#Which mean that Fu will exist in a new form

[stoopidassjamesfranco]

It's so obvious that Glorio and Arinsu are Mira and Towa's retconned new version

[asarigg]

Character Design: Part 7

KOTODAMA

Speaking of Aoba’s powers, it was traditionally believed that words had power, and precisely in Koujaku’s route, which is the one with the traditional japanese theme, it’s not just about what Aoba says, the step to choose the bad or good ending is precisely to form a word.

The word for “speech” (koto) and the word for “soul” (tama) are combined. Words can magically affect objects, and the ritual chanting of words can affect the individual and the environment. For example, if you call someone’s name, the sound will have an impact on them, regardless of whether they can hear you or not. Spells and incantations to shinto gods were believed to possess divine power. Not only people, but also animals and objects have souls, so it’s not strange that this is also the case for words. At first it seems like they were just spells and incantations, but over time other words took magical power as well.

Words are also used to make talismans, and writing itself became an art. I wouldn't be surprised if the connection between the spiritual realm and hair could have something to do with their phonetic similarity. Both “god” and “hair” are kami, although I think with a slightly different pronunciation, so it is just another reason to believe that Aoba’s hair has a heavy religious, sacred and magical meaning for Koujaku.

FLOWERS

Now let's talk about the flowers that appear in their illustrations. Cherry blossoms bloom in early spring when the school year starts, new careers too. It might even be an inspiration to look for a new job or even getting married, everything starts with cherry trees, for about two weeks it is a strong representative of spiritual beauty and new beginnings.

Rebirth, renewal, optimism to start something beautiful. Its short life span makes us reflect on the brevity of life, to comprehend the value of life and enjoy every second of it. This flower was also seen as the symbol of the samurai, both were considered to have a short life, and the cherry petals represented the drops of blood spilled in their battles. It is the soul of the samurai, and their souls live in the cherry tree.

We see it being used constantly in their illustrations, they even used it as decoration for the promotional images of their figure.

Obviously it is one of the most important flowers, if not the most, because besides the peonies in Koujaku's tattoo, it is perhaps the one with the most significant weight. The first time we see the cherry blossom is in the CGs at the beginning and end of Re:connect. Let's remember that at the beginning is when Koujaku finally cuts his hair.

Not only the flowers, but also the haircut symbolizes the beginning of a new era, for each of them individually, and for both of them as a couple. Cutting Aoba's hair isn't just a simple "I want to be the one to cut your hair" because he wants to be special. It's more of a "I want us to write a new page in life together." They've been through so much and now they can finally see life with different eyes, especially Koujaku, who had a strongly tunneled vision.

Aoba is trusting him with something that has hurt him so much before and that he's been bullied for, which is also the reason they met, because Aoba’s hair was being pulled. Not only that, at this point they say the pain has numbed, but not gone away completely, so Aoba still feels a bit uncomfortable. And now he’s cutting the very reason why they met, and taking the utmost care not to hurt him.

He can finally hope for something more out of life than just stay there, staring from the distance, he can have some hope that his existence will be something else beyond being a broken puppet. And this is reflected in the Drama CD, when he tells Aoba that he wants to open his own shop. He is settling down, he is having plans for the future, for himself, and for Aoba, he is growing as a person and breaking free from his way of living, so irresponsible with his own well-being, irresponsible with his future. He didn't even see a future for himself before.

I also want to point out that the cherry tree doesn't appear at first. It's true that the illustration where he's cutting his hair should theoretically have happened before. I don't know exactly but I imagine it's just a promotional illustration that they've also included in the game, because the style of the render is different. That's why I believe it's good to think that it's an addition from later and that's why it doesn't appear in the CG. The cherry blossoms appear as a tree regardless, so it’s still there.

The thing is that this bonsai, of this particular flower, appears after cutting Aoba's hair, so it seems like an addition to the house after starting this new stage together, as a sign that the time Aoba spends with him is having an effect, an influence. Now there's not just one person living in that flat, but two, Aoba has practically moved in with Koujaku at this point.

The next flowers I want to talk about are the ones that appear on Aoba's clothes.

I don't know exactly what the round ones are supposed to be, but I've assumed they're daisies or gerberas. They are said to represent the love hidden in the heart, innocence, happiness and true affection. “I feel the same”. The simple beauty of a happy life.

As you can imagine, it's quite representative of his feelings for Koujaku. Similar to his friend, what Aoba felt for him wasn't just friendship since long before the events of the game. They had such a close friendship, for so long, trusting each other with everything (uh) that those feelings had slipped by. Aoba takes longer to realize it, but the way he talks about Koujaku, his reactions, how he describes his hands, it's not neutral at all. These are subtleties that for some may not mean anything, but he doesn’t talk like that easily. I have no doubt that they would have done much more than that if it weren't for the fact that it would be too obvious in the middle of the common route and there are more characters with a dedicated route.

Also next to the daisies there’s bush clover, with the same significance of hidden feelings as with Koujaku. Koujaku in this illustration also has the motifs of white hibiscus and blue leaves, but there is no bush clover. Once they confess their feelings, Koujaku no longer has anything to hide, and he isn’t embarrassed of being in a queer relationship. We will talk more about these two topics later.

The hanging flower is a wisteria. They are beautiful iconic flowers that symbolize youth, perseverance, sensuality, and long-lasting romance. “Drunk with love”, “Never leave”. Its length has made it associated with longevity, and it can be given to a married couple, for example, as a wish for a long-lasting marriage. In general the color purple is associated with spirituality, the white color of these flowers might also be related to nostalgic memories. Wisterias are sometimes seen as a symbol of longing, clinging, and loyalty, as their branches wrap tightly around themselves and other plants or structures like vines. Aoba has issues with abandonment and jealousy, and we see this expressed on several occasions, even though he is embarrassed by it. He has a heavy attachment to Koujaku, which we will also talk about more later.

This is the Kabuki play "Fuji Musume"

In short, Aoba's love for Koujaku is pure, long-lasting, and it’s been deep in his heart for years. He loves him devotedly, yes, just as I've always described Koujaku's obsession with him. I get the feeling that a lot of people aren't aware or don’t see that Aoba has the same level of infatuation as Koujaku, because it's the latter who usually makes the first move, and he's the one who says out loud that he's been in love for years. Since their story is so based on duality and mirroring each other, on how much Aoba and Koujaku are alike despite being so different, it’s easy to assume that one's feelings aren’t any less deep than the other and is pretty much deliberate.

[osakanone]

Exotic doctrine theory: Grappling & Booster-fu

Source of the song is "If you Dare", anime is Orguss 02 episode 1

When all conventional means of machine combat are forclosed, only unconventional means remain: This is what seperates the aces from the jobbers, bitches: the capacity to improvise.

A fighter pilot will jam the WEZ, that's weapon engagement zone: the minimum arming range of a missile before it will hurt both the enemy and yourself -- but what about mech pilots?

You get up in their BAZ; the Ballistic Attack Zone, with the tip of the barrel behind you. How do you stay safe up close like this?

You ever seen any soft-bodied octopus or starfish get into a crab?

They have hard bodies and are all soft underneath, like a mech. They're not impervious.

Why? Any hard body is made of levers:

Drive any joint to its limit and you have an instant fulcrum to rip at the inner structures and shatter the outer form.

But then what?

No blades? No pile bunkers? No problem.

Ground talons. Rollers. Grappling hooks. Joints.

The sheer fucking mass and density of your armour plating.

Your whole body is a weapon.

Some of you make 3:1 against your mass with your boosters.

That's a lot of energy and if it has nowhere to go very bad things happen.

Some of you can do this with neural implants but you've got biofeedback out of the wazoo to contend with, which is why so many of you go twinkly eyed with overload daze out when you lock up with an opponent.

The smart among you are already running a specialist grips and inceptors in your cockpits, so you can dip out of the feedback when you need to and you're TAZ compliant: that's TORSION, ASPECT and ZONE controller, so named for the work of a Dr Senerchia, a fighter who deserved better than they got, and a treasure to us all.

So what does that mean to you?

A mixture of special software, and a pair of extra thumbsticks for your index fingers on your grips above the triggers.

Those of you familiar with loaders or cargo-work will find it familiar.

The rest of you: they're there to override and guide cueing information based entirely on brutal trial and error that'll make the size or weight of your frame irrelevant in CQB.

You can't rely on fixed solvers and playback to do the work for you with some existing motion-plan: You need to invent a new one on the fly using all of your fine control inputs.

So how is this relevant to you?

A Class A heavy support is fucked against a Class F attacker surely with the height difference and loadout, right? That's fifty tons of mass and nine meters of stature apart.

But watch an A slam its talons into the dirt, wrap the F with its wire anchors, and then perform a boost suplex, knock its barrels under the deflection plating of the other guy and follow-up up with a full sabot alpha-strike at point blank.

Any trainer worth their salt will teach you this shit.

You should know how to grapple with your sisters, and to practice regularly in and out of the cockpit. You need to get familiar with how bodies roll across eachother in motion.

You get lucky and you'll get some special training with oxytocin boosting mucus membrane massage and carotid restraint to simulate g-loc until you see stars to keep it memorable.

Have fun out there.

Class dismissed.

[yaut-jaknowit]

A lil request

(Male reader or gn) where the reader was so shock back on earth that they took martial arts like almost everything like they tried every single one they could like do karate, judo, kung fu, kendū, Taekwondo etc etc and also (Ty lee from avator the last air bender) like they aren’t originally from the actual planet earth but from the world of avator the last air bender after finding out where they aren’t where bending doesn’t exist but learning martial arts despite being a earth bender (also knowing how to bend all types of metal and rock) but (any male yautja of ur choice) saw the reader out in the forest/woods doing earth bending watching the reader afar intrigued how the reader is bending the ground to its will. After watching a bit they decided to approach the reader only to be body slammed to the ground taking the challenge only to loose since the reader knowledge of martial arts the yautja decided to take the reader with him to the mother ship where many yautja was disgusted of the reader but a few wanted to challenge but had been quickly pinned to the ground in seconds till one manage to be pinned down but only to be paralyzed stumbling to the ground where the reader just chuckled where the male yautja was shock at the reader strength and knowledge of the martial arts they asked what kind of fighting style was that so the reader provided the info that they took martial arts. After many defeats of yautja falling to the reader the male yautja decided it was time to make reader a hunter so he did since they are on a metal ship the reader couldn’t really earth bend after a bit of learning the metal they decided to try something new getting scraps of metal and boom metal bending shocking the yautja who which asked a million questions. Boom they are mates

From Another Universe

Pairing: Yautja x (Bender) Reader

Word Count: 2001

Summary: This isn't where you're from. This isn't where you slept last night... You're not home.

Author Note: So... A lot of things have happened. I had to take an abrupt break from writing. I didn't mean for it to on for a month, but unfortune things happen. Thank you for all the love and support I still received even though I wasn't posting. I'm going to try and get back to writing. I have a few things pre written, I just have to post them of course.

P.s. As for this, I tried my best. I do love the Avatar series but this was a lot to write for. So I took a piece of it and went from there. I feel if someone wants a lot of writing, I might put a price on it. But IDK, I like keeping myself free for those who don't have the money to spend.

Masterlist

Ao3

Natural instinct. Skill. Passion. Those three drove you. They made up every fiber of your being, every molecule. It flowed through your veins. Power rushed into your hands and feet, sending itself into the ground.

The earth underneath your form trembled as you moved in strong, firm, quick movements. Energy passed into the dirt and drew up columns of stone. One hand slashed the air before you. The dirt bended to your moves, willingly. Your lips curled up.

Trees, not large nor miniature, surrounded you and the small meadow. An area you woke up in not long ago. In a world that wasn’t your own. Completely different. Your whole world was flipped tenfold on its head and left you reeling where you had ended up. When you had ended up in. This wasn’t your world of bending, where some are blessed with the ability to will an element to their will.

Machines. Many, many machines populated massive cities. Cities with tall, towering buildings that seemed impossible to build. Not with how these ‘people’ moved. No one seemed to have the ability to bend. No one would bend.

Afraid was the first thing to enter your rushing blood. Those people barely gave you a glance as you retreated to the forest. Not stopping until the earth felt cleansed and calm. Back to the same place you bend currently. It was all you knew, all you could keep sane with. It’s what soothed you in the world that wasn’t your own.

Far from the city that haunted you, you took roost deep in the forest. Former training as a young bender stuck to you like sap. It aided you into surviving by yourself with no one else. No one else to talk to. No one you could trust. Terrified because of the unknown.

Something in the air disturbed him. The ground was filled with electricity. It called to his hunter side to follow it. And that he did. His blood rushed with adrenaline, fire that pooled deep in thickly corded muscles. Muscles that have long been sculpted from hard work and tremendous days of straight hunting. A male, perfect in shape and skills.

Feet, quiet without doubt, stalked through the forest he travels in. Not a sound broke the calmness of a morning forest. The talons on his feet bit into the ground at each step and further pushed his thick body forward. Quick and lethal, the words to describe a hunter of his kind. He never faltered as he continued on, to whatever called to his curious nature.

A nature that his sire tried to kill as a youngling. It never left his bones or blood. No matter how much of the fluid he as lost. Or the number of bones were broken during his training.

Ooman. It filled his sense of smell full and heady. This far out? The question rolled around in his elongated head. He’s never smelled even faint, roaming scents of the oomans this far out. The invisible creature’s ship was out here, close by. He couldn’t have a ooman finding it. An action that could condemn him to either death or exclusion.

It grew thicker with the familiar knowledge of sweat. At the edge of his hearing, grunting and heavy breathing. What was a ooman doing miles away from their city ‘working out’? His mandibles twitched behind his biomask in thought as he jumped over a fallen log. The pine needles tried their hardest to pierce the thick skin on the bottom of his feet. This is a hunter we’re talking about. He continued.

Once his form became close to the ooman, he slowed to a strut. His hips swayed. Trinkets, skulls and bones, and weapons followed the same movement and slapped against his thighs.

Through the tree line, his dark eyes spotted a form dancing in a grassy meadow. Compared to him, he considered them small and meek. The muscles that lined its body caught his attention. Strong, screamed at him. Well built and moved with knowledge. His upper mandibles curled dangerously up. This was what he’s been looking for since he begun his hunt here on this backwater planet.

From experience and rumors, to find a ooman worthy to kill was rare. It grew harder to find as the years passed. This would be his first one that he’ll take and possible gift to a female with the up coming mating season. He sent a prayer to Paya as he watched this ooman move with grace but a firm hand. It intrigued him.

His body moved closer, boarding on the meadow’s edge. Yet, he kept to the shadows as he observed. One of the ways he could determine how to hunt this ooman with honor. The hunter forced his mandibles to stay tense behind his biomask. Or else he would give his position away to the prey.

The ooman moved. The ground before it rolled like a water’s wave away from it. He could only stand and stare in shock, memorized as the alien did that again in a different direction. One shift of its bare feet had stones protruding from the earth as its will. It commanded the ground like an army.

Never in his life has he ever seen something like this. From all of his research, a ooman has never been said to be able to do things like that.

Swift, striking moves as if it was attacking an enemy send shockwaves out, disturbing the earth. The grounds around returned to their original position afterwards, like nothing had been out of place.

A hard, strong, harsh force crashed into his backside. The hunter was sent forward, far too quick to correct himself. He was sprawled face first into the dirt that once was underneath his feet. In two seconds, the ground was once more touching his paws. One glance of the alien before is all he had before thick, sturdy columns of rock grasped as his frame. His muscles bulge and strained without getting him free from the trap he was placed in.

Burning, blazing eyes that matched your personality stepped up to the invisible force stuck in your earthly hold. Through the earth, you were able to sense the proximity of something your eyes could not see. Something heavy with muscles like your own. You felt through your ability metal that decorated this thing that found safety in its amazing camouflage. Armor covered its body.

Everything stilled between the two of you. Just the heavy breaths of you filled the air. Your hand came up to swipe at the sweat dripping down your face. The clicking of bone on metal sounded a second afterwards. It was alive. You stepped closer, far closer than you should’ve been smarter about. “Show yourself, attacker,” you spat, defensively.

There was no clue to who or what this hidden animal could be. All that you could tell with feel alone was its mass has heavy, heavier than someone of its statue. You kept your muscles taunt and tried to stare the creature down without truly seeing its form.

A shimmer rolled over the creature before you, like shifting scales. Then, the camouflage fell to reveal something you truly couldn’t comprehend at that moment. You jumped back and drew a defensive position. The energy in your drew up to the soles of your feet and hands, eyes watching closely at this… creature.

It wore a mask that hid its face from the world. A mask that was blank of emotion yet decorated to form a dangerous look to it. Thick, rubbery looking ropes cascaded from its strangely formed head. They rolled over dense, wide shoulders. It struggled in the earth’s hold once more with little success for freedom. The ropes swayed with the movement.

The metal you sensed from before hugged its mighty form tightly, perfect for protecting itself from weapons. It won’t do much for it from you. What caught your attention was closely crossed fabric, like a fishing net weaved around the skin you could see. Skin that wasn’t any shade of human. Skin that was green and scaled behind the net. Was this a trick on the eyes or was this what you were truly seeing?

You stayed a safe distance away, eyes stuck on… it. “What are you?” you snapped and curled yours fingers into a fist. “Who are you?” It puzzled you on what this thing was.

First you get tossed to some far off place that was completely different to your own world. Second, nothing is the same. No one seemed to be bending, not even a single drop of a try. Third, this creature comes from nowhere, dressed ready for a fight. Did it expect to fight you? Was that why it was stalking in the shadows before you attacked?

All the unknowns had a headache arising to the occasion. The only thing you wanted nothing more in that moment was to be back home with your family.

It only stared at you, shoulders barely lifting with each breath. Not a noise escaped its tensed form. It didn’t speak, it didn’t answer your questions. To be fully honest, the gaze you felt through its mask felt predatory. This thing was a predator. What ever it was. You were the next hunt.

With the silence of the forest surrounding, you once more, you took a seat before the creature. Barely noticeable, the head of it jerked back, trinkets around its head and neck clinking lightly with each other. Yet, you sat, legs crossed over each other and just observed. Your eyes looked at every detail of its body, trying to figure it out. Curiosity sung in your veins, but you knew not to get too close.

This happened all day, until night fell over the two of you. At that point, your bladdered screamed for relief. Also, the lack of light didn’t aid you. Finally, you stood up, legs a bit sore from the activities today. It’s never ending gaze kept locked onto your body. One last look at it, you strolled away.

Through the earth and out of sight, you felt the beast struggle with all of its might. You smirked at the fact you were able to keep such a muscular creature captured. Years of training have paid off well.

Far from the creature, you relieved yourself before searching for wood. Anything big enough to burn for a few hours. It gets could out here. All you had was what was on your body for warmth. You weren’t prepared to be sent to a different world.

Out here, alone, you were able to go over every detail of the creature you gather without it’s eyes on you. What was it? A demon? A swamp monster? The fact it could camouflage into thin air was stunning. It shocked you that anything could do that at its will. You’ve never heard of anything being able to do that in your whole life. Another detail was its claws. Sharp, fatal. They looked like they could tear the meat right off of your bones. The last thing was it’s mask. What was behind it? Why did it wear such a thing? You shook your head before turning back towards the camp sight.

As you strolled into the meadow, you felt nothing. You stopped point blank and gasped at the empty trap. The wood in hand was dropped mindlessly onto the ground. Your feet rushed over to where it was last seen. The rock was broken, snapped by sheer strength.

Immediately, your eyes were searching the surrounding meadow. Not for tracks, but for the creature. It was a predator. A hunter that looked to have you in its sight. You weren’t going to let it get to you so easily. You tried to sense through the ground if it was nearby.

Nothing. Or if it was able to figure out your little trick, it could be in the trees. This world just got interesting.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A "secure" system can be the most dangerous of all

Two decades ago, my life changed forever: hearing Bruce Schneier explain that “security” doesn’t exist in the abstract. You can only be secure from some threat. A fire alarm won’t protect you from burglaries. A condom won’t protect you from mass shootings. It seems obvious, but how often do we hear about “security” without any mention of who is being made secure, and from which threat?

Take the US welfare system. It is very “secure” in that it is hedged in by a thicket of red-tape, audits, inspections and onerous procedures. To get food stamps, housing vouchers, or cash aid, you must navigate a Soviet-grade bureaucratic system of Kafkaesque proportions. Indeed, one of the great ironies of the post-Cold War world is that the USA has become a “Utopia Of Rules” (as David Graeber put it), subjecting everyday people to the state-run bureacracies that the USAUSAUSA set endlessly ridiculed the USSR for:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/

(The right says it wants to “shrink the US government until fits in a bathtub — and then drown it” — but not the whole government. They want unlimited government bloat for that part of the state that is dedicated to tormenting benefits claimants, especially if its functions are managed by a Beltway Bandit profiteer who bills Uncle Sucker up the wazoo for rubber-stamping “DENIED” on every claim.)

The US benefits system has a sophisticated, expensive, fully staffed anti-fraud system — but it’s a highly selective form of anti-fraud. The system is oriented solely to prevent fraud against itself, with no thought to protecting benefits recipients themselves from fraud.

And those recipients — by definition the poorest and most vulnerable among us — are easy pickings for continuous, ghastly, eye-watering acts of fraud. These benefits are distributed via prepaid debit cards — EBT Cards — that lack the basic security measures that every other kind of card has had for years. These are simple magstripe cards, lacking basic chip-and-pin defenses, to say nothing of contactless countermeasures.

That means that fraudsters can — and do — install skimmers in the point-of-sale terminals used by benefits recipients to withdraw their cash benefits, pay for food using SNAP (AKA Food Stamps), and receive other benefits.

It’s impossible to overstate how widespread these skimmers are, and how much money criminals make by stealing from poor people. Writing for Businessweek, Jessica Fu describes the mad scramble benefits recipients go through every month, standing by ATMs at midnight on the night of the first of every month in hopes of withdrawing the cash they use to pay for their rent and utility bills before it is stolen by a crook who captured their card number with a skimmer:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-06-28/ebt-theft-takes-millions-of-dollars-from-the-neediest-americans

One of Fu’s sources, Lexisnexis Risk Solutions’s Haywood Talcove, describes these EBT cards as having the security of a “glorified hotel room key.” He recounts how US police departments saw a massive explosion in EBT skimming: from 300 complaints in January 2022 to 18,000 in January 2023.

The skimmer rings are extremely well organized. The people who install the skimmers — working in pairs, with one person to distract the cashier while the other quickly installs the skimmer — don’t know who they work for. Neither do the people who use cards cloned from skimmer data to cash out benefits recipients’ accounts. When they are arrested, they refuse to turn on their immediate recruiters, fearing reprisals against their families.

These low-level crooks stroll up to ATMs and feed a succession of cloned cards into them, emptying account after account. Or they swipe cards at grocery checkouts, buying cases of Red Bull and other easily sold grocery products with some victim’s entire SNAP balance.

Some police agencies are pursuing these criminal gangs and trying figure out who’s running them, but the authorities who issue SNAP cards are doing little to nothing to stop the pipeline at their end. Simply upgrading SNAP terminals to chip-and-pin would exponentially raise the cost and complexity that thieves incur.

Indeed, that’s why every other kind of payment card uses these systems. How is it that these systems were upgraded, while SNAP cards remain in mired in 20th century “glorified hotel room key” territory? Well, as our friends on the right never cease to remind us: “incentives matter.”

When your credit card gets cloned, it’s your banks and credit card company that pays for the losses, not you. So the banks demanded (and funded) the upgrade to new anti-fraud measures. By contrast, most states have no system for refunding stolen benefits to skimmers’ victims.

In other words, all of the anti-fraud in the benefits system is devoted to catching benefits cheating — a phenomenon that is so rare as to be almost nonexistent (1.54%), notwithstanding right wingers’ fevered, Reagan-era folktales about “welfare queens”:

https://blog.gitnux.com/food-stamp-fraud-statistics/

Meanwhile, the most widespread and costly form of fraud in the benefits system — fraud perpetrated against benefits recipients — is blithely ignored.

Really, it’s worse than that. In deciding to protect the welfare system rather than welfare recipients, we’ve made it vastly harder for benefits claimants who’ve been victimized by fraudsters to remain fed and sheltered. After all, if we made it simple and straightforward for benefits recipients to re-claim money that was stolen from them, we’d make it that much easier to defraud the system.

“Security” is always and forever a matter of securing some specific thing, against some specific risk. In other words, security reflects values — it reveals whose risk matters, and whose doesn’t. For the American benefits system, risks to the system matter. Risks to people don’t.

It’s not just the welfare system that prioritizes its own risks against the people it exists to serve. Think of the systems used to fight drug abuse in clinical settings.

Medical facilities that use or dispense powerful pain-killers have exquisitely tuned, sophisticated, frequently audited security systems to prevent patients from tricking their doctors or pharmacists into administering extra drugs (especially opioids). “Extra” in this case means “more drugs than are strictly necessary to manage pain.”

The rationale for this is only incidentally medical. Someone who gets a little too much painkiller during a medical procedure or an acute pain episode is not at any particular risk of enduring harm — the risks are minor and easily managed (say, by keeping a patient in bed a little longer while they recover from sedation).

The real agenda here is preventing addiction and abuse by addicted people. There’s a genuine problem with opioid abuse, and that problem does have its origins in overprescription. But — crucially — that overprescription wasn’t the result of wimpy patients insisting on endless painkillers until they enslaved themselves to their pills.

Rather, the opioid epidemic has its origins in the billionaire Sackler crime family, whose Purdue Pharma used scientific fraud, cash incentives, and other deceptive practices to trick, coerce, or bribe doctors into systematically overprescribing their Oxycontin cash cow, even as they laundered their reputation with showy charitable donations:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/12/monopolist-solidarity/#sacklers-billions

The Sacklers got to keep their billions — and people undergoing painful medical procedures or living with chronic pain are left holding the bag, subject to tight pain-med controls that forces them to prove — through increasingly stringent systems — that they truly deserve their medicine.

In other words, the beneficiary of the opioid control system is the system itself — not the patients who need opioids.

There’s an extremely disturbing — even nightmarish — example of this in the news: the Yale Fertility Clinic, where hundreds of women endured unimaginably painful egg harvesting procedures with no anaesthesia at all.

These women had complained for years about the pain they suffered, and many had ended up needing emergency care after the fact because of traumatic injuries caused by undergoing the procedure without pain control. But the doctors and nurses at the Yale clinic ignored their screams of pain and their post-operative complaints.

It turned out that an opioid-addicted nurse had been swapping the fentanyl in the drug cabinet for saline, and taking the fentanyl home for her own use.

This made national headlines at the time, and it is the subject of “The Retrievals,” a new New York Times documentary series podcast:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/podcasts/serial-the-retrievals-yale-fertility-clinic.html

If the pain medication management system was designed to manage pain, then these thefts would have been discovered early on. If the system was designed so that anyone who experienced pain was treated until the pain was under control, the deception would have been uncovered almost immediately.

As Stafford Beer said, “the purpose of any system is what it does.” The pain medication management system was designed to manage pain medication, not pain itself.

The system was designed to be secure from opioid-seeking addicted patients. It was not designed to make patients secure from pain. Its values — our values, as a society — were revealed through its workings.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/13/whose-security/#for-me-not-thee

[Image ID: A down-the-barrel view of a massive, battleship-gray artillery piece protruding from the brick battlement of a fortress. From the black depths of the barrel shines a red neon 'EBT' sign.]

Image: Bjarne Henning Kvaale (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oscarsborg_28cm_Krupp_cannon_4_-_panoramio.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[gale-gentlepenguin]

In your opinion, what are the top three peaks of worst narrative choice in Miraculous?

An interesting question, because with Narrative choices, its not so much one episode its the impact it has throughout the series.

But because I dont want to solely be Negative. I will also pick 3 POSITIVE narrative peaks as well. (I am only talking about what has aired so far. there could be choices later on I dont like or enjoy more than before. But we will see)

3rd worst

Su Han and the Order of Guardians

me too luka, me too.

Honestly the whole thing with Feast. which i thought would make this list, but nope. Because of Su han, I think Feast did the world a f***ing favor

Su Han is still my least favorite character. He is a stick in the mud that comes to yell and does nothing. The fact that he shows up in season 4 and doesnt even help Marinette with Guardian stuff is bulls***. He should be helping by teaching Mirakungfu, or anything!

Really, he only exists to show that Fu really made the best out of a s*** situation. When the order was beaten by a 4 FOOT TALL BLUE DOG, Having met Su Han, I understand why now.

3rd Best

Marinette telling Alya she's Ladybug

So this one is something many people are on the fence about. If you like this choice, you like or tolerate Alya. If you dont, you hate alya.

I for one Love Alya and Marinette who was sinking in her new responsibility gains a confidant that wants to help and do whats best for her. (she is like 80/20 on that but still, its the thought that counts)

Alya does help flesh out somethings and helps Marinette grow as a guardian and is probably the reason Chat noir didnt f***ing ditch earlier than kuro neko.

Alya even showed to be a somewhat competent ladybug replacement. But thats out the window with the recent episodes. I still think this is one of the best choices made in season 4

2nd Worst

Sentimonsters are Sentient

The show is weird with Sentimonsters. Now I dont know if Sentiadrien is 100% confirmed. But its gross how some sentimonsters are given more respect than others. It is like "Oh only the Human looking ones are sentient" Sentinino, Sentialec, Sentigabriel, sentibubbler all got controlled like puppets with no agency and no one gave a f***.

They should just be emotion's given form and nothing more. Because basically the peacock miraculous creates slaves. And its kind of f***ed up. Id put this at number one, but its still sort of being explored and if the show finds a way to give the sentimonsters full control or a means of not getting erased on a whim, I can over look it. But yea, its pretty bad.

2nd Best

Gabriel Getting all the other Miraculous

I have wanted this since SEASON 2!

The problem with season 3 and 4 was the fact that Ladybug and Chat noir had access to so many powers, heroes and abilities that basically Hawkmoth/Shadowmoth were not even a threat anymore. That they could have taken him down at anytime if they were more active. Like no cap, why didnt Marinette give herself the snake AND horse when she went for Shadowmoth in Sentibubbler. Or the horse and Bee? Stun his butt and WIN.

With Gabriel having the miraculous, the tables and stakes are now high again. Ladybug and Chat noir are up against the wall. Thats where the tension needs to be if you want things to develop.

The Worst

Miracle Queen (The last 10 minutes)

So this may seem like cheating but this episode really did a LOT and had a massive impact on the show. Lets have a check list.

It had Fu wipe his memories (something that apparently he could do but was never mentioned)

Chloé's growth and development is completely tossed out that she ends up exactly how she was in season 1 (and eventually worse)

The love rivals start dating the heroes because Marinette read Fu's letter which just told her "Life sucks and you gotta settle"

So basically it pulled a Deus ex machina out of its butt, destroyed the potential of a redemption arc and then make no means of seeing a struggle just poof, like it didnt even happen. And then the love rivals that had hardly any screen time (maybe like 2 episodes total with the heroes) are just dating.

The last one may have gotten axed but the first two are ever present and its horse crap.

The Best

Chat Blanc

So this is gonna need some explaining. While I am not crazy about the time travel, and I am not crazy about all the things in the episode, or even how some of the trauma is handled. Chat Blanc is an excellent choice to show the viewer how things can go wrong.

Its not the scenario where Hawkmoth wins, its not the heroes winning. Its EVERYONE LOSES.

This episode took Season 3 to the darkest its been. I would have loved if it was several episodes. I would have loved if this was explored more. But the fact that the group took a concept fans have thought about and brought it to such an NTH degree

I 100% can say with certainty before this episode no one wrote Chat blanc in fanfiction as an end of world threat. Maybe a dangerous beast or feral cat. But NOT A COSMIC LEVEL THREAT.

This episode demonstrated how dangerous the powers of the miraculous are. It gave the viewer a reason on why Marinette and Adrien dont share their identities right away. Its because of the worst case scenario.

(I would have put origins, cause umbrella scene but thats not so much a narrative choice as it is the start of everything, but know its basically pseudo number one)

[chibivesicle]

Ranma 1/2 2024 - early thoughts

Soooooo, we are up to episode 5 of the new Ranma 1/2 from studio MAPPA. And how am I feeling about this? I'm enjoying it! That's right, as a silly martial arts/romance/zany humor series it so far is delivering decently.

I was completely nervous about yet another older series getting a reboot, but this one has already cleared my low expectations. I wasn't sure how I felt with the more pastel/muted color palette from the previews but after a few episodes, I like it.

First off, they decided to keep the series set in the 1980s which means we didn't need to have the full technology upgrade - which another one of Rumiko Takahashi's famous series would completely fall apart with. That's right, Maison Ikkoku wouldn't work with ubiquitous cellphone/texting. They also leverage the 80s decor/aesthetic well, reflecting it through the normal clothing and outfits along with Akane's bedroom.

I first read Ranma 1/2 long before watching the original anime so I'm less attached to the original anime. Sure, it was fine and the first OP will live rent free in my head until I die. I appreciated how the remake made sure to keep the feel of the original OP even with a much more smoothly animated version of the martial arts moves that Ranma and Akane did in the original OP and expanded it to contain Ryoga and Shampoo which was great.

Therefore, unlike other series that I watched a lot more, I couldn't even do a one to one comparison of the original version and the 2024 one if I wanted to.

I have to admit the family friendly censorship of Ranma's frequently carefree attitude towards his female form seems a bit odd as a manga fan. I get it, I'm not some fanboy getting my knickers in a twist over it - more like it matches the self-censorship that is omnipresent with shirtless males in anime. I honestly think the last time I recall a male character in anime had legit nipples it was Spike in Cowboy Bebop. I just don't get it, there was a time when male nipples existed freely in anime but now it is no nipples. I'm not looking for an answer, just scratching my head that this is a line that can't be crossed in more recent series. [cough cough] Golden Kamuy [cough cough].

Anyhoo, I've gotten off course . . .

Five episodes into the series, I'm enjoying it. The color is fun, I like the dynamic panels, extra effects and the much more manga adjacent feeling. The manga is so bonkers and over the top and this anime really seems to capture it well. Since it is a silly manga the gags can be approached from a number of different ways. It appears that someone on the staff is a huge Kuno fan based on his even more dramatic entrance in this version.

The biggest disappointment with this first season is we will only get to the introduction of Shampoo - I'm going to have to wait awhile for my gal Ukyo to appear with her giant spatula.

Welp, that's all at the moment for comments on the 2024 version. I'm also reading the manga currently, past where I had gotten with my first edition books. It continues to be hilarious and I'm currently in the middle of the 'food fu' arc which is a great snapshot of how the series captures that weird sense of humor.

[toxinellebug]

Paris and the World under The Supreme’s Rule Headcannons

Back during WW2, when Marianne suggested to Wang Fu they should use the Miraculous, she of course meant using them to fight. Wang Fu decided to use them to make a wish;

World Peace.

The price?

World freedom.

So there are SOME good things… No war in Vietnam, no war in Isreal, and good news Americans; 9/11 never happened and school shootings do not exist because it is impossible for anyone to get a gun, not even hunters!

On the downside, no guns for hunting means wildlife conservation is a thing of the past. Animal overpopulation in addition to human deforestation has led to a significant decrease in food sources for wildlife, many of which have gone extinct due to starvation. Another plus side is there are no “slap on the wrist” punishments for criminals who assault women and children. Death penalty is a very effective way to prevent recurring crimes.

Prisons are also no longer a multi-million dollar drain on tax-paying citizens; no free room and board for criminals. They all have to work in labor camps to earn every morsel of food and live in 15 square foot cells.

(Marinette’s Grandmother is currently serving time in a labor camp)

There aren’t really much in the way of trials either… You are arrested for a crime, presented with the facts/evidence, then sentenced.

There are no homeless wandering streets, begging for hand-outs. There are special labor camps for the impoverished where they are assigned tasks that meet their physical and mental abilities, snd are paid enough to afford them cheap living quarters, approximately 130 square feet in size, and the most basic of food stuffs and hygiene products to keep them alive. No, they cannot refuse.

Remember, the Supreme knows best.

Project Oxygen is a go- several small parks have been “re-habilitated” into giant filters and fresh air is beginning to be sold in fancy plastic bottles thanks to Bertrand King. He’s been trying for a while to convince Gabriel that Adrien should do commercials for Project Oxygen, as it would be great for the boy’s career…. But Gabriel always comes up with an excuse to get out of it. The latest being that it wouldn’t match with Adrien’s new look.

Audrey Bourgeois ADORES Adrien’s new look! It’s so much more bold and edgy! Also, the latest fashion trend is not glitter, it’s metal studs- industry and progress in a sleek, metallic form.

Audrey is home more often than Andre, who could be gone for months at a time working on one of his movies. But of course he still handles important paperwork and does video calls to check on hotel and sends lots of very expensive gifts to his little Princess.

Chloe is even more abusive and demanding of Sabrina, and poor Sabrina puts up with it for her father’s sake-

There has been a lot of vandalism lately (thanks to Shadybug and ClawNoir) and talk that Enforcers just aren’t as effective at keeping the order as they used to be. Word is that tech Giant Tsurugi is in the process of designing new automatons that will be more efficient (and less costly) than human Enforcers. Who knows? There may even be a surge of Enforcer lay-offs if the project becomes successful. Chloe has hinted that she MIGHT be willing to put in a good word with Daddy, should Mr. Raincomprix be one of the many Enforcers who finds himself out of a job. The Hotel could always use more security guards/bouncers. But since Daddy ONLY hires the most DEDICATED employees… Well, how can Chloe possibly make a recommendation if she’s not sure Sabrina’s dad would REALLY give it his all? So Sabrina bends over backwards until she breaks and then some to keep Chloe happy.

Officer Raincomprix is also uneasy about talks of future layoffs, and as such, has become harsh in Enforcing law and order. No little wrong doing goes unnoticed or forgiven. No leniency. (Think Roger-cop without the Akuma).

Rose is not that perky. Under the Supreme, there is no socialist nonsense like Universal Healthcare, so medicines, doctor visits, prescriptions, hospitals… it’s all crazy expensive just like in the USA. This means, in order for Rose to be able to attend a private school like Francois Dupont; her parents work a LOT of overtime and pinch pennies whenever they can. So it’s very lonely at home and in this universe, Rose has not (yet) met Juleka (as stated in previous headcannon). Instead of Unicorns, Rose’s favorite animal is the Caladrius, (a mythological bird that can heal any illness). Though unicorns and kittens are still in her top five favs.

Rose doesn’t see the word through rose-colored glasses. She can’t see the silver-lining in ever raincloud… Instead, she tries to make it herself; if there is no positive, she will just have to invent one! It’s more work, and exhausting, but she HAS to, otherwise she’d drown in depression. Rose’s illness is kept a secret, not because she fears people will treat her with pity, but that she fears people will look down on her; like she’s a burden on her parents, like it’s annoying to have to put up with her weakness.

(I’ve actually been sick myself, since xmas day in fact- perhaps as punishment from the universe for making ClawNoir cataclysm Santa Claus)

Penny is Bob Roth’s personal servant- er, I mean, assistant… which means she’s also gopher for XY. (There is no woman in Paris more miserable than Penny).

Jean-Pierre Monlataing is still an Art teacher at Francois Dupont… and he teaches traditional art styles. Helping students practice time-honored techniques through repetition and standardization. Graffiti is not art, so no spray-paint cans in his classroom! Alix Kubdel is his most troubled student. Marinette does not attend art club. Nathaniel shows great talent for portraits.

Jalil strives to be better than his father; he admire Nathalie Sancoeur and hopes to rise to her position of Director of the Louvre someday.

Directors of Museums are prestigious positions you have to work hard your whole life to even be considered for, as The Supreme appoints them. As far as the public knows, this is for the sake of preserving history as well as ensuring that dangerous ideas from the past do not repeat themselves and inspire anarchy in young, impressionable minds.

The reality is that they are searching for clues to missing Miraculous.

The Supreme has already taken steps to ensure the Prodigious will never pose a threat to his power (Temple and access to cave have been destroyed and the bracelet has been confiscated and placed in a secure location).

But there are still most likely Miraculous scattered across the earth. Gems that, if fallen into the ���wrong hands” could disrupt the peace and order that the Supreme has worked hard to maintain.

Marianne intends to find these Miraculous first… if only she had the help of someone younger and more physically up to the challenge.

When Gabriel/Betterfly/Hesperia forms “The Resistance” and Marianne is introduced to their ranks, this is exactly the plan she suggests in order to take down The Supreme and give power back to all the people.

She only has a few clues on where to start searching though.

…Fun fact, if you were to unify the Ladybug miraculous of creation with the Eagle miraculous of freedom, you would get Ladybird- determined to create a new, free world.

[ryin-silverfish]

I've seen lately that in some fsyy media, they are trying to portray Su Daji as someone who helped Zhou and put Zhou as the real villain and not an innocent victim of Daji's manipulation and bootlicking (I understand they are possibly trying to demolish "women are always to blame"). I watched this in Jiang Ziya's animated film, that Nezha animated series and the recent adaptation of fsyy, creation of the gods. But I wanted to ask, is it true what they say that the real Su Daji was slandered just to give King Zhou a bad reputation? Or was she really bad?

I assume that, by "the real Su Daji", you mean the historical Su Daji. Which is...tricky, because her very name might be a later invention!

Like, in Zhou dynasty + Spring & Autumn period sources, there were mentions of King Zhou's concubines; 尚书 described King Zhou as a "woman pleaser" and someone who was easily influenced by their words, and 逸周书 recorded that the two concubines of King Zhou hang themselves after his defeat, and their bodies were decapitated by King Wu and put on a flagpole.

This lines up with what we know about the historical Shang dynasty, where aristocratic women could, and did participate directly in political and military affairs: the most famous of them being Fu Hao, King Wu Ding's wife.

However, the name "Da Ji" did not appear in written sources until the Warring State period; the earliest one, 国语·晋语, said that when King Zhou warred against the You Su clan, they surrendered a woman named Da Ji as tribune, who gained favors at court and became the seed of Shang dynasty's destruction.

Subsequent documents like 世本 and 史记 then merged that anecedote together with earlier records, and formed a new narrative:

1)Da Ji was offered up as a tribune by the You Su clan,

2)King Zhou loved her so much that he listened to her every words,

3)King Wu killed her and put her head on a flagpole.

Once this narrative gained popularity, together with the name, it was only a matter of time before ancient historians were blaming the end of Shang dynasty solely on Da Ji, and even attributing King Zhou's supposed tyrannical deeds(cutting out Bi Gan's heart, making Mei Bo into meat sauces) to her.

"So, was she really bad?"

We will never know! No, really, it is hard to make any moral judgements when her very existence is based on shaky evidence and later extrapolations.

This extends to King Zhou/Di Xin too; whenever he was brought up in ancient historical writings, it was less about actual Shang dynasty history, and more about the writers' ideals of virtuous rulership and its opposite.

Lastly, there is the matter of value dissonance: we know, from archaeological evidence, that human sacrifice was widely practiced in the historical Shang dynasty. At its heights, oracle bone scripts recorded the killing of a thousand people in one go, and though the quantity was significantly reduced by King Zhou's time, the practice went on until the dynasty's end.

From a modern day standpoint, it is absolutely horrifying, but for a king of the Shang dynasty or a warrior-priestess like Fu Hao, to which spirits and gods and ancestral ghosts were very real, fearsome forces that could only be placated with sacrifices, it would be a vital duty.

[kafkaoftherubble]

Weird thought but I really love the various contexts Fushi uses different bodies in. Sandel is for taking care of people, Shin is for talking and carrying things, Nando is to intimidate people and the most fun one is Yuuki as a symbol of peace. How lovely.

Being me, I automatically interpreted this from a cognitive-scientific perspective. I actually think it's scientifically accurate for Fushi to treat each form that way!

Fushi's access to forms is based on memories, right? Once they forget, they can no longer access that form. It means Fushi's form is always bundled together with what they remember as that person's most meaningful traits.

In neuroscience, the famous Hebbian Rule is that "neurons that fire together, are wired together." In other words, I kinda see Fushi's transformation-memory as a fantastical way to illustrate this concept. Transforming to a given form triggers an entire web of memory in Fushi's mind—exactly like how memories themselves also trigger transformation in Fushi's early days. If Fushi had neurons, then these bunches would definitely be bundled together, because when they learn about a person, they are not just forming memories of this person but also how to re-create them. Recreating them on their own flesh, and we see it as Fushi transforming. Recreating them outside of Fushi's current form, we see it as Fushi creating a new body altogether for any Fye to inhabit.

I may hazard a guess and wonder if this is one of the factors why Bestbonnist believes Fushi has no Fye, but imma wait (EXCITEDLY!!!) for their meta essay on this!!! Can't wait to see what they cooked!

There's also another non-scientific perspective for me to interpret this—it's a Buddhist one. It's got to do with the idea of aggregates and non-self. Chiefly speaking, under this thought, a "self" is really just an aggregate of qualities and material making up a "personhood," which is then mistaken as a "self." There is no personhood/"self" existing independently of these aggregates. Hence, whenever Fushi takes a form, they also take up the aggregates that make them, often overlaying these qualities with their own (supposed) "default" qualities[1]. This is why as Sandel they become better at treating people and doing doctor-y things. As Mia they become adept at chair kung-fu. As Yuuki, they become most resolved in being the bridge between two factions.

[1] I have a hypothesis that Fushi's "default" qualities/aggregate are not their own. I actually think it could very well be the Nameless Boy's—Fushi is an addition of all things, but their base as a human is the Nameless Boy's aggregate... according to what Fushi remembers him as. I won't know if it's true until the manga ends!

That's just how I see this, personally! Also, wow a short ramble? I surprised myself!

[deke-rivers-1957]

Kung Fu Elvis Part 5

If you're new to this series, the point of this is to find out which Elvis character is the best fighter given an uninterrupted, hand to hand combat styled fight. The goal is to rank each individual Elvis character and then within each tier determine who would win against who.

How I plan on determining this will be by finding each character's age, size and general background. How well a character does in on screen fights will also be considered but analyzed on a case by case basis. Sometimes an Elvis character loses a fight simply because it's a comedy, or due to the low quality stage fighting wins because his opponents are laughably weak.

At the end of the day this is all headcanon as these are all fictional characters. If you disagree with how I rank a character I would love to hear your thoughts on where you would put them.

As stated in Chad's ranking, we know for a fact that this movie takes place in spring of 1961. I specify spring because that's when pineapples start becoming ripe. Chad takes Ms. Prentice and the girls to a pineapple plantation and we see the workers handle We get the very obvious registration plate in the window of Chad's car that clearly shows 1961. You can also determine that this was in the early 1960s based on the various tourist attractions that are named and one that is noticeably missing. The Polynesian Cultural Center is one of the biggest tourist attractions on the island of Oahu and it wasn't named. This is because the museum wouldn't even exist until 1963 when it first opens. Another very glaring omission that proves this was 1961 is the lack of the Pearl Harbor Memorial, you know the tourist attraction that at least a million people visit annually. That site is way too big to complete forget and yet the movie doesn't mention it at all. This is because the memorial wouldn't be finished and open to the public until May 1962. Meaning the movie has to take place before then.

I actually want to make a slight revision to Chad's age. Since Chad was attending university for 2 years before being in the army, that would make him about 20 years old. However, Chad is shown having chevrons, making him a sergeant. Unless there were some circumstances that explain how he got it sooner, Chad would've been in the military for 3 years. That would make him 23 years old at the youngest. Since his age wasn't mentioned as being an issue for being a tour guide, I'm throwing out the 25 year old requirement since it's not a universal policy. Also when you look at Chad's story, it makes perfect sense for him to be in his early 20s. We never hear what Chad was studying in college as it's possible he was only doing it to appease his parents. It's a very common experience for someone that age to not have a plan in life. They take gap years, they travel and in Chad's case does some time in the military. While it is possible, it wouldn't be probable for Chad to be older and not have any plan in life. Therefore I'm going to specifically consider Chad 23 years old. That puts him at a post college age where he's decided to stop his studies and is now trying to apply what he's learned in the real world.

Once again, I'm going to focus on the use of the Gold Standard in the US. The official end of the Gold Standard where you can use gold specifically as a form of currency ended in 1934. All gold had to be turned over to the government, making Pam's grandfather having gold a very rare situation. The legislation outright banning the personal hoarding of gold wouldn't be repealed until 1971. However, in 1964, these restrictions were relaxed and there weren't any enforcements in place that would've found out about this newly found gold. The Double Eagles were originally priced at $20 making Pam's inheritance worth $100k at the time of her grandfather's issuance. Even though that's a lot of money the deputy sheriff wanting that gold indicates the existence of the bigger selling market for gold. While the flat rate of $35 per ounce wouldn't end until the 1970s, it's entirely possible the deputy sheriff planned on selling that gold on the black market where it easily could've gone for more. There's also the fact that Lonnie is known for his work as a bull-rider. While rodeos have existed in the US since the 1800s, their popularity skyrocketed in the 1960s as the first regular rodeo school opened in 1962. Since Lonnie is famous for his work, that indicates he's been doing this since at least 1960 when the National Finals was broadcasted by CBS. Even the meal plan Vera's ranch had indicates the diet culture of the 1960s that involved meticulously scaled portion sizes and rigorous exercise routines. The ranch itself wasn't even accessible to the general public fitness culture wouldn't take off until the 1970s-80s. Therefore, I'm placing this movie as the mid 1960s.

I still stand by Lonnie either being 30 or older than 30. Younger people are able to heal faster and Lonnie outright said his season ended because of an injury. While it wasn't specified what was broken, it was clearly enough to take him out of the sport for a period of time. Given that this was his sole source of income, he couldn't just quit on a whim. His inability to get back into the game after such an injury suggests a combination of a change in priority and a decline in ability. While he does blame his failure on Pam not answering his calls, it just isn't probable for him to fail at every rodeo he's been to over the course of months. We have a huge precedence of athletes suddenly losing the ability they have a lot of experience in. Even though there's no specific cause that's related to age, this tends to happen in athletes in their 30s more often (golf being one of the exceptions as involuntary twitches that can dramatically impact playing ability does increase as you age). Since what we saw was only the start of Lonnie's decline and not a complete certainty that his career, I would put him at exactly 30.

We know for a fact that this takes place in 1878 based on the graveside crosses. That interestingly coincides with the real life Kiowa war chief Satanta's death. Assuming the movie is (intentionally or not) based on his tribe's story, this village likely could be around Adobe Walls where multiple battles involving the Kiowa were held. Since last battle was in 1875, Chief Buffalo Horn's talk of war could be a reference to that battle where the real life Chief Guipago surrendered. His son would then go onto lead the resistance to reservation life which is exactly what Chief Buffalo Horn was trying to do. Even though Kiowa schools existed on the reservation since 1873, it's possible that this specific camp refused to go to them since not all Kiowa camps stayed together.

Outside of Mrs. Burton leaving the tribe I'm assuming to marry Mr. Burton 20 years, we don't have much to go off of when determining Pacer's age. Cars wouldn't even exist for another couple decades so we can't use the driving age as a benchmark. The purchasing age for alcohol can't be used either because while there was an on the books law of 21 before 1909, we don't see any evidence of a saloon in this town anywhere. There also isn't anything in the books that says you have to be 21 when drinking at home. It's specifically for purchasing it so there's nothing to keep Pacer from drinking alcohol during Clint's birthday party outside of his own personal choice. Therefore, I'm going to say he's exactly 20 years old to match how long Mrs. Burton's been living in the white village.

Even though none of my guesses will be perfectly accurate, I'm going to focus specifically on Johnny's story. Even though I've tried to equate Lunarkand to the newly formed Tanzania, I realize that Zanzibar having a coup to overthrow the Sultan doesn't match what happened in the movie as Sinan's coup failed. However I did find a coup that does closely match the circumstances Johnny faced. Ethiopia actually had two failed coups that involved the planned assassination of the Crown Prince (later King Tarif) so the Empress (his cousin) can have full sovereignty over the empire, making her husband the administrative emperor. I'll spare the details but the two attempted coups occurred in 1928 and 1930. From my understanding, the 1930 attempt best matches what Johnny experienced. The leader of the coup (Sinan) was defeated and the only other threat to Tarif's reign died a few days later (Prince Dragna while surviving, was banished). His oldest child was his daughter (Shalimar) and was old enough to be married. Again it's not a perfect 1:1 match, but it's close enough if we consider Johnny to be in place of Rudolph Valentino (who died in 1926).

My breakdown on how being a stuntman benefits the youth still stands. What I will change though is the age range. Instead of using a vague label of the "late 20s", I'm actually going to make Johnny 26 years old. No particular reason outside of it being a reference to Rudolph Valentino's age when he filmed The Sheik. I consider Johnny's movie to be this universe's equivalent of the Sheik.

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

Chad has the misfortunate of only getting one fight scene. Sure it's against multiple people which give him points for not immediately losing, but it's a bar fight. You have multiple people possibly fighting each other, so it's hard to tell which individual person gets credited with a win. Chad holding his own doesn't reflect his fighting ability at all.

I know I didn't give his military training as much weight, but I can't really take that into consideration when he's mostly fighting older (probably drunk) men. He still has a fit body and his youth to his advantage. If I had a bigger sample size I would put him in A, but because I try to base my ranking entirely on what we're given in the movie, he stays in B tier.

There were multiple fights that had to be thrown out because Pam interfered in a way that significantly changed the outcome. Had she not interfered, we actually would've seen a clear result. Based on what I could count, Lonnie still has a strong showing. He managed to disarm and knock out Adolph without using a weapon. To do so without suffering any injury is very impressive. His fight against Brad isn't as impressive but still counts since it was a physical fight against someone I consider an equal.

Lonnie still being physically fit to do manual labor and bull ride serves him well in a fight. However, he doesn't have enough to beat Chad. Chad has military training and an age advantage. Lonnie recovering from a major injury also gives Chad an advantage. Chad, as far as. we know, never suffered a major injury that could possibly be exploited. That's enough to put Lonnie below Chad but also in B tier.

Pacer specifically threw his gun away to fight two people in one go. Sure they were both older, but Pacer had to climb on top of the shed in the process. His physical prowess is constantly displayed during his fights, showing that he doesn't have to rely on a weapon to win. I very much wanted to see what all of his battles against the Kiowa looked like. If we saw the full total of Kiowa he had to fight, it would give us a better idea on what his limit was.

Pacer might be from a completely different time period, but based on his father owning a cattle ranch, he wouldn't have starved. At the very worst, they could kill some of their cattle for the meat. That's why I didn't disqualify him all together. He also shows that he can easily navigate uneven if not rocky terrain. His youth isn't shown to be a disadvantage at all as people back then matured younger. His ability to take on multiple people a very short amount of time before being dealt a fatal blow showcases his stamina as well.

A lot of Johnny's fights involved weapons so even though he does have a body count, I can't even include those in my break down. The fight against a leopard in his movie obviously doesn't count either because it was specifically staged for Johnny to win. It's not like they're going to have Elvis fight a leopard for real without all kinds of safety protocols in place.

Johnny really should be in A tier, but the portrayal of his fight scenes looked absolutely terrible. I would excuse the leopard fight since that's obviously not meant to be real, but it is. Prince Dragna actually took a fight scene from his movie as being a legitimate reflection of his physical skills. Even when Johnny wins in "the real world" it doesn't feel legit. There's no sense of weight when he physically fights someone. He's disqualified. I can't possibly give him a rank when his fights don't follow real world physics.

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

To summarize this part:

Pacer is in A tier.

Chad is in B tier.

Lonnie is in B tier below Chad.

Johnny DNA and will not get a rank.

Tagging: @callieselvisobsessed, @vintagepresley, @somethingaboutelvis, @tupelomiss, @eapep,

@freudianslumber, @makethemorning, @southcarolinawoman, @thelonelyheart, @ssinnerplazahotel,

@squaggleson, @hooked-on-elvis, @smokeymountainboy, @swingdownsweetchariot, @suraemoon,

@be-my-ally, @thatbanditqueen, @pledgingmylovee, @arrolyn1114, and @seredelgi.

[eelhound]

"The most brilliant chapter of Life Against Death, 'Filthy Lucre,' links money to guilt: 'Whatever the ultimate explanation of guilt may be, we put forward the hypothesis that the whole money complex is rooted in the psychology of guilt.' The psychological advantage of archaic society is that it 'knew' what the problem was and therefore how to overcome it. Belief in sin allowed the possibility of expiation, in seasonal rituals and sacrifices. This provides a different perspective on the origin of gods: 'The gods exist to receive gifts, that is to say, sacrifices; the gods exist in order to structure the human need for self-sacrifice.' For Christianity that sacrifice is incarnated in Christ, who is believed to 'take away' our sins. Religion gives us the opportunity to expiate our sense of lack by means of symbols — for example, the crucifix, the eucharist, the mass — whose validity is socially agreed upon and maintained. Hence, we feel purified and closer to God after taking Holy Communion.

What of the modern 'neurotic type,' who 'feels a sinner without the religious belief in sin, for which he therefore needs a new rational explanation?' What do you do with your sense of lack, when there is no religious explanation for it, and therefore no socially-agreed way to expiate it? The main secular alternative today is to experience our lack as 'not yet enough.' This converts cyclic time (maintained by seasonal rituals of atonement) into linear time (in which the atonement of lack is reached for but perpetually postponed, because never achieved). The sense of lack remains a constant, but our collective reaction to it has become the need for growth: the 'good life' of consumerism (but lack means the consumer never has enough) and the gospel of sustained economic growth (because corporations and the GNP are never big enough). The heart (or rather blood) of both is the money complex. 'A dollar is...a codified psychosis normal in one sub-species of this animal, an institutionalized dream that everyone is having at once.'

The result of this is 'an economy driven by a pure sense of guilt, unmitigated by any sense of redemption,' 'the more uncontrollably driven by the sense of guilt because the problem of guilt is repressed by denial into the unconscious.' Today our particular form of that insanity is the cult of economic growth, which has become our main religious myth. 'We no longer give our surplus to God; the process of producing an ever-expanding surplus is in itself our God.... To quote Schumpeter: Capitalist rationality does not do away with sub- or super-rational impulses. It merely makes them get out of hand by removing the restraint of sacred or semi-sacred tradition.'"

- David Loy, from "Buddhism and Money: The Repression of Emptiness Today." Buddhist Ethics and Modern Society: An International Symposium, edited by Charles Wei-hsun Fu and Sandra A. Wawrytko, 1991.

[aceofspadeunity]

Stéphane Matheo Benedict

HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I finally decided that I will be putting my Original Characters here finally. I have a template for all my ocs (They use the same one) Also all my ocs so far use picrews.

Also, if you would like the picrews I will try my best to find them and send the links at the bottom, but I cannot promise I will find all of them so sorry about that.

This Oc that I have right now is for a story I have been working on. I'll try my best to post the rest of the ocs that go along with this story in the next week at least.

Picrews Used

Name: Stéphane Matheo Benedict

Name/kanji meaning:Stéphane: From the Greek name Στέφανος (Stephanos) meaning "crown, wreath", more precisely "that which surrounds". Saint Stephen was a deacon who was stoned to death, as told in Acts in the New Testament. He is regarded as the first Christian martyr. Due to him, the name became common in the Christian world. It was popularized in England by the Normans.

Matheo: Gift of God.

Benedict:From the Late Latin name Benedictus, which meant "blessed". Saint Benedict was an Italian monk who founded the Benedictines in the 6th century. After his time the name was common among Christians, being used by 16 popes. In England it did not come into use until the 12th century, at which point it became very popular. This name was also borne by the American general Benedict Arnold (1741-1801), who defected to Britain during the American Revolution.

Nicknames: Mr. Banker, Eggs Benedict, Matheo, Stephane, Matheo, Math, Ben, Mr. Benedict, Benny boy, Steph, Demon Banker

Race: Human/Demon

Nationality: French

Age: Human age: 35 

Demon Age: over 50’000

Pronouns: He/Him

Gender: Male

Sexuality: AroAce

Hair color: Blonde

Eye color(s): White

Skin tone: Pale

Hair Type: 2b

Height: Human form: 5’9

Demon Form: 7’10

Like(s): Money, God

Dislike(s): People, the poor

Fandom oc is from(If not any just say none): They Exist (My own story)

Powers: Depending on how much money someone gives him, he gets stronger. So if someone gives him $1 it would give him .1% more power. If money is stolen from him, he will lose some of his power. If he loses $1 he will lose .01% of that power he gained.(human form and demon form.) He is able to use the blood of people that owe him money to heal his own wounds (Human form.) His tail is spiky and will stab people with it, the spikes will sometimes come off inside of the body. If they do go into the body then the spikes are given a time limit on how long the person has to live before they kill the person. Stephane will tell the person the due date of their debts and the time will start. If the debt is not completed at that time then the person dies. If the person pays it off then the person lives. (Demon form.) If he gives money to someone then he will lose all the power that the money gave him. So if he gives someone $1 then he will lose .1% of his power. (Human and demon form.) Since his powers aren’t as effective towards fae he came up with another way to make sure they keep their end of the deal, he has them sign their name and everything but if they don’t hold up their end of the deal then Matheo will kill them with an iron dagger he found.

Dagger: The sword has old runes that Matheo put on there to protect it from being stolen from him. If he doesn’t give you permission to take it, the sword will zap you. The zap will kill a regular human but vampires, werewolves, fae, demons, just non humans will live. The dagger slightly shines when shown in the light, the brighter the light the more danger it senses.

Tail: Matheo’s tail is built to kill, if he deems like he needs to. He can only use his tail in his demon form. The tail is sharp and can stab through a lot of things. He mostly uses it for humans so he can suck the soul of the person. 

Horns: Matheo’s horns stick at the top of his head but they turn to the side as a way for protection. He will use these horns mostly as a way to intimate others. 

Weaknesses: Poor people, thiefs, people he needs to pay

Drawbacks: If he doesn’t get paid, Giving people money, 

Relationships: Spike: Matheo thinks Spike as nothing more than a hard working child of Ewald. He has swore to protect even if he doesn’t care that much for Spike. 

Ewald: Without Ewald’s power he would have never been what he is now. He has become friends with Ewald even if he doesn’t want to admit it. 

Blade: At first was tricked by Blade but he will never let that happen again

Ace: He sees him as nothing more than just a customer or the teacher of his employee. He finds it very annoying to deal with. 

Rhea: He sees her as nothing more than just a customer or the teacher of his employee. He finds her actually very kind and thinks that if she isn’t careful that she might be taken advantage of but he knows she is smart. 

Pit: He thinks nothing more than him as a guard dog and a mutt. 

Organization: Banker, loan shark, demon

Personality: Bossy, fake, rich, fancy, french, controlling, mean, Dominant, perfectionist, leader, introverted, and judgy. Depending on the person he might be more lenient on his rules. 

Back story: Matheo doesn’t speak much of his past for many reasons, but we know some things. He is a demon that came to the human realm long before anyone else. He started to work at this one bank and suddenly he realized he could make this his whole life, and he could get the power he needs to thrive in this world. He Befriended a vampire when he started to make his own bank and told him that it would be a great investment for the vampire. It took some time but once the vampire decided he could trust the man they became very close business partners. The vampire owns and ran a whole casino on his own, Matheo was impressed and decided not to try and toy with the vampire seeing he could probably ruin his life. Later on, he started to get a name for himself and suddenly he became the most trusted banker and the riches banker in the world. He and the owner of the Casino became better friends and soon he found that the owner was able to do for him, he was able to hire all his staff through the owner. He was even given a place to stay if things went south for him at any point as long as the banker did stuff for him in return. They both worked together and used each other to make sure they both became the richest people. Soon even the Owner sponsored him in money wealth BUT that didn’t bother the banker because he knew that the money that was the owners was also his. Later on, he was requested to hire the owner’s son. Matheo at first didn’t think the guy would be very good for the job but when he found out that the kid was able to easily talk to people, he figured it out that they would be a great addition to his workers. Matheo ended up becoming the kid’s Mentor and gave them all the advice he could. Much later on, Matheo was asked to take in another person from the owner but this time it was a werewolf. A young one at that. He ended up making a deal saying that if he could finish up schooling, train and work for him part time then he would hire him. Eventually the werewolf grew up more and was able to do more hours as he went to college. Now Matheo is one of the richest bankers in the world with the Vampire owner right in front of him.

[miraculouscontent]

It’s heeeeere! Another summasalt, this time with nearly twice the length of the first one!

(Turns out that not having caffeine doesn’t help me talk any slower.)

Script below:

Anonymous asked:

Thoughts on Rocketear?

Can you Rocketear the newest episode apart with your salt, my beloved Salt Queen?

Penny for your thoughts on Rocketear?

Aw, anon! You can have that for free! I'm a generous goddess.

"Rocketear" begins with Chat Noir and Carapace - just Carapace, really - holding back a pack of what I presume to be the physical manifestation of the writing staff's age, or at least a representation of how behind the times the writing seems.

Just as the dinosaurs break through Shellter. Ladybug shows up with the scientist who revived the dinosaurs in the first place and said scientist uses a whistle to calm the dinosaurs down. There's also a line from Bob Roth about putting the dinosaurs in a theme park to make money and I know what it's referencing but it's so incredibly random that it doesn't really come off as a proper joke.

Carapace was notably sad right after battle, but insisted that he was fine when Ladybug asked. Rena, sporting a... - I would like to say "new design" but it's a recolor in every sense of the word - is hiding behind part of a building and smiles after the heroes before walking off. Ladybug takes Nino's miraculous back but sees that he's still upset and asks him again what's wrong. Nino asks where Alya was and Ladybug claims that she only needed Carapace for the job, which cheers him up but only until Ladybug is already gone.

Mm, I guess Nino and Adrien relate in heroism not being enough for them unless they have their respective love interest to flirt with.

Also, I know this is an obvious set-up, but the show can't tell me that Ladybug just always brought Nino and Alya whenever she needed one of them. Season 3 required her to go to Master Fu to get the miraculouses, and unless she already knew that Nino and Alya would be in the same location - which, okay, the show does basically shove the two of them together whenever Nino is onscreen, fair, if two characters are in a relationship in this show then it's weird for them to NOT be with that person - but it just seems like a gamble, not to mention proof to Shadow Moth that the two are close if Ladybug constantly brings both of them.

Anyway, Ladybug goes into the sewer and asks Rena if she's seen any sign of Shadow Moth or his traps. Rena didn't see anything and they de-transform. Marinette is about to leave when she thinks of something, but Alya assumes it's about her new look, which was apparently not voluntary on her part and the suit automatically adapted to Alya's new role as Rena Furtive, which she has now named it as.

Marinette reminds her that this is supposed to be a secret and that they agreed that the fox has no owner. When Alya is evasive about whether she told Nino that she won't be Rena anymore, Marinette stresses that everyone needs to believe that Alya won't be using a miraculous anymore so that she can remain an undercover spy.

What's the point in changing the look if you're not going to show yourself anyway? I mean, insurance, I guess, but still.

Alya, exasperated, parrots what Marinette has apparently told her before: that she helps Ladybug with Mirage in case Shadow Moth tries to follow her so Rena can follow him instead. Marinette stresses the situation again and Alya tries to get Marinette to agree on her telling Nino that she's Rena Furtive, but Marinette refuses.

At Marinette's house, Alya talks further and explains that she doesn't know if she can lie to Nino since they don't keep any secrets--Alya, babe, you kept Rena Rouge from him and didn't tell him that you knew he was Carapace until Ladybug was forced to give you your miraculouses at the same time. I don't wanna hear it.

Marinette states that it's too late for that and also not technically a lie, but Alya gets upset and says that Nino will never trust her again if he finds out that she kept something from him. Marinette brings up how she had to keep secrets from Alya too, but they're interrupted by Tom appearing and wanting to play games with them. Marinette makes an excuse about homework that she's repeated many times, as Tom comments that the teachers give her too much. After Tom is kicked out - hang on, lemme just... - Marinette uses the moment to show Alya that she's lied to her family a lot and hasn't played games with her father in months. She states that there's no other option as they have to protect their identities, and Alya agrees to talk to Nino.

In Alya's room - I just presume at this point that Nino's house doesn't exist and Chris is an illusion - Alya tells Nino that they need to talk, but stammers and states that it's hard to talk about. Nino thinks that she wants to break up with him, but Alya assures that she loves him. She finally gets to the cover story that Rena herself made up in "Sentibubbler" and Nino understands, sad that she won't be around anymore but agreeing if it's what Ladybug thinks is best.

Is it weird that Nino respects Ladybug's wishes more than Alya does?

Nino hugs her and is confused by why Alya was nervous to tell him, as she can tell him anything and nothing will change their relationship. Alya feels guilty and hugs back, murmuring about how they don't have any secrets; that's not what Nino said, but sure, push this plot to its already predictable conclusion. I mean, I thought it was vaguely sweet that Nino switched to seriousness immediately when Alya said that she wanted to talk, but how am I supposed to be invested in this couple when their dynamic boils down to "STRONG, INDEPENDANT WOMAN who wears the pants in the relationship because her boyfriend is portrayed as a wimpy coward"? Like, the show constantly dragged Nino down to make Alya look "powerful" by comparison, and then when it comes to characters like Marinette, we get a girl who works very well outside of her relationship with her endgame love interest.

It's the fakest form of "girl power," dragging guys down to raise girls up or actually making a strong girl character but having her love interest be a weakness that creates flaws in her that weren't there originally and having that love interest be who she's "destined for."

I'm rambling, sorry.

In class, Marinette assures Alya that she did the right thing and Alya agrees. As they're leaving school, Marinette talks about how their "night walks" start soon, and Alya non-subtly talks about how Rena Furtive will be on the lookout while Ladybug and Chat Noir patrol. She stops, however, as gets excited about some pictures she took of herself as Rena Furtive, which has a lot of details that Marinette hasn't seen. I don't know whether to groan at what I just heard or remind everyone that Rena Furtive is literally just a recolor and therefore this is the writers patting themselves on the back for this design, so let's just move on.

Alya then shows Marinette her phone--AUGH, MY EYES--and suggests making a poll on her Ladyblog so people can vote for their favorite Rena design. Marinette has to stress again that Rena Furtive is supposed to be a spy and thus invisible, which Alya admits that she forgot about.

Okay, I've been holding off on talking about this, but now seems like the best time to bring it up. Alya has been a trash friend as well as a trash confidant, and her role as Rena Rouge boiled down to, "it was convenient for her to be the fox at the time it was needed." She's not particularly stealthy like one would expect of a fox, and she was easily one of the worst candidates to be told Marinette's big secret. I'll get more into this later, but I have to stress that Alya has treated Marinette no differently since learning of Marinette's identity and has already gone against Marinette's orders once before at the time of this episode airing. Episodes are constantly torn between validating their decision to have Marinette tell Alya, having Marinette be worried about the decision while the show considers her to be ridiculous for it, and then having Alya either consider or make choices that clearly don't gel well with what's good for her role. Much like Marinette, she lacks a sense of self-control and--wow, a female character who's impulsive, never seen that stereotype before.

Point being, "Sentibubbler" stressed over and over that Alya was the right choice and deserved to be both the permanent fox and the understudy for guardian, but then we have "Rocketear" here where Alya is making basic emotionally-driven errors that I'm not even remotely sympathetic to when Marinette has gone through so much worse over the course of three+ seasons.

*sigh*

Alya laments that it's hard to find new content for the Ladyblog - ah, yes, tell me more about your struggles, Alya - but figures that at least she can post stuff about Chat Noir instead of--I don't know--making fake Ladybug theories to lead people off Marinette's trail. Marinette says that it's a great idea, though Alya still doesn't look too happy. The scene then rewinds to a little bit to show a different point of view, this time with Adrien and Nino. Wait, this feels familiar, wasn't there another episode that did something like--ohhhh no, this is going to hurt.

After saying good-bye to Adrien - something I wish I could do every time he's mentioned or on-screen - Nino catches the bit of conversation where Alya talks about the Ladyblog. Nino talks as if Marinette isn't there and asks Alya out to the movies because Marinette is chopped liver and this is about Alya and how sad she is, guys.

Wow, she's turning into Adrien faster and faster.

Alya hesitates, but Marinette assures her that there's still time. Alya excitedly runs off with Nino and they watch what I presume are previews given the narrator, featuring recycled footage from the Ladybug PV. Nino is upset because Rena is mentioned but not Carapace, and the preview features Rena telling Chat Noir to forget Ladybug because it's Chat and Rena herself who are trulu made for each other.

I don't know what's funnier; the complete lack of self-awareness or the suggestion that a biracial couple would exist in this show outside of a special that gives them maybe a minute of screentime and acts more like suggestive canon anyway. I think I might've been too generous with that line about dinosaurs.

Nino is offended by the preview and Alya brushes off his comments, stating that it's just a cartoon and it's made to entertain people, though Nino himself is certainly not entertained. Can't say I entirely blame him considering that Alya doesn't really try to say anything substantial or even agree with him. No cuddling or reassuring kisses, she just gets slightly sad and turns to her phone for a bit.

After the movie, Nino is cheered back up again until he catches Alya on her phone once more. He offers to take her home, but she's distracted, and he comments that what she showed to Marinette looked pretty nice; I don't know because they didn't show it. Nino asks what it was and Alya evades the question, stating that her battery is running out. Nino is suspicious, but spots Andre's ice cream cart and the two head over there. Andre calls them his favorite couple and asks what they want, but Alya sees Ladybug gesturing for her and has to run off, giving Nino a cheek kiss as she goes which feels like too little too late at this point.

Nino catches some conveniently-placed kids arguing over who Chat Noir loves, but they settle on the fact that girls in general love Chat Noir. Nino is then seen at the Seine watching the Ladyblog's latest video, where Alya is talking up how amazing Chat Noir is. I hate to stop every five seconds to complain - okay, actually I don't - but I presume this video must've been made after the movie since Nino seems like the type who would actively follow his girlfriend's blog, yet not only is this video perfectly set up to echo the kids and the movie preview, but Alya - despite apparently caring about her boyfriend soooo much that she kept trying to convince Marinette to bend the rules - didn't even try to warn Nino or text him so he doesn't take it too seriously. It's like "Sentibubbler" with the conflicting messages about identity rules; Alya cares about her boyfriend but both isn't thinking about how he'll take the things she says and apparently doesn't know him well enough to realize that he wouldn't be mad over her keeping a secret that she was told to keep. I already talked about how they play up Nino to be the emotionally weaker one of the relationship, but then they don't have Alya try to cover or make up for that. She's been acting very much not like Alya - you know, the one who in "Sapotis" practically bragged about how great she'd be at covering for Ladybug - with her stutters and weak excuses, so I can't completely blame Nino for being upset after everything that's happened when he sees the writers projecting onto Alya as she talks about how Chat Noir is brave and funny and cute and showing all these images of him as well. I don't agree with all of his actions, but--oh yeah, speaking of which--

Nino calls Adrien and is talking to him about how Alya must be in love with someone else. Adrien dismisses the idea, as Alya and Nino are together basically all the time, and asks who she could possibly be in love with. When Nino suggests that it's Chat Noir, Adrien laughs and jokes about it being Fang instead. Nino points out the video but Adrien did see it but is overall unphased and convinced that it means nothing. Nino says that he'll find proof and hangs up, but Adrien is certain he'll find nothing. Plagg comments that Nino will find someone because Plagg's charisma has definitely contaminated Adrien.

Ugh.

Adrien expresses concern that he put on the cat's charm too much and accidentally made Alya fall for him, and decides to visit Alya as Chat Noir to be sure.

Meanwhile, we get a reference to film noirs as Nino narrates. That's the second blatant reference this episode and now I feel like they wrote this script while doing a movie marathon.

Chat Noir arrives at Alya's house and Trixx hides before Alya opens the curtains to reveal her surprise guest. Nino is nearby watching the scene with his phone as Alya wonders aloud if something's wrong. Chat assures that everything's fine, but brings up the video she posted. He insists that it made him happy, but points out that she's been following him and Ladybug since the beginning and that they know each other much better due to everything that's happened. He has some conveniently-worded dialog as he starts to say that he hopes something's just an illusion and Alya gets worried that he's about to bring up Rena. Chat continues and clarifies that he wonders if she started to feel something for him, though adds that he understands because just look at him.

UGGGGH.

Chat clarifies by making a heart with his hands, which Nino sees. Alya laughs at this gesture and states that she has a boyfriend, doing the same heart gesture and suggesting that her love for Nino is even more than that. Chat Noir apologizes - hm, I didn't know he had the capacity to do that - and hugs Alya, saying that he was just confused.

An absolutely unnecessary hug for two people who, at least in terms of their current selves, have had very little screentime together, but this is also the show where making eye contact basically means your friends and it's all just to push the plot along so Nino inteprets that Alya is in love with Chat Noir, so whatever I guess.

Alya states that Nino is far more irresistable than Chat, then adds that she doesn't even know his secret identity, and she'd never fall in love with someone she doesn't know. Nino then runs away upset and the scene cuts away to the next day where--

Wait, wait, wait, hang on a second. Two things right off the bat there.

First off, we're just gonna sidle past that "wouldn't fall in love with someone you don't know the identity of" while ignoring the existence of the love square? Not even Chat thinking about how he doesn't know Ladybug's identity and trying to excuse that he doesn't have to? This guy is that certain of their relationship?

Secondly, Nino is practically sobbing and Shadow Moth doesn't take this as his opportunity? Same guy who akumatized Mr. Pigeon 72 times and has akumatized Gigantitan more than once? What is this pacing???

But--alright, so Adrien comes into school and sees Nino, still dressed up in his detective gear, which gets ignored completely as Adrien goes to tell him about Chat Noir and Alya. Because the show doesn't know how Adrien would convey this within reason, Nino interrupts him, taking him down into the lower part of the school where he has a desk and chairs set up. Adrien goes to ask when Nino had time to do this, but Nino slams his hand on the desk to cut him off. Nino presents the evidence he took and they go back and forth, likewise with Adrien turning off the background music while Nino turns it back on. Adrien insists that it's a misunderstanding, but pleads innocent when Nino asks how he knows. Adrien states that Alya is just a superhero fan and that she and Chat Noir have nothing in common.

Again, the complete lack of self-awareness is astonishing.

Adrien repeats what Alya said about secret identities and how she wouldn't fall for someone she doesn't know - they're really ignoring this, aren't they? - and continues hitting Nino's soft spots about how unlikely it is until Nino decides to tell Adrien something he's not supposed to.

He tells Adrien, not only that Alya is Rena Rouge, but that he's Carapace. Adrien goes through a range of emotions beyond sAD for once, shocked at the fact that they know each other's identities. Nino states that they don't keep secrets from each other, except now Alya is with Chat Noir. Adrien still doesn't understand and brings up how secret identities have to be protected, or else Nino wouldn't have told him because Ladybug wouldn't agree to it.

Oh, here we go. So that's why they waited.

Nino states that it was Ladybug herself who gave them their miraculouses at the same time; not giving the reason why, of course, nor pointing out that they're temporary heroes so there's understandably some leeway. Adrien is having a moment, but manages to bring the subject back to Alya and Chat Noir, who he still doesn't think are a thing. Nino argues that it's because Adrien doesn't know Chat Noir, but he does because he's Carapace and knows how Chat Noir acts. He says that it's all flowers and confessions when Ladybug appears, but he gets rejected because Ladybug thinks that he's annoying, and she's right. He adds that Chat flirts with Rena Rouge and that's all that needs to happen, with Chat stepping in on the first mission Carapace lost in. Nino laments the loss of the love of his life and wishes to shut Chat Noir up forever; we all do, Nino, we all do. Shadow Moth finally steps in with - oh, less than eight minutes left in the episode, yikes - and Nino is akumatized into Rocketear.

Rocketear rejects Adrien's pleas to stop, insisting that Chat Noir is who he's after, not Adrien, and Adrien transforms in sad fashion despite Plagg's reminder of who Rocketear is after. Alya, meanwhile, is in the art club with Marinette - wait, since when was Alya in the art club - telling Marinette about how Chat Noir thought she was into him due to the video, which Marinette groans at. There's an earthquake and they peek outside to see Rocketear firing his tears at Chat Noir, shouting that he stole Alya from him. Chat Noir tries to tell him otherwise, but Rocketear won't listen.

Alya groans at Nino doing this, then she and Marinette set off to find a place to transform. They conveniently go to the same place Adrien and Nino were, so they see the desk that Nino had set up.

Genuine question, how seriously does this episode want me to take itself, because now when I recount all the unnecessary love square drama in my head - because you know that's where this is going - I'm going to have to think, "Nino, dressed in a detective outfit, ripped off his fake mustache and told Adrien both his and Rena's identities, and also that Ladybug was totally cool with it and thinks that Chat Noir is annoying."

Gettin' two completely different vibes here. The episode clearly wants to be important but it doesn't take itself seriously either, which it totally could while including enough jokes to keep things light. Instead, I'm just left scratching my head and wondering what tone they're going for.

Marinette finds Nino's phone on the desk - I'm calling continuity error on that one because he at no point put it on the desk, at least not on-screen - and she questions Alya on the video she sees. Alya insists that nothing happened, apparently completely unphased by her boyfriend having spied on her, and says that he wouldn't have misunderstood if he'd heard the actual conversation.

The two transform and Ladybug immediately uses Lucky Charm, receiving a projector. Ladybug is clueless and Rena Furtive suggests creating an imaginary movie like Nino. Ladybug gets an idea, remembering Alya's earlier comments, and Rena confirms that she remembers every word of it.

Aaaaand, just like that, all of the tension has been completely sucked away. You know, "Backwarder" was a trash episode, but at least when Ladybug was showing every step of her plan, she didn't tell us what it was.

Meanwhile, Rocketear and Chat Noir are still arguing--I started zoning out at hearing the same thing over and over again at this point, so I just presume they were fighting over who does stuff behind their love interest's backs better; I don't think they came to an agreement but they're both losers anyway.

Chat Noir says that he'll prove his innocence, tossing his baton aside to show him giving up, but Rocketear points out that it proves nothing and strikes Chat Noir with his tears.

Our endgame love interest, everyone. Straight As yet about as smart as a sack of bricks, and that at least won't flirt with anyone non-consensually.

Chat Noir makes a point that he doesn't want to hurt Rocketear, and Shadow Moth tells Rocketear to take his miraculous before finishing him. Chat Noir can only weakly tell him not to before Ladybug snags Rocketear's wrist and diverts the shot. Ladybug explains to Rocketear about the projector and how it'll let him hear the audio of the recording he took. She adds that she doesn't know what Chat said, but she trusts him.

Marinette, I'm sorry, I feel so bad for you.

Ladybug turns on the projector and Rocketear relaxes at actually hearing what was going on. Rena then de-transforms and hurries out to meet with Rocketear, hugging him as Rocketear apologizes for doubting her. Alya also kinda sorta apologizes in a way I don't understand and Rocketear then breaks his akumatization, very casually, all on his own.

Yeah, just--casually, in a matter of seconds in fact. You know, it's really sad when people resisting akumatizations are more tense and emotionally compelling than them breaking them. This is twice in one season now and has zero impact considering that Nino's reason for being akumatized was already taken care of so he had no reason to stay akumatized anyway. Him breaking his own object to release the akuma would've at least been different, but instead it's just a repeat of what Alya went through with even less tension considering that Alya's wasn't even that good in the first place, relying on her relationship to Ladybug rather than who she knew to be her best friend.

Moving on, Ladybug captures the akuma and uses Miraculous Ladybug to bring everything back to normal. Shadow Moth monologues about how love and secrets don't go well together and he's sure that she has a lot and I'll talk about this later.

Ladybug hands over the magical charm, which Nino takes but insists that he won't need it, as he'll never let Shadow Moth use his love to manipulate him again. Plenty of other things to get akumatized over, but they gave the supposedly ace character a robot to help him stick out and also gave the supposedly aro character a miraculous back in season one to give her more importance. If characters aren't in love then they need something to ceompensate for it.

Nino apologizes to Chat Noir for being wrong and Chat Noir assures him that everyone has doubts, even him. He gets sad and Ladybug asks him what's wrong, but he insists that he's fine - officially throwing away his right to be upset at her later as far as I'm concerned - and they do their usual fist buuuuu--

...Really?

Everyone then splits up and Chat Noir sulks by himself instead of--you know, talking to Ladybug, or asking her anything, or making any sort of excuse for her because that would mean he actually has faith in her and understands that their partnership is different from temporary heroes, even if the excuse was as basic as her wanting to protect him more than the others because he would be that egotistical if they didn't want to stretch out this unnecessary drama.

Later on, Adrien is staring at a picture on the Ladyblog that might be a metaphor for the show considering how "in the foreground" Chat Noir and Rena are.

Adrien vents about Ladybug giving miraculouses to Alya and Nino, but Plagg states that she's the guardian. Adrien clarifies that he's referring to Alya and Nino knowing each other's identities, but Plagg doesn't see the issue. Adrien gets huffy and asks why the rule exists for LadyNoir but not Ninya, but Plagg again points out that she's the guardian, so she makes the rules, though obviously he uses cheese metaphors to convey it.

Okay, Plagg is only, like--half-right because he doesn't have all the information. If you don't mind me rambling for a bit, I'm on the fence here because, on one hand--yes, I agree that Marinette should be allowed to make her own rules, and I often do that in my writing because I think she should be permitted leeway in order to let herself be happy, but on the other hand, it's not technically her rule, as she had to let Alya and Nino in on their identities back in the Season 2 finale, so Fu was still around for a season. She wasn't even guardian yet!

Now, presumably so the fandom could blame Marinette if anything happened, Marinette never discussed this with Fu on-screen, so I can't say whether or not Fu knew, but I feel like he must've since Marinette had to have told him the heroes' identities off-screen, given "Party Crasher," and thus I imagine that Marinette would tell Fu everything that happened, which is consistent with what she does on-screen even if she'd keep things from him for a little while.

"Furious Fu" had also established that not even Master Fu followed rules completely, meaning that Marinette is in this awkward spot of mostly following what Fu taught her, which aren't all guardian rules anyway, and having to break the rules on occasion for various purposes. I can't say what Fu approved of and what he didn't, because episodes spend so much time on the love square that they forget about Marinette as a person and how she interacts with everyone else. From an emotional standpoint, I can't blame Marinette for not revoking the miraculouses of people whose identities get discovered because of her, as I imagine she feels guilty and it probably doesn't seem fair to force them into another miraculous or have them be entirely without one because of a mistake that she made, meaning that someone needs to be throwing a lot of red flags for Marinette to be through with them.

Though obviously, from the show's standpoint, it's just an excuse to not make new models, but I complained about that enough in "Sentibubbler" and this episode even went out of its way to design a detective model for Nino while spraypainting Alya's bodysuit in the same breath, so this is the world we live in.

Anyway, Marinette is essentially in this position where she still has Fu's rules hovering over her, but she's also trying to step out on her own and make her own decisions to varying degrees of success or failure depending on your point of view. Tikki--wait, no, bad idea--Su-Han then, could easily give input on these things, perhaps with Marinette discussing a modern day set of rules for someone her age and going back and forth with Su-Han on what the right choices to make are, finding something that's comfortable but within a realm of predictable control. Su-Han was okay with some rules being broken after seeing how Ladybug handled them and they could've easily made this episode about that instead, but instead, we get rules being set and then being broken on a writer's whim.

Which now brings us to the end of the episode, where Marinette is on the phone with Alya and apologizes for causing trouble between her and Nino. Alya tells her not to worry and she'll fix things - you know, those things that, to Marinette's knowledge, have already been fixed - and asks if Marinette trusts her. Marinette does, and Alya hangs up in order to face Nino.

Yeah, that feeling of dread in your stomach? That means you know how predictable the writing is and what's about to happen, good for you.

Alya explains that she has to tell Nino something and he's worried, this time trying to sheepishly break the tension. She explains that she's still Rena Rouge, much to Nino's shock, and adds that she's in hiding, which is why Ladybug didn't want her to tell anyone. Nino asks why she's telling him if she's not supposed to tell anyone - proving my point from a while back that he wouldn't have been upset had she kept it a secret - then asks if Ladybug agreed with it.

I want to give him a pat on the back for considering Ladybug, but he didn't even tell her when he had the chance that Adrien knows his identity now, so I'm just beaten down at this point.

Instead of answering the question directly, Alya says that she can't hide her identity from him because she loves him and they don't have secrets.

You know, like Nino telling Adrien about Rena's identity, or Alya saying specifically that she's a permanent holder, which I'm sure both of them will confess to since they said that they don't have--aaaaand the episode ends on happy triumphant music, okay.

I mean, I guess Alya at least didn't tell him that Marinette was Ladybug, but that is such a low bar and not even remotely worthy of congratulations when Alya told Nino the specific thing that Marinette told Alya not to tell; the thing that they had agreed on.

Nino wasn't upset anymore. He won't be getting akumatized either. Alya endured the supposed hardship of being a permanent fox holder for four episodes before breaking down and telling her boyfriend. Even her excuse doesn't hold any water because, again, they're both still technically keeping a secret, particularly Alya who knows Marinette's identity as Ladybug. The episode also apparently forgets that Alya and Marinette's friendship must not be as strong by her logic of telling Nino specifically everything, as Alya kept Rena Rouge a secret from Marinette for all of Season 3, but tells Nino about continuing to be Rena Rouge in Season 4. Boyfriends before BFFs without explicitly saying it, or to be more specific, whatever screws Marinette over the most, because that's what this comes down to, made worse by "Optigami" where Marinette told Alya that she'd tell her everything and I guess that doesn't go both ways.

"Sentibubbler" had Alya stress that no one would ever know. She promised Marinette and told Marinette to trust her, and the episode spent its entire running time talking her up and assuring Marinette that she was the right choice, even considering Marinette ridiculous for worrying when Alya had done something without Marinette's permission the episode right before it. Then, three episodes after "Sentibubbler," when Marinette is finally comfortable and trusts Alya completely, Alya betrays that trust. Nino betrayed that trust, knowing he wasn't supposed to do so but telling Adrien his and Rena's identity anyway, because he was losing an argument and needed to PROVE something.

Marinette gives them an inch and they take a mile. Marinette bent the rules so that they could continue to have the miraculous they'd started with and they disrespected her because it was hard for like a day.

And if this bites them back, it won't reflect poorly on them, it'll reflect poorly on Marinette.

It's not like Alya just overrode Marinette. She didn't go, "Hey, I'm telling Nino, I'm sorry," or tried her hardest to go back and forth with Marinette until they both agreed. No, she did what she told Marinette she wouldn't do without saying a word to her, because LOVE and SEEEECRETS.

And this only applies to her, of course, because don't think I didn't notice the parallels between this episode and "Truth," because WOW.

Episode begins with Marinette hoping for something and it blows up in her face? A date at the cinema that ends on a sour note? Plot-centric couple trying to get Andre's ice cream and the female with a secret needing to leave in a hurry? Boyfriend character getting akumatized over their girlfriend's secret? Boyfriend assumes/suggests that the girlfriend's secret involves Aaaaaadrien - or his alter-ego in "Rocketear"'s case - and the episode hints as much to him even though he's completely wrong? Akuma's colors are blue and black? THE BRIDGE?

But, ahhh, little difference, here and there, y'know, like how Marinette was forced to break up with her boyfriend while Alya got to keep hers, and Nino got to have long talks with Alya while Luka got little to nothing with Marinette.

Because do note that Alya, while trying to convince Marinette and talk to Nino about not keeping secrets, at no point suggests that Marinette deserves to be happy and deserves to have a boyfriend and that Marinette should be allowed to tell Luka her secret so they can get back together, so you have Alya here selfishly prioritizing her relationship with Nino while making no comment about Marinette's relationship, essentially asking Marinette to allow her what Marinette herself didn't have the luxury of, and Alya knows this because Marinette told her. It is both incredibly insensitive of Alya and incredibly insulting of the show to make so many parallels between this episode and "Truth" just to have everything crash down for Marinette because she's Marinette while everything goes well for Alya and Nino because they're not Marinette.

We've talked before about the formulas that are literally baked into the show, and one of those is how Marinette makes a mistake in every episode and has to learn from it. What that mistake is in this episode, I don't know, but considering that she apologizes for Alya and Nino's problems, I guess the show blames her for what they themselves had taught her.

Point being, there's a clear karma system in place, but it only applies to Marinette, and forcing her to mess up in every episode means that she is literally not allowed to be with Luka because had she been able to clear things up between them, he would've eagerly accepted her and they could've been happy. It'd be too difficult for her to mess up when Luka doesn't put mountains of pressure and expectations on her like everyone else. Factor that in with how she can be herself around him and it leads to situation that are too difficult for her to screw up in because her mistakes - more often than not - center around Adrien or her role as guardian.

And because another rule in the show is to bring up Adrien so they don't "lose him for too long," she can't avoid bringing him up either. If he's not in the plot, he has to be mentioned, leaving Marinette in a lose-lose situation that she'll never be free from.

So, let me just get this straight then:

The guy who spied on his girlfriend instead of talking to her about his assumptions gets to keep his girlfriend, not because he realized it was wrong regardless of whether he was correct or not, but because the situation had been cleared up for him, yet the guy who actively resisted his akumatization, saddened by his girlfriend's secrets but wanting her to share them when she was ready, gets broken up with and tossed to the wayside because he's not a rich blond boy who got a miraculous because he happened to be within the twenty meters of space where Fu was searching for new holders?

Meanwhile, the girlfriend who has gone against the wishes and insistence of her best friend - guardian of the miraculouses, by the way, so she calls the shots, something that Alya herself said in "Optigami" BEFORE GOING ON TO DO HER OWN THING IN THE SAME EPISODE AND BEING REWARDED FOR IT - is allowed to go against the wishes and insistence of her best friend again for the sake of "all love, no secrets" with her boyfriend and so she can have the happy ending she wants, yet the girl who was chosen for a miraculous without her consent, forced to screw up and talk about a random boy who doesn't even go out of his way to spend time with her, treated like absolute trash by writers who find humor in her misery, and is the only one to receive overly harsh and long-lasting consequences for her actions while also covering up and forgiving the actions of others within the episode where they do it...

doesn't get her happy ending, and won't ever get her happy ending. That thing Shadow Moth said about love and secrets not going well together? Yeah, only goes as far as the writers want it to, because both Nino and Alya still have secrets, and some of the ones they did tell each other were forced by someone else and kept until that very moment. This idea that people in love have to tell each other everything and that it makes a relationship stronger makes me immensely uncomfortable, and that lesson is also in "Guiltrip."

People should be allowed their secrets, and obviously there are exceptions for things that are being hidden with malicious intent, but being essentially forced to share everything or risk not having a "full and complete" relationship is stifling and sounds like it'd only cause stress.

This episode sucks. It furthers and confirms everything I've already thought about the show, Nino's screentime continues to be dependent on Adrien, Alya, or both, there are pointless references that completely take me out of the experience, and the utter betrayal from Alya and supposed message of the episode just reminds me that Marinette is inevitably going to be stuck with a guy who didn't even DO anything in this episode and is going to let himself stew instead of asking for any sort of clarifications from someone he apparently trusts so much.

So the takeaway is that Marinette's life is awful, she'll be forced to apologize for rules that she didn't even come up with herself, her best friend will walk all over her for the sake of her relationship with a guy - not even for the sake, really, they were going to be fine, it was more for HER personal comfort if anything - and the guy who actually makes Marinette happy and could've known her identity instead BECAUSE HE AT LEAST DIDN'T HAVE A TRACK RECORD OF SPILLING HER SECRETS gets treated in the exact same way that she does; like nothing, just something to abuse unfairly.

What a waste of an episode.

[gale-gentlepenguin]

ML Reboot: Miraculous: Heroes of Miracles: Zhi Chao

(The first new Character created for the reboot)

-While his first official appearance is in season 4. He is referenced to as early as season 2 and appears in Fu’s story and Fa Li’s flashback.

-Zhi Chao was one of the guardian of the miraculous. He was responsible for the Peacock and the butterfly during the time Fu was recruited.

-Zhi Chao was picked by Su Han himself (the Grandmaster). And Zhi Chao was by all means, a once in a generation Genius.

-He Mastered the Endless flow Fist faster than any previous Guardian. His hard work and dedication made him an incredible chosen.

-His miraculous before becoming a guardian was the Rabbit Miraculous.

-Zhi Chao was the youngest member of the Advisor council and was a candidate for the next Grandmaster.

-He felt he deserved to be the Grandmaster, that he would lead the order into a new era.

-He was confident in his prowess and was amazing at picking chosen. This was shown with his selection of Fa Li and Wang Fu.

-Fa Li was a genius like he was, but Fu. Fu was a prodigy. Fu showed control and prowess unlike any other chosen. Zhi chao was jealous of his student, but kept it hidden.

-When selected ti be an advisor, he was asked to pick his successor. He chose Fa Li. Even though he knew Fu was a better fit. Though Su Han was fine with the choice. Especially since that let him select Fu to handle the Fox, Bee and Turtle miraculous.

-during this time Fu began to soar and it bothered Zhi chao. His ambitions for change were being altered by his own student. He had most of the advisors under his sway, but Fu gaining the attention of the Grandmaster

-Zhi Chao tried to get Fu to his side, figuring that by having his support he could sway him away from the grandmaster. But Fu declined, stating he should discuss his objections with Su Han.

-Zhi’s nightmare came true when Su han confided to the council of advisors that he was planning to make Wang Fu his replacement.

-This Broke Zhi Chao. He decided if he would not be appointed the grandmaster. Then he would take it by force.

-Months of planning and Scheming, Zhi Chao created the Order of Zodiac.

-the event was known as the Zodiac Coup.

-The coup did not go as planned as he lost the peacock miraculous and was eaten along with Su Han, by the sentimonster he created.

-Fa Li, his student escaped with her life and a few miraculous. Unable to find the beast that ate her master.

-Fa Li would unite the scattered remains of Zodiac and form a new organization (Masqué) Which was used to find Feast and the remaining miraculous.

-Fa Li did somewhat succeed after freeing Feast. Feasts defeat resulted in the freeing of Zhi Chao. But she was lost after the collapse of the Headquarters, after Gabriel stole her miraculous and Age caught up to her.

-Zhi Chao, Now free and working with Gabriel as his new Second. Reformed Zodiac and began his plot.

-Zhi Chao saw the world and was disgusted by what it had become. His idea of a utopia in a world such as this would not come to fruition (the reverse of Su Han’s reaction)

-Zhi Chao decided he would no longer settle on taking over the order of guardians. No, he would use the miraculous to bring order to the world. And if need be, he would reset it with the ladybug and Cat miraculous.

-Zhi Chao is biologically Gabriel’s age, due to being in stasis inside of feast for all that time. Still very much in good shape.

-Zhi Chao is also a cunning strategist, using the knowledge given to make up plans and alter them in quick notice.

-He is a massive ego maniac and refuses to believe himself inferior to anyone. He finds Marinette’s existence incredibly vexing as she seems to have even more potential than Fu and him. Which also made him want to have her under his thumb as an apprentice.

-Zhi Chao realized the potential of the master miraculous and used all of the zodiac miraculous at once to become Tiānmìng. (Basically claiming he’s the Mandate of Heaven)

-Of course his arrogance and ego would lead to his downfall as Ladybug and Chat noir use their Awakening to match him, allowing them to snatch the Master Miraculous, resulting in his instability allowing for The duo to take the miraculous off of him and leading to his demise though that is decided in a final bout in the sky where He tries to take them all out.

Trivia

-Zhi Chao is the most skilled fighter as he invented Endless impact from his mastery of Endless flow.

-Zhi Chao is chronologically the oldest character in the series second only to Su Han

-Zhi Chao is very good at faking emotions and will often do so in order to manipulate people, such as his student Fa Li.

-Zhi Chao was able to pick up French shortly after being freed. But often messes up idioms.

-According to Zhi Chao, he felt that Marinette’s talent for the miraculous was the biggest threat to him, and it was extra aggravating to him. It is unknown why this is the case.

-Zhi Chao developed a fondness for Croissants, but will hide his enjoyment of them.

-It is implied that he tortured anyone that failed him.

-Gabriel was planning to betray him the entire time they worked together, and Zhi Chao was fully aware of this.

Zhi’s demise was described as feeling every pain receptor in his body explode at once before his end.

-Su han explains that utilizing miraculous in an incorrect manor can damage or destroy one’s soul. Which is implied what happened to Zhi

[mc-lukanette]

I haven’t watched the new episode but I heard it was awful. Do you have a fix-it that I can pretend is canon?

- Marinette is stressed, and extremely so; her schedule is more hectic and the kwami have been keeping her busy with teaching her any guardian rules/lessons they know from their limited knowledge that she might not have gotten from Fu since he hadn’t had the time to teach her due to what happened.

- Because of these factors, her dates with Luka have often been interrupted and constantly replanned, only the cinema date being anywhere near complete due to her giving him the guitar pick necklace. Luka is trying to be respectful and not pry, but can’t help being disappointed whenever she leaves.

- Eventually, Luka talks to her on the matter, concerned for where she goes and how she always seems anxious when she does. Marinette assures him that she adores him, but she has... things that she has to do, and even though she wishes so badly for it to be different, she’s forced into this situation and she’s so sorry for it.

- Luka is pained by the secret she’s forced to keep, but gives her a sad smile and ends the conversation there. She can tell that he’s putting on a brave face from the slump as he walks away.

- Later on, Marinette is walking down an empty street, muttering to Tikki about the situation, when an unfamiliar form descends from above and lands in front of her. Tikki quickly conceals herself and Marinette goes on the defensive, recognizing that this must be an akuma. “Who are you, and what do you want with me?!”

- The akuma reaches out... and gently takes her hand in his. “We have a date planned today, Marinette, and I want to make sure that we get to finish it this time.” “...W-what? Wait--Luka?”

- In that instance, someone from a distance screams at the sight of the akumatized Luka, yelling for someone to call Ladybug. Luka faces them, muttering, “You’re disrupting us,” his sentimonster helper using their ability to make the person and even the phone they were trying to use go completely silent, much to their shock. Roger, who was nearby at the time, approaches and gives a speech about defending Paris, then tries to attack Luka, but Luka uses his own power to flash Roger back to where he was a minute ago (meaning Luka’s sentimonster is an equivalent to Silencer whereas Luka himself is similar to Viperion); this happens to put Roger in the middle of the street - where he’d originally been directing traffic - and he has to dodge an oncoming car.

- “Luka!” Marinette states, panicked. “You can’t do this! You’re akumatized, you’re not thinking!” In response, Luka settles his hand on her shoulder. “I’m thinking perfectly well, and all I can think is about how you’re so burdened by something that I could never help you with. Now I can, and I’ll stop anyone or anything from bothering you or interrupting us, so we can have the date you deserve.”

- It’s at that moment that Marinette realizes that this akuma literally just wants her to have a nice time and that’s the sweetest freaking thing she’s ever heard.

- She can’t help being torn. On one hand, this is an akuma who will inevitably cause havoc, and she stops akuma as Ladybug... but on the other, this is Luka and she’s so touched and this is an offer for them to finally have a date not interrupted by an akuma because he IS an akuma, and she’s felt so bad ditching him before so this is a chance to remedy that.

- Marinette can see Tikki peering at her judgementally from her purse, but the opportunity is too tempting to pass up and Marinette agrees to go on a date with him, exciting Luka as he enthusiastically tugs her closer so they can walk together.

- Cue montage of Luka recreating their dates, though this time where she can actually enjoy them without interruption. Luka and his sentimonster occasionally use their powers and Marinette clearly hesitates, but he dotes on her so much that it’s hard for her to not want to continue their dates.

- Meanwhile, Shadow Moth probably: Wh--where the heck is Ladybug???? (there’s also probably a moment where Luka mentions Shadow Moth and Marinette uses the opportunity to gather some information)

- During one of the recreated dates, Chat Noir shows up and manages to snatch Marinette away, jumping up and out of harm’s way while trying to find a place to hide. He ducks into an alleyway and is about to go on about how neat his save was when Marinette huffs and asks, “What do you think you’re doing?!” “...U-uh, saving you?” “I didn’t need saving! We were on a date!” “You were on a what now.” “Chat Noir, it’s very rude to interrupt someone’s date. “I’m sorry, Princess, but I’m still stuck on the fact that you said you were dating an akuma--”

- At that moment, a hand clamps down on Chat Noir shoulder. He stiffens and turns, seeing Luka there and very much not happy. Luka squints, asking lowly, “What did you call her?”

- Chat Noir can only weakly look back at Marinette, who waves apologetically at him right before he’s yeet’d off into the distance. The sentimonster gives chase.

- Marinette does eventually leap into action as Ladybug once she recognizes that okay this was amazing and incredible and I’m officially de-stressed but Luka is akumatized and there is definitely a rule against Ladybug dating supervillains.

- Naturally, when Ladybug arrives, Luka’s first concern is what happened to Marinette. Ladybug tries to get him to back down and points out that he won’t even remember any of this once de-akumatized, but Luka insists that, “It’s okay. Marinette will remember.”

- Ladybug is internally like okay but can you not, I’m trying to fight you here and you’re making it difficult.

- Ladybug tries to negotiate/convince Luka into getting de-akumatized, until Chat Noir shows up on the scene again, the sentimonster following after. The fight itself is significally difficult and limiting; if they make any loud, disruptive noises, they’ll be silenced, but if they try to fight Luka directly/physically, he can zap them back to where they were a minute prior; knowing Luka, he could even engineer it so that one of them perhaps gets trapped if they’re not careful.

- Post-deakumatization, Marinette meets up with Luka and gives him a long overdue kiss. Luka is stunned, having been prepared to apologize for getting akumatized, and asks her what he did to deserve it, to which Marinette explains that he’s amazing and she’s happy to have him.

- They end up talking and Luka apologizes for trying to pry about her secret, but explains about his dad and the mystery behind his identity (foreshadowing the conflict for a future episode: I'd have the whole Jagged thing be a different episode so it gets proper focus). Marinette insists that she understands and he has nothing to apologize for, but pauses and laments that their dates might very well continue to be interrupted.

- Luka hesitantly starts to ask if she thinks it’d be best if they broke up, but Marinette cuts him off to insist otherwise. She wants to make this work with him but it’s complicated and she literally (stressing that it’s not a trust issue) cannot tell him why she leaves all the time. Luka smiles reassuringly and points out that a perfect song doesn’t exist and that every song goes through edits. Marinette asks what he means and Luka explains that he can’t help wanting to be selfish and spend time with her, but also that the knowledge of them dating is enough.

- Marinette, considering this, realizes that - yeah - not going on dates doesn’t mean they can’t be in a loving relationship, and maybe they can stop planning dates and get together right after she deals with akuma instead. She’s been a mess because of stress and that’s caused even more problems, so it doesn’t make sense to cause herself more stress by breaking up with Luka; she needs to take care of herself.

- The episode ends with Marinette in her room, some of the kwami being a bit chaotic/loud but Marinette being completely unphased and talking excitedly to Luka on the phone about their recent date “after that crazy akuma attack,” as Luka can’t hear the kwami due to their voices not breaking through technology.