#it's kind of six of one you know

[sweaterkittensahoy]

There's a little extra room in the cups, but overall, I think I nailed it.

The trick to sizing up the bottoms is to add all the extra inches you need on the back. Just make the front according to pattern and subtract that from your hip measurement. Then, add however many extra inches you need to fit the back, and figure out a good increase layout and off you go!

You'll need size #3 thread (I used WeCrochet Curio) and a 3.25mm hook. Pattern is here (or you can message me).

Also, enjoy this very low effort very pin up shot:

[demaparbat-hp]

In your Spitfire AU, since Zuko is looking after Lu Ten II, what happened to Ursa?

Zuko is slightly older in the Spitfire AU. He was banished at fifteen, his head a little clearer and denial a little weaker than in canon. After his first look through the Air Temples, Zuko decides that if he can't find a myth, he might as well search for the next best thing.

Finding Ursa isn't easy, but in time he makes it to a secluded house in a near-forgotten part of the world. His mom is there, older and stronger and alive.

But she isn't alone.

And Zuko, as it turns out, didn't keep the best company during his search.

When Ursa is discovered and her secrets are laid bare for assassins (for Ozai) to find, she begs Zuko to take his little brother and run. She'll do anything it takes to protect her children, even if that means leaving them behind to keep a target off their back. Ursa diverts attention from them and allows Lu Ten's ancestry to be kept a secret. She orders Zuko not to follow her again, and disappears.

Zuko is left with a little three-year-old brother to raise and a mother he cannot hold onto.

[anna-scribbles]

they should've been at the club(infertility treatment centers)

[canisalbus]

Oh, speaking of Vasco & Machete's voices, I always imagined machete as having either a very high and delicate voice or an uncharacteristically grave, low and regal voice, similar to how Jeremy Irons voices Scar in the original lion king. I personally like the grave voice idea much more, i find it at the same time a curve ball and somehow fitting of Machete

I think it's a little bit of both. Machete has a meticulously crafted work persona that is quite different from what he's like off the clock, you could say he has developed a distinct customer service voice. It's imperative that he comes across as professional, respectable and authoritative, so he has learned to use a lower register than he normally would, and keeps his tone cold, measured and impersonal. I'd say he sounds dignified and somewhat long-suffering, often with a tired, bitter creak. All in all he sustains this business facade quite well.

In private he's very soft-spoken and tends to have an underlying wounded, whimpery frailness to him. He practically never raises his voice but when sufficiently agitated, he becomes a fast and expressive talker and his pitch rises sharply. He doesn't sing (outside of conducting an occasional Mass, I suppose) but has a surprisingly light and airy laugh.

[gretagator]

Been meaning to redraw that one Dead Money achievement image for years because it looks so stupid. (in a good way)

[thelilylav]

We only see each other at funerals

(On Jason, Thalia, Nico, Bianca, and their parallels/connections)

The Titan's Curse (Rick Riordan), @/anxiousmaya_, Right Now (Gracie Abrams), The Battle of the Labyrinth (Rick Riordan), Joan of Arc (Mary Gordon), The Lost Hero (Rick Riordan), Episodes Toward and Elegy for Halley's Comet (Lindsey Drager), Jason Grace (Riordan Wiki), The Gods Show Up (Michael Kinnucan), The House of Hades (Rick Riordan), What the Living Do (Marie Howe), The House of Hades (Rick Riordan), Planet of Love (Richard Siken), The Blood of Olympus (Rick Riordan), Tangerine (Nolune), The Blood of Olympus (Rick Riordan), The Blood of Olympus (Rick Riordan), I Bet On Losing Dogs (Mitski), The Burning Maze (Rick Riordan), @/abhorarchive (Twitter), The Burning Maze (Rick Riordan), Seventeen (MARINA), The Burning Maze (Rick Riordan), @/rollercoasterwords, The Tyrant's Tomb (Rick Riordan), @/the-overanalyst, Where Things Come Back (John Corey Whaley), Grit (Silas Denver Martin), Softcore (The Neighbourhood), The Tower of Nero (Rick Riordan), Frost (Mitski), @/moonbends, I'm Your Man (Mitski), Sun Bleached Flies (Ethel Cain), The Tower of Nero (Rick Riordan), Three (Sleeping At Last), My Art

[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.

[inkstainedrat]

Papa V so help me

I have so much energy right now I need to be taken out with a tranquilizer gun

It’s the tiniest, briefest little glimpse of what the future holds

But my god I love this band and am so excited for whatever is in store

[blueskittlesart]

cold fruit in a hot kitchen (so i had this great watermelon last weekend)

[random-autie-fangirl]

Shoutout to a bunch of voices crushing on the Razor

Voice of the Broken: She doesn't want us. Voice of the Contrarian: You're just saying that because you want her to be into you. Voice of the Broken: I know. I thought I was being obvious.

Voice of the Paranoid: Maybe it'll work! Maybe it'll throw her off. I know I'd be thrown off if she started flirting with us. Voice of the Contrarian: Yeah, because you'd be into it. Voice of the Paranoid: No comment.

Voice of the Stubborn: I'm into it. Voice of the Cheated: I can't say I mind either. If it weren't for all the cheating, I'd say she's pretty cute.

Bonus:

Hero doesn't know if he's into the Razor

[queenofbaws]

hi hi 👋 icyqueen I love your jossam fics on ao3 and am simply blown away by how you bring the characters to life, especially the crepes. Your dialogue is always so entertaining. Like how do you write them so well.

anyway, I’m hope you’re still doing requests cause I was thinking about that lovely wonderful fic “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” that I yelled to you about on ao3 and how I really enjoyed reading josh flip his shit over sams safety. So in that same vein, I was wondering if you could write about the until dawn final scene/flipping the switch but in Josh’s perspective. And how he would react to Sam being the who has to stall, face handigo and risk her life saving everyone.

The high school rumor mill didn't have shit on whatever it was the hospital had going on. Everywhere he went, there was another murmur, a whisper only half-hidden behind an out-of-date magazine - "They said..." or "Well, I guess..." or "What I heard..." - a piece of a puzzle he hadn't even known he'd been putting together, and high holy shit, he had never wanted to know the ending of a story less.

But he'd grown up in a house where plots were discussed at the dinner table; where twists were dismissed as too predictable or not predictable enough. Just because he didn't want to know how this one went didn't stop the knowing from happening.

So he waited until she came to do her usual round (visiting Jess as her stitches healed, visiting Mike as he worked his way through PT, visiting him as all the king's horses and all the king's men tried to put his ass back together again). And then he asked.

"What's this I keep hearing about a light switch?"

Sam watched him for a second, maybe two, maybe a hundred and thirty-seven for all he knew, then blinked and shrugged as if he'd asked about the weather. "I don't know. What do you keep hearing about a light switch?"

And there it was: The Impasse. The one they'd been sidling along since he'd been dragged out of the mines, his eyes too sensitive to open in the sunlight. Most days they just sort of crept towards it, talking pleasantly enough without actually approaching the edge; today it seemed they'd decided to jump in headfirst, not bothering to check for handrails or safety nets before careening towards the dark, spiraling pit that was This Conversation.

Sam watched him. Sam blinked. Sam waited, and waited, and waited, and if her goal had been to show him how it felt, being appraised and goaded and puppeteered at his most vulnerable, well...he couldn't say it didn't work. A little, anyway. He had to figure it still wasn't quite the same - she'd had that nice, fluffy towel after all, and the only thing he had was a flimsy old hospital gown.

"Rumor has it," he started again, fighting to keep his tone blasé (or, at the very least, level), "you weren't exactly conforming to air safety rules the other night." When it didn't get a response, he sniffed and explained the joke, "Y'know. Help yourself before you help others. Attach your oxygen mask first."

She sat on the visitor chair and watched him. One ankle folded over the other, and as the hem of her pantleg rode up, he could see the bandages wrapped beneath. Still white. So there was that.

"You just, what, pulled a Scooby-Doo? Ran around, clapped your hands, hid under furniture, that kind of thing? Where'd that athlete's spirit go, huh? Where'd miss 'Oh-don't-worry-about-it-I'll-just-fucking-CLIMB-out-of-this-mineshaft-barehanded' go? Don't tell me I took it out of you down in the basement, because we both know you barely broke a sweat at that, so - " He realized his face was getting hot and stopped. His chest had gone tight too, but there were a million reasons that might've happened, so he didn't bother looking the most obvious in the face. Instead he swallowed hard and forced himself to mimic himself, pressing his mouth into a slash a passerby could've mistaken for a smirk. "What gives?"

Sam shrugged. She didn't seem interested in doing much else. Maybe she was worried there was still something wrong inside of him, something inhuman, something that would pounce if she stood or shook her head or tucked her hair behind her ear; maybe she just didn't care. "Someone had to be the last one out," she explained, and again, her tone suggested something about the weather.

"But why you?"

"It had to be someone."

"But why you?!" And fuck, maybe there was something still wrong inside of him, because suddenly his vision was blurred and his lungs ached like they'd been squeezed. His face prickled, his stomach twisted, and none of it was normal - none of it - none of it was right. The room was too small and too bright and too fucking sterile, leaving him nowhere to hide.

"You could've died!" he found himself saying (though he guessed he might've just imagined it, the ringing of his ears so high and shrill). "You could've fucking died, and for what? For who?! For them?! What if something had happened to you - what if you'd gotten hurt? What if - " I was alone, his traitorous mind finished for him when his voice shattered and broke, What if I'd woken up in this awful fucking place without my sisters AND without you? What if what if what if...

It wasn't until he dropped his head into his hands that he heard her leave her chair; it wasn't until he felt the shitty mattress pad dip beside him that the tears came. But by then her arms were around him and she'd somehow saved him too, her skin so warm against his she might as well have just stepped away from the fire.

The hospital rumor mill would have a field day with this one, he thought, but that would be fine. He didn't have the first clue how this story was going to end - only how he wanted it to. He'd take all the help he could get.

[averlym]

no one would notice if i ever vanished // if bodies could sustain // this never-ending army // like blood pumping through a vein

(click for better resolution!)

:OOO hello. anyway since these are all posters i'd have in an ideal world or smth and i'd like to store the high res versions somewhere,,, here's the google drive folder for them? hehe ''

close up!

[madnessofmen]

Shell shock? What? Come on Corporal, get out of that daze. We have more pressing matters to get to. I have a very important question. Would you still love me if I were a worm?

Yes, sir. I would fill a mason jar with mud and carry you around in it at all times to make sure you were safe. (A shell goes off a few dozen yards away, throwing dirt and debris into the air. It lands with a series of soft patters in the ankle deep mud of the trench. I stare at the ground for an uncomfortably long time, watching the soil soak up the water and become mud. My thoughts are far far away. You wait expectantly. I finally look up.) Can I also be a worm?

[kushanna]

why does ange not being trapped in the past and having the will to build a future for herself have to include her taking responsibility for things that were never her fault to begin with. honey, you didn't "abandon" your warm memories. you were six. i barely have memories from when i was six. and for the love of god. ange never needed to call eva her mother (!), that was never a necessity, she didn't need to display a single ounce of affection towards eva when she was a child in order to not have been abused. whether it would have made their relationship easier or whatever, that's almost irrelevant since it's simply not a responsibility that you get to put on her anyway, you don't get to even imply that she's somehow responsible for the abuse she suffered, and it's bizarre that i'm having to say this obvious thing AAAAHHHH i feel like i'm losing my whole mind lmao it's completely possible to look at their life post-1986 and have empathy for eva as well (which is what i had been doing since episode 4?), though that doesn't include all the whitewashing and glossing over and needless over sentimentality episode 8 is doing. i do have so much affection for eva and it's hilarious that i'm having to come here and call nonsense for what it is cause the story is failing at the bare minimum this late into the game

[blujayonthewing]

guy sees student art for the very first time in their life, gets really scared

[bloomingsalma]

i think one of the most disappointing things is to see that your childhood friends have grown up to represent the kind of people you're disappointed in