#just enjoy this rare treat

[jacks347]

(After the latest BVZ episode, I have to get this out of my brain. Enjoy Albus visiting home out of panic.)

Faith barely heard the door open and slam shut over the low buzz of the early evening. Faith was working on dinner, Kerano was doing her homework at the kitchen table. If anything, she expected the sound to be Devlin. It wasn't until she felt a familiar pair of arms wrap around her in a tight grip, burying his face in her hair.

It was...odd. Faith almost didn't want to breathe, lest she break the atmosphere. Albus didn't do hugs, Faith would know. But here he was, clinging onto her like she'd disappear if he didn't. If she really listened, she could hear him mumbling something. "She's safe, she's okay, he can't hurt her now." Over and over like a mantra. Just what had happened out there?

She slowly reached up, smoothing over the warrior's hair. "Albus? Are you okay?" That seemed to snap him out of it as he lifted his head, his near death grip loosening. "Huh? Oh, I'm fine, Faithful. Just...had a rough mission." Faith leaned her head back to raise an eyebrow at him, unable to resist a teasing smile. "What's this? The impervious Albus York admitting he had a bad day?" He snorted, almost offended as he pushed her away. "Yeah yeah, laugh it up. Next time I'll just leave you to worry like an old housewife." "Don't you dare, I will march out to Maya myself and hunt you down if I have to." Faith warned, brandishing her spoon like a sword. Albus only chuckled, pushing her spoon down and kissing her forehead. "You're cute when you think you're intimidating, you know that?"

The healer could only sputter and blush, unable to find the words to counter him before pointing towards the table. "Just...go sit for dinner. You came all this way, you're not leaving until I know you're not going to drop over dead from hunger or something." "Stickler as always, Faithful." "Go!" "Alright, alright, I'm going."

Albus wandered to the table, settling into the chair across from Kerano with a sigh. "How ya doing kid? Listening to your sister?" Kerano’s head popped up with a toothy grin. "Mr. Albus! When did you get here?" "Ah only a couple minutes ago, you didn't miss much." "Oh well that's good! Big sister really misses you when you go away for so long." "Oh does she now?" "Yeah! I mean, she has Mr. Devlin and she's always happy with him but she talks about you a lot. Wonders where you are or what you're doing or if you're okay. She really worries about you. She tries not to show it but she acts different when you haven't been around for a while." Albus raised an eyebrow at that. "Acts different? How?" "Her shoulders get all tense. They get closer to her ears bit by bit like a wind-up toy. And she gets really nervous. Then you come by and she relaxes again. It's kinda funny to watch." Kerano giggled as Albus’s heart flipped. She really worried about him. Gods above, if only she knew how much he put on the line to protect her.

"Kerano, honey! Can you clear the table? Dinner's ready!" "Yes big sister!" Kerano hopped down from her seat and quickly cleared her papers off the table, setting out dishes as Faith brought in a delicious smelling meal. As they both took their place at the table, talking and dishing out food, Albus sat quietly and watched. He watched his girls talk and laugh, watched them be happy like a mom and daughter.

This was his mission. This was the thing he fought so hard to protect. Fuck whatever he told people, fuck his own life, he fought for his family. For the woman he loved, the girl he cared for as his own, and the brother he'd grown to have. He would never deserve it, never deserve a place in their picture perfect life, but he'd be damned if he let his actions be the thing that destroyed it. So he would defend them with his life.

"So Kerano tells me you get all jumpy when I'm away. Haven't convinced Vinny to give you any stress relief, eh?" "Albus!!"

(There. Brain worm satisfied. I can finally finish my homework in peace-)

[detectiveposting]

my stages of watching columbo

1: hahah hes just a silly detective ;)

2: columbo is actually a cunning manipulative liar that hides his true persona behind the facade of a slow and clumsy middle class detective

3: hahah hes just a silly detective ;)

[gophergal]

If I cannot have a tasty pastry rn, then Medic will have one in my stead

[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.

[leonardalphachurch]

you know what. i say that all chucker is actually chuckboose in disguise but you know what the same is true for tuckington. caboose is there. he needs to be there. why are you writing tucker and wash together without their third. where is he.

[naomiknight-17]

I got a Lush gift card for Christmas, so I went to the mall a couple days later and took advantage of the holiday sales and got a bunch of stuff for half price

Our shower area is sparkly clean cuz Jon did a deep clean on it just the other day

I just had a totally decadent shower with my new Sleepy Bear body wash (oats and lavender!) and my usual Ocean Salt facial scrub, and just regular shampoo but with Valkyrie hair conditioner and then as I dried off I moisturized my face with Celestial, fancy face cream that makes my skin so happy

The only thing better than a shower in a clean shower stall with new fancy bath products is knowing I barely had to pay for any of it ☺️

[affluent-havoc]

[arolesbianism]

Finally fixating on some nugget relationships that aren't horrible for everyone I love friendship <3

[pixelatedraindrops]

Now don't expect me to draw that kinda cute stuff on my timeline often. I'm a sick whump art/prompt blog XD I was just in the mood to draw a Pokémon crossover because Eevee is one of my favorites and today is Eevee Day and I love naming my shiny eevees after Yuma <3

[medicinemane]

You know, looking at a diet soda can it occurs to me that it might not be so wretched to me if the cans weren't so unpleasant

Like we know that things like color play a role in how our brain perceives things, and I realized looking at the can that they're always this bland but at the same time nasty looking silver and it just... it looks foul and I think that compounds with the fact that I also just plain don't like diet soda

My point here isn't to say anyone else shouldn't like diet soda, just how I never realized how much of an impact the can has on me not liking it... there's just something offputting about it to me

[bismuthburnsblue]

fitting on my flora bodice tonight! heres an image of her so you have a reference for what were going for!! (and so tumblr doesnt make the fitting image a thumbnaillll)

ive made an initial mockup from my pattern (s9653, got from a magazine!), heres the things i changed before i got to the actual fittings:

sized down from the "recommended" size (i ALWAYS find commercial patterns have way too much wearing ease for me)(i did mock it up to the guide size, but... no)

added allowance for a zip in the back (since im going to be shortening the button stand to fit the design, i figured the easiest way to make this wearable is with a zip. even if i wasnt, honestly- i kinda hate doing that many buttons)

and heres what that looks like! (im aware its a tiny bit tight around the bust, thats from my vagueing the size down, ill do that Properly when i transfer to paper) honestly im pretty happy with this- theres no fitting issues that i didnt expect from this pattern, which is a minor miracle with me & commercial patterns

now our next set of tasks is making the actual wanted changes!!! im going to add more shaping to the princess seam lines (at the waist on the front and back to make it actually nip in there, and above the bust on the front) and the notching for the button stand. i think thats all i want to do, but ill check again, maybe with collar and sleeve on, this time! (no point adding those when im making major changes)

(i know im also going to have to figure out the sleeve situation, but thats a later problem, i think!)

i should be able to get this all done tonight, ill catch you guys for an update a little later!!

[fastfists]

Remembering way back when I ALMOST made an Undertale OC RPC blog...

[rpfisfine]

I’m still so fucking angry abt the death grips thing I wish ppl could treat artists like human beings

[pielove123clan]

If i had a nickel for every time my mom thought I was a great kid when I was younger but one day I changed and become a "bad disobedient kid" in her eyes, I had enough metal to melt down and turn into a dagger to behead her. ( for legal reasons, this is a joke. )

[ssongsboo]

my coworker always calls me babygirl and shes been doing so for like a week or 2 now so this guy started doing it as well today n he was like ‘you enjoy when i call you that dont you’ in like a joking manner but then this other guy hes soooo my type im going insane was like ‘it fits tho its cute isnt it’ n omg i was ready to drop my panties right then n there for both of them

[chaosintheavenue]

76 followers: Is Del Lawson glitchy AF for everybody? Specifically in the dialogue department?