#is my favorite part of the work day

[rottengurlz]

she’s like if the virgin mary smoked a pack of pall malls every day 🚬

[starry-bi-sky]

Out of Context Danny Phantom Memes for a fic i haven't posted (yet)

[numberonetribble]

Oh you KNOW that thing is going to taste 100% like food coloring 😭

[fatedroses]

Finally I can post the comic for Adventurer!Zenos that has taken hold of my brain for the past week.

AKA a man who is currently running off the fumes of the literal souls of the damned being very desperate to be out of the void he was stuck in (and for the first time actually being able to just enjoy something mundane), only to get absolutely overwhelmed but all the stimuli he had just... ignored until now.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Pages from trying to keep a little sketchbook-scrapbook type thing going for two weeks lol. I gave myself specific rules in hopes they might all end up more cohesive/consistent seeming, but alas, scribbly chaos reigns, it seems

[lurking-loaf]

Who is Sun's best friend? You are!

Day 1 of DCA Promptober - best friend

[ryllen]

Look what came through the mail today! The letters & ( •̀ω•́ )σ 3 little gremlins from letterstoear.

Just wanna say i adore the flower stickers on the letters too much, they are that much worth mentioning.

[solaestial]

SLEEPWALK - Hitorie

(link to song translation)

[svtskneecaps]

i'm still stuck on the purgatories so here's a list of purgatory 2 moments simply off the top of my head that deserve to be remembered:

aimsey ducking all of axolotl team alone in a cave with literally half a heart

goose gang fucking descending on the raccoon base and absolutely wrecking shop

ethan crankgameplays clutching up for team panda during the capture the flag game by being the only one hanging out in the center and periodically checking the chests, earning them a shitton of flags and clutching multiple rounds

crow team's egg taking 0 damage

pac doxxing goose gang's egg in the last second

shelby shubble as the last member of her team online writing a letter to aimsey and sharing the world's most devastating ten minutes before her team was eliminated with one of the eye creatures (coco? i forgot lol)

badboyhalo absolutely fucking DEMOLISHING the battleship event on like 2 hours of sleep and a dream

wuant(?) stealing a tv from the battleship event and then playing portuguese ice age on it for the crows lmfao

tubbo djing for his team while waiting for the time for a goose gambit

theguill CRASHING THROUGH THE FUCKING CEILING of the raccoon team's hidey hole like the fucking kool aid man in a last effort to save his team and 4v1 or 5v1 ing team raccoon; he lost but that was such an epic fucking moment

theguill and etoiles pvping and each hyping the other's skills the entire time

seapeekay escaping cellbit and baghera and then stealing their boats and rocketing past to tease them about it; that shit was iconic

kenny going mad with power collecting sand on literally day 1

the english speaking squirrels taking actual physical notes on portuguese phrases (i think)

lgbtiba

i may add more this is an off the top of my head list but like got DAMN i like these events :D i like them a lot

[latenightsundayblues]

Give it up for adam faulkner everybody

He's been saving up money for the last two weeks so he could finally buy a cup of name-brand coffee that actually tastes good. It was supposed to be his lunch

[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.

[covvboytears]

The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

[oozeandgoo-art]

This is (vertically) pretty long; the rest is under the cut to save your dash.

Haven is a lot of things. An effective communicator isn't one.

This is very much intended to be Taran retelling the story of the time this happened to someone else, given the eight-thousand anachronisms and the level of comfort Taran has in talking to Haven. It's so specifically anachronistic in such a specific "I'm telling you a story and I don't want you to get bogged down in the inconvenient details" way that it got me to write 6000 words (and counting) of a stupid wip so I could justify this existing.

Bonus notes: Haven is specifically pretending to be asleep because he doesn't want to talk about the mess in the kitchen. Taran isn't remotely annoyed about that but he would like for next time Haven to come downstairs and say hi instead of putting on a shirt and then pretending to be asleep again.

[kitkatsgalore]

you have my soul, you have my heart ♡

[gardenofhope]

I’m so excited to do nothing but play salmon run for 48 straight hours tomorrow

[psychomusic]

meet doctor leptis ferrer, also known as fixer nine!

he collaborated with cipher thirteen on a few crucial missions, but his most important aspect is his research.

his backstory before becoming a fixer + some worldbuilding of his home planet under the cut!

he was born on niamos, that, at the time, was shifting from being a planet with its people inhabiting it to the Space Beach™ we know from andor. amidst this changing environment, little leptis was born.

niamos was divided into three main groups of people. the natives; the tourists, who were growing in number, but only stayed temporarily; and the offworlders who settled down and started to run mainly tourism-centered business. the niamos people, called avile, still ruled over the planet, having their own political organizations that excluded the newcomers. aviles allowed the offworlders to settle down in their certain parts of their lands only because that generated profit through taxes, but they weren't allowed to fully integrate in their society nor leave the permitted areas under any circumstances.

actually, the aviles allowed these settlements rather recently, after a series of revolts in the lower classes. in theory, their system was a democracy - in practice, only rich enough people could afford to become politicians, because there was no retribution for it. so, they decided to allow newcomers to settle in, with a tax, that would be used for the retribution of political positions. the more people started moving to niamos, the more new positions could get paid.

(quick colored sketch of a part of their territory - pardon the ugly af buildings but i hate drawing them)

when the initial wave of new politicians from the lower classes got into the system, they started turning the system into a full, direct democracy, reform by reform. most roles were assigned by casual drawing from a list of volunteers, and no one could keep their chair longer than a year in every position. but, after the initial wave of openness and inclusion, things changed.

initially, there weren't any laws on citizenship or access to politics. it wasn't explicitly said that offworlders couldn't partake in politics, so when they began taking interest in it, with political programs that addressed their needs and problems, the natives started to fear that their flourishing tourism business would change the political balance they had reached. many feared that, in the span of a few generations, the niamos would be governed by the interests of the tourist business, that attracted visitors (and their money) from many star systems.

so, they started to legislate. to be a niamos citizen, one had to be born in a family of niamos people, quite obviously. at first, children born of mixed parents weren't allowed citizenship, and weren't even really a thing. but as the offworlders areas grew larger, and more offworlders settled on niamos, some protests arose.

then, they had to change the legislation. they were a people with a strong and deeply felt culture - they decided to use it as a base to legislate further. the niamos had many rites and trials, and a complex language, called caile. one would become citizen only by successfully passing all the trials, partaking in all the rites, and fully learning the language.

the first trial was a long pilgrimage with a wooden boat (and an animal) to an island. this allowed the child (around 6-7 y.o.) to go to school, where they could learn the language. this first trial was easy for any "full" avilec child to pass, as they traveled around the various islands of their world on a daily basis. offworlders, however, were still confined into one section of a bigger island. this allowed only children who spent enough time sailing with their avilec parent to pass the test.

then, they would be allowed into a school that would teach them how to read and write. the school, though, only taught in avilec language - so, the children already had to speak caile at home, to be able to pass the tests at the end of the year. after that, it mostly got easier - one would study the niamos history, and was asked to partake in every smaller rite that tightened the community and better integrated the new members.

around 18, though, to become a legal adult, there was another trial (here, it granted access to vote and independence. then, as one got older, they'd have to pass a trial to be able to volunteer and be elected for each position - the age grew with the importance of the role, but the difficulty of the trials only decreased). it was a relatively simple trial: it was a boat pilgrimage around every island in the archipelago - something anyone could do.

but leptis failed it.

when he was around 14 years old, he went on a boat pilgrimage with his family to reach a sacred island in front of the offworlders' sector. there, a young sea monster who had lost its way attacked him. he clenched his big jaw on his body - the monster's mouth was big enough to cover his entire torso and get a good grip anyway. as his family panicked, from the shore, some tourists saw the scene and called for help, and help arrived in the form of medics on a speeder and an offworlder with a gun, who shot the beast, who immediately lost its grip on leptis.

the offworlders' hospitals, with special legislation, were open to everyone. it was the only thing the niamos paid a tax for, as they recognized that the offworlders' medicine was better than theirs for some things. they did mostly go to their old medics, but when that failed, they relied on those hospitals as well. knowing that no niamos medic could save their son, his parents allowed him to be taken away with the speeder.

in his parents' eyes, his survival was a miracle, and they accepted it without questions. instead, little leptis began wanting to know how he was saved. so he began studying medicine. he devoted himself to the subject. even as he ruined his connection to the rest of the community (he stopped partaking to the rites - he wasn't forced to go, as both his parents were aviles, and nobody thought a niamos would stop partaking in the rites, so there weren't any rules on that) he kept on studying.

when he turned 18, he had to leave his studies to complete the trial. he was doing well, as everyone always did, until he reached the spot where he was attacked. he never went back there since the incident. suddenly, he relived all of it again, and couldn't move anymore. he was paralyzed by the flashback, and trembled heavily as he realized that there was a wound the doctors hadn't healed. unable to continue, he failed the trial.

no avile had ever failed the trial, but the law seemed clear - he couldn't have access to politics, and wouldn't become an adult. he became an outcast - his peers continued their lives while he was forced out of it, forced to depend on his parents, forever. but mostly, he started to have trouble dealing with the incident like he never had. he was distressed and tense, and couldn't sleep properly. he went back to the medics, and they told him he had ptsd - and that they couldn't do much about it. that shocked him - they saved his organs from failing and stitched his broken body back together in ways that would seem impossible to comprehend, but they couldn't do nothing to heal his hurt brain?

so that became his research interest.