#sugar addition

[mr-timekeeper]

Don’t think I’ll ever get over the fact that Kaz Brekker nearly shifted the economy of Ketterdam

Like if the crows managed to ruin all of Van Eck’s silos and taken out a large huge amount of the sugar supply. That’s not something that will go down anytime soon it would take years for sugar to go back to the price it was to match up with supply and demand.

This 17 year old kid who likes dogs and can never figure out how to talk to his crush. Kaz “I protect my investments” Brekker almost caused a complete disruption in the stock market and with how strongly Ketterdam is built on their economic system-

Please I need someone else who think economy is a really cool topic to understand just how much that’s insane. A 17 YEAR OLD NEARLY CAUSED A SHORTAGE OF A HIGH DEMNAD COMMODITY ITEM.

Kaz would go insane in America

[paper-mario-wiki]

ive been getting more sugar daddy scammers lately trying to court me which i THINK is a good sign because that means i might be getting closer to getting an offer from a LEGIT sugar daddy, who i would use to purchase more pre-9/11 technology.

[zecoritheweirdone]

so i saw this old-ish post about an au centering around a villain lewis and a hero arthur,,, and i. may have gotten attached to it,, dkdndkdjs. so i decided to make some edits + doodles based on it!! i also really wanna make a lil oneshot about it as well,, but uh... whether or not i actually follow through on that, we'll see,, skdjsojdks.

edit: good news, gang,, i wrote the fic!!

[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.

[hellodaekko]

biblically accurate (in my headsicle) shaw pack! scarred version is post-inversion, I think the stress of the event makes their wolf forms develop white frosty muzzles (milo's is more obvious bc his shit got fried from the inside out)

[miramelindamusings]

@prudensvulpes requested Sora with Dylan Hollis' energy where he has his own cooking channel! Thank you so much for your patience! And this was alot of fun to do! I used Dylan Hollis' "Fake Apple Pie" tiktok (shortened to certain moments and some moved around for comedic effect!). I hope you like it and thank you again :)!

And here's a bonus sketch because I couldn't resist drawing Sora's face lighting up the same way Dylan Hollis' does when a recipe is actually good!:

[monsterfloofs]

Vampire Ramble - A Late Night Bite >8)

The wind was howling, a steady hum of noise that made you wonder when rain was going to come. Couldn't sleep, wide awake, a mix of alertness and a drowsy unease. Then the rain began, softly drumming against the house as the wind continued to whirr and whistle. You close your eyes, beyond those two distinct sounds, almost left unheard was a distinct tapping against the window.

You roused reluctantly from bed, walking towards it, what looked like murky darkness outside began to change as your eyes slowly carved out features. A figure was outside, so close to the glass pane that it made you jump. A hand tapping impatiently against the glass.

"Oh!" You threw up the sash, as a bedraggled form slid inside.

"I didn't realize you would come tonight, would you er. . . like a towel?"

There was an indignant sniff from the shadowy figure, "That would be appreciated, yes."

You nod, and trot from your room, a soft orange glow illuminating the bathroom just enough that you can grab a fresh towel and head back. The figure murmured a word of thanks before throwing the towel over their head, fussing with their hair.

You sat upon the bed, hands resting on your knees.

The figure shifted, and you watched the towel being pulled down and folded.

"Just like before?" The figure inquired, a tone of softness in their voice that made you prickle.

"N-no. Laying down made me nervous. I'll sit this time, thank you."

"Sitting is a bit messier, are you alright with that?"

"Mhm, I don't mind."

The bed creaked, cold fingers pull your hair back from your throat. You take a deep breath, and wait. There was the initial feeling of them leaning in close, that sensation fueled the anxious instinct to jerk away from them. You stayed still and unmoving, fingers itching, scratching at the soft pad of your thumb as you waited. Your eyes twitched closed as your throat felt pressure and then a burn of pain. Your hands clenched, fingertips digging into your palm. You fought back the feeling of wanting to swallow, time began to blur, one sluggish second after another ticked by until you felt a chaste kiss against your throat and you suddenly could breathe again, making an involuntary gasp that had you wincing.

The damp towel was pressed against your neck, and your hands moved to hold onto it. Sitting there in the dark, fingertips barely touching with the person who sat next to you.

"Was it easier this time?" The shadowy face was unreadable, but the voice was tender, compassionate.

"Yeah," Your voice was slightly husky,

"Good," There was a pause, "Go to sleep dear, and thank you again for the treat tonight. Our next appointment can be October 13th, will that work for you. . .?"

"Write it down for me?" The sluggishness was taking over your brain, making you feel dizzy. "I don't think I'll be able to. . . remem. . . ber."

"Of course," They reply consolingly. A hand at the small of your back dipping you backwards into bed.

"Thank you," You whispered as sleep wrapped its arms around you.

"Oh no, thank you."

—

Morning came sooner than expected, your neck was sore and you groaned, rubbing the back of your neck as you forced your eyes open.

Your hands reached to your phone to check the time before they patted around blindly on the bedside table. Expression brightening when your fingers grasped a crisp blue envelope. You brought it towards you, lifting the flap to take a peek at the content inside. Delight danced in your eyes, clutching the envelope to your chest and kicking your feet. Rent was made, more than just made, you had extra to spare. You felt your eyes prickle with tears of relief as you stared up at the ceiling.

It was considerably the strangest side job you had ever taken, but the benefits made it more than enough worthwhile.

"I have my own sugar Vladdy" You mumbled to yourself in disbelief, before laughing at the absurdity of it. Then wincing apologetically as laughing made your neck hurt.

"Ouch.

[smallsucreeveryday]

Day 7: Turtleneck Sucre!

[thislittlekumquat]

Every time I see a banana bread recipe that does not involve crisco, I acknowledge the superiority of my own banana bread

[axellis]

https://www.tumblr.com/axellis/755289937639882752/if-you-see-these-ppl-in-your-vicinity-run-far-far?source=share

Now I'm curious how they'd end up in a polycule in the first place lol

my face when i get to talk about lore

i wrote a whole lot so im gonna put it under a readmore but TLDR:

hollyberry & powdered sugar have known each other since they were littleeee-- before she finds her soul jam & everything! so they were already pretty close. in my head powdered sugar is at the very least acquainted w/ the others. hollyberry & powdered sugar were adventurers together until the berry families get united & the hollyberry kingdom is founded.

hollyberry & powdered sugar both fight pitaya! pitaya isn't one to back down and rest, but powdered sugar is insistent on bandaging the dragon up. hes just not one to leave someone injured. this quickly becomes a cycle where they fight and powdered sugar patches it up before it thinks about flying off. pitaya starts not minding (bc then it can get back to fighting faster)

this is at the very least the beginnings of their relationships w/ eachother.

as a brief summary: powdered sugar is able to get pseudo-immortality but has to stay in an inn of his founding in order to keep it up. the inn is created post-dark flour war and powdered sugar presumes hollyberry to be either dead or missing

so when a certain unnamed huntress comes across an inn and sees her childhood friend of so many years ago-- safe to say they're both surprised to see each other! hollyberry doesn't really ask, but she will still try to visit.

...but by legend of the red dragon she's starting to think that some answers on how powdered sugar is still alive after YEARS are needed. especially if it's some kind of sinister magic. this story powdered sugar gets to tag along with ^___^ by force. but it also lets the trio do some necessary rekindling that eventually pushes them into considering romanticisms

im actually like writing the legend of the red dragon retelling w/ powdered sugar's inclusion as a fic but idk if ill ever post it

post legend of the red dragon i think pitayasugar happens first. they kind of always had moments but never really talked about it. hollyberry & powdered sugar sort of resolve themselves into thinking that they'll just be friends for eternity. until eventually somebody pushes them into getting together. (like no you two making out w/ eachother when youre drunk is NOT typically a normal friend thing!)

but yeah i think theyre all cute together and um ilike them a lot smiles i think theyre very complicated but also so uncomplicated bc thats just how it is when youre friends/lovers as immortal beings

[sneeb-canons]

Mind and Heart both know how to cook and bake. Mind prefers baking because of the rigid instructions, and Heart prefers cooking because he can experiment with the recipes.

Soul should not be allowed anywhere near a kitchen. Heart asked if Soul wanted to cook once and he brought out a Mountain Dew cookbook. He’s never asked again.

Headcanon #319

[mochiiniko]

rd art dump featuring some old stuff that i just forgot to post lol

[sermna]

watching a nice video about a family in southern Italy making their own tomato sauce. They're so dainty with their added ingredients they would hate my tomato sauce lmao

[dis--parity]

『🍬』 "Imagine bein' so joyless that you don't like sugar. Major skill issue, TBH."

[thewitchofcedarandbone]

A little nocturnal offering to the land spirits🍏🔪🌿