#this is one of my favorite of the reboots

[lemonlinelights]

@dialup-dragon YES HI HELLO!!!!!!!! The can has been opened I hope you like worms XD

The diva's name is The Question aka Vic Sage My Beloved. He's my favorite superhero like EVER in DC and Marvel I love him so much. I can say like SO MANY THINGS ABOUT HIM!!! Idk where to start UHHH the other person in the art is Huntress aka Helena Bertinelli she's a badass character with a lot of cool stories of her own. Cause it's ya know ✨comics✨ it depends on what you're reading/watching but they're sometimes lovers and I love them together so much.

The Question is from DC comics and he's from Hub Cap City which like a lot of cities in DC comics is corrupted and full of crime.

Vic DOES have a face! He just has a special mask that makes it look like he doesn't. The mask is weirdly very important in the start of his alter ego. He uses a gas to take the mask on and off and it also changes his hair color in the process. His skill set is martial arts and his detective skills. but later on he sort of starts to be able to communicate with cities? And also understand coincidences, comic book logic lol.

Uhh I'm trying to keep this short without going into an essay XD

For awhile his main struggle was seeing things strictly in black and white, until he's basically beaten to death by Lady Shiva which starts his entire journey into morals and learning that not everything is what it seems (I've a post that explains this a lot better hopefully I can find it) A LOT of other stuff also happens, many tragedies and character growth as is the life of a comic book superhero. Skipping all his dramatic adventures Vic eventually dies from lung cancer, and his successor is someone who he's been training-

Renee Montoya! She is AWESOME! I don't know her as well yet but she's amazing as The Question I love her. While Vic is alive their dynamic together is SO fun and Renee on her own is also neat. Again comics so the story changes a bit but shes a former cop struggling with alcoholism and her girlfriend leaving her when Vic enters her life giving her something to work for again. Renee usually has a relationship with Kate Kane (Batwoman) and I love it just wkhxenhdben💕

So yes there's two Questions, sometimes at the same time! Vic Sage has some appearances  in Justice League Unlimited that a fun watch. He and Huntress are together in it <3

They're my beloveds I love them a lot. I think it's mainly their personalities that draw me in a lot of the time. They're entertaining :-) ✨Divas✨

Uhhh also at some point when the universe got rebooted (this is usually done once the comics get too complicated even for the creators) they tried giving The Question a fresh coat of paint by making him a cursed guy who will be able to solve other people's Questions but never answer the biggest one, his own identity. Also this version doesn't actually HAVE a face he legit has no face. The version also has some superpowers? It didn't last long though and I think they've just been ignoring it. So uh yeah we ignore that one.

A whole bunch of JLU Question doodles

Shout out to these comments that changed how I saw certain scenes + Jeffrey Combs' entire performance (his voice is so goodd)

Adding another compulsive nerd to my "favourite compulsive nerd characters" collection

[beanbagbuddies4life]

Stanley the Seal

Born May 4

"Calmly sleep the whole night through, As my flippers comfort you. You'll feel safe during the night, As I hold you very tight."

"Stanley the Beanie Baby features a vibrant, eye-catching design with its smooth green body and contrasting yellow belly. Its playful expression and soft, plush fabric make it an irresistible companion for children and collectors alike. This unique seal adds a splash of color and whimsy to any Beanie Baby collection." - shop.ty.com description

[juniemunie]

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

Hitting a lil' too close to home?

[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

[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

[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.

[theflopwonder]

Me, naively: Omg haha what if I wrote a fic abt the party at the fortress of solitude in superman/batman 26 as an excuse to do some Tim & Kon character study?

Me, after reading 4 separate comic runs from 4 different editorial teams who were OBVIOUSLY not talking to each other AT ALL to try and figure out the timeline & other logistics of this party: WHO THE FUCK FUCKED UP THIS HOUSE LIKE THIS GOOD GOD??????????

[styxbugg]

Reboot Gobo reads his postcards to Red because he’s oblivious to anyone disliking them

Og Gobo reads them to Red specifically just to spite her

[imfamou69]

Remembered this image and I knew I had to draw them.. hi mkulia nation👋👋

[yhwcomeback]

what are your favorite ninjago seasons?

Rise of the Snakes, HANDS DOWN.

I've rewatched it so many times, and I adore this season, it's so nostalgic, and easy to digest, it brings me back to when I was 12 years old searching "Lloyd gets revenge against the ninja" on youtube only to instantly get spoiled that he was the green ninja LOL. (twelve years old me really thought he was going to become a major villain and I WAS READY TO EMBRACE THAT)

altought I also rewatch Dragon Rising alot? Probably cuz it's easy to watch it and similiar to season 1, it just feels like I'm eating a snack.

I also really like Possesion and March of the oni, but that's mainly becuase of the opening? like the opening of the season is just so cool.

and I feel like seabound is one of my top favorites becuase I am AWFUL at dealing with that type of stuff so I was sobbing so hard in the end. Same with Sons of Garmadon.

[anoant]

On this episode of Ant makes a beta kid crossover line-up:

[hawksheadcanonblog]

Headcanon - The Warners all have some undiagnosed conditions with only Wakko’s hypoglycemia being officially diagnosed by a doctor, but that was only after they had to be taken to a hospital. Yakko had to self-diagnose his lactose intolerance and many suspect Dot of having some sort of issue with her immune system.

[cyniicism]

did everyone just silently agree that mkulia’s theme song is “apple cider” or what because if we did, then i might scream in joy because i love beabadoobee and i love mkulia

[josubana6]

Some Wayne's art! (he's so silly)

[rosdevw2]

the reboot is amazing when you're the one handling it honestly. it's great because you make it so, with your ideas and your art. keep going.

I'm glad you like my ideas for the show, it one of my favorite Ben 10 media! but I'll just appreciate to not be so negative on the reboot UnU

like yeah the plot may not be as interested as OG or AF, but if you like series that are just for laughs and being silly (like me) it's not really bad, I mostly love it because you can get more episodes where the tennyson fam are just doing things together and having fun, is so adorable seeing their dynamics and I love when the kids are having unapologetic fun together! Maybe you are weirded out by the animation, but the animation is not bad actually! In my opinion is the artstyle that makes it look bad, like it still a production by Man of action, they know how to produce a good show

I'll admit it more fun to watch the series when Kevin starts appearing cause it adds a new dynamic to the family and also Kevin is so well written (and so adorable!!) but tbh I love season 1 cause it where Ben actually uses all of the 10 aliens he has in a variety of situations and it was cool seeing them (and also I love greymatter personality in the show) but later on the next seasons Ben has more "physically strong aliens" and "onmitrix power ups" which I find boring, I love when Ben's aliens are diverse and each one has a unique trait to them and It whould not bother me that much if they just made Ben use more that the same 3 aliens (looking at you Humungousaur).

where I was going with this? oh yeah, not judge a reboot only cause it's not the original, like it's the same situation as the ROTTMNT and now that series is finally being appreciated! I hope this ramblings will make somebody to give it a chance :]

[surgefairy]

whenever i don’t know what to draw i always just end up making absolutely insane and dumb doodles such as these