#i think so much of drawing is a mental battle honestly

[devotion-disorder]

UR ART IS SO PRETTY 😍😍🙏🙏 lT MAKES ME WANNA GOBBLE IT UP

Have any tips? I've been tryna get into drawing but i'm rlly strugglimg 😭

First off THANMKYOU FOR YOUR NICE WORDS....🥺🫶🫶

i'm gonna assume you're asking about advice for people that are just getting started with drawing! Now im not a ~seasoned~ artist or anything, i've only been drawing on-and-off for about 7 ish years? so this is all coming from someone who only approaches art as more of a casual hobby... also if you're asking about more technical/ practical advice then feel free to send another ask because I don't really go into that here lol :p

Honestly, i recall that being a beginner artist was tough, because the gap in my skill level and my expectations seemed so daunting. The hardest part was probably having to motivate myself to keep going even when it's hard to see actual progress and, again, the disappointment in "what I draw does not match what I envision in my head". It's hard and sometimes I question what am I even doing all this for. As of right now I can say that this feeling doesn't ever really go away, just that now I've managed to build a bit more confidence in my stuff.

So how I see it is that it's important to find a way to keep yourself motivated no matter what, so that you have it in you to keep practicing, improving, or at least, to just keep drawing. This is something that is gonna look different for everyone so I think it'd be a good idea to explore yourself what can keep you motivated. I was very lucky in that the people around me were also into drawing and were always really nice and supportive, so they played a huge role in building up my confidence - such that I wasn't afraid to experiment and take risks, which is necessary for learning and getting better.

Another major thing for me is to remember to have fun with art, and understand that as long as I managed to enjoy some parts of the process then I've "succeeded" so to speak, even if I don't like the end results. This still applies now...it's frustrating when something I spent time on doesn't turn out the way I wanted, but at least rendering it was fun and relaxing, so it was still a good use of my time. Its about striking a balance i guess; its important to practice and do fundamentals etc etc but imo its equally important to draw things that will make you want to keep drawing. for some this could be doing fanart, for others it could be original art. Social media and fandom-ry is a whole 'nother can of worms, but I will say that they were helpful to me in keeping me motivated and inspired. so basically its this *taps sign*

anyhow i hope that was helpful,,,,, i hope I didn't come off as preachy because im the last person with any authority to be telling other people about art so it was mostly just my own experience with art...but i think its really just about finding your own rhythm and if you keep at it you will get better...either way GOOD LUCK I BELIVBE IN YOU AND I HOPE YOU HAVE FUN🫶🫶🫶🫶

[mooluvs]

The league of villains with a reader with a croc quirk

requests open | bnha masterlist

requested by @stitched-bones-draws

warnings: none | genre: platonic fluff | fic type: hcs

Request: How about the lov from mha with a reader that has a croc mutation quirk, that has all the pros and cons of crocs(ei swim speed, and big lungs) and they are very loving, a good baker, loves to play fight/train, but… their way of showing affection is biting.

They love you

You’re super happy to have found people that accept you for you and don’t judge you for your quirk

And they all love having you around, you’re a big sweetie!

And very useful to have around

The biting... took them by surprise

Toga loves it, especially as she also has a unique way of showing affection.

In general she just loves having you around, your really nice and sweet to her.

And you don’t even flinch when she comes at you with a knife!!

She thinks of you as family.

Shigaraki claims he only keeps you around because you’re useful

That’s a lie, he adores you

You’re actually nice to him and never make any judgmental comments about his interests or appearance.

He likes training with you, you’re strong, but he much prefers just spending quiet time with you

Whether it be sat with you while you bake, or just sat at the bar talking.

You’re good company!

And you bring him tasty cakes when he’s gaming

To be honest, they all love your food.

Especially twice

Practically everyone even associated with the league has heard from him about how good your cooking is.

He’s your main hype man

He gives your cakes to Giran, all the time.

Not that the man’s complaining, they’re tasty

He also appreciates how you try and help him when he’s having a rough day mentally.

And how you try and calm him down when he feels like he’s splitting.

He really appreciates that.

He’ll try and help you bake sometimes.

Try

So does Mr compress, and he’s surprisingly good at it.

He appreciates having another mature person around

I mean, you can cook for yourself and that is a hell of a lot than most the others can do

He likes that you’re loving and gentle but could also fuck a man up, if need be.

He enjoys just spending time with you, he likes your vibe and caring attitude

He about shat himself the first time you chomped on his arm

Was never judgemental about it, though

Just scared shitless

Dabi appreciates how strong you are

He lets you play fight him and treats it as training.

You’re a really good training partner, you’re strong and hard to take down

Even if you do fuss over his burns too much

Would never say it but he seriously appreciates how you help him with his burns and stitches

It warms his heart

He tries to repay you by helping you on any missions or getting you anything you need for baking.

Or just stealing stuff for you

It’s his love language, okay

He’s strangely protective of you, even though you could end most people in an instant

He acts almost like an older brother

You and spinner are reptile buddies

You’ve honestly done so much for his confidence

You always hype him up and defend him against any of dabi’s totally not affectionate insults.

You always hype him up

And you’ve been training him to help him improve in battle

You like to talk to him about your quirk and living as a heteromorph

Though your quirks are very different, you’ve had some similar experiences.

And both you have reptile traits

It’s good to find someone who knows the pain of having animalistic instincts and traits.

Also, him and Tomura sometimes grab you and drag you into video game sessions.

The other members don’t know this

Shiggy has a reputation to maintain

In conclusion, congrats on being adopted by a found family of Criminals.

Enjoy being the mom friend!

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

Every Episode of Miraculous Ladybug Season 5 Ranked (Part 2)

Part 1

(This site's stupid 30 images per post forced me to do this, so thanks for nothing, Tumblr)

#14: Transmission

I swear, I'm not doing these on purpose. This is just how I've been ranking the episodes.

Like I said in the last part, this episode just did not need to happen. The first half is cheap melodrama between Marinette and Adrien and the second half is a run of the mill Akuma fight with two different heroes. This is the story that seriously warranted two parts this season?

I just can't stand the fact that Marinette and Adrien gave up their Miraculous so easily here. Maybe if it was Season 2, Season 3 at the latest, I'd buy it, but near the middle of Season 5? They honestly view their love lives as more important than the battle with Monarch. If it was anything else like the stress or physical danger, I'd also be understanding, but Tikki and Plagg decide that Marinette and Adrien are so miserable that they need to be happy by losing their Miraculous without a fight. Remember, this was just two episodes after “Reunion”, which showed Joan of Arc was a Miraculous holder. So fighting in the Hundred Years' War didn't get so much as an ounce of concern from Tikki, but teenage angst is too much for her little heart to bear?

Maybe it's the benefit of knowing this won't be permanent, but the issue I have is how much the show draws this out for so long, as if the audience is supposed to buy it. “It's really happening, guys! Ladybug and Cat Noir won't be the stars anymore, we swear!” This kind of plot can work under the right circumstances. All you needed to do is at the very least, make it something they choose to do instead of their Kwamis taking their Miraculous away so we can see them weigh the benefits of giving up life as a superhero in ways that aren't exclusively about their love lives. I'd even buy it if it's something Ladybug and Cat Noir actually agreed on before quitting.

While I can sort of get Alya becoming Scarabella due to her experience with the Ladybug (even if she chose to give up using any Miraculous at the end of Season 4), Zoe getting the Cat just feels like the writers put a bunch of names in a hat and picked hers. The two just don't have as compelling a dynamic as Ladybug and Cat Noir do, because they don't get a lot of time to know each other. Alya and Zoe have almost never interact with each other, so the masks don't really shake up their relationship, because there's no relationship to speak of.

Also, the Akuma here was really forced. We know nothing about this new character while the show acts like we're supposed to know who he is based on some minor hints with Nora calling earlier. While I will give the show credit for arguably giving us the most powerful Akuma of all time due to being both a man and a bear, he's as forgettable as a villain as Kitty Noire is as a hero.

Just about nobody here comes out smelling like roses in this episode. The Kwamis are morons for caring about one ship becoming canon, Marinette and Adrien are selfish cowards for giving up their Miraculous with little hesitation, their friends are ignorant buffoons for thinking some random attempt to get Marinette and Adrien to talk will somehow seal the deal, and Alya and Zoe are idiots for not thinking that they should take off the shiny ring that tracks their every movement. It's a terrible episode, and the only reason why “Deflagration” is ranked higher is because it didn't irritate me as much as this one did.

#15: Determination

And now we're onto the really bad episodes this season.

This episode is pretty much what you've come to expect by Season 5. People keep forcing Marinette into situations she's clearly uncomfortable, and we're supposed to just laugh at her anxiety, because we still have eight episodes to go before the show decides to take her mental health seriously.

What makes this episode really sting for me is that it's Luka and Kagami that are forcing Marinette into these unfunny antics this time. For the most part, they never really stooped to this level and didn't try to force anything with their respective love interests until they had trouble in their relationships that required them to communicate. But now, even though one knows Marinette and Adrien are superheroes while the other is usually very blunt with her feelings (at least, before she became this season's next victim), they're going to try forcing Marinette and Adrien to spend time together even they both know they have feelings for each other and MY GOD, THIS IS SO STUPID! It's just a cheap excuse for more pointless shenanigans that stopped being funny years ago.

Yet somehow, that's not the worst of the Love Square drama this episode. It's here where we learn that Adrien fell in love with Marinette over a season ago, during a scene where she violated his personal space. In addition, Adrien somehow showed no signs of attraction to Marinette until the plot demanded it, and came right after another episode showing him falling for her. Why not make it the fake confession Marinette practiced with Cat Noir in “Glaciator 2”? The kiss Marinette gave Adrien at the end of “Heroes' Day”? I'd even take another umbrella scene callback like in “Mr. Pigeon 72”. But no, it's the statue scene that the writers decided on. It's like they noticed all the criticism Marinette got in that episode and were like “Joke's on you! Adrien actually liked being lusted over like an object!”.

And then the masks come on and make things even more convoluted. Adrien at least got to reflect on the events of a previous episode to explain his new feelings for Marinette, but what caused Ladybug to suddenly fall for Cat Noir after four seasons?

The writers don't even bother with an explanation for this. Ladybug spontaneously becomes attracted to Cat Noir with absolutely no foreshadowing, buildup, or even callbacks to earlier episodes. The writers either wanted to complicate things one last time before Adrienette became canon, they wanted to bury the Ladynoir conflict arc from last season in the sand, or the most likely option, a combination of both.

The idea of the public turning on Ladybug was an interesting one to take, seeing how she's been universally beloved for the past four seasons. But despite hinting at it in “Multiplication”, this is the farthest is goes, and even then, guess who's behind it? You can't keep raising points against the main characters if it's only Chloe who does it. It doesn't open debate on the story and essentially tells the audience that they're wrong to agree with her, no matter what kind of point she makes.

As dumb as the way it happened was, Ladybug still screwed up and endangered the city by losing the other Miraculous, but we can't actually challenge children by acknowledging that the hero actually did something wrong and needs to grow as a person. We need to use a recurring character as a strawman to tell the audience that only bad people think this way! Way to remove any interesting internal conflict, writers.

The Akuma was pretty weak, just being an older Puppeteer, down to using wax statues like what happened in “Puppeteer 2”. The army of wax heroes could have been interesting, but there wasn't enough time to do much with the idea. The one thing I liked was how the Ox Miraculous' Resistance was used. It felt like an upgrade instead of a core power Manipula got.

This episode pretty much set the stage for a new level of frustrating Love Square drama this season, and it was one of the season's first outright awful episodes.

#16: Conformation

The only reason this episode isn't at the bottom is because the rest of the ones on this list are far worse by comparison. Make of that what you will.

Like most season finales, this one continues the tradition of being better at buildup than actual execution. Gabriel's plan is pretty decent, even if it's just Heroes Day on a global scale. He utilizes his public influence and business skills to plan out a plan to get almost all of humanity working for him. While I don't like the Miraculized, I still think Gabriel being on top works here, especially since he's not going out into the field like the last three finales.

But other than an okay evil plan, this episode is still pretty bad. Marinette being infected with nightmare dust only happens to get her to the Agreste manor because the writers forgot that Marinette learned Gabriel was Monarch last episode. It could have been a decent way to up the stakes by showing Ladybug not being at 100%, but like everyone else, she just fights off the nightmare dust and doesn't have a single problem during her fight with Monarch. In general, the nightmare dust isn't really utilized well, only being an excuse to bring out the Miraculized. It doesn't impact everyone fighting off the Miraculized, and there's no lesson or theme about fear that's conveyed here.

Speaking of nightmare dust, I'm pretty sure the only reason why it was introduced in the first place was to bench Adrien, which is still easily one of the dumbest decisions the show has ever made. While everyone else had no problem resisting the nightmare dust, Adrien is just physically incapable of doing so because of some half-assed character arc the show pretended happened. So either Adrien got a more potent dosage of the nightmare dust, or Adrien's just too weak to actually overcome his fears. “Sandboy”? Never heard of it! The fact that the writers also tried to claim they were being subversive with fairy tale tropes and cliches didn't help, since it devalues Adrien as a character even further. He's not a superhero and Ladybug's closest ally. He's just some damsel in distress who needs to be saved. Let me just remind you, if the genders were reversed, this would not be seen as some bold move, but the same overused cliche trying to be something new.

I already talked about my problems with Nathalie in “Passion”, and the stuff she does here isn't really different. Despite enabling Gabriel for five seasons, the episode has the balls to act like Nathalie always had morals and is appalled by Gabriel planning to sacrifice someone to save his wife. Just remember, “Passion” established that Nathalie had a history as a treasure hunter, so this is like Indiana Jones not knowing what the Holy Grail does. Nathalie only got dumber than in “Passion” because she somehow thought she could take on a supervillain with nothing but a crossbow and a body that already has one foot in the grave. And just like Felix, Nathalie can't even apologize to Ladybug for the aiding and abetting a terrorist thing. Between Nathalie, Felix, and Gabriel, does using the Peacock Miraculous just make you an idiot?

While the buildup is decent, it's just not enough to really get audiences excited for the second part.

#17: Representation

This episode is yet another example of the show's double standards.

Without going into detail too much, this episode came right after “Revolution”, the one that essentially portrayed Audrey taking control of Chloe's life as a karmic punishment. What happens in this episode? We learn Felix's father literally took control of his life and it's portrayed as wrong as child abuse should be. That's why this episode is still better than “Revolution”. It at the very least understands how serious child abuse is, and tries to tell Felix's story with as much dignity as two teenagers in white onesies can have.

With that being said, there's a reason why this episode is as low as it is. The Sentimonster play used to tell Marinette about Felix is just so stupid. The sets and costumes look ridiculous, it's hard to take the story seriously with Felix and Kagami doing all the voices, and most of it is unnecessary since the whole point is to tell Marinette that Gabriel is Monarch... something that the writers decided she needed to find out on her own in the next episode. It comes across less like Felix trying to alert Ladybug to who Monarch really is and more like he's just trying to justify his own actions. Hell, the actual reason he decided to tell Marinette about Gabriel was because he and Kagami were worried about their own relationship being ruined by him. And yet somehow, Ladybug lets him on the team at the end of the season.

The stuff with Adrien was also pretty dumb. It's cheap fanservice that reminds the audience of Cat Blanc when none of the characters should know who Cat Blanc is. You can call him Anticat all you want, but everyone can see that he's just Cat Blanc with blue hair. It's bad enough that this was what all the times Cat Noir almost Cataclysming people this season was meant to lead up to, but this is pretty much the reason why Adrien is benched during the finale.

This episode really shows how desperate the writers are to make people take this show seriously by showing serious topics like genocide and child abuse, as if the show didn't already ignore the horrible implications previous episodes (like the very last one before this) raised and will continue to raise during the season finale. So much of the episode is just dark for the sake of being dark. It's nothing too horrifying for children, of course, but the issue is how obvious it is that the writers are trying to raise the stakes right before the season finale and show how mature the show's writing is. For lack of a better term, it's this show's equivalent to “Ow The Edge”.

#18: Revelation

Get ready for the episode where the writers abandon all attempts to be subtle and create an episode specifically to attack people who think Chloe isn't the most evil character on the show. Because how dare they be optimistic and try to see the good in people! What do they think this is, a kids' show?

While a big problem with the Lila episodes was how stupid the class is, this episode made it so Marinette got to join in on losing brain cells too. Despite outright admitting to neglecting her duties as class representative (as absurd as it is to be in charge of notifying teachers about student progress they should be aware of), we're supposed to agree with her for not telling her teacher about Chloe cheating. Not only does this make no sense since you'd think Marinette would want to see Chloe get punished, but her claiming that all Chloe does is abuse her privileges loses any point to it because Marinette admitted to not doing her job as class representative, making her just as lazy as Chloe and unintentionally helping her through not telling the teachers. And that's not even getting into how many times Marinette has broken the secret identity rule despite also being the one to enforce it the most as the Guardian.

If the episode at least admitted to Marinette having personal issues that prevented her from displaying any form of professionalism towards Chloe (especially since this episode takes place after “Derision”), that'd be fine. Sometimes, people just can't let bygones be bygones and let their emotions dictate how they handle things. If she willingly resigned from her position by admitting she was just as at fault for Chloe getting as far as she did with her cheating, that would have worked. Instead, the episode does the same things it did with Adrien for the last few seasons: Go out of its way to vindicate Marinette's complaining and never even consider the idea of her being wrong in the slightest.

It's also hilarious to see Ms. Bustier act like an actual teacher for once and plan to work with Chloe to help make up her missed work, but portray it as a bad thing because in Marinette's eyes, that's not a punishment. Since the school year is almost over, Chloe will have to attend summer school at best and be held back or even expelled at worst. How the hell does that not count as a punishment, Marinette?

And don't forget how she gets not one, but two separate scenes insulting people for being idealistic and not wanting to write off people as beyond saving, the second one being copied from Astruc's Twittter.

And remember, this was right before a string of episodes where characters were able to change their ways, including Sabrina (Chloe's accomplice), Andre (Chloe's enabler), and Gabriel (Chloe's supervillain contact). How the hell is Chloe the only one being written off as irredeemable when she didn't pull off any of her evil plans without help? You can still punish Chloe. All I want is for the other characters to be punished as well.

But let's talk about the main event for this episode: Lila. In one of the most confusing “twists” in the show's history, she's now an identity thief who lives with three different mothers. Why? Because the writers have no idea how to hype people up for her being the main villain for Season 6, so they think just making her mysterious for the sake of making her mysterious is enough to build her up as a villain. It's like the writers realized Lila had absolutely zero resources of her own, so they felt like they needed to establish her as an evil genius to compensate. “Who cares if there's no logical explanation for how she's gotten as far as she has despite constantly boasting about her celebrity connections in public? We have to make her vague and mysterious, damn it! It worked for Judas Traveller and Kaine, didn't it?”

This episode takes multiple shots at fans and tries to make Lila seem more compelling than she actually is. It feels more like damage control than an actual plot-relevant episode.

#19: Illusion

Want to see the main characters acting like idiots for almost a half-hour? No? Too bad!

So much of this episode's conflict, the characters trying to investigate a possible lead related to Monarch, comes from everyone making stupid decisions. Nino tries to get one of the most influencial men in Paris akumatized, talks about it in public, falls for his trick, and lets him into his secret alliance. This season really cemented his role as the Zapp Brannigan of Miraculous Ladybug with how incompetent he is. If you really want to start portraying Nino as a tactical genius, maybe you should actually show him doing something smart instead of getting outsmarted by obvious tricks.

Of course, the other characters aren't immune to Nino's stupidity either. Marinette, Adrien, and Alya just go along with his asinine plan to get Gabriel akumatized, never question his logic, and ultimately still go along with the Resistance despite how obnoxious their leader is. The worst part is Ladybug not recognizing her own partner being stung by Venom... when they're fighting someone with access to over a dozen Miraculous. I know Cat Noir was born with glass bones and paper skin, but I don't think he literally freezes in terror when he's scared. And of course, Ladybug never questions the tiny invisible men who stunned Cat Noir after this scene.

The cafeteria scene is something that should really be cited as an example of how terrible this show is with acknowledging continuity. You thought there would be some compelling drama discussing the secret identity rule and all the double standards it has? NOPE! It's a funny joke about how confusing the identity stuff is at this point. The fact that Nino somehow doesn't understand the concept of secret identities in this scene is yet another reason as to why he isn't even qualified to lead an anime club, much less a resistance against Monarch.

The idea of Monarch using an illusion to fight Ladybug and Cat Noir was an interesting one, but it still had some holes. For one thing, what if the two heroes can't dodge one of the illusion Collector's attacks? What if they're fast enough to try tying him up, only to dispel the illusion? The entire plan pretty much relies on the fact that Ladybug and Cat Noir are too slow to catch the Collector.

But one scene that has only become more questionable after the finale is Ladybug trying to reach through to the illusion Collector. Like several episodes this season, it comes across like the show is spitting on idealism and wanting to solve problems peacefully because Monarch tricked Ladybug into believing he willingly rejected an Akuma. Remember kids, if someone says they want to change, it's really a trick as part of an evil supervillain's plan to maintain his secret identity.

This episode is like a microcosm of everything wrong with Season 5. Poor morals, characters acting like idiots, shooting down any potential for plot development, and being told characters are right when their actions say otherwise.

#20: Confrontation

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the episode where the writers just gave up.

There is just so much that happens in this episode that the writers cram in. There's Marinette's “final” confrontation with Lila, the battle with Reflekta, Sabrina's redemption, Juleka's character development, Ms. Bustier's character development, Mr. Damocles' character development, and the reveal of Lila's true nature. I don't think I need to tell you that the writers struggle to make all of these plot threads work in less than a half-hour.

First off, Marinette and Lila. The previous episode implied that Marinette let Lila have this short-term victory because she had her own plan to expose her. This episode puts that plan into action. See, she has the genius idea of going along with submitting school application forms to Lila and Chloe with no actual countermeasure in place, waiting for Sabrina to have a sudden change of heart so they can work together to expose Lila and Chloe through a bathroom peephole. This is the kind of tactical intelligence that will be studied in the history books, let me tell you. There's just no weight to Marinette and Lila's final battle of wits because there isn't any. There's no series of gambits or scenarios that actually pit their minds against each other, so you don't get a lot of satisfaction from Marinette's triumph over Lila. It doesn't help that there's more focus on Sabrina than on Marinette, but I'll get to that later. Even the actual payoff is anti-climactic. Most of the class' apology to Marinette was deleted because Mr. Damocles using a Magical Charm shield was just too important to leave on the cutting room floor according to the writers.

This episode really shows just how Marinette's classmates are like NPCs in the Lila-centric stories. They don't second guess Lila's accusations due to their past experiences with Marinette, and as soon as Marinette's name is cleared, they instantly apologize to her and don't even think about how easily they were fooled by Lila and Chloe. The worst example is Alya, Marinette's confidant and someone who was trusted to temporarily use the Ladybug Miraculous last episode, falling for this and not trusting Marinette. My sister in Christ, your friend goes out and saves lives on a weekly basis at least. How can you fall for Lila's story? This is why I think the Lila episodes should have all been set pre-Season 4, so Alya falling for Lila's lies is a little more believable since she isn't already in on Marinette's biggest secret.

I also have to roll my eyes at how melodramatic the talk about everyone's “futures” is. Yes, I don't know a lot about the French education system (If there's anything I'm getting wrong here, don't hesitate to let me know), but I don't get why they're treating their high school choices like such a big deal. Maybe if it was college, I'd get it, but high school? Why can't you just transfer if it doesn't work out? But then again, this is the same show created by a man who thinks school uniforms are a sign of fascism.

THIS IS WHAT THOMAS ASTRUC ACTUALLY BELIEVES.

Speaking of futures, this episode also showed just how little the writers cared about Adrien at this point, with how a supposedly heartwaming moment is him having no plan in life other than Marinette. I know this might seem weird given my problem with him last season was his refusal to think about anyone but himself, but there's a difference between wanting someone to follow orders without complaining and giving them absolutely no motivation outside of their significant other. And once again, if you swap the genders, this becomes sexist as hell.

But the big problem comes in the form of how the side characters are utilized. I don't know why the writers decided to focus on developing characters like Sabrina, Juleka, Ms. Bustier, and Mr. Damocles with five episodes left in the season. This should have been done in earlier episodes, not in the middle of a major story arc. I'm just left not caring about the development because it takes away from the conflict between Marinette and Lila, to say nothing about how little Adrien and Alya contribute to the story.

To me, this episode feels like the writers had no idea how to make Marinette outsmarting Lila into an episode, so they crammed in all these half-assed character arcs to pad out the runtime. While “Revelation” personally upset me more, I personally think this is the worse episode of the two from a writing standpoint.

#21: Revolution

Given how often I've criticized the way Chloe has been handled over the years, I bet you're surprised that this one isn't at the bottom of the list. You'll be even more surprised to learn that I think Chloe is one of this episode's saving graces.

This episode (along with “Derision”) provide an example of the Chloe we should have gotten ever since Season 3 ended: A villain who's allowed to be a threat while still being funny. So much of the past two seasons have done nothing but portray Chloe as nothing but an incompetent joke, but here, near the end of the season, she's in a position of power and is taken seriously. The episode does a good job showing how tyrannical Chloe's rule as Mayor is while still making it funny and in-character for her. She uses her power on frivolous things because she's a teenage girl who doesn't understand the complicated issues that come with politics. It's also why her idea of punishment involves detention, because it's something she's more familiar with as someone in middle school. Of course, even the episode all about Chloe ruling Paris with an iron fist isn't stupid enough to actually let Chloe be a compelling antagonist. No, we need to constantly remind the audience that Chloe is being played, as if we're supposed to see her as nothing more than a pawn even though the show still wants us to see her as an irredeemable monster.

Putting aside that one speck of something interesting, this episode is still incredibly bad. So much of the story is dependent not on how smart the villains' plan is, but rather, how lazy the heroes are. Not only is there not a single moment where Ladybug and Cat Noir acknowledge that the whole reason why Chloe was able to take over as Mayor was their fault, they act as if Chloe abusing her power to make everyone's life a living hell isn't enough of a reason to stop her. What kind of Prime Directive bullshit is this? YOU JUST HELPED SOMEONE LEAD AN INSURRECTION AGAINST A POWERLESS CIVILIAN! HOW IS THIS ANY DIFFERENT?! If there was at least something involving Ladybug and Cat Noir taking responsibility for what happened or at least showing that they played a part in this (especially since they “grow up” in this episode), I'd get it. Instead, because this is Season 5, our heroes are perfection incarnate, and can't ever be wrong. Even when they finally decide to get off their asses and stop Chloe, they didn't know she was akumatized, and nobody seemed to care before Chloe blurted it out, so Ladybug and Cat Noir have no excuses for slacking off.

The final battle is just a joke. Not only is it another excuse to force the Resistance into the plot, it shows Ladybug and Cat Noir unlocking the full power of their Miraculous in the most anti-climactic way possible. Even though they spent most of the episode caring more about their personal lives than actually stopping the obvious threat, somehow, this means they “grew up”. There's no buildup, no explanation, and no catharsis gained from this achievement. All of a sudden, Ladybug and Cat Noir are adults now. There's one decent scene with Adrien, but that's far from an actual explanation. What, did you actually expect an explanation for something this huge? Too bad! We need to have Marinette tell Chloe she's not afraid of her anymore even though she was never afraid of her prior to this season. Of all the things that happened this season, this is the one that makes it clear that Season 5 was supposed to be the end. There is no way Season 6 can happen unless the writers come up with some crap that undoes this, because Ladybug and Cat Noir have essentially unlocked god mode.

But I saved the worst for last, and you all know what it is: Chloe's punishment. I still can't get over the fact that there's actually a scene heavily implying we're supposed to be happy Chloe is going to live with her emotionally abusive mother in the same season that's trying to tell a serious story about child abuse. There's already been so much said about all the horrible things this implies, so I'm going to try and bring up something else. Specifically, how everyone is just okay with this. I can buy Ladybug given all the things Chloe has done to her, but it's pretty odd that Cat Noir, Andre, and Zoe all decide to wash their hands of their association with Chloe as if they never knew her. They don't even feel bad that it had to come to this, and feel absolutely no sympathy for her. Remember in episodes like “Malediktator” and “Queen Banana” that showed Adrien and Zoe still cared for Chloe despite all the terrible things she's done, teaching kids a lesson about trying to show compassion to your enemies? The writers sure didn't, because Adrien and Zoe don't get to say a thing about Chloe after she's defeated. Way to establish connections between characters and do nothing with them, writers!

This episode had so many things wrong with it, and it only got worse the longer it went on, to the point where the ending is essentially condoning child abuse. It's disgusting, but at the very least, it means we're not going to have to deal with Chloe in Season 6.

.....

#22: Adoration

This is one of those episodes I honestly didn't think would hate as much as I did.

I think of all the episodes this season, this is the one that shows how frustratingly inconsistent the characterization is. Characters will either announce how much someone has changed or will take a complete 180 while the show makes it clear this is how things have always been. Not only does the show say Zoe has somehow changed and suddenly developed feelings for Marinette, but Chloe's view of Sabrina has gotten even lower, to the point where she calls her an underling to her face. Because actually showing character development and changing interpersonal relationships is too hard for these writers. It's like that rule everyone knows: Tell, don't show. That's how it goes, right?

Before anyone gets on my case about this, I'm not trying to say that Zoe having a crush on Marinette was a bad idea. The issue is more how it comes across like the show is trying to earn brownie points with LGBT+ audiences with the reveal. The issue is that this major revelation isn't about Zoe, but rather, Marinette. It's from a Marinette-focused episode all about her heterosexual feelings for Adrien while Zoe's coming out story is nothing more than a cautionary tale to get Marinette to finally try kissing Adrien. I'm not saying Marinette should have dumped Adrien to be with Zoe. The point I'm trying to make is if you want to show something as huge as a character coming out as sapphic, maybe put more focus on that character's struggles than the struggles the straight main character goes through. Maybe instead of being an afterthought in the story, make the episode about Marinette helping Zoe confess her feelings to a girl she likes.

This was also the episode that laid the groundwork for Andre and Sabrina's “redemption arcs”. Normally, I wouldn't mind something like them changing, but it's less to show a character becoming a better person and more to vilify a different character. Andre went from a corrupt politician who abuses his power to please his daughter to an honest politician who is forced to abuse his power to please his daughter. Sabrina went from Chloe's loyal friend who chooses to help her make people miserable to Chloe's underling who is being forced to help make people miserable. Both of them were perfectly willing to go along with Chloe's acts in the past, and as we saw in “Revolution”, being a pawn didn't excuse her from being punished, so by that logic, they shouldn't get a free pass either. It's also strange how this wasn't the episode where Andre and Sabrina officially cut ties with Chloe, considering they already had issues with them. There wasn't really a reason to wait if they already made their issues clear, especially Sabrina. Somehow framing Marinette here is okay but doing it a few episodes later is too much for her?

Also, Lila served no purpose in the episode. Just like in “Collusion” and “Revolution”, all she does is tell Chloe to do things she was perfectly capable of doing in earlier episodes. We're supposed to see her as a mastermind, but I don't get why she has to hold Chloe's hand here. Why can't Lila come up with her own plan or manipulate different people from behind the scenes? It only further highlights the double standards because while Sabrina being a lackey to Chloe earns her sympathy, Chloe being a lackey to Lila doesn't for some reason.

I am getting really tired of the whole “Nobody believes Marinette” formula that every Lila episode relies on (Chameleon, Ladybug, Risk, Revelation, Confrontation). It's the exact same story. Everyone who has known Marinette for the past four seasons suddenly loses all trust in her, only instead of instantly believing Lila, it's Chloe. CHLOE. This is worse than Lila, because she's at least in good graces with other people, but this is the same season that solidified the idea of nobody liking her at all. They seriously take her words at face value over Marinette, someone whose friends know has tormented her for a year at least (Derision)? Put aside how I feel about Chloe, this is a story that depends on trusting someone nobody has any reason to trust, and it makes no sense.

There are just so many minor issues in this episode that pile up enough to really piss me off. It's like a death by a thousand cuts.

#23: Collusion

I normally don't try to get political on this blog unless I absolutely have to, and talking about this episode is one of those occasions.

If you've been around since the early days of this blog, you'll remember that Astruc once compared Chloe to Donald Trump, and not too long after the January 6th attack on the Capitol Building at that.

Even before that thread, Astruc made a joke comparing Trump to Chloe less than a week after the attack.

Whether you agree with Astruc's views on Trump or not, the point is that he kept up with American politics and strongly opposes him. So anyway, let's get to the episode where the heroes let someone lead a small army to storm the mayor's office and force him to resign, which is totally different from what Trump did.

I cannot get over just how confusing this episode is. For a show created by someone who usually keeps up with American politics, this is such a tone-deaf episode. I get that the story is trying to lean into French history, and I'm not sure how far into production the crew was when the attack on the Capitol happened, but given how Astruc was aware of the drama, he and his team should have at least considered the implications this episode could raise. The problem with the discussion around January 6th is that the supporters see it in as righteous a light as Miss Sans-Culotte is. As far as they know, what happened wasn't a violent invasion of government property, but a peaceful demonstration. Sure, none of the talking balloons said “Hang Andre Bourgeois!”, but it still brings similar imagery to mind.

Something that also harms the French Revolution narrative is the fact that all of Miss Sans-Culotte's supporters are helping her against her will. Much like countless Akumas throughout the show's history (Darkblade, Kung Food, The Puppeteer, Princess Fragrance, Despair Bear, Befana, Zombizou, Malediktator, Gamer 2.0, Mr. Pigeon 72, Hack-San, Revelation, Confrontation), Miss Sans-Culotte brainwashes innocent civilians so they can help her cause. This goes against the idea that she's speaking for the people, because her victims don't have a say in this. She's not reenacting the French Revolution, she's reenacting Order 66!

Also, this is something I've neglected to discuss. Why make Miss Bustier pregnant at all, much less akumatize her while pregnant? Outside of her students telling Chloe not to make a scene because the stress caused from dealing that is bad for the baby, Ms. Bustier's pregnancy adds nothing to the story. Seriously, the story thinks Chloe annoying the class is more dangerous for Ms. Bustier's baby than Ms. Bustier herself running around and getting into fights with her baby inside. It could have made for some interesting drama where Ladybug and Cat Noir are hesitant to hurt a pregnant woman, even if she's been akumatized. While the writers do try to work around it by giving her minions to do the fighting (as much as it mucks up the themes of this episode), it still doesn't explain why she needed to be pregnant during this episode in the first place.

Putting aside how unlikable Miss Sans-Culotte is in this episode, you can't even enjoy seeing Andre getting kicked out of office because this is the same episode where the writers really want us to feel bad for him. Look at how sad the rich white politician is. Let's ignore the fact that he's a big part of the reason why Chloe is as bad as she is, has abused his power multiple times, and is all around the cause of his own problems. But even though this is a show that tries to take an anti-capitalist stance (which I'll get to more in “Emotion”), we're supposed to side with one of the biggest symbols of everything wrong with capitalism and political corruption. Even then, Andre is framed for corruption instead of the several instances he actually abused his power, as if they're trying to say he was never a corrupt man. He just loves his daughter. Is that too much to ask for? His daughter herself? Eh, who cares? You really need to support the rich white man. Are we sure this show was created by a liberal?

But the biggest issue is the moral. It's impossible to frame Miss Sans-Culotte storming the mayor's office as a peaceful protest because she's clearly inspired by one of the bloodiest and most violent revolutions in history. If she was supposed to be a violent warrior who needed to learn there was a better way, that would work, but instead, the show downplays how dangerous she is... when she has a guillotine blade for a weapon. You can't claim Miss Sans-Culotte is non-violently protesting Andre's administration when she brainwashes innocent civilians, storms into the building, and demands he resign without any question. Even taking all that into consideration, the moral ends up backfiring because forcing Andre out of office caused an even bigger problem with Chloe taking over, and the very next episode threw the non-violence message out the window.

Whether or not you want to consider the political implications here, this is still a terrible episode with a terrible moral.

#24: Pretension

I've always had issues with Felix, and after the trainwreck that was “Emotion”, let's just say this didn't exactly do anything to raise my opinion of him. Just like his other appearances for the last few seasons, he did absolutely nothing to help Ladybug, focused on only doing things that benefited him, and making everyone's lives worse due to his incompetence. And somehow, this idiot is the one who moves the plot along the most.

The entire conflict happened because Felix kidnapped Kagami without even coming up with a plan. Even when he believes that Kagami is a Sentimonster (I apologize for saying that word Felix hates, but once again, the show provides no alternative to it), he doesn't think of Tomoe being able to track her or command her to leave even at a far distance. He doesn't even try to explain himself to Ladybug and Cat Noir and spends more time running away from everyone who wants to kick his ass. But by the show's logic, he just needs friends, even though his entire deal is that he works alone to get what he wants.

It's bad enough that Felix has to screw up everything he touches, but now he's dragging Kagami to his level. Kagami has cemented her role as Felix's lackey/girlfriend and nothing more. People give Marinette crap for the way the behaves around Adrien in and out of universe, but Kagami knows nothing about Felix, yet a single conversation about his past is enough for her to fall head over heels in love with him. She went from someone not willing to take any bullcrap from Marinette and Adrien to believing Felix's story in a fraction of a heartbeat. This season really likes ruining the few likable characters the show has left.

I also have to roll my eyes at the conversation Marinette and Gabriel have about fashion. For one thing, it's one of the few times the entire season remembers that Marinette wants to be a fashion designer and doesn't really factor into her rivalry with Gabriel. This season made their conflict revolve around how to treat Adrien, not their views on fashion. It feels like they only brought it up to remind viewers that Marinette is still into fashion. Well, that, and also to take a stance on artistic integrity... supposedly.

And on that note, it's amazing how the writers display little to no self-awareness during this scene. The show that embraces sticking to the status quo and rejecting almost any attempt at keeping consistent continuity is now trying to teach children about the importance of being willing to take risks when creating something. This is like Hannibal Lecter trying to promote veganism. I get the message, but the messenger's history is keeping me from buying it. It doesn't help that for a scene trying to point out how outdated certain views are, the show ultimately chooses to take the side of the man with the “wrong” mindset by the end of the season.

The pancake metaphor really confuses me too. It's meant to be a running gag that the only thing Gabriel knows how to cook is pancakes, but A) Nothing is really indicated to show how terrible they are as a metaphor for how bad his outdated views are other than Marinette's verbal assessment of them, and B) We later learn Gabriel used to be poor, so either he never knew how to cook prior to earning his fortune or being rich somehow made him forget basic living skills. I'm just saying, when an episode of Sid the Science Kid manages to better convey someone doing a terrible job making pancakes, you might need to put in a little more effort to show how bad Gabriel's pancakes supposedly are.

Finally, Tomoe. This episode didn't really do much to show her as a compelling threat, given all she did was nag Gabriel and try to shoot her daughter when she didn't even try commanding her to fight back when she was kidnapped. She's nothing more than a female Gabriel and is another example of how overstuffed this show's cast is,

This episode is awful, plain and simple. It took aspects from previous episodes that were already questionable, and doubled down on them while acting like there weren't any problems at all.

#25: Derision

And now we're onto the really, REALLY bad episodes this season. One of the reasons why this post took so long to make was that I wasn't sure how to rank these last three episodes. Thankfully, I managed to find a way to rank them based on the morals are executed. With that being said, let's start scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Ah, “Derision”. You're the only episode that makes the backlash caused by “Chameleon” seem like a pleasant breeze. It's incredible to see just how much negative a reputation this episode has in the fandom. Virtually nobody likes it because it manages to upset everyone with its poor characterization. I'm talking Marinette fans, Adrien fans, Chloe fans, Kim fans, and pretty much every other character's fans. I've only seen a few die hard fans defend this episode, and they're the people on Tumblr who defend pretty much everything done this season.

I have just one question to ask about this episode: Why did it need to happen? We didn't learn anything new that we didn't know already. We know Chloe is mean, and we know Marinette used to be more timid and had no friends. We didn't even need that much of an explanation for why Marinette acts the way she does around Adrien, seeing how it was usually played for laughs

Speaking of which, let's talk about the fact that the episode tries to shame the audience for laughing at the jokes about Marinette's reactions to Adrien. You know, something that was the show's primary running gag ever since Season 1? A running gag the writers ran into the ground by the end of Season 3 but still chose to go with it? Now we're not supposed to have laughed at it, assuming we laughed at it all. Way to insult even the small portion of viewers who didn't get on your case about this, writers.

I only have about two positive things to say about this episode. For one thing, Chloe actually served as a pretty decent antagonist in the flashbacks. Much like in “Revolution”, when the writers actually let her be a villain on her own without being made a pawn, she can be somewhat entertaining. If this was the Chloe we got after Season 3, I don't I would have been as upset at the direction Astruc's team took with the character.

In addition, the thing that saves this episode from being at the bottom is that unlike the next two, it actually understands that what the antagonist did was wrong. They don't make up excuses for what Chloe did and she actually gets called out as a result. It doesn't lead to anything major, but it's something.

Like with “Queen Banana”, there's not much else I can say that hasn't already been said. There's plenty of retcons, the characterization for everyone is off, it attacks the audience, and the message about trauma got fumbled by the show's usual double standards. It's been said over and over again, and it's become a symbol of how much the show's quality has degraded.

#26: Emotion

I think if you've kept up with my reviews of this season, you should know by now that I don't exactly like Felix, and most of the problems I have with him can be attributed to this episode. In fact, for a while, this was going to be my choice for the bottom slot.

It's clear that the writers want to make Felix this wild card who's only in it for himself, but like most of the show's antagonists, they want to show Felix as this devious mastermind... but he's also not really evil, and you should feel bad for him. For most of the episode, Felix does nothing but make everyone's lives worse during his first outing as Argos. He smears his cousin's reputation yet again, tricks his girlfriend into dancing with him, condemns some rich kids for the crime of being rich when he's just as rich, and eventually wipes out all life on the face of the earth. But he's just doing it for his cousin, we swear!

While Felix has understandable motivations for what he does, wanting to free Adrien and Kagami, the way he tries to achieve his goal makes it hard to sympathize with him. If the whole point was that what he did was wrong and that he needs to find a different way, that could work. Instead, we're supposed to see him as this tragic figure who was forced to do terrible things when the episode shows him happily singing while causing chaos. It's the same problem with Gabriel, wanting a sympathetic character to do unapologetically evil things. The fact that he has to be told that genocide is bad doesn't make us want to sympathize with him when he breaks down crying. It paints a picture that he's crazy but the show wants to act like he isn't.

Even putting all the crap with Felix aside, the episode is still unbearable. The stuff with Marinette was poorly executed and was just done to get her involved in the plot, and later become the first one to excuse Felix for betraying her. Other than the dance scene, you could easily just have Marinette swing in as Ladybug when Argos starts his rampage and nothing would really change. The episode tries to make jokes about how unnecessary this is, but as usual, its attempts to be self-aware come across like its saying “What we're doing it wrong, we know it's wrong, but we're gonna do it anyway!”

Speaking of the dance scene, I can't stop rolling my eyes whenever Felix tries to be all “We live in a society” to Marinette. Forget the corrupt politicians, corporate moguls, human traffickers, and despotic rulers of foreign nations. The absolute worst section of humanity is composed of the teenage children of the 1%. Sure, you'd have to break my legs before I'd agree to supervise them at this party, but I don't get why these are the people we're supposed to see as irredeemable monsters. Do the writers think because these kids associate themselves with Chloe, we'll automatically hate them? Newsflash, but if I had to choose between hanging out with some annoying kids and a mass murderer, I'd stick with the annoying kids.

Rewatching this episode was what helped me finally realize just what my problem with the show's anti-capitalist message is. How the hell am I supposed to hate the villains on this show for being rich when several characters are rich or at the very least, are successful thanks to their connections to the rich? Think about it for a second. Putting aside Adrien and Kagami, you have Marinette, the daughter of two of the most popular bakers in Paris and earned the respect of multiple celebrities, Alya, the daughter of a chef who works at a five-star hotel, Nino, someone who got to DJ at a major fashion show, Rose, who is friends with a literal prince, Luka and Juleka, the children of a popular rock star, and Max, the son of an astronaut with access to cutting-edge technology. Somehow, these people are supposed to be poor? They make Monica from Friends look like Oscar the Grouch. It's why I can't take the message seriously. You can't write a story about a class struggle when both classes are shown to be pretty well-off.

The only thing that saves this episode from being at the bottom of the list is the fact that despite committing genocide while singing, Felix at least gets what he did was wrong and makes up for it. It doesn't fix everything else he did in this episode, but that's better than nothing. As for the villain featured in the episode that's at the bottom of this list? If you've been keeping track, I think you know who I mean.

#27: Re-Creation

I'll admit, I'm sort of cheating here. I'm judging this episode more as a finale than an individual episode, but I'm making an exception because the plot is tied to wrapping up all the loose ends this season.

I'm mentioning this because for a season finale, the stakes just feel so low. The fight between Bug Noire and Monarch doesn't have any weight to it because they've barely interacted at all for the last five seasons. These are supposed to be two mortal enemies, but you can't really buy the enmity between them. It ultimately cheapens the moment of Bug Noire triumphing over Monarch in the end... before Monarch triumphs over her not long afterwards, but we'll get to that.

The stuff with the Miraculized doesn't help either. We already know that the Ladybug and Cat Miraculous are in the Agreste manor, so the Miraculized's goal is impossible to achieve. It's never even explained why the Miraculized don't go back to the manor to help Monarch beat Bug Noire, since they should still be able to track the Miraculous. All of the fights with them just come across like filler, and there's no real sense of danger or hopelessness to be found. Whether the Miraculized win or lose is irrelevant. Nothing will happen either way because the important stuff is happening in the Agreste manor.

This extends to the part where all the heroes appear to help. It doesn't come across as an Avengers-esque moment for the climax, because it doesn't change anything. The episode never explains what any of these characters were doing prior to the events of this episode and why only now they're helping out. The United Heroes are the most egregious example because unlike Fei or Su-Han, they're a major organization whose members include the president, and they didn't do a damn thing when Monarch stole all of the other Miraculous. Speaking of, there is no way in hell that Su-Han taught Mirakung-Fu to three random people over Ladybug and Cat Noir, much less that those three people are actual masters after about two months at best. Maybe they got to train in Bunnix's Burrow? After all, she's not doing anything else to stop the end of the world other than sending four people over to Paris. This whole sequence really highlights how bland the other heroes of this universe are. If they're not slacking off when they're needed, they're criminally underdeveloped because there's a slim chance they'll get spin-offs to flesh them out.

But I think the biggest issue me and other people have with this finale is the resolution. In what is easily one of the most baffling decisions the show has made, Bug Noire doesn't defeat Monarch, and Monarch gets to make his wish. I don't care how many times the writers technically say she won because she beat him in a fight. Gabriel backstabbed her at the last minute and got her Miraculous to make his wish. Yeah, he died, but he succeed in achieving his goal, never faced any real consequences, didn't get any closure with his son (much less apologize for abusing him), told Marinette to lie about the monster he was to him, and was turned into a martyr with a statue made of the same things he used to control the world.

This ending infuriates me because it not only makes Marinette out to be a terrible hero for failing to do the one thing she was chosen to do (get the Butterfly Miraculous back), but it also ultimately makes Gabriel out to be a decent person even though he destroyed and recreated the world. All Marinette did was take credit for saving the world, and even then, Gabriel got more celebration in the end. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen! She got outsmarted by an abusive parent and didn't even get a new statue in her honor!

But the most damning thing of all this is the fact that this finale retroactively makes everything that's happened over the last five seasons completely pointless. If Gabriel making a wish wasn't as bad as it was supposed to be, why didn't Ladybug and Cat Noir let him borrow their Miraculous? Why make the stakes this high if you're going to downplay the impact of a madman recreating the world in his own image? Follow-up question: why make the stakes this high if the wish being made is ultimately shown to have huge benefits for society? In an attempt to wrap things up with a happy ending, the writers accidentally made the conflict completely meaningless.

That's why this resolution is the ultimate example of the writers refusing to allow any major changes to happen. If they're willing to treat the end of the universe as less important than Ms. Bustier becoming mayor, why should we assume they'll ever take their story seriously? For God's sake, every character you know and love is essentially dead, and we're supposed to act like that isn't a big deal? That's how you wanted to end the show originally? Then again, at least they tried to resolve something, unlike the Love Square. We still haven't gotten a reveal, and I don't think we ever will at this point. These writers will drag out the story until the show stops becoming profitable, which won't be for a long time.

And with that, I am officially done with Season 5. Honestly, after having to rewatch this season again, I'm not sure if it's even worth giving Season 6 a shot. There's nothing to look forward to, and Lila becoming the main villain isn't really appealing to me. At the very least, I have the movie review to look forward to, meaning I can watch something good for a change.

[b1ackoutartist]

Finding Shelter in a Storm

Scarlett Johansson x fem!reader (platonic)

The movie set was buzzing with excitement. "Cut! Perfect take, Y/N!" the director shouted. Y/N Y/L/N, a relatively new actress in Hollywood, had landed a significant role alongside the legendary Scarlett Johansson.

Though the set was always alive with activity, there was one thing that always remained a constant: the sight of Scarlett by Y/N's side.Y/N had faced numerous hardships in her life. From a troubled childhood filled with bullying and familial disconnects to battling severe mental health issues in her teenage years, her life was anything but a fairy tale. Despite her talents, her insecurities often overshadowed her achievements.

However, joining this movie set was about to change her life in ways she never imagined.From the very beginning, Scarlett seemed to have taken an unspoken oath to be Y/N's protector. It started with small gestures: lending her a jacket when the set was cold, offering words of encouragement after a challenging scene, or simply inviting her to lunch so she didn't eat alone.

One evening, after an especially grueling day of filming, Y/N found herself breaking down. The pressures of the industry, combined with her personal battles, made it feel like the weight of the world was on her shoulders. As tears streamed down her face, Scarlett found her, sitting quietly in a corner.Without a word, Scarlett wrapped an arm around Y/N, drawing her close. The warmth and genuine concern in her embrace provided Y/N with a comfort she hadn't felt in years."Hey," Scarlett whispered, wiping away Y/N's tears, "you're not alone anymore. Remember that."

As days turned into weeks, the bond between the two grew stronger. Scarlett became the guardian angel Y/N had never had, guiding her, supporting her, and most importantly, making her feel seen and valued.

Their camaraderie wasn't lost on the rest of the crew, either. It was evident to everyone just how much Scarlett cared for Y/N.During a press tour for their movie, the duo was asked about their off-screen relationship. Scarlett, with a cheeky grin, pulled Y/N close. "I've got to keep an eye on this one," she laughed, "or she'll find her way into some kind of trouble."

Y/N chuckled and shook her head with a smile, her eyes darting to Scarlett. "Honestly, she's not wrong," Y/N playfully admitted. "But honestly, she's the best guardian angel anyone could ask for."

The interviewer, clearly amused by their banter, delved deeper. "We've seen all the posts on social media. Fans adore the 'mother-daughter' dynamic you both share. How does that make you feel?"Scarlett's eyes twinkled with pride. "It's heartwarming to know that our relationship resonates with so many. I think it's a testament to the fact that family isn't just blood. Sometimes, you find it in the most unexpected places."Y/N nodded in agreement.

"Seeing all the support online is surreal. It's like we've become this beacon of hope, showing people that no matter where you come from or what you've been through, there's always a chance to find someone who truly understands and cares."The interviewer nodded, clearly touched. "It's inspiring. Your story, Y/N, and the bond you share with Scarlett, has touched so many hearts. It's beautiful to see."

The rest of the interview was filled with lighthearted banter and shared memories between the two actresses. As they left the stage, arm in arm, it was evident to all that the connection between Scarlett Johansson and Y/N Y/L/N was profound and unbreakable.

Behind the scenes, the two continued to uplift and support one another. Scarlett, with her years of experience, offered guidance to Y/N, helping her navigate the challenges of the entertainment industry. And Y/N, with her fresh perspective, often reminded Scarlett of the joys and spontaneity of life.Social media was ablaze with fan edits, heartfelt messages, and stories from individuals who were inspired by their bond.

As the years went by, their relationship remained rock-solid. Scarlett often mentioned in interviews how proud she was of Y/N's growth, both personally and professionally.

And Y/N never missed an opportunity to express her gratitude for having Scarlett in her life.Their bond became a testament to the fact that sometimes, amidst the chaos of life, you find your anchor in the most unexpected person. And for Y/N, that anchor was Scarlett Johansson.

[bones4thecats]

2023 Halloween Special; RoR

A/N: Part 1 of the Halloween Specials, and when they are all posted, I will have a special announcement in regardance to my Request Form, enjoy~~

Their Favorite Thing To Do With Their S/O During Halloween

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📯 This guy thoroughly enjoys singing a bunch of halloween songs through his megaphone at the other norse gods, his favorite to sing is This is Halloween from ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’

📯 Heimdall does also enjoy judging people’s costumes, though it’s mostly the children who dress up, since most gods see it as pointless

📯 If you ever wanted to do couple-costumes, he’d do it happily

📯 This god does try to get Odin and the others to allow trick-or-treating in the house, so they can connect with the new generation of children faster

📯 It fails, but he never stops trying every year

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🍭 This guy lives for trick-or-treating

🍭 It’s a day where he gets free candy to add to his stash, if he could, he’d make every day Halloween

🍭 He also enjoys dressing up in costumes with you, though it’s mostly just things simple like ghosts, very rarely will he ever put an extreme amount of effort into something to trivial when he could be spending that time with you

🍭 Whenever he gets candy that night, he basically rushes home with you and begins to add the sweets to his already existing stash he hides in your room and the one he hides somewhere else throughout your shared home

🍭 Honestly, it surprised everyone on how the food somehow hasn’t expired

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📨 This god. Oh boy

📨 He has so much work to do when it comes to delivering messages that he never really had a Halloween to celebrate, even with you

📨 But since this year Zeus wanted to see his son happy and free for the day, he gave him the day off as an early Christmas gift

📨 Hermes immediately went home and began to bake

📨 That is his favorite thing to do with you, make all kinds of treats for all the pantheons

📨 He’d love making things like pumpkin pie, but he also enjoys cooking a bunch of foods, he has an amazing palette, and knows exactly what everyone likes, because he flies around a lot

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🐍 This little gremlin likes doing anything revolving around scaring people

🐍 If you think he does this enough when it isn’t Halloween, prepare the sappy movies

🐍 He constantly jumps out to scare everyone that passes by, especially Thor, Odin or his birds, and you

🐍 Loki also enjoys watching horror movies, his favorites are either slasher movies or psychological

🐍 He’s so mental that he even recommends things for the antagonist to do;

“ Come on, just cut her head off, she’ll bleed like a pig! “

🐍 Everytime some child asks trick-or-treat and Loki answers the door, he says trick and sprays them with silly string

🐍 Damn gremlin

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🪩 This head god of the Hindu Pantheon definitely enjoys survival horror movies

🪩 They bring him back to when he and Rudra were younger and battling the gods one by one

🪩 Shiva also enjoys going to pumpkin patches, baking, carving pumpkins, decorating the yard, and making treats with his wives and S/O

🪩 When you first handed him a pumpkin and told him to draw a face, he drew something along the lines of a temple of his

🪩 It was hard to carve, but he did enjoy watching you and his wives take out the seeds and stuffing to fully finish it

🪩 Watching you make decorations and treats also makes him happy

🪩 Shiva especially loves watching you and his wives help Ganesha with a costume if he wanted one that year, it was so domestic, it made him forget he could destroy something with a flick of his finger for a minute

[cosmerelists]

Shallan’s Murders: Ranked by Level of Disturbing

Shallan-murders-feature requested by @nerd-in-distress

[Major spoilers for Stormlight Archives!]

I’ve already ranked Kaladin’s dramatic entrances & the awesomeness of Vin’s kills. Next up we’re looking at the many deaths that Shallan has enacted, directly or indirectly. Since Shallan’s murders tend to be Trauma Personified, I’m going to rank them by how disturbing I found them.

#10: Bluth

We’ll start with the one that I find the least disturbing--in part because I think it’s the least attributable to Shallan herself. Technically, Bluth is inspired by the “Ideal Self” that Shallan draws of him, a drawing which motivates Bluth to join the fight against the bandits and die. So it is true that if not for Shallan, Bluth would not have been in that situation and likely would not have risked himself. But it is framed as a redemption, and I don’t find it particularly disturbing. 

#9: Her own alters

In particular, I am thinking about the Battle of Thaylen City, during which Shallan keeps an entire Thrill-infected army busy by constantly creating illusions for them to kill. Every time one of these illusions die, Shallan feels it, as though she is sending out parts of herself to be murdered, over and over again. I’m not going to lie--this scene has made me cry, and I do personally feel a sense of creeping horror imagining Shallan simply sending herself out to be murdered hundreds and hundreds of times. But I suppose these deaths aren’t exactly real, so I can’t rank this too highly on the disturbing scale. 

#8: The Coachman and his Parshmen

Shallan has a bit of a rocky start when it comes to being Veil and infiltrating the Ghostbloods. During one such incursion, she hires a coachman to bring her to a meeting and then makes him drive away without her to trick the Ghostbloods. Later, she finds him and the Parshmen murdered and his coach burned. Here again, it’s not like Shallan murdered them with her own hand...but she does cause their deaths, insofar as they wouldn’t have been in danger if not for her. But this is really the fault of the Ghostbloods, so I rank it as less disturbing in terms of what Shallan herself does. 

#7: Her Mom’s “Friend”

I have honestly always been unclear about whether Shallan or Shallan’s father actually kills this guy, but the wiki says it was Shallan, so I’ll go with that. This is our first real person who is killed directly by Shallan’s hand--and honestly, I find it to be the least disturbing of actual-people-murdered-by-Shallan. I mean, the guy was a Skybreaker trying to suppress the return of the Radiants by murdering a kid, so I really feel like Shallan was acting in self-defense here. I mean, it is disturbing for Shallan, though, so that counts for something.

#6: Tyn

Speaking of murders in self-defense...Shallan does directly murder Tyn, but this one is once again purely self-defense. Tyn was trying to kill Shallan at the time, and Shallan summons her Shardblade in a desperate act of self-defense. There is still a level of horror, though. Tyn was sort of Shallan’s friend, and Shallan’s Shardblade is Trauma Personified at this point in the story--I believe this is the first time we ever actually see it. I don’t remember if it’s confirmed whether the Blade is Testament or Pattern, but there’s an extra layer of horror if it’s Testament, aka the spren that Shallan killed and is now using to kill someone else.

#5: Ialai

Now, here’s a murder not in self-defense at all. Radiant just straight up murders Ialai and hides this fact from Shallan. This is after Shallan, Radiant, and Veil vote on it and decide not to murder her...but then Radiant does it anyway in order to protect Shallan from having to do it--and from having to know about it. Unfortunately, this doesn’t so much protect Shallan as it does cause her intense mental and emotional distress, as now Shallan thinks there is a spy among her friends. This is partly why Formless becomes such a big threat in this book. So while I didn’t feel particularly upset that Ialai died, this murder did end up being disturbing in its implications--especially the idea that one of Shallan’s alters could do such a thing without Shallan (being willing to?) know.

#4: Her mom

Shallan’s mom was trying to kill her at the time, and baby Shallan summoned a Shardblade and killed her. Shallan then became convinced that the sword was her mother’s soul, which was locked in a safe behind a picture in that very room. For a very long time afterwards, Shallan would believe that safe was glowing with her dead mother’s soul. That’s all pretty disturbing--from attempted daughter-murder to actual mother-murder to just heaps of trauma. It was still self-defense, but that doesn’t help much with how disturbing it all was.  

#3: Testament

The Stormlight Archive books are FILLED with mentions of the Recreance, that day when the Radiants betrayed their oaths and killed their spren. Of course, we eventually find out that the decision to break the oaths was mutual, and that the Radiants and their spren agreed to take this action (for reasons that are still not clear...). But there is one spren-killing that occurred long after the Recreance and that was not, so far as we know, a mutual decision: Shallan’s murder of her first spren, Testament. This is the spren whose blade killed Shallan’s mother, an act that so traumatized Shallan that she broke her oath, turned her spren into a deadeye, and then repressed all off the memories. Later Shallan meets Testament in Shadesmar for just an extra layer of trauma--her murder victim is still walking around. Maybe this will get less disturbing if a way of saving deadeyes is discovered, but for now, I find this one very disturbing.

#2: Grund 

Grund is the street kid from Kholinar that Shallan tries to help by giving him food, only to later discover that Grund is being forced to do this by the gangs, who then murder Grund in front of her while he uses his dying words to declare how much he hates her. Even though this is not a death caused directly by Shallan’s hands, I find it to be one of the more disturbing deaths attributable to Shallan--because it’s a kid, because he dies of head trauma which I find disturbing, and because he uses his dying words to blame her, which is a pretty big helping of trauma to add to Shallan’s already large pile.

#1: Lin Davar

Listen, Lin Davar is the worst, and I am a fan of him being dead. Nevertheless, I find this to be far and away the most disturbing of Shallan’s murders because of how it happens. First, Shallan uses the blackbane her brother gave her to poison her father. But it doesn’t work. Her father wakes up, and Shallan has to murder him a second time, this time by literally strangling him to death with the necklace he gave her while singing the lullaby he sang to her after she murdered her mother. And strangling is not fast--she has to persist and sing until he is finally, finally dead.

So congratulations (?) to Lin Davar for being Shallan’s most disturbing murder victim! 

[sky-scribbles]

Playlist for my Aeor longfic

I failed to figure out how to do a fancy spotify embed like the kids do but uh. Here's the playlist for Gravity!

I listened to this while planning and writing, and there are even a few shout-outs to the songs in the fic... Songs are arranged chronologically, so you should be able to hear the story happening, hopefully :'D

Further yelling about song choices under the cut!

A Matter of Time - This one is... sort of the fic's opening titles in my head? I wanted to start out with an instrumental, to capture the vibes of the months before the fic opens - Essek and Caleb apart, thinking about the T-Dock, and each other. Wondering. Waiting.

Horse to Water - Essek in Chapter 1, knowing his life as the Shadowhand is ending, waiting for Caleb to come and take him away to whatever comes next. (I'm normally very picky about not putting songs that reference modern day stuff on fantasy playlists but this one's vibes were too perfect)

Dear Fellow Traveller - Two wizards heading into Aeor together.

Conquest of Spaces - A song for Aeor. A dark, beautiful city, the remains of a people who lived by greed and power. (And two wizards in the ruins, trying to draw closer to each other.)

Neptune - This is mostly for Essek's breakdown in chapter 5, as he worries he'll never break out of his Shadowhand manipulation, wanting to be closer to Caleb and not knowing what that would even look like. And it's a little for Caleb in chapter 6, too, grappling with his feelings for Essek and his fears that they'll ultimately be bad for each other.

Please Don't Say You Love Me - ... and as they move past those fears, this song is for them tentatively acknowledging what they might be to each other. Not yet. But maybe soon.

Woodwork - This is for the chapters 6-9 span, as they learn more about Brashaar's plan. The pressure of a crisis has an odd way of making them realise just how deep their trust and care for each other runs.

Two Evils - Since we're at the point where Brashaar shows up, she gets a song now! This is pretty much her internal monologue during her confrontation with the wizards (though she really should have paid attention to 'if you're not careful, you will lose her' in reference to Quaera...)

Winter - Travelling northward, and yearning. Wishing they had more time.

Mind - A song for a young Quaera, slowly forming a personality, wondering about who she is and how her identity forms...

The Tower - ... and having their own breakdown.

What Could Have Been - I love me a good villainous breakdown, and this is a song for Brashaar's. This is how I imagine she feels during the final confrontation, raging against the gods, against Caleb and Essek, against Quaera after they turn from her. Not quite able to let go of what she thinks Aeor could have been. What, in her eyes, the world is meant to be. (As a bonus, I think the second verse sounds a bit like a retort to her from Quaera...)

Everybody Wants to Rule the World - This is such a fun cinematic cover, and I can't tell you how many times I've imagined a mental AMV of the final battle with Brashaar set to it :'D

Ori, Embracing the Light - I wanted an instrumental here too, because... Essek is dead, Caleb is in shutdown, and Essek and Quaera are communing with the Luxon, a being that doesn't really speak with words. Also, 'embracing the light' is exactly what Quaera does at this point.

Would That I - I know we all use this as Caleb's 'learning to live and love again' song... and I am no exception. This is for him after the T-Dock, finally fully acknowledging his grief, and his love for Essek.

First Day of my Life - Just two wizards realising that they have a future, and agreeing to slowly work at what's between them.

Ready to Call This Love - This one speaks for itself, honestly.

Five - Both of the wizards in the final chapter, but especially Essek realising how isolated he's been from the world, and letting it all in so he can feel it. (Also, studying the universe is a love language - )

Gravity - Gravity is a metaphor for love!!!!

[arenabreadandbiscuits]

INCOMING COMIC?! - ZODIAN

So, kinda working on a comic. I say kinda because constant support is gonna be a great way to push me to actually do it but my posts don't get much attention so it depends ^^''

Anyway the comic is based around Zodiac signs and considering I'm an Aries I drew them first. He/them pronouns for my boy because yes he's pretty like a girl but he's not one. (Though...I'm so totally down to make a female version for the comic as well. Which I'll probably do for everyone is this blows up like I'm begging to the Gods for it to do lol)

Arian - The Ram, The Shepherd.

I have many ideas for this comic since I've been thinking about it on and off for years so PLEASE interact guys!

Here he is, as well as his time lapse. Also VOTE IN THE POLL TO CHOOSE WHO I DRAW NEXT! Of course whoever has the highest votes wins.

I'm happy to share info on the story to come and share my thoughts on what may or may not happen. Ask in my askbox if curious about the possible lore!

For context I think I want it to be a rather interesting depth story in a world of competitions and battling over space and territory. Please ask me so I can brainstorm ÙwÚ

Honestly this is a project to keep my mental safe as I continue to heal from my GBS, I just want an audience and one that pushes me just a little to get these things done so I feel better about my situation. Please vote, whoever wins this vote I'll draw next for sure. And I'll draw both 'male' and 'female' though I enjoy making my characters look androgynous at times hahah

I look forward to seeing the results!

[labyrinthe-exe]

laby_log 0.2

oh wow... has it already been like idk... two weeks? it's kind of insane to think about... originally i wanted to do it every week, but a lot of stuff has happened since my last log..

but i released the demo! wip! you can find it here!

anyway... now to actually get into my mental state and where i was at progress wise during the last two weeks

so! i left off in an optimistic spirit, while i was mentally in a downpour and feeling waves of hppelessness.... i also was positive of the future! i had to do some cuts in terms of cutting off legs but....

as soon as i finished that devlog, i ended up just... really really going through it mentally...

i was both tired, fatigued, and like all over the place even more. i had started to write but i was insecure about my story and the pacing and if i was even doing a good job. i was worried about if the story i was telling would even be interesting or if the designs were hot enough, attractive enough... i was wondering if i was doing justice to characterization, too?

that also was the fact i just felt like giving up completely LMFAO

i was powering through, and i wasn't progressing in ways that i want to... hell what can i show for it other than writing? that you can see in the game!

but anyway, i started working on the key art and this is where i spiraled again LOL wow... me and spiraling... is it professional to express all this? i dont know...

and this is where i was unraveling... you see i started out mapping stuff out ( i dont have the screenshots i dont think of the part before i fixed stuff but like its okay these are some i sent to my friends LOL ) but the third pic is where i hated it... i had to go to sleep cause i just wanted to cry

i felt like i was struggling with both trying to improve my art, stay consistent, but also develop an art style all at once in the same frame and that sort of progression... is hard? scary... terrifying... it made my heart totally break

but! i perservered!

and WHAM! i started getting somewhere with the help of amazing community of friends who i just spammed LMFAO like "pls i need it to look like clouds...." and also just in general to make sure i was on the right track with vibes...

i finally felt a little satisfied though it still didnt match the other cains i drew/other love interests but eh... honestly consistency is a hurdle i will have to learn how to get over eventually, i was looking at this game development process as not a fun experience but as a job and that was really fucking with my creative process

a lot.

AND I SWEAR I WAS COOKING THOUGH! once i was getting into a roll, but my progress still felt abysmal with all the things i wanted to achieve: good writing, good story, attractive characters..

i felt i was lagging behind my peers, i felt like i was making a fool of myself. who am i even trying to make games yanno? i'm just a sort of like... artist who struggles to even draw everyday. which doesn't mean im impassionate... i think i am passionate...

it's just a battle...

that and irl i have to take care of the household in terms of chores and the like, i only have so much mental bandwidth... it was hard to socialize some days cause i just felt like i was disappointment... would i even be able to finish in time?

well from the beginning of this log, it's clear i did finish something! aided w/ the power of friendship and eternal shounen determination LOL yes. call me naruto ( don't but funfact in elementary my friends called me ichigo kurosaki )

once again, i had to take an art break, here's my art from 2022 ( the subview ) versus 2025! i'm so happy with my progres even if the sketch i made was kinda shitty too LMFAO i do have plans for a project featuring this character, a little devil ( he'll be in a game with anathema... i'll take about anathema in another post one day, my precious baby )

either way, i found it easy to compare everyones progress to mine... like wow other people are able to be so organized and cool and i struggle with it... even checking off lists, it's hard for me? i felt all over the place, sinking into a pit that i created myself and that i was just showcasing the worst parts of me...

even though thats not true.

honestly i was incredibly worried people wouldn't like cain, the mc, he's like so pivotal to the story it'd be kind of hard to rework the entire story because cain is like... pivotal, i'd just have to write a completely different story...

but the show must go on, i kept making things.

honestly, in real life was a strong part of why i felt kinda crappy. even online, being busy so much and not socializing w/ key people that i usually socialize with was such a damper on my mood. i missed my friends. i wonder if they felt uncared for while i was busy ( which isn't true, but my brain is weird ) WOW AM I OVERSHARING? idk... i feel that its important to showcase that my design process includes being all over the place...

i didn't work every day. i tried to, but i didn't.

while my friends were trucking along on gui, i was frozen in a sense of wondering if i should even continue development or quit while i'm ahead and ghost everyone for being a disappointment.

the deadine was nearing and i still hadn't even written the kiss. the gui wasn't done either which didn't worry me as much as being worried that i would disappoint everyone i told "i'm making a game!" what would i look like then... if i didnt make it? a gameless loser?

i know right. what the heck?

it makes no sense.

i ended up writing the kiss yesterday actually, i was experiencing writer's block cause i was so insecure about my story.

but woo boi. the story got put out the gui got done and my stress... didnt dissipate. either way, i think the last two weeks of the jam was a tough time? i did learn a lot. like what i needed to prioritize, how to better prioritize for my workflow.

i have to go like gui - sprites - writing - editing - backgrounds - writing again... i think? it feels a little weird but i think that'll work for me? i can still fix that though.

ANOTHER THING! i couldnt actually sleep last night. i was nervous how my story would be recieved LMFO isn't that normal i think...

but i released the game!

and there was typos.. which to be fair, i'm not good at cross-editing.. i was trying to go line by line after a friend proofread the first part for me and then i... kept missing stuff- don't be like me, just copy paste all the edits and reformat it. or just write in renpy speak in the first time...

but overall i think i learned a lot from swak.

am i still going to be ambitious?

hell the fuck yes.

but will i know how to better work around my high and low mental peaks? also yes. i think i need to remind myself every so often why i'm doing this... well i love writing, i love art, i love telling stories... i like to share my perspective on things, my characters perspectives, and just ships too in general I LOVE SHIPS! SO MUCH YOU DONT EVEN KNOW

but yeah...

does any of this make sense? i don't know... maybe i overshared, maybe i didn't. but the demo is done. it's still a giant wip, but i feel better about the future of it. the extended demo is coming and i will keep on trucking on. cause that's all i can do.

anwho... laby logging out <3

[childotkw]

re that au where au!tom yeets himself into canon - so you said harry would be happy to ignore the, uh, particular brand of obsessed tom's got going with him. but what about everyone else's (who knows his real identity) reaction to that? like harry's friends (I imagine tom would be using every opportunity to push them away so he can hang out with harry alone), the rest of the order, dumbledore (who i assume trusts him about as much as you can trust a dementor to not snack on your soul), the other death eaters, or even canon!voldemort

oh ho ho

Harry knows, after the initial confusion and fear and disgust and rage are cycled through, that the presence of a different Tom Riddle at his side is not accepted but for the moment tolerated.

The Order, Dumbledore, are too soldier-like to disregard what an asset Riddle will be in this fight -

(war, a part of Harry corrects, because even if he's never experienced it on such a scale, every day of his life has been a battle and he knows, bone-deep, what the beat of drums on the horizon means)

and that if the only thing guaranteeing his compliance is access to Harry then they will do it. Because Harry has always been more tool than person in their eyes, more symbol than boy.

And it's not even that Harry particularly minds being given up like a sacrifice, an appeasement, an offering because that's what he's spent his whole life being moulded into, isn't it? Someone to lay down his life for others, someone to take the hits, someone to draw the ire and attention of the most dangerous man in the world so that others could spin their plans on the side.

He's honestly not even surprised when they agree to let Riddle stay with him.

His friends don't understand his ease with the situation. They don't think he's in the right headspace to know what he's agreeing to (don't trust me, Harry thinks, a little bitter, a little sad). Ginny, in particular, is wroth at the Order's decision. She rages, she spits, she cries - because the young man standing at Harry's shoulder shares the face of the boy she had put her faith in and been violated by, been betrayed by, and it's not fair to ask Harry to go through that too.

Hermione and Ron are more quiet in their disagreement, their anger on Harry's behalf a simmering but ever-present force. They don't like Riddle, don't trust him, don't want him near their friend, but Harry is unmoving and the more time he spends with Riddle the less weight their voices seem to hold and they're scared.

Voldemort, on his part, is at first frustrated and then curious. He shares a mental link with Harry, after all, and the more glimpses he gets of his other self - of the things he says to Harry, of how masterfully he brings the boy under his purview, of the subtle influences he imposes that always, always lead to impressive growth in Harry - the more he begins to understand just why a version of Tom Riddle would leap dimensions to find another Harry Potter.

The Death Eaters are more confused than anything, but the ones that cross paths with Harry more often? The ones that find themselves on the end of his wand more and more? They're the ones that begin to see. That know -

Harry Potter is shifting. Slowly, incrementally, he's sliding away from being a paragon of Light propaganda and is becoming more...open-minded. His spells drift more towards maim than subdue. Curses roll of his tongue without hesitation. His magic, just as fierce as ever, has a certain flavour to it now, some mix of Dark and Light that is bewitching to see.

And when he rages how beautifully it swirls.

Tom is...content for the most part. Under his guidance Harry has begun to shake some of the more unappealing traits he's been forced to cultivate over the years. He's more assertive, more confident, more in control. Proactive rather than reactive. Stable rather than teetering on the edge of destruction.

Harry's no use to Tom if he can't stand up to him, after all. What good is a balancing influence that fails at balancing?

[kiwi-the-servamp-addict]

I recently redrew my subclass ocs! Every. Single. One.

So here's all of em

oh also some of the Svs have outfit changes or little things added on or like bits of redesign

also warning:there's gonna be mentions of death and ways people die so just a fair warning

here's Nyx, Kuro's subclass! They died in the Trojan war as a bystander (why was Kuro in Greece?... I don't know man...) so now they kinda go and do their own thing but they go to bother Kuro every once in a while. They often travel during the day by wearing tons of white (for less sun absorption) and covering all of their skin. They also have a bad habit of talking without thinking.

next is Amira who's Hugh's subclass! She died in a car "accident" shortly after her kid passed away. She's quite motherly towards the people around her and her bag contains anything you could possibly imagine.

Then it's CeeCee! (Fun fact I've drawn her 4 years in a row) she died because she was in a witch trial [she rejected a girl {this was prior to CeeCees transition} and the girl accused her of witchcraft] and she's very attached to JeJe and is all over him half of the time. [Mikuni is jealous... Little does he know JeJe has no interest in women {hc} and CeeCee has a gf]

Then there's Irene who's Freya's subclass! She died in a war because she crossed dressed to get in and died on the battle field [forgot to give her an animal motif...] due to her injuries she has to wear hearing aids and she freaks out about loud noises and paints to cope

Next is Jonathan! He died because he got drunk one night and might've accidentally outed himself... So... He was murdered... He also likes to cook a lot and he owns an immortal puppy (don't ask I can't handle him losing a dog.) named Diablo! He's also a massive hopeless romantic.

Now there's Anita (pink) and Catherine (red) ! They're Ildio's subclasses! Anita died because she was a lady of the night and a client made her uncomfortable w his requests so she refused and he killed her. Now she's kind of hostile to really anyone new around her. She's also a massive chain smoker-

Catherine was arranged to be married to a mentally and physically abusive man who killed the actual love of her life. So on her wedding day she shot herself and now enjoys praying on people for blood so- but she's a lot nicer than Anita.

This is Lilian she's Lily's subclass and honestly looks like a ghost Victorian child. My friend suggested making a character albino but I might have made her too white.... But I thought it was interesting and made her stand out more so I kept it. She died due to starvation and neglect form her parents. Her older sister who was only about a year or two older was doing her best to keep her alive but there was only so much she could do. Now the two live in the mansion and her sister works there and is still alive.

Lastly we have Wisteria who's Tsubaki's subclass! They died by oding shortly after their family was brutally murdered. Now they kinda people watch for fun and flirt with Tsubaki for shits and giggles and is purely here now for the ride.

And ways this concludes my redesigns on my ocs and redesigns on some of the Svs (let's be real it's like almost all of them)

this was actually really fun to do! Maybe I'll get around to drawing the eves... One day...

[birchbow]

Your character designs are always so dang cool!!! Are the captain positions on other ships in the holy fleet challenged for like the position of GHB in a duel to the death, or are they appointed? (Some combination thereof?) The Orisoner looks so friendly, but I bet he’s brained somebody with that whimsical staff! I love that in the group shot Kurloz’s frame is almost a 2x scaled up version of Sister Waspclaw - his Gigantic Lankiness is just so fun. (Also LMAO at Kurloz being too prudish to claim his right to show tits! Honestly any time he mentions modesty standards being different a couple centuries ago it cracks me right up 😂)

Aw, thank you! :D Waspclaw is real small for a highblood, especially a relatively old and powerful one--smaller than pretty much all her pupated students, and a few of the pre-pupation ones! So next to Kurloz "Big Motherfucker" Makara, she's absolutely tiny. But does still manage to have more boobs than he does. Tragic.

RE: succession, it varies! It's pretty much always going to include some amount of combat--some of the variety where the loser is allowed to slink away and lick their wounds, and some where they definitely don't. Let's see. On a scale from most to least "Challenge To The Death"...

Definitely the Behemoth. It follows the same rules as the Grand Highblood challenge--if two trolls who want to be in charge walk into what passes for a captain's court on the Freakshow, only one is going to come out. Yozuna's not fast, and most trolls who ARE fast aren't nearly strong enough to make a dent in it even if they hit it--but the fact that Kurloz is big enough to really hit it hard and also came up specializing in speed and evasion is probably a real big part of the reason it hasn't made any attempt to challenge him for the throne, honestly.

Waspclaw. She's very lax with gutsy newbies getting fresh with each other and their superiors, thus the Joker's reputation for letting people get away with stuff, but stepping to her directly is SUPER dangerous. Make your gamble if you know you can get away with it!! But always know you aren't going to get away with it with her. :o) Plus, much like the Uderaks and Untoxxic, she works in poisons and venoms, and also she's heavily min-maxed into speed, so by the time you realize your challenge fight has officially been accepted, she's gone "well, they made their choice!" and you've been stung with something fatal.

The Abattoir. He isn't fucking around, although she also strikes me as very businesslike about it, and not inclined to be vindictive about the act of the challenge itself. I think the format is a little less "immediate fight to the death" and a little more "courtly duel" in keeping with both of his knightly sort of vibes. The exception being if you manage to draw blood on either of him, in which case shit flips very much into death-match mode. Also like. Hard-mode. You do have to challenge for both ships at once, and you will be fighting both of her. So like, considering authority over Elixir and Stardust features a lot of interfacing with the nonbelievers and doing Finance and shit, not a lot of people are jumping at THAT daunting prospect lol.

The Judgment. She wants to hear your argument for why the fuck you think you have what it takes to perform the physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually-taxing work of disciplining the wayward sinner-criminals of the church, and she's not getting any younger, here! If she feels like she's won her argument and the battle and you're inclined to back down in shame, she's not going to continue to press the point, but she will definitely openly think less of you for making a stupid and badly thought out attempt on her authority. She's as close as the church fleet gets to having a legislacerator taskforce, and she's just as stern and hard-assed as the Cruelest Bar, but also a large part of the Penitent's function is for flagellation and rehabilitation (???) of potentially-redeemable highbloods who've fucked up in ways that the church considers forgivable enough to give them a shot. She's down to clown (fatal) but also she's not an executioner necessarily.

Brother Libation. I drew inspiration from Il Dottore from the commedia del'arte, Bacchus, and the whole concept of drunken fist characters as an archetype, so if he's challenged he's got like... a 33% chance of just offering some kind of whimsical puzzle challenge that nobody ever manages to solve to his satisfaction, a 33% chance of just verbally convincing them to chill the fuck out by being a Cool Hang, and a 33% chance of bonking them heartily to the brink of death with his big spiky gourd.

The Orisoner wins for least deathmatchy. You can try to challenge, but you'll just get invited to come chill and vibe and just like. Really get into why you think your leadership will be hilarious and honoring to the messiahs, and what you think about art, and why you feel like you need captaincy to make the changes you want to see in the church and empire. If anybody attempts to escalate to violence, they'll mostly be met with a vaguely disappointed, surprisingly benevolent no-weapon-open-palms kind of rebuff, and if things continue to get more aggressive from there, the big spiky walloping staff will come out and be employed with startling effectiveness and skill lmao. But! If there were ever going to be highbloods inclined to take debate of best leadership policy over violence, it's the ones who decide they want to be theologians professionally. (Debate of best religious interpretation is a whole other ballgame, and gets aggressive here more than any other ship on the fleet lol). Orisoner in general though, would be one of the safer trolls you could be around as like, a human or a lowblood, if you had to pick a ship.

[evilmadscientistwizard]

@bishop-percival

(Previous) In the time it took Tris to get to the library, Cas had decided to just leave Cyrus be. In the meantime, he possessed the laptop to mess around with it more. When he heard Tris arrive, he popped out and floated down to the other side of the table to examine the engineering drawing. Seeing proof that Tris could build and has built portals excited him. He nodded at what they had to say. “Not only that, but the afterlife and other dimensions associated with it are purposely difficult to reach! Some gods that govern it make sure of that, and punish those who dare break that boundary.” He smugly shrugged. “If they can catch them.” “Anyways,” Cas leisurely hovered above the table like he was laying down on it and kicked his feet, “I figured out how to work a laptop by possessing it. It’s weird and it takes me a while to do things, but it’s also pretty cool.” He rolled over and folded his hands across his chest. “In doing so, it got me thinking about the weird ways that spirits affect electronics and such. I’m basically a being of pure energy.” He raised his hands above his face and made some sort of scrunching gesture as he explained, “So we were wondering, since spirits like me have an inherent connection to the afterlife, and if you could capture me and like, process my spirit energy into some sort of battery, if such a thing could be used in a portal to open up a way there!”

Yesh. Dealing with those gods could be a major pain in the rear. Professor Trismegistus made a mental note to ask Reverend Mike about avoiding/appeasing them later.

They nodded along to Cas’ explanation while taking actual notes. Once he was done they said, “I see... Which means that ghosts interfere with electric devices not because of some passive ability, but because they generate their own electromagnetic field.”

Professor Trismegistus brightly smiled as they exclaimed, “And that’s all a motor is! Mechanical parts driven by an endless battle between opposing magnetic forces!”

Then they put their hand to their chin. “Yet perpetual motion doesn’t come free. Now, if we take how much magical energy was consumed simply by summoning one ghost into account...” Tris paused to look up at Cas.

“Do you honestly want me to process your spiritual energy?” They shook their head and started to pace. “No, you hold far more value as a collaborator. Probably wouldn’t provide enough power anyways. But where can we find more ghosts around here..?”

[raposarealm]

Today is release day for the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection!

WE MADE IT, FOLKS!!

Yes, I know we're celebrating the game's re-release, but I took a character from the anime for this event -- specifically, Oozono Yuriko, shown here in Cross Fusion. This piece is based on the final fight in episode 19 in Stream, taking place on the hospital roof. I... didn't know whether I could show other characters in the shot, so it's probably not as apparent, but for context, her opponent here not pictured was Bombman. Honestly, the whole scene is a lot shorter and less relevant than I thought (there's another unrelated fight in the same episode that kinda overshadows this one,) but it stuck in my memory regardless. [Insert a joke about my regular medical field-related rambles here.]

Yuriko isn't my favorite character, but she is still one I'm fond of, and one I feel gets picked on a little too much sometimes. Like a number of the anime cast, she kinda got the short end of the stick in terms of... everything, so I guess I'm doing my part to try to make up for that. Somehow.

This piece is super late, due to a number of issues; most notably, this month I've had problems both with chronic pain and mental health, and it's kinda hard to draw when you feel like you've been hit by a bus. The other issue was the good five or so drafts I had before landing on this particular composition, and the sheer amount of digital art and editing skills I had to learn very quickly. The sketch was drawn digitally here, but everything from the refined underdrawing to the coloring were done traditionally, with multiliners and alcohol markers. It's by far my largest piece in a couple years at least, possibly overall. (Yeah, I know it looks kinda simple, but inking buildings and other structures with a normal ruler is harder than it looks, I've learned.) There's a few errors here and there due to both exhaustion and expedience, but I think it's acceptable enough.

Here's to a new breath for the series, and here's to all the folks who've worked so hard on this collaboration!

Plug in, transmission!

[chattegeorgiana]

Happy NaruSaku Day & Happy Birthday to Hanami Uzumaki!!! 🍥🌸🥳

Quick Question about Hanami: What do you absolutely love about her? For me I don't know too much about her but I really love her design and she's really fun to draw. She's seems like a really fun character and I get such a really warm feeling whenever I look at her. My birthday is also within same month as Hanami's. Seven days away from hers really, which isn’t exactly close but it's close enough so I'm happy.

Comment on NaruSaku: I'm honestly really glad I gave NaruSaku a chance. I used to be a pro-NaruHina fan and didn't like when people said they liked NaruSaku better (very immature I know, still cringe at that til this day🤦‍♀️). Even when I was really disappointed in the ending, I still blindly defended NaruHina with my life. But over time I started to come to terms that NaruHina was not a good ship and joined the NaruSaku fandom out of genuine curiosity and because I was starting to notice details about them that got me interested. I started to fall out of love with NaruHina and leaned more to NaruSaku. I honestly had more fun with NaruSaku then I did with NaruHina because of the amount of symbolism they have together. I still like NaruHina but not as much as I used to. I've come to realize that I loved their potential as ship rather than what they are in canon. The potential was there but the execution was done very poorly. It's even worse when there was good potential in their kids but nothing was done with them but a bad story. But that's enough venting (sorry about that), I really love NaruSaku from their story, to their symbolism, and to their kids—ESPECIALLY their kids! My favorite detail about NaruSaku is that the Uzumaki-Haruno symbol looks like the rising sun flag and that they represent two of the most well known symbols of Japan! I also just really like how we're just finding so much hidden details about them that's most likely just a coincidence but who knows.

Anyway, Happy NaruSaku Day and I hope you enjoy yourself on this very special day!

Hi there!! Happy birthdaaaay to yooou!!!

Because if I'm understanding correctly, it's soon gonna be your birthday, right? :D Hope you're going to be having an amazing day.

ALSO HELL YEAH ARIES POWEEERRR! My birthday is a day after Sakura's, on the 29th of March haha.

I'm so happy that basically around my birthday I get to celebrate Sakura's birthday, NaruSaku's day, Hanami's birthday, Sakura's Brazilian VA's along with Junko-san's birthday is around the same time.

So really, HELLA MUCH POWER in this fam haha.

As for what I love about Hanami? Well, everything? How she's a mix of Naruto & Sakura's most inner mischievous selves and plays pranks. She's such a bubbly character, really. Full of life, like a full blown spring. After all, her name says it all.

I like that she's a very resourceful girl - she might not have her mother's & brother's patience to learn complicated techniques, but she is smart enough to work in her own way. Kinda like her dad, actually. Naruto was never the book smarts. He was more the "street smarts" and that served him so well in battle if we think about it.

In my interpretation of things, she's quick on her feet, so to speak. Both physically and mentally. That's why she doesn't have the patience to stay and study long boring texts about techniques, lol.

She's more of a "do you feel me" type of girl? As in very intuitive, just to be clear here.

So yeah, I basically love that she's a bubble of energy all around and everywhere she goes she just makes people bloom with her sweet & mischievous personality.

Also wow, you were a NH fan? What a surprise. Welcome to this side of the fandom, tho! We're happy to have you.

And hey, look, you don't have to feel bad for liking NH. It was a part of your life. Of your experience. You can like both if you ask me, lol.

Cuz for example while in canon I don't like how things worked out, in fanon tho? I could make countless scenarios where all the pairings work. That's the fun of fanon, hahaha.

So at the end of the day, feel free to enjoy both of them however YOU want because it's YOUR experience and no one else's.

I'm glad to see you've opened yourself to the NaruSaku experience. It's really awesome and as a former multishipper myself, I totally understand your predicament.

Once upon a time I was a NS/SS/NH multishipper. With time and different experiences I stayed NS only because as a symbolism enthusiast I just couldn't help but love their thematic symbolism and the little nuggets Kishimoto was dropping for these two.

Anyway, once again welcome to the NaruSaku fandom space! Hope you thoroughly enjoy your time here!

Also Happy NaruSaku day to you too!

[xivu-arath]

actual finale thoughts:

I was salty about nynaeve at first but. after a night's sleep I do really like the building on her block (and plus associated trauma from the archways and her fake life within??) in a scene that was already juggling so many characters. plus it does set up her next arc really well. it stings for a finale but every wot finale until the last one is also inherently a bunch of setup, so! I'm More Chill Now

I knew how this would go with hopper the moment I saw a whitecloak presence and I got so teary at him jumping... (I do think the book death hits harder, the being pinned down with lances as he tries to leap...) But Still. I do feel it was early but also... well. it's important he die

I saw something in the tags about renna's death but honestly I feel it really works narratively for egwene at this moment, and for what mental space she'll be in for the next season

moiraine and lan <3 . great scenes, no notes. also I wonder who the big part of the fire banner was from, because it was very much filmed to draw attention to it being from a wholly different angle

the age of legends scene killed me. gonna be rotating "I know how much you hate being alive" and "I'm sorry but I can't do this again" and the repetition for YEARS

thinking about how the second after lanfear and ishy cuddle and affirm "we need each other" they both then move to betray each other with zero on screen regret. they know each other so well. this is how things go. I'm So Feral

speaking of isha'mael... his resignation when rand refuses! his extremely disinterested battle where he only does one weave and does not even try to change things up. he also knows how this will go, and there will be other chances for this to change before the end. at least he has a brief reprieve (:

(I also noted out loud that his dissolving into ash and crumbling away looks very similar aesthetically to how the heroes of the horn are pulled back. just wanna make that association)

mat's stuff was great <333 the awful lurch from feeling like he knows where he belongs to fucking it up. his frantic explaining it was a mistake

it feels like uno being a hero was either a gift to fans or a confirmation of a theory I'd never heard? honestly I'm p neutral on him so I didn't get much from it. I was however happy to see amaresu and birgitte!

I didn't expect to see the heron brands given how comparatively small and detailed they are, so that was such a gift. the scar looks so awful and grody too! wonderful. rand angst also fed really well for the future

everything with lanfear was great. her schemes! selling her coworkers to dump in the ocean like discarded pokemon! making sure she could fuck up isha'mael's contingencies. strolling into a total victory only to be fucked up by her least favourite coworker!! she's not my fave forsaken but she's been amazing all season and I'm glad for her