#it's on the milder end

[flightfoot]

The thing about the London special not outright accepting or condemning Marinette's actions itself, to me, feels like giving her more sympathy and grace than she deserves for her actions. There is no moral ambiguity here. Marinette is 100% in the wrong. And the London special goes out of its way to try and frame this as some "no right answer" type of situation and takes away every opportunity it can to have someone meaningfully confront Marinette about the impact her actions could have on Adrien.

They deny her the chance to even consider it beyond "is lying wrong?" She's almost gaslighting her boyfriend into thinking his abuser was a good person, and now she doesn't even have the excuse of not knowing how bad it was. The whole special focused on how awful Marinette felt for doing something so despicable. And I apologize for my harsh words, but that's really just how bad it is. There's no way around it, and it's honestly quite disheartening to see all the posts about Marinette being under a lot of stress and being 14 or whatever. Like sure, but I don't see nearly the same number of posts sympathizing with Adrien, who is by all means Marinette's own victim now. And anytime someone points out the very reasonable critique that Marinette is doing an incredibly bad thing, they get swamped with these excuses.

Hm... okay. So I agree that Marinette's actions in the London Special were wrong, and that she should have told Adrien the truth, even if it hurt, instead of lying to him. I disagree about there being no moral ambiguity, since "wanting Adrien not to be hurt worse than he already is and wanting to honor the last wish of a dead man, even if he was awful" are reasonable things to value, they just don't override Adrien's right to know about things that concern him, and the way she's done it is likely just as, if not more upsetting than just telling Adrien the truth.

So with the focus on Marinette during the special (and in a bunch of the fanfics that were made based off of the special, though there haven't been all that many) being mostly around Marinette's feelings about the lie, being sympathetic towards her... yeah I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I think showing her perspective is valuable to understand why she did what she did, and to show that she was conflicted about it and honestly believed that she was doing the right thing, or trying to do the right thing at least.

On the other hand, it did sometimes feel like the London Special went beyond "these are the reasons Marinette did this, and this is the effect this decision has had on her, please empathize with her reasoning even if you disagree with her choices (even she isn't sure her choices were correct)" to "Poor Marinette, struggling under the burden of the choices she made, but she will bravely shoulder them for Adrien's happiness." I thought it mostly did okay with balancing it except for the last part, with Ladybug and Chat Noir talking about secrets and them both hugging each other over the burden of what they can't tell their partner. Because Ladybug COULD tell Chat Noir, and the person she's hiding all this stuff from IS him, so it felt icky to me to have him help in comforting her for it, when he didn't even understand what he was comforting her over.

I have the same problem with most of the fanfics about the London Special which have cropped up. I'm okay with there being some sympathy towards Marinette in the narrative for being conflicted and feeling like she should lie to Adrien "for his own good", given that she has good intentions, but a lot of it traipses into "poor Marinette is struggling heroically with having to sacrifice her commitment to the truth for the sake of Adrien's happiness." I especially don't like when Adrien feels guilty about Marinette feeling bad over that. While that's not totally out of character for him, I feel like his feelings over his own horrific situation should be centered more, rather than Marinette's guilt over feeling like she should lie to him in an effort to make his situation seem better.

Marinette IS only 14 and I can see why she honestly thinks that lying to Adrien about his father being a better person than he is would be better for him, she hasn't exactly had a lot of classes on the effects of child abuse and the different forms it could take. But there is the angle that Adrien is ALSO 14 and doesn't even have the luxury of any amount of control over the horrible situation he's in with his father.

The main sympathy I've seen given to Marinette is that well, what would YOU do if you were thrown into the situation of having to tell your crush that his father was a supervillain, he was gonna die anyway, and decided to do the one good thing of sacrificing what remained of his life to save your substitute mom? Which... yeah I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable having that conversation, but I wouldn't lie to Adrien either, I'd foist it off on Nathalie. (I do agree with the criticism that Nathalie ought to have been responsible for telling Adrien all these uncomfortable truths, given how deeply she was involved in both Gabriel's supervillainy and in Adrien's creation, but the show has decided to give Marinette all the power and all the responsibility of deciding what to tell Adrien, so here we are).

I would like there to be more attention paid to how Adrien must be feeling after all of this, with finding out his father died and being led to believe that he was actually trying to protect him the whole time, and dealing with that knowledge, than just sympathy for Marinette's position. Marinette had a choice in what to do. Adrien did not.

[nightmun]

Here's a few more goofy Connectifia related sketches! Also introduction to Kit since I've barely talked about it in general. Basically Kit is Haniel's version of Connectifia (Haniel gets to join the sentient virus gang YIPPEE). Kit takes the form of a little spicy kitten in Haniel's head who is responsible for their poor reaction to other forms of the virus. Kit is very scared of and hateful towards other Connectifias, and in the process of being angry ends up inadvertently hurting Haniel, causing their sick-like symptoms. Haniel isn't aware of Kit at first, only learning about it after seeing it in dreams several times after an event where they nearly die messing with Connectifia. At first they think Kit is some kind of monster but they eventually learn that it's just a scared little kitten of a creature. Kit has the ability to affect technology around Haniel, so once Haniel befriends their little brain cat they're able to use Kit's powers and control technology from afar.

Hope you enjoy this little intro to Kit though! Also small cameo from @pokeblog123's Connie!

One more drawing below cut (spoiler for mild eye strain):

[tormentum-ab-intra]

skeledog Leander WIP

the skull here is actually modeled closely after a deer skull, just compressed to fit a dog's overall face shape. also tried to make the eyes a little less wide-set than a deer's without making them completely front-facing like a dog's. here's the rest of the (still un-rendered) body:

i'm testing out the screen recorder i just downloaded so if that ends up working the way i want it to i'll have a timelapse of this piece when it's done :)

[sealeneee]

got a new friend :3

[winterdeepelegy]

I want to write more but I'm down with the sickness. I'll try to make up what I can after the fever breaks. Head fog + general ick = what r wurds

[desirableendings]

The X-Files’ Pilot has everything. Alien abductions. Scary woods. The pinnacle of nineties fashion. Rainy sexual tension. David Duchovny looking like that. Family drama. A tragic backstory. Graveyard digging? And the most interesting choices for practical effects.

[pillowspace]

stop sending me nsfw. you are coming down with me. hand in unlovable hand

[hazamacore]

i always think of this tweet whenever i see someone act like depression has been entirely de-stigmatised. or the countless posts mocking people who “cant even ask the waiter for ketchup/cant even make a phonecall” when someone acts like anxiety has been entirely de-stigmatised

[websitelover24]

highly recommend watching tom goes to the mayor btw lol

[deep-sea-anemone]

I love doing gender-confusing cosplays

Love the puzzled looks I get

[julesnichols]

It went from "lucky to be close to 10 Celsius" last week to "will we break the record of 30 degrees Celsius" this week and I am so tired

[desperatepleasures]

"I'm gonna put jalapenos in this broth and make eight fucking servings of soup" - my dumb ass who's allergic to chili peppers and thought surely jalapenos would be fine since they're slightly different

[anavar-immela]

Ask game: storm

Storm: share a snippet where a character is angry.

ohohohohohoho you have chosen well. though it occurs to me that I haven't written nearly as many scenes as I feel like I have, which obviously requires fixing

Something rustled in the far corner of the cave. Sam tensed, ready to run - but from what, he still had no idea.

"Who's there?" called a voice, which belonged to someone who clearly wanted to sound less afraid than she was.

"Anina!" said Sam, perhaps more eagerly than he intended. Never had he been so relieved to find her where he didn't expect to.

"Collen?"

More scuffling sounds erupted from the corner, and then - to Sam's complete surprise - a pair of skinny arms wrapped around him as Anina hugged him tightly. He barely had time to react to the hug before she pulled away and punched him, her small fist hitting his chest with unexpected force.

A short string of curses spilled from his mouth before he could stop himself. "What was that for?" he added at the end of it.

"I hate you," Anina said matter-of-factly, all fear gone from her voice.

"Well yeah," said Sam, "but why'd you have to hit me?"

"That's what you get for making me feel bad about you dying."

"I'm not dead," Sam pointed out.

"I thought you were, and that was bad enough," Anina replied. "Coping with you being dead was one thing, but now I have to cope with you being alive again!"

[youweremyridehome]

cant wait to go straight to bed after work tonight (it's currently 7.56am)

[avibero]

TikTok feels like a prime outlet to recruit people into conspiracy theories and weird cult like mentalities. Like I just go there to find some funny memes or recipes and gardening ideas, but there is such overlap between gardeners and preppers that the algorithm starts feeding me the most unhinged vids of government conspiracies followed by new agey prophets foretelling, idk, the rapture? But all framed as, like, advice for small homesteaders. And it KEEPS GIVING THOSE KINDS OF VIDEOS TO ME. I remember catching myself almost believing some of these things last year because I just kept seeing them and the ideas wormed their way into my brain until I started thinking that way (and this is one of the many reasons I only occasionally go on tiktok). And what I'm seeing are probably the more tame ones! This feels bad? Especially with so many younger people on the platform

[jorvikzelda]

feels so fucking WEIRDDD having someone tell you that you seem to be doing better mentally than normal when actually you’re at your lowest point in many months you’re just taking iron supplements now 😭