#Paramount has done my boy so good thus far! Hope it keeps up

[pianokantzart]

This show is going to make me regress into my middleschool self where I spent all my free time feeling emo about Knuckles The Echidna

[popculturebuffet]

Uncle Scrooge by Don Rosa:  The Isle at the Edge of Time (Thank You Comission For Rosie Isla)

Hello all you happy people! Today’s review is a bit special as it’s the result of another review. See I had trouble finding a translation of the subject of last weeks’ mother’s day special, Family Ties. 

No not that one. I have Paramount+. I can watch all the Family Ties I want and that’s a fact that i’m pleased as punch about. 

No it was the story 80 is Prachtig, called Family Ties in the copy used, Della’s first major comics appearance and one that explains what happened to her in the classic continuity, one that clearly served as the foundation for her far more fleshed out 2017 versions personality and backstory. It also had Pinocchio in it for some reason, and spent most of it’s large run time on a meta comedy plot that had nothing to do with the reason anyone wanted to read this story in the first place.

But despite being a vitally important story, it never got an english translation, something that baffled me till I read the story and found cameos of the racist indigenous stereotypes from Peter Pan. In 2014. You may commence booing. Even with how weird the story was I simply couldn’t find the story googling it and the Della tag is too vast and deep to go spelunking in.

So what’s all this have to do? Simple I put out a post last month when neither I nor Kev, who wanted to comission it as part of Moons, Millionares and Mothers, my coverage of all three season 2 Ducktales story arcs, could find a copy and offered a review to whoever found it.  Weeks passed I got nothing.. then in the 11th hour I got a break as the lovely @rosieisla​ found a translation that was on this very site, one she seemed to have helped with. As a result I could do the review and as a man of my word, offered it up despite her clearly having not seen that part of the post and simply having done this to be nice. Still she gladly took up the offer and offered me my pick of two stories: The Carl Barks Story Back to Long Ago or this one. 

As for WHY I picked this one Back To Long Ago didn’t seem bad, i’m just not a fan of “The Cast is put in the past as their own ancestors” type deals. Or in some cases put the cast as people from that time period. It’s just not for me and is most often done in TV where it can get really goofy, Beverly Hills 90210 being a prime example of this, though Girl Meets World was no slouch in being embarassing... that being said I really need to finish that show and miss it. 

So yeah when put up against a story with two intresting hooks and FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD, even if i’ts not the version that’s my boy, it was no contest. So what are these hooks you ask? Well join me under the cut and find out. 

We open with a weird stylistic choice: This story has a narrator complete with caption boxes. Now for those of you familiar with comics or pastiches of comics in tv and film, this probably dosen’t seem like a big deal. It was a common thing in comics from their inception to 90′s to have caption boxes, big boxes of text narrating the action to help move things along faster. It did start to fade out by the 80′s and was gone by the end of the 90′s for the most part, replaced instead with first person narration. It’s the kind of thing you’d see most often in the Golden and Silver Ages, with stuff like tihs

It’s not a BAD device, it’s good old cheesy and bombastic fun and some writers did get clever with it.. like that time Chris Claremont used the narration to yell at a greiving cyclops after he lost a teammate early in his long and storied run on the uncanny x-men. 

This is a objectively weird scene that’s still somehow effective by the by. On the one hand it does come off as Chris Claremont essentally bullying Cyclops who already feels guilty for a death that was not in fact his fault as Thunderbird was told the plane he was attacking with fleeing villian Count Nefaria was about to explode and refused to listen.. and that they needed to get rid of either him or Wolverine as both served the same purpose and chose the non-white guy. 

On the other htough it comes off just as much as Scott beating himself up in his grief and anger over the event and his perceived failings as a leader. It’s good stuff and shows why this run caught on as this was only three issues in. Also the rest of the issue features the X-Men fighting a giant cyclopian demon that Cyclops accidently freed in his rage by destroying the stone thing keeping him imprisoned. No really here’s the cover

Huh so tha’ts what Nifty’s dad looks like. Neat. Also I REALLY hope we get the X-Men fighting aliens or demons in the MCU. Unlike the XCU the MCU isn’t alergic to getting batshit.. and for the record Deadpool and New Mutants are the exception, not the rule.

My point that I swear I do have is that this was common practice for most comics.. but never really for Disney Duck comics. It popped up ocasionally, like with Scrooge’s introduction, but Barks and those after him never really used them that much. Sure they’d have caption boxes for flasbacks and what not but Barks and Co geninely only used this sort of thing to set up a story. The most i’ve seen it in a duck comic is life and times and even then i’ts usually only used for gags or to set up the passage of time, as the story IS covering decades and thus often needed to have montages to show time passing, and in the case of chapter 11, had to cover decades in the span of a single chapter, so it’s not like they had many other options. So even Rosa as a personal quirk didn’t really use these often. 

Rosa used this specifically because he felt the plot was complicated by the use of the international date line. As for what it is, it’s essentially a line marking calender dates from one side of the hemisphere to the others. To use the offical defentition from the National Ocean Service I found via a quick google:

“The International Date Line, established in 1884, passes through the mid-Pacific Ocean and roughly follows a 180 degrees longitude north-south line on the Earth. It is located halfway round the world from the prime meridian—the zero degrees longitude established in Greenwich, England, in 1852.

The International Date Line functions as a “line of demarcation” separating two consecutive calendar dates. When you cross the date line, you become a time traveler of sorts! Cross to the west and it’s one day later; cross back and you’ve “gone back in time."

Despite its name, the International Date Line has no legal international status and countries are free to choose the dates that they observe. While the date line generally runs north to south from pole to pole, it zigzags around political borders such as eastern Russia and Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.”

Rosa felt this made the story complicated.... and that... really isn’t remotely true. The narration is mostly used for gagas and really dosen’t clarify anything. it’s mostly used well in the opening.. but the actual explinations for the date line are clear enough in the story that even if I hadn’t looked the thing up, I still would’ve got it and i’m sure a kid would’ve too. It just feels like a weird thing to ruminate on, especially because he’s got actual things to make up for: while to his credit the native american characters he cribbed from carl barks are sympathetic, their culture respected and treated decently and used for a green aseop, their dialouge is stitled and sterotypical something he dosen’t even comment on (And these trades ewren’t THAT long ago) 

And of course it dosen’t help that he dosen’t even comment on using a common device in american superhero boooks.. in the same volume where he ONCE again makes an unwanted and outdated diatribe about superhero comics. I’ll probably cover the Super Snooper Strikes again so I can throughly tear this apart but higlights include: Calling superhero comics “Unwanted” just because he dosen’t like them personally, when people like me would disagree and they’ve lasted through a LOT of highs and lows, outdately saying they took over the American market as the only suitable comics which while true for a TIME,but by 2015 when this book was printed is laughably out of date, as non superhero works like The Walking Dead, Saga, and Scott Pilgrim were massively popular, one of my faviorite comics that is entirely slice of life and would go on to bea huge hit, Giant Days, re-debuted that very year. He also has the fucking gal to insult The Uncanny X-Men by name and I swear to god I did not know this when I made those references earlier, but as you probably guessed REALLY god me livid. 

And this is just on his COMMENTS on the story I can’t imagine just how bad the content itself is and having read the first few pages which come off as Rosa using Donald to essentially do an “old man yells at cloud rant” about superhero comics, I really don’t want to. Might make htis a patreon exclusive or again would do it on comissoin. You all make the call.... the point is I don’t likes his elitist bullshit about superhero comics, and this is clearly something that gets my hackles up as I just spent a good two paragraphs of an entirely unrealted review yelling at the guy for it. I don’t like when he does this and this authors notes entirley felt like an excuse. I GET the dark age of comics were bad, they REALLY were that bad, but I will NEVER accept painting an enitre genre as bad just because one work in it is bad. And I wont accept it from someone who himself writes about an often throughly unlikeable anti-hero for a living.  Scrooge may not have a gun on his gun on his gun or get to stabbing or have pouches, but he DOES finacially abuse his nephew, scoff at people’s personal troubles, and often refuse to use his wealth to help others in general. So yeah in conclusion Rosa really needs to say less about this subject. 

Okay so where were we.. right the story hadn’t even started yet. Jesus. 

Okay so our story begins with the narrator. Whose going on about time and what not. The main point of this speech about time is that it’s night in Duckburg and Scrooge is going to bed as, even being the workhorse that he is, he can’t keep going 24 hours. While he’s snoozing though something major happens and it’s the hook that made me pick this story along with the international dateline one.. an island rises thanks to volcanic erruption.. and the lava is GOLD. That’s just pure unabashed classic Duck Stuff: a mysterious treasure or phenominon of gold bound to bring scrooge in. 

But Scrooge isn’t stupid: the sun comes up and the world still spins while he sleeps, so he set up a satalite to monitor for this sort of thing. The thing naturally goes nuts.. and even more naturally breaks down becasue Scrooge bought cheap parts. A nice gag and a fully in character way to bring our antagonist into the picture, as the Satellite of Loaded falls in the middle of South Africa... right on the property of my boy Flintheart Glomgold. 

This is something Rosa brought up in his commentary for the story i’d never thought about. It turns out Glomgold being a citzen of Duckburg WASN’T an invention of the original Ducktales but the comics: some overseas had understandably moved him from his home country of South Africa. Him bieing in the same town as Scrooge instead of half a world away allows for easier setups and more intresting ones.

Rosa however being obdient to Barks Version of things, ketp Glomgold in South Africa like barks did, which was an .. ifffy decision given Apartheid had JUST ended at the time of this story. Not so much in the reboot as not only had apartheid been long gone by the time of the reboot, but that’s more fair. Still we do get some gorgeous vistas as a result as Glomgold’s minon goes to look at it and finds it’s from McDuck Mining company... Glomgold’s reaction is obvious. 

So on that note we cut to Scrooge rushing to Donalds house and forcing him awake and not telling him anything at first. Look his Ducktales Counterpart straight up kidnapped his donald in my last review, I’d call this a win. He also tries to dress Donald while explaning both his panic to find the crashed satlitle and what it found: the golden island. The end result of him dressing donald is worth a chuckle

So after Donald puts his shirt and little hat on our heroes get rollin rollin rollin what keep rollin rollin rollin who to Manilla. On the plane we get the scene I mentioned: The boys make a quip about Scrooge having lost a day and the group go over the international date line. It’s a fun little scene especially Donald trying to get paid early at the end. Classic scrooge and donald stuff without the abusive undertones some of their classic stuff has. 

Meanwhile Glomgold works out the data and finds out about the gold island, and his excitement accidently wakes a giraffe outside.. welll it was nice knowing him, Giraffes are the deadliest species known to man.. here’s an educational video t back that up....

So at Manilla Airport, Scrooge finds out abotu the south african crash, figuring he’ll get a laugh out of glomgold being there ... only for Donald to spot the Jet. Scrooge figures this can’t be anything good... now come on man maybe he’s just promoting his energy drink. 

As super sayin god super sayian as my witness, I will never get tired of Ultra Instinct Glomgold here. 

Scrooge isn’t so nice about that though and figures he better find out if Glomgold knows about the island and bribes one of the fueling crew for his uniform. He sucesssfully eavesdrops on Glomgold talking to his pilot, finding out from him exactly WHERE the island is. He ends up hilariously botching the mission though: when getting ready to leave Glomgold complains abotu the price of gas and that naturally causes Scrooge, just as cheap, to join in... and Glomgold to find out it’s Scrooge. The two wrestle outside the plane but before this can progress to a game of Naked Robber an airport security guy comes up and Scrooge cleverly claims that Glomgold’s plane has an infestiation, requring it to be quanrantined and allowing Scrooge to jet on.. thoguh not with an actual jet. With Glomgold seemingly dispatched, he can afford to save some money and take his time with a seaplane and I know just the man for the job. 

Oh nope looks like he’s busy. So one time related rambles later we meet Keoki, their asian pilot from the tiny island of Wookawooka.. and no that’s not a real place i checked... and no Fozzy dosen’t own it his check bounced. That being said it is a very well done represntation of someone from a smaller country: he’s doing this job to try and bring money back home, but being a seaplane captain just isn’t enough and his island is dying. Scrooge naturally is about as sympathetic as you’d expect, having apparently never even heard of the idea of a bonus when Huey, Dewey or Louie suggests it. 

Even less suprising is that Glomgold streaks by in his Jet:turns out Manilla was already overun with the bugs Scrooge claimed and Donald rubs it in that had Scrooge got a JET this wouldn’t of been an issue. 

So Glomgold easily beats them there, and to add insult and actualy injury to a cash based one, our heroes get blasted by golden lava on the way in and crash. Should’ve gotten launchpad... got the crashing professional. Keoki is dispondent as this means his people are doomed. He also dosen’t know waht staking a claim is when Scrooge mentions it and the boys bring him up to speed with the poor guy saying he wish he could for WookaWooka. Donald also makes a valid point about how greedy and heartlress scrooge can be.. and really billiionares in general.

No no YOUR the Grouch who refuses to have one drop of emapthy. Donald’s just pissed at your general selfish and terrible behavior. 

Glomgold glomgloats and has seemingly won... but naturally that rant that seemed extranious at the time about the date line comes into play: turns out the Island is on it, and since glomgold put his marker int he west, Scrooge simply puts his in the east which is a whole day before. Now GRANTED there’s nor eal legal prescendice for the intetaoinal date line itself , as noted above... but there’s enough witnesses in Scrooge’s favor that it simply does not matter anyway. Scrooge SEEMINGLY wins.

But Huey, Dewey Or Louie instead backs another claim: Keoki’s from earlier. While it was made in gest, he and the others along with Donald back it as witnsses instad. WookaWooka is saved and SCrogoe ends the story yelling at the narrator.

Final Thoughts: Don Rosa.. did not like this story, feeling it wasn’t one of his best and apologizing for it. I however.. really loved it. It’s not PERFECT: the narration feels not entirely necessary and the gag isn’t as funny as he thinks, though the payoff of scrooge saying “it’s time for this story to end” is fucking hilarous. I also feel it’s a bit too compressed: the story is only 16 pages and was only THAT long because Rosa added a few for exposition, a worthy addition. This feels like one of his 30 page adventure stories but slightly crammed into half the length. I also feel the golden island bit was BADLY underused as it’s such a cool setting but barely shows up in the story. 

But despite that.. it’s still a fun story: as is standard for Rosa the art is gorgeous and the humor is great. And unlike some stories where Rosa casually ignores how terrible scrooge is, here it’s his own greed and hubris that do him in: had he actually agreed to help Keoki, the boys likey would’ve let him keep the island but his own cold refusual to be a human being does him in, just as his cheapness nearly did. Flintheart is also decent here.. not the deepest foe but frankly most classical duck antagonists really aren’t all that fleshed out, and we still get some good bits with him. The dateline bit, while telegraphing that it will be important, as I said REALLY isn’t that hard to understand. All in all while i’ll agree with Rosa this isn’t his BEST, it’s still a really damn good story and one he shoudln’t be ashamed of. 

Tommorow: Green Eggs and ham is back for some train shenanigans! Kay. 

Saturday: The Tom Retrospective returns for it’s last detour! Eclipsa and Moon team up to stop meteora but grapple with diffrent wants: One to save her daughter.. the other to stop waht she clearly sees as an out of control monster. The result.. will only lead to tragedy and a hell of a two parter. 

If you liked this review consider joining my patreon, patroen.com/popculturebuffet. At as low as 2 bucks a month you get accesss to my patreon discord, exclusive reviews, and to pick a short when I do one of my shortstragavanzas, a marthon of theatrical shorts honoring a characters birthday. And given Donald’s is next month, now’s the time to get on board. 

But if you go up to 5 you get a guaranteed review of whatever you want every month, and will get me to my next milestone, which will give everyone including yourself a monthly public darkwing duck review, reviews of the two Ducktales minis’ I haven’t covered (Time is Money and SuperDuckTales) and a reivew of the Danny Phantom film the Ultimate Enemy. So please join today and if you cannot, like this review, subscribe and give me your opinions on it bellow. Or even if you can feedback is always appricated and I will see you at the next rainbow. 

[whitetigerdemoness]

In Japanese folklore when a fox steals your appearance to make mischief you will be bed ridden so there are not two of you seen at once.

TRIGGER WARNING FOR HANGING AT THE END!

Master post of all chapters

Adrien vowed to get Luka something really, really nice for his birthday this year. The man was an absolute saint. Viperion had nonchalantly volunteered to ‘assist’ Queenbee in keeping Penknight in check while Ladybug and Chatnoir ‘searched for Volpina’, which was code for the two exhausted heroes going home and getting some rest. It helped that Viperion was charming, handsome, and a surprisingly smooth talker. Adrien suspected that was because Luka’s platitudes were genuine and not just lip service. Chole had thankfully been too smitten to hear Penknight grumble ‘who is chaperoning who here?’ as the bee heroine flirted shamelessly.

All in all getting Chole to agree to let her room be a temporary safe house had taken a lot less begging than any of them thought it would. Sabrina had seemed eager to help as well, happily ferrying drinks and snacks to the visitors. Chatnoir and Ladybug took their leave hopeful that when they returned in a few hours the penthouse room would still be in one piece. 

From there the two heroes snuck back into school to collect their things (class had been canceled for the day due to the ‘stress’ of seeing Lila attacked on TV) and separated to go to their own homes. When Adrien had detransformed, Plag had been surprisingly serious for once.

“I hope you know what you’re doing kid.” The little kwami intoned. He always seemed to know what had happened when Adren was Chatnoir. The blonde guessed that made sense since the spirit basically possessed him.

“I know a lot could go wrong with us knowing each other’s identities, but I trust Marinette. No matter what happens, everything will be okay in the end.” He hoped. One step at a time, and his next step was convincing Nathalie to cancel his afternoon appointments. Nathalie, who was waiting in the foyer with his father. Adrien gulped, this couldn’t be good.

“Adrien, would you care to tell me where you have been the past two hours? Your school called to inform me the day had been cut short, but when I sent the car for you you were nowhere to be found. Your bodyguard is still out searching for you.” Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.

“Father I-” Gabriel held up a hand.

“I do not want to hear your excuses. Ever since you started public school your studies have slipped. You have missed appointments, and your health has begun to slip. I can tell just by looking at you you are exhausted, an unfortunately common occurrence as of late. I recognize you are getting older my son, and thus have tolerated your bid for independence so far, but clearly you are not ready to handle these responsibilities. I have already informed the school you will not be returning. An early dinner has been prepared. You will eat, and then go to your room until I call for you in the morning to discuss what happens from here.” Gabriel didn’t even wait for a response, turning on heel and stalking into his office without a backwards glance.

Adrien swallowed the lump in his throat as he obediently followed Nathalie to the dining room. This was fine. He could make this work. He had had more time when he was homeschooled, sometimes finishing his lessons hours before normal school would let out, depending on how hard he worked. Wouldn’t more free time be better if he was going to continue to be Chatnoir? This didn’t mean he had to stop seeing his friends, father hadn’t said anything about that. He still had their numbers and emails. He could still see them after school hours and on weekends. 

Yeah. This would work out. This...was...fine….

------------------------------------

Nathalie caught Adrien as he slumped to the side, the sleeping drugs in his food easily taking over his exhausted body. She felt mild regret that it had come to this, but Andrien had been given a chance to side with them and scorned it. Nathalie did not blame him, he was still just a child. He didn’t really understand how complicated the game they were playing was. Taking him out of it would prevent him from being hurt in the long run.

“Sound asleep already? Poor kitty must be so tired from chasing that black spotted rat around all day.” Volpina dispelled the illusion that had been hiding her. Nathalie slipped the black cat ring from Adrien’s finger as Volpina lifted the boy over her shoulder.

“Take him directly to his room. Hawkmoth will be displeased if there are...detours.” Nathalie didn’t trust the fox akuma, but Gabriel had insisted she was paramount to his plans.

“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t hurt a whisker on poor sweet Adrien. I’m glad he’s going to be safely tucked away from all of this, I would hate to have to hurt him.” The older woman frowned, following the akuma out. No, she did not trust the girl at all. Hopefully this would all be over soon, Emilie revived and the Agrestes a whole family again with no need for magic or duplicit allies. 

After confirming Adrien was tucked safely into his bed, Nathalie and Volpina joined Gabriel in his office to present him with the cat miraculous. 

“Excellent work. Never before have we been so close to victory.” The man grinned, clenching the miraculous in his fist. Nathalie shared in his joy. Soon, soon this would all be over. She missed Emilie just as much as anyone. She missed her kind hearted friend.

“So what’s the plan to lure out Ladythug and her merry little band of misfits?” Volpina asked, eager to play her part.

“Ladybug’s allies are exactly what we should be worrying about. Penknight and his would be lover may have failed me, but they did have some use. They wore down Ladybug and Chatnoir into making one very, vital mistake. Volpina, today your reputation was destroyed beyond repair. I think it only fair you do the same to Ladybug. I do not care what you do, but make it vicious, lasting. A great failure to this city even a hundred miraculous ladybugs could not erase.”

“Oh, I have the perfect idea. Though I need to wait until nightfall to carry it out. The impact on Paris will be so much sweeter when they wake from their safe slumber to realize they were never safe at all. In fact, I guarantee you that there will be so much negative energy in this city by the time I’m done, you’ll have an army of akuma’s ready to do your bidding.” Volpina’s eyes glittered with wicked excitement. 

“Catalyst stands ready to assist you, Hawkmoth, should you choose to go this route.” Nathalie affirmed. They were so close, she could endure one more transformation.

“Yes…it may come to that. Go, carry out your plan Volpina.” Gabriel dismissed the akuma, who gleefully vanished into an illusion. “As for you Nathalie I have a different mission. We can only assume Ladybug is in a similar state to Adrien. This is the perfect time for Hawkmoth and the new Chatnoir to pay the guardian of the miraculous a little visit.” He purred, slipping the cat miraculous onto her finger. Nathalie knew Emilie would always be first in his heart, but in her own secret one she dreamed of the day the three of them could be together again.

“Yes, sir.”

----------------------------------------

“Marinette, Marinette! Wake up! Please, something awful has happened!” Tiki sobbed in her ear, jolting her awake. Marinete lurched up in alarm, just barely noting the time on her digital clock. It was nearly five am, and she had crashed as soon as she had gotten home. She had been asleep for over twelve hours. She had only meant to take a nap!

“Tiki, what’s wrong? Why didn’t you wake me sooner?” 

“You were so exhausted, I was going to let you sleep for as long as I could, but I should have woken you when you wanted. I never thought this could happen.” The little kwami drew her attention to a ladybug shaped box sitting on her bed. “It showed up just minutes ago. Oh Marinette, the master…” Tiki cried.

The master? Marinette thought, hugging the distraught kwami. What did this box have to do with him? Using her free hand, she poked one of the black spots. To her surprise, it popped open, revealing a small compartment with...the ox miraculous inside? With a growing sense of dread, Marinette began opening more compartments, finding more miraculous. She stopped cold when a compartment near the top revealed the turtle miraculous.

“Tiki...is this...the miraculous box? What is it doing here?” Marinette knew she hadn’t felt the most charitable towards the old man yesterday, but that didn’t mean she wished him harm. The way Tiki was reacting, Marinette feared something awful had happened to him.

“It’s an emergency ritual to pass on guardianship of the miraculous in times of need. Normally a new guardian is chosen after years of training and the miraculous are passed down during their training, with the previous guardian to mentor them. There have been times in history though when evil have taken a guardian and used them to gain control of the miraculous. This ritual was developed for that. The current guardian names their successor, magically transporting the miraculous to them. In the process, the guardian’s memories of all things miraculous are erased. For Master Fu to have used this ritual, something terrible must have happened.” Something like Hawkmoth? Marinette wondered. 

“Well, there’s one way to find out.” She said, picking up the turtle miraculous. Wayzz glowed into existence. 

“Master!” The green kwami shouted, paw outstretched. When he saw only Marinette, he deflated. “Oh.” He sobbed.

“Wayz, what happened? Where is Master Fu?” Marinette asked softly.

“He...Hawkmoth found us. We transformed into Jadeturtle to hold him off, and it should have worked! Master should have been safe! But…” Wayz paused, head down. “Ladybug...Chatnoir is no more. The cat miraculous has a new wielder, a woman calling herself ‘Panther’, and she is allied with Hawkmoth.”

Ice dripped down Marinette’s spine. She couldn’t breathe. Adrien, Adrien. She had to-! 

“Marinette, stop!” Tiki gasped as she frantically fumbled for her phone. “Stop, think! If Hawkmoth has Adrien, calling him could lead Hawkmoth right to you!” 

“I need to know if he’s ok!” Marinette said at the same time Wayz exclaimed “She knows?!”

“She, they found out today. So did Hawkmoth, about Adrien. I had hoped Plag would convince Adrien to give up his miraculous once they were alone, but perhaps that was foolish. Plag has never been one for rules.” Tiki glumly floated over to rest on the miraculous box.

“Hawkmoth found out his identity and you let him keep his miraculous?” Wayz shouted, incredulous. 

“I didn’t think...I didn’t think.” Marinette whispered, a tear rolling down her cheek, before she furiously wiped it away. “No, this isn’t over yet. Hawkmoth may have the cat miraculous, but we have the rest. Good always triumphs over evil in the end. We can fix this.” She vowed, missing the worried glance the two kawmi’s gave each other.

----------------------------------------

“Penknight, please. If I drink anymore water I’m going to explode.” Marc whispered as the akuma tried to coax him into drinking another glass.

“Are you sure? The doctor said you’d be dehydrated from the medication.” Penknight fretted. “Hydration is important!”

“Where was this attitude a week ago when you drank an entire pot of coffee by yourself?” Marc wondered aloud, amused.

“That’s different. We had a deadline.” Penknight huffed.

“Yeah well, if the two of you don’t shut up and go back to sleep we’re going to have a dead akuma.” Chole growled in exasperation from her bed, pulling the covers over her head. “The sun isn’t up yet and you shouldn’t be either. Honestly.” She huffed. “Why did I agree to babysit the two of you again?” The actual babysitter, Viperion, only snored softly on Chole’s couch. The spot had been occupied by Marc until only a couple hours ago, the boy haven woken up and been unable to get back to sleep.

“Because the chance to kiss up to Ladybug was more tempting than telling us to get lost?” Penknight grumbled resting his chin on the top of Marc’s head. The chair was really only meant for one person, but they were making it work.

“I’ll sting your mouth shut if I have to!” Chole threatened, throwing off her covers. The fact that she had been forced to sleep in her clothes due to her company had only further soured her mood. 

“Please don’t sting him, Chole.” Marc sighed, and hugged the arms around his middle. “Penknight, please stop antagonizing Chole. She was nice enough to let us stay here when she didn’t have to.”

“Listen to your boyfriend, Kurtzberg. He’s obviously the one with all the brains in the relationship. Though I have to wonder if you’re killing them with your ugly face. Honey,” She said to Marc “You do know you are WAY out of his league right?”

“I’m just really lucky.” Penknight sighed into his hair. Marc could feel his face heating up. He didn’t agree with Chloe, if anything Nathaniel was the one who was out of HIS league. He was still coming to terms with the fact that the other boy apparently liked him back. Assuming his feelings were real and not some weird side effect of his akumatization.

The black haired boy was broken out of his thoughts by a knocking on the glass doors that lead to Chole’s balcony. Standing there in the beginning dawn was Ladybug, decked out like she had robbed a jewelry store. Floating around her were many different little...animals? Huh. That medication must be stronger than Marc thought.

“Ladybug!” Chole squealed, rushing over to let the heroine in. Viperion blinked as he sat up on the couch, startled awake by the sudden noise. 

“I’m glad to see everything is still ok here at least.” Ladybug sighed as she came inside and closed the door behind her.

“Has something happened Ladybug? Why are you wearing so many Miraculous?” Viperion asked in concern, approaching her. Ladybug looked grim.

“I don’t know when it happened, but Hawkmoth has Chatnoir’s Miraculous, and it gets worse.”

“Worse? How could it possibly get worse than that?” Chole gasped.

“Ladybug is the master now because the previous master had to use the emergency ritual to get us away from Hawkmoth!” One of the little animal spirits, which looked like a mouse, squeaked. 

“Those are kwami.” Penknight, breathed into his ear, noticing his confusion. “They have something to do with how the miraculous work. Chole has one too, though Pollen has been mostly keeping to himself.” Now that the akuma mentioned it, he did see a bee like creature next to Chole. Marc wasn’t sure how he missed it before. Must have been Chole’s natural demand for attention that had diverted his.

“Mullo! Let Ladybug tell the story!” One of the other kwami scolded. It kinda looked like a horse. The mouse creature peeped out a quick ‘sorry!’ and darted behind the ox one.

“That’s actually the gist of it. The ritual removes the previous guardian's memories, so he should be safe from Hawkmoth trying to get information out of him, but in the meantime we need to come up with a counter offensive to rescue Chatnoir.”

“Um, I actually don’t care about that.” Penknight commented, raising his hand.

“ ‘Knight!” Marc exclaimed, wiggling out of his lap. 

“What? I’m an akuma. I don’t care what happens to the miraculous.” The akuma pointed out, hands ready to catch Marc if he fell. Marc wanted to roll his eyes. His leg was broken, he wasn’t an invalid! Still, the concern was sweet.

“You do care what happens to Marc though, right? Volpina is still at large and certainly helping Hawkmoth. If he wins, she won't rest until she’s gotten her revenge on Marc for what you and Prism did to her. Helping us defeat him will keep Marc safe.” Ladybug reasoned.

“Well…” The akuma hesitated.

“Chole! Oh my god, Chole! Turn on the news!” Sabrina, who had gone home when her curfew was up last night, burst into the room in a panic.

“Sabrina! Can’t you tell Ladybug is talking? Don’t interrupt!” Chole scolded. Sabrina for once didn’t listen to her. Instead she flew to the large tv, fumbling with the remote. 

“-The victims are still being identified, but we have reports that Jagged Stone and our own Nadia Chamak are among them.” Marc recognized the reporter as one who usually did late night reports. What was he doing on the early morning news? The man was pale and clutching his notes so hard it looked like he was going to rip them. He also looked like he was going to be sick.

“The images we are about to show you have been censored, but are still very graphic. Viewer discretion is advised.” The screen cut to many images of people, of corpses hanging from buildings and street lamps around Paris. Near each victim were the same words over and over again; ‘Ladybug did this’.

Ladybug herself screamed and fell to her knees, her wailing almost drowned out by the cries of the various Kwami as the final image was shown. This one contained two corpses, one that was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and...Chatnoir. Viperion wrapped his arms around Ladybug, hiding her face in his chest as she sobbed. Chole and Sabrina clung to each other, shaken. Marc felt Penknight support him as his legs gave out beneath him. Written next to the two figures were simply the words;

“You’re next.”

[sage-the-mage]

Okay so I've recently gotten into Heathers

My friend has the movie and we watched it about a week ago, and holy hell I love it. "Fuck me gently with a chainsaw" is like, new favorite phrase. And it had a really meaningful story, which I really wasn't expecting given it was a black comedy.

Veronica and JD, while certainly not a healthy relationship, have very obvious chemistry. I like imagining alternate lives for them, where they never killed anyone and he didn't become manipulative and possessive. And as it is canonically, it's a realistic relationship that happens all the time, though not necessarily with the murder and dramatic "I'm blowing myself up cause you didn't let me blow up the school" "lol bye" moment.

And Heather Chandler OH GOD I want her confidence. Like, confidence goals right there. Seriously. She's a total bitch but also I love this mythic bitch. Heather Duke seemed all sweet and soft spoken at first, but then after Heather C dies she takes the head bitch role, so I've got mixed feelings about her. Not bad though. And Heather McNamara, while far from perfect, felt like the most redeemable of the Heathers, and I really hope she and Veronica and Martha and Betty all became friends after.

And then I find out there's a musical! While the exact story and play out aren't exactly the same, and they amalgamed Betty and Martha into one role, it's still really good. They showed Ronnie's rise into the Heathers, their colors are even more obvious, and those songs are fuckin' bangers. Candy Store and Dead Girl Walking, just yes. I love it.

And then I find out they are (were?) making a Heathers tv show (dubbed "Peathers" since it's Heathers made by Paramount.) Now, my first thought is fuck yes, a modern Heathers and a tv show instead of a movie, sign me the fuck up. I'll take more of these color coded bitches. NO THE FUCK I WON'T. GET IT AWAYYYY. They were trying to make it diverse and inclusive and just. Not the fucking Heathers of all people. They're supposed to be stereotypically pretty popular types, not look like the ones Westborough would bully. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with how they look as characters but. For who they're supposed to be, it's all wrong. Heather C is supposed to be a skinny blonde bitch that lords over everyone. If you want diversity among the Heathers themselves, she's the last place to put it. Plus, an entire plot point is Heather D is bulimic, trying to live up to Heather C's levels of perfection (and in the movie at least gives it up after she dies) so seeing any of the Heathers, or Veronica seeing as she's let into the clique, as overweight feels wrong.

Now, if we're wanting diversity and inclusiveness within the Heathers, Heather Duke could be made a different race, which she has in the musical version, without impacting the story or making it entirely off feeling. And Heather McNamara could be a lesbian (for real, not faking it like in the show *bleh*) or bi or pan, but closeted to keep from being ridiculed, and after Heather C's death and Heather D takes charge, Heather M could be outed and made fun of by Heather D, thus leading to her attempted suicide. And that's just a quick throw together idea.

Now for Veronica, she's sure as shit not blonde. She's never been a blonde, don't try and give me fucking blonde Veronica. Give me brunette Veronica as she should be. Appearance wise, that's about my only condition. And honestly I'd be all for lesbian Ronnie with a female JD, or a bi or pan Ronnie with a trans boy JD. Side note, that would be a great opening for Ronnie and Heather M (nicest of the Heathers tbh, and seems to have the potential to be closest to Ronnie. I like the idea of them together) to wind up beginning a relationship in the end, or at least obvious crushes on one another and implied future relationship.

And then with Martha and Betty you can have so many different options. Like, they could be adorable little diverse munchkins, but no, one's nixed completely (because we can't have overweight Heather C making fun of a "plainer" overweight person) and the other is made the Heather C replacement bitch?? What???

Just. No. They could've done so great, and instead we're given complete crap. I'm sorry I've just got so much feels for this. Go back to your regularly scheduled blogging now lol