#my favorite reboot

[littlesmokesceenfan]

What's ur MLP favorite character?

I think mine are Fluttershy and Sweetie Belle

Yep, I think I ship Fluttershy x Discord ✌️

I can't really decide since they are all so much fun. But if have to choose one it's would probably be Pinkie pie, Torrox and Sunburst. Most of the MLP antagonists snaps so choosing just one is very hard for me. But it is a tie between Tempest( sorry storm king but you get out Shadow by your own henchman), Queen chrysalis and Cozy Glow

[hychlorions]

saw another klapollo vision. falling asleep with a distance between them but they're still reaching out to each other.... augh

[juniemunie]

[Abandoned by the Lightners, his heart became cracked with hatred.]

Hitting a lil' too close to home?

[insert-cephalopod-joke]

A little Acht art :]

[sketchy-tour]

Silly silly whiteboard doodles don't mind me. The reboot one is super recent and I'm slowly getting more used to the site yiippeee

Anyway take these. Reboot au belongs to @bloodrediscream

[starlightvld]

Faking It

Ghost is a master of stealth. He uses this to his advantage both on and off the field, the latter of which is mostly for his own personal amusement. And though he typically targets cocky recruits or pompous officers, the core 141 members are not exempt from his games.

Price can usually sense him coming, but even after so many years of working together, he's still the one most likely to be surprised. Sadly for Ghost, Price is also a consummate professional at holding back his emotions, so although Ghost succeeds in surprising him, Price doesn't show it. Which... is no fun (exactly as Price intends).

Gaz is the perfect soldier, and that extends to his situational awareness. Ghost has managed to actually scare him a sum total of three times, and all of them were while he was drunk off his arse. Ghost has made it a personal goal to scare Gaz while he's not pissed and is so far zero to... far too many attempts to count.

The first time Ghost sneaks up behind Soap, though, he's rewarded with a shriek worthy of a banshee. Soap instantly tackles him and starts an impromptu spar in the rec room, breaking one table and three chairs.

Price reprimands them both.

Ghost is utterly delighted.

Soap becomes his new target more often than not, and every time, he gets some form of shrieking or squeaking or Scottish swearing. Soap returns the favor by pranking the shit out of Ghost: putting hair dye in Ghost's shampoo, offering to make him tea and using salt instead of sugar, and worst of all, stealing all his balaclavas and writing "Property of TF 141, if found return to Soap" across the backs.

Ghost has never been so entertained in all his life.

Soap is also delighted, but for different reasons.

He's spent years learning from the best of the best, so after those first few scares, he trains himself to keep an ear out for cues that Ghost is coming - the faint rustle of tactical cargos, a rare squeak of boots, or the way people around will go silent if they see him before Soap senses him. Soon, he's anticipating Ghost's presence nine times out of ten. And he's rehearsed a hundred ways of responding just to entertain Ghost.

It's not until Ghost stalks up to where he's sitting alone at a table in the midst of a very busy SAS rec room that Soap thinks he might have made a mistake.

"Have you been fakin' it all this time?"

Ghost growls the question like he's legitimately offended. He's not paying attention to the several other tables of soldiers sitting around them, but Soap is. The sudden silence is deafening. Then whispers start up, and Soap barely holds back a face palm. Instead he looks Ghost in the eyes and responds in a loud and clear voice.

"Aye, I figured out how to tell yer sneaking up behind me a while ago, but ye seemed so amused by my squawkin' that I kept it up."

The whispers die down. Soap breathes out a little sigh of relief even as he regrets the sudden slump in Ghost's shoulders. Ghost looks off to the side, shakes his head, and stomps away with a muttered "fuckin' hell."

Soap doesn't react, and soon the other soldiers are coming up to him, begging him to teach them how to sense Ghost sneaking up on them, too. Soap laughs and smiles and tells them they'll have to figure it out on their own.

It's not until later that night that he slips into Ghost's room to talk it out. Ghost is sitting maskless on his bed, nothing but a thin pair of gray jogging bottoms covering his toned body, and Soap has to use all his willpower to keep his eyes on Ghost's face as he approaches the bed.

"Are ye truly upset with me?"

Ghost sighs. "No. Just disappointed."

Soap huffs a little laugh. "Ye do know that everyone's minds went straight to the gutter with that first comment, though, right?"

"What comment?"

"The one where ye asked me if I'm fakin' it. Had to tell the truth to make sure everyone knew what you were actually talking about."

That brings a smile to Ghost's face. "Oh. Didn't think about it like that."

"No?"

"No. I fuck you too well for you to be fakin' it in bed."

Soap smirks and props a knee on the mattress. "Might need ye to prove it."

Ghost grabs him by the belt loops and pulls until he tumbles into bed. And Soap is happy to confirm that, in this, he's not faking it at all.

[boat-of-losers]

Total Drama Text Posts Featuring: Chris, Chef, Alejandro, Heather, Lightning, Cameron, Jo and Scott

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

[theartsyhognose]

Happy family!

[duncanor]

Honestly, Studio Orange are such a bunch of chads because this reboot was so risky.

The animation changed, they made the season 1 a prequel and didn't tell anyone, they changed the timeline, they added new characters with different designs and used a different flavor of sci-fi.

A lot of things that could make it fails so easily in the eyes of most people.. But they pulled it off so damn well.

They went against the odds and delivered something beyond amazing.

I am impatient to see what the future holds for this show.

[gabbyp09]

Ranma 1/2 (2024) - P-Chan Explodes! The Icy Fountain of Love!

[ducksinspaceadventure]

Happy Women's Day to all women! And especially to my favorite DuckTales characters like Della Duck, Daisy Duck, Gandra Dee, Magica De Spell and Bentina Beakley!

And M'Ma Cabrera Crackshell of course!

[littlesmokesceenfan]

They are so me

[clock-loves-rajbow]

HELLO I made another fanart for @cremdotexe’s fic Be My Fate, Be My Fall because I was a DUMBASS and didn’t realize they already had official designs!! AND THEYRE SO GOOD?? I had to draw them again SO HERE THEY ARE!!

Because I’ve already drawn them like ten million times I think this one came out a lot better anyway!! And I tried harder on the background this time too. Still no shading tho cause I hate shading.

[legionofpotatoes]

I know the discourse well is poisoned and no one hates bioware games more than bioware fans, but I am just 🫠 having so much fun with veilguard it's unreal. It is selfishly the dragon age game I always wanted. with less emphasis on cRPG, a more focused story, curated mission based design that spotlights the high fantasy stuff, slowburn structure with companions, significantly less sidequest bloat, and a fully real-time action-oriented combat system that isn't riddled with the growing pains of previous titles. when I first played origins I imagined something almost exactly like this as my ideal version of a sequel; and it was one of those dirty, selfish thoughts that I knew was disrespectful to the then-established DNA of the thing, but I can't help but feel giddy about having it here and now. like down to the shift away from the childishly dark tone and to something more inherently flexible with a baseline aspirational quality. I hate aesthetically depressing games so much. am I not alive right here and right now already

When I say "aesthetically" there though I do mean it. I'm fully on the opposite side when it comes to tone and positions expressed in the story itself. I am just not including that in my analysis because I am not done yet - so please no spoilers! I think I am where most people consider to be the second act, and I definitely have my gripes with the narrative framework and some of the optics, but I won't put the cart before the horse and will see how it wraps things up first. Above that level, in terms of how it presents itself, of how it plays, of how it balances its core pillars - it is such a bioware-ass game and I could not be any cozier in it. So grateful it exists

[asphelissorcery]

doodle

[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.