#embracing progress

[lifeinspiration4all]

Embracing the Pain: The Inevitable Price of Progress

Embracing the Pain: The Inevitable Price of Progress. In life, we all strive for progress and growth. We set goals, push ourselves to new heights, and work towards becoming the best versions of ourselves. However, what many people fail to realize is that progress comes at a price – and that price is often pain. To truly embrace progress, we must be willing to face challenges, overcome obstacles,…

[kc22invesmentsblog]

Embracing Progress: A Wednesday Morning Motivational Reflection

Written by Delvin In the midst of our journey, we often find ourselves seeking the motivation to keep moving forward. Wednesdays, positioned right in the middle of the week, can sometimes feel like a hump to overcome. It’s during these moments that we need to remind ourselves of the wisdom encapsulated in the words of Barack Obama: “If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to…

[cabbagestrand]

day3: still practicing faces so dont mind the hands and the body lmao

[captainjonnitkessler]

No more religious hymns at activist rallies. Union folk songs are right fucking there

[captainkirkk]

I'm now on season 2 of my Natsume Yujinchou rewatch, and I love seeing the marked difference in the way Natsume is treated.

In season 1, we get a very withdrawn, very fake Natsume - quiet, smiling pleasantly but clearly looking right through people, apologising for taking up space. People like him right away but don't know how to breach that distance. But towards the end of season 1/ into season 2, we see people understanding Natsume more and more and deciding to close that distance by reaching out to him with affection. We see them teaching Natsume how to be loved.

We also get more people recognising and seeing straight through Natsume's bullshit, ESPECIALLY Nyanko-sensei.

Natsume: "My temperature is a little over 37 degrees."

Nyanko-sensei: "You should rest then."

Natsume: "I took some medicine. I should be fine if I don't do much. I don't want to worry Touko-san."

Nyanko-sensei: "Geez, how long will it take you to realise?"

Natsume, entirely oblivious to just how much he's loved and wanted: "...Realise what?"

[evenmyhivemindisempty]

My controversial opinion about Hob Gadling is that I believe he’s absolutely the sort of guy that “puts things behind him”, and tries to wash his hands clean of the things he feels icky about. This is implied pretty well in the show, with him blithely moving from soldiering and robbery to printing, from slaving to… whatever it was he was doing in the 19th century instead. That being said, this is not at all the same as actively trying to atone, or even making a concerted effort to be a better person, and I really wish fandom could tell the difference!

[not-so-superheroine]

Jesus is my older brother, not my dad.

other christians don't seem to feel the same?

am i missing something where he insists on such a thing except perhaps with actual little children?

[pratchettquotes]

"But I'd always understood, sir, that Unseen University was against the use of movable type?"

"Oh, I think it's time to embrace the exciting challenges presented to us by the Century of the Fruitbat," said the Bursar.

"We...that's the one we're just about to leave, sir."

"Then it's high time we embraced them, don't you think?"

"Good point, sir."

Terry Pratchett, The Truth

[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.

[reachhforthestars]

Sonic 3 spoilers!!! Talking about the mid credits scene/what people have been saying about it under the cut

feeling like the only one who doesnt want reverse sonamy for the movies </3

or more accurately, fine sonic can have an obvious crush on her but i dont want ‘reverse sonamy’ to mean ‘amy doesnt have a crush on sonic.’ she can be lowkey about it or whatever (like sonic is sometimes in the games/other media) but to me part of Who She Is is that shes this super cool, super strong, intelligent fighter but shes also still a young girl who has crushes and believes in fate and is guided by her compassion, not by her strength or her mission or her love of adventure.

shes such a good character because while she is physically strong and possibly slightly magic, those are equally as important as her love and compassion and care for the world and people around her. preserving amys girlhood is important to me like loving sonic isnt her single defining character trait bc she ‘has to have a crush on a guy’ but it is a main character trait because thats just who she is. a loving person who sees the good in the world and wants to protect it and loves sonic because she sees him as the embodiment of that

[astriiformes]

Some of this is an expansion of a thesis that I was prodding at in my speech and debate piece ten years ago in high school (which was an admittedly somewhat naïve exploration of the relationship between science fiction, optimism about the future, and scientific progress, though I stand by elements of it), but there really is something fascinating about the way Back to the Future, as a piece of science fiction media, engages with its own genre.

In the "better" timeline, George McFly, an avid sci-fi fan, goes on to become a science fiction writer. Doc Brown was inspired to become a scientist by the works of Jules Verne (and in the video game, has another Eureka moment when he sees the 1931 Frankenstein film for the first time); in the musical, he describes his time machine as "A car for the stars / Like Captain Kirk's." As a sickly girl, isolated from her peers, Clara Clayton fell in love with amateur astronomy and stories about traveling from the Earth to the Moon.

I'm just so enamored with the fact that, unlike some other media, Back to the Future loves being sci-fi so much. There's a consistent throughline in every piece of BttF media--even the newer ones--that science fiction is something good, and inspirational, that makes people feel less alone, and forges connections, and encourages people to learn and invent. And that throughline is absolutely in conversation with the fact that the 2015 segment of the second film presented a decidedly aspirational vision of the future, even though other contemporary portrayals on the new millennium were starting to skew bleaker and more cyberpunk. It would come across as a little self-aggrandizing if it didn't feel so genuine--and it also helps that some of the positive impacts shown are smaller, and more personal. George finds a fulfilling career. Doc and Clara fall in love. It's more like watching a work of fiction earnestly believe it has something to say than it is watching it be self-important.

"You can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it," "Your future hasn't been written yet. No one's has. Your future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one." Do you see. Do you see it.

[ginzburgjake]

huh. something happened over the last two months

[beifong-brainrot]

sorry your post got to THAT crowd, i understand why you're not gonna bother engaging with them any further they're too entrenched in their cultish echo chamber mentality to have any productive discussions with. i have never seen a ship fanbase as bitter, insecure and as miserable as zutara shippers, i almost feel bad for them

Eh, i put it out on the internet people are allowed to interact with it. I've since talked a little with one of the people who reblogged it and come to a semi? Agreement.

Honestly it's not that I even hate Zutara. Frankly when I first entered the fandom I was ambivalent to mildly intrigued. But at this point I can't engage with the ship without thinking about a good chunk of the fandom around it and it's tiring.

Honestly I don't think they would be half bad if they weren't convinced that they were somehow robbed of their ship becoming canon. A ship being canon isn't the end all be all. Hell, I've built my entire online presence around a crackship with like 2 interactions. And yeah I have probably joked about weilin being the "superior bolin ship" or something but I can't imagine having the level of bitterness i often see in the atla fandom.

This isn't to say I have the moral highground here or anything. It's just like. Fandom etiquette in my eyes

[balluprojects]

Warm, 2025

Mixed media: coffee, gel and posca pen on 200g paper

have an embracing tuesday*

>>music>>Suzoon>Farq Hair>>

[eerna]

i will say, even though in retrospect acotar is a badly written series and has a lot of crap in it, a court of mist and fury does have one thing i really like: at the opening feyre is forcing herself to marry tamlin even though their relationship was clearly changed too drastically from the under the mountain trauma, and the court is too strict and stifling.

rhys gradually helps her out of that toxicity (even if he’s a compete asshole to do it). and then he gives her the space and time she needs, constantly allowing her to make her own decisions. is it shitty that he ends up keeping a lot from her as a result? yeah, definitely. but he and his inner circle make it clear she’s allowed to be there and wanted there even if she’s in the pit right now. she’s given agency when it had been taken away, and before that stuffed into a box because sheer survival was more important.

that little area between feyre having a panic attack meltdown and when she finds out he’s her mate was something very healing to me at the time i read it

Fair, everyone is allowed to feel different about the story! But to me it was nasty to read about a woman being allowed freedom through a relationship with a man, without the story being aware that is what is happening. I only made it to the halfway point of the book and then dropped the series for real because to me it wasn't empowering, it was demeaning. And Rhysand's way of giving her a choice was just really shitty from the get-go. Just because she is constantly told she has a choice, it doesn't mean she actually has it.