#i have no idea how i ended up here

[liberty-barnes]

how tf did i get myself stuck in a situationship and how do i get out of it?

[the-lonely-human]

Be warned, Ive accidentally fallen into the rabbit hole known as Sherlock Holmes (not the BBC show)and hyper-fixation is going wild. For the next week or do expect nothing but Sherlock Holmes related content. Goodbye

[marigraphia]

I've had this pose ref saved for a while and the Superman set photos just gave off the same energy 👉🏻👈🏻

The reference is this photo of Katharine Hepburn as Antiope and Colin Keith-Johnston as Theseus in the 1932 play 'The Warrior's Husband' (and I'd love for people to turn into a draw your otp meme pls pls pls this pose is so good)

And also, of course, the Superman (2025) set photos

[caramellody]

Yall i dont think im gonna be able to stop thinking about usha and g13, actually.

Ushas an old old woman, clueless with tech. Lived long enough to develop various bonds with a LOT of people and relies on them a lot for help. In turn, shes VERY loyal to her close conpanions (a great example would be how she tends to back paula up a LOT, the way she sets up russel and paula to 'fake date' wink and all). She's very warm and very emotionally intelligent even if she's a bit clueless sometimes. Her logic is borderline incomprehensible, but it has heart.

G13 on the other hand, is a hacking prodigy. Hes young, hes sought after for his skills for better and for worse. But in turn, he's essentially lost himself in the process. He may be able to scrape nuke codes, but he'll never make a friend. He lacks any loyalty for anyone and anything except for himself and his interests, and if they dont satisfy those two points, then its worth nothing to him. His logic may be sound, but its cold.

[yourlocalabomination]

Target Practice.

(+ Alt version below)

[luck-of-the-drawings]

THIS THING IS SCUUUFFED AS HELL & ITS ALSO THE BEST THING I HAVE ANIMATED THUS FAR. IM SO IN LOVE WITH EMIZEL. JUST WISH I GAVE HIM MORE STUPID TATTOOS. NEXT TIME THO. NEXT TIME. I ALSO LOVE VEX&VIV SOOOO MUCH. charlies flavor of Deranged is my FAVORITE!!

[phreaticlayer]

can you keep a secret ~ ?

[kacievvbbbb]

Some Goth Fam Modern AU headcanons I can't stop thinking about and will probably explode if I don't put pen to paper or in this case- Type to screen

Here we go. This is going to be a long one;

-Shanks isnt officially part of the goth family. Even though he's know these kids since mihawk had them, helped raise them is always there in the morning to take them to school and is practically their other father. Perona and Zoro still refer to him as "Mihawk's bum of a boyfriend" (byprodcut of hearing mihawk call shanks a bum one to many times).

-Zoro and Perona relentlessly troll mihawk for having only 2 friends and they are his boyfriend and business partner. even though perona herself only has like 1 friend and a gaggle of minions.

-Perona got a giant bear cut out all the stuffing and used to make a baby zoro wear the carcass of her destuffed bear. baby zoro was very chill about all this.

-People think mihawk is a housewife but he actually has a job with the government that nobody really knows what it is and nobody is really allowed to talk about. he just never goes in except for the once a month meeting where they threaten to fire him.

-They have a groupchat just the three of them called "The Family" and then another one with shanks sinces hes the one that actually drives them places called "the family and shanks"

-Mihawk is the type of person to get a family portrait every time the kids have grown to look significantly different from the last so every couple of years. They are all extremely giant and actually painted. these are the only family picture hanging on the walls. even tho mihawk secretly scrapbooks all the pictures shanks takes.

-Mihawk has had them since they were toddlers they still call him Mihawk tho. excpet zoro hits 13 and starts exclusively referring to him as Hawkeyes or "that guy".

-Mihawk is a crunchy mom tm and they grew up in an ingredient household. But because mihawk is a grazer at heart and zoro needs fuel like a truck and all their little friends all practically live at their house. Theres awlays charcuterie boards on hand. Zoro never had a pop tart until he went to Luffy's house one time. He asked Mihawk what fruit snacks are and he reacted like zoro just summoned the devil into their home. He's very Nara smith I cook all my kids meals from scratch coded. He's definitely running one of those mommy blogs and being really bitchy and personal attacky about the whole thing and hes not even trying to hide it. Literally two steps away from bring a mommy influencer. literally just needs the instagram page (which he has but doesn't know its run by perona).

-Despite this zoro and perona cant cook for shit. That one tiktok video of the woman showing her husband what she used to have for a midnight snake as a kid in an ingredient house and it was just a bowl of mixed vegetables is so them coded. Despite mihawk's nara smith tendencies once thye get to a certain age every meal but dinner is every man for himself. mihawk only cooks once and so raises a family of girl lunch havers and grazers. Zoro thinks a greenshake is a snack. his eating habits are a source of constant stress for sanji.

-Perona is definitely an influencer her content ranges from fashion stuff to content about her strange family (she tries to get them to make tiktoks and msot of the videos are just zoro's resignantion and mihawk's funnily shutting that shit down with a swiftness) and just stories of her weird family and her brothers even weirder friends. nobody can figure out what their family dynamics are.

-shanks definelty makes those "dealing my italian husband psychic damage videos" except they are like my Spanish-Romanian husband and mihawk get genuinely upset and every video ends witrh the threat of shanks being murdered.

-Nobody on these channels realizes that this mihawk is the same internationally recognized as the best swordfighter to ever live Dracule Mihawk.

-Zoro goes to the local community college with most of the gang while perona goes to a fashion college as a fashion/fashion history major. she lives on campus but is home every weekend tho so mihawk can do her laundry and restock her fridge.

-Only luffy and nami who are his childhood friends truly know just how fucking rich his family is even tho Zoro and the parent that zoro and luffy both weirdly share, despite not being otherwise related, look and act like bums. They meet the rest of the straw hats in college.

-At no given time do shanks or zoro even have 20 dollars on them something that endlessly frustrates everyone else around them. Usopp has bought one to many meals for zoro to be nothing other than incensed when he is invited to "summer" at their lake house thats more like a resort. Zoro can live in a converted mid century castle but Usopp has seen him pay for a sandwhich with a collection of change.

-people often wonder where exactly perona got her bratty attitude from because zoro and mihawk are pretty chill, composed guys. and then they see how mihawk acts around Shanks and the lenghts of childishness Shanks can push him too and then they

-Zoro and Mihawk are endlessly competing at petty meaningless activities espoecially if they involve cutting things with a blade. they have a running count into the 300s off how much mihawk has won vs zoro and he is endlessly smug about it. Zoro has only just begun to start clawing more victories for himself. He recently won their speed cucumber cutting challenge and mihawk was non to pleased about this.

-Adopted this one from a mutual; but Mihawk used to take Perona to all the twighlight, pop girlie, pastel goth stuff and pretends that its all a hastle even tho he's really into the stuff and has been since perona got into it.

-They are the kind of family that always had dinner together but would have every other meal wherever and whenever but since perona is away at college it became sunday lunch and dinner which just turned into sunday bruch for practically the entire neighborhood because zoro and perona keep inviting their weird friends over. and now its a whole thing and mihawk is none to pleased.

-Mihawk was about to be an empty nester and then s-hawk falls in his lap and heres another kid he has to look after and makes sure survives till adulthood 🙄. S-hawk ironically for all he looks exactly like him is the child that acts the least like him (This is largely zoro's influence) And he's definetly that stereotype of when you parents decide to have a kid in their 40s and they grow up in a completely different household than you did. like who even are these people?? S-hawk actually gets to have fruit snacks and zoro is still super salty about this. Because Mihawk was just off achieving his biggest dream with nothing better to do that to pout all his energy into being a parent to these two monsters. but now he has actually has a job that he actively needs to work at🙄

-Zoro looks baby sits s-hawk the most and like s-hawk is like 5 to zoro's 20 and zoro is definitely one of those people that doesnt "play" with kids instead he just folds s-hawk into whatever routine he has for the day without missing a step. He takes him with him to his classes at the community college. He pulls up a chair for s-hawk he has his own little notebook and everything everytime people try to coo at him Zoro tells them to leave him a lone the little dude's trying to learn here. He takes him to the gym like all those videos with dads and their babies repping sets. He gives s-hawk baby dumbells and teaches him proper form and everything. just goes about his life like there isnt a 5 year old trailing him like a duckling. Zoro puts on act for mihawk but he loves having a little buddy since chopper's kind of outgrown it.

-Zoro and Mihawk both talk to baby s-hawk like a regular person. Mihawk talks to him likes he's a distinguished gentleman with thoughts and opinions and who should know better than to fling food and toys and he often reads him the news. Zoro talks to him like he's just a dude definetly the type to have a beer with the baby while they sit on the couch watching sports. Perona and Shanks are the ones that actually treat him like a baby and baby talk him and shanks is definietly one of those parents that's always doing extreme sports stuff with a baby while Perona essentially treats him like a teddy bear / dress up doll. she and mihawk are the only ones allowed to make clothing decisons for him after the time he came home from a shopping trip with zoro and shanks looking like both a bum and a middle aged dad on vacation. Shanks was allowed to keep one tiny s-hawk sized haiwain shirt.

-Zoro essentially raises s-hawk like he's his child 😭. Like Junior and devante from Black-ish but he's less upront about this. He keeps adding things to the kid's schedule without telling Mihawk and essentially treats mihawk like the unwanted third in their relationship. He takes him everywhere with him. People would think that was his kid if he didn't look so intensely like mihawk. He signs baby hawk up for kendo classes from the age like 3 cause he'll be damned if he takes after mihawk's swordsmanship. He attends every practice he gets very intense during matches. its a whole thing. He also keeps signing baby hawk up for random extracurriclars that Mihawk can't keep up with and change depending on season. Baby hawk is in baby gymnastics with all the other seraphim. Zoro is very invested in this. Zoro the type to pull up to a heist with a baby.

[welcometogrouchland]

I'm going to be so real I do not understand tim & steph shippers who feel that Steph dating Tim again would save her character. You can make an argument that giving Tim a more compelling love interest would be beneficial for him! And you can at least make an argument that the fujo mischaracterization of Steph would stop. However she'd still, inevitably, be treated as a prop character/extension for someone more popular 😭 it also wouldn't make her appear in more books! Tim doesn't have many frequent appearances at the moment either! You can just say you like the couple and want them back together without acting like you have some kind of moral stance

[necrotic-nephilim]

"--but why should I let you go when you look so pretty like this?" w/JayTim

send a quote and a ship and I'll write a short fic!

this one was such a fun pick, anon. i will warn you, this one has some... very dark dialogue. the JayTim is absolutely unrequited, but Tim is forced in a situation where he has no other choice bc of some Ra's tomfoolery. you *could* read into there being Ra'sTim as well, but that's not the focus, it's just 2.8k of unhinged JayTim. enjoy <3

Tim had lost count of the days.

He was pretty sure he was somewhere in the range of ten days and two weeks. He couldn’t use how often he was fed as a gauge when it seemed purposefully sporadic to throw him off. There were no windows in his cell.

Not that it looked like a cell, but Tim insisted on mentally calling it one, mostly for fear of Stockholm Syndrome getting the best of him. No matter how large the bed was, with an ornate carved cedar headboard and cotton sheets. No matter the plush carpets and en suite bathroom with a gloriously large shower with limitless hot water. No matter the shelf full of books to keep him entertained and patterned wallpaper.

This was still a prison. Tim was still forcibly attached to the bed by a long chain connecting to a thick metal cuff around his wrist he’d yet to figure out how to pick.

Tim had to let himself believe the lock could be picked. He had to hold onto hope there was some kind of escape.

The real contrast of the lavish room wasn’t the chain, though. It was Tim’s current state, naked and questionably close to bleeding out.

Not that it would matter if Tim died.

Ra’s al Ghul had already revived him with a Lazarus Pit at least four times, and he had made it clear he had no qualms doing it again. And again.

Tim went with ‘at least’ as a mental marker, because he was certain the Lazarus Pit was starting to influence his mental state.

However many times it took, repeating the vicious cycle of coming in to torture Tim until his body gave out, then giving him a violent, unwanted rebirth. Each time, Tim was pretty sure he lost a piece of himself, somewhere deep in those glowing waters.

He was sure he’d been angrier and fighting harder to break free once. Now, that anger was drifting somewhere in the Pit, far out of Tim’s reach. Tim had heard that rapid repeated exposure to the waters of Lazarus could have degrading effects on one’s mental state.

But he never thought he would learn that firsthand.

Instead of fighting and clawing at the wrist cuff like Tim had been doing for days, he just laid on the bed, sprawled out and staining the chartreuse sheets a bright crimson, staring at the cuff. One time, Tim had clawed at the cuff until his nails ripped out of their beds and he was biting a pillow in pain, watching his skin shred trying to pull it apart.

Those injuries, much like his feral desperation, were washed away now. Every scar Tim had earned over the years was gone now. He was losing pieces of himself.

After his next death, Tim promised himself he’d redouble his escape efforts. Run his hands along the walls again, test the door frame, find something that he must’ve missed his first dozen tries. He wasn’t going to let himself rot here and be changed into someone else, just wearing the corpse of Tim Drake.

Ra’s could take a lot of things, but he couldn’t have Tim’s humanity.

For now, though, Tim was just going to lay in the bed, breathing as shallowly as he could. All his body’s survival instincts were in overdrive, making him light-headed and his heartbeat a rapid, fluttering thing, trying desperately to hold on. He had yet to figure out how to get his body to let go of those responses yet.

Because the worst part wasn’t dying. The worst part was the animalistic attempt to survive that came just before his body gave out. Tim’s mind had fought alongside his body the first time he died. The second time too.

By the third, Tim had just naively hoped Ra’s would let him stay dead.

Now, Tim was just tired and waiting for it to be over with.

Just when Tim was considering getting up and trying to speed up the process, he heard a commotion. He lifted his head and squinted.

The ninjas who brought his food were always so silent in how they moved that Tim couldn’t hear them even when they were in the room. So the running feet, the yelling-

The gunshots.

Definitely a fight. Tim snapped back to reality. He sat up as fast he could, trying not to let his body dip and sway the way his perception did. It had crossed Tim’s mind, that rescue would come at some point. But he refused to hold onto it as anything other than a futile last hope.

And even now, it didn’t feel real.

No one who would save Tim used guns. The ninjas definitely didn’t use guns either. Tim carefully wrapped the chain around his fist. Whatever energy was left in his body was better spent fighting like hell than just laying there and accepting death.

The door to Tim’s room slammed open and Tim sucked in a breath.

Of all the people it could’ve been.

“Look at that,” a smug, modulated voice crowed. “I’m the lucky guy who actually found your sorry ass.”

Jason Todd reached up and pulled his Red Hood helmet off, shaking his hair loose. Tim didn’t like the look of his smile.

Granted, he didn’t like the look of Jason Todd in general, but that was beside the point.

“What are you doing here?” Tim hissed through clenched teeth.

Jason just shrugged, walking into the room with slow, casual steps. “Bats wanted to find you bad. Bad enough he was willing to call me and offer a truce if I helped storm the stronghouse.” He shrugged like it meant nothing to him. “Looks like you’re lucky I said yes. You’re already half dead.”

“Others are here?” Tim’s breath caught on his hope.

“The whole fucking calvary.” Noises of a brawl sounded in the distance and Jason spread his hands, as if his point was proven. He took another step forward just as a ninja ran into the room, sword raised and charging Jason. Before Tim could warn him, Jason shot the person in the head over his shoulder, making them drop to the floor. A full-bodied flinch went through Tim at the sight of blood spraying the beautiful wallpaper. With an annoyed huff, Jason turned and kicked the door shut.

He didn’t signal for backup. Tim’s skin prickled at the sight of the shut door and Jason stalking toward him.

“This is the part where you say thank you,” Jason prompted lazily, getting within an arm’s reach of Tim. Tim couldn’t stop his body from recoiling, eyes flicking down to the dead body on the floor. “Oh come on. Now’s not the time to worry about morals. I gave them a quick death. You should be thanking me for that too.”

“I’ll thank you when you get me out of this,” Tim said, lifting his arm to show the cuff. He pressed his palm against the cut on his chest, the one responsible for most of his blood loss. Ra’s had blamed Tim for that one, saying it was his fault for squirming too much. Tim knew better, though. He knew every drag of Ra’s’ blade was always exact and purposeful.

Jason tilted his head to the side and leaned in close. He smiled with tiger teeth and snake eyes. “See, I would but-” his eyes dragged up and down Tim’s battered form- “why should I let you go when you look so pretty like this?”

Tim was suddenly all too aware of how naked he was, skin prickling. He grabbed a handful of sheets and yanked them over his lap, trying to cover himself. Jason made no move to stop him, just watching the motion of Tim’s arm as it grasped for a crude attempt at modesty.

“You said Bruce is here,” Tim chose his words carefully, trying not to show fear. He was better than being afraid of Jason of all people. He blamed the worst of his feelings on the vulnerable state he was already in. His fingers clenched the sheets to hide the way they shook.

“He’s around somewhere,” Jason waved his gun in the air dismissively. “But he’s not here, is he?” Another wave of the gun to gesture to the room. Jason’s eyes flicked down to the gushing chest wound. “You really need to cauterize that.”

“Do I look like I have something to cauterize it with?” Tim shot back, sluggishly. He didn’t let Jason distract him from the real point. “If you try anything, I’ll-”

“You’ll what?” Jason rolled his eyes. He searched around his utility belt, pulling out a lighter and a knife. “Tattle to Bruce? Fight me?” He snorted. “I don’t know which is more amusingly unrealistic.” He flicked the lighter on and held it under the knife.

Tim watched the blade heat up, eyes widening. “You’re not going to-”

“You’ve got a better idea?” Jason arched an eyebrow. “It’ll really piss B off if you fucking die.”

“Won’t be the first time,” Tim muttered under his breath. He cringed as soon as the words came out. That was too much information to be giving to Jason.

Another cruel snort came from Jason. “You got your own taste of the Pit, didn’t you?”

“No,” Tim tried to lie, shifting a bit.

“You did,” Jason hummed. He leaned in even closer, until his face took up Tim’s entire field of vision. “Trust me, I recognize the look in your eyes. Hold still.”

That was the only warning Tim got before a red hot blade was pressed against his skin. Tim opened his mouth to scream against the burning pain, but gloved fingers were shoved into his mouth to muffle the noise.

Tim tried to bite down on Jason’s fingers hard enough to break them, but the gloves were too thick and his body was too weak. All he could do was glare and grasp at the sheets.

The look in Jason’s gaze was terrifying. His lips held a slight smile and he looked hungry, eating up all of Tim’s tormented noises. Tim’s pain was a feast for Jason’s sadism. Tim was struggling just to stay alive and Jason looked like he was having the time of his life, licking his lips and swallowing hard.

Tim was starting to think maybe he preferred Ra’s over this.

Finally, Jason pulled the knife off of Tim’s searing skin and Tim sagged in relief. He almost fell over before Jason caught him around the waist, pressing Tim against his suit. Blood smeared over Jason’s jacket.

His fingers were still in Tim’s mouth.

Tim tried to speak around them but Jason just forced his fingers in deeper, making Tim gag.

“I could probably sneak out with you, you know,” Jason whispered into Tim’s ear. “Tell Bruce I got bored and left. They’d just think it was a bust.”

TIm had never understood Jason’s complex over him. He knew it was something he wanted to avoid at all costs. With Ra’s, Tim could at least find the root of the obsession.

With Jason, not so much.

He was always breathing down Tim’s neck and trying to get a rise out of Tim. Wanting Tim to work with him, pay attention to him, anything he could get. It reminded Tim of trying to tame a needy dog.

This was a step too far, though.

This made it all make sense in ways Tim regretted knowing as soon as it hit him. He twisted his head around until he managed to spit out Jason’s fingers, coughing.

“You don’t have Ra’s’ manpower,” Tim bit out the words. He tugged hard and uselessly against his cuff. “You couldn’t hold me for long.”

“Sounds like a challenge,” Jason hummed. “Tell me, Drake, you pissed off enough to actually try to kill me, yet? Or do you need another dunk?”

“Give me that knife and find out,” Tim curled his hand into a fist. He was bluffing. Just the thought of killing someone nauseated Tim, his eyes briefly flickering over to the dead body on the floor.

No amount of the Lazarus Pit could turn Tim into that. A cold-blooded killer who didn’t even look before he shot. Tim was better than that.

He was better than Jason.

He just had to distract Jason long enough to find where he kept his lock-picking tool, stab him in the eye with it, and then break free and find anyone else.

Maybe Tim was against murder, but there was just enough cold rage in him to crave bloody violence. He squirreled away his logical thoughts on the matter, for now. The situation warranted just a bit of brutality.

Someone had to teach Jason that he didn’t always get to have what he wanted.

Jason dared to groan softly. “Tempting. So fucking tempting. How would you kill me, Drake? Would you gut me? Slit my throat?” He sounded far too into the idea of it. The knife in his hand started trailing up Tim’s bare back. Not deep enough to cut, but still leaving goosebumps of fear in its threatening wake. “We borrow enough Lazarus water and we can take turns killing each other.”

“Borrow,” Tim echoed the word with an incredulous laugh. “Like Ra’s would let you.”

Jason’s laughter was sickening. “Didn’t plan on asking permission.” He paused, just as the knife dragged up to the base of Tim’s skull. “I’m serious, you know.” His voice got quieter. “I’d do it if you wanted to.”

“Kill each other?” TIm’s heart was pounding. He was doing the exact opposite of getting himself out of this situation. He was sinking deeper and deeper into Jason’s clawed grip and didn’t know where the escape route was anymore. He couldn’t pull away from the hold, with the knife pressed where it was. He definitely couldn’t fight Jason like this.

Tim was trapped in what he was pretty sure was a prison of his own making.

“Kill, kiss, fuck.” Jason shrugged. “I’ll take any of the above.”

Tim swallowed down blood and bile. “You couldn’t handle me.” He couldn’t show fear. More than couldn’t, he refused to. Giving Jason his fear would just spur Jason on more. Or maybe piss him off to the point of just killing Tim and leaving him there.

Now, with the teetering edge of Tim’s sanity under Jason’s scrutiny, Tim was positive he’d shatter if he got dipped in those green waters again. And he refused to let Jason keep the pieces left of Tim to himself.

He was not going out like this.

“Wanna bet?” Jason asked. “Winner takes all.”

He sounded insane. He probably was.

And he wasn’t letting Tim dance around a lack of an answer any longer. The tip the knife started to press harder until blood was trickling down his spine.

Placating Jason seemed to be the obvious and smartest survival method. If Tim faked it long enough, he’d have to have an opening sooner or later.

“If you can keep me alive long enough to get the hell out of here, then we’ll talk,” Tim chose his words as carefully as he could. He kept his tone light, in a way that was practically teasing. He hoped it was enough.

Jason practically preened, his whole body shivering against Tim’s. He lifted the knife from Tim’s neck to reach for his belt. Tim was able to suppress his sigh of relief, hearing the lock on his cuff click.

“Can you stand?” Jason asked, pulling away to stand up, but still keeping a hand on Tim’s shoulder. Possessively, almost.

Tim gave him a withering look. “Do I look like I can stand?”

“Good point.” Jason shrugged. He lifted Tim almost too easily, an arm around Tim’s waist to haul him off the bed, forcing the sheet to fall away. “God.” Jason paused for just a moment, looking over Tim’s naked form. It made Tim felt studied under a microscope in a way that made him want to crawl out of his skin.

He’d just signed a deal with the devil, and he was already regretting it.

Jason managed to snap out of it and carried Tim toward the door. Tim just held onto Jason’s neck for support and closed his eyes, trying to convince himself he hadn’t just made the stupidest decision of his life. He could still distantly hear other Bats fighting off ninjas. Salvation so close to Tim, yet still out of reach. Jason easily stepped over all of the dead bodies as they slunk through the hallways, away from the noise and into the darkness.

Tim couldn't escape the awful chill crawling down his spine; pressed against someone who was possibly more psychotic than the madman he was being promised escape from, grandeur illusions traded for the ugly truth of Jason's desire. His flicker of hope felt like it was being snuffed out by every heavy step of Jason’s boots. The best he could pray for was for Jason to give him a cell as nice as the one they were leaving behind. 

Out of one den of vipers and into another.

[dailyperkele]

DAY 2 - Place lips here

Not the type for kisses it seems, unless losing your lips is part of the experience.

[crystalpallette]

what was intended to be a sort of "battle of the doppelgangers" has turned into "ally loves her very scary gf so much"

[flowerakatsuka]

gay ppl @ a summer festival, what will they do??

[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.

[teddybeartoji]

i think i always screw myself over by thinking that EVERY piece i write has to be fully fleshed out, with a proper beginning and an end, when in reality it's literally just not true lmao the bi-weekly realization that you CAN write whatever the fuck you want and however the fuck you want is so relieving thanks brain for letting me have this one<333333333

[thelassoway]

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