#it truly is horrible out here for me

[eucalyptication]

there’s actually nothing quite like the olympics to make me feel like i’ve wasted my whole life away 😊

[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.

[vigilskeep]

um calenhad aeducan lore. known fondly as prince cal by the people of orzammar and also me. he’s called that after the founder of the theirin line, because after ferelden successfully rebelled against orlesian rule, orzammar was like oh fuck we’ve got to repair that relationship as if we didn’t just sit by the whole time that was happening. so there were a bunch of these kind of uh diplomatic publicity stunts happening around the time he was born. and nothing about his life has ever not been someone else’s angle

his mother was one of endrin’s lesser concubines from a lower status house, and every jealous eye turned in her direction when she bore the king a son. despite that, endrin’s queen took her and the baby under her wing. it wasn’t entirely altruistic. the queen had no sons of her own, so cal could serve instead as her “contender” for heir against trian, the son of her long-time rival, a favoured concubine called lady rosdrada. the queen also happened to be a notable warrior, a powerful reaver, who died years later on a deep roads expedition under mildly suspicious circumstances, with many blaming lady rosdrada. (she was never publicly accused but neither did the king ever marry her and allow her to rise to the queen’s vacant place, a fact bitterly resented by her faction.)

cal’s mother, who returned the queen’s protection and favour with fierce loyalty, was first among rosdrada’s accusers. furious that punishment never came, she changed almost overnight from a shy, humble woman to a politician who could in her own right engage in the life or death battle for succession, raising her son to be the fulfilment of the late queen’s ambitions. he was trained since childhood in both the ways of princely charm and the ways of a reaver warrior, all to be the vengeance of a woman whose face he sometimes struggles to remember. perhaps there was a time, as boys, when he tried to be a brother to trian despite it all, but with his mother’s teachings always in his ears and trian less bearable each year, he’s long since accepted that deadly conflict between them is inevitable. he’s never eager to be the ruthless aeducan prince, but he’s always done his duty, however ugly. he never turns down the foul-tasting reaver concoctions, or quakes when he’s sent to the deep roads. he always defends his house’s honour and makes the point in blood. anything less is death; his mother tells him so

he doesn’t truly want the throne. he just wants more than anything to have the weight of expectations off his shoulders, and to no longer dread that his mother, his second, and all who support them will pay the deadly price of his failure. he’ll jump blindly at the chance to get this fight over with—and that’s all the opportunity bhelen ever needed

[bruciemilf]

I think an underappreciated motive for Bruce / Batman to not murder the Joker after he killed Jason is that it would, in a sense, mean Joker won. Like, yeah the Joker would be dead but he would also be laughing himself silly that he was the one who made the Bat break his code.

Bruce sparing the Joker was not because he didn't love Jason enough to kill him, but because he refused to let the Joker take anything else from him; he took his son, but he would not take his honor, his morality, his code. He would not give Joker the satisfaction.

Yeah! I think, ultimately, DC said it best, -- one death, two deaths, three deaths, -- whatever you pick, everybody loses. It was a no win situation from the start and specifically designed to have no satisfactory ending

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

men are so disappointing in so many ways i know i shouldn't expect most of them to be dignified humans but it's crazy. i need to get over this guy he's making my sense of self crumble even faster than it usually does. like he's just so unlike my usual type and i'm pretty convinced he's stupid and slutty and not discerning whatsoever. not to mention boring like i know even if i did have a chance with him he wouldn't Get Me at all so it's a bigger waste of time that usual and i'm actually pretty tired of men in general and definitely tired of parasocial relationships because they drive me insane for months typically. thankfully it's only been like 2 weeks if that at this point. idk. sigh. i know literally virtually nothing abt him as a person and ofc liking any public figure who you know nothing about is only setting yourself for heartbreak and disappointment to begin with bc you already know nothing is gonna come from it but. in a way it's almost addictive to become obsessed with someone and not be looked at with the same level of scrutiny. i don't think anyone in real life would ever try to get to know me as much as i try to get to know people who i'll never even meet. lmao! but that's the thing... idk... i have a lot of love in my heart and it consumes me and i reject my pride usually when i'm into someone. i want to know more... like VORACIOUSLY consuming anything with information about them involved simply because i think knowing someone is a very deep form of love but of course you can never truly know anyone. not completely. and that scares me i think which is why it's always probably been easier for me to never really TRY to be with anyone or have anything real. idk. this turned into me psychoanalyzing myself real quick but SOMEONE needs to bc i need to understand what the fuck is wrong w me.

[musicalmoritz]

LMAO there’s no way someone made a callout blog for TBHK, you people have way too much free time on your hands

[rustedgate]

being not depressed is kind of what i was scared it would be. im so fucking angry. cause i have the energy to *BE* angry now. and to be told i should just "let it go, ruminating won't help" by someone who's spent my ENTIRE LIFE being angry, just in general, meaning i have to tiptoe around without that person EVER realizing i do that, is incredibly frustrating.

[eeblouissant]

do you ever find a song that reminds you so violently of a favourite character that you kind of just like. freeze there once the realization hits

so anyway I found a new Dorothy song and I’ve paused everything I was doing to talk about it because. oh my god. come cry with me.

Flowers by Marina, here’re the lyrics:

obviously I’ve related this back to her marriage with/& divorce from stan, but I feel like this song really encapsulates how easy it is/has been for Dorothy to fall right back into his arms at the slightest show of affection, regardless of how far along she is in her own healing journey, and how awful she knows he is. “And it’s most tempting to give in when you hear the firin shots, when you’re steps from winning back all the happiness you lost.”

She’s very weak to emotional temptation, it’s one of her biggest character flaws. It doesn’t take much to convince her to do something she has already been yearning for even slightly. (I could connect this back to her recovering gambling addiction on so many different levels but thats another post entirely, and kind of self explanatory) ie: the episode stan takes a wife, where he shows affection for Sophia in crisis, keeps dorothy company, and now - regardless of the fact that she’s about to ruin a planned wedding and that, stan is stan - dorothy is determined to take stan back and completely convinced that he wants her back, too. We see dorothy in a similar situation with stan in season one also, to a little bit of a lesser extent. There are so many big and small examples of this that it would be impossible to name them all individually, but I think the examples involving stanley are most relevant here. oh god, not to mention the time they almost actually get married again … spare me. Eventually, everytime, when he proves once again to be the asshole that cheated & left her, she comes to her senses. But oh my god sometimes it just takes so much for her to see that someone is bad for her. “–but I would rather not, betray myself, just to keep your love at any cost”

Sophia comments on this flaw once or twice in canon too (OUCH, BTW.) and it just … dorothy is always so defensive. girl your mother is correct I fear!!!

“If you’d just bought me flowers, maybe I would have stayed”… the slightest show of affection would have kept her there with him for even longer, I’m so sure of it – thank god he stayed gone for as long as he did. Should have been forever!!!!!!! she had been slipping away from him since day one.

Do I even need to start talking about “and now my future gleams with colours bold and bright, in a home that’s filled with love and hope and a life that just feels right.” PLEASE. PLEASE… I’m so fragile …… please … I feel like this one speaks for itself. And right after a line that so perfectly describes her home life while married to stan? I’m not well oh my god this is sick

[deus-ex-mona]

s. s ave me, meoto…

[angelstrawbabie420]

hmm i think i am not coping. very well

[laniidae-passerine]

Honestly I think Dean Highbottom has some shit to answer to as well. The mockery, the derision, the outright admittance that he was hoping Coriolanus would fail and the Snow family would continue to suffer. How someone who loathed the Games still treated a young man with cruelty because of the past, because of social divides that would be so easy to tear down. In the end, it wasn’t just Gaul who shaped Snow into the man he became. So bitter and hateful. So incapable of compassion and forgiveness. Just like his father. Just like his Dean.

[cosmik-homo]

Just realized- and God, I hope Mr Emmerich comes through with this- to me dragon age men are romantically about one thing and one thing only:

Getting annoyed by something they're up to and then they suddenly say the most vulnerable soft ass gentle lovely thing and I have to growl and go ougggghhhhh I CAN'T not cherish him

[jackass-jones]

Posts about bpd need to stop being so damn relatable to me 🤨

[wulfhalls]

.

[criticalrolo]

folks i have put in the legwork to try to understand the jgy apologist side of the fandom since that seems to be So Many People... I thought that maybe the tv show elevated his crimes to make it a more black and white villain situation but then I read what he does in the novels and it is WAY WORSE... i literally feel like it's 2012 and people are writing loki-style apologism for "his childhood was very sad (extremely true it was horrible) and that's why the crimes are okay (the crimes are so so many murders and SA because his feelings and desires are more important than People's Lives)"

[todayisafridaynight]

OKAY THE JO ASK I MENTIONED

I'm working on next week's video and it's just like 8 Characters Appearing In Y8 or whatever, and there's a lot I've scrapped to keep it manageable, but obviously I re-listened to the teaser trailer and it got me thinking about Y8 Jo... as usual...

RGG's connection with reality is tenuous at best, but in the case of prison life especially, it's pretty obvious it's Mostly modeled off of movies and other media. Which is fine, RGG is more often than not actively "going for RGG-ism rather than realism" (per staff interview), but it does mean I'll be BSing my way through most of this ask <3

So unlike America, in Japan, inmates can't just make a list of people who can visit them (I would cry if that were the case). Only family, people connected to the case/law enforcement/civil servants, and people who need to consult them about personal matters with legal consequences (e.g. marriage, childcare, employment) can get in.

Friends and associates aren't generally barred from visitation, but Basically It's A Pain In The Ass that requires consistent correspondence to prove they know each other. On top of wardens summarily rejecting visitation requests they don't think will be Productive for the inmate, there's an additional challenge for someone like Ichi as people with criminal records are deemed Bad Influences and so face higher rates of rejection and letter confiscation.

Now. ABSOLUTELY none of this Actually Matters because we've seen Yasuko (who absolutely should have a right to visitation) get rejected and people who probably shouldn't have a right be able to get in. Most wardens don't actually do their jobs (either because they're corrupt or because they're My Man Kosaka From Y5). Because of that corruption, even if a big deal is made of it (50/50 on that), it shouldn't be too hard for someone like Ichi to arrange a visit. It's just down to whatever Yokoyama and co. think is the best for the story.

HOWEVER. It did get me thinking. Because even before I noticed it was Jo's voice, I noticed he definitely didn't sound surprised to see Ichi. He doesn't miss a beat greeting him. And "been a long time, Ichi" has some nuance to it for being such a simple phrase; if you're saying it, and you're Jo, you're not only not surprised to see Ichi, but also the one who's starting the conversation proper and in control of the conversation, whether Ichi knows it or not. At least that's how it's been used so far and how it's generally used in media.

So it's like, What's The Circumstance Here where Ichi is not only able to meet him but Jo also isn't surprised... are you playing it cool... are you gonna be cunty... have you been writing/calling so you know to expect it... do you have other reasons to expect it... If I May Dream A Moment are you meeting outside of prison, so Ichi's the one who's caught by surprise...

This literally isn't even Anything for how long this ask is lol sorry I'm just. Yeah. I am once again Thinking

nothin like a lil thinkin while we wait for more lad8 news yk..... im an encourager of it hell yeah.......