#don't do like mari kids

[fenomeno-invisible]

Going back to practice on digital painting. It’s a pain in the ass (:

This is based on @xhanisai ‘s fic: But you'll never be alone, I'll be with you from dusk 'til dawn, Ch. 23 (<--link)

I love their use of the sakura petals as a blush metaphor on Marinette (and she blushes a lot)

[hellmandraws]

I accidentally got really into X-Men lately, and I'm not immune to... them. 🥺❤️

[dawnofiight]

Now Presenting: Momma Pack!

Fun facts:

Marie and Jasmine went to the same high school and Aurelia and Veronica went to the same high-school.

Asher got his hs emo phase from his mom because she too had a hs emo phase.

Veronica has a snake tattoo that goes around her entire body.

Veronica and Jasmine were the besties ever. They met in college. Veronica introduced Jasmine to Gabe after Gabe broke up with Gregory 😌 (gay people are everywhere)

Aurelia looks mean she just has a resting bitch face. She's pretty nice. She has authoritative parenting style.

In the Sun her hair looks red.

Marie is just a baddie. Her and Veronica never really got along too well because Veronica has questionable parenting styles. But they. Talk.

I have the strangest obsession with Asher's mom and the Talbot family as a whole. They all have piercings for no reason.

Tag list:

@sunsickcrab

@professionallyyappin

@themeridian

@ashertickler

@plaqying

@puffin-smoke

@pandoraroid

@infinitelovewiithoutfulfilmentt

@starlogician

@zimix-whispers

@astrodude-87

@aurorialwolf

@porters-fangs

@skunkox

@achios

@moronkyne

[yellowocaballero]

SHAZAM SHAZAM SHAZAM pls tell us about billy batson. ive only ever seen the movies o great comic knower

Very very very VERY far from comic expert (that's brawltogethernow) but I have read a lot of Shazam. His history is actually really, really fascinating and involves more than one lawsuit that really defined very early comics. I'll focus on one thing, though.

There are two Captain Marvels: One from the 1940s to around 2013, and one from 2013 til now. The Captain Marvel you're familiar with (who is named Shazam) is from 2013. He's a more realistic, grounded character. He was created to be pretty much the polar opposite of his original version. The best summary is to say that the Wizard chose Billy Batman 1940 because he had the purest heart, and the Wizard chose Billy Batson ~2013 because he was there. My personal 'best' Shazam story is the "Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil" graphic novel by the guy who made Bone. It's good because it's for elementary schoolers yet acknowledges this small child as homeless. Which, don't get me wrong, you shouldn't always do. My personal favorite is the 1970s ones.

As some background: Otto Binder was the creator/main writer of the very early Captain Marvel comics. He was by far and away the best writer of the early Superman Silver Age comics, because all of his comics were batshit insane. Shazam has a complicated and legal history with Superman, so the 1970 run was a super fun high camp tongue in cheek reinvention of the best Silver Age stories.

So the 1970 Captain Marvel comics are insane.

I can't even summarize them without sounding crazy. Basically the conceit is that Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr, and Mary Marvel (Billy, Freddy, and Mary) are having 1940s Golden Age Adventures when they get somehow in suspended animation and are basically time travelled to the 1970s. This don't bother them too much. Why would it bother them. Nothing bothers these people. Nothing. I don't think anybody experiences a negative emotion in these comics. Not bc they were twee. Bc they were insane.

Many of the comics basically had three shorter comics inside it: one Billy story, one Mary story, one Freddy story. Interestingly, they all had different art styles, artists, types of story, genre, etc. Billy's stories had a cartoony art style with very over-the-top and silly plotlines that involved supervillain bad dudes. Freddy's art was slightly more realistic and was slighty more grounded, but still had some classic Marvel indescribable scifi that can best be summarized as that one meme panel people have seen where Sivana recites a science equation that lets him walk through walls. Mary's stories were much more realistically drawn and featured the most banal shit, like her starting a club with her friends. Somehow Mary Marvel gets involved in those.

Sometimes they worked together and did superhero things and fought bad guys. The average fight looked like this:

Billy was a twelve year old who lived by himself, in his own apartment, had his own radio show, a full-ass job, a whole thing as Captain Marvel. He paid fucking taxes. Everybody knew this and nobody cared. He's the most affable, good natured kid on the face of the planet. Nothing bothers him. Nothing. Nothing bothers any of these people. Sivana shows up and he's BIG MAD so he's creating another death ray and Captain Marvel shows up like "Oh you rascal! Time to punch this and go back to helping my friend eat his infinite Jello."

He has a friend named Talky Tawny, who is a talking tiger wearing a suit. He also has a friend named Sunny Smiles, a person of indeterminate gender who everybody falls in love with, for unexplained and unknown reasons. Not to be confused with Freddy's friend Gregory Gosharootie, the "World's Dullest Mortal", who is so boring that nobody notices him and he keeps accidentally comitting crime. There is also an old guy named Uncle Marvel who pretends he has superpowers, which they all find funny so they just roll with it. Freddy is a disabled orphan who has to sell papers on the street corner to make a living. Mary lives in a middle class suburban home with loving foster parents. It never once seems to occur to Mary's parents to adopt Billy, for Freddy to live with Billy. Everybody is happiest this way.

I do think this is partly why a good Shazam comic has to be aimed at the 6-12yo demographics. They have to be for small children, because Billy is living a complete and utter power fantasy that only a ten year old would think is a good idea. He's a kid, and he doesn't have drag parents or a lame family, but he can turn into Superman, and he can also do magic, and everybody loves him and thinks he's the nicest person, and his supervillains are Dr. Doofenschmirtz and a worm, and his supporting cast is like okay my sister if she HAS to be involved, but also my best friend who is a paperboy! but cool because he's disabled, and….

Look, you could engage with that seriously. You could go "holy shit this is a homeless child". That's fine. That's what they do these days, and that's what they did in the movies. Nothing wrong with that. Take the story more seriously.

But also they don't give a worm the electric chair in those stories, so.

To actually give some commentary on these comics: these comics really love people. I've never seen comics that were so entrenched in their community. The kids just know everybody they meet on the street. Freddy delivers paper up and down every block, so an average story for him is just talking to a butcher or baker or old man or grumpy housewife and helping them out with some batshit problem. Mary's a sweet girl who's always starting clubs with her friends and taking on neighborhood projects. Many Billy stories involve one of his many friends falling into some trouble and Captain Marvel helping them out - or just exploring some fun with Billy hanging out with Sunny Smiles, who is a person of indeterminate gender who for some reason has magic love brainwashing powers -

This isn't the biggest #Shazam take, but I think a good Shazam story stays grounded in that. These are poor street kids who love Fawcett City so damn much. They love fighting their supervillains, but they love helping out the random guy off the street with their problems even more. Way more so than Spider-Man or a lot of other guys, I think of the Marvel family as the friendly neighborhood superheroes. They're both larger than life and street level. They're Superman level powers but they just use the powers for wrapping up their hijinks. Isn't that nice? Aren't you tired of going apeshit? Don't you just want to be nice?

[queenlucythevaliant]

We see him come and know him ours

Russia: "Carol of the Russian Children," traditional // Kenya: The Nativity, Elima Njau // France: "Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella," Nicolas Saboly // Haiti: Madonna and Child, Ismael Saincilus // Australia: "The Three Drovers," William James // China: Tryptic by Lu Hongnian // Canadian/Algonquian: "Huron Carol," Jean de Brébeuf

[that-was-anticlimactic]

the miraculous ladybug fandom really loves hating children for being children. they are literally kids. they are fourteen years old. "alya césaire bashing" should NOT be the top alya tag. what did she do wrong? have an underdeveloped brain since she's, oh, idk, fourteen? or-or is it because she *gasps* has made mistakes? why is "classmates bashing" a popular tag? oh noooo they're kids and they made mistakes! + the writing in those episodes was bad and they were ooc! how dare they! "adrien agreste bashing" - okay. he's flirtatious and has feelings. sue him for acting like the suppressed teen he is. like oh my god. even the lila hate,,, y'all do realize she's a child, right? you're allowed to hate her but wishing death upon her?the way that people write about/refer to lila is sick.

"alya césaire redemption" FROM WHAT!!! why does she need to be redeemed? gosh. no matter how many classmates bashing-related tags i filter out on ao3, i still actively struggle to find fics without it. these characters are 1. fictional and 2. children. if you can't handle kids being kids then stop watching???

not only are they kids, but they're traumatized kids. marinette and adrien aren't the only traumatized characters. every single classmate got akumatized and tried to kill the city's heroes and destroy the city. alix erased people from existence. how do you think she felt about that after the fact? ivan, a fourteen year old kid, was the first person to get akumatized. the first. he had no idea what was happening, people gave him so much crap for it, and then it happened again. sabrina almost killed chat noir. kim tried to make chat noir kill ladybug. alya tried to unmask her hero live. sabrina literally became invisible.

like... and not just that, but they've all been heroes, too. as exciting as it may have been at the time, you can't tell me they aren't at least a Little traumatized after fighting literal villains. oh, and they've been victims of akuma attacks. is chloe a bad person? kinda, yeah (but also partially bc of bad writing-). but she was almost like boiled alive, killed, was taken hostage countless times. max had to deal with the aftermath of markov's akumatization. when juleka became akumatized in "guilt", the classmates were forced to sit and get consumed by guilt. they've had to watch their family get akumatized, watch their friends or partners get akumatized, live through the guilt of knowing they hurt someone so much they got akumatized. bc they're human and they're kids. ofc they're going to hurt someone. it's natural. let them be kids!

[some-mari-thoughts]

What do you make of the idea of Blackspace kinda fusing with Hellmari after a post-good ending Omori gave her true life, therefore making her the entire realm by technicality? Omori would do that cuz he needs something to kinda fill the void that appeared when Sunny left and he's getting desperate after not finding anything in Headspace to do that...

(woooooooooo explaining my omori au lore-)

Truthfully this is so wildly different to my idea of headspace and omori and after-good ending that i cannot make anything of this! i think that's up to u to decide

[kumakuma-circus]

i think december's the funniest part of p4 honestly. i mean there's all the fucked up emotional shit at the start but like. the optimal time management is to finish magatsu inaba on december 22nd. adachi's in the tv world for a whole month. there's weird fog making everyone crazy (even if it's mostly placebo). inaba is basically going to undergo an apocalypse if you don't deal with it.

meanwhile yu's just vibing. hanging out with his friends. still playing soccer in the potentially poisonous fog. yeah the world's ending or whatever but i gotta max out my social links-

[amaliaofnassau]

what are your thoughts about the drf and them showing of well known luxurious brands?

[emile-hides]

I’m so obsessed with the Mario family and while I’m a very hard Uncle Tony stan I’m also insanely obsessed with Auntie Marie and her daughter. I want to know all about them.

[nightmares-voicemail]

Natasha, say you were the Ladybug Holder, partnered with a Black Cat Holder and you had to assemble a team- who would you potentially call in as an ally and what Miraculous would you give them

Natasha

"Uhm, that's a difficult one. Logic says I should avoid involving people I know too well, maybe even use the Horse to recruit a team from outside of Achefall but... that doesn't seem very feasible. I need to pick people I can trust and I don't have such a big social circle.

"I can see Maris' point in that she wants more or less fix kwami-Holder pairs, so everyone can get comfortable with one power-set. But to be honest, I feel like if it was up to me, I might go for a smaller core-team, and give them Miraculous based on who is available and what is needed at the moment. Kwami swaps tend to happen anyway, and sometimes Maris even forced to recruit bystanders as one-time Holders, so doing it this way might help to make things more flexible, and hiding the actual size of the team could be nice too.

"Let's see... one person I'd surely recruit if they were willing would be Kris. There would be no sense not to- I know them enough to trust them. They are an adult, so they could use their powers more. And they're already involved with the Miraculous, they were since childhood. They're pretty good at improvisation, so I think they could get a lot of use from the Goat. If we needed more raw strength, they could also use the Dragon... they like swords, or at least I know they did as a kid. And if things were dire enough, they could back us up with the Snake... uh, on a second thought, maybe they wouldn't be that thrilled to have a time travel Miraculous. But it works pretty differently than the Rabbit, so they might be fine with it.

"Depending on the circumstances, I might try to get Sonya on my team. She already proved herself very capable, but of course I'd understand if she said no. Probably wouldn't be a very good idea to give her the Turtle again, even though the villains already know some of our team's identities, so it might be pointless to worry about that. But she could also use the Ox that works kinda similar, or maybe the Tiger would fit her too.

"It would be probably a bit too reckless to involve someone who is basically living with me, but maybe Saiyuki could be a good fit for the Fox or the Bee? Not sure why, it's just a hunch.

"Naota loves to do things for people just to make them happy, they would be probably a good fit for the Pig... wait, maybe they wouldn't be that comfortable to weaponize people's desires against them. Then maybe the Dog would work better, and Erica could have the Pig instead.

"Fletcher likes birds and sometimes it feels like he... I don't know, wants to prove himself I guess? So the Rooster might fit him well.

"I recall Hikaru mentioning once that in their childhood games she played pretend as a hero with lightning powers, so she'd probably enjoy the Dragon. If a sneakier approach was needed, I think she'd manage the Bee well too.

"Justin is a baseball player, so either the Dog or the Monkey could work well for him, since both of those requires throwing skills.

"Let's see, we're left with the Horse, Rabbit and Mouse. I feel like Eva could do well with any of those."

[[Eva belongs to Tsukiyomaru/Arcade Rabbit. I'm not sure if he can be found here, otherwise I'd tag him properly.]]

[murderballadeer]

i do like my name generally tho i think it's a nice name. & like it better be considering it took my parents the first full month of my life before they settled on it

[dandunn]

Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that at the end of Joseph's route in DD his "talk" with Mary amounted to him convincing her to keep things together for the kids and his social image (because we know how easy it is to get a divorce in conservative Christian communities esp if you're a woman amirite).

Like people are real quick to throw the book (and the rest of the library) at Mary when she's evidently depressed enough to resort to substance abuse and can't even summon the energy to take care of her kids. She's just so very clearly at the end of her rope with all this and it ruffles me that people get more enraged with her flirting with other men while her husband has been going out and actually fucking them (potentially more than once).

And idk. The lived in state of the boat and how convinient the 'oh no we ran out of gas and the radios out!' thing was made me think my guy. This has happened before, hasn't it? Like you really didn't think to grab a backup canister of gas?

And if they got divorced what would she even do, is the house hers? Who owns it??

Idk I don't hate Joseph but i don't trust him either. I'm #teamWomen

[egipci]

my god those gifs… JDM looking like the skinniest gangliest most fuckable grey haired old man there ever was and looking so besotted with and amused by sturdy little Jensen with his pony hair and little double denim outfit

love is real and so is dickmatization <3

[hassiegfrieddoneanythingwrong]

Sure. I was more angry that the writers are conflict-avoidant when it comes to Kriemhild and passed over not one, but two large, potential character arcs that Siegfried could play a minor part in rather than the only, major part. Only one I easily understood because Byrnhildr is from Sigurd's legend, so she's not the Queen of Iceland and it would be silly to linger on Kriemhild's conflict with her.

Mind you, I'd still like to see an interlude on it, much as I'd like to go over Gudrun and Sigurd, but let's not kid ourselves here. The FGO writers nowadays don't seem like they ever want to bring it up given Sigurd's line on it.

Remember when I said I wanted a Enkidu-like interlude for Kriemhild? In that interlude, Enkidu spared nothing for Ishtar and went straight into catty dialogue with her. There was no delicately dancing around their hostile relationship nor any retcons regarding what was already said before in FGO regarding Ishtar and Enkidu.

Kriemhild, on the other hand, gets two lame excuses that cut off parts of the Nibelungelied she could possibly grow from: Brynhild's conflict with her and the long time she spent with Attila and the Huns.

I wasn't talking about the event entirely as it was a breath of fresh air from the last two events where she spent time with Siegfried. That's expected. No. I was talking about the small part between her and Altera where she said that she couldn't remember her time with Altera and the Huns - which contradicts Byrnhildr saying she smells Siegfried's scent on Altera. Which hints at Altera having spent time with Kriemhild. That little aside soured the rest of the event as it not only confirmed the writers don't want to dedicate time to fleshing out Kriemhild beyond her Fate-only conflict with Siegfried (thanks Higa), but that they're content in using any out to avoid going over Altera's time as Etzel/Attila. Want to know what I wanted when saving a pity for Kriemhild? Character expansions for both Siegfried and Altera on top of Kriemhild herself. Guess I wished on a monkey's paw. I'm now sure her kids with Altera are also retconned out of existence. Not too sure about Gunther II, though.

Oh yeah, want to know the best part? In the same cop-out dialogue, the writer of this event said there's another version of Kriemhild that remembers her time with Altera instead of casting away the memories as not important (even though Kriemhild's tactics in Traum say otherwise). I remember another servant version promised by the writers that never came out: rider Caesar. Yeah, it's been years and he still hasn't shown up. Sorry Cleo. Odds are, that version of Kriemhild won't show up either. And it's been nearly a year since the last batch of interludes too.

So yeah, that's what I meant about her being Siegfried's shipping attachment. It seems the writers only want to focus on their romance part of the Nibelungelied and not go over Kriemhild's personal development as a character herself. One issue I do have when it comes to couples in this game, regardless of who's being shipped.

But I suppose this comes with the territory of loving the character from the source material first before getting their Fate version. You start getting disappointed when the writing doesn't meet what you expect.

Anyways, I hope this explains it. And thanks for not immediately assuming I hate Kriemhild herself just because I have issues with how she's written.

OOOOOOOOOOHHHH, yeah that makes more sense now. As much as I would also love to see more focus on both Kriemhild and Siegfried (especially on the former), as well as possibly for Altera, the sad fact is that it will possibly never happen.

Kriemhild forgetting why she politically married Altera is like as if Artoria forgot why she abandoned her humanity to be a good king, or Gilgamesh seeking out the herb of immortality, or why Yu Mei-ren/Akuta Hinako initially wanting to summon her beloved Xiang Yu. It makes no sense on any level for her to forget it. Perhaps this'll be ignored and actual focus on them if Kriemhild gets an interlude, but I sadly don't have high hopes (or even a medium level of hope).

And for Altera, none of the writers seem to be interested in fleshing her out in FGO. All of them seem content enough that everything interesting about her is just locked behind another game. Like, her second interlude is the only one that's actually about anything while her first and third interludes are more vague memories before and after she became the leader of the Huns. There's a small (and I mean small) possibility that there probably could be an Extella collab at some point in the future, with a guest writer who is really damn passionate about the character(s) similar to what happened with Samurai Remnant, but again I wouldn't hope for it.

TLDR the only way to deal with the giant, tangled, unfocused mess that is the situation between Siegfried, Kriemhild, Altera and potentially anyone else is to Cope™️.

Or write fix-it fics, either way.

[squirmydonnie]

CW: unreality/ nudity/ self harm?.