#but i don't think it's a specific attack on syd either.........

[chaoswillcalmusdown]

sometimes my app forcibly throws me into the 'for you' side of tumblr and like. idk why so many posts about season 3 are phrased as 'why does claire get to fuck carmy but syd doesnt?' 'why does everyone get to be happy but syd doesn't'. there's such a vitriol specifically directed towards the fact that syd is not happy in the narrative currently. sorry, remind me who are these everyones who are happy on this television show? is carmy happy? is richie? is fak? is marcus?

[dessarious]

Old Scars and New Beginnings Pt105

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Selina looked around the room in amusement. The sheer number of people rivaled a meeting with most of the Justice League. This group, however, was far more diverse. And far less likely to back down to Batman.

"I don't see why we can't just stay here. We'll go home, so anyone who's watching will see. Then Mari can transport us back here." Gina was exceptionally unhappy about leaving. Her idea wasn't a bad one either. Mari was frowning in thought, but Bruce just looked annoyed.

"If it were any other threat, I'd agree with you. But Talia, or whoever she sends, is as likely to attack us here as anywhere else. I can't risk you being caught in the crossfire."

"I can handle myself, and honestly, I have a few words to say to that woman myself after the last time we crossed paths." Bruce looked like his head was about to explode.

"You know Talia?"

"I do, and seeing the way she raised her son after what her father did to her, I'm more than happy to make sure she doesn't get near him again." Now Damian was studying the woman. His cheeks were a bit flushed and Selina wasn't certain if it was embarrassment that she thought he couldn't handle himself, or just because someone he didn't know at all was willing to protect him.

"Marinette, what do you think?" She couldn't tell if Bruce was stalling to get his thoughts in order, or if he thought Mari would back him up. She'd been whispering with Tikki and Kaalki since the argument started.

"I don't see why everyone thinks it has to be one or the other. If Kaalki has a constant food supply, they can simply keep a portal open between the two houses so everyone can come and go as they please. It would be a good option as an escape route if it's needed as well." Gina and Bruce both just stared at her and Selina had to fight back a laugh. They'd been arguing for over an hour and Mari made the entire thing defunct. "I would still feel better if Syd and Trixx stayed at the house so they can shield it though." Syd just shrugged her acceptance. Selina wasn't certain what was going on with that girl, but she was even more closed off than usual. But Chloe and Mari didn't seem worried about it, so she was willing to overlook it for the moment.

"In that case, we're going to need to add more security. Especially to the rooms where the portal is. The last thing we need is Talia finding and using it." The fact that Bruce didn't argue, or even resist changing directions, showed just how much of an impact Mari had on him. Before, he would have dug in and insisted that his plan was best. Especially since Damian's safety was involved. Her flexibility was wearing off on him. Bruce started hashing out security plans with the others, but Mari immediately went back to whispering with the Kwami. The grave looks on the Kwami and the worry on Mari's face made Selina edgy.

"What's wrong, kitten?" Selina kept her voice soft so the others wouldn't pay attention. She didn't want to take the focus away from the planning if she could avoid it. Mari startled a bit and hesitated.

"It's just... Whatever is after Damian is getting closer and..."

"And?"

"I think whoever it is spent time in Paris within the last few years." Well, that was oddly specific.

"What makes you say that?" She kept her tone calm and soothing.

"I said before that they hate the Miraculous, and they do, but..." Selina just waited. "Most of that hatred is for Ladybug specifically." Selina blinked at her for a moment before pulling the girl into a hug. Mari burrowed into her.

"It's not your fault, Kitten. You did the best you could with what you had. Whatever their reason, and given they are almost certainly part of the League, you are not to blame."

"Maybe." It was the best she could hope for. Mari still seemed to think that her friends were going to leave once they really thought through what her being Ladybug meant. Nothing they could say would help, and this would be no different. Bruce raised an eyebrow at her, and Selina just shook her head. Mari didn't need them to make a big deal of this right now. The only other one who had noticed the interaction was Luka. While Selina could understand why the boy made Bruce uneasy, it was obvious he was completely devoted to Marinette. And where her other friends would push and prod her to do what they thought she needed, Luka just supported her. Even now, he just made sure no one else caught on to Mari's distress.

"It is a clue, though. Can you think of anyone you ran across as Ladybug that might feel that way?" Mari didn't respond and Selina regretted asking. It was entirely possible it was just someone who had something happen while they were there and blamed the heroes for it. The last thing she wanted was Mari going through the list of people who she thought had a reason to hate her. "We'll figure it out."

"A lot of people blamed us for how long everything went on. For everything they had to go through."

"You know that wasn't your fault, right? Gabriel was the one who caused all that, and if you hadn't been there to stop him, it would have been worse." The girl just shrugged. "You didn't have a choice. You were put in a terrible position and you did the best you could. All of you did. You don't blame the others for what happened, do you?" She shook her head.

"Other than Adrien, I picked them. I was the one who made the plans. I was the one who couldn't catch him." Selina pulled back and lifted Mari's chin to force eye contact.

"You were and still are a child. You were forced into a responsibility that no one should have expected you to take. You and Adrien both were put into an impossible situation with zero knowledge and zero training. The others, you gave a choice. Perhaps it wasn't wise of you or them, but you all did what you had to do. And you did it well enough that the Kwami decided to give you even more responsibility. I'll say it again. Nothing that happened was your fault."

Mari wanted to argue, Selina could see it. She wasn't certain if the fact that Mari couldn't come up with anything was proof that they were getting through to her, or just proof of how exhausted she was. She just pulled the girl back into a tighter hug.

"I just wish it didn't feel like my mistakes were coming back to haunt me." She sounded so tired.

"Whatever this is, isn't your fault. And if you weren't here to warn us that someone was after Damian, who knows what would have happened? At least now we can prepare."

"I'm sure you would have been fine without me." Selina couldn't help the annoyed sigh that left her.

"Given that they funded a cult for this opportunity, whatever they have planned is big. It's entirely likely we would have walked straight into an ambush." They probably wouldn't have found out who the cult's money backers were without the information Mari gave them. She shuddered to think what going into that confrontation would have been like if they weren't prepared for Talia's tricks. "You don't give yourself enough credit."

"I still don't understand why Damian's mother would send someone who hates him to retrieve him." Selina rolled her eyes at the subject change and debated on how honest she should be. In the end, Mari and the others needed to know how this was likely to play out, so they didn't let their guard down.

"While Talia wants Damian back in the fold, he's a liability if he stays outside the league. The person she sent likely has orders to kill him if he refuses to return." Mari gave her a skeptical look.

"She'd really have her own son killed?"

"She'd do it herself if she was here." Selina wasn't certain what to do with the thoughtful frown on Marinette's face. She'd expected horror or disbelief.

"So even if we catch this person, Damian will still be in danger." Selina just nodded. "That's not acceptable." She said it in such a matter-of-fact tone that Selina didn't know how to respond. She agreed with Mari, but there wasn't much they could do about it. Mari startled her when she stood abruptly and walked over to Damian. The girl didn't say anything, just held out her hand to him, and when he took it, marched him out of the room. Everyone paused for a moment before resuming planning. All Selina could do was shake her head.

"She's blaming herself for things again." Selina jumped as Luka materialized next to her. She hadn't even seen him move.

"It does seem to be her natural state." The boy's expression settled into the closest thing she'd seen to a scowl on him. "Whatever is coming after Damian hates Ladybug, and she thinks it's her fault."

"If it's a native Parisian, that's a very short list. It shouldn't be too hard to research. It will be harder for anyone who came and went since you'll have to rely on travel records and they can be spotty. It's far more likely to be someone not from Paris originally, in my opinion."

"Really? Marinette seems to think a lot of people were upset with Ladybug for how long things went on."

"She what?" The genuine surprise in his tone was unexpected. Apparently, Marinette still wasn't talking about her fears with her friends. One more thing to worry about. "Yes, right after Hawkmoth was defeated, everyone was letting out all the emotions they'd had to repress, and a lot of that was anger. Some of it was even directed at the Heroes. But in the end, everyone knew who was at fault. Granted, I wasn't in Paris, but I didn't get the impression from anyone I talked to back home that there was real animosity towards the heroes. Adrien and Chloe haven't mentioned it either, and Chloe would have."

"What about the police force? Chloe said they actively worked against them." Luka's expression tightened.

"Maybe while the heroes were active, but I doubt those feelings lasted long without a target. Not to mention, from what I remember, it was resentment more than anything else." Luka hesitated. "Other than Gabriel, I can only think of one person who truly hated Ladybug."

"That's great! It gives us someone to look into."

"You already are." He sounded grim, and Selina just raised an eyebrow at him. "Lila Rossi."

"You're kidding." He shook his head. Selina was getting tired of this girl and they hadn't even met her yet. "I suppose it makes sense with the way she disappeared. We know they want the Miraculous, so taking her for information isn't out of the realm of possibility. At the same time, I don't know that Talia would send someone so knew to the League to take out Damian, of all people. It could be a test, though."

The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like something Talia would do. It could be a test of loyalty, or just of training. She wouldn't be counting on Bruce to kill her, so there would be a backup plan. There would be more than just one assassin. Granted, they were already planning on that. But this brought competing factions into play. One more problem to complicate things.

"If it is Lila, and she finds out Mari is here, there's a very good chance she'll come after her. Especially since Mr. Wayne took her in." She didn't like Luka's tone.

"Because he's Damian's father?"

"Because he's famous. Lila always hated that Mari had better connections than her. I can't even image the rage she'll feel at this development."

"Depending on what Talia's done to her, she might not even remember Mari." Luka was shaking his head before she finished.

"If she remembers Ladybug, she remembers Marinette. I met her when I was Viperion with Ladybug and Mari on separate occasions. She hates Mari more."

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[greenerteacups]

Thoughts on sydcarmy? (figured i’d ask since you mentioned the bear in one of your asks.)

[normal person voice] THOUGHTS ON SYDCARMY? YEAH I GOT A FEW

To start from the beginning, I've been watching the Bear IRL as it airs, so I've been through all the hiatuses between seasons. And in season 1, I was the conductor of this ship. I was on the train basically from the minute they have that first bit of cooking synchrony in like episode 2 and my obsession with the coworkers-to-lovers trope perked its nose up, but I was promoted to captain when I saw the scene at the end where he grounds himself through a panic attack by thinking about her. Which — hey, by the way, sidebar? Directed to the writers of The Bear? I'm totally on board with the 'let's have more platonic bonds between men and women' stuff, I get why you like that story and want to write it, and seriously, platonic sydcarm, that's cool. That's awesome. But also: visualizing someone's face to anchor you through a panic attack — while in real life not at all inconsistent with platonic friendship — is an extremely loaded scene to drop in the middle of a narrative where the two characters in question have demonstrable chemistry and an intense but ill-defined bond, and your audience, which has been trained to close-read male-female relationships for signs of romantic interest, is going to read that scene as romantically intimate, if not sexual in nature. And they're not, like, ship-obsessed or whatever for thinking that. The visual language of your product does not exist outside of the cultural lexicon where it is being presented, regardless of your intentions. Anyway. [Sidebar over.]

Season 2, and especially the introduction of Claire, seemed to me like a Doylist way to address the SydCarmy train. The upshot to this is they do use this to talk about Sydney and Carmy being Weirdly Intimate Business Partners, and you get a lot of references to Sydney's jealousy, her disgruntlement with Claire, and Carmy's struggle to fuse the two worlds. The downside is that Sydney and Carmy no longer feel like the epic power chord at the center of the show, because Carmy's been shifted into this internal battle between Claire (who in many ways represents being Out of the industry) and Sydney (who, whatever else you can say about her, is very much In). And unfortunately for Claire, Sydney is just way better written. Like, I really did try to be fair to Claire, but it's not even close — and man, I didn't even feel like the writers were trying. Claire and Carmy's crush on Claire are introduced to the audience at the same time, and from there, she has zero scenes without Carm being either present or the subject of conversation. And like, that's so weird, on a show where almost everyone is rich and well-developed, and even the extended family in Fishes get little nods to their internal life. And I — I'm rambling. Point being, I think Season 2 took the wind out of SydCarmy's sails by making their dynamic antagonistic and strained by Carmy's obvious romantic interest in someone else, so I went into S3 with guarded optimism.

And then, like... okay. I'm a Sydney fan before I'm a SydCarmy fan, right? That man's cute and all, but she's the protagonist of this show for me. And at this point, I really do think the best thing for Syd is to get out of Carmy's orbit and go do her own thing. I don't believe in people being "too traumatized" for relationships to work, so I think a lot of the people blowing off Carmy as being "not ready" for love this season are full of hot air — but I do believe that Carmy's trauma is specifically impairing his ability to empathize with and care for Sydney, a fellow restauranteur and subordinate chef/protege, in a way that would make any iteration of their relationship satisfying to me. Getting him to that point would require the writers to dedicate a lot of storytelling and character development in a creative direction that they don't seem to be interested in. They are clearly interested in other things — worthy things! Cool things! Things that can make for a good plot! — but at this point, I was only interested in a version of SydCarmy that existed for about five minutes in the first 1/3 of the show, and it's time for me to face the music. I'm really excited to see where they take Sydney, though. I still trust the writers to do her justice, because they clearly know what a rare thing they have in her.