#or cheese cheese is great

[emmaziadarcy]

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON 2.01 | A Son for a Son 2.08 | The Queen Who Ever Was

[dungeonmessy]

a request someoen had a while ago :3 laios cooking for kabru !!

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was on The Great British Bake Off. I baked a giant savory scone as big as the table and filled it with ham, cream cheese and spring onions. Then I lost the top of it and was eliminated from the contest.

[ayrennaranaaldmeri]

HELAENA WAS A BELOVED QUEEN IN F&B SO OF COURSE RYAN CONDOM HAS TO MAKE THE SMALLFOLK PRAISE THE PERSON WHO WAS BLOCKADING THEIR FOOD TO BEGIN WITH BC PROPAGANDA ONLY WORKS WHEN RHA EN YRA DOES IT AND THROW THE FOOD THEY WERE RIOTING OVER AT HELAENA. I CURSE HIM AND HIS UGLY WRITING.

[fictional-orphan-smackdown]

LET THE FINAL ROUND COMMENCE!

All propaganda and what each competitor is from under the cut

Anthony Lockwood (Lockwood and Co)

Lockwood (he's known by his surname mostly) is the mysterious, daredevil and charming founder of Lockwood and Co., a detective agency specialised in protecting people from angry -and sometimes sort of hungry- ghosts in a world where they're rampant. His agency is starting small despite Lockwood bragging it's the best in London but get more and more recognition as the series progress and the agents composing them meet success (when they're not on the verge of dying). Lockwood has open manners but hid his painful past from his coworkers to protect himself. He and George, the first teenager he recruited, are quite stunned by Lucy, a country girl who fled to London after disaster striked in her hometown. Thanks to her talent, she quickly becomes known as one of the best ghost fighter in London and finds her place in the small team despite having the same determination to hide her past than Lockwood, which draws him close to her, making George jealous, but Lockwood's manifest good skills in leadership and the three of them become fast friends while unravelling secret truths and risking their lives repeatedly

He has a lot of trauma and a lot of pain but he always smiles and always has a warm and polite attitude; he’s so protective of the ones he loves that it overrides his suicidal tendencies; at the end of the series he starts to heal from his past; he’s hot but has only two braincells.

Chuck e' Cheese (Restaurant/family entertainment center chain)

Charles Entertainment Cheese grew up in St. Marinara orphanage and he loved singing, especially happy birthday. But he didn't know his own birthday (because he is an orphan) so all he could do was celebrate other kids' birthdays. His favourite part was the pizza. He also loved playing Pong and he went to New York City after winning $50 in a Pong tournament.

[p-idiot]

Listening to Tomcat Disposables moodboard probably

[blendereels]

I'm going to try to make my own designs for all the creatures in asoue/atwq. Here's my interpretation of The Great Unknown :)

design notes ↓

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

When I first saw a Miraculous Ladybug salt post it was the usual Lila takes away all of Marinette's friends Adrien does nothing Marinette becomes super successful Lila gets exposed blah blah blah

When I see posts like the ones you post where people give actual constructive criticism about the characters and not favor one character over the other has made me realize that these are fictional characters and its not their fault they are the way they are. Also they're 14 what kind of 14 year old makes good choice's? Especially when they have the fate of the world/universe on their shoulders

If anything the character I really blame is Master Fu. He was obviously meant to be some sort of mentor figure for them or at least Marinette's mentor. He was the one to tell and encourage Marinette to keep everything a secret from Adrien. Comparing him to other mentor like figures in the world of superheros he isn't really all that helpful.

Compared to DC Ladybug and Chat Noir do not have any adult superheros to help them. In DC younger superheros have entire superhero families to help them out and if not that than they have other adult superheros to help them or they have an actual team. We know that other miraculous holders exist and the order is back I have a vague idea as to why they can't help but I still find it weird as to why they are around if not to help. Like phones and the internet exist do they not?

Sorry for they rant, I want to know what your thoughts are on this?

Your rant was fine! I don't think that I've talked in depth about mentors as a concept and I should both because I love mentors and because Miraculous has completely failed to give us any good ones. This is a writing failure not because good mentors are required, but because the show chose to have mentors characters and then not use them.

Before I get into the topic at large, I want to start with a brief discussion of mentors in shows aimed at young children as Miraculous' intended audience is young children and that fact is worth keeping in mind when discussing what Miraculous did wrong and some of the ways that you can fix it.

Shows aimed at kids generally avoid adult characters in major roles for the very obvious reason that the intended audience is kids, so you want the kid and teen characters to be the stars. This doesn't mean that adults aren't allowed to save the day or have important roles. It just means that they should be used sparingly. This is why mentors are a great addition to kids shows. They allow adult characters to be deeply involved with the plot without anyone expecting them to intervene because that's not their role in the story. They're not here to be the hero. They're here to guide the hero.

One of the powerful things about this setup is that it allows the writers to give the real kids watching at home real advice about real life problems. For example, if Marinette comes to Fu to talk about feeling alone and overwhelmed, then he can give her real, practical advice that would apply to anyone who is feeling alone and overwhelmed, but no one expects him to directly intervene because he's supposed to say hidden.

A lot of these elements apply to mentors in media aimed at older audiences, the rules just apply for different reasons, so I'm going to stop reminding you that Miraculous is for elementary school kids and focus on the failed mentor issue as it would be an issue no matter what Miraculous' intended audience was.

When it comes to bad mentoring, a lot of people focus on Fu and I get why. At first glance, he's the classic wise old Asian man who is supposed to be there to guide the protagonist on her mystical journey (not getting into the racism issue here, just know that I'm aware of it and that Miraculous dropped the ball on this in a lot of ways even though they absolutely could have made it work.) But Fu isn't the main focus of my ire because, while the writers seemed to have designed him around the mystic Asian trope, they never actually wrote him like a mentor.

He doesn't train Marinette and Adrien in the ways of the miraculous. He just sneakily gives them their miraculous and then disappears from their lives for quite some time. So he's not around to get them properly started on their hero journey. That's strike one for the mentor role.

Strike two is the fact that we never actually see him mentoring Marinette. I don't think that she ever went to him for advice? If she did, then it wasn't a big element of their relationship. When I think of Marinette and Fu, I picture her going to him to grab a miraculous or two before booking it back to the ongoing fight and that's about it. The guardian training she supposedly had was all off screen, so we have no idea how close they were or what he even taught her outside of potion making. Even that wasn't really him teaching her something. It was them working together to figure out a puzzle because Fu never completed his own training, making it impossible for him to properly train a successor.

Strike three is the fact that - outside of the King Monkey incident - Fu never gets directly involved in helping team miraculous. He's never gives them feedback on fights or works with Ladybug and Chat Noir to strengthen their bond. He doesn't even help them track down the two missing miraculous or hand out the temporary miraculous on Marinette's behalf, a choice I still find super weird. "This fight is super hard and we need help, so I'm going to leave Chat Noir to fight alone while I go get said help!" is absolutely nonsense logic and one of the many examples of the writers desperately needing to let Marinette hand her responsibilities off. Why wasn't this Fu's job?

This brings us to fix one: if you want the guardian to be a mentor - which is a role they arguably should have - then the guardian needs to be actively involved in Marinette and Adrien's lives in an on screen way. For this to work in the context of Miraculous - a show that really wants to focus on the teen characters - then the guardian probably needs a teenage apprentice who isn't Marinette and that apprentice will be the one doing the mentoring.

My pick for this is Luka for two big reasons. The first one is that his calm personality is perfectly suited to a mentor. The second one is that it seems insane to me to have the snake be a temp holder. The snake should be watching every fight, but staying out of the actual fight so that they can use their power whenever it's needed. That's the perfect role for a mentor character to fill. Someone who is active in the plot, but only ever as a support because their power stops them from getting more involved.

Moving on to the bigger issue.

As I said up above, Fu doesn't actually get my ire. While I wanted him to be a mentor, he never once filled that role and he didn't really need to because the show already had mentor figures that it was actively using and using poorly. Those figures are the ancient magical creatures that follow our heroes around, dispensing terrible advice whenever they feel like it. That's right, as much as it pains me, Miraculous' biggest mentor failures are Tikki and Plagg.

The miraculous did not need to have magical creatures associated with them. They could have just been magical jewelry that Fu handed out and explained. Instead, the writers chose to give us the Kwamis and I don't disagree with that choice. I like the Kwmais! The problem is that they're used in the most lackluster, asinine ways you possibly could.

The Kwamis are not presented as oblivious to the world and unable to give advice. They give lots of advice! The problem is that advice tends to suck! I can think of many examples of times where the Kwamis made everything worse, but let's look at the one that grinds my gears the most: Plagg's actions in season four.

In Rocketear - the episode where Nino gives Adrien an incredibly inaccurate picture of why he knows Alya's secret identity - we get this:

Adrien: I still can't believe Ladybug entrusted Alya and Nino with those Miraculous. Plagg: Of course she did. She's the Guardian. Adrien: But they're a couple and they know each other's secret identities. Plagg: So...? Adrien: So, why does she make it a rule that we can't know each other's identities but it's okay for them? Plagg: She's the Guardian, the Grandmaster Cheese Ripener, and you and I are just cheese on the platter. She decides what's on the menu.

Hey, Plagg, maybe don't tell your clearly upset and vulnerable teenage holder to just suck it up and deal with it when he's feeling alone and betrayed? Maybe encourage him to talk to Ladybug about his feelings so that he can get the full story? Knowing that they learned their identities during the Scarlet Moth incident would probably do a lot to smooth over Adrien's hurt feelings.

What's even more rich is that the episode Kuro Neko lets Plagg go off on Marinette for not appreciating Chat Noir:

Ladybug: What's gotten into him? I didn't do anything. Plagg: Didn't do anything? Well yeah, you did! You've been neglecting a very classy piece of camemebert on your plate for too long! And as a result it got runny, and moldy! Ladybug: What? Cat Noir never gave me any camembert. Plagg: Of course not, Cat Noir is the camembert! For a while now, you've been neglecting this camembert— I mean Cat Noir, and going on adventures with the all other cheeses! Ladybug: But he should be happy about it, it gives him more time off. Plagg: Cat Noir doesn't wanna have time off, Ladybug! He is in love with you! And your persistent calling on all the other heroes has broken his heart.

Dude, if you saw all of this going on, then why didn't you say something??? You and Tikki are in the same location for multiple hours five days a week. Go tell her how your holder is feeling and figure out how to fix the situation! Or be an actual mentor and encourage Adrien to talk to someone about his feelings! At the very least, cut up a wheel of cheese, sit down, and listen to your kid so that he feels less alone!

Also what exactly do you want Ladybug to do to fix the problem you presented? Let Paris burn until Chat Noir decides to show up to today's fight? Refuse to use the temp heroes even if it means losing a fight? None of those are valid solutions when the problem presented in the episode is Chat Noir missing fights. Especially when we know that he's doing it on purpose. Why are you yelling at her instead of working with her to come up with an actual solution? You are such a terrible mentor...

To be clear, I don't think any of this is intentional. I don't think the writers want Plagg and Tikki to come across as actively hurting their teenage charges via bad advice. I think Plagg and Tikki are supposed to be seen as good and helpful, but they can't fill that role because they're tools of the narrative and the narrative has really wacky views on what good advice is. Thus nonsense like the example I discussed above or Plagg and Tikki picking new holders instead of guiding their holders through an identity reveal.

I personally adore letting Plagg and Tikki be good mentors in my own stuff. It falls under the same category as Alya and Nino being terrible friends on screen. I acknowledge the problem and then delight in fixing it by writing the exact opposite setup because what is fanfiction for if not heavy self indulgence?

[atlasisnothere]

one of the most wild things about rolling into the torchwood fandom a good fifteen years late is scrolling through the popular works on ao3 and seeing the sheer amount of hatred and vitriol that so many people held for gwen cooper. like??? fighting for my life here having to filter out multiple variations of the gwen bashing/anti-gwen-tag and even then some writers have such an unconscious dislike for the character that they'll slip nasty OOC characterisation in anyway. and it always seems to stem from this idea that she was 'stealing' jack's affections away from ianto but like. did these people not notice that the insane-straight-baiting-codependent-thing gwen and jack had going on was two-sided. did they miss the fact that literally every relationship in this show is toxic to at least some degree. some of these fics were rendered almost cartoonish in their going out of the way to point out how terrible and whiny they saw gwen to be. it all seems as yet another case in the epidemic of taking the woman perceived to be 'getting in the way' of a popular mlm ship and exaggerating or simply fabricating negative traits in order to justify shoving her to the wayside by proclaiming that she's a terrible person but. my god. gwen cooper my messy and flawed woman you will always be famous to me.

[zerohirrotries]

Sonic IDW comic background characters appreciation Each character has their own uniqueness to them that I love them all!

[marvel-lous-guy]

Peter: I think I've been doing great recently!

Tony: You have 2 stab wounds!

Peter: but yesterday I had 4! This is an improvement!

[t00thpasteface]

me, my brother, and our mutual goth bestie went to an arcade yesterday and it was such a blast! i wore myself out playing ddr, my friend destroyed me in guitar hero and puzzle bobble, and my brother apparently got his cool, laid-back look validated by some rando while my friend and i were talking about how adam west understood the bat-assignment.

[chvoswxtch]

i’m never going to fucking shut up about this look at THEM

now I know exactly how foggy felt in season 3 when he sees matt at josie’s and asks him if this is real

pls excuse me while I scream from the rooftops

[antiquepearlss]

I headcanon Varian as lactose intolerant because he is absolutely one of those people who eats a whole block of cheese and a pint of ice cream and just “powers through” the pain.

[brother-genitivi]

“A wife’s not a son,” said Blood. “It has to be a boy.”

was absolutely enchanted by Phia Saban’s performance and so I had to draw her

[hishighnesstheprincess]

I feel like one of the things that gets missed a lot about Sonic and Amy's dynamic is that he isn't running because he's scared of Amy or hates her: Sonic runs because he loves running, and Amy chases because she loves Sonic and all he represents. She also clearly doesn't spend all her time chasing him: in Adventure 1 she's just lounging around in a city missing him and then he runs into her, in Heroes she's spending time with other friends of hers, etc.

Yes, she is more active in pursuing him than even other characters like Tails can be, and he can occasionally be overwhelmed by her pushy personality, but that doesn't equate to stalking or harassment. Sonic enjoys having her around- they're friends. To a certain extent, Sonic also clearly enjoys being chased by Amy.

Almost every moment that gets tossed around as her being abusive or terrible is some looney toons ass gag. Y'all can't seriously think she intended to kidnap and physically drag Sonic into a church to marry her just based off one awkward line in Heroes, can you? Regardless of whether you ship them or want them to be canon or not or find the jokes cringe or #problematic, their intended dynamic is not and has never been that of stalker and victim.

Also, another misconception about her is that people think her life revolves just around Sonic. Now, she was certainly created with him in mind (the creators wanted her to be a Minnie Mouse to Sonic's Mickey Mouse) but that's true of almost every character in the classic era. I'm not going to pretend CD presented a great dynamic between them, but starting as early as Adventure Amy had stories about standing up to Sonic, befriending other characters, actively redeeming multiple other characters/being one of the ones to help them, etc.

She's got multiple hobbies and friends outside of Sonic, she will stand up to him when she thinks he's doing something wrong: she has a life outside of Sonic.

Just because she wants her life to include him as well doesn't make her a one-note, lovesick fangirl stalker like she was so commonly seen as for so long!

Anyway. I just really love Amy Rose and also her dynamic with Sonic. It's been portrayed imperfectly at times, and there are definitely some moments where she was characterized horribly, but a) that's true of basically every major Sonic character and b) that doesn't wipe out all the good characterization and moments she's had over the years. She's always been a good character, and she's been growing and evolving over the years, just like a good character should. Her problem is mostly that she's been underutilized in games, and the solution to this is simply just to show more than one facet of her personality, not bashing that part of her or trying to take it away.