillion skills and a controlling father, he's like. actively being abused, and in some cases straight-up mind controlled. His tendency to heroically sacrifice himself so that Ladybug can do her Cool Protagonist Thing is gradually but unmistakably reframed as being a sign of suicidal inclinations. He has identity issues out the wazoo and he doesn't even know he's an artificially created human yet, because everyone in his life is keeping secrets from him and/or lying to his face about crucial information.

Information like, uh. how his dad died???

Yeah, so we're at a point in the story now where there was no satisfying conclusion to the Gabriel plot, no team-up, no moment where he realizes he's been fighting his son, none of that. He still has something akin to a change of heart, but he also still kind of gets what he wants - the Miraculous of the Ladybug and Black Cat, which he uses to rewrite the universe with a wish. It's just that instead of reviving his wife, he trades his life for Natalie's. Of course, he was already dying anyway, which was his own fault but he did force Cat Noir's Cataclysm onto himself, so, that's another thing poor Adrien is going to have to deal with at some point.

And because there's all these astronomically messed up things in Adrien's life, and Marinette's the one who got to learn about all of it before him, she decides that maybe it would be better if he just. didn't know about it. Which is understandable, if I was 14 and had all this information about my boyfriend's life that he didn't, I wouldn't know how to begin telling him about it, either.

But. can you see how we've maybe lost the plot, here?

Here's the thing: starting with a simple framework and gradually getting more complex and subverting the audience's expectations for how the main villain is going to be dealt with is not a bad thing. The fact that it gets darker over time is not an issue. I actually think that all these developments are, themselves, pretty cool! I'm a sucker for angst and complex character dynamics and the show is absolutely giving me those things.

The problem is that it didn't just start with a simple framework, it started with the framework for a different demographic entirely, and perhaps just as importantly, it never actually... stopped.

For as much complexity and intensity they're injecting this story with, they're still working under the logic of it being "for young kids." We still get goofy villain-of-the-week designs with equally goofy motivations, and the supporting cast is stuck remaining two-dimensional no matter their circumstances. Chloe is the most blatant example of this - she was made to be a simple bully first, so no matter what else they do with her, she has to remain straightforwardly evil.

This, I think, is the reason that Gabriel is a more nuanced and "sympathetic" antagonist than her, and why so much care goes into Adrien's character as a victim of abuse while Chloe is just a Problem Child despite suffering similar neglect; she wasn't made to be interesting, and so the show is resistant to changing that. Gabriel and Adrien, however, were already made with nuance in mind, and so they're allowed to develop as characters. And at the same time, it's a kid's show! We need to teach the kids what kind of behavior is acceptable, and Chloe's home life isn't an excuse to treat people badly, so--!

...Oh crap we're supposed to be teaching kids about acceptable behavior. Uh. Um. Quick, bring back the ice cream akuma who cares way too much about his ships so that Cat Noir can learn about consent! Uhh, but don't change his character too much afterwards, he's only marketable because of his silly flirting, and we can't lose that.

Yeah, remember when I said that the romance having problematic elements to it used to work well enough because it was clearly just exaggerated cartooniness? It wasn't free from criticism or anything, but you could see how it was intended to be endearing and silly, right? You were supposed to point and laugh at Marinette's convoluted plans to spend time with Adrien, at Cat Noir's dramatic flirting attempts that Ladybug herself fondly rolled her eyes at.

The tonal shift into deep character exploration kinda paints the previous stuff in a worse light, and to an extent, I think the writers know that. It's hard to laugh at Cat Noir being flirty all the time when he's also supposed to be taken completely seriously, and the more Ladybug rejects him, the more it turns into harassment, and it. kinda just stops being funny, even with the comedic framing.

It's also hard to laugh at Marinette's crush being so all-consuming when they try to tell us (in what I can only assume was an attempt to get people to stop complaining) that she's like this because it's fueled by an event in her past, one that made her so scared of loving the wrong person that she now needs to know Everything about them before asking them out. Her cartoon antics aren't funny under that light, it's just concerning, but they're dedicated to keeping it up anyway.

The show runs on straightforward cartoon logic where you're not supposed to think about it too hard just as much as it runs on grounded, closer-to-real-life logic where people are messy and complicated and actions have consequences. It's so divided that you can hand-pick parts of the story that are influenced by one or the other pretty easily, and depending on the episode you can find instances of both in the same 20-minute time span. Maybe even multiple times!

Neither thing they're trying to go for is bad, and neither is a better approach than the other, but forcing them into the same show makes both sides suffer.

It's not just hard to laugh at the parts I mentioned earlier, it's hard to take Gabriel seriously as a villain whenever you rewatch an episode and remember that he has a once-per-episode pun-based speech that he says so self-seriously that you can't help but laugh at. It's hard to take him seriously when you remember that he repeatedly akumatized a Literal Baby and practically threw a tantrum every time it didn't work, or when he randomly steals (and enthusiastically performs) his nephew's musical dance number, or something similar that you would only do for a cartoon villain aimed at five-year-olds.

And I can only imagine this whole show is a marketing nightmare, too. Hey, little girls, here's your cool role model! She's cute and smart and talented and powerful and can fix anything by shouting the title of the show! Hope you're having fun watching her tell her boyfriend that his newly-deceased father (who used deepfakes of him to sell merchandise that's built to enslave the population and then locked him in a solitary confinement chamber in another country) was actually a hero who sacrificed himself to stop the main villain instead of, y'know, being the main villain! Aren't you excited to watch her wrestle with the guilt of this lie for the next season or so? Doesn't it just make you want to buy her merchandise??

Like. what is even happening right now. what am I watching. how did we get here and why did we start where we did if this was what the story was going to be about

[justabunchofdragons]

they were so insane for having house play "hugh laurie's cuddy's serenade" bookending "you can't always get what you want" as cuddy held her party with everyone else and their mother attending AND having her open the door only to drop her smile when it wasn't house. she really said "i DON'T want you there" and got upset when he didn't come. they drive me insane

[bidokja]

do you ever think about how we absorb little bits and pieces of everyone we have ever been close to? how it echoes. how heavy and wonderful that is? how we still remember inside jokes with people we no longer talk to, and the favorite wild tale of an ex-lover, and how we say that word a specific way because a friend did that and...and, anyways, totally irrelevant, but ever think about how kim dokja just happened to take in the story fragments of a swordmaster and a dragon.

[cookiesinthecloud]

Idk if I’m reading too much into it, but I think a lot about unukalhai telling you that his echo specifically grants him the ability to understand a primal’s mind and how he must have felt being around elidibus. Since elidibus is a primal by nature after his separation from zodiark, imagine that unukalhai would have discerned what zodiark really was created for. A being fueled by the desires of salvation designed to save the world.

And I think given the boy’s circumstances, having lost his own world, he would be sympathetic to elidibus even disregarding the ascian’s own half-truths about the rejoining and the Thirteenth.

I like to play around with the idea of whether or not elidibus knows about his ability, but my personal belief is that he did, in fact, know because he saw fit to send unukalhai to help the scions defeat the warring triad.

I just love how elidibus saw parts of Themis and elidibus in unukalhai. One torn by unfathomable loss, yet continues to hope for a better future. Someone who wants to be a hero; who blames themselves for not being strong enough to be one. Who also looks up to someone who is.

In relation to Elidibus transforming to the Warrior of light, there’s this one line unukalhai says to the wol in the warring triad quest that always gets me:

“…I had realized I was treating you as an ideal rather than as a person. I was convinced you were the light that brought hope in the darkness; that you walked only the path illuminated by the rays of the sun”.

And after everything, once you defeat elidibus and you talk to unukalhai about what he’ll do afterwards, he tells you that he wants to find a way to save his world. And the quest involving his passage to the First is called The Hero’s Journey.

[valewritessss]

You know what I find so funny? That I’ve come across a lot of people on TikTok that have something against this one account that posts pjo content. I do too, I mean I got into an argument with them because they kept saying percabeth is strained because annabeth made Percy feel suicidal. And I ended up blocking them because they made a story saying that percabeth shippers need to calm down in their comment section because we’re crazy or something like that. And I just wanted to scream like this isn’t because you don’t ship percabeth, it’s because you constantly bash annabeth, unintentionally but prominently make Percy this stupid victim that can’t feel for himself, and think pereyna and Perachel had better development (not to bash pereyna or Perachel shippers, but in canon, this is just obviously not true). And I thought I was the only one who had something against this person but now people are speaking up about it I guess and I think it’s so funny because I’ve BEEN having problems with them.

[mischiefbuckley]

For this season being marketed like Eddie’s season again with Ryan doing so much press heading into the beginning of season 8… like where are all my Eddie scenes ABC??? Season 8b please deliver on more Eddie scenes and more focus on Eddie’s storyline please 🙏🏻