#and we're starting from the veeeeery beginning

[technovillain]

i saw somebody comment on how the classic who companions don't get to change outfits enough and i agree. i need to play dressup dolls with them STAT!!!

[pfffsfic]

Post-Fall Falls False Starts- Chapter 6: Wish Upon a Triangle

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

"Cosplaying him didn't work, or at least it hasn't yet," Sarah mused. "I was gonna go and try to fall asleep by the instructions for summoning him, but it turns out I've only ever seen here and never actually been here and I don't know my way around at all. Embarrassing, right? I just fell asleep in a random cave and hoped that would work."

Rob blinked absently.

"Thing is, I dunno when we are. Like, has he already been summoned? If I did it first, would that lead to some kind of freaky paradox? Would I be on the wrong side of time law? I guess I also want him to come to me because that's more satisfying than just brute-forcing it and making him show up, but is that too selfish of me, or is it just the right level of selfish?"

"Uh-"

"Besides! Imagine I summon him and he asks why, and I say, oh! I dunno. I just wanted to talk! That would make me seem so desperate! Ugh, but maybe desperation can be cool in sort of a yandere type of way? Is that how I want him to see me? As some- some- fangirl? Well, maybe I am, but not for him! This is purely a narrative thing! Ugh! How the heck do I get him to notice me without making it seem like I want him to notice me? Rob, any ideas?"

Rob scrunched his eye closed. He felt like a web browser with 52 tabs open. Minutes earlier, Sarah had led him back to camp, sat him down, and promised to explain everything. She had asked him where to start, he had said, 'wherever you think is best', and she had replied, 'okay, I'll start in the middle'.

"Uh, you want me to tell you how to meet a demon?"

"Not just any demon. We're talking about-"

"I know, you've said Bill like fifteen times! I have no clue who he even is or why you wanna meet him so bad. We're done with the middle and the end- start at the beginning. Can you do that?"

"The beginning. Okay, okay, sure, I can do that. I'm more of an in medias res type of girl, myself, but linear storytelling has its benefits-"

"Get to the point."

"Chill out! I'm getting there! Okay, okay, so! Our story begins in 2012."

"Maybe start a little closer to the present."

"No can do. You want the whole story, right? Besides, 2012 is the present right now, at least probably. The timeline hasn't been confirmed- whatever."

Rob almost scoffed, but found himself nodding and burying his chin in his palm.

"Okay, so, the year is 2012, and the media landscape is a pretty great place for a company called- wait. No, no, let me start from the veeeeery beginning. The year is 1901. Flora and Elias Disney are in Chicago, Illinois, about to bring their fourth child into the world..."

The shadows grew longer, and Sarah's story meandered every which way, and at one point she retrieved a flashlight from who-knows-where and held it under her chin despite the lack of anything spooky in her ramblings. When she finished, the first stars of the night had appeared in the evening sky above the clearing. Rob found himself staring at them instead of paying attention.

"Anyways," said Sarah, taking a breath so deep she momentarily turned inside out (had she not been breathing for the hours it took her to tell the story?) "Gravity Falls. That's where we are."

He sat up, rubbed his eye, and thought for a moment, 'what a waste of time'. And then, as if by a truck, he felt the weight all of the information his subconscious brain had picked up on while he zoned out.

"Wait," he said, holding his hands up. "You're telling me this place where we are exists in the form of a fictional cartoon back home? We are inside a story you've already seen? Right now?"

He knew this place was also a work of fiction to the real world, but he had never once considered that it might be fiction to his world as well. What did that mean? Surely that had really huge implications hovering just outside of his cognitive reach! Hindsight was 20/20! And now, for better or worse, he was no longer the capable one. Upstaged. By a fangirl, no less. Typical. Hold on, he wondered, what if this went both ways? What if somebody recognized him as a fictional character? That would be bad for his whole monster shtick that he had been fantasizing about on the down-low since his encounter with that human guy. He'd need to know for sure! Sarah was nodding.

"Do you know if there's an internet in this universe?" Rob asked. His phone had been dead since long before he left Elmore, what with the lack of a usable power grid.

"Sure there is! After all, in season 2, episode 2-" Sarah paused, noticing Rob's dead, empty gaze, and got to the point quickly. "Yes, the internet exists here. Why? Oh, don't tell me..."

Sarah was blushing and squishing her cheeks now and Rob felt it was best for his peace of mind to not think about why. He had in his grasp a chance at thriving in this new world, armed with someone knowledgable about it, and he could not jeopardize that by giving the poor girl an existential crisis over her own nonexistence. He had come to think of himself as the solemn guardian of forbidden knowledge- a man (or, when it counted, kid) burdened with the truth and the responsibility associated with that truth. That had been the ethos behind his convoluted rescue plan for the people of Elmore Junior High. Well, that and it seemed like the kind of plan a professional supervillain ought to make, and, provided there were a lack of supervillains in the real world, he wanted his rather spotted career to go out with a real bang.

"Sarah, I just wanted to ask- no hard feelings, right?"

"Hard feelings? About you not listening to me? Oh, trust me, I get that all the time."

"No! I meant about the whole Superintendent Evil thing!"

"That? That was a long time ago."

"It was two weeks ago."

"Two weeks is a long time in the apocalypse. Look, don't worry about it, okay? Human AUs are totally classic! I was just thinking, hmmm- if this Evil guy is actually evil, Gumball and Darwin will take care of him in about 11 minutes."

That comment might as well have been an arrow through Rob's nonexistent heart.

"Would it cheer you up if you got to say, 'I told you so'?"

He had wanted to say that before, but now there was very little fight left in him.

"I told you so," Rob replied in a weak little voice...

...That grew stronger as something bubbled up inside of him.

"I told you so! I TOLD YOU SO!" He got to his feet, gesturing wildly, as his pent-up rage came to the surface. "Nobody listened, and we could be in the real world, but instead I'm stuck here with a crazy weirdo girl who's trying to summon a demon! On purpose! And we have no food, no internet, no way home, heck, no home to return to. It's your fault. It's all of your faults! The one time I try and do something good, fate comes along and slaps me in the face for it! UUUGH!"

He smacked his head on a nearby tree and fell backwards into the dirt, clutching it in pain and glitching out for a second. Why was it that every time he tried to lash out in anger he ended up hurting himself? ...Well, in this specific instance, he wasn't sure what he thought would happen.

"What did you think would happen?" Sarah asked, peering over him.

"Shut up," he mumbled, rolling over to lay face-down in the dirt.

"Do you need ice?"

"I know that if I say yes, you're gonna-"

She flopped down next to him on her back so that they were cheek-to-cheek, her iciness soothing his headache a little. He reluctantly let it happen. He hadn't meant to fall asleep, but something about the whole situation lulled him away from the waking world and into an uneasy dream.

It was the forest, yes, just as it had been before he fell asleep, only Sarah was absent and so were the stars above. He noticed moments later that the floor underfoot was the familiar- if heavily cracked- tile floor of Elmore Junior High, covered in the dirt that lined the forest floor in the waking world, with a familiar hole several feet from him leading down into the void. It wasn't growing. A moment from his memory forever frozen in time. Something drew him towards the hole and he discovered first that its surface rippled like water and second that he could see his reflection in it.

The reflection shifted and changed with the surface of the liquid static. It melted into his cute (he liked to think so) look from long before he had been chewed up and spit out, and then into how he'd looked right before hitching a ride out of the void the first time, and then into Superintendent Evil's visage, and then into an odd human form he didn't recognize- and then into a yellow, strangely-shaped form he definitely didn't recognize.

It blinked.

Five seconds later, Rob processed what exactly was wrong with that, and six seconds later, one of the reflection's black hands reached past the static surface and latched onto the edge of the hole, pulling its entire triangular body out and into the air right in front of Rob's face. The thing put its hands on what passed for its hips, ascended further into the sky, and turned a gaze with an undercurrent of frustration to Rob, who blinked and suddenly righted himself in confusion. Something stirred in the back of his mind, something that would have helped clarify the situation had he been more lucid.

"Hey, kid! Want a once-in-ten-billion-lifetimes opportunity?" came a shrill voice from everywhere, though Rob gathered the thing was the one speaking by how its body flashed. "You're about to hear me say something I have never said before! Listen up- I'll only say it once- this is the kind of thing you're gonna remember for the rest of your life, whether you want to or not!"

Happiness, maybe? Annoyance? Anger? It was hard to tell. Either way, Rob found his words at the exact same time that the yellow thing did, and as it turned out, they were the exact same words.

"Who the heck are you?"

[chicoriii]

Season 4, Episode 4 - Mr Pigeon 72

I have no idea where to start. This episode has some good things and some extremely stupid.

Marinette isn't still completely fine, but I prefer when she deals with it through being hyperactive than being a whining crybaby.

I know people don't agree with me, but personally I don't buy the whole revealing identity to Alya. It's not a problem with Alya herself, I would say the same about every single character who is not named Alix Kubdel at this point of the story. I haven't written anything in my post about Gang of Secrets, because I thought it would be undone in some way at the start of the next episode. The creators did nothing to explain why revealing identity of Ladybug to anyone was super dangerous and would result in a catastrophe in seasons 1-3 and the first two episodes of S4, but it's magically fine in episode 3. Only Alix made sense to me, as she will be the rabbit Miraculous holder, so she is destined to discover identities of everyone sooner or later and Marinette is aware of that. While it's not necessary to learn identity of anyone to other temporary Miraculous wielders, including Alya. Also that reveal hasn't been foreshadowed in season 3, while the show usually does it, especially if it's about something as important as that! More, in late S3, it's been shown that Alya still can't resist to not talking about Marinette's love life with Nino, despite she asked her to not do it. Now the girl, who is overly excited about superhero stuff, has no problems with even accidental revealing anything to Nino or someone else. She's even "stealing" Bunnix line that she's great at keeping secrets (sorry but you, the creators, haven't shown us that she's indeed is before!). This is why I think that reveal hasn't been planned before they started writing season 4.

But okay, I can deal with it, even if I don't buy it, but things these happened in Mr. Pigeon 72 are even more inconsistent with previous seasons. I have been worried about it, so it doesn't surprised me. For some reason Guardian related-things that have been kept in a secret before from everyone minus current Guardian and the future Guardian, are now fine being done in front of Kwamis (remember, they haven't been allowed to learn about making potions before!) and a civilian who is just a temporal Miraculous holder, not someone who is supposed to be trained to be a new Guardian. You can say - new Guardian, new rules, but why? Marinette has been portrayed as someone who respect authorities, she has never questioned any Fu's rules. It wasn't even said in the episode that she's going to change the rules. I hate that the writers don't even bother to explain us what's going on. Probably they don't bother about consistency, they think the audience is going to be too excited about Alya knowing Ladybug's identity and helping Marinette to question anything about it? How Alya could be allowed to learn the Guardian secrets? She is just best friend of the protagonist, she is not one of the main characters to get that special treatment. I makes zero sense to me. Especially since Su-Han will be introduced in episode 6 and he should help Marinette with understanding the Grimoire, Alya isn't necessary here for any other reason than fanservice.

In my opinion the way how they discovering how to make charms that protects from akumasitation was the most stupid thing that happened this season and one of the most in the whole show. Marinette who is the new Guardiand and portrayed as someone extreme intelligent and creative couldn't find the solution for days, but Alya with zero training magically discovered it in a few hours at worst. And when she told her the solution in not even very clear way, Ladybug did it immediately with no effort. That was so anticlimactic. At least the animation was fine, but other aspects of it was just a big disappointment, and I was looking forward for it. Thank goodness it's just the beginning of the season, I hope later important events of the season will be better written and portrayed.

Also I find it absurd that Rena Rough is walking with a page from the Grimoire like it's just an ordinary book and she's talking about it in front of a random civilian, like things that are written there are nothing special. She or Ladybug are not careful about Miraculous lore anymore. Not to mention that they are giving hints that Rena is very close to Ladybug in public, suspiciously close. And now with them being too careless, that's not hard to suspect that Rena Rouge is someone very close to Ladybug, maybe even as a civilian. Shadow Moth knows Rena Rouge's identity, and it's easy to him to learn who is Alya Cesaire's best friend if he doesn't know it yet, after all his son is in the class with her. Marinette has always been super careful and serious about her duties before, why that sudden change with zero explanation? It's just very out of character to her in my opinion.

I didn't like the akuma battle either, it's now the worst fight of the season in my opinion. It was so short and felt very lazy. I only liked that Plagg got some action and interaction with Ladybug (though it should be suspicious for her that he managed to reach to her that fast). He should be aware now that Alya knows Ladybug's identity but he acts like nothing happened. Not a word about it being unfair towards his kid or something, weird.

Thankfully the rest of the episode is generally more or less fun to me. It was nice to see Marinette and Kagami interacting again. I loved Kagami in the episode, although it was a bit weird to me that she isn't seemed to be affected by her breaking up with Adrien. Like her crush was very shallow, so she managed to recover herself from it very quickly. While it's been shown that Luka is hurt, despite Lukanette always seemed to be much more shallow than Adrigami in my opinion. But maybe it's because she's so down to earth, so being less emotional makes sense for her character. I liked how her attitude was opposite to Marinette's hyperactive: "No, I don't want to be in a relationship with Adrien again, he disappointed me, just let me live!!!". And she's another character who said that Marinette and Adrien are made for each other. I'm not surprised that Kagami sees it now when she tried to be with him and that didn't work. She's observant, sees more than many other characters. It seems she's an Adrienette shipper now. It's also good that her issue with Adrien wasn't resolved that easily and too fast. They need more time, but I'm sure they will be friends again.

So, we've gotten shirtless Adrien. I remember seeing a tweet of Thomas in which he answered to a question if there will be a beach episode and he said we will get something similar. I wonder if he meant this episode. Oh, they just remembered that Adrien is supposed to be allergic to feathers. It seems Adrien has allergic reactions only when it's somewhat related to the plot. When it's not, he's completely fine.

The reference to the famous Umbrella Scene™ out of nowhere in a random episode? It probably means something. I can see "reverse crush" supporters interpreting it as a proof to their theory, especially since this time Adrien did something clumsy and Marinette is laughing because of it (actually both of them). Or maybe because it's the first episode of season 4 with Marinette and Adrien interactions, they decided to be that much gracious for Adrienette fans, to compensate lack of it in the first three episodes. Oh wow, Marinette managed to propose spending more time together to Adrien without stuttering. Probably because she has done it spontaneously. Marinette is the most nervous when she's planning and thinking what could go wrong too much. This time she had no time to it, so it went more smoothly. It's like they building development of their relationship, but it didn't seem in Guiltrip (that's episode 11 chronologically) that something changed.

Seeing screenshot above, you can easily imagine how great friends they could be, being very comfortable around each other and laughing together, if not Marinette's anxiety. We need Adrienette development so much to get more moments like this.

Oh and I just realized that it's also one of the veeeeery few episodes with no real Ladynoir at all (the only other one I remember is Style Queen). So if there was no Adrienette it would be an episode without interactions of two main characters at all (although we almost got Ladrien). It could be another reason why this episode is that nice for Adrien and Marinette ship.

After seeing overly excited Marinette dancing in the rain, I can't believe she can manage completely give up on Adrien. It doesn't look like this at all.

Also we've seen three photos of Adrien wearing THAT scarf. It could not mean nothing different that foreshadowing that he's going to discover the truth about it somewhere this season. But I have no idea what Ladybug's mask with shining eyes could mean.

I don't know what to think about the episode. Despite absurd Guardian-related things, I still liked it much more than Gang of Secrets, but I have no idea if I generally enjoyed it more than other episodes of this season or not. At least it's an episode without stupid drama, which is amazing.

---------

I'm currently less active on social media, because my internet connection is very unstable, it often works very slowly to the point I'm not patient enough to visit Tumblr. Also I block spoiler tags again, because I don't want to see spoilers from the episodes those are going to be released very soon, as I feel that they reveal too much to me once more. We're currently in a marathon of the new episodes and since watching them is the more more enjoyable, the less I know about them, I decided to try avoid spoilers as much as I can. The only bad thing is that I can't be read discussions about the new episodes, reblog them and adding something from me until Optigami will be aired.