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burningtacozombie · 1 year ago

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“I’ll never see my mom and dad again, and I loathe him, I detest him completely that he robbed me of those years with them, that they both died not knowing what had happened to me! [...]

that’s fucking awful, I hate that for her. her parents died never finding out she was still alive and she never got to see them again :(

Guero pushed himself up, his eyes rounding as he looked down at her. “For real, that motherfucker wants us in on trafficking kids?”

after everything we’ve just heard, I can’t say I’m surprised. but no one in the club would even so much as think about doing it so it’s not just our babe who has a personal reason to take him out, now the entire MC has an “official” reason. Rocco be out there messing with the wrong club. good for them.

He took a few puffs, handing it back, holding in a cough until the tickle passed. “I do, but not often. It has too much of an effect on me, and I can never get the balance right.”

“The balance between what?”

“Between a nice buzz and ragingly horny.”

“Ahh.” She nodded, looking entertained, the stoned giggled welling up within her. “I somehow don’t think you need any extra boosting in that department.”

He moved her hair, kissing the side of her neck. “A hundred percent correct, mamacita. And since I guess you’re probably drunker now than you were earlier, I’m not risking that balance any further, [...]

aww I’m never getting tired of adoring how considerate he is <3 around the club guys he’s got that big mouth and is all tough but bet he enjoys being sweet and thoughtful away from them. also, can you imagine just how incredible his lips would feel on your neck...

Tyrone continuing, “You better sort yo’ damned mess, fuckboy! Because I am one pretty smile away from makin’ that fine assed lil’ honey mine, you hear?”

at this point this dude makes me sick. I hate fuckers who talk about women that way, like.. shut the fuck up, you ain’t making anyone “yours”. she’s not property, not anymore anyway, she decides who she fucks and when, not you. calls Guero a fuckboy but talks like that, about someone who’s sitting RIGHT THERE no less. they might be laughing but I’m not, I kinda wanna kick his teeth in. yes, I have strong opinions about dudes like that.

[...] He’ll be looking for me, and if he finds any record of a twenty-nine-year-old woman named Emma Louise Taylor anywhere, he’ll come for me.”

Her muscles stiffened at just the thought, Guero turning to wrap both arms around her, feeling her relax into his embrace after a few moments. “We’ll work something out.”

two words, baby girl. new identity. pretty sure the club can help you out with that. I wanna fall asleep in his arms too...

Her safe person, the kind of man she’d dreamed would one day save her from her fate, and there he was... snoring like a brontosaurus.

[...]

“I wasn’t snoring,” he began stretching, the other eye opening eventually. “I was doing mindful breathing.”

Immediately, she cracked up, leaning to place a kiss against his stubbly jaw. “There’s nothing mindful about those sawn logs.”

She had a point, he guessed, Guero turning onto his side and wrapping his arms around her. “Yeah, but I’m cute. I get away with it, don’t I?”

yes babe, you’re cute. yes I love you. even if you sound like a demon and a brontosaurus had a lovechild when you sleep :D :D

Leaning close, he kissed the side of her head, his lips soft against her ear. “They aren’t who you are, and you’re not any less beautiful. They’re only the map of the journey that finally led you to me.”

LITERAL HEART EYES!!! babe, you say you don’t know what to say a lot and yet you’re pretty good at saying the perfect thing <3

Lost & Found - Chapter Nine.

So then, my beautiful, wonderful audience. Those who are not new around these parts know that sometimes, treats are given in the form of a double update day with my stories, and guess what? Today is one of those days! I know you've all been waiting patiently for the sexual side of Emma and Guero's blossoming relationship to finally flower, so I thought I'd share it today in the next chapter! Has that made you smile? I hope it has! :)

Previous chapters - One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight

Words - 3,434

Warnings - 18+ content throughout, Minors DNI. Recounts of kidnap, child trafficking, physical/verbal/sexual abuse.

The more she revealed, it seemed, the more comfortable she became with sharing memories of her nineteen years held prisoner. Guero lay there and let her recount it all, being exactly what she needed, somebody to simply listen.

“Marie taught me how to shoot.” He had wondered at how well she seemed to handle the Beretta she’d pointed at his head, her handling of the firearm steely and confident. “There were guns kept all over the house, so there’d always be one within easy reach, just in case. With whom Rocco was, he was a target, or rather his family were. He routinely pissed off other mob families, so of course anyone he cared for became a target, a weak point.

“She wanted me to be able to protect myself from such a threat, but mostly, if Rocco himself ever became so unhinged that I felt my life was in danger. “Shoot him dead, and we’ll figure it out somehow afterward”, is what she used to tell me. How we would have figured that out beyond running for our lives, I don’t know. His guys would have hunted us down.”

She paused for a moment, tears beginning to swim within her eyes. “I hate myself, for leaving her. Joey, Alessia and Mikey, too. I loved them so much, they were like my siblings for Christ’s sake! It’s a guilt that’ll never leave me, that I ran and they’re all still stuck there! She became my mother, and I abandoned her!”

“Hey, no,” he began, touching his fingers under her chin, gently lifting her head. “You don’t have to feel guilty about a thing. I get that you miss her, she made the hell he put you through bearable where she could, but Marie chose that life, Emma. Nobody forced her.

“She knew who she was marrying, and I’m not saying that in the end she had an easy choice to get away from him, ‘cuz I can see from what you told me he’d have killed her for it, but you found a way out. You took your chance, and you got free. If she loves you as much as it seems she does, then she’ll be fucking happy as hell the girl she counted as one of her own got free of him.”

She absorbed his words, realising that no matter how unpleasant it felt, what he’d said was the plain, simple truth. If she didn’t assume her to be dead via Rocco’s hand, Marie would be quietly rejoicing her escape. “Is it wrong that I feel more of a maternal bond with her than I do my actual mom? I feel guilty for that, too. When I hear the word mom, I think of Marie, not Cassie.”

He shifted slightly beneath her, Emma moving a little as he turned onto his side, resting his head on his arm. “It might sound cold, but it’s fact. Marie was in your life longer than your birth mom. I kinda guess it’s only natural you’d think that. Doesn’t mean you love Cassie any less, or that you can’t reconnect with her now you’re free.”

“But, but,” she began, her throat swelling on a rising lump, “that’s the thing, there is no Cassie. When I was twenty-five, we sat and looked on the internet, I begged her to look up my family. I just wanted to know if they were okay. Mom died back in two thousand and thirteen from breast cancer. My dad, he passed away six years ago, motorbike accident. All I have left is Dylan, who is still in Spokane. My grandparents, too, unless anything happened in the interim.

“I’ll never see my mom and dad again, and I loathe him, I detest him completely that he robbed me of those years with them, that they both died not knowing what had happened to me! As if me being taken wasn’t bad enough. It left Dylan all alone, no immediate family, and it’s all because of him!”

She fell apart at that point, naturally so, sobbing against his chest as Guero held her. Again, he had no idea what to say to that, knowing it would take a man greater with words than he was to offer verbal comfort. Instead, he was just there, not knowing that truly that was all she needed from him, just someone to be there. It wasn’t about words. Listening was enough, as he continued to do, Emma sharing more with him about her life within the gilded cage prison that was the Lombardi mansion.

“He used to virtually pimp me out to his friends too at parties.” Once again, Guero felt his anger flare like a firecracker, grinding his teeth as his jaw tightened. “I always wanted to enjoy sex, but none of them ever made it feel good for me, all too consumed by their own pleasure to give a damn about mine. As long as they got to lie between the legs of a pretty, young blonde, that was good enough.

“There was only one of them who was different. His underboss, Vincent Calabrese never laid a hand on me. I was offered to him, and for appearances in front of Rocco and the others he always accepted, but once we got into the bedroom, he just sat down beside me on the bed and we talked. He said he wasn’t in the habit of defiling little girls, but even when I was over the age of consent, he still wouldn’t.

“He staunchly disagreed with what was being done, the child trafficking. ‘It’s an affront to god, snatching children from their families’ is what he always used to say. He always opposed it, and Rocco knew that, but ultimately went along with what was being done for the sake of a quiet life, and I guess not ending up with a bullet between his eyes either. This leads me to something that you guys should all know, EZ especially.

“You’re running heroin for him now, but all that will change if Rocco has his way, and believe me, he will. You guys are in his pocket now, which means in his mind, he owns you. You’re all to do with as he pleases, and what he pleases is to start bringing children across the border. Undocumented migrants are much easier to move, and get away with moving, too. I overheard him talking about it, it was always a two birds with one stone deal for him. He’d get you used to the money first, and then tell you that your consignment would begin to include kids as well.”

Guero pushed himself up, his eyes rounding as he looked down at her. “For real, that motherfucker wants us in on trafficking kids?”

His horror at the very suggestion was telling over the person he was. Although still a criminal, he was a man with the kind of morals that had been few and far between in the world she had escaped from. “Eventually, yeah.”

“And if we refuse?” He didn’t need to ask, really. He could guess.

She made a gun motion against the side of her head, couple with a soft exclamation of ‘pow’. “He’d wipe you all out and move onto the next nearest charter, using your eradication as an example of what happens when people push back against him.”

The weight of the mafia. That was a war they definitely wouldn’t win, and he knew that for sure. Rocco Lombardi could crush them all, very easily, too. “I have to take that to EZ. Not now, of course, but at some point over the weekend, call a templo. Will you be okay to come and tell us what you know?”

She smiled, reaching to stroke his hair. “Of course, I will.”

They remained quiet for a time after, Emma needing the silence. Her legs remained in tangle with his as she reached for the tequila bottle, taking a long glug, the alcohol burning her throat. She felt a little drunk and numb, which was what she had needed in order to sit there and offload it all to another person. “There’s more I could tell you about my life, but right now, I feel drained. Like I need air, too. Can you give me a minute?”

“Yeah, take as long as you need.” He reached to stroke her face, Emma turning her head and kissing his palm, getting up and letting herself out of the front of the house. The cool air hit her, soothing to her frayed nerves, the residual effects of her revelation hanging onto her, though.

“Hey, boo.” Of course, Tyrone would notice her out there, always keeping the watch. She walked over to his window, her shoulders heavy, watching him emerge from behind the swathe of curtain fabric. “Damn, you look all sad and shit. Fuckboy bin’ actin’ up?”

She shook her head. “No, no he’s great. Listen, I know you deal, so I figure I’m in the right place. Can you sell me a joint? That’s all I want, just one.”

He looked entertained at the naivety of her question, that it was the norm for dealers to exchange such a small amount. Tyrone, for all of this mouth and uncouthness was kind, though. “I ain’t selling you shit, white girl. This is on me, hold on.”

She smiled. “Thank you, you’re great.”

He beamed, reaching to grab his rolling tray, locating one of his pre-rolled joints. “Ain’t I, though? I know fuckboy rarely smokes it, so just remember I gotchu if you ever need a lil’ hit.” The truth was, neither did she. She’d occasionally partook of it back in her old life, secretly taking from Rocco’s personal stash which he smoked to ease his chronic migraines. It helped her feel more relaxed in the utter brutal chaos of her life. It smelled and tasted awful, but she enjoyed the calming buzz.

Tyrone passed a joint and a lighter through the window. “Enjoy, boo.” She smiled, leaning in and kissing his cheek. “Aw, lawdy! I gotta kiss from a pretty girl, hell yeah!”

She laughed softly, shaking her head and lighting up, moving to sit on the front step of Guero’s side of the house, taking a long drag. God, that was some nice weed. She coughed a few times, the usual, barky rasp associated with smoking weed, her throat tickling.

“Yo!” She turned to see a large arm thrust through the window, a can of soda proffered forth. “If you don’t like mango then I can’t help you. Oh, hold up. I might have a Fanta somewhere.”

Walking back over, she took the can. “Thanks, Tyrone. You keep your Fanta, mango and I are good.” She moved back to the step, opening the soda and sipping it, the tickle clearing nicely before she took another little puff, looking out across the street into the darkness. The only sounds audible were that of the game Tyrone was playing, and the chirp of cicadas. It was somewhat relaxing in ambience.

The weed had an instant calming effect upon her, all of the brutality that would endlessly echo through her memories placated and pushed back again, back behind the fortress walls in her mind. She’d had to keep it there for years to have even had a chance of remaining sane through her ordeal. God, she couldn’t believe that she’d actually escaped it, found somebody who she could trust, someone who for all intents and purposes was slowly becoming all hers, too.

“As if you’re out here getting high on my front step. Not even I do that.” Turning, she saw Guero emerge from the house, moving to sit behind her, his legs flanking her body as he stretched.

“Well, that’s because you don’t smoke weed,” she chirped, watching him frown before plucking the joint from her.

He took a few puffs, handing it back, holding in a cough until the tickle passed. “I do, but not often. It has too much of an effect on me, and I can never get the balance right.”

“The balance between what?”

“Between a nice buzz and ragingly horny.”

“Ahh.” She nodded, looking entertained, the stoned giggled welling up within her. “I somehow don’t think you need any extra boosting in that department.”

“Oh, you’re not wrong there,” she spoke, eyes widening a little as she leaned back against him. “Even if I was sober, sharing all of that has kinda dampened my desire.”

He snorted softly, arms tightening around her. “Understandable. S’okay, I can wait.”

“Can you?” she giggled, the sound joining the noise of the cicadas.

“Mm.” he hummed, kissing her neck again. “Just.”

Just then, the curtains next door began moving, Tyrone’s boom sounding. “Goddamnit, will you two go back in that house and bust some furniture already? Shit!” They both snort laughed, Guero resting his forehead to her shoulder, Tyrone continuing. “You better sort yo’ damned mess, fuckboy! Because I am one pretty smile away from makin’ that fine assed lil’ honey mine, you hear?”

“Yeah, I hear,” he called through his laughter, “and I see, too. Plying her with weed and soda.”

“I know what the ladies like! If she’s still out here in a half hour, she gets the first slice of my pizza, too!”

“Exactly, you gotta give me a head start against your half ton of raw charm, dog,” he chuckled, Tyrone emerging further from the curtains.

“Hey, I might be a big fella, but I’m no fuckin’ half ton! I’m thick and juicy, drives the chicks wild!”

“Tyrone, you ain’t thick, my man. Your ass is so fat, if I swerved my bike to miss you, I’d run outta gas.” There was a pause, a squawking laugh emanating from the window, Emma thinking it hilarious a man with such a low, rumbling voice had a laugh so high in pitch. All banter with their hilarious neighbour aside, they remained outside until she had finished the joint, heading back in and returning to bed.

“Do you feel better for telling me everything?”

Resting her head against his chest, she nodded, her nails tracing the outline of one of the spiderweb tattoos that spread out across each of his shoulders. “I do, you know. Whether the nightmares will stop because of it, I don’t know. I think I might need further help to recover from it all. Kinda scared about registering with a doctor, though, putting my name back out there. He’ll be looking for me, and if he finds any record of a twenty-nine-year-old woman named Emma Louise Taylor anywhere, he’ll come for me.”

Her muscles stiffened at just the thought, Guero turning to wrap both arms around her, feeling her relax into his embrace after a few moments. “We’ll work something out.” She fell asleep in his arms, those early morning hours passing dreamlessly, neither waking until 10am the following morning.

Rising from her place curled against him, Emma rubbed her eyes, looking down at the chiselled tattoo canvas that had been her pillow. Her safe person, the kind of man she’d dreamed would one day save her from her fate, and there he was... snoring like a brontosaurus. She couldn’t help but giggle softly, thinking that was a part perhaps not strictly included in the romanticism of her fantasies.

He cracked an eye open, his grin widening. “What are you laughing at?”

“Isn’t it obvious? The noise! You snore like something hell spat up for being too loud.”

“I wasn’t snoring,” he began stretching, the other eye opening eventually. “I was doing mindful breathing.”

Immediately, she cracked up, leaning to place a kiss against his stubbly jaw. “There’s nothing mindful about those sawn logs.”

She had a point, he guessed, Guero turning onto his side and wrapping his arms around her. “Yeah, but I’m cute. I get away with it, don’t I?”

“Yeah,” she agreed, turning her head back to kiss him, “you do have that going for you.”

“And a whole lot more.”

Biting the corner of her lip, she shifted against him, a little wiggle that stirred him exactly where she intended him to be stirred. “Feel like showing me?”

“Mm.” His arms tightened around her, kisses scattered against the side of her neck. “I need coffee and a shower, then trust me, I’ll spend all morning showing you.”

Now that was a statement definitely on a par with her fantasies. He left the bed first, taking a shower, calling to her that he’d left in on for her as he made his way through to the kitchen. It was while she was under the warm water looking down at herself that a stab of panic prickled against her guts.

He’d see her naked. All of her.

While she had body confidence in her shape, the littering of scars that marked her sides and lower back made her feel ugly. Some had faded to white, but there were still a few dark pink markings that remained. All were raised scar tissue, triangular shapes of knife points pressed into her skin, the burning brand of a hot blade searing Rocco’s displeasure branded onto her skin forever.

As she dried off, her eyes found them again, wondering if they’d really be all too noticeable if the blinds remained drawn in the bedroom.

“Of course, they will," she muttered, beginning to sniff. All she wanted was to move on from it all, enjoy the basic human right of a consensual sexual relationship with another adult, someone of her actual choosing, yet the literal scars of the past held her back.

A soft tap sounded upon the partly open door. “Em, you want a coffee?”

Em. No one had ever called her that before. She liked it. “No, thank you.”

“You alright.”

“Yeah.”

Her pinched voice alluded to the contrary. “No, you’re not. Can I come in?”

“Yeah.” Tightening the large, white bath towel around herself again, she wiped her eyes on the back of her hand, trying to compose her upset.

“So, people who are alright stand here crying, huh?” Him and his smart mouth. He was right in his light sarcasm, though. “What’s wrong, baby?”

Baby. He'd called her that back when he’d first found her. How different the intent behind the word was now. “The scars I have,” she began, gulping, hoping she could swallow down the lump she had painfully swelling in her throat. “You’ll see them, and they’re hideous. They make me ugly. You’ll think they look ugly.”

He frowned, lifting her chin with a gentle touch of his fingers as he began shaking his head. “I’ve never liked people making my mind up for me. That includes you, mamas.” His hands pressed softly on her shoulders, resting his forehead against hers. “I’ve got no problem with whatever scars you have, and I’m not gonna think you’re ugly because of ‘em. Only thing that is, is that low opinion you have of yourself. If you want, leave a t shirt on. I don’t mind. I’d prefer you naked, but whatever makes you comfortable, I’m good with.”

She could fetch a t shirt, or she could just be brave and let him see her. All of her. She’d bared her soul to him already, after all. Indecision made her heart quicken, the soft stroke of his fingertips at her upper arms soothing as she reached for the towel and untucked it, letting it fall. Fighting the urge to cover herself with her arms, she looked anywhere but him as he took in her nudity, her body tensing when he moved his hands to stroke the scars she detested so much with careful attention.

Her throat tightened with emotion, his words so beautiful, she wanted to cry. The desire in his eyes as she finally looked at him dictated it might be poorly timed, though. This was not a time for lament and sadness. No. This was the time to plant her lips upon his and let him carry her to the bedroom.

#omg two chapters today!!#and I already loved the first one #the snoring bit made me laugh when you released it as a snippet #and it made me laugh here again #emma's parents though #that's a brutal thing to find out #also please make guero punch tyrone #just once #I don't even care why #that fucker needs a punch in the throat stat #guero #mayans mc #mayans fx

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alwaysdowntohidewithyou · 5 years ago

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“Most parents will be familiar with the experience of being ignored by their teenage offspring. Tormented by my daughter's incessant loud singing around the house, I've lost count of the number of times I pleaded: 'For God's sake, Florence, please put a sock in it.'

Of course, she didn't take a blind bit of notice. Just as well, really. My daughter is Florence Welch, of Florence And The Machine.

She is 22, lauded as the next big thing and her debut album Lungs has been sitting at No2 in the charts, behind the late Michael Jackson.

She has won the Critics' Choice Award at the Brits and was this week nominated for a Mercury Music Prize. She's even been on Radio 4's Woman's Hour, for goodness sake, not to mention Jonathan Woss.

This has all happened in the space of a couple of years, and it takes some getting used to.

Florence was born into an Anglo-American middle-class family. Her mother, Evelyn, is an American art historian and I worked in advertising. We lived in South London, we took holidays in Cornwall.

There was music in the house and there were books. There were performers and musicians on both sides of the family. I took Florence and her younger sister Grace to violin lessons (ouch) but it wasn't their passion.

Because of her mother's work, Florence did have an early exposure to Renaissance painting, which may have had an influence on the somewhat visceral world view expressed in her lyrics. As a child, she was particularly fascinated by Mantegna's Circumcision Of Christ, and by various paintings of the martyrdom of St Agatha, who had her breasts cut off.

Florence, always a difficult sleeper, was often as an infant encouraged to nod off by being wheeled around the sitting room in a pushchair to the accompaniment of loud music.

Her earliest subliminal influences include The Smiths (whom she found highly soporific) and Syd Barrett (less so). We also tried works by The Soft Machine, REM, The Go-Gos.

One evening a few years ago when I was passing Florence's bedroom I heard her shouting out: 'That's amazing, I'm having a bloody epiphany.'

I poked my head around the door and saw her sitting on the bed with a huge pair of headphones on. She had, it appeared, just listened for the first time to Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit.

People have asked whether there was a moment when I realised that Florence had a gift. There was. It happened during a performance of Bugsy Malone at her school, Alleyn's, in Dulwich. Florence was ten or 11 and she was playing the lead female part of Blousey Brown.

At school productions, parents are usually interested only in the efforts of their own offspring, but when Florence sang, the whole audience was suddenly fully engaged. I remember thinking: 'Cripes, she's got a voice - this is serious.'

It wasn't just her perfect pitch - she had the essence of phrasing and timing which makes a good singer great.

On the basis of her phenomenal performance she was co-opted to sing a rather obscure and difficult Gilbert And Sullivan song at my father's memorial service at St Bride's in Fleet Street in 1997.

My father, Colin, was a journalist and satirist who had been deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph and a parliamentary sketchwriter for the Daily Mail, so the great and good of Fleet Street were there. Florence sang brilliantly in front of scores of weeping crumblies.

After this she became something of a fixture at funerals. When I recently gave her a hard time about the dark quality of her lyrics - the first song she wrote was called My Boy Builds Coffins - she said: 'You made me sing at funerals. What do you expect?'

Florence spent her later teenage years in a mysterious group called the Toxic Cockroaches. Her mother and I, by now divorced, probably did not pay enough attention.

Having won a place at Camberwell School Of Art, she sang with a band called Ashok.

On one occasion she called me from Greenwich, angling for a lift home. Her band, she said, weren't there but there were some others around who she might play with. I turned up and watched her sing two songs, which were phenomenal.

No, she said afterwards, she hadn't rehearsed. No, she had had no idea what she was going to sing when she got on stage. This stunned me then and still stuns me now.

Florence and her bandmates were 'spotted' by an old-school music manager and there was talk of a contract. 'Don't sign anything until we've had a chance to have a look at it,' we implored. 'Yeah, yeah,' said Florence - and went ahead and signed it.

That's where it all could have gone off the rails. She was 19 and miserable, in the wrong band, life signed away, career over before it had begun. Despite my misgivings, I became a bit of a rock dad, and phoned a friend who was a music lawyer.

It turned out the contract was only binding on Florence as part of the band, so all she had to do was resign. After that we paid a bit more attention.

Florence engaged her present manager, Mairead Nash, one half of the achingly fashionable Queens Of Noize club night promoters, by trapping her in a club washroom and singing an Etta James song at full volume. Their partnership has worked pretty well so far.

Once established in her own right, and aided and abetted by Mairead and the 'thunderous' Machine, Florence's progress has been swift and spectacular.

Last year I was the one driving Florence and a two-man Machine around Europe in her stepmum's camper van, following in the wake of the MGMT (another popular band) tour bus - all for the princely sum of €75 a gig.

This year it is a professional driver, Florence, a five-piece Machine and a road crew in their own tour bus.

I still go to some gigs, but my small part in this drama is, to a great extent, over. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and my early days as de facto tour manager are a great source of envy to my fifty-something chums who would give their eye teeth for the chance to go 'on the road' with a band, man.

There are, of course, alarming aspects to the whole thing. I have witnessed Florence clambering up the gantry at Glastonbury in 6in heels and I have seen her being passed around the audience at a gig with Pete Doherty.

Indeed, I shared a light ale or two with the rock and roll Rimbaud and found him to be quite charming, if a trifle vague. I must admit, though, a report that he had proposed to Florence earlier in the evening did cause a momentary attack of the vapours.

It is all exciting. But a word of warning to any potential pop stars and their parents: it is also expensive. Florence has received reasonable advances, but had to use them to pay for a lot of the band's running costs.

Florence will, we hope, make some money, but only if she sells a lot of CDs and gets film tie-ins - and after she has repaid her advances.

I may have to wait for quite a while for that bungalow in Weybridge that all rock stars seem to buy for their parents.

The fact that Florence has become public property can invade one's life and conversation. We do have evenings within her extended family where all mention of the 'daffy diva', as I call her sometimes, is forbidden.

Her sister Grace is at Sussex University, and so is able to get away from the all-embracing tsunami that Florence's life has become.

Florence's 15-year-old brother, JJ, thinks it's all pretty cool, and finds the connection with a pop star a good way to develop conversations with girls.

I do occasionally feel a twinge of unease about this whole extraordinary thing, and I remember the first time I felt it. It was more than a year ago and Florence was playing a gig in an inexplicably fashionable joint in Hoxton, Hackney.

Practically every A&R man in London was there. As I watched Florence putting her heart and soul into the performance, I glanced round at the audience.

There were the fans, wild-eyed and transported by the experience. And there were the A&R men, with quiet, thoughtful faces. They weren't here to enjoy themselves, they were taking care of business, and the business was my daughter. That's just the way it is - no worse than any other business, but it was a sobering thought.

It was also at this gig that one of the A&R men who knew that I was Florence's father turned to me with a quizzical expression as she launched into another of her perverse, Gothic tales of death, dismemberment, and bloody revenge.

'I know what you're thinking,' I shouted, 'but I can assure you she had a perfectly normal upbringing.'”

-Nick Welch, 2009 (x)

#‘cripes she’s got a voice’#she was still so young when this was written #also find it incredible how she somehow looks identical to BOTH her parents #florence + the machine #florence welch #2009

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soulmate-game · 3 years ago

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Daughter of wonderwoman au where marinette finds out her mother is actually Diana and somehow it ends up with her meeting/being introduced to the batfam maybe because she has super strength and is seen yeeting some bad guys who tried to mug her... Or something.

“... you are running from your problems, Mari,” Adrien’s exasperated voice reminded his best friend. Again. She ignored him, and he threw his hands up in exasperation. “Look, you don’t have to do anything about it! Nobody would hold it against you if you decided to just, ignore that you found anything out at all. But you need to actually think about what we just found out and decide whether or not you’re gonna do anything—“ he side-stepped a piece of trash that went flying in his direction. “—or if you’re gonna move on and pretend nothing happened.”

“Isn’t that what I’m doing?” Marinette shot back, pushing her bangs out of her face and tying her hair back with one hand.

“No, you’re currently hiding away in Gotham to avoid your parents while you beat up every random group of idiots who thinks you’re an easy mark,” he retorted. Another wannabe kidnapper went flying in his direction, making him sigh and side step again. She had thrown that one with only her one free hand, showing just how upset she was. “You’re ignoring everything in your life, which is not what we meant we said you should get a little space.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Marinette dropkicked the last criminal into unconsciousness before stepping back and putting her hands on her hips. She looked over at the now seven passed out men in the alleyway, and the one very frustrated ex-model pinching the bride of his nose. “I think I’m coping just fine.”

“It’s better than being forced to suppress all of your emotions, sure,” Adrien reluctantly agreed. “But not by much. Your angry rampage through Gotham has already attracted more attention,” he raised his hand to point at a nearby rooftop. Several shadows lurked there, looming over the building’s edge. “Which, might I add, is exactly why I told you not to come to Gotham.”

“You’re the one who followed me here,” she shot back before turning to the shadowy figures above them. “Go ahead and come down! But it was self defense, and you can’t arrest or beat me up for defending myself!”

The first figure to drop down straightened your just as quickly, revealing the imposing figure of none other than Batman himself. The little white eyes on his cowl seemed to narrow on their own as he looked down at her.

“That might be true, but I’m sure you know my policy on metas in my city,” he grumbled back at her. He wasn’t necessarily threatening, but he definitely wasn’t welcoming either. With all of his limbs hidden behind the cocoon that was his cape, Marinette would never be able to predict his next move if he did decide to fight. Not that she seemed particularly worried about that as she crossed her arms over her chest and met his glare evenly.

“Oh, do you own this city now? I wasn’t given the memo,” she retorted. “And considering I didn’t even know I was a meta until last week? I think I deserve a little slack. I’m angry and if people think the tiny little girl in pink is an easy kidnapping target, then it’s their fault for making themselves into the perfect practice dummies for me to try out my newly discovered strength on.”

Adrien saw the eyes on Batman’s mask narrow even further. Marinette wasn’t exactly at her most charismatic at the moment, and Adrien didn’t wanna get the both of them into a bad relationship with the experienced superhero who always seemed to know things he shouldn’t know. So he stepped up quickly, getting in between Marinette and the Bat and holding his hands up in a placating gesture.

“Okay, Monsieur Batman,” Adrien started slowly, making sure his posture was impeccable and his smile bright. “She’s telling the truth, even if she’s not... the most tactful about it right now. She just found out some very concerning things about her origin and Gotham is the best place for her to hide from her problems and let loose a little pent up aggression. But— well,” he grimaced. “We didn’t intend to run into you guys, but maybe it’s a good thing we did.”

“How so?” Batman was clearly still incredibly suspicious of the both of them and wasn’t giving an inch. So Marinette rolled her eyes (she was still very moody) and leaned around Adrien so she could get a good look at the monochromatic hero.

“I thank my lucky spots that we ran into you, Batman!” She said monotonously. “Me and Adrien are paw-sitively excited at this opportunity.”

Batman. Froze.

Not only were those two lines the very first lines ever spoken to him by two foreign heroes a few years ago (with a few key words changed to protect identities), but they had become their code phrase for whenever they made calls to one another outside of their costumes. All at once it seemed to hit him— the golden hair and bright green eyes on the boy, the blue-black hair and normally super-focused bluebell eyes on the girl that were currently sporting very uncharacteristic frustration. Their heights. Their builds. All of this info flowed through his mind and compared to the information stored in his memory, and it only took the span of two seconds for everything to click.

Suddenly Batman was at full attention, back straight instead of looming over them and eyebrows clearly raised high under his cowl.

He knew Chat Noir and Ladybug would never take a random vacation to Gotham. Ladybug herself had nearly waxed poetic about how much the city depressed her just from the pictures she saw online. If she had willingly come to visit, it was more than to just blow off some steam.

“Batcave?” He asked, earning a relieved look from Adrien and a moody silence from Marinette.

“Please,” Adrien agreed. “You can probably help us, actually.”

—*—*—*—*—*

Marinette leaned back in the metal debriefing chair, legs up on the table and looking for all the world as the picture of pure teenage rebellion and angst. Coincidentally, Red Hood was in the exact same position in the chair next to her.

Batman and all of his other bats and birds were in the cave with the two off-duty Parisian heroes. Everyone except Adrien and Marinette still had their masks on, since the two Parisians were still not privy to their identities. Yet.

To be fair, the bats hadn’t known the identities of the two miraculous users either before today.

“Cha Noir,” Batman started, only to get a head shake from the blond boy.

“Just call me Adrien. Chat’s out of the bag—“ he ignored the groans at the pun and soldiered on, “—so might as well use my real name.”

Batman nodded. “Adrien, then,” he amended. “Why are you and Ladybug really in Gotham?”

Adrien sighed. “I wasn’t lying, before. Marinette,” he gestured to his hero partner. “Just found out some distressing family news. Since HawkMoth is gone, she doesn’t need to repress her negative emotions anymore. But she also didn’t want to be around her parents while she processed everything. I told her to choose any other city— really, I begged— but she insisted on coming to Gotham.”

“The never ending cloud cover and constant rain seem thematic,” she finally spoke up, reaching into her big over-the-shoulder bag and pulling out a large envelope. She threw it to Batman, making the thin package slice through the air like a knife. To nobody’s surprise the seasoned hero easily caught the projectile between two fingers. He looked at the envelope and back to Marinette, silent questions floating in the air between them. Marinette decided to answer at her own pace.

“That’s what we found out. You see, one of my friends is a huge science nerd. A genius. And he wanted to compare DNA samples between us to see if there were any genetic components that determined a person’s suitability towards certain Miraculous or other magical artifacts over others. It was supposed to just be a fun side project that he didn’t expect any breakthroughs on. He mostly just wanted to satisfy his own curiosity. But instead of finding out if our DNA was linked to the miraculous, he found out that my parents are not biologically my parents.”

“Hence the whole just finding out that you’re a meta thing, right?” Nightwing spoke up, fully invested in the story. “Did they never say you were adopted before?”

“It’s not in the system,” she replied easily. “My parents have all the documentation to prove that I’m their biological child, except I’m not. When I confronted them about it, they caved and admitted that they had adopted me in secret and covered it up. Apparently a friend of theirs was involved in something illegal, and,” she waved at the envelope that Batman was now opening. “The details of what we were able to dig up are in there. The summary is this; their friend was part of a secret, illegal experimentation to create clones that could defeat the Justice League—“ the air seemed to get sucked out of the room as soon as those words left Marinette’s mouth. Everyone seemed to know exactly what she was talking about. “—a group called CADMUS. They made me, as apparently one of their early attempts. But I didn’t exhibit any of the powers they were looking for, or any meta traits at all, and my body refused to mature at the rate they wanted. They had no use for a seemingly normal human baby that they managed to clone, so they were preparing to kill me and start over. That’s when my parent’s friend stole me, not wanting to kill an infant, and begged my parents to take me in and pretend I was theirs. Low and behold, it turns out that my DNA just needed a very specific series of emotions to unlock it’s latent abilities.”

“Those emotions being..?” Red hood trailed off, earning a wolfish smile from Marinette.

“Intense anger, betrayal, and confused frustration closely followed by the desire to punch other people’s faces in.”

“That last one is just an assumption,” Adrien chimed in. “And maybe not accurate. But the first three, our scientist friend was able to confirm. The rapid experience of a lot of negative but action-oriented emotions released whatever had been holding back the powers in her DNA from expressing themselves,” he had switched to French so that he could explain everything exactly as Max had told it to them, but he knew all of them were fluent anyway so it was fine. They nodded along, processing the information.

The crinkling of paper drew everyone’s attention back to Batman, who had been flipping through the detailed break down of everything they had found about Marinette’s situation and how she was made by CADMUS.

“Uh,” Red Robin nervously spoke up. “What’s up, Batman?”

“Your genetic donors...” Batman breathed, getting a wink and finger guns from Marinette.

“Yup. Isn’t that just the most fucked up thing you’ve ever seen? They were clearly trying to make someone who could destroy the world.”

“That makes me nervous,” Nightwing admitted, getting up and going to get a look at the papers himself. “It can’t be that ba—“

When even Nightwing was left agape, everyone else who wasn’t in on it found themselves squirming.

“Just tell the rest of us, already!” Robin demanded after the silence stretched just a bit too long.

“The unknowing genetic donors that CADMUS used to make me,” Marinette spoke up, still with her legs up on the table. “Are a very mad-scientist’s-wet-dream combination of Lex Luthor, Bruce Wayne, and Wonder Woman.”

“We don’t even know why they added Bruce Wayne’s DNA,” Adrien admitted. “Although our scientist friend thinks it’s because of physique. His hypothesis is that, in order to support the genes of Wonder Woman, they had to add male genetics that could support the production of a very high muscle mass and would lean towards easy development of a very athletic body. Lex might be evil-scientist smart, but he’s a string bean. But if he added the DNA of another multi millionaire who just so happens to maintain a ridiculously fit body without putting any obvious work into it,” Adrien shrugged. “Then maybe the clone would be able to support Wonder Woman’s genetics and that of two human donors without falling apart.”

“So I’m ‘the clone’ now, huh?” Marinette snarked, earning an exasperated eye roll from her friend.

Batman just stared at the both of them for a moment. He walked away without a word, and came back with a fresh needle and a box. He placed it on the debriefing table.

“Can I do a paternity test myself?” He asked, his voice suspiciously less gruff than normal. “I trust the both of you, but I rather be safe than sorry with something like this.”

The both of them just stared at him in confusion. They traded a glance, and finally Marinette shrugged and moved to sit in her chair properly. Her shirt was already short sleeved, so she just held her arm out so Batman could easily get a blood sample.

“Sure, why not. But do you just have Lex Luthor or Bruce Wayne’s DNA sitting around to compare, or—“ she shut up when she watched Batman take off his glove and roll his own sleeve up. Realization slowly sunk in as he asked Nightwing to take a blood sample from him.

“Holy shit,” she breathed, eyes wide. “You’re— and Luthor doesn’t know— holy shit this is even worse than I thought,” Marinette rambled, not even noticing as Red Hood moved forward and took a small blood sample from her.

Adrien put a hand over his face and just laughed for a moment hysterically. “Oh my god,” he looked over at Marinette. “You could take over the world.”

“I have the blood of Batman AND Wonder Woman on MY side,” Marinette joked back, also hysterical.

When the bat’s high tech equipment was able to come back with a positive result only a few minutes later, Marinette and Adrien had to sit on the floor and just let it all sink in. Which Batman did not at all help by immediately unmasking himself and trying to make a proper introduction.

“I wanna go beat up random thugs again,” Marinette whined, pulling at her hair. “I’ll put on a mask, whatever, but just please let me punch people. I need to punch people right now.”

#maribat #ml x dc #mlb x dc #soulmate-game #dc x miraculous #dc x mlb #bio!mom Wonder Woman #Bio!mom Diana prince #bio!dad Bruce Wayne #Bio!dad Batman #idk what this is #but it happened #and it’s something

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the-lone-witch-and-secret-room · 3 years ago

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The Blight twins, codependency and fatal communication failure

Recently I talked about “the Blight children and toxic behaviors”, specifically about the tough love fallacy and how their parents get them to target each other rather than backing each other up.

In that post I mentioned wanting to make one specifically on the relationship of the Blight twins, and, well, here we are.

When we think of The Owl House and unhealthy/toxic platonic relationships, we think of the one Amity has with the twins in the earlier episodes, or Eda and Lilith, or the one the Blight kids have with their parents. I’m pretty sure very few people would look at these words and think of Edric and Emira… but it’s true nonetheless. The twins are raised in a very toxic environment that teaches them a lot of unhealthy mechanisms. The heavily codependent relationship the two siblings share is incredibly unhealthy for both of them.

Let’s get into why.

More under cut because hell this got long.

Who am I without you?

The Blight Twins always show up as a unit. They’re a set of two, who share the same track and are involved in the same shenanigans.

We never see them separate from each other in the show. Not a single time.

Their mother picks their matching outfits, according to Dana, because she likes her kids to be “color-coordinated.” They’re supposed to always look similar.

To Amity, they’re a united front—we don’t get to see her relationship to them separate from each other, we only get her relationship with “the twins.”

As far as I’m aware we’ve never gotten art from Dana featuring just one of them. They’re also often treated as a pair by the fandom (outside of their respective ships, that is), showing up together and showcasing very similar behaviors in fics, showing up together in fanart, etc.

We don’t have much content of just one of them with Amity (or anyone else that’s not their romantic partner).

You also don’t generally see them disagreeing a lot in fan content, which is interesting. Despite being two separate characters, they don’t get to actually be separate from each other a ton.

The main difference you see in their portrayal is in Emira being treated as the more responsible older sister, while Edric gets treated as more goofy (and a bit of an idiot), both in the show and fanon content. But that’s essentially it.

The twins are the twins. There’s no “just Edric” or “just Emira”. They don’t seem to exist without each other.

Their united front is both their greatest strength and their weakest link. They likely experienced a similar abuse as the one Amity went through, but they always had each other to lean on instead of enduring it alone. And while it definitely helps them a ton that they have each other, it also results in an unhealthy amount of codependency. Edric and Emira ONLY ever had each other. Their relationship with Amity is pretty bad and outside of that almost nonexistent up until Lost In Language, mostly used to hurt each other. Edric is always with Emira and Emira is always with Edric and there is no one else they can fall back on. Their most important relationship, the one with each other, is simultaneously the only one they have, one that they desperately clung to for a very long time. They don’t have any friends that we’re aware of.

Both Emira’s and Edric’s worst fear is born out of this. Despite being completely opposite fears, they stem from the same basic issue. In Enchanting Grom Fright, when they talk about their worst fears, Edric says “Being alone forever.” while Emira says “Being stuck with you forever.”

There is so much characterization in those two little sentences.

Edric has a fear of being alone because he’s always around Emira. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be alone, and he doesn’t want to find out. He doesn’t know who he is without Emira. This is somewhat subtle in the show, but she’s shown to be the more responsible of the two, preventing her brother from eating snow and being bitten by a bat. Edric looks to Emira for guidance, and his fear of being alone might stem from him not thinking himself capable of taking care of himself. Emira is smart and knows what she’s doing, and so Edric always runs after her. Even just entertaining the thought of being without her, without anyone to guide him, scares him so much that he proclaims it his worst fear. He likely leans on Emira a ton.

His desire to to lean on other people because he thinks himself incapable of handling issues himself comes with the possibility of him opening up easier, to the extent of oversharing, doing it so much that it becomes overbearing for Emira. But even if he can open up about some of the fears he has related to not meeting their parents expectations, he can’t really communicate the issues he has that involve Emira, because open communication about their issues is something they generally struggle with (see the point about lack of communication further below). Edric is under the impression that he needs someone else because he’s never been without Emira and doesn’t know what it’s like to exist without her. And as long as he has someone to lean on, he never has to find out if he’s truly as incapable as he thinks himself to be. His refusal to let go of her fuels his fear further—the tighter he holds on, the scarier the thought of letting go becomes.

Emira doesn’t know who she is without Edric either, and that’s exactly the reason she wants to break out of that dynamic so desperately. She doesn’t want to be nothing but someone’s twin for the rest of her life. She wants to just be herself, not have all her interests linked to her brother, for people to stop mentioning her only in the same sentence as Edric. She’s had enough of the matching. What Emira really wants is independence—from her brother, and, to a larger extent, her parents and their control.

Edric leaning on her as much as he does makes Emira feel responsible for him, and she struggles to let go of that because she doesn’t want to hurt him—but the tighter he holds on because he believes he needs her, the more overwhelmed Emira feels by her brother and the responsibility she holds for both of them.

Emira loves Edric, but she’s his sister, and can’t provide him with emotional support 24/7. Spending all day handling someone else’s issues can be pretty draining, especially when you struggle to share the ones you yourself have.

With Emira’s longing for independence comes a refusal to lean on anyone, especially on Edric, because she can’t at the same time let herself be vulnerable and need his support while also wanting to break out of their current dynamic. So Emira doesn’t talk about her issues, she doesn’t cry, she doesn’t lean on anyone. Emira is independent and strong and she doesn’t need anyone, especially not Edric.

It likely started out as them leaning on each other, but where Edric started to become too dependent on Emira always being there, Emira started growing increasingly overwhelmed and pulling back, catching them in a vicious circle of him trying to hold on tighter in order not to lose her, which causes her to draw back further.

To be clear:

a) Emira is not a terrible person for wanting to be away from Edric. What she said hurt him and came across as callous, but what he said harmed her too, even if the “why” that I just explained isn’t as blatantly obvious in the show. Edric isn’t a terrible person for relying on Emira so much, either. Neither of them are inherently malicious in any way, even if they do hurt each other. That they have to deal with these issues in the first place is rooted in the abuse they experienced, specifically in their parents treating them as a two-part set rather than two separate people their whole life.

b) I think it should be clear now why Edric’s behavior is toxic, but I want to address that Emira’s behavior is also an issue. While her desire for independence in itself is normal and healthy, she’s striving for a toxic kind of independence where she doesn’t need anyone anymore, which wouldn’t be good for her either.

Everyone needs to rely on other people sometimes, and if she doesn’t allow herself to, it’s going to cause some serious damaged in the long run. The most reliable relationship she had, the only support system she has, falls victim to her desire to be away from Edric… and only after she is she’s going to realize just how much she needed him, needed anyone to be there, too.

I think it’s very interesting that Edric’s and Emira’s issues are essentially inverted—they have the same root, but their problems are the exact opposite.

Edric is Emira’s mirror image.

This is also shown visually. With the matching clothes and identical dominant features (eye and hair color), they look extremely similar. Their beauty marks are what makes them into a mirror image rather than just looking identical, because they’re on opposite sides of their face. Emira’s is on her right cheek, Edric’s on his left. If they face each other, the marks mirror each other perfectly.

They had the same thing in the concept art I’ve seen of them too, but it was with identical earrings on opposite sides rather than beauty marks.

Caged Freedom

I couldn’t find a way to somehow smoothly fit this into the overlaying topic, but it’s an important part of the reason for their communication issues I go into below, and also just something that I wanted to go into, so take it or leave it.

The twins appear extremely confident, seem like they always get what they want (Amity even resents them for “getting away with everything”), but they really, really doesn’t. Sneaking out of school is the only way they can have the slightest bit of normalcy and freedom and control over their life, and Edric and Emira cannot be caught or it will come back to bite them—the reason they wanted to punish Amity in the first place is that she told on them for skipping, getting them in trouble.

Even within their “rebellion” against their parents, there’s a set system Emira and Edric have to operate within—matching clothes, perfect scores, not doing anything that could get back to their parents or harm the family reputation. Despite skipping school, they both maintain excellent grades. It’s said in Adventures in the Elements, Amity is even trying to beat their best score on an exam.

It’s a careful, calculated kind of resistance, not one that includes them openly opposing their parents. They do things their parents wouldn’t like, they tread lines, but they’re being smart about it, in hopes it will never get back to their parents. Even their limited freedom is caged in that way.

Despite seeming as confident as they do, they’re too scared to talk back to their parents. They cause exactly the kind of trouble that they know is possible to get away with without putting themselves in harm’s way. Going further, openly calling their parents out for how they’re being treated, would be dangerous, and so they don’t. They operate within the system and follow it as much as they have to in order to be able to push the boundaries even slightly.

Their endless confidence, their apparent fearlessness, is just another illusion of theirs.

They wouldn’t need to get back at Amity for telling on them if their behavior was just a huge “fuck you” to their parents. But they do, because their parents aren’t supposed to know. They’re scared, even if they’d never admit that.

Emira and Edric target Amity as a way to cope with the treatment they receive from their parents, which they to an extent blame on Amity (I’ve gone over this more in-depth in the toxic behaviors post I linked above).

Hurting Amity in hopes she won’t tell on them again seems safe in a way that actively calling out their parents behavior could never be.

Lack of Communication

Edric and Emira both have trouble communicating their feelings in a healthy way, and instead of open communication and talking things through they revert to backhand comments and punishment.

They grown up believing that severe punishments are necessary, “tough love” used to help someone improve as shown (and literally quoted) in Lost In Language in regards to Amity. That’s also something I go into my other Blight sibs post.

Regarding the backhand comments, let’s look at their worst fears in Enchanting Grom Fright again. As explained above, Emira’s “being stuck with you forever”-fear is a shitty attempt at trying to get across that she’s unhappy with never getting to be apart from Edric to just be herself. Edric’s “being alone forever” brings up a huge fear of his, especially of being abandoned by Em, which, regarding her worst fear, is justified.

Both of these fears are extremely understandable, and they don’t necessarily have to be at odds with each other—Emira just wants to not feel overwhelmed by Edric, and figure out who she is, and she doesn’t have to completely abandon him to achieve that, even if it’s something she might think she wants now. Edric has to find a way to be able to rely on himself more because Emira can’t always be around him, but he can still maintain a close, positive relationship with her, and would absolutely be able to make other friends that could support him.

What them voicing these fears is, for both of them, is a desperate cry for help, for change. Edric wouldn’t be bringing this up if there wasn’t a part of him that desperately wants to talk to Emira about this, and in the same way Emira wouldn’t have said her fear if she wouldn’t want it too. But the issue is that the twins don’t actually communicate. They put these huge things out there, validating the other’s worst fear with what they say. And then they don’t talk it out. These sentences just hang in the air between them, and then they move on like nothing happened, both anxious and hurt.

And this is because the Blight family in general doesn’t communicate. As mentioned before, the twins don’t dare to talk back to their parents, they do things behind their backs and hope they won’t get caught. They don’t communicate with Amity, and despite Edric and Emira being the closest person the other has, they don’t really communicate the issues in their relationship with each other either, because they don’t know how. This is not a skill they were ever taught, because talking things through like that requires them to be extremely vulnerable. To acknowledge what their worst fears are and why, that they might have gone too far or might have been wrong about some of the things they said, and therefore admit to not being perfect.

But Blights are required to be perfect, and Blights aren’t wrong—if others don’t see things your way, you make them. If others don’t act the way you want them to, you punish them. Tough love to help them grow and “encourage” them to make the “right” decision.

There’s no room for open communication in an environment that sees vulnerability as a shortcoming, and admitting mistakes as a weakness. If neither party is willing to take the first step, communication withers and dies, and the issues go ignored as they grow. Admitting there’s an issue in the first place, and that it might partially be your fault, is considered backing down. And Blights don’t back down. They can’t.

If you back down in business, let others convince you into a bad contact, you’ll never be successful. Worst case: it might be the end. And so you don’t back down. You never do. Blights don’t lose an argument. The other person has to break and back down first.

But that can’t work when both people involved were raised with that mindset. So Emira doesn’t make the first step, and neither does Edric, and aside from their backhand comments that never lead anywhere, they just suffer silently as their relationship disintegrates without as much as their acknowledgement of it.

For Edric, there’s also the issue that bringing up his fear might possibly drive Emira further away, knowing her fear. He doesn’t want to make her angry, and doesn’t want to fight with her, because it might lead to him losing her, which is exactly what he so desperately wants to prevent.

I can’t remember which post brought it up, but one post I read a while back also addresses how despite admitting that her behavior was wrong, we never hear Amity say “sorry” to Willow. Because if there’s one thing the Blight family does even less than admitting mistakes in the first place, it’s apologizing for them. Open communication is weak. Apologizing is weaker.

In summary: There needs to be a balance between depending on yourself and still being able to ask others for support when you need it, and Emira and Edric are currently sitting on opposite ends of the same issue. Both of them need to move more towards the middle. What one of them so desperately wants is what the other needs to recognize.

Emira realizes that she needs space from Edric, and because Edric doesn’t recognize it, he’s the one that needs space from Emira more. He desperately needs to realize that clinging to each other the way they currently are isn’t healthy.

Edric realizes that he needs support from other people, and that’s something Emira denies for herself that she really needs to realize.

They both have half of the solution to their shared problem, but their difficulties communicating the issues within their relationship properly prevent them from finding a healthy solution together.

For everyone that’s incredibly sad now (myself included): I cover these topics in several of my fics.

Most prominently, Locked Out, where I’m currently beginning to explore the Blight twins and their different mindsets further.

Most recently, Sleight of Hand, a collab fic I did with my friend @lexa-alycia, where, among other things, the twins have a long overdue conversation regarding the things said in Enchanting Grom Fright.

But also 6/8 of my currently posted Owl House fics (not counting another additional two that also do and are done but haven’t been posted yet) give focus to at least one of the Blight twins if not both, so yeah I have plenty of twins content on my profile for anyone that wants XD

Next up, probably (because I just do not want to be done with this apparently): a post regarding Vinem and Jerbric and why these relationships would work and be extremely beneficial for everyone involved.

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camgirlkaminari · 4 years ago

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so ive been thinking for a while now how bonkers it is that ochako has a floatation quirk and an almost identical hairstyle to inko midoriya, and now that we're closing in on deku mastering all 7 ofa quirks, I can't stop thinking that nana, a woman who has been textually compared to inko midoriya, ALSO had a floatation quirk. i wanna ramble about it a little bit:

inko's first introduction to the comic is her telling us that she can float small objects toward herself:

she's an older generation, so her quirk isn't all that powerful compared to the kids' quirks. this is apparent when ochako comes into play and can float much larger objects, but with less control over their trajectory. i think we're not ever meant to compare the two characters' quirks, since ochako is more powerful, and can also float herself. even further, inko doesn't seem to suffer any consequences for using her floatation quirk, but since we are only shown her using it once, there's no way to know.

(i find inko to be such a strange character. she spends so much time crying and being deku's mom that we forget that she is her own person. she's married. she has a quirk. what's her job? how does she pay the bills? how did she meet her fire breathing husband? does she have parents of her own? we know so much more about everyone else's parents than we even know about the main character's mom! this feels so deliberate, even beyond the fact that we are all wondering if deku's dad is somehow ~a villain~. like I don't care about deku's dad! what's up with his fucking mom!!)

so now we're so focused on ochako's journey to mastering her quirk and learning how to float herself in addition to huge objects that we almost forget how similar to inko she started out: her hair, her face, her kindness, her strength.

spoilers ahead:

now, like 150 chapters later, we learn about nana shimura's quirk: float. deku knows what's coming, so he asks his friend ochako, who can float, for pointers on floating. this is excellent strategy, deku! good call! you don't know anyone else who can float themselves so you learn from ochako!

meanwhile, absolutely NO MENTION of how 'hey, my mom can float stuff too! weird coincidence!' despite him remembering all might's comparison of nana to his mother.

all of this leads me to have a few theories about the nature of afo & ofa, the relationship between ochako, nana, inko, and deku, and the major themes of legacy in bnha.

theory one: Gramps For All

there's a massive theme in bnha of grandchildren of importance. first, we learn that tomura shiguraki is the grandson of nana shimura, a pro hero, one of the three factions warring for a place in post-quirk society. then we learn Eri is an instance of this: she's the granddaughter of an equally influential player. The comatose boss of the yakuza, one of the three factions warring for a place in post-quirk society.

there's all kinds of legacies in bnha: shouto, the son of the number 1 hero, a direct victim of hero society. iida, the younger brother of a hero who was victimized by a villain hell-bent on changing hero society. hawks, the son of a serial killer, a victim who perpetuates the cycle of victimization in the name of upholding hero society. all these legacies, but we don't know anything about their extended families. what are endeavor's parents like? were iida's grandparents pro heroes too? does hawks really have no other family?

and where are deku's grandparents? did they ever watch him while his single mom was working?

my theory is that afo is not dad for one, but actually gramps for one. he had children, more than one, and they each had their own children. inko is one of them, and izuku is the resulting child.

deku, grandson of all for one, one of the three factions warring for a place in post-quirk society. eri, shiguraki, and deku, each representing the groups most affected by post-quirk society: yakuza, "villains," and "heroes."

theory two: ochako & deku are cousins

why the hell does ochako look so much like inko midoriya and NOT her parents?

(in the anime, they look a lot like her, but in the manga...)

gramps for one had children, more than one, and they each had their own children.

i think that ochako may be adopted, or one of her parents is, or perhaps even inko was, so ochako's connection to biological relations is distant or non existent. she may not even know. we've seen that horikoshi doesn't make character design mistakes, and he's gotta realize that every time he draws deku & ochako in the same scene that he's drawn the same face twice.

so either he's trying to throw us off, or he's making a grander statement about who they are. he's a fan of star wars- he's already done a reverse of "I am your father" with touya & endeavor, so I think it would be interesting if he's set up this ochako/deku thing as a fun homage to luke/leia, too. but they're cousins, not twins.

(that's just deku times two, babey!)

inko, unconnected to her family as she seems, may never know if she had siblings or half-siblings. ochako's parents may never have known about ochako's biological relations.

this is a much weaker theory, but i think quirk singularity theory can make some sense of it. we have the original float quirk user, nana shimura. I don't think she is related in any way to inko or ochako, but her quirk helps demonstrate the generational growth of power. she was a hero before all might, meaning she's an earlier generation and had an arguably weaker quirk. but since she was a hero, she honed her quirk so that it comes across as incredibly strong, however she seems to have only been able to float herself, not objects or people.

float quirk user number two, inko midoriya, who can float small objects toward herself. she's the next generation after nana, so her quirk is still kind of weak, and in fact looks incredibly weak compared to nana's and ochako's quirks. inko is a nobody, not a hero, just deku's mom. she had no reason to hone her quirk. who knows? maybe if she'd gone on to be a hero, she could float entire buildings if she wanted to.

float quirk user three, ochako uraraka. ochako can float objects AND herself. she's a hero and a strategist, and incredibly strong despite being 16. she can float pieces of buildings and people and herself all at once. she's a hero. she's powerful. she's thoughtful & kind, yet willful and strong. she's the ultimate culmination of the other floatation quirks as well as inko & nana's personalities. but since we were introduced to these three float quirks all out of order, it's difficult to see the exponential power growth that happens each successive generation.

I don't think that ochako's ever going to be a major player in the end of all for one, or even the plot overall, but i think the THEME of ochako being the ultimate floatation hero in the series is a major player in the final story. ochako REPRESENTS the singularity. the generation after ochako will be so strong, perhaps her descendants would be able to negate all gravity in the vicinity, maybe on the planet. who knows! even if ochako isn't related to deku, let's say dechako happens, they have babies. that's a lot of float quirk in one couple! their kids are gonna have no bones! no muscle development because they never have to fight gravity! ochako's existence represents such a huge, yet nearly invisible thematic element of bnha.

tldr: ochako looks exactly like inko and has a cumulative float quirk reminiscent of both inko & nana, and i suspect the parallels between the three is deliberate for some reason. i just think that's neat.

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stark-tony · 4 years ago

Text

today is my 22nd birthday so i’m celebrating by reccing 22 of my favorite fics and giving my general thoughts about them.

atla

i'm still here by owedbetter (77.7, T, zutara) "You see me."And somehow, that makes all the difference.

thoughts: One of the first zutara fics i ever read and it’s still one of my absolute favorites. The characterization of all of the characters is superb and the gradual development of zuko and katara’s relationship is amazing.

such selfish prayers by andromeda3116 (47.6k, T, zutara) Katara's ambition, so long set aside for the good of others, breaks free and sets fire to her soul. Or, Katara has a vision of her canon future, casts it aside, and becomes a world-changing politician instead.

thoughts: while this fic is a zutara fic, the majority of this fic is centered on katara and her helping rebuild the world after the war and it does an astounding job of portraying just that. and honestly this probably has my favorite characterization of katara i’ve ever read in a fic.

Southern Lights by colourwhirled (501.8k, M, zutara) A world where the Avatar has disappeared from memory. Where Sozin’s Conquest was successful. Where the unsteady order of the empire is threatened as members of the royal family are picked off one by one and lines are slowly drawn in the sand.One last chance for peace forces an unlikely alliance between a homesick waterbender, a carefree Air Nomad, a runaway Earth Kingdom heiress, and the fire lord's inscrutable son. Together they must learn to shed old enmities and become the balance they seek to restore to the world.OR:The avatar has four heads.x[[Chapter 4: "And always, his eyes, cautiously watching her. Even when he thinks she isn’t looking. It drives her mad"]]

thoughts: when i say i was unable to put this fic down i genuinely mean that. like i’m pretty sure i was hooked from the very first chapter and i never looked back.

bnha

stickers and stars by aloneintherain (1.9k, G, gen) “Aizawa, are you sure I’m the best person for this job? There are a lot more qualified people on campus. People who have been teachers for years, and—”As All Might spoke, Midoriya Izuku crawled the length of the couch, ducked under All Might’s arm, and made himself comfortable on his lap. All Might’s hands rose into the air, as though unsure of what to with his arms now that he had a toddler curled against his stomach like a cat seeking the warmth of its owner.“Um,” All Might said.

thoughts: is it not enough to say ‘baby deku’ and leave it at that?

Butterfly by aconstantstateofbladerunner (198.8k, T, gen) The first over-night trip off campus since the training camp was supposed to be a fun break from more intense work back home. But between a bleak introduction to chaos theory, a chilly reception from the locals, and the looming threat of a villain attack, Izuku has too much on his mind to properly enjoy the fresh air. But those worries are a light breeze compared to the hurricane that accompanies what he finds on the outskirts of town.Or rather, what finds him.

thoughts: it’s incredibly well written and the horror aspect is so good. also the dad might in it is top tier.

villain eradication plan 5C: let them attack budding heroes mothers, wait appropriate time for mother to defeat them (3.4k, G, toshinko) Targetting the civilian families of hero students should be cakewalk. Pity they decided to go with Inko first.Or the one where Inko accidentally defeats the League of Villains.

thoughts: this fic is basically inko accidentally being a badass and it’s as hilarious and awesome as it sounds

see it all in bloom by aloneintherain (57.2k, T, tododeku, kiribaku, momojirou, bullying) Midoriya looked over the occupants of the room with butter soft eyes. “We should do this again. Seeing everyone in one place … it’s like we’re back in school again.”Todoroki said, “It feels like a family reunion.”(Social media fic, counting down the five months to Class 1-A's ten year reunion.)

thoughts: this series deals with social media + the lives of class 1a after they become pro heroes and it is amazing.

remember from here on in by aloneintherain (8.1k, G, gen) Aizawa glances from All Might to Midoriya quickly. It sounds impossible—he’s never heard of a quirk that can be handed down like a family heirloom—but at the same time, it makes perfect sense. Midoriya’s inability to use his quirk at the start of the year. The strange, familial relationship between All Might and Midoriya. The slow malnourishment of All Might’s body, like his power was being siphoned away.“You’re …” Aizawa begins.“I’m All Might’s successor.” Midoriya’s proud but shaky voice rings clearly down the empty corridor.Aizawa finds out about One for All.

thoughts: this fic deals with one for all being revealed to aizawa + midoriya getting more quirks and it is amazing

could i but teach the hundredth part by terra_incognita (5.2k, G, gen) Ito Matsu knows three things about her neighbor, Mr. Yagi: he's very skinny, he's very kind, and he has enough children to overthrow the Japanese government.Or:All Might is retired, but his former students keep coming up with reasons to visit.

thoughts: this fic is so lovely and i adore it so much

mcu

the talk by parkrstark (3.1k, pepperony) “Wait, man, what’re you doin’?” Rhodey asked, leaning forward.“Giving the kid his talk before he goes off to college.” Duh.Rhodey blinked. “At 3am when you’re probably too drunk to even spell your name, months before he actually has to leave?”“Yeah.”Rhodey blinked again. “Okay.”

thoughts: this fic is absolutely hilarious and poor peter is suffering throughout all of it

call you home by Madelinedear (19k, G, pepperony) sometimes family is who you're born with.and sometimes family is a spider boy, a rich not-dad, and a kickass aunt.(or; tony, may, and peter find a place in each other's lives)

thoughts: to me, this fic is the tony may co-parenting fic. like i honestly don’t think that anything can ever top it

I Never Lived 'Til I Lived In Your Light by losingmymindtonight (38.4k, T, pepperony, character death) As the world shifts to make space for Morgan Stark, everyone around her shifts, too. (As it turns out, this also includes Peter Parker's sleep schedule.)

thoughts: this fic is both fluffy goodness and heartwrenching angst and it handles both beautifully.

Lazarus, come forth by iron_spider (47.9k, T, pepperony) Tony's mind is a chaotic mess but he remembers the moment—remembers his death, remembers the red hot pain and Peter screaming, Rhodey rushing to his side. How he knew he’d never see Pepper again—but they’d fixed it. They’d fixed the world, erased the lost time, set things right—and the kid was back. The kid was crying, the kid hated him for doing what he did, but he was back. He was alive.Tony Stark was dead. But now he’s breathing again, trying to think, gasping, hands tracing the box surrounding him, covering him, suffocating him.He’s in a coffin. He’s under the ground. He’s under the fucking ground.(Tony Stark dies defeating Thanos. But then he comes back to life. He has to find out how, why, and how to live again. And how to deal with the changes in the people he's coming back to.)

thoughts: although this fic was written and finished pre-endgame but to me this fic is the fix-it fic for film.

Identity Saga by KitCat992 (400.7k, T, pepperony) An organically developed, platonic slow-burn of Avengers-fam dynamic with a heavy hand of Irondad & Spiderson. Throw in an overdose of whump, a couple of cunning villains and a big-bad hiding in the shadows, and you got yourself this hot mess.

thoughts: i just love the avengers dynamic in this series and the whump is medically accurate which is amazing.

college applications: the biggest meme by sagemb (3.3k, T, pepperony) Tony covered his face with both hands and screamed very gently. “Can I just bribe the school to let Peter in?"

thoughts: this series is absolutely hilarious and i love it

The Changeling + Armistice Series by Annerb (586.6k, M, hinny, rape) Ginny is sorted into Slytherin. It takes her seven years to figure out why.

thoughts: this fic is absolutely golden and i adore it so so much. the characters are so well written and the worldbuilding in this fic is fantastic and it actually has an original aspect of hogwarts (aka the parlor) that i practially consider to be canon at this point. also the depiction of slytherin house + house unity in this fic is just *chef’s kiss*

boy with a scar by dirgewithoutmusic (208.7k, T, hinny, romione, jily) A series of "what if" rewrites of Harry Potter, books 1-7. Cross-posted from tumblr (ink-splotch).

thoughts: every single one of these fics are exquisitely written and i wish that i could experience the beauty of this series again for the very first time.

Hogwarts, to welcome you home by gedsparrowhawk (FaceChanger) (11.1k, G, ginny) “You understand, Professor,” Harry began, after a moment, “that I don’t have my N.E.W.T.s. I never even finished seventh year. Between everything, I never had a chance the first time around, and then afterwards there didn’t seem to be much point. Hermione argued for it, of course, but I was so tired of Britain. So technically, I am completely unqualified for the position.”“Quite a way to begin an interview, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall said, dryly.Or, three years after the war, Harry Potter becomes Hogwarts' newest Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

thoughts: this is my favorite harry as dada professor i’ve ever read. no doubt about it

And the Unethical Binding Contract by justafandomfollower (14.6k, G, gen) AU. What if the Triwizard Tournament took place in Harry's first year, not his fourth?

thoughts: this fic is beautifully written and i love the relationship that forms between harry, cedric, krum, and fleur.

Regulus Black and the Way Things Changed: A Not!Fic by imaginary_golux (8.8k, T, wolfstar) What if Regulus Black, and not Severus Snape, ended up being the turncoat Potions Master of Hogwarts?A not!fic written in bullet points, ignoring the Deathly Hallows entirely because they annoy me.Beta by my immensely patient Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw, and by the delightful starbirdrampant.

thoughts: this fic may be ooc at some points but it’s so funny that that makes up for it

spn

Broadway Musical by Griftings (12.5k, M, destiel) This is the day that marked the Holy and Blessed Union of Dean Winchester and Jo Harvelle.The merging of prominent bloodlines is always a grand occurrence, but breeding pedigree hunter families like Winchester and Harvelle is something to be rejoiced. It is also something to be meticulously planned, which thankfully the Host is very good at.Or, the romantic comedy where Dean Winchester and Jo Harvelle are destined to get married, Castiel is given the task of playing matchmaker and fails terribly, the entire Heavenly Host becomes a sitcom audience, God warns against male pregnancy, and Jimmy Novak is incredibly unimpressed with angels in general.

thoughts: this fic is quite possibly the single most funniest thing i have ever read. like i was straight up cackling when i was reading some of the scenes.

Down to Agincourt by seperis (1 million+, E, destiel) There is no such thing as a guarantee when it comes to war.The outcome's known. Why try? Return your rusty sword to battered sheath, bow your head and bend your stubborn knee. Why take the field when you cannot win the war? But Harry -- he went down to Agincourt.

--Harry Takes the Field by bratfarrar (AO3 link here.)

thoughts: this fic is an absolute work of art. the characterization dean and cas and all of the ocs is astounding the world building is immaculate and the writing is so detailed and in depth. a fair warning though to the first time reader as this fic can get very confusing at times but trust me it is worth it.

#mcu recs #atla recs #hp recs #bnha recs #spn recs #my fic recs #bullying tw #rape tw

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miraculouspenta · 4 years ago

Note

I have a request.if marinette is Jon's twin sister and has no power. Marinette contact justice league for help but she end up being reveal her identity to justice league because jon and Clark knows her and can you make it daminette story

Tale of the Girl Kent

One evening years ago, twin cries could be heard in Metropolis. These cries belong to Jonathan Samuel Kent and Marinette Martha Ella Kent, newborn children of Lois Lane and Clark Kent. They grew up together for quite some time, and people around them could swear they never saw one without the other.

Ever since a young age, Jonathan, or Jon as people call him, discovered that he had inherited his father's superpowers. Flight, super hearing, super speed, heat vision, x-ray vision, and etc. Marinette on the other hand doesn't have these superhuman abilities. She does, however, have an incredibly sharp eye for detail, astonishing creativity, unimaginable problem-solving skills, and an IQ that is already considered a genius, 184. Even though she was born without mystical abilities, Marinette never felt jealous of her twin. Howbeit because of this, her father decided not to tell the rest of the league, short of Batman and Wonder Woman.

When the twins turned nine, Lois and Clark felt like they were neglecting their little girl, focusing more on teaching Jon how to handle his powers. Marinette didn't mind and she had told them this repeatedly. But then again, they're parents, they're supposed to worry. As a result, they decided to reach out to Lois' old college friend and roommate, Nadja Chamack. They told her of their dilemma and asked if she knew anyone who could and would take care of their daughter. Nadja mentioned a married couple whom she has known since high school. She said that they had wanted a child but the doctor said they couldn't have one. Of course, Nadja also mentioned that the couple were really kind people, they would never take their place as parents. They would, however, be pleased to be their daughter's guardian.

And that's what happened. Marinette flew to Paris the next week to live with her new guardians, leaving a teary eyed father and brother behind, not like they would admit it. She soon found her guardians' names are Tom Dupain and Sabine Cheng. She could've sworn she stared at the sun when they picked her up.

As time went by, Marinette got very comfortable with the Dupain-Chengs to the point she slipped and called them maman and papa. She told her biological parents about this and they were glad she felt safe enough to call them that. Both didn't have anything against Tom and Sabine because of that and Marinette was really glad.

Let's jump to when she turns 13. She finds a mysterious box on her desk and opens it. When a flying creature flew out of it, Marinette wasn't really surprised. She had seen weirder things. Then the creature, who she found out was named Tikki, started explaining that she was chosen to be a hero to save Paris. "Figures that I'm made to join the family business," she said. Tikki just blinked, "What do you me-" she was cut off by a shout. "Kim!" a voice roared. "You can explain this to me later, right now just say spots on," Tikki said.

Once the 'akuma' was handled, Marinette told Tikki of her biological family. "Hey Tikki?" "Yeah?" "Do you think I should call the Justice League? Not to ask them for help, more like... Tell them of they are going to Paris to keep their emotions in control? I don't think I can defeat my dad or my brother." "That's a great idea Marinette! Although I suggest that you ask Chat Noir for his opinion first." And here she is now on the Eiffel Tower with Chat, trying to call the League.

Ironically, Superman answered. "Hello, this is the Justice League. How may we help you." "Hello, my name is Ladybug and this is Chat Noir," it felt so weird using formal talk with her dad, "We wanted to inform you of Paris' new situation as of yesterday." At the word Paris, Superman's froze, Mari lives there. "A supervillain has appeared and it turns people into villains to do the dirty work. It appears that the supervillain transforms them if someone has a negative emotion. Hawkmoth, the supervillain, and us get our powers from the miraculi," Ladybug continued knowing that her dad knows about the miraculi. "We came to ask if any of you were to come to Paris make sure that your emotions are under control," Chat said, "We don't need to fight any of you."

"I can accept that, I have heard of the miraculi and it seems reasonable," Superman said, "If I'm correct, any damage should be reversed. No civilians should be hurt, am I right?" "Figures he'd be worried about me," Ladybug mumbled forgetting that her dad had super hearing and pieced everything together. "My cupcake?" he asked. Ladybug's eyes widened before she started laughing, "Damn it, forgot you had super hearing." Superman grinned, "Looks like you're in the family business anyway huh?" "Seems like it."

Chat stood on the side wondering why are the two so comfortable with each other. "Guess I owe you an explanation huh Chat?" Ladybug said, "Superman here, is my biological father and the current Superboy is my twin brother. Unlike him, I didn't inherit dad's powers." Meanwhile, on the other side of the line, Clark called for his son and told him the news. "Hiya sis!" "Hiya little brother!" "You're only older by 5 minutes!" "I'm still older!" Chat laughed at their banter, "I can see that now."

"Just hold on a minute, I can register your partner and change your name and you can zeta on over to discuss this more," Superman said, "Also, I missed you." "I miss you too." Once Superman gave them the okay, Ladybug disconnected the phone and dragged Chat over to the zeta platform (I have little knowledge of this so feel free to correct me) They ended up at the Watchtower and Ladybug hurriedly ran to her father and brother giving them a big hug. "Superman have you seen-" Wonder Woman stopped when she saw Ladybug hugging her colleague. She ran out of the room to grab someone to make sure she wasn't hallucinating, that person happened to be Batman, and wherever Batman goes, 16 year old Robin follows.

"You are seeing this too right? That's his daughter right?" Wonder Woman asked. "Yes I am, and most likely." Meanwhile, Robin was just confused, who was this girl and... Is that a knockoff Catwoman? But since Batman appeared not to think of her as a threat he let it slide, that is until their eyes met. His heart skipped a beat. Her eyes are so beautiful. Superboy heard Robin's heartbeat picking up and smirked because it wasn't only Robin's heart, but also his sisters. Both speeding up but still somehow in sync. They are going to date each other if it's the last thing I do.

1143 words

Longest one shot apart from my secret Santa. Tell me if you want part two.

XOXO ~𝓔𝓲𝓵𝓮𝓮𝓷

#maribat #damian x marinette #damimari #maridami #twin au #platonic marijon

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miraculouscontent · 4 years ago

Text

Didn’t Need Burrow (April 17th-23rd)

Anonymous said:

Didn't need Burrow: "Gabriel Agreste" will be all about how he's not really evil just misunderstood. He had a lonely childhood or some garbage and we should feel totally sad for him you guys.

Just throw the man in jail and move on, PLEASE.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Chloé will be jealous of Zoe and throws a temper tantrum. Bonus points if the show blames Maribug for giving Chloé the Bee Miraculous in the first place.

[flashbacks to “Malediktator” where Adrien “the perfect high road boy” made the comment about Chloe that encouraged Marinette to give her the bee in the first place, something they will very likely never address]

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Gabriel and Nathalie will have last-minute redemptions because "fAmiLy".

Aaaaand now I’m having Voltron flashbacks...

and Steven Universe flashbacks...

You know what, just most recent shows that have a villain related by family ties in some way.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Zoe and other new characters are Romantic Rhombus shippers/stans. (love square synonyms anon here; glad to know you liked them.)

I HATE IT

SOMEONE HAVE A UNIQUE OPINION, I’M BEGGING.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Luka and Kagami get new love interests. Bonus points if this is used to make their exes jealous.

Double bonus if the one paired with Luka is either terrible person/isn’t like Marinette at all, or is just “objectively better” than Marinette.

Anonymous said:

Didn't need burrow to know that there'll be an episode where Alya tries to help Marinette out with all the Ladybug things and Marinette is gonna get pissed because she's helping to much and possibly the kwamis like Alya more than her. Alya won't be akumatized, but Marinette's gonna learn a lesson about trusting her friends and not being so controlling because Marinette will have to trust Alya to give a miraculous to someone.

Anonymous said:

Didn't need burrow: that Alya knowing Marinette is Ladybug and thus Lila being a liar isn't going to come up except for one episode and then never be mentioned again.

If they don’t address it in the very next episode I s2g--

Anonymous said:

Didn't need the Burrow: The season's finale will feature Shadow Moth empowered by Catalyst. He will have the most ridiculous name and outfit. Bonus: His grand plan fails mostly due to his owns stupidity

I’m only looking forward to the stupidity and nothing else.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Alya will ultimately betray Marinette's confidence in order to prove that Marinette was wrong to trust her with her secret identity instead of Chat Noir.

The building blocks are already there, let’s be honest.

Bonus if Astruc acts as if Alya was “the best choice” and then cut to Alya’s betrayal (whether accidental or intentional) and he’ll act as if the writing is so clever.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Since Hawkmoth already knows Alya is Rena Rouge, Marinette will try giving her a different Miraculous to try throwing him off. This only serves to make Trixx jealous and cause friction between the kwami which is all blamed on Marinette.

Okay, the idea would be plausible if it weren’t for the fact that this would mean making new models.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: The writers will steal another common fan concept by having Marinette entrust Nino with the Miracle Box. Su-Han will be upset at first, but accept Nino as a suitable candidate (possibly implying that he's better at it because, as a guy, he's not 'ruled by his emotions' like Marinette and proves better at keeping the kwami in line. Somehow).

It’s genius! His parents and other relatives don’t even exists outside of Chris, who only exists when it’s to torment Marinette when she has to babysit him!

There’s no one to find the box!! (except Alya, who Su-Han will be fine with knowing because he trusts Nino’s judgment)

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Alya will continue to push the pro-Adrien agenda down Marinette's throat, over any and all protests that she can't have a romantic relationship with ANYONE right now due to her various responsibilities. Alya will give lip-service to the idea that she'll help her with everything else, but in practice, her only real priority is shoving her towards Adrien every chance she gets and continuing her scheming to get them together.

The illusion of caring.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Alya will wind up STEALING the Fox Miraculous from Marinette in order to become Rena Rouge again. This will be presented as entirely Marinette's fault, with Mari forced to apologize to HER for not 'trusting her more', despite Alya's actions throwing her trustworthiness into question.

“Bonus” if Marinette had trusted Alya with the code to open the Miracle Box’s compartment, yet sure, she needs to trust Alya “more,” okay.

differenttriumphdragon said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Alya will still believe Lila at some point even though she now knows Marinette has a good reason not to trust her.

And this will not be portrayed as Alya’s fault but rather “Lila’s.” She’s just “too clever,” you guys!!

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Alya will continue trusting Lila, accusing Marinette of lying about not being friends with her as Ladybug and insisting that she needs to 'give her a chance' as Marinette rather than letting jealousy get the better of her.

The thought alone makes my blood boil sjgnjdfjgnfdg

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: The matter of how Alya refused to listen to any of Marinette's warnings about Lila will be glossed over with Alya making some lightly teasing remark about how 'You could have cleared this all up sooner if you'd just been honest with me, girl~'

Thus furthering the narrative that Marinette telling someone about her being Ladybug was “a choice.”

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Alya will make a 'triumphant callback' to her remark in "Chameleon" about how journalists always check their sources. Referring, naturally, to how she now knows the truth from Ladybug herself... while completely ignoring how she dismissed all of Marinette's warnings before and refused to do any of her own research. Somebody will add this to ML's 'Crowning Moment of Awesome' page, praising it as an incredibly cool and well-earned moment of catharsis.

ugh

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Now that she knows Marinette = Ladybug, Alya will accuse her of two-timing Adrien with Chat Noir. She will refuse to believe any of Mari's insistence that she's NOT 'stringing Chat along'. Meanwhile we'll get more Sadrien as he mopes over LB continuing to deny their love.

“Bonus” if the fandom praises Alya for finally “calling Marinette out” because “Ladybug has never properly denied Chat Noir.” (but they’ll also deny that she should’ve done it more bluntly because “that would’ve hurt his feelings”)

[meanwhile, “Prime Queen” was a thing that happened and was publicly recorded]

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Upon realizing Lila deceived her, Alya will get PISSED. ...Not over anything she did to Marinette, but because she tricked her into posting false information on the Ladyblog. Other than snapping at Mari for 'not warning me', or scolding her if she starts complaining and 'trying to make it all about you', she won't acknowledge what her bEsT fRiEnD went through at all.

I--

...oh my gosh, I hate how plausible this sounds.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Hawkmoth will inexplicitly delay going after the families of the exposed superheroes until the writers can frame it as Marinette's fault. This likely involves Mari being forced to babysit Chris and/or the twins, and having to take them on an outing since she can't have them at the bakery due to the kwami. Cue akumatized kids/hostage situation, Nino/Alya angst and Mari being lambasted for her failures.

Kids, Marinette babysitting, and Marinette being blamed??

Wow, it’s like all the things I hate rolled into one convenient little package!

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Alya will use the fact that she knows Marinette's biggest secret to justify being even more invasive, insisting that she already knows Mari better than she knows herself.

“wE cAn tAlk wHerE aNd wHeN yOu wAnT”

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Despite how their secret identities were exposed, Marinette will be pressured by both Alya and the kwamis to give her friends 'their' Miraculi back and give new Miraculi to other classmates. Her fears about this will be presented as unreasonable... until they come to pass in later episodes, at which point she'll be blamed for 'letting this happen'.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Alya will pressure Marinette to trust the rest of the girl squad with Miraculi, with Mari taking the blame for anything and everything that goes wrong in the process.

*long, deep sigh*

Alternatively, Alya will pressure Marinette into giving miraculouses to already-revealed heroes (Rena I could at least see being excused due to being a long-distance fighter who can create illusions from a distance, but Carapace? lol no).

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: The exposed superheroes will get magical makeovers to let them 'start fresh' and throw Hawkmoth off their trail. These new designs will be HEAVILY whitewashed, using the weak 'justification' that this will help hide their identities. Think Shanghai Special levels of appearance-shifting. Bonus points if Chat Noir tells the transformed Alya and Kagami they look prettier now.

I already hate it.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Alya is against Lila because she knows Marinette is Ladybug (not because she [Alya] trusts her).

Yyyyyup.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: The Ladybug reveal to Alya is used for shipping purposes.

Well obviously!! Who else was going to comment on the oh-so-coveted LadyNoir???

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow to know that Alya will still believe Lila's lies, despite her knowing that Marinette is Ladybug now

Anonymous said:

Didn’t Need Burrow: Alya is still gonna be on Lila’s side despite now knowing Marinette is Ladybug.

Part of me wants to say, “No, they wouldn’t be that stupid,” but...

yeah...

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: There will be an episode where Marinette has to learn to respect the privacy and boundaries of others. Likely candidates for the recipient of her pesky prying are Juleka (because 'Friends don't keep secrets!' only applies to Mari), Adrien (because haha stalker) or another guy-'friend' like Nino (because guys are entitled to their privacy in ways girls are not). Alya will lecture Mari on being 'too nosy' and insist that SHE would NEVER go so far and knows to give others space.

THE HYPOCRISY!!!

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Alya doesn't believe Marinette, assuming that she's lying to her about being Ladybug. The scene of the kwami surrounding them was an end-of-episode fake-out and didn't actually happen/she didn't see them. Marinette is berated for spilling her secrets so 'easily'.

fdjkgdfjkgdfg okay but would we roll with that or nah considering at least that’d mean that Alya doesn’t technically know then??

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Jagged Stone's relationship with Marinette will sour since she broke his son's heart. Never mind that he's been a deadbeat dad for years; clearly HER slight against Luka is far worse, and he has every right to condemn and judge her for it.

Jagged, I swear, I want to keep liking you, don’t do this.

Especially because then it’s gonna seem like they made Jagged the dad just so he’d have some reason to be against Marinette, taking away yet another person who was on Marinette’s side.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Adrien's antics will escalate to the point where he is openly and brazenly sacrificing others for the sake of his 'hilarious antics', such as getting them hit by akuma powers to pun off their plight. Ladybug gets blamed for failing to protect them.

Ladybug and Chat Noir are “equals” until Chat needs to be blamed for something, in which case Ladybug will take the heat.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: In a moment of jealousy, Adrien will sacrifice somebody else in the name of his own ego. Such as outing another hero, bringing an already outed heroes' loved ones to Shadow Moth's attention, getting more kwami caught by the villains... Naturally, Marinette gets all the blame and all the guilt from the fallout.

Of course!! Who else could possibly be blamed???

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: In a cliffhanger, Chat Noir needlessly sacrifices himself only for Shadowmoth to recall the akuma before Ladybug can purify it/do something else that leaves Chat Noir in limbo. Much angst and drama is mined from Ladybug's failure to save him; the fact he effectively did this to himself is never acknowledged.

Okay, that IS sad for Ladybug but would we honestly complain about Chat being stuck in limbo?

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: In a 'Shocking Twist', Hawkmoth's connection to *Chat Noir* will be revealed, causing Ladybug to flash back through all their interactions and question whether Chat Noir was ever TRULY on their side. Her moment of doubt will be treated as completely unreasonable and unfair, with Adrien stung deeply by her 'betrayal' and failure to 'trust in their love'.

all of my hate--

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Marinette's anxiety will be depicted as the *cause* of said anxiety -- in other words, she'll be told that she's making mountains out of molehills and 'worrying over nothing'. Most likely by the very ones responsible for making her so anxious in the first place, treating problems *they caused* as a 'you problem'.

Don’t you guys know? Anxiety is always caused by the person having anxiety!

Trauma?? Root causes? What are those?

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Marinette will be forced to pass Guardianship to somebody else, but will NOT have to wipe her memories in the process. This is treated as a 'learning experience' with Marinette having to live with the knowledge that she simply wasn't up to snuff, with somebody else having to 'pick up her slack' and take over the responsibilities that she 'just couldn't handle'.

I still say the worst part of all this is that I - someone who hates memory loss plots - am half-hoping for her memories to be wiped just to free her from this hellscape.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Somebody else will take over as Guardian, and Tikki will guilt-trip Marinette for not being able to handle the responsibility on her own. Sighing about how nice and lively it was with the other kwamis around, and how quiet it is now that they're staying elsewhere, wistful about the 'good times' they had while failing to acknowledge how much of their excitement and enjoyment came at Mari's expense.

And just casually forgetting that Marinette’s own privacy was invaded by the kwami being around, but sure, their comfort was so much more important.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: During a battle, Marinette/Ladybug will have to sacrifice herself/APPEAR to sacrifice herself in a way reminiscent of Chat Noir's usual self-sacrifices. This will be absolutely necessary to create the opening they needed to win, but will be treated as senseless and unneeded. Everyone will berate her for it, especially Chat - and if she points out his own tendencies, he'll accuse her of pulling that stunt just to 'teach him a lesson' and punish him for being heroic.

*screams from a distance*

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Juleka doesn't get any dialogue outside of mumbling in her hero debut episode.

I’m half-expecting Juleka to be totally mumbly until a future Couffaine-centric episode where they’ll treat her talking as if it’s a huge deal.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: The show would end on a vague note. We don't know if the Love Square got together (they had a finale kiss and a confession.) We don't know what will happen to the rest of the plotlines, characters, and miraculouses.

We also don’t know when we’ll get the time we lost back.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Adrien switches sides after learning his father's motives, and is treated as 100% in the right for doing so. Marinette keeps fighting, and is blamed for everything Hawk/Shadowmoth does in his efforts to win.

“See, Marinette??? You didn’t aPpReCiAtE Chat enough!!!”

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: In a 'Very Special Episode' of ML, somebody else gets to learn a lesson. It's Luka, who starts a new relationship with somebody else. It's shown that he learned from his mistakes with Marinette, and is more assertive and straightforward about his desires, and much happier for it. Meanwhile, Marinette's latest mistake is either being reluctant to let him move on... or letting him go because she foolishly 'wants him to be happy'.

(╯ಠ□ಠ)╯

The worst part is that they definitely won’t give a reason why Adrien > Luka outside of possibly “they have history” (fun fact that Hannah Montana back in the day - another show about a girl who led a double life - did this, except the guy she “had history with” - blond, famous, and rich - ended up cheating on her and she later pursued the other option properly - black-haired guitar boy who was way more flawed than Luka but was still endgame)

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Mylene will be treated as a better Multimouse than Marinette. Not because of any of her personality traits, but because she has more mass to draw from. This is trumpeted as 'body positivity'. (Bonus points if her design is still inexplicitly slimmed down by her transformation.)

I feel nothing but disgust from reading this, please apologize.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Juleka and Luka being twins/her being held back is confirmed by her getting bullied/mocked for her anxiety issues keeping her from completing assignments (flunking verbal reports, presentations). Alternately/in addition, it's revealed by Bustier while asking Marinette to help Juleka/fretting that she'll fail for similar reasons. Somehow, Bustier is still presented as a 'good teacher' despite being the one who held her back in the first place.

This will also be a reverse-”Gang of Secrets” where Luka doesn’t appear or has no input on the matter whatsoever.

“Bonus” if this ends up being used as the reason why Juleka has been mumbling for this whole season: they didn’t want her to be considered “stupid” so they retconned her to be more mumbly than before, which caused her to get held back.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: It's revealed that guys are normally incompatible with the Bee Comb because Pollen treats men like worker drones while all women are queens. Adrien is either an exception to this or gets to be Sadrien after he's briefly given the Bee and has to deal with Pollen going Full Sass on him, with her severe critiques being presented as totally wrong no matter how dead-on her analysis of his character actually is. Jokes are made about her 'poor judgement'.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Flashbacks will reveal that Gabriel had a similar personality to Marinette when he was younger. Unlike her, HIS anxieties will be treated as more serious/endearing, rather than something to be mocked and belittled -- think his own version of Sadrien. The parallels drawn between them may also be used to cast Marinette in a worse light/imply that she could go down the same path as him.

I hate how plausible “male character has anxiety but is treated properly” is.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Alya will be the next Chloe; trusting her despite her clear personality flaws is ultimately shown to be another of Marinette's mistakes. Just like Chloe is an unrepentant bully, Alya is an 'aspiring journalist' first and foremost, and this will override whatever faith her BFF put in her.

THE PARALLELS CONTINUE.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: After Alya's eventual but inevitable betrayal, Trixx will defend her by reminding Marinette that 'She's a Fox. Foxes lie.' He's not even particularly *surprised* by Alya breaking her promises, treating it as proof that she's one of *his*. And it's not on him for not warning Mari, but entirely her fault for failing to recognize what being a Fox truly means.

You can’t trust foxes, Marinette, and that’s what makes them great.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Su-Han will constantly veto Marinette's ideas, ESPECIALLY ones that would have prevented problems that arise later on... which she then gets blamed for not averting. If she actually calls Su-Han out on this, he will insist that the fault falls upon her for not convincing him... if he even acknowledges that he was wrong/she actually suggested things that could have averted disaster.

“But--”

“No.”

“It makes so much se--”

“No.”

“YOU DIDN’T EVEN LISTEN TO WHAT I HAD TO SAY--”

“No.”

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: An episode will LITERALLY get on Marinette's case for breathing -- while hiding from an akuma with super-sensitive hearing, her needing air causes problems. Bonus points if she's breathing heavily after getting injured saving Chat Noir from being hurt due to his messing about; cue Drama and Sadrien without acknowledging his true culpability in the matter. (I.E. "It's all my fault! D:" "No, no, *cough* I should have dodged better..." "Fear not, my lady, I'll protect you!")

Miraculous: Tales of Marinette Not Even Being Allowed to Breathe

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: We'll see more in-universe merch and marketing of the heroes, their images stolen and sold without permission. Ladybug is dismayed and disturbed, while Chat dismisses it; he's financially secure and doesn't care how his image is (mis)used, while Marinette's concern is treated as 'silly'. Why is she so bothered by dolls with unrealistic proportions and painted-on suits, or ones that gussy her up to make her more overtly girly and marketable?

Bonus if this is also an episode where Marinette is strapped for cash due to possible gifts for friends or all the things she used to make for Adrien (i.e: more proof that her Adrien crush just makes her life worse), and she will be treated as greedy/selfish for wanting something out of her hero work.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Alya declares the LadyBlog to be officially endorsed by Ladybug herself, and that all of her information is verified by the heroine. This is a blatant lie, as she continues not to do any fact-checking or run anything by Marinette, and acts as though MARI is wrong for trying to call her out on this.

Alya will also be treated as in the right for taking advantage of the opportunity because “she deserved to know” and “should be getting extra rights” as Marinette’s best friend.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Gabriel is shown monitoring the LadyBlog and using information he gleans from it more and more. If Marinette expresses any concern about this to Alya, she gets dismissed as 'paranoid' and 'jumping at shadows'.

And, similarly to “Feast,” Alya will never be called out because the narrative will conveniently never make the connection to Alya or force Alya to realize that this was a mistake.

Anonymous said:

Didn't Need Burrow: Alya will be responsible for exposing Ladybug's secret identity to Chat Noir. Chat then gets *furious* at Marinette for telling her and not HIM, using this as an excuse to not reveal his *own* identity, sarcastically parroting back all her warnings about how 'It's just not safe' for them to know.

Totally ignoring the fact that Marinette was on verge of a breakdown in “Gang of Secrets.”

Sorry, Marinette, guess you should’ve let yourself plummet.

#Didn't Need Burrow

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toujoursmiraculous · 3 years ago

Text

Thoughts and Reaction to WISHMAKER

Oh I'm so excited about this one! Marinette's little soft looks she gives Adrien in recent episodes before snapping herself out of it is adorable. Not overwhelming, just nice. Poor Adrien doesn't know what he wants to do. But the thing that hurts me most (probably because I was always in the same position he is in, so understand more than hurt from it) is the fact he thinks that with Ladybug adding more people to the team, he won't be needed and thus won't be Chat Noir anymore. OOOF it hurts! Poor Adrien doesn't realize that if Ladybug didn't give these Miraculous out, Shadow Moth would've gotten their Miraculous from them a long time ago. I rewatched all episodes out now in chronological order, and it's so obvious she cares about him and could not be able to do what she does without him. What needs to happen is for her to not only tell him that, but express it somehow for him to believe it.

"Come on, Plagg. It's time to start thinking about our future." OUR future. He's including Plagg in that future. Good! I definitely understand what this episode is trying to get across about jobs and careers, but a majority of people can't and never end up doing a job or career they love and gives meaning. Some struggle just to find something they can do with their circumstances, much less something that'd make them happy. A very good message though to encourage young kids to look into many interests and try to find what you enjoy to life to end up doing that makes an impact on the world to spread the positivity and happiness. Hey hey hey Alec, how dare you go after Andre the Ice Cream Maker?! But good on him for not letting it affect him at all, he's doing what he loves so the criticism doesn't matter. "Pistachio and pecan for the clear-sighted young man!" "Who? What young man?" "Hello Marinette." I love Luka so much and Andrew's voice is so smooth. x3 I've wanted to learn the violin for years, I have one, but have never been able to do much with it. Luka having and playing his violin makes me incredibly happy (and adore him even more). "Whoa. You definitely have a gift for finding the right words at the right time." "Adrien." "Ah, well, most of the time." LOL But this entire scene. Luka saying you haven't told him about your feelings have you, her noticing he's sad, and Luka being like let's go talk to him and help him then! Just. AWWW! Poor Adrien has so much pressure to find something he wants to do or his dad will make him do what he wants instead. That's going to make it even harder for him to find something... I remember a spoiler from a long time ago, of Adrien baking with Marinette. What if he finds he loves it when that happens, and it's what he wants to do? :o Ahahahaha when Luka goes and sits next to Adrien, Adrien looks up at Marinette expectantly to sit down too. Probably thought by him. but she went the safe route and went next to Luka. xD Adrien, thinking he knew what Luka and Marinette want to do. Luka knows what he wants but it isn't what Adrien or the rest of us thought. Marinette thought she knew but now she's not sure at all. So all three are kind of confused and it's complicated. Life's complicated. Have you noticed, this is the most honest Marinette and Adrien have ever been about something so deep and personal to them? And they're able to do it around each other. Because Luka's there. He's like their emotional guide to help bring them closer and I love it. "Nothing, my mind is empty!" "I'm completely lost!" - Marinette and Adrien say together. Dang. When Luka explains Marinette and Adrien's "inner music" that felt like the most deep and personal scene this show has ever had. "You two will eventually find what's already in front of you," he says before he knew. As they look at each other. Oh lovely foreshadowing moment here. "But you can't hear it clearly, just let the melody flow." In other words, let things happen as they should. Don't force anything. If it feels right to do something, do it. If it doesn't, don't. Wow that violin is so beautiful. Adrien and Marinette's reactions in

sync, the surprise at the tune, the contentedness, and wordlessly looking at each other before getting up and sitting closer. Such a beautiful scene, this has me in awe honestly. "I've wasted my life!" oh I'm sure that hit hard with some of us older viewers. :c I have trouble sometimes not thinking this way, but there's always still time to change how things are. I love that everyone's dreams are either sweet and positive or just plain silly. Like CrocoJagged.

Hey, hi there, son! I absolutely lost it LOL this was brilliant! And the way he runs away on his hind legs it's too much XD "Hey Adrien, go hide behind that tree!" and then he drags Marinette along to hide her. So funny he's the one taking control in this situation. He's really shown his superhero potential in this and Optigami, even when not suited up. oooh Marinette wasn't where he brought her. That was sus. "HEEEELP I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SWIM!" "If we get hit, we'll reveal our secret identities!" "What do you mean, m'lady?" "When I was six I wanted to be the Knitting Fairy, and the Knitting Fairy didn't wear a mask!" The fact she's distracted and Chat Noir had to be paying attention to pull her to safety was such a Ladybug move. What do you mean you're not needed, Chat?! Obviously you are! Also she's giving you information about herself! LISTEN. She never used to and doesn't have to tell you these things, she's choosing to! And she even asked about you and your childhood! "You must have just forgotten!" or didn't have one. I honestly didn't have a dream as a kid, either. I don't know, I never wanted to grow up and be anything in particular that I thought I could do. I didn't have wishes of things I wanted to do for fun much either. I don't know why exactly, but I had a dad that's enough like Gabriel so maybe that's why. (My sister proceeded to tease me about being a sentimonster, since there's that "Adrien's a sentimonster" theory going around). "But Dad, crocodiles know how to swim..." "I didn't when I was a kid!" THIS SCENE XDD I love it! "If Chat Noir and I get hit, you must come back to this exact moment." Yeah it was at that point my suspicions of Luka finding out about them both seemed to be very likely to happen. "Nobody can know about our secret identities." At this point I was going omg omg omg omg the entire time lol The fact that Adrien would decide to have his identity revealed so he could learn more about himself to help him in the future. o.o This poor boy! And here's Luka finding out about Marinette being Ladybug! The dramatic zoom in! Viperion goes "Marinette?!" literally with Chat less than a foot away and he doesn't even budge. He's really that sad he's not even paying attention to what's going on Dx Okay, Ladybug calling on her Lucky Charm just to have the plushie squeak in her hand got me lol "My childhood dream is being what my parents wanted me to be!" Adrien seems happy. And he's himself, it looks like, so I don't know if we just got it cut off short or if he is exactly what his parents wanted him to be, so he's happy knowing that information?

This back and forth between a serious moment and a hilarious one! Shadow Moth's horrified Adrien's Chat Noir lolol not even the same kind of reaction that was in Chat Blanc when he found out . Okay but back to Luka. I think he was much too far away to hear what Adrien was actually saying, but he can see that it's Adrien standing where Chat Noir was.

He sees Adrien's where Chat Noir was.

The realization that Chat Noir is Adrien.

Understanding exactly what it means for Marinette to be Ladybug and Adrien to be Chat Noir. It's interesting how the people of Paris were able to still have jobs that was as close to their childhood dreams as possible. The man that wanted to be Santa makes toys. Mr. Banana wanted to be a cucumber and while he's not one, he wears a Banana suit every day. Jagged wanted to be a crocodile so the closest he could get was to have one as a pet. Marinette wanted to be the Knitting Fairy and look at all she can knit and sew! Alec: "When I was a kid, I just wanted people to be happy!" so sad that his bullying made him want to make others miserable instead. But it's nice that he wants to start now trying to make others smile and be happy c: "Sorry Alec, but when you're a superhero, even your dreams have to remain a secret." But she told Chat Noir hers. If that's not her going in the direction of outright telling him who she is....! Please let Luka be the one to help Ladybug with Chat Noir and Adrien with Marinette. Please. They need it. They have to have Ladybug realize her feelings for Chat and be willing to tell him everything. And they need Adrien to open his eyes and realize his feelings for Marinette. Once those things happen, they'll be okay. Except Adrien still doesn't know what his dream is because that was taken away by Second Chance. Personally, I think his dream of wanting what his parents wanted him to be, is what he already is. He just doesn't know it. As for his future, that can be up to him to start finding! "Thanks to you, our secret identities were persevered and nobody discovered who Chat Noir and I really are..... uh, not even you, right?" "Not even me. Luckily Wishmaker never hit you or Chat Noir." LIES Funny that he was "Truth" before, but now he's spitting lies. HOWEVER don't worry, I understand very much why he's lying and with the way Marinette is, this would be something she'd worry about and obsess over and Luka doesn't want that for her. He knows he can handle it, and she'll find out about it later when she's meant to. I just think it's ironic and funny lol And ooooof the way Luka's face fell after she left. Poor bb. "It was nothing, Marinette. You know you can always count on me." Luka's going to be Marinette and Adrien's best friend in a way that Nino and Alya just can't be. I can feel it. "We're all okay. Thanks to Ladybug and Chat Noir."

Oh. Oh you dorks! It's like they somehow know deep down they're Ladybug and Chat Noir with that look at that line. They're looking at each other like they know to some extent... I'm sure nothing happened in an episode we have yet to see but, it feels a bit weird, don't you think? "I may not remember my childhood dreams, but that's okay! It's time to focus on the future and find my inner music, like Luka said!" AWWW good for you my precious sunshine boy! Keep being you. Also Adrien's disturbed look at Plagg killed me again.

Marinette: "I'll do it all! .... I'll be Luka's best friend and I'll love Adrien!" Yeah see, that's it! You guys are best as best friends, and Luka will one day find someone else and he'll be happy to have you as his best friend when that time comes too. As far as all the other stuff, that sounds very busy and exhausting, but if it makes her happy! "How can you love other people if you don't love yourself?" Oh dang, that's such a good line to have put in this show honestly! Nicely done. So this is definitely one of if not my favorite episode. Chat Blanc's been my favorite but this is at least up there with it! There's so much to take from this episode, and so much that can come from this episode's events that I'm both extremely excited and scared to find out what happens next.

#ml #miraculous ladybug #ml spoilers #ml season 4 spoilers #ml spoilers season 4 #wishmaker spoilers #luka couffaine #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #chat noir #ladybug #viperion #thoughts and reaction to wishmaker #toujoursmiraculous thoughts and reaction

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vagrantblvrd · 4 years ago

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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Late-night and also half-assed AU idea times?

The one where Luke gets sent back in time (Because Reasons) to Clone Wars era shenanigans.

Also Because Reasons Obi-Wan is put in charge of keeping an eye on this kid, idk, Biggs Antilles because everyone is so hapless in the Star Wars universe when under pressure, like seriously.

Anyway.

Obi-Wan is suspicious like a suspicious person and so is Anakin and Luke is kind of losing his mind because he never knew (suspected, but never had proof) that old Ben was a goddamned menace and all his lectures to Luke about same are like, wow, dude, wow.

Oh, and also his dad.

And Ahsoka?

And all the clones and everyone else and he’s like, ;____________________; at what could have been, you know?

But also not sure if he’ll ever get back to his time - he really hopes so because there’s this Mandalorian with an adorable kid - and oh, God, he needs to check on Grogu in this time stat, but yes.

Shenanigans in which Luke desperately tries to hide his real identity because everyone’s iike “He feels like Anakin,how strange, and Luke in the corner like “Hahaha, yes, STRANGE. :DDDDDD

And then adventures in which he ends up having to save Obi-Wan more than he ever expected to when he woke up twenty-something years in the past, and oh dear God is that his mom? (Leia looks so much like her. Mostly the angry part right now, because Anakin and recklessly endangering his life and uh, oops, he didn’t mean to eavesdrop???

But like. Luke is kind of bleeding again (he,too, recklessly endangered his life alongside his father and Obi-Wan) and thought medbay was this way and -

Wait, why are you looking at him like that?

Anaking and Padme worried Luke’s going to at them out to, idk, the Jedi council or whatever about their ~forbidden love, and Luke is just.

“What.”

So then the thing about attachments and how they’re bad because emotions is explained to him and Luke looks at his father who clearly loves his mother so much. Thinks about the nonsense about attachment and how scared it would make someone like Anakin, and Obi-Wan -

Luke loves him, but the man’s made mistakes. (And, like. Luke gets it, he does. Some adventure with Obi-Wan and sharing of past loves because they weren’t sure they’d make it out alive and why not share this thing with someone kind of friend-shaped, and anyway,)

Luke is like, okay, wow.

Because one, the thing about attachments is bullshit - show him one Jedi master who isn’t attached to their padawan for starters - and anyway.

Not his business who they love, an then he scurries off to medbay before he bleeds out in hallway or wherever, which is where Obi-Wan finds him and is like >:((((( at the bleeding thing and :| about the attachment thing but also *SIGH* because Luke reminds him of this padawan he had once, what was his name???

Anyway.

Yes

Also, though, also.

Them taking Luke to Coruscant to meet with the Jedi council because they have no idea where he came from - Luke floated the possibility of time travel being real to Obi-Wan once, but as a hypothetical and really, never mind him - and anyway.

Luke being like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ as they ~question (interrogate) him because he has read up on the Jedi Order and their rules and whatnot. And where he might have been in awe of getting to meet all these Jedi masters once, now he just feels. Pity. He feels pity for them.

It shows, a little, and they call it arrogance for someone so young to think they know better than the entirety of the Jedi council and yet?

Luke doesn’t care.

Which kind of makes him a threat in their eyes, this incredibly powerful Jedi who appeared out of nowhere and shows so little - if any, really - respect for their Order.

And, they realize, who both Obi-Wan and Anakin like.

Ahsoka too, but she’s a padawan, young and such, doesn’t know better.

But also, also, after all the fun-times had with the Jedi council Luke walks out to find Palpatine talking to his father and his mother while Obi-Wan stands by and chips in with a comment or observation every so often and he is like !!! because he never expected this???

Somehow after hearing stories from people, he just. Didn’t expect the fall of the old Jedi Order to take place in a tastefully appointed waiting area, potted plants and chairs and such Maybe one of those little fountains you see in an office sometime for the soothing sound of moving water and whatnot.

Anyway.

Maybe it’s his own personal experience with the man in the throne room on the second Death Star with the dramatic lighting and so on, but it’s a wee bit jarring.

He has one of those “episodes” as the others call them, and gets hustled out of there posthaste while Palpatine is all, “Oh, dear, I do hope he feels better,” and Luke does all the meditating exercises so as not to blurt out that hey, so, that sith lord everyone’s trying to find? RIGHT THERE.

Because lack of evidence and such.

And it’s like.

After seeing what things were like, he’s just. He’s stuck here, probably, right? So. Maybe he can fix things, even a little.

(Right the wrongs that Palpatine wrought and so on.)

And while he’s doing that it occurs to him that Din, okay, Din is alive in this time. And he told Luke about the attack that killed his parents, about being rescued by Mandalorians, and is like.

Can he change that too? Should he? Searches everything he can only to realize he’s too late to do anything about it. That the attack happened before Luke arrived in this time and he has this.

This little breakdown in a library or some such somewhere, because all that fretting and whatnot he did about whether or not he should intervene was for nothing, a moot point because he was too late, and it’s like.

Existential crisis time because if he changes things more than he has, will he even exists in the future? Will Leia?

Will any of their friends exist, and on his way back to the quarters he’s been given he runs into Padme - perhaps sneaking out from visiting Anakin - and she’s surprised to see him, maybe a little worried too.

(She knows his views on the whole attachment thing, yes, but her and Anakin have kept their relationship a secret for a long time now and old habits)

Still, she notices he’s obviously not doing well and they talk for a bit, Luke asking her a hypothetical, like if she could go back in time to change something to save someone she loved from suffering, would she?

And of course she is like. No, because doing so negates their choices and how would it affect others and so on?

Luke is just, right, of course.

But then she goes on and says, as a person, not a politician, a leader, she absolutely would.

Luke is like, oh, because of course that makes sense, doesn’t it.

Good of the many and so on and anyway.

He goes to his quarters and thinks on it for a bit and realizes, yes okay, the thing with Din was mostly selfish - he wants to say he wouldn’t have done it, but he still doesn’t know - but Palpatine, okay, Palpatine.

How many million, billions, maybe more, lives was he responsible for? (Luke has his own count for the dead, and monstrously high it may be, but Palpatine is at the heart of all of it.)

So.

He he starts laying the groundwork to expose Palpatine, or maybe just build up, idk, say a Rebel Alliance to oppose him - and discovers that oh, would you look at that.

Because Padme and Bail and their closet conspirators who know something is coming, that Palpatine is surely part of it, but they don’t know the full scope of things.

And honestly, even Luke doesn’t, but.

They think he’s a spy or whatever, and there are all these shenanigans in the meantime, and Luke doing what he can to prove that he’s really on their side, and anyway, anyway.

He plants seeds here and there, everything Leia taight him, everything he picked up, and goes to Obi-Wan for help because his former master and watchdog, and anyway.

Before Luke gets to see if anything he’s done in the past pays off he gets booted back to his time.

Or a version of it.

Ripped back to his time and this moment where he’s sure he’s dead - in the middle of a space battle or collapsing temple somewhere and glowy doohickey, something like that, or, okay, Palpatine trying to kill hi again for the first time - and anyway.

Super disorienting.

Especially when he opens his eyes and Obi-Wan is there along with his father and is that Ahsoka?

But, like.

Older.

Also, though, Din.

And Grogu and Luke is very confused?

But there’s no time for that, as Padme and Leia run in and tell them the Imperials found them, did you get him? Yes, oh, good, and now with the running???

In which they do the running to a familiar ship Luke knows well, and also a few others he likewise knows, and anyway.

They escape just in time because an Imperial fleet was looking for them, and anyway.

Luke is super confused, but that’s okay because exposition time in which he finds out all those seeds he planted worked.

Palpatine was exposed, but didn’t matter because he had contingency plans, you know?

Order 66 never went into effect because someone - Obi-wan was prompted to go back to Kamino and ask after the clones, any...special features that may have been added and anyway.

Palpatine never got his clone army, but he made up for it with battle droids and conscripts and the Empire didn’t win? But neither did the Alliance.

Not yet, anyway, and they’ve been fighting for years at that point. No Death Star - at least not a completed one - and anyway, yes.

Alderaan’s still there, Leia doesn’t have to pretend she can see it in the night sky, and anyway.

A lot has changed but so much is still the same, and everyone, okay, everyone thinks Luke an idiot.

(They’re also not surprised by that, because Skywalker, but yes.)

This whole thing of Luke’s original memories clashing with this new timeline - he keeps his old ones, but it makes for a confusing time, you know? Some point where Luke gets this faraway look and turns to someone - maybe they were dead in that original timeline - and tells them how different everything is.

If they’re feeling brave enough, and honestly most people in Luke’s life are that brave, they ask what he was thinking about to get that look on his face and he’ll tell them about terrible future that didn’t come to pass.

One he feels a little guilty for missing sometimes because those other versions of the people he knew, loved, are gone and he’s the only one who remembers them? But then he’ll see one of them, or someone who was dead in that other timeline and realizes it’s not as simple as that.

Looks at the life he knew before and the one he’s learning now and can’t decide if what he did was the right thing?

But then he’ll catch his parents on a balcony somewhere lost in on another’s eyes and these soft smiles and the love between them that’s grown over the years. Or see Obi-Wan walking about with Cody, and soft smiles and quiet laughter and hundred dozen little moments like that and thinks, selfishly, he doesn’t truly regret it if these people he’s come to love get something like that, you know?

And, then, of course, then Din finds him, or maybe Luke goes back to their quarters on whatever ship or base they’re at then, and he’ll be waiting for him.

They were on the cusp of something when Luke got thrown back in time, but things changed once he got back.

Slow, awkward, because different timelines and experiences, but something new and good, and anyway, anyway.

Din’s there and Luke is being a little (lot) selfish in wanting to keep whatever the two of them are building between them, and Din seems to want the same, and anyway.

Yes????

#star wars nonsense #dinluke #time travel shenanigans au v2 #i have ~feelings regarding time travel okay #sorry #technically not a fic #vagrant fic #long post

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s-and-n-writes · 4 years ago

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you are my north

a/n: hey guys! here's the soulmate fic i've been working on for a while. it's an outline-style because i didn't want to write out the whole thing. enjoy! -s ps. i can't write summaries to save my life. pps. this fic is rated teen only because of two curse words, and while there is some major character death, i didn't mark it in the warnings because it's temporary.

quick links: | crossover masterlist |

People get many types of soulmate bonds

Some are romantic and some are platonic

Platonic can be friends, family, found-family, etc

Bonds can include marks, writing on arms, switching bodies, etc

Everyone has a soulbond but some aren’t visible or obvious

Marinette grew up in Gotham named Marianne

She didn’t have a visual bond so hers would manifest when she met her soulmate

Her parents were killed when their house burned down (she was 5)

She was sent to an orphanage and ran away after a few months (she was still 5)

Lived on the streets for a year until she met Jason Todd (she was 6 and he was 10)

They met when two older boys tried to steal Marianne’s money since she was small

Jason beat them up and gave her his hand to lift her up

When their hands met there was a flash of light

Marianne - My mama told me about this. She said it was a soulmate bond and the person it was with was really really really special to me.

They both have a compass on their palms pointing to where the other is

They go off together and live together on the streets

She calls him “Jay-Jay” and he calls her “Pixie” or “Mari”

2 years later (Marianne is 8 and Jason is 12)

Jason goes out and finds the Batmobile and proceeds to get adopted

He refuses and wants to find Marianne

Jason - Let me go old man!

Batman - No. You’re coming with me.

Jason - I need to find my sister!

Batman - Fine. Find her and you both will come with me.

Both go in search of Marianne

Earlier Marianne woke up and found Jason missing so she went out to search

She couldn’t find him and was upset and was sloppy

A Parisian couple found her and adopted her

The people at the GCPD were like ????? because who adopts a Gotham street kid?

Tom Dupain and Sabine Cheng apparently

So Marianne is taken to Paris while Jason and Batman are looking for her

They can’t find her and Jason goes with Batman and gets adopted and everything

Jason believes she must have been taken out of Gotham because his compass points towards the harbor and towards the water

Eventually gives up because he won’t be able to find her since across the ocean is a massive place

Gotham proceeds as normal

In Paris...

Marianne is refusing everything because she didn’t want to leave and she misses her brother

Tom and Sabine didn’t want two children so they didn’t bother looking for her brother

They rename her Marinette

She goes to school and makes friends with two boys named Nino and Kim and is enemies with Chloe, the mayor’s daughter

Reluctantly starts calling Tom and Sabine ‘Maman’ and ‘Papa’ because it would look weird if she didn’t and she didn’t want to talk about her past

They treat her nicely but she still misses her old parents

Marinette makes more and more friends but they don’t know about her past or her brother

When she’s 11 she sees on the news that Jason Todd-Wayne died

She’s really sad because her brother and soulmate died but also insanely confused because he somehow got adopted by Bruce Wayne???

Back to his death

Her compass stays but her compass needle disappears

She withdraws and doesn’t go to school for a week

She asked everyone not to give her any nicknames (not that she had any in the first place)

Nobody knows she had a brother except Tom and Sabine but even they don’t know his name

Everyone is told one of her family members died and her parents try to console her but eventually give up

Continuing on and time skips

Her parents start leaving her alone more as she got older

It helped when she became Ladybug

Marinette also slightly resents them for forcefully adopting her and then kind of neglecting her but let’s not get into that

Becomes friends with Alya and starts crushing on Adrien

Alya posts everything and is very intrusive

Marinette is constantly questioned about her soulbond but always refuses to answer

Did I mention that she always wears gloves ever since Jason died?

Because she does

She doesn’t want to see the compass and be reminded of him

Anyways, Alya keeps trying but is always refused

She calls Marinette ‘Mari’ one day and she just…snaps

Marinette goes on this big rant about personal information and privacy and respecting boundaries and ends up screaming at her and curls in a ball crying

Alya leaves and stops being friends with her because Marinette is ‘mean’ and ‘sensitive’

They occasionally talk but they’re not really friends anymore

Very soon after, Lila comes and that's why Alya turned on Marinette so quick

Adrien tells her to “take the high road” and her crush on him dies

Marinette becomes even more miserable because everyone has left her and she is alone

Luka and Kagami aren’t her close friends here

And Chloe is not in her class anymore

Tikki is her only friend until Master Fu gives her guardianship and she is in charge of her kwamis

She is incredibly stressed because of Ladybug, Guardian duties, bakery shifts, and school

Tikki gives her the idea to get rid of bakery duties and not focus on Guardian stuff and instead do a hobby

She tells her ‘parents’ that she’s too busy with school to work at the bakery

They roll their eyes and ignore her again and sometimes she thinks they only adopted her to get her to work for them for free

There isn’t too much to do for Guardian stuff anyways

She designs more and more as a hobby and ends up opening a commission website (that’s completely anonymous so Lie-la and her cronies can’t do anything to it)

It’s more work but it relaxes her and is great for making money

Her pseudonym ‘MAT’ is famous because of Jagged Stone and Clara Nightingale constantly mentioning her

MAT stands for both Marinette And Tikki, and MariAnne Todd

Eventually she gets a request from the Waynes

Marinette just cried because this was her brothers family and takes the request

She makes everything extra personalized and charges a bit less and writes a note to them

The note says something about how she knew Jason before he died and he was like a brother to her and she misses him so much and she can’t imagine what they’re going through

By this time she’s 16 and Jason would have been 20 and he is currently being Red Hood (not that she knows that)

Stuff happens, Hawkmoth is defeated, and she takes the ring away from Chat Noir because he’s an asshole who can’t take no for an answer

It’s Adrien Agreste...thank god she didn’t have a crush on him anymore

Time passes, and Marinette is now 18

She has moved out of the bakery and into her own apartment

She’s still in school but it’s her last year

She is now insanely famous and her identity is the best kept secret in the world

She is completely alone except for the Kwamis

So Marinette had entered a contest sponsored by Wayne Industries and won

The prize is a trip to Gotham for the entire class...fuck

If Marinette had known she probably wouldn’t have entered

Why would she go back to the place where her brother died?

She has to go though because she is the contest winner

Lila took credit for it and is spinning lies about how she’s so close to the Waynes and is dating Timothy Drake

So now onto a plot twist yay

On the morning of the trip Marinette is getting ready

She hasn’t looked at her hands in forever because she doesn’t want to be reminded about Jason

Keep in mind that she wears gloves constantly

That morning she looks at them because she wants to prepare for being in Gotham again and memories sake and things

Marinette is shocked when the compass needle is back and pointing in a direction

She doesn’t know what happened since as far as she knows people can’t come back to life and her needle was definitely gone before

So after interrogating Tikki and Plagg for a while she finds out that yes, there are ways to bring someone back to life and some aren’t very good for you *cough* Lazarus Pit *cough*

On the plane ride she is thinking and being both excited and scared/worried

Excited because Jason’s alive!

Scared/worried because some ways of bringing back the dead don’t work very well…

The plane lands and they get out of the airport with no big issues

Except for Lie-la hiding her luggage and getting the class to leave without her

So now Marinette has to walk across Gotham at night, alone, while carrying heavy luggage and looking like a tiny, weak, foreigner

She is practically begging to get mugged but what can you do?

Around halfway to the hotel she hears footsteps behind her

Before she can do anything, Red Hood jumps down from a roof and takes them down

He ties them up and calls the police

Marinette thinks he is familiar but ignores the feeling and goes on her way

Red Hood (Jason) also thinks she is familiar but also ignores it

Now is the time for normal Maribat field trip tropes and ideas

Nothing big happens to advance the plot

The last week of their trip is at Gotham Academy and then they go to the Wayne Gala

Again, normal first day at GA tropes until there’s a Rogue attack

For plot reasons (can’t reveal the akuma situation, Ladybug can’t be in Gotham, she has nowhere good to transform, etc), Marinette hides in a storage closet

She rubs her compass-palm to calm herself and looks at it

The needle is moving as if her soulmate was walking towards her (or the closet where she’s hidden)

But that’s not possible because Jason should be 22 and definitely shouldn’t be in a school right?

Marinette is freaking out and then the needle is pointing directly in front of her

And then the doorknob turns and the door opens and she sees…

DUN DUN DUN

Red Hood!

Marinette is kind of shocked but shrugs it off for a minute

Red Hood tells her the attack is over and she can come out

He helps her up but when their hands touch there’s a flash of light

Marinette - Jay-Jay?

Jason - Pixie?

Then there’s a very heartwarming reunion that I’m too angsty to write properly

Marinette starts going by Marianne again and meets the Bats

They love her immediately (and more when they realize that she is MAT who personalized their commissions and wrote that note long ago)

Lie-la’s lies get taken down

At the Wayne Gala she is announced to be Jason Todd-Wayne’s platonic soulmate, Marianne Todd

They live happily ever after

a/n: if you would like to be tagged for any of the maribat drabbles we post, shoot us a message and we’ll tag you!

#maribat #miraculous ladybug #batman #gotham #fanfic #ml #mlb #marinette dupain chang #jason todd #the bat family #soulmate au #au #alternate universe #our writing.txt

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adrinoir · 4 years ago

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Who will be the next Hawk Moth?

Alright, well there’s a lot of different theories on who will be “the next Hawk Moth”. So I wanted to do a break down on some possibilities (warning: this analysis is REALLY long lol)

Lila

I feel like Lila is very likely to be the next one. She already has a leg up in working with Gabriel (despite not knowing he’s Hawk Moth).

Even though Hawk Moth hasn’t reached his goal of getting Ladybug and Cat Noir’s miraculouses, he’s made good progress. With Lila’s help, he’s gotten PRETTY damn close to getting them since she has that deep hatred of Ladybug. Without her, he wouldn’t have had his invasion of scarlet moths possessing Paris.

Additionally, Lila is pretty full of herself and does just about everything for her own benefit. She could easily grow a bigger hatred towards Ladybug and find out about the benefits of their miraculouses to have her own wish granted.

It’s really difficult to see her as a redeemable character since she has yet to show any redeemable qualities. But, hey, maybe there will be a plot twist where she’ll change her ways.

Chloe

As much as I’d LOVE to see Chloe develop into a better person since we see she is the way she is, I don’t have too much faith in Thomas Astruc’s writing.

Thomas initially started Chloe off as the annoying and conceited bully, then she started seeing the error of her ways, and finally...she was pulled back to square one.

It’s obvious that Chloe is pretty strong. She knows Hawk Moth is evil and has fought off an akuma even when she was super angry with Ladybug. However, Hawk Moth IS a rather powerful man and was able to akumatize Chloe on many occasions. She became his most successful akumatized victim as Miracle Queen. I feel like the fandom doesn’t talk enough about how Chloe managed to get almost ALL the miraculous holders to reveal their identities. (Don’t come for Hawk Moth in saying he hasn’t made a lot of progress - he HAS.)

The main issue with Chloe is that she can easily be manipulated into doing things for Hawk Moth because she has that disliking for Ladybug, deep down. She doesn’t want to hate Ladybug but obviously it’s been tough since she won’t let Chloe have her bee miraculous, and being Queen Bee is very important to her. Chloe wants to be powerful and heroic to feel good about herself since her mom doesn’t see her as something special (which is awful, I feel so bad for Chloe, honestly.)

Even though the likelihood is there, I really don’t want Chloe to become the next Hawk Moth. In season 4, it’d be nice to see some of her character development come back, and hopefully her and her mom build a stronger relationship now that Audrey has decided to stay in Paris with the family. Thomas Astruc needs to make Chloe better but KEEP it that way. She’s shown redeemable qualities and we know why she acts the way that she does. There’s a ridiculous amount of potential for her to be a wonderful, well-rounded character instead of just the evil bully Thomas makes her out to be.

Felix

So far, we’ve only seen Felix in one episode, but we already have a good idea of what he’s like. He’s very manipulative as a form of coping with his father’s death.

Felix already has a bit of a vendetta against Gabriel for keeping Emilie’s family heirlooms, and managed to steal them from Gabriel. He also wasn’t very nice to Adrien in pretending to be him and attempting to hurt his friendships. All of those things Felix did just prove he’d make a *good* villain.

My theory is that he’ll come back for at least one more episode, since he took the wedding rings that were very precious to Gabriel. However, it’s kind of strange to me that Felix hasn’t even been mentioned since his debut episode. So, we will see if this devilish boy makes a comeback.

Adrien

People have had this theory a while back, but it’s just incredibly unlikely at this point.

Adrien cares deeply about his mom and wants her back, of course. However, we see in Cat Blanc that he tried to cataclysm his own father for what he’s done. He was so hurt by his father’s motives, he triggered the end of the world.

There could potentially be an episode where Adrien hears his father out and tries the butterfly miraculous out for himself, but Bunnyx would come out of her burrow and shut that shit down.

OR, we know Gabriel is an awful father and he could somehow manipulate his own son to take his spot as Hawk Moth. (But again, Bunnyx could easily shut this down, too.)

Adrien loves being Cat Noir; he’s shown to be the Cat Noir in the future. He has an extremely good heart. So they’ve pretty much denied Adrien becoming the new Hawk Moth, at this point.

Luka

I think this is the most interesting idea I’ve seen on who the next Hawk Moth will be. (I recommend watching Cat Blanc x Princess Justice’s YouTube video analysis on this. It’s really good! I mention some of her points in here.)

Luka is almost too nice of a character. He cares a lot about other people and just sort of lets Marinette take advantage of his kindness, which is really sad, BUT there could easily be a motive we don’t know behind that, or he’s secretly bothered by it deep down.

There’s that theory that Luka knows Marinette is Ladybug. He could be trying to get closer to her to take the miraculous from her since he might know the power the ladybug and black cat miraculous hold.

Or, like I mentioned before, if Luka is bothered deep down by Marinette’s romantic feelings for Adrien, there could be something that happens that pushes him over the edge. We’ve even seen that Luka makes a terrifying villain as Silencer. He was super manipulative and had a lot of good tactics. Ladybug and Cat Noir DID in fact have a really hard time fighting him. Luka is also not the type of person to get angry like that, but Hawk Moth needs STRONG emotion to feed off of. So, considering how powerful of a villain Luka was, there’s clearly some anger boiling within him.

We also don’t have that much of a backstory to work off of. We’re slowly learning more, but think about it, for instance, we don’t know who his father is. Some people have theorized it’s Jagged Stone but we’re REALLY not sure. So, maybe it’s a motive of his to find his father.

Thomas Astruc made Luka a very likable character, enough so to get most of the fandom to actually like the Lukanette ship. Luka could have been made purposely likable so that the fandom won’t believe that he will be the next villain.

Another good point Cat Blanc x Princess Justice had made was that Miraculous World made a tweet that Miraculous will be introducing a new villain in season 4 - but it’s a character we already know. Lila and Felix are already known BUT they’re also already well-established villains....

Kagami

If Luka is a possibility, so is Kagami. Half the fandom thinks Kagami is great, the other half thinks she’s awful.

Kagami is shown to have a very strong personality (that sometimes comes off as a bit threatening). She’s very blunt about everything, very uptight, doesn’t beat around the bush. Those three characteristics are similar to Gabriel, HOWEVER Kagami has a caring soul and she really wants to be good to Adrien and Marinette.

So, it’s possible, but unlikely and definitely hard to pinpoint what intentions she could possibly have of becoming a villain. Maybe her mother pinches a certain nerve, or she can’t understand why Adrien doesn’t love her.

Additionally, Thomas Astruc doesn’t cut Adrien a lot of slack, let’s be real here. Adrien’s father is already Hawk Moth, he could switch it to his “girlfriend” being Hawk Moth.

Alya

So, I have a bit of an interesting theory on this since I haven’t really seen anyone else mention anything about Alya potentially becoming bad.

Despite Alya/Rena Rouge having a strong bond and trust with Ladybug, there’s that possibility she still wants to unveil who Ladybug really is - she still runs The Ladyblog, after all. And of course, unveiling Ladybug’s identity is extremely dangerous. She even posted the museum exhibit to her blog in Feast, which she didn’t realize was dangerous. It shows that she might slip and reveal something that she shouldn’t have.

Or, maybe Alya manages to lose Ladybug’s trust. Something monumental could happen. There’s already that bit of danger surrounding Ladybug and Rena Rouge since they’re such close friends in real life and know nearly everything about each other.

Hawk Moth also now knows that Alya is Rena, and could do something to push her to reveal something on The Ladyblog, therefore turning her into a villain.

Also, Alya already knows SO much of the Ladybug lore. She’s dedicated so much time to researching the lore behind the miraculouses. Also pretty dangerous and suspicious.

Nino

Like Alya, there’s a chance Nino also loses Ladybug and/or Cat Noir’s trust. When Nino first got his miraculous, he wasn’t very good at acting like a different person in his superhero persona. He could easily slip and reveal an something he isn’t supposed to.

He is the least likely possibility, but not completely impossible.

Tom or Sabine

I put these two in the same excerpt because they have about the same amount of likeliness to be the next Hawk Moth (or maybe one is Hawk Moth and the other is Mayura 👀)

Tom and Sabine are both super sweet, but also, we don’t know a whole lot about them. Since Gabriel - father of sweet cinnamon roll hero Cat Noir - is Hawk Moth, who’s to say superhero Ladybug’s own parents couldn’t become evil? It’d create a super interesting dynamic in the plot because it’s like how would Marinette react if one of her parents was Hawk Moth?

I have a stronger theory that Tom and Sabine used to be the old Ladybug and Cat Noir, but still. Don’t put it past Thomas Astruc to trick us somehow.

How would Gabriel fail (or lose his miraculous)?

One last thing I’d also like to analyze relating to this is this question.

Does Gabriel NOT end up ever getting Ladybug and Cat Noir’s miraculouses? Let’s look over some possibilities:

1) One of the villains he creates or senti-monsters Nathalie creates becomes too powerful and doesn’t give him the miraculouses once they’re captured.

2) He gives up and realizes all he needs is his dearest son Adrien.

3) He gets sickly and can’t fight anymore and passes on his miraculous for someone else to do the job.

4) Simplest answer: His miraculous is stolen.

#miraculous ladybug #tales of ladybug and cat noir #miraculers #miraculous #hawk moth #hawkmoth #gabriel agreste #lila rossi #adrien agreste #luka couffaine #alya cesaire #nino lahiffe #miraculous kagami #kagami tsurugi

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bookandcover · 4 years ago

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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe…they do! They really, really do! This was such a phenomenal book! It’s 1987 and narrator Ari is a 15-year-old Mexican American boy living in El Paso who feels perpetually misfit. He doesn’t understand how to relate to other boys his age; he doesn’t understand his father, silent and troubled after years of serving in Vietnam; he doesn’t understand his mother’s silence when it comes to his older brother who is in prison, but who might as well be dead. Then, his world is utterly changed when fellow 15-year-old Dante befriends him. Dante is many things Aristotle is not: in love with the world and his life, passionate about books and art, open about his feelings, affectionate with his parents, and Dante charges through life with a joyous innocence that extends from his love for all living things right down to his unwillingness to wear shoes outside.

I loved every page of this book, from the tough parts to the surprising plot twists to the stunning portraits of both boys’ relationships with each of their parents, to the glorious ending which felt like a rainstorm breaking over the desert Ari loves—a therapeutic release of emotion. First off, the writing and voice is beautiful and spot-on. Ari is our narrator and every word sounds like him. He’s troubled and stubborn, but also quiet and attentive. He has a strong sense of justice, a strong moral compass, and clever and sarcastic sense of humor. We know him, and through his eyes we know deeply the other pivotal figures in his life. Ari’s growth over the course of the novel is seamless, as is the growth of his relationships with the other characters. Let’s start with Dante. Dante is beautiful in Ari’s eyes and therefore in ours. His soul is beautiful. Just like Ari, we long to protect that innocence. A third of the way through the book, one of the significant plot twists is the back-to-back events of Dante announcing that he’ll be leaving El Paso for a year—his family is moving to Chicago for his dad’s one year sabbatical—and a car speeding in the rain nearly killing both Dante and Aristotle. Ari moves instinctively and shoves Dante out of the way. The car crushes his legs. I gasped aloud reading this section. It’s unclear for several pages if Dante has survived and what, exactly, has happened, as we experience these scenes with the full confusion and disorientation that Ari experiences. This is the first event that shifts Ari and Dante’s relationship. Dante is wracked by guilt and Ari tries desperately to move them past this, to equalize their light-hearted friendship once again.

Dante moves to Chicago, writes letters to Ari who only occasionally responds, and then moves back. Everything continues to change. Dante is no longer so innocent, but he is still as pure of heart. In true Dante fashion, he is not afraid of who he is and he tells Ari openly that he’s gay and that he likes boys. Ari, again, tries to hang onto the past, tries to keep their relationship the way it’s always been. Near the end of the book, their relationship changes again after another dramatic twist (although, perhaps both of these should have looked to us as inevitable, as they match the personalities of both characters) that leaves one of our favorite duo severely injured. This time, Dante is hospitalized, after he’s beaten up by a group of boys who see him kissing another boy. Ari goes on an emotionally-driven rampage in response. He confronts the boy who Dante was kissing and learns that Daniel fled while Dante faced up to the bullies (very true to character) and discovers the names of two of the four boys who beat Dante up. Furious, Ari goes to find one of these boys and fights with him, sending him to the hospital in turn. Both these events evidence Ari’s deep need to defend and protect Dante, and both events change Dante himself and the relationship between Ari and Dante.

Both events remove some of Dante’s lightness. He understands in different ways what’s at stake when he’s expressing his identity. He worries over telling his parents that he’s gay and he’s thrilled when his mom is pregnant again, insisting that the child needs to be a boy and he needs to love girls. After Dante is beaten up, the truth about his identity comes out, and his dad is saddened as he asks Ari why his son didn’t tell him, why he didn’t feel he could tell him the truth. While Dante is no longer quite so light-hearted, his strength in his convictions is never shaken. While these events are dramatic, it’s the slow disappointment of his unrequited love for Ari that is perhaps changing Dante the most. Dante tries for a long time to show Ari his love. He talks Ari into things, shares his drawings of Ari, kisses him, and eventually tells him how he feels. But, by the end of the book, we see the way the hopelessness of Dante’s love for Ari is aging him and saddening him. When, in the final scene, Ari starts to tell Dante of his feelings in return, Dante’s instinct is to draw back, to tell Ari that he can’t do this. Dante has been too hurt by the day-to-day pain of loving Ari and believing this love is not returned. Ari, on the other hand, has reached a place of openness in which love has become stronger than the boundaries he has always built around his heart. He has become more like Dante—more willing to wear his heart on his sleeve—and Dante has become more like Ari—more cautious, more aware that the world is not as magical as he believed it to be. Beautifully, these boys meet in the middle, somewhere between their two natures.

Ari’s character development feels like healing. He begins this book in a place of tension, with himself and with his family. It takes him a long time to uncover the truth: the truth of his heart and his feelings and his sexuality, the truth about his brother, the truth about his father, the truth about his mother, the truth about his aunt (who was queer and estranged from her extended family while accepted only by Ari’s immediate family)…As Ari peels back these layers seeking the truth he seems to be liberating himself. Interestingly, the truth about his brother is a truth he always knew he needed. He wanted to know what happened and why his parents didn’t speak of this. The truths he learns about his father and mother seem to be by-products of this central truth, or part of the natural process of growing up and discovering the complexity of one’s parents as people. The truth about himself seems to be the deepest layer, the hardest to uncover, but one that is tied to learning these other truths. I thought it was poignant that his father, always so silent and internal, is the one to tell Ari the truth about his feelings for Dante. That his father, who Ari has always perceived to hold so much inside, is able to bare his soul and tell his Vietnam story (the deep guilt he feels for having left a man behind to die, that this is what haunts him most) and then, in the same conversation, tell his son that he knows his son is in love with his male best friend seemed like the perfect parallel. It is somehow always easier to see the truth in someone else than in yourself. Ari’s mother’s unveiling of her heart is similar, as she tells Ari the truth that is hardest for her to face—the truth about Ari’s brother who was imprisoned for killing with his bare hands a prostitute he picked up who turned out to be a man—and after revealing this, she is there in agreement as Ari’s father reveals the hardest truth for Ari to hear. I loved how she shows her son that his hardest truth doesn’t need to continue to be painful, that he doesn’t need to feel ashamed, that he can heal fully, as she says “Ashamed of what? Of loving Dante?” In asking this question, she shows Ari that shame is so far from the way he should feel about love.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with a better characterization of the relationships between children and parents. These parents are incredible people. They are far from perfect, but they try so hard to understand their children and they love them so fiercely. Early in the book, Ari is closer with his mother than his father. His witty banter with his mom, who co-opts Ari calling her a fascist as a way to tease him, shows their similar ways of being in the world. But in nature, Ari is more like his quiet father who holds a whole war inside himself. Ari grows to realize the ways that his reluctance to take the truth out and look at it has echoes in his mother’s nature as well, and that his father might be more light-hearted than he’d assumed (he goes bowling regularly with Mr. Quintana). Dante, on the other hand, feels more early affinity for his father who is also funny and fun-loving and contrasted to his composed mother. Yet, we see how deeply Mrs. Quintana loves (I loved the moment where, after Ari saves Dante’s life in the car accident, Mrs. Quintana tells Ari that she will love him forever, and Ari knows that she means it), and we see how her moral conviction and weight is somehow like her son’s, as he matures into himself. Mrs. Quintana sees everything about Dante in a way his father does not; his father, who more often lives in the moment, is blind-sided to realize his son is gay and never told him. Both of Dante’s parents are rejuvenated by Mrs. Quintana’s pregnancy, and they behave like young lovers, as they take Ari’s truck for a spin. Their age difference with Ari’s parents is never closely commented on, but it’s something I thought about as a friendship square is foraged among the parents, and opened to include their sons. By the end of the novel, Ari feels like Dante does: he knows he loves his parents; he’s crazy about them.

I loved how, late in the book, we finally get the first names of Ari’s parents—Lilly and Jaime—when they have become, for him, fully realized beings and when they have, through their bravery in confronting their hardest truths, helped their son to confront his. I bawled through the penultimate scene of this book when Ari’s dad tells him about his time in Vietnam. I felt like Ari’s dad was showing him that the most painful regret was to leave someone behind, that leaving someone behind is what haunts you, and that he doesn’t want his son to leave someone behind…and that someone is himself, a version of his true self that Ari might have chosen to shut out from his life for so long that he would never be able to truly heal. Instead, because of the willingness of Ari’s parents to still grow and change as settled adults, to strive for more openness with their son, they teach Ari openness with himself. Ari is not his brother and they see him for who he is rather than projecting Bernardo onto Ari. Although, when he comes home after having beaten up Julian (Dante’s attacker), his parents show an instinctual fear that he is like his brother—using his hands for violence—and his father reacts punitively (“I’m selling your truck”) like he must have done to his brother, Ari is able to tell the truth of his motivations and his parents are able to slow down and see him. This is such a powerful testament to the ability of parents and children to grow into their relationships with each, a positive growth that requires change in both of them. The healing of Ari’s family, their blossoming closeness, forms the central arc of this novel. Yes, this is a love story. It is a story of Ari coming to terms with his sexuality and accepting his love for Dante. But, more fundamentally, it’s the story of his relationship with his family, because in healing themselves, they heal each other. I adored all of these characters and l didn’t want their stories to end. Ending the novel felt like saying goodbye to friends.

#aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe #benjamin alire sáenz #amazing book!!!!#ya lit #the best of the best #this book changed me #i loved it so much #important reading #the parents????#i bawled my eyes out #ari and dante #icons #fourth book of 2021

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likeadevils · 4 years ago

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hey! for your post about sun moon and rising but with taylor albums, can you list out the characteristics of each album? i'm having a hard time associating them and it'd make it a lot easier, if you could do that :)

oh totally! Its really all about your personal association, so i’ll give vibes for the era and the album. a good rule of thumb is to read the prologue if you want the tone for the era quickly. honestly, there’s no set system, go wild

taylor swift (2006) “debut”

era: blue and teal and brown. cowboy boots and sundresses, wild curly hair, trucks and mud and wildflowers. very 2006, very high school, very country

album: swings between pining from a distance and wanting to destroy a boys whole ass life and feeling like you have no friends and no one understands you in the whole world. like I said, very high school, but also full of whole ass bangers

fearless (2008)

era: yellow and white. 24/7 prom. she’s got the fairy tale aesthetics set in high school, she’s got calling your ex boyfriend out on national television, she's got so many headbands. god to be 8 years old when the joe jonas/taylor swift drama was going down

album: again, fairy tale set in high school. lots of crushes, lots of realizing men aren’t shit. it’s about the pull between childhood ideals and real life tearing them down, and deciding how much you should cling to your dreams and how much you have to let them go. it’s also a pull between knowing that these little moments are kinda ridiculous but also taking everything so goddamn seriously

speak now (2010)

era: purple purple purple. she’s starting to grow up! her look has evolved out of sundresses and prom dresses and into a more preppy style. she’s moved out of fantasy and into this like. circus aesthetic? 30s movie type thing? watch the mean music video, idk how to explain it. her hair is still curly and but under control, and she’s solidly Famous at this point. the idea that she can’t sing is Big, and the man-eater stereotype is starting to get popular

album: she’s starting to grow out of country. she’s experimenting with rock, but her pop sound is starting to take off. it’s all about Dramatics: she’s experienced her first heartbreak, broke someone else’s heart, and was in an emotionally abusive relationship all within two years. she’s moved out of her parents house and is both infantilized and forced to grow up to fast by the media.

red (2012)

era: its 2012 hipster style. her hair is Straight and she’s wearing vintage dresses everywhere, and she’s posting sketches of red lips and quotes from fitzgerald about heartbreak and finding yourself on instagram. she is dating and breaking up with harry styles Very Publically, and its the last major relationship she’ll have for two more years. the idea that she dates to much is everywhere, and she’s being slut shamed to an insane degree, while also being dismissed as a goody-two-shoes

album: it’s designed so each song has the opposite emotions of the song before it. it’s dramatic and it’s heart wrenching and it portrays these relationships that were toxic and messy and captivating. has the last vestiges of country, some more rock, and the first pure Pop songs, all nestled against each other to give you the epic highs and lows of being 22

1989 (2014)

era: its the height of her stardom, and she’s more beloved then she’s ever been and (probably) will ever be again. she’s cut her hair and moved to New York, she’s wearing high waisted stuff and taking polaroids, and she’s been single for two years and it’s has given her the freedom to find a “tight” group of friends and herself. shes talking about third wave feminism all the time, she’s papped every day, and she started dating c*lvin h*rris; they date for a year, he was the first boyfriend to be posted on social media, and the one she was with the longest (until her current bf). publically, she’s the happiest and most successful she’s ever been. personally, it’s more complicated, especially by the last few months. “she lost him, but she found herself and somehow that was everything” and “from the girl who said she would never cut her hair or move to new york or find happiness in a world where she wasn't in love”

album: single handedly brings 80s pop into the mainstream. (like seriously, her only contemporary influence is lana del rey, and even that is only on a few tracks. listening to this when it came out was a religious experience). it sounds basic now but only because she influenced all of the pop music that came after her. its also her first sonically cohesive album since fearless. subject matter wise, its very 80s movie. it’s the first album without a break up song that ruins a man's whole career— no cold as you, dear john, or all too well type. the relationship is on and off again, but more muted and mature then the tumultuous ones portrayed on red. its very star crossed; two people who just can’t find the right time. she’s also writing about how fame has affected her— blank space, shake it off, and i know places all directly reference it, but the idea that the whole world is watching is woven all throughout the album

bleachella (2016)

this isn't an album but its definitely an era

taylor has become so oversaturated that people are starting to turn on her, and her mental health is suffering. her relationship with c*lvin h*rris is falling apart, she's changing her hair every couple of moths (most notably she bleaches it, and goes to coachella. so like bleachella), and then all of a sudden The Phone Call happens. kim and kanye release edited footage of a phone call that makes it seem like taylor swift is a liar who intentionally plays the victim to stay in the public’s good graces, and the world pounces on it. between that and the idea that her friend group is super cliche-y and exclusionary, her reputation is ruined and she goes in hiding for months. before going into hiding though, she breaks it off with c*lvin (he throws a FIT on twitter) and starts a whirlwind romance with tom hiddleston that includes them flying all over the world on vacations and meeting each others parents super quickly. this all happens in one summer.

reputation (2017)

era: black and white and gold. very edgy, very rich, lots of snakes and casual wealth. there’s the aesthetic of her being very hurt and defensive and lashing out, but the reality of her being the happiest she’s ever been. she’s still famous, but she’s learned how to have a private life and healthy relationships. the tough times have shown her who and what’s important to her

album: pretty much that. the first half is brash and bombastic and playing off what people expect her to be like, how they expect her to fall in and out of love quickly and manipulate those around her to see her as a good person (while exploring sounds that no one expected her to explore) and the second half slows it down and shows her falling in love more explicitly and sweetly and under cover. “in the death of her reputation she felt truly alive” and “finding love through all the noise”

lover (2019)

era: bright pink and pastels and bright colors and happiness and butterflies!! she’s in love and beloved by the general public again, but all of her past albums have been stolen from her by a man she thought she could trust. sadly cut off short by covid. “step into the daylight and let it go”

album: her messiest album (sonically) since red. a popular saying when it first came out was that it had the writing of speak now but the sound of 1989, which is... understandable? its the kind of thing you have to form your own opinion on. it’s on the surface all bubblegum pop and being in love, but it has some of the absolute saddest songs of her entire discography. a 18 song long rollercoaster

folklore and evermore

preface: these are definitely two separate albums and there’s a definitely a difference but this girl has so many albums and it’s taken me an hour to answer this ask and it’s 1am right now so i’m gonna smush them together. go listen to them, and we’re in the era right now

eras: it been covid so all we’ve got are a couple performances and the album visuals. cottagecore, a return to the small town setting of her first two albums, very understated and timeless. one noteworthy element is that both albums were surprise releases (especially after lover had almost a year of build up that kinda worked against it). she’s reached a level of artistic respect that she’s never had

albums: folklore is a level of sonic and thematic cohesion comparable to 1989, as well as having a similar feeling of like. oh god we’ve been waiting for you to make an album like this for years and you’ve still exceeded every exception and made it surprising. evermore is mostly a continuation of its sound, though it’s a bit more experimental. both albums are incredibly mature, and move into non-autobiographical storytelling for most of the songs. it’s easy to build your own world based on one or both of the albums. their main themes are also mostly divorced from relationships, and more tied to personal identity and mental state (though there is quite a bit about divorce and heartbreak in both)

#sorry this took so long but damn that’s a big ask for someone who never shuts up #and by someone I mean me but also taylor #anonymous #asks*

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sunnywritesstuff34 · 4 years ago

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hello! It is time for more Boruto AU, with Sasuke this time! @ghostjellyfishheart was excited for this, so enjoy lmao. I apologize in advance for this. Just. Disregard the choppy transitions. Tune in next whenever for Boruto being incredibly confused by Sasuke and trying to figure out how to adjust to living in his house. It’s incredibly awkward. Can’t wait.

(TW and CW for: unconsciousness, coma, critical injuries, tired Sasuke Uchiha, angry Boruto, probably ooc Kakashi and like six other ooc people, death, parental death, possible parental death, cursing, the Uchiha Massacre, one night stands, Sasuke is trying very hard okay he’s doing his best, both of them are good dads because I wanted them to be okay?)

Sasuke Uchiha was angry. No, scratch that, he wasn't angry, he was pissed. He was furious. He was beyond angry, he had reached the peak of anger and transcended to another plane, and that was something he didn't even think possible. For starters, it's not like his day was going well to begin with. Kakashi had stuck him with way too much to do, endless goddamn paper work. Apparently sharingan was mostly for battle, because it really didn't do shit when it came to focusing. And it's not like his paperwork wasn't important, it was. He had to review a series of reports from high profile shinobi on their teams and the work of their teammates, so and so and so and so, it was always something.

In all honesty, he had signed up for this. Well, okay, he didn't sign up for it, but he agreed to it. After Naruto’s disappearance Sasuke was just about ready to throw himself into as many dangerous situations as far from Konoha as possible, but no. He didn't know whose idea it was, maybe Tsunade’s, maybe Sakura’s, maybe Kakashi came up with it all on his own, whatever. Now he was working as Kakashi’s right hand man (and shadow in a lot of ways) and, in his own word’s, the Hokage’s “Don't Be Stupid And Callous And Hurt People For The Greater Good Because It Really Didn't Go Well Last Time” reminder. He really was doing good work, he caught multiple oversights and made sure to hold Kakashi to his word about the decline of execution, especially for missing-nin. He nearly punched Ibiki in the nose about sixteen times for being ridiculous, but what the hell did he expect? Changing things on a fundamental level and rebuilding at the same time were hard, it was pretty tempting to fall back on old methods. It was largely Sasuke’s job to prevent that from happening, and he was really good at doing it without murdering anyone, surprisingly (though he came close a couple of times.) The destruction of the Foundation was extensive and incredibly difficult, and it was surprising to pretty much everybody except for Sasuke just how deeply corrupted the village was. They were also changing up Anbu, though that was still an ongoing process. Sai helped quite a bit in the destruction of the Foundation, and helped develop some sort of rehabilitation for people indoctrinated into it like him. He was very passionate about it, something that Sasuke totally understood. It was personal.

All things considered, there were two reasons that Sasuke didn't cut and run as soon as Naruto wasn't around to keep him anchored any more. The opportunity for bettering Konoha and the shinobi world as a whole and… well… Sarada. Sasuke and Sakura had Sarada around the same time that Naruto had Boruto with Hinata (say that ten times fast) albeit in a less… graceful manner. Naruto and Hinata had a child after getting married due to mutual affection, and Sasuke and Sakura had a child because of… well, a one night stand.

In hindsight, though it hadn't worked out with Sakura, he was grateful to have Sarada. She was a sort of anchor that kept him from running yet again, especially seeing as Sakura was busy running the hospital/teaching the next generation of medical nin/finding new techniques for medical advancement and health/going on a mission every once in a while. She was also, you know, his daugther, and he loved her. Sakura’s parents had a fit when they found out, and they had an even bigger fit when they realized that the two of them weren't getting married any time soon. If Sakura had decided that a marriage was best, Sasuke likely would have gone along with that. What else was he supposed to do? It wouldn't be fair to her, especially in the eyes of traditional families and clans. Sakura, of course, was having none of that, and Sasuke was incredibly relieved. Sasuke had raised his daughter for the most part, and he loved her more than anything, but it was clear to anyone with eyes that Sasuke Uchiha wasn't necessarily the image of “perfect father.” At first, he thought of Sarada as an ambiguously important responsibility, as cold as that sounded. But then she was born, and she had legs and arms and a brain and feelings, so of course he became attached. Actually, she was sixteen at that point, and she had become an excellent kunoichi. In fact, she was taking the jounin exams soon, which Ashina might be too if Naruto had stayed. Speaking of Naruto…

Sasuke had no idea why he was surprised. It seemed that no matter where Naruto was or how many years it had been since they'd seen each other, he would always, always be a pain in the ass. That would never change. Of course Naruto would show up with his children in the Forest of Death. Of course he would do it while Sasuke was swamped with work and trying to help his daughter prepare for the exams. Of course, of course, of course. Not that he was complaining (he was), at least not in the long run. It was better that Naruto come back eventually, but twelve entire years? That was a long time. A very long time, with no explanation. Just to show how thoroughly Sasuke was swamped, he heard the news in the middle of an incredibly important meeting with the daimyo and Kakashi. That didn't stop him from rushing to the hospital anyway, but it was inconvenient. Whatever, Kakashi (the damn slacker) would probably survive without him. Ino arrived distressed and covered in blood, only to deliver the message of a lifetime. Kakashi pretended not to care, especially since he was in the middle of a meeting and Naruto was technically a missing-nin. But he did care, obviously, he was just very good at compartmentalizing. Sasuke was too, but Naruto and Sarada seemed to be the only exceptions to this rule. So, he took off without explanation and rushed like hell to the hospital, because Ino said that Naruto had been in critical condition. The idiot always managed to get hurt somehow, but if he died before Sasuke got to chew him out for vanishing, he would resurrect the bastard so he could pound him into the dirt. Or hug him and never let go. It was a toss up, either one. Sasuke’s chakra was flashing dangerously, and it made everyone around him nervous, but at this point he could care less. The Uchiha opened the doors to the hospital and rushed to the front desk, but he was intercepted by an exhausted looking Ino.

“Where is he?” Sasuke blurted, and she glared at him momentarily.

“I'll tell you where, but it's not that simple Sasuke, you can't just rush in there-”

“Tell me where he is,” Sasuke growled.

“Sasuke-”

“Ino why can't you just-”

“Sasuke Uchiha!” she shouted in a way that sounded suspiciously like the few memories he had of his mother. He blinked. “Would you listen to someone for once in your entire goddamn life? God, you're just as frustrating as Sakura said you were. Naruto is stable for now, but he’s in comatose. Hopefully he’ll survive. But his kids are sitting in the room with him, and if you storm in there all furious, you'll scare the shit out of them. If you have to go in there, do it slowly and calmly. And Shikamaru says they go by Boruto and Himawari, not Ashina and Natsu. They must have changed their names at some point. Either way, you need to calm down.” Sasuke paused, because (damn her) Ino was right. He had to calm down. He was pretty threatening on his own, but to these kids, who were already worried about their father? He collected himself briefly as Ino sighed. “He’s asleep in room 306. Please be careful.”

“Thanks, Ino,” he managed before practically launching himself past her. Just before he turned down the hall, he paused. “And Ino,” he called over his shoulder. “If Neji comes by… tell him to go to hell.” With that he was off. The room wasn't hard to find, and he threw the door open. It was a private room, no other beds except the one where Naruto lay. He sucked in a breath when he saw him, because it had been so long and frankly the man looked terrible. His breathing was shallow and he was way too pale, but he was alive. God, he was alive, at least he was alive. Sasuke could hardly believe it. Naruto was alive, and he was here. He was so caught up in his own head that he didn't notice the two children sitting by the door until he turned around to face them. He froze in place as an awkward silence settled, and the first thing he could think was oh my god, he looks just like him. Ashina- no, Boruto, looked just like Naruto used to, he was nearly identical except for Boruto’s eyes being a slightly lighter shade of blue. There was a girl sitting next to him that looked alarmingly like Hinata, and she was watching him with more curiosity than defensive aggression like her brother.

“And who the hell are you?” Boruto demanded. Sasuke blinked.

“I um. I am an old friend of Naruto’s. I- I had to see him. My name’s Sasuke Uchiha.”

“Boruto- Boruto Namikaze,” the kid explained begrudgingly. Sasuke sat down in one of the chairs against the wall, a few away from Boruto and Himawari so that Boruto could watch him from a safe distance. He’d picked up a thing or two about skittish children in his time, and he figured the best course of action was to remain passive until Boruto let down his guard. Like an unruly cat that hisses whenever you get too close to it.

“What… what happened?” Sasuke asked, trying to start a conversation in a totally subtle way. Boruto winced and hesitated, almost looking… guilty.

“We got ambushed. That's all. He tried to keep us safe and it didn't… It's complicated.”

“Ah,” Sasuke muttered. “Right. Naruto is my friend, I've known him since we were kids. He’s always one for reckless endeavors.”

“Sometimes,” Boruto conceded. “I guess. He’ll… he’ll be okay. He has to be.”

“He will,” Sasuke assured him before he could stop himself. “He’s strong. Sakura Haruno is one of our top medical nin, she's not here right now, but she should be back from her mission soon, and she especially will be when she knows that Naruto is here. He's very important to us.” Boruto glanced over at him, tearing his eyes from his father.

“How did you know him?” he asked tentatively. Sasuke smiled without realizing it.

“He's my best friend. We went to the academy together, we fought in the Fourth Shinobi War. He was always there. He’s important to all of us, before he… before he left.” Boruto looked away nervously.

“Right,” he muttered. “Of course, that makes… that makes so much sense. I mean, I always wondered how he learned ninjutsu, I guess- I guess it makes sense for him to be from a Hidden Village. I just never…” Sasuke stared at him for a moment.

“He never told you?” Boruto shook his head and traded a glance with Himawari.

“No. He never talked about anything from before we were born. I never asked because it just… made him sad, I guess. I didn't like making him think about it.” Sasuke nodded numbly. Did he regret it, he wondered silently. Did he regret leaving? Did he ever think about coming back? The door opened just then and Boruto tensed again, whipping his head to the door. Kakashi stood in the doorway with Sai behind him.

“Hello. It seems Sasuke made it here first.” Boruto eyed him warily, moving closer to his sister. Kakashi took one look at the bed and then looked away, trying to not think about it for the time being. He turned his attention to Boruto instead.

“Well Boruto Namikaze, it looks like we have a lot to talk about. But it's been a long day for you two, and I think we’d best keep the hard conversations for tomorrow, hm?” Boruto must have read that as a threat because he bristled at the words, and Sasuke silently wondered how, despite years and years and years of experience, Kakashi never got any better at learning how to speak to children. Sai watched pensively, like an owl, tilting his head. Sasuke could understand Boruto’s nerves, especially considering the company he was in. Sasuke silently cursed Sakura for leaving at the worst time possible, but he knew it wasn't her fault.

“You should try and get some sleep tonight, we’ll probably have more information on Naruto’s condition in the morning. Don't worry, Sasuke’s house is comfortable.” Sasuke shot to his feet.

“What?” he demanded. Kakashi looked at him lazily.

“Oh yeah, sorry about that. I think it'd be best for the two of them to stay with you for the time being. You have a child of your own, and lord knows I wouldn't trust anybody else to do it. Sorry Sasuke, I promise i'll pay you overtime. I can have somebody else handle your paperwork for a few weeks.” Sasuke blinked as the children looked between the man and his teacher. Finally, the Uchiha gritted his teeth.

“Of course, Hokage-sama,” he growled. “It would be an honor.” Kakashi nodded.

“See? It's not that complicated. I have business to attend to, I'll have a conversation with you tomorrow, Sasuke.” With that he was gone, and Sasuke found himself alone with two children. Two. he had his hands full with one, and now he would have to take care of three. And they were Naruto’s children, lord only knows what they would get up to.

“Um,” Sasuke started. “I… I suppose… we should go… home.” Boruto hesitated before standing, tossing one glance over his shoulder at his father before walking out the door. Please wake up soon, Naruto Sasuke thought silently. But there were a few things Sasuke didn't realize at the time, and wouldn't for weeks. Naruto wouldn't be waking up, at least, not at first.

Kyuubi would.

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