#so i have to save it to read later

[palarien]

sketched this out at jury duty actually

[egophiliac]

buckle up lads we're going BACK INTO THE BOOK

[fungi-maestro]

Happy tdov to fat trans people. 🏳️‍⚧️ Biggest thing that helped me as a trans kid was seeing older fat trans people. There were a lot of really irritating "advice" posts going around early in my time on the internet with a lot of misinformation in them, but one that I constantly saw (in addition to people claiming you should wear your pants rediculously low or only wear button ups) were posts saying you had to lose weight to transition. Can confidently confirm that is completely untrue. 👍

[starflungwaddledee]

sadly wasn't up to drawing anything today even though it was my beloved blueberry's birthday, sorry 😔 but instead i baked cookies!!

happy birthday meta knight!

[lululeighsworld]

Black Butler -Emerald Witch Arc- Episode 3

[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.

[dreamersdwell]

Dark enchantress cookie redesign

[alicenpai]

forgotten playthings, forgotten child 🧸

Jack from my series Lost & Found Children 🤍🖤

i hope to showcase more of my ocs in 2024 hehe! im FINALLY getting around to finishing art i left to rot in my folders (the pandora hearts drawing last month being one of em). if you saw the WIP of THIS particular drawing 2 yrs ago... no you didn’t 💔

my charas are very personal to me, but tbh ive always been a bit hesitant to share their stories. over time i realized ... it’s kind of a shame to not make art from one’s heart. which is something i regret a lot year after year whenever i make my yearly art summary reflection. i'm like damn i need to make more emotionally evoking pieces!!! so i'm gonna keep going in 2024 with that in mind ❤ i have to admit, although this drawing started 2 years ago, and there's a lot i would do differently if i were to supposedly draw it now - this concept goes pretty hard.

the final drawing stayed pretty close to the original concept which im so relieved for! i think part of the reason why i left it on the backburner for so long, was the fact that i included so many details, and i was unsure of how to colour the "background". (not to mention stuff like cons & real life getting in the way).

i'm glad for discovering a really handy watercolour brush, it's helped me a lot in my last few drawings, bc i dont have to colour in each detail. especially since the witch hat atelier: eternal ephemera zine piece i did. otherwise if i coloured this back in 2022 with my usual method, i'm pretty sure i really would have included a shading and highlight layer for each individual toy... HAHAHA. much to think about

oh yeah and in the last few days of drawing this i was listening to some visual kei bands. i love how some of the band members literally have been performing since like the 90s or something and DO NOT AGE and are literal vampires. every so often i fall back into visual kei (you can tangentially thank aggretsuko although yes i know it's not the same). and i kind of realized. i like Jack's edgy design so much because he looks like. a visual kei esque vampire.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

sorry just got reminded of the entirety of uncanny x-men #309 and how it's charles having a therapy session with himself about his love life and desires and how he kept sacrificing himself and his wants for The Cause and the whole time he imagines erik to represent his innermost thoughts in the form of a therapist to have him unravel all this

[bertrei]

The bertholdt hoover fandom is dying rt if youd wipe the sweat from his brow like if youd give him a warm glass of milk

[residentialsinyomakai]

You'll never guess who the kinda primary subject of this yappost/doodle dump is

sigh. it always comes back

Freaky ahh bowl of rice...what's he on about

"But Yōmakai isn't this a maddiman post. Why are the first two things besides the intro not ma" IM GETTING THERE. PATIENCE

I redraw Kagemura every now and then to see if I improve!! :) Think I kinda ate w this one frfr

No me mires con tus estupidos ojos

UEgh. judging you btw

Expression stuff cause I love seeing different depictions both from other people and within my own mind

Mini thing based on a. Trend jm noticing LMAO

Also this Maddiman that scared some of my friends apparently 😔💔

AU shenanigans and this idiot again. HATE HIM BLOW HIM UP NOW!!!! Jkjk i wish people drew him more i love him :)

Anyways all done :) see you!!

[unpretty]

normally i am the first person to agree with hating a website/service making a bunch of changes out of nowhere, but the inoreader revamp might actually stop me from switching to freshrss

[lunarharp]

into the deep end - 30k T orufrey fic, focusing on memory trauma, disability, and romance.

the sweet oblivion of the victim, the poisoned freedom of the witch.

for one moment - it had felt like two parts returned - the needed reunion of two disparate halves. no more secrets, no more pain.

the moment you get to give back what you never wanted to take. that moment, under the night-blooming flowers, when they had both let out the same single broken sigh of relief.

but they were never whole to begin with, were they?

qifrey swore he wouldn't say 'sorry' to this man any more if he could help it - sorry is cheap now. he didn't want to be in a position ever again where you only have 'sorry' left. so he just looks down into the threads of his blanket, strains his eye until it hurts, feeling his insides - his throat, heart and head - burn with pain. he expects more, but olly says nothing.

olly says nothing.

[starbuck]

the worst possible fandom experience is seeing someone passionately and lovingly going on an extended rant about your favorite characters with a premise that is objectively factually incorrect.

[thedailymaskedmerchant]

…

(Zach broke out of the claw machine, and now has to spend more credits to get it repaired. While also funding some side projects and fun events to host in Zone 2. He can’t waste meaningless cash on stuff like more fortune tickets. He needs to sell those. He’s completely fine, and turning to the various books in the library, most of which are display items)

(Does the Bible even exist, even as a remnant as it once was in OFF. I believe it would, explaining why the book is so thin. Lore aside, I’m going to hope nothing goes drastically wrong within the next week. Zach’s a pretty chill guy. He’ll forgive it all due to knowing this is nothing but blog showcasing bizzare alternate universe within a few days ideally)

[polyshodivorce]

Happy birthday Emu. My personal idea for how the Wonder Stage might be used after WxS disbands and Emu starts getting more hands on with running Phennyland is dedicating the stage as a starting place for beginners. People normally audition at PxL for the bigger troupes, but there will always be the ambitious amueturs who have that potential and passion but didn’t quite make the cut for the big stages. That’s where Emu comes in and offers them an opportunity at the Wonder Stage, just like she had given Tsukasa.

It’s to help people get on their feet and into the acting/performing scene but without the same pressure and expectations that come with joining larger troupes. Unlike WxS, the new troupes at the Wonder Stage don’t have to deal with all of the hurdles Emu and her friends had. Back then, it was entirely up to the four of them to keep that stage running, but now Phennyland is well off. She’ll cover everything, advertising, props, maintenance. It leaves the troupe with nothing to worry about and total freedom to manage their own shows/schedules how they want. The real focus and goal of the Wonder Stage is to help beginners build up some experience, to help nuture passions that might have previously never gotten the chance, to be somewhere accepting that brings any ideas they wish to life and then… Emu makes it her personal goal to help each and every one of them find opportunities at bigger stages or bigger roles outside of the Wonder Stage.

It’s a starting line. She doesn’t have to be scared of her Grandpa’s stage being torn down anymore, so she’s made it into a safe place for people to grow with the goal in mind… that they will someday outgrow it, but that’s not a bad thing and it’s nothing to fear, not anymore. After one person leaves, there will always be someone else who needs that supportive environment, an opportunity, her help to make others smile. She’s there to tend to buds before they bloom, the cocoon for caterpillars, it’s a place for anyone, young and old, talented or inexperienced, determined or hobbyist, to come and go when it suits them best—

Becuase she’s learned that the smiles created at the Wonder Stage and Pheonix Wonderland shouldn’t end there, she wants those smiles to stay on their faces as they leave and go out into the world to spread those happy feelings everywhere.