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carolmunson · 2 years

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bad blood (part one) (stella's version)

(A CROSS OVER FOR THE AGES FEATURING @ROLLERGIRLWORLD ’S BOXER!STEVE AND LIBRARIAN!READER) (18+) (ROCKSTAR!EDDIE X ACTRESS!READER)

TENSIONS ARE HIGH WHEN YOU FINALLY RUN INTO STEVE AGAIN AFTER HE MADE YOU CRY IN HIS KITCHEN IN MALIBU – CALLING OUT YOU AND EDDIE’S BAD BEHAVIOR. THE TRAINING FOR YOUR NEW OSCAR BAIT MOVIE IS ON THE LINE, BUT WILL THINGS GO TO BLOWS BEFORE YOU EVEN LEARN HOW TO THROW A JAB? WHY IS EVERYONE SO ON EDGE?

Do they know something you don’t? READ FROM LIBRARIAN!READER’S PERSPECTIVE HERE.

warnings and such: smut implications/almost smut, fingering/teasing, name calling, drug mention, swearing, blood mention, intense toxic behavior from a one steve harrington, angst, crying, some kissing, not really ‘ignoring’ per se – but feeling ignored by partner (also: photo above does not imply that that’s my HC for stella – i don’t use descriptors outside of clothing, just was a cool lady boxer pic) lastly, i don’t use 'Y/N’ in fics, filler name is stella rink, argue with the wall. and super lastly, if you’re under 18, don’t read my content.

“Oh no, I think they took a different exit,” you said with a frown, looking out of the back window of Eddie’s black Jeep Cherokee. Your assistant and manager had been following you from the hotel to the gym, but neither of them knew Toronto very well – to be fair, neither did Eddie. He had one eye on the road and the other on a map propped up on his knee, jaw tight and his grip on the wheel with his ringed hand even tighter. His tongue stuck out on the corner of his lip while he tried to concentrate.

“Baby, I’m not saying this in a mean way, but please stop talking,” he pleaded, “Let me just figure this out.”

The heavy churn of Judas Priest’s Painkiller album was screaming through the sound system, making your anxiety even higher. Ed told you it would be good ‘pump up’ music before you went in for your first training session, but it couldn’t have made you more overwhelmed. You sat back down in the passenger’s seat, watching the road and the piles of snow building up on the meridians of the highway. You’d never boxed before, you barely did your own stunts – and hey, neither would anyone else whose legs were insured for forty million dollars. The training was for a movie – your first big drama, absolute Oscar bait – where an about-to-be pro, female boxer is down on their luck and stuck in a man’s world. If you had just erased the boxer part, you might as well have been playing yourself. Quick witted, snarky, tough, self reliant and self sufficient, all listed in the character description – Eddie laughed when he read it, “All it’s missing is your loud mouth and then it’s just you on a Monday morning.” Since you had just wrapped a few episodes of a new mini-series in Canada, and the movie would be filming here, it made sense to get you right into training here, too. You’d been so preoccupied with filming that you just okayed everything your manager said about getting this set-up through your assistant. “It’ll be the best boxer working in Toronto, you’re gonna be in great hands! Well…gloves? I guess?” she said over the phone. You nodded to your assistant while your manager’s voice droned on through the speaker, trying to focus on getting your hair and makeup done, learning your lines, and a PA coming in to check on you every five seconds. Before you knew it, you and Eddie were on a private jet from Montreal to Toronto with only two days to spare before you got to the gym.

It hit you the night before that you had to do something you weren’t one hundred percent confident you’d know how to do. Sure you were coordinated: you could dance, you could swim, you could figure skate, you could play baseball – could you box? Sure you were tough, you were quick, you were angry – but – could you box? You tossed and turned in bed for an hour before Eddie sat up and turned the side table light on. “Okay, lay it on me,” he said, the sheets shifting down to show off his chest while he pushed up to lean against the pillows, “What’s wrong, sweet thing?” You huffed and turned towards him, pouting, “What if I’m bad and the studio decides it’s not worth it and they recast me?”

He laughed, “That’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said.They’d never recast you, you’re a perfect fit.”

“Can you just listen?” you whined, “Indulge in my bad mood with me.”

“Sweet thing, I’m never gonna indulge in your bad mood with you,” he said, taking his hand closer to you and plopping it on your head, “Especially when your bad mood is telling my baby all that bullshit. Why do you think you’re not gonna be good?”

“I don’t know, I’m not like – I’m not a boxer. I’m not a fighter like that,” you shrugged.

“That’s what you’re being trained for. So you can look like a boxer and act like a boxer,” he explained, “If you already knew, the studio wouldn’t spend the money on a coach for you. They know you don’t know. That’s the whole point.”

“I don’t like not knowing,” you sulked, “What if I look stupid?”

“You never look stupid,” his brows knitted, you were rarely this down on yourself, “What’s gettin’ into you tonight? You’re so pouty.”

“Just nervous,” you whispered.

“You know what helps me when I’m nervous?” he asks with a little grin, using the hand he plopped on your head to put your hair out of your eyes.

“Yeah, you smoke weed,” you replied matter of factly.

“The other thing,” he said, catching your eyes.

“Oh. Fucking?” you guessed, you knew that look.

“C’mon,” he said, tugging his pants off under the sheets and kicking them down to the edge of the mattress, “Come get on top of me angel, show me how tough you are.” You groaned and turned to the other side, hearing him sink into the covers through the crinkle of the sheets. Ed’s body is suddenly warm against your back, his fingers trailing your thigh to catch the silk of your little powder blue nightie and shoving it up to your waist. You giggled when his lips found your ear, nipping at the lobe. Your back involuntarily arches, pushing your ass against him when his hot breath fans against your neck.

“Don’t wanna show me how tough you are? You want it to be a surprise?” he asked, his fingers snaking over the swell of your hip. He tucked a knee between yours to keep your legs propped open, the same hand on your hip making its way between your thighs. Your body gets hot at his touch, the way he talks in your ear, the confidence he has to know when and how you want it without having to tell him.

“Want me to tucker you out, instead?” he asked, two fingers slowly circling over your clit. You could feel the spongy, swollen tip of his cock already trying to probe you from behind.

“Please, daddy,” you whine, your hand reaching for his wrist while pleasure builds between your legs.

“Lemme get you relaxed first, baby,” his voice got deep and gravely, your hips slowly grinding in time with his fingers. Eddie grinned at your silent consent, your little breaths picking up while he touched you. He fucked you hard that night, slamming you into the mattress with your legs in the air, getting you to scream out all of your anxieties into the pent house suite walls. You slept better than you had in weeks, but the wake up wrapped up in each other’s arms was sweeter than the kisses he gave you the night before.

“Looks like we’re here, princess,” Eddie said, pulling the Jeep into the parking lot. A couple of cars were already there and you silently cursed yourself for not getting there earlier. The sound of a sports car pulling in behind you was a happy reminder that your assistant and your manager made it unscathed.

You popped open the door, hopping down from the seat in your silvery white moon boots. A knee length white (FAUX – don’t throw any red paint) fur coat protected you from the bitter cold of Canada. You tugged on some matching mittens, closing the door behind you and meeting Eddie at the trunk while he pulled out your bags, slinging them over his shoulder. You both couldn’t look more different. You in your winter wonderland best, ear muffs and accessories all in the same bright white – you matched the bitter snow filled sky. Then there was Eddie, swallowed up by a heavy duty leather jacket covered in studs, black shredded sweater underneath. His tight black jeans tucked into black socks, tucked into steel toe combat boots. No gloves, no scarf, nothing to cover his ears – his teeth chattered but he didn’t complain.

With the bags on his back, he looked you over, cooing at the sight of you, “My little snow angel, look at you.”

You blushed, “Stooppp! I’m supposed to go in there and kick ass. I can’t be a little snow angel.”

“Shouldnt’a dressed so cute then,” he shrugged, leaving a kiss on your cheek and putting your mittened hand in his. Your assistant, Tiffany, and your manager, Simone crunched towards you in the snow.

“How ya feelin’, Stell?” Simone asked, “You look nervous.”

“I’m a little nervous,” you confessed, your lip quirking.

“Nothing to be nervous about, we go in, we train, we schedule the next training, we leave – done!” she assured you, her coffee colored nails shining while she talked with her hands, “You’re gonna crush it, you always do.”

Simone’s words were always comforting and straight to the point, it’s why she’s been your manager for as long as she has. Normally, she’d never come to something like this, she has other clients, but she knew it would be something you’d want extra support for. It didn’t exactly mean this wasn’t a working trip for her though, because as soon as she finished her sentence, one of her cell phones rang in her oversized purse.

“Simone Mueller speaking,” her voice was cavalier, but her work ethic was anything but. If there was anything you wanted in Hollywood, you wanted Simone Mueller on your team for it. You, Eddie, and Tiffany followed behind her into the gym, the heat of the building soothing your nerves almost instantly. You felt Eddie give your hand a squeeze, kissing it over the mittens.

“You got this, baby. Gonna be so great,” his award winning smile, dimples and all, made you want to take him to the locker room like you did with the boys in high school. When you stopped at the doorway you looked to the far end to see someone familiar. Little feet that could use some Vivienne Westwood platforms attached to a little woman looking at the banners on the ceiling, oh - OH!

“Libby!” you call out, waving at her. The sight of her calms you more than the heat of the gym, a friend, someone safe. Someone who knew you outside of being a movie star. But the comfort faded as her boyfriend came into view next to her – if Libby was here, it meant your coach was Steve.

You never forgot that look he gave you from behind his glasses, the last words he said to you back in September of last year. He had been right the whole time, Eddie would get caught using again five months later and ruin everything. Your jaw clenched when you thought about how satisfied he was when Eddie called him up to get back in the ring when you separated in February. Your heart sank to know that he was right again, you took him back. You fulfilled his stupid fucking kitchen counter prophecy.

Your smile falters when she doesn’t respond, getting tugged away by Steve to have a hushed and heated conversation with his manager. You guessed he was as surprised as you were, because when Simone said ‘best boxer working in Toronto,’ you thought it meant someone from Canada. Not a boxer that just so happened to be working in Toronto the same time as you.

“Let’s go change, they’re almost done setting up,” Simone said, beckoning you over with her hand, “You gotta talk to Tim, too.”

“Let me just get my bearings, Simone, I’ll be right over to the locker room. I promise!” you say, but she picked up a call halfway through your sentence.

“Want me to talk to Simone about getting you out of here? You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Not with that fucking asshole,” Eddie assured, his hand rubbing your back while guiding you to the other side of the gym. Unbeknownst to you, Eddie’s heart was pounding at the sight of both of them, a cold sweat pooling on the back of his neck.

“No baby, it’s – it’s okay,” you assured, shrugging your coat off. Tiffany ran up unannounced, her blonde ponytail bouncing behind her to take your things and hang them up in the locker room.

“Thanks Tiff,” you beamed, “Can you get me a tea? If they have that here? Coffee’s fine if not.”

“You want a coffee, Ed?” Tiff asked over her shoulder. Eddie shook his head no, knowing he wouldn’t be able to keep anything down if he tried. He didn’t dislike Tiffany, but something about how willing she was to do things for you made him feel like he was a little useless. Sure, he was there for general spousal support’ but he was perfectly good at getting you coffee or tea or putting your coat away.

“Surprised they even got back together,” Eddie muttered, watching you pull your hair back and out of your face. You made a face, brows contorting.

“They broke up?” you asked, “Where’d you hear that?”

Eddie stuttered for a second, his cheeks turning pink, “Uh, oh, in like, some magazine. It was a while ago.”

Eddie didn’t read magazines that reported break ups, especially ones that might report on a guy he hates. He only read Heavy Metal, Kerrang!, and Metal Hammer – every now and then Rolling Stone. Though, you wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been trying to find stories about you in Teen Beat and Seventeen when you were separated.

His hand found your waist, stealing a kiss from you, “You wanna go? I can still show you how to box.”

“You weren’t my favorite coach for that, baby,” you laughed, returning his kiss with one of your own, “But thank you so much for the offer.”

When you knew you were getting the role, Eddie brought you right down to the home gym to show you the ropes. He was good at so many things, but teaching you how to box just absolutely wasn’t one of them. Eddie was always getting frustrated that you were getting frustrated, giving vague instructions like:

‘Okay move your arm like this!’

‘Like what?’

‘Just like, punch, baby. Just throw a punch – no, no not like that.’

‘Okay like how?’

‘We’re doing hooks baby, not jabs. You have to put your weight into it, turn your body a little – not all the way, honey. Jesus Christ, we’re gonna be here all night.’

Needless to say, the session ended with you grinding on top of him in the sauna and you both figured that would be a better workout program than whatever you were doing before. You make your way over to meet with Mikey and Big by the ring – Eddie trailing behind you protectively, a straightness in his posture you weren’t used to seeing.

“Hi, I’m Stella! We all met briefly back in September of last year, and I think I’ve seen you all at a couple parties at our place. It’s nice to see you again and, you know, officially meet you,” you put your hand out, getting hand shakes all around, “This is so exciting! I really appreciate you all taking the time to be a part of this project – I know Steve’s got a busy schedule.” It was like Steve never sent you home crying. You’d been acting for a long time. What’s another performance for the audience? The men shared their niceties, Mikey’s stare lingering a little too long for Eddie’s liking.

“Haven’t seen ya since the beginning of March, kid. Where’ve you been?” Big asked, big smile on his face, giving Ed a little shove on the shoulder, “You’re gettin’ fuckin’ ripped dude. You wanna come fight for Mikey? We can put you on the roster.”

Eddie blushed, he always liked Big from when he used to work out with Steve at the Malibu gym, “Nah, nah, it’s just for the ladies, y’know? Well, for this lady.”

“Picked you a winner there, huh?” Big smirked at your eye roll.

“I always do,” Eddie joked back. You let the boys talk more, seeing Steve approaching the group with a face only concrete could love. He sneaks the mitts out of Big’s arms, not making eye contact with Eddie at all. There’s a rigidness to his face, he’s mad, he’s fuming – this wasn’t surprising. “Bet he’s pumped to the fuckin’ brim with roids,” Eddie huffed one night when he got angry again over the whole ordeal, “Probably why he’s such an asshole to his girl, all the fuckin’ roid rage.”

“Hey, Harrington,” you smiled, taking a few steps over to him. You see his jaw tense and eyes darken, you know he hates the informality – so you really lay it on thick. You clapped him on the shoulder, slinking your arms across your chest after, “Long time, no see Steve.”

“Can’t say that bothered me,” his tone was low, his stare sparking with that same glint in his eye from when he used his words like knives to your throat. You havin’ fun, angel? You havin’ fun, angel? You havin’ fun, angel? You havin’ fun, angel? You havin’ fun, angel?

“And still so charming,” you say flatly, a sparkling smile still plastered on your face, a media training laugh pouring out of your mouth. You knew the gym owner had to be here somewhere and you’d be damned if the The Sun got a report that you were a bitch to Steve fucking Harrington and his little woman. You peer over his shoulder and see the woman in question, a nervous looking Libby sitting over by the side of the ring.

“Where’s Lib —oh! Libby!” you call out, hurrying over to her, almost skittering on your moon boots. Just a moment to feel okay, just a little girl chat was all you needed to get through the next few hours.

“Oh, h-hi, St-Stella.” She looks terrified and you can feel Steve’s harsh glare on your back. Something felt wrong, but you shook it off. Maybe they got in a fight after you left last year, maybe things got worse for her. That’s what you feared the most, that before she knew it, Libby would have lost all of herself in Steve. "I was trying to come and say hi, but they were trying to corral me off to change. It’s been so long, we have to catch up!” you urge, but Libby doesn’t respond. She takes a step back and knocks over one of the chairs, a commotion causing the guys to look up and for you to protectively reach your hand out to help.

“Y-yeah, it’s um —wow, yeah —uh…I forgot my book,” she mumbles, getting up. She could barely look at you. Your heart starts to race. Did Steve tell her that you both couldn’t hang out anymore? Just because you said he might lose her?

“Oh, okay–” you start meekly, realizing you might’ve gotten Libby in trouble. Your smile falls a little, suddenly self conscious.

“—yeah, I’ll be right back!” she says before running all the way to the gym’s office and shutting the door behind her.

“Stella! Gym clothes, let’s go!” Simone calls out, walking over to you, her waist length micro box braids swinging behind her. Her knee high black leather boots clicking loud on the concrete floor, her long floor length Calvin Klein trench floating behind her. Simone never asks for something more than twice, so you hurry your way towards the locker room matching her stride.

“I sent Tiffany to get coffee for everyone,” she muttered, “We’re not using a coffee pot from 1982 that’s never been washed in a gym’s back room.”

You nodded, slinking off to the locker room and seeing Eddie making himself comfortable on the other side of the ring. He looked a little jittery, his knee bouncing anxiously, fiddling with the guitar pick on his chain.

Eddie’s demeanor perked up when he saw you emerge from the locker room in your Everlast shorts, sparkling white. Shorter than men’s boxer shorts, but flowy enough to move around in – you of course still had a reputation to uphold. Your sports bra, obviously a sensible top, clung to your body; suddenly feeling too hot and tight at the sight of Steve menacingly standing in the corner of the ring, his eye following you and flitting to Eddie. You swallowed hard, climbing into the ring, Big hopping in to tape up your hands and give you a little pep talk. Steve crossed his arms, leaning against the posts with the mitts on each hand. When the gloves were on, a little heavy and awkward, Big hopped out to collect his coffee from a chatty Tiffany who came back with the goods.

“I don’t like to wait,” Steve said, approaching you with slow steps in the center of the ring.

“That’s too bad. I don’t like to be rushed,” you hissed back, “I’m the star, here, so.”

He clicked his tongue, “How’d I know you’d bring that little attitude with you.”

“Oh wow, brighter than he looks, folks,” you say, your smile still stuck on your face.

“Comin’ in the ring dressed like boxer barbie and I’m not bright?” he retorts, “You come here to work or t’show off?”

“Well if I knew you’d be here, I probably wouldn’t have come at all,” you glare back.

“Alright, alright, enough – you wanna know how to box? Let me show you how to box. You know how to stand?”

“I’m standing right now,” you said, gloves on your hips. He laughs, an evil snicker, and he wants you to know he’s laughing at you.

“Oh you’re real hopeless, huh?” he said, a smirk curling onto his face, “That’s not a boxing stance, princess. You do any research at all? You watch a match? Or did they send you in here with nothin’ in that barbie doll head?”

Your cheeks burned, this is exactly what you were afraid of – being made to feel stupid. He takes the mitts off and tosses them to his feet, his rough taped hands finding contact with your shoulders.

“You left handed or right handed?” he asked, “D’you know the difference?”

“Left handed,” you responded, shaking off his comment.

“Okay, left shoulder always leading towards me, right at my chest,” he explains, “Feet diagonal apart, back heel up.”

You do as he says, his rough hands adjusting your shoulders position, reaching at your forearms.

“Gloves up, shoulders up, chin down,” he said, “Gotta be blocking your face. You know, the shit fuckin’ Munson doesn’t know how to do? Wouldn’t be surprised if you couldn’t catch on either.” His head flicks a little toward Eddie and you grit your teeth. You get into position, the gloves feel awkward and heavy, but you don’t want to show it – he already knows you’re out of your element.

“You’re punching straight out, just straight ahead,” Steve instructed, bending down to pick up the mitts and slipping them back on.

You lunge your arm forward in a sharp line but it barely makes a ‘smack’ against the mitt on Steve’s left hand. He laughs, shoving them off and leaving them by his feet again.

“Awful,” he says with a smile, coming over to the side of you, “Real fuckin’ awful.”

“Well you know all about being awful, Harrington, so, you’d know,” you huff. He stops, you can feel his eyes on you, he swallows while he grabs your left forearm. Steve sends your arm forward to mimic your previous movement.

“Where’s the power coming from when you throw a punch like this?” he asked, moving your arm back and forth.

“My…fist?”

“Oh my God, Stell. You’re serious?” Steve’s voice is teetering on exasperated and pure rage, dropping your arm back by your side. He runs a hand over his face and then through his hair – but you know, your ignorance could be fun for him. Steve gets behind you, his chest close to your back, the uncomfortable scratch of his wrapped hands reaching around either side of you to cage you in. He’s got your arms up, like he’s using you as a boxing puppet – you can smell the mix of his sweat and cologne and it immediately sends you back to their kitchen in Malibu. His harsh glare, his smile when you started to cry.

“So when you put the glove forward,” he says, slowly maneuvering your arm forward with his hand from behind you, “You’re using your whole upper body behind it, twisting at the waist. Puttin’ all the weight on that front foot. Feel how you twist when I do it for you?”

“Oh, yeah,” you reply, “That makes sense.” It’s the first time you can really gauge how strong he actually is – his soft touches feel heavy. He could kill you if he really wanted. Behind you, Steve catches Eddie’s eye whose arms are crossed in a chair at the side of the ring. His dark brown eyes shining and angry, his cheeks tinged pink, a vein in his neck pulsing while he watches Steve get closer to you. He instinctively goes to chew on the skin of his thumb, a nervous habit he’d had since he was a kid.

Steve’s eyes stay trained on Eddie while he guides you again, jumping when his hand falls to your hip, his voice booming in your ear – loud enough for the spectator to hear it, “That feels better, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, I can tell where the weight’s supposed to come from now,” you respond, but Steve isn’t listening. He’s just relishing in whatever emotional turmoil he might’ve put your fiance in. Steve’s hands skitter off you and he picks up the mitts again, slipping them on and getting in front of you.

“One, two me,” he said. You throw a jab with your left hand and quickly another with your right.

“Again,” he said, “Keep your arms up, you can’t drop ‘em.”

You go again, but it’s still not enough.

“You keep droppin’ your shoulders, pick your fuckin’ shoulders up,” he hisses.

You tighten your upper body, tucking your chin, a tight one two smacking into the mitts.

“Start over, it’s not clean enough,” he says from behind the mitts, “You need it cleaner.”

You catch Libby taking her seat back by the ring, hoping that with her back around, Steve will be a little nicer.

“I literally just started boxing today, what do you mean I need it cleaner?”

“Start over. If you wanna whine about it, I’ll send you home,” he shrugs.

You keep pulling ‘one, twos’ and he’s moving around the ring while you try to keep up. There’s not one kind word that leaves his mouth, no words of encouragement, nothing. Just his dead eyes and every critique he can think of.

“Stop, stop,” he says, ripping the mitts off.

“This,” he says, performing a punch, “Is a fucking jab. What the fuck are you doing?”

“What you just showed me, if I’m doing it wrong it’s because you showed it to me the wrong way,” you heaved, gloved hands on your hips. You were glistening with sweat, trying to catch your breath.

“No, I showed you the right way. Don’t get smart with me,” he said, hands on his hips to match your posture, “You wanna play a professional boxer, right? So what’cha gettin’ lax for? A pro would never look that sloppy, no matter how tired they are. Fuckin’ commit, Rink.”

“I’m not getting lax, Steve,” your voice toddled on the line of whiny.

“You know what I think?” he asked, his arms crossing over his chest.

“I’m surprised to hear you do,” you snapped, “Could’ve fooled me.”

He shook his head, running his hand through his hair, his step toward you made him close enough that you’d have to look up at him when he spoke.

“I think,” he said, his eyes scanning yours, his wolfish smile curling up into his cheeks, “You need to learn a thing or two about gettin’ some discipline.”

Steve scared you, the way your cousin did when he was living with your family to go to military school. He was ‘going through a tough time’ when you were a teen. Unhinged and unpredictable – the same flash of devilish confidence bursting behind their eyes. You can hear the clinking of Eddie’s leather jacket and the stomp of his boots walking around the ring, but you’re too frozen in fear and the desperate need to keep your cool to toss your gaze over to him. But god damn do you wish he’d give you a little cheer from the sidelines.

“Looks like you still got Libby pretty educated in it, Harrington,” you muttered darkly, getting back into your stance. His jaw is tight, his eyes flitting to Eddie sitting down next to his girlfriend, but he doesn’t falter in his malice for you.

He snickers, “Anyone ever teach you to shut that mouth, Rink? You know what happens to boxers who talk too much?”

“What?” you ask, tossing a hard one-two into his mitts. He peers over the top of them to make direct eye contact with you.

“They fuckin’ lose.”

“Pfft, okay,” you bristle at his words, your cheeks getting splotchy from feeling overwhelmed and inadequate. You didn’t have the energy to fight with him anymore. Your next to punches are weak, they barely make contact with the mitts. He doesn’t let you forget it.

“What is it?” he mocks, his face matching his hatred, “You not havin’ fun, angel?”

You let a breath push hard out of your nose, tears pricking in your eyes – you were so over this. Over Steve’s shitty attitude, over the gloves being too heavy, over the fluorescent lights. You already felt weird over Libby not talking to you and now Eddie wasn’t coming to your rescue either – just indulging in his stupid fucking crush. You’re so preoccupied with your annoyance at this whole ordeal that you don’t catch Eddie and Steve’s quiet stare down. You don’t catch Steve’s satisfied smirk while Eddie makes it back to his seat. All you feel is lonely in the center of the ring.

“Alright, everyone, great work! We’re gonna break for forty, you can put your lunch orders in with Tiffany.” Tim’s voice booms through the gym and shakes you back to yourself. You hear the mitts smack hard against the floor of the ring as Steve makes his way over to Libby. You flinch at the way he grabs Libby from her chair and drags her into the office, it feels like watching an after school special on abusive relationships and you’re the bystander who doesn’t know how to ask for help. Big helps you take your gloves off, tying the laces together and throwing them around his shoulders and he puts two big hands on your own.

“You’re givin’ ‘im hell, kid,” he smiled, “You’re doin’ great.”

Your smile weakly back at him, following him out of the ring toward the locker room. Eddie meets your stride and can immediately tell something’s wrong, reaching for your hand and lacing fingers with you while you walk past the office door.

The stale, humid air hits you but it’s not as stifling as it was to be out in that ring with King Steve. You sit on the bench, leaning up against the wall shared with the office, Eddie squatting down between your knees. He lets his hands spread over each of your thighs, hot to the touch from your quads keeping you in your boxer stance, his thumbs rubbing comfortingly over your skin. He sees your face scrunch and your lower lip start to tremble, a tear twinkling in the white light as it falls to your shorts.

“Oh, honey, no, it’s okay,” he says, “Don’t cry, it’s okay.”

“He’s just – he’s such an asshole,” you shake your head, wiping the streak of tears away as they come, “He’s so fucking mean.”

“It’s the roids, babe, I’m telling you,” he jokes, “His balls gotta be raisins by now.”

You snort at the joke and a real smile floods your face for the first time since you woke up this morning. You wipe your eyes again, hearing Eddie shift to get close to you. You feel his hand snake under your jaw before your eyes meet his, his kiss is gentle and sweet.

“There’s my pretty girl,” he coos. The door opens and Simone peaks her head in, wincing at the stagnant air.

“Stella, your lunch is here if you – Oh, sorry,” she says, seeing your tear stained face, “Everything okay?”

“We’re okay,” Eddie answers for you, “We’re probably gonna eat in the Jeep, Simone. She needs a little break.”

“That’s fine, that’s fine,” she says, “It’s on the edge of the ring, when you’re ready to pick it up. Tiff put your names on it.” She disappears as soon as she arrives, her cell phone ring echoing in the hallway, her clipped steps fading away.

“Just take a deep breath ba–” Eddie starts, but is soon interrupted.

A soft grunt sneaks its way from behind the cinderblock wall, the sound of skin slapping together, and you lean forward to turn your face toward it. Eddie looks up too, sitting next to you on the bench.

“No,” you blush, looking over at Eddie, “They can’t be. With everyone here?”

Eddie shifts his weight on the bench, his cheeks tingeing pink again while he becomes entranced with the bitten hangnail on his thumb. His voice is soft and low while he speaks, still looking down, “He’s a fuckin’ animal, so…”

Eddie watches you stand up and go to the locker with your name on it, scrawled on a white board. You unhinge it, swinging it open to find all of your effects neatly inside. The scent of your perfume sneaking out from where it lingered on your coat. You pull it out and give it a shake.

“I don’t even wanna change,” you sigh, “If I change, I’ll just wanna leave. I suck at this.”

Eddie frowns at the defeat in your voice, you sound so small and hurt. His chest heaves with guilt, it’s clear only three of the four of you know why today has actually been so shitty. Why Steve has been taking his anger out on you. Why Libby is avoiding you like the plague. He wished you demanded to leave, he wished you use your America’s Sweetheart powers for evil just one time. That way you could both get out of this.

He lets out a sigh, “Baby, you don’t suck. Don’t say that.”

“How would you even know? You haven’t been paying attention,” you don’t mean for your voice to be snippy, but the fire in your chest reblooms as you remember him going to sit with Libby. Walking around the gym while Steve degraded you and made you feel stupid.

“Too busy entertaining your school yard crush to even cheer for me,” you say while tossing your coat on the bench. You know it’s childish, but you’re desperate to feel an ounce of power, a shred of the upper hand for just three seconds.

Before he can respond, you’re interrupted again.

“Say it or I stop,” Steve’s voice is ragged and demanding from behind the cinderblock wall, it’s much clearer than the grunting from before. It’s like they’re right up against the other side. You take a moment to really listen – heavy breathing, the sound of slick skin against skin.

”—speak up,“ Steve’s voice rings again, rough and mocking like he was in the ring. You shiver at the sound of it, disappointment flooding your chest when you realize Libby was in too deep if he let her talk to her like that.

"Thank you, daddy!” Libby’s high pitched moan leaked through the wall. Oh. They definitely weren’t fighting.

“You win, I guess,” you say. Eddie blanched at the sound of Libby’s squealing through the wall, sputtering at your words.

“What d’ya mean, I win?” he asks, swallowing hard.

“Didn’t you say a long time ago that she probably calls him daddy in bed?” you laughed a little, “Looks like that’s confirmed.”

Eddie doesn’t laugh, he looks upset and uncomfortable which is unlike him – especially after a sex joke. You go back into your locker and grab your purse, rummaging through it to find your travel size Chloe Narcisse to reapply. The scent is dominated by daffodils with a bite of tropical citrus, violet and sandalwood, something to brighten whatever awful mood you were settling into. The scent hits Eddie and his mouth waters, having felt lucky to have bought it for you that spring. He knew that something about it would wear deliciously on you, but then again, he thought everything about you was delicious. He gets up to meet you, putting your purse back in your locker and shutting it.

“You like that one?” he asks, taking the small bottle delicately out of your hands and putting it in his jacket pocket, “I’ll buy you another before we leave.”

“You don’t have to buy it for me,” you smile, a little ‘oh!’ leaving you as you feel his lips against your neck. The small scratch of his five o’clock shadow against your skin sends a jolt through your body.

“Why not?” he asks in your ear, “I like to spoil you.” His hands are shaky as he keeps kissing your neck and jaw, grabbing at your waist. At this point, Eddie was desperate for a distraction from anything happening in that office.

“Ed stop,” you whine as he hands go to the band of your shorts, “Not here. You’re not like him.”

“Sorry,” he said, lifting his head up from your neck to lean his forehead against yours, “Just wanted to cheer you up a little.”

You hear Tiffany’s voice chirp outside the door, probably to Libby and Steve coming out of the office. You sigh, wanting to run out and pull her into the locker room and lock the door. Leave the boys to their own devices while you yell some sense into her and tell her how much you missed her. It was nice having a friend like her – why did Steve have to ruin it for everyone?

“You know what would cheer me up?” you ask, reaching for your coat. Eddie takes it out of your hands and holds it open behind you, helping you shrug it on.

“What?” he said, getting to the front of you to adjust the collar.

“Judas Priest, as loud as it can go in the Jeep,” you sniffled, the tears from before leaving a crunch of salty cast on your face.

“I love that,” he laughs. He takes your hand while you walk out of the locker room to the gym. It’s quiet when you see everyone and you’re sure they know you were crying so you keep your eyes down to your shoes, squeaking on the concrete floor. You hear Eddie pick up the salads meant for you both from the edge of the ring and you catch the bottom half of Libby sitting on top of Steve’s lap. Your teeth grind in annoyance that she can’t even have her own place to sit, like she’s a fucking trophy he has to parade around – but you don’t say anything. Before you know it, the biting cold is back to whipping your face and the beep of Eddie unlocking the Jeep sends you back to the present with him. His face is colder than the weather outside.

You both hop into the truck at the same time, Eddie shoving the keys into the ignition to crank the heat in the now freezing car. He passes you a plastic bowl of salad, takes it back, and passes you a different one with his name scrawled on it - medium rare skirt steak sitting on top of leaves of spinach.

“They got you breaded chicken instead of grilled, so just have mine,” he said flatly. You know he didn’t mean it like that, but it sounded like he was bored of making things work for you.

“Thanks, honey,” you say. You watch him open the salad bowl and pour a packet of dressing on it, his face flush. He just nods, but doesn’t look at you – suddenly the car feels too hot and you shrug off your coat – your salad sitting abandoned on the dash while you toss the coat in the back seat.

Eddie turns the music up while you open up the utensils packet, Metal Meltdown screaming through the sound system and he can’t help but air guitar the opening riffs to himself. You giggle and he finally tosses a glance at you, warm and cozy like the brown of his eyes.

“Are you okay?” you ask, you can see some hurt behind his gaze, like he wanted to tell you something. He’s quiet for a moment, still looking at you. Eddie’s lips part to speak but he second guesses himself, looking down at the now dressing drenched salad on his lap. He takes a breath in through his nose and out again. Eddie holds his hand out, always an indicator that he wants yours, and you oblige – he pulls your fingertips to his lips to kiss them before starting to speak again.

“I don’t want you training with him,” he says, “I’m gonna talk to Simone about finding you someone else.”

“I’m perfectly fine to talk to Simone, Ed,” you assure, “You don’t have to do that for me. I can negotiate my own stuff.”

“I don’t like him, Stell,” he continued, his words clipped and bordering angry, “I – fuck – like, all I can see when I look at him is you crying in that kitchen. I don’t like how he makes you feel – the way he talks to you. I don’t fuckin’ like him.”

“You’ve established that,” you say, stabbing at the skirt steak with a fork in your free hand.

“I just want you to have a good experience going into this. This movie’s gonna be a big deal,” he says, “You’re a big deal. You should have the best of the best.”

“Unfortunately for us,” you say, ripping a piece of steak off a bigger piece with your teeth, “Steve is the best of the best.” Butter and steak juice run down your chin, but Eddie catches it with a napkin before it drips to your white sports bra.

“Cut it, baby, don’t eat it like that, you’re wearing white,” he said, shaking his head. You show him the plastic knife in the utensil pouch and he rolls his eyes. He takes his pocket knife out from his jacket, not to be confused with his switchblade, and pulls the salad bowl out of your lap to get the steak into bite size pieces, stealing a few for himself.

“Hey! That’s mine,” you tease.

“Technically it’s mine,” he says, stealing a final piece before handing the salad back to you. He watches you eat, the same gnawing look he had before lingering behind his eyes. He studied you, the way you breath, the way your head bobs to the music that was vibrating the seats.

“I’m gonna get this taken care of for you,” he said, “You’re not working with him after today. You’re not even gonna see him after today.”

You laugh, “You’re funny.”

“You think I can’t make sure of that?” he challenged, crossing his arms.

“We have two of the same endorsement deals, we’re going to have to be around each other again at some point,” you explain, “He’d obviously be invited to the premiere – it’s a boxing movie. He’s America’s favorite boxer right now.”

“You haven’t run into him in a year and some change,” he retorted, “I think I’ll be able to keep that a theme in your life.”

“You sound like him when you talk like that,” you say to your food, “Plus, you never wanna see Libby again? I like her, I wanna see her again.”

I never want to see her again in my life, he thinks to himself. His mind falls back to the last time he saw her, like it had been all day. Hips rolling against his while propped up on the sink, the way his fingertips sunk into her thighs, how she tasted like liquor and bad decisions. He was barely lucid when he called her up there, but he knew, and that’s what made it worse. Stealing glances all day put a stake in his heart, and the way she shook when he approached her – he was about ready to put Steve in jail.

“Hm,” is all he replies, reaching over to your almost finished salad and stealing another piece of steak before you shut the bowl over his hand.

“Enough,” you laugh while he slides his hand out and you close the bowl. You pass him the plastic and he collects all the leftovers in a bag to bring back into the gym to toss out.

“You wanna go back inside, or do you wanna get out of here?” he asks, hand on the keys keeping the car on.

“We have to go back inside, the studio is paying for this. Tim would be pissed if we just dipped out,” you explain, sulking. Eddie lets out a sigh that turns into an exasperated ‘urgh!’, and snatches your coat from the backseat for you to put on. He hops out and jogs to the other side of the car to get your door, helping you step down into the snow.

The warmth of the gym envelopes you again but it doesn’t melt away your nerves like last time. You see everyone still gathered in their chairs by the ring, Steve and Libby sharing a kiss that she looks despondent for. You weakly raise a hand to wave but she ignores you, your face burns for what feels like the fiftieth time, in embarrassment.

“Okay, round two!” Simone cheers, while Tiffany comes to collect your coat and Eddie’s leftovers. You sulk a little until you remember where you are and stick on your bright fake smile again. Eddie gives you a not so subtle pat on the ass before heading back to his seat on the side of the ring. He slumps into it moodily, putting one foot up on the corner post, playing with his box of cigarettes before popping one in his mouth.

“Baby, not in here,” you call out while Big helps put your gloves back on. Eddie rolls his eyes and puts the cigarette back in the box, still playing with it in his fingers. He drops the box onto his lap, slipping his jacket off and putting it on the seat next to him, and nestles the box in the leather and studs.

“You got this, kid,” Big says, pulling the ropes up so you can crawl onto the ring, “You’re doin’ amazing. Can’t believe this is your first day in the ring!”

“Oh, stop,” you blush, “I’m okay. I’m trying my best!”

“That was your best?” Steve asks, back in the ring with the mitts under his arms.

“Hey,” Big warns, “Be nice, why don’t ya? Give it a try.” He walks back over to Mikey shaking his head while Mikey takes another call. Simone is chattering away on the opposite end of the ring into her own phone, Tiffany taking notes next to her. No one is really paying attention to the ring aside from Eddie and Libby, opposite ends – coaching you both in their own ways.

“Have a good lunch?” he asks, he speaks like he’s confident that you cried in the locker room after the first round.

“I know you had a good lunch,” your voice is unenthusiastic.

“Mmm,” he smirks while he remembers it, it’s a lewd smirk and it’s unnerving.

“You know, it helps to get your rage out when you gotta deal with two fuckin’ idiots all morning,” he says, putting the mitts up, “One, two me. Get warmed up.”

“Shouldn’t be taking your rage out on her,” you hiss, slamming your gloved fists into the mitts. Steve almost smiles at the impact. You’d take your rage out on her if you knew what she did.

“Whoo! Looks like you left boxer barbie in the car,” he says, taking one of the mitts off and shaking his hand, “Done cryin’ to your boyfriend about how mean I am? Ready to put in the real work?”

He slipped the mitt back on, back at the ready for you to lay into him. You shoved the gloves back into the mitts, one-two with vigor, but it wasn’t holding up the speed and cleanliness Steve was expecting.

“Arms up, you’d lose your teeth if you were in the ring for real,” he said, “Clean it up, Rink.”

Eddie stands up with his arms crossed, black sweater tight against his body, bulging at the seams when he crosses his arms across his chest. He’s watching Steve with a hard look, rage filling his eyes with every word that comes out of his mouth to you. He knows you can take it, but he doesn’t want you to have to.

You straighten up, hits coming at a steady pace, triceps burning while you keep the jabs as clean as possible. He nods while he moves with you, maybe he was done shitting on you for the day.

When you got to hooks, Big took your gloves off. It would be easier to just learn those basics with your bare fists with nothing extra weighing you down. Steve took his mitts off again, laying them on the top of the post by Eddie. His eyes flitted toward him and then over at Libby, who had turned to walk towards the chairs nearby on the opposite side.

“Hey! Where you goin’, angel?” he asked, his words coming in a little hot.

“I’m just going to sit down, Steve,” she replies, you frown at the sound of her voice.

“Jesus, Steve, what next – you gonna put a leash on her? You don’t need to know where she’s going, she’s obviously staying at the gym,” you glower while he approaches you. He considers your question while he cracks his neck to the left and the right.

“You here to do business?” he asked, standing up in front of you like he had before lunch.

“Yeah,” you said, feeling more confident without the gloves on.

“Why don’t you start by mindin’ your own, hm?” he stared at you down the slope of his nose, you gulp inadvertently.

“Hooks,” he starts, stepping back from you, “Aren’t in the flex of the arm, it’s all about the body. You’re not moving your arm at all.” He shows her the form, but it’s too quick for you to really understand what he means.

“Show me,” he says after demonstrating it again. Even without the gloves, your body moves awkwardly, your arm jutting out at an awkward angle, your elbow nearly hitting him in the face.

“So I tell you that you’re not movin’ your arm at all, so you just move your arm anyway?” he asks, “Were you only half listenin’?”

“Harrington, I don’t have time for this,” you huff, “I’m not your girlfriend, you can’t just keep pushing me around. You’re getting paid to be here.”

His eyes darken when one of his rough, taped, hands finds your forearm again. He gets behind you like before, keeping your right hand up by your face, holding the other one slightly curved out, “Put your shoulders up, and your chin down.”

His voice chills you, “Turn your thumb toward your face or you’re gonna break your wrist.” He lets go of you, and stalks slowly back to your front.

“You’re living on that ball of your back foot, that’s where you’re pulling the weight from,” he explains, “Show me.”

You try again, but it still feels awkward and tight. He runs a hand exasperatedly through his hair – maybe he didn’t really have the temperament to coach. Maybe it wasn’t worth the $400,000 dollar deal for three months of training – especially not with someone this out of whack.

He gets behind you again, but instead of Steve reaching for your arms, which are still in place, he goes to your waist. You jolt when you feel it, stifling a squeal – you’re always so used to Eddie’s calloused fingers and soft grabbing – not the roughness of his wraps and harsh grip. His chest is closer to your back than it was before, you can feel his breath fanning out against the top of your shoulder.

“The power of your hook has nothing to do with your arms,” he says, palms scratching downward, his fingertips at the waistband of your shorts, “And everything to do with the rotation of your hips.”

You nod, your eyes dropping to Eddie who looked so angry he could jump in that ring himself. Not like he really had a leg to stand on, but he knew that at this point Steve was doing this on purpose. He was doing it to remind him that not only was Libby his, but if he wanted – he doesn’t – but if he wanted, he could have you, too.

“You’re gonna twist that front foot like you’re stomping out a cigarette,” he says, his foot tapping your front foot, “So the power is coming from your feet, to your legs, to your hips, then your core.”

“Show me again,” he says, closing the gap between you. His chest is sticky with sweat against your back and your head tilts away from him. You squirm in his grasp and Eddie can tell you’re uncomfortable, his hand reaching for one of the ropes. Eddie clears his throat and you feel Steve’s head raise from behind you – a low, gravely snicker vibrates from his chest.

“Not a lot of fight in him, huh?” he asks.

“Violence isn’t required in my relationship, unlike some other people I know,” you mutter, throwing a practice punch. It isn’t perfect, but it’s much better than your first couple of tries.

“There it is,” Steve says, his hands dropping while he goes to retrieve the mitts at the post by Eddie. He shoots him a satisfied smirk while he puts them on, but with his back to you, you don’t notice. The mitts are lower this time, imitating body shots.

“We’re not even gonna attempt doing different levels of these today, so let’s just pretend you’re hitting your opponents sides,” he says, “Go.”

You try, and they’re shaky at first – it’s different throwing a punch without the gloves. Your hands feel small and weak, you almost feel more stupid without them. Nervous sweat starts dripping down your chest as you follow the mitts, Steve waltzing around the ring quicker than when you were with jabs.

“C’mon, really show me you mean it,” he taunts, “Get angry.”

“I’m not an angry person,” you say, tossing another punch to the right.

“I’d be fuckin’ insane if I had to deal with Munson all the time,” he lets out a dark laugh, “Come on, Rink. Show me – show me how mad you were when you tried to kick ‘im out.”

Bile rises in your throat when he says it and tears prick your eyes. Blood rushes in your ears for a moment, drowning out Eddie’s warning ‘Hey!’ from the sidelines – he’s suddenly so ready to protect you after Steve staked his claim over Libby. You guess you matter to him now. Your cheeks get a little hot while you throw two more hard hooks, the sound ringing through the gym when they make contact with the mitts.

“There we go,” he sneers, “Guess you didn’t forget what I said last September, huh? Hey, hey, keep your shoulders up!”

“It doesn’t matter,” you growl, your knuckles getting red by how hard your punching, even with the wraps, “We’re better now.”

“You sure?” he asks, light on his feet as he gets to the other side of you and you pivot to meet the mitts.

“We’re doing great,” you say, making eye contact with him, “Can’t say the same about you and yours.”

“Of course you’re doing great – shoulders Rink, Christ,” he groans, side stepping and you miss the shot, “You’re doing great, cause you don’t know the truth.”

Your posture stiffens and you stand tall in the ring, staring him down. The words sling out of you like venom, “What the fuck are you talking about? Why are you so interested in my relationship anyway? You and Libby wanna join? We got enough fuckin’ beds in our house. She’d probably be so much fucking happier to be away from you anyway.”

A pin could drop while he heaves breaths out of his nose, that same bull like anger rearing his head. He looks at you through furrowed brows, his lip snarling.

“Yeah, well, Libby already fuckin’ did.”

You hear Libby gasp and watch as her hand claps over her mouth. Eddie’s hand goes to his face, sliding down to his jaw. He mumbles a quiet, ‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ, man,’ to himself, his big eyes already wet with tears.

“Wh-what?” you ask, your voice is weak and broken while reality sets in. You can hear the roar of your heartbeat in your throat. It becomes too clear that since you got to the gym, there have been three people here who have known something that you don’t.

#eddie munson x reader #rockstar!eddie munson smut #rockstar!eddie smut #rockstar!eddie #rockstar!eddie munson #eddie munson x you #eddie munson smut #eddie munson fan fiction #eddie munson rockstar au #boxer!steve #boxer!steve harrington #steve harrington fanfiction #eddie munsn fanfiction #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson #steve harrington #stranger things au

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maysxn · 8 months

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A Scorch Trials rant Pt. 2

Hello, it's me again. I just finished the book and I don't know what to say (I'm lying, this is gonna be a long rant…again).

After finishing the book I thought maybe I was the crazy one because I had only seen good reviews about it and maybe I was being way too harsh and critical about it after a quick search, Goodreads showed me that some people agree with me. I give this book a score of 1.5 stars out of 5. I'm honestly disappointed.

The Maze Runner was an amazing book, with good characters, fast pacing, a mystery, and a lot of questions. It was exciting, it was thrilling and I wanted to know more.

The Scorch Trials almost made the burning flame of my curiosity disappear. This book was like a long filler episode, they just walk, and walk, and walk, and eat and pee and continue walking through the desert, you have a little action sprinkle here and there and then we continue walking, only to have Thomas passing out every five seconds.

After three hundred pages when we finally arrived at the finish line, we found the most absurd thing I have ever read in my life. Wdym that some weird capsules emerge from the ground, creepy monsters come out from them, they fight, they get rescued and then Thomas just wakes up in a white room?? Are we still in the same book??

The character development I was hoping for, was nonexistent. If Thomas was already annoying because he could not stop thinking about Teresa, then we added Brenda to the mix and it became a whole new mess that I felt was unnecessary. The world is already hard as it is and you want to create a bland and underwhelming love triangle that is all over the place with characters that barely have an ounce of personality to distinguish from one another.

Honestly, I thought Thomas was making fun of me on the final pages when some of the Gladers didn't make it to Save Heaven he literally says "I didn't know them well anyway", no shit Sherlock.

Then the questions, we have a lot of questions that are still unanswered, I read almost four hundred pages for nothing??? Not even ONE answer??? What is WICKED actually doing? How do they get money and manpower to do everything? Is money still a thing after the fucking apocalypse? How does the economy work? Are all countries controlled by WICKED? All the areas are secluded? How does WICKED spy on them in the middle of the desert? What is the purpose of having everything planned? What makes Thomas that special? and I could go on.

At this point, WICKED is almost like an omniscient god more than an evil corporation/government/laboratory. They almost feel like fucking wizards, they have teleportation portals and eyes everywhere, they can heal people in an instant, they can alter their senses, they create monsters, etc. They can do all that but they cannot find the cure to a virus.

Wouldn't be more efficient, controlled, and cheaper if they just did what they did to Minho in the movies?

And to finish this long rant with another pet peeve of mine, Is Thomas Spiderman? Or why does he always know when something bad is about to happen?

#tmr #tmr minho #tmr thomas #tmr newt #the maze runner #james dashner #the scorch trials #maze runner thomas #maze runner newt #maze runner minho #maze runner

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aaamike · 2 years

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Ruika honestly knows Ichigo better than almost anyone else, (she did live with him for so many years and was in like, hundreds of filler episodes with him) even better than one of his old teachers, so it makes sense she’d pick up on something as subtle as him hiding some conflicting feelings...

#character analysis #rukia kuchiki #hirako shinji #ichigo kurosaki #bleach sennen kessen hen #lol #good anime #wtf #funny as hell #good manga #dank #anime memes #funny

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moongothic · 1 year

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I keep on seeing people who're thinking about getting into One Piece and either don't know where to start or feel overwhealed by the lenght of the series and like. IDK if this will even reach any of those people, but I just want tell you

If you want to get into One Piece, just read it. The anime (and the live-action adaptation) are supplementary material at best, and I don't mean this in an elitist "you're not a real fan" way. Let me explain

Reading One Piece is simply faster than watching it. While the amount of time it takes to read a chapter can vary a lot depending on the contents of the chapter (action packed vs lore heavy), generally speaking, when every chapter is about 19 pages long, it takes about 2-6 minutes per chapter, also depending on your personal reading speed. Meanwhile, watching the anime, every episode takes about 18 minutes (not including openings/endings/recaps) to watch. So in the time you can watch a single episode, you could have read 3-5 chapters easily. And when you have a series that is both 1000+ chapters and 1000+ episodes long, that does make a huge difference. Reading One Piece is a far smaller time commitment than watching it. If you feel overwhealmed by how long it is, I swear, it is nowhere near as long as you think it is in manga format

Toei cuts out content. The manga has these things called "cover stories" where the cover pages of each chapter tell small sidestories about various characters. Cutting these out wouldn't be a huge deal, if some of them weren't actually plot relevant. Like, some sidestories are absolutely insignificant and missing out on them isn't a deal breaker, but others can introduce important characters literally hundreds of chapters before they reappear within the plot, explain how certain characters end up in specific situations in the story, and even give out massive lore hints. So even if some of them aren't that important in the long run, you are still, objectively speaking, missing out on stories because Toei decided to not adapt most of them. (A few did get adapted, but most have never been)

Filler You have 1000+ episodes to watch, I'm sure you don't want to spend your time on any filler arcs. Now in theory you could just look up episode guides and figure out what you can skip, but there comes an issue where there's more than one occassion where Toei decided to take lore and/or plot relevant scenes from arcs and placed them inside filler arcs, meaning if you didn't want to miss out on something important (like why you can't just sail into the Grand Line), you'd have to at least watch a single random filler episode for like one scene. There is also this one notorious case where a canon storyarc had the most important plot relevant scenes removed in the anime, this arc ended up getting extended and turned into half-fillede, while those plot relevant scenes were then moved to the tail end of a completely different filler arc right after. The point being; this is not the worst, but it would be easier and faster for you if you chose to just read OP instead.

Pacing issues. And this is by far the worst one in my honest opinion. See, on average, two 19-page chapter have enough content for a single episode. This can vary depending on the contents of the chapter, sometimes you can cram more, sometimes less, but the approx. average is 2-to-1, right? For about the first half of One Piece, Toei used adapt chapters with that ratio in mind, doing filler arcs and episodes when they'd start to catch up to the manga so they'd keep a healthy buffer they could work with. But about halfway through, the changed their tactic, abandoning doing full-blown fillers almost entirely. Not quite, but filler arcs for the second half of the series have become much farther and fewer. And you'd think that'd be good, since there'd be less filler to deal with, but it's not See, to make sure they don't catch up to the manga, Toei decided they would start working with a 1-to-1 ratio. But a single chapter does not have enough content to fill out a full episode. So to have enough stuff happening each episode, they have to drag out almost every single scene to the absolute maximum, add the exact same flashbacks to almost every single scene, show the same non-flashback scene happen in multiple episodes (but it's animated different) back-to-back, etc, etc. And very rarely will you run into an episode you can skip entirely. Like, just to give an example, there was this very minor moment in the manga where some small time goon attacks the strawhats by firing some arrows that get deflected, leaving the goon shocked his attack didn't work. In the manga, this scene was like, 2-4 panels, a quick insignificant moment. But in the anime, goon keeps on firing more and more arrows, each barrage getting deflected one after another, with intense close-ups every few seconds, and it just keeps on going for a full minute or two. And at the end, he has the same "my attack didn't work?!" reaction. And this basically summarizes the issue with the pacing. It is a fucking meme at this point that One Piece's anime has horrible pacing, that every episode is 14 minutes of filler and flashbacks and the remaining four actual plot progression. It genuinely makes it a worse experience as a story, as every single moment gets dragged out for no god damn reason. And the worst part is that this only really applies to the second half of the series, as the first half was much better with its pacing and is genuinely good

Bonus note: You can read the entirety of One Piece, legally and for free, from the very begining, if you download the MangaPlus app. It's not the best way to read it, double page spreads get split which sucks and is a bit rough to read, but considdering you can read the entirety of One Piece for free without even pirating it, I think it's fine

Now I want to make it clear that I don't think you SHOULDN'T watch One Piece. I love this god damn series and I do think it's worth watching, if it wasn't I wouldn't have watched and rewatched that first half of the series like 20 fucking times since I was a kid. It is good and worth checking out.

I just want you to understand that the anime is supplementary material to the manga, not a replacement, and if you want to get into OP, the manga is the best, easiest, fastest and cheapest way to do so. Once you have read it, I think it's almost like a rite of passage to then be like "oh, I want to watch my favorite arc animated", waltz right into it and be like "this character's hair color is WHAT?!" or "this character sounds like THAT?!". Not to mention that going back to watch the anime after reading it can help you memorize the story, characters and events (useful down the road), and getting to experience a truly iconic series with its music, legendary voice actors and masterful animation is absolutely wonderful.

OP is worth watching (to an extent)

But please, just read it if you want to get into it

#Moon posting #Long post #I'm sorry the brainworms are taking over #But I've been trying to say this for years and OPLA has given me another excuse to repeat myself #Like just to put into words how bad the pacing gets for the second half #When I got back into OP after a few years break (like two years ago)#I rewatched the whole first half (skipping the filler) and then switched to the manga #Because I remembered how shit the pacing got after that. I did not want to sit through that again #Then I heard the pacing in the latest arc got good again and after reading it I went to watch and. I was lied to.#It did not improve.#To be fair there are moments of actual fucking gold (especially certain flashbacks that got the 2-to-1 adaptation ratio) in there #But it was buried between so much garbage good god #MY POINT IS #JUST READ IT

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poebradleyknox · 12 hours

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One Piece is without a doubt one of the most influential manga series and anime ever that takes place in a well-established and ever growing world of pirates and their conflicts with the World Government as they sail the seas to find the legendary treasure of the King of Pirates Gol D. Roger, The One Piece. Monkey D. Luffy is the protagonist and along with his crew: Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji, Chopper, Robin, Franky, Brook and Jimbei they set sail to find the One Piece and stop anyone that gets in their way so Luffy can become King of the Pirates.

The manga series started in July of 1997, written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda and was published weekly in the Shonen Jump magazine like a lot of other popular manga series like Naruto. In the early 00’s One Piece, along with Naruto and Bleach were deemed the most popular manga series and fans across the world called them ‘The Big Three’. And as of now 516 million copies of the manga have been sold.

Almost 30 years later One Piece has still yet to come to its conclusion and still holds a massive fan base. The series spans over 1,100 chapters and 109 volumes.

In 1999 the manga was adapted into an anime series which is also still airing. Though the anime series has fans debating on the quality as the pacing of the show is incredibly slow and only covers 1 or 2 chapters per episode meaning it takes a while for the plot to develop. Things like these happen when the manga and the anime run at the same time, sometimes the anime catches up to the manga so they need to let the manga get ahead so they draw out the episodes or produce ‘filler episodes’ which are original episodes separate from the real plot. The One Piece anime has 1,119 episodes and over 100 are filler meaning 10% of the show is unnecessary to the plot but a lot of other shows are lot worse, most famously Boruto a spin-off from Naruto were 206 of the 293 episodes are fillers.

In response to the slow pacing of One Piece a website was made by fans called ‘One Pace’ which cuts down on a lot of drawn out sequences and flashbacks to things that happened the episode prior.

Weirdly, an official solution is happening because a separate animation studio, Wit Studio ,who adapted seasons 1-3 of Attack on Titan and Season 1 of Vinland Saga, are animating a reboot of One Piece called ‘The One Piece’ whilst the original ,by Toei Animation responsible for Dragon Ball, is still airing. So two separate anime’s of the the same source material will be running at the same time. They claim this reboot will take only five years to get to the Egghead Island Arc ,the portion of the story that the original is on, unlike the original’s 27 years.

There is also a live action adaptation of One Piece that is produced by Netflix and currently has 1 season but the second is in production. The live action series has 8 hour long episodes that covers the first 45 episodes of the anime so it’s an easy alternative if you want to watch One Piece but not commit to 1000+ episode show.

The One Piece world is fantastical, it has sea monsters, dragons, abilities you gain from eating fruit but a lot of the characters take inspiration from real life pirates and history. Blackbeard is a common antagonist of the series and as the real Blackbeard was called Edward Teach, in One Piece he is called Marshall D. Teach. Another important character is Whitebeard or Edward Newgate, he instead has Blackbeards real last name and his surname is that of Newgate Prison which held many pirates in London.

Me myself am a fan of One Piece and started the series during the Covid-19 lockdown and though at the time it had 800 something episodes I was able to catch up and that’s when I realised the poor pacing people talked about. I was able to watch hundreds of 20 minute episodes back to back for hours but when I caught up and I had to watch one 20 minute episode once a week it was a struggle when not a lot happened and then I had to wait another week for another episode for the same thing to happen so I often stop watching for a while and just let the episodes bulk up so I can binge or watch a couple every day until I catch up again.

Overall, One Piece is a great piece of media that’s going strong even after almost 30 years, it’s fun and light hearted, the characters have goals that they all strive for, the fights are entertaining, has plenty of mystery and when it needs to delves more into mature topics like corrupt governments and gender identity.

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gwarden123 · 4 months

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One thing I do like about the new book, the unfortunate book to follow the good book that I just read, is that the split POV that you get in a lot of romances is split across time rather than just flipping back and forth between the main characters.

I'm not entirely sure it works? I'm pretty sure what's happening is that what we're seeing is each character fall in love with the other, with there being a space of about ten years between their personal revelations, and their feelings slowly become in sync over the course of the story. The issue is I feel like the story could be heavily trimmed or condensed over the first quarter or so that I've read so far. Maybe I'm just not connecting with the characters, but I feel like there's been a lot of waffling going on. I really don't know if I've learned anything about these characters or about the plot that justifies this many pages being spent on it. We've just had what could arguably be called the inciting incident and we're 30% complete. This is a four hundred and something page book.

Maybe I'm just still high on Under the Pendulum Sun and am judging other books too severely. I do think you can cut a story down too much to the essentials, like the way newer TV does away with the filler episodes where you get to learn about the characters. But I still don't feel like these past hundred plus pages have been worth it. It doesn't have to be filled with rocketships and strange creatures, but there needs to be some earnest attempt to flesh out these characters lives separate from each other if we're going to spend so much time on setup before getting to the start of the romance.

I'm getting too negative. I did think the almost-sex scene between them was cute. Perhaps a bit flaccid in the ending, although it could always turn into the basis of something further into the book, but it was cute.

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mediacinemtographyartetc · 6 months

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Just watched MSM Spiderman

The disney+ one that so many people hated and thought was the worst spiderman. Well I liked it, it had lots of potential and sorry I tried Ultimate y'know the [BEST] one ever but I just...physically can't. but yeah I could write some reviews so heres a quickie.

Overall when I watched some episodes thought it was over hated and some plots made me go "Le Gasp PLOT TWIST!" And ended up enjoying the writing.

But then there were parts that were cringe the "It's obviously its made for kids hence why it's agony to watch part." Or when it went hard at some points like peter not telling Harry he's Spiderman because his dad has a vendetta and didn't want to be put in the position of having Harry use Spiderman only to capture him because he'll have to choose between his best friend or his dad and Peter thought Harry would never choose him.

As I'm limited with the spidey content I watched with only the raimi/andrew Peter/osborn stories this cartoon actualy conceputilsed harry and Peters friendship because other versions just never hit that close and their issues etc.

But I understand why some people dislike it. Sure I like it, but yeah first season as it kept going I thought "Ah...I get it now."

They introduced Miles Morales near the beggining. Then he ghosted.

Oh no something explosed they need spiderman! Miles was RIGHT there!

And then the story was like Miles is missing!

What a surprise, it's as if the writers just remembered they have a SPIDERMAN v2 in there!

And I got bored becuase most of it was just filler like yeah thats what the guy in charge wanted. [I had the same idea with Ben 10 Omniverse, I liked that show too and didn' understand the hate and when a friend said should he watched it I was like "Oh sure here a ten episodes and thats pretty much it." him: Isn't there a hundred episodes? Me: Ah...I see the problem now]

But GOD the potential, I mean sure the Superior Spiderman ep 1 maybe I'm not giving it a chance and should skip a few and try again [I probably won't those noses? ugly I can't just it looks like a toenail]

Like no I can't believe I live in a world where TOENAIL face is called superior over...

This face at least it looks like they HAVE a nose! jeez

Anyway moving on, I admit it got to the point where spiderman only started feeling like spider-man in the last two episodes when his quips were actually funny and I thought. Yeah I'll end it at Season one. Given that they brought in black cat, dropped. Miles Morales spiderman? Dropped until convinient, Gwen Stacy turned her into a bug. Sandman "I did this for my daughter angst." Her daughter : I'm a sand person too! No thanks to you, deadbeat dad! Le gasp plot twist Daughter KILLS sandman! Oh my god did they just do that holy cow and THEN The sysbiote jumps in holy shit-

Daughter/sandman episode gets dropped. Symbiote episode: Spider-Man: The symbiote is awesome strong powerful amazing! People: No spider-man its making you evil. Spider-man: Your right! I need help getting it off!

And this happens twice, like again could've pushed it a lot harder, it's like introducing a cool concept and then just tripping on their feet at the finish line. Like c'mon. And Otto octavious voice felt so cartoonishly evil it was hard to take seriously since it sounded like robin from teen titans go. [I know it's the same voice actor I'm just saying I hate western cartoons currently coz I'm like wow I grew up with darker and harder villians like SLADE from teen titans meanwhile current villains are as scary as kittens its physically painful]

Anyway, say what you will about MSM but I actually loved how Norman Osborn was almost using cancel culture to claim that Spider-man was part of a spider army and things would happen like the jackal confirming it and if Norman actually manipulated events to make public opinion and his own son hate Spider-man and have it spiralling out of control?

I thought that was cool, and actually intersting of Norman instead of being goblin first, or a two bit villain used image/lack of context and painted him in a bad light. I just thought it was cool and wished more versions did that.

__________________________________________________________

And the other things, love this episode with iron man [shut up I like the potential kay!]

This scene was cute like iron man is dealing with a threat is so used to lethal/suspicious/more dangerous foes. So seeing this nerdy fanboy just happy to see him? And then scans him to realise he's a kid? How he was first attacking then became impressed then even figured out his obvious identity [Peter can't lie for shit] and had some obvious interest that even Black Widow mentioned it? How they had a team up, and stark almost died because of his arc reactor - like ugh the angst and I wish there was more. Just more episodes like this...

But then the symbiote scene wish again, cool since it was anti-tech but then the whole song and dance AGAIN of, symbiote good no you're right get it off!

Like idk I think they could've yknow what forget it. I'm a 90's kid who is so used to DARKER stuff that when this series just shaves the tip of the iceberg I'm like OOHHH the potential!

Such a shame...anyway thats what fanfictions are for.

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casliveblog · 9 months

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Custom Toonami Block Week 159 Rundown

Spy X Family: We’r eback to the small vignette episodes now, Bond has a premonition of his own death and since they’re out of dog food he fears that if Yor makes his dinner he will just fucking die and if he refuses to eat Yor will murder him. So he tracks down Loid on a mission and does a fucking Air Bud spy mission deal and Loid is just kinda like ‘okay guess this is a thing data dogs can do’ and assumes it’s a conscious choice to get back at the company that turned him into a data dog when he’s really just avoiding his assassin wife. Loid’s weirdly okay with this and they manage to pull off the mission and get Bond some non-Yor food, it’s cute but between this and Anya building a pipe bomb last episode feel like they’re kinda pushing what some of the gag characters can do even for a comedy. Also with Bond’s premonitions already being cutaways and him having no dialogue it’s kind of hard to tell when one of his imagination spots is a premonition or one of the ‘exaggerating consequences’ deals that the other characters do. The B-story is Damian and his gang getting in trouble for lapsing on etiquette because Damian’s fucking burned out pushing himself to meet his father’s goals for him from the season finale. So his two flunkies get in trouble with him but the adults see what’s really going on and send them on a nature hike so Damian can relax for a day and shift gears instead of keeping his nose to the grindstone. I really hate his goons’ voices in the dub and I assume that’s intentional but it’s still a nice little fleshing out episode for all three of them.

Inuyasha: Man this fucking episode is like a third recap, it takes like seven minutes to get back to where we were last episode, I thought I clicked on the wrong episode for a moment since they basically just give you a speedrun of last week. Sango’s ready to attack Kohaku and break the rat shrine meanwhile Hakudoshi… summons demon slugs to attack Kikyo’s tree because I guess that’s something he can do now. It’s funny they have to tell Inuyasha not to Wind Scar the tree on accident to get at Hakudoshi but they end up clipping him and killing the slugs but the tree’s already dead and Sango can’t destroy the shrine because it has a barrier and she never almost killed a bat child to get the Red Hiraikotsu that’d be obsolete in a season anyway. Sango, Kohaku and Kilala all get swallowed by the rats while Sango’s trying to protect Kohaku and Kohaku’s trying to pretend to hate her so Naraku doesn’t know he’s not a meat puppet anymore. Like you’d think that’d be something you could feel, like if the guy whose brain you’re directly interfering with suddenly had autonomy you’d think you’d know. Still Kikyo comes out to break the barrier but Hakudoshi’s been Wind Scar’d so not much he can do about it. Sango angsts about Kohaku and how even though he’s directly tied to countless deaths today along she still wants to protect him as his sister which is fine because as far as they know he’s still being controlled but it’s actually a lot worse because he’s letting people die to get a shot at Naraku that we all know will never come, not that him not being there would dial down the death toll any, if anything using Kohaku as an envoy to fuck with Sango actually makes Naraku’s murder spree less efficient since he’s just a kid with a scythe and if he just starts sending poison demon puppets to blight the whole countryside it’d probably be a lot worse. Either way Kikyo gets the message that as long as Naraku’s looking for her he can just keep pulling filler demons of mass destruction out of his ass until he finds her so she might as well come fight him. I mean Naraku basically does that for fun as it is but this time he’s specifically pinning blame for it on Kikyo like a ‘you did this by not doing what I wanted’ because Naraku is a gaslight gatekeep girlboss.

Yu Yu Hakusho: We just jump a hundred days after Yusuke announced the new tournament and it’s time for the prelims. Kinda speedrunning the arc here because we just have to take Mukuro’s word for it that Yusuke’s gotten stronger again since we have no clue what he’s been doing. It’s kinda funny that despite being the literal ringleader of the tournament Yusuke is still out of the loop on how it works, guess that’s his Goku instincts trying to keep things exciting. Most importantly Koto’s back to announce again, honestly one of my favorite parts of the series in general. Turns out there’s so many demons out there hoping for a lucky break that they had to have 128 preliminary brackets just to weed out all the mooks, luckily because there’s that many basically no one who’s named has to fight each other and everyone we already know advances except for Chu who gets knocked out by a sexy lady that’s way stronger than him, and Yomi and his son Shura have to fight each other which kinda sucks but guess we can’t have too many enemies off the bat. Also apparently Shigure is alive which I know he’s a really good surgeon and Mukuro has bacta tanks but dude got the top half of his head cut off, like not even just the head Hiei went right through the guy’s brain, that’d even kill a zombie but okay. Also there’s some kind of sexy monkey lady that Yoyo kids wants to bang so good luck with that I guess. The only halfway decent fight for this will be Shura vs Yomi and the show knows that so we just get a quick montage of everyone using their special techniques and blasting everyone who doesn’t have at least three degrees of separation to Yusuke.

Jujutsu Kaisen: Feel like this is the second time we’ve done the ‘shit’s going down’ cliffhanger only for Geto and Gojo to solve the problem off-screen, like I get that it’s to build them up as invincible badasses that can solve arc-spanning problems in an instant so when shit really does go down it hits harder but how many times are we gonna do this? So yeah the gang’s in Okinawa now with some time to kill after the kidnapping arc wrapped up quicker than expected so Gojo gives Riko the quick and dirty two day tour of Okinawa, I swear I don’t know whether the JJK author is using the series as an excuse to hit the tourist spots of Japan for ‘research’ or is just already well-traveled within the country and using that knowledge as inspiration because sometimes this feels like Adam Sandler levels of ‘the story’s set here because I wanted to go here’. Geto tells Gojo it’s not good for him to keep his infinity shield shit on for this long which I guess it’s something he has to turn on which was never really established nor is it something the fans seem to realize given I’ve seen memes of Riko slapping Gojo being the only thing to get through to his skin. Anyway they show up to Jujutsu High a day late but once they’re safe inside JJH Gojo turns off his barrier and IMMEDIATELY gets stabbed by Megumi’s dad, turns out the Arkham City Bane Plan worked and he’s officially snapped Batman’s back because Gojo being on high alert for two and a half days straight gave him enough leeway to ninja his way in and stab Gojo though this ridiculous Machiavellian planning is kinda pointless because Gojo reveals the surprise stab didn’t do much and it turns out Megumi’s dad also has a ‘cut everything even if it’s an infinity barrier’ sword so idk why he even needed the whole Arkham City plan. Anyway instead of both taking him on and having two people fight and protect Riko, they split up and Gojo fights Megumi Sr. (I’m prolly not gonna learn his name) while Geto takes a leisurely walk to let Riko make her choice. Gojo does his Almighty Push shit but Megumi Sr. ninjas around long enough for Gojo to think it’s a feint and he’s going straight for Riko but it turns out the feint was a feint and he actually just carves Gojo up like a Christmas Turkey. I mean we know Gojo doesn’t die so I’m really confused about what kills curse users in this universe which is why I’m only mildly perturbed that shots of dead bodies tend to be memes for this series because for all I know that person could just get back up and keep going.

Geto tells Riko that he and Gojo always planned to let her make the decision for herself if she wanted to be sacrificed and that even if it meant fighting the world they’d do right by her and themselves and not let the way people say things should be entrap them into doing something evil. She’s inspired by everything she’s seen over the past few days and has her ‘I want to live’ moment and… immediately dies. God that’s so simple yet effective, like Riko feels like a character that is deliberately not given much screentime or development, like it’s supposed to hurt like that, normally she’d be a manic pixie dream girl that inspires the heroes to live and want to see the world but that’s absolutely not her role here, she’s a deliberate anti-climax, she’s barely a person because she never got the chance to develop her own personality and is punished the moment she decides she wants to grow and it hurts so much worse than any kind of saccharine filler you could throw in there about her developing feelings for these two because she’s a girl with a lot of possibilities cut short, it’s the point where literally not fleshing her out too much gets the point across all the better. Also I have no idea what this means for Barrier Buddha given he still exists in the main story but doesn’t get his sacrifice here so I guess either they find someone else or it’s like a global warming thing where ‘it’s not gonna fuck us over right now but the next generation’s screwed’ which would be the main timeline’s period which that’ll suck. Also also, I guess Megumi Sr. passed by the maid on the way there so either she’s dead or let the guy that murdered the only girl she loved like a daughter ninja right by her without even knowing and I dunno which is worse. Anyway Geto hears Megumi Sr. ‘killed’ Gojo and is ready to bust out the demon dragons.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: There’s a lot of gay in this episode and I have many questions but still it’s pretty good. There’s a thing about a screenplay that doesn’t come back up this time around so I’ll skip it and get to the part where Ramona has discovered Scott was actually kidnapped by a Rick and Morty portal and idk if turning into coins is a normal thing in this world or if that should’ve been their first clue but yeah Ramona does have trans-dimensional imagination powers and I can’t tell if magic is just a thing that exists in this world or if some people are just not phased by it because they’re world-weary twenty somethings. Knives and whatsherface do a very gay little jam session and that’s pretty cute and Ramona continues her investigation by talking to people that knew/dated Scott which is kind of a neat inversion on how I thought the plot was going to go with Scott learning more about Ramona through her exes, kinda interesting to have the title character be so absent and be an ephemeral presence in the background. Anyway while Ramona is questioning drummer girl who was Scott’s first girlfriend, Roxie shows up and she’s what I imagine that kid from Craige of the Creek that roleplays as a knight is gonna grow up to be and they have a cool trans-dimensional movie ninja Amy Rose airplane samurai fight and do the Soifon/Yoruichi thing of ‘I’m fighting you because you left me weirdly’ because there’s apparently only one lesbian fight in all of fiction. Still it is fun and I do like Roxie and how quick she is to check if every girl she meets is a lesbian just in case. Though this does make me kinda question Ramona because with Matt we did establish it was a fling on a whim from when she was young but then with Roxie we saw that it was just… no real reason, just kinda grew apart which obviously happens but the fact that Ramona has so many of these types of relationships makes her seem like someone that has a lot of hyperfixations and then burns out quickly, like not a deal breaker but if the series is going for ‘yeah her and Scott are the one’ deal it’s gonna have some work to do to prove this isn’t Ramona just liking someone for a while and then pissing off when she gets tired of it like the color of her hair (though assumedly Scott would be cool enough about it to not go off on an evil tirade and be a jerk) also Gideon’s in his Poor Kaiba phase which never happened in Yugioh but the comedy basically writes itself so I’m down.

Ranking of Kings: So we’re still in filler but this one’s actually pretty interesting, the story of Ouken’s descent into madness. It’s basically just an elongated version of the flashback of Desha, Despa, and Ouken overthrowing their dad and committing war crimes but also with the added wrinkle that Satun tried to posess Ouken when they killed him and they may not have driven all of him out completely. It’s really kinda creepy to see Ouken go from ‘I can use infinite healing as a superpower for fighting to help people’ to ‘I am a murder machine because I must keep fighting’ to ‘I wonder why people have to die at all, lemme just run some tests…’ and then finally he starts seeing his ghost dad everywhere and stards murdering people, donning the armor and going on a rampage, wanting to see more death thinking if he sees enough he can cure himself until that much blood just kills his soul and without fear or compassion he becomes the rampaging Dark Souls boss we know from the main story. Not really much in the way of new information but seeing the whole journey is pretty neat.

Vinland Saga: So Olmar’s still being a whiny little pissbaby about how no one treats him like a man while he’s rolling on the floor drunk crying like a baby, so his dad’s bodyguards Fox and Badger convince him the quickest path to toxic masculinity is murder, like not even war duel murder like the shit Thorfinn was on, shooting fish in a barrel ‘bring out a guy to kill’ murder. And of course the guys they randomly pick to have him kill are Einar and Thorfinn (dunno why they picked up both in the first place, like having a witness is probably a bad thing and killing two slaves is twice the monetary loss) so they interrupt Thorfinn and Einar’s nice morning of waking up screaming and hitting on handmaids respectfully to come get them killed. Obviously Einar’s not a fan of the plan but Thorfinn’s just like ‘yeah sure why not’ and this kinda pisses Fox off because if people don’t value their lives he doesn’t feel a macho when he kills them and then he’s out of a job. He just starts cutting chunks out of Thorfinn and Thorfinn’s like ‘why should I fear death? Life’s been nothing but dead father figures and slavery so go ahead, fucking do it, DO IT’ and before Fox can go too hog wild on him, Snake steps in and shows who’s the real badass, punching out Fox and making the lesser guards piss themselves while being impressed by how Thorfinn was cut to ribbons without even flinching so looks like these guys may be up for a promotion.

#ooc #Toonami #Custom Toonami Block #Spy X Family #Inuyasha #Yu Yu Hakusho #Jujutsu Kaisen #Scott Pilgrim Takes Off #Ranking of Kings #Vinland Saga

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ofallthingsnasty · 11 months

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All your One Piece posts have me genuinely interested in giving the series a try. But I'm so intimidated by the hundreds of chapters and episodes it has (╥﹏╥)

So I was wondering if you had any tips for getting into the series? Like should I read the manga first or watch the anime?

Oh yay, that's so cool!! It's a fun series (although the author has his creep moments, admittedly) and there are sooo many wonderful characters. (Also the fandom is also old enough that there is sooooo much to read once you get into it! And the possibilities are endless - from dark to fluffy to angsty... It's all right there!!)

And intimidated? You and me both, haha 💀😭

I fell off the One Piece wagon sometime in 2016 and because of the ginormous amount of... story I just never got back into it - but my little brother wants to watch some of his favorite arcs with me (and also someone sent in a OP request in September haha), so I have a reason to push myself 🫣

I think it depends on how you approach animanga in general! Personally, I like to stick to the manga because I can read a chapter here and there and just put it down when something comes up. I also feel like I can get through it quicker and with a clearer head, because it keeps me engaged. I just don't have the time to sit myself down and watch ten episodes a day right now (my schedule is kinda fucked up haha). I started on October 9th and I'm now at chapter 409, so slow and steady wins the race, yay.

On the other hand, the anime is just more lively. I looked around in the wiki and especially the early arcs have very little filler! If anime is more your thing, it's definitely worth it. I think it doesn't make that much of a difference whether you're manga or anime only! But for me personally, reading the manga is the better option -- maybe someone on here is more connected to the material and can weigh in 😊

If you go for the manga - I basically put down some weekly chapter goals for myself. I try to get through 150 chapters a week, which leaves me enough wriggle room for a day or two of not reading/reading just 3-4 chapters to catch a break. It really is a marathon with almost 1.1k chapters and rushing yourself is kinda not worth it. (I think haha)

I know it'll take me at least another four weeks to catch up, but that's peanuts considering the manga started in the 90s 💀

And if you decide to get into One Piece, feel free to tell me about your faves, your thoughts etc!! I'd love to hear them!

#ask #anon #i really think setting yourself goals and sticking to them is the best (you know like studying lol) bc of the sheer amount of content

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immaturityofthomasastruc · 3 years

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IOTA Reviews: Ephemeral

Well, here we are. I can't believe we've gotten this far. You know, I've had my problems with this show, and it's clear it's gone downhill these past few years, especially in the fourth season, but even ignoring the recent clone drama, it's still got a lot of likable characters, hilarious moments, good action, and one of my favorite female superheroes. It's why I don't hesitate to call this show my favorite TV show of all time.

That's right, my friends, after almost six years, DC's Legends of Tomorrow has finally reached one hundred episodes.

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And yeah, while it was a glorified clip show, it was still nice to see so many old characters return all while teaching the two newest members of the team what it means to be a Legend, and—oh, right. Miraculous Ladybug got to a hundred episodes too.

Although, technically, because of the anachronistic airing schedule, it's the ninety-seventh episode, not the hundredth, which I'm sure won't confuse viewers with the numerous references to the number 100 at all.

Let's get into the nineteenth (chronologically the twenty-second) episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fourth season, and (chronologically) the one-hundredth episode of the series: Ephemeral

We start off with, and tell me if you've heard this before, Gabriel monologuing to Emile's corpse about how much he loves her, how it doesn't matter how many inhumane things he does, or if he'd have to do them all A HUNDRED times again, he loves her, and that's enough, which totally makes him a deep character. How does the stock footage of Shadowmoth sending out Akumas feel more original than whenever he does this?

Gabriel goes to an event with Adrien to the launch of his ONE-HUNDREDTH COLLECTION for the Agreste brand, but he senses negative emotions for an Akuma, so he decides to ditch this huge moment for his career and leave Adrien to hold a press conference... and tells him do while fidgeting with his ring, leading to Adrien complying.

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I'll... I'll get to this later...

At the actual press conference, Adrien is asked about the collection being dedicated to Emilie, to which he says his father “did it for her”, right before we cut to an akumatized Bob Roth (the asshole music producer from “Guitar Villain” and “Silencer”), AKA Moolak, attacking the public. Subtle, writers.

As for the design... you can really tell the animators were slumming it for this one. It's just a gold safe with Bob's head inside surrounded by gold coins. I get he isn't the main attraction, and points for not making him a costumed villain, but why not make him a Sentimonster instead with how inhuman his design is? Though I guess we should count ourselves lucky it isn't just Mr. Pigeon or Gigantitan again like all the other filler Akumas.

Ladybug arrives on the scene with every temp hero available, sans Rena Furtive (Carapace, Viperion, Ryuko, Pegasus, King Monkey, Vesperia, Pigella, Purple Tigress, and Polymouse), just to find a way to defeat Moolak. Ryuko tries to use her Lightning Dragon to make a dent in the safe, while Pegasus tries to use Voyage to portal into Moolak, but neither are successful. I'm guessing we're going to ignore what Purple Tigress can do with her power for the sake of the plot. You know things are dire when even the greatest superhero of all time, Vesperia, can't even stop Moolak on her own, though she does state what has to be done, clearly showing off her genius.

GOD DAMN IT! The one time, the ONE TIME Cat Noir isn't there to blow his Cataclysm on something that could have easily been broken like a record or a plastic charm, it's an indestructible Akuma they're fighting. This obviously means Cat Noir is absolutely integral to make the team function, and they're just helpless without him.

Look, I can get that the circumstances in “Optigami” and “Sentibubbler” were contrived in some way in order to justify Alya's role as Marinette's confidant, but I found it easier to believe because not only has Marinette been incapacitated by Akumas before, but Alya was shown to be crafty as Rena Rouge and was shown to be crafty in her civilian life in earlier episodes, so it didn't feel like she was saving the day just so the writers could make her look good. Here, this situation was specifically written to highlight how useful Cat Noir is because this Akuma just happens to be an impenetrable safe that needed Cataclysm to defeat it. It doesn't show off how necessary Cat Noir is as a hero, it shows off how useful his power is, and the situation could have easily been avoided if Ladybug simply had the Cat Miraculous to hand out to someone else like with the other temp heroes.

Adrien is, of course, helpless to leave the press conference, because what do you expect a superhero to do? Say getting his father's approval doesn't matter when lives are on the line? NOPE! He was told to stay there, and so he can't do anything to help out, showing how useful he is as a superhero.

After not hearing from Cat Noir again, Ladybug decides to go on without him, summoning her Lucky Charm, a firetruck of all things (wait until Ladybug gets a fighter jet in the season finale), giving her the idea to have Polymouse draw Moolak's fire with Multitude while Vesperia (backed up by Carapace's Shelter) stuns him with venom, giving Viperion the chance to try all possible combinations to the safe through the use of Second Chance, finally cracking the code on his ONE-HUNDREDTH try. Ladybug manages to free the Akuma without the use of Cataclysm, de-evilizes it, casts Miraculous Ladybug to fix the damage, presumably gives him a Magical Charm offscreen, King Monkey, Pigella, and Purple Tigress did absolutely nothing to help, and Shadowmoth says he'll try ONE HUNDRED more times to get Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous.

While Ladybug takes Viperion to the sewers to get the Snake Miraculous back presumably after the others hand their back as well, she's berated by Celestial Guardian Su-Han, who scolds her for what happened.

Big talk coming from the dude who couldn't even defeat one villain on his own (and one he used to run circles around while training him) with his “Mirakung-Fu”.

Su-Han points out how dangerous it potentially is to leave someone with the Miraculous of Destruction alone without any method of contacting him outside of battle, and seeing how he's a mouthpiece designed to make even the more reasonable concern by viewers look insane, he's obviously wrong.

Oh, come on! When has Cat Noir ever acted like a supervillain, much less use his Miraculous for selfish purposes? All he's done is soak in the limelight the public has given him (Copycat, Prime Queen, Glaciator 2), said things he'd never say in his civilian life thanks to the mask (Copycat, Simon Says, Felix), ignored his partner's personal boundaries (Prime Queen, Glaciator, Frozer, Oblivio, Glaciator 2), refused to follow orders when given them (Glaciator, Syren, Frozer, Party Crasher, New York Special, Lies, Sentibubbler, Hack-San, Wishmaker), destroyed public property in his anger (Sentibubbler, Glaciator 2), and abandoned the city he was supposed to protect (New York Special). If that's not the definition of a noble superhero, I don't know what is.

Su-Han orders Ladybug to find out Cat Noir's identity in case he turns bad, or else he'll take back his Miraculous and choose a new Cat Noir, and Ladybug tells him that the reason they don't know each other's identities in case they're captured, instead of, you know, this guy.

The worst thing is that this rule was never properly established at all, so this episode could have told us the origin of this rule. We never knew why the rule was in place in “Lady Wifi”...

Ladybug: Nobody must know who we really are. Not even us.

We never knew why the rule was in place in “Origins”...

Ladybug: You should get going. Our identities must remain secret.

We never knew why the rule was in place in “Kwamibuster”...

Plagg: Besides, you shouldn't be trying to find out more, if you discovered Ladybug's true identity you'd have to give your Miraculous back!

And we never knew why the rule was in place here. This episode could have had a flashback to the beginning of the series where Ladybug and Cat Noir (or Marinette and Tikki) discussed the idea of Hawkmoth figuring out their identities, leading to her establishing the rule. You know, call back to the chronological first episode of the series, like a lot of shows do when they reach A HUNDRED episodes? It would do more to back up Marinette's claim that their identities must remain secret as we would see her talking about why the rule was in place instead of this explanation that was never given to us beforehand.

Ladybug strikes a deal with Su-Han so he can figure out Cat Noir's identity without her knowing, but she needs the help of Luka (who was there during the whole conversation) for her plan. Here, we get more of an explanation for the rule, but it's obvious, and we still don't know when it was established in the first place.

As opposed to when Shadowmoth figured out Luka's identity, only made one plan around it, and gave up after failing once because Astruc thinks you can't workshop your evil plans for some reason.

THIS IS WHAT THOMAS ASTRUC ACTUALLY BELIEVES.

In fact, what does Su-Han even think of the temp heroes? How can Shadowmoth know most of their identities and he's just okay with it? Does he even know Shadowmoth knows who most of them are? Why doesn't he tell Ladybug to never give them their Miraculous back?

Ladybug's plan is to have Cat Noir tell her his identity, and then after Viperion hears it, he'll rewind time and tell Su-Han about it (while he technically already knows as this takes place after “Wishmaker”, it's safe to assume Su-Han won't be happy at a temp hero knowing both of their identities, so Luka's playing dumb for now) while Ladybug doesn't know.

Okay... that's a weird and, let's be honest here, kind of immoral plan. In the next scene, Ladybug basically tricks Cat Noir into revealing his identity by pretending to believe the things he wants her to say, and she's never really called out for it.

I believe the kids today refer to this kind of behavior as “Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss”.

How exactly is this any different from what the two Ladybug doppelgangers from “The Puppeteer 2” and “Ladybug” tried to do with Cat Noir? The real Ladybug is still tricking Cat Noir into giving up classified information, and it's never really framed as a bad thing. Sure, she was forced to, and this will have consequences, but she never gets called out for her behavior here specifically. Instead, her starting a relationship with Adrien later in the episode is the mistake she made according to Astruc.

I'll get to this later, don't worry.

And even if there was a scene where Ladybug realized how unethical her plan was, why rely solely on Viperion? Why not have Pigella use her Gift from a distance to get a hint on who Cat Noir is by seeing his greatest desire, or if Ladybug needed Viperion for the plan to work, why not have Rena Furtive use her power to disguise Viperion as Ladybug to not risk the real Ladybug finding out in case Second Chance runs out? As a matter of fact, why didn't Ladybug just tell Cat Noir Su-Han wants to know his identity like Master Fu did? Cat Noir knows who Su-Han is, so it's not exactly unreasonable for him to understand where he's coming from. Seriously, he was willing to trust Ladybug enough to hand back his Miraculous if she wanted him to in “Furious Fu”, so it's not out of the picture for him to only reveal his identity to Su-Han if that's what both he and Ladybug want.

So after tricking Cat Noir into telling Ladybug he's Adrien Agreste, Ladybug is so stunned by the revelation, the window for Viperion to rewind time with Second Chance closes. Interestingly, Adrien says that “whoever Ladybug may be under her mask, she is the most outstanding person in the world”. Let's just ignore the fact that Adrien never saw Marinette in a romantic light and only thought of her that way when he found out she was Ladybug in “Cat Blanc”.

Ladybug, despite promising to reveal her identity after coming up with the idea in the first place, says she can't right now, and Adrien is surprisingly chill with it, giving her plenty of time to think it over. If only he respected her boundaries like this more often. After Ladybug tells Su-Han who Cat Noir is, she goes to her room to think about it, leading to a handful of really good scenes. Marinette is genuinely unsure if she was actually loving the real Adrien or just a facade he put on like what other episodes hint at, and after a brief montage where she keeps seeing Cat Noir instead of Adrien on a picture and in person, she decides to talk with Luka about it.

He's obviously referring to the fact that he already knows who both Ladybug and Cat Noir are, and he's giving Marinette advice on how to deal with what she just learned. I think I have an easier time with Luka being for the Love Square because he's always been a very supportive person who respected Marinette's feelings, as opposed to Kagami, who antagonized Marinette for almost two seasons over her liking Adrien before thinking they're made for each other. It's unclear if Luka still has feelings for Marinette or if he means he loves her platonically now, but it's still a decent interaction. The visual of Marinette smiling at Cat Noir as she came to terms with the knowledge is also nice, even if they ignore all the less than glamorous stuff he's done to Ladybug before this episode.

Afterwards, we get a montage of Ladybug and Cat Noir being more in sync as the former can show up to battles quicker, showing a benefit to Ladybug knowing Cat Noir's identity, a recreation of the umbrella scene with their hero forms that's far better than what “Mr. Pigeon 72” did, and after an uncertain amount of time passes, Ladybug finally reveals her identity to Adrien, where things go downhill again.

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Yep, the show really wants us to believe that Adrien considers Marinette one of his best friends. Okay, yes, Marinette has stuck up for Adrien several times (The Collector, New York Special), but outside of class interactions, the two have barely spent any time together. The only time Adrien ever contacted Marinette on his own accord to spend time with her outside of social/work obligations where multiple people were there and Marinette happened to be around (Timebreaker, Horrificator, Kung Food, Gamer, Santa Claws, Despair Bear, Befana, Frightningale, Style Queen, Frozer, Heroes' Day, Animaestro, Reflekdoll, Startrain, Desperada, Party Crasher, The Puppeteer 2, Heart Hunter, New York Special, Shanghai Special, Sole Crusher, Queen Banana, Mega Leech, Optigami), or just bumped into her in public with no plans on his end (Gorizilla, Backwarder, Guiltrip, Wishmaker) was in a single episode from this season, and even then, he was only asking her for a favor (Simpleman).

Say what you will about Marinette, but she has consistently made plans to spend more time with Adrien, do things for him, and tried get closer to him (The Bubbler, Copycat, Dark Cupid, Gamer, Horrificator, The Puppeteer, Riposte, Gigantitan, Desperada, Party Crasher, Cat Blanc, Optigami, Glaciator 2, Simpleman). Adrien, on the other hand, has barely spent any time with Marinette, and ignored several chances to do so either because he was forced to ignore her and stay home (Captain Hardrock, Silencer, Mr. Pigeon 72), because he didn't want to spend time with her (Glaciator), or just didn't really care about her (Weredad).

To put it as generously as I can, Marinette and Adrien are classmates and acquaintances at best not “super besties better than the resties” like the show keeps trying to claim.

And things get even dumber in the very next scene (ignoring a brief bit where Adrien hands Marinette a note in class) where Gabriel decides to be a decent father for one in his life, overhears a conversation Adrien was having on the phone... and immediately figures out he's Cat Noir because he used the term “M'lady”.

I DID NOT EDIT THIS. THIS IS ACTUALLY HOW THE SCENE WENT.

Gabriel just overheard Adrien say “M'lady”, and immediately came to the conclusion that he was Cat Noir. Because it's not like that term became a popular buzzword since Cat Noir first appeared, right? At least in “Cat Blanc”, Adrien used deductive reasoning to figure out Ladybug's identity, and didn't correctly guess thanks to the slightest hint he got. And why was Gabriel suddenly going to talk with Adrien when he rarely gave his son the time of day before? You guessed it, never explained.

So the next morning, Adrien feels compelled to walk to the painting of his mother, where he inputs the code to go to Shadowmoth's lair without even knowing, he sees his mother's body, before Gabriel says how it's been ONE HUNDRED weeks since Emilie “left them” and that he's tried ONE HUNDRED times to get Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous (even though “Felix” said it's only been a year, and Mr. Pigeon has been akumatized seventy-two times, so great continuity there, writers), transforms into Shadowmoth in front of him, and immediately akumatizes Adrien while the camera fixates on Shadowmoth's ring finger right before Adrien gives in and hands over his Miraculous to Shadowmoth, heavily implying Adrien is actually a Sentimonster.

And right now, I’m guessing something like this is currently going through your mind right now like it did mine.

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Yes, this episode managed to come up with a scene dumber than Adrien saying Marinette is one of his best friends. I know, it's impressive.

Just... why does Gabriel keep trying to akumatize Adrien as soon as he finds out he's Cat Noir? He at least had some morals and didn't try to akumatize him or intentionally get him harmed, as we literally just saw in “Glaciator 2”. If he's Gabriel's son, he should be able to at least try and reason with him before immediately resorting to brainwashing him. I'm just saying, even Omni-Man tried talking with his son before beating him within an inch of his life for not listening. Another thing, why did Gabriel specifically need Adrien to be akumatized here? Yeah, his plan involved ambushing Marinette, and Adrien, who has the knowledge of her location and identity is now incredibly loyal to him, but why did Adrien need to be the Akuma to fight alongside him if Akuma powers aren't dependent on his emotional state? And once again, we're robbed of a potentially interesting scene of Gabriel rethinking his entire mission upon realizing his son was his enemy the whole time, and immediately forced him to follow his wishes without even trying to reason with him, just like how we never got to see Adrien really process seeing his mother's body and finding out his father is Shadowmoth.

And let's just get this out of the way here, because this is the bigger gripe I have with this scene, I HATE THE SENTIDRIEN THEORY AND THE FACT THAT IT IT'S BASICALLY CANON NOW WITH A BURNING PASSION. I've talked about the theory briefly before in earlier posts (mainly Astruc trying to simultaneously hint it might be true and saying it's obviously false), but now I get to really rip into this plot thread and why I personally think it's the dumbest thing the show has ever done. Yes, that's including everything I've said about the Love Square, Cat Noir's unheroic behavior, AND Chloe's arc. It pisses me off that much.

First, this plot twist just screams “OBVIOUS RETCON” thanks to it getting absolutely no foreshadowing in any of the previous three seasons outside of the rules established for Sentibug, and even then, Sentibug wasn't even the focus of the episode or the conflict. Why not foreshadow or at least allude to that by having Gabriel allude to how dangerous it is to create a human Sentimonster or have a few shots of his ring, hinting it serves the same role the keychain did in that episode? If this is a major thing you're establishing about one of your two main characters, you can't just introduce it out of nowhere. You need to help the audience settle in first, so while it's an interesting plot twist, it adds rewatch value to the show to see how many hints were there. If there are no hints, it makes the actual twist that much harder to stomach. Why do you think so many people were pissed with how Chloe's arc ended?

Second, If Adrien is actually a Sentimonster and Gabriel can easily control him from a long distance even when transformed, how can Adrien still get away to transform into Cat Noir? You're telling me Gabriel doesn't even think of ordering him to find a safe place to hide from an Akuma whenever he's in public? How did Adrien even get out of his home to sneak to school in “Origins” if Gabriel can command him to follow his orders? Sure, “Optigami” and “Sentibubbler” hinted that Shadowmoth needed to be close to the Sentimonsters he directly created to follow orders, but both of those episodes required him to leave his base and manipulate others as part of his plans, so those could just be coincidental.

Third, how does their bond even work? If Sentimonsters are created through the Peacock, the Miraculous of Emotion, does that mean Gabriel can sense Adrien's emotions through his connection to him? Does Gabriel's influence over Adrien have any limits? Is there a way for Adrien to leave the country and be free of it like what happened in “Startrain”? If Gabriel can give orders to Sentimonsters thanks to him controlling the object facilitating their mental link (Sentibubbler's coffee cup being an obvious example other than the ring), can he read Adrien's mind? If he can, why the hell has he never taken advantage of it? Is it just the ring Emilie had before Gabriel took it in “Felix”, or did both wedding rings hold control over Adrien?

Fourth, I don't think I need to say how this is clearly a way for the writers to get out of talking about the way Gabriel treats his son by handwaving it away and saying “It's not child abuse! Adrien was forced to listen to Gabriel thanks to the control he had over his son”. The writers didn't want to go into detail about Adrien's relationship with his father other than how sad it makes him, because that would imply they actually wanted to talk about a serious issue a lot of real people go through instead of making broad strokes in saying “X is bad! Don't be like X!” There was a really interesting idea here to explore the relationship between Gabriel and Adrien, where Adrien learns to become more independent outside of being Cat Noir and break free from Gabriel's grasp, becoming a more emotionally balanced person in the process. Unfortunately, the writers felt it would be easier to make it so Adrien now has no choice but to follow Gabriel's commands, which does nothing to help the poor reputation he has among viewers. Are we seriously still expected to sympathize with this man after the way he turned his own son into a slave and later attacked a powerless Marinette?

Finally, why is the show still keeping the fact Adrien is a Sentimonster ambiguous or not after blatantly telegraphing it in this episode and earlier ones too (Gabriel Agreste, Mega Leech)? Unless this is a huge red herring, I think we all know where this is going, so I just don't get why the show is building it up as this big mystery, or why Astruc is being so wishy-washy about the subject, when it's obvious the show is building up to the big reveal Adrien is a Sentimonster. In fact, why not confirm it here and leave the audience's minds lingering on the revelation seeing how the season's almost over if you're going to confirm it in the finale?

Come on, you can't tell me that's not what's going to happen. They're obviously going to give a lot of focus to Angstdrien Depreste losing focus on the fight because he isn't human, and he'll be torn between Ladybug and Shadowmoth, but he'll obviously choose the former over the latter because of the power of love and all that crap Huey Lewis loves preaching about. If something like that doesn't happen in the season finale, or in Season 5 for that matter, I'll eat my hat.

So we cut to the movie theater where Marinette is waiting for Adrien, only to be ambushed by...

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Oh my God, that's the design you're going with?! Congratulations, animators, you managed to make Shadowmoth actually look menacing by comparison. I mean, the purple color scheme just looks ridiculous when trying to blend the designs of Shadowmoth and Cat Noir's together, and with how skin-tight the jumpsuit this grown man is wearing looks coupled with the little ears on top, it's amazing that the animators thought this was meant to be the symbol of Shadowmoth (now calling himself Shadow Noir, which is an oxymoron) finally winning after getting the Cat Miraculous, they failed miserably. He looks like he's trying to cosplay as Black Panther for crying out loud!

This is still enough for Marinette to transform into Ladybug and summon her Lucky Charm, an electronic watch displaying the same time as when she and Viperion executed her plan to figure out Cat Noir's identity, but before she can figure what it means and how to use it, she's caught off-guard by Ephemeral.

For an Akuma who only appears for about a minute, I think Epheheral has a decent design. I like how he sort of resembles Hawkmoth's original design with some nice shades of purple, a good metaphor for how Shadowmoth basically groomed Adrien into being his servant. The perpetually miserable personality and expression on his face really helps him stand out as a character.

His powers raise a couple questions, but not for the reasons you're thinking of. His power to accelerate time (something I think we all want to do while watching this episode) right as Ladybug uses her Lucky Charm so she can immediately detransform is a really clever plan, but... why wasn't this “Plan A”? Like I said, Akuma powers aren't dependent on the victim's personalities, as Shadowmoth gives them their powers and overrides their free will, so why did it take so long for him to use an Akuma like this if it can easily beat Ladybug? If the powers are in fact a result of the victim's circumstances, why not make Timebreaker's powers so everything around her starts to reverse, leading to both Ladybug and Cat Noir transforming back? Seriously, before this, only three Akumas had powers specifically designed to depower the heroes (Miraculer, Kwamibuster, Feast), so how come Shadowmoth can't use more powers like that? Oh right, because the plot said so. You know, with how often I say that, I'm worried Thorias Unlimited is going to press charges if he finds out. In fact, why is Adrien still the same as Ephemeral? Is he overriding Shadowmoth's influence enough to be cognizant of his actions? The whole idea of how different Akumas act from their civilian forms is such a vaguely defined concept in this show.

So yeah, after being attacked by Ephemeral, Ladybug sends a desperate message to Luka telling her where the Miracle Ball is (obviously assuming he can figure out her identity since she knows the name of Luka's Kwami) before detransforming, and gets her Miraculous taken by Shadow Noir, who throws this defenseless fourteen year old girl aside and potentially injuring her, which is obviously the same as Mr. Freeze taking revenge on an asshole businessman who had actually wronged him to the point where even Batman was willing to expose his crimes after saving him from Mr. Freeze.

And... yeah, that's all we see of the first triple unification in the series and the titular Akuma of the ONE-HUNDREDTH episode. They only get less than a minute's worth of screentime where Ephemeral only used his power once and all Shadow Noir did was throw Marinette after nabbing her Miraculous, and neither of them are seen again. How did Moolak get more focus in this episode than these two did? It's even worse when you consider the reason so many Akumas were reused this season was to save up money for four new character models that barely got any screentime in this episode.

So Luka barges into Marinette's room and finds Sass, the Snake Kwami, showing him the picture of the watch and theorizing Marinette wants him to go back in time and undo the events that led to the identity reveal. While Luka can only travel back five minutes, Sass has the ability to travel back in time to any period where Second Chance was set up, but as earlier episodes have established (Style Queen, Gang of Secrets, Optigami, Dearest Family), any Kwami using their power in the slightest can lead to reality getting all screwed up. Remember, Plagg's Cataclysm in “Style Queen” that almost decimated Paris was only used as a last resort, and that was when he was holding back. If Sass tries to use his power to reverse time, we don't know what the hell could happen, and Wayzz, the Turtle Kwami, points out that if Marinette needs him to do that, shit must be hitting the fan hard.

And indeed, it does, as it turns out Gabriel made his wish off-screen, and seeing how “Robostus” established that the consequence to reviving someone means that someone would have to die or at least fall into a deep sleep like a magical equivalent to the conservation of mass law in physics, that obviously means the wish triggered the end of the world.

I'm sorry, what?

Oh my God, we're seriously introducing this plotpoint now, with only four minutes left in the episode? Okay, yes, there were a few episodes in Season 1 where Hawkmoth claimed his goal was to rule the world or use the Miraculous for more selfish ends (The Evilustrator, Rogercop, Timebreaker Darkblade), so it's entirely possible to assume Gabriel could possibly have other goals besides reviving his wife, but said goals were still never properly established. And again, it makes no sense for the show to once again go back on its own rules and say that making any wish, no matter how minor it is in the grand scheme of things, to require reality to be turned off and on again. And instead of actually showing Gabriel making his wish, it's only explained to us what happened, so we can't even see how the wish backfired on him. It feels like the writers added it in after realizing not much would actually happen if Shadowmoth managed to get the Miraculous, so they added in this bit with his wife to raise the stakes.

So because he really has no other choice, Sass uses Second Chance to being us back to Ladybug about to trick Cat Noir into revealing his identity (which is totally different from Gabriel resetting the world himself for some reason), until the lights across the city start to flickering, because as Optimus Primal put it best, “TIME ITSELF IS ALL BEING DESTROOOOOYED!”

But because the animators have already blown through basically their entire budget for this episode, all we get to see the chaotic state of Sass accidentally screwing up the space-time continuum is three old Akumas reappearing (Captain Hardrock, Gamer, and Gorizilla) a T-Rex rampaging through the streets for a few seconds, and the appearance of previous Ladybug, Joan of Arc, the aforementioned fourth new character model the writers did nothing with, as all we got with her was her briefly questioning what happened and charged at Ladybug and Cat Noir before disappearing.

And you want to know the worst part? We're still not done yet. The show still wants to have Ladybug use her Lucky Charm to save the day, even though the way time is unfolding doesn't nearly have as much of a punch as the writers want them to because of how little time there is spent building it up as a threat. Ladybug's Lucky Charm is a tiny weight, which reminds her of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, an organization that accurately measures the time of day around the world. She explains this using a visual that I'm sure won't attract widespread controversy or end any close friendships at all.

Ladybug theorizes that if they fix the satellite, they'll be able to fix the time on all the connected devices with clocks on them. Well, that, and I guess maybe send Joan of Arc back to her timeline too. So this is the climax to this show's ONE-HUNDREDTH episode: Ladybug and Cat Noir performing basic maintenance to fix everyone's phones. Riveting.

The writers remember their power-ups exist, so Ladybug and Cat Noir transform into Cosmobug and Astro Cat respectively before heading into space, casually breaking through the atmosphere before we learn that not only does Cosmobug know what the International Bureau of Weights and Measures is, but she also knows how to work a satellite's computer. So Cosmobug fixes the computer, and by extension, everyone's clocks on Earth, the astronauts on the International Space Station are probably wondering what the hell they're doing, Astro Cat makes a brief reference to the soundtrack from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for some reason, Cosmobug decides not to go through with her plan.

Back at Marinette's balcony, Su-Han (who I'm guessing was asleep while reality was taking a beating from Sass) asks if she knows Cat Noir's identity, but she refuses. Before Su-Han can chew her out for disobeying orders, for some reason Ladybug suddenly gets the courage to stand up to the man who can easily kick her ass and take away her Miraculous if he wants to.

Well, at least the ending of this episode is just as consistent as the other scenes in it: Something that could have been a good scene if there was proper buildup, but instead feels like the writers made a few broad strokes when coming up with how to end the episode.

When the hell was this episode all about Ladybug being a good Guardian, much less her partnership with Cat Noir? Yes, this is a good scene to show how Marinette has become more confident in her role as Guardian compared to how the season started, but this was never what the episode was about. The whole reason Su-Han was angry at Ladybug was because she dragged out a fight for far too long when all she needed to end it instead of relying on a small army of heroes was Cat Noir's Cataclysm, and Su-Han wanted to know Cat Noir's identity because he was worried about what would happen if Cat Noir went rogue. Yes, it did relate to Ladybug's judgment as a leader and Guardian, but there was never any indication she was bad at her job.

Then there's Su-Han's random turnaround which is basically the ending to “Furious Fu” redone. Su-Han learns he was wrong, says Ladybug is awesome, and apologizes for being such a massive asshole, but it doesn't feel earned here. Su-Han worked as a character in “Furious Fu” because he had no idea what Marinette was like as a Guardian and had reasonable concerns he overreacted to, and was clearly shown to be in the wrong. When he was beat up by Furious Fu and saw how well Ladybug and Cat Noir worked together, it made sense to see him change his mind after being humbled. Here, there's no reason why Ladybug changed her mind on learning Cat Noir's identity or where she got the courage to stand up to Su-Han in the first place, so her calling him out doesn't feel earned. Maybe if Su-Han was still wary of Marinette at the end of his debut episode and made sporadic appearances throughout the season, this could have been a more impactful scene, kind of like Adrien finally realizing how harmful Lila's lies were in “Ladybug”.

But the dumbest thing is that the episode says that Su-Han was overreacting to the idea of Cat Noir's identity being unknown when he had every reason to be concerned. Cat Noir was still a no-show at the battle with Moolak and Ladybug needed to think outside the box just to defeat him without Cat Noir's help, because his power is still useful at the end of the day. And again, we see how useful Ladybug knowing Cat Noir's identity was, but the episode just skipped over that. All they had to do to prove Su-Han was wrong was have Sass remember part of the erased timeline and explain that what Su-Han wanted Ladybug to do ended up leading to Shadowmoth's victory, so he'd realize he failed at his mission.

But at least with that scene over, I can finally say that's how the ONE-HUNDREDTH episode of the show ends. Obviously, I didn't think it was very good.

I'm not sure if this was the result of executives or maybe COVID screwing up the production, but this episode just felt so rushed, and I think it would have benefited from being a two-parter. Just have the first episode build up to the fight with Moolak and the reveal afterwards, and have the second part focus on Marinette and Adrien's relationship and the ensuing tragedy without the half-assed climax where they fix the satellite.

I think the first half had some decent buildup, but after the reveal, it all goes downhill. Marinette is now super close to Adrien because the plot wants her to be, Gabriel torturing his son is just uncomfortable to watch when you remember how many sympathetic moments he gets in earlier episodes (including the last one to air, “Glaciator 2”), the fact that the Sentidrien theory is basically confirmed is a bad indicator to how future episodes will go, and the retcon surrounding the wish just felt forced.

Marinette's plan and actions in this episode really needed to be called out more, and not just for starting a relationship with Adrien, like Astruc claimed.

Astruc, forgive me for being blunt here, but if the Love Square is endgame, and every character in the show loves to say that Marinette and Adrien are “made for each other”, why are you blaming her for what happened to Adrien after they got together when Gabriel was the one who turned him against Marinette? Intentional or not, your team of writers has connected Marinette and Adrien getting together to the end of the world, and you're still saying we should ship them?

It's been six years, and ONE-HUNDRED episodes have aired, yet it feels like we're still at square one. Nothing has really changed, and the writers shun actual plot progression. Ironically, this episode is a perfect metaphor for the show: It has the potential to do great things, but as soon as things get interesting, the status quo is reset. People are starting to lose faith in the show and the production staff, and it shows with how mixed the reception to this episode has been. With how many fakeouts we've gotten for a Love Square reveal, the actual reveal better have some Emmy-worthy writing, if that ever happens.

While this isn't the worst episode of the season, it's definitely in the top five for me so far. Let's see if it stays that way, or if the rest of the season manages to get even worse.

But for now, I think we should take a moment of silence to pay tribute to all the great shows who were never as lucky as Miraculous Ladybug to reach ONE-HUNDRED episodes.

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The Spectacular Spider-Man (26 Episodes)

Why the people at Disney thought Ultimate Spider-Man would make for a better show is beyond me.

Star Trek: The Original Series (79 Episodes)

The crew of the Enterprise never got to finish their five year mission, but they still paved the way for future installments.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (10 Episodes)

A worthy prequel to a pretty forgettable movie that was taken from us far too soon.

Teen Titans (65 Episodes)

Insert your own joke about Teen Titans Go! Here.

Mech-X4 (35 Episodes)

Seriously, go watch Mech-X4 if you can, because it's SO GOOD.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold (65 Episodes)

Henry Winkler as Ambush Bug said it best: At least the Caped Crusader can say he had a good run.

Quantum Leap (97 Episodes)

The show with an ending tacked on so last-minute, it spelled the main character's name wrong.

Here's to the next hundred episodes if Miraculous Ladybug manages to last that long without getting cancelled or ZAG filing for bankruptcy.

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