#i wrote a whole rant but i decided to make this less personal and more broad

[lover-of-mine]

"I do think the show kinda wrote themselves into a corner with them and I can go on a whole separate rant about that" can you elaborate on that?

tldr: the stakes are too high now so it's easier to keep playing with the tension than resolving it.

Okay, so, I do joke they had a plan when they casted Ryan, but I actually do think they were just playing with the chemistry between Oliver and Ryan up until the moment they decided to retcon the well to make the will a thing. I do think both Ryan and Oliver like to play with their chemistry too, I don't act but I'm guessing it is fun to play with what you can do with another actor you have the type of chemistry they have, but when you look at season 2 and most of season 3 as a whole, ignoring a few moments we like to hang on to, they are two friends who really trust each other. Season 3 does up the stakes, but it was early enough they could swing it either way even more with the way they are not as close as they could be during most of season 4, a lot of things about the 2 of them are left implied, and it makes sense considering both of them had explicit love interests that season.

But the shooting and consequences are a real turning point for the way they are being portrayed, its less unintentional, less reliant on the chemistry between the two of them, it's more on purpose, the way the shooting scene was filmed and framed, the choice of words, the slow-mo of them standing there, the impression they give you that they have their eyes locked across the pavement, Buck saving Eddie alone, having Eddie ask Buck is he's hurt, Buck saying "I need you to hang on", the way Buck steps up with Chris without knowing about the will, the way we find out about the will, the choice to have that be something Eddie has been hiding for over a year, creates something on purpose with the two of them that actually allows them to play with putting buddie in season 2 and 3 in a different light, it implies a level of planning when you look at the whole show. Season 5 we have them talking more on screen, we have Eddie basically asking for permission to break up with Ana, the wording in that scene also feels really on purpose to make you look for hidden meanings if it ever came to it. And there are things like Mitchell clocking that hurting Eddie is more effective in controlling Buck that's also something you can come back to and repurpose later. There's the choice to have Buck being the person who actually gets through to Eddie with making him feel comfortable in his own life again, and having Buck being the person Eddie opens up about his trauma to begin with. And then we have literally everything about season 6. Season 6 actually allows me to change the perception of the whole show and write a 4k words rant about how Eddie has been in love with Buck since season 3, because they make a very conscious effort to paint Buck, Eddie, and Christopher as a family unity, the dinner on the premier, Buck baking cookies for Chris to take to school, the 3 of them hanging out on the loft while Chris does his homework. And everything about Buck's death and the episodes following, Eddie mirroring Buck during the shooting after the lightning, Eddie acting like a grieving partner, Chris being the person who makes Eddie go and see Buck, Buck knowing he can run to Eddie's when he's overwhelmed, whatever the fuck was mixed feelings.

But since now they can very easily add context to previous seasons to make them seem planned even if they weren't, there's a whole new level of expectations about them together. Because it makes it look like the people who have been shipping them since season 2 are right, so right now the showrunners have the chance to make what could objectively be one of the best slowburns in television history and add the fact that it's a queer relationship and they have the chance to do something that will make the show go down in romance history in a way. But realistically speaking, it's hard for them to make that relationship a reality. We have 7 main characters, we see 4 of them get together, so we are invested in them, we have Karen being introduced to us when Hen screws up, which makes us sympathize with Karen so we are invested in henren even if Karen mostly exists to be Hen's wife, and we have the other two being heavily shipped together since the beginning. But the thing with Bobby and Athena and Chim and Maddie is that they don't work together, so they don't have to acknowledge bathena and madney every episode, because if we are not seeing them together there's no real expectation for the episode to do something to remind us they are together. That won't work with buddie. Considering the way they are partnered in the field most of the time and they are on the same shift and how high the expectations around them are because of the way their friendship was constructed, they would have to find a way to make the relationship known every episode. And let's face it, most television shows really struggle with keeping slowburns together after the buildup, and the buildup with buddie is high, because they get used to working the tension and once the tension is resolved they drop the ball so we end up with unnecessary conflicts and breakups that make no sense just to add tension back in so the relationship will be interesting for them to write. And we joke that Eddie baby trapped Buck and that they act like an old married couple, but they literally already have a canon legal document tying them together, they very explicitly co-parent Chris, they are very clearly comfortable in each other's spaces, so that makes the usual tricks to keep slowburns interesting won't work, because honestly, I think that even a friends to married thing with them isn't that farfetched. Raise the tension enough in the lead-up to getting them together and they could have them flying to vegas to get married and most people just accepting it. But that's not good for their storytelling because 911 is not the buddie show and there is all this expectation that could end up with them deciding that writing them as an established couple is more complicated to deal with than just leaving them simmering forever.

Because the thing is, one good push and you get them together, they can trip them into a relationship at any time, really, just sit them down and let them talk about their feelings and accidentally confess to something, or turn up the flirty banter they have while they're alone and let them trip into each other, put any of them in danger and have the other snapping, like literally any of the hundred contexts we have of getting together fics about them would work at this point, but the issue is not getting them together is keeping them together in a satisfying way.

[addictedtostorytelling]

I feel like you’ve answered this before, so perhaps you could just point me to your previous posts on the matter, but as a fairly new CSI fan - WTF was that divorce arc!!! I just can’t figure out how that would make sense for the characters other than the writers ‘wanted tension’. Was it simply they wanted a way to write Grissom completely out of the show? I mean, we already had an explanation as to why he wasn’t there - he was overseas, they had a long distance relationship. Watching Immortality, the whole thing just feels like genuinely bad writing choice. I’m not a fan of the later seasons in general, but ‘Grissom and Sara married and then divorced and then apparently didn’t speak to each other for at least 2-3 years’ just doesn’t make any sense to me at all. It does not fit with the previous fifteen years of show at all. It just feels like a weird, clumsy writing choice. Whenever I see Immortality I just think - this doesn’t make sense for the two of you! Anyway, wondered what your thoughts were.

hi, anon!

you're not alone in your feelings at all.

the divorce arc was the absolute nadir of series.

it was nonsensical from a character perspective. cruel to the fans. insulting to the actors. an utter narrative dead end (eventually all but retconned out of existence by the time of the reboot anyhow). reductive to previously established storylines and themes of the show. poorly rendered "in-episode," in terms of dialogue, story beats, pacing, etc. just abysmally bad writing all around.

i mean, in what universe would grissom and sara ever decide (as newlyweds, no less) to live 8000 miles away from each other and then allow their communication to lapse so badly over the next few long-distance years they eventually dissolved their marriage via telephone without either one of them ever bothering to get on a fucking plane to try to salvage things in person before the end?! how does that notion fit with anything we know about these two characters, who have been all but surgically attached to each other at the hip for the entirety of the show previously and who have both made big "get on a plane to be together" gestures toward each other in uncertain situations before? i mean, jesus fucking christ! it just doesn't track at all.

i make no secret of my deep and utter loathing for this arc (and neither, indeed, for all of the later seasons of the show just in general).

most often, i prefer not to acknowledge it at all, but i do have some old posts on it that may be of interest to you:

this one is just a good, old-fashioned rant about why i consider the divorce arc unjustifiable on every narrative level;

this one covers a lot of different divorce arc-related issues but especially focuses on how the writers failed, leading up to the divorce, to handle grissom and sara's marriage well during s10-s12;

and finally this one explains the bts decision-making from the writers and showrunners that ultimately led up to (and out from) the divorce arc, including where they made their major mistakes*.

* this post is an old one, written back when i was still in the business of trying not to bad-mouth the show or its writers overly much, so the ending kind of props up "immortality" more than it deserves; nowadays, i don't really consider the finale well-written at all. like you, i find it clumsy and weird.

anyway, the tl;dr of all of those posts is, ultimately, you hit the nail on the head: the writers essentially wrote themselves into a corner by initially making grissom and sara's marriage long-distance and then after a couple of seasons of floundering went for some cheap melodrama with the divorce to boost their ratings, somehow not realizing when they did so the intense audience backlash they would provoke. they then spent the next few seasons stuck in a holding pattern where sara was concerned, having no idea what the hell to do with her or how to wield her post-divorce, which resulted in them basically failing to develop her character at all beyond s13. finally, they lucked out when billy petersen agreed to reprise his role as grissom for the series finale, giving them the opportunity to undo their old, terrible mistake—however, at the expense of basically every other character and relationship on the show, all of which were shunted to the side in service of making "immortality" into a poorly-written, two-hour gsr made-for-tv movie. come the reboot, they then just tried to pretend like the whole divorce arc had never even taken place to begin with, which is honestly just as well, given what a shitshow the thing was, start to finish.

there's more salt like this—whole mines of it—in the posts i linked to you above.

suffice it to say, i am right there with you, anon, in my disdain for these storytelling mistakes.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[fish-nailed-to-a-cross]

A long unedited late-night ramble about the Satous

Writer's note: I tried. I really did. But my thoughts tended to go all over the place, and I sort of repeated myself a few times, and I fell asleep in the middle of writing it so uhhh it's not that good. I'm not completely sure why I'm posting it and sharing it with a bunch of strangers on the internet. Out of boredom, maybe. Even though I sort of disliked this ramble, I thought I made a couple of cool points. Anyways you can skim it for a few cool things but you can tell how tired I was when I wrote it so uh

Gashu was never that close of a father with his kids because that's not the way his personality is. Or maybe it was Asunaro that was trying to turn him into a soulless machine they could use. Or maybe it is a Satou trait. Kai also had a hard time expressing his emotions properly. It seems that Gashu had the same problem.

Even if he did seem cold, he really did care for his sons. In the beginning, at least. He did his best to show affection by giving his kids cake and trying to plan vacations for them and whatnot. He loved them with a father's love, and he never would do anything to purposefully hurt them. Sure, he made them go through tough trials to make them better assassins, but I think that was because he wanted to see them grow stronger and he believed in them.

Originally, after adopting Sei, he simply used him as a tool to make Kai train more. Over time, though, he started to treat him like a real son. Probably after he realized that Kai no longer saw him as an enemy.

Gashu started to warm up to both of them and for a short while, they were a bit more like a real family, until that whole business with the Hunger Games style event.

Gashu was left with two choices: One, disobey Asunaro and put him and his family in danger, or Two, risk losing at least one of his kids, but stay on Asunaro's good side.

Gashu picked Asunaro over his family, because that's where his loyalty ultimately stood. I don't think it was an easy decision for him, though.

The reason he cut himself off from his sons after that was because he wanted it to hurt less if they both died. It still hurt him a lot when Sei died, but he didn't have time to grieve, not when Asunaro was giving him new orders.

Kai sort of shut himself off as well, probably because he didn't feel like he had a family anymore, not when Sei was dead and his father was acting cold towards him again.

Kai didn't start to warm up again until he started working for the Chidouins, and they probably felt like a new family to him.

As for Gashu, I don't think he allowed himself the luxury of having normal feelings and emotions, because of his role in Asunaro. He couldn't afford to let his emotions get in the way if he had to do something or make a decision.

Eventually Rio Ranger was created. Why he was a recreation of Sei, I don't know. There's multiple reasons, but it really depends on who came up with the idea in the first place, whether it was Safalin, Gashu himself, or someone in Asunaro's higher-ups. (Maybe it was Mrs. Hiyori, as I have nicknamed the shadowy figure.)

The reason Gashu decided against giving Ranger positive emotions at the last minute was because he was afraid that he might get too attached to him if he was too much like Sei. With negative emotions, he was less likable, and it was easier for Gashu to get rid of him, when the time came.

Poor Ranger suffered an inferiority complex just like Sei, only he was programmed to feel inferior to every human, and felt nothing but hatred and jealousy for them.

Well, we all know how that whole thing ended up. I could go into a whole rant about Ranger himself as well as his true self, Laizer, but let's not go into that now or we'll be here all night.

After shooting Ranger, Gashu took over as Floormaster, up until his death in the Main Game.

Oh my, what isn't there to say about that? I'll try not to go too far off topic here.

In the end, Gashu died for Asunaro by taking his own life just so the Main Game could continue and the participants wouldn't get another chance to get out through the exit. It's a parallel of Kai's death, if you think about it.

Both killed themselves for reasons that were important to them. Gashu died so the Death Game could continue smoothly, because he was loyal to Asunaro. Kai died to disrupt the Death Game, because he wanted to show the others that they were not Asunaro's pawns.

Maybe Kai was secretly hoping that his father would hear about his death and decide to change his loyalties and join the fight. Because maybe if his family had been his priority instead of the organization, then they could all still be together. It was just a sliver of a chance, but who knows, maybe they could have run away and never be found again.

Gashu obeyed Asunaro until the end, though. He had already sacrificed his sons to them. What did it matter, exchanging his own life for proof that he had unwavering loyalty to the organization.

However, there's a small chance I could be wrong. Maybe the reason he shot himself was because he was simply tired.

Maybe he was tired of being used by Asunaro, and wanted to take the simpler way out. Maybe Kai's death really did get to him after all, and the message he was trying to send, but Gashu had no will to see it through properly.

Maybe the reason he killed himself was partly because he wanted to prevent Asunaro from using him any further. Or maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part. I tend to try to find the good in everybody, no matter how bad their actions are.

Anyway, to sum it all up, Gashu gave in to fear, and fear is what broke the family up. It was Asunaro or his family, and on that day, when he received news of the battle between all of the would-be assassins, he picked Asunaro, unfortunately.

As I said, maybe if he hadn't given in to fear his family could still be intact. Or maybe they would have all died in the end anyway.

He had a few chances in his life to turn it all around and right his wrongs, but he didn't take them. Because what would Asunaro do to him if he disobeyed the wishes of “God,” as Mrs. Hiyori called the organization?

No, I don't hate him as much as I used to. I sympathize with him because I've given in to fear before. But if you never have the courage to stand up for what you think is right, then what are you even doing?

It seemed like what he thought was right and what he believed in was Asunaro, but maybe that wasn't so. Maybe there was still a bit of doubt in his mind, even after he tried to bury it.

That's all I have to say, I guess, about how he closed himself off so he wouldn't get hurt, how he gave in to fear, and how he had to decide where his loyalties lie.

I feel sorry that he never ended up getting anything sorted out while he or his sons were alive (even though I know he's a fictional character in a silly game that I traumatize myself with), but it brings a great comfort to me to know that there's an afterlife in there as well. This means that Sei and Kai are reunited, and that maybe they'll be able to talk to their father once more and spend a blissful eternity together when they get things sorted out. They have all of the time in the world.

Hm goodness it's past midnight and I'm actually really sleepy I need to go to sleep now yay pillow hm I'm too warm no blankets tonight

[birlwrites]

Helloo!! Uve sometimes described barty as potentially being a romantic partner to regulus and so i was wondering what made u choose evan to be his love interest in ttdl instead? I think u also mentioned the possibility of them being polyamorous and so in what scenario do u see that happening (in the ttdl universe or a whole other one)

Have a great day!!!

okay SO

there are a few reasons that regulus/barty does not happen in atfhv and most of them are supports to the real reason which is that i think best friends are SO underutilized as central pairs of characters. i've read a shitload of works centered around regulus and sirius, and a shitload of works centered around regulus and a romantic partner, and i have also written a bunch of these! like they're everywhere! and there's no inherent problem with that, but i think that with a familial or romantic relationship, the question of 'why us' becomes much simpler and less interesting

so ig the short answer to your question is: it was more about choosing for barty to *not* be regulus's love interest than it was about choosing evan to be

also [insert rant about regulus not often having his own friends in fic]

but as for why i did choose evan!! aghslgkjdhf i'm going to have to do a lot of tracing of my thought process because regulus and evan as a pairing just feels SO intuitive and obvious to me now, but the fact remains that when i got into it the tag was TINY. so like. how did those neurons fire in my brain?

i think it started with survived by, which was the first fic i wrote in which evan really played a role - barty's always had a pretty set personality and vibe in my head, so evan was an opportunity to play around and make someone up. i didn't proceed directly from there to rosewater - there was a period of time when i was experimenting with a few different ships, notably blaise zabini's mom and The Forbidden Jegulus Fic, and i'm looking at my warmups document right now (which is where most of my stories start before they hit ~10 pages and i decide they merit their own documents) and rosewater just sPRINGS INTO EXISTENCE on page 11. so those neurons may continue to be a mystery

but i think generally speaking, to answer 'why evan,' it's because the persona i gave him complements regulus's personality in a very different way from how barty does. they're playing the same game in very different ways, and of all the characters in ttdl, the two of them have the strongest facades.

regulus is very guarded and has a role he's decided to play, and evan just has Massive Fucking Secrets, including a role that was decided for him, but regardless - the process of the two of them growing close enough to develop and then EXPRESS vulnerable feelings is so intense/demanding in a way that it wouldn't be for any other combination of people, because literally any other combination of people would be slightly less hidden away. even them + barty in a triad would be less closed off b/c barty

in the ttdl universe i'm very attached to aro barty, which doesn't prevent there being polyamory but does affect the shape of it - i do think that at any given time the probability of regulus and barty being life partners is basically 100% though. in my head they always have a life together, unless it's like, stga aghshgljkdf, so then the question becomes how does evan factor in, and the answer is 'yes'

like they're very much a trio in my mind - the specific dynamics might change but in terms of the future, almost regardless of universe (rip stga), i envision the three of them together in some way

[seriouslysam8]

I am sorry that I made you justify for something that was your opinion❤️ (I am the one that asked you ages ago about your hate/dislike)

Normally, I don’t read Hermione bashing because people make her a real bitch that is after Harrys money and that doesn’t care about him, which I think is weirdly non-canon. So reading the MiT was kind of a suprise to me. It didn’t have the tag bashing and you were definitely NOT bashing her, but wrote her pretty boring, distant and cold.

I shouldn’t have asked you… like you said! Its YOUR story and YOU decide who has more „page time“ and who deserves to be written about. But instead of being an asshole and ignoring my ask you were so respectful and said so many reasonable points that I understood and accepted your opinion!

I don’t agree with all, but I understood and tbh I still read through all those one shots and multi chapters 😅 You write too good, to just stop reading your stories 😅

The only thing that I can suggest so people stop asking about Hermione is to write a post or just a disclaimer that this blog is an anti!Hermione blog without bashing

Because you really don’t bash Hermione, you just don’t write about her more.

I am so Sorry that you needed to write this rant, because you felt like justifying your opinion and hate again and again and again! But I am also glad you wrote it and didn’t shut up about it. Because nobody cares if someone hates Drarry, Wolfstar, a feminin Sirius(which is so weird.) a skirt wearing Sirius (I- wtf), those blogs that post about TOMARRY don’t need to justify their ships, people don’t ask about why someone hates Ron or Ginny or the whole Weasley clan (seriously noone). So you should have the right too, to hate a FICTIONAL character that is not REAL

Again I apologize for my noisy self!❤️

———

And just to annoy you, bc I really do love this blog snd the person behind it:

Why do you dislike percy Weasley?💀😭

(Pls take it as a joke, I rarely care about him😂💀)

I don’t want you to feel bad. Some people are genuinely curious, and those people (like you) bother me a lot less. Because I get it. She���s not normally a disliked character. But there are those of us who just don’t have any interest in her or don’t like her.

It’s just a question I get asked often.

You are so right. Nobody goes to an anti-Ron or Ginny or Weasley tumblr or story and ask why or to shit on the author. Or if Ron is put in the background as a friend and Hermione is portrayed as the bestie, nobody bats an eye. I think that’s what bugs me the most.

I had someone who would rant on my page anytime I said something even remotely negative about Hermione. I blocked their account and their second account so I don’t have to deal with it. Most times, people don’t really argue. But I get a lot of reviews and asks asking questions or people who are upset that I underutilize her. A lot of the time I just delete and ignore, not giving it any attention.

I just got a shitty anon review today that I ended up deleting ranting and raving at me because of Hermione in Brumous and saying my portrayal of Harry and Ron was awful. And I just had enough. And I needed to vent.

But honestly, I remember your ask and you were kind and respectful. I don’t mind questions. It just gets exhausting sometimes. More often than not, they’re not respectful.

I am just trying to establish some good boundaries. Some people in the fandom need to learn how to respect boundaries. That’s very, very important.

So, friends?!?

….

But

Don’t get me started on Percy!!

🤣🤣🤣🤣

[lighthousegod]

Hello and welcome to my rant from my time on Stranger Things Steddie and Friends Twitter for the past few months.

K I'm really pissed but its fine I wrote this all before the poll thing. Now I just. Can't get rid of it. (Me at tumblr headquarters right fucking now)

Anyway. Sorry for the interruption.

The fact that I've seen several ST fans claim most people who like steddie are fetishizing them is already shitty, but what makes it even more shitty is that they focus on them being two white cis guys fetishized by "white girls".

To reference the two white cis guys first, yeah, you got me there. That really is all those two are in the show. And if you wanna talk representation, well shit! Let's do it! Out of the main cast, we have 3 people of color: Lucas, Erica, and Argyle. Lucas is much too young to be in a relationship with either of them and already has one of his own, and Erica is ten years old. Now, I love Argyle, but he was written to be a comic relief character that had no arc and never met either of them. I think that's a wasted opportunity, Eduardo is great and would've done well as a fully fleshed out character, and there is a conversation to be had about whether that character would've been received the same way Eddie was being a white guy. But the thing is, he was never even CAST as a character who could be compared with Eddie- again, his whole character was "funny stoner." THAT is fucked, and people have definitely decided to ignore that fanon. In fact, Jargyle has become a pretty well known ship! Weirdly enough, the content I've seen of them has majorly been from people who also ship steddie! It isn't as popular as Steddie, though, and I don't think that's ONLY bc of half of the ship has less lore than eddie. There definitely is at least some internal bias us white queer folks should take into account when considering what ships we focus on in media.

However, I don't think that's why it's being brought up. I don't think I read tweets from lesbians with she/her in their bios condemning all us steddie ppl who just ship it because "they're two white guys we can fetishize for being in an mlm relationship" bc they're trying to be good allies. That COMPLETELY disregards that transmasc and nonbinary people (ESPECIALLY transmasc people of color) make a BIG chunk of the steddie fandom. Crazy, it's almost like Eddie was written to represent an outcast and literally GOT TARGETED BY CHRISTIANS and a bunch of people in marginalized communities related to his struggles! Except oh, yeah, that'd exactly what happened. And yeah, okay, he's a white guy and it IS pretty shitty that they cast a white dude to represent outcasts in general, but the people talking shit are watching the SAME DAMN SHOW that has a huge fucking cast and still has minimal representation. Fuck, man, Caleb McLaughlin has faced SO MUCH hate from assholes "fans" as the only black main character. Why the hell are people using that very real issue to back their shitty arguments against a gay ship on twitter?

Again, I wanna preface that 90% of these kinds of comments come from lesbians and bisexual people with she/her or she/they in the bio. I thought yall were COOL with the gay and trans people. Yall ARE queer people. Some of them were even big Ronance or Rovickie fans! YALL. WHY IS FRIENDLY FIRE ON??

A lot of this argument is backed by claims that steddie fans ignore canon queer rep, too, and I just don't understand that.

I know. Robin is representation. I am SO HAPPY to have her, and I'm so happy that Maya pushed for it, and as a transmasc person who was not out at the time and likes girls, I felt very seen when watching her coming out scene with Steve. However, I know I don't fully understand the lesbian experience as someone who likes guys too. I know Robin means a lot to wlw fans, especially lesbians. There have been instances where steddies have co-opted that scene to make it about steddie, and that is not okay. (I've never SEEN this happen, but I've seen people talk about it. All the steddie guys on Twitter that I follow were making it pretty clear that that was not cool and pretty fuckin lesbiphobic. I agree, whoever did that, fuck them. Wlw and specifically lesbian wlw relationships have very little rep and Netflix canceled all their shows and it's super fucked.) But besides this, I actually see a LOT of steddie fans who very much love Robin's character. Most of the steddie artists and fic writers I know are also ronance, rovickie, and/or Buckingham creators. A lot of them are wlw themselves!

//I should also note that Will is canonically gay now and I'm super excited, but truly, I just don't see as much appeal in byler because they're so much younger than me now. I totally love Will as a character, and I was around the kids' ages when the first season came out, but I'm in college now. I relate a lot more to the older kids! I'm real happy to have will as mlm rep and I hope he gets his moment in s5. I just didn't latch onto him and Mike the way I did Steve and Eddie! We all got preferences and that's fine.//

All this to say, I'm just so tired of Twitter, man. I just saw a post about how many cis women who claiming its "ableism" to say they have to be around anyone who identifies as masculine, including queer men, queer mascs, cis men of color, butch lesbians, etc. And I've seen a lot of that lately too. It's just so weird to see someone who identifies as a queer woman talk shit abt a steddie fan with a hellcheer shipper.

(man I can't even get into that rn. Chrissy and Eddie shippers in ST fandom are a whole other bout of drama. I've seen steddies be pretty nasty on the issue toward bi women who ship that bc of age difference, which I never really understood because eddie has no confirmed age?? Like idk how he can be a super senior AND 17 on his missing poster but whatever, I'm not stressing abt that as long as you dont make them have a weird age gap on purpose. Hell, I even thought they were love interests at first, too. But DAMN I've seen some hellcheer people that hate steddie. None of this justification type shit either, they just say "it doesn't make sense" and "I'm scared of steddie" and "they ruined the fandom and eddies character" like bro that's literally homophobia. like oogily boogily gay people jumpscare homophobia. So I just don't talk to those guys usually.)

Whatever abt the straight ppl tho they're never gonna get my weird gay stuff. But what SUCKS is when it's other gay people saying this stuff. Like what about mlm wlw solidarity man? Why do I gotta see a rovickie stan and a hellcheer girl talking abt how steddie shippers are all misogynistic and hate women?? Esp when so many are transmasc?? It's getting weird and TERF-y and I just. I wish we were cool again. ST is abt outcasts at the end of the day, it's why we root for them and relate to them. There aren't even a lot of queer people from the 80s around because of the kinda hatred people like us face. Not to mention racism, ableism, misogyny, all of it. For centuries. The people up top all hate us. We gotta have each other's backs and twitter is making us INSANE instead. God.

Anyway I'm gonna go watch the mandalorian now later losers.

[alunaticrose]

Everything I learn about Wicked pisses me off more. And now I'm gonna rant about why Wicked pisses me off.

I'm going to assume that most people who know the Wizard of Oz know it's an adaptation of a book, but many of you out there probably don't know that L. Frank Baum, the book's author wrote thirteen more Oz books after it. (There's another twenty-six by two other authors written after Baum died that the publisher insists are canon, but I'm going to ignore them). And these books give us a lot more of the history of Oz.

So we're going to briefly go back to the beginning. Oz is surrounded in the books by a desert that will kill you if you touch it. This is why Dorothy can't try to walk home. It is accurately named the Deadly Desert and originally covered the whole area until a Fairy Queen named Lurline decided to change that and the kingdom of Oz was born. And yes Oz is traditionally a monarchy ruled by a series of Kings and Queens who used the name Oz and Ozma respectively. (This is part of how the Wizard rose to power as he has an absuredly large number of names and goes by his first two initials OZ since his full initials OZPINHEAD are less than flattering, and the people of Oz just rolled with it)

Now what exactly happens to them is unclear as we're given more than one version (history is a little inconsistent from book to book), but afterwards the four regions of Oz are divided up between four wicked witches. Not two, four. By the time Dorothy arrives in Oz two of them have been deposed one by an unnamed witch in the north, and the other by Glinda in the south.

Glinda did not gain stewardship of Quadling country by politics but more likely via assassination (It's never explained what exactly happened to the Wicked Witch of the South but she never shows up so...). Which is probably part of why the Munchkins wanted to make Dorothy ruler of Munchkin country: there was already precedent.

This is also why in the book the good witch that meets Dorothy in Munchkin country of the east doesn't tell her what the shoes do: the good witch of the north doesn't know and the only person alive who does, Glinda, is busy in Quadling country with something that won't be revealed until the second book. All anyone else knows about the shoes is that they are powerful.

Also Glinda is not only not married in the books but her retainers are supposed to be made up of some of the most beautiful women in Oz. So she's definitely not pretending to be straight.

As for the Wicked Witch of the East? The character I'm told Elphaba is supposed to be? There are reasons the Munchkins celebrate her death. Among her sins is the fate of Nick Chopper, more commonly known as the Tin Wood-Man or as the movie shortened it just the Tin Man, was originally a man of flesh and blood. All that tin is prosthetics that he replaced his body with gradually as he kept sustaining grievous injury due to a curse she laid on his axe. All to make sure he couldn't gather the resources to marry a girl that she was basically holding as a slave.

In the books the Wicked Witch of the East is unsympathetic and is wicked for the choices she and her compatriots made. And Glinda is the generally stoic minder of the south, who spends most of her time looking for the missing heir to the throne of Oz, considered good for the liberation she brought to her people, and generally considered the most competent person in the room which she readily demonstrates as necessary. They are nothing like their Wicked counterparts.

And I get that the writer(s?) had a story they wanted to tell with Wicked, and likely hadn't read the books, but I also don't care, as they could have done their research and known this all and not so massively misrepresented these characters.

Glinda really had an entire musical number expounding on the theme of "success in life is not about being highly qualified or even competent, but manipulating people's superficial perception of you." and then she went into POLITICS. truly the #girlboss representation the world has earned

[tera-91]

Mid-June Rant

Im not sure when Ill post this.

July 2nd is when 2024 will be half way over. Even though as I start to write this post it is only June 1st. It feels like Ive spent half of the year already. Like Ive wasted half of the year.

Or rather I cant shake off the last half. When 2024 began I felt like it was Spring oddly enough. Like a new beginning. The first quarter went by and I kept doing the same thing over and over again. Then April hit and I decided to turn my world as I knew it upside down.

Wow that sounds dramatic.

Not really.

Just that I needed to make a change.

My first thought was to go back to school. To do something that I could make what I was in a week in a day. In reality it would probably take me a couple of days. Which wouldn’t be bad. I would more than double my income. The only problem would be that it will take me about 3 and a half years to get there.

That is quite a while to stay at a job that, deep down, I wasn’t happy. I get that it cant be great all the time. But everyday. I would go into work, either pissed off that I was there. That I felt like I was wasting my time. And if I wasn’t mad, or frustrated. I certainly was watching the clock and ready to walk out of the door.

The manager that was directly my boss I guess, was a inconsiderate jackass. But the other one I feel so much respect for. This manager wants to see if things can be talked out with the other manager. But even if that’s the case I feel like that one is such a vindictive tyrant. I don’t want to work for them. I just don’t know how to tell the other manager. Theres nothing else I can do. Nothing else I want to do.

I feel like I need to make a change.

But I have no one to talk it out with.

My friends say that I should take a break. My family is just wishy washy. I should do what I want. I wish I could talk to my dad. I feel like he could understand my brain better. The only other person that gets it is my sibling. Although we got different versions of neuro-spiciness. My sibling has quite a different choice of words for that manager though… I would rather not repeat.

Im not sure how many times Ill tell myself that I need to take a break. To make a change before I actually believe it. Or rather before I actually do something about it.

_____

Im not sure how many days its been since I wrote any of the previous stuff. Ive been doing a bunch of little things.

I feel like Im less stressed, I looked in the mirror the other day and realized, my shoulders were more relaxed.

Ive gotten a few things done. I got at least 3 videos made. I edited audio on another to come out hopefully soon. Ive written a little more.

Im exploring more.

Once I finish writing this Im going to tackle some things again. Try to get more done in my Roman story series. I hadn’t planned on making it a series but I ended up starting 4 stories with Roman for some reason, I don’t feel like I connect a whole lot with his character in comparison to Virgil. Then one day I was out with my pups and a thread appeared in my head. Connecting these 4 stories but I will have to make an additional one to make a 5 story series.

If youre interested in that, hopefully I wont make you wait too long for it. Im just struggling slightly as when I started the first one it was going to end differently so Ive been trying to add and shift things as I go.

I think I have a little bit of a block going, not necessarily in coming up with the story but to actually sit and write it. My brain is struggling to figure out which to tackle first.

Do I write? I have a bunch of different things that I need to write.

Do I record? I’m having a bit of an issue with my voice at the moment but I can at least prepare things to record.

Then there is the issue of income. I know logically at the moment I am lucky enough to have the option to step away from my source of income due to issues. But it is going to be a problem, I just don’t know how soon now. I have a medical thing going on that I will need to spend a not so small amount of money on which was not an issue prior to when I decided to take this path.

So I do think of that. Once that is hopefully taken care of in the real short future I will be able to tackle two things that I have a potential to get income in. Do I set up a patreon? It would be something to potentially help right now. I have applied for several jobs and have had at least 1 interview so far.

Part of me feels silly for thinking this. I mean I did decide to do a thing and this is the consequence of taking that action. But at the same time, I don’t regret making that decision.

Ill try to write the Roman stories but if that doesn’t seem to work I think I will try to get a little editing done.

_____

Right so a few days later and I’m still in job limbo apparently. Certain things happened in recent days. Didn’t get any of the Roman stories done yet.

Going to work on that and everything else that I need to work on.

I just need to do stuff as I have time. It doesn’t matter if I know I only have 5 minutes or if I jump on it and only get to spend that amount of time on it.

Off to make a list of things that I need to get done. Maybe if I have a visual representation of what is on my mind it will help.

[themusiichouse]

Wilhelm for Your character will absolutely flip their lid if BLANK happens. and Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)? - @theload 

Oh man, Wil would absolutely flip his lid if…a lot happens. Much like Wagner he’s got a rather volatile temper which can sometimes make him hard to get along with, though unlike Wagner sometimes he can admit that he was wrong…Let me list what it takes to piss him off:

Calling him a “Wagner rip-off” or saying he was anything less than being a far greater genius than Wagner. He’s spent his whole life trying to undo the harms of Wagner’s legacy and trying to one-up him artistically, and he won’t accept any less assessment from history on the latter than saying he’s succeeded.

Being opposed to one of his strongly-held political beliefs, even if that opposition is you simply existing in a certain profession that he believes is immoral. As a radical far leftist who ascribes to a fantastical form of anarchism known as Barashinan anarchism that makes your average far leftist seem downright moderate (I’ll go in-depth on this in a later post), Wilhelm cannot and will not tolerate conservatives, centrists, landlords, police officers, government officials (whether local or federal) or businesspeople who run their businesses under a capitalist model. If he sees you disagreeing with his beliefs, such as on prison abolition or on abortion, he’ll try for a time to more calmly get you to see his perspective--but if he doesn’t make headway, he’ll resort to yelling and ad hominems. And if you fall under one of the professions that he objects to and he can’t convince you to give up your job, expect a rant barrage about why people of your station are inherently evil and holding the world back from the utopia that Barashinan anarchists envision.

Trying to get him to apologize for something controversial he’s done in public that you disagree with but he thinks he’s done nothing wrong. As an example, he’s gotten kind of infamous for an essay he wrote in his early twenties titled “Centrism Is Racism,” in which he said that centrists are racists who can be just as dangerous as conservatives because capitalism is inherently racist due to the fact capitalist systems were built to privilege dominant countries (such as white Western countries) and centrists tend to be pro-capitalist, which means they are ultimately aligned with conservatives who also support capitalism. He also took some time to tear into some centrist filmmakers and opera writers whose centrism showed up in their work, calling them racist and throwing in some jabs about their personal lives that were only tangentially related to the topic at hand. He finished by openly calling for the end of conservative political ideology and saying that centrists were the largest roadblock to achieving this aim other than the conservatives themselves. One can understand why some people would object to this stance, and while yes centrism is annoying and exasperating it really also shouldn’t be used to just straight up slander someone. But if you tell him the essay was ill-advised and should never have been published in the form that it was, that’s one way to get on his bad side.

As for animal bites…Well, it wasn’t an animal that bit him, rather a god in the shape of one, but I suppose that counts as well. I feel like Loptr (Loki in my original setting) would have bit him in spider form at least once just to get him to shut the fuck up and calm down. He still has a scar on the back of his hand from a time when Loptr bit him in his sleep to give him nightmares and hallucinations that would make him see a mistake he made, but I haven’t quite decided what that mistake is yet…

[oreolesbian]

hey: if someone is coming out to you, don’t talk over them, please just fucking listen. especially if you’re cishet.

they’re not just saying things, they know themselves more than you do, even if you think you know them so well and know what’s best for them and whatnot, you don’t. i’m sorry. nobody knows anybody as well as they know themselves. ever.

this person is queer. they’re telling you that because they’re trusting you. not because they want your opinion, but because they don’t want to hide anymore. cause hiding who you are fucking sucks. it does. you tip toe around everything that brings you joy and you feel like a fraud in your own skin. you literally aren’t you around people that are supposed to love you.

you may think you know gay people and are the best ally in the world. great. love that for you. don’t talk about that. by god, don’t make someone else’s coming out about you. cause it’s fucking not.

don’t try to guess why this person is queer. don’t try to “put it together.” don’t tell them, especially if they’re a kid, that they don’t really know themselves yet…that they don’t have the “experience.” cause god knows i’ve never heard anyone cishet be questioned as to why they are who they are.

you don’t have to have been in a relationship before to know you’re queer. only you can answer those questions. if you know, you know. simple as that. of course it may take a bit to get to that point for some, and that’s okay. it’s normal. you came into the world assumed cishet. so naturally you’ll assume the same about yourself until the day comes where you realize it’s all a load of a shit and you’re who you say you are—no one else saying it for you. if someone tells you you just don’t know yourself yet, fuck them. maybe you are questioning…who the fuck cares. it’s not their business. this goes for literally all ages. my own mom told me i couldn’t know i was gay yet when i was 16. then again at 18. and continuously on. they’ll keep saying it to you because what they’re really saying is that they don’t want you to be queer. because they think queerness is an anomaly, a phase, acting out, experimentation, etc. it’s not.

a queer person coming out to you is the ultimate form of trust. it’s fucking terrifying. every time. yes, every time, no matter how many times you do it. because you will do it. a lot. for the rest of your life, most likely. because people will always assume cishet first. you come out to literally everyone you know…and the walking on eggshells process of evaluating their persona and whether or not they might literally harm you is absolutely mentally exhausting.

every day i meet a new person, i have to check my queerness. am i being too obvious? if i am, does it matter? should i drop hints and gauge reactions? or dial it back just to be safe? will this girl i’m talking to assume i’m flirting and be disgusted with me or be chill with it? what if i’m actually flirting? how do i do that without being 100% sure it’s a thing i even can do with her? can i write this paper in class on a piece of queer media or will i be unintentionally outing myself? can i openly defend LGBTQ issues or will that also out me? will this person treat me differently if i tell them? oh god, now my stomach hurts cause two women are kissing on tv and the person next to me is rolling their eyes. should i act nonchalant? maybe i should only watch queer content alone from now on. oh shit my gay music is playing…turn it off turn it off! should i clear my search history? do i look too masculine today? do i look too feminine today? oh god, everyone around me KNOWS.

^^ this is a pretty regular thought process for me. yeah, i’ve got anxiety, but this is, to my knowledge of every queer person i’ve ever interacted with, pretty goddamn normal. doesn’t make it right, but it’s reality. so yeah, if you’re telling a queer person that’s never been in a relationship that “well then how do you know for sure?” i think this makes it pretty crystal fucking clear. do you know how hard it is for queer kids to not only come to terms with who they are, but confront the fears of being publicly out or even trying to gauge who is actually queer like them—who actually is in their dating pool? who they can trust with their true selves??

i would love it if i could walk up to a random girl on the street i think is cute and ask her on a date. but i can’t. because i have to think through all those things above, all the time, to protect myself and my sanity. cause i don’t want to be treated different or looked at weird. every time i come out, even subtly, my throat closes. cause i’m petrified. i’m beyond proud of who i am, it’s the truest part of me and a real confidence boost, but i’m beyond terrified of the hatred, the whispers, the stares. yeah, we’ve made progress, but the story’s still the same in our little heteronormative society.

don’t talk over queer people. do your best to understand our struggles, but acknowledge that you never will really understand. cause you can’t. even if you had a gay friend, my god. you don’t understand. i promise you don’t. if you want to be an ally, a real ally, can you just listen? please? things you may think are so simple for you aren’t always for queer people. i mean god, y’all don’t have to think twice about holding hands with a partner for crying out loud.

the queer experience is individual, different for everyone, so why do you possibly think you could understand it for someone else?

this is not a: gee it really sucks to be queer rant. cause it doesn’t. it’s great. our community has its ups and downs but i have formed the strongest bonds through the trust i’ve formed in other queer people in my life. but there are days where i just can’t fucking take it anymore. i’ll hear my family watch a stand up comedian downstairs whose punchline is my very existence. and they laugh. and i stay silent upstairs, nauseous. cause yeah, maybe they accept me, and that’s a blessing in itself, but i’m still an other to them. a joke. something to be looked at and criticized and critiqued and questioned. all because i love differently. and i don’t think it’s overly sensitive to be angry about that reality. cause i am angry. and sad. and trying my damndest every day to look towards the positive. cause mental health and self-care is important when you’re doing all these mental gymnastics on the daily.

so. someone comes out to you. thank them for their trust. support them. offer congratulations or happy feelings. maybe even a hug if they want one. acknowledge that you’ll never truly understand the queer experience, but that you want to at least understand enough to help and listen where you’re able to.

don’t ask how they knew. when they knew. question how. say they “don’t look queer.” say “i always knew.” etc. etc.

it may seem like simple harmless phrases, but they make a queer person feel like they’re being talked over. a point of discussion when all they wanted to do was to stop hiding themselves. it hurts even more when it comes from someone you care about. so please please please, try to be better. i don’t think it’s asking much.

[tiredspacedragon]

I did see that answer from him, but to be honest, it doesn't really mean much to me what Greg thinks? Idk, the Bionicle fandom as a whole has been far too reliant on Word of God in general, and it's hurt as much as it's helped. Whatever Greg's thoughts on the matter are, he never wrote about any other Toa Kaita in the official story, so anything else he has to say about the matter is more or less moot in my eyes. The vagueness of these particular answers doesn't help their case.

Okay, and I apologize for this, but can I go on a little rant here about BS01 deciding the canon shape of the Rua is a silver Hau? Because it's stupid. It's incredibly, mindbogglingly stupid, and it's a perfect example of what I mean when I say the fandom depends on Greg's word way too fucking much.

As you pointed out in the tags, Akamai, as a word, means wisdom, and Wairuha means spirit, and indeed, we know from the 2001 story bible that the two Toa Kaita's domains were switched at some point in development. Akamai was always planned to be the combination of Tahu, Onua, and Pohatu, but was originally set to be the Kaita of Wisdom, while Wairuha (always Gali+Kopaka+Lewa) would have been the Kaita of Spirit, later changed to Valour. Somewhere along the line, the decision was made to make Akamai the Spirit of Valour, and Wairuha the Spirit of Wisdom. Why not swap the names too to keep the meanings consistent? I don't know, but they didn't. And it lead to a lot of confusion in some parts of the marketing.

Most obvious is the Power Pack set, which includes a silver Kanohi Hau it describes as, and I quote: "the Kanohi Rua, the Silver Mask of Valor, worn by Toa Kaita Wairuha formed from Tahu, Pohatu, and Onua." Tell me, do you notice anything wrong with that sentence? Like the fact that it is entirely incorrect? The clear mix-up in this description, you would think, would be enough to make anyone think that it can't be taken as canon, it's too blatant an error.

But apparently not! Because some fan took it upon themselves at one point to ask Greg to clear up the issue, asking if the true appearance of the Kanohi Rua was a Hau, as it appeared in the Power Pack set (and also Bionicle Heroes, which also mistakenly called it the Mask of Valour, which is shaped like a Hau, funnily enough (: ), or a Miru, as it is depicted in MNOG and literally everywhere else. And Greg's response was, and I quote again: "The Rua on the set is canon."

The set is canon. Which is what he always said when asked something like this. Every time. Of course, this time, that particular phrasing is entirely unhelpful, because Toa Kaita Wairuha is a set. A combo model, sure, whose green Miru certainly isn't canon because we know the Rua is silver. But I think, in this case, it should take a little precedence over the Power Pack, which rather obviously doesn't even know what it's referring to! It uses the name Rua and then uses half the details of the Aki in its description. It can't be trusted! Especially not when we have several other sources from MNOG to the comics, to the Legend of Mata Nui cutscenes, to the actual Wairuha model itself to confirm that the Rua looks like a Miru! Of course it does, none of Wairuha's components wear a Hau! And if that's still not enough, Wairuha Nuva's Rua Nuva also looks like a Miru Nuva, not a Hau Nuva, and there's no bad marketing to disagree this time! But no, because the question posed to Greg mentioned the Power Pack specifically and he then gave his standard answer (likely without thinking about it for more than half a second) the "canon" appearance of the Rua is now declared to be a silver Hau, which again, conflicts with every single actual appearance of the mask in-story.

Just ugh. I'm sorry, that has nothing to do with the Kaita themselves, it's just incredibly frustrating to me personally. Because it's the most common sense thing to figure out, but someone had to run to Greg to do the thinking for them, and his vague as balls answer has led to the obviously incorrect choice being declared "canon." It's ridiculous. That's what upsets me about it the most. It's just the ruling of one fan-run website, it means nothing in the long run. It's just so obviously wrong, but you can't convince anyone running the site of that because "Greg said so," and that, apparently, makes it law, no matter how stupid it is. And it's very stupid. I know that's mean, and I feel bad for it, but it's true.

I am plagued by thoughts of Toa Kaita and how their names and titles are determined.

Is every single one unique? That leaves the most room for creativity, and means the result of each fusion is dependent on the personalities of the individual Toa components, which seems like the most narratively satisfying option. But also, if every possible Kaita is unique, how do they avoid overlapping domains? Eventually Valour or Wisdom are going to be really fitting for some other combination of three Toa, or they'll just run out of fancy mental concepts to name themselves after.

Alternatively, do the names, or maybe just the titles, of any given Toa Kaita, depend on the elemental combination used to form them? Does every instance of Ta-Toa+Po-Toa+Onu-Toa result in Akamai? Does every instance of Ga-Toa+Ko-Toa+Le-Toa result in a Toa of Wisdom? I went and learned some math specifically to determine that there are 560 different possible 3-element combinations that can be formed from the 16 Toa elements, assuming all three have to be different, because that makes the most sense to me. 546 if Light and Shadow could not coexist within a single Kaita for some reason, and 455 if you don't count Shadow at all. Those are still really big numbers! But it seems a lot more feasible to come up with 500-ish attributes for each combination to represent than for each of the infinite combinations of individuals to result in something completely unique. But then again, it seems awfully limiting to simply assign a default attribute based on elemental alignment without taking into account the personalities of the constituent Toa at all. Would Vakama, Onewa, and Whenua really result in a Valour combination rather than something more tailored to them? Could Tuyet and Nidhiki really be part of a Wisdom combination?

Then perhaps there is a set number of possible Kaita and which of the limited (but likely still beyond extensive) list of possibilities the fusion forms is dependent on the three Toa's personalities? That feels like it's getting dangerously close to personality-based categorization though, and I've seen enough bad YA to know that's never a good idea.

Is any of this important at all? Oh no, not at all, we only ever see two Toa Kaita in the entire story and even they barely matter, this absolutely isn't the sort of thing that needs to be thought about deeply at all. But here I am, distracted by it anyway.

[twst-drabbles]

Dark Mirror 1

Summary: You show some pictures you took to the Dark Mirror. It eventually turns into a rant.

(I uh, I wrote this a while back cause I always felt that if I was in this world, I would be so full of anger and frustration at the situation I’m in due to being without magic. Feels difficult to stand on equal footing with anyone in a world that lives and thrives on magic. Excuse me as I make my own lore in this drabble.)

“Now this one,” you pointed to the group photo with a dinged up Grim, Ace and Deuce while you stood in the middle completely blemish free, “this one was the first photo I’ve ever taken with the camera. Right after the we came out of the mines and Grim and I got admitted.”

The mask in the mirror squinted before letting out a small, “Hmm,” of acknowledgment. “Admitted as a half of a whole student, if I remember correctly.”

Bitterness built up in you at that. Not even considered a full student but half a student. As though your lack of magic made you less than a person. And what doesn’t help is that your input on a lot of things held less sway than Grim because he had magic. Dumbass he may be, a lot of folks seem to gravitate towards asking for his opinion first.

Dammit, you came in the coffin. You’re an official student because the damn horse brought you here. Whatever qualifications this college had, apparently you made the cut despite what you lacked, so the fact that Grim of all things was your only ticket in kinda pissed you off. And the majority of your grade depend on him too.

Shit’s unfair.

“That doesn’t make you happy.” He simply stated, with no indication that it’s meant to comfort you, but still didn’t feel cold enough to tick you off.

“Of course it doesn’t. First few hours in this college and already I’m being looked down upon. Nothing says ”I’m lesser than you,“ then not even being considered a full student.” Probably not a good idea to vent, but you have a pretty good feeling this Dark Mirror isn’t one to prattle on on information not meant for the ears of others. “I know this is a place for magic to be cultivated, but ugh!”

You stuffed your face into your photo album. “I’d rather be a janitor than just a mere half student. But it’s too late to pull out now. It just, it just frustrates me that the only thing keeping Grim from being a full student is that the carriage didn’t bring him here.”

The mask blinked. “I suppose that is the case. Had he come in a coffin, he would’ve been assigned a dorm. But, I don’t look into those that haven’t been brought here by the carriage.”

You huffed. You weren’t really all the interested in being a student here. You’re more than content to just watch the others pop off their own magic while you stayed in the background doing cleaning and being paid, but, in your own need to have some protection, you kept Grim and suddenly Crowley decided your reward should be your admission. “If Grim and I end up separated, he at least has a good chance of survival, but I’d be dead within seconds if I meet anything with just a tiny ounce of magic. You’d think Crowley would give me some kind of accommodation or some magical tool to make up for my no-magic situation but…”

“I’m afraid such things either don’t exist, or are extremely limited.”

You scoffed. “Let me guess, it’s because people don’t want to waste resources on the non-magics when people with magic can use these tools so much better?”

“…”

You snapped your finger. “Figured. People in power really are predictable, aren’t they?”

You flipped through the album, adjusting the thing on your knees. “Well, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let me show you some fairies I took pictures of. They sure like to pose when they can.”

[septembersghost]

literally there are dudebros that r like Kim doesn't actually love him she's gonna con him she's actually evil etc and its soooo low-key misogynistic its like can't imagine a woman being nuanced in any way. but also its so obvious they complete each other

they've been like this for years, but they were usually silenced quickly before - recent events have sadly given them the excuse to double down on their heinous misogyny with less push back. these guys have been swearing for years that she was playing him - at the very least since S4 (and chuck's letter), but it began even more in earnest at, "maybe we get married," which for some reason made a whole host of them decide they hated her and she must be conning him, instead of understanding literally anything about the context of that scene. as if getting married didn't cause their bond to blossom even further. it's like they refuse to believe women are anything other than conniving harpies. :|

i was telling a friend about this, but it's legitimately horrifying to me that they're also rushing to unrestrained glee at not only the thought of her being violently murdered now (too bad for them, i fully believe this isn't going to happen), and additionally wishing cartel s*x slave/assault on her, as if this show would ever do such a thing, there's not even a TRACE of that threat in this narrative and they're foaming at the mouth wishing it on her as "punishment," as if she 1. pulled the trigger herself (she very much did not), or 2. as if that's a perfectly reasonable thing to hope a woman has to endure to bring her low in ANY circumstance. it's disgusting and it speaks to the way their minds work and how little they value women generally, tbh at a certain point that level of misogyny is so sick that it ripples far beyond fiction. they live like this? they see the world like this? despicable. i had to completely tap out of the subreddit because the comments i was seeing were too upsetting. /rant

she is a complicated, nuanced, insular woman. she always has been. this show has been a masterclass in how to communicate things with stillness, or minute movements that accumulate to far more. they've trusted us to spend enough time with her that we empathize and understand who she is as a person. she keeps herself tightly contained, so we see her measuring moments, being cautious with circumstances, but then when she lets that break open, we also see the complexity of her intellect, her emotions, and her fierce belief system - a system which includes jimmy. her moral compass being something that shifts seems to confuse some of them into thinking it means she's ~wicked~ rather than realizing WHY that shift has taken place. even her devotion to justice - it's very much something she uses to frame her world, but her sense of it changes as time goes on, and she experiences more, and gets more angry and frustrated at the broken aspects of the system. kim "breaking bad" is fueled by a sense of injustice mixed with hubris mixed with an almost fanciful quality. jimmy is capricious, but with kim to me it's almost like she's rational to the point of tipping into sophistry. she wanted to be atticus finch. she wants to improve the world, she wants people who aren't afforded fairness, who aren't heard, to be treated better, and if this means she has to make some sneaky moves and damage a few reputations and defy these men with privilege and power who keep the system unbalanced, doesn't she have the right to do it? we know it's illogical and ultimately even immoral, but she kept thinking the ends justified the means. after all, if they get the settlement faster, that means she can do good with it, right? they never foresaw it being blood money, which of course ruins everything. the hand of fate here isn't like...it's not coming down on the side of who is Good and who is Evil, which is why i wrote the post about EVERYONE in the entire story being to blame for this falling out the way it did. the repercussions are a reminder that even when we desperately want to, we can't take justice into our own hands.

the very quick turn to buy into howard's, "you're soulless, you're sociopaths" rant is an utter lack of nuance or understanding - they've been lying in wait for the chance to tear kim apart and they believe this handed it to them, and i do not in any way blame schauz or the rest of the writers' room for it, any more than i blame them for the way a much too large percentage of this same audience reacted to skyler back in the day. that damning judgment is not the intent of the storytelling imho, but the rot of the misogyny takes hold. we know that it isn't true. she isn't "evil." she hasn't been "psychopathic from the beginning" (lmao what? they're wholesale rewriting canon now, along with "howard never did anything wrong." he definitely did a number of things wrong, and acknowledging that isn't saying that what happened to him was justified). we have these small glimpses of her life and upbringing - an unreliable mother, an unstable home, her desire to achieve and accomplish things, her reaching for more - we know precisely why she and jimmy connect, and why their experiences of the world end up informing one another. we know why she defends him so fiercely. we know how deeply she loves him, and he her (but notice they don't question his love for her). i feel as though a lot of the comments convinced she's somehow playing a long con on him don't understand what this form of love and intimacy look like? it isn't spelled out for us in simple terms, it exists in their actions, gestures, even subtextually, but there's a startling, lovely realism about it that i personally find gorgeous and refreshing to watch, because we rarely see relationships depicted in this way. i don't know what more they needed than the beginning and end of bad choice road, which in and of itself speaks more volumes than some fictional couples ever do. it's such a genuine connection and it has always been portrayed that way.

they are very intentionally two parts of a whole. (whatever our souls are made of! i will keep saying it!) like you said, it's obvious they complete each other, they have from the start. where that eventually ends is difficult to say - violent delights or lovers meeting - but this has absolutely been a story about how these two people are united, and restorative and destructive, in one another.

[lexpressobean]

It is what it is. And we know fillers tried to fill in the gaps, somewhat. And this is just speculation on my part too. But it's just a huge waste that Shino's whole "they forgot about me" gag became a thing because he wasn't even forgotten. He was left out of a very important arc of the series, and the writing concerning his characterization decided to reflect that so specifically. Canonly because he was on a joint trip with Shibi. But really it's because Kishimoto had enough of Shino's bugs after his fight with Kankuro it seems. At least that's the info I got secondhand, but it sounds like it could be legit lol. Otherwise I feel like his character could've gone into much more appealing direction instead of simply a gag character a majority of the time.

thoughts rants and takes under the cut lol

So because they had to play up Naruto's idiocy in Shippuden, they made him forget Shino all together. Which caused Shino's character to suffer. That, when in part 1 Naruto simply wrote off Shino as creepy w/o knowing how strong he really was even as a genin. Also, he just wasn't at Shino's level when it came to lot of things, namely stealth!

I feel like that whole set up, however, was thanks to that scene when Naruto is about to leave with Jiraiya. Shino is not so subtlety demanding Kiba tell him about the Sasuke mission. Kiba picks up on Shino being upset and Shino just keeps quiet because he's actually stubborn as hell and won't admit he's upset.

That scene could've set up Shino to be characterized with so much more personality and less of a gag.

--

Like, instead of being forever pissed about the Sasuke Mission like he became in Shippuden, Shino could've actually, like... gotten over it, because I would think he'd care more about his former classmates being safe and not dead! Ino, Hinata, Tenten and Sakura weren't part of the Sasuke Mission either, why weren't they as sour about it? Shino being more upset he didn't get to go on a Mission with The Boys is such an annoyingly shallow idea, but that's what it feels like to me. If he was actually upset because he 100% believed he could've helped the mission succeed, that'd be different, but that's not what it feels like to me everytime he brings it up later.

Instead, if Shino had to be upset about not being on the mission, maybe it should've been established to be result of his resentment that is aimed at Shibi.

Yeah, I know the fandom loves to paint Shibi as a good father. The Aburame aren't heavily explored in canon and it's easy to want to make them a friction free family. But I would not be surprised if Shibi turned out to be a helicopter parent. You notice he found Shino fairly quickly after the Konoha Crush. Shino, literally the BEST candidate for the Sasuke Mission, was off with Shibi on a mission. During introductions, Sai mentions right away that Shino is often utilizing his Clans Techniques for Search and Seizure and Bodyguard Missions, seemingly separate from Team 8, though not necessarily. But getting the hang of Kikaichu manipulation for such missions would take practice, and I'm sure Shibi would love to be a part if that as a Father. And then, of course, you have the fact that Shibi and Shino as well as Muta and that other member, confront Konan but Shibi just talks at Shino telling him something he already probably knows???

Dealing with a smothering parent that makes you feel like they don't have full faith in your abilities or trust your judgements is stifling. And if their overprotective/strict behavior started to actively interfere with your team and extracurricular activites, you would hate it, and if it happened often enough, you would start to believe you actually hate them.

What if the reason why he found Shino when he did after fighting Kankuro was because Shibi put a tracking beetle on Shino? How complicated would those feelings be? Like yes, Shino is still alive. Yes, Shibi cares about Shino enough to resort to such things. But also, Shino would've been 13. And 13 is a big deal for growing kid. I'm not saying he's unnecessarily angsty and is the type to casually throw around the phrase "I would rather die"...

But Shibi let Torune get taken by Danzo too. Shibi did nothing but let it happen. And as Shino grows, that specific part of his resentment would slowly become redirected more heavily at Danzo but also Konoha. Which is complicated for such a promising young Shinobi that's supposed to proclaim his love for and loyalty to Konoha. Thus reminiscent if a certain someone who ran off. It'd be easier to hate Shibi simply as a coping mechanism because of all Shibi does after the fact to keep Shino safe.

Plus the guilt on Shibi's end. Shino could see Shibi's extra attention on Shino as a sign of this guilt, and also as a deeply upsetting reminder that Shibi can't truly protect Shino the way he wants to. But he tries to anyway, and Shino hates seeing Shibi struggle with the concept as much as he hates how Shibi's struggling actively interferes with Shino's personal life.

Shino being upset because in Shino's young tween ninja mind, Shibi's overprotectiveness can very well be the reason why Sasuke wasn't seized and why his friends were so brutally hurt. And having it all revealed more earlier and cleaner that Danzo did in fact take Shino's brother, giving him more of a parallel to Sasuke throughout the story and fleshing out these issues that Shino very well made have had with Shibi would have been a much more interesting route for his character to be developed.

Shibi did nothing and Torune was taken. Shibi pulls strings to watch Shino like a hawk as a genin and another one of Shino's friends is suddenly gone. And it's not entirely Shibi's fault, we know that. Shino would grow to understand that. But both as a parallel to Sasuke and Sai, as someone who suffered from Konohas antics at such a young age, lost his brother, and knows what Danzo Shimura could do if he wanted to, that would have been interesting

Instead we have Shino's later fear of kidnapping and abandonment issues coming out as an unknown until basically right at the end and played off until then as taking moody shots at Naruto for the most part and a continuous gag of Shino being left out and forgotten because haha he was the only guy who didn't go on the Sasuke mission. Haha he has a deep seeded fear of no one being able to or caring enough to keep him from or finding him after disapearing in his own village because of his own village. Hell even Gaara and Kankuro were in the fucking mission as well as Temari...!! But not Shino! Lets make it seem like Shino is more worried about socializing than actually being there for his friends and just wanting someone there that he can truly count out because all the adults in his life including his father have failed him!!

...

Ugh. The Data Books want us to believe that brother thing about Torune and Shino so bad but when it all comes down to it... don't get me wrong, I like it, give us more of a Family!! but it wasn't even a twist, it was just thrown in for filler and confirmed by a non manga source :(

[lover-of-mine]

Okay, let's do this then, the whole thing about the theme of Buck's arc specifically and the search for family it's the thing that leaves me the most frustrated with his ending, because he doesn't get the family, there was even an effort to make it clear that Buck sees Chris as his kid that just went nowhere just to put him with a girl and I think that's a major disservice to Buck's growth and the way we were led to believe he didn't want to settle for anyone that came back for him anymore; And I think the parallels between Buck and Natalia and Buck and Taylor give Natalia a huge disadvantage since we are partial to Buck, Buck is the one we care about, he's the main character, and we watched her flee him and flee him because she can't handle parts of who he is, (which paint her as only interested on his death and given the effect his death had on us that a big no no) which make us, who have watched and loved Buck for 6 seasons now, look at her and be like "eh, don't think that's a good idea" even tho she's not actively doing anything bad. I have no idea how they'll deal with her in season 7 since they already put her in a in but not really in position in Buck's life (you can read this if you want to understand what i mean) with the way they have their ending, sitting in the balcony and the structure of that scene, but I do hope it's more drama free. I think Buck needs to have a relationship end just because it wasn't right, no break of trust, no running, just "we don't work, this was good, but let's stop" kinda way.

With Eddie and Marisol is a lot easier to just make her vanish. They set up one date, one throwaway comment about how the date was "nice but it wasn't magic" gets Eddie right back on track. And I do like the idea of Eddie dating, having some less serious fun, reminding himself that he's allowed to feel good in a relationship with no expectations or obligations. Because while he is dating out of a sense of obligation and this expectation that he's been alone long enough, I think he should get something positive from the experience that doesn't leave him not looking at someone else for another year.

And if we decide to talk about Buck and Eddie and the possibilities for them, I do think they need to find out that relationships are supposed to be fun? It would be good to just exist with someone before falling into a relationship with each other given the place they have in each other's lives. I do think the show kinda wrote themselves into a corner with them and I can go on a whole separate rant about that, but in the end, we don't see them having fun with the people they date? Abby was never all the way in with Buck, we never even see them have a successful date that's just fun, we meet Shannon when the trust of the relationship is already broken, so it feels doomed because we feel the way Eddie is guarded around her, Ali is never around and when she is we find out she fundamentally misunderstands who Buck is as a person, Eddie is never all the way in with Ana, Taylor is its own can of worms, so I think they need to date for the sake of dating and be like "oh this is fun but not what i want long term" and move on.

And theres also the fact that Buck needs to work on himself before he gets his endgame relationship because he really needs to stop hoping someone will fix him before he can make a relationship actually work.

And as long as the show is on and both Buck and Eddie are alive, I'm staying captain of the ship. I don't think the finale was the disaster for them people painted it out to be, because I had already accepted Buck needs to deal with his death before buddie happens and that wouldn't happen in season 6, so I just like "it's not happening yet" so honestly, there's still hope, there's always hope.

I am REALLY interested in Taylor's book tho, because books don't just happen so the possibility of her writing that while still with Buck and the implications for Buck can be fascinating. Let's see if that will come back tho (I'm looking at you emergency beacon that was never used that haunts me all of the time)

With the way the season played out + some comments from the actors/team, I really believed this was the year we'd get a end of season with a cliffhanger. Really feels like they could have intended for the bridge scene to be the whole episode and to leave us with at least Bobby's fate in jeopardy. And then changed it to give everyone a somewhat closed ending.

No, because the signs pointed to the bridge being worse than it actually was and personally I think a cliffhanger with a fan-favorite character in danger would be so effective to force a renewal. Like, imagine we get the sneak peek that Bobby is missing and we don't have the confirmation that season 7 is happening? We would've made NOISE to make sure the show got picked up. And I think the show always tries to package the finales nicely, let it end on a hopeful note for most characters, season 1 we had the start of Bathena, Chimney and his party, Karen coming back home, season 2 we had Bathena's wedding and Eddie's shield ceremony, season 3 we have May's graduation, season 4 we have Eddie's party, Hen's picnic with Nia, the Grant-Nash dinner, Albert's graduation, season 5 we have henren wedding and Eddie coming back to the 118, so like, I think it would be nice not to have a happy ending in season 6, leave us wondering, yk? Like, I don't think they have the balls to pull anything bigger than a temporary character death with the core 7, but like, even though we knew Buck was going to wake up, his death still left us on the edge, to put that in a bigger scale would've been a great experience. Like, my original guess was that rescuing Eddie was going to be harder, and that we wouldn't really see Bobby, he was going to fall, byebye see you next season. With what we got, I maintain that Eddie would be harder to rescue, but I think in a Hen would need assistance in the ambulance so it would take longer for Buck to get to him way, so by the time Athena found Bobby and there was the second collapse, you have Eddie and Chim incapacitated, we have Hen the way she was, we have Buck pushing through something (because i still can't believe he walked away from that unharmed okay, unrealistic lskoasokaosk) because Athena just radioed that she found Bobby then everything falls again and the episode ends. And to have Bobby, Chim, and Eddie incapacitated could even open up something with the broader theme they had going around fathers specifically and you could even do something cool with Buck taking charge but struggling, because you have his surrogate father, you have the father of his niece and you have his best friend who made him responsible for a kid in case something happened, so it could have so many cool ramifications all around. And it felt like they were building up to it and then just chickened out. It's like what @sherlockcrossing said, it's a square peg in a round hole. And it's a hole they built because the whole season felt like they were leading up to something that they chose not to deliver. I would much rather have the show not end than to have that attempt to force a happy ending that they could still pick back up next season if there was one.

I am curious really about how they'll pick it back up next season tho. If they'll retcon shit, commit to it, make something happen offscreen to work with. I'm particularly curious about Marisol and Natalia and the way they were building buddie up just to cut that off. But mostly because by the time the show comes back both relationships will be like, going 6 months (depending on the beginning of the season time jump they decide on once the strike ends) if they choose not to give them the Ali treatment, and to add 2 somewhat long relationships for 2 main characters (that a lot of people want together and that were being hinted at more clearly with 6b) with 2 characters we have no reason to be attached to will be a challenge. I guess we'll have to wait.

[marauderundercover]

Taking Chances Ch. 1: Adopted

AO3 @maribat-bdbwm

Adopted. Adopted. Adopted. Adopted. The word runs on a loop through Marinette’s head as her world crumbles around her. She was adopted.

“What? Maman, I don’t, I don’t understand.” Marinette says, her voice cracking as she tries to act like this isn’t bothering her. Like she doesn’t feel as though her entire world is changing.

“Marinette, sweetheart, just take a breath. That’s it, breathe in...and out. Very good.” Her maman says, holding her hands as she breathes with her slowly. Marinette swallows thickly, trying hard to ignore the way her hands shake in her maman’s.

“Maman, why didn’t you tell me?” She asks, confusion and self doubt swirling in her mind. Why was she adopted? Did her birth parents not want her? Could they not take care of her? Was she a mistake? Did they hate her? Did her maman hate her now? Is that why she’s telling her? Is she going to be kicked out? Is she going to have to leave Paris? What if-

“Marinette?” Her maman’s soft voice pulls her out of her thoughts. Marinette frowns when she realizes that she has tears running down her face.

“I-I’m sorry.” She says, pulling her hands away to furiously wipe at her tears, trying hard to ignore the sympathetic look her papa keeps giving her.

“You have nothing to apologize for, Marinette. Are you feeling up to an explanation? Or would you rather not talk about this?” She asks, her face covered in worry.

“I wanna talk about it.” Marinette says quickly, before slapping her hands over her mouth. She didn’t mean to say that. What if that’s not right? What if what her maman has to say is just going to hurt more? What if-

“Okay. It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m sorry we waited so long to tell you.” Her maman apologizes, scooting closer to wrap an arm around Marinette’s shoulders. Her papa wraps an arm around both of them, his presence calming Marinette enough so that she can think a little more clearly.

“Why did you wait? Why now?” She asks, still confused why she decided to break the news today of all days.

“We were going to wait until you were sixteen. Let you be at an age where you would understand it a little more, understand that being adopted isn’t wrong. And that you didn’t do anything wrong.” She explains, rubbing her shoulder gently.

“But then, why now?” Marinette asks, frustration starting to build. Why say they were going to wait and then not actually wait? Why would they-

“Mme. Mendeleiev called. You’re starting a unit on genetics and biology, and she knew that you were adopted. She just-” She sighs, frowning. “She didn’t want you to be blind sided or caught off guard in class if things didn’t add up.”

“But why does she know?” Marinette asks with a frown.

“Because we were both friends with your birth mother.”

--- Walking into class, Marinette tries hard to avoid the worried glance from Mme. Mendeleiev. All of the information from yesterday swirling through her head; her maman was friends with Mme. Mendeleiev. They were both friends with her birth mother, Bridgette Le. Her birth mother didn’t just give her up, she did want her, her maman had reassured her repeatedly. But she had died. And Marinette had almost died as well. And her parents? Didn’t hate her now. They didn’t love her any less, they reassured her of that several times before Marinette asked to be excused to go to bed. Tikki had had to watch for akumas most of the night. Breathing shakily, Marinette sits and immediately starts doodling on her notebook, hoping that no one else will put two and two together once their genetics unit starts. Hoping that no one will know or ask her. About adoption. --- It was two weeks after Marinette found out that she was adopted that she decided to talk to her maman about it again. After ranting to Tikki for several nights and spending time thinking about it, she had slowly started to accept it. It didn’t mean her parents loved her any less. It didn’t mean that she was any different or anything. It just meant that she had two more parents. A birth mother who had apparently wanted what was best for her, naming Sabine Cheng as her godmother even before Marinette was born. And a birth father. A man that Marinette was determined to talk to her maman about. Surely the woman would know something about him, given her close friendship with her birth mother.

“Hey Maman.” Marinette says, walking into the kitchen and sitting at the counter. Her maman smiles brightly at her as she continues to fill the dumplings.

“Hello sweetheart. How’s your commission for Jagged going?” She asks, her face filled with pride. Marinette grins and nods.

“It’s amazing. The shape of the suit is much different than anything else I’ve made before, but I think it’s going to look really cool!” Marinette says, a wide smile on her face before she remembers the whole reason she came into the kitchen. She clears her throat. “Maman, could I ask you something?”

“Of course Marinette.” She says, closing and filling dumplings before placing them in the steamer.

“When we talked about my...adoption. You didn’t say anything about my birth father. Did you know him too?” Marinette asks, staring down the counter to avoid looking at her maman.

“I didn’t know him very well, I’ll be honest. Bridgette met him when she went to the US for a year. I’m not sure what happened, but she did write a letter for him. I have it in the lock box though, she didn’t put an address on it and I wasn’t sure where to send it.” She explains and Marinette frowns at the lack of information.

“Does he- did he even know about me?” She asks.

“I’m not sure. Bridgette didn’t talk about him much. All she really said was that the town wasn’t fond of her and she didn’t want you to grow up in that environment, said it was terribly dreary. And that he was obsessed with his work. He worked for some big company, but I’m not sure if he still does. ” Her maman adds and Marinette nods.

“Is that all?” She asks, trying not to show her disappointment.

“Let me grab the letter. I can’t remember his name, but it should be in there.” She says, turning and washing her hands before walking away to get the letter. Marinette lets out a long breath, hoping that she isn’t making a mistake by looking for this information. --- Bruce Wayne. That was apparently the name of her birth father who lived somewhere in the US. Her maman was right about that. The letter didn’t have an address and Bridgette hadn’t put anything specific about the location. Besides her birth father’s name, the letter was a dead end. How generic could a name be? Bruce Wayne. It was like finding out her father’s name was Thomas Williams or John Smith or something. There must be thousands of Bruce Waynes in the US. Walking into Mme. Bustier’s class, Marinette trudges to her desk in the very back and drops down into her seat. Dropping her head onto her desk, she barely notices Adrien walk in.

“You okay, Mari?” He asks, frowning as he takes the seat next to her.

“I got a name.” She mumbles into the desk, knowing the boy would understand. She turns her head so that she can glance at him, frowning at the wide smile that takes over his face.

“Really? That’s great!” He says and she huffs.

“Not really. It was the most generic name ever, and the letter that Bridgette wrote didn’t have a location or anything.”

“Why do you want to talk to him so badly?” Adrien asks and Marinette sits up, frowning.

“I don’t know, I just-” She sighs. “I guess I just want the chance to meet him. Maman’s told me so many stories of Bridgette since I found out, and I’ve loved getting to know little things that we have in common. I just want to know if I have anything in common with him.”

“If you really want to meet him, I’ll do everything I can to help you find him.” Adrien says. Marinette looks at him, relief and gratitude coating her face.

“Really? You’d do that for me?” She asks, hope and faith that this could actually work rushing over her. Adrien nods, gifting her a small smile.

“Of course, Mari.” He says. Marinette opens her mouth to thank him again, when Mme. Bustier barges into the classroom.

“Students! Listen up, I have an amazing announcement!” She cheers, clapping her hands together. Marinette looks at the woman wearily, unsure of what the woman could be so excited about. She’d had a meeting with the woman earlier to talk about the end of year trip. They hadn’t talked about much, just the budget and trips that they could feasibly do. Marinette had also shot down some of the woman’s….less than ideal options. Seriously, who thought a trip to Gotham was a good idea? Even Marinette, with her lack of knowledge about the world’s big names and celebrities, knew that Gotham wasn’t a great place. It was quite literally crawling with villains, and unlike Paris, there was no Miraculous Cure to fix everything. Marinette blinked as the class suddenly erupted with cheers.

“What happened?” She asks Adrien, zoning back into the situation around her.

“We’re apparently going to Gotham for our end of year trip.” Adrien mutters, clearly not thrilled with the turn of events. Marinette nods, then freezes as the words register. Well shit. --- Marinette huffs as she rushes into the empty hotel lobby. Key word: empty. Well, okay it wasn’t completely empty, but it definitely didn’t have the entire class (and teacher!) that it was supposed to have. Instead it just had a tired looking concierge and a bowl of bruised apples. Fantastic. Grumbling under her breath, Marinette pulls out the itinerary that she had been forced to create for this trip she was forced to be on. She wasn’t trying to be dramatic, but between Hawkmoth and all of her responsibilities as Ladybug, going to a city like Gotham was the last thing that she wanted to do. Its villains, or Rogues as they preferred to be called, seemed to have no fear. At least Hawkmoth was smart enough to hide behind his goons. Gotham’s rogues had no such qualm, and instead ran around to personally cause mayhem. Glancing down at the itinerary, Marinette suppresses a groan. The entire class left early. Of course they did. Whatever, she still had plenty of time to get to their scheduled tour time at the Gotham City Museum of Modern Art. It had been Alix’ suggestion, as the girl’s father was friends with someone who had helped in its most recent street art exhibit.

“Marinette!” A small voice yells. Marinette glances down at her purse and raises an eyebrow at the concerned look on her kwami’s face.

“What?” She whispers back.

“You’re not really going to walk by yourself in Gotham, are you?” Tikki asks, her eyes wide with concern.

“I’ll be fine, Tikki. And I plan on getting a cab.” Marinette says, giving her purse a reassuring pat before walking out into the dreary mist outside. Hailing a cab with surprising ease, Marinette tells the driver her destination and sits back, watching the gargoyles and architecture stream past. She’d have to sketch something later, because a million ideas for a Gotham inspired line was floating through her head. When the cab stops, Marinette smiles and thanks the man, handing him the fare and a tip.

“No problem, Miss Wayne.” The driver says, tipping his cap before zipping away from the museum. Miss Wayne? As in her father? Marinette shakes that thought away almost as quickly as it appears. What are the odds that she’d be in the same city as her birth father? Must’ve mistaken me with someone else, Marinette thought to herself, almost as if she was reassuring herself that there was no chance of seeing her birth father. No chance of someone seeing her and saying, “oh, are you Bruce’s girl? You sure do have his nose”. No chance of the man himself running into her and seeing a perfect blend of himself and Bridgette and- No. No need to panic about this right now. Pushing the thoughts away, Marinette rushes into the museum and nearly runs over Adrien.

“Mari! Are you okay? Where were you? I didn’t see you in the lobby so I got on the bus to look for you and you weren’t there and then I tried to get off to find you and-” Marinette cuts Adrien’s rambling off with a tight hug to reassure him that she’s there. She’s there and she’s safe.

“I’m okay, I promise. I got a cab surprisingly easily.” Marinette reassures him, mumbling into his chest. He freezes momentarily before returning the tight hug.

“Marinette! Now that you’re here we can start the tour. The tour guide suggested we start in the Comedians Hall of Fame and then loop around and end at the new graffiti display.” Mme. Bustier announces, clapping her hands excitedly. Marinette pulls away from Adrien, blushing slightly as he squeezes her once more before fully letting her go. Wandering through the Comedians Hall of Fame, Marinette’s eyes dance over the exhibits. She wasn’t necessarily passionate or inspired by this section of the museum, but it was still interesting. A big bang made Marinette spin around and frantically look for the exits. The uncontrollable laughter started seconds later. Shit.

“Welcome, welcome to MY hall! Except someone apparently forgot my picture. No worries though, I’m sure we can add one with all of your smiling faces in it as well.” A voice echoes in the hall. Marinette’s blood instantly freezes. The Joker. In a room. With her class. Oh my God, someone is going to die.

“What’re you doing?” Adrien hisses out. Marinette blinks and realizes she had unconciously taken a fighting pose. She was so used to protecting the class as Ladybug against Akumas, she just immediately fell back into the role. She straightens immediately, but it’s too late.

“Ah, a brave little girl. Who do we have here?” Joker asks, and the sickening realization that he’s holding a gun washes over her. There would be no Miraculous Cure. No Lucky Charm. Marinette grits her teeth and stares at the man’s yellow teeth stretched into an unnatural smile.

“Marinette.” She says, leaving out her last name. No need for her parents to panic because her name is trending at the site of a villain attack. Assuming nothing goes wrong and the heroes show up and she doesn’t die by the hands of the Joker. Not that that would be traumatic, or anything.

“What, no last name? Or did you think I wouldn’t recognize you?” Joker asks, pushing her hair out of her face with his gun. Marinette sees Adrien’s fists clench out of the corner of her eye, a wave of determination running through her. She needed to keep Joker distracted so that he wouldn’t notice Adrien and try to hurt Adrien. Since obviously, as an Agreste, he was a much better hostage than the daughter of bakers. Well, and the biological daughter of some random American man who doesn’t even know she exists.

“It’s Cheng.” She retorts, dropping her father’s last name off in a desperate attempt for her full name to stay off the internet.

“Is it? Are you sure? Because if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’re a new Wayne. Much smaller than the others, and a girl is different, but maybe Brucie’s just changing his type.” Joker taunts and Marinette’s head spins. Wayne? It can’t possibly be her birth father...Wayne must be a much more common name in the US than she originally thought and maybe even though she hadn’t even thought about contacting him yet or trying to find him, maybe it would be much harder than she could’ve ever thought because it’s such a common name and he probably has no idea that she wants to even try and find him and there’s probably no chance that he even wants to meet her and-

“Are you even listening to me?” Joker’s annoyed voice cuts off her internal spiral. Marinette quirks up an eyebrow and shakes her head.

“No, not really.” She says, eyes widening and face instantly turning red as she realizes that this was not the kind of villain she could smartmouth like she did Akumas as Ladybug. She’s not even Ladybug right now.

“You’re odd. Maybe you’ll be even more useful than I thought.” Joker says after a moment of tense silence. Marinette glances around the room, noticing how the goons that came in with Joker were more focused on Joker’s weird reaction to Marinette than the other hostages. Making eye contact with Adrien, Marinette has a silent conversation, hoping that he’s suddenly become a mind reader and will start getting people out of the room while the bad guys are distracted.

“I doubt that. I’m failing science.” Marinette says matter-of-factly. It was true, though she wasn’t usually this bad at science. But it was really hard for her to focus on genetics and biology with everything else going on. So her parents didn’t really blame her either, though it did dissapoint Mme. Mendeleiev.

“You’re kind of a smart ass, aren’t you?” Joker taunts, haphazardly waving the gun around.

“It’s um, one of my better qualities.” Marinette stumbles over her words as the gun stops waving to once again point at her face. Joker smirks, his face suddenly darkening as a crash echoes throughout the room. Marinette pales as she watches Joker turn and shoot through the wall next to the door that Lila was currently walking through. Lila yelps and drops to the ground, and for the first time ever, Marinette is certain her tears are real.

“I see what you were trying to do, Frenchie. You were trying to get my hostages out of here. But why? Why would you play hero like that? What would YOU get out of that?” Joker taunts, moving the gun so that it’s pointed right at Marinette’s face again. This time, Marinette could feel the heat radiating from the end of the gun. From the gun being shot at the wall. Near a classmate. Granted it was Lila, but it was still someone she knew. Someone she couldn’t save with the Miraculous Cure because this would be it. The smoke filling the room pulls Marinette’s attention from the gun in front of her, and instead to the hulking figures that suddenly entered the room. Four people, three of them tall but one of those three towering over everyone else in the room. Marinette blinks as her eyes attempt to adjust and she sucks in a breath in shock. Batman. Batman and Nightwing and Red Hood and Red Robin. Of course she knew the vigilantes here, she had done extensive research on anything to do with the hero scene in Gotham. Mostly to keep herself and the class safe in case of an attack, which now that she thinks about it is actually impossible to plan for. Marinette’s feet seem frozen to the ground as she glances around at the bodies hitting the floor. She couldn’t see clearly, but she was almost certain that they were the goons that had arrived with Joker.

“Oh come on, I was just trying to greet this lovely young lady. Say Batsy, don’t ya think she looks like she could fit with the other Wayne brats?” Joker taunts as Batman closes in on them. Joker had shifted her so that she was pressed up against his chest, the gun now situatated at her temple. Batman stops several feet in front of them, a clear grimace on his face.

“Let the girl go, Joker.” He demands in a gruff voice. Marinette inhales sharply as Joker tightens his hold on her.

“I don’t think so, Bats. See, I need this one to guarantee that I get outta here without taking a trip back to my cell. So how about instead, I’ll take her on a little trip and leave her somewhere you can find her later.” Joker offers.

“I don’t think you’re in any place to attempt negotiations.” Batman replies, his face an unwavering mask.

“And why is that?” Joker asks, and Marinette can hear the wide smile in his voice, though she can’t currently see his face.

“‘Cause you’re the asshole who didn’t bother to focus on the rest of us.” A gruff voice from behind taunts. Joker sputters in shock, but seconds later his arms loosen and Marinette dashes towards Batman, glancing back in time to see the man collapse to the ground.

“Is he?” Marinette asks, unsure how to feel about watching a potential death. Even if the man was horrible, he hadn’t killed her or any of her friends so she couldn’t wish him dead. No matter how much it would help her sleep tonight.

“No.” Batman says. Marinette nods before turning her attention to the head of the Batfamily. A wide smile spreads across her face and she extends her hand for him to shake.

“Well then, thank you for saving me, Monsieur. I’m Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”

Next