#inactive protagonists

[starry-bi-sky]

pouring one out for luo binghe in my disciple SQQ fic, poor guy has taken a backseat here. we're nearly 30k words deep and he hasn't even shown his face once. it'll be much longer before he even actually talks to Shen Qingqiu.

(i say im pouring one out but in reality im sitting in my director's chair chewing on a cigar and wearing a beret as he tearily and unsuccessfully pleads with me for more scenes with Shen Qingqiu)

[yansurnummu]

WIP Wriday

tagged by @captain-of-silvenar!

here's a bit from a chapter of THIKL I've been working on, ft. Drals' first time meeting Torvesard :)

-

“Of all the realms I’ve walked, I somehow always end up here,” a voice said to Drals’ right. “Fargrave. Beautiful, isn't it?”

Drals glanced towards the voice’s owner. The sound was clearly Dremora, harsh and grating yet with a tone that he would almost describe as soft. He was tall and broad, bare-chested with scarred reddish skin, his features strong and pointed with black horns that curved back over his head. His cloudy gaze was focused away from Drals, over the city below.

Drals took a quick look behind him for anyone else, wondering why, of all people, this Dremora was accosting him.

“Weird place,” Drals muttered dismissively. “Weird people.”

The Dremora’s attention snapped quickly towards him.

“And what of you, mortal?” He cocked his head to the side, his eyes sizing Drals up. “What business might a servant of Hermaeus Mora have in this plane between planes?”

“I’m no one’s servant,” Drals hissed, his upper lip twitching. “If anything, he’s more like a terrible landlord. If I stink like ink, it’s because he won’t fix the leaks in my bloody ceiling.”

“Hmph.” There was something almost like a smirk on the Dremora’s face, though it was hard to tell. “Perhaps you and I aren’t so different after all.” He stepped closer, coming to a stop at Drals’ side.

“Who are you supposed to be, then?” Drals asked, barely masking his curiosity.

“I am someone who has searched millenia for purpose,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “And now that I am as close as I am to finding it, I will not have it torn from my grasp.”

Drals eyed the Dremora, taken aback by the sudden intensity behind his words. “Do you understand me, mortal?”

[unfortunate--moth]

Good day, greetings UnMoth, I have started playing HSR again and am now going to blow the trailblazer up with my mind, (they're both different flavours of nonbinary to me, as are all male+female chosen protagonists such as Aether and Lumine, and Jesse from Minecraft Storymode) that is all.

- Milgranon

NO YOURE SO FUCKING RIGHT MILGRANON.

i chose stelle and i've never resonated with a player character ever before. both of them just have that gender swag. i love them both so much.

[nothingtherefornow]

In Adrien’s defense. I think a lot of people forget that in Ladybug he did attempt to speak up for Marinette and was silenced. And given who he was going up against Lila and Chloe, I don’t think he believed it and was more likely trying to figure out HOW to go about this.

People like that you HAVE to be careful when speaking against them, and try to do so in a way so your actions cannot be twisted.

Speaking from experience having had my own Chloe and Lila, nearly anything and everything I did was always twisted to make me the villain. It’s likely that he realized that, and combined with the fact that he had been silenced by damocles before… not to mention the fact that anytime he attempted to speak up against his father, he would always get silenced as well.

Getting shut down by adults messes with a kid.

(and it doesn’t help that in revelation when he did attempt to speak about Lila he got shut up and dismissed by Alya and Nino.)

Thanks for your opinion, you may have helped me a little with Adrien's character, I'd rather think that he remained passive and silent most of the time against people like Lila and Chloé because he can't figure quickly enough how to confront them in the right way, and because he is too used to be silenced by adults. The fact that both Alya and Nino dismissed Adrien's opinion must indeed also have played a part in Adrien's reluctance to speak up.

The problem is that the derie doesn't show that those are the main issues and reasons why Adrien never speak up against Lila and Chloé even when Marinette would desperatly need it and appreciate it.

It would have been better to have an understandable explanation for Adrien's silence and inaction against Lila and Chloé's evil words, actions and behavior (just like they gave us a very understandable explanation for Marinette "stalking" habits), instead of leaving it for the fans to guess those reasons.

But I guess that the limited time for each of miraculous episode can be very costing for the miraculous story and its numerous caharcters.

[tadpal]

YESSSSS TOM IS ILL ITS FINALLY ALL HAPPENING

[flagellant]

i could not be trusted to make this game because my immediate thought is that the game advertises and markets itself as what op intended but steadily and then rapidly becomes very clear that instead of a cozy cute cottagecore "mystery" the story SHOULD be about the blatant corruption, cruelty, systemic oppression, and persecution and bigotry of her neighbors, but the main character is desperately clinging to the original genre of omg cozy cute and cottagecore because she feels overwhelmed by the potential responsibility to enact meaningful change rather than feel-good aesthetic positivity, thus becoming actively complicit in the town's crimes through her not mere inaction but in fact conscious choice to decide that she will be the protagonist of a cozy cute genre game rather than a story which might challenge her preconceptions of the world and the state of her own community.

[mrmidknight829]

Been too inactive on Tumblr lately. Need to post again. While big bad wolves, or wolf villains and antagonists can be cool, we could always use more good wolves, wolf heroes and wolf protagonists.

The wolf characters in the picture, from top to bottom:

•Legoshi (Beastars)

•Mutt (Lobodestroyo)

•Shirou Ogami (BNA/Brand New Animal)

•Mr. Wolf (The Bad Guys)

•Grey (Sheep and Wolves)

•Humphrey & Kate (Alpha & Omega)

•Kiba (Wolf's Rain)

•Trickshot (Trick Moon)

•Wiley Wolf (The Great Wolf Pack)

•Amaterasu (Ōkami)

•Robyn & Mebh (Wolfwalkers)

•Lazor Wulf

•Luka (Kingdom Force)

•Big Brain Wolf

•Gabu (One Stormy Night/Arashi no Yoru ni)

•Wanji and Wicasa (Tales of Tatonka)

•Lupin (Lupin's Tales)

•Hope (Seed of Life)

(Hope's bird companion Letty is also barely seen in the photo like she's peeking)

[linkcharacter]

arghhgh your analysis of jimmy is so good... it's so thematically important that he isn't a monster. he's completely disquietingly human. the game sets him up as an antihero protagonist who's making the best of the godawful hand he's been dealt and people forget that when you start your first playthrough, you believe it. jimmy's calm and collected during the crew meeting. he sticks up for daisuke when swansea insults him, even going along with his rescue fantasy. sure, he's cruel towards anya, but the player's handed the premade justification that she's supposedly completely incompetent. sure, it's implied he's torturing curly, but genre convention is surprisingly lenient towards that sort of pointless revenge. the screen even blacks out during the pill-feeding scenes - we get to look away. we're given excuse after excuse for his behaviour while every background detail screams that something's horribly wrong. mouthwashing uses its medium to instill a sense of complicity in jimmy's actions and i think its narrative does the same for curly's inaction. by the time we watch curly freeze in place as jimmy sends the ship to its death, we can't judge him without also judging ourselves. this game's writing has me in a chokehold

Nice writing, well put.

[himitsusentaiblog]

I could write so much about the differences between Shin Godzilla and Godzilla Minus one as different sides of a political story.

Shin was a political satire at points about the ineffectiveness of Japanese Beauracracy in the face of immediate crisis and how a solution can only be found once the government is pared back to a leaner, more agile and less bound by red tape core of problem solvers. I talks about competence and creativity and radical ideas in the face of insurmountable odds once freed from constraint. The protagonists are young, scrappy and ambitious and the idea that you can make a difference, can step up and save everyone if only you were free to do so.

Minus One is about humans struggling to deal with a crisis in the face of a LACK of government, with almost no military after the trauma of a war they were forced into by their government and then lost badly. It's about picking up the pieces and then having those pieces kicked over again because of the actions of others and possibly, the inaction of one of the protagonists in the past. It's about regret and shame and heartbreak and the feeling you are not worthy of happiness so denying it when it presents itself to you.

And while Shin deals with the constraints placed on Japan by the treaty that ended World War II and whether or not they can deploy their self-defense forces to try and stop Godzilla before it is too late, Minus one deals with the lack of support from the US Occupying Forces who seem to not care if Japan gets absolutely destroyed again. You can almost feel a kind of callous disdain in the non-presence of the Americans as if they are ok with Japan being destroyed as long as it doesn't lead to conflict with the USSR. Or maybe they are just using that as an excuse to further humiliate a defeated enemy that once threatened them.

[opheliaplath]

The rise and fall of “Electra Heart” and the birth of a “Princess of Power”

In the new song ⭐️CUNTISSIMO⭐️ by Marina, as well as in the music video there is a clearly reminiscence of Primadonna; the song in fact has similar electronic-hyper pop sonorities, and the music video has a clear intention to remind and represent the iconic images and aesthetic (bold, historical and colourful dresses, in a period building, as well as the opulence and romanticism of an old time) of the remarkable music video “Primadonna”, on the other hand it is also clear that in “Cuntissimo” there is a fundamental change that it can be seen in the different representation of the protagonist character, that lived -and died- and here is reborn: the acquaintance of her freedom;

if Electra heart in Primadonna “wears her heart on her cheek” (visually represented with the draw of a heart on her left cheek) and fights deeply to have her own power, that she obtains from men through her beauty, and dies in this eternal battle against herself just for the seek of approval of others - mostly man-, now in “Cuntissimo” she rises from the dust of her death and, learnt her lesson, becomes herself: through the process of freedom and pleasure of her own mind and body, she switches from somebody who would beg others for love and power to someone who understands that it’s all them (“i’m a star” visually described by the simbol of the star on her left cheek);

Marina after years of inactivity is representing, with her latest work, the difficult process of acceptance, rebirth, and grow that a girl has to go through in this society, in order to find herself:

from a lost adolescent afraid of life, to a confident adult aware of her own worth, from an “Electra Heart” to a “Princess of Power”.

[randomwriteronline]

btw still not over @crystaltoa 's whole post on narrative and destiny and bionicle characters being aware they're characters but not in a common fourth wall breaking way. Random thinks too hard two electric boogaloo

Like. The Matoran Universe is a fictional universe within the already fictional universe of Bionicle. Like the more realized version of a book in a book. It's a completely artificial manufactured cosmos where essentially nothing is real - most elements are replaced by protodermis, animals and plants are produced, the inhabitants are engineered and built via assembly lines, their sapience was installed post-completion - and the awareness of this is None. Like Crystal mentions in the original post, the characters know they're following Destiny like it's the rough draft of a play and they're actors of the Commedia dell'Arte, taking on certain archetypical roles and adhering more or less closely to their traits and clichés, but that's where the self-awareness ends because to them this is a performance of life, not a pantomime. The nature of the Matoran Universe naturally prevents any knowledge of or contact with the wider "real" universe, so they remain ignorant to how fictitious their existence is and continue to perceive their own reality as the only possible one (ITS THE FUCKING CAVE AGAIN).

Keep this in mind for later.

Now back to Destiny. MU beings seem to have a tendency to conflate or heavily associate it with Mata Nui ("the will of Mata Nui" being used as a synonym for it, the Order of Mata Nui working to ensure it), to the point where it would be fair to assume that the two are one and the same, or that at least Mata Nui has some agency on Destiny; however, while it's true that Mata Nui is heavily tied to Destiny to the point of seeming its incarnation, he just as submitted to it as the rest of the MU beings are, if not possibly more.

In the narrative of Destiny, Mata Nui is at once playing both the Objective and the Ultimate Hero - not in the sense that he's the platonic ideal of the role, but that at the end of the day he is the proper main character, if not the ONLY proper character for it. The concept of Destiny with a capital D is after all a creation of the Great Beings, whose principal concern and endgame is eventually* healing Spherus Magna: since Mata Nui is made for this specific purpose, Destiny exists to ensure he actually follows through with it; since Mata Nui needs to be functional in order to succeed, the narrative of Destiny converges around him and works to compel the MU beings towards keeping him alive. Thus, as mentioned, he is both hero and objective, protagonist and macguffin.

*dont fuckin talk to me abt the great beings and how they provoked the entire plot of bionicle through their tendency towards inaction and apathy. perhaps ill elaborate one day but the jist of it is that i need to bite them in the ass

This duality intrinsic to his character is made explicit by the constant if sometimes faint separation between his soul/spirit/essence ("him" proper) and his body (a "thing" he only inhabits) - causing him to oscillate between being a person and being an object, with the latter often winning over the former especially while he was commanding the Great Spirit Robot. His exile from this incarnation of fiction into the "real" world doesn't unshackle him from the narrative, which is too far above him from him to be escaped just like that, but it does allow him to take a detour outside of it and come into his own self in a way he's been unable to experience until now - because he hasn't exactly been a character at all, let alone an active player. He is first and foremost a tool, a means to an end; he's less reciting/living a part and more doing the job he's been built to do, and this singleminded and utilitarian approach to his identity seems to have been at least part of the problem in how effectively he could perform his task as it prevented him from noticing the problems which then led into the main conflict of Bionicle. By being forcefully exiled from fiction and having to become "real" he finally surpasses this obstacle and gains the mindset and skillset of a proper protagonist, finally realizing his heroic potential to a point where he can put it in practice.

Teridax, on the other hand.

Crystal has said it before because it is true and correct and right, so it's worth saying again: Teridax loves being the Villain. He's enamored with the role to such a disgusting degree that he essentially hoarded it for himself the moment he found out it was an option and nearly everybody else had to be declassed to Lackey or Antagonist in comparison. It's more than a role or a calling - it's a lifestyle. He makes it his whole personality and reason of being, completely abandoning his original purpose as a Makuta (in direct contrast with Mata Nui, who instead focused exclusively on his purpose at the cost of neglecting his role). He revels in the clichés, the monologues, the manipulation, the cruelty, the ominous laughs, the stark shadows, the drama and theatricality of it all. He likes it so much that it literally makes him stupid.

Teridax runs The Plan in tandem with Destiny in order to usurp it, replacing it with his own design in the same way he aims to replace Mata Nui with himself in the role of Great Spirit. In his mind, these are equivalent pairs: Mata Nui coincides with Destiny just like Teridax coincides with The Plan, so by replacing one you replace both, and he gains power not just over the universe but over the story itself.

Of course, as explained above, this is completely wrong: while he can and does run The Plan as parallel to Destiny in a way that makes them effectively overlap, and he does succeed in gaining Mata Nui's power, he remains a character subjugated by a narrative which is completely out of reach for him and continues to influence how the consequences of his actions will ultimately play out. This is immediately obvious to the reader the second he decides to get rid of all his problems by shooting them into space, completely unaware of the fact that the narrative has already made it so that Mata Nui will have the means to reach his objective, get another physical form, and eventually find a replacement for the body he needed for his quest, rendering the Great Spirit Robot mostly obsolete (which will be part of the reason why, again in tandem with Teridax's need for gratuitous cruelty, it will eventually be bested by the technically much worse Prototype Robot), all while Teridax is too busy learning the commands and terrifying his blood cells to realize his genius idea is going to get back at him and curbstomp him into the surface of a moon in roughly a couple of weeks.

But there's more!

Because the Great Spirit Robot is in and of itself a sort of physical manifestation of fiction as the container of the fictional Matoran Universe, it's effectively the most gargantuan vessel of Destiny available in the Bionicle Universe. As such, it is intrisically tied to the rule that dominates both of the stories centered around it: in Destiny's case, that Mata Nui will always succeed; in Bionicle (a story for kids)'s case, that the Villain will always fall to the Hero.

Teridax proudly, confidently and without doubt turns himself into the embodiment of his inevitable defeat.

[idiasweat]

caught in inaction

idia | rook catching gn!yuu skipping class in the bathroom warnings: self-deprecating language, anxiety, self-harm (in rook's) word count: 3k (idia) 2.1k (rook)

10:23.

Your phone is dying.

You forgot to plug it in last night... again.

And you've beaten the rest of the battery to death with mobile gaming and the music blaring through your earbuds. You're sure to be half-deaf by next semester, the way this one's been going- the two-thaumark things you found in the bargain bin at a thrift in Foothill Town were the only kind that matched your archaic phone's jack, and every beat felt like your ears were being full-body tackled to the floor. But anything is better than the unforgivable silence of Monday morning. You had just barely managed to convince Crowley that wearing earbuds in every class is an important custom in your world, and you wouldn't be able to function or focus without them.

He was either really gullible, or he just wanted you to get the hell out of his office before his lunch break started (which you had accounted for, of course. You wanted to be there about as much as he did...)

10:25. Six percent left. You're not going to be able to survive the rest of the day without the sweet oblivion of fuzzy earbud feedback and the white noise between tracks. Sigh. Your music taste has really refined itself since the start of the semester- after craftily finding out which music shuffle app was best by listening in on your desk neighbor's conversation, you'd just been letting the songs play without skipping a single one. You didn't know any of the bands from this world, after all. Folk music between classes, classical in the bath, showtunes walking back from the library... right now, it's an ad. Great. You're about to be thrown to the wolves with a vanilla body spray advertisement as a parting gift.

You shift, drawing your knees to your chest on the chipped toilet seat. There's not exactly a lot of space to sit, but that's to be expected from a room that's only designed for temporary use. Most of the boys that come into the desolate hall bathroom are only here to exchange homework answers and sometimes take swings at the hanging lights with socks full of pebbles. Typical teenage boy things, you supposed. You'd spent a good week testing out different hiding spots around campus before settling on the third-floor east-wing bathroom, the smaller one, tucked between a dusty, vacant trophy shelf, and a closet with a rusted lock. You would've really preferred an empty classroom with a view of the courtyards to tuck yourself away in, like the protagonist of a slice-of-life anime, but all of the ones you found (and there were many) were locked with some stupid magic spell you couldn't undo even if you knew how.

So, smelly bathroom is was. You're sure there must be mold in the vents here- no one actually uses this place to pee, it's too far from the actual classrooms, but there's a pervasive musty smell that never worsens nor improves. You're probably going to start hallucinating and having weird nightmares. Well, more than usual, anyway.

10:30. Your phone dies without warning, drained of all life after you hit 3%. Damn it!!! You were really hoping you had a few more minutes. It wouldn't have done you any good but to take the weight of skipping another class off your mind, which was all you wanted, really.

You just couldn't do it today- again- presentations.

Not yours, mind you. Yours is on Thursday. But today you'd have to sit through an hour of watching your talented, smart, funny classmates rake in laughter and applause for their stupid puns and award-winning smiles and Wikipedia-tier research. Which is not as bad as presenting yourself (you'll probably skip on Thursday, too) but it is torture on par with waterboarding. And after ten minutes of imagining the ceiling tiles falling on your classmate's heads, you got kinda bored.

This is infinitely better. You're failing, but failing in style, right?

Somewhere nearby, a leaky faucet drips.

The last light in the room fizzles out and dies.

Now would have been a good time to have your phone. You're not afraid of the dark! It's just... there are puddles of... liquid... all over, and you can't navigate around them in pitch black. The newer bathrooms on the lower levels all have windows, low and close to the ceiling, hugging the helm of the wall and sucking up all the darkness and bad smells. This room has vents full of mold and... puddles. Not really unlike Ramshackle, but it's not like you're crazy about that, either.

Crap. Now what? You can't even check the time, so you won't be sure when class is over unless you venture outside for a clock. It could be an hour from now, or thirty minutes. How is anyone supposed to live like this?!

Creeeeak... click.

You tense. Maybe not being on your phone is best, especially in a dark room anyone else can see in.

The stall you've locked yourself in is the only one with a working-slash-existent door, the others having been smashed in or melted or taken off their hinges and carried into the night, or whatever else happens at this fucking school. That's all to say, if you were blissfully on your phone when whoever just came in came in, they'd see the blue light and know there was someone on the only usable toilet. Then they'd probably say something like, "Woah, dude, it must be huge!" because you won't leave and you'd be shaking so hard from the nerves that it'd rattle the walls.

Please, don't try the door... don't... this bathroom is disgusting!!!! And MINE!! Go find your own mold poisoning!!! FUCK YOU!!

Your bathroom-mate doesn't seem to get the angry memos your mind is rapidly firing at them (who would've thought?) and the sound of sneakers scuffing the damp tile floor follows. DAMN YOU!!!

There's still a door on the stall, sure, but the lock has been busted since you found it. There's a suspiciously rock-shaped dent where it should be, indicating a teenage boy-related event may have occurred there. You shrink into the furthest corner of the stall, hands against either side as if bracing yourself for the walls to collapse in on you. Don't try the door... it's not worth it, I promise!

Click, swoosh. "EEEEEK!"

You should be the one screaming, if anyone, especially since there's a giant blue gumball blocking your only exit. With the lights going out, the foreboding cracks and creaks, and the stranger in the doorway, you could see this as a corny horror movie... if the slasher wasn't sheet-white and shaking.

You blink. "O-occupied..."

His hair falls over his face in waves, a soft, blue light, not unlike that of your recently deceased phone, glowing around him like a halo. He doesn't look much like an angel otherwise.

He stares at you, processing your half-baked response and the sight of a person sat like a spider in the corner of the toilets.

And then... he glares.

"Get out,"

EXCUSE ME??

"Guh?" is all you can manage.

He frowns. "I-I said, get out. This is my hiding spot,"

No way! Who does this guy think he is?! He's really defending this nasty bathroom stall!?

"...Wh-whuh?"

He swallows thickly. "...C...c'mon... please?"

His arms, firmly at his sides, seem uncomfortably stiff. He clenches and unclenches his fists, clearly not as mean or scary as he's trying to come off as. You narrow your eyes.

"I-I found this spot fair and square!"

"I-I've been coming here to hide since my first year! I found it first!"

He shuffles a step forward and the door swings shut behind him, forcing him a little further. It's not a big stall, so he's practically in your lap.

You blink, and he rolls his eyes, turning his back to you and fidgeting with the lock on the bathroom door.

"It's broken," you say, stupidly. The stranger turns it at an angle and then hits it over its top with a closed fist, the click of the lock following.

You stare. "...Ah-ah..."

He turns to look at you from over his shoulder, and you awkwardly slink away from the toilet to give the grimy porcelain seat to him, which he takes with an exasperated huff, crossing his arms and leaning against the graffiti-etched wall.

You do the same, mimicking his posture, but against the door. He blows a strand of hair out of his face.

"...So... skipping, huh?"

It's still dark in the stall, but the light coming from his hair is enough to make out his features. You wonder if he can do the same for you.

You nod, and then: "O-oh, uh... do you have the time?"

The stranger starts to reach for his pocket, but his hand stills at the last moment, and he rolls up his sleeve to show off a pricey-looking digital watch instead. You can't tell if that was to impress you, or if he just didn't feel comfortable taking out his phone in front of a weirdo he found pressed up against the wall of a toilet.

"It's ten thirty-eight,"

You slump. You were somehow hoping more time had passed since he first spoke to you.

The stranger observes your body language, the sweat beading on your upper lip, the awkward, uncomfortable way you shift against the wall.

"Forgot your homework?" he asks, prodding for answers. He's a lot less anxious than he was when he found you- you must make him feel at ease. There's something both relieving and aggravating about that- what's a bathroom-dweller doing judging you, anyway? He doesn't know you!!!! Maybe you're really popular, and you're meeting a lover here... well, you're not, but he doesn't know that!

"I-I just didn't want to go," you mutter.

He looks at his feet. "Yeah, okay. Me, too,"

Figures. You sniffle, crossing your arms.

"Presentations?"

"Whuh?" he says, eyes darting up to meet yours before swiftly away, back at his feet. "N-no, I just... don't go to class in person often, but the wi-fi is down for maintenance, so I..."

He trails off. A spark of envy ignites in your chest. What's he got to complain about?! You have to go to class in person every day! It's not like anyone's asked you if that's what you want to do, either...

You stifle the flicker of frustration tickling your throat and shift again. "But you're not going?"

"No," he says. "...Can't."

Can't is much heavier of a word than want, and you find yourself envious again, at least of his ability to make you feel bad for him. No one feels bad for you, and yet here you are, giving sympathies to a stranger who's life sounds a hell of a lot easier than yours...

You bite down the bile of insecurity.

"...I... me, too," you say, half-wanting to make him feel more comfortable, half-wanting him to feel bad for you, too. For some reason.

"Can't, I mean."

He nods. "Y-you chose a good hiding place, then... I guess I'm not so opposed to sharing it as long as we're using it for the same thing..."

You'll count that as a win. "Thanks..."

"NP," he says, sitting up straight again and rolling his shoulders with a soft grunt. Bad posture. "I-I didn't realize anyone else was, uh... yeah. I'm... Idia."

He didn't give you much to work with, but you're not asking for much, either. You're really just grateful he didn't kick you out.

You give him your name, in no uncertain terms, and he nods, looking away again. The stall suddenly seems so small, with two people in it... Idia seems like he's realizing this, too, the way he's looking around and bouncing his legs like he wants nothing more than to stretch them out... but there is, of course, nowhere else for you to go.

Unless...

No. Those sorts of things only happen in crummy fanfiction written for hormonal losers, and you're anything but that. Obviously!

Idia lasts all of two minutes before he asks you to move, his voice crackling with a renewed twinge of anxiety. "C-could you...?"

"I don't have anywhere else to go," you say, telling him exactly what you'd been rehearsing in your head, in case he asked.

Idia swallows a rebuttal and turns around himself in the tight space. There really isn't much in the way of comfort, and by the look on his face, he already feels guilty for making you get up. At least there's that!

"D-do you wanna... could you... um, we just have a lot of time left, and..."

You'd been so quick to dismiss any sympathetic, sappy thoughts like that, but he spoke up so easily... maybe he'd been thinking the same thing? But, no, that'd be...

He's just being nice.

Still, you can't say no, even if you really wanted to. You shuffle closer, suddenly feeling very aware (and very afraid) of your own weight, though Idia doesn't seem too concerned. If anything, the terrified look of anticipation that's on his face tells you he's thinking a lot about his own body. You move slowly, both for his and your own benefit, fitting yourself in his lap with a touch of grace you weren't aware you had. Idia stiffens at first contact, but he doesn't seem completely repulsed by you, which is a relief.

"Is this... are you comfortable?"

Something like that, you think. You nod, sat neatly in his lap like a present under a Christmas tree... or maybe more like a lump of coal in a stocking, but he's nice to sit on, and that's all that matters.

A few moments of familiar silence pass before Idia shifts, the sounds of shuffling fabric following, and he pulls out his phone.

Despite the less-than-charming atmosphere, the musty smell of mold, the incessant drip, drip, drip of the tap, the darkness, the looming threat of moving time and the outside world, this is... strangely... nice. He's watching car crash compilations on his phone (the screen lowered, so you can see, too) with his chin on your head, which is actually somewhat uncomfortable, but it's romantic, too. Dreamy, even. Something you'd see in a romcom, if romcoms were written about people like you.

You sit there in silence, quietly contemplating the nature of time, existence, and foreign-language dashcam videos, until you're suddenly... not contemplating anything.

bbbbbbrrrrRRRING!

You jolt, hand flying to your bedside table to slam your stupid alarm off and cram in an extra ten minutes of sleep, just to punch straight into a metal wall. Ow.

Cradling your sore fist, you sit up, eyes adjusting to the desolate darkness of your room. Not... your room, you remind yourself.

bbbbbbrrrrRRRING!

You blink, reaching out in the darkness for the source of the sound and finding only metal, metal, metal... something soft. Fabric. Hoodie, pocket lining, and then, phone! It's not yours, remember- yours died.

You remember that this pocket is attached to a person, who's happily snoozing through the loudest alarm you've ever heard. You contemplate the situation for a moment, and then decide it would be best not to dawdle. And so you hold the phone speaker right up to Idia's ear and let it ring again.

He wakes with a start, his hips snapping up and jostling you in his lap, and he just barely has the mind to grab hold of your waist and keep you upright before you fall onto the bathroom floor. You hold his phone as if it were a sickly swaddled newborn baby, close to your chest.

bbbbbbrrrrRRRING!

Loud, too loud. You hand the phone to Idia and, in his sleepy stupor, he tries to answer his alarm like a call. It'd be entertaining if you hadn't just been woken up from a... nine hour nap.

No, that can't be right. You squint at Idia's digital watch again, reading the screen as he paws at his phone, trying to turn off his alarm.

Almost evening. You slept in a dirty bathroom with a stranger for an entire day... missed all your classes getting mold poisoning.

...Could have been worse.

Besides, it's not every day a human being willingly touches you.

"That's for dinner," Idia mutters, slipping his phone back in his pocket with an exasperated, sleepy sigh. "Gotta set a reminder or I'll forget to eat... I'm, uh... I get busy..."

He doesn't have to explain anything to you, but the fact that he likes you enough to want to look good is pretty nice.

You nod.

"Y-yeah... me, too..." you mutter.

Idia unlocks the stall door with a jab of his elbow and walks you into the hall. It's already dark, and you can't see anything but inky blackness through the tall, imposing windows of the school, and the air is impossibly clear here. You're going to smell like raw sewage and mildew for a month...

Idia sniffles, still rubbing sleep out of his eyes. The events of the day haven't caught up to him yet, it seems. You wonder how he's going to react once he's fully awake.

"Eh, uh..." he starts from behind you, and you turn over your shoulder.

In the moon of early evening, where you can make out more of his face and less of the glowy halo that hides it, he looks more... like himself. You suppose that's a nonsensical thing to think, but his brow is knotted, his eyes turned away, his lower lip caught between his teeth, but all in that stubborn side of him you met first.

"...Same time tomorrow?"

You blink. No... not really, does he mean that?

"Uh..." shit... "I have... potionology, this- that time tomorrow. But Thursday! Th-Thursday I'll definitely be here..."

Idia nods, looking mildly relieved that you didn't turn him down (how could you?)

"Thursday, it is,"

You part in opposite directions (even though your dorm is the way he's going), your feet padding against the stone floor, the-

"W-wait!"

You turn. He's staring at you, wide-eyed.

"W-we don't have to do that in the toilets. You can just come to my room,"

Today marks the third time this week you've missed History of Magic.

You really shouldn't be skipping. It's not like you haven't had every opportunity to succeed, after all; Professor Trein has been extending deadlines since the start of the semester, which, as his syllabus would indicate, is strictly against his classroom rules and expectations. You're a "special case". Always have been.

So, he's not totally heartless, but he is pretty oblivious. It would take a blindfolded fool to not notice the way you cower in the back of the class, avoiding eye contact and praying you don't draw any unwanted attention to yourself. There might've been a point in time where you wanted to be noticed, admired, befriended, loved like your classmates were, in this world and the last, but that fantasy had been long abandoned in the abyssal blackness of your mind. Since September, you've been focusing on one thing, and one thing only: staying out of people's way. If you could survive school at home, then you could here, too... or you'd die trying, which wasn't the worst route.

Not like you had much of a choice either way. You couldn't just ignore the main storyline to focus on sidequests, or you'd never move forward. No matter how daunting that was.

But you could allow yourself breaks, and since Monday, every day had been a sidequest day. As evident by the tiny bandages dotting your skin, you had successfully been abdicated to the infirmary for a full three days worth of classes. Of course, the injuries you littered your skin with weren't that serious- a bruise, a scratch with the end of your quill, a paper cut here and there, "accidentally" stapling the soft flesh of your palm... enough to make you bleed, but not to cause permanent damage. It was the perfect plan. And once you had secured ointment and a colorful bandage from the nurse ghosts, you got to wander the halls until class had concluded. You had quite the reputation for being clumsy, but it was worth it- you'll have to milk this as much as you can before Trein bans you from using the pencil sharpener on a permanent basis.

You drum your fingers on the stall door, the steady rhythm and melodic taps motivating you to turn the textbook page you'd been perusing. Who said you have to go to class to learn, anyway? You can just cram for exams from the comfort of your porcelain throne! You'll pass, easy peasy.

And if not...

...You don't want to think about it. A summer course might not be so bad, since there'd be less people, but you're not even sure if NRC offers those.

And to retake this miserable class next year...

Shudder. You swallow your worries and return to the page on ancient sorcery. Midterms are coming, and the last thing you want to do is make an idiot of yourself by having your low scores posted on the corridor wall.

Or, worse... Trein will read them aloud to the class. You'd seen that in a light novel once, though you're not sure if it happens here. But it might, and that's plenty enough motivation to keep you reading.

Each turn of the page echoes in the impossibly empty bathroom. Besides the drip, drip, drip of a leaky pipe somewhere off to your left, the only sound is your own breath, and the flutter of paper. You could be taking notes, too, but this is plenty enough sound for now. You just have to get a passing grade, after all. You're not aiming for points. Just not to be humiliated when the grades are posted...

You swallow. Your throat is dry and scratchy, no doubt from staying up too late again. But who could blame you? Night is the only time when you actually get to be alone, and you don't have to worry about these... things. No textbooks or tests, no snickering classmates, no whispers and stares, no angry Trein demanding to know how you accidentally slammed your hand in the door... again.

You really hope he doesn't report you to Crowley.

Having a heart-to-heart with the Headmage is truly a fate worse than death... or retaking a class. You try to reassure yourself that Trein wouldn't do that, no one truly suspects that you're hurting yourself on purpose... right? You're just clumsy and accident-prone. There's nothing worth reporting there!!!

But, truthfully, you don't know what's going through the old man's head. Or anyone's. You get teased for your clumsiness, but does anyone really mean it, or are they just saying that because the reality is more uncomfortable than a simple lack of poise? You shudder to think of it, your fingers digging into the pages of the book and crinkling the smooth paper. You can't focus on the paragraph anymore, rereading the same line over, and over, and over...

What could they be thinking? you ponder. Maybe Trein will report you, or he'll think you're playing hooky like some idiot kid and give you detention... maybe he'll make you stay after class to catch up.. oh, the horror...

You swallow the painful lump in your throat, your spit stinging the red rawness all the way down.

Don't be ridiculous, you reason, or try to, at least. Trein teaches hundreds of students. He wouldn't take any interest in someone as insignificant as you...

"Helloooo in there~"

What- FUCK!

Someone is knocking on your stall. You didn't even hear the door opening- who the fuck is it?

"O-occupied," you manage.

"Je sais," the voice says. "You cannot hide all day. Come out, now, I will tell you what you missed!"

Threatening. Overconfident. French. Your stomach drops.

The door opens (how did he unlock that???) and there's Rook Hunt. You shrink as far as you can into the corner of the water closet, sitting on the toilet with your feet on the seat and your hands on either side of the stall, your textbook slipping out of your lap and onto the dirty ground.

"C-can you not see I'm busy?"

"Eh?" he hums, looking down at where you had locked the door. "Ohh... oui, I see. I have been sent as your personal aide to class. You seem to have forgotten again. I will escort you!"

Perhaps you would have had some pity for Rook Hunt, the boy who collects friends like they're novelty bobbleheads but never really makes them, never keeps them, if he were not... Rook Hunt. If he had not spent the last few months justifying his want to follow you around like a hungry hunting dog with the excuse that you were... what did he say?

"Mysterious"

Never in your life did you think you'd one day be hoping for someone to regard you as worthless and leave you be.

But you're pressed here, both physically and metaphorically, and you can't summon the confidence to say "no", and so you do something stupid instead.

Run for it.

You were once taught never to turn your back to predators, like bears and big, rabid dogs. Your tablemate had been reading something from his scout book to his friend in first period. They'll see you as prey, he had said, and then to you, with an evil smile: I bet they would run. They're so afraid of everything.

His friend had scolded him for teasing you and ruining your morning, but you hadn't been planning on enjoying it anyhow.

Stupid, you had thought, you would never be caught dead outside of your room, let alone in the woods. Useless information.

There were no angry bears or hungry lions at Night Raven College. But you did have Rook.

Your tablemate should have learned something fucking useful at his stupid scouts training. Like, for instance, what to do when a tall, scary extrovert takes your running as an invitation to hunt you like an animal.

You're so out of shape. When did that happen? You suppose you can only blame your piss-poor diet of noodle cups and sweets for that. You're winded and worn in two minutes, using the wall as a crutch to support your weight down the hall.

For a fleeting, terrifying moment, you have a very scary thought: I wish someone else were here.

And then it goes away, with your energy, with the feeling in your feet, with whatever was left of your pride, and the air in your lungs.

Shouldn't have run... Stupid, stupid, stupid...

SMACK.

Had there always been a wall there? You can only somewhat register the shooting pain in your skull and the purple bruise forming on your forehead as you fall backwards. It's not graceful; you hit your tailbone on the stone floor and curl in the fetal position.

If anything went right in your pitiful life, this is where you'd die. But it's only an ache behind your eyes and a bruise on your butt, and then Rook Hunt crouching over you like you're his latest kill.

"Zut alors... you have injured yourself yet again!" he trills picking you up and slinging you over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, not even flinching once at the weight.

"You are quite the tricky one, you know! And here I was, thinking that your injuries were all faked... tch, it looks like you are a clumsy one... non?" he smirks knowingly at you, paying little attention to where his feet are going but walking gracefully nonetheless.

You don't respond. This is the most anyone has touched you in... years, probably... and it sucks. It's miserable. And uncomfortable.

"Wh-where are we going?" you manage.

Rook tsks. "Ah, the infirmary, of course. You are in no state to study after that fall!"

Maybe running for it wasn't such a stupid idea, after all...

"And I will stay dutifully by your side, nursing you back to health!"

Never mind.

You wince at his words, a sharp sting of panic shooting down your spine and right into your bruised tailbone, making your butt ache. Ow. "Y-you don't-"

"But of course!" he interrupts before you even get to finish. He knew you were going to object, damn it. "It was my doing, was it not? I should have known better than to spook un petit lapin such as yourself... small, easily-startled creatures should be handled in traps, or at long distances!"

He's talking about shooting you now, which honestly isn't the worst thing you've heard about yourself here. At least he's being honest, rather than saying it behind your back.

You don't even try to fight it. What's the point? Besides, your head really does hurt, and you don't have any access to ice in Ramshackle (as Rook would also go on to remind you).

But you could do without the boy at your sickbed, legs crossed, elbows on his knees and chin in his hand as he studies you like a piece of fine art, or, more likely, an ant under a magnifying glass. He bats his long eyelashes at you as you cautiously eat the soup he had "specially prepared" for your health. There's probably something weird in the warm, swirling broth, but you can't find it within yourself to care. It's good soup, anyway.

"...Are you going to sit there all night?" you weakly ask him, your fingers absently feeling over the thick bandage on your forehead. You'd bled a little, when you hit it.

Rook nods eagerly. "Ah, yes, to study such a rare specimen... of course, I would have preferred to do it in your natural habitat, but under controlled conditions is acceptable..."

Like you're a rat, or something. Well, you've been called worse. You set the lukewarm bowl to the side and sink into the bed. Firm, uncomfortable, just like home. Your dorm, that is.

You're not too keen on being... "observed", or whatever he said, but it's not like you have much of a choice. He wouldn't leave even if you asked him to.

"..." you wring your hands, quiet for a moment. "...Can you at least get more ice, then...?"

"Ah, it would be my honor!" Rook says, shooting up from his seat. You're almost surprised that he doesn't salute you, too.

He does, though, return with a bag of ice, place it by your abandoned bowl, and press a fleeting kiss to your forehead.

It's swift and painless, like being decapitated- and not unlike a headless body, it leaves you silent and stunned. You sit there for a moment longer before Rook presses the ice to your head himself.

"Just as I thought," he says. "I will have to take note of this... ah, how my heart leaps at such an opportunity to study an elusive creature such as yourself! Rest easy, lapine, I have many more trials to conduct!"

[momoyoshi73]

I noticed that yoohankim exchanges their roles from time to time.

Kim Dokja has been a reader since he was a child before becoming an author as the most ancient dream. He then became the protagonist of omniscient reader's viewpoint.

Yoo Jonghyuk was the protagonist of twsa, then he became an author because he helped Han Sooyoung write omniscient reader's viewpoint, eventually reading that very novel to survive while wandering around space to search for Kim Dokja.

Then there's Han Sooyoung, the writer of two novels—twsa and orv—before be becoming a reader of twsa. Eventually, she was referred to as the protagonist of the 1863rd round.

But besides that, there were times they all wanted to give up their roles.

Kim Dokja hated being a reader because he felt nauseous at the mere thought that he was consuming Yoo Jonghyuk's suffering for his own entertainment and survival since he was a child. That's why he wanted to die the very moment he realized he was the most ancient dream.

Yoo Jonghyuk hated being a protagonist because he loathed the fact that he was a mere character judged and controlled by higher beings such as constellations. That's why he was initially enraged when he discovered that his whole life was recorded as a novel, laid bare to Kim Dokja's eyes

Han sooyoung hated being an author not only because she caused the apocalypse but because through mere inaction, she could've prevented kim dokja's sacrifice in saving the world she ruined. That's why she fought yoo jonghyuk in the scenario museum to unleash her own self-hatred and regret on the protagonist she created.

[fallout-sole]

Sorry for the inactivity here’s a meme

(I just went through the most protagonist bullshit filled year you could imagine, but I’m back on my bullshit again ! )

[natequarter]

Me on a date: The Sarah Jane Adventures lures you in with a closed-off and paranoid single woman living alone who slowly opens up to her much younger friends in an obvious parallel to the Doctor, particularly the Third Doctor (alone and miserable on Earth, which she cannot leave, unwilling to open up to her friends but slowly coaxed out of her shell); Sarah is the protagonist of The Sarah Jane Adventures, but she is not its hero. We see hints at her trauma, emotional repression, and paranoia over the course of the show; she repeatedly lies to her charges, to the point where they essentially have to stalk her to keep track of her, and she’s fundamentally incapable of relating to ‘average’ people, because she never really adapted back to life on Earth, emotionally or psychologically, and never learnt to grieve. All of this is a compelling, if implicit, storyline on its own, but it hits much harder if you’ve listened to the Big Finish audio series Sarah Jane Smith, in which Sarah is explicitly depicted as an antihero who willingly and recklessly endangers herself and her friends because she’s miserable without the adrenaline of danger and saving the world. Her heroics more often than not cause more harm than good; she cuts herself off from her friends just to solve mysteries (to the point it puts her life at risk), she throws herself into situations that nearly kill her multiple times, and many people die because of her intervention, some of them innocent. The only way she can rationalise the Doctor leaving her to herself is that there was some higher purpose. The artifice of prophecy pervades the entire series; time and time again it becomes clear that any instance of ‘coincidence’ or ‘fate’ are actually down to the machinations of time travel, Sarah, or the cult that has dedicated itself to fulfilling its doomsday predictions. Sarah in The Sarah Jane Adventures is an obvious Doctor stand-in for the narrative, but in Sarah Jane Smith it goes further than that: Sarah embraces his manipulative behaviour, his darker side, his tricks and bluffs. She pretends to be blind to outwit her enemies. She defeats her enemies through words and kills a villain through intentional inaction. At one point she’s forced into a moral dilemma reminiscent of the conflicts that the Doctor faces, where she must choose between the lives of thousands of innocent Londoners and her friend. In the end, it’s no question to her; she chooses to let her friend die. She’s willing to let both her friends die, if it comes down to it—and one of them ultimately does. Sarah is an unusual character; unlike most ex-companions, she’s fundamentally incapable of readjusting to normal life, and has pretty explicitly spent her life since leaving the Doctor isolated, miserable, and in constant peril. But she also doesn’t fit in with the companions who ultimately meet their doom travelling with the Doctor; unlike, say, Clara Oswald, she’s given the chance to back out before it’s too late, and she takes it. But it’s clear that she never recovered from leaving the Doctor, because the Doctor’s lifestyle is the only thing that makes her feel like life is worth living. Sarah Jane Smith clearly portrays Sarah as someone transformed by the Doctor into the Doctor. But this is not a good thing, and the series occupies itself with deconstructing the damaging psychological effect the Doctor has on both people in general and Sarah specifically—Sarah is not a nice person. She is not a better person for having known the Doctor; in fact it’s only made her worse. She’s a danger to the people around her. She’s irrational and obsessed with getting what she wants to the exception of all else. She’s sometimes outright cruel. It’s a fascinating play on a usually much kinder (if imperfect) character, and personally, I love it.

My date: What the hell?

[arlakos]

The High Road: A counterpoint to one of the most commonly used Salt Takes for Adrien.

This isn't really a salt fic idea, but since we are on the topic of salt on this blog, I'd like to take a moment to talk about a scene that has largely been used out of contex ever since Chameleon came out, and that is the infamous high road scene that has since been used to death for every Adrien salt story

For those who are unaware of this scene (or perhaps are unfamiliar with the canon version), in the episode Chameleon of Sesason 3, Marinette is about to go expose a plot hole in one of Lila's many fabrications, only for Adrien to stop her by stating that it won't change Lila for the better (Full Transcript Below). Keep this transcript in mind because I'll be referencing it a lot.

Now, this scene doesn't seem like something to be mad over, but the the whole episode of Chameleon has twisted a lot of people's perceptions of certain characters for the worse. This particular scene just happens to be one that changed people's pereceptions of Adrien.

However, I think its actually somewhat unjustified. I feel that in many ways, Chameleon as a whole has been misrepresented for what changes it has actually brought into the show, and I feel that it's easy to take a lot of moments in the episode out of context, especially when emotions come into play. The episode transcript actually happened to be leaked before it was supposed to be relased, so a lot of people already made up their minds about what this episode was about before it was released. It's easy to hate on this episode when you're friends in discord have watched it before you and have started to shout buzzwords such as "The class betrayed Marinette!" or "Adrien is a monster!", etc etc. I would know, since that was how I found out about the episode in the first place, and watching it for the first time didn't change my initial perceptions.

Today, I would like to take a moment to take the infamous high road scene and talk about what it meant for the salty portion of the fandom, before taking a metaphoically sledgehammer and slamming some misconceptions about Adrien from the perspective of salty people. Sure, they're other scenes that could be looked at, but since every salt fic tends to reuse this plot point, I feel it deserves its own deconstruction.

1. The High-Road scene is proof that Adrien is an asshole!

Now this statement is a bit of a buzzword since the actual reasons for people disliking this scene can vary, but to be fair, the reaction to this scene is also more nuanced as well.

In truth, a lot of people already had issues with Adrien/Chat Noir as a whole (for reasons that I won't elaborate here since it would be worth its own post), but this scene seemed to open the floodgates with hatred for our secondary protagonist out of his percieved inaction, since many people now had dislike for Adrien, while those who hated him prior were more than happy to provide fuel for the fire. After the episode was released, these ideas began to merge together, resulting in this belief that Adrien has always been an asshole, and that the Chameleon scene was simply the final straw, and that if the show was written by a good writer (read: anyone who hated the episode), Marinette would actually ditch his ass!

Now, its debatable on whether Adrien had writing issues prior to this point, but I feel that using this scene to justify hatred for him is outright slander for several reasons:

First of all, Adrien never suggested for Marinette to take the high road if we are being logistical about it. He only complimented her on that regard, telling her she did a good job for "taking the high road", and that was after he sat next to her to show he was by her side.

His actual message to Marinette was that it wasn't worth it to try expose Lila at that moment (and to be fair, it wouldn't have worked, more on that later though) because all it would do is make her double down on her behavior. Plus, trying to expose her in front of everyone would just hurt Lila more than help everyone else, which is, if anything, not untrue.

Overall, the advice Adrien gave to Marinette was not meant out of a desire to hurt anyone (least of all Marinette), but was out of a genuine desire to help resolve a situation and prevent Marinette from doing something that would not have helped the situation. Even if he does have other character flaws, this situation was by no means a reason to villainize him for it.

2. Adrien prefers Lila over Marinette, thats why he told the latter to take the high road!

Again, another idea that is found in fanfics, but is ultimately untrue in canon.

While Adrien doesn't believe Lila at all from the beginning of the episode, he isn't exactly just letting Lila's actions slide either; his stance comes from that of believing that Lila being decietful will do nothing to actually help her make friends. However, rather than confronting her angrily like Marinette does, Adrien instead tries to be friendly with her and try offer Lila some advice to try and change, albiet to no avail.

Now, some people might argue that Lila doesn't deserve kindness considering her threat to Marinette just moments ago, but it should be also stated that Adrien knows NOTHING about this: as far as he's aware, Lila is a transfer student looking to make friends, but has a wrong way of doing so (so in a way, she's not unlike him, from his POV at least), so he's just trying to help her, rather than attempt to force her out in the open.

(Quick tibit though, if Adrien knew what Lila did to Marinette, he would probably be more inclined to help her and protect his friends, given that he was willing to 'sacrifice' himself to get Marinette un-expelled in the Ladybug episode)

By the end of the episode Adrien is obviously dissapointed in Lila continuing to act the way that she is, but ultimately refuses to sink to Lila's level in order to teach her a lesson. As childish as it is (and it should be considering Adrien is a TEEN) Adrien believes that Lila's deceptions will ultimately come back to bite her (Adrien even tells her this himself, see below.), but trying to expose her in front of everyone else will do more harm to Lila than it will help others, hence his methods of speaking to her privately about it.

3. Adrien's reasoning is horrible and stupid! He deserves to pay for it!

This reasoning is the one I find the most dissapointing, partly because it inspired The Karma of Lies story (Written by CartoonAddict564), and also because while Adrien's reasoning can come off as naive, it is by no means stupid, nor should he have to suffer for having a different viewpoint for Marinette. But to understand, you need to think of Adrien in terms of his character.

Adrien is not just a celebrity, but also a child with a very controlling father, who pretty much controls and manages his day to day life with the help of his secretary. As a result of his popularity, Adrien has to be very careful with what he says or does, not only because it would reflect poorly onto his father's company, but it would also force his father to step in. As the Collector has shown, Adrien being able to even LEAVE the home is something that could easily be revoked at any time, and being Cat Noir has only loosened the bars on his cell, not remove them completely. Adrien has very little to gain by confronting Lila, but everything to lose, which is in direct contrast to Marinette having everything to lose by letting Lila walk by.

So in the face of all that, plus the situation he is in now, why would he not act passive and provide advice to try mitigate conflict rather than escalate it?

Now whether or not that should be seen as selfish is debatable, it's ultimately not out of character for Adrien to try and provide more passive options to deal with Lila rather than go for the most violent option. You could even argue that Adrien's actions are also out kindness to Marinette, since (in his eyes at least) it could get her in trouble with her own parents if they try and confront Lila violently.

At worst, Adrien's passiveness is a result of his controlled upbringing. At best? He was just trying to help without causing conflict.

4. Adrien shouldn't have stopped Marinette from confronting Lila!

.... im sorry to say this, but yes he absolutely should have.

Marinette was about to confront Lila over which ear her supposed tinnitus was in. Aside from the fact trying to expose her on this alone would not have worked, this would have just resulted in Marinette becoming more estranged from her classmates in this situation. If Marinette should have confronted Lila about her lying, this was DEFINTELY NOT the way to do it.

This isn't to say that Marinette could not have confronted Lila, but this moment simply was not it. There were better alternatives to Marinette that she could employ in the future had she thought of doing so (such as coming to Alya as Ladybug and revealing that her frienship with Lila is a lie), or carrying a voice recorder to record any threats made by Lila.

As uncathartic as the situation was, from a writing standpoint Adrien's inteference ultimately helped Marinette keep her friendships in the long run, while avoiding making a fool of herself with a battle she simply could not win.

5. It's Adrien's fault that Marinette didn't go after Lila! Marinette would have been better if she brushed him off!

This sounds crazy, but this is a genuine point that people seem to mention when it comes to their reasons for writing salt fics. Even if Adrien's attempts to dissaude Marinette were out of concern rather than malice, people still condemn Adrien for pushing Marinette off that path of going after Lila. In their eyes, Marinette didn't get her immediate revenge for what Lila did, and Lila herself was allowed to continue manipulating the class. All of this becomes Adrien's fault by virtue of being the one to deny this from happening, denying the fans their catharsis.

However, the question I ask it that for all the blame they give to Adrien in this situation ... how come nobody blames Marinette at all for the same thing?

See, despite people argue that Adrien manipulated Marinette into not going after Lila, Marinette isn't necassarily gullible or stupid. If Marinette really thought that Lila was a threat worth going after, she could and would have easily found a way to take Lila down and get her removed, with or without Adrien's support (given she made a similar plan in season 5 for when Gabriel tried to get the Kwamis to lead him to Marinette). She wouldn't even need a miraculous to do so given she can make plans without transforming, and most of Lila's lies aren't particularly smart, they just can't be immediately discredited without proof.

And it can't even be argued that Adrien took advantage of Marinette's love for him (whether intentionally or not). Marinette has shown that even though she does value her friends, she doesn't need to rely on the validation of others to do whatever she feels is right (given that she argued against Alya and others in Risk when it came to their belief that Adrien was fine, even though she was partly amped by an akuma at the time). And if Marinette did think that Adrien was wrong, she probably wouldn't have continued to crush on him anymore.

Also its kind of lowkey sexist? Like, Marinette can probably make her own decisions, she doesn't need someone to dictate her own actions given she's the leader of a superhero team?

Ultimately, Marinette made the choice not to go after Lila. Perhaps she thought that Lila wasn't worth it. Maybe she thought that taking down Lila wasn't worth the time and stress. Maybe she ended up agreeing with Adrien and thought that Lila would expose herself sooner rather than later with her own deceptions. Either way, Marinette can make her own decisions, and she ultimately thought that going after Lila was not a good idea, for whatever reason.

Now, some people might be upset about this idea that Marinette is to blame, but people can't just play the blame game and expect their target to lose. It would honestly be preferrable to say that both Adrien and Marinette made a decision that (for better or worse) thought was good at the time and that neither should be judged for it, but the fandom doesn't seem to care for that because that means their salt fics would be invalid.

Thus, since people want to blame Adrien for apparently "manipulating" Marinette, Marinette should get equal blame for allowing herself to be manipulated by Adrien. Sucks to hear it, but since nobody calls out Marinette on her shit, I might as well be the first. Sorry if it triggers you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

So ... what does this all mean?

It means that my boy Adrien is innocent.

He meant no harm by suggesting that Marinette not go after Lila, nor did he do it because he took Lila's side over Marinette's. At best, he was unaware of how evil Lila was and thought she was misunderstood, and at worse he defaulted to using the same ideas that he uses to protect what limited freedoms he had, and offered it to Marinette as geunine advice. Marinette isn't a pushover either, meaning that not only did she also think what Adrien said was a good idea, but the fandom is inadvertently being sexist by implying she can't be independent and can't make her own decisions, given that she's shown her own independence multiple times. At best, both characters made a dumb decision that they thought was good, but neither can be soley responsible.

Ultimately, Chameleon was an episode that gave Adrien (and whoever else was targeted) a bad rep due to the kneejerk reaction everyone had to the episode due to Lila's lies, myself included. In truth, nothing of what happened in the episode had any actual long term effects, since Marinette still kept her friends and Lila didn't end up playing any major role for nearly 2 seasons, at least until season 5 finally got rid of 'Lila' and set up 'Cerise' to be the new Butterfly villain.

It took me a long while to put this belief into words, and it may be 2 seasons too late, but at least I can upload it now knowing that this truth could possible be shared with the world. Maybe it will stop the excess of salt fics in the world, and allow for new salt free works to be made. Who knows?

Anyways, I hope you found this to be an interesting read as I had writing it!