#salt-characters

[snek-disappearedagain]

Another new oc?? That would be crazy-

hes a puppet and i love him

picrew used here

character template by @unfinished-projects-galore

[canisalbus]

You should put Machete in a turtle neck with a spooky shaped boob window, for what other holiday could you do such a thing?

[clarissasbakery]

Plz feed the Saltpep nation, we are starving…

i did draw this before ii 17 so…..😁😁😁😁

[nutakuro]

Happy Summer!! I hosted a secret inanimate insanity beach collab with a bunch of super cool artists !!!

And oh my god ?? This turned out way better then I even expected oh my god everyone’s art is amazing check out the artists below !!:

Apple- @assigned-k9

Blueberry- @whipedcream

Bomb- @kkmochii

Bot- @//hungyhenka (discord)

Bow- @knific

Cabby- @cringefailcabitha

Clover- @fettifunfetti

Fan- @pankiepoo

Goo- @spr1mkle

Lightbulb- @qui-gg

Knife- @//inanimateins (twitter)

Marshmallow- @starleavess

Mepad- @r-egen

Mephone 4- @mephoj

Mic- @flyingbuddiies

Oj- @mr-payjay

Paintbrush- @tenquis

Paper- @nutakuro

Pepper- @juiatomou

Pickle- @//celezticuh (twitter)

Salt- @//tungster24 (twitter)

Silver- @silverboo

Suitcase- @potatemotate

Taco- @//seraphysm (twitter)

Trophy- @syztemerrxr

Yinyang- @starryv01dz

[nebulousbren]

It's done! Everyone's having a good time playing games and nothing will ever be wrong :D

For anyone wondering where the Disney dudes are, Mickey and Donald are on a double date with Minnie and Daisy at Scrooge's bistro, while Goofy is catching a movie.

[official-trainwrecks]

HEY, YOU. Are you a fan of Friends, Riverdale, Dracula Daily, or Heartbreaker? Do you love romance/romantic plotlines? Do enemies-to-lovers and will-they-won't-they scenarios keep you on the edge of your seat? Are you starving for more diversity and mental health rep?

Then you should read Trainwrecks, a FREE online serial following the lives of six Seattle-adjacent best friends from 2004-2015!

Meet the Cast!

Art by mangomangoj on Instagram.

Luna Cruz: (14) A nerdy and artistic girl who's had enough of being bullied about her weight. Her dream is to become a fashion designer. Or an ASL interpreter. Or both!

Dimitri Hale: (19) The most charming genius-turned-bag-boy you'll ever meet. He likes alcohol a little too much, but better booze than heroin, is he right??

Sebastian Velasquez: (16) The only thing keeping Seb from a life of debauchery is his best friend Dimitri, who he happens to have a crush on. Singing, dancing, and playing the guitar are his hobbies.

Jasmine Nolan: (16) Jasmine had the baddest reputation in her high school until she met Jesus. Now He's forgiven her, but she's having an awfully hard time forgiving herself.

Duke Kingston: (14) Duke might be one of the best friends you'll ever have! But if you're a bully, he's going to beat the shit out of you. No questions asked.

Victoria Hale: (14) Victoria's just moved to the U.S. from London, and she has her sights set on Juilliard. Beware her ADHD rage: She can go from 0 to throwing furniture in seconds.

About the Series

Trainwrecks: Season 1 (2004-2005) is now premiering on Substack! Each week, subscribers will receive both a narrative chapter and a social media chapter in their email inboxes. This entire story is free to read, but paid subscribers will receive four pieces of bonus content a month!

Curious about the characters? You can browse this blog or follow the link in the bio to the official website for bios, Spotify playlists, and more information!

Thanks for reading!

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[szynkaaa]

kicks down everyone's door folks I might have figured out how tall Sun Wukong/Destined One is in Black Myth Wukong.

Starting with a disclaimer that this is just my speculation and nothing is confirmed unless the dev state otherwise

So y'know how the collector's edition came with this amazing Wukong figurine:

amazing right? I want one too.

The description states that the figure is 40cm tall (according to playasia)

The figure is made by Queen Studio, specifically the INART team that makes 1:6 figures.

So we know that the figure is 40cm tall. It is not clear if that includes stand or not, and I was not able to find any information how tall the stand is

On another website (which I don't want to name because I don't know how serious the website is) lists up the figure as 315mm/31.5cm

If that is the height of the actual figure without stand, and it's a 1:6 figure, that means 31.5cm * 6 = 189 cm

So that means it is very possible Destined One/Sun Wukong is 189 cm / 6 feet 2 inch tall.

that is TALL. a lot taller than I thought he would be tbh LOL cause in the books he is usually described as the shortest (cause well, monkey)

which ALSO means.

Wukong better be paying for her chiropractor with the amount of crancking her neck up she has to do.

[damnnotagainn]

Damn, I really do love how realistic the family dynamics in blue lock are and it’s been such an unexpected surprise. Like there’s so much range

a rich kid who was spoiled by his parents but also was expected to do the most and so now has crazy perfectionist tendencies

a kid that was taken care of materially but was absolutely neglected by his parents, and now as a teen has to learn how to socialize and be close to others in a way that he probably craves but doesn’t know how

a kid with totally normal parents that support his hobbies and want the best for him without expecting the moon, probably in a very average way (get a good job, marry a nice person, etc.)

a kid of divorced parents that used their child as a way to project and navigate their relationship failures, leaving him feeling isolated and with the burden to bring peace to his family through his success

a kid with curious and destructive tendencies, who’s parents tried their best to raise him but fell in the trap of trying to adjust him to their sense of normalcy rather than to understand his instincts. also had an older brother he placed on a pedestal that tried to protect him from the burdens that were placed on them, which inevitably backfired as they were just a child too.

a kid with a single mom who raised him with so much care and acceptance, encouraging him to embrace his feelings

a kid who was raised kinda by a single dad, but grew up in a very abusive home that told he was worthless and instilled so much self hatred

But now they all just… play soccer together.

…and try to navigate that time when you’re a teen and you realize how fucked up your childhood was, while also forming your own identity outside of the world your parents built for you (kinda like what all my friends and I did when we ended up in the same college together lol)

[randomfandomss]

I'm literally not saying anything but Eric's brain must have really, really short-circuited after that comment from Assad...

It's an excerpt from Eric's book 'Perforated Heart'.

[jaydencoolguy]

With Veruca and Mike's references completed, I can finally put together all my reference sheets for the CATCF characters! (I will design the parents too BTW just not as fleshed out as these)

[snek-disappearedagain]

New oc!! Say hello to him!!! Hi!!!!

I edited him a little bit, but the here’s the picrew used!

Character template by @unfinished-projects-galore !!

He is a silly little guy who may or may not be a great white shark mer

Why isn’t he in Octavinelle then? Because not all mer’s are octavinelle that’s why :)

[aspaceace]

Error... Data corrupted... Memory override failed...

happy march caprice everybody :)

[clarissasbakery]

a little more about red 40

[zoe-oneesama]

Wait uh I think missed something, why's the statue scene getting so much hate? Like yeah it's horrific second hand embarassment but practicing a love confession with what she thinks is a fake statue of her crush is like. The most normal thing Marinette has done wrt to her cringe teenage crush

Season 5 likes to pretend that it's the moment that Adrien started falling for Marinette:

Since we already hate the scene for the cringe level of second-hand embarrassment, them forcing us to make this scene important 2 seasons later is mega-annoying. Like, 2 Seasons ago Adrien's "feelings changed"???? Because it sure didn't seem that way to anyone watching!

And I'm extra dead because they had the scene in Season 4 where Marinette gave her genuine love confession to "Buttercup" and you can literally see Chat Noir be touched and moved by it and THAT SHOULD'VE BEEN WHERE THINGS STARTED TO CHANGE-

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Keep hearing people say maribug keep asking adricat if he's ok and he keep saying he's ok instead of telling her his problem but I don't remember it happened more than once in s4 in Rockettear but even then the circumstances of that episode did warrant the "nothing" answer he gave her unless he want to tell her that "nino tell me you let nino and alya know each other identity" which will reveal adricat identity. So when else did she ask? about the thing in hack-san, I think another credit goes to alya since she's the one who bring the topic to maribug who seems to be blissfully unaware that her leaving without telling adeicat that she send subtitute would be a problem.

I didn't get into this side of things in my other post because it was long and I wanted to focus on why Chat Noir's behavior was so frustrating, but this ask brings up the other big reason why the season four conflict was such a frustrating and terribly written plot line. Specifically, the part of your ask where you point out that Maribug seems blissfully unaware that her actions are having a negative impact on Chat Noir until someone points it out to her.

Yes, she is presented as blissfully unaware of this and every other interpersonal conflict we're given in season four. Your ask treats this as a failing on Maribug's part as if she should have obviously realized that she was in the wrong, but that's the whole problem. Telling kids - telling anyone really - that they should just magically know what others need is a frankly terrible life lesson as that's just not how the world works. You cannot just assume that everyone will have the same view of the world as you do and instantly pick up on the same issues as you do. That is the path to easily avoidable frustration and conflict. It also teaches people to assume that their view of the world is inherently correct when that is rarely the case. We often don't know the whole story and the other person's point of view may end up being equally or even more valid. This issue is extremely present in season four as Marinette has legitimate reasons to behave the way she does, which I'll get into in a bit.

If Marinette were written as feeling guilty about how she was treating Chat Noir, then this would be a different story. She'd be way more in the wrong and would shoulder a much greater portion of the blame. But as is? She has no idea that she's doing anything wrong. And until someone takes the time to tell her that her actions are causing harm, she is going to continue causing harm because she has no idea that she's causing harm.

In fact, I'd argue that the Alya thing in Hack San is a point in Maribug's favor. Throughout the episode, we see Marinette sending Alya messages on ways to be a good partner to Chat Noir, proving that she does in fact care about him. And then, as soon as Alya says, "You need to talk to Chat Noir," what does Maribug do?

She goes and talks to Chat Noir, giving him a pretty good apology for the problem she now knows she caused. Because, shockingly, Maribug doesn't actually want to hurt her partner. She also clearly cares about his feelings, making me want to take the season four conflict and tear it into itty bitty pieces because what is the conflict even supposed to be when you write shit like this?

I want to briefly step away from Miraculous and talk about this issue in a broader context via this YouTube short:

This short is from a Vietnamese woman who moved to Germany. Her YouTube channel is about her experiences there, including things like the short above which goes into the differences between what it means to be a dinner guest in Vietnam and what it means to be a dinner guest in Germany. In Vietnam, it's apparently standard for the guests to cook dinner with you where as, in Germany, you're expected to have the meal ready when the guests arrive, making this a situation where it's super easy to come across as rude just by doing what you think is normal.

Society is relatively aware that these types of culture clashes are a thing, but you don't have to be from different cultures to have these types of situations. Every person has their own unique needs and ideas of what "normal" is. The culture they were raised in will affect this, but so will their family, their personal needs, and many other factors. Two people can be raised on the same street and wind up with wildly different world views even though they supposedly share a culture. This is extra true when you add in compounding factors like neurodiversity, which is why it's an exercise in futility to say, "But Maribug should have realized..."

Well, she clearly didn't. And you can't change that she didn't realize whatever you're mad about. All you can do is have someone tell her what she's doing wrong. If she then continues the behavior, go ahead and judge away. But if she immediately corrects it like she did in Hack San? Doesn't that just prove that she truly didn't know that Chat Noir was hurting and would have probably fixed all of his problems if someone just pointed them out to her?

This is only exacerbated by the fact that Marinette's behavior in season four is largely unchanged from her behavior in previous seasons. The only major change is that she revealed her identity to Alya, but as soon as that's pointed out as a problem, she course corrects with an apology. After that, she thinks that everything is okay because why wouldn't she? Chat Noir said it was fine and everything else has been business as usual.

Bringing temp heroes into help as needed? That's been going on since season two. Having these additional members has been vital in multiple battles and there have been plenty of times where Chat Noir took a background role to the temp hero of the day like in Sapotis, Rena Rouge's season two debut. So why would Maribug suddenly think that this dynamic is a problem when it's been working fine for so long? We even had a whole episode about how Chat Noir was still needed in spite of the new heroes back in season three! Or, at least, I think that was Desperada's message? This show is shockingly bad at giving clear lessons.

Keeping guardian knowledge from Chat Noir? That's also been going on since season two and was even treated as a conflict that supposedly got resolved in the episode Syren which was the episode that ended with Master Fu coming to the mansion to talk to Adrien after everything was over.

When I watched that episode, I assumed this meant that Chat Noir was going to be more involved in things like picking the temp heroes. I actually thought this was how we were going to get Queen Bee because I knew she was going to be a thing, but it made no sense for Marinette to pick Chloe for a miraculous. Of course, I was wrong. Nothing changed after Syren. Chat Noir remained nothing more than the comic relief while Ladybug got all the insider info.

To be clear, I think that was a terrible move writing wise, but it doesn't change the fact that this is what they went with. This is the established dynamic. I can't even say that Alya learning Marinette's secret led to something new. She's just taken Marinette's old role while Marinette has taken on Master Fu's old role. This show loves it's status quo and Chat Noir has been at least tolerant of that status quo since Syren, so it's not surprising that Maribug doesn't register that this is a thing that should change and no one bothers to point it out to her even though she has a mentor in Tikki (and Su Han, I guess?) and a confidant in Alya and a whole slew of Kwamis who could also provide insight if they were allowed to do that sort of thing. (Sass and Wayzz were robbed of mentor roles.) Additional blame goes to Plagg because he should absolutely have told Adrien to talk to Ladybug. What is the point of giving these characters mentors who never mentor? It's aggravating in the extreme.

To circle back to the first part of your ask, outside of Hack San and Rocketear, I don't think there are any times when Ladybug invites feedback from Chat Noir unless you want to give credit to the end of Kuro Neko:

Cat Noir: (lands next to her) I've been a really temperamental kitty, m'lady. I didn't realize how much trouble I'd make for you by giving back my Miraculous. Ladybug: (sits closer to him) Just because I don't need you all the time doesn't mean that I don't need you at all, Cat Noir. No one could ever replace you.

Which isn't Maribug inviting him to tell her what's up, but she is clearly willing to listen to him and reassure him, further backing up my point about this conflict being some of the worst writing I've ever had to suffer through. If Maribug always fixes the issue as soon as she learns about it, you are not writing a situation where she's clearly in the wrong. You are writing an easily solved communication issue where she gets blamed for something she clearly doesn't realize she's doing wrong and it is so frustrating!!! I feel so bad for her. The next episode is Penalteam, btw, which starts the battle with this gem:

Ladybug: (laughs) Nice scare tactics, but it's not gonna work. Cat Noir and I are the best at soccer! Cat Noir: (Whispers to Ladybug) I don't know a thing about soccer M'lady. Maybe it's time to call the real team?

And basically just spends the whole episode making Chat Noir seems like a worthless partner while Maribug tries her best to make him - and everyone else - feel special.

Oh, and the episode before Kuro Neko? Well, it's technically Ephemeral, but that got magically overwritten so let's go one further back and we get to Dearest Family, which ends with this:

Cat Noir: (grabs a golden paper crown on the coffee table) Since I'm the king, (wears the crown on his head) would you be my queen, Ladybug? Ladybug: With pleasure, kitty cat! Tradition is tradition!

Oh yes, these two are in such conflict and Maribug does nothing to validate Chat Noir. He's in pain every episode and she's just totally oblivious to it.

If that was what they wrote, then I'd probably agree that we needed more instances of her asking if Chat Noir was okay. But it's not what they wrote. If you look through the list of season four episodes, you'll find that less than half of them deal with the supposed conflict of the season (by my count, only 8 of the 24 episodes before the final actually showcase the conflict and they are not in a logical order in terms of escalation as I tried to demonstrate above). The rest of the episodes flat out ignore it or even straight up work against the conflict like when Ladybug says this to Chat Noir in Guilttrip: "I probably don't tell you this enough, but I couldn't do this without you. And it'd be a lot less fun too."

Seriously, what even is this season? What is the conflict supposed to be? Because it sure as shit isn't Maribug undervaluing Chat Noir, if memory servers, season four sees her validate him more times than any other season. And it isn't her guiltily hiding things from him like so many fanfics claim because we have multiple points of evidence that prove that she's completely oblivious that there even is a conflict. So what conflict are the writers actually trying to write?

What's even more baffling is that none of this logically leads to the loss at the end of the season:

Maribug's new secrets didn't lead to her downfall. The only reason she lost was because of the secret that's always been there - a fact that's never revealed to her - and a freaking evil twin! So why did it matter that Maribug was keeping secrets? This is made even worse by season five maintaining all of the secrets, once again begging the question of what lesson were we trying to teach here???

Chat Noir wasn't needed for the final fight of the season, Maribug only needed the powers of a few of the temp heroes to win, a baffling ending to a season whose focus was Chat Noir feeling unimportant. You could scrap that conflict entirely and the ending would not change. In fact....

Adrien quitting to be nothing more than a good little boy who obeys his father would have actually saved the world from eventually being rewritten. If you think about it, the season four final actually punishes Adrien for being defiant. So does season five as, if Chat Noir had quit, his father would still be alive. I thought this show was supposed to be a romcom, not a tragedy. Why is Adrien being punished for being a hero? Is this supposed to be karma for lying to Ladybug with the whole Catwalker thing?

This shit is why I say I'm a writing salt, character sugar blog. I can't get mad at the characters when they're in such a nonsense story where things never logically tie together. They all deserve so much better.

None of this is meant to imply that ignorance is a blanket excuse for hurting others. Nor is it meant to imply that you have to forgive someone who hurt you just because they didn't mean to. There's a ton of nuance around these topics. But season four acknowledges none of that nuance while creating a situation that desperately needed nuance because there was no clear right and wrong here. Should Maribug work to be more aware of others feelings? Sure, but that journey can only start after she's made aware of her faults and no one ever points them out to her. Does Chat Noir need to work on clearly communicating his needs? Desperately, but no one is teaching him that lesson so he remains a terrible communicator who suffers in silence. What impressively bad writing.