#some examples include

[monarchetype]

art can be "good" in plenty of ways but I find my favorite art (in longer formats) to be party terrible and partly amazing. half renaissance painting and half shitpost. switching between masterfully executing all the conventions of the genre/medium and or breaking all the rules. 50% the cringiest thing youve seen in your life and 50% something you want to show to every person on the planet. constantly swinging betwern "how does a person come up with this" (in awe) and "how does a person come up with this" (derogatory). embodying humanity's duality of the angel and the animal. both shit and the shit. you know?

[alonelyliversuspendedinliquid]

it's oddly comforting to be in love with men that i know i'll never have

i don't understand why

[habizuh-studios]

i am basic. i am a fucking basic bitch, are you happy? are you proud? knowing that my favorite characters will either be the main character because they are the first person we meet and i get immediately attached or that it is the intelligent boy that fandoms will mistake as softie uwu's? are you happy?

[effiemal]

currently watching this guy react to every genshin character trailer and realized that half the cast is "happy go lucky girl who is passionate about her job" and the other half is "people who need therapy"

[heartless-aro]

People when a character is aromantic or aromantic coded: Wowie! They’re aroACE! Because they aren’t interested in romance! Look at how aroace they are!

People when a character is aroace or aroace coded: Isn’t it cool that this character is asexual? Asexual icon! They’re such great asexual representation :)

[heyimkana]

A compilation of Sung Jinwoo being a soft, gentle, protective, warmhearted gentleman 😌

(Eng Dub because Aleks' gentle voice is unmatched)

[dejablonde]

I'm pretty sure there's only two types of bassists in this world

- quiet, probably dorky man with long hair (coin flip on whether he plays only 4 notes or approximately ALL the notes)

- the hottest woman you've ever seen in your life

[cool-as-steel]

A selection of Allen & Gintner cigarette cards from the 1888 'Pirates of the Spanish Main' series.

[shouts-into-the-void]

I really don't think we appreciate how feral Renee is. Like, she puts on the front of a good Christian girl, and she is trying so hard, but the second anything goes slightly wrong she defaults to crime immediately.

[froschli96]

🗣️ Darlin', you give love a bad name

Found this in my old wip folder and it feels now more relevant than ever :)

Also these don't know why I never uploaded these they were just sitting there completely finished:

[bleue-flora]

Thought in light of my playlist with all of the Tommy lore, (btw if I missed anything let me know and I’ll try to find and add it) I’d also share all the playlists I have saved that could be useful to people watching lore or making their own playlists. There are also some other ones on my channel that you can check out if you want to, some of which I’m still working on (marked *). I have also posted lore resources before [here] and [here], which mention people like @spit-bite-glitch and @Wishdreamerx on youtube who have playlists by month.

{Also, I am trying to put together a dream playlist, which since he mostly doesn't have his own pov and sticks his head into everything, is quite a challenge, so if you are currently going through lore or something and come across the green boy it would be a big help if you would let me know, no need to provide time stamps or anything just a link, or even like just informing me of maybe some smaller lore you know he shows up in. I'd really appreciate it<3}

Timeline Playlist Links:

<> - <> - <> - <> - <> - <>

Anyways, this one is probably one of if not the best playlists I found. It does a pretty thorough job and includes lots of povs, it is understandably missing a few small things, but it’s really good and can definitely help you get a good view of the timeline too:

Characters:

Awesamdude - <> - <>

Sam Bucket*

Badboyhalo - <>

Dream*

DreamXD*

Eret

Eryn

Foolish - <>

Fundy

George

Michaelmicchill - <>

Niki

Philza

Ponk

Puffy

Punz* - <> - <>

Purpled

Quackity

Ranboo - <> - <>

Sapnap

Seapeekay

Skeppy - <>

Techno

Tommy

Tubbo - <> - <> - <> - <>

Wilbur - <> - <>

Arcs:

Disc Saga

War for Independance

Exile

Egg - <> - <>

Las Nevadas - <>

Prison Arc - <>

Post-Prison Arc

Daedalus * - <>

Finales*

And just for fun, while I'm at it, here are some other lore resources for you:

Transcripts Archive

Exile Transcripts

Exile & Prison Visitors

DSMP Members' Ages

DSMP Map Coordinate Archive

[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.

[afterthelambs]

While doing research for female equivalents of Arsene, I discovered that the wikipedia page for fictional female thieves lists all of the phantom thieves girls except for Makoto and Futaba? Who made this lmao

And Irene Adler is there for some reason. I know that Arsene is supposed to be the rival of Sherlock Holmes so logically I would have to pick Irene Adler but she's not a thief or a criminal at all, it's just that so many versions of Sherlock Holmes tricked people into thinking she's a catwoman-like figure. In the original novel she's literally just an innocent opera singer who was being harassed by a king that she used to date. She did nothing wrong, stop slandering her.

Actually now that I'm typing this out, "woman accused of doing something she did not by a scummy politician who abuses his power and hires a detective to sell her out but she manages to outsmart said detective and escape" is basically joker's actual story... dammit. why does it fit. hang on.........

[silverview]

reece characters getting called little ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[clover0101]

I love how MILGRAM keeps leaving little details that show us that haruka has difficulty with his motor skills. Motor clumsiness is quite common in neurodivergent people, in this case its fine motor skills and its seen on a daily basis in difficulty tying braids or ties, problems doing manual work that requires accuracy (like origami!! folding or cutting paper, grasping small objects). Gross motor problems involve difficulty moving around, poor hand-leg coordination, miscalculating one's own position in space which causes us to bump into objects or people etc etc

[askyofexplodingstars]

men <3