#also this isn't from my personal experience this is just how she operates with these deities!

[mageiia]

maggie's altars* :

hermes espresso grounds cat treats feathers gold candles coins from around the world and different ages yellow and orange post-it notes the fool, the magician, the hanged man, and all ace tarot cards a joint alexandrite, citrine, sodalite, ruby, and leopard skin jasper crystals and stones

ariadne rubik's cube puzzle boxes with yarn in the center red & gold candles wine corks snake sheddings (naturally found, as whole as possible) chalice for bourbon/wine pearl necklace the empress, the star, temperance, and all queen tarot cards lodestone, rose quartz, citrine, and flower agate crystals and stones

hypnos opium pipe pressed poppies lavender black & white candles hematite ring a couple mini notebooks that functioned as dream journals a clear quartz pendulum with its own stand the wheel of fortune, strength, ten of cups, and page of cups tarot cards smoky quartz, peach moonstone, lapis lazuli, tiger's eye, and obsidian crystals and stones

dionysus leopard skull black & purple candles wine corks chalice for wine pinecones & evergreen clippings vine fruits, primarily grapes & strawberries black scrying mirror a bloodstone figurine of a leopard garnet and carnelian beaded bracelets and anklets the hierophant, death, and the devil tarot cards grape agate, sugilite, and amethyst crystals and stones

pan assorted wildflower honey mushrooms brown & green candles wood and bone pan flute goat horns small mason jar of sea water from ionian sea the hermit, justice, the moon, and judgment tarot cards fuchsite, emerald, calcite, and flourite crystals and stones

*she has a different but close by space where she does her active work, with more practical tools and a more neutral space, but these line the room with appropriate distances between them lol

[genericpuff]

say sike right now, she's actually going back to The Doctor Pepper Show-

Like, this is just "What if The Doctor Pepper Show and LO had a baby?" Because at this point it's very clear Rachel only knows how to write from inside her own head, which is full of unresolved salt towards her childhood and medical fetish shit. The imagery in the first panel is very LO, and the imagery in the second is literally The Doctor Foxglove Show-

Evidently she's been reskinning the same shit for years-

Listen, I've been, for the most part, keeping my lips sealed on a lot of Rachel's old projects and what I've dug up on her previous works, for a few reasons:

1.) We were all cringe on the Internet at some point in time and a lot of these older works, such as Freak Scene Surgery and The Doctor Pepper Show, would have been from when she was in her late teens / early 20's. I'm not here to judge Rachel's personal preferences or whatever kind of fetishes she's into. It's totally normal, expected even, for a lot of creators to have older works they're trying to bury or disconnect themselves from because it's simply not them anymore.

2.) Ultimately I've been focused on discussion around Lore Olympus and Rachel as she currently operates as a creator, so I don't want to go digging up her old skeletons as any sort of "gotcha" towards LO today. Ultimately a lot of these works don't have anything to really 'do' with LO as it exists today.

That said, the reason I'm bringing it up now is because these new series... are bridging that gap that I've been avoiding for ages now. The gap that's filled with skeletons of Rachel's past that she's trying to both disconnect herself from but now fall back on with LO come and gone. It almost goes to show that her being a one-note pony goes back since far before LO - these are literally the only ideas she's able to come up with at this point, and it's painfully obvious in how both these new "graphic novel pitches" are pretty much the exact same and could apply to the same character, and that character may as well just be Persephone, i.e. Rachel, all over again.

Like, I'm calling it now, Patients in the Dark is just gonna be more "moms are bad" rhetoric, and Eleanor's Deathbed is gonna be Hades and Persephone, but replace Hades with some death god and Persephone with a training mortician, which is basically also still just Foxglove training to be a doctor, and Icy Shaw bragging about fondling corpses.

If anything, now that Webtoons is no longer carrying her around on their shoulders, this is gonna be Rachel's moment of "put up or shut up". She can either actually put in an active effort to write something that's decent, or she can flounder under the weight of her own tired mediocrity that's been knocking at her door for years now. As much as she's using her labels that were bought for her to sell these books which aren't even in real development yet-

-Webtoons isn't gonna be there to buy her Eisners forever. This is entirely on her and the imprint that Webtoons shoved her into. Her process is still the same, she's learned nothing from the experience of making LO, she's just got the money and awards now and is trying to run with it, but all she has are the same tired pitch lines that she's been using for decades now and just so happened to work with LO because LO had both Webtoons and the appeal of it being a Greek myth "retelling" to carry it into fame.

I'm gonna go into a bit of a tangent here, but it's been weighing on my mind since I found out this news and have been discussing it with pals within the ULO circle. Rachel once said in an interview that she wanted to use her platform to raise awareness of issues regarding sexual assault, mental health, and "the patriarchy":

"Who do you know that hasn’t been sexually assaulted? The number is depressingly low, right? Why is that? There is no short answer or an easy fix. I have a platform. I can tell a story that will hopefully educate and help others feel acknowledged and vindicated." - Rachel Smythe, Interview with Gossamer Rainbow

"...obviously I'm very feminist, and that sort of stuff really matters to me, um, the best way to approach this question is… I began, the pilot was written in sort of mid-2017, and I think what I wanted, what I wanted to achieve, and I don't even know… probably in 5 years time I don't know how I'm going to feel about this but I'm taking the risk, I really wanted to write a story where, uh…this female character goes through these things and I think what I wanted to do, what I wanted to achieve, was like a really common, I can't speak for like, men, but I can definitely speak for like, you know, if you're sitting in a group of your female friends and you're like "Hey! Who's been sexually assaulted?" … The response is going to be really depressing… Most female people that you know have probably experienced sexual assault to, on one level or another, and I'm like, for me I'm like "Why is that? Why?" And is it because there is a lack of information, lack of education, like what is it? And I'm lucky enough to have a platform and I'm like, if I could just provide some information in story format, would that help? Is this what I can contribute? So I feel like, especially, when writing sexual assault in media often it's… it's a way for the main male character to be, like, uplifted to hero-ness by, usually like, violence is the way to fix the problem, and that's not the approach that I want to take… um, I think [sighs], oh god, sorry I've lost my train of thought, [sighs], yeah, I think a lot of the time in movies when they, like, show rapists or something it's generally someone who's jumped out from behind the tree at a lady in a park and it's not really how it is like 90% of the time [laughs], so I just wanted to make something realistic where people could at it and be, like, "hey, nagging someone into sex isn't cool" or like removing all of their opportunities to say no isn't cool, or for someone to look at it, and just like feel validation, this is me trying, trying my best to make a difference with the platform that I have, and yeah, this is my roundabout answer for it" - Rachel Smythe, Interview with The Comic Source

And yet not once has Rachel actually used her platform for good outside of herself. She just asks the question, "Sexual assault?" and then writes off the answer "yes, it's bad!" and it especially shows in LO where the resolution to the one plotline she kept around to draw in readers was "assaulters are sent to the timeout corner!" Sure, it works for the readers who are simply seeking validation that their experiences aren't unique to themselves, but is it actually doing any real work to talk about the systems in place that leads to people like Apollo being created? Is it doing anything to address purity culture as it exists and the double standards that exist for women who are navigating sexual relationships? Is it doing anything to take the discussion outside of the narrative and put it into action through support of women's shelters, charities, mental health support for men, etc.? Not really. Like many of Rachel's ideas throughout LO, she simply goes, "Men, amirite?" and the answer is "yeah men suck!" and nothing more. The answer to the entire SA plotline is "rape is bad, don't do it" when anyone who could even relate to that conclusion in the first place already knows that.

Ultimately the activism she claims she's trying to do doesn't actually service the issue at hand - it just services herself and her own insecurities, her own unresolved trauma, her own need for validation through Eisners and merch sales. She asks the question, "Who hasn't been assaulted?" so that when she responds to the women who come forward and relate to Persephone, it's with the intent of getting them to read LO and buy her merchandise. She winds up making herself the center of other people's experiences, even ones that she cannot relate to. At BEST her attempts to "use her platform" as a means of starting discussion around ongoing societal issues like the patriarchy and sexual assault towards women is about as effective as Bell #LetsTalk, it's purely performative, self-profiting, and offers nothing of real tangibility.

If she just wants to write her own self-empowering personal works, that would be fine. Plenty of creators do it. Art is, at its core, self-expression. But it's extremely telling that she's built a platform off her self-expression, and twisted it into what she believes to be "activism" and "feminism", so that she can continue to profit off it in her future works such as this, which, again, are just reskins of her previous projects which were largely centered around the fetishizing of abuse towards women.

I don't want to claim that this is what it is, but... how much of the "feminism" in LO is done purely through the lens of victimizing women? Why is there more effort put into torturing female characters like Hera, and Demeter, and Minthe, and even Persephone to a certain degree, than there is into actually addressing the larger issue that she's claiming she wants to shed light on and resolving her questions with actionable answers?

That is the only question I will leave you all with. I am absolutely 100% not planning on touching these works with a ten foot pole, even if they should come to fruition. With the recent realization that she was into artists like Trevor Brown, alongside the fact that we've known for a long time she's into Lolita and there are very clear parallels to draw between it and LO, I think it's safe to say at this point that Rachel's work is not something I want to continue to support even when it's "hate reading". Again, I'm not going to outright accuse her of anything, but I feel like the writing is clearly on the wall here and I'm taking that writing as my warning to steer clear.

I didn't want to discuss the elephant in the room - her older works as they exist in the distant past of the early 2000's - but she's now riding the elephant.

[melodic-haze]

Could you maybe do nsfw hcs for Jinhsi?

☆ — DEMO TRACK: sub!Jinhsi x dom!Reader

☆ — TYPE: NSFW

☆ — CONTENT WARNINGS: bondage and use of toys

☆ — NOTES: it's 1 am and I should be sleeping bc I'm fucking off to London tomorrow early morning. Oh well LOL

☆ — PARTS: Part 1, Part 2 (you are here)

So we witnessed the part 1 right? Day mode Jinhsi content? If not and you came straight for this then you're FILTHY❗️❗️❗️❗️❗️ Jokes me too

Anyway she's as sweet in bed as she is in the streets my babyyy 🫶🫶🫶 AND she's also as strong and formidable too. Thoigh tbf cmon you're BASICALLY bedding royalty/royalty-adjacent 🤷‍♀️ like be real

As much as she holds power and authority in her duties with a balanced grip, soft and caring yet firm and watchful, she does like the feeling of letting it go. She isn't a workaholic despite the workload she acc has so she recognises just how nice it is to simply stop thinking. And she puts herself in your hands, so full of trust as if she wasn't superior to you. Though really, in the room you're in? You may as well be equals-- no, you may as well be the one superior to her

I think while she may seem like very vanilla, she's definitely looked into things once or twice to experiment and see what she likes and doesn't like, sort out her preferences and stuff yk. Don't think she's be open about it though, more of a 'need-to-know-but-you-have-to-ask' basis which nobody's ever been.....until you, DUH

Ohhhhh I see her as a toy enthusiast. She doesn't get them out often (and no FUCKING way would she display them or anything) but she does certainly have a collection. She buys them under different names, has trusted couriers deliver it without knowing what's inside and it would be a disgrace upon the Magistrate to take a peek❗️❗️❗️ and just keeps them in a hidden box with different compartments. I just KNOW she'd be extremely knowledgable on them though, like how you're able to use them to gain max pleasure and etc despite not actually using them a lot

I personally don't think she'd have much of a libido!! Might be bc of how swamp she basically is with work, both while she's clocked in AND clocked out, but she's just never had that constant want or need—that kind of thing is at the back of her mind, esp when she has an entire region to manage and protect as its Sentinel's blessed

When she does get the urge to do so though, especially when she's with you, oh it hits STRONG I fear. Maybe it's bc of how pent-up she may be (bc really sometimes toys get to the point where they jsut aren't enough), or maybe it's bc of her being closely linked to said Sentinel ☺️☺️☺️

By THIS I mean with the whole sharing powers thing, there's no way some of its draconic traits haven't affected her in a certain way. SHE SPROUTS HORNS FOR GOD'S SAKE

Maybe that was mean of you, leaving her all alone for a little while in the dark while the vibrator inside her pussy operated as it should.

Really, you were just having way too much fun with her collection and you just wanted ti grab a few more.. at least, before you got distracted with one thing or another.

Now that you're back, though, you can't say you regret being distracted; the overall look that you lover was currently sporting, all bound and oh so wet as flickers of the power you both fear and respect make themselves known by having her—or rather, Jue's—horns manifest on her head from the overwhelming feeling of wanting to let go. But she can't, not when you've yet to give her the command to do so.

"For a leader, you obey me so easily, even when I'm not even there," you notice. "This whole time, you're just really eager to please, aren't you, dear Magistrate?"

Of course she couldn't answer verbally, you hadn't told her to speak, but she nods her head desperately as she trembled and that was good enough for you.

You see her eyes tracking you as you came closer, her irises quite literally glowing a celestial gold from the need of release. The closer you got, the more you see her struggling with her bonds to reach you... And failing miserably, much to her credit considering how you knew she could tear through them if she really wanted.

When you finally, finally get close enough, your hand goes over the dildo vibrator inside her, yet you don't grip it. Instead, you simply graze your hand on the toy's handle, perhaps even knocking it slightly sideways for a little extra motion, to which she lurched so delightfully—unbefitting of a government official like her, of course, but certainly befitting for your beloved in the bedroom.

"Do you want to cum, babe?"

She nods.

"How badly do you want to cum?"

No answer.

"Speak."

And all at once, her thoughts burst forth, the blatancy still unfamiliar to you to this day yet it still isn't any less satisfying to experience such a strong, independent soul to fall like this.

"I-- I need you so very badly, please..! I can't.. I don't-- I don' think I can h-hold it any longer--"

"Bold of you to decide what your limits are by yourself." You raised your eyebrow, "You wanted me to take the lead, the least you could do is—" and you turn the vibrator off, "—follow it. Stop thinking, there is no place for you to do so here."

All she lets out is a desperate whimper—she doesn't dare to upset you any further.

..And that has you turning it back on again, though you put it at a relatively low setting for her, keeping in mind that her draconic-esque endurance would need more than the average to break your beloved completely, as per her request.

She wanted true bliss, right? She wanted you to ravage her completely and take control of her in the way nobody else has managed or dared to?

If Jinhsi wanted it all, then she had to let herself go completely first.

Anyway ab her horns, touching the base of them would set her the FUCK off 🥰🥰 no, not the horn itself. Apologies have to be made right here right now but I believe in horn technicality which means horn sensitivity is not a thing, ESPECIALLY when it's her type which only really appear when she's channelling her abilities. The ROOT of it however would be a different matter, so massaging her head would basically K.O. her self-restraint

But that's fine, you'll make sure it happens.. no matter how long it'd take and how loud she ends up becoming.

Along with that, she probably has INSANE durability and stamina let's be so real. Each time you do anything remotely harsh on her, her tacet mark flickers for a brief second and it's like you're simultaneously striking soft skin and scales at the same time. She can ALSO go for a VERY long time, so edging her? Is REALLY fun when you wanna test exactly how much shr can take befkre she breaks and starts begging for you to help her get off 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

[ajaxgb]

Okay so Murder Drones Episode 7 clarified a lot about what's going on, and I think I now mostly understand The Plot. Pulling my thoughts together into a rough timeline (warning, this is looong, major spoilers obv):

The setting:

Humanity is in the space age, having colonized other planets like Copper 9.

The company "JCJenson IN SPAAAAACEE!!!!" appears to have invented sentient robots, called worker drones.

Worker drones have no rights and are generally thought of as disposable slave labor.

Worker drones have a known "bug": if a dead worker drone's core is left alone in the body, it has a ~0.01% chance of coming back to life (a "zombie drone").

JCJenson has a fix for this, called "wdOS_606" (assumed to stand for "Worker Drone Operating System 606"). It's installed in dead worker drones to prevent reanimation, but in some cases the dead body can "reject" the update (even after lying dormant for up to five years!) so users are instructed to remove the core and destroy the body, too.

If a drone does reanimate, there's 70.3% chance that everything is fine and the drone is just alive again, a 29% chance of undergoing "terminal lockout", and a 0.7% chance to reboot with "potentially hazardous mutations".

So if you do absolutely everything wrong, there's a ~0.00007% chance of "potentially hazardous mutations".

That's probably fine.

The backstory:

Someone does absolutely everything wrong.

An improperly discarded worker drone awakes in a mass grave of other drones.

This drone is recovered by Tessa James Elliott, heir to the Elliott fortune, who names her "Cyn", after the drone's serial number.

Tessa has a fascination with worker drones, treating them like people and dressing them up as butlers and maids (much to her parents' annoyance). In addition to Cyn, she has three other worker drone rescues, who she has named "N", "V", and "J" after their serial numbers (Tessa is not terribly creative).

Unbeknownst to Tessa and the other drones, Cyn is one of the previously mentioned 0.00007%. She has a mutation (or something) called "Absolute Solver".

Exactly how much of the original Cyn is left in there isn't clear. Exactly what Absolute Solver is also isn't clear. (Personal theory: JCJenson didn't actually invent sentient AI. They found some eldritch alien technology, reverse engineered it, locked the original programming down under a giant pile of safeguards, and referred to it as "potentially hazardous mutations" in the user manual. But that's purely speculation.)

Whatever it is, Absolute Solver is obscenely powerful and dangerous. It can manipulate objects telekinetically with extreme force and precision, regenerate from virtually any injury, project expansive life-like holograms, generate massive bio-mechanical extensions to its body and surroundings, and create "null" zones capable of shattering a planet with the correct placement.

During this time J and Tessa regularly keep Cyn locked in the manor's basement at the request of Tessa's mother, who finds her disturbing.

Absolute Solver / Cyn spreads itself into N, V, and J without their knowledge and spends its time cloning and experimenting on them down in the basement, wiping their memories to prevent them from noticing.

Eventually, Absolute Solver / Cyn attacks a gala the Elliotts are holding, killing most or all of the guests and taking full control of N, V, and J.

Either at the gala or during the subsequent genocide, Absolute Solver / Cyn takes Tessa's body. It's not entirely clear whether AS killed Tessa and is wearing her body like a suit, or whether Tessa is still "alive" in some way (which would be even worse IMO).

Absolute Solver fully mutates N, V, and J into their murder drone forms, cloning them and using them as soldiers in the genocide of Earth. Their original personalities are mostly suppressed during this time, leaving them as mindless killing machines.

Earth is eventually fully destroyed, presumably by nuking its core with a null zone, and waves of murder drones start spreading out to other colonized planets.

The common worker drones on Copper 9 apparently never hear about any of this?

As the wave closes in, the JCJenson outpost on Copper 9 starts doing secret experiments on worker drones that are infected with Absolute Solver, under the code name "Cabin Fever".

For safety, the scientists stock the underground labs with anti-drone sentinels, raptor-like robots programmed to freeze and destroy worker drones.

Some of the worker drones they experiment on never gain any powers. The ones that do eventually become corrupted by Absolute Solver / Cyn and have to be put down. By the time of the final experiment, only two successful experiments remain: 002 Nori (Uzi's mom) and 048 Yeva (Doll's mom).

The scientists manage to develop a patch that can suppress Absolute Solver's influence. The patch is successfully installed into Yeva, but Nori has already been corrupted by Absolute Solver by this point. The scientists frantically struggle to install the patch into her as well.

During this final procedure, for reasons unknown, the intended lead scientist Dr. Chambers never shows up. His hazard suit and name tag are mistakenly taken by Mitchel, the world's unluckiest intern.

Absolute Solver / Nori is rampaging out of control. Dr. Ridley hopes that Yeva can subdue her with her powers, and due to the mix-up sends Mitchel to fetch her.

While Mitchel is gone Absolute Solver / Nori kills everyone in the cathedral lab (except for Dr. Ridley), gets rid of the sentinels, and projects a hologram to disguise the killing.

Mitchel returns with Yeva, but finds the situation seemingly under control and the patch already installed into Nori. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with Yeva in the first place, so with the danger apparently passed he leaves her outside and claims he never found her.

Mitchel leans down to pick up what he assumes is a spare copy of the patch (it's actually the original), and freezes as he spots Dr. Ridley hiding silently behind a pew. Absolute Solver / Nori kills Dr. Ridley and drops the hologram, then flings the patch USB at Mitchel's face to kill him too.

Yeva catches the USB before it hits him, having followed him inside, although the sheer wind force shatters Mitchel's visor and breaks his suit camera. She flings the USB back at Nori, successfully "plugging" it into her at last.

Before being fully suppressed, Absolute Solver throws the USB down a giant hole and generates a null zone in Nori's hand. Yeva slices the hand off and lets it fall into the hole, too. The null zone explodes, partially shattering the planet and killing all human life (rip Mitchel).

Nori and Yeva escape to the surface and join the newly forming worker drone society. One of the failed experimentees, Alice, remains below and begins scavenging parts from worker drones that have been killed by the roaming sentinels.

Nori and Yeva have children (however that works), Uzi and Doll respectively. Although it is not yet obvious, their children inherit the suppressed Absolute Solver.

The main Absolute Solver / Cyn construct was observing these events from Earth to the best of its ability. Faced with the threat of other drones that share its powers but are not under its control, it reprograms N, V, and J to wipe out all the worker drones on Copper 9.

Under the reprogramming, they mostly regain their original personalities (seemingly due to a twisted sense of sentimentality-slash-sadism) but are given false memories of being built by JCJenson as "disassembly drones" to suppress the worker drone "uprising".

Their abilities are "nerfed" to prevent them becoming a threat to Absolute Solver. This may be why they need to consume worker drone oil so frequently, although Uzi and Doll have that urge too. Their ship is also intentionally crash landed to prevent them from returning, and the radio is removed to prevent them discovering the truth.

It's possible that J's reprogramming was different, as she "was getting orders from someone."

In one of their early attacks, the disassembly drones "kill" Nori, but she manages to survive and escape as a core using her Absolute Solver powers. She returns to the underground lab to search for the dropped USB, never telling Khan she's alive. Presumably her goal is to use the patch to stop Absolute Solver / Cyn and the disassembly drones.

V also kills Yeva and her husband, apparently for real. The trauma awakens Doll's Absolute Solver powers.

Khan builds the doors to hide the remaining worker drones from the disassembly drones.

With her powers awakened, Doll needs to consume oil. She begins secretly killing her classmates to survive and training her powers so she can avenge her parents by killing V. Lizzy finds out and fully supports her friend's serial killing / revenge plan.

The present:

Uzi manages to befriend N, leading him to start questioning the corporate propaganda he's been reprogrammed with.

Uzi and N fight V and J. J is seemingly killed, and N confines V to the ship. In reality J's Absolute Solver awakens and takes control of her body, now reduced to a core. V could escape if she chose, but she pretends to be captured for now, seemingly conflicted.

Uzi's Absolute Solver powers begin to awaken.

Absolute Solver / J stalks and kills several worker drones using holograms, seemingly for materials to construct a new body. N and Uzi fight and eventually defeat it. N repeatedly stabs its core with his nanite acid, collapsing it into a small void that drifts away. It's not entirely clear whether it's dead or not.

Offscreen, Lizzy starts hanging out with V? While she's locked up in the ship, I guess?? and forms a semi-sorta friendship with her. Her intention seems to have been to mention prom to V, so that V would get the idea to go there for murder purposes and Doll could kill her. (The Promening is kind of a confusing episode and several characters have inconsistent unclear motivations.)

Uzi begins to notice the disappearances caused by Doll's killings, but is prevented from investigating by Khan, who attempts to distract her from all that creepy stuff with prom.

Doll attempts to isolate and kill Uzi, with Lizzy's support. As far as I can tell Uzi wasn't being targeted specifically, and was just another of Doll's victims. Uzi finds the bodies of Doll's previous victims and escapes. Lizzy goes to let V inside.

V escapes from the ship and heads to prom with the intention of killing everyone. N follows to stop her, joined by Uzi.

Doll crowns herself the prom queen, having murdered all the other candidates. I have no earthly idea why she did this, other than that the murderous psychic girl was crowned prom queen in Carrie (for different reasons) and this episode is a light Carrie reference.

V descends on the prom with murderous intent, but is suddenly distracted by the prospect of becoming prom queen. Lizzy declares that V is her friend and peer pressures the other students into forgiving V and declaring her prom queen. Lizzy eventually decides that V is "hotter than Doll" and warns her to run just as Doll attacks.

If this sudden shift in Lizzy's alliances confused you when you first watched it, don't worry! It's just as confusing in hindsight.

Doll and V fight, killing tons of students nobody cares about. Uzi and N enter the fray, finding themselves defending V instead of stopping her.

Doll and Uzi both attempt to convince the other to join them in taking revenge on / working with the disassembly drones, without success.

Lizzy helps V, cementing their weird semi-friendship.

Doll discovers that Uzi also has Absolute Solver powers and says she's sorry for her. She escapes, saying she's going to search for a cure and promising to help Uzi if she does.

Uzi's oil cravings begin to get worse.

Tired of waiting for the disassembly drones to finish the job, Absolute Solver / Cyn / Tessa (who I will now call Skyn) arrives on Copper 9 in person to do it herself. She is accompanied by a J clone. Their cover story is that Tessa is working for JCJenson to stop Absolute Solver. It's not yet clear whether this J is aware of the truth or has false memories.

At some point, Skyn and J meet with Doll and give her some information about operation Cabin Fever. Doll agrees to find the key they need to get into the underground labs if they take her with them.

Doll travels to Camp 98.7, a former facility used in the Cabin Fever experiments, to find the key. N and Uzi follow her there to try and figure out what's going on. They bring V and all Uzi's surviving classmates too because why not.

Uzi finds a green robot-bug which has the keycodes, though she doesn't know this yet. N finds a VHS tape describing zombie drones.

Uzi's corruption gets worse. She loses control and kills several of her classmates. V fights Uzi, addressing her as "Cyn", but N manages to calm them both down.

N has been recovering partial memories of his time in Elliott Manor. While at a not-sleepover at Uzi's, he and V collapse as their reprogramming tries to delete those memories, pulling them into a memory of the night of the gala. Interestingly, their screens display "Error: 606" during this time, suggesting a connection to "Worker Drone Operating System 606", the operating system intended to prevent zombie drones.

Uzi hacks into N and V's brains to protect their minds and to recover the memories in full. As she's doing this, Doll breaks into Uzi's home and steals the key-bug. Torn between saving her friends and letting the one clue she's found slip away, Uzi decides to help N and V.

Uzi helps N and V successfully recover their memories of the gala. Uzi sets herself as their system admin to prevent Cyn from tampering with them again.

They follow Doll to her rendezvous with Skyn and J, shocking everyone. While Skyn (pretending to be Tessa) explains her cover story, Doll runs off with the key and ducks into the office complex leading to the lab.

Everyone else follows her, fending off sentinels and Alice (that ex-experimentee from earlier) along the way. Skyn tells N that Uzi is infected and must be killed for the good of the universe, a half-truth meant to drive a wedge between them since Skyn A) is the Absolute Solver, and B) knows about the patch. Alice is killed by sentinels.

One sentinel manages to wound Skyn and goes berserk, probably due to the paradox of a creature that is both human and worker drone.

They find Doll seemingly frozen by the sentinels, but it's a trap. Doll uses the key to summon an elevator down to the labs, opening her own way and leaving them cut off, surrounded by sentinels. V sacrifices herself to let them escape.

Down in the labs, Skyn continue to push Uzi away from N, freaking Uzi out and leading her to accidentally collapse the tunnel, separating all three of them.

With "Tessa" missing, Skyn is free to return to her Cyn form. She torments N with illusions of V and his suppressed memories of the genocide on Earth.

Absolute Solver / Cyn attempts to further manipulate N's mind, possibly trying to wipe his memory again, but is unable to get around Uzi's admin override.

That attempt having failed, Cyn starts dragging N away into the tunnels. He is saved by Nori, who in an amazing coincidence has just today found that patch USB she's spent all these years searching for.

Uzi finds Mitchel's suit cam recordings of the final experiment, seeing her mother horrifically possessed by the Absolute Solver but not the moment when she was cured.

Returning to her Skyn-suit, Skyn accesses and deletes all the Cabin Fever team's notes, while new-J destroys the disassembly drones' ship on the surface, leaving Skyn and new-J's ship as the only way off the planet.

Skyn is confronted by Doll, who demands to know where the patch USB is, determined not to let Absolute Solver use her to destroy the planet (which was never actually its plan). Skyn does a funny Five Nights at Freddy's reference and fatally wounds her.

Nori catches N up on her backstory and the two try to figure out whether Doll or Uzi was the Absolute Solver that just attacked them, unaware of Skyn. Nori makes N promise not to tell Uzi that she's her mother.

Doll, bleeding heavily (a thing she can do thanks to Absolute Solver!) approaches Uzi and collapses. Skyn, re-disguised as Tessa (I swear she does like five costume changes in this episode she's so extra), follows Doll in and tries to kill Uzi, who is having the worst day of her life and is in no mental state to fight back.

N stops her and, determining that she did know about the patch and wanted to kill Uzi anyway, decapitates "Tessa". He tries to give the patch to Uzi, but she's already succumbed to Absolute Solver and destroys it.

N and Nori fight Absolute Solver / Cyn / Uzi. The fight goes poorly, and Absolute Solver / Uzi almost manages to eat Nori before N executes a flawless collective-embarrassment-jutsu, snapping Uzi out of it, but causing her to toss Nori into the giant flesh pit. N spills the beans about Nori and both of them freak out in each other's arms.

Skyn finally reveals herself, devouring Doll's still-living core and beginning to yank Uzi and N into the pit as she prepares to detonate Copper 9's core just like Earth's and kill every remaining threat to her expansion.

J gets hit by a bus, loses her car keys, and is accosted by teens.

Uzi sacrifices herself to toss N the keys and get him out of there.

Uzi is pulled into the pit and somehow ends up in space, looking down at a big hole in Copper 9? Presumably the next episode will clear up what's going on here.

Which brings us up to the present.

[vinnieswife]

Hi :D, I'm sorry to bother you, but I just found your page and I love it!, so I was thinking of a story of Macgyver.

When the Reader is recruited in Phoenix, and she is as intelligent as Mac, and have similar skills. So Mac is amazed and he starts to feel attracted to her because he have never met a person that understands him.

Idk if I'm asking to much, if so, I'm SO sorry. :c

Btw english isn't my first language I'm from Argentina so I'm sorry if my grammar sucks :'(

OMG I LOVE THIS, it’s so short tho, i’m from Spain no worries amor <3

Angus Macgyver x fem!reader

wc: 357

warnings: none

At Phoenix headquarters, the air is charged with anticipation. You've been recruited for a crucial mission, and as you meticulously review the documents, MacGyver, a seasoned maverick from the agency, enters the room with his characteristic calm yet alert demeanor. “who’s this matilda?”, she smiled looking at him “y/n she will help us with a couple of missions her occurrences match yours so having both on our team will be great”

Your gazes meet, and he, with his ability to read people, immediately recognizes the spark of ingenuity in your eyes. Intrigued, as matilda leaves you two, he approaches you, and you begin exchanging ideas about the upcoming mission. Amid improvised schemes and creative solutions, the spark of a unique connection ignites.

The more they work together, Mac noticed surprising similarities between them: creativity in problem-solving, the ability to improvise, and a passion for exciting challenges.

As time passed, the connection between you and Mac strengthened with each mission successfully tackled together. On a quiet night after a triumphant operation, as you shared experiences in the break room, he couldn't help but express his growing feelings.

“you know y/n, every time we work together, I realize how incredibly compatible we are. Not just professionally, but also... personally."

You, with a knowing smile, nodded, feeling the same connection. “Seriously, have you turned your feelings into a compatibility test between us?" you laughed, his face grew red. “I wouldn’t word it like that but…yeah”

As you shared more moments outside of missions, Mac gathered the courage to take the next step.

"And what if she rejects me, Jack? It'll be catastrophic," Mac was so stressed, but he needed to give it a try.

"Come on, Mac, you know her. We both know she's going to say yes. Be a man and get the girl."

Mac nodded, approaching you after the mission. Your hair was disheveled, and your clothes were dirty, but to him, you were the most polished girl in the world.

"Hey," you looked up. "Oh, hi," you could see he was nervous. "Are you okay?" you asked. "Oh, yeah, don't worry. Um, can I talk to you for a moment?" you nodded and Mac glanced at Jack, who smiled and gave him a thumbs-up.

"How about we celebrate something more than paperwork after this? How about going to dinner with me?" he said, smiling while scratching the back of his neck.

You, surprised but pleased, enthusiastically accepted the invitation.

Suddenly, a shout was heard, "I told you!" and right after that, Jack was hugging both of you.

"Took you long enough huh.”

That night, amid laughter and confidences, you and MacGyver discovered that your connection wasn't just professional; it extended to a romance that flourished with time and shared experiences.

[hiwelcometothemonstersancturary]

May i order a poppy info dump please

Oh, Poppy Ludwig (Oliveira) my BELOVED.

I don't think it's very clear yet in the actual fanfic, but Poppy's entire character arc here is learning to stop viewing the others as monsters, but as victims just like herself! There's some hint of a theme about how she was a bit more priviledged than the others when it came to how the scientists treated her, and she was able to see them as people rather than JUST the monsters that were keeping her locked away, and how this affected her willingness to participate in the Hour of Joy. Poppy is sooo fascinating because she goes from being one of the few of the experiments to see the workers of PlayCo. as people and the other toys as monsters, to being the one to remind others that EVERYONE is a victim.

Poppy to me is a very calculative and manipulative person, but unlike other characters - Pierre, for example -, she didn't forget about her own compassion. She's hiding a lot of things from Angel, but she isn't proud or happy about that. She doesn't want to lie. Frankly, she's tired of always having to play chess in order to have her friends and allies have one single day of rest. She has been locked away in a GLASS cage for more than a decade, and trapped inside PlayCo. for almost as long as the Prototype himself was. And before that, she was constantly bedridden thanks to her body falling apart. She has been stuck in places, only able to watch from afar as her entire world changed, and with each passing day she's growing increasingly more and more tired and desperate. Imagine wanting to save everyone but always being fated to get stuck or locked away somewhere for things completely beyond your control!

And, speaking of which. Control. Not the AMAZING game Control (2019) by Remedy, but the concept of control. Poppy has been wanting control of her own life for sooo long. Doesn't justify her constant lies and manipulations, but it does make it VERY fun writing for her. And yet! Elliot Ludwig, her dad, the most important person in her entire life, had taught her to, above all else, be kind. And even after decades since she last heard this, Poppy still takes the advice to heart, and when Angel appears and starts doing exactly just that, she realizes that her entire worldview was very, very flawed. The others were wrong to partake in the Hour of Joy, but she was also wrong to think of them solely as monsters.

Also. Despite her being TECHNICALLY on her 60s, Poppy is still mentally a goofy 30-something year-old who was raised by an even goofier guy. She's the main "head of operations" behind the whole rebellion against the Prototype, but she was the one making jokes to cheer up Dogday, Kissy and Ollie. She was the one telling them to rest and getting super worried about them. And after Angel leaves the factory with everyone, Poppy will FINALLY allow herself to be even goofier, despite the horrors she witnessed.

I gotta say that I see her as only being transformed into a sort of "leader" while inside PlayCo. because she was the oldest of the group. Poppy can command people around in a work setting, but inside the factory, she was just "that one toy who wants to be merciful to our captors". She'll get better, esp after her main character arc, and she will be promoted to the go-to older sister of the group, but this will take some time!

I hc her as having severe fear of closed and small spaces post-factory. She thinks it doesn't make sense, only to realize her fear is not of closed spaces, but the feeling of being trapped inside of them. She can use a vent but DON'T put her inside a box. Ever.

Also the relationship between her and the Prototype........ DELICIOUS to write about. These two are all "we're nothing like each other!" but Elliot IS her dad and she DID get habits from him. The head tilt may be the main one, but she makes tea and coffee the same way he always did, and folds her clothes the same way, and makes the same stupid STUUUPID jokes as him. It's amazing.

[soaps-mohawk]

Okay so I know I sent you an ask literally yesterday but the latest chapter has me thinking about CRCB non-stop (send help) and my brain has made up the wildest theory that I need to share with you:

So I think it's kinda odd how focused the people behind the omega initiative are on omega specifically, and not the pack as a whole. We've been told that the goal of the initiative is to see how well a military pack operates when there's an omega involved, compared to one without. But if that's the case, why isn't there more focus on the guys? Like why weren't there any cameras in their rooms? Why didn't they watch them and their training more closely or had them do some tests to see if they are more successful now that they have 'mega? But no, they only seem interested in omega (putting cameras in her room, wanting the notes of Dr Keller and a report from Price).

Right now it seems to me that they don't necessarily want to find out how the guys are affected by omega, but how 'mega is affected by being in a military pack. And that had me wondering why they would want to know that. Maybe they want to see if omegas can be useful assets in the military after all? I think you mentioned somewhere in the beginning that omegas aren't suitable for the military because of their submissive nature, but what if they could be?

So my theory is that the goal of this experiment is to see if omegas can be part of the military (under certain circumstances). Maybe not as normal soldiers, but maybe they can be trained to be some sort of undercover agents/spies? Omegas typically aren't perceived as threatening, so nobody would expect an omega of all people to be a spy. They have the perfect cover.

That would also explain why they specifically targeted 'mega with the cameras. Besides being used as surveillance, they also could have been a test for her. Would she be able to tell they put up cameras? If she did, would she find all of them? How does she react to them? And most importantly, would she be willing to lie to her pack about it? Would she even be able to lie to them, or would they know that something was up?

And then there's the fact that they are now again separating her from her pack. They could be trying to see how well she reacts in these stressful situations, if she distresses or if she is able to handle herself on her own. After all, if she were a spy, she would operate alone quite often.

All in all, I think the people behind the initiative are way too focused on 'mega for there to not be specific plans for her and maybe those plans involve her working as a spy for the military (and other omegas in the future as well).

...okay now that I've typed all of this out, I realize this may be a little far-fetched and it sounds kinda insane but hey, it's just a little fun speculation :D

I also don't think that's actually what's going to happen, mostly because I believe most higher-ups in the military are really traditionalist alpha assholes who don't believe omegas are capable of such things. Personally I think if omega wanted to, she would be a very badass spy and kick everybody's ass.

Anyway, sorry for rambling so much (I just now realized how long this is lol) and I hope you have a wonderful day ❤️

Hey, it's a good theory!!! Shows you've been paying attention 👀

I love hearing everyone's theories 😊 it's so interesting to me how everyone interprets everything, the different things readers notice. Don't apologize for sharing your theory and rambling!!! I love it!!! Send an ask every day I don't mind 😊💚

[smytherines]

Fuck it, here's an Owen Carvour dissertation

We don't have canon ages for Curt & Owen, but personally I headcanon Owen as being born in 1928, making him 29 when the banana incident happens. This leads to a lot of thoughts that are fascinating to me, because growing up in London during WWII could inform so much of his character.

Personally, I believe DMA's accent is much closer to Owen's natural accent. I think the Owen Carvour accent is something he puts on to make himself sound neutrally British while working abroad, because he grew up working class. RP is how most people (at least in the US) assume British people speak. This also works with the Texan agent mega headcanon, like they both have to put on an act to be spies, just like they have to put on an act with their relationship.

And class is really really important to how you conceptualize this character, because your experience of the war could be radically different depending on how much money you had. Food rationing began in 1940, which in this case would make Owen 12. Rationing isn't fully lifted until 1954.

At Elizabeth II's wedding in 1947, the palace made a big deal about how she was saving ration coupons for the material for her wedding- a full two years after WWII ended.

Here's WWII London:

This is the city Owen would've grown up in. This is a war zone. A city where food is tightly rationed, where sirens were constantly going off and you had to draw down the blackout curtains and go sleep in the tube station with bombs dropping constantly overhead:

If Owen were upper middle class, he might have had a shelter at home, some people did. But I imagine him sleeping in dark, cramped, noisy stations. And he learns to keep his cool. He starts to enjoy the danger because he has to to survive it.

Maybe he has lost loved ones to the bombings. Maybe one morning he comes home from the tube station and half of his house is in rubble on the ground. Maybe he's used to hand me down clothes and simple homemade toys and not having enough to eat. He's used to having nothing, having nobody. That's a headcanon a lot of folks have, and I think it makes a lot of sense for his character.

Even if Owen were one of the kids evacuated to the countryside, maybe that happens when he's 15 or so, it wasn't a Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe situation. For a lot of those kids they were leaving their parents behind in a war zone, sleeping in barns or basements, and most importantly working almost non-stop on British farms because all the regular farmhands were fighting.

I think, if this happened, Owen would be itching to go off and fight in the war. My personal headcanon is that he's an intelligent guy, and he figures out how to forge some basic paperwork to claim he is older than he actually is, so he can go fight in WWII.

But by some fluke he couldn't account for, he gets discovered. And because of his skill and his ability to keep his cool under interrogation, he gets recruited to MI6. A lot of MI6 operatives are upper class men, recruited young from the top schools. He mimicks them.

I think many years later, when he and Curt are escaping a Russian weapons facility, Owen loves Curt and trusts in his capabilities (maybe a bit too much- especially when he's been drinking), but he also feels frustrated that Curt is impulsive and cocky and thinks he is untouchable.

Because Curt didn't grow up the way Owen did. He didn't grow up waiting for the bottom to fall out over and over again. He's certainly got his own shit from adolescence, but he doesn't have that survival impulse hardwired into him the way Owen does. So Owen is careful and cautious for the both of them, trying to keep them both safe and alive.

I think about Owen being trapped in the rubble a lot. He would almost certainly be critically injured. Maybe he has PTSD from the WWII bombings, and he's just trapped in an exploded building, trapped with his own memories of childhood until he's almost feral from it.

This also, btw, is why the AU of Owen as Eurydice from Hadestown is so so poignant to me. Someone who grew up cold and hungry and turned their collar to the world, and then suddenly they fall in love and everything is sunlight all around them. All I've Ever Known is such an important owen!Eurydice song to me

I could keep going from here, but I'll stop for now. This isn't as neat and concise as I wanted to present these thoughts, but I can't stop thinking them

[daydreamerwonderkid]

Kyoko is adding so much more credence to my theory that being a magical girl is more like a curse.

My earlier thoughts about how there's no incentive for magical girls to work together seems to be correct so far.

Yeah, sure, it could just be how the magic system operates that the more Grief Seeds you collect, the more powerful you become. And the fact that in order for a magical girl's gem to not "fade" aka not lose their powers, they have to keep collecting more Grief Seeds is just so ... convient.

It's starting to feel more like magical girls are meant to farm Grief Seeds for Kyubey to snack on vs "helping people."

I'm mostly saying this because of Kyoko and Sayaka's first interaction/fight.

The fact that Kyoko is willing to sacrifice people in order to "game the system" vs Sayaka's-and by extension, Mami's-blatant disgust at suggesting such a thing is very interesting to me.

To me, this really shows how manipulative Kyubey actually might be. They're still selling the idea that being a magical girl is like being a super hero, but Kyoko is living proof that this is not the case at fucking all.

It also shows that Homura isn't an outlier. Her cold personality, actions and words could absolutely be a direct result of her making a contract with Kyubey. Where Kyoko seems to find amusement at the expense of others, Homura is detached and seems to find no joy in being a magical girl.

So her anger towards Sayaka forming a contract with Kyubey is actually looking pretty warranted. I mean, sure, her anger towards Sayaka for doing it feels like a on overreaction to Sayaka and Madoka. But with all this added context, Homura's actions are starting to feel less like an overreaction and more like an appropriate response to, well, literally everything.

Kyoko and Homura are "veterans," but it's extremely obvious who has more experience here. Kyoko can still act cocky and brash, but the difference in perspective really highlights their difference in power, too. Something something the more powerful you become, the more of your humanity you lose.

Of course, from Sayaka's perspective all she sees is someone who let Mami die. But in actuality, Homura gave Mami ample warning and she still chose to fight the witch on her own. Mami died because of her overconfidence and it's a fucking tragedy.

But to Sayaka, Homura is directly responsible. So whenever Homura tries to offer any advice or warnings, Sayaka instinctively writes her off and refuses to listen.

So you have 4 different perspectives all at war here:

-Sayaka's righteous (and possibly naive) belief that being a magical girl is an honorable profession akin to that of a super hero/knight

-Kyoko's ambivalence towards human life all for the sake of self satisfaction and power, which is further validated and encouraged by the reward of Grief Seeds/more power

-Homura's emotional detachment as a possible result of witnessing far more suffering than any other magical girl before her

-Madoka's growing horror and desperate attempts to have everything be "okay" again, naively imploring everyone to use the "power of friendship" so she doesn't have to see anyone else get hurt

It genuinely feels like being a magical girl purposely sets you up to self isolate. Whether as a precaution to protect loved ones or to gain more power, there's just very little reason for anyone to work together.

Also, Kyubey's constant fucking pushing for Madoka to become a magical girl is so fucking suspicious. They're legit pressuring Madoka to keep entering into dangerous situations "just in case" Sayaka gets in trouble when we all known damn well at this point that it's absolutely guaranteed she will.

Kyubey using Madoka's fear of losing another friend in a horrific way by knowingly placing her and Sayaka in danger is so fucking suspect. And then them trying to convince Sayaka to persuade Madoka into forming a contract-BITCH, HELLO?!

Idk what Kyubey has to gain from all of this yet, but if getting more Grief Seeds translates to more power ... making a contract with Kyubey could potentially be a way for them get innocent and vulnerable girls to do their dirty work.

A part of me even wonders if Kyubey knew Mami was going to die and is using that traumatic event to further manipulate Sayaka and Madoka.

[purgemarchlockdown]

Autism and Amane

(CWs: Ableism, Child Abuse, Cults)

(Note: This is mostly based on personal experience and stories I’ve heard from other autistic people.)

It’s a bit of an understatement to say that I love Amane Momose. She’s my favorite character in the series, and I think about her constantly. It’s why I have this blog, I thought about her too much that I needed to write it out somehow.

A personal favorite headcanon of mine is the idea that Amane is Autistic. Mostly cause I’m autistic and I like head-canoning characters who I like with it. So now I'm just explaining why I find this reading of her character compelling.

Right and Wrong

There's no doubt about it that Amane is someone who is heavily constrained by rules and standards, and she expresses frustration towards certain rules in subtle or obvious ways throughout Milgram.

For example, the flag for vulgarity is the only one that is laying down on the ground in Purge March, something that is usually a sign for disrespect.

Implying that this is the rule that Amane breaks the most, something that is consistent with a lot of the other information we know about Amane. Since it seems like a lot of the things she finds enjoyable (cute outfits, amusement parks, performance art) are either neutered to the point of being boring or outright banned.

Outside of that, Amane doesn't operate on the rules of "normal" society. She operates on her own rules. Rules that are molded by the cult but still Her Rules. She does not care much for acting in ways that would be considered normal to people, and has stated that she is alright with that.

(T2 Amane VD)

Amane: Aren’t we the same? Me and Warden-san. You know, I’m aware that I’m out of the ordinary. That my environment was peculiar, and that everyone [else] is normal. Es: Amane… Amane: In fact, there have been people who said that to me. I’ve been told things like, “You’re being deceived.” “You can still make it right now.” “You’re crazy.” Es: … A: You are treating me as a child after all. Because I’m a child, you believe that I must have been brainwashed. It’s not like that. I, too— children, too, understand everything! Please don’t just decide that people must be unhappy.

While this is influenced by her abuse and her justification of it, even before this Amane has been very consistent on repeating this idea that she does not mind not being considered normal and is not going to change how she acts just because other people said she should, for better or for worse.

22/04/19 (Futa’s Birthday)

Amane: ……I’m fine. I don’t know what you’ve done or what it is you’re worried about, but I think if there’s something you believe in, you should stay true to it. It’s not something that should waver just because other people said something. I personally don’t plan on changing my own beliefs even if I’m told I’m wrong either……

That isn't to say Amane Doesn't operate by rules, she does, to an extreme extent even. Something that is even shown above.

But she operates on rules she personally believes makes Sense. If she does not agree with a rule she believes to be nonsensical she will express that. If she does she'll follow it to the letter, even if it harms her or someone else.

21/06/27 (Amane’s Birthday)

Shidou: Amane, I heard it was your birthday today. I asked Es-kun if we could get this cake to give to you…… Amane: I don’t need it. I’ll gratefully accept your well-wishes, but I don’t eat things like that. Also…… Shidou-san, I can’t say I’m especially fond of the way you assume that all children will love frivolous things like this. Shidou: ………… Is that so… I apologise. I’m sure everyone else will be happy to eat it, so don’t worry about it. Sorry for intruding. Amane: ………… ……cake……

She's very inflexible and dogmatic in that sense. But not just because of her cult. As stated she seems to disagree with her cult's view on vulgar things, and seems to have broken that rule multiple times before in the past and has gotten punished for it.

Not only that but she is insistent on certain ideas of "rightness" that are Outside of her cults worldview. For example, she consistently reiterates that children also have feelings and agency, to the point that's her Major focus in her T1 VD. Not her religion, not her crime, but her feelings about agency. The idea was just too important to her to simply let go.

Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior (e.g., extreme distress at small changes, difficulties with transitions, rigid thinking patterns, greeting rituals, need to take same route or eat same food every day).

What is a promise, if not a rule you swear to follow?

Good Interests

Now I would personally love to argue she has a special interest in religion as someone who was a kid with a Catholicism special interest (trauma is weird) but I don't think I have enough ground to argue that interpretation.

What I can argue, is a performance art special interest.

Amane seems to be deeply invested in performing arts. While it is a metaphor for how she's performing for her family and cult, outside of that she seems to actually show a genuine interest in it.

Amane is a bit of a critic. She seems to be a choirgirl that hates the songs she's singing.

T1Q14: Do you listen to music? A: Not really to songs that are highly entertaining.

Which implies that she knows what songs she Does find entertaining, and also that as established before Amane likes looking cute and pretty. She keeps on dressing herself in her MVs in cute outfits, and there is even a minigram about her being self-concussion about her hair and then getting it styled.

There's a Sincerity in these aesthetics, it really seems like Amane Enjoys Performing as an art form. The way she portrays her revenge is not her Stopping the performance, but for the marching band to break from the routine and to go full force into the "real world."

Not only that, but when Mikoto mentions he's an art student. Amane immdieatly asks him if he's good at drawing. The entire conversation shifting from their discussion about studies but about art.

20/07/15

Amane: It’s fine. If there are any words I don’t understand I can look them up later. An arts university, though…… Does that mean you’re good at drawing, then? It may be a bit rude to say, but that’s rather unexpected.

Her critic side even pops up here. Being surprised someone so "normal" seeming would be an art student.

It also seems like TV was a way for her to cope with her situation, judging by the final shot of Magic.

This stuff is so Important to her that it bleeds in Everywhere. Even when she tries to hide it to seem more like a "good girl." The visual ideas of performing arts and music come through.

As mentioned above, it seems like these interests were considered "vulgar" by her cult. It's not something a "good girl" like her should like.

It's something...abnormal.

Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus (e.g., strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects, excessively circumscribed or perseverative interests).

Normalcy

Amane is not as good of a girl as she wants us to believe or wants herself to believe. She knows it. She knows it too well.

Dear wise one, Am I worthy? Is it ok to spoil myself? I promise! A pinky promise is a pinky promise!

She's promising that she'll follow the rules this time. Promising that she'll be a "good girl." A status that gets her a modicum amount of respect and safety.

If you become a bad girl, monsters will come out This is the magic that stops that from happening

However, there's a sense of impossibility to become one, as if she was made Unable to fulfill the arbitrary conditions that were set by the people around her. Amane can only pretend to be a good girl, to...mask as one per-say. But she cannot Be One.

Only if, only if, only if I could be a good girl

Amane has been masking for basically her entire life, to various levels of success. To blend into the cult, and to seem "normal" in their eyes.

Except, she's inherently Unable to be one. It's not something about herself that she can change. To turn Amane into a good girl is to make Amane into something that isn't herself.

Amane isn't Human in the eyes of her cult, she isn't good enough to be one, she wasn't born in a way that allows for her to be Respected as one.

She's even Represented by The Cat in Magic.

Her feelings of pain and anger and isolation by being different are given to something inhuman. And since this is Amane's MV, this is partially an acknowledgement that she is not good enough to be a human

Not only that, but even in the prison she's isolated. The way she speaks is surprising for a child so the people around her aren't sure how to interact with her, and her unwillingness to act in a "proper" way gets certain people (Shidou) upset.

However, she doesn't seem to even view her seeming inhumanity as a bad thing.

Amane is consistently more frustrated at people not understanding her than her not understanding them. She cares about her feelings because no one cared to adjust to Hers. She cares about asserting her agency because if she does she'll be infantalized.

Because, In spite of everything, Amane deeply loves herself.

T2Q20: How do you feel about you not being like everyone else? Nevertheless I was born as myself, so I'm happy.

Conclusion

I wrote this post partially cause I was inspired by this really good Dunmeshi analysis of Laios' autistic frustration. Which made me go "Wow I should do that but with Amane." So I did.

There's so much I can talk about really, but to me. Amane is a character who is in a world Hostile to who she is. Stuck between having to pretend to be "normal" for her own safety and hating having to do it because it's sickening and confining. Where her interests are controlled or considered "abnormal" meaning she is unable to indulge in them. Where the people around her can either demonize her or infantalize her for not fitting the standards they hold her to.

And, maybe it's just me. But I personally relate a lot to that, and I think there's something really amazing about how she's still able to love herself in spite of it all.

(And, I also think she's trans but that's a whole other discussion.)

[wherebettertoescape]

Top 10 Underrated Songs from Musicals (Sad Edition)

so I've been down a wormhole of YouTube rank videos of songs in musicals. And so many of them I disagree with - particularly the ones looking at the sad/evocative songs. So, I decided to make my own ranking of saddest songs in musicals, but I'm gonna try and avoid just posting the usual ones, the ones that I usually see in these videos and instead go for the ones that I WISH were included because they're SOOOOO good

I'm also very well aware that so many people are gonna disagree and argue with my choices (including Louise, who I did NOT run this post by 😂) so please - let me know which ones you think deserve more recognition!

(I don't know which order you're meant to do rank posts in so I'm gonna start with number 10 and lead up to number 1??)

10. That's What You Call A Dream (Bonnie & Clyde)

I have such a soft spot for songs in musicals that are about grief for a dead dream, grief for a life that they could have had - anyone who made it through my Outsiders post will probably know that. And that's exactly what this song is - even with the amount of death within the show, Bonnie and Clyde is not exactly what I'd call a sad musical? You know exactly what's going to happen from the start, and even while you root for the two of them, they're not exactly sympathetic characters.

Blanche, though, she is exactly that. I know some people don't like Blanche too much, and I could go on and on about how I disagree with that and also with the notion that her and Buck are only there for comic relief. But I won't, and I'll instead settle with saying that within the musical she is a reluctant participant within her own life because she is intrinsically tied to Buck because she loves him.

While the other characters have grand dreams of fame and fortune, Blanche dreams of the mundane - this song is all about how she just wants a normal, simple life with Buck. But even that simple life is out of her reach - at the time she first sings this song, they haven't yet rejoined Clyde, but she is becoming more and more aware even then (while they're living within the law) that they're never going to get the life she dreams of, because the police are never going to leave Buck alone because he has a criminal record, and even if he didn't, being related to Clyde is enough to cast suspicion on them at all times. Even so, Blanche loves Buck and sticks with him through everything - and then the reprise of it when Buck's dying, don't even get me STARTED on how beautifully sad it is.

9. Dear Bill (Operation Mincemeat)

I get the feeling that there's gonna be a slight trend in this list of songs in usually upbeat musicals that just come in and absolutely decimate me emotionally. "Dear Bill" is the ideal example of that - Operation Mincemeat as a show is so upbeat, so funny, so melodramatically unique, and all the songs are so enthusiastic and filled to the brim with jokes and word play.

And then there's "Dear Bill" - a ballad in the form of a love letter penned by Hester to their fictitious fallen soldier, drawing on her own past experiences of writing to Tom, her partner who died fighting in the First World War. She reflects on what it's like to be left behind in England while her partner is off fighting - updating him on the day-to-day things that have been going on since he died, rather than offering endless proclamations of love.

And then, midway through the song, she slips up. She forgets that she's not writing a false letter to their made-up soldier Bill, and instead addresses her lost love. The letter is becomes so full of anger and loss and heartbreak, and the audience is forced to remember that Hester was a real person, that the people in the show were all real and all felt this loss at some point or another. And Hester is so tired and angry at the war - "why did we meet in the middle of a war? what a silly thing for anyone to do", just longing for the war to be over, because this isn't even the first war she's lived through. Adding onto that is when Jean, who is listening to Hester writing this letter, later on brings up that line again (in Useful) - "I think that when people meet in the middle of a war, it feels like it means something more" and it's just this very beautiful moment of friendship between these two very different war-hardened women.

8. Lifeboat (Heathers)

Lifeboat is kinda similar in it being a shockingly sad song within an otherwise comedic show. I know that there are probably other, better songs within Heathers I could have listed, but Lifeboat has always stuck with me. The drop from her singing "the tiniest lifeboat with people I know" to her practically screaming "EVERYONE'S PUSHING, EVERYONE'S FIGHTING" is the kind of thing that haunts me when I try to sleep at night.

This is the song of a girl whose entire life has been flipped upside down. She is losing so many people who she loves, all because (from what she knows) they have decided to kill themselves. I know its a comedic line, but there's something so sad in her speech beforehand where she goes "I'm on the damn bus again because all my rides to school are DEAD".

Lifeboat is just this eruption of overwhelming emotion - sadness, confusion, anger, and above all this desperation to understand what's happening to her friends, it truly is a cry for help. Only for it to be used against her by one of her remaining best friends - Heather McNamara is not exactly a good person, but she is trying to be and she has just unburdened her insecurities (yes, in the completely wrong environment but she doesn't know any better) only to be told to kill herself. When I saw Heathers live, it was Lifeboat that brought me to tears - it was a musical that I had never cried at before, and maybe it was just that the actress I saw was incredible, but even so I think it's such an underrated song and one of the saddest musical tunes.

7. One to Seventeen (The Little Big Things)

okay I can't lie, before The Outsiders musical came out, The Little Big Things was the musical I was obsessed with - I've not seen it. I'm hopeful I'll be able to see it. I've read the autobiography, and I've seen the Olivier performance and I'm in love with all the cast.

And writing this list, there are so many songs from this soundtrack that I wanted to put on, but there's something about One to Seventeen that always brings me to tears. Just her absolute desperation, her pain at seeing her son growing up and his accident and I just can't even express it.

Also I just think that there aren't enough shows which show good parent/child relations and that's one thing that I love about The Little Big Things. And listening to One to Seventeen I just get so emotional and I wanna text my mum to like thank her for every thing she's ever done for me and like apologise for when she'd get calls from school saying I'd been hurt or something. Something about I dunno, that moment when you realise your parents are humans too? Like that's what this song feels like to me and it's so sad and beautiful and I love it

6. For Good (Wicked)

This is probably the one that cannot be labelled as "underrated", but also the one that no one's going to argue about it. As such, it needs the least explanation 😂

"I know I'm who I am today because of you" - what a BANGER of a line, just always makes me think of my best friend and how much I love her and miss her. I'm a sucker for friendships - give me friendship over romance any day.

Just the complete heartbreaking notion of being irreparably changed by someone who had originally been your enemy, and then having to realise that you're going to have to figure out how to live without them, but really they're always going to be with you just 🥺

5. Stay Gold (The Outsiders)

I'll be quick on this one, because if you want my full thoughts on Stay Gold I've made a whole other post about it 😂 - I'm obsessed with this show at the moment, and Sky Lakota-Lynch has just got absolutely no right to make me so emotional wit this song.

It's the "sixteen years" verse that gets me every time, just him realising that what he'd always dreamed about (having a family) was something that he'd actually had all along with the Greasers, and while the entire of the gang think that Johnny is the one member that they can't live without, Ponyboy is the one member that he can't live without.

And also the reference to the father who thanks him for saving the little girl and how he just truly thinks that the girl's life is worth more than his. Even typing it out gets me all emotional 🥲

4. I'll Be Here (Ordinary Days)

This is one of my absolute favourite musicals, and this FUCKING SONG has NO RIGHT to make me feel SO MUCH

It's essentially just a recap of Claire's relationship with her ex-husband who passed away. And it's such an important song because throughout the musical before this song, Claire is not exactly a likeable character - she seems kinda rude and standoffish. She doesn't seem to like her current boyfriend, Jason, at all, and the audience is left in the dark as for why?

I remember the first time listening to it and kind of wanting Jason to break up with her? I thought that she was treating him kinda bad for no reason? And then this FUCKING SONG comes along, and it breaks my heart every time I listen to it because she's so wracked with guilt and love and grief.

It's so rare, at least for me, that one song can change your entire perception of a character, but that's exactly what I'll Be Here does

3. Drink With Me (Les Miserables)

I think this is the one that most people are gonna be mad about. Don't get me wrong, I love and appreciate the other fucking depressing songs in Les Mis (i.e. most of them - I could write ESSAYS on Little People and Empty Chairs), Drink With Me will always be the one that makes me sob.

Louise will confirm but I've got a thing about drinking songs and letter songs. They always make me cry a little. There's something about the vulnerability of them paired with the relative simplicity of the music.

Drink With Me is just so powerful - it's entire point is to humanise Les Amis for the audience, to allow us to recognise that these revolutionaries (despite their larger-than-life appearance onstage) are just students. And this alongside the fact that we are introduced to Grantaire as being the drunkard and the cynic of the group, and yet it's not led by him? At some point I'm gonna make a whole post about the meaning of that 😂

But as well the fact that Enjolras doesn't contribute. At least in the productions that I've seen of it, Enjolras doesn't join in - while the rest of them are being humanised, Enjolras remains distant, he remains unreachable to his friends, to Grantaire who truly does idolise him (calling him Apollo, he is the only thing that Grantaire believes in), and it keeps him distant from the audience as well, it allows us to continue to view him as a martyr. But then there's Grantaire who, despite everything he says is afraid to die, and he just wants some inkling from Enjolras that their fearless leader feels the same - the "can it be you fear to die? [...] is your life just one more lie?" is the most desperate beg from Grantaire for Enjolras to confide in them and yeah, I don't know.

For me, Drink With Me is the song where it starts for me - I start crying here, and then don't stop until the end 😂

2. What Would I Do (Falsettos)

I think it's a travesty that Falsettos is almost never on those lists. It's a fucking work of art as a musical. Just so raw and painful and I've never watched it the whole way through without crying at least once.

So yeah, I was definitely torn for which Falsettos song to put in this list - Unlikely Lovers? You Gotta Die Sometime? so many good choices. But this does go back to the thing I said about having grief for a life that could have been.

And also, despite how hard their life together had been, knowing how hard it was to love each other, how painful and drawn-out their illnesses were going to be, the knowledge that Marvin doesn't regret it, that he knows that he would choose Whizzer every time?? That's my roman empire 😂

The fact as well that even in this monologue, he can't call Whizzer his boyfriend/partner, Marvin always calls him "my friend" just is so painful I don't know man

"Once I was told that good men get better with age. We're just gonna skip that stage" is just the most heartbreaking line ever - and the way that in the recording Christian Borle's voice breaks as he sings it will genuinely haunt me until the day I die

1. We Raise Our Cups (Hadestown)

Another musical that there are definitely so many options for "sad songs" - I wanna give "Flowers" an honourable mention because that's the one that really gets me, it's so beautiful.

But Louise and I saw Hadestown in the West End a couple of months ago now, and I had kinda forgotten that it ended with this song and I left the Lyric theatre in FLOODS of tears, and so for that alone I have to give it number 1 position 😂

I think it's partly with the staging on the West End, in "Living it Up on Top" when Orpheus says "to the world we dream of... and the one we live in now", there's a moment when the entire cast turns to the audience to raise their cups directly to them, and the finale with this song just took me right back to that moment and I lost it entirely.

Because I was forced to realise that when Orpheus said that at the start, that was an Orpheus who wouldn't have looked back, who had faith that the world could change, it could be kind to him. But now the Orpheus that they were singing about in "We Raise Our Cups" is hardened and more cynical and so of course he looks back

i just think it should be illegal to end it with this song and then expect you to get on the tube around London afterwards, okay? 😂

OKAY so that's my list - please let me know what your thoughts are as well - any that you agree with or disagree with? Or just your own rankings because I think I'm gonna come back to this in like a week and want to fight myself so... let me know 😂

Freddie 🐸

[statiicstag]

[ ooo im seeing a lot of people talking about their alastors and how they handle relationships today makes me wanna join in !! yapping under the cut

i honestly think part of why i was so intimidated to bring my interpretation to tumblr was specifically because of how he handles emotions and how it could be seen as ooc (which I see now why does that matter there's so many unique ways to write this guy lol) in the way that mine is not completely emotionless but oddly emotional and That is what fuels him to be the way he is

mine is mostly fear driven and that I diverged from the finale where he's blatantly freaking the fuck out about nearly dying for the hotel. now the way I read that I honestly think he was just trying to show off by killing Adam and didn't expect to be nearly killed but the fact he'd nearly sacrificed his life for someone else clearly horrifies him, and i don't necessarily think its because of attachments to the hotel but even the vague Idea that, if he DOES form attachments, this is what happens he nearly dies

and i personally think that's the root of all his problems: he doesn't experience love like a normal person, he equates love with ownership (he considers husk a friend canonically yet he has him on a leash, same with niffty he canonically cares for her) i think he thinks he has to force someone to stay by his side or they'll walk away and his care will be tor nothing. and i think he has a very "eye for an eye" mentality—like each party has to be Doing Something for the other party to stay involved, love itself isn't enough. i also truthfully write him as fearful of the hurt that can come with letting someone in and caring about them, because that's a weakness

i think the reason he's so comfortable keeping rosie as a friend and not under his thumb is because she doesn't seek him out? like they have a mutually beneficial relationship for him, he can come and go, vox was Too Much and it frightened him so he self sabotaged the relationship to avoid pain

most people he just wants to be of use to him—he views others like pawns, and if you can't provide either entertainment or some kind of service, you're useless

clearly all this can be pushed past I have several ships on this blog he actually cares for but overall even at the beginnings of those, he sees them as someone he has to sink his nails into and own to a degree (though that can be worked past too). and good luck getting an i love you out of him, its simply not how he operates. anyone whose walked away from him has walked away with claw marks embedded in them ]

[familyagrestefanblog]

Clarification I definitely should have done ever since season 4 and the Ladynoir conflict started escalating, but hey, let's just get it out:

There are reasons why I'm harping down so badly on Miraculous' Girlboss feminism and defend Adrien as much as I do.

To get the feminist (in-universe) explaination out of the way first:

I would be lying if I said that I like the direction the show has taken Marinette's character and the story in general. But regarding her specifically I simply have to say that most of my problems with her are how she is written as Ladybug, Guardian, and especially leader & partner. Not in her civilian self. Hence why you won't find that alot on my blog, only when it contributes to the overarching double standards problem from s4 I take issue with.

I simply cant deny it, Ladybug is a kind of leader I just came to not be able to respect alot anymore in how she operates most things bc she doesn't really ever look passed how things look & stand for herself, and what SHE needs & wants. Marinette is a very low empathy person in the sense that she struggles putting herself in other people's positions, or remembers considering that at all.

But that's not the reason why I can't respect her as leader. I have ADD, that would be really hypocritical of me.

What leaves me unable to respect her as leader though (& honestly kinda even wanting Alya to take her position) is the fact that the show doesn't see much wrong with Maribug doing that.

They don't properly depict this as flawed leadership she actually NEEDS to grow out of by making up for her shortcomings by, for example, making other people her official co-leaders. Instead the show since s4 (& kinda s3) will proceed to put it's feminist foot down if Maribug isn't actually in the end 100% correct and "totally girlboss justified" in any given case - with CN & authorities specifically - no matter the context. Ergo she's barely ever truly improving her weakpoints in partnership skills for example & continues doing the same mistakes over n over.

like she genuinely would benefit from having Chat Noir as her co-leader too, not just Rena Rouge. But no. The neurodivergend low-empathy girl can't have a high-empathy boy co-leader bc apparently thats misogynistic now, huh ?

Again, I have ADD and I'm also a woman. In fact, I actually have alot in common with Maribug (hence why it hurt so much once s4 took her away from me), so forgive me when I still say: I am NOT going to lower my standards of my believe that neither of those aspects get to be an excuse on everyone else's expense regarding LEADERSHIP (which I do also am in the position of in my life).

And I repeat: LEADERSHIP. Not Marinette herself as a person necessarily & esp not her civilian life.

People always say that her critics wouldn't be so hard on her if she were a man, but I strongly disagree. In my experience, if Marinette were a boy people would actually draw a line nowadays and call out that Mariano is too stuck in his own head to be a good leader (& partner). And maybe even demand that he shouldn't be in that position anymore either at all or until he's in a better head space.

Bc with male characters people are actually drawing lines now in important factors when it comes to power & the accountability coming with it, bc in the end being in change means it ain't about you

Hence why e. g. Steve Rogers (Captain America) was then a fucking fugitive from the law when shit got real in the MCU. They had to do that bc of his leadership morality not being able to exist well within a corrupted & complex law system under fire and attack. My man's an amazing battle leader, but the MCU did VERY well leaving taking care of all kinds of social & political matters to Tony Stark. This kind of nuance ain't Steve's strength. Marinette & Steve are actually a EXTREMELY similar type of leader and it's interesting that I don't exactly vibe with him too much either in that regard, but like him as person the way I did Marinette. So for me it's definitely an issue with their type of leadership.

But the mainstream female leader characters are often still "too female" to get held to the same regular standards bc telling a female leader character in a complicated and not entirely beneficial situation & position 'yeah, it's sucks but you're not the center of the universe'' is now more often than not still "too mean/ sexist"

again, Steve was made an outlaw for a reason and you can bet if he had been a Stephanie people would have made all her struggles about sexism & called the 'outlaw leader' route after Civil War misogyny, merely bc "society doesnt respect women". This is whats happening with Maribug & it clashes with her leadership style.

Hence why there AREN'T ALOT of mainstream female leader characters. And if we get some, most of them are narratively defined by how powerful & in control they are for THEIR OWN BENEFIT and it being depicted as 100% right & just in general (like with Marinette) which goes against what a normal leader should be, so alot of people don't like them (ignoring the actual sexist people for a sec)

The first Wonder Woman movie for example was so well-received for a reason. They did it RIGHT (& may I please also recommend Wakanda Forever? Fuck, that movie was GOOD)

--

But yes, it's notably how Maribug treats Chat, who is supposed to be her partner and friend, that I take alot of issues with.

And yes, I would say the same if LB were male and CN female. Ladynoir is so rooted in toxic femininity that this "partnership" (or just the entire LS) the way it is could NOT exist today in gender bend. S4 and the s5 finale in particular are unthinkable in gender bend and they sold it as "justified female empowerment" & "unparalleled loving treatment" from Ladybug's side Chat Noir needed to learn to be GRATEFUL for.

All while, and I will never stop stressing this: the show has never stopped writing Marinette to treat Chat Noir as if he basically just spawns into existence once he puts on the mask. He's HALF a human being. Even once she falls in love with him in s5.

This is the fundamental and deep seeded problem of where my issues come from here. It never stands in question if Adrien views Marinette and Ladybug as full human beings, but the other way around that very much is the case. In whatever way it's depicted. Yes this is a line I draw, especially because of the whole Sentihuman thing.

I personally am alot more like Adrien regarding Friendship and partnership (or what his character initially started out). They are heavy & meaningful topics for me. So seeing Marinette being utilized to girlboss all that into the ground with Chat Noir, esp in s4, while she apparently barely ever even noticed anything wrong with how she treats him in the first place as she literally replaced him with Alya/ Rena in everything but name

cause buring him under a wall of secrets & lies meant she can still 100% benefit from his eternal devotion by letting him believe she's too alone to be a partner anymore AT ALL. (Kuro Neko onwards and then NEVER stopped letting him think she's just as alone as he is. NEVER. She's still doing it in s5 while leaving him 100% isolated which was then his demise in the s5 finale.)

and gives Alya the deluxe partnership entirely on his expense, while barely ever sparing him even the most basic thought in anything; & by "Risk" then literally having them switch status. Rena is her actual partner she fully treats that way and he's merely her favorite temp hero with no rights, which Rena was previously.

And the only reason why Chat was treated with something resembling to fairness or dignity again in season 5 (& finally wasn't a rag doll for her every little mood anymore...) was because Maribug plainly had no other choice and had her team & position of power taken away by force while Alya renounced for her own safety. And yet she's still treating him as half a human being even by the end of S5. AFTER her character development. He's Chat Noir and that's where his existence ends in her leadership & friendship. CN and Alya in s5 are literally 2 halves of ONE PARTNER.

All that was painful to watch to say the least. Bc it's imo honestly a disgrace to friendship and partnership. I can't put into words how ashamed I would be of myself if I treated someone the way Marinette treats Chat Noir (again, HALF A HUMAN BEING).

Much less a friend I claim to love dearly and don't want to loose (another thing the MCU did better regarding Steve's fall-out with Tony over Bucky... I should really make that comparison post why Steve works for me & Marinette doesnt)

Just the mere fact that Marinette in "Elation" even told Chat "It doesn't matter who's underneath your mask" is honestly outrageous.

Because thats simply what it is for me. If s4 & 5 Marinette were portrayed from a similar morality angle to Emonette in the Paris special I would have much less issues with her. Cause thats ironically an angle female characters barely get & is mostly used to redeem the broken bad boys with a hidden heart of gold™.

Double irony: s1-s3 actually DID put civilian Marinette often into that angle, hence why I really liked her, but then s4 suddenly said "well, her methods & actions really dont matter. She's wrong, but actually not really; ergo she should get rewarded in the end. Always. But with a few exceptions. Here n there she loses to claim otherwise. But actually the world just needs to learn how right & amazing she is."

She makes countless mistakes but often either doesn't really learn from them anymore or they just don't "count" bc that's 'what makes her quirky & loveable', so having any issues with her now means you hate women. And she's a very flawed leader but actually never did anything wrong. Ever. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I will be VERY blunt now: The moment you put a female character into the leader role the FEMALE aspect is supposed to be of secondary importance. And a leader, by the nature of the position, ALWAYS has to be questioned morally wise in my opinion bc of the fatal blindspots that will automatically occur in every leadership.

And it happened here too: Chat Noir's treatment. But they demanded that her being the (female) leader means she's OWED to treat him badly & gets to keep him as blindspot on HIS expense bc she doesn't like thinking about him existing as civilian person.

A leader is ALWAYS somebody who is NOT going to sit well with everybody regarding their approach. That's a normal instinct, and in fact it would be highly dangerous if that wouldnt happen at all. So if I, or other people, don't respect her as one that simply means she has an opposition the way every leader has & is being held to normal standards a leader should be held to, regardless of gender.

Sorry if you think thats sexist, but in my opinion that's a YOU problem. I personally respect female leaders too much to not acknowledge them as anything else but the potential threats they are. The same way I do with male leaders.

You're leader first, woman second. If you can't handle that get out of the leadership position (yes, oc that also applies the other way around). Feminism was about making sure that women cant be excluded from e. g. position of power just bc we're female. The goal wasn't to have yet another group of people stomp their foots, now claiming that they are OWED power once they wanna have it to feel powerful. But that's what Marinette was used to teach an entire generation of children, especially girls.

The last thing you will EVER get me to do is accept that I should be holding women - specifically for equality, female empowerment and leadership - to LOWER (moral) standards as I would the men in her position.

Buddy, I am NOT gonna fucking do that. Just the thought is pissing me tf off, and has ever since s4, cause it directly plays into the misogynistic thinking of:

"Women can't be given power, status or even too much focus as human beings because they're too irrational and immature to be able to then lay proper priorities & take rightful accountability for their shit like a man in power could; and not just scream and cry while playing the oppressed victim card the moment things don't work out & they aren't being given the special female treatment to let them mostly off the hook consequences wise.

Leading to everyone around them, especially the MEN, having to step up, do the work & basically babysit the women like children - while still having to give her the credit as person in charge - turning the women more or less into toddlers wearing a queen's crown"

Which, by all means, Adrichat in every dynamic of the love square by season 5, Gabriel at the end of "Recreation" and even Luka & Félix (& "thankfully" Alya too since s4) had to do for Maribug in alot of ways.

Pick up all of her slack in several major areas & catering to her while simultaneously having to still give most of the credit to HER or else they would be "mean to the female lead" (it's also telling that Alya is treated the best here, & goodness dont get me started on Su-Han...).

And with that out of the way, a few more meta reasons:

1) I'm NOT watching a damn documentary. Marinette is NOT a 14 year old, she doesnt exist & isnt based on a real person or story. She's a fictional main character and narrative tool, so forgive me for approaching this differently than a real life case.

and 2) in everything I watch I automatically look out for the narrative's blind spots and victims of the writings' favorites. I take it this seriously because this is career related for me.

Hence why I have barely ever liked a main character and ironically Marinette/ Ladybug was once one of the few exceptions (alongside Korra from Legend of Korra and Blitz from Helluva Boss)

Look, when I for example watch Helluva Boss or a Yugioh show I will automatically pay extra attention to how the female characters are being treated bc they are obviously treated worse by the writing and much more neglected and scapegoated than the male characters.

Meanwhile when I watch Miraculous and She-Ra, I do the opposite and pay attention to how the male characters are treated bc now they have the gender-biase against them.

And when I for example watch Avatar the last Airbender or Legend of Korra [and She-Ra, that show is great], then I actually get to be mostly fucking happy for once in my life jfc

I'm not going to elaborate too much more on this because I already named by my main point in the beginning: Chat Noir's - not even Adrien's, I mean CHAT NOIR - sometimes honestly awful treatment being the biggest moral and narrative blind spot of the entire show, and honestly where most of Maribug's problems then are also rooted in. Hence why I started focusing so much on Chat Noir since season 4. I look at the overall narrative and circumstances and look for the blind spots that needs to be solved to get to the core of the problem of this whole mess, to get effective results.

And that was and even by the end remained the fact that Adrichat is treated so badly, scapegoated in every possible way in the name of "feminism" and kicked out of the story where HE is at the core of most everything going on, just so the show can force Maribug into everything, make things about her that have no business being about her

Just so she can then be made to constandly turn around and scream, cry and stress about problems - and go about them in the least effective way - that wouldnt be there in the first place if she wasnt the main character of a story that isnt hers.

Mate, I dont know what to tell you here, but the fact that we are following Marinette Dupain-Cheng ,who has nothing to do with anything besides being the cool action girl, is and will always remain of the of core problems of this show. I WISHED that wasnt the case. But for the love of everything, Kagami would have made so much more sense as the female lead, but no.

Anyway, I will leave it at that now cause I already elaborate much further than I initially wanted to, I just wanted to finally have all this stated.

This Blog is not a full representation of how I lay priorities in (feminist) media in general, my view adjusts to the piece of media I'm watching.

And unfortunately, ever since season 4 Miraculous turned into a full blown extreme case and has only gotten better somewhat recently. So I will continue doing what I always do: focus on the fucking VICTIM whose bad treatment pulls down the whole show's quality, and here that's plain obviously Adrien Agreste/ Chat Noir.

And with all due respect: Die mad about it.

[wanderingmoonflower]

I love Team Star a lot, actually

This is like. a lighthearted mini rant, mainly cuz I am tired of seeing Team Star getting the "they're bad cuz they're not evil" treatment. Honestly remembering the context that ScarVio takes place within a school environment, having an evil team that's just a group of delinquents works perfectly, considering you don't really personally interact with adults plotting to end the world during your school career.

I get that those kinds of evil teams tend to appeal better, but if Team Skull is able to get a lot of love while also being a group of delinquents (albeit influenced by a bigger evil), then what's stopping Team Star from getting the same kind of love?

This does have vague spoilers for Indigo Disk, and obvious spoilers for the main story, so please proceed with caution and read at your own risk.

I went into the Starfall Street storyline without expecting much, I mean, when Cassiopeia came to us asking to help disband Team Star, I didn't think much of it.

"We need to disband a group of delinquents cuz they're causing the school a lot of trouble? Okay, sure, whatever."

But every time we met up with Penny in-between each star base, and she starts putting details into our heads about how everyone in Team star were bullying victims, and this was their way of standing up to their bullies, I saw them in a completely different light.

Bullying is something that's, unfortunately, still frequent in a lot of schools, and I'm a victim of bullying myself. So when all these details came to my attention, I grew extremely fond of all these characters. I grew especially fond of Giacomo, who was alienated from his peers for his strict policies when on the student council.

In all honesty, ScarVio is very down to earth with its story and how it's portrayed, so much so that I forgot I was playing a Pokemon game, since I'm used to these elements of whimsy being present. Team Star at its core is a group of young kids who were bonded together by similar experiences, and use that similarity to lift each other up and support one another. Operation Starfall only came into effect because of threats of expulsion, and Penny cared for them too much to let that happen.

Team Star was built on the basis of love, and while calling them an "Evil Team" after learning all this is a little weird, they initially present themselves as antagonistic, so it still checks that box. That love is still present in a cutscene after finishing the Indigo Disk, where the Team Star bosses take it upon themselves to form a study group so they don't stress Penny out too much.

These characters feel so real, and honestly all the characters do. They're so full of personality and color yet don't feel overly exaggerated. For Team Star, there's bonding with others through your loneliness and alienation, the uncertainty of not know what the future will bring, and treasuring your friends even if they don't know how much you truly care for them at first.

So sure, Team Star isn't evil. But by no means are they bad characters. I've found comfort in them, as I'm sure many others have too. Their experiences are real, and has happened to others. But everyone can have their own opinion, just don't push yours onto others because they don't agree with it.

Shine bright like the starry sky and become who you really want to be, hasta la vistar... ☆

[thejesterstears]

Gonna be self-indulgent with a little whump content here and ramble off some sickness-related Pomni headcanons I've been rotating in my brain since about when I first watched the pilot (once you get to know me it will become apparent how much I love whump).

Disclaimer that these are just my headcanons and not anything I am trying to push as canon! These headcanons also operate under the idea that sickness does exist within the circus in the form of computer viruses/corrupted code that manifests as human-like illnesses in the circus members, and also bearing in mind that they do still experience pain.

Sick Pomni Headcanons:

In her old life, she would rarely ever call in sick, even if it meant dragging herself through the work day looking like death warmed over and powering through it with hot tea and round-the-clock medication--less out of dedication to her work so much as a nagging feeling that she would be letting people down if she didn't come in to do her job as well as fear of failing herself. She has worked herself to the point of fainting more than once due to her own stubbornness. This is the same attitude she's carried with her into the Digital Circus, even though it isn't a "job," just because she doesn't want anyone to feel the need to pick up her slack or to worry about her (and, yes, has reached a point of fainting here too).

She is what can only be described as a horrible sick person to take care of, in that she struggles to accept help because she feels she should be able to take care of herself and feels uncomfortable making anyone else concerned about her or paying excess attention to her--even when she's reluctantly accepting help, she hesitates to ask for more than the bare minimum of care, regardless of anything else she may want or need. She only fully relents when she's feeling so miserable that she literally can't work up any energy to fend for herself. For the most part, she'll just hole up in her room and sleep for hours at a time until she recovers.

Of everyone in the circus, Ragatha is the one who would take care of Pomni the most whenever she's under the weather, out of her own genuine concern and care--something that surprises Pomni at first, so used to fending for herself in her old life that it actually overwhelms her a little to have Ragatha check in on her frequently and offer to bring her extra blankets or warm drinks or cold compresses. She resists offers of help at first, feeling guilty for making anyone worry about her when she doesn't feel she deserves it, but eventually reaches a point where she feels more comfortable accepting care from the friends she's learned to trust in the circus--and if she's being honest with herself, she might feel a little clingy (emotionally, at least) when she gets accustomed to the company where she isn't so quick to turn it away, or might actually ask for it herself.

Due to her tendency to become nauseous easily, she does not like to eat when she's sick as much as she can help it--not needing to eat for nourishment is one of the few perks to her new digital life when she doesn't feel well (though if, say, Ragatha were to gently encourage her to eat something for the sake of maintaining some normalcy, she wouldn't say no to some soup or warm tea).

She is unfortunately prone to stress fevers and migraines that'll knock her down for a good several hours whenever they happen.

(Semi-connected because it's medical-related but I also personally hc that she suffers from bad vertigo episodes/motion sickness and has endometriosis, both of which regularly make her feel completely miserable)

[runwayrunway]

MISS CONENGINALITY - BRITTEN-NORMAN BN-2 ISLANDER

Remember when the UK made the best airplanes in the world? Me neither, I wouldn't be born for several decades. Anyway, Britten-Norman Islander.

image: Air Seychelles

The last holdout of the UK making really fantastic planes, the Islander is a popular regional airliner and utility plane used for things like skydiving and air ambulance service as well as the typical passenger and cargo flights. At first glance she's a pretty regular high-wing twin-prop that seats 10, but look closer and you may begin to notice things.

Upfront, I love the Islander. (Obviously, or I wouldn't be making this post about it.) My love for this plane isn't solely organically developed, because it does also hold a special nostalgic place in my heart for being the first propeller plane I ever flew on, with Cape Air in 2015 from San Juan to Vieques. (As Vieques Air Link also operates these, they're a common sight down there! The name of the model is, as it were, very apt.)

image: Cape Air This is the exact plane that I flew on!

Now, from this image you can already see that the Islander has some lovely features, from those absolute bollards coming out of the engines to the wildly pointy nose (not the first plane I've discussed that's giving DUKW), but despite looking goofier the closer you look at it this thing is an incredibly beloved and reliable plane.

image: Bonham's Behold, a Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander.

Also of note is the Islander's extremely low wing aspect ratio, and I've always thought the tailplane looked a little too small for the tailfin from the side despite looking giant from below. The general ratios on this plane, in every single possible place, look just ever-so-slightly off, and I love it.

image: Mark Harkin I mean. She's just blocks.

Still, this is an incredibly well-designed plane. It's cheap, rugged, utilitarian, reliable, versatile, and remarkably stable in flight, which is why over 1,000 have been built to date. (Personally, I didn't find the cabin to be the roomiest even for an aircraft of its size, but I remember it being a comfortable enough flight.) The Islander is still in production today despite first flying in the mid-1960s, which is something few models can claim. You can use an Islander for basically anything, with their big doors and STOL capability, and it's even used for the world's shortest flight and an entry on my bucket list, the two-minute hop between Westray and Papa Westray operated by Loganair.

image: National Museum of Flight Scotland Despite being shown outside in this photograph, she currently lives in the civil aviation hangar, a top pick on my list of places I would like to secretly live in for the rest of my life.

image: own work, taken inside the civil aviation hangar at the National Museum of Flight, Scotland

In late October I visited the National Museum of Flight, Scotland. It was an incredible experience and I will be discussing it across several future posts due to the sheer variety of preserved airframes they had, including everything from a Puss Moth to a jump jet. (The general museum will probably get a dedicated post as well in the future - suffice to say I had a fantastic time.) Among their preserved aircraft is a BN-2 Islander registered G-BELF, painted a vivid highlighter-yellow which pictures really can't do justice in homage to Scottish air ambulances which serve isolated island communities in the North Sea.

I was absolutely delighted to see her in person. Seven years after I last stepped foot in an Islander, it felt like something of a reunion to just stand next to a mothballed airframe and admire how...really strange-looking these planes actually are.

own work, obvi

I mean, for one thing, they're a lot shorter than you might think they should be. Pictured for scale is a 165cm/5'5" tall human with a PSA Lockheed TriStar for a face. I couldn't get that good of an angle on it, but my head is only a few inches short of the wing, and you can see that I'm well taller than the cabin windows. An entire Islander is shorter than a single Concorde tire.

Plus, that wing chord is so long I could use her as a shelter in the rain.

So, yeah. That's the story of how I met my favorite commuter airliner. I hope to fly on one again someday, but for the moment I'll have to be content with looking at pictures of these weird-looking planes that can fool you for a moment into thinking they're regular.

Also they tried to put propeller shrouds on one once.