#basically good news overview+

[velvette3]

Oooookay.

So I had great news! For me anyways.

And then bad news. For me anyways.

I suppose they cancel each other out, since they are both long-term developing kind of news.

[kira-akira]

What I Want You To Know About Long COVID

Well lads, I've been suffering from Long COVID for over a year now. My life is at a complete standstill. I'm 25 years old and I'm too sick to go back to school, I can't work, I had to move back in with my parents and I'm still stuck here.

Here are just a few things I wish people knew about Long COVID, including things I didn't know myself until I got it.

COVID destroys your immune system. Yes, even if you don't have Long COVID. Are you getting sick more often now? When you get sick, does it last longer? There are many studies showing that COVID causes t cell depletion, even in mild COVID cases! T cells are how your body remembers how to fight off infections you've had before so losing those cells? Bad news.

Your initial infection can be mild and you can still get Long COVID. Right from Yale Medicine, "Most people with Long COVID had mild acute COVID." (This is also a good link for a basic Long COVID overview).

There can be a gap of time between when you "get better" from the initial COVID infection to the onset of Long COVID symptoms. Some people get sick with an initial COVID infection and never get better. Some get better and then weeks or months later start developing Long COVID symptoms. Long COVID symptoms can even fluctuate over time, can go away for months and then suddenly come back.

So many people have Long COVID and don't realize it. Do you feel more tired lately but no matter how much you sleep, nothing helps? Is it harder to concentrate at work or school? Can you just not think like you used to? You could have Long COVID and not even know it. Even mild post-COVID symptoms are still Long COVID.

COVID can do anything to your body. Long COVID has over 200 recognized symptoms and can affect basically any part or system of your body. There is no one mechanism or cause of Long COVID which unfortunately also means there's no one cure either.

The effects of COVID are cumulative. Each COVID reinfection increases your chances of developing Long COVID. COVID is also affecting your body in other ways, yes, even if you're otherwise young and healthy! "Repeat COVID-19 infections increase risk of organ failure, death".

Once you have Long COVID, repeat COVID infections will make your symptoms worse. "80% [of Long COVID patients] saw their symptoms worsen [from reinfection]. In 60% of people who were in recovery or remission from Long COVID, reinfection caused a recurrence of Long COVID."

There is a lot more I want to say about Long COVID but I want to keep this post at least somewhat manageable to read. Like how when COVID is contracted during pregnancy, those COVID-exposed fetuses have a 6.3-fold increased risk of motor developmental delays, or that another study found 50% of babies exposed to COVID in utero had developmental delays.

You need to keep caring about COVID, for others around you and also for yourself even if you're "healthy". Everyone is at risk. And don't forget 40-60% of COVID infections are asymptomatic, which is why masking even if you feel fine is crucial. The only way right now to not get Long COVID is to not get COVID in the first place. It's not too late, if you've stopped masking it's never too late to start again! I know it's easy to get distracted by things in your life that seem more real than the possibility of getting sick some time in the future, and the peer pressure to not mask can be intense. But it only feels less real or less important until your entire life is having Long COVID. Trust me.

I know this is a complicated issue, many people can't afford to stay home when sick even if they want to because of their jobs, there are disgusting policies trying to ban wearing masks, but please if you can. Keep masking. Masking works, masking saves lives.

This post got a bit longer than I wanted so below the cut is a non-exhaustive list of my Long COVID symptoms and some of my experiences as one of the "healthy young people" who got "unlucky". cw brief mention of suicidal ideation.

Welcome to the Thunderdome that is my body with Long COVID. Keep in mind these are just my experiences and symptoms, Long COVID can cause any range of symptoms at varying severities.

Dysautonomia: Exercise intolerance, Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM), fatigue, and heat intolerance. What do those things mean? Here's some specific examples. Absolutely terrible circulation I am so cold all the time but also, if I get a little too warm I will pass out. Eating hot food makes my heart rate spike, I sweat, my body feels heavy. Blood pooling and pins and needles in my feet when I walk. Don't even think about exercising past walking, it's impossible. I used to work out an hour a day 4 times a week and now walking up one flight of stairs makes my heart pound and I can't breathe. Can't take even just warm showers anymore or I will pass out. Heat rashes from being in the sun for 10 minutes.

Digestive issues: Honestly too many to name but: constant bloating, extreme nausea, constipation, slow motility, lack of appetite, just so much cramping and pain. I lost 18 pounds from Long COVID, as someone who was already considered underweight their entire life, and almost had to get a shunt put into my chest to deliver nutrients because I was nearly completely unable to eat. For the first 6 months of Long COVID, if I could manage 600 calories a day, that was a good day.

Histamine intolerance: Oh boy. My worst symptoms, I don't even know where to start with it. If you know Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) it's very similar. I can only eat 19 foods. If i eat a single bite of something not on that list, it's 48 hours of absolute hell. Coughing, migraines, itchy eyes, such extreme nausea I cannot even describe it, panic/feeling of doom, racing heart rate, derealization, rash, uncontrollable muscle tremors. I only learned about histamine intolerance 5 months into having Long COVID so before that, I was experiencing these symptoms nearly every single day. Terrifying isn't even a strong enough word to describe how it felt to experience all this and have no idea what it was, how to stop it, or if it would ever stop. Really dark times.

Neurological issues: More of that derealization. Inability to concentrate. Anxiety. OCD-like symptoms such as thoughts getting "stuck" in my head, repeating 24/7 completely unable to stop them, genuinely felt like my brain had cracked open and I had lost my mind. Constant dizziness like I'm on a boat.

Sleep issues: I sleep like garbage. I have insomnia, I wake up dozens of times every night and every single time I sleep I have intensely vivid dreams. I can't sleep longer than 7 hours total no matter how exhausted I am. It is exhausting. I'm exhausted, I'm so so tired.

And finally. Just. Really intense suicidal ideation. My body, my health, my entire life has been stolen from me because someone else decided my life was worth less to them than wearing a mask or staying home if they feel sick. Before I got Long COVID, I was preparing to go to South Korea to teach English, then on to a PhD in neurolinguistics, I was supposed to meet my long distance partner and had already booked plane tickets when I got sick. All of that has been destroyed.

Most of us with Long COVID are stuck in a cycle of being extremely sick, then if you're lucky you'll slowly get better over months, just to get reinfected and go right back where you started or worse. Honestly, I'm not scared of dying from COVID. I'm scared of living for a long time, suffering from Long COVID the entire time. This isn't living.

I don't know how to end this now. I'm still fighting, I'm trying experimental treatments, I'm not giving up yet. I hope everyone reading this stays healthy and well.

[coolpuppy12]

Introducing the Doo Doo Save File - Version One!

Disclaimer:

This save is still very much a work in progress. While most things appear to be complete (such as builds), there's still a lot to be done. So, keep that in mind. Also, I tried my best to playtest everything, but this is a HUGE save. So, it's possible I missed things. If I did, feel free to let me know!

TOU:

Please don't claim as your own. Don't reupload my builds as your own. Basically, don't be weird. Just give credit please as this took centuries to do lol.

Special Thanks!

EDIT: Ahhh! Big thank you to @lasabarcassims for helping me set up SimFileShare! Please check out their save as well. It’s amaaaazing.

Shout out to @aaliyahnavI @doit4thesims @forever-lbsims @senselesssims for playtesting this monstrosity. I greatly appreciate you all!

Thanks to @simmerapple (gallery: ImpossibleBelle) and @simkuza (Gallery: Mimilagu) for checking out the save and sending some of their amazing sims to use!

Lastly, I want to thank everyone for their continued support and encouragement! When I started this thing, I was just bored and looking for a way to improve my game. I honestly did not expect to finish it, nor did I expect so many of you to care lol. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. It's still very rough around the edges, but I hope it brings you some enjoyment!

Also, don't hesitate to tag me in any posts! I want to see my precious Doo Doo brought to life!

Doo Doo V1 (with rentals - updated): download here!

Alt. DL here!

Doo Doo V1 (without rentals - outdated): download here!

Alt. DL here!

MORE INFO AND SCREENSHOTS BELOW:

Here is an overview of everything:

16 worlds redone (Mt. Komorebi, Sulani, Selvadorada, and Tomarang still need some TLC)

Some updated townies with lore, relationships, jobs, etc. etc.

New townies!

New clubs and holidays

LOTS of packs used, so not BG friendly

For Version 2, I hope to finish this save completely. When will that be? That's a good question lol

What's not included:

All the packs - I don't own (and probably never will lol) HSY, Werewolves, Lovestruck, and MWS. Also missing most of the kits.

Specialty lots (i.e. police station, magic realm) won't be touched until Ver. 2

CC, Mods, and Tips

If you want the townies’ relationships to stay intact, I HIGHLY recommend downloading MCCC. If not, you shouldn’t have any issues playing the save, but some relationships will eventually be deleted due to the culling system.

I did use one piece of CC, but it is absolutely not required in order to download this save. It's the Modern Family Portrait by RAVASHEEN! Download only if you want some cute portraits of the families.

For this save, I grouped some of the worlds together. You don't have to play this way, it's just a note to consider:

Oasis Springs, Del Sol Valley, and StrangerVille

Newcrest, Willow Creek, and Magnolia Promenade

Windenburg, Forgotten Hallow, Glimmerbrook, and Henford

San Myshuno, Brindleton Bay

San Sequoia and Evergreen Harbor

The other worlds? They're just on their own for now.

PHOTOS!

[headspace-hotel]

okay. so.

i'm reading this book The Origins of the Modern World by Robert Marks

and even from the beginning i was getting this weird feeling from it. I'm always really wary of books that are broad overviews of history that claim to explore big theory-of-everything explanations for very broad phenomena, because history is unbelievably complex and there is so much disagreement between historians about everything.

But anyway I come to this section (in the first chapter)

This writer's opinion is that the Americas seemed so abundant when English settlers first arrived because the Native Americans had been mostly killed, and as a result, the wildlife increased greatly in numbers and forests overtook the farms, creating what appeared to be a natural paradise.

I'm immediately suspicious of this paragraph because arguing that the mass death of Native Americans was good for nature seems really contradictory to the research I've explored, on top of being just...disgusting.

But it doesn't sound right in regards to how ecosystems work either. If populations of animals had recently exploded after millennia of being limited by a major predator, it would cause the plants to be overwhelmed by the herbivore populations. The land would be stripped barren and eroded, and soon the animals would be weak and starving.

So I thought to myself, huh, a citation. I will look at the citation and see what it says.

It's a book called Changes in the Land by William Cronon, who seems to be one of the most important and respected guys in his field. I thought, I have to find this book. So I did, I found the book, and spent like an hour reading through it.

And what I discovered, is that Cronon's book directly contradicts what Marks says in the paragraph that cites Cronon?!

So basically this entire book, Changes in the Land, is a detailed exploration of how the arrival of English settlers, the decline of Native American populations, and the slow transition to European farming and land use practices caused increasing degradation to the ecosystem, beginning very early on in colonization.

Changes in the Land quotes a great array of documents from the colonial period where settlers observed the soil becoming depleted, animals disappearing, and the climate itself becoming more hostile even in the 1600's. It's actually a really fascinating book.

Cronon tells us that Native Americans created lush and abundant conditions for wild animals by causing a "mosaic" of habitats, with different areas representing various stages of ecological succession. With this great diversity in habitats, and lots of transitional "edges" between them, the prosperity of the animal life was maximized. This was intentional, and really a type of farming.

The book essentially explains how European settlers couldn't recognize Native American life ways as "agriculture," they thought the land was just supernaturally abundant all by itself because of its inherent nature, and yet almost immediately after settlers came, the abundance of the land degraded and vanished. The settlers cut down vast amounts of trees, which caused erosion, which destroyed the river and stream ecosystems and starved the soil of nutrients. Destruction of forest caused less rain, and more extreme temperatures. It became a vicious cycle where the settlers had to abuse the land more and more just to survive.

The spiral pulled in Native American communities too, forcing them to turn to more exploitative means of survival like the fur trade, (which depleted the beaver population, which caused the decline of beaver ponds, which harmed the whole forest). It describes how the changing ecosystems left Native Americans with no choice but to turn to European practices for survival, which in turn depleted the land even further.

Even I was surprised to learn just how early on environmental disaster set in, and the incredible extent of it. English farming practices literally reshaped the map of New Haven between the 17th and 18th centuries:

To return to Marks, though...Marks' statement in the excerpt, where he says the "abundance" of animals continued throughout the 19th century, is blatantly false according to the source HE CITES.

Deer were becoming scarce in New England by the 1690's. It was so bad by 1718 that deer hunting was forbidden for 3 years at that time, and by 1800, deer were almost extirpated from New England. The book explains on another page that wild turkeys became so rare that a farmer's manual from the time said their domesticated turkeys were from Turkey—settlers had no opportunity to see a wild turkey and no idea they existed.

Marks is supporting his statement using a source entirely dedicated to contradicting the exact thing he's saying! It's unbelievable.

How does this happen? Did Marks just have his own opinion and insert a famous book that seemed to be on the subject as support, without reading it?

I'm thinking now of all the times I've read a book and seen a citation on a statement and unconsciously thought "oh, well it seems there is evidence, so it must be reliable" when actually, something like this was happening. The array of ways misinformation can be propagated and never be found out is terrifying.

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

Miraculous Ladybug Season 5 - An Overview

Well... that certainly was... the fifth season of Miraculous Ladybug.

While I was overall mixed on Season 4 with how much it varied in quality, I think I have a more concrete opinion of Season 5.

Yeah, this season was a real pain to review, but not for the reason you'd think. Most of the episodes were either dull or average, so there wasn't a lot for me to really talk about. Of course, when things were bad, dear lord, were they bad. This analysis is somehow longer than my Season 4 one and the ranking post. Other than real life stuff getting in the way, there's a damn good reason why this took so long to finish. I basically wrote a college thesis on this season.

The Things I Liked About Season 5

Let's get all the good things about this season out of the way first.

For one thing, one of my biggest complaints about Season 4 was sort of rectified, the portrayal of Adrien. While I still have problems with him (which I'll get to in a later section), they're more about his impact on the story. As for his personality and attitude, it's a big step up. There's much less complaining, he's more active in the action, and is far more intelligent. Compared to Season 4, where Cat Noir was affected by an Akuma's powers or taken out of commission in order to raise the stakes eleven times (Lies, Mr. Pigeon 72, Mega Leech, Guiltrip, Optigami, Sentibubbler, Wishmaker, Simpleman, Ephemeral, Penalteam, Risk), here, funnily enough, it only really happened five times in Season 5 (Jubilation, Illusion, Derision, Emotion, The Final Day). It's honestly amazing. There were times where I thought he was going to be taken out or get portrayed as an idiot, but that almost never happened this season. Even some of the weaker episodes this season featured Adrien in a more active role, like “Passion”, “Reunion”, “Elation”, and “Deflagration”.

Also, as much of a problem that I have with Cat Noir trying to Cataclysm his enemies, I'm glad that the show at least tries to acknowledge this by showing his worst nightmare is a world where everyone is dead because of him. It's not handled well, and it's only done just to bench him for the finale, but I'll at least give the writers credit for putting in the effort to give him more nuance. It's a hell of a lot better than what they did with Gabriel, but I'll get to him later. By extension, his relationship with Ladybug is much more tolerable. The two work together well, talk about the conflict with Monarch more often, and for the most part, feel like actual partners. Yeah, that dynamic falls apart towards the end of the season, but again, I'll give the writers an A+ for effort.

Another thing I like is that this season tries to focus more on character pieces, with episodes focusing on characters like Nathalie (Passion), Kagami (Perfection), Luka (Migration), and Zoe (Adoration). They're not handled the best, but I'm glad the show is at least trying to give the supporting characters time in the spotlight, even though they don't have their Miraculous anymore.

Speaking of, I like the idea of the Alliance rings. It's really the only time Gabriel actually takes advantage of his status as one of the most influential people in Paris to push the use of something specifically designed to help give his Akumas more power. Given how prevelant the marketing for Alliance rings is, it's easy to see his plan working in the long term.

We also had a couple decent new Akuma designs, like Safari, Bugfighter, and... uh... Yeah, I got nothing else. This is pretty much the most praise this season is going to get from me. Sure, I'll go into some other aspects I like during later sections, but other than that, this is it. Hell, even the parts I listed earlier are only mentioned for the ideas they present, not the way they're executed.

The Final Season... Of Filler

We've finally made it to Season 5, the climax of the conflict with Monarch. This is going to be epic, with all kinds of compelling stories that can be used for episodes, leading to a final product that will go down as—my God, why is this season so boring?!

Like I said earlier, this season was a lot harder to review than Season 4 was, and this was one of the biggest reasons why. As bad as that season was, I at least had stuff to talk about. Here? Almost nothing. A good chunk of the episodes I reviewed just didn't leave an impact on me. Most of them were either forgettable, mediocre, or just okay. Some of the episodes had decent ideas and a handful of good scenes, but it wasn't really enough to reach the highs of earlier seasons, including Season 4.

It's strange, because at first, it seemed like the show was learning from its mistakes during the first three episodes of this season. “Evolution”, “Multiplication”, and “Destruction” were far from perfect, but you could at least tell the show was trying something different. There was tighter continuity, clever mind games on both sides, a rare instance of nonlinear storytelling, and major changes to the status quo. They explained why Monarch can't just beat up Ladybug and Cat Noir himself, why the Rabbit and Rooster Miraculous can't be used to end the story, and why the Alliance rings were created.

When Ladybug got the Rabbit Miraculous after failing to get the other fourteen back, you would think that this would lead to an arc where Ladybug and Cat Noir gradually reclaimed the Miraculous from Monarch until the final battle, but what did we get instead in terms of plot development?

For what was supposed to be the final season, it felt like almost nothing happened. Sure, as always, the show tried to trick us into thinking stuff was happening, but several plotlines introduced this season were either abandoned or rushed through after a few episodes. The Resistance? Only relevant for five episodes, and even then, they didn't do much (Illusion, Deflagration, Confrontation, Revolution, Representation). Trying to discover how Monarch is giving the Akumas Miraculous powers? Only relevant in a single episode (Illusion). Felix having the Peacock Miraculous and being a total wild card? Only relevant for three episodes (Emotion, Pretension, Representation). The reverse Love Square? Only relevant for four episodes before it petered out (Determination, Passion, Reunion, Elation). Lila manipulating Kagami for some reason? Only relevant for two, maybe three episodes if you count that one scene in “Emotion”, and that was dropped in favor of her learning Monarch's identity offscreen (Perfection, Protection).

You'd think for a season with stakes this high, there would be bigger stories or more character drama, but we got nothing. The only real ongoing story we got was the Love Square finally happening, and trust me, I'll get to that later. There were plenty of ideas for story arcs here, but the writers pretty much ignored all of them.

Retcons! Retcons Everywhere!

This one's shorter, because it's a problem with the show in general, and I'll go into more detail about specific examples of this later on.

Miraculous Ladybug is a show that has always struggled to be consistent with its lore, worldbuilding, characters, story, and... well, a lot of things. I've talked about how often the show retcons things in order to justify whatever story they need to tell, not just for individual episodes, but story arcs too. There were so many episodes with stories that contradicted previous events or changed the motivations of certain characters on a whim.

In case you didn't keep track, here's a little highlight reel of some of the retcons this season.

Evolution: After both him and Ladybug were able to use multiple unifications last season with no problem, Monarch can't use too many of his powers without collapsing in pain. It also goes against what was established in “Kwamibuster”, the idea of using multiple Miraculous being enough to damage your sanity, where here, Monarch's body is damaged.

Multiplication: Adrien's reason for falling for Marinette was due to all the times she helped him, when it was usually the other way around in earlier seasons.

Determination: Adrien reveals he's had feelings for Marinette since the events of “The Puppeteer 2”, even though it never influenced any of their interactions between that episode and this one. It also contrasts the previous episode, where it said that Adrien was just starting to fall for Marinette for different reasons.

Derision: Chloe's bullying of Marinette had severe psychological damage that explains why she acts the way she does around Adrien... but ignores the romantic feelings Marinette has had for Luka and Cat Noir, and didn't act the same way around them, to say nothing about how she acted around Nathaniel when he had a crush on her during “The Evillustrator ”.

Intuition: The Snake Miraculous somehow makes Gabriel's Cataclysm wound worse even though the form of time travel it uses is mental, not physical.

Protection: Gabriel and Tomoe want their children to be in a relationship, yet Adrien and Kagami kept it a secret while they were dating.

Adoration: Zoe suddenly has feelings for Marinette despite showing no signs of it beforehand.

Emotion: Felix reveals he's doing everything for Adrien's safety, even though in his previous few appearances, he's done nothing but screw his cousin over by smearing his public image.

Pretension: Felix is against using a Sentimonster to defend himself and Kagami due to not wanting to force an innocent creature to follow his orders, yet he had no problem using a Sentimonster in the very last episode and in his next appearance.

Revelation: Lila has multiple secret identities she uses while pretending to be the child of several women, which had never come up at all during the last four seasons.

Representation: Kagami apparently learned Marinette was Ladybug right before she was akumatized in “Perfection”, yet Monarch didn't learn this like he did with Luka.

Do you see the problem here? Hell, I didn't even list every single retcon, or else we'd be here all day.

I don't get how a show that wants to be serialized can keep changing details like this. It's not even a case of the show replacing its writers with new ones who don't know as much as the old ones. This is mostly the same writing team for almost four seasons at this point.

Sometimes, the show will retcon stuff in order to justify stories when it doesn't need to. Remember how at the beginning of the season, Marinette was feeling guilty about her failure at the end of Season 4, and that influences her hesitance to accept Adrien's advances? The writers sure didn't, as “Derision” exists to give Marinette a whole new reason to not be comfortable around Adrien. Why the hell would you give Marinette a perfectly valid reason to not want to pursue Adrien, only to write an episode that gives her a different reason to not want to pursue Adrien? There was literally no reason to do this, especially during the last season of your first major story arc!

This season is clearly trying to be the most serialized of the bunch, yet the writers keep changing details about the story like that one Wallace and Gromit meme.

Season 5: The Show's Greatest Hits Album

Something I've noticed about this season is just how repetitive it can be. I know that sounds weird given this is a show that literally gave us the Status Quo-Yo, but please hear me out.

So many major story arcs and focus episodes are just rehashed versions of older things in this show, and not just the reused Akumas. Not only does the first half of Season 5 restate how complicated things are for Marinette's love live and how she can't love Adrien after what she did (something she gets over rather anticlimactically once Adrien confesses). Then there are other times where even plotlines established this season will get reused, and more often than not, it's worse.

In “Perfection”, Kagami is akumatized thanks to Lila's lies, and manages to break free from Monarch's influence thanks to her friends showing that they care for her. And then four episodes later, Kagami is akumatized again thanks to Lila's lies, only this time, she isn't able to break free. What... what was the point of having that emotional scene in “Perfection” if you're just going to treat her like a run of the mill Akuma a few episodes later?

And it's not just that. Big moments that happened in earlier seasons are pretty much redone but with a few changes to make it seem like they're different. Did you like seeing Adrien give up being Cat Noir in “Kuro Neko”? Well how about seeing Adrien and Marinette give up being superheroes in “The Kwamis' Choice”? Did you like seeing Chloe break off her friendship with Adrien in “Queen Banana”? How does seeing Adrien break off his friendship with Chloe in “Derision” sound?

But the worst of this has to be in the last seven episodes of the season. So much of what is essentially the culmination of five seasons' worth of story is just recycled. Let's go over why. In “Confrontation”, Marinette (and by her, I mean Sabrina with help from Marinette) manages to outsmart Chloe and Lila and put an end to their tyranny in the classroom. What are the next two episodes about? Marinette needing to outsmart Chloe and Lila, only now, they have reign over the city. This feels like something that should have been one major story, not something split up into two two-parters. Hell, you can't even say it's original to see Chloe in control, because this is also something that was done back in Season 1's “Rogercop”, only with the titular and the police following his orders for no reason instead of Chloe and her bootleg Daleks.

But hey, if an army of robots capable of using Miraculous powers, at least we can expect something even more creative for Monarch's ultimate plan, right? Yeah, Project “Perfect Alliance” is just a combination of Chloe's murder boxes and the exact same plan in “Heroes' Day”. People are brainwashed like in “Heroes' Day” and they get Miraculous powers like the robots in “Revolution”. Seriously? Nobody took a look at this and thought “Didn't we do this already?”

What's the point of making these two different evil plans when they're essentially the same thing? Why not give Chloe's robots various weapons instead of Miraculous powers if you're going to have an army of villains who have the same Miraculous powers two episodes later? Why not make it so the Miraculized are really the robots designed to help Chloe, only here, they have the ability to turn anyone wearing an Alliance ring into one of them, sort of like the Borg from Star Trek?

It's clear that after four seasons, the writing on this show has gotten incredibly stagnant if the major plotlines are just reused from earlier seasons. At best, it comes across like blatant fanservice, and at worst, it's a symptom of the writers struggling to come up with new ideas for stories. Either way, this is one of many reasons why not a lot of people are looking forward to Season 6. How can you expect interesting stories in the future when the writers keep recycling their old ones?

Felix and the Struggle With Sentimonsters or: This Is Starting to Sound Like a Bad Comic Book Plot!

Before I get into the problems with Felix this season, consider this: With Chloe (who I'll get to later), she was an example of someone who wouldn't get a redemption arc. Felix? This is the writers intentionally trying write a redemption arc. How did that turn out?

The obvious problem with Felix is mostly due to, like a lot of things in this show, poor time management. He only had three focus episodes, and in that time, the writers needed to explain his motivations, establish him as a wild card, have him realize the error of his ways, develop his relationship with Kagami, and help out Marinette. They really wanted to do a lot with Felix, yet with how rushed his arc was, I have to wonder if there was some trouble behind the scenes that prevented him from getting more focus.

It doesn't help that what little we got was confusing as all hell. I've already gone into detail about the problems with Felix's motivations not explaining his actions, but here's a list of all the problems with Felix.

If Felix wanted to get the Peacock Miraculous from the start, why didn't he try stealing that in “Felix”?

If Felix cared about Adrien, why did he spend most of his appearances mocking him and ruining his reputation by impersonating him in “Felix”, “Gabriel Agreste”, “Risk”, “Emotion”, and “Representation”?

If Felix knew who Gabriel was, why did he come up with this elaborate plan to get the Peacock Miraculous in a trade with him instead of going to Ladybug for help in “Strikeback”?

If Felix realized Gabriel was dangerous and capable of wiping him out, why did he decide to give him fifteen Miraculous in exchange for a single Miraculous without doing anything to stop him in “Strikeback”?

If Felix could easily get rid of Gabriel with a single Sentimonster like he did in “Emotion”, why didn't he immediately do that as soon as he got the Peacock Miraculous in “Strikeback”?

If Felix wanted to stop Gabriel, why did he decide to wipe out all of humanity alongside him in “Emotion”?

If Felix cared about innocent lives, why did he decide to wipe out all of humanity without showing any remorse except for when he had to get rid of Red Moon in “Emotion”?

If Felix didn't want to create any Sentimonsters just to end their lives in “Pretention”, why did he do just that in “Representation”?

If Felix knew Marinette was Ladybug, why did he choose to tell her who Gabriel was in an unnecessarily complicated way instead of telling it straight to her face in “Representation”?

If Felix really hated his abusive father, why didn't he show any hatred for Gabriel (who gave Colt the damaged Peacock Miraculous and did nothing to stop the abuse) as well during his little play in “Representation”?

If Felix cared about stopping Gabriel, why did he only decide to go to Ladybug for help when Gabriel was getting in the way of his relationship with Kagami in “Representation”?

If Felix was willing to tell Marinette about Gabriel being Monarch in “Representation”, why didn't he do anything else to help her stop Monarch in “Comformation” and “Re-Creation”?

With how many flaws his plans have, I'm surprised Felix hasn't said anything along the lines of “My pwan is gweat!”

For someone who claims to be doing a lot of things for Adrien, Felix tends to either screw over his cousin as part of his plans or forget him entirely. I don't mean he screws over Cat Noir, as his identity is one of the few things he doesn't know, but rather, how little his plans actually benefit Adrien. Putting aside his previous appearances in Seasons 3 and 4, in the span of a single episode, Felix pretended to be his cousin and smeared his public image, used a Sentimonster to wipe out all of his friends and loved ones while needing to be told by Adrien that doing so wasn't cool, and after that, he pretty much abandoned caring about Adrien.

Yeah, starting with “Pretension”, the writers once again change gears so Felix's primary goal is to help Kagami, not Adrien. It's Kagami that really helps inspire Felix's true turn to good, it's Kagami who he chooses to visit when she and Adrien are taken to London, and it's Kagami that helps him decide to tell Marinette Monarch's identity. Even though he only has three major appearances, the writers still decided to shake up his character arc for some reason. How does a team of paid writers struggle to stay consistent with any story or character arc they've written?

The worst part is that for a redemption arc, Felix shows little to no remorse for his actions. Not once does he apologize to anyone he's personally wronged, like Adrien, Marinette, or Kagami. He doesn't see anything wrong with giving Monarch more power and depriving Ladybug of almost all of her allies, and he had to be told that wiping all of humanity from existence was a bad thing. Felix has done so many terrible things in his quest for freedom, which isn't a bad idea, as it could make for an interesting discussion about whether the ends justify the means, but the show doesn't go that route. Instead, despite doing almost nothing but making things worse for Ladybug and Cat Noir, we're supposed to see Felix as a great person who just wants to have friends. Sure, having good social skills is a big part of being able to manipulate others, but let's just ignore all the people he's tricked and assume he doesn't know how to properly socialize with someone without stalking them.

It doesn't help that of all the characters this season, Felix makes the most progress in stopping Monarch. Puting aside his little genocide attempt in “Emotion”, he actually made an attempt to take Gabriel out of the equation, and later on, passed on intel about his true identity to Marinette. Think about that for a second. Marinette, despite being a hero with the ability to deduce what to do from simple clues given to her, isn't the one to figure out Monarch's identity. Instead, she has to be told who Monarch is, and is able to beat him only because Felix told her what to do. The worst part is that Felix doesn't even take part in the final battle when he has no excuse to not get involved. Remember, he doesn't have to worry about getting snapped away by Gabriel, so even though he cares so much about Adrien and Kagami, he does nothing to save either of them from their glorified solitary confinement.

Felix isn't a character. He's a glorified plot device who only shows up to advance the story instead of letting any character make progress by themselves. While Marinette and Adrien are focusing more on their love lives this season, Felix is the one actually getting things done. Because God forbid the two characters the show is named after actually do anything to stop the villain this season, am I right?

And that's not even getting into the Sentimonster stuff. Yep, to our collective horror, not only is Felix a Sentimonster, but it's also hinted that Adrien and Kagami are Sentimonsters too. I'm not sure why the writers are so hesitant to flat out say the latter two are Sentimonsters after all the obvious hints, especially when this is a show that loves to overly explain every plot detail and character trait. I don't know. Maybe they're just hedging their bets in case things don't go over well with audiences, but I can't possibly see anything bad coming from this. After all, how can you think of any uncomfortable implications stemming from the three major victims of child abuse literally being inhuman monsters who are physically unable to resist their abusers' orders?

With the Sentimonster “reveal”, Adrien and Kagami, two characters who were previously doing their best to be independent from their parents as they could at their age, are now physically incapable of even having a single negative thought about them without being ordered around while showing no resistance. Like I've mentioned before, it's a blatant retcon because it's never explained why Gabriel and Tomoe didn't do this during Seasons 2 and 3. It also gives the writers the opportunity to remove any agency Adrien and Kagami have in the plot, even though one is one of the two main characters, and the other plays a crucial role in helping another character expose the main villain's identity.

We're supposed to see Gabriel and Tomoe as wrong for ignoring their children's protests and forcing them to do things they don't want to do, but it doesn't lead to an arc where Adrien and Kagami rebel against their parents and break free from their influences. As soon as either Gabriel and Tomoe touch their respective rings, Adrien and Kagami are completely helpless, and there's no way for them to resist because of how powerful the link with their Amoks is. There's no hint that they have the potential to break free from their Amoks' influence, and the only time we saw that happen, it was a complete accident that Felix didn't even cause (Representation). Adrien and Kagami are both reduced to damsels in distress thanks to being Sentimonsters, and even though the show is trying to say they're trapped in a terrible situation, there's never a way out.

The most Adrien and Kagami do is express frustration with their situation, but most of the progress made in escaping their bad relationships is done by their respective love interests, Marinette and Felix. Yes, support systems are important, but rather than help Adrien and Kagami earn their freedom, Marinette and Felix do pretty much all of the work to save them during the latter half of this season. Hell, they couldn't even get that completely done by the time of the finale! Gabriel dropped dead and Adrien thinks he's a hero and Kagami's still living with Tomoe, only now she has her Amok ring. We're supposed to see this as a happy ending when they're both still influenced by their abusive parents, even if they don't have any physical control over them. The whole idea behind making Adrien and Kagami Sentimonsters should have been something about them, but with Gabriel and Tomoe, the writers only see them as helpless victims who can't do anything to save themselves. Sure, both of them have fought supervillains before, but we can't have them actually showing agency, can we?

I'm going to get into other ways Adrien and Kagami's characters were butchered this season, but for now, let's get into all the uncomfortable things this plotline implies. Now before I go any further, just remember that I am far from an expert on abuse or child psychology, so please take what I say with a heavy grain of salt. If there is anyone reading this who is a victim of abuse or knows someone who was, please don't be afraid to speak your mind about my analysis or correct me if I get any details wrong.

I get that making Adrien, Kagami, and Felix Sentimonsters was probably done so it'd be a way to explain the concept of child abuse to younger audiences, specifically to show how helpless the situation can be for victims, but the problem is how the allegory is handled. It wants to show how cruel the idea of child abuse is, but it doesn't want to outright vilify abusers like Gabriel or Tomoe. They usually try to sugarcoat it by saying that the two have good reasons for doing what they do, but that's a common problem with abusers. Abusive parents almost always believe that they're doing the right thing while their children think that they're just being punished for their own good, and the season ultimately takes that stance by the end.

The show is clearly trying to use the Sentimonster concept to tell a story about abuse, but I have no idea what exactly it's trying to say about it. “Child abuse is bad”? Okay, then why aren't you going to condemn the abusive parents for being abusive parents? And no, brief mentions of abusive parents who we never actually see onscreen don't count (Derision, Pretension, Representation). “Help out abused children”? Big talk coming from the season that only has two people actually fight to help the victims of child abuse, while treating another victim of child abuse as getting her just desserts (Revolution). “Parents have good reasons to do what they do”? Yeah, that normally applies to stopping your kid from getting a tattoo, not forcing them to whatever they want against their will.

The thing about writing abuse is that you need to acknowledge just how unhealthy it is, and do whatever it takes to take them out of the toxic environment. Here, nobody ever tries to remove Adrien from the toxic environment or tell him that what his father is doing isn't right. Sure, Felix tries to take Kagami away from her abusive mother, but that was only for like an hour at most, and then he just let her go back to her mother. Adrien doesn't even get that luxury. Hell, he isn't even allowed to know just how terrible his father was because he's just a sensitive baby according to the show. Portraying abuse victims as too emotionally fragile to know the truth is a pretty bad idea because, like I mentioned before, a big problem that abuse victims go through is that they're conditioned to see their treatment as normal at best, or see it as their fault at worst.

Like so many other serious topics discussed in this show, the writers clearly want to tell a story about abuse, but they're too afraid to actually take a proper stance on it, so they kept trying to play it safe in an attempt to not get backlash from audiences. Of course, because of that, they ended up portraying victims of child abuse as soulless husks who have almost no free will of their own, while ending the season by having them still under the influence of their abusive parents, even the dead one. Real bang-up job, there, writers. It says a lot when a Spider-Man PSA from almost 35 years ago did a better job tackling child abuse than you did.

And finally, let's talk about how this season's treatment of Sentimonsters indirectly influences our perception of them across the past two seasons. Even though the Sentimonsters created have shown almost no individuality from Seasons 2 to 4, only now are we supposed to see them as sentient beings, with Felix himself even taking offense at the idea at being called a Sentimonster. Never mind the fact that Felix never actually comes up with a proper alternative, so he just comes across as whiny when we're supposed to see him as a champion of the Sentimonsters.

In regards to the narrative the show decided it now wants to tell about Sentimonsters, I have two questions.

First, why should I care about Sentimonsters if the previous two seasons have portrayed them as nothing but soulless killing machines? If you're going to write a plot twist that changes the way we see Sentimonsters, you need to explain why we were wrong to only assume they're dangerous, especially since Argos' first Sentimonster literally wiped out all of humanity. For comparison, Ultraman Z did a similar plotline by having the main character realize that several of the monsters he killed as the titular hero weren't intentionally trying to harm humanity, so it caused him to doubt himself as a hero before he vowed to start finding non-violent ways to stop monsters if he could, while viewing the act of killing monsters that couldn't be reasoned with as a necessary evil. This show has no such arc and just expects us to ignore all the damage the Sentimonsters have caused since the end of Season 2.

Second, what about the Sentimonsters whose lives have been snuffed out by Mayura, Shadowmoth, and even Ladybug? The writers want us to sympathize with Sentimonsters and believe they get a bad rap? That's fine, but even if we did, what about the ones who were already wiped out of existence? Are we just not going to talk about them? Why should we only value the lives of Felix, Adrien, and Kagami and not any of the other Sentimonsters created in previous episodes? What, because they're not main characters, their lives don't matter?

All in all, everything about the Sentimonster was either poorly thought out or too preachy to take seriously, and Felix is emblematic of those problems with how he and the Sentimonsters are written. Oh right, I forgot Felix had a sidekick too, Kimberly—I mean, Kagami.

Kagami Never Hesitates to Be a Complete Idiot

If you read my overview of Season 4, I sang high praises for how Alya was written. Season 4 managed to take a character I had previously disliked and turn her into one of my favorite characters in the show. Now, with that being said, I want you to imagine the opposite of that happening to a different character, and you have my feelings on Kagami this season.

It's weird how, after she had made it through the past three seasons with her character somewhat intact, the writers decided to give her even more prominence by involving her in two separate arcs this season... and only made her nothing more than a damsel in distress who constantly needed to be saved in both of them. I'm not saying that Kagami should be able to beat the crap out of Monarch with her bare hands, but my point is that Kagami just lost so much agency this season.

When she wasn't being manipulated by Lila (Perfection, Protection), she was playing second fiddle to Felix and acting like he didn't hand over almost every Miraculous in Ladybug's possession to Monarch (Pretension, Representation). It's really strange, considering a defining character trait of hers is her hating liars like Marinette does, since it's why she dumped Adrien, yet here, she gets tangled up in the schemes of two different liars, Lila and Felix. I can at least get Lila (as dumb as her episodes are), since she's supposed to be seen as this master manipulator, but she just brushes all of Felix's crimes aside because he “doesn't know how to express himself”. Because even though she's always been loyal to Ladybug, she has no problem working with one of the only two people to betray her trust. But she loves Felix, so that makes it all okay.

What made Alya's arc last season work was that even though she was primarily Marinette's confidant, we also got episodes showing her struggling to balance her own desires with what needed to be done for the greater good (Optigami, Sentibubbler, Hack-San, Rocketear). She had to step up and become more than just one of the many temp heroes Ladybug called on, someone trustworthy enough to temporarily use the Ladybug Miraculous. Yes, she made bad calls, but when things went south because of her bad decisions, she normally took responsibility for her actions and vowed to do better. With Kagami, we don't get any internal conflict like that at all. She just blindly goes along with whatever Lila and Felix say, and even when bad things happen as a result, she never even thinks to call out either of them other than rarely saying something along the lines of “Hey, not cool.” (Protection, Pretension).

Kagami just doesn't get to do anything on her own terms this season. Her entire arc revolves around following Lila and Felix around like a lost puppy. And just remember, we're seriously supposed to act like Kagami is trustworthy enough to see that her defending Felix from Ladybug is enough to prove that he's a good person deep down... when this same season showed her easily falling for Lila's lies and getting akumatized twice as a result. It's like believing Dr. Nick can perform a life-saving kidney transplant after seeing him botch an open-heart surgery.

Even Kagami figuring out Marinette is Ladybug, something that should be a big deal like with Alya and Luka learning last season, is something we learn through a flashback and is, you guessed it, is only relevant to one of Felix's plans. And yeah, reveal your friend's secret to someone who someone who betrayed her. What could possibly go wrong? Again, when Alya screwed up, she was at least able to admit it to Marinette's face. Kagami never tells Marinette that she knows, and never faces consequences for throwing her lot in with Felix. What's her excuse, that she has too much love in her heart for Felix?

Speaking of which, let's talk about the biggest problem I have with Kagami this season, the way her relationship with Felix is handled. Let me make one thing clear: my problem isn't with people who ship the two together. Much like with the Love Square, my problem is how the show handles this romance. The two had almost no episodes together, and from what little we saw of them interacting, Kagami didn't like him, and for obvious reasons. But then “Pretension” came. Not only did Felix develop feelings for Kagami offscreen, all it took for Kagami to fall for Felix was a single conversation where he showed basic human decency. Yeah, Marinette fell for Adrien for similar reasons, but at least she and him took a while to actually get together. These two shared a handful of conversations, and now they're just made for each other.

The problem with this is that the relationship basically reduces Kagami to Felix's girlfriend and sidekick. All of her major appearances post-“Emotion” were in relation to Felix. She only helps him because of their relationship, and their relationship was the whole reason why Kagami convinced Felix to do what he should have done from the start, tell Ladybug who Monarch was... even though Astruc said this kind of relationship was toxic when discussing Lukloe.

You see, the difference between Lukloe and Feligami is (MAKE UP EXPLANATION LATER AND DON'T ACCIDENTALLY LEAVE THIS SPOT BLANK). And that's why we shouldn't see this as blatant hypocrisy on Astruc's part.

While it's par for the course, given how almost every female character in this show is connected to a male character in some way, the way Kagami is written this season is still part of a bigger problem. Kagami is not everyone's favorite character and not one people fiercely discuss as much as Marinette, Adrien, or even Chloe, but it's still baffling that out of all the characters in this season, Kagami would arguably sustain the most damage out of the entire cast. Given that this is the same season as Nino becoming the braindead leader of the Resistance, Chloe's brief stint as a tyrannical mayor, Nathalie choosing to do nothing about Gabriel until she was about to die, the baffling reveal of who Lila supposedly is (again, more on these later), or... really, a lot of things with both Marinette and Adrien, this is actually saying a lot. If you want to look at it at a particular angle, Kagami's actually a direct victim of practically all of the biggest problems in this season and I've had to mention her a lot more in this analysis than I anticipated. Then again, I suppose that's me showing more care to Kagami as a character than the writers did.

The Story of The Resistance (In Name Only)

I've already gone on about how underdeveloped most of the temp heroes are, so you can imagine the season where they try to help Ladybug without superpowers doesn't really change my opinion of them.

Remember how in episodes like Season 1's “Antibug”, Season 2's “The Dark Owl”, and even this season's “Jubilation” made it clear that trying to be a superhero without a Miraculous or proper training was essentially suicide? You know, how it was better to leave things to the actual superheroes? Well the writers sure didn't, as now we get to see a bunch of idiots try to take on supervillains with paintball guns and whatever they can throw at them. I'm pretty sure the writers put more effort into all the codenames themed after condiments than actually coming up with creative ways to fight Akumas. Because we all know how hilarious (citation needed) the flower codename gag from “Gigantitan” was, so let's do something like that, but for multiple episodes this season.

I'm just going to be blunt here when I say the Resistance this season sucked. Putting aside the fact that the writers couldn't come up with a less generic name or a name that wasn't already taken by the Ox Miraculous' power, this subplot was just so pointless. You have a team of former heroes who want to find a way to help Ladybug and Cat Noir stop Monarch, and rather than do things like pass intel along or find ways to stop people from getting akumatized, they decide to try taking them on themselves with their most powerful weapons being paintball guns. Congratulations, you now have all the equipment you need to take on Bart Simpson in a fight. Sure, they try to pass on intel to Ladybug and Cat Noir in their first episode, “Illusion”, but Nino's plan was so stupid, they ended up helping Monarch in the long term by letting his civilian identity into their team. Oh, I'm sorry, did you forget how Gabriel and Lila were inducted into the Resistance at the end of “Illusion”? It's okay, the writers did too.

And the idea of them passing on intel could have worked, as it would give Marinette a support system to help solve problems she can't figure out on her own, following up on her character arc from Season 4 where she learns to put her trust in people, but like a lot of things this season, the writers got bored halfway through and decided to change up this plotline. Now, they're prepared to fight anyone who gets akumatized. How many Akumas did the Resistance manage to stop completely on their own? One, and it was offscreen (Deflagration).

Trying to make the Resistance seem competent and effective comes at the price of making the villains look like idiots who can't handle a few teenagers without superpowers. Monarbug, someone who managed to unify with the Ladybug Miraculous, lost it thanks to the Resistance dogpiling him. Then, later on, they managed to stop Nightormentor, an akumatized Gabriel, by just throwing stuff at him. Do you have any idea how lame this makes Monarch look? It's like that scene from Robocop 3 where that kid somehow managed to make ED-209 as loyal as a puppy in a matter of seconds. It's not cool to see it happen. It diminishes the threat the formerly menacing villain posed.

The show loves to play up the Resistance as this amazing underground organization Nino is so proud of, but it doesn't work because you can count the number of times they've actually helped out on one hand, and even then, that's being that word Chloe doesn't know the meaning of (Deflagration, Revolution, Representation). Even then, they still fall for Lila's lies which, like Kagami, doesn't help establish any of them as trustworthy. The whole Resistance subplot is basically an excuse to make it seem like the former temp heroes aren't just sitting around, which again, isn't a bad idea, but nothing comes of it. We don't get to see any of them worry that they can't do anything without their Miraculous, we don't see where or when Nino got the idea to form the Resistance, and we don't even get any scenes where the worry about the captured Kwamis. The show just has them all operate under the same goal and makes it seem like they're making a difference when they barely do anything. None of them really feel like characters, and it shows this season.

Nino, despite labeling himself as the brave leader of the Resistance, is anything but. He constantly brags about how effective he is, but not only does he let anyone into his top secret organization without even thinking if they can really be trusted, all of his genius plans amount to, you guessed it, throwing stuff at the brainwashed people with superpowers. He's also so confident that he was awesome as Carapace when all he did was occasionally help Ladybug out with his Shelter, and then whines about not being chosen by Tikki and Plagg when Scarabella and Kitty Noire temporarily take over (Illusion, Deflagration). He's also so poor at gathering intel that not only did he fall for Gabriel's ruse and act like he figured out how the Akumas have Miraculous powers, he didn't even know his best friend was going to London until he got on the plane (Representation). I wasn't kidding when I said Nino was such a terrible leader, he makes Zapp Brannigan look competent by comparison.

And remember when Alya was a major character? Neither does the show! Out of the entire season, she was really only relevant to the plot when she became Scarabella for a few days, and even then, she didn't think that maybe she should take off the Alliance ring that monitors her every move if she's going to be a full-time hero again (Transmission, Deflagration). There is absolutely no follow-up to anything that happened to her in Season 4. She doesn't regret blowing her cover, she doesn't worry over not being able to help Ladybug as Rena Rouge, she doesn't worry about the safety of Trixx, she doesn't even consider the fact that she's not used to going back to full-time hero work after half a season of being undercover as Rena Furtive. At best, the whole thing with Alya exposing her cover to Nino last season gets played off for the sake of a cheap joke (Illusion).

Then there's Zoe. Like Season 4, I can definitely say that out of all the supporting characters, she was certainly one of them. They clearly try to give her these big moments in an attempt to endear her to the audience, like her brief stint as Kitty Noire or her coming out to Marinette, but because of how nonexistent her character development has been, these don't feel earned. I can't buy her friendship with Marinette or anyone else because of how little she appears. Hell, she was specifically introduced to act as a good counterpart to Chloe, and she did nothing to really contribute to her ultimate downfall other than sharing a single conversation during “Revolution”. That's how little the writers care about her, they don't even have her interact with the character she was designed to replace. I take back what I said about her being a Mary Sue way back in my “Sole Crusher” review, because at least those types of characters get plenty of focus in the narrative. All I can really say about Zoe after two seasons is that at least she's more interesting than Socqueline, a character so boring, this is the only time I'm going to mention her in this entire analysis.

And that's it for the Resistance. Only three side characters are actually worth talking about this season. That is how pointless of a group they are.

Chloe’s Arc That, in Case You Forgot, Was Totally Planned From the Start

I really don't know what else to say here. Remember, this entire blog was started because of how upset I was by Astruc's response to criticism of the Season 3 finale, specifically how Chloe's “damnation arc” was claimed to have planned out from the start.

For the sake of argument, let's go over this arc and just what happened with this character over the past eight years. In Season 1, Chloe started out as a standard high school mean girl who used her father's influence to get whatever she wanted, but wasn't that much of a threat compared to Hawkmoth and the Akumas. In Season 2, we got to see a different side to her that started a character arc, showing she was capable of changing and becoming a hero in her own right. In Season 3, while it seemed like Chloe was changing for the better, the finale had her betray Ladybug and go back to being the same mean girl she was before. In Season 4, we were introduced to Chloe's never before seen half-sister, Zoe, who only existed to replace Chloe as the user of the Bee Miraculous, and even though the very same episode where Zoe first got the Bee Miraculous hinted that there was still a chance of Chloe changing, the rest of the season acts like she's always been a menace to society with no redeeming qualities. In Season 5, Chloe was portrayed as a heartless monster who is worse than the main villain of the entire show, is simultaneously smart and cunning enough to bully Marinette in a way that would leave lasting mental scars for a year and also too incompetent to take seriously, and even though the season has made a big deal about how terrible child abuse is, her being sent off to live with her verbally abusive mother is seen as a perfectly suitable punishment for her.

I don't know what's worse, the fact that none of the writers had second thoughts about this character's “arc”, or the fact that Astruc probably thinks he made an antagonist as complex as Lady Macbeth. I also love how, despite all this supposed planning, not once do we get any explanation as to just why Chloe hates Marinette so much other than the fact that one's a rich person and the other is the main character in a cartoon.

Chloe's character was already going in a downward spiral in Season 4, but with Season 5, it feels like the writers just abandoned all attempts to be subtle and were determined to stop people from liking her. Like, it's amazing just how much time was spent hammering the point home. She got more focus as a villain than Lila and even Gabriel. We had about eight episodes this season that featured her in a major antagonistic role: “Determination”, “Deflagration”, “Derision”, “Adoration”, “Revelation”, “Confrontation”, “Collusion”, and “Revolution”. Almost a third of this season is dedicated to showing how evil Chloe is, as if she's somehow worse than people like Gabriel or Tomoe. And that's not even counting episodes where she got a line or two to remind the audience of how bad she is, like “Multiplication”, “Passion”, and “Reunion”.

The weird thing is that even though this was supposed to be the season where Chloe was at her worst, it still seemed like the writers couldn't make up their minds on what they wanted to do with her. For example, let's take a look at her relationship with Monarch. In “Multiplication”, she believed that Ladybug and Cat Noir should just give Monarch what he wants, implying she's still on his side. Then, in “Determination”, she blamed not having the Bee Miraculous on why Monarch was able to win, implying she wants to stop Monarch. And then in “Deflagration”, it's hinted that she once again willingly accepted an Akuma out of a desire to get revenge, implying that she's still on good terms with Monarch. Finally, in “Revolution”, she initially wanted to arrest Monarch when he arrived in her office, and had to be convinced to work with him again. Seriously, this is almost two seasons after she started working with Monarch in the first place. How the hell are the writers not sure if she's working with the villain or not?!

Of course, that's the least of my problems with Chloe this season. One such problem that it seems like the writers specifically went out of their way to ruin the few positive relationships Chloe had just so her fans would have less ground to stand on. Her friendship with Adrien? He finally decided to write her off as irredeemable just as he learned just how miserable she made Marinette (and only Marinette) at the end of “Derision”. Her friendship with Sabrina, as one-sided as it is? She doesn't even see Sabrina as a friend anymore, specifically referring to her as an underling starting with “Adoration”, and then Sabrina turns against her after she finds one specific scheme to be going too far. The sympathy Ms. Bustier had for Chloe, even though it wasn't relevant to her character after “Zombizou”? Chloe basically ignores any attempt made to reach out to her, and we're supposed to act like her wanting to help Chloe get a decent education because it's her job as a teacher is the stupidest idea in the world. Chloe's relationship with her own father? This season decided to make Andre out to be a man mentally broken by the bad treatment he gets from his daughter and totally not a corrupt politician, and outright disowns her in favor of adopting someone who isn't even his biological daughter.

It already felt like Season 4 exaggerated Chloe's negative traits, but now, the show doesn't want anyone to like her in-universe, as if showing basic human decency to her in the first place was off the table. Remember, in “Revelation”, Marinette's speech to Adrien was basically copied and pasted from one of Astruc's tweets, as if this was meant to address anyone who still liked the idea of Chloe changing for the better.

And trust me, I'll get to the characters who actually got redeemed later.

For now, let's talk about the main issue I have with her portrayal: The writers want her to be seen as a threat... but they don't want her to actually be a threat. Almost all of Chloe's appearances this season had her acting as a pawn to either Gabriel or Lila. This season also started to use dumb blonde jokes in order to show how incompetent she is, like having her struggle to understand the concept of the word “generous”, making her out as an idiot. The whole point of the “irredeemable villain” archetype is that the character is usually so big of a threat, there is absolutely no way of talking them down, so they need to be stopped through the use of force. Chloe is far from a threat, which is why all this talk about her being a monster falls flat.

At the end of the day, Chloe is easily at the bottom of the hierarchy of the villains on this show. She has no Miraculous like Gabriel, she has no advanced technology like Tomoe, and she's nowhere near as cunning as Lila is. The problem is that the show wants the audience to see Chloe as if she's the worst of them all. Fine, she may have the most obnoxious personality and least amount of redeeming qualities by the writers' standards, but this is a superhero show. You don't just rank villains on how mean they are, but also by how much of a threat they are to the hero. The moments where we're supposed to take Chloe seriously, the show keeps reminding us that she's only getting as far as she has because she's being used by other villains. It makes the moments where the heroes triumph over her ring hollow.

I'm not even joking here when I say that out of the show's entire rogues' gallery, Chloe is literally the only one who actually gets punished. Sabrina was able to wash their hands of her association with the bully, Andre was more than happy to give up his position as mayor and kidnap Zoe, Tomoe was never even exposed, Lila only faced a minor setback when she was exposed, Nathalie was healed by the wish, and even though he died, Gabriel died a martyr who never actually answered to any of his crimes. But Chloe? As fucked up as it was, she was the only one who received some form of punishment for everything she did. Congratulations, Ladybug and Cat Noir! After five seasons, you finally managed to defeat the Ringo Starr of your rogue's gallery, and all it took was unlocking the full power of your Miraculous.

I was initially angry at the show for just throwing away a character arc and mocking anyone who was interested in it, but now, I'm angry at the show for a different reason. Even if we were to assume that everything about Chloe was planned from the start, that she was supposed to be a fallen hero turned enemy, the show did nothing with it. If you're going to make Chloe a full-blown villain, then go nuts with the idea! Have her dedicate her life to beating Ladybug out of hatred, maybe even through a suit of armor like Princess Morbucks. Instead, this is the writing equivalent of intentionally setting your house on fire, but deciding you don't need the insurance money.

I'm actually going to say something that might sound blasphemous, especially coming from someone who has spent a lot of time talking about Chloe's character assassination, but I'm just going to admit it: I think Chloe should have been the next Hawkmoth, not Lila.

Yes, that's probably what you're thinking, but I'm serious. Think about it. Between her and Lila, who has the closer connection to Marinette as an enemy? Who has a more fleshed out reason to hate Marinette? Who got more focus as a villain this season? Who has more resources at her disposal? Essentially, the show put so much effort into making Chloe out to be Marinette's most personal enemy, that it makes no sense for them to not just go all the way and make her the next big bad. The writers already go on and on about how irredeemable she is, so why not make her an actual threat for a change?

But no. Instead, let's just keep her as comic relief who somehow gets more screentime than almost every other villain this season. That's a good way to tell our story, right?

Now You See That Evil Will Always Triumph Because Good Is Dumb... And So Is Evil, Apparently

This section should be relatively easy for me to get through, since not much has really changed with the villains since Season 4. They're all still idiots even though the show wants us to see them as a threat to the equally idiotic heroes.

Let's start with our only newcomer to the show's rogues' gallery, and definitely the weakest, Tomoe. I'll give the show a lot of credit with the foreshadowing for Tomoe here. Unlike other plotlines where the show bashes you over the head with obvious hints like with the Sentimonster stuff, the hints leading to the reveal of Tomoe being in leagues with Gabriel are far more subtle. They spend a lot of time in Seasons 3 and 4 discussing things offscreen (probably about some version of the Alliance rings), and both of Tomoe's akumatizations happen offscreen as well (since their conversation would give away their alliance). It's handled pretty well... which is more than I can say for Tomoe as a villain.

Tomoe is just such a confusing character, both conceptually and the way she was used this season. She's meant to be Gabriel's new confidant after Nathalie decided to stop being a villain while still mooching off him, but she pretty much does the same things Nathalie does, including the constant nagging about how inefficient he is. She even serves the same role Nathalie served in earlier episodes as Gabriel's technical advisor. Tomoe is basically a second Nathalie, with the only differences being that she's blind and that she wants Kagami to be with Adrien. Of course, this makes no sense because, like I mentioned in the retcon section, Adrien and Kagami tried to keep their relationship secret before their breakup. How could Tomoe not notice this? What is she, blind—oh right...

There's also the issue I have with the way Tomoe's nationality and disability is portrayed here, and how it really highlights how terrible this show is with representation (not to be confused with the episode of the same name). Like with my Sentimonster section, if there's anyone reading this who is disabled or a person of color, and you'd like to say anything about this part or how this show's representation is handled, feel free to voice your opinion or correct me if I get anything wrong.

With Tomoe, it feels like the writers slapped on every Japanese stereotype you could think of and called it a day, because we've seen all of these before. She's dressed in very traditional Japanese attire, is named after a famous Japanese warrior, uses a kendo shinai as a cane instead of a walking stick, is a strict parent to her child who expects the best from her, makes references to Japanese culture like samurai (Pretension) and taiko drums (Protection), is a technological genius, forces her child into an arranged marriage, and uses Japanese honorifics while talking with Gabriel even when they're not speaking Japanese. I'm not saying Japanese people can't talk about their culture at all, but when you're writing a character who happens to be a person of color, you need to do more than make references to their heritage.

With Tomoe, almost everything she says is referencing her heritage, which makes it come across like the writers cared more about her being Japanese than anything else. Because somehow, the writers were worried kids wouldn't pick up on the fact that she's Japanese... when she's wearing something that makes her look like she just stepped off the set of an Akira Kurosawa movie.

But hey, at least they say Tomoe is Japanese. I don't think there's a single indication that she's blind. At most, they give her the stereotypical superpower every blind person in superhero media seems to have, enhanced hearing. Of course, while characters like Daredevil and Toph Beifong have in-universe explanations for how they're able to “see” without their eyes (Daredevil's enhanced senses came from the same chemicals that blinded him in the first place, while Toph learned an advanced Earthbending technique that gave her the ability to sense others through vibrations in the earth), Tomoe just has them because the writers thought it would be cool. I know it might seem strange to say this after I talked about how too much focus was given to Tomoe's Japanese heritage, but you'd think more would be done with her being blind, and how it would factor into her motivation to create a better world through technology or her ideology about self-discipline. Instead, she acts like every other character on this show, to the point where all three times she was akumatized, she got her sight back.

The main problem with Tomoe is how other than her heritage and disability, she has almost no personality other than being a strict mother to Kagami (something that is also a negative Asian stereotype) and her vague ideology about suppressing her emotions. She's basically a female Gabriel, and because she's a woman in this show, lacks any depth or redeeming qualities. There just wasn't enough time to really develop Tomoe as a character in the same season she was revealed to be a villain. Sure, they try to hint at her having history with Gabriel, but that never goes anywhere, and we never even learn just why she's working with him in the first place other than some vague desire to make the world more technologically advanced in spite of also being a traditionalist who loves honoring old beliefs. Just remember, Chloe got eight focus episodes as a villain this season, yet Tomoe only got one.

Now for Lila, the most competent of the villains... by comparison. The show clearly wants her to be seen as a master manipulator in the same vein as David Xanatos from Gargoyles, but how they show it is just poorly executed. Sure, sometimes she would get ahead in clever ways during episodes like “Illusion” and “Revelation”, but other than that, a good chunk of her plans rely on contrivances that we're supposed to see as part of her plan when she would have no idea if it would actually happen or not. In fact, let's go over all the things Lila did during her last five episodes of the season and see how her master plan played out.

Step 1: Revelation – Convince Ms. Bustier to hold another election for class representative, lie your ass off to get the position while making it seem like you rejected an Akuma, and win the election.

Step 2: Confrontation – Tamper with confidential school documents while hoping your enemy doesn't plan anything to stop you, and if your plan falls through, abandon your identity entirely and hope nobody ever tries to look for you.

Step 3: Collusion – Convince your pawn to record a conversation between the mayor and the man you somehow know is Monarch and then after the conversation leads to an Akuma forcing him out of office, tell your pawn to accept an offer from Monarch's civilian identity that you somehow knew he'd make, leading to your pawn becoming the new mayor by force who everyone is too stupid to even think of opposing.

Step 4: Revolution – Tell your pawn to take an offer from the same supervillain she's willingly worked with before, watch her go mad with power and assume that Ladybug and Cat Noir will defeat her, and then in the chaos from her defeat, assume that one of Monarch's associates will randomly leave her computer behind for you to use.

Step 5: Re-Creation – Develop an immunity to magical nightmare dust, hack into the heavily-guarded mansion you know where Monarch lives while the city is being swarmed with supersoldiers, hope you don't run into Monarch or any heroes trying to stop him on the way there, take the hole created by a Cataclysm you know would be there, assume that Monarch will lose, and seize his Miraculous from the ruins of his lair that you somehow know how to navigate after surviving all of reality being rebooted.

General Patton, eat your heart out. I think we all know who the real tactical genius is here.

Seriously, how the hell did she even know half of the stuff involving Gabriel and Tomoe would happen? Yeah, she had Tomoe's laptop after the events of “Revolution”, but she didn't see how their final fight would play out. You could also argue that we technically never saw her go into Monarch's lair during the final battle (all we got was a shot of her looking down into the hole Bug Noire created with her Cataclysm), but why didn't she go down if she disguised herself to infiltrate Monarch's lair? Was she just scoping out the area? Was her entire plan just to steal Monarch's Miraculous? There were so many ways this could have blown up in her face, so let's go over all of them, shall we?

What if Ms. Bustier didn't agree to hold a reelection for class representative?

What if Marinette won the reelection anyway?

What if Lila wasn't able to escape during the chaos caused by Monarch's Megakuma targeting Mr. Damocles?

What if the school managed to contact one of Lila's moms and tell her about what her “daughter” did?

What if Chloe wasn't able to record the full conversation between Gabriel and Andre?

What if Andre agreed to use the police robots without any manipulation?

What if Miss Sans-Culotte wasn't able to get Andre to resign?

What if Andre did resign, but managed to appoint a interim mayor until the next election?

What if Chloe didn't accept Gabriel's offer?

What if Chloe didn't accept Monarch's offer?

What if Chloe managed to arrest Monarch with her robots and got all of the Miraculous herself?

What if the French military was sent to stop Chloe's abuse of power?

What if Ladybug and Cat Noir weren't able to stop Chloe and lost their Miraculous to Monarch?

What if Chloe double-crossed both Lila and Monarch and managed to get Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous herself?

What if Tomoe didn't carelessly leave her laptop behind during the final battle with Chloe and her robots?

What if Tomoe realized she lost her laptop and sent someone to track it down?

What if Tomoe installed a kill switch on her laptop to make sure nobody would be able to do anything with it in the event it got stolen

What if Ladybug didn't learn Monarch's identity?

What if Lila fell victim to Nightormentor's nightmare dust?

What if Lila was attacked by some of the Miraculized before she could make it to the Agreste Mansion?

What if Gabriel caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?

What if Ladybug caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?

What if Nathalie caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?

What if the Gorilla caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?

What if some of the Miraculized caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?

What if Lila got caught in the crossfire during the final battle between Bug Noire and Monarch?

What if Bug Noire didn't Cataclysm the floor and beat Monarch at the entrance of the mansion?

What if Bug Noire wasn't able to defeat Monarch?

What if Ladybug managed to find the Butterfly Miraculous before she did?

What if Ladybug caught her while she was trying to find the Butterfly Miraculous?

Do you see why I only think Lila is the most competent villain by comparison? A good chunk of Lila's “plan” amounted to her waltzing over and reaping the benefits from every coincidence she's around to see. And she's supposed to be this criminal mastermind who thought this all out from the beginning?

Lila's planning makes about as much sense as her motivation. Why does she hate Marinette and Ladybug? They both called her out on her lies back in Season 1 and 3 respectively (Volpina, Chameleon). That's it. This is enough for Lila to want to become a supervillain and terrorize Paris. I get that the idea is to contrast with the more noble goal Gabriel had as a supervillain, but you need to give more of an explanation if you want the audience to care about Lila becoming the next Hawkmoth.

At the very least, if the writers wanted to build intrigue about Lila, have this be the season where she first appears. Build her up as this mysterious new girl who wins over Gabriel's trust, only she has an agenda of her own. By having most of her appearances be this season, it's more obvious that she has a bigger role to play, and would eventually become the next Hawkmoth. Instead, it seems like the writers put a bunch of names on a dartboard, Lila's name was the closest to the first dart they threw, and that's how they decided who Ladybug's next arch-enemy would be. And once again, Lila hasn't even touched a Miraculous in five seasons, yet we're supposed to believe that with the help of that vague glowing light she saw as soon as the first put on the Butterfly Miraculous, she'll be able to take on eighteen superheroes who have plenty of experience fighting Akumas?

Speaking of, let's get into the final main villain, Gabriel. Compared to the others, he had a pretty decent start. He felt a lot smarter than he usually did, like how he used his influence to market the Alliance rings in order to boost his Akumas' powers, or once again trick Ladybug and Cat Noir into thinking he isn't Monarch. He even managed to outsmart Scarabella and Kitty Noire by using the Alliance rings to learn their identities, and almost got their Miraculous as a result. For the most part, Gabriel was a pretty clever villain who capitalized on every screwup the heroes made, and actually came across as a threat... that is, until “Protection”.

Starting with “Protection”, Gabriel decided that even though he has only a few weeks to live at best, he needs to focus more on meddling in his son's love life instead of getting Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous in order to save his wife. It comes across like he cares more about stopping Marinette than he does stopping Ladybug in the latter half of the season. Hell, Gabriel doesn't even set up any plans for what would happen to Adrien if he died despite once again claiming to be doing everything for his family. Also, for some reason, he really wants Adrien and Kagami to stay together and become a couple for reasons that I can only assume is because of some kind of social commentary on the rich. Is Gabriel trying to start a eugenics program? Is this how Khan was born?

The abrupt detour Gabriel's motivations take is connected to one of the bigger problems with this season: How Gabriel's Cataclysm wound is handled. We're supposed to sympathize with Gabriel and how his days are numbered thanks to what happened, all while he's desperate to achieve his goal... when not only did Gabriel Cataclysm himself at the beginning of the season, he almost never brings up his wound until the writers want to add unnecessary drama to the story. At most, he'll either flinch in pain a little because of the wound (Elation, Perfection, Intuition, Protection, Emotion, Confrontation), or show his purple hand to show how serious it's gotten while saying he doesn't have much time left (Passion, Pretension, Revelation, Collusion, Conformation). At least, we're supposed to see it as serious, as the injury never really gets in the way of his plans.

Rather than a painful injury that's slowly killing him, the show treats Gabriel's injury with the seriousness of a sprained ankle. Yeah, it's painful, but nothing serious. Aside from one episode (Intuition), we don't see Gabriel struggle that much with his deteriorating health or how it gets in the way of his plans. Compare this to how Nathalie's condition has been portrayed. As Season 3 progressed, Nathalie got weaker to the point of forcing Gabriel to abort his second outing as Scarletmoth (Ladybug), she became so sick, she had to be benched as Mayura by the end of Season 3, and needed cybernetic crutches just to help her walk during Seasons 4 and 5. While I criticized her sudden wrinkled appearance by the events of “Representation”, the show still made it clear that Nathalie was struggling to go about her everyday life over the course of the last three seasons. As for Gabriel, whose condition is supposedly more serious to the point where not even the Ladybug Miraculous can heal it? At most, it's less something influencing his belief that he has nothing left to lose, and more a mild injury at best.

Another problem I have with Gabriel is the same one I have with Tomoe and Lila: The lack of a proper backstory. Yes, we know the basics of it (his wife is comatose and/or dead, so he became a supervillain to get Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous and save her), but we know nothing about his life before that. Thanks to “Revelation”, the most we get is that before he became a fashion designer who took an interest in discovering the Miraculous, he used to work in fast food like Skeet from Jimmy Neutron. Hell, the two even have similar haircuts.

Whether Gabriel knows the difference between salt and sodium chloride is still up for debate.

The show wants to say that Gabriel used to be different, but we don't get to see that side to him. If you want to say Gabriel used to be nicer, then give us a flashback to show how much Emilie's death affected him. That way, it would also give the scene in the finale where he breaks down have more weight to it, as it would show him letting down his emotional defenses.

Also, why was Gabriel so interested in the Miraculous in the first place if he found the Butterfly and Peacock Miraculous before Emilie got sick? The show establishes that Gabriel went exploring with Emilie and Nathalie, but why? What were they looking for? How did this lead to them getting into fashion? How did Gabriel and Emilie get so rich if Amelie inherited the Graham de Vanily fortune? This was the season that was supposed to wrap up the storyline regarding the Agreste family drama, yet we still know so little about them or how Gabriel and Emilie even met.

Finally, let's get to the Akumas. The season makes a huge deal about how dangerous Gabriel is now that he has almost every other Miraculous at his disposal, how hard the battle against him will become. How do the Akumas reflect that idea? Very poorly. Twelve of the season's Akumas were reused models (Ikari Gozen in “Multiplication”, Darker Owl in “Jubilation”, the Collector in “Illusion”, Glaciator in “Elation”, Sole Destroyer in “Deflagration”, Dark Humor in “Derision”, Riposte Prime in “Protection”, Vanisher in “Adoration”, Matagi Gozen in “Pretension”, Hoaxer in “Revelation”, Reflekta in “Confrontation”, and Nightormentor in “Representation”), and only ten of them were original (Manipula in “Determination”, Safari in Passion, Kikou in “Transmission”, Ryukomori in “Perfection”, Gold Record in “Migration”, Bugfighter in “Intuition”, Miss Sans-Culotte in “Collusion”, Queen Mayor in “Revolution”, King of Plastic in “Action”, and the Miraculized in “The Final Day”). I've also gone over this several times, but despite the main gimmick being that the Akumas have Miraculous powers now, the show never really explains why Monarch can't just give them those kind of powers himself, especially when he could easily recreate Miraculous powers as far back as Season 1 (Copycat, Antibug, Volpina).

Most of the Miraculous powers didn't actually feel like upgrades and just excuses to recycle Akumas on the basis of acting like they have new powers when it's almost always just giving them the same old powers. Either that, or with the new Akumas, they'll just make it so their only powers are related to their Miraculous powers, like Safari getting all of her gear thanks to the Goat Miraculous' Genesis, Kikou and Ryukomori's only abilities being related to their respective Miraculous powers, or Queen Mayor getting the power to control robots with multiple Miraculous powers. There were exceptions like Manipula getting the Ox Miraculous' Resistance as an added precaution, or Vanisher mixing her stealth with the Dog Miraculous' Fetch, but they were few and far between.

Overall, almost every villain this season was just so underwhelming. While the Akumas were once again mostly reused character models, we learned almost nothing about the villains other than the fact that they're idiots. Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot the fact that by the show's logic, almost all of the villains aren't really villains. Let's talk about how the show handles redemption arcs now.

The Redemption Misconception or: The Power of Love Always So Strong?

While younger readers might not understand this, there was once a time on the internet where one of the most debated shows was Steven Universe, and mainly for one reason: How it handled the topic of redemption. Pretty much every major antagonist had changed their ways by the end of the show, including Lapis Lazuli, Peridot, the Cluster, Bismuth, Spinel, Jasper, and even the Diamonds. While the quality of each of these redemption arcs varies from character to character, as is the moral status of each character, there's one thing I can say about how the show got the moral about redemption across: It was consistent. Aside from one or two characters like Eyeball or Aquamarine (who were more ignorant than anything else), there was never a case about someone being physically incapable of changing their ways, which tied into the overall theme of how important compassion is. With the way Miraculous Ladybug handles its redemption arcs, I unfortunately can't say it does it the same way Steven Universe does.

Pretty much every major villain, antagonist, or associate in the show gets a redemption of some kind. This includes Nathalie, Felix, Sabrina, Andre, and even Gabriel, while Chloe, Lila, and Tomoe are all viewed as beyond saving. The problem is rather than actually acknowledge the things any of them did as wrong before they start to change their ways, pretty much every “redemption” in this show amounts to downplaying their crimes. If the writers don't retcon the story so characters like Nathalie, Sabrina, and Andre were forced to help a greater threat instead of being willing accomplices, they'll retcon the story so characters like Felix and Gabriel were perfectly justified in their actions due to having a tragic backstory. Yes, while the point of a redemption arc is to have a former antagonist realize the error of their ways and turn a new leaf, it doesn't mean that the character who goes through this arc was never bad in the first place.

Like a lot of problems with this show, this is obviously contradicted by the way it handles Chloe. Any argument made on why every villain who was redeemed this season was stated to not apply to Chloe for some reason.

“Felix is a victim of child abuse and has a lot of emotional baggage!” Funny, because I remember in “Derision”, Mylene made a point about Chloe having a deadbeat parent not being enough to justify her actions, so by that logic, Felix shouldn't be getting away with anything.

“Sabrina and Andre were being forced to go along with Chloe's evil plans, so it's not their fault!” Chloe was also a pawn in Gabriel and Lila's schemes, yet we're still supposed to see her as evil. “But she still went along with Lila's plan!” By that logic, so did Sabrina and Andre, since they still listened to Chloe for a while instead of distancing themselves from her far earlier than they did.

“Gabriel and Nathalie are doing everything they can to help Adrien while they're both in poor health! Chloe didn't actually care about Adrien!” Sure, it's clear that (according to the retcons in Season 4), Chloe only cared about Adrien as a meal ticket, you can't say Gabriel and Nathalie care about Adrien either, since one is an abusive parent and the other did nothing to actually stop the abuse. Also, why should I feel bad for either of them when they routinely endanger lives and are only on death's door because of their own terrible choices?

I'm not saying that the show doesn't make decent points about why Chloe can't be redeemed. The issue is that these rules are never applied to anyone else who does get redeemed. The show tries to use characters like Chloe and Lila as a cautionary tale about how easy it is for your kindness to be taken advantage of, yet we never get any examples of compassion being a key factor in any major redemption this season.

Pretty much every villain who changes their ways only does so out of self-interest. Nathalie was fed up with Gabriel's constant failures and her own declining health, Felix only cared about doing things that would benefit himself like hooking up with Kagami, Andre was more than happy to resign even though he was forced to do so by an Akuma, Sabrina chose to stop helping Chloe after one particular plan goes too far (without actually apologizing for all the times she still went along with Chloe's schemes, no less), and Gabriel only stopped trying to hurt people once he got exactly what he wanted and died a martyr.

For a show with the lyrics “The power of love always so strong!”, why do we never actually see the power of love in action? And it's not just them. Whenever a character shows some form of compassion for an enemy, it's usually met with a dismissive attitude or fails miserably, and if it's not that, it's all lie to trick someone else.

In “Illusion”, Gabriel's plan to throw off suspicion that he's Monarch involves pretending to let Ladybug and Cat Noir get through to him.

In “Derision”, Rose pointed out Chloe's relationship with her mother as an excuse for why she's so mean, only for Mylene to argue against that despite being in a different boat than Chloe is.

In “Revelation”, Lila kept lying about having a caring attitude and believing that anyone can change, which was obviously meant to mock anyone who had that kind of viewpoint.

In “Collusion”, Ms. Bustier tries to reach out to Chloe after everything she's done, only to lose her job as a result.

In “Re-Creation”, the whole reason Bug Noire manages to beat Monarch was by putting him in a situation that would take advantage of his compassion for his wife, and later on, Gabriel manages to get the upper hand by taking advantage of Marinette's own compassion for him.

For a magical girl show, these writers are really terrible at teaching the lesson about showing kindness to your enemies, because more often than not, it's just violence that solves everything. Just ask the citizens of Paris in “Revolution”.

It doesn't help that the morality in this show isn't a complicated spectrum that weighs every action a character does and allows for other stances besides good or evil. Instead, it's like a light switch with two settings: “So good, you volunteer at the local children's hospital” and “So bad, you voluntarily send children to the hospital”. Characters in this show are either good or bad, and there's no room for in-between. Even when characters supposedly do change their ways, the show goes out of its way to claim that this is what they've always been like, which completely undermines the idea of what a redemption arc sets out to accomplish.

The thing is that I've actually seen examples of “Character X was only doing bad things as part of their plan!” and “Character X was only forced to do bad things for the villain!” done with one character, and it was a very recent example too. In the recently concluded Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger, one of the major villains was a tyrant named Racules, who took advantage of several monster attacks to secure more power for his kingdom, but later on, it's revealed he had a reason to do so. Long story short, Racules was the latest in a long line of rulers who was essentially blackmailed into carrying out a war by an immortal being from space named Dagded. However, Racules had a plan to secretly find a way to kill Dadged, and it involved playing along by pretending to be a heartless tyrant. By playing up his persona of a villain, not only did Racules drive his brother Gira (who was revealed to be an immortal creation of Dadged) to gain the weapons necessary to fight Dadged, Dagded trusted Racules so much, he decided to give him the power to kill an immortal. Guess who Racules chooses to kill as soon as he gets that ability.

While the reveal that Racules was good all along happened very late into the series, it worked far better than any redemption in this entire show for one reason: Racules isn't let off the hook for what he did. Everyone, Racules included, acknowledges that he did terrible things for years, and as soon as the situation is resolved, Racules is imprisoned for his crimes. Racules even admits to going mad with power at one point before he focused on his goal again, and he doesn't complain while he's in prison.

We never get any moments like this with the other redeemed characters. Nobody ever acknowledges that they went too far. They do one or two good things, and therefore, they're perfectly okay in Marinette's eyes.

Like a lot of topics it covers, this show wants to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to redemption. It wants to show characters changing their ways, but it doesn't want to actually hold those characters accountable for their actions. It wants to explain that not everyone can be redeemed, but it doesn't want to explain what causes people to want to redeem themselves. It wants to have an idealistic view of solving problems with compassion, yet it goes out of its way to mock those with that same ideology while claiming that violence is the only answer.

Maybe if Astruc spent less time arguing with people on Twitter over the concept of redemption, he and his team could have put more effort into fleshing out the all of the half-baked redemption arcs this season.

Adrienette Is Finally Canon! The Love Square? What’s That?

Well, it finally happened. After seven years, five months, fourteen days, 115 episodes and three specials since the show originally premiered in France on October 19th, 2015, Marinette and Adrien have finally gotten together for real. No cop-outs, no reset button, no misunderstandings, this is real. Credit where credit is due, the writers could have easily kept stalling and wait until the very end of the season for Marinette and Adrien to get together and called it a day, but they gave us over half a season of them in an actual relationship. Unfortunately, this also meant the writers had to rush the development of the relationship in order for Adrienette to become official in the first place.

Like a lot of stuff in the first half of this season, the writers pretty much speedran through the plotlines building up to Marinette and Adrien getting together. During the course of a mere eight episodes, we got a plotline about Marinette feeling guilty for letting her feelings for Adrien make her screw up, a plotline where Adrien realizes he has feelings for Marinette, a plotline where Marinette falls in love with Cat Noir, a plotline where Adrien stops having feelings for Ladybug, and finally, a plotline where Marinette stops having feelings for Cat Noir. These are all plotlines that we should have gotten over the course of the past four seasons, but instead, the writers are just cramming them all into less than a dozen episodes.

Considering how this was meant to be the final season originally, you can tell the writers realized they actually had to actually resolve the “Will they or won't they?” plotline instead of just padding things out like they normally do. But that's the problem. This was something fans, shippers, and general audiences were told to look forward to for years. Keep in mind, one of the biggest arguments you could make for just why the writers waited until Season 5 for Marinette and Adrien to officially get together was because they had something HUGE planned. This is a big deal for the show, something you can't take too lightly. If Astruc and the other writers were so intent on hyping up Adrienette for over four seasons to the point of showing two alternate timelines where they get together to tide viewers over, they needed to make sure they had a payoff so incredible, so satisfying, that their audiences would see it as more than worth the wait.

Just how was the big moment where Marinette and Adrien officially got together this season after so many years of buildup?

To be perfectly honest with you, I had absolutely no goddamn idea that the end of “Transmission” was meant to signify them finally starting a relationship. It just felt like the writers were doing the same thing about them being friends with a hint of something more on the horizon, but then the opening of “Deflagration” made it clear that here was major progress made in their relationship, though Marinette denied it due to her own anxiety, and by “Perfection”, it's confirmed that the two are dating. I just... really? This is how the two finally get together? It just... happens? No big dramatic confession? No romantic first date building up to this? Not even a kiss? The two talk for a few minutes, watch an Akuma fight, and now they're an item. Are you kidding me? Sure, most of the big moments in their relationship are saved for after they get together, but there's the problem: the writers half-ass the moment where Marinette and Adrien get together! It's more or less an afterthought in a two-parter involving a battle with Monarch where nothing was really accomplished.

You'd think for all the uncertainty Marinette felt over her feelings for Adrien this season, them getting together would be seen as a big moment, but it just doesn't for some reason. While you could argue it's a lesson in your fear of confessing being harder than the act itself, not much attention is given to Marinette growing closer with Adrien, because, for some reason, the writers decided to hold off the love confession and the first kiss for far later in the season (Pretension, Revolution). That's right, even after Marinette and Adrien finally get together, the show still needs to find a way to draw out the development of Adrienette.

I don't get it. Why couldn't the confession and kiss be what cements Adrienette, so more focus could be given to other plots? You can't say the “Will they or won't they?” stuff is the only draw to Adrienette, because there are plenty of plots you could write now that Marinette and Adrien are together. You could have an episode where Marinette invites Adrien over to breakfast with her parents in a follow-up to “Weredad”. You could have an episode where Marinette and Adrien try to go out on a perfect first date, only to struggle to balance their superhero lives getting in the way. You could have an episode where both Marinette and Adrien worry they're not good enough for each other, only for them to realize they love each other for who they really are. You could have an episode where Marinette and Adrien finally get closure on their former relationships with Luka and Kagami respectively. There were plenty of options for stories here, yet rather than do literally anything like that, not only did the writers drag out Marinette and Adrien's first kiss, they had the main villain take a break from trying to get the Miraculous to focus on breaking up the two.

As I mentioned earlier, we get a new arc all about Gabriel trying to break up Marinette and Adrien so Adrien can start dating Kagami again. Now I know what you're probably thinking: “IOTA, wasn't it implied that while Adrien and Kagami were dating, they were keeping their relationship a secret from their parents? Why are their parents suddenly obsessed with them getting together?” Well, you see, the answer to that is... that I have no answer because this makes no sense and is yet another excuse for a story arc that is somehow relevant to the overall plot. It's because of Gabriel's irrational hatred of Adrienette that Adrien is sent to London, and as a result, is absent from the final battle.

The sad thing is that I honestly thought Marinette and Adrien had some cute moments as a couple this season and had some believable chemistry. It's nothing groundbreaking, and there are plenty of flaws that I'll get to later, but for all intents and purposes, they still made a decent couple. It's just too bad that everyone else won't shut up about how amazing they are together. When their friends aren't trying to set up these cinematic scenarios for Marinette and Adrien that keep failing (Perfection, Protection,), they're gushing over how amazing of a couple the two are (Transmission, Deflagration, Revelation). At best, it comes across as the writers saying “How do you do, fellow shippers?”, and at worst, it comes across as the writers taking a victory lap while treating Adrienette as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Adrienette just dominated the latter half of this season, and it really got in the way of the overall story regarding the conflict with Monarch. What's that? You're saying I forgot something, like the other three sides of the Love Square. Ah, good eye, my friend.

SO DID THE FUCKING SHOW.

For the thing that got a lot of people interested in the show in the first place, the rest of the Love Square is criminally underutilized this season. Marinette randomly develops feelings for Cat Noir for a handful of episodes, Cat Noir randomly moves on from Ladybug, and I don't think we even got a single Ladrien scene this season. It really felt like the writers realized this was meant to be the last season, so not only did they have to get Marinette and Adrien together as quickly as they could, they also had to acknowledge the other sides of the Love Square. Of course, they did that without actually doing an identity reveal.

There are theories that the reveal was going to happen this season with how much Marinette and Adrien only talked about each other and not their superhero partners (implying they both knew who the other was), but the writers changed it at the last minute because they got renewed for more seasons. I suppose it makes in a meta sense, but what about the in-universe explanation? What's stopping Ladybug and Cat Noir from learning each other's identities when literally every other hero in Paris can get their Miraculous back, even the ones who had their identities discovered? Were the writers so uncertain if people would still watch the show if there wasn't any mystery in Marinette and Adrien's relationship? What exactly is there left to explore with the Love Square when Adrienette is canon, while Ladynoir, Marichat, and Ladrien are all dead in the water?

Like a lot of things this season, the handling of the Love Square started off strong and gradually petered out to the point where I just don't care anymore. I started this season assuming the reveal would actually happen, but of course, the writers just won't let this subplot die already.

Adrien Who?

While I don't really have a lot of bad things to say about Adrien compared to last season, this is unfortunately part of the bigger problem with how he was handled this season.

Like I said earlier, it seemed like the writers actually learned from their mistakes last seasons with how Adrien was written during the earlier episodes last season. He stopped whining about how he was totally important and started pulling his weight in battle. He was very active in fighting Akumas and actually felt like an equal to Ladybug. Yeah, Ladybug still called the shots, but the two stopped bickering over stupid things and had more conversations about other things. It didn't matter if they were more casual chats about their lives (Perfection) or discussions on the enemy's plans (Intuition, Revolution).

The problem, like a lot of things this season now that I think about it, comes in the second half. Remember how last season made a big deal about how wrong it was to leave Adrien out of the loop with so many secrets? Once again, the writers seemed to have forgotten this major story arc that they wrote themselves. Now, not only does Gabriel crack down on his horrific treatment of Adrien through his ring, not only does Adrien's character regress to being nothing more than Marinette's trophy boyfriend, by the end of the season, Adrien is literally reduced to a damsel in distress who needs to be saved, instead of, you know, A SUPERHERO. And remember, the writers were very proud of how this was planned for almost a decade, all because they got to supposedly subvert fairy tale tropes.

I feel like this whole “Save Adrien” plotline could have worked if Adrien wasn't already a superhero, and was just a civilian Marinette knew. Yeah, it would still be using an overdone trope, but at least if that happened, Adrien would have an excuse to not be able to fight back as opposed to the several he made during the finale. Instead, for the majority of the season's second half, Adrien takes a backseat to a major story arc revolving around his family and isn't even given proper closure by the end.

“But IOTA!” You might say. “The show's called Miraculous Ladybug, not Miraculous Cat Noir! Of course Ladybug has to save the day! She's the main character!” That may be true, voice in my head, but here's the thing: If Adrien wasn't going to be part of the final battle, why wasn't this about Marinette's family? Why not make Monarch Tom or Sabine trying to bring back their spouse? Marinette is the main character, yes, but so much of the backstory in this show is connected to Adrien's family. The show tries to connect Marinette to this through her relationship with Adrien, but with how often she and Gabriel fight over what's best for him, Adrien kind of just sits around, not protesting against his father in the slightest. I'm not saying Adrien should be the main character. I'm saying that Marinette should be tied more into the story if you were going to base a lot of the drama on her perspective during the final battle. It's almost like making it so Adrien physically can't rebel against his father was a stupid way to keep him out of the conflict.

Why the hell couldn't we have gotten a scene where Adrien's connection to Gabriel was broken? There were plenty of options the writers could have used. You could have had Nathalie steal the other ring back from Gabriel to give to Adrien, have Argos use the Peacock Miraculous' powers to override Gabriel's commands, or have Adrien unlock a new form of Cataclysm that severs the bond with his Amok. And that's not even getting into the excuses the show made for why he can't get involved, because God forbid one of the two main characters in the show's title get to take part in the final battle.

In fact, I'm pretty sure this is why Felix was introduced, to do the things Adrien should be doing. Felix is the one who has a vendetta against Gabriel, a deeper connection with Kagami, knowledge that he's a Sentimonster, and an overall influence in the plot. The writers are so obsessed with coddling Adrien that they created an entirely different character to fill in a role for him, and Felix wasn't even in the final battle. And just remember, Adrien was originally created to replace Felix in the story, so Felix taking over Adrien's role as the character who helps advance the plot makes even less sense.

Even if the final battle is meant to be over Adrien, it comes across less like Marinette and Gabriel are fighting over his freedom and more who gets to control him. Gabriel doesn't use his wish to free Adrien from the shackles of the rings. He just gives Marinette the rings and hopes she won't do the same kind of things he did with the rings. Nothing changed over Adrien's treatment except who gets the keys.

It'd be one thing if Adrien at least chose Marinette over his father, but Adrien isn't even allowed to know the full story on anything, not even the Sentimonster stuff. Okay, putting aside the fact that Adrien has lots of friends and family to help him cope with this, maybe I can buy not telling him about Gabriel. Not telling him he's a Sentimonster is something I can't excuse. This is like not wanting to tell someone they have diabetes and hoping they know how to use their own insulin while they're downing Pepsi after Pepsi. It's not just a matter of hurting Adrien's feelings. His fucking life depends on those rings. He should obviously know to keep them safe and not trade them for magic beans or something stupid like that.

But the biggest problem with Adrien this season is how it goes against everything the show has said about him and his relationship with Marinette/Ladybug the last four seasons, and especially Season 4.

For the past four seasons, the show has loved to say that no matter what happens, Ladybug and Cat Noir will always be here for the other, even against the world. Put aside how unlikable Adrien was last season, that was the ultimate lesson, about the two reaffirming their bond. And yet, here we are in the Season 5 finale, when literally the entire world is against Ladybug and Cat Noir, and Cat Noir is nowhere to be seen.

One of the main reasons why Adrien jumped at the chance to be a superhero was the freedom it gave him from his restrictive lifestyle, and how it led to him making more friends at school. And that very same story ends with Adrien admitting it's a good thing for him to stay inside and never acknowledge the fact that his father was kind of a dick. Remember, this was planned in advance for YEARS, and absolutely nobody thought it contradicted one of the most important aspects of Adrien's character: his desire for freedom. Now the same person who would demand to not be kept in the dark about so many things (Lady Wifi, Syren, Lies, Sentibubbler, Rocketear, Risk) is now sitting around like a coward while everyone else saves the world instead.

I still think Adrien was at his worst in Season 4, with how much of an whiny and insufferable idiot he could be, but Adrien in Season 5 is a close second. Yes, I wanted him to stop acting out and demanding that the world cater to his every whim, but I also wanted him to prove he was as valuable as he says. The first half of this season seemed to understand this kind of criticism and reminded the audience that Cat Noir was still useful, but when the actual story kicked in, the writers were so determined to keep the secret identity bullshit going, Adrien somehow got less focus as a hero than the Resistance, a group of temp heroes who actually lost their Miraculous. And consider the fact that this season wrapped up the drama with the Agreste family, so for all we know, Adrien will get even less screentime next season.

If Adrien is supposed to be an invaluable ally to Ladybug, then why doesn't the writing accurately reflect it?

The Problem With the Biggest Idiot of Season 5: Moronette, “Of Course I Know What I’m Doing!” Royal-Pain, AKA, Ladydumb

You know, it's funny. I kept defending Marinette when the writing kept making her out to be a terrible hero last season while Adrien got by without a single criticism, to the point where I considered Adrien to be the worst part of the entire season. Oh, how the tables have turned with dear old Marinette, as the season that chose not to criticize every single action she took is when she's arguably at her worst.

You have to wonder if the writers finally realized how much crap they put Marinette through over the last few seasons by having her always forcing her to learn some contrived lesson and were like, “Oh yeah, she's supposed to be someone the audience is supposed to root for.” Unfortunately, they went way too far in the other direction with how they handled Marinette.

The way Marinette was written this season felt eerily similar to what happened with Adrien last season. Suddenly, her personal drama is of the utmost importance (Determination, Passion, Reunion, Elation, The Kwamis' Choice, Perfection, Migration, Derision, Adoration, Pretension, Representation), she's making incredibly stupid decisions in battle (Evolution, Destruction, Determination, Pretension), she becomes the moral compass of the show who lectures others on what to do (Revelation, Confrontation, Collusion, Revolution), and she's never really called out for her actions by the other characters despite how often she makes things worse.

So much of the first half of this season is the exact same crap over and over again. Marinette complains about how hard things are for her and her conflicting feelings for Adrien. I wouldn't really mind something like this if it wasn't for two things.

First, there's no real arc involved with this. Marinette keeps complaining about her love life, and she never really learns anything from it. She doesn't even get to confess to Adrien and show her growing as a character. Adrien confesses to her, and bam, the two are a couple now. Glad to see all the discussions about Marinette's anxiety was completely pointless since she doesn't get to be the one to really confront her inner demons. Well, there was one time in “Derision”, and we all know how well that turned out, right?

Second, more often than not, it seems like Marinette is prioritizing her personal life over the situation with Monarch. You know, the guy who has access to fourteen different Miraculous? After you only managed to get one back? I'd understand if we got this kind of arc in the earlier seasons, but by doing this, you're undermining the current threat Monarch poses. She's even willing to give up being a superhero if it means being with Adrien. That is how important her love life is to her. She's willing to let Tikki force the responsibility onto someone else if it means she can be happy. Of course, this isn't too surprising, as Astruc once said that the show is supposed to focus primarily on romance, not superhero action.

THIS IS WHAT THOMAS ASTRUC ACTUALLY BELIEVES.

Just like with Adrien last season, the show seems to care more about Marinette's personal issues at the expense of other characters. Do you want to know how many episodes this season focused on Marinette's love life in some way? EIGHTEEN (Multiplication, Jubilation, Determination, Passion, Reunion, Elation, Transmission, Deflagration, Perfection, Derision, Protection, Adoration, Emotion, Pretension, Revolution, Representation, Conformation, Re-Creation). Literally two-thirds of the season includes Love Square drama. Even if you want to be generous and count both two-parters as single episodes, that's still more than half the season. This is yet another problem with waiting until what was originally supposed to be the last season to resolve your plot. You need to force all of this development through almost every episode until people get tired of it.

Because of this, Marinette basically took over the narrative of Season 5. Almost every major conflict revolved around her, even the stuff with Adrien. Rather than make a story about Marinette and Adrien working together to break free from Gabriel's influence, Marinette is the one who has to do the heavy lifting and save Adrien herself. I've already talked about this with Adrien, but it bears repeating, as this is same issue I had with Season 4. Just like how Adrien got more focus during a story arc that should have been about Marinette last season, Marinette is now getting more focus during a story arc that should have been about Adrien, to the point where Marinette gets to use Adrien's Miraculous during the final battle with Monarch.

I'd at least be somewhat forgiving towards the shift in focus if Marinette actually got to do anything to advance the plot herself. Because of how often the show focuses on Marinette's love life, very little time is dedicated to showing Ladybug making an effort to actually stop Monarch. The closest we got was in “Illusion”, and that was a plan spearheaded by Nino. Like I said earlier, Felix does more to advance the plot out of any character, even Marinette, THE ONE THE SHOW IS NAMED AFTER!

We have three separate episodes where Ladybug has Monarch at her mercy, but she decides to talk about how she's totally won and that Monarch can't get away at all, and then Monarch gets away in a matter of seconds. I just... this is “SHOOT THEM WITH THE DEHYDRATION GUN!” levels of stupid here! The only reason Monarch gets as far as he does is because Ladybug can't just grab any the Miraculous he has all over his body.

We're seriously supposed to see Marinette as an amazing hero when she keeps screwing up every opportunity she gets to stop Monarch. In the span of one season, Marinette went along with being forced to retire because she got a chance to date Adrien (The Kwamis' Choice), chose not to form a temporary alliance with an Akuma even if it meant possibly getting the Peacock Miraculous back and stopping a potential threat (Pretension), had absolutely no plan to stop Lila until someone else came forward with information on what she was doing (Confrontation), decided to let another Akuma force the mayor out of office (Collusion), and failed to stop Gabriel because she got tricked again and was completely helpless as the entire universe was recreated before she took credit for defeating Monarch afterwards in the new reality and then decided to honor the insane supervillain's wishes and keep her boyfriend completely in the dark about the truth even though she learned not to keep secrets from others (The Final Day) and MY GOD, I HATE THIS SEASON SO MUCH.

When Marinette isn't making terrible decisions, she's lecturing others on how to act around their enemies, and when I say “how to act”, I mean “refuse to give them even the slightest bit of respect after doing the bare minimum to help them try and change”. Marinette really lets her own personal biases toward Chloe and Lila get to her this season with how the latter half of the season had her tell others not to even consider trusting them because of how easy it is for them to take advantage of kindness. You know, something you'd hear someone like Superman or Spider-Man teach kids about.

In fact, here's a little game any aspiring writer can play when writing superhero characters: If you can't imagine someone as noble as Superman saying something like this...

Marinette: But sometimes, the good we think we see in some people is just a reflection of our own, and we end up being fooled by our own kindness.

Unless your intent is for them to be flawed or in the wrong instead of a complete paragon of virtue, you need to go through your drafts.

And just like Adrien, even though Marinette keeps screwing up, she's never held accountable for her actions. She's never allowed to be wrong, and is almost always the one who gets to lecture people, mainly towards the end of the season. A good example of how poorly written Marinette is this season is when she whines about Ms Bustier not punishing Chloe enough when not only does she fail to understand that Chloe is still being punished, but she did absolutely nothing to bring Chloe's cheating to her teacher's attention when as class representative, it's her job. I don't care how stupid that idea sounds, that's what the show goes with, and it makes Marinette's inaction come across as very irresponsible.

But then again, neglecting her duties at school is nothing compared to acting like Marinette didn't fail to save all of reality while not showing the least bit of remorse for it. I'm just saying, when even Ben 10: Omniverse of all shows does this kind of story better, you know you've screwed up. Again, we're supposed to see it like Marinette won because the universe is in one piece, when, once again, SHE FAILED! Like I said, she failed at pretty much everything she set out to do this season and didn't stop Monarch outside of warding off his Akumas. This is seriously how the show was supposed to end, with Marinette failing to save the universe and the audience just needing to accept it. Well, in case it wasn't obvious on my front, I don't. Hell, forget Ben 10: Omniverse. Even Star vs. the Forces of Evil had the main character save the day, even if it meant potentially screwing over countless lives by destroying all magic in the world. Marinette? “Well, everyone I know and love is technically dead and the madman I spent five seasons trying to stop gets to die a martyr, but everything looks like I saved the day, so that technically means I didsave the day! Man, I'm a great hero. Good thing the other characters basically exist to remind the audience of how amazing I am.”

If there's one thing to take away from everything that's happened, it's that this was the season where Marinette has arguably become one of the biggest examples of a show failing to make the audience like their main character. There was much time dedicated to rationalizing and trying to justify the worst possible decisions she could've made and acting like she's still an amazing hero. Stuff like this only serves to further validate the criticisms people have had for her as a character ever since Season 5. And remember, this is coming from someone who went out of their way to defend Marinette last season. In an attempt to show her at her most heroic and virtuous, Season 5 pretty much cemented Marinette as a terrible main character, a terrible superhero, and a terrible role model for children.

Eight Years for This?

I'm going to be perfectly honest with you guys. This season just broke me, and there was a good reason why this analysis took so long to write.

While there were a number of outside factors that made it hard for me to get the time to write (work, the holidays, family gatherings, etc), there were still times where I either didn't have a lot of material to work with, or I just couldn't find the motivation to work on the reviews. I guess throughout all these years, I figured that after all this buildup between the Love Square and Adrien's relationship with his father, there would at least be something I could find this season that would allow me to say this was worth the wait. Unfortunately, it was just disappointment after disappointment this season, with a universally hated finale to boot.

To me, this was the season that burned away the remaining goodwill I had for the show, because there's just no salvaging it at this point. The writers pretty much butchered every single character in some way, excused the main villain's actions for a sorry excuse for a heroic sacrifice, and literally reset the universe so all of the characters we've come to know for almost a decade technically don't exist anymore. Even the cliffhanger for Season 6 really excites me, because why should I care about a character we still know nothing about becoming the main villain? Why should I care at all when the writers have made it clear they don't care either? They don't care about writing character development, they don't care about writing consistent lore for their world, they don't care about approaching serious subjects with the delicacy they deserve and they certainly don't care about telling a consistent story.

Season 5 of Miraculous Ladybug was a failure in every conceivable definition of the word. It failed to deliver a satisfying conclusion to any of the stories that had been set up for years, and if this was how the main story ended, I don't really have a lot to look forward to when Season 6 premieres.

[salvadorbonaparte]

How to set up a research journal

This is just one way you can set up a research journal but it's helping me tremendously so maybe it also works for you. My set-up is partially inspired by this video by Answer in Progress and I suggest you check out their curiosity journal.

Preparation

First you need a notebook. The trick is to find a notebook that you're not afraid to "ruin". We all want a really neat, aesthetic research journal, but the reality looks more like hasty scribbles, but that's okay, that's where the research breakthroughs happen.

I personally bought a cheap lined notebook from Søstrene Grene that I thought looked cute and put a sticker on it. That way I feel good about using it but I also don't mind when my handwriting gets messy because it was only like 3€.

You should also stock up on pens you like writing with. Different colour highlighters and post-its are also a good idea but not a must. Keep it cheap but comfortable.

Title Page

Here you should put down all the really important information: year, title, deadlines, word count, supervisors. Maybe add an inspirational quote to spice it up but keep it simple and relevant.

Key

This should either be your next or your last page. I personally use the last pages of my journal so I can add thing and find it easier. Your key is there to list abbreviations and symbols.

For example, I have different symbols for statistics, dates, new terminology, questions, breakthroughs, important notes and abbreviations for the most important terms in my field. It's shorter to write T9N than Translation.

The trick here is to have enough abbreviations and symbols to save time and effort but not so many that you constantly have to look back and forth between your page and key. They should be memorable and not easy to confuse.

Topic Mind map

If you hate mind maps you can skip this of course or use a different method but what helped me is to visualise all the topics that connect to my research project in a mind map. I then colour-coded the main groups of topics with my highlighters. It helps me to keep an overview on how many topics I need to do research on.

Proposal

If you're writing a thesis/dissertation it can be helpful to have a page set aside for your proposal and take some bullet point notes on methodology, chapter structure, research context, aims and objectives and think of some titles. You can also do this for your lit review and a list of works to include.

Hypothesis and Question Pages

I set aside four pages for this but you can adjust this to your needs. The first page is my hypothesis. It doesn't have to be fully formed yet, it can just be bullet points with five question marks. You can always revise and update it but it is important to keep an eye on what you're actually trying to find out.

The next idea is basically just stolen from Answer in Progress: a section for big questions, medium questions and little questions. These aren't necessarily hypotheses you aim to answer but questions you have about your topic that might be good to look into (maybe they lead somewhere, maybe they don't).

Research Notes

Now comes the big, fun part. Research notes are allowed to be a little messy but you should have some sort of system so you can actually find what you're looking for afterwards. I'm currently just looking at books and articles so that's what my system is based on. You can totally adjust this to include other forms of research.

What I do is that I put down and underline the author and title of my source. Underneath that I use my highlighters and mark the topic of the paper based on how I colour-coded them in my mind map. You might have to do this after you've finished reading. For example, if a text talks about censorship and dubbing in Germany, three of my topics, I will draw three lines in light blue, dark blue and red, the colours I chose for those topics. This way you can easily browse your notes and see which pages are talking about which topics.

When it comes to the actual research notes, I include the page number on the left and then take bullet point notes on whatever is relevant. These are often abbreviated and paraphrased but if something is especially important I will write down a full quote.

As mentioned earlier, I have a key of symbols I use so I can simply put down a '!' in order to differentiate a research breakthrough from a normal note. You can insert your own thoughts much more easily when you know you'll be able to tell them apart later on. At the end of each article, book or even chapter I write down my main takeaway.

Other Notes

This is your research journal and you can do with it what you want. I also added lists of films that might be relevant for my research, a list of databases and publishers to check for papers and tips on research strategy.

If you're working with interviews or surveys you could write down your questions. If you're nervous about your research you could include a list of reasons why your research project is important or why you're doing it. You can include a to-do list or a calendar to track meetings with supervisors. Anything that helps you with your research.

[trashpandacraft]

I found fibrecraft tumblr after searching drop spindles because my dad *didn’t even know what that was.* And despite having been firmly of the opinion that I didn’t intend to learn it, y’all have me getting ever closer to giving in. However, I’m also growing ever more enamored with the idea of weaving - and despite recently deciding to give knitting and crochet another go - I think it looks the most fun of the fiber crafts. My issue is that I have absolutely no space.

But I’m beginning to realize there’s a lot of different looms and types of weaving. So I was wondering if you have any resources or tips for small space methods and storage?

welcome to fibrecraft tumblr! it's fun here, we have enablers.

i will admit that while i love knitting, weaving is amazing, and is much better with regards to instant gratification—weaving for an hour gets you a lot more fabric than knitting for an hour.

so let's talk about weaving, because i have great news for you: you can 100% totally weave in a small space if you want to, and you even have options for how you do it. i'm going to go through basically all the small space weaving options that i'm aware of in roughly size order, and if you make it to the bottom of this you'll have a pretty good overview of space-saving weaving methods.

the first question to ask yourself is what you want to weave. maybe you're not sure yet, which is totally fine. if you don't immediately have strong feelings about it, though, maybe consider if band weaving strikes your fancy. this is pretty limited in size, but lets you weave belts, straps (like camera or bag straps), lanyards, etc.

if you think that sounds neat, it's worth looking into tablet weaving, an inkle loom, or a band/tape loom. tablet weaving takes up no space at all—if you can fit a stack of index cards into your life, you can fit tablet weaving. the tablets are small square cards, often made out of heavy cardstock, and even with a project on them, you can probably fit them into an index card holder.

inkle looms are larger, and to be honest i've never used one and don't know a ton about them, but they're also used for making woven bands. the looms can also be very aesthetically pleasing, if that's something you're into. they can be very big, but the ashford inklette, for example, is only 36 cm long and maybe 12 cm wide.

tape looms are—in my experience, anyhow—larger than tablet weaving but smaller than inkle looms, and even the larger ones are only about shoebox size. they vary widely, from gorgeous, complicated little looms to a handheld paddle that you use to create a shed, which is what you put your yarn through when you're weaving.

if that doesn't sound like good times, consider a frame loom. these are pretty simple—if you ever wove potholders out of stretchy cloth strips as a kid, you probably used a frame loom to do it on. frame looms are generally inexpensive and readily available, and can be used for small woven objects like potholders, coasters, placemats, etc. they can also be used to make some truly stunning tapestries. while you can buy a huge frame loom, you're still only talking about huge in two directions—it might be as wide as your armspan, but it's still only a couple inches thick.

another option is a pin loom. these don't get mentioned a lot, and i'm not totally sure why. pin looms are shapes with a bunch of pins (metal points, usually) coming out of them. on one hand, you're limited to making things that are the shape of the loom, but on the other hand, if you've been hanging around fibrecraft tumblr, you've seen all the things crocheters get up to with granny squares, right? there's no reason in the world that you can't do all those things with the squares made on a pin loom. or the hexagons! or the triangles! i've been kinda thinking about getting a little hexagon or triangle pin loom and using it to sample my handspun, then turning the shapes into a blanket.

if you hate all of that, that's ok! we have more options.

you could consider a backstrap loom, which is an ancient way of weaving that's still practiced today in many places. backstrap looms are cool because you can weave probably 24 inches wide on them, but even with a project on it, they take almost no room at all. backstrap looms are fairly easy to diy, because they're basically a bunch of dowels, so they can be a good low-cost way to try out weaving. backstrap looms will let you make longer, wider fabric than anything else we've mentioned so far!

another option—stay with me—is a toy loom. there are a number of cheap looms for sale on amazon/ali express/some local places that are actually fully functional looms. recently i've seen a number of people (like sally pointer, though i'm sure i've seen someone using one of the brightly coloured harness looms, as well) who've used them and report that they're functional, if basic, looms. you're fairly constrained in terms of project size, since there's not a lot of space for the finished fabric to wind on, and there's a very limited width, but the looms are quite small and tuck away easily.

ok, but so what if you hate all of those options? don't worry—there are more options! this is the part where things get expensive, though.

as looms go, rigid heddle looms are actually quite reasonably sized. i think the smallest one i've seen is a 40cm (~16") weaving width, which is about 50x60 (20x24") in length/width, and 13cm (5") high. so that's more space than anything else we've talked about, but it's still not a ton of space, you know? a 40cm rigid heddle will let you weave lovely scarves and things of that nature—table runners, placemats, strips of woven fabric to whipstitch together into a blanket, etc.

but maybe that's enough. so let's talk about table looms. some of them are quite large—mine, for example, is about a metre square and sits on a frame that it came with. it is not what you would call space efficient. but many of them, especially modern ones, are very compact, and can even be folded up into something more or less briefcase sized. (weird way to consider it, since the last time i saw a briefcase was probably the 80s, but you know what i mean, i bet.) the cool part here is that you can weave damn near anything you want on a table loom. the less cool part is that for the compact ones that fold up, you're looking at hundreds if not thousands of dollars. the smallest one i'm aware of is the louët erica, which folds down to 42x62x42cm (16.5x24.5x16.5") and gives you 40cm (16") of weaving width. i feel like that's impressively small. you'd have to decide for yourself if that's enough to justify the $500 usd/$800 aud price tag, though.

finally, we've come to folding floor looms. i don't think someone who's never woven before should run out and buy one of these unless money is just literally not at all a concern for you, but they are basically the dream for those of us trapped in crappy rentals, and it seemed weird to leave them out when i'd come this far.

some floor looms are various levels of collapsible. to be clear, this does you absolutely no good at all when you're actively weaving, because you have to unfold them to weave, but it does you a lot of good if you'd like to have a floor loom and still have the ability to, say, walk through the living room when you're not actively using the loom.

most relevant to our discussion about small weaving footprints, some looms fold up entirely. they are incredibly fucking expensive and incredibly fucking cool. the two that i'm most aware of are the leclerc compact and the schacht wolf line, both of which fold up to about half of their unfolded depth. they're still not small—i think that they're both the better part of 75cm (30") wide and tall, so even if they fold down to 40cm (16") deep, they're still 75cm wide and tall. which is Fairly Large, though much better than having something 80cm deep sitting in the middle of the floor.

this was a very, very long post, but hopefully makes it clear that there's a surprisingly wide range of options, and they all have advantages and trade offs. if you're asking my opinion, my suggestion would be to try something—anything—with a backstrap setup and see how you feel about it. maybe you love it and keep at it forever, in which case you're in good company: there are entire cultures that weave exclusively on backstrap looms.

if you like producing cloth but don't love the backstrap setup, or don't like using your body to tension the warp, you have a lot of other options, and you're out maybe ten dollars of dowels.

personally, my next loom is probably going to be a pin loom. unless i win lotto, in which case it's going to be a house that has a weaving studio and like four floor looms in it. but probably a pin loom.

[ayyy-pee]

Discord 18+ - Twitter - JJK Masterlist

Pairing: Suguru Geto x Female Reader

WC: 6.7k

Summary: You’d never met anyone like Suguru Geto before. It seems strange that just a few hours ago, you’d never seen or heard of this man in your life. But it feels like you're drawn to each other in ways neither of you can explain. There's a pull you couldn’t resist if you tried.

Rockstar AU

Story Warning: Smut, Blowjob, Mutual Masturbation, Female Masturbation, Profanity because come on..., Sprung Suguru, Cumshots, Facials, Cumplay (a lil bit), Fingersucking, A sprinkle of power dynamic, Oral Sex, First Day Hookups

Suguru art by: @affectbitter

AN: There's some OCs in this one bc this was just a funny idea between me and some friends LMAO. Imagine them however you will!

The roar of the crowd is almost painful in your ear as you enter the venue. You’ve made it just in time, with minutes to spare. 

“Excuse me. Sorry! Just gonna squeeze past you here…I’m sorry…”

The apologies fall from your lips as you navigate through the crowd of people in the arena. You’re trying to find your way backstage before the concert begins for this band… Demon Parade?

An up and coming group, quickly rising in stardom who you never would have heard of had you not been scouring the job boards for an easy and quick way to make money. Imagine your surprise when you found a job posting for them stating the band was in need of an efficient, organized assistant. A go-getter who would be willing to do anything to aid in their success and ride along with them. 

You’d had some assistant jobs in the past, nothing too crazy, but you knew what the basic expectation of an assistant was. So you applied for the job, not thinking there was a chance in hell you’d get it, but you needed something and anything was better than nothing. Besides, the job came with all the perks: benefits, free travel, a food allowance. Sounded like a steal. 

You got the call less than a week later, saying that you were a great fit and exactly what the band was in search of! It didn’t seem real at the time, even after you’d hung up, filled out your onboarding paperwork and were sent all of your information for your first day – the concert you were currently pushing your way through. It felt even less real when you received your all access badge at the arena doors.

You’d made sure to listen to a few of Demon Parade’s songs and you had to admit, you liked what you heard, but you wouldn’t exactly call yourself a superfan. Not like the crowd of people swarming around you as you hurried through to backstage. God, it was fucking packed.

Is this band that good?

The moment you enter backstage, you feel like you can breathe again. It’s less crammed, so you feel like you can relax a bit. But that feeling only lasts for a second before someone practically materializes out of thin air before you. They call your name, one hand coming up to tap the small earpiece in their ear, the other coming up to indicate for you to stop.

“Yep, she just got here,” They mumble into the earpiece. “I’ll bring her back.” They tap the earpiece again, waving to you to follow them. “I trust you didn’t have any trouble getting back here?” 

“Nope, fairly easy,” you answer, quickening your pace to catch up with them.

“Good,” they make a sharp turn around a corner, speeding up and you feel like an idiot essentially running behind them. “I’m Jaz, the band’s manager. We don’t have too much time. I’ll give you a brief overview of the band and each member and then I’ll introduce you to them.”

“Oh, so just…immediately starting? Is there like…a formal training I should be going through first? Or a new hire orientation?”

“No,” they state. “Do what the band asks and if you do it well enough and the band likes you, you’ll be able to keep your job by the end of the night.”

Your eyes wide as you rush to walk next to Jaz. “Wait, what do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. If you make a good impression on the band, we’ll keep you. We’re about to start a national tour in a few days and we need someone who will be able to get the job done. If not, we move on.”

“Okay, so just…do what they ask me to and…that’s it?”

“That’s it,” Jaz confirms. “It’s that simple.”

So this whole first day is a test…given with no actual instructions…Fucking weird, but who are you to argue?

You’ll just have to use your prior assistant knowledge to make it work. If you’ve done one assistant job, you’ve done them all. You think so, at least.

You hurry through the halls alongside Jaz, the hallways snaking around to the back of the venue where there are many different dressing rooms – one for each band member and one for the group. Jaz reaches a door with a sign taped to it with the name Demon Parade on it. Scribbled in the corner of the sign is what looks like a very poorly drawn penis.

Jaz sighs when they see the doodle and whips around to face you.

“First things first, a brief rundown of the band.” They fish out their phone to pull up a group photo of the members on stage at one of their concerts. They point to a beautiful brunette woman in the photo before their finger glides over to a tattooed man with his hair piled high atop his head in a loose bun. “This is Shoko Ieiri – our bassist – and this is Suguru Geto – our lead guitarist. Both very low maintenance, very easy to get along with because they most likely will take very little interest in you.”

They then point to a blonde man who looks about ready to clock out at any moment and then to a white haired guy with freakishly blue eyes. “Kento Nanami is our drummer and this annoying beanpole here is Satoru Gojo – our lead singer,” Jaz finishes, rolling their eyes when they point to Gojo. But you can see a clear fondness there with the way their eyes linger on the screen.

You nod, eyes locked on the heavily tattooed raven haired man on the phone. He looks a little bored, almost like he’d rather be anywhere but where he was at that moment. Even so, his gaze is intense. You know it’s impossible, but you feel as though he’s looking at you through the phone. It’s literally a picture taken at some random venue that you’d never seen in your life. But, it feels like he’s staring right at you. Those feline eyes of his look so deeply into the camera, peer so powerfully into your eyes through the screen, it makes you look away. There’s something about that guy, something that’s almost familiar…it makes a tingle race up your spine. 

You’re not sure if the feeling is good or bad, but you don’t have time to think too much about it because Jaz is knocking on the dressing room door. A massive, burly man donning sunglasses is opening it, peering at you from over his shades. Jaz is moving past him, beckoning you to follow when you don’t move, cemented to your spot.

Because you’re still thinking about that fucking picture.

“Hey,” The goateed man says when you’ve finally entered the room. You notice then that he’s wearing a black windbreaker with Security on one side and his name on the other. Your eyes quickly drift down to his nametag.

Yaga…With a little panda sticker next to his name. This old guy loves cute things apparently. It’s sweet, makes you smile.

Yaga quickly introduces himself. “Nice to meet you,” He grunts, no smile returned. “I’m head of security for the band. My name’s Yaga.” He doesn’t await a response from you, turning to speak with Jaz instead and you take that time to have a look around in the interim.

The dressing room is incredibly spacious. In a corner across the room, there’s a snack table full of an assortment of candies and bags of chips with the members' faces on them as well as an array of drinks. Large couches are arranged throughout the room, enough space between them to give each member their own little area to lounge in. There are also vanity areas along the back wall with brightly lit mirrors and chairs for each member.

You’re assuming it’s Shoko who sits in one of the vanity chairs getting her makeup done. She is the only female member after all. She’s as beautiful in person as she appears in pictures, though her hair is a lot longer than in the picture Jaz showed you earlier. She’s on her phone scrolling boredly, but when the door clicks shut, your eyes meet in the mirror and she waves quickly as the makeup artist applies her lipstick.

“Hey,” is all she says.

On the far side of the room is a blonde man reading a newspaper, he glances up for all of two seconds when you enter the room and then he’s back to reading. Next to him is a girl who can’t yet be in her 30s, leaning her head against his shoulder. They look cozy together. Maybe they’re dating? You make a mental note to ask Jaz about this later.

Just a few steps away from you, seemingly appearing out of thin air by the snack table, is Satoru Gojo, lead singer of Demon Parade.

His eerily blue eyes glance up when you enter the room, and then he shoots you a beaming smile as he leaves his spot by the snacks and strolls over. He grins at Jaz who has now made their way back to you, rolling their eyes again as Satoru gets closer.

“Jaz,” he purrs. “What do we have here? A meet and greet?” Gojo asks, eyes locked on his manager. His gaze wanders over their clothes as if he can see straight through them. “You look good. Missed you last ni–”

Jaz holds up a hand, cutting him off and getting straight to the point. They introduce you to Satoru, Shoko, Nanami and the woman sitting next to him who you’ve learned is Nicole – their vocal coach, though she doesn’t appear to be doing much vocal coaching while she makes googly eyes at Nanami.

Yaga sighs as he goes back towards the dressing room door and Jaz follows behind him, pulling their phone out and typing away. You don’t miss that the moment Jaz is putting their phone back in their pocket, Satoru is pulling his out to quickly glance at his screen, smirking before he slides it back into his pocket.

Okay, there’s clearly something going on there.

“Call me if you need anything,” Yaga utters to Satoru, but Satoru isn’t even listening anymore. He’s back at the snack table rummaging through the available items. Yaga pulls the door open to let Jaz exit first. Behind you, you hear him briefly grunting an “excuse me” as someone else enters the room before he’s also gone.

And you can’t really explain it, but the moment this other person enters, the air in the room shifts. 

At least for you. 

They move past you, their bare arm just barely brushing against your own and you startle at the charge of pure electricity that jolts through you at the near contact. They seem to feel it too, because they pause, whipping around to look at you and you’re met with those sharp, cat-like eyes you’d just seen peering through a screen now staring into your own. That familiar tingle you’d felt outside of this very room zips back up your spine.

Suguru Geto stands before you, his beautiful face framed by his signature raven locks that now cascade around his shoulders. He’s somehow even more striking with his hair down, beautiful. He says nothing as you stare each other down, the air between you thick with something you can’t quite describe. The room around you blurs as your vision seems to hone in on Suguru and Suguru only. 

It’s after a few moments of tense silence that Suguru breaks eye contact first, eyes trailing down your form. And suddenly you feel as though you’re under a microscope, being so closely examined by him. You can’t help but feel exposed. He tilts his head to the side, his hair falling with the motion. He cards his fingers through his strands, pushing them back, eyes narrowing when they meet your gaze again. His brows knit together for a moment and then he speaks.

“Have we met before?” 

Your pathetic body reacts immediately, melting the second his voice reaches your ears. Goosebumps race across your skin, even as your body feels like it’s being engulfed in heat. Your heart feels like it’s crawling up your chest and into your throat, your pulse is beating behind your ears so hard it’s making you dizzy. 

What is this?

You don’t understand this sudden racing of your heart, the way your hands feel clammy, the explosive reactions your body is having to him simply looking at you. 

Suguru leans his head to the other side and the movement brings you back to reality, helps you to remember that you’re just standing there like a fucking idiot when he had asked you a question. You shake your head quickly, suddenly unable to find your voice. 

Suguru looks you over once more, almost like he doesn’t believe your answer, until Satoru interrupts.

“You’ve never met her. She’s our new assistant. Starting today,” he announces, mouth full, from what seems to be his permanent spot by the snack table. He tells Suguru your name. Suguru quickly glances back at Satoru before his eyes drift back to you again.

“Yeah?” Suguru asks, eyes still on you. You can see Satoru turn back to the snack table from your peripheral, picking at different candies. “Nice to meet you. I’m Suguru,” he states.

For some reason, it dawns on you then that Jaz is no longer there to speak for you. You’re on your own. Jaz’s earlier words ring through your ears. Whether or not you get to keep this job depends on how well you do tonight.

So you clear your throat, finding your confidence again. You know what you’re doing and Suguru is essentially your boss. Just like the other members, so you needed to build a relationship with him all the same. “Yes, I’m your new assistant and I’m very excited to be able to work with you all. Please let me know what you need and I’ll do my best to make sure you’re all happy.”

A small smile graces Suguru’s features and the tiny motion has your heart picking up speed again.

Fucking relax.

“Yeah, I got a couple things you can do for me,” he voices.

“Okay,” you glance back towards Shoko who is eyeing you through the reflection of the mirror. “Anyone else need anything before the show?” She shakes her head indicating your assistance isn’t necessary. You look to Nanami who couldn’t look less interested in what’s happening right now. Next to him, Nicole shakes her head as well.

“All good here,” Satoru says, waving you off. “Suguru, be nice.”

“When am I not?” Suguru chuckles, closing the distance between you and slinging his arm around your shoulder. The contact makes your skin erupt with goosebumps once again.

Only this time, you feel a little less crazy about your body's seemingly random reaction to Suguru’s touch because as you glance down at the arm wrapped around you, see the telltale sign of goosebumps along his skin, too.

- - - - - -

Suguru doesn’t have shit for you to do. The concert is happening soon so there’s not much else left to do that the other staff hasn’t already taken care of. He’s not sure why he lied to you, but the moment he saw you, there was something familiar about you that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He’s certain you’ve never met, he would’ve definitely remembered your face; lovely, beautiful, stunning, all the words that could describe how nice you were to look at. Looks aside, there’s just something about you that has his mind reeling.

He’d heard from Jaz that the band would be getting a new assistant today. Didn’t make a difference to him, staff was staff. He was sure the new assistant would be fired by the end of the night, if not the end of the week. They could never keep an assistant too long, most of them deeming Satoru too needy, Shoko too cold, Suguru too mean. The list went on and on. The simple truth of the matter was Suguru had a goal, a plan for his success and if an assistant wasn’t able to hang in there for the ride, then they weren’t worth his time. Suguru stopped caring about who their assistant of the week was a long time ago.

So what was it about you that had him hiding you in his dressing room until the show started; showing you his favorite guitars, asking you about how you got this job, wondering how you liked it so far, if you’d heard their music? Any other assistant he’d have running to get him a coffee, doing menial tasks just for laughs. But for you, he’d grabbed a coffee with you and spent that time practically bombarding you with questions the moment he had you alone. Suguru knew more about you in 20 minutes than girls he’d dated for months. And he had no idea why he cared so much.

“Are you sure it’s okay for me to be here?” You ask. Leaning against the wall of his dressing room, Suguru watches as you sit on his dressing room couch, strumming the strings on his guitars. 

“I mean, it shouldn’t matter.”

“Jaz made it clear I need to keep you all happy or else…” you make a dramatic slicing motion across your neck, pulling a laugh from Suguru.

After finding out Suguru did not actually have anything for you to help him with, he spent a few minutes trying to calm your mini panic attack where you told him about how nervous you were. How badly you needed this job. So he’d brought you back to his dressing room to hang out where no one would see you aimlessly wandering.

“The guys said they’re good, so no need to worry about them. They’re happy right now,” Suguru reassures you.

“And you?” You ask, eyes meeting his from across the room. It makes him inhale sharply, trying to calm the swift pounding of his heart. “Are you happy?”

He nods. “I’m happy.” You pluck a string on his guitar, the offkey note cutting through the tension Suguru was beginning to feel. “Despite your horrible guitar playing skills, I’m happy.”

You laugh. “Rude.” You pluck again, this time the note is more bearable. “If I make it past today, I’ll be on the road to continue on tour with you guys,” you told him.

“Oh yeah?” His eyes look on as your fingers dance along the strings of his guitar awkwardly. He could show you how to hold a guitar, how to hit a note that’s not offkey, but he’s enjoying watching you struggle a little too much. It’s cute, though his body’s reaction to watching the way you hold the neck of the guitar is…less appropriate than what the situation calls for. “Has anyone ever told you you have really nice hands?”

Because he wouldn’t mind having your really nice hands wrapped around his cock.

The question comes out before he can stop it. For any other groupie he’d brought back to his room, the answer to the question wouldn’t have mattered. He’d just be making small talk, he wouldn’t have even meant the compliment. But for you…he was mesmerized by the way you held his instrument, the sight filling his head with lewd thoughts.

You freeze at his question, glancing back at Suguru. “No…thank you?”

Suguru chuckles, moving from his spot on the wall to take a seat next to you. The air immediately thickens, this close proximity to you making it hard for him to breathe.  “You are…really bad at guitar.”

“Oh my god, were you this mean to your past assistants?” The question comes out with a giggle, as you set Suguru’s guitar down next to you, turning to face him.

He smirks, turning his body to face you as well. “Only the ones who are shit at guitar.”

“Oh, so you let all your assistants hang out in your dressing room and show them your instruments then?”

“Nope.”

If anything Suguru was way fucking meaner to his past assistants. In less than two hours, you already had him cleaning up his act.

You make a face, scrunching your nose up in Suguru’s direction and he decides he likes you already. Yeah, it’s only been a few hours, but he wants to see that face more often. The choice wasn’t up to him, though. You had to impress the other members, too. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t help you along the way.

A light knock at the door interrupts Suguru’s thoughts.

“Yeah?” He calls and Jaz peers their head in, brows furrowing when they see you on Suguru’s couch.

“She was cleaning my guitar for me,” Suguru lies easily, motioning towards the instrument next to you. Jaz either believes him or doesn’t care because they don’t even acknowledge it any further.

“Showtime, let’s go.”

- - - - - -

Suguru had been nice enough to give you some tips on how to ensure the band was happy after the show.

“Nanami loves a good coffee and a book set up in his dressing room after a show,” he’d noted. “Satoru is easy. Leave him some of those little mochi candies with the red bean paste inside? He’ll eat like fourteen of them and pass out. Shoko literally just wants to be left alone after dealing with Satoru all day. Put a cigarette and a bottle of liquor – any kind – in her room and she’s set.”

“And you?” You asked, nervously fidgeting in the hall outside of Suguru’s dressing room. Suguru had kept your mind off of panicking and inadvertently pissing someone off on your very first day. With no delegated tasks, no orientation or training and no clue in hell about each member’s preferences, you were truly grateful to Suguru for all he'd done for you on your first day. He was your lifeboat today.

“Me?” It seemed he’d forgotten he was also a part of the band, which was even more endearing to you. He’d been more concerned with making sure you were successful today than his own needs.

“Yeah, you. I want to make sure everyone is satisfied.”

Suguru hummed a look flashing behind his eyes and disappearing as quickly as it came, it still sent a shiver up your spine all the same. He placed a hand on your arm, inhaling slowly. His eyes locked onto where his hand lay on your arm, like he could feel the way your stomach twisted, the way your breathing increased, how your pupils dilated just from his touch.

And Suguru could feel it. Because his body was reacting the exact same way.

“I’ll be fine,” he breathed, letting go of your arm. “Hopefully at the end of the night, Jaz will have good news for you.”

He turned to leave, but not before calling back, “I’ll see you after the show.”

Now you stand on the side of the stage, unable to stop staring at Suguru as his hands fly along the strings of his guitar with ease, beautiful notes carrying out of the instrument and dancing around the stadium for the audience to hear. You can’t get over the duality of this man. 

Backstage he’s chill, if not a little intimidating. But in the short time you’d spent together, you found it easy to talk to Suguru and open up to him. He was funny, smart, insanely talented. You did not expect a rockstar as big as he was to be so down to earth. 

Now as you watch Demon Parade perform their last song of the night, you can’t help but think Suguru is the sexiest man on earth. The way his hair whips across his face when he shakes his head to the music, how his large hands control every note that drives the song, how his rich voice blends smoothly with Satoru’s to really push the message of the songs across. And when Suguru’s really feeling it, the way he lets the world see the tiny metal ball sitting atop his tongue.

He is so insanely sexy.

It seems every little move he makes has the crowd losing their minds, men and women alike screaming his name. And you can’t blame them, occasionally rubbing your own thighs together to stoke the heat pooling between your own legs whenever Suguru would peer over to the side and grin at you mid song. 

Fuck, working with him may end up being harder than you anticipate. If you are able to keep this job, you’ll likely have to maintain a friendly distance. You don’t trust yourself not to do something stupid with the way your body seems to respond to him any time you’re near each other.

When the show is over, Satoru thanking the crowd for coming out, the band members all go their separate ways to their dressing rooms. You wait in the hall, standing with Jaz who again is on their phone. They seem to always be working, but this time you watch their fingers fly across their phone screen, a tiny smirk on their lips. You bite down on your bottom lip to keep yourself from smiling.

You’re pretty sure Jaz and Satoru are sleeping together.

You nearly jump out of your skin when Jaz clears their throat, their eyes boring into your own. Did they hear…your…thoughts?

And then they smile. “Just got the green light from the band. You’re in.”

Eyes wide, you stand there gaping like a fish until you finally find your words. “Just like that? I mean…there’s not a formal meeting or anything?”

Jaz shoots you a deadpan look, like you’re wasting their time with your stupid fucking question. “Look around you. Nothing about today was formal. Get used to it. Go home, pack your bags. I’ll email the details of where to meet us in the next couple days before we get on the road. Be on time please. Don’t miss the tour bus leaving.”

They turn on their heels before you can thank them, making their way down the hall (in the direction of Satoru’s dressing room, you can’t help but notice).

The clean up staff moves hurriedly around backstage, rushing off and on the stage. And you just stand there, the giddiness of the news bubbling in your chest. You want to scream about how happy you are, but you contain it, instead opting to go tell the person who helped you to lock in your spot today.

After a short trip down the winding halls of the arena, you knock softly on Suguru’s dressing room door. It doesn’t take him long to answer, the door swinging open and revealing him in a loose fitting tee and some sweats. His hair is damp from a shower, strands clinging to his face, cheeks flushed. You can practically feel the heat of his bath radiating off of him.

He’s as captivating off stage, like this, as he is on stage. You can’t help but stare.

“Hey,” he breathes, voice rough.

“Hey,” you practically sigh, cheeks heating furiously.

It’s just you two, standing there, staring at each other. The world continues to move, it all becoming a blur as you refuse to look away from the other. You, watching as the flush on Suguru’s cheeks slowly creeps from his face, down his neck and to the exposed part of his chest the ‘V’ in his shirt allows you to see. Him, watching as your chest rises and falls, breathes picking up rapidly as he gazes at you.

You’d never met anyone like Suguru Geto before. It seems so insane that just a few hours ago, you’d never seen or heard of this man in your life. Now in this moment, standing before him in front of his dressing room, it feels like he has a pull on you that you couldn’t resist if you tried.

“Just heard from Jaz. Looks like I’ll be going on the road with you,” you tell him, voice coming out smaller than you’d intended.

“Yeah?” His low voice is nothing but a whisper, eyes darting down to your lips quickly before they shoot back up to your eyes. 

“Yeah.”

Then his tattooed hand is cupping your face, your arms are looping around his neck, his mouth is colliding with yours as he pulls you into his dressing room, slamming the door behind him. It’s dizzying, the heat rolling off is his body, his scent invading your senses. The hand touching your face slips to the back of your neck, making you sigh into his mouth. It’s so fucking unfair how a move so simple had the power to make you melt into a puddle for him.

Suguru’s body molds against yours as he pushes you against the door of his dressing room, pressing his own arousal against your thigh. And you gasp, the thick feel of him making you moan.

“Fuck,” Suguru presses a sloppy kiss to your cheek, rolling his hips into you. “I don’t know what it is about you,” he groans, kissing along your cheek again, rolling his hips into yours once more.

You feel the same, like there’s something about him that keeps drawing you to him. The stars only seem to continue aligning in your favor. First getting this job, this trial run day, meeting Suguru, Suguru helping to make sure you got to keep your job and you actually getting the confirmation you needed. It’s like you were meant to meet one day. You’re eternally grateful.

You press a kiss to Suguru’s lips, your hands finding their way into his hair and pulling him closer to deepen the kiss. He slips his tongue into your mouth, further deepening the kiss, trying to taste everything you have to offer. You’re panting into his mouth as he rolls his hips into yours roughly. 

“I want you,” Suguru breathes against your lips. “I want you so fucking bad, I’m losing my mind.”

His mouth is back on yours, hands grasping at your waist, pulling you as close as he can. You want him too, you probably want him just as badly as he wants you. But there’s time for that. You’ll be on the road together for months. That’s surely enough time to have each other every which way you want. But tonight, you want to show Suguru how grateful you are to him.

“Let me thank you for today,” you offer Suguru breathlessly when you break the kiss. His brows knit together for a brief second before they rise at the same time you fall to your knees before him.

“Are you sure? You don’t have t–”

“I want to,” you assure him. Suguru gulps, nodding as he watches you wet your lips.

Hooking your fingers into the elastic of his sweats and briefs, you tug down, freeing Suguru’s erection and wasting no time wrapping your hands around his length. It’s just the way Suguru imagined when he watched you strumming his guitar. Better than he imagined, actually. He shivers when your hands grip him, your mouth watering with the thought of tasting him as you watch a drop of precum form on his tip.

He’s big. Bigger than you had pictured. You swallow, thinking about how in the hell you were going to be able to possibly fit all of him in your mouth.

“Take it slow, baby,” Suguru tells you, as though he can tell what you’re thinking. He brings a hand down to gently caress your cheek.

Peering up, your tongue peeks out of your mouth, tentatively flicking against the head and Suguru sighs shakily, staring intently. He watches you closely, his tongue running along the inside of his cheek as your lips fall open and you wrap them around his cock. You take him into your mouth, slowly sinking down as far as you can go before you pull off and sink down again.

Eyes locked, you watch with hardly concealed elation as Suguru’s pupils blow out, dilating so much you can no longer make out the color of his eyes. 

“Fuck,” Suguru’s hips buck forward like a reflex, head falling back as a deep groan falls from his lips. Your mouth is so warm, so fucking wet. He wants to revel in the feel of it. Doesn’t want you to suck him so good he blows his load down your throat yet. He looks back down at you, at the way your mouth is stuffed full of him and you’re not even halfway down. Suguru utters a curse under his breath. 

“Stay right there,” he tells you, rougher than he intended, he knows it. But it’s so fucking important that you don’t move right now or he’s done for. “Just hold it - ahhh, yeah just like that, angel.”

You place your hands against his thighs, holding yourself still with Suguru’s cock in your mouth. The weight of him on your tongue, the sound of his harsh breathing, his hands gently holding your chin, it all makes a delicious heat pool in your core.

Suguru takes a deep breath, pushes his hair back with his hands as he exhales. He’s trying to catch his breath, trying to keep his composure right now, but fuck. It’s so hard to hold it together with the way your mouth is stretched around him, with how he’s just barely halfway in and he can already see the tears brimming in the corners of your eyes as you try to take all of him.

Suguru’s had his fair share of flings come back to his dressing room with him, sure. But you… there’s something about you that has his heart thundering in his chest, has his cock throbbing within the wet confines of your mouth, has him reaching down to caress your cheek and wipe the pooling tears away as you try to take him deeper. Your eyes close with the action.

“Look at me,” he pants. And you do, your beautiful gaze finding his again. “Fuck, you look so pretty like this,” he purrs, loving the way you haven’t moved since he told you to stay. You’re already such a good girl for him. “Think you can take more?”

You mutter a muffled agreement against his cock, still not moving. Just the vibration makes Suguru’s balls tighten, a threat that he’s not going to last very long with you.

He hopes it won’t be like this the next time.

He also hopes there is a next time.

Because he’s beginning to realize something. It hasn’t been that long since he met you. Hell, it’s been less than a day. But, he’s so fucking into you it’s insane.

You peer up at him from beneath your lashes again and Suguru hisses the moment your eyes connect. He runs both hands through his hair, his thick black locks cascading around his face as he looks down at you.

“Fuck, you’re so beautiful. You know that?”

You nod your head, tongue pressing against the underside of Suguru’s cock as you slide more of his length down your throat. You’re not going to be able to take all of him. He knows it.

You shift on the floor, thighs rubbing together to give you some sort of relief from the aching arousal between your legs. Suguru doesn’t miss this. You’ve worked hard. You deserve to enjoy yourself, too. It’s not like you got to keep your job only because of him after all.

“Touch yourself,” Suguru commands. “Play with that pretty pussy while you suck my co–” His voice cuts off, a harsh groan ripping from his throat when you move forward, one hand squeezing his cock as you try to take even more of him, the other slipping into the waistband of your pants. “So fucking good...” he whimpers, and you can’t help but moan when your fingers finally meet the onslaught of wetness that’s been rushing between your legs, absolutely soaking through your panties.

“Jesus,” he murmurs, petting your hair before gently fisting the strands between his tattooed fingers so that you’re forced to look up at him. “Ah…I love how hard you’re trying, baby. Think you can take it all the way for me, angel? Can you take it all the way into that tight fucking throat for me?” 

You nod enthusiastically, eager to please with a mouth full of Suguru’s cock and your fingers rubbing tight circles on your clit. The vision has Suguru’s eyes rolling into the back of his head. “You’re gonna fucking kill me,” he sighs. Suguru pulls you forward, and you let him, going as far as you can until you’re gagging on his dick, the drool pooled in your mouth dripping from the corners of your mouth.

Even still, that doesn’t stop the moans escaping, the little mewls that let Suguru know you were fucking loving this as much as he was.

“Ah – fuck, fuck–” Suguru breathes, pulling you off of his cock with a loud pop. “I can’t,” he pants. “I can’t. If you do that again, I’ll cum –”

You didn’t wait for him to finish, taking Suguru in your mouth again, taking him as deep as you can go before pulling back and taking him in again. The lewd squelching noises of your slick fingers playing with your sweet little pussy and the mixture of your spit and Suguru’s precum hitting the floor of his dressing room fill the air. You take him to the hilt, your nose buried deep in his thick raven curls.

And Suguru’s hips began to move, fucking into your mouth as he held your head in place. This was what you wanted, right? Suguru warned you. He’d warned you what would happen if you swallowed his dick like that again, if you choked on his cock like you just did one more time. He warned you and you kept going, pushing him closer and closer. So he couldn’t help it when his body tensed, when his cock stiffened, when his thighs shook and his cock twitched in your mouth.

He couldn’t help it when he pulled out of you as quickly as he could, pumping his cock with a quick “fuck I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, baby–” muttered before his cum shot out of his swollen tip, covering your cheeks, your throat, your tongue and your chin.

And you couldn’t help it when you pushed two fingers into your tight hole, pressing your thumb to your clit the moment Suguru’s cum covers your face. And you see stars, clenching hard around your fingers as waves of your orgasm crashing over you until your vision nearly blurs.

“Shit,” Suguru murmurs with a sigh, the aftershocks of his orgasm sending shivers up his spine. He takes your arm, pulling your hand from your drenched panties, closely looking over the sheen of your release covering your fingers. He parts his lips, taking the digits into his mouth and sucking, licking your hand clean of your orgasm before he kisses you hard, shoving his tongue into your mouth immediately and groaning when he tastes the mixture of both your releases. He doesn’t even seem to care that his own cum now covers his face. The sexy grunts and moans tell you he loves it.

When he breaks the kiss, he looks you over, licking his lips of the mess he made between you. “Let me get a towel to clean us up.”

He stands, pulling his pants back up to his waist before he lifts you from your spot on the floor. You hear him shuffling around in the bathroom area as you take a seat on his couch. He returns shortly, sitting next to you. You close your eyes as he gently wipes the warm, damp towel over your face. “God, you almost killed me.” Suguru huffs quietly.

You chuckle, opening one eye to peer up at him. “Damn, am I that good?”

Suguru smiles, chuckling. “Let's just say, I’m not ever letting them fire you.”

Discord 18+ - Twitter - JJK Masterlist

[yanderes-galore]

Hello! Could I please request a Romantic rivalry between Princess Cadence and King Sombra?

I like this idea, a savior vs a tyrant! You're a Crystal Pony in this :) Sorry this took so long, this ended up being an overview more than a detailed rivalry (I keep running out of ideas....)

Yandere! Princess Cadance vs King Sombra

Pairing: Romantic - Rivalry

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Manipulation, Sadism, Stalking, Overprotective behavior, Imprisonment, Minor violence, Cadance isn't married to Shining Armor in this, Abuse of power, Forced/Dubious relationship.

Princess Cadance was your savior.

Her return to the Crystal Empire after her wedding with the help of the Mane Six helped heal your mind and soul like many Crystal Ponies.

King Sombra used to rule the Crystal Empire with an iron hoof, you were forced to play the role as loyal slave and servant

But such a role was abandoned once the Crystal Empire was returned to its former glory.

You lived a much happier life with Cadance in power.

Yet the threat of looming evil only seems to creep closer to you....

I definitely like the idea of you being a royal servant.

You used to be a Crystal Pony who served King Sombra.

As a sadistic king, he liked to toy with you.

Perhaps even gaining some sort of attraction to his weak servant.

Your life was miserable before Cadance or any of the other Princesses came along, King Sombra always enjoyed keeping you close.

He never enjoyed other ponies around you and often had you sit beside his throne.

With him, you're a toy and pet.

Even when he left, his disappearance made the whole kingdom disappear due to a curse.

For what felt like decades you were left in limbo.

Only to be brought back to a new ruler.

Princess Cadance assumed rule of the Crystal Empire.

Used to King Sombra, you quickly rush over and bow, all ready to serve.

Instead... you're met with a chuckle coming from the Princess.

"No need for all the formalities! You don't need to bow...."

Puzzled, you're confused.

Despite this, you listen and stay a loyal servant to Cadance.

Cadance, no doubt sensitive to things like love, can tell you've been... hurt.

Which leads to her often checking up on you.

You're always so... quiet.

You never make eye contact with her and struggle to speak.

Cadance may make it a goal to make you comfortable.

She's often patient and invites you over for a chat.

There's times she can tell you're hesitant in the castle and walks you around the Crystal Empire.

This is the reason you begin to view the Princess as your savior.

Not only was the kingdom back due to her and the Mane Six, but she wanted to help you.

You become closer to the Princess due to her kindness, for once enjoying the idea of serving a royal.

Cadance cares for you a good deal, often treating you like you're equal to her.

She's obsessed with seeing you smile and heal from your emotional wounds.

It makes her... happy.

The Princess is often protective of her servant

A stern look is often on her face when she sees you around others or seems upset.

Cadance represents love... it's only fitting that she wants you to experience such a thing.

The issue comes with King Sombra's return.

You see, the tyrant of a ruler hasn't forgotten you.

Not only does he want his throne back, but he wants his servant.

Which eventually leads into the two rulers clashing.

The dynamic of this rivalry is actually very basic.

A loving and caring Princess against a cruel and selfish King.

What's worse is they both happen to be close with their royal servant.

You only want to be with one, that's Cadance.

When Cadance sees how you cower before Sombra's presence, she's determined to fight for you and her ponies.

There's multiple times in the series where King Sombra attacks the Crystal Empire.

Cadance would protect you in every one of them.

Each time Sombra attacks, the two end up fighting.

Cadance often orders you to hide while she confronts King Sombra with Shining Armor.

Meanwhile Sombra is interrogating the Princess who usurped his throne and her guard on where you are.

IIRC, Sombra actually gains control of the Empire at one point.

It's amusing to him to drag you in front of a bound Cadance, grinning maliciously as he shows her who you belong to.

Cadance genuinely loves and cares for you.

She liked the idea of helping you improve, even beginning to have feelings for you.

She had no idea of the true pain you went through.

Not until she sees how Sombra treats you in the flesh.

She hates how he forces you to bow, to care about him as he uses you.

Sombra likes you for power, he's possessive of you.

It's unknown if his dark heart genuinely loves you or not.

The moment Cadance is freed by Twilight who came to her aid, she's definitely helping to get you out of Sombra's hold.

Magic will no doubt be thrown around in an attempt to dispel Sombra, by the time he is dealt with, Cadance is quick to pull you into a hug.

Cadance may even think of marrying you by the end of the encounter.

Your destiny is intertwined between two rulers.

Whoever rules, you follow obediently.

For you that could mean a life of love and care... or a life of hate and tyranny.

Unfortunately this is a power struggle you have no say in.

The thing with Cadance and Sombra is not only the fact they're opposites, but their way of courting a darling is different.

Sombra is more upfront and possessive, often liking the power dynamic between you.

Cadance is more subtle, she seems like the better choice... but may be just as controlling.

Both of them are bad for you, you can only hope that the lesser evil wins in the end.

At least Cadance is affectionate, right?

She cares for you, it's more comforting than Sombra's commands.

Although, both rulers hold a darkness of different kinds...

If Cadance married you, then you may just be locked in another vow of loyalty regardless of what you want.

If Sombra took you away, then it will be just like before.

You begin to realize both options are merely a different set of chains...

Fuzzy cuffs and still cuffs in the end.

Unfortunately, your fate is locked here in the Crystal Empire...

Like you will soon be once a victor is clear.

[lurkingteapot]

Free Thai language learning resources

I’ve been learning Thai for the past 20 months. This list is by no means complete or comprehensive, what works for me doesn’t have to work for you, etc etc. That said: I’ve used most of these and found them useful, I thought you might, too. Have fun!

Youtube channels with free video lessons:

There are tons of wonderful teachers on youtube; this is by no means an exhaustive list. The three channels listed here are comprehensive, long-running, and updated regularly; if you have other favourites, please reblog and append!

Comprehensible Thai is a channel that teaches Thai in Thai, from zero, via the comprehensible input method. They have videos from total beginner through upper intermediate/lower advanced levels available.

Learn Thai with Mod – Mod runs a language school that offers good, structured group classes; she and her co-teachers often upload short videos about specific aspects of Thai. The channel has been around for a long time and they cover a lot of topics, including grammar points.

Thai Lessons by New (Learn Thai one Word one Sentence) – lots of good vocabulary and situational phrases

Other channels I like:

Advanced Thai with Kruu Momm -- one of my favourites, Momm’s a star. Not included in the upper list only because this is definitely more of an intermediate-advanced resource.

Thai with Grace -- I knew of Grace via her polyglot channel and travel vlogs before I realised she also teaches Thai. Fun stuff.

Kat talks Thai -- I believe Kat is more active on instagram (@kattalksthai), but these are still really neat.

Perth Nakhun’s Basic Thai playlist

Honourable mentions because they’re interesting and can be nice supplements (yes, the video titles on these channels tend to be clickbaity, the content is useful, though):

Stu Jay Raj: Stu is a polyglot based in Thailand. His channel is a bit of a mixed bag, but he has a very interesting approach to languages and sometimes does foreign accent reduction / accent analysis sessions on his channel (with consent and participation of those whose speech he dissects).

Thai Talk with Paddy: Paddy is an Australian who learned Thai when he was a volunteer in Thailand, he’s kept it up. Fun things about language learning and culture

Listening comprehension

I’m assuming many folks on here who are interested in Thai already watch some Thai shows (yes I’m stereotyping but also this is tumblr), which means you’re spending time listening to Thai.

If you’re not:

Netflix, Youtube, WeTV, and Viki all have several Thai shows with English subtitles available. The Youtube channel of Thai broadcasting giant GMMTV has English subtitles on nearly all of their uploaded series, some series are also subtitled in languages other than English. one31 is another huge channel; they have English subtitles on some series and some series also have subtitles in Thai. There’s tons more – find a rec list and a Thai show that sounds like you’d enjoy it, chances are you’ll be able to watch it for free, legally, on youtube. You can use the youtube controls (or the ones on netflix) to turn the speed down to 75% —this can make it a lot easier to catch what’s being said. 50% gets so draggy that I personally find it almost harder to understand, but ymmv—give it a shot!

https://lingopolo.org/thai/ has real-life recordings for listening practice; sign-up is required but it’s literally just an e-mail-address, user name and password. Using the site is free.

https://www.activethai.com/ has a section dedicated to learning the tones (under “Overview of Thai Tones”) including a self-test for listening that I found very useful.

Learning to read

I will always, always, ALWAYS recommend learning to read the Thai script. All available romanisations for Thai have drawbacks, and besides, you learned to read English with its “though through thorough tough thought”, you can damn well learn to read Thai. I promise it will help you improve your pronunciation (yes, really) and overall understanding of how the language works.

Learn-to-Read-Thai resources that seem comprehensive and like they should do everything in one:

Anki decks “Read Thai PHASE 1 - The Consonants“, “Read Thai PHASE 2 - Thai Vowels“, “Read Thai PHASE 3 - Consonant Classes” and “Read Thai PHASE 4 - Tone Rules” by Khruu Gaan (ครูกานต์). Anki is probably the most powerful spaced repetition software I have ever used. It’s free on all desktops and android. These decks have sound.

Memrise course “Read Thai: A Complete Guide to Reading Thai“

Other resources I used (In hindsight, I feel like I should’ve picked one resource to learn to read from and stuck with it; I think I was rushing and made things more complicated than need be for myself with my hodgepodge mix-and-match approach. But hey, I can read now.)

https://www.activethai.com/ – the site I started with. Teaches the consonants separated by class and with sound. The only reason this is no longer my top recommendation is that I ended up using this alongside a resource that helped me memorise what the words used to represent the letters actually mean because the site itself didn’t tell me, and I wanted that easy way to have 44 vocabulary words ready as soon as you’re done learning your consonants, and it gives you access to neat mnemonics such as ไก่จิกเด็กตาย(เฎ็กฏาย)บนปากโอ่ง.

The chart on Wikipedia’s English article on the Thai Script

the reference section of Thai-Language.com

In order to better learn to read Thai written in different fonts (modern and handwriting fonts can be tough at first), the Thai Script typographical styles overview on Thai-language.com was a huge help, as was throwing simple phrases things into gdocs and messing around to see how different fonts made them look. This chart from sanukmaak.com also helped.

Speaking and pronunciation

The hardest one for any new language for most folks. For me personally, finding someone who speaks the language and is willing to correct me was an absolute necessity, but I know that’s not always an option. If you’re going it on your own, make sure you check out the resources above for learning to hear the tones and those sounds and sound clusters not present in your own language correctly first.

Things to try on your own:

shadowing: Whenever someone on a show utters a sentence you think might be useful, or provide a useful pattern, or something just sounds cool, rewind and try to speak along as they say it, trying to make it sound as close to their pronunciation as you can.

try to record yourself and listen back -- yes, it’s cringe af but it will HELP.

memorising short sentences and phrases: tying back to the section above, there's a ton of youtube videos that is "phrases to use in [situation]" that are great for targeted learning if you're up for it

self talk (cautiously! don't want to cement bad pronunciation habits)

if you’re linguistically inclined: looking up descriptions on how to make a sound correctly sometimes helps, as does watching videos of folks who’ve successfully learned the language.

once you’ve learned to read: find sentences to read somewhere (twitter, a textbook, whatever) and read them into your phone’s dictation engine. See if the software understands you correctly. Adjust as needed until it does.

Websites and apps to find language partners or (paid) tutors

Like any other app where you ‘meet people’, please exercise caution on these.

italki (mainly for finding tutors and teachers, but you can find language partners on the forums)

Preply (web/app) (for finding tutors/teachers)

hellotalk (app only, iOS/android) for finding language partners -- free to use basic features like messaging, voice rooms, etc; has annoying ads

tandem (app only, iOS/android) for finding language partners -- free to use basic features, has ads

any other app or website that’ll let you meet people, like local facebook groups (yes really), instagram, etc

(note: Neither hellotalk nor tandem allow users to sign up without selecting a binary gender. it sucks. I’ve seen people who managed to circumvent this on Hellotalk by signing up via apple ID (? I think), but it’s hearsay and I have not managed to do so myself.)

Books (a book) that are (is) worth spending money on imo

Higbie & Thinsan: Thai Reference Grammar. The Structure of Spoken Thai. Orchid Press: Bangkok, 2002. Yes, it’s ancient in textbook terms. It’s not perfect, but it’s still the best reference grammar for Thai I’ve come across so far, and I use it frequently.

Random bits and bobs

Stu Jay Raj has two videos in particular that I, as a phonetics-and-phonology-loving person, loved and found extremely useful and wished I’d watched before I started to try and learn the script: Thai Vowels for Dummies in 5 Min v2 - A System Impossible to Forget and Thai Bites Extended Edition - Transliterating Thai using IPA. I realise these may be overwhelming and less helpful for people with no prior phonetics or phonology training, but they helped me so much it’d feel amiss not to include them.

Resources I recommend AGAINST using when starting out

drops/hello words -- seems like their Thai courses have been created using machine translation that wasn’t sufficiently proofread. They will assign you nouns in places of the corresponding verb or false cognates, and that’s within the first 10 or so lessons. Might be useful once the level where a learner can tell “ah, yeah, that’s … not right” has been reached? idk.

transcription as generated by google translate: BURN IT WITH FIRE. it’s a transliteration, i.e. 1-to-1 representation of 1 Thai letter = 1 Latin letter (extended), it’s not phonemic, it’s not going to help ANYONE (and those who can make sense of it presumably already read Thai and would be better off with just Thai script). Just. Stop.

Google translate as a dictionary: still shitty but not AS bad as the transcription function. Still, for the love of all that you hold dear, please, save yourself the pain and confusion and just use thai2english or thai-language.com instead.

---

And that’s that from me, friends. Yeeting this into the void before I second-guess myself more. Please append additional resources!

Edited to fix a couple of typos and errors on 2023-06-15

[cpericardium]

Compilation of Megafire's Wildbow Essays (Imported)

I haven't read all of them myself, but the few I did were always worthwhile and interesting, so I thought I'd index them here for anyone who hasn't heard of them or checked them out. As I recall, these were written by Megafire as the chapters were coming out.

CHARACTERIZATION OF CAROL IN WARD

REDDIT INDEX

Chapter 3.6 

The Warden's HQ, or, Playing With Time

Chapter 4.6 

Natalie, or, Working Through Proxies

Chapter 5.9 

Power Dynamics, or, Why Carol Love(s/d) Mark

Chapter 6.3 

Trust, Safety and Control, or, General Opinion

Chapter 7.4 

A Glimmer of Hope, or, Victoria and Carol have an Actual Conversation!?

Chapter 8.2 

Meeting the Parents, or, Never mind, Carol is Back to Being Carol

Chapter 8.9 

Baby Steps, or, Carol Manages to Respect Boundaries for Once

Chapter 9.12-9.13 

Bonus Damsel Interlude, or, This Will Pay Off Later, I Promise

Chapter 10.1 

The Diner, or, I Yell a Lot

Chapter 10.y 

Bonus Chris Interlude, or, This Has Nothing to Do With Carol, I Just Really Like This One

Chapter 12.1 

Ruminating on New Wave, or, Why Mark Loves Carol

Chapter 12.2 

Carol vs Damsel, or, I Told You It'd Pay Off

Chapter 12.f 

Ryan and Cradle, or, What It Means to be Good, and, Competing Access Needs, or, Why the Dream Room is the Worst

Chapter 12.9 

The Bubble, or, Making You Feel Even Worse About Carol Getting Hurt

Chapter 14.5 

The Greenhouse, or, Carol Brought Low

Chapter 14.6 (Sort of) 

Drawing Similarities, or, What's Left for Carol

Chapter 14.7 

Chris' Crossroads, or, Screw It, I Guess I'm Talking About Chris Too Now

Chapters 14.9 + 14.10 

Her Mother's Daughter, or, What Amy Learned From Carol

Chapter 14.12 

Piecing Together Chris, or, What Do Monsters Mean?

Chapter 15.7 

Slaves to Fate, or, Predictions and Responsibility

Also Chapter 15.7 

Ultimate Agency, or, Who Is Contessa?

Chapter 16.4 

Mockeries and Funhouse Mirrors, or, Paths Not Taken

Chapter 16.y 

Attempted Therapy, or, Amy Is Not Doing Well

Chapter 17.1 

Family Issues, or, Confrontations Vis-a-Vis Parentage

Chapter 19.1 

The Curious Case of Sarah Pelham, or, A Basic Overview of the Shit That Happened to Sarah

Chapter 19.9-19.10 

The Talk, or, How To Screw Up Your Kids In One Easy Conversation

Chapter 20.e6 

Carol: Final, or, What Has Carol Learned? (Hint: Not Much)

---

PALE ANALYSIS

REDDIT INDEX

Verona and her Dad, a Transactional analysis

Why Verona's Dad is a Literal Manchild - mostly about Out on a Limb 3.1, but with references to 3.4

Adults, Parents and Children

Lucy is Verona's Only Good Parental Figure (and That's Kind Of Sad) - Leaving a Mark 4.2

Pale: Justice

The Cast Of Law And Order: Kennet - Cutting Class 6.z

Practitioner Supremacy

Boy There Are Some Real World Parallels Here - Gone Ahead 7.1

Practitioner Parenting

Regular Old Bad Parenting - Vanishing Points 8.4

Abuse

Brett is an Absolute Bastard - Shaking Hands 9.9

Avery's Games and Gimmicks

Breaking Patterns Is Hard - Dash to Pieces 11.10

Transgressive Acts

Why the Mussers are like the Spartans - Break 5

Practitioners and Others, a Binary

The Binary is a Lie! - Gone and Done It 17.x

Judging the Judiciary

What About the Judges? - Crossed With Silver 19.z

Hostile Environment

Power Plays for the Future - In Absentia 21.12

[sparklecarehospital]

an overview of my progress on the new site over the past 5 months of building

i decided i would put together a big post compiling all of the things i have currently implemented to the new site since at the moment it's scattered amongst a million small update posts. i feel like this will be good reference for anyone who has ideas that aren't included yet

the comic reader

you can now change the placement of the comic pagination arrows to be above, below, or on both the top and bottom of the comic page.

you can search for individual page numbers via a search bar (and also search 'cover' 'back cover' etc)

you can bookmark pages and save your place at any time in any series, and the home landing page will give you a link to your saved page when you revisit the site so you dont have to go all the way to the read section just to access your place. saving your bookmark tells you what page you're saving (or clearing if you're removing it)

you can now select individual scenes in the volume that have non-spoiler names but proper associations to the content for returning readers to quickly find specific scenes

on desktop you can change the size of the page on your screen

on desktop you can hide the site header (this is not necessary on mobile)

there is a legend explaining what each button does

new comment service that does not have ads

transcripts now come from the sides of the screens and do not require scrolling down to read them, and they are correct and no longer inaccurate on certain pages

tooltips that explain what each navigation arrow button is for

content warnings

you can select individual categories of content you do or don't want to see via switches

you have the ability to disable warnings entirely if you wish, just turn all of them off

you can choose between verbal warnings (stuff in dialogue) or visual warnings (things seen on-screen)

you can suggest adding content warnings to specific pages if there are errors OR if there is something major i overlooked

there is a page that lists every content warning in a volume with contexts for each individual warning, whether it's verbal or visual, and links to the pages

there is a pre-moderated comment section that allows anyone to ask questions about content warnings (for example, asking if something will ever be in the comic or asking what category something specific would be listed under).

there is a list of things that do not get warnings and a list of things that will never be depicted in the comic

scenes that did not have content warnings before now have them to match the proper category system

archives

volume archives are now images instead of links, and they are displayed in a grid format which is mobile-responsive so it doesn't take absolutely forever to scroll through an entire volumes archive

volume summaries are more easily accessible

the new transcript archive which is a text-only version of the entire comic, including a clean version in case you need things in dialogue filtered out

mobile devices/tablets

the website is now properly mobile responsive and designed to function like a regular mobile website and is not unbearable to use anymore. it just feels and looks like any other mobile site!

comic pages now touch the edge of the screen and do not always require zooming in to read dialogue

transcripts are now more device-friendly and do not appear broken on small screen devices anymore

all comic reader features work on mobile (except the 2 desktop-only features)

content warnings do not take up too much space or overflow the comic page box

margins are improved to make basically everything more mobile friendly

you can still see page backgrounds faintly on mobile, but they have an overlay to make reading the comic page contents easier. this was not originally planned but i made it happen! yippie!

display

the site now has a built-in dark mode that works for every site theme, however, keep in mind that due to the nature of dark themes they are obviously not as colorful as the main site themes

there is now a saturation slider which changes the saturation of the site to whatever percentage you wish

saturation affects the background and does not ignore it

the screen does not flash as new elements load in, however, images specifically may take a moment to load depending on your internet speed. this is something i'm trying to fix but i can't guarantee it because it's not entirely in my control how websites load images depending on your internet speed

secrets!

cast page

cast page for each series is divided by individual character type (main patients, side patients, main staff, side staff, family, outsiders etc)

cast profiles are mobile responsive in an easy-to-use way and do not take forever to scroll through on mobile devices, instead they are collapsible and you only have one open at a time.

desktop has anchor links to specific profiles using my cute emoji edits :]

search bar on the main cast directory page that takes you to specific characters by entering their name (or variations of it)

profiles include allotpuns, genders, pronouns, nouns, sexuality, species, age, hatchday, height, and a list of all of their afflictions

there are popups that explain the meanings of certain phrases or words (like specific sexualities) and neopronoun usage explanations and examples

cast page profiles for all of the currently public cast members

biographies that contain character history (or at least the currently public history) and a detailed explanation of their personality that replaces the trait system for simplicity's sake

secrets!

comic itself

pages with errors have been corrected

pages with improper characterization/retconned information have been updated and replaced with new dialogue

character card intros now contain pronouns and retconned pronouns have been corrected

uni is no longer referred to with exclusively he/him anywhere except in the comic itself to avoid confusing new readers/people who do not look at other areas of the site

scenes that did not previously have site themes now have them, for fun!

secrets!

FAQ

the FAQ is no longer a million miles long despite containing all of the questions it originally had. it is now collapsible sections that make accessing certain question types easier

pre-moderated comment section that allows anyone to ask questions about the comic, even if they do not have a tumblr account. these questions are directly on the FAQ itself. it is pre-moderated to keep things on-topic.

bug report page where you can describe problems you're having if the site isn't working right for you. this is also pre-moderated. common/important issues will be pinned

navigation bar

there will be links to all of the ask blogs on the navigation bar, including the AUs

there is a link to the spinch lore page directly at the top. no more digging through the FAQ!

navigation bar has dropdowns to specific types of pages to increase the link count without cluttering/taking up too much space

the links are no longer poorly sized images, instead they are actually made with html

landing page

when you first open the site, you will be linked to a settings page that allows you to set your display settings and content warnings in advance

you can set saturation and select dark mode if you want

this landing page is not bright and has an overlay to prevent it from immediately forcing you to see bright colors

this is everything that is currently implemented. there may be things added in the future, this is just all of my current progress.

what do i have to finish?

uploading the comic. i currently have volumes 1-2 fully uploaded and transcribed, v3 is fully uploaded, and v4 is undergoing the upload process.

finish the archive pages to include all of the volumes

finish the cast profiles

work on the spinch lore page

do proper beta testing with the crew to make sure everything works on as many devices as i can possibly test it on

thank you to everyone for being patient with me over the past few months as i work hard on this. i feel really good actually writing out everything i've done overall because i have more progress than i actually realized!!! i hope everyone is excited to see all of this in action because i can't wait for you to see it either!

[mythosidhesdollhouse]

Shibajuku Anime: Akira (Pt. 2 - The Review)

The nitty-gritty breakdown promised in Pt. 1. This post was an absolute drag to work on, but I'm glad to report I did at least find a few nice things to say. Precious few.

This is such a hilarious joke where do I even begin--

Alright friends and enemies, let's get this over with--

Cursory overview of the packaging: Forgot to take a closeup of the front before I removed her from the box, but it doesn't matter much since she's pretty accurate to the stock photos aside from her hair being several shades lighter than I was expecting (my first grievance).

Vague but threatening, bordering on nonsensical. Sounds like it was written by Chat GPT.

The array of blinding whiteness we discussed at length previously. (and no I will not collect you all, indeed I will be deeply shocked if the other three dolls in this line ever see the light of day)

Okay enough of that, let's get into the actual DOLL. For better or worse I am somewhat surprised to report this appears to be an entirely new sculpt. Not just the head, the body as well. The new one was clearly modeled after the original, but there are enough minor differences to convince me they made completely new molds for most if not all of the parts.

The face has the most obvious differences. The first thing I noticed when handling her is that the material Akira's head is made from is softer than Yoko's. Her cheeks are more rounded and less angular, her nose and mouth are smaller, and her eyes are smaller and more forward facing. The eye chips and lashes appear to be the same material that was used on the previous dolls, but the design of the iris and pupil have changed drastically, and combine with the overall revision of the makeup to give the new dolls what I suppose they thought was a more 'anime' look. Personally I prefer the wider, colored brows and glitter eyeshadow seen on Yoko, but I think Akira's stronger cheek blushing is an improvement on the old look.

The differences in the face sculpts are even more apparent in profile. Overall I think I actually prefer the new face. It's like a revised and updated version of the first draft we got on the original dolls.

Might as well drop a word about the hair while we're discussing the head. They appear to both have the same fiber--either very low end nylon or poly, I admit I'm not well versed enough to tell the difference--but Akira's rooting is much sparser than Yoko's.

At first glance not much to note about the new body appearance-wise, but upon closer examination we find the elbow and knee joints are cut differently, and the material(s) they are made from are not the same. While Yoko's entire body appears to be made from the same shiny hard vinyl throughout, Akira's torso and legs are made from a matte vinyl, while her hands and arms are rubbery and slightly pliable.

Akira's hands are smaller than Yoko's, and her arms are slightly slimmer.

Same hilariously tiny feet. If you check the backs of their knees you can see how the joints aren't quite the same.

Ok the sigh has returned. We're getting to the point that really bummed me out. You may have noticed the staining on Akira's arms in some of the earlier photos. Let's take a closer look.

The marks go all the way around on both arms. I suspect the blame for this lies in equal parts on the rubbery plastic her arms are made from, and the absolute shit material of her dress. OMG THIS EFFING DRESS. Sure it looks fine--Nice basic lolita silhouette, cute graphic elements, plenty of lace and ribbon trim--but the material it's made from is just nasty (and no not in a good way like Ms. Jackson). It's....crispy? Crunchy? Honestly the only way I can think to describe it is cheap, plasticky paper. It doesn't feel like fabric at all, and it's easily the worst tactile experience I can remember having with a doll garment. If you are sensitive to abrasive textures trust me you do not want to touch this thing. It made me physically cringe. And on top of all that unpleasantness, it's not even colorfast!

Her other pieces are fine. Shoes are fine, socks are fine, headband is actually better quality than anything else here and is the only thing that redeems the ensemble for me. With all her kit on Akira is decently cute enough to hang out with the other dolls I have on display at the moment, as long as I don't have to touch her.

Yoko's outfit is relatively simple by comparison, but it's made from NORMAL, soft, non-crunchy fabric, has some nice lace and metallic details on the skirt, and features the iconic Shibajuku cat socks, which are this brand's greatest (only) contribution to the wider doll community. Best of all, NO STAINS. Yoko has been wearing these pieces for eight, nine years? I've never bothered to redress her. Not a single mark on her. Call me crazy, but I'll happily take simplicity over a more elaborate design made with poor quality material that actively harms the doll.

That's it! I've run out of things to say. I got Akira with a $5 discount code Walmart sent me for posting a review of another doll, and I still feel like I overpaid. I don't hate her--you all know I love weird looking dolls, and for all their flaws I find these girls rather sweet (if derpy)--but I am just plain old mad at all the corners Hunter Toys obviously cut to make these dolls as cheaply as possible. It's an insult to their customers and their dolls.

[tanadrin]

This series of four videos on Ukraine and the Russia-Ukraine conflict is very interesting. The first is basically just a narrative political history of Ukraine from about 2000 to 2014, talking about different political factions that were relevant in the country in the period, and how different internal and external pressures shaped politics. It's very helpful for understanding the Ukrainian political context, including just how recent and just how shallow the supposed tensions between monolingual Russian and bilingual Ukrainian-Russian speakers was in 2014.

The second video is an overview of the Donbass war from 2014-2022, which you might have been vaguely paying attention to at the time. But it's very helpful to have it all laid out in chronological order with the benefit of hindsight, especially due to the obfuscation of Russian operations at the time that made it hard to work out what, exactly, was going on. It's a combination of a good old 19th century-style filibuster (the military expedition, not the parliamentary maneuver), Fox News-style propaganda, and some (rather badly failed) attempts at astroturfing civil unrest--why Russia thought that would work becomes important in Part 4.

Part 3 is just an extended argument that NATO expansion is not relevant to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and while I already agreed with that assessment, it's nice to have it laid out in detail. The very very short version is that by NATO's own public criteria, Ukraine was simply not a candidate to join NATO, and had given up on joining NATO, and that had been painfully obvious since at least the Obama administration. Even more frustratingly, there were multiple points where Russia had an offramp to escalation, where it had gotten everything it could have possibly wanted from the conflict in Donbass, and it refused them all.

Part 4 is the author's attempt to explain why it refused them. The very short explanation is that Russia's government is led by idiots, who are very enamored of a flavor of conspiracy theory that has its origins in the LaRouche movement, and which has been bubbling in both left-wing and right-wing circles since 2000. In this worldview, the US government acting through the CIA (or the British royal family, or George Soros, or Jewish bankers, or whoever your bogeyman of choice is) has an almost supernatural ability to overthrow any government on earth by funding performance art groups (seriously), civil society NGOs, and protestors, and that almost every revolution, actual or so-called, since 1989 has been their direct work, from the post-Soviet revolutions, to Euromaidan, to the Arab Spring.

This belief, in its more overt or fragmentary forms, is incredibly popular, spurred on no doubt by historical instances of CIA malfeasance and actual aggressive wars waged by the Bush administration. But the problem is, it's bunk. During Russia's initial moves against Ukraine in 2014, they tried essentially the same playbook in the Donbass, and of course it failed miserably--you cannot actually astroturf a popular uprising. (The CIA has preferred to stage coups and assassinations, which are a different animal from color revolutions.) The separatists in the Donbass eventually had to be supported by a few thousand Russian troops and direct military aid.

But Putin, driven by his own paranoid misunderstanding of world events, the clique of yes-men he has embedded himself in, and his fear of gay Nazi Jewish CIA agents, simply got Russia in over its head. There is no offramp because Russia cannot articulate what its goals are, and because "stop trying to use George Soros to overthrow the Russian government" is not something the US can agree to, since they are not doing it. The only thing that might have prevented Putin fucking with Ukraine in the first place was maybe if rigging the parliamentary election in 2011 hadn't resulted in protests, in which Putin saw the specter of the hand of the CIA--but of course the US and NATO and the EU had nothing to do with that!

And to cap it all off, since the 2010s the LaRouche movement and its theory of color revolutions has been making inroads in China, so we have that to look forward to in coming decades.

[casuallyawkardd]

Dating Miguel O’Hara

Pairing: Miguel O’Hara x GN!Reader

Summary: An overview on what dating Miguel O’Hara would be like. Starting from how you meet/get together to actually dating and the long run

Warnings: fluff, angst, age gap kinda?? I picture reader in their early/mid 20s and Miguel in his early/mid 30s

A/N: Wow, two in one day, a rare sight indeed 😂 This is SFW but like if ya’ll want a NSFW it’s here and send in requests if you have them! Or just your own headcannons I don’t care I have no one to talk about this man with🤷‍♀️

Meeting

Miguel is a workaholic, so he doesn’t leave the Spider HQ hardly ever. He usually spends his time in his office/lab working, in the cafeteria on the hunt for an empanada and maybe in his private quarters if Lyla convinces him to take a break. Aside from going out to save the world, both his own and others, Miguel is basically a homebody....except for when it comes to one thing.

Coffee.

Miguel lives off of the stuff. His superhuman abilities can only keep him going for so long. He needs an extra boost to keep him going through the long nights. That being said, he’s very picky about his coffee and refuses to touch the liquid trash the cafeteria offers. Which is how he meets you.

You’re a college student, in your senior year actually, having spent the last three and a half years working at a small cafe for some spending money. It’s nothing special, somewhere that’s a secret delicacy to the locals of Nueva York. It’s quiet, which is what Miguel likes. It also stays open late, something he appreciates as well. 

The first one to fall is you. To you, he’s the handsome regular who always comes in ten minutes before closing, orders a Red Eye, requesting that a questionable amount of espresso shots be added to his black coffee, and grumbles a ‘thank you’ before leaving. Does he know you’re the person behind the hand that slides him his coffee? Probably not. But seeing his face every Tuesday/Thursday night is fine with you. 

Call it a middle school crush, if you will.

One night you decide to change the routine, preparing his drink before he’s even arrived. Like clockwork, the bell at the front door rings and he comes in. You throw him off as you present the coffee and tell him the total before he can get a word in. 

He finally looks at you, really looks at you. 

You think it’s the first time he’s actually lifted his head, making him even taller than he already seemed. Miguel pays, mutters the same ‘thank you’, but leaves a much more generous tip than usual. 

Catching Feelings

Things go on as usual, that is until Miguel notices that it’s no longer you serving him his drink. Whoever the new guy is, he doesn’t make the coffee like you do. It tastes shitty now. How do you even mess up black coffee???

When he finds out you switched to working mornings, he’s suddenly getting his coffee at the buttcrack of dawn. You take this as a good sign, daring to strike up conversation. You had tried in the past, but only ever received grunts as replies. To your surprise, he indulges you and even asks questions of his own.

“Why’d you switch shifts?”

You explain that you had started taking classes in the afternoon, prefering to end the day studying and doing homework rather than wiping counters and serving half awake customers. He keeps going.

“What are you studying?”

“How much longer until you graduate?”

“Any jobs lined up?”

It’s the kind of questions you’d hear from your distant relatives who don’t know you well enough to ask anything interesting. But when he does it...your stomach finds itself in knots. He’s no longer some handsome regular. Miguel is funny, in a sarcastic, blunt sort of way. When he chuckles, it rumbles in his chest. His smiles are small and brief, usually only one corner of his mouth turning up rather than a full on grin. 

Miguel doesn’t notice that you’ve wormed your way into his thoughts. It’s a slow process. The small talk building up on itself with every visit until one day he realizes he knows that when you were little, your older brother pushed you off the slide at the neighborhood park and that’s why you have a small scar on your temple. How you love your anatomy/phys class, but hate the TA that runs the lab. How it’s ironic that you make the best coffee he’s ever tasted and yet you personally prefer tea. 

Hell, even the other spiders are starting to become aware that something has him distracted. How his ‘quick coffee runs’ progressively taking longer and longer and that he smiles a little when he tosses the empty, cardboard cup in the trash. It’s all an inside joke until Peter B. opens his stupid mouth. 

“So who are they?”

“Who’s who?”

“Don’t be coy, O’Hara~”

Miguel doesn’t know what his friend is talking about until he’s alone later that night, watching his screens. He finds that he can’t focus as well as he usually does, thinking maybe he needs some coffee. The thought makes him freeze.

“....God dammit.”

Dating

It doesn’t take long before he asks you to be his partner. Not because he’s fallen ‘madly in love with you’, as Peter likes to say, the thought seeming childish to Miguel. Rather, it’s because he wants a reason to keep you around. 

Hear me out.

You go on a couple dates when his schedule allows it. Rather when Lyla/Jess/Peter convince him to touch some grass... He enjoys going to the science museum, tagging along with you to the gym and treating you to a nice dinner from time to time. But like I said....he’s a workaholic. What most would consider quality time with a potential new love interest, he views as time away from his job. Worrying that the multiverse will collapse at any minute if he’s not watching it. 

When he asks to be exclusive, it’s more of an excuse for himself to keep seeing you. He likes you, likes how he acts when he’s around you. Likes how you make him feel. Miguel wants a reason to keep seeing you and not have the reason be to satisfy his coffee fix.

It helps that you’re both busy, that way he doesn’t feel like the only one who has to take rain checks for date night. He was upfront from the beginning, telling you that he was Spiderman and letting you know what you were signing up for. That he’ll try to be attentive, especially in those crucial first months of dating, but that he wouldn’t be able to always give you the attention that you deserved.

It’s a lot to hear, but you agree to be with him. He’s too pretty to pass up, you think. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? It doesn’t work out and you break up? You’d been there and done that with past partners; it was nothing new. 

Nothing could’ve prepared you for dating a man like Miguel O’Hara.

He’s got more pros than cons, being written in the books as your first ‘mature’ relationships. The honeymoon phase is short lived, only a few weeks as you two enjoy the new relationship. He shows you around HQ, you invite him to events at your college, the typical stuff. Afterwards, you two go back to being busy, you’ve got finals/graduation/job hunting and he’s got a Spider Society to run. The result being that you call each other more often than talking in person. Miguel doesn’t do texting, you thought you were reserved with your emojis, but Miguel brings a whole new form of dry to the table. With a call, at least you can pick up on his tone. 

Miguel, from the beginning, isn’t one for PDA. Reserving the times when he holds you and kisses you breathless for when the two of you are alone. That being said, he’s affectionate in his own way. Holding doors open, remembering what you like to order from your favorite food places, standing between you and anyone he deems as sketchy. Spoiler alert, it’s anyone who isn’t a fellow spider. He cares and you know it, which is what matters. 

Future

Okay girliepops, yes that’s a gender neutral term, let’s be honest with each other. 

If you want to be a for lifer with him, it’s not gonna be an easy road. He may have more pros than cons, but the cons are a lot more severe. 

He gets absorbed in his work. He’ll go for long periods of time without contacting you. Hell. you two will probably be on and off for a good chunk of time. It’s not that he doesn’t love you like when he first fell for you; rather he struggles to find a healthy balance. He’s used to the world being on his shoulders, being responsible for the fate of the multiverse, at least that’s how he sees it. 

Normally you’d drop him like all your other exes, but you’re in too deep now. You reminisce on the good times because when things are good between you, they’re really good. 

You decide to be the push the both of you need. Even if it’s considered ‘toxic’, you give him an ultimatum. He either prioritizes you or the rest of the multiverse. Miguel scoffs at the idea at first, thinking the choice is obvious, but then he really thinks about it. Realizes that he’s as much in love with you as you are with him, arguably more so. He’s mad, but not at you. Mad at himself. Mad that the idea of you out of his life is almost the equivalent of when he lost the life he had with Gabriella. That he’d be a fool to let you slip away.

“....God dammit!”

You two get married shortly after that incident, ya’ll have been together for years at this point if you include the on and off phase of your relationship. It’s nothing fancy, just signing some papers and throwing a party with a small group of friends and family. Similarly to when you first started dating, Miguel considers the marriage an excuse to be around you more often. The voice in the back of his head that tells him to go home to sleep rather than on the platform. That reminds him that there’s something worth going home to now. 

Is he the perfect husband? God no. He’ll fall into his old habits of putting work first and you second, but he does better about it and it doesn’t happen as often as when you two were just dating. The thought of getting to crawl into bed, wrapped in your arms as he falls asleep, motivating him more than anything else to keep the multiverse safe.

[goqmir]

if u wanna fantasize about having awesome sex with my ocs (of which i have like two and theyre basically my fursonas) heres a lil overview of the sex youd be having below the cut. this is like not a joke this is serious business im talking about real fantasy furry sex in there okay this is not like a joke setup.

yoshi fursona will give you insane head. that tongue game will blur your vision. she likes pets on the snout and getting her hair pulled, and the spines are an erogenous zone. she has a dick of like moderate size and i like to imagine she has some sort of knot situation down there cuz i think those are really swag. she loves getting railed so much and if you cum inside her it will start forming a big hardshell yoshi egg in her thats ready to be laid in only like two hours or so. laying yoshi eggs feels really fucking good btw. however notably if you put a plug in her butt the eggs will not come out and she'll stay pregnant until the plug comes out so you could easily torment her with that (she thinks thats really hot and cool)

for the pooltoy version of yoshi fursona its a little more up in the air. you could imagine it having a dick similar to non-pooltoy version and like a hole you can rail too. i think generally pooltoy yoshi has no dick or anything but it does have a cute little built in hole under its tail you can absolutely rail. and maybe that hole has like an opening in the back you can undo to fill the pooltoy with your cum if u wanted. alternatively one could imagine no parts of the pooltoy are built for sex and it just paws u off and squeakily moans when you grab its handles. this one is up to viewer interpretation. i encourage you to think of awesome and weird sex you can have with pooltoy yoshi :D it has big useless paws and the nozzle you fill her with air with is so sensitive. and it enjoys being filled with interesting liquids other than air. and loves being objectified.

my rubbersuited fox oc i kind of like to think of as my fursona for when im a boy (in comparison to yoshi who is very girly). so far ive only drawn this sona once and its pretty new but its very cute <3 its rubber suit covers everything but its eyes so theres no holes directly here. however, one thing that is fun to fantasize about is like.... some sort of small portal device built into the rubber suit? so you can rail it even through the permanent rubber suit (and even like. remotely :3). it cant talk and theres no way to interact with its mouth but it will squeak so much when you fuck it. it wears a big green cloak that tends to obscure its rubbery body but underneath it has cute squeaky boobs and maybe like a cute rubbery bulge you can toy with. and it has a really big rubber tail behind it. and its an expert in archery and firearm combat which isnt necessarily sexual but is really hot