#above Chloe

[athena-xox]

When your little tiny artist who you’ve been with since day one and still responds to your dms has a song go viral on tt

[tears-of-xion]

A lonely moment, away from the party.

What is she thinking of, I wonder?

-

Please do not use or re-post my artwork without my permission. Thank you!   (reblogs, however, are welcome and appreciated)

I do not own Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir, nor it’s characters. All rights to their owners.

[chloepleasestopdying]

Like I understand that most people don’t want to get into how bad Joyce is in fic ( most fics are ship based just to start) and the game is clear on it’s stance on the matter ( Which is that Joyce is mother of the year and tried her very hardest but Chloe is stuck in her grief and if she just gave David a real chance everything would be sunshine and rainbows) but ugh.

No doubt there’s like a dozen posts on this blog about how annoyed I am about it but honestly it really does annoy the hell out of me. I mean come on guys! Putting aside that Chloe lost her father and was undoubtedly a hard teenager to raise: Joyce started dating a man within a couple months of William’s death ( I believe we dated it at like 5 or 6 months) and continued despite seeing how Chloe felt about it. Yes- she can date who she wanted too but she had to have seen how much it hurt Chloe.

David clearly pushed Chloe into being more aggressive and angry. She was a young teenager who lost her father and instead of getting a hint of compassion from her mother or new shiny step father her needs were completely ignored. And Joyce just sat there and went ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with that girl I did all I could 😔’ while David’s over there poking her with a stick.

It just really gets me that Joyce only kicked David out when she learned about the cameras and not if Max tells her that he hit Chloe. She can excuse her husband hitting her daughter but not an invasion of her own privacy. 

[jq37]

Descendants: The Rise of Red is kind of a bizarre movie to talk about critically because, imo, it almost doesn't make sense to talk about it in the usual terms of good vs bad or enjoyable vs not enjoyable when the way more obvious tension is finished vs unfinished.

Because, more than any other movie I've ever seen, it does *not* read as a full movie. And I don't mean in a "this movie has a cliffhanger" kind of way. The Empire Strikes Back and Across the Spiderverse fit that description. They end on big dramatic cliffhangers that point to a resolution in the third installment.

But Rise of Red just sets all this stuff up and then...ends without concluding anything. It doesn't feel like the first movie in a trilogy (or duology). It feels like the first act of a two-act musical. It very specifically reminds me of the end of the first act of Into the Woods where all the main characters sing the song Ever After about how they all fixed their problems with magic and nothing bad will ever happen to them again and then the narrator ominously says "To be continued" before the curtain drops. But in Into the Woods you know there's a second act and this movie wasn't sold as the first act of a bigger story. Like sure, it has the, "You didn't think this was the end" tag at the end like all the other movies, but those movies were complete, self-contained stories even though they had sequels. This was NOT a full story. It's half of one story.

Like, if we're supposed to take this as a full story, there are so many bizarre choices:

Why did they make sure to mention that Cinderella and Charming fell in love at the ball at the top if it wasn't meant to set up Back to the Future style, "Oh no, I accidentally got my mom banned from the ball so she's not gonna fall in love with Dad and I won't be born" shenanigans?

Why did Maddox very pointedly have that bit about "you could lose your mom completely" if that was never going to come into play? Red never did anything to endanger Bridget or endanger her own birth so it doesn't make sense as a warning in that way.

Why was there all this focus on this Carrie on prom night moment for Bridget if we LITERALLY NEVER SAW CASTLECOMING? Why dance around this moment and talk about it all cloak and dagger with no specificity if they weren't building up to some big reveal that it wasn't as straightforward as it seemed? And like, they leaned in HARD with making Bridget the nicest, sweetest, cotton candy princess as a teen so I need WAY more than, "She got pranked by known bullies she's been enduring with a smile very handily up to this point" to buy that she went from that to "murderous dictator". And even if she did become murderous, I find it insanely hard to believe that she'd include her best and only friend on the list of people she wants to suffer unless there was a betrayal. I find it INSANE that there wasn't a falling out scene at any point in this movie with how thickly they were laying on the admiration and camaraderie.

(Note: And adult Cinderella def has guilty vibes re: the Queen at orientation. Which I know I'm not imagining because it's literally spelled out in the Jr Novelization!)

Before the time travel element of the movie started, I thought they were going for something like they go to the past and realize that Bridget was bullied not by the VKs but by the spoiled royals, and Ella ends up joining in the bullying once she gets with Charming, betraying Bridget and justifying her whole "Love Ain't It" philosophy. Or Ella ditching her at the last minute to be with Charming meaning she has to deal with the monster prank alone and it was the being alone rather than the prank itself that hurt her (though that is NOT a good enough reason to go all off with their heads on your subjects). The fact that, as far as we know right now, it literally was just a relatively mild and reversible prank that caused all of this is just, such flat storytelling, you know?

But! All of this makes way more sense if this is meant to be the first act of a single contained story. And I don't wanna be all "Pepe Silvia, secret good 4th episode of Sherlock" about this but I did see this picture:

Which seems to indicate that this was written as a Part One. Which, if so, idk why they wouldn't advertise it that way but whatever. The point is, if that's the case then it means that we're potentially in bad pacing territory rather than straight up bad storytelling territory. Because this isn't a bad place to be halfway through your story:

The heroes, warned that time travel is dangerous, have gone back in time to change the heart of a brutal tyrant before she can stage a coup. They seemingly succeed in their mission and when they come home, everything is great! But then, the side effects of time travel start to catch up with them. Chloe realizes that, in breaking the vase, she prevented her mother from going to the ball and falling in love with her dad (who was conspicuously absent from the final scene btw) which means she's starting to be forgotten and erased from the timeline. And Red realizes that though this new version of her mom is as sweet and kind as the teen she once met, she's a complete stranger to her (fulfilling the Hatter's warning that she could lose her mom completely). So they have to go back in time once more to make sure the Ella and Charming fall in love again, perhaps at the cost of whatever bad thing that happened to Bridget happening again and bringing back the original version of her future self. But, now with more context of how her mom became that way, Red can now talk to her mother and persuade her to give people another chance.

Boom, that gives us time to go back and hit everything we haven't yet hit. We can pay off the time travel tropes that were set up but not explored. We can go to Castlecoming which feels so obviously set up to be the centerpiece of this story (like, come on, Back to the Future literally does the school dance thing. This is Time Travel Storytelling 101). We can actually get info about what the prank was and why it affected Bridget so completely.

(Note: This is a side thing but it really strikes me as so crazy that Bridget would so SUCH a big 180 here. Like, I know the Queen of Hearts is a silly, goofy, campy villain, but she straight up murders people and there's no way to get around that if we're taking her out of the surreal story she comes from and putting her in a (comparatively) grounded story. If I wasn't doing a betrayal plot, I would make the twist that the spell that turned Bridget into a "monster" didn't just have a physical effect, it had a mental effect and it magically twisted her personality to be the way it is now. So they broke the physical half of the curse, but neglected the other half and it's been festering the whole time, turning her as evil as she was sweet. Because like, a simple physical transformation isn't that big of a deal to have such heavy security--Bridget made cupcakes with a transformative effect and that was totally fine. I'm not saying that that's what's gonna be the case. I just think it would be an explanation that makes sense for why she changed so crazy much that makes more sense than a simple prank or even a betrayal. Her mom wasn't even evil! How did she go from zero to murder without even an evil mom to push her onto the path? But I'm super digressing right now.)

(Note #2: OK, one last thing. The trap on the book presumably would have hit the VK's and trapped them in Merlin's office regardless of what Chloe and Red did, right? That's like, net zero influence on the timeline. I genuinely can't tell if that's a straight up plot hole or set up to be like, "Oh no. Actually when she said that she was turned into a monster in front of everyone it was meant in a less literal way." Like she was just made to look bad and that was the real thing that pushed her over the edge. Like idk. It really feels like the only thing they really did that would change the timeline was get Ella banned from the dance and presumably out of the way where she couldn't hurt Bridget. OK NOW I'm done.)

Anyway, my point is that this is not how I would have structured my movie and I think this was a super weird way to go into the second era of Descendants movies, but they can still tell a complete story if that's their plan. I'm genuinely really curious to see if this pans out to be a fairly competently told story that just happens to be split over two movies or a complete fumbling of the narrative bag because it could really be either at this point and it's fascinating to me.

[girlwithsword]

Me reading chapter 1: Oh I bet Chloe is just being overdramatic and presumptuous and Shara is actually a nice girl with more depth than Chloe thinks

Me by chapter 12: Shara Wheeler is a vicious bitch and maybe a sociopath

Me by chapter 17: Oh they’re both batshit insane and they’re //perfect// for each other

[blackwell-academys-airdrop]

Chloe: [practicing pick-up lines in her bathroom] Dang girl that's a nice shirt can I talk you out of it

Chloe: Are you a toaster because I wanna take a bath with you, wait that doesn't make sense

Chloe: Excuse me are you a sea lion because I could sea you lion in my bed

Chloe: Excuse me are you my pinky toe because I wanna bang you on my coffee table

Chloe: Ok that one was just stupid

[marsneedstherapy]

Oliver: I love the term 'partners'. Are we dating? Are we robbing a bank? Are we the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies and are members of an elite squad known as the special victims unit? Who knows!

[caeruleums]

open to: m / f / nb

plot: spencer has hired your muse (escort / s*x worker / someone looking to make extra money / etc.) to confirm whether or not her husband is cheating on her. they’ve come back to let spencer know what has happened.

           “...so you saw him?” the woman asked, the once bustling home filled with children and life was empty except for the two of them seated at the kitchen table. her husband was away on some trip with his church, and she’d always suspected he had eyes for almost every person that ‘worked’ for him there. boys and girls alike, barely legal. but she also thought... maybe she was paranoid. “he used to tell me that it was unholy to have... relations if we weren’t intending to procreate. so... we haven’t been... together in any sort of way. i just, um, find it hard to believe that he would stop.”

[rozunderpressure]

Into the Miraculous Woods

Ladybug *deadpanned*: You can talk to birds?

Chat Noir * cataclysm in hand *: Sometimes the things you wish the most are not to be touched!

Adrien and Félix: AGONY!! FAR MUCH GREATER THAN YOURS!!

Tom Dupain: Father?? You're alive! I thought you died in a baking accident!

Ladybug *after kissing Chat*: That was just a moment in the woods...

Lila: Everyone in life tells tiny lies, what matters, really, is the size!

Chloé: Because of the way you treated me, I'll NEVER EVER be happy! Audrey: . . . I was just trying to be a good mother.

Hawkmoth: I wish... More than anything! More than LIFE!

Emilie *holding the peacock Miraculous*: Do you want a child or not?

Sabrina: A servant is more than a dog to a princess.

Astruc *as the characters gang up on him* : Hey, wait! I am the narrator of the story! Adrien: Some of us don't like how you've been telling it

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

Hey CJ 👋 I hope you’re doing well in life.

I’m on the same page as you, when it comes to taking a step back from TWDG & the fandom. And, coming back to the games after sometime & seeing it in a different light. Some things that didn’t click with you back then, makes a bit more sense now.

Also, I’m curious.. what are thoughts on true colors? Steph & Ryan? 👀

Hello, my friend! 👋 Been a while! But yeah, I'm doing fine; a lot of the usual work with writing fic and blog posts in between.

Yeah it's funny to step away from a fandom you're so engrossed in for so long, like twdg was such a huge part of my life back in 2018-2020 with me running this blog, writing fic, and streaming. Now I'm just in a completely different headspace in general, and looking at the games now, they're still amazing but my reasonings are different. Also I talk about the comics a lot, which isn't something I would've guessed I'd be doing. If you go back to when they were announced, I made posts being like "yeeeeeah I dunno if I'm gonna read them :/" jokes on me. I read them multiple times, I need to make that useful haha.

As for LiS True Colors, I actually super loved it?? way more than I ever did the first LiS game?? though I think I might've loved it for the wrong reasons. I don't know, I haven't actually looked into what LiS fans thought of it compared to the other games, but for me it was a "perfect time, perfect place" game in the moment. To me the whole thing was nearly a perfect escapism game; the music is an A+, the entire town is gorgeous and covered in flowers and woods, Alex gets to live in a nice apartment for free [the true fantasy], there's a whole LARP campaign to play through, a flower festival where I've never been so conflicted on who to give a rose to, and overall just the coziest vibes. I swear, I spent most of the game just wandering around the town looking at all the flowers, it was great.

Like if Gabe didn't die and True Colors was just about Alex moving to this fantasy-like small town and working through her issues with the help of her powers, I would've been 100% on board. I didn't mind the mystery, though I totally guessed Jed would be the twist villain given the first episode immediately presents him as a hero who saved a bunch of people in the mines, I was like "Oh did he now... mmhmmm mmhmmm and he's Ryan's dad, oohhh he's gonna be this game's Jefferson-" except he was done better than Jefferson imo. He didn't turn into a cartoon character and his motivations behind the cover up were interesting. He didn't do it for the aesthetic like Jefferson did. And in the end I got everyone to side with me, except Charlotte because I told her to take the money so she wanted to speak out but couldn't, which was honestly fine with me like take their money, send Ethan to college, we'll stab Typhon just fine without your vocal support.

I liked most of the characters, except for Diane and Mac, though I reluctantly disliked Mac less by the end... Diane can suck an egg, though. I don't think I've ever wanted to throw a character out a window more than when Alex came back all bloodied with a bullet wound on her head as she exposed the truth and when she asks why no one's saying anything, Diane just goes, "We don't want to embarrass you" kjlkajdslkjalkjdl LADY DON'T PISS ME OFF

As for Ryan and Steph, I liked them both, trying to choose between them was absurdly difficult. It was like True Colors saw how easily I picked between Louis and Violet and took it as a challenge to create Ryan and Steph specifically to stump me. I mean, soft boy who loves nature, goes out of his way to be kind and helpful to those around him, has a slow build up to being emotionally available with someone he trusts, and has some daddy issues? A girl with pretty brown eyes who loves DnD and LARP, has a passion for music and will deflect with humor, who knows who she is and is eager to help those around her, and who isn't just another rehash of Chloe? They knew what they were doing; they dressed Steph up in as a witch after having Ryan act like a goof acting like enemy creatures, they were made for me.

Having done both routes, I do prefer Steph. I adore her and Alex together, but Alex and Ryan are super cute, too.

It's not a perfect game and there are issues in the writing but honestly, I don't care. I had a good time. I was engaged. I looked at every single flower and kissed a pretty girl so good that the world exploded. What a great game.

[mothdotz]

I like them a whole lot.

(I am not normal about these guys)

[rex101111]

finally got my hands on Granblue Relink, because while i fell off the Gacha the world and characters are too likeable to just divorce myself from completely. Pretty fun so far! A fairly standard if very enjoyable ARPG. Also since Vaseraga is apparently a character you can unlock, you can bet im making that a priority.

[thatwasthenightthingschanged]

number 1-3 switch constantly & I also have to add that atm I'm only capable of listening to the Not That Sad Songs repeatedly bc otherwise I spiral mentally so my therapist actually had to forbid me from listening to the other songs lol but yeah! my ttpd ranking😌

[caliburn-the-sword]

it’s theory time

i bet that at some point in flf2 the communists are gonna put a hit out on rosalind. and it will be phoebe receiving the order.

[enigmasandepiphanies]

all i do is lately loop in down bad, so long london, guilty as sin, daddy I love him and clara bow and cry

[plumsaffron]

Each time I see a post questioning or speculating if Lila Rossi is an adult to make it so called realistic. My desire to bless your mouths with Spades grows.

Just because what you can't fathom because it appears improbable does not mean it's impossible. One just really just needs intel and know what they are doing.

But very well this is what you're asking for with your stupid theories.

It will be just like that ship people drew of many times called Gabinette or Gabrienette Maribriel. So I guess Cerise would become shippable with every adult then (even master fu).

Farewell to your Liladrien Nataniel and Lila Lilanette Chlolila Lilagami Liluka Maxssi etc then. Oh the devastation. And like what even makes you want to really think like that. GEZZ?

I wonder if that would possibly grant a excuse to make some people no longer hold back on what they desire to draw or animate of Iris Verdi or Volpina or Hoaxer.

A fan of Lila ceased her life because worthless maggots harassed and drove her there because they hated the existence of Rossi.

Yes, speculate the worst so scums and indirectly some of the accursed parts of miraculous fandom can have a one up on the deceased.

Ah number 2 on my list of fandoms I despise a lot.