#it becomes very hard to tell the difference between genuine care and manipulation tactics

[cold--carnage]

people don't seem to realize how damaging and traumatic it is to constantly be the object of someone's obsession. like over and over again. not treated like a person but like a piece of meat or a pet or a favorite toy. people do extreme things when they're obsessed, and the person who usually gets hurt is the person they're obsessed with. yandere and obslove creators love to talk about isolating their darlings and stalking them and controlling them, but no one ever talks about what happens when they actually do that to a person. it's all fun and games on paper but when it's put into action, people actually get hurt. and you never hear about it

[kerubimcrepin]

Liveblog - Dofus, livre 1 : Julith [PART 20]

Joris grabs Kerubim as they're falling, to shield him, and my personal thoughts on this are [CAR CRASH] [GLASS SHATTERING] ‘GOOD LORD!’ [GENERAL COMMOTION] [BABY CRYING] ‘WAAAAH WAAAAH’ [YELLING] [POLICE SIRENS] WEEWOO WEEWOO [HELICOPTERS] ‘WE’RE REPORTING LIVE-‘ [EXPLOSION] ‘MY LEG… MY LEG…’

Even with his probably very limited thinking-capabilities as a kitten, Kerubim's first instinct after falling is to look at whether Joris is alright or not. Personally, I think that——

:(

fanmgs

Kerubim is 2 sauces tall, but ready to avenge his death and also his son's fresh traumatization.

"Please don't call me a flask of poison because I have some green liquid inside and skulls drawn on my bottle <3 just drink up. Okie dokie?"

I don't lnow what this woman is expecting, here, honestly.

BASED Joris.

Bakara really thinks that Joris is stupid enough to go with her, while Joris employs the classical battle tactic of lying, by approaching her until she let go of Lilotte and saying "im going to kill you or hurt you in some way [giggle]" immediately after.

But as Bakara has shown repeatedly, even in this scene alone, she doesn't think highly of Joris. Even if she tried really hard to pretend that she did.

Well, she doesn't think of anyone highly, actually. Including herself.

This screenshot will get a lot of usage during ova2 liveblog, followers. It's literally THE reaction image for ova2.

While watching this movie, I always go between different extremes, when thinking about Joris and Bakara's relationship in the future. Would it become worse? Would they be close? Would they hate each other?

Every time I have a different answer, which is probably an answer in on itself.

My current take is that whether Joris and Bakara consider one another a friend probably varies from year to year. I can see it clearly: her telling him stories of Jahash. Her helping him around the home. Her criticizing him harshly for being a failure of a huppermage (it's as unacceptable for him to be that, as it is for her). Her stopping talking to him after he leaves the academy. Beginning to talk to him again after a few years, when he has a very close call to death while adventuring, — angry at him, because don't you dare die on me while we're in one of our "I don't talk to you" argument phases. Rinse and repeat.

I think it's funny. Atcham's greatest wish, besides hair, has always been "I want someone in my family to care about me," while Bakara...

Whike Bakara, as an heir of a Bontarian hero, would probably fear being in the wrong, — an evildoer, — the very most.

No wonder they're so shocked.

Both of them are experiencing some entirely new emotions, thanks to Joris.

It's not really about Bonta. It's about revenge. And it's about her feeling inadequate. And it's about her feeling like a failure.

As far as she's concerned, even a dofus doesn't want her, with how broken she is. He wants some weird, off-putting, Julith-related 10yo instead.

One has to wonder, if it is a genuine plea, or if she is manipulating Bakara by revealing the truth. Because she doesn't want to be blown to pieces by a dofus.

It's a bit hard to analyse this part of the movie because I'll be real, there's so much occuring all at the same time. Like bro. Imagine being Joris here.

The woman who killed your dads is now like "I am going to bring one of them back", and also another one came back 5 minutes ago, but also things are exploding and fire is everywhere, and also your aunt just tried to kill your uncle?? And also stole your dragon egg magical nuke.

Even if everything Julith said was true, — her cold, cold reaction to a fireball hitting her son, the way she looks at Bakara like at dirt, and the way she says "quit fooling around", point so, so heavily towards her revelation of this information being a tactical way to manipulate Bakara.

[e-m-p-error]

Voxval Voxval!

send me a ship and i’ll tell you…

[ Valentino ]

Who starts most fights?

Weekly Break-Up or not, I'd say Valentino. He will bait Vox into starting the weekly one sometimes because it's less dramatic if it's always him. Valentino's ire is not hard to earn, as he always runs hot and explodes very quickly. It's never guaranteed what will or won't set him off, and he's prone to mood swings.

Who surrenders at the end of most fights?

I don't think either of them necessarily surrenders, but just as much as it is Val's job to start their weekly break-ups, it is typically Vox's job to initiate the make-up portion. Valentino will actively ignore even the most valid and easily explained arguments and proof that he has ever done anything wrong, and as such is more likely to pick more fights until he exhausts Vox's ability to deal with him. Escalation is always on his mind. He cannot accept blame, even if he is the guilty party.

Who is more likely to cry during a fight?

Valentino. He's manipulative to a fault, and if he thinks tears will get him his way, he can cry on command. If he can't, he has other tactics. It is rare for him to genuinely cry around other people, but if his tears aren't glowing just slightly and staining his skin/clothes, then they aren't real.

Who is more likely to storm out during a fight?

I'd be willing to say Vox. Valentino is likely to follow, but not be the one to leave.

Who is louder in fights?

Valentino again. He screams, yells, and hurls insults. Fast, hot anger. He is the king of saying shit he doesn't mean because he wants Vox to hurt more than he does.

Who is more likely to throw things in fights?

Again, Valentino. If it isn't nailed down or too heavy to be lobbed at someone, it's going to fly. He likes to make a mess, and to be noticed while he's doing it. He has and absolutely will throw things if Vox is trying to leave and he isn't done being explosive, yet.

Who is more likely to bring up past mistakes?

While I want to say both, Vox is more likely to remember them. If there was something that Vox royally fucked up that Val still remembers, even if it's a decades-old already handled situation, Val will dredge it up out of spite. His short-term memory is not great.

Who is more likely to give the silent treatment?

I think they're both willing to do it for different reasons. Val will make the attempt at weaponizing his silence as a way of convincing Vox to break first and apologize, whereas Vox just throws himself more into his work.

Who is more likely to blame the other?

Valentino is allergic to accepting blame, so even if the situation was entirely his fault, he will still blame Vox until the apology still doesn't come and he makes a half-assed attempt at self-reflection.

Who is more likely to blame themselves?

When the fights stop being fun, and enough time has settled between them, I think they both do. They just both have vastly different ways of dealing with it.

Who gets jealous more easily?

It depends entirely. When it comes to other people, Valentino doesn't feel like he has competition. The one thing that Vox holds a little higher than him is his work. However, many of their fights and the single biggest fight they have ever had was over Valentino's jealousy that Vox would always pick work over him.

As far as Vox goes, he knows how Valentino is, and who he's been the whole time. He doesn't care unless someone is doing for Val what he does for Val. Even Val is well aware (and has made the general populace aware of very loudly) that Vox "does something" for him that nobody else can.

Who is angered more easily?

They're both pretty quick to anger, they just handle it differently. A lot of the time I think Val's anger probably is an easier jumping point for Vox, Val will also become angry on Vox's behalf.

Who is more likely to break off the relationship?

Aside from their weekly fights, which Valentino always starts, it's probably still Valentino. He doesn't stew on things, he will bring things up as immediately as he can, and he says things he doesn't mean. A lot of the time that includes threats to their relationship.

Who is more likely to threaten to leave?

Valentino threatens it, but he always struggles with actually doing it. Not only does he not like being alone, but he also can never make himself do it.

Who is more likely to actually leave?

I feel like Vox probably does, and then he leaves like he said he would. Valentino is always shocked when he follows through on his threats.

Who is more likely to forget the other first?

I think neither of them could forget each other. They are so intertwined that it's like amputating themselves at the chest. The successful removal of each other would probably eventually kill them both.

[starshine583]

New Girl on the Block (13)

(Happy Valentine’s Day everybody!!! I’d say that this is a gift for the day, but this is my usual update time lol please enjoy the new chapter anyway! There’s also a mini series connected to this called Journal Entries :D)

Ch.1 / Ch.12 / Ch.14  (ao3)

Chapter 13: I’ll Make You a Deal

Lila stalked the halls of Dupont, doing her best to hide her scowl as she massaged her temples. When she offered to take Marinette’s job as Class President, she hadn’t realized how much extra work she was dumping onto herself. She thought that the title was just that: a title. Nothing more. Nothing less. Sure, she would have to verify a few things, acknowledge her classmates’ opinions towards the school system, and speak out about it as a representative towards them, but that was all. She didn’t expect it to rearrange her entire schedule towards life! Her head was pounding from the late nights of filing student complaints, her back ached from carrying this stupid binder around, and her wrist still twinged with pain from signing too many papers at once. It was ridiculous!

Lying to Bustier about those forms didn’t make it any easier either. Instead of getting to make minor additions to the papers Marinette had already written, she now had to rewrite all of the forms herself. The entire process was a nightmare, and Lila couldn’t escape. If she lied again and said that Marinette gave the forms back, that would be glorifying the girl, and she refused to do that. However, if she lied and said that she simply found the forms again, it would not only make her look suspicious, but also incompetent. She couldn’t have either of those descriptions attached to her person. 

So, that left her with the agonizing option of filling them out again herself. She tried to push it onto Alya, and for the most part, she succeeded. The red-head filled out a good half before handing them back, but that still left Lila with the other half. Thus, she’s spent the last three nights in a row doing nothing but signing form after form after form. The fact that she had to use Marinette’s forms as reference only made it worse. She could practically hear the ravenette laughing at her every time she glanced over the original paperwork. It was utterly humiliating.

And don’t get her started on the amount of requests or complaints that she had to file. Everyday her classmates came to her asking for this or that or “could you change this about our classroom?”. Sometimes they would talk about the seats being too hard or the fact that they didn’t have enough recess or how the stairs were too far apart and someone could trip. Then- oh, then -there were the class trips. One request was a literal trip to Greece. Greece! Did they think she or the school was just made of money? How can they possibly be this greedy or entitled? How was Marinette able to handle it all so easily? She made it look like it was nothing!

Lila clenched her fists at her side, her nails digging into her skin. Even after running from the school with her tail between her legs, Marinette was still acting as a sharp, irritating thorn in Lila’s side. 

Sparkling laughter interrupted her thoughts, and Lila turned to the two boys standing outside of the library entrance. Adrien Agreste, the golden child of the school, and Nino, his little sidekick- as far as Lila was concerned -appeared to be chatting mindlessly on their way back to class, which was typical. Adrien was always talking with somebody now-a-days. That was another problem of hers. 

When Marinette first left, Adrien became distraught and distant. He began muttering to himself and not listening in class, dismissing everyone with a hum and a nod. The other students berated him for the behavior, wonderfully captured in Lila’s beautifully crafted web of words, but he hardly heard them. Or if he did, he didn’t care. He continued to write things in his notebook that certainly weren’t lesson notes and run his hand through his hair with frustration when he hit some sort of wall. 

It was irritating, of course, but nothing Lila hadn’t expected. Marinette was supposed to be his “very good friend”, after all. She would have been surprised if he hadn’t mourned the loss. What she didn’t anticipate, though, was the way he bounced back. 

It had to have happened a little over two weeks after Marinette left, because Lila remembered finally starting to feel comfortable in her new role of being able to lie unchallenged. She was spewing some crap about Marinette sending her mean messages, making sure her tears looked real enough and her sobs were believable, when Adrien decided to jump into the conversation. He flashed her a bright smile and, in the kindest voice she’d ever heard, asked her for the texts that Marinette had sent. 

The question alone had surprised her, considering the fact that he hadn’t really spoken to anyone in a while, but that smile he held was really the thing to set her on edge. It was simply too sweet-looking for someone who had just indirectly asked for proof of her story, especially when they both knew that she was lying. 

She couldn’t understand the change. He’d been cowering in the corner for the last two weeks, and yet that day, he was out for blood on her account. Why? What was the difference between the last two weeks and that day? She still doesn’t know. 

Adrien’s determination towards outing her cranked up to eleven after that . He went from barely talking to one person throughout the day to talking with everyone on a constant basis, and anytime Lila so much as uttered a sentence, he was there asking questions. When did she do this, who helped her with that, how did she manage to get from one place to the other so quickly- from a naïve onlooker’s point of view, Adrien would simply appear to be interested in Lila’s stories, but she knew better. He was finding holes in her stories and using them to rip apart her words piece by piece, all while using an innocent yet confused expression to make it seem like he was trying to help her. The strategy was completely different from Marinette’s, and it ticked Lila off to no end. How was she supposed to turn crowds against him and regain her throne if he kept acting like some pure-hearted angel?

She couldn’t. She knew she couldn’t, and he knew that she couldn’t, because that’s the exact same tactic that eventually got Marinette to leave the school.

A part of her had hoped that this newfound passive-aggression would fade after a few days, but now that three weeks of constant badgering on Adrien’s account has passed, that hope has been thoroughly and relentlessly crushed. He hasn’t done much over those weeks, thankfully, but she’s had to reinforce her lies ten times the normal amount to keep it that way. That’s a tad hard to do when all of your stories are on the grand scale of things. 

Even with her meticulous planning and words choices, though, one can’t escape subtle confrontation forever. She could tell that people were slowly starting to become suspicious of her stories. They were either wanting Adrien to be around during their discussions with her or were looking for holes themselves. 

Watching them exchange glances during her stories made her blood boil. Why did they have to be so nosy? So picky? Can’t she have a reprieve for once in her entire life? Can’t she just lie and manipulate others without the fear of getting caught? Why did that feel like such a big request from the universe?

Adrien and Nino waved to each other, and Lila perked up. It looked like they were separating. Were they separating? Oh, please be separating. That would be the most convenient thing to happen to her all month.

Adrien split off from Nino, to her delight, and Lila beelined after the blond. His meddling had gone on long enough, and she thought it was high time someone put an end to it. That someone being her. 

“Adrien!” Lila cooed, looping her arm with his and flashing a bright smile. “It’s been forever since we’ve talked just one on one, don’t you think?”

Adrien’s steps faltered, and for the briefest of moments, she saw his eyes darken. Nobody else would have noticed, especially not with the friendly smile he gave her right after, but Lila caught it. She was the only one who realized how truly despicable the model could be. 

“Oh, hey Lila.” He replied with an easy, clearly fake smile. “I guess we haven’t talked alone in a while. You normally like to be at the center of the crowd.”

Lila tried not to grit her teeth and instead elected to flip her hair over her shoulder. “Well, I wouldn’t say the center. I’m just being myself, and the others seem to follow.”

Adrien hummed. “Yes, I’m sure you're a wonderful role model for all of us. It isn’t everyday we get the courtesy of having an honest and kind friend like you.”

His sarcasm was palpable, but his shining smile remained. A part of her wondered why he even bothered acting at this point. They both knew they were at war now. Niceties were only necessary when someone was clueless towards hidden motives. Adrien wasn’t, and neither was she, yet here they were. Smiling and trading snide remarks in the privacy of the empty locker room. 

Lila put on a bashful expression. “Oh, please-”

“Of course,” Adrien interrupted her, “there was also Marinette. She was always ready to help someone. It’s a shame she had to transfer schools.”

Lila bit the inside of her cheek to avoid sneering. There he goes again, mentioning that ridiculous baker girl. It’s so infuriating.

“Even though she was a bully? I’m sorry, Adrien, but I don’t think you should forgive someone so easily. They’ll walk all over you if you give them too much leeway.”

Adrien slipped- or rather jerked -his arm out of Lila’s grasp as he exchanged some of his books. “You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”  

Ah, there it is. That might have been the first genuine comment he’s made during this discussion. 

“What was that?” She asked with feigned politeness.

Adrien straightened and gave her another innocent smile. “Oh, nothing. I was just wondering if this could all be a big misunderstanding? The phone number that was terrorizing you wasn’t Marinette’s, after all. If you were.. mistaken.. on that story, perhaps you missed something in your other stories. Don’t you think so?”

Lila forced a smile so wide that her cheeks started to hurt. Was this his way of giving her an out? A last chance of mercy? Because if it was, she refused to take it. She’s built this kingdom with nothing but her bare hands, and she’d be darned if she decided to lie down and let him take it away just as quickly. 

“I can’t say I do.”

Adrien closed his locker, a certain glint coming to his eyes when he looked at her. “Well.. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what I find. Won’t we?” 

Rage crackled through Lila’s bones as Adrien walked past her, but she caught herself before doing anything rash. If she was going to counter Adrien’s sudden attacks, she needed to make a deal with him and get him off of her back just long enough to plan. And to do that, she needed to promise him what he apparently wanted most.

“What if it wasn’t her?”

Adrien stopped in the doorway, and Lila held her breath.

“..Because it wasn’t her,” he corrected, “I’ll be hoping that she comes back.”

Lila drew in a deep breath, if only to avoid screaming. Marinette, Marinette, Marinette- Why did he have to have to be so infatuated with Marinette? What could she possibly have that made Adrien want to fight against the whole school to get her back? 

“Alright..” She said, completely calm. “Say you were right. If it happened to turn out that Marinette wasn’t the one responsible and I convince her to come back, will we all be able to get along?”

Bile rose to her mouth as she spoke. The very thought of running back to Marinette and asking her to come back to Dupont made Lila’s stomach churn, but this was fine. She was only promising to bring Marinette back. Promises can easily be broken.

Adrien smiled, but not like the fake, warm smiles he’d been giving her throughout their conversation. No, this one was sharp, predatory, as though he could see right through her words.

“See you in class, Lila.”

The “golden child” left the locker room then, and Lila finally gave in to her frustration and let out a growl. This was supposed to be her victory, her turf, and yet she can’t even enjoy it anymore because Adrien freaking Agreste decided to meddle in business that wasn’t his. He knew that the only reason she was willing to compromise was because he was getting to her, and that burned her up inside. 

She drew in another deep breath and smoothed out her miniature ponytails. This was fine. Everything was fine. Adrien might be deciding to join the squabble a tad later than usual, but Lila invented this game. If he wanted to try his hand at her tactics and strategies, fine. He would soon realize why she was able to climb to the top in the first place.

~~~~~~~

Marinette stared out the car window with awe as they drove up the street towards Allegra’s estate. In the week that led to the group sleepover, Marinette had racked her brain day and night trying to decide what the mansion would be like. How tall would it be? How wide? Would it take up an entire street or a small square of Paris like Gabriel’s? Would there be butlers running around like in the movies or would there be a simple maid or two to keep things moving? Perhaps there wouldn’t be any hired hand at all? The excitement and anticipation made her buzz and bounce through the last few school days at Rosemary, but she refused to ask any questions during the wait for winter break. Marinette wanted the mansion to be a complete surprise. And now that she was finally here, sitting in the backseat of Allegra’s miniature limo and practically pressing her face against the window, she couldn’t be happier with that decision.

Mansions of all kinds lined the sidewalks, bigger and more elegant than she could have ever imagined. Some had marvelous fountains, while others had incredible gardens. Some had amazing walls with ingrained art that lined the premises, and one mansion even had horses grazing on their front lawn! It made her wonder why Gabriel would build his mansion in the middle of the city, or if any of these mansions might belong to Claude, Allan, or Felix. 

Near the end of the street rested a long brick wall that had elaborate, white statues decorating the major corners. Marinette guessed immediately that that was Allegra’s mansion, because the wall wrapped around an enormous white house that had silver railings for the balconies and blue-ish grey tiles for the rooftops, quite contrary to the golds and dark browns that came with the other mansions. It was beautiful in its simplicity, and that seemed like something Allegra would enjoy, even if the house belonged directly to her parents. 

Sure enough, the car rolled to a stop in front of the black metal gate that the brick walls led to, and the driver told Marinette to stay put as he hopped out of the vehicle. She watched quietly as he unlocked the gate by hand using a personal key and quickly found herself wiggling in her seat when he started pushing the gates open. They were so close! Allegra’s mansion was right there! If they didn’t start moving again in two seconds, Marinette might just jump out and start running.

The driver got back into the car with a small apology for the inconvenience- to which she assured him that it was fine through barely contained squeals -and they continued through the gate at a leisure pace, which killed Marinette inside. She wanted to get into the mansion now!

In an effort to remain still, her eyes flicked around the front lawn of the estate. The driveway they had pulled into appeared to be a full circle, looping around an intricate water fountain that spouted bursts of water in such a way that made the water look as though it were dancing.  Diamonds of dark green grass cut through the concrete in the driveway, leading to the rest of the vibrant grass on the lawn, and a delightful mix of bushes and flowers lined the inside of the brick wall as well the outside of the mansion. It struck Marinette as quaint and refined at the same time, and her respects went out to the person- or persons -responsible for designing and maintaining the look.

Finally, the limo parked in front of these wide, marble steps that led to the front door, and the driver barely had time to open Marinette’s back door before she leapt out with her bags in her arms. If the outside was this luxurious, she couldn’t wait to see how breathtaking the inside would be. 

“Thanks for the ride, sir!” She called over her shoulder as she hopped up the steps two-by-two.

“Oh, miss-!” The man yelled after her. “May I take your bags?”

Marinette skidded to a halt and turned around, ready to politely decline his offer, when another voice spoke up behind her.

“No need, Louis! I’ve got them.”

Marinette whirled back around, coming face to face with Allegra, who was now standing in the doorway with a bright smile. 

The blonde reached forward to take the bags with one hand, while giving Marinette a side hug with the other. “I’m so happy you’re here! This is going to be great.”

“I know! I’ve been waiting for this all week! Your house looks amazing.”

A grin spread across Allegra’s lips, and she pulled back from the hug in favor of grabbing Marinette’s hand. “If you like it now, just wait till you see the inside.”

The two girls waltzed inside together, but as soon as she entered, Marinette couldn’t help gasping and breaking away from Allegra to run further into the house. Tiled, marble floors stretched out before her, seemingly farther than the street she had just driven down, and on the other side of the bigger-than-life foyer was a set of large, open windows that touched from the floor of the first level to the ceiling of the second level. They overlooked the backyard, which was equally as enchanting as the front yard, and a part of her had the urge to sit down and stare at them wistfully for a good hour or two.

To her left and right were a pair of long, curved stairs that led to the second floor. They matched the marble tiles on the first floor and had beautiful, metal railings that curled and twisted into different types of flowers and leaves. The railing also trailed off to the open hallways above, where Marinette could see different types of doors lined up. Her restless brain wanted to skip up the stairs, brush her hand across the smooth, black railing, and explore each and every room possible.

Her gaze dragged up to the ceiling, and her jaw fell slack yet again as she realized exactly how high the building was. The circular sunroof that signified the center of the ceiling felt higher than the Eiffel Tower itself, and Marinette was certain that if she called out, it would take at least five seconds to hear her voice echoing back to her.

“Well?” Allegra asked next to her. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Marinette blanched. “Allegra, this is incredible! Do you really live here?”

A musical laugh came from the blonde, and she nodded. “Yep. Ever since I was five. Come on, I’ll give you a tour!”

They made their way to the stairs, and Marinette eagerly ran her hand across the cool railings as she continued to look around. She couldn’t believe how astonishing everything looked. It was as though they’d taken the finest jewels and rocks on earth and merged them together to create this mansion. How did they even afford all of this?

“What did you say your mom did again?”

Allegra glanced over at her. “My mom? She’s a-”

“Hey!”

The two girls paused mid step and looked up at the open hallway. Claude stood just above them, leaning over the railing and waving with a wide grin. Allan stood behind him, also offering the girls a friendly smile as a greeting.

“Is that Marinette?” Claude called.

“Yep! She just got here.”

“Sweet!” The brunette cheered. He dashed from his place upstairs and, once he got a good enough momentum, jumped to a stop, using his socks to slide the rest of the way to the stairwell. “We’ve been waiting forever for you to show up!”

Marinette giggled and ran up the rest of the stairway to give Claude a hug. “I got my clothes together as fast as I could.”

“Oh, you’re good.” Allan assured as he came to join them. “You’re technically early anyway.”

“I thought I was.” Marinette remarked, pulling away from Claude to give Allan a small hug as well. “Is Felix here too?”

“Nope, it’s just us right now.” Claude answered with a smile. “We already had clothes here from previous sleepovers.”

“They practically have their own personal closets at this point.” Allegra snorted. Then, she gave Marinette a playful nudge. “And soon, so will you.”

Marinette smiled. She wasn’t sure that she even had enough clothes to fill another closet, but it didn’t stop her from feeling giddy towards receiving one. Having a personal closet at Allegra’s meant she would be coming over much more often, and that was something she desperately wanted to do at this point.

“Have you shown her around yet?” Claude asked.

“Nope. I was gonna show her my room first, though, so I can put her bags down in there.”

“Oh, good idea.” The brunette remarked, taking the opportunity to snag Marinette’s bags from Allegra’s hands. “Let’s go! You’re gonna love it, Mari.”

With everyone together- save for Felix -the group eagerly clambered down the hallway that Claude and Allan had previously been in. The black railway from the staircase continued to twist down the hall next to Marinette, and when it finally stopped at a wall, Claude stopped at a doorway to his right. Glittering stickers arched across the door, spelling out the word “Allegra”.

“Those are from when I was, like, nine.” Allegra commented, a hint of a blush on her cheeks as she opened her bedroom door.

Marinette was about to say that it was fine- she actually found the lettering to be endearing -but any form of words or replies were lost on her when she saw the bedroom for the first time.

Everything was covered in light purples and white, with occasional bits of gold and light blue to accent the room. An enormous, deep purple bed with swirling, golden patterns sat in the center, holding pillows that were bigger than Marinette’s bed alone and a comfort that looked fluffier than her warmest ear-muffs. A pair of blue, see-through curtains wrapped around the bed as well, reminding her of something a princess might own. 

Across the room- which was twice the size of her little attic bedroom -were two white shelves that stretched from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. They held various things such as books, notebooks, miniature glass statues, and plenty of other trinkets that struck Marinette as charming. She wondered how long it must have taken Allegra to collect such things, or if she bought them all in one go as she decorated her room. There were even a few crystal wind-chimes hanging around the room. 

“This is..” Marinette wasn’t sure what it was as she walked inside, star-struck. The girl even had her own chandelier, for Pete’s sake! Then there was the massive vanity with a million different types of eyeshadow- all aligned perfectly in an orderly fashion -and the massive desk on the other side of the room that had a fancy paperweight and a nice, little trinket to hold all of Allegra’s pencils and such for school. Don’t get her started on the chair hanging from the ceiling that looked equally fancy and comfortable.

“Do I really get to sleep in here?” She eventually asked instead. Words couldn’t describe her thoughts on the room or how it looked like something out of a daydream. 

Allegra laughed. “Yep! We’re actually going to be spending most of the night here.”

“After we go swimming, of course.” Claude added as he set Marinette’s bags down in the walk-in closet.

Marinette’s eyes widened at the remark. She’d almost forgotten why she came here in the first place. “Where is the swimming pool?”

“It’s downstairs.” Allegra answered. “I can’t wait for you to see it. We have a water slide and everything.”

Marinette would have gasped, but after what she’s seen so far, she wouldn’t be surprised if they had their own personal zoo. “Can we go see it?”

“Absolutely!” The blonde smiled, looping her arm with Marinette’s. “But first, we need to finish our tour.”

The group made their way out of Allegra’s room and started exploring each door they passed. Claude, Allan, and Allegra took turns explaining each room’s purpose to Marinette, and she absorbed their words as best she could. Most of the time, though, she was lost in her thoughts, completely awed by the structure of the household.

Each room appeared to be bigger than the last, and some of them had Marinette nearly falling over from the amount of money that had to have gone into the décor. There were offices and dining halls and bigger bedrooms for Allegra’s parents. Then there were game rooms with pool tables and living rooms with couches that stretched around the entire room so everyone could see each other. Vases and sculptures lined the hallways and hid in the corners while extensive family portraits littered walls and held personal places on overly huge fireplaces. 

In a word, the entire mansion was extravagant, especially for a three-person family, but despite the overwhelming amount of space, Marinette could feel the warmth and familial love of each room. A multitude of memories resided in the walls, and she couldn’t wait to hear all of them.

One room in particular caught her attention the most.

“What is this place?” Marinette asked as she walked into another wide-spread room. Musical instruments of all kinds littered the area- harps, violins, cellos, pianos, guitars, mandolins, and other things she couldn’t even name. They all appeared to be in mint condition, so clean that she could see her reflection in them, and the little kid in Marinette wanted to run around and try each one of them.

“This,” Allegra said next to her, “is our music room.”

“Music room..” Marinette whispered as her hand ran over a pair of literal bongos. “Can you actually play all of these?”

Claude snorted behind them. “She definitely wishes she could.”

Allegra scoffed and smacked his arm with a playful glare. 

“No, I can’t play all of them.. But I’m working on it.”

“Wow.” Marinette muttered. That had to be time consuming. Where did she find the drive to keep practicing all of these? 

“..Can I touch them?”

“Oh, yeah! Touch them all. Go crazy. I can even teach you how to play a little tune for some of them if you want.”

Marinette lit up. “Can you really?”

Allegra chuckled. “Of course. We have all night, don’t we?”

Marinette had to bite her tongue to avoid squealing again, and she promptly darted off to try everything she could. Any strings and keys would be briefly plucked and pressed before being cast away for the next instrument. She would thump on the drums and blow on the tubas and, occasionally, she would stop to try a few simple tunes on an instrument that sounded especially enchanting to her. 

After about thirty minutes of this heaven- there were a lot of instruments -someone knocked on the doorframe at the front of the room, gathering the group’s attention.

A man with light brown hair stood in the doorway, offering an easy, yet apologetic smile. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

Allegra, who had been teaching Marinette how to play the Panda Drum, hopped up from her position on the floor to greet him with a hug. “Not at all! I was just showing Marinette around the house. Mari, this is my dad, Arthur. Dad, this is Marinette, my friend from school that I’ve been telling you about.”

Marinette set the drum aside and stood up as well. “It’s nice to meet you, M. Chanson.”

“Oh, please.” M. Chanson held up a dismissive hand. “Just call me Arthur. Or even Uncle Arthur, if you like.”

A soft smile spread across Marinette’s lips, and she nodded. He sounded exactly like Maman when someone new came to their house.

“Anyway, I just came by to drop off the last bit of your group. He found me in the kitchen while looking for you.” Arthur said. He then stepped to the side to reveal none other than Felix, who had apparently been standing behind him the whole time.

Marinette perked up at the sight of the blond. “Oh, Felix! You’re here!”

“Here late.” Claude added with a smirk.

Felix shot him a look. “I’m not late. I told you all that I wouldn’t quite be here at the same time as everyone else.”

“Telling us that you’re going to be late doesn’t mean that you weren’t late.” Allegra pointed out. “It just means that you were considerate about your tardiness.”

Felix narrowed his eyes at her, knowing she was correct, and Marinette pursed her lips to avoid laughing, because she also knew that Allegra was correct.

“So I see you’ve been showing her my instruments?” Arthur cut in, redirecting the conversation.

Marinette’s eyes widened. “These are your instruments?”

Arthur chuckled. “Yep. In fact, I taught Allegra everything she knows.”

“You mean you can actually play all of them?”

“Well, some better than others,” The man responded with a half shrug, “but yeah. I’m honestly a little disappointed that A didn’t come get me when she showed you the room.”

Allegra winced. “Oh, sorry, Dad. I wasn’t thinking about it.”

“That’s amazing..” Marinette remarked, dumbfounded. She couldn’t imagine having enough memory to know how each individual instrument was played. 

Arthur tilted his head back and forth with a hum. “I wouldn’t say amazing. A lot of these instruments are extremely similar to how they’re played, and at some point, once you’ve learned enough, you start to realize that a lot of music has a certain order to it. When you know that order, it makes playing a lot easier.”

“Oh, don’t be modest.” Allegra scolded. “Who else can play almost all of the instruments of the world and memorize any new instruments within a week?”

Before Arthur could respond, Allegra turned to Marinette with a proud smile and continued.

“Dad’s able to combine these instruments like no one I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. It’s like he’s memorized every string, key, or chord possible! He’s even written songs for us too. Some of them are just funny little melodies to go with Claude’s acts, but others are full songs that he performs for me and Mom. Sometimes, when Mom’s stressed, he’ll sing or play for her to help her relax. I personally think that the songs he writes then are the best ones.”

The more she talked, the more bashful Arthur became, and Marinette couldn’t help cooing at the man. The thought of someone writing songs for the person they loved and singing them when that person felt down brought a wonderful warmth to her chest. It actually reminded her of another sweet boy she knew, one with blue-tipped hair and a smile that could melt the arctic.

“I have a friend like that.” She decided to say. Why not tell the others about him too? “He has a passion for the guitar and plays songs for me when I feel down too. It’s so calming.”

Something in her tone or expression must have caught their interest, because the group’s attention shifted from Allegra to Marinette in an instant. Before she could ask about the sudden change, Claude slipped an arm around her shoulders, flashing her a sly grin.

“Oh? A friend, you say?” He drawled. “You sound pretty fond of him. What’s his name?”

An involuntary blush crept across Marinette’s cheeks, more so at the implication in Claude’s voice than anything else. After two years of hanging around Alya, with her raised eyebrows and coy smiles, she could tell when someone was trying to accuse her of certain feelings towards another. 

“O-Oh. uhm.. His name is Luka.”

“Luka..” Allegra hummed. “I’ve never heard you mention his name before.”

“And I’ve never seen her blush like that before, either.” Claude teased. “You’re not being very subtle, Nette.”

Marinette felt her blush deepen, even though they both knew she was easily flustered. She’s probably blushed a million times in the month that she’s known them, and most of those blushes were definitely darker than the one she was wearing even now.

Her gaze flicked to Felix, curious as to what he thought on the matter. His expression remained neutral, though she spotted a bit of intrigue in his eyes. It didn’t help with her guilt towards the comments.

Then again, why should she feel guilty? Even if she did like Luka, that wouldn’t affect anyone here. There was no reason to be ashamed.

Nevertheless, she still wanted to slip her way out of getting teased, so she jokingly rolled her eyes and said, “You guys said we were going to go swimming, right? Felix is here, and it’s getting dark so we should probably change before it gets too late.”

“The pool is indoors.” Claude helpfully reminded. “It doesn’t matter how late it gets.”

“But that was a good try at dodging, though.” Allegra smirked.

A squeak flew from Marinette’s lips before she could stop it, and the trio shared a laugh.

“Come on, guys.” Allan lightly scolded. “If you keep messing with her like this, she might spontaneously combust.”

Another laugh tumbled from Claude’s lips before he let out a dramatic sigh. “Alright, fine. I guess we can go swimming now.”

“Marinette has to cool off, anyway.” Allegra added with a wink.

Marinette groaned and put her head in her hands, if only to hide her ever-growing blush. 

Mental note: Never mention a boy to the group again, because they will probably see right through you when it’s actually serious.

Tag List:  @artbyknigit @athena452 @nickristus-dreamer @throneoffirebreathingbitchqueen @arsaem @abrx2002 @neakco @pawsitivelymiraculous @too0bsessedformyowngood @nathleigh @lusicing @officiallydarkgeek @all-mights-asscheeks @tbehartoo @woe-is-me0 @raeuberprinzessin @lazuli-11 @miss-chaos27 @trippingovermyfeet @sadpotatoondrugs @ladybug-182 @jaggedheart11 @marinahrasauce @i-need-blog-ideas @thewheezingbubbledragon @crazylittlemunchkin @unabashedbookworm @moonystars14 @sunflowers-and-mooncakes @2confused-2doanything @magnificentcrapposts @moonnette @nickristus-dreamer @vixen-uchiha @casual-darkness @luxmorningstarr @jjmjjktth @kaithehero @itsme1598 @theymakeupfairies @xjaccyx @miraculous-ninja @miraculouspenta @swiftie-miraculer13 @justafanwarrior @all-mights-asscheeks @ira-sairain @lookatthestars1 @dahjokester @blissful-passing @solangelo252 

[work-of-waking-up]

In Defense of the Psychopath

Alright, wanna venture into my crazy ass brain? I’m going to start by saying one thing that will set the tone for everything else that follows: Villanelle is not a psychopath in the way that we currently understand them. Why am I even bothering to write about a fictional character, you ask? Because representation is important. Media portrayal of various mental and behavioral health topics (including ones that people might not think need to be discussed) is important and this show has a big audience. I also just want to contribute to the conversations that are taking place because I am seeing A LOT of them and the reason for that I believe boils down to the fact that Jodie makes Villanelle so relatable and people want to know what that means and looks like for them. Even those who felt they could relate to Sandra’s Eve, or the relationship between the two, maybe questioned what that meant the further they went down the path with them. “It’s probably a bad thing I relate to a psychopath, right? But she can’t be a psychopath because she cries and she feels things! Psychopaths don’t cry, which means she isn’t realistic so therefore it’s okay that I relate to her! Right? Or are my assumptions about psychopaths and people with antisocial personality disorder wrong? I relate to Eve but look what she is underneath it all...so does that mean I relate to that part of her too?” Not only is villanelles character relatable, but people see the freedom inherent within her, the freedom that Eve sees, and they realize that, at least on some level, they want it too. The show has (unintentionally I think) created a massive dialogue which is super cool and you can tell everyone involved on the show is aware of that now, I mean they have a consulting psychiatrist so I think that speaks for itself. This is less of a commentary on the character herself and whether or not she is a genuine psychopath, and more so a commentary on the conversations she has inspired and why... For the record, this is literally just my opinion sprinkled with a few facts, nothing else.

So, the term psychopath gets thrown around in the show, more so in the beginning, MI6 explicitly labels Villanelle this way, even going so far as to use her in a presentation about psychopaths, although I think that was more so to gauge Eve’s response than anything else. The reality of Villanelle, which we come to learn, is that nobody has been able to get close enough to really know the truth. Anna and Konstantin both got close but we never hear either of them use that word (Konstantin says it once but he clearly doesn’t mean it, it was more of an attempted manipulation tactic). They make it clear that she has, and can, and WILL cause damage, but that’s as far as they go. Eve is getting close and she tells Villanelle when they first meet that she knows Villanelle is a psychopath but it’s obvious from Eve's behavior and things she says later on that she truly doesn’t believe Villanelle is what everyone says she is. It’s easier to label her as a psychopath because that alienates and isolates her and her behavior completely. She is an outlier with behavioral anomalies and therefore it isn’t necessary to look any closer. For MI6 and others (not talking about the shows creators) to label Villanelle as a psychopath is easy, it’s lazy, it’s reductive, it serves a single purpose... a means to an end. They (anyone other than Eve basically) simply do not care about Villanelle’s truth. But as an audience we are lucky enough to see more of her with each episode. The psychopath label begins to fade and Oksana is what’s left. We know based on what she has said that she is aware that people think she is a psychopath, a monster, a person built to kill. It’s not always easy to decide that who you are is different from who you’ve always been told you are, especially given her history. Villanelle hasn’t told us yet if she thinks (or knows) that she is a psychopath, but it’s clear towards the end of last season that she no longer wants to be the person that they (meaning the twelve, Dasha, Konstantin, etc.) created. We see moments where she clearly has no remorse and clearly enjoys what she does, but then we have little moments sprinkled in between where she very obviously struggles, even if its short lived. And those moments are important. We have the moment where she struggles with the choice to shoot Konstantin, saying he is a good person, she thinks. This comes shortly after a conversation she had where Irina tells Villanelle she thinks she is a good person because she is sad, so we know she is thinking about it, we know the awareness is there, and it becomes more and more there as times goes on. I like to think of it in terms of having moments that are pure Villanelle (ie the way she killed Inga in the Russian prison), and then we have moments that are Oksana, vulnerable and emotional. Villanelle is a creation and a mask whereas oksana is the truth. Those moments are starting to really mean something. I'm not even going to start with her trip to find her family, that’s its own thing, but it's a Really Big Thing.

So. Villanelle is not a psychopath in the way that we currently understand and perceive them. Yes, she displays psychopathic traits, and yes, she absolutely has antisocial personality disorder. I read an article where the psychiatric consultant for the show (makes it pretty obvious how hard they worked to make Villanelle as realistic as possible) said that the Villanelle in Luke Jenning’s books scored a 32 on Hare’s psychiatric checklist, but I like to think (and I think a lot of people would agree) that number is a bit high, at least for Jodie’s Villanelle, maybe not even hitting 30 at all (close though, let’s be real lol). The max score is 40 which would be a fully blown primary psychopath. For reference, Ted Bundy scored 39. This checklist is flawed though, mostly created and based off the prison population. Which is why it isn’t used as a proper diagnostic tool. 32 is apparently extraordinarily high for a female (think Aileen Wuornos), which brings me to my next point which is that because it’s hard to measure a lot of the classic traits objectively, there is not a ton of solid data surrounding psychopathy, and even less of it is on female psychopaths. Like most things in life, psychopathy exists on a spectrum, there are levels and layers. It’s not black and white, there’s no definitive test (psychopathy isn’t even in the DSM-5 because as I said earlier it’s extremely hard to measure objectively) and it's important to distinguish between someone who exhibits psychopathic traits and someone who is actually an identifiable psychopath. Chances are high that someone you know displays at least one characteristic shared with psychopaths and this doesn’t make them one.

I think what’s important about this is that mental disorders (mental illness/personality disorders/etc.) of any kind are much more nuanced than a lot of people tend to think they are. That they exist less in black and white and more in shades of grey. Jodie Comer is absolutely remarkable for showcasing that through portraying the different layers of Villanelle. Her performance is a literal gift. We cannot keep thinking and acting like we know everything about how a person thinks, feels, and behaves based strictly and entirely on one label. The thing that has stuck out to me the most, the reason I decided to even write this bullshit babble, is that one of the most searched topics about the show is whether or not it’s realistic that Villanelle cries, and honestly how sad is that? That makes me sad for V. Is it more realistic for her to develop connections and cognitive empathy if she was made into a psychopath vs if she was born that way? Is there a legitimate difference between the two? And how do we even decide which one is applicable for someone? It’s important to add that antisocial personality disorder is not the same thing as psychopathy or sociopathy. You can have aspd and not be a psychopath. Research has shown that about only a third of those diagnosed with aspd would meet criteria to be considered a psychopath. Society is not doing a great job at getting people to understand this. But to be fair, understanding personality disorders specifically has been somewhat problematic, a lot of diagnostic confusion and overlap between disorders. A LOT of work needs to be done. But as far as portrayals go, society has strictly chosen to go the route of giving us psychopathic characters and having them be inherently violent, incapable of remorse, feelings, or change. Poverty of all emotions. Subhuman. They are made out to be so abnormal and unrelatable to the point where the character of Villanelle has sparked so much debate and fascination simply because she exists in a way that actually IS relatable...and layered and beautiful and thrilling. We thought she would be the bad guy and yet we root for her at every turn, we cry for her, we want good things for her! We see her darkness and without question or hesitation we forgive it. She makes us question what we’ve previously been shown. Questioning whether or not it’s realistic that she acts the way she does is less important than questioning our own personal assumptions and beliefs and where those come from. I think that’s awesome. Villanelle is truly a gift. She is hands down one of the most well written fictional characters, which is saying a lot considering when you put something, or someone, in a box it doesn’t leave tons of room for expansion. and I honestly don’t even really need to say this, but.. Jodie Comer.

[imaginarydesires]

Pedro Pascal

Character Preferences

How They React to Seeing You Happily in a New Relationship ♡

Warnings: jealously, angst, sad shit

Notes: it’s gender-neutral!

❥ Dave York

He knew he shouldn’t care that you had found a new relationship. After all, he was married. But even besides that, he had plenty of opportunities to be with you - or at least try to be with you - plenty of opportunities to flirt and show his true intentions, but he never acted on them. Now, he watched you happily with another and his chest clenched with jealousy and regret. The thought of killing them had crossed his mind, but he pushed it away quickly because you seemed happy, and if you were happy he didn't want to be the one to take it away from you. You noticed his change in demeanor. He was more professional. He made less jokes and avoided eye contact. You hated it, but had no idea why the change happened so suddenly. You considered the idea of it being jealousy, but quickly brushed it away. He was married, and certainly if you could watch him with his wife for years, he could watch you with your new partner and still act amicable.

❥ Din Djarin

He is undeniably in love with you, and you both know it. You pined over him for what felt like millennia, trying to convince him to accept your affection, but repeatedly he declined stating you deserved better than a dangerous helmeted bounty hunter with a primary commitment to his creed. Eventually, you found another, and you were happy. Din pushed you away even more than before. He tried to leave you alone completely, wanting you to find a new life without him and worrying you would never move on if he was still there, but the universe seemed to bring you together. He talked to you only when you spoke to him and tried his best to stay strictly professional. He hated his helmet for keeping you apart, but he was grateful the beskar hid the pain in his eyes every time he looked at what he couldn't have.

❥ Ezra Prospect

You deserved to be happy. He wanted you to be happy. Yet he couldn’t push down the feeling that you were meant for him. Watching you in a relationship with another was painful for him, but he refused to let you go. He’d be your friend, trying anything he could to get you alone in hopes you’d realize the connection between you. He’d take his pain out on your lover by using his words to confuse and injure them while simultaneously flirting and enchanting you with poetic phrases. He would do just enough for you to see he that he loved you but not enough for you to push him away.

❥ Frankie “Catfish” Morales

Watching you with another was an intense struggle for Frankie. He had dreamed of a life with you and worked hard to get it. Everything he did was rooted in wanting to provide a life for you filled with security and happiness and to be a man you would be proud of. But unfortunately, his good intentions caused tension because you didn't want a perfect man with his life together - you wanted to grow with him and support him through his journey, but he was too focused on being the best man that he didn't see you slipping away from him. As much as you wanted him, you couldn't just wait for Frankie to get his life together and be ready for you, so you found someone else. As soon as he saw you, he was filled with regret, overthinking everything he had ever done and wondering how he let you slip through his fingers. He stayed your friend, despite how much it pained him, because you tried to wait for him and he pushed you away, so he would wait for you as long as you'd let him. He never tried to break you up because your happiness was more important than you being his. He just waited on the sidelines, hoping you'd realize you were meant for each other.

❥ Jack "Whiskey" Daniels

He denied his jealousy, but the pressure that built in his chest every time he saw you with your partner was irrefutable. He tried every coping mechanism he could think of - masking his pain with rivers of alcohol and crowds of women - but you were the first one he had truly fallen for since the passing of his first love, and you were not easy to forget. He continued to flirt with you, using all of his best lines and calling you sweet terms of endearment, even if your partner was right next to you. When you asked him about it, he shrugged you off, acting as though he had no idea what you were talking about. But even if you weren't together, you were still supporting him, pointing out his spiraling habits and reminding him you were there for him through anything. You thought you were helping, but it only made things harder for him. One night, after drowning himself in booze, he called you and confessed everything - how much he cares about you and how hard it has been to watch you in a relationship. He tells you he will wait for you and that no matter what you do, he will always love you.

❥ Javier Peña

You never knew how sharp Javier's tongue was until you got into a new relationship. He's constantly masking his hurt with sarcasm and unplayful banter. You reciprocate his same energy, which only fuels his negative attitude. One day you get into a fight and both go too far. You have a long, deep talk about how much you care about him, and how you just wish things could go back to the way they were before, when you two were friends. He agrees despite knowing he desperately wants to be more and makes a genuine effort to be a good friend to you. He hopes that by being there for you, you'll admit you want him as much as he wants you.

❥ Marcus Moreno

He had finally let himself fall for someone again. After the passing of his wife, he thought he's never find love again, but then you came along. So when he found out you were dating someone else, he was heartbroken, but he hid it well. He suppressed his emotions because having you as a friend was better than not having you at all. He tried to move on, and told himself that if it was meant to be, it would be in time.

❥ Max Phillips

He never thought he’d care about anyone or who they were dating. He had only cared enough for a fuck and a quick bite. But as he watched you with your partner, smiling and wrapping your arms around their waist, he felt an unfamiliar strike of jealousy lull through him - and he did not handle it well. He flirted with you even more than he did before, trying every trick in the book to sabotage your relationship. He compared himself to your partner, putting them down constantly. He described in detail all of the ways he would be better than them. He told himself he just wanted to bang you, but in reality, he desperately craved to have you be his the way you were theirs.

❥ Maxwell Lord

He's as sweet as ever to you, making sure he is the perfect gentleman and that he compliments you every day. But if there is a way he can put your partner down, he's doing it. He's never handled his emotions very well, and this was no different. He didn't realize how much he wanted you to be his until he couldn't have it, and now he is even more determined. He'll make excuses for you to stay at work late, and he'll ask you out constantly, but make it sound like a platonic gesture. You don't even notice his simple tactics until your partner points it out, but then Maxwell will try to make your partner sound manipulative and jealous. He stops eventually, or at least genuinely tries to stop. But only because you call him out on it and tell him how hard he's making your life. He cares about you too much to be the cause of your unhappiness. So, he sticks to the occasional sarcastic line towards your partner and just tries to be there for you as much as he can so you know he'll always want you if you want him.

❥ Oberyn Martell

He’s not necessarily jealous of the relationship, but instead he struggles with seeing you so committed to another person. He constantly flirts with you, reminding you that polygamy is a beautiful way to maintain a relationship. He insists on taking you out often whether it’s him going on a walk with you or inviting you for a drink. He’ll approach you, not minding the presence of your partner, and say, “Certainly you won’t say no to the Prince of Dorne?” Eventually he becomes so determined to make you his, he’ll flirt with your partner as well, trying anything he can do dismantle your commitment to monogamy.

❥ Pero Tovar

The life of a mercenary was not glorious and it did not call for an easy family life. He was away for months at a time and when he returned, he was only home for a few days. You deserved better for a husband, he thought. He strolled into town after a long job, immediately going to see you as he always did. You greeted him as usual, but it didn't take him long to notice the sparkling diamond ring on your left hand. He knew the day would come, but he dreaded it. You tried to introduce them, because the thought of not having Pero in your life, even as a friend, was heartbreaking. He refused and left town. You lived your life, but always looked toward the end of the street, hoping your mercenary would one day come walking down it to see you again.

[princess-of-the-corner]

I think one of the reasons that I don’t care for the Marinette vs. Lila plot, as much as I like writing fics where Lila get called the fuck out, is that it’s… the least interesting.

Out of the Main Five of Team Miraculous, Lila being a narrative foil to any of the others is so much more interesting!

Like sure. Marinette vs. Lila is the basic good vs. evil. The protagonist vs. one of the many antagonists. Not to mention the love rivalry over Adrien. But like…. on top of all that, Marinette’s narrative foil should honestly be Gabriel. And that’s a post in itself so I won’t go into it here.

But look at the opportunities the rest of the Team would have!!!

Lila vs. Adrien:

While I argue that Adrien’s true narrative foil should be Nathalie, just like Marinette has Gabriel, Adrien vs. Lila would be interesting.

Both seem to have mildly similar parental backgrounds, from what we’ve seen. Lila’s dad is out of the picture for some unknown reason, and Adrien’s mom is missing.

While Gabriel does seem to be worse than Mrs. Rossi from the little screentime we’ve seen, both parents are very busy with work and ignore their children.

Both also have to uphold reputations too. While Adrien is ‘the face of the brand’ and more in the public eye, anything Lila does reflects on her mother and therefore Italy itself.

Adrien deals with this by believing the best in people, believing he can help them, and being genuinely nice to others.

Lila deals with it by becoming cynical, thinking everyone has an agenda and that niceness is just politics. Be nice or mean to get what she wants.

Seeing the two of them have a rivalry would be more interesting because we can see what both could have become. And how easily they can become each other even now.

We can see Adrien trying to get Lila to be a better person and learn that people will genuinely love her without lying and faking. That while some people just have agendas, that others are sincere.

Meanwhile, Lila could be trying to get Adrien to be like her. He has the actual money and power to get whatever he wants. It would be easy for him to manipulate anyone into anything.

You can even have it working on both sides! Adrien convinces Lila that some people are genuinely nice, and she tries to refrain from lying to them. Eventually either getting a redemption arc or tossing it out the window.

On the flip side, Lila can show Adrien how her lies can get Gabriel and Nathalie to listen to him more. And he can even go darkside for a short time by getting frustrated with unrequited love and using the tactics on Ladybug, but eventually realizes how shitty that is and stops while apologizing.

Again, the back and forth would’ve been interesting.

Lila vs. Alya:

This one!!! Rena Rouge vs. Volpina! Fox vs. Fox! Truth vs. Lies!!

Seriously! Why set up Lila as a lying fake fox and Alya as a journalist searching for the truth if you’re not going to have them get into a fight?

Especially because while Marinette’s foil is Gabriel and Adrien’s is Nathalie, both Alya and Lila are the 'third team member’ to both sides.

I already went over this before, but I think of it would’ve been great if Lila’s lies were outed, but everyone believes her lies were just “new kid trying to make friends quick” lies.

Alya, pissed that she was tricked and resolving to not get tricked again, continues to be suspicious of Lila. Eventually she realizes that Lila is a full-on manipulator, only pretending to have repented to get close to people like Adrien and Marinette.

Alya trying to find the Truth while Lila makes more Lies could make a good back and forth battle.

Especially as Alya would be simultaneously struggling with the idea of exposing the truth due to realizing how the truth can hurt. In the beginning she wanted to find the story and dig up any secrets like the identities of the Heroes. But after becoming a Hero herself, she realizes why the lies and secrets about her identity are in place. The safety of herself and her loved ones.

Meanwhile, Lila is struggling with her lying tactics. Because despite not actually having famous connections and even after the annoyance from the class finding her out she was lying, they still like her. They still care about her and want to be her friend.

Lila vs. Nino

I will admit that Nino is the least developed of the five which is a crime because he’s great and deserves better but that’s for another post.

It would be interesting because he’s the least like Lila. Marinette is the one with all the connections that Lila claims to have and is the 'Love Rival’, Adrien is the one with a similar history but on a different path, Alya is the 'opposite’, and Chloé (who I will get to) is the Mean Girl. But Nino’s none of that.

Still, Nino is friends with everyone Lila targets. And he’s a protector type. Like bruh. He gets the Miraculous of Protection!! That’s just Canon.

The idea of everyone thinking Lila is genuine, but Nino is the only one who get bad vibes and is wary of her could’ve been a good story.

Especially because this would make sense for extending this plot!! Like, Nino is the only one of the four who can’t disprove Lila’s lies himself. Marinette could just be Ladybug and otr Lila again or call any celebrities she knows. Adrien could do the same as Chat, or just by telling people that Ladybug called Lila out. Alya can contact the Heroes and knows how to research anything Lila claims. Chloé can do the 'call up celebrities’ thing too. Nino being unable to prove Lila’s a fuck makes more sense than everyone suddenly being dumb for the plot to work.

It’s also so much harder to have Lila turn people against him! With Marinette, it’s the “sure she’s nice but jealousy makes a vicious monster out of the best”. With Alya it could be either the “jealous I’m bffs with Ladybug” or “jealous of her getting close to Marinette”. With Adrien, Lila could claim that he’s the one pretending to be nice while manipulating them. And Chloé is self explanatory. But Nino is none of that.

It might not have quite the back and forth like the others, but that is also why I like it. It’s more subtle. It’s not a full on battle between the two. Neither is really a threat to the other directly.

This would also make sense writing-wise for why Lila is both built up as such a threat but is also doing nothing to actually be a threat outside of, like, four episodes. She’s subtle, and Nino’s protection of his friends is just as subtle because he plays defense. 

As a bonus: This would also give Nino more screentime and development.

Lila vs. Chloé

This would’ve been so good because, like, they both start as antagonists for the Civilian plot. And there’s two ways that I would go with this.

The first, which I like better because it’s Chloé Redemption: As Chloé learns to be a better person, Lila begins becoming worse and worse.

Both start as Mean Girls for the class, but in different ways and in ways that are reverse of each other. Chloé seems like the typical 'rich girl bully’, but does have hidden niceness and just wants to be loved. Lila seems oh so nice, but is cynical and only seems to want power and attention.

Chloé being the one to try and out Lila’s lies and not being believed makes so much more sense because, well, Chloé is an asshole and the class is just barely beginning to trust her. If they trust her at all. But compared to the other four, she’s the least trustworthy.

However, Chloé is also much more morally gray than the other four. So she can play Lila’s games just as hard. Lean into the lies just enough to turn it around on her. Much like the Adrien plot, you could have Chloé learning to use these skills for 'good’ to help people while Lila continues to just get what she wants.

This would eventually come to a head when Chloé’s redemption arc gets to the point where people do legitimately believe she has changed and trust her.

The other story option: Both hate Ladybug and go Darkside, but for different reasons.

Yes this includes keeping Miracle Queen which hurts me, but it also includes keeping Chloé’s character development by changing a few things.

So, Lila hates Ladybug because Ladybug ruined her plans, and is joining Hawkmoth because she can use his powers to further manipulate the situation and get what she wants.

Chloé hates Ladybug because she feels betrayed and abandoned by her, and joins Hawkmoth because at least he is upfront about how she’s only useful as a tool.

Both are doing the same things, but one is an asshole while the other is sympathetic. And it leaves room for the narrative, and the Heroes, to offer both of them a redemption arc and see who takes it. 

Anyway! That’s my point on how I think literally any of these would be more interesting than making Lila be Marinette’s problem!!

[noethicalconsumptionunderdisney]

Hogwarts Sorting Profile: Max Russo

So, confession time: Initially, I wasn’t actually planning on writing one of these for him.  I’m sorry!  I love Max, but he’s often in the background of Wizards of Waverly Place and just has these really random plots thrown in his direction, rather than interesting character-exploration-type shit like the main sibs.  (Which, to be fair, is probably why some of y’all might be curious what I’m going to say about him.)

But I was thinking about what makes Max so odd as a character, and specifically I was thinking about him in comparison to other characters of his archetype in the Disney Channel-verse.  Because we’ve seen the messy, funny, underachieving brother character a lot, but they come in very different flavors.  Part of that for Max is that he shares some of those traits with Alex in contrast to the overachieving, overly serious Justin, but part of that is… Max often seems to be in his own little world, incomprehensible to mortals and wizards alike, and generally takes in the “real-world” around him with a shrug.  He still cares about the “real-world” when it suits him, but he’s often kind of divorced from it, and that discovery fascinated me.  Furthermore, it made his Sorting “click.”

We’ll start off easy: what does Max do?  The answer is… he’ll do pretty much anything.  He’s not a Burned Secondary, though, he just doesn’t give a fuck.  Max is every bit the Slytherin Secondary that Alex is, we just don’t usually notice because he spends most of his time in his Neutral State.

The Slytherin Secondary’s Neutral State is blunt, rough, and often unphased by stepping on people’s toes. It’s easy to mistake this for a Gryffindor Secondary’s honesty, but it comes from a different place: comfort, relaxation, and/or apathy.  It doesn’t inspire or motivate so much as sit back and do as it pleases, and the Neutral State’s honesty is there for convenience rather than necessity— if a different tactic will work better, a Slytherin Secondary can ditch their honesty and change direction far more easily than a Gryffindor Secondary.

Max isn’t exactly shy about saying what’s on his mind, even if it’s usually dismissed as nonsense.  He also does seem to charge into situations without a care sometimes, but that’s the thing: he’s able to charge into those situations because he doesn’t care.  When he tests out the zombies’ No-Fear Ring, it doesn’t work on him because he’s already fearless.  So while some Slytherin Secondaries are nervous about showing their honesty to others and only show their Neutral State when they’re home safe with people they’re comfortable with, Max lives in his honest Neutral State because he feels comfortable and safe most of the time… even in situations where he really, really shouldn’t.

Curiously, one situation where he doesn’t feel comfortable or safe has very little to do with actual danger, but about personal identity: when he’s turned into Maxine.  And in Maxine’s body, he’s a lot more manipulative.

“You know, I can’t help it if people think I’m cute.  Watch how I make it work for me.”

As Maxine, he uses his cuteness to get out of chores, to get revenge on Alex and Justin in karate, to guilt dishonest customers out of cheating his parents, and comes up with a plan to talk his “boy self” up to a girl he likes as Maxine so that she’ll like him when he changes back.  Yeah, can’t imagine why Maxine reminded Jerry and Theresa so much of Alex…

But there are Slytherin Secondary indications from Max in his usual form as well.

He has no qualms about outright lying — inventing a fake illness to get out of P.E., pretending to be “Tom Sawyer” so he wouldn’t be embarrassed by/compared to his family — but he prefers obfuscation, aka confusing people with his “Max-ness.”

“How do you get your brother to say what’s really on his mind?”

“Oh, I use randomness.”

“What?”

“Well, I just say random things and while people are trying to figure it out, they say stuff that’s on their mind.”

One example of this tactic being employed successfully is with the Genie.  While Alex fails to outsmart the Genie using her quick wits, as the Genie is every bit as cunning as her, Max figures out a way to piss off the Genie enough to blackmail her, then talks circles around her and confuses her until she reveals a way for them to undo her wishes.  Alex calls it “outdumbing” her, but in any case, he succeeded where she failed, and showed that he’s more capable than often assumed.

We get another rare moment of clarity from Max during “Alex Tells The World.”  

“Alex, you know you can’t reveal magic!”

“Oh, even I know that. That’s why I just make people think I’m dumb so if I slip up, ehh, they figure, the kid’s an idiot.  And I slip up all the time, so.  Who’s dumb now?”

Max’s admission that he “slips up all the time” isn’t exactly reassuring, but it is telling that he’s the only one who doesn’t reveal magic during both the Season 4 Premiere and the Season 3 Finale.  Perhaps it was dumb luck that got him there, but I think there’s more to it than that.  There’s a method to his madness.  There’s a logic to it, even if Max’s logic often doesn’t follow all the way through.

Which leads me to his Primary— Ravenclaw.  (LOOK I KNOW. HEAR ME OUT.)

Yes, Max is often seen as “the dumb one.”  Yes, Ravenclaws are perceived as “the smart house.”  And while I’ve just demonstrated that there’s a brain under all the Max weirdness, I’m not about to argue that he’s secretly a genius.  He misses the mark more often than he hits it, and oftentimes when he hits it, it’s through coincidence or dumb luck or Insane Troll Logic that’s impossible for anyone but Max to follow.  But I do believe he operates on logic, just his own wacky version of it.

The thing about Max is that he’s neither as dumb as most people think he is, nor is he as smart as he thinks he is.  He’s somewhere in between, and the fact that people never quite know where exactly he falls on that scale is kind of the point.

In fact, part of the reason I struggled with Max was because I was trying to figure out where exactly he did fit in:

He can be selfish enough at times to argue Slytherin Primary, the stereotypically “selfish” House, but he’s missing Justin’s protective streak.  He doesn’t feel that same sense of duty towards his family that Justin does; when Mason breaks Alex’s heart in “Wizards vs. Werewolves,” Justin turns on him instantly because he Hurt His Little Sister And Is Therefore Bad, while Max is the one most willing to give Mason a chance, because he has his own reasons for wanting Mason in his life.  Yet, he still clearly cares enough about his family to rule out the possibility that they don’t factor into his morality at all, not to mention how easy it is for them to influence him.  

His more humble ending of inheriting his father’s sub shop might make people think Hufflepuff Primary, but there’s even less justification for such a sorting upon scrutiny.  As I’ve touched on above, the staunch loyalty to community isn’t all that important to him, and he’s also not all that into traditions.  There’s no compulsion to help strangers, he doesn’t really make enemies but he kind of just ignores people he doesn’t like (or shatters them in a million pieces on accident), and let’s not forget that he unleashed countless monsters in New York City that killed all the Monster Hunters just to win the competition… even if he did do it when his Conscience was separate from the rest of him.  Not exactly behavior you’d expect from the morality system of “a person’s a person no matter how small.”

Speaking of Conscience, it’s notable that he argues with it, rather than accepting his advice. I’m still a little unclear as to how much this matters (there’s definitely room to argue that most of his brain went into Conscience as well, and that whole plotline was… weird), but even with his Conscience inside his body, he seems to lack that moral drive Alex has.  Gryffindor Primaries have this embedded sense of justice deep within their characters. Even when it’s hidden most of the time, like in Alex’s case, or when it becomes twisted into something dark and dangerous, or becomes Stripped of its certainty, there’s still this sense that there is Right and Wrong in this world, that trusting your gut should lead you to the right conclusion, and that it’s wrong to ignore it.  I have a hard time remembering if there’s really any situation where Max gets that gut feeling of Something Being Wrong at all, much less acting on it with a Heroic Plan… at least, not without convincing.

But Max can be convinced, and that’s key.  Alex often takes advantage of this to manipulate him for her own selfish ends, such as talking him into paying her for handing out fliers to her zombie prom, but more often it’s his parents that act as his voice of reason, whether it’s convincing him to go after the “deli robber,” convincing him to give his siblings a fair shot at the Wizard Competition, or convincing him to tell his girlfriend the truth… and then unconvincing him of that when he takes it too literally and tells her he’s a wizard.  

Actually, Max is prone to misinterpreting advice in this way while trying to follow it to the letter— he does this when he tries to sell fountain water with a puppy, as well, because his mom told him to “add something to it.”  I think he is, to an extent, aware of his own intellectual limits.  He knows he misses the mark a lot of the time, so he’s often willing to trust other people’s judgment over his own, so long as they can get it through to him in a way that he thinks makes sense.

But beyond that, he’s often willing to question “common knowledge” in a way the other characters don’t. When Justin tries to tell him he can’t make life out of the stuff from his room, he simply replies, “Where’s it say that?”  In season 4, when there’s a distinct possibility that he’ll win the competition, he expands the sub shop business by making the Wizard Portal into a Drive-Thru, which genuinely worked as a business plan until Jerry took it too far.  Later that season, he saves his siblings by creating a black hole and then jumping through it to pull them to safety from the black hole in Alex’s apartment.  Like, that was his idea.  He came up with that.  It was weird, it was risky, it was unconventional, it could’ve been incredibly stupid… and it worked.

And that’s what I keep coming back to with this Ravenclaw Primary sorting— that sense of ingenuity, curiosity, and the willingness to experiment.  On one hand, you have your System Claws, who are dedicated to The Rules because they’ve been convinced that living by them is The Best Way To Live, and on the other hand, you have those that are willing to challenge conventional wisdom and try new things.  It’s this willingness to question that I personally attribute to a Ravenclaw mentality, rather than inherent intellectual ability or a large knowledgebase.  While Max may not have the latter, he has the former in spades, and that, more than anything, is really what told me that he truly belongs here.

Conclusion:

Max Russo is a Ravenclaw Primary and a Slytherin Secondary.

As a Slytherin Secondary, Max often likes to confuse and obfuscate to get what he wants, is flexible in his methods, and can even be manipulative when he wants to be.  He’s also relatively comfortable with himself, thus he often lives in a Neutral State where he says whatever’s on his mind without thinking much about danger or whether he’ll be understood.

His Ravenclaw Primary is as curious as it is undefined, and operates on a logic that only Max truly understands.  While this leads him astray more often than not, this also allows him to break from tradition and try new things, and this unconventional thinking can sometimes lead to better solutions than anyone else could’ve come up with.  However, it also comes with a set of brakes in the form of taking input from others.  It’s not always easy to get through to Max, but he can be reasoned with, which in his case, is probably for the best. 

In this combination, we find a character who truly dances to the beat of his own drum.  As the most flexible Secondary and Primary, respectively, Max is a conundrum to most who meet him, confusing even to those who know him best.  That said, being the Russo who “goes with the flow” the most often, he’s also probably the Russo that has the most fun.  He’s certainly more fun to write about than I was expecting him to be!  I’m glad I did, and it’s good to be back.

[agent-cupcake]

Imagine having a child with a guy named Jimmy. Cursed.

OTHERWISE you all pretty much echoed what I was thinking, bless you.

cw pregnancy / forced pregnancy

(As ever, this is all in the context of dark personalities. I hesitate to say yandere, although that’s kind of become synonymous with dark personality AU’s and an obvious argument can be made that a darker take on the characters could lead into a yandere scenario) 

Ferdinand von Aegir

~While I don’t think he’d go out of his way to have a baby, he definitely wouldn’t take any steps to avoid it, either. That is, he wouldn’t really stray into breeding kink territory or anything of that kind but he’s not gonna pull out either. 

~But, yeah, if you were to get pregnant, Ferdinand wouldn’t be displeased by any means. He’d legitimately think it was the best way to “fix” things and out of a misguided attempt to ignore any negative aspects of the relationship and cling to the idealism of a happy marriage. 

~Just a side note, but I def see him with a body worship kink and I can only begin to imagine how that would intensify with his weakness for the softness and so-called beauty of motherhood. Whatever that’s supposed to mean.   

~Honestly, I don’t see him overtly leveraging  as a manipulation tactic. No, he’s good enough that his genuine feelings could do the job for him. Like, it’s not just you anymore. You’re responsible for another life so don’t you think you just trust him and let him take care of you? Oh, sure, he’d humor you (on account of the hormones) and say that he understands why you’re upset, but please just calm down. Everything will be all right, he’ll take care of you. 

~I think that Ferdinand would want a family even without the whole dark personality aspect. The way he’d see it is that children are a natural result of a union and love. He’d absolutely cherish your children if for no other reason than the fact that they’d be half you, although you can’t tell me that he wouldn’t have a horrible weakness for kids.  

~You’d be barely showing and he’d be picking out baby names and getting opinions on how to decorate the nursery and occasionally freaking out due to anticipation and nerves. He’d be really, disastrously, over-the-top protective, too. I just assume white magic would greatly lessen the infant and mother mortality rate but that doesn’t entirely remove the risk of complications so he’d be cloyingly careful about everything you ate, keeping tabs on any possible oddity going on with you. And, you know, I think he would enjoy emotionally taking care of you. Like if you were scared or sad or anything, I think he’d enjoy comforting you in a way that’s definitely not healthy. He’d enjoy being needed, I suppose.

~Yeah, so overall I view any sort of darker personality take on Ferdinand to be him, but with his sweet and noble and protective traits dialed up to an eleven without any sort of self awareness to make him pause and consider that maybe you don’t feel the same so having a child like this, as an intentional act of manipulation to make you stay or not, would be within the realm of possibilities.

Sylvain Jose Gautier (Bastard Man)

~Sylvain is pretty easy to imagine with a dark personality. I mean, assuming you have no pity in your heart and are willing to write him in a way that he never was able to get over his myriad issues, self hatred, severe distrust of people’s true intentions, and familial trauma.

~Assuming all that, and entertaining the idea that he could never find a good balance of repression and escapism, I think Sylvain would create an unhealthy emotional bond to a single person he believed to be exempt from his overall dismal regard for people and do this fun little thing where he’d chaotically flip flop between extreme emotions of distrust, blame, and anger and adoration, need, and a desperation to be seen as he was and still loved. 

~But it’d be a brutal cycle because he’s not the delusional type. Sometimes he could be, both with the good and the bad, but those would be kind of episodic. There’d be bad days where he’d be utterly convinced that you were just like the rest and he’d pick little fights and generally just be pretty pissy. But then sometimes he’d be blinded by love and so caught up in it that even if you told him no, he’d take it with a cheeky wink because of course you loved him and everything was so good. But, mostly, it’d just be a lot of dysfunction and Sylvain trying to lure you into a nice, good relationship with him by being mostly normal and decently charming and even, occasionally, being vulnerable (and tricking you into being vulnerable with him). 

~Anyway, back to the point. With all that context, why not bring a baby into the mix, right?    

~How many times does Sylvain bring up crest babies. Please, someone do a hard count and get back to me because damn son. So, may I just say, if anyone of these three were to have a breeding kink it’d be him. Is that controversial? Just think about it. Every girl ever wants him mystical crest cum, right? So, mentally, the whole thing would have a lot of weight and significance. Also Sylvain just strikes me as the type who’d be self aware enough of his dark and unhealthy needs that staking as intimate of a claim as that would be erotic. Unlike the other two, the act of forcing an irreversible and tangible change in your body and mind would be interesting. Not that he’d tell you any of that, or even dwell on it himself. 

~I’m torn between Sylvain saying it was an accident and him using the argument that since the two of you were in love, it was only natural that you’d start a family together. How could you not want to have his children? Better yet, how was he supposed to know that you wanted to wait. 

~But if you continued to be unreasonable, he’d go on the defensive. Like, what are you going to do? Leave him? For what? To raise his baby on your own? Or, worse, abandon your child? If you thought he’d voiced unfairly negative opinions about women before, the way he’d talk about a mother who abandoned her child and such a good, happy life with a loving husband would be infinitely worse. After all, he wanted to make a change in your relationship and be happy together. He wanted to be a good, loving father. He wanted a family with you. After everything, what kind of person would you be to throw that all away?

~So that’s... a lot. 

~But Sylvain’s the type to be awful in the moment then regret it after the heat dies down. Knowing he’d hurt you would genuinely tear him up inside. All of that adoration and desperation to keep you with him because he’d feel like he needed you to be happy would kick in and he’d break down under the guilt and tell you how much he loved you, how happy it made him to think that the two of you could have a family, that he knew you would be a great mother, that he knew he’d messed up but he would make it up to you, that you really could be a happy family. 

~Just saying, I can see him taking a perverse sort of pleasure in the physical effects of pregnancy. Also, he’d definitely be a lot softer with you. Guilty conscience, anyone?

Dimitri (Dimi) (Jimmy)

~You, dear anon, said it better than I could have myself. I agree SO HARD that Dimitri would be terrified of being a parent, but at the same time I think, if it were to happen, he’d be utterly enamored with the idea. There’s a lot more that I think about how he’d regard fatherhood, but that’s the gist. 

~Funny thing is, darker Dimitri is just like... More needy... unbearably protective... Paranoid... less stable... bad at managing his emotions when it comes to you... But, like, the same general emotions about fatherhood would apply because that’s already pretty complex. Only, this time, with an obvious emphasis on how it would effect you and your relationship. 

~I was going to say that I can’t see Dimitri purposefully impregnating you, but that’s not entirely true. In a fit where he’s feeling especially raw and paranoid, I think he would do it very purposefully and even almost-kinda-sorta relish in the idea. 

~I view his obsessive feelings to be like an itch he can’t quite scratch because he knows better than anybody how easy it would be to lose you and doesn’t know how to manage both his own instability with the unpredictable world because at any moment it could all spiral apart. 

~So, this in mind, he could believe that having a baby would make things different. More than just vows or words or rings or anything, it would be a concrete and absolute tie between the two of you. He would have an unquestionable claim over you that would go beyond the scope of just your relationship, you’d be carrying the royal heir which would give Dimitri even further valid excuses to be suffocatingly overprotective.

~It would be... So messy... On the one hand, I think the concept of fatherhood, of being given another chance, of being needed that much more by both you and the child, would really appeal to him. It could even sand off some of the rougher edges of his darker traits, now that he had this assured security in keeping you with him. Sure, the itch wouldn’t be scratched entirely, but it would be easier to ignore, there would be a solid way to reassure himself that you were his.   

~But Dimitri’s got this awful middle ground of self awareness. Anything that would come off delusion would be a result of his endless attempts at rationalizing his unhealthy feelings and trying to make sense of it all without having to actually confront the issues. But that wouldn’t mean he wouldn’t know, on some level, that what he was doing wasn’t healthy and how bad it was for you. The guilt would be intense, which would be apart of the reason he needed to keep you so close all the time because then he could pretend that you needed him just as badly, that everything was all right because he could take care of you better than anyone else. 

~Dimitri’s self aware guilt would allow a part of himself to understand that he should let you go. He could even, on the bad days, convince himself that maybe, one day, he would allow you to leave him because he loved you, because what he was doing was wrong. As long as you were near him, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself, he would always hurt you. 

~But using pregnancy to force you to stay with him would, perhaps even in an intentional subconscious way, cut off that last-ditch contingency to ease his own guilt and pain of what he was doing by keeping you with him. Now that you were going to be having his child, the royal heir, would mean that you could never leave. He’d know it. You would probably know it, too. 

~After that point, Dimitri would double down with proving his affection, proving that he was capable of taking care of you and his child and that you could be a family and everything would be okay. 

[rantshemlock]

Midsommar

this contains spoilers for Midsommar 

so like, the cult is bad, right? you realise that? like you guys know cults are bad? like i know they were nice to her but you know this is a white supremacist cult thats manipulating mentally ill people to indoctrinate them? like you guys see that right?

i think maybe the scariest experience of Midsommar was seeing how much people completely accepted and justified everything the cult did in order to project into the fantasy of getting that ultimate catharsis; of completely breaking free from your terrible abusive boyfriend and doing so in a way that empowers you. but it’s a joke to pretend that Dani is empowered at all, or that she really wanted this.

Midsommar is about Dani, who suffers a personal tragedy and then travels with her horrible boyfriend and his awful friends (not you josh) to a cult in sweden for their nine-day midsummer festival. the longer they stay, the more dangerous and frightening the rituals become.

it’s kind of impossible to condense this movie to a short description without it sounding insanely stupid; there’s not a quick paragraph that really condenses the scope of this when so much of the movie is dedicated to crafting an incredibly specific mood. the visuals of the film are incredibly detailed and trying to describe them is almost pointless; its a movie that does need to be watched if you want to understand how Aster cultivates tone and pace. 

the utilisation of the incredibly limited colour; the way images are blended into pictures so subtly they are almost there only to create a subconscious understanding; the way sound is used to tell the story; the mood the permanent sunny day and clear skies sets in a world where the sun barely ever sets. it all adds something to Midsommar, makes it even more of an anxiety-inducing nightmare of the worst thing that could happen when left alone at a friend’s house.

i think one of the greatest skills in Midsommar’s toolkit is the dialogue; while i wouldn’t call it improv or naturalism, the dialogue is very natural and not-stagey, but laced with double meanings and subtext. i think this kind of incredibly believable dialogue is one of Aster’s strongest talents, and definitely one of the things i enjoy most about his movies.

i didnt really get as much out of Midsommar as i did out of my beloved Hereditary, but it’s hard to say exactly why that is outside of my own personal relationship to Hereditary. something about the scope and scale of Midsommar, the removal from the domestic, makes it a touch less personally evocative to me. 

Midsommar is a movie about gaslighting and abusive relationships, but there’s a pretty clear pattern in people recognising that with Dani’s horrible boyfriend and neglecting to see it in the cult. it’s very easy to get wrapped up in the cult’s apparent empathy and understanding of her trauma, but what we’re watching isn’t a genuine love and care for Dani. it’s an indoctrination tactic used to manipulate and brainwash her. all through the movie the cult imitates and pretends to share people’s pain, but they don’t truly experience Dani’s any more than they do that of the old man who survives a suicide attempt, only to be subsequently killed by the cult. they are merely reflecting what she was going through, utilising her pain to guide her to their own ends. 

the intention is stated clear as day during the exact same “does he make you feel held? does he feel like home to you?” conversation Pelle and Dani have that people love to reference so much as the heartwarming moment of the movie. Pelle tells Dani that his parents also died, but he never had to be sad because the cult was there for him, and then says that he’s glad Dani came on the trip to sweden because she’s the one he wanted there the most. later, we find out that it was the mission of Pelle and others to bring outsiders to the cult.

the meaning of this is clear; Pelle recognised that Dani was vulnerable, and took it upon himself to recruit her. this is a frequent favourite tactic of cults. the idea he was doing this trip out of the kindness of his heart is absurd; the cult deals in human sacrifice. he knew that he could more easily lead Dani to her death. 

pretending Dani is happy at the end of the film is a vast stretch, and pretending that any brief spell of happiness would justify what happened is even more so. right up until the very end she is either terrified or has been drugged, often without her knowledge or consent. she doesn’t know the extent to which innocent people have been murdered. she doesn’t know what the cult have planned, what their history is, what their future is. she can’t even communicate with the vast majority of the cult’s members. to pretend that she has any autonomy in this situation is to ignore how guided and controlled her actions are throughout the movie; she accepts the death of her boyfriend when she is drugged and almost catatonic from trauma, and is that really enough to say that she is happy? that she is docile and compliant?

throughout the film Dani is constantly trying to set up boundaries, to make tiny requests of people for her own wellbeing. time and time again they are ignored and overruled and her attempts to stand up for herself are flattened in the wake of other peoples desires. the cult is no different; none of her actions are borne of her own choices. no one has ever really cared what Dani wants. 

i think what is most prominent is that when Dani is becoming the may queen, an image of her sister committing suicide can be seen mixed into the trees in the background. drawing a direct parallel between death and Dani’s adoption as the May Queen feels like a very transparents statement of intent. 

what also should be mentioned is the white supremacist nature of the cult; of the victims, the first to die are all people of colour. white supremacist literature is seen around the camp. the cultists talk about how their children are born from specially chosen couples, in what is the most brushed over description of selected breeding and eugenics ive ever heard. every living person is white. it is not accidental or subtle. apparently the directors cut goes into much deeper detail on this idea; i couldnt say myself, i havent seen it. but its obvious in this film that this cult stands for the benefit only of themselves and the preservation of their rituals and past.

in the end the question to me is: was it all worth it? was all the suffering and pain the loss of life worth it, just for Dani to have a smile that expresses nothing but how far she has fallen into her trauma? 

one of the things that weighed on me watching the movie was that it was specified that the ritual lasts nine days -- we see maybe five. the other thing is that throughout the movie we are repeatedly shown dozens of photos of past May Queens, but never does a character ever introduce themselves as a past May Queen, never does a character reference other May Queens. after their need is abated, they just seem to vanish. it makes me wonder what happens in the other four days. 

[life-as-an-evolving-journey]

Sexual Abuse in Marriage

We’ll start hard and heavy, because this is the easiest way to weed out those who cannot handle certain topics, and that is ok. This story will include abortion and, you guessed it, sexual abuse. It is not an easy read for those who have experienced any kind of abuse, so TRIGGER WARNING. Prep yourself, get yourself in the right mood before reading this in its entirety.

I want to preface this conversation by reminding everyone that abuse is seen on both sides of the gender lines, so as I use my gender terms (so unnecessary), please do not believe that this situation could only happen to a woman. I also want you to understand that any anger I once felt towards my x-husband has subsided into more of an indifference at this point, and there is no need for nasty comments towards him or myself. We all do the best that we can with the tools we had at the time. I will do my best to explain the circumstances from both angles as much as I can, but it is not possible to have every bit of information for his side since I have never spoken with him about this situation.

This is a long one, and I tend to ramble, so please forgive me for the length in advance.

In May of 2013, my x-husband and I decided, mutually, to have an abortion when I got pregnant unexpectedly. In the long run, it was the right decision, but in the moment it did not feel like it. See, I used to be a strong pro-life advocate, with a keen sense of why women should not have abortions. So, having an abortion myself seemed a little bit like nonsense to me, but I agreed to it because my opinions were changing, and it genuinely felt like the right thing to do. My past belief system was not as accepting. In the beginnings of my journey after my abortion, I had to find a way to convince myself that I was doing the right thing, not for myself, but for the people who would have been most impacted by us having another child. That would have been my x-Mother-in-law at the time, as she watched our child while we worked. Between her husband’s business, and my first child, she had a lot on her plate, and weighing her down with helping us with another child would have been difficult for her. So I built this foundation to move forward based on that premise and that premise alone: It would have been hard for her. Then in August that year, her husband quit his private practice and suddenly she had a lot of extra free time. Free time that would not have complicated her life if we had asked her to help care for our toddler, and this potential newborn that we would have had. This completely crumbled the foundation I had built for myself.

Why is this important to the topic of sexual abuse in a marriage? Well, let me explain. After my abortion I was so frightened at the thought of having sex again because I did not want to get pregnant again and be forced to make the same decision. So I avoided it at all costs. This left my x-husband feeling lonely and dissatisfied. At the same time I felt like he was distant and cold when it came to talking about my emotions regarding my abortion. So once my foundation crumbled,I felt I could not “bother” him with my problems, so I built a new foundation based on the worst things possible. I convinced myself that I had murdered my child, that I was undeserving of any kind of love from anyone because I was a murderer. I would have nightmares constantly about different ways I had murdered my potential child, I would fall down in the middle of public spaces when I would hear a baby crying. My legs would just suddenly decide to stop working entirely, and I would fall. (That’s a sign of shock caused by trauma, as I would later learn.) This sequence of thoughts started soon after my previous foundation had crumbled, so around August. By October I had decided that I could not do it on my own anymore, and I went to the one person I believed I could trust whole-heartedly, to create a safe judgement-free zone for me, my x-husband. Well, you can guess that is not what he created, hence the x before husband. I told him about my troubles, and all he had to say was “you need to get over it, and see a therapist” Now, mind you, he is sexually pent up and feeling frustrated towards me because of it, and it is probably what caused him to respond that way. This, however, should not excuse his next response to his vulnerable, emotionally unstable wife.

Well, you stuck around with me this far. This is where it gets difficult for me to even type about. About two weeks after his cold response to my troubles, he comes to me requesting, nay demanding, sex. He says “I need it, I deserve it. Think about all of the sacrifices I ever made for you.” (Last statement is another story for a different time.) Lording my past mistakes over me like I owed him for the sacrifices he willingly chose to make. Dear, that is where sacrifice becomes debt, not sacrifice. But this, this is what he says to me. I respond with “no, I’m sorry, I’m just not ready yet.” through a river of tears as I feel awful that I am leaving him out to dry sexually. Instead of leaving it where it lies, he continually pesters me 3 or 4 times a day for the next week. Same argument, same response. He is relentless, and I feel trapped in a corner. If I don’t give it to him he will never leave me alone on the topic, never. So the, approximately, 21st to 28th time he asked, I agreed to it. To cope in the middle of it, I disconnected myself entirely from the situation, basically numbing myself, and thought about my dead child the entire time. He finished what he was doing, went back to playing his video games, and I cried myself to sleep on that lonely bedroom floor. I woke up feeling different, but not knowing what it was exactly, because in my head, at the time, it was not sexual abuse. He was justified in asking for it, and I had agreed. Little life lesson, that does not mean it was not sexual abuse. A partner emotionally manipulating you into giving them something they want that you do not that oversteps a personal boundary, ESPECIALLY a sexual boundary (something very sacred in a marriage), should always be respected, period. That is what makes this sexual abuse,because he did not respect my boundary. What makes this far worse, is that Physical Touch is my secondary love language, behind Quality Time, and this hit deeper than I could ever explain.  It has affected my life in numerous ways. I, to this day, have difficulty trusting straight men because I am so frightened that they are staring at me sexually. They don’t even have to act on it, they just need to be staring at me that way. I no longer want to feel pretty, because that would only entice a man. I haven’t had the pleasure (dripping sarcasm) to be in the same room alone with my x-husband since we got divorced in 2016, but when I think about it i tense up in ways I wish I didn’t have to experience. 

This instance, unfortunately, was not an isolated incident for the two of us. I began to see him differently, in ways I did not entirely understand back then. I started to feel ashamed of my body around him. I wanted to hide it so he could never touch it again. I explained this to myself by saying that I was just protecting myself from getting pregnant again. It’s not him that is the problem, it is sex. So he responded to getting sex from me using the same emotional manipulation tactic for the next 3 years before I left him. He would also get me drunk to get me to do things that I wouldn’t normally do. I only know this because he openly admitted that to me once.Sex eventually became a scheduled event for us. I attempted to compromise with him, but his version to compromise was to have sex 4 times a week, and it was unreasonable, but he refused any other offer. He said that I just need to do that for him for a couple of weeks, and then he would be satisfied for a while, but never defined how long “a while” was. Even after I left him, about 2 weeks later, I agreed to meet him at Starbucks. He got the wrong impression about why I agreed to it, and once he realized that, he changed the topic immediately to getting sex from me one last time using the same emotional manipulation tactic statement I mentioned before. Thus proving to me that there was no limit for him when it came to crossing my boundary expectations on sex. During all of this I eventually convinced myself that I could never do anything correctly, and I would never amount to anything special. This type of thinking is what made me excuse a lot of his abuse over the years. 

To sum all of this up, I wouldn’t post something so personal so publicly if I did not think that telling my story wouldn’t help someone on their own personal journey with something similar. You are not alone if you are sexually abused by your partner. Marriage does not make sex obligatory or a requirement, and never let someone convince you otherwise.

[davids-cartoon-corkboard]

I'm starting to think that Venomous and Shadowy Figure aren't twin brothers but one of them is the turbonic form of Laserblast. It's hard to say for sure which one is the turbo form because while Venomous is similar in personality to Laserblast ( Calm and collected, likes cute animals, romantically attracted to those who show strength. ) it feels like Shadowy Figure is more actively fit, carefree, goofy, and seems to genuinely care for K.O which gives him heroic traits.

I think Venomous and Shadowy Figure are brothers (maybe nottwins), and Shadowy Figure is Laserblast. However, Shadowy isn’tturbo!Laserblast. Which sounds confusing, but I’ll try to explain.

(longish post under the cut)

Coincidences happen all the time in real life. But OK KO isa story, and coincidences don’t happen nearly as often in stories. This storyhas only two purple snake people. Not two prominentpurple snake people, two purple snake people period. And they’re both voiced by Steven Ogg! They’re connected somehow.To fit with the show’s themes of family and identity, they’re either related orthe same person. (If someone can think of a third option that would fit, I’dlove to hear it.)

Ven and Shadowy aren’t the same person. Shadowy is veryfixated on KO and his power. Wouldn’t figuring out how to obtain it be aninteresting and complex project for Ven? But Ven had been dealing withlong-term boredom as of “Boxman Crashes”. Wouldn’t he have at least mentionedbeing frustrated at “not making progress” or being “stuck on a problem”? Thosetwo puzzle pieces don’t fit together.

Also, Shadowy Figure made a huge tactical blunder that wouldn’t have happened if he wasVenomous. When Fink was upset she couldn’t go to the party in “Villain’s Night In”, Ven apologized for disappointing her (via text, but still an apology). Every good parent knows the powerof an apology. And from a strategic standpoint, Shadowy should have apologizedfor hurting KO. I doubt he feels guilty about it, but when has the idea oflying ever stopped people like him? The second time he interacted with KO wasin “Let’s Have a Stakeout”. He acted manipulative, insulted KO, and physicallyattacked him. What if he hadn’t done that? What if he had met KO in the sewersand said, “I’m sorry”?

“KO, I’m sorry for what happened to the Plaza. If I hadknown the true extent of your power I would never have pushed you so hard inthe first place. I wanted to help you, but I wasn’t careful enough and wound uphurting you and many others instead. This is all my fault, and I am so, sosorry.”

Suddenly KO doesn’t feel quite so guilty for wrecking thePlaza, because Shadowy has taken the blame instead. Suddenly this guy isn’t anenemy, but a potential ally who just made a mistake. People forgive KO when hemakes mistakes, shouldn’t he do the same? And so what if Shadowy’s POW cardsays he’s level negative eight? KO’s card obviously isn’t accurate, so maybeShadowy’s isn’t either!

Maybe KO starts to trust Shadowy again, putting him in theideal situation to be manipulated. Carol and Gar and everyone else would thinkhis new friend was evil, so KO can’t tell them he’s visiting Shadowy. Shadowywants to fix this, so maybe it’s okay for him to take a few hair and salivasamples. Both want KO to use this power responsibly, so maybe he’d considerpracticing with it… just a little…

But Shadowy isn’t Venomous, so he messed up and none of thathappened. It would have been so cool,though.

Since Ven and Shadowy are not the same person, they must berelated. I only call them brothers for convenience, they could be cousins orsomething.

Where does Laser fit into this? Well, he’s not dead. Acharacter isn’t confirmed dead if nobody finds the body. And it doesn’t makesense for him to have said “screw this” and gone off to chill on a tropicalisland for the past six to eleven years without letting anyone know he wasokay. He must still be relevant. “Where did Laser go?” and “Where did Shadowycome from?” are questions that easily answer one another.

Both the blue and green orbs activated in the “Let’s Take aMoment” flashback. It’s possible the red orb also activated, removing Laser’spowers. Laser is clearly KO’s father. Children tend to inherit their powersfrom their parents. Shadowy wants KO’s power, but we don’t know the reason. Laserhas a reason, though. Them being the same person would fill in that blank verynicely.

While Shadowy is morecarefree and goofy than Laser, Shadowy isn’t under the pressure of Being a GoodExample, Not Disappointing Foxtail, and Not Blowing His Cover. I’m much morepolite and formal at my job than I am at home. This difference in personalitycan likely be chalked up to a difference in environment. Goofy isn’t inherentlya heroic trait either, Boxman is very goofy but he is absolutely a villain.

I don’t see any evidence for the Laser=Ven idea. While theirpersonalities are similar, it’s possible that’s just due to being raised in thesame environment. Sure, Ven has something to do with turbo power, but hisinterest in KO specifically is minimal, even though KO is apparently a sourceof it. He doesn’t seem to prioritize antagonizing KO over Rad or Enid. He hasno reason to attack the Plaza or its members other than to have fun withBoxman. We haven’t seen him interact with or comment on Carol. His opinion onP.O.I.N.T. seems to be wholly negative instead of wistful or bittersweet. Therearen’t enough strings linking the two for me to think they’re the same person.

Laserblast is Shadowy Figure, and that person is Venomous’brother. “Shadowblast” wants KO’s power so he can restore his own. But thepower he wants isn’t just turbo power. In “Boxman Crashes”, Venbecame more snakelike when he lost his temper. Ven has shapeshifting abilities,but he doesn’t use them a lot because he fights with science instead of hisbody. His brother Shadowy may have also had shapeshifting abilities. But sinceShadowy is a physical fighter, hewould have had more incentive to train and improve his powers.

Perhaps he got so good at shapeshifting he could change intoa human form?

And that is where“Laserblast” comes from. No turbo power, no two identities housed in one body,just regular-ass shapeshifting and a whole lot of lies.

KO’s eyes are typically brown (like Carol’s?), but have beenred, purple, both, or a mix when influenced by turbo power.

Maybe Shadowy hadpurple eyes and tried to change them to red to match Laser’s visor beam, butcouldn’t do it fully? Laser always hid his eyes because one was stuck atpurple. We could see this heterochromia in modern day Shadowy and that will beThe Big Reveal.

But why wouldShadowy undergo such a dramatic change for such a long period of time?

My theory is that Ven and Shadowy are from a formerlypowerful villain family. Shadowy had a mission to infiltrate P.O.I.N.T., butcouldn’t complete it because he lost his powers and permanently reverted to hisoriginal form (except possibly for his red eye). His failure disgraced thefamily. Ven often wears a hat and glasses in public and Shadowy Figure wears ahood because they don’t want to be recognized as members of the disgracedfamily.

Shadowy wants his powers back so he doesn’t have to sneakaround everywhere. Perhaps he even wants to become Laser again, to make up astory about why he was gone so long and return to his former friends. Cob knowshis family won’t take him back.

Shadowy had major shapeshifting abilities, while Carol hasnone. This gives KO minor shapeshifting abilities. Because the abilities are sominor (and possibly because he doesn’t know he has them), they only manifestwhen boosted by turbo power. We can see this in “You’re Level 100”, when KO wasusing turbo power before TKO had fully formed. His eyes, teeth, and claws areclearly different.

KO’s minor shifting powers with enough turbonic energyshould get Shadowy back to his original ability level.

“But David!” you ask. “If Shadowy’s power is onlyshapeshifting, then where does KO’s turbo power come from?”

It comes from Carol. And I know that sounds like a reach,but hear me out. Carol can mimic any combat move she sees. We see this mostoften when she copies Gar’s signature move. But it’s not your standard elbowattack- it also emits a pink energy. This suggests Carol could mimic otherenergy emitting moves.

Remember that turbo collar Ven made for Fink? It worked very well! The only reason it stopped was because it ran out of power. There weren’t any glitches or malfunctions. That means it probably isn’t the first iteration of this project. Perhaps he’s had prototypes for years and years, but hardly made useof them because he a) didn’t have a stable glorb supply, b) doesn’t dohand-to-hand combat himself, and/or c) didn’t trust anyone he might have beenworking with to use it. But he let Fink have it because she’s loyal and theynow have access to Boxman’s glorbs.

The tree under the Plaza is a source of glorbs. Presumablythere’s another one somewhere else underground, as suggested by the glorbcluster Gar sealed up in “GarQuest”. There are likely more of them scatteredacross the world. If we’ve noticedthe similarity between glorbs and the colored orbs, P.O.I.N.T. may have too.Carol’s new outfit in the “GarQuest” flashback suggests she still did somenon-secret hero work after Laser’s death, presumably until she realized she waspregnant. I think she was sent on a mission to make sure a glorb tree didn’tfall under villain control, and got in a fight when she arrived; perhapsagainst Venomous himself, perhaps against someone he used to test the collar on.If Carol fought a collar-powered villain while in a glorb-rich environment, shecould have used her ability to temporarily go turbo herself.

Which could do odd things to a fetus.

While KO has a weaker version of his father’s power, he alsohas a weaker version of his mother’s. “Copycat” becomes “Imprint”. He can copyan energy-emitting ability… but only once, and then he’s stuck with it.Normally he wouldn’t have been able to do this until after he was born, butsince he was essentially soaked inturbo power, he imprinted early.

This would explain why his standard power fist is blue- it’sthe color of a normal glorb. Only under special circumstances can he use theturbo version. It might also be why PKO’s headband and wristbands are blue.

That’s why Carol has no fucking clue what’s going on withher kid. It wasn’t a particularly memorable mission, and she was focused on hergrief. She has no reason to connect it to KO’s situation six to eleven yearslater. Maybe now that Foxtail’s done a heel face turn we can get access to someold mission files.

I’d say, “this is a bit complex for a children’s cartoon”,but Gravity Falls and Steven Universe pulled off some wild shit. It couldhappen!

This was probably way more of a reply than either of us were expecting, haha. But that’s my take on things! Y’all are welcome to bring up new evidence, alternate theories, corrections, etc.

[ohjohnno]

Outrageous Fortune Reviewcap: S1E07 (”Foul Deeds Will Rise”)

Y’know, I never really appreciated how good some of these episode titles were until this second run-through. Foul deeds in-deed. This episode is really something else, and I’m going to enjoy running through it, but before I do I just gotta quickly clarify one thing.

I mentioned, in the first post, that Loretta had a penchant for blackmail and also that she’d found a way to skip school most of the time. Well, I forgot to mention that those two were one and the same. Jethro’s current girlfriend, Caroline (who I misidentified before as the headmistress - she’s actually only deputy principal) has been fucking him since he was fifteen, and Loretta has pictures. She’s using that to blackmail her into letting her skip just about every day at school. I mention it now because it’s about to become very important.

I’m gonna have to do this episode in much the same way as I did episode four. It’s not nearly as dizzyingly densely-written as that one, but it nonetheless eschews the usual separate-plots format to focus on one fairly distinct throughline. There are, I suppose, technically two plots, but they have pretty much total overlap and are both driven almost entirely by the same character: Loretta West.

She gets this episode all to herself, pretty much, though Ted and Jethro naturally play very important roles. This is our deepest look into her psyche yet, and it happens - not coincidentally - to be another of my favorite ever episodes of the show.

We open with all the Wests, except Jethro, in the kitchen. Ted’s about to go off to play bowls with Margaret, and Loretta’s not any happier than she was last episode. Ted mentions that Margaret is on the local committee for the sport, which will be important. Margaret shows up, and cajoles Ted into admitting that the two of them are planning to move away together, which leaves Cheryl pretty much overjoyed. Loretta, though, looks as if Ted just tore out her heart and shattered it upon the ground. 

The two of them leave, and Cheryl reminds the rest of them that Jethro’s bar admittance ceremony is coming up (Van’s not enthused about having to go). Loretta, though, doesn’t give a fuck; she follows Cheryl into her room and immediately sets about trying to convince her to stop Ted from leaving. 

It doesn’t take one of Loretta’s intellect to work out that Cheryl is just happy she won’t have to look after Ted anymore, and she doesn’t bother trying to deny it. So Loretta turns to her next tactic: she immediately, and without a moment’s hesitation, outs Margaret as transgender to Cheryl, and in the most primally transphobic way she can conjure. “You know she’s a man, right?”, she seethes, making various horrible gestures as she explains it all to Cheryl. And Cheryl is certainly shocked, but it’s the neutral, just-plain-amazed kinda shock, free from any judgement and remarkably lacking in any real prejudice. She has no idea which pronouns to use, but ultimately just doesn’t really care. “Look, Margaret is a very nice woman who used to be a very nice man,” she says, very satisfyingly, and the disgusted Loretta is forced to her last resort: revealing that Margaret is a wanted criminal on the run from the law. But she must have known, on some level, that a woman as seasoned in the criminal world as Cheryl wouldn’t care about that either, and it all ends up with Loretta storming angrily out of the room as Cheryl continues to vocally give no shits about any of it.

Meanwhile, Jethro is preparing for his barring ceremony in the most appropriate way he can imagine.

Loretta’s still present, though, living rent-free in Caroline’s head, constantly grating between her and Jethro as the sandpapery wall that prevents them from living as a regular, out couple. Caroline fantasizes, mildly, about just straight-up killing her; Jethro doesn’t seem to object. 

Loretta’s conduct the next day doesn’t help any. A teacher called Smail (poor guy) reminds her that she’s gotta do a speech about her favorite family member soon, a concept that bores her enough that she goes right to Caroline and demands that she call the man off. Caroline points out, really quite reasonably, that she literally can’t do this, which doesn’t faze Loretta one bit. She makes her ultimatum clear: Smail leaves her alone, or she reveals to the world that Caroline fucked a student.

Let’s pause and review for a second. Loretta, less than seven minutes into this episode, has just done two things that are both kind of awful in different ways. Firstly, she outed a trans woman without a moment’s second thought in order to try and serve her own ends, and this becomes more awful when you remember that she fully understands - indeed, is maybe the only member of the cast who does - how much prejudice they face. Indeed, that exact knowledge is what drove her to do it; she was trying to manipulate the prejudice she assumed she’d find in her own mother in order to achieve her own ends. The second is more complicated; threatening to destroy the life of a statutory rapist isn’t really all that objectionable in itself, one might think, and Caroline surely does not deserve much of our sympathy. But Loretta doesn’t give a toss about the morality here, of course. She just views it as a nice, efficient way to realize her aggressive laziness, and we can rest assured that Caroline’s own moral failings are no more important to Loretta than those of any fly she might swat.

We cut to Ted and Margaret enjoying their bowls tournament, all the while surreptitiously taking photos of the place. It is revealed, in a conversation between them, that they’ve gone back to their old ways; the two of them are constructing a meticulous plan to rob the club blind, and they seem to be having great fun doing it. Again, I want to stress this: there is never any suggestion of anything untoward in Ted and Margaret’s relationship, and there’s no evidence of dishonesty, manipulation or anything else. The two really do love each other, and it’s honestly very wholesome. I mean, aside from the whole conspiracy to rob a bunch of their fellow old folks, I guess.

Cut to Ted back in the house, talking to Loretta. She doesn’t want him to go, and she says so. What follows is a conversation that quickly goes down the drain. 

It starts out innocently enough; Loretta reminds us all, in case we’ve forgotten, that she’s a teenage girl, and tells Ted that he’s “the only one in this fucked-up family who actually understands me”. But when the various garden-variety guilt trips and whatnot fail to move him, Loretta goes for the jugular: she mentions Rita. Well, I say “mentions”, but it’s really more like she wields her name as a bludgeon, suddenly abandoning all her sweet softness and just straight up wailing on Ted’s weakest point, implying that he’s selfish and the moral equivalent of an adulterer for finding someone new. Ted’s furious, and not a little upset; you can tell it got to him, and it may indeed have accomplished Loretta’s goal of giving him second thoughts. This wasn’t as calculated as Loretta’s usual cruelty, though; you can tell it came from a place of genuine hurt. She really is upset about the thought of her favorite family member leaving, and the truth is that this sort of reaction to the prospect of (perceived) abandonment isn’t actually too out of the ordinary for teenagers. Does that mean we should let it slide? Not really, but this time, I do understand. Anyway, Jethro and Caroline show up before Ted can respond, and they have a private conversation with Loretta in her room.

Jethro tries to convince Loretta to “just do what the nice teacher says”, for once. Loretta is unmoved. She’s generously come up with a solution for her Smail woes, too: she’s gonna accuse him of sexual assault, and Caroline’s gonna get him fired. Even Jethro is a little shocked at the newfound depths of the moral void present in the teenage girl sitting before him, and it’s true that it really is an absolutely awful thing to contemplate, let alone propose as a genuine plan. Blackmailing a teacher who really did commit sexual assault is one thing, but annihilating the life and career of a perfectly innocent one by falsely accusing him of that same thing (except, arguably, worse) just to avoid having to do one fucking speech is something entirely different. It also serves the nicely revealing function of letting us know for certain what we had already guessed: that Loretta doesn’t give a flying shit about the fact that what Caroline did was actually wrong. To her, it’s just another weapon she can use.

Meanwhile, Judd is trying as hard as he can to think of a reason to write a letter recommending that Jethro be denied entry to the bar. We cut, ominously, to Ted and Margaret planning their job. Ted is still thinking about Loretta’s words, and starts getting sentimental; “I swore there’d never be another woman,” he says, and Margaret says something about getting out of that on a technicality which I’m pretty sure no actual trans person would ever actually say, and which does make me wince a little. Ted mentions that Loretta loved Rita, which isn’t the last time that’ll come up.

Jethro is trying to console a very upset Caroline, who is just about at breaking point. Loretta, in her youthful inexperience, has dared to push it too far; Caroline is so distraught by the whole affair that she’s actually pretty much willing to commit career suicide and just let her send the photos, feeling that death (so to speak) would be a better fate than the abominable constant torture of living at the beck and call of a lazy, smug fifteen-year-old girl. So Jethro comes to Loretta in the middle of the night (prompting a very strange quip about incest from her) and leaves her an ultimatum: either she uses the photos now, or the blackmail stops. Loretta tries, in vain, to convince him otherwise, reminding him of the consequences, but he turns it round on her, asking if she’s considered how, exactly, Cheryl will react when she finds out what Loretta’s been doing. Loretta turns it back round against him, threatening to reveal his Maori fraud (and as far as I can tell, she’s the first white person in the show to pronounce the word “Maori” like the Maori do); Jethro simply points out that this would just straight-up break Cheryl’s heart, and has to trust that there’s at least something other than pure void in the girl’s soul that’ll restrain her. He leaves her with that, presumably nervous as anything. After all, he's Loretta’s family, and he knows perhaps even better than Caroline just how low she can go. So this is a tremendously big gamble for him to take.

Cut to the video hut next day. Loretta’s on the verge of tears in the office she commandeered from the real owner, and she’s particularly snappy with Kurt, even by her standards. “Why can’t I just live the way I say? Me getting what I want, is that too much to ask?” It’s not my favorite dialogue in the show - it’s a bit too on-the-nose, honestly - but it’s not exactly out of character. It turns out Loretta doesn’t have the photos; she had stashed them in Ted’s unit, and when it burned down, they went with it. She’s been bluffing ever since, and up until now, it had worked. But she’d done that thing young geniuses like her so often do: she’d overestimated her own intelligence, overplayed her hand. If she hadn’t been so lazy this once, she might’ve been able to keep the charade going until the end, but now everything’s fallen apart and she’s managed to sweep her own legs out from underneath her. She’s going to have to start going to school now. She thinks that’s tragic. And in a way it is. What’s that classic friendlyshark review on Letterboxd? “TRAGIC DRAMA. SHARK DESTROYED BY OWN HUBRIS. MASTERFUL.”

Things don’t get any better for her anytime soon. Margaret shows up when Loretta’s on her way into school, and she’s correctly divined that Loretta is trying to prevent Ted from leaving. She’s not having that at all; she tells her to stay out of the two of their business or she’ll, and I quote here, “rip your fucking tongue out”. And she does it all with a big smile on her face!  She also tells Loretta that she’s the spitting image of Rita, which is - again - not the last time we’ll hear that.

What’s shaping up here is a remarkably unusual kind of plot for TV shows outside of the sitcom realm. Loretta sure is the protagonist here, and her challenges, goals, and cast of villains is now all laid out before us. But “villains” here feels weird, because there’s nothing villainous about what Margaret is doing. She’s just protecting a relationship she cares deeply about from ruination at the hands of a selfish, frighteningly intelligent young girl, and there’s still no suggestion that her love for Ted isn’t genuine. If it wasn’t clear before, it’s becoming clear now: this is a plot with a villain protagonist, and Margaret is playing with something dangerous here.

We cut to Van, delicately polishing his toenails before scrambling to hide all the gear when Jethro comes in. He mostly ignores him and makes his way to Loretta’s room, looking for the photos. Loretta tells him she isn’t gonna use them because she “can’t do it to mum”, but Jethro knows her better than that; I don’t think he really expected that gambit he pulled to actually work, and he’s suspicious now that it did. Loretta tries hard not to spill the beans, but Jethro works it out anyway, and leaves gleefully secure in the knowledge that the photos are long gone. 

                                                           Kia kaha!

This pisses her right off. And sheer rage is what seems to motivate her next move: flagrantly ignoring the old West no-snitching code and putting together an anonymous report about who Margaret really is, posting it to the police. We don’t see the effects of that right away, though - we cut, instead, to Jethro telling the overwhelmingly relieved Caroline that the photos don’t exist anymore. She’s giddily excited at the prospect of her and Jethro becoming a regular couple. Jethro... well, he’s not as excited. You can see the enormity of it washing over him all at once, actually; it hits him, as Caroline is exploding with excitement before him, that he’s actually going to have to be seen out in public with her, and that now their relationship will involve more than just sex. Instantly, in that moment, you can tell this thing is doomed. But he invites her to his barring ceremony anyway.

It’s later, and Loretta and Ted are playing chess. It’s not clear who’s winning. Loretta eventually gives up anyway and tells Ted she’s going to give her speech about him. It’s a tender little scene, actually; Antonia Prebble really brings her A-game to this episode, capturing a very wide range of emotions in young Loretta, and it’s clear she really does love and care about her grandfather very dearly. 

He reappears the next morning, as Cheryl is making clear she will attend Loretta’s speech and drag Pascalle along with her (Van declares he isn’t going, and nobody seems to have any objection). Ted expresses an interest in it, too, in his usual feigned-dementia way. The good vibes are interrupted, though, by the demons Loretta herself conjured up earlier; Judd and Hickey turn up talking about “Mark”, making it clear that they’re onto Margaret, even if they don’t actually know where she lives or even really who she is (apparently she’s been savvy enough to keep her real name off any records). Judd not-so-subtly implies that he might use this as a reason to get Jethro denied admission to the bar. 

Now Cheryl cares.

She still doesn’t care enough to stop any of their plans, but she does make it clear, as non-maliciously as possible, that Margaret isn’t welcome in the West house anymore. Ted and Margaret, later, have some discussion about whether to continue with the job at all; Ted wants to call it off, but Margaret insists that they continue. The one concession she makes is that they move the job forward and do it tonight. Ted is conflicted, since that means missing Loretta’s speech, but ultimately his love for Margaret wins out.

The Wests, minus only Ted and Van, show up at the school, reminiscing about bygone days. Jethro reveals to the family that he’s dating Caroline, which seems to have Pascalle equal parts disgusted and amused. Cheryl is a bit nonplussed, too, but they’re all interrupted by Loretta, anxious and nervous that Ted hasn’t showed up yet. That’s because Ted is, at that very moment, getting ready to break into the club. He won’t be showing, and poor Loretta is waiting in vain, standing next to the man she would have completely destroyed without a second’s hesitation to get out of doing this very speech.

Loretta has to give her speech anyway, and the stage doesn’t suit her. But she finds her stride anyway, with the help of a jab at lawyers (Jethro very much included). What follows is a nicely efficient mix of character exploration, setting exposition, and plot development.

Loretta’s speech is, as promised, about Ted (”Theodore Francis West”), and she doesn’t pull any punches. The audience is shocked when she proudly mentions that he was once known as “the finest safe-cracker of his generation”, but this only seems to spur her on; offending the polite society with which she feels no connection is clearly instinctively pleasurable to her. We learn a bit about Ted’s early life; he married and had children young, he had a code of ethics he followed almost without fail, he was superstitious, and he was meticulous. This, then, is the origin of the West family profession, and Loretta seems to find it as romantic as anybody else might. But as she speaks - specifically, as she mentions that Ted’s targets always used to include sports clubs - she reaches a sudden, overwhelming moment of epiphany, and we know well what it is, because the whole thing has been intercut with scenes of Ted and Margaret expertly breaking into and robbing the bowls club.

She really is the smartest West. She’s also inherited both her mother’s drive and her father’s clarity of vision; the moment she finishes her speech, she fucks right off, failing to convince Jethro to lend her his car (she “drives like a maniac”, apparently, which isn’t surprising considering she’s fifteen) and thus instead just stealing and hotwiring a random unlocked one she finds in the parking lot. She drives off, coincidentally passing Judd and Hickey (surveiling Margaret’s house, I think, and very much not enjoying each other’s company) while, back at the school, Cheryl fails to get used to the fact that Jethro is dating his old teacher, and Jethro’s blood runs cold when he hears mention of a car stolen from just outside. 

She drives quite well, actually, and Judd and Hickey don’t recognise her. Cut to Ted and Margaret, jubilant with excitement at the success of their job. Ted opts to walk home, leaving the money with Margaret, who promises to pick him up tomorrow morning. But as she drives off, she encounters Loretta, and the two have a confrontation in the dark.

Loretta makes it clear: Margaret is to leave, and she’s not to take Ted with her. Margaret, of course, doesn’t see why she should - she loves Ted, after all, and what could be more important than that?

What Loretta says next is important.

“Do you love him enough to go back inside?” she asks. And that’s a threat that confused me at first, because what she’s threatening is basically to snitch, and hasn’t she already done that? But it’s different now, of course, because Loretta knows more. She’s at the scene of the crime; she’s a credible witness who can place her there and identify her car. Her prior act of snitching was limited, being entirely anonymous and based only off a decades-old cold case about a prison runaway; this time, she has real dirt, and the police will be far more motivated to pursue this one. And there’s another implication here, one that makes it all so much more horrible: if she tells the police about this, she’ll be putting Ted in the line of fire too. Is that what Loretta’s implying here? Does she really realise that’s what she’s doing? The dialogue leaves it open to interpretation, which may be intentional. Personally, though? I think she knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s forcing Margaret into a horrible choice: either risk the both of them getting caught and, one way or the other, separated, or just leave now and leave them both separated but, at least, still free. Either way, they won’t be together.

Loretta justifies this to herself as concern for Ted, who, she tells Margaret, is just too old for this sort of thing. Maybe she’s right - I dunno, he still seemed pretty spry when he broke into that safe. But are those really her reasons? Somehow, I’m skeptical. And that doesn’t jive very well with the veiled threat to put him in danger of prison, does it?

Cut to the West home. Loretta’s home already when the others all get back. She says she walked home; Cheryl believes her. Jethro knows better. He’s furious, since Loretta’s little stunt put him in danger; if she’d gotten caught, that might’ve endangered his admittance to the bar. Loretta’s response is as quintessentially teenage-girl as it gets. “I had my reasons, okay? And you wouldn’t understand.”

Next morning, Cheryl hears news of the break-in on the radio. Loretta lies as expertly as ever and reassures her that Ted wouldn’t be capable of such a thing. Ted pops his head out of his room, asking if the phone had gone for him; Loretta says the phone didn’t go. And that is such a quietly, horribly tragic moment - Ted facing up to the horrible beginnings of building, dreadful feelings of betrayal and abandonment; it being mistaken, by anyone present, for just his regular demented-old-man rambling, taken seriously by nobody; Loretta playing along with it, cold and sharp as ice, knowing the enormity of what she’s hiding from him and seeing what it’s doing to him and still displaying absolutely no response to it - that it rips me up inside a little bit every time I see it.

Cheryl doesn’t want him coming to Jethro’s barring ceremony; Loretta offers to stay and look after him. And if, at this point, you feel a sudden cresting wave of appalled, horrified disgust at that little thing, sitting there innocent and contented as a lamb as she awaits the full detonation of that abominable time-bomb of trauma and grief she just planted for her own grandfather, ready to be there with first-aid when it goes - well, that’s only natural.

We cut now to the only part of this episode that really doesn’t concern Loretta at all: Jethro’s barring ceremony. In its own way, that’s kind of horrible in itself, after all, but really Judd had it right earlier in the episode: “have you ever met a lawyer that wasn’t a ratbag?” Jethro’s general scummery ain’t exactly out of the ordinary for his profession, and one expects that he’ll fit right in. The ceremony itself is as big a moment for Cheryl as it is for Jethro, but alas, it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

The afterparty contains a couple of pretty great jokes - the head of Jethro’s law firm hesitantly trying to tread the line between admitting and not admitting that he’s seen Pascalle stripping; him also mistaking Van for Jethro and being absolutely baffled by his behavior - but one plot-important thing does take place: Tracy Hong shows up, for unimportant reasons, and promptly and immediately realises that the man she had sex with that one time was definitely Jethro and not Van. That will be important, though not perhaps in the way I’d like.

Judd and Hickey call off their surveillance, though not before Hickey creeps out Judd some more. Elsewhere, Caroline tells Jethro she loves him before they sleep; Jethro doesn’t say it back, and he dreams about Tracy. Uh oh. 

And then we’re back in the West household, populated only by Ted and Loretta. 

And this one hurts.

This show doesn’t pull any punches, and Frank Whitten (R.I.P) throws into it with all his might. Ted is in two. He’s ripped apart, torn up, absolutely shattered, utterly distraught with a truly awful concoction of grief, confusion, betrayal and pain. It was never in any doubt, and it’s even less in doubt now: Ted loved Margaret. He loved her deeply and truly. And right now, he is in overwhelming agony.

And then there’s Loretta.

A lot of people will talk about fictional characters they hate. Not hate in the sense of critiquing the quality of their writing, but hate in the sense that they just loathe them. Dolores Umbridge and Joffrey Baratheon are the most common names mentioned. But let me tell you that in this moment, when I’m watching this brief, minute-long scene, I have never hated either of them with even a cinder’s worth of the hate that I feel for Loretta in this moment. She’s sitting there, tender and soft, gently caressing Ted with needles concealed within cushions. “She’s not coming, Grandpa;” “Maybe she didn’t really love you.” She leans in close to him and whispers: “but I’m still here.” She looks the desolation and annihilation she has wrought square in his trembling, tear-stained eyes, reaches into his shattered soul, and reconstructs it with threads that all lead back to her. She weaponizes the agony she conjured in him to root him even firmer to the spot, building the moss-encrusted walls of grief that were erected with Rita’s death even higher up round him, constructing a fortress of pain in which the only exit leads to her.

She didn’t do this because “he’s old”, or any other altruistic concern. She did it because she loves her grandpa. She loved him so much, in fact, that she didn’t want him to ever leave her side; he is, as she said in her speech, her oldest and best friend. And she has precious few friends, as we know. She has little to cling to in this world. So when she faces the prospect of losing one of those rocks, she moves heaven and Earth to keep it locked firmly where it is. 

“Sometimes you’re so like your grandmother,” says Ted. “So I’ve been told,” says Loretta, hugging him, satisfied that she achieved her goal. She’s not losing Ted. She’s had to shatter him into a million pieces and make him live through the worst pain imaginable once again, but that’s okay with her. If anything, it’s strengthened his bond with her. Things have turned out better than she could possibly have imagined.

I hate Loretta West. I hate her with every fiber of my being. She is, truly and deeply and utterly to her core, a monster. All her excuses, all her alienation, all her teenage rage - all of that just makes it worse. She’s a complex, three-dimensional human being, one of the best-written characters I have ever encountered, laden with layers and depth and commentary on levels I’ve never seen before. And she is, far and away, the blackest, most evil, most hateful and horrible soul I have ever seen on television. Sure, she hasn’t got a body count like Joffrey or Hannibal, but that’s just setting and context, and by that metric the worst monster in television history is some Cylon from BSG. This is a show set in the suburbs in a well-developed country, and it’s not about murderers or wars. It’s about a little suburban family of screw-ups and misfits, and at their core, sitting at the dinner table alongside them every night, is a child whose heart is as black as obsidian, whose capacity for evil is deep as a black hole. And the thing she does in this episode is evil, make no mistake. It’s so evil it’s honestly kind of nauseating. It gets worse the more you think about it, fractally awful, a kaleidescope of blackness.

And she’ll do it again.

Anyway, erm... I don’t really remember what happens in the next episode. It’ll be fun to remind myself. Until next time, I suppose.

[erenthecoordinate]

Hi! Any thought on the chapter?

I don’t have a whole ton to say about this chapter, honestly, it was a conveniently paced setup chapter.  We got a couple significant reveals, potential foreshadowing, and an epic cliffhanger.

To touch up on the latter, a number of people believe this is the climax of it all and that we only have several chapters until the finish.  Personally, this feels more like a buildup to the bigger, ultimate climax.  Business needed to be taken care of with Marley first.  The true happening is solving what happens to Eldia(ns) in the long-term.  I was hoping for more answers regarding Eren, but it seems we’ll have to wait an action sequence before we get his internal insight on anything.  There is still some stacked-on evidence of his intentions though, and I don’t think that should go unnoticed.

It is kind of a no-brainer that Pieck’s intimidation tactics to get Eren to submit wouldn’t work out.  At this point, Eren is confident (maybe too confident) that no one can afford to kill him without a fight.  And he sure as hell would put up one.  She decides quickly that her better option is to appear desperate for his cooperation to take down the nation that had devastated the island in the first place, and that he in turn infiltrated back.  This isn’t the first time we see Pieck so easily put her hands up and appear harmless, of course, but she makes it convincing enough where Gabi is questioning where her loyalties lie.  Interestingly, much of what she is saying in regards to her opinions of Marley is genuine, but that doesn’t mean she sees Eldia’s Paradis as allies, much less Eren.  So, props to Pieck for her deception and information prodding.

Between Eren and Pieck, Eren is one with little words and feigns ignorance to a lot of her questions.  He obviously knows why Zeke has the abilities he possesses, and quizzes Pieck to see how much she knows.  It is clear neither trust one another, but it makes we wonder if Eren would actually consider allying with another warrior if they were interested in aligning with his plan.  I don’t think he intended to ever believe her seeing as how he braced himself for a fight and stood quite a bit away from Pieck and Gabi when he asked her to point her comrades out.  It just would be interesting to see if he would at all.  Guess we’ll never know now.

I see you’ve taken some lessons from Annie again, Eren.  I wonder if we’ll ever see what object he is using in his pocket.

Anyway, with the two’s conversation, some things were revealed.  Eren is aware of the spinal fluid that’s in the wine.  He is likely aware of who drank the wine or at least who would be at risk. That said, I’m not entirely convinced Eren initiated or advocated for this wine plot to happen, and am better convinced by a theory that implies there was more forward planning before his (willing or unwilling) participation.  Maybe I’m just thinking the better of Eren, but that’s just what it seems to me. 

 Pieck believes Zeke’s words to Eren on the roof were true, that this was the most genuine he had ever been toward anyone.  Pieck is painted as a very perceptive person, so I’m inclined to agree with her.  

Before the action, though, a quote that has sparked a lot of discussion is what Eren says to Yelena in regards to Pieck trusting them.  Yelena is sure that Pieck is deceiving them and Eren agrees that she is not trustworthy, apparently much like “another woman.”  [Note: More officially, it’s actually “that woman”] English has this statement translated as if there is another woman who is not to be trusted.  But, can refer to Yelena being the one not to trust Pieck.  Or…that Pieck is the one not actually trusting them.  Or…well, it’s complicated.  Japanese readers are still confused what exactly Eren is talking about and people are guessing that there is not much meaning behind whereas others are thinking that Eren is talking about someone not on-scene.  Isayama just managed to pick the vaguest meaning of this sentence and it’s suspiciously convenient that it’s within a conversation about trust.  

Personally, I’m bouncing back and forth between believing it’s just him referring to Pieck not trusting them after all or that he is talking about another woman they cannot trust, whether he means someone non-present.  There aren’t a lot of women in the cast (sadly) that may spark the latter point.  The only one I can think of is Kiyomi, which is entirely possible.  Mikasa and Historia being regarded in this way don’t make sense.  Regardless, the way it is worded in a confusing manner was intentional, or at least I’d like to think so.

It’s also neat to point out that this is the first time we see Eren and Yelena actually interacting that isn’t a flashback.  I wonder how their demeanor normally is around each other.

Really quick, I’d like to appreciate a couple glamor shots of Eren looking intimidating and angry.  Even if this is the only mood he is emoting this arc so far, it’s refreshing to see him break from his barely phased and unreadable demeanor.  At least I have NO question why Eren is upset!  And he’s gonna be shoeless in shorts after all this.  Wow.

Side B to the story is the 104th and Sasha’s family (Nicolo, included) in their cell.  I guess it’s relatively…generous that they were given supplies to eat, drink, and keep heat while behind bars?  

Armin and Mikasa recall Eren’s hostility toward them and very quickly Jean asks what went down.  When Connie brings up that Eren has become a different person, effectively a piece of shit friend, Jean isn’t entirely certain about it.  Despite how hurt they are, he reasons that, once again, these actions wouldn’t be made by a sane Eren without a reason behind it.

We’ve seen quite a number of people bring up that “no, this is not like Eren” as a means to analyze his current behavior, and I believe even the flashbacks and Eren’s lack of input in the grand scheme of things (aside from what other characters are saying), are meant to tell the reader to stay tuned, Eren may not be how he is projecting himself to be.  How much longer until the truth?  Well…probably another volume, who knows!

That said, it’s understandable that Armin and Mikasa, despite having grown up with Eren and experiencing his changes, are most shaken and uncertain.  Eren’s hostile words towards them hit a personal note and attacked their identities.  He made them doubt themselves and that makes them doubt their support for Eren. So Jean reiterating that this is unusual behavior and it can’t be taken at face value has them consider for a bit.

Yelena finally comes to talk to the 104th in their underground prison.  Naturally, the group is confused by what is going on and demand answers.  Before that though, we get some more blatant racism targeted at Sasha (who is dead, what a low blow!) that Yelena is quick to shut down.  I don’t trust Yelena but I’d be lying if I didn’t feel like this guy deserved it.  It may have been an excessive action, but it’s true that you probably don’t want a guy sputtering insults at the people you are still trying to win over.  Also, what a dick!  You’re just as bad as Floch last chapter!

Also we learn that Onyankopon isn’t as innocent as he claimed to be...

Or at least, on the surface.  He still seems uneasy whenever he is around Yelena but more talkative around Hange, so I’m wondering how deep their loyalties lie and whether or not these two are cooperating to push forth their own separate (but symbiotic) agendas.  As we see not even a minute later, no one would want to be caught on Yelena’s bad side anyway.  Oof!

Afterwards, she reveals the plan to the group and they are all taken aback by the euthanization add-on.  Yelena confirms that the idea to pass down the Beast Titan down to royalty and the Coordinate to another series of chosen successors, as well as threatening the world with the Rumbling by initiating a small scale test run, were still part of it.  Historia’s pregnancy and getting Zeke to the island was no big surprise to them considering upper military branches and the government were willing to chance the event.  It appears, however, that not everyone was involved in Yelena’s full agenda.  Although Nicolo served the wine, he had believed Yelena and her circle of allies were more interested in securing the island to rule and destroy Marley as revenge.  Yelena assures that this isn’t quite the case and the action they are taking is for the benefit of Paradis and all Eldians alike.  At this point, it’s hard to imagine she is lying anymore (although, I don’t doubt there is some revenge seeking on her part).  She has little reason to when those who would want to stop her are behind bars.  And she doesn’t personally dislike them.  In fact, she is more than happy if they “understand” her.  Armin is “moved” to tears actually.  Of course, as far as Yelena knows, Armin isn’t one for master manipulation.  Mikasa, on the other hand, knows better.  Connie and Jean are more shocked, but I’m inclined to believe it’s because they noticed Armin suppressing laughter before crying (yes, it is laughter).

I know there is debate on what this all means.  Did Armin finally crack?  Is he actually moved by Yelena’s motives?  Is he just expressing all the pent of emotion he has carried for a long while only to finally release them when the truth of it all comes out?  Or…most likely…he has figured something out and the crying itself was a cover up.  Either he thinks the plan is so outrageously NOT Eren that his doubts are being relieved or the plan is in general so outrageous that there has to be a way to stop it and well, since it’s Armin, there is definitely something cooking up in there.  Once this is all over, I think he does need an actual good cry, though.

What I predict in the next chapters is, of course, more action.  I think Zeke is bound to arrive at some point either as a cliffhanger for ch117 or sometime within the battle.  Whether he and Eren come in contact to put an end to Marley’s remaining forces depends on what damage they can do to the non-Eldians.  The wine drinkers are suspiciously all together, after all, not far from the invasion.  I think the 104th will be able to break free somehow and arrive at the scene.  To do what, I’m not entirely sure.  But I think we’ll get a final verdict on whether they will decide to support Eren again or leave him to his demise.  I have reason to believe they will forgive him if they feel like his actions aren’t an actual danger to them, albeit not that they would be as close as they were before ever again.  Something’s got to give at the end of this frustrating mystery, right?

Again, I’m probably too hopeful, and I don’t think any BIG answers will come until after this battle.  In fact, I’m really anticipating more “villainous” demeanors from Eren that will either confuse people or have readers believe he really is totally gone.  But we are getting our final Reiner v Eren fight and I’m QUITE excited about this!

Not a really long reaction.  A good chunk of the chapter was people deceiving each other and the playing “can I trust you?” game.  Needless to say, I don’t think anyone really trusts each other.  Well, except for Pieck and her comrades.

I miss those moments from the alternative perspective...  :(

Thanks for the question!

[trevaleyn]

Chains That Bind

Most people didn’t see the world the way Ulysses did, or had rather. He supposed none of that mattered anymore--only one thing mattered to him of that old life, his wife Rolance. Sure, their had been other flames, other interests, other infatuations but those all boiled down to distractions, nothing more and nothing less.

“I just came home from being in prison,” The words weren’t his, but rather his wife’s even now, an entire reality away, the eldritch magic that saturated Ulysses being--and now the reality he had created, linked them all together, her words and thoughts able to bleed over much like how a pen or a marker with too much ink was able to bleed over to another page beneath leaving its mark, echoes he supposed, but it felt like more than just echoes. Could space, time, and reality itself have memories?

“Just like when I died to the Crows, nobody came to save me… Well. Me in particular. The group was saved.” There was a pause, “But for me, I think the person who was the most visibly concerned was Kelly, and you know how she is… If she cares the most for you, that’s pretty sad.” He smiled at that, though found no laughter or joy in Rolance’s words. He was merely listening as he worked.

“Suppose I am pretty sad right now.”

His hands flourished once, in this realm creation was his right, his mere will was all he needed to play, no, be a god. Ulysses sheer will had manifested before him a forge--not a heavy handed blacksmith’s forge, the tools here were smaller, more precise, more clamps and small furnaces and kilns, molds and sharpened tools meant to work with softer metals, this was the forge of a whitesmith.

“Do you know the shit I did for you? I stormed a Legion ship for you. I became a soldier for you. I learned how to manipulate time and space to bring you back from certain death…” He did know. of course he knew, he was Ulysses Trevaleyn, it was his job to know. That was how he had undid the damage and alterations to Azeroth’s reality and created his own.

“Can’t think of any times you saved me. You said letting me die was something like payment for how I’d wronged you, if I remember right…” The sound of a bellows in the background as he listened in across the barriers of realities, though perhaps listen wasn’t the right description, he more felt the words, like thoughts he might want to say aloud, words that hovered in the forefront of his mind but he knew the source wasn't him. A jeweler’s hammer had manifested in his hand along with a pair of almost wire thin tongs as he began to shape what he was making carefully, meticulously so.

“This was just another time that you weren’t there, I guess. That I would have been if it were you in trouble.”  He could feel pain alongside those words, the Eldritch was inside Rolance’s body right now, acting to suture her back together. Despite feeling the ghost of Rolance’s pain, Ulysses still did not react, he had become more stoic in this place and on his own.

“I should hope one day I meet someone who cares for me like I cared for you.”

Their were tears then as he worked, though they weren’t his own. Borrowed from the link they shared, these we're Rolances tears he was wiping from his cheeks, taking a moment to compose himself though he knew Rolance was still bawling like a babe, curled up on their couch.

Despair, it had always gripped Rolance so easily without Ulysses being around, one lesson the tempest of a woman never had learned was that exact exchange was a lie. People took different things from different relationships, Rolance had been with Ulysses because she craved a man who would stand up to her, to tell her what to do, to be a sort of check and balance against her actions and to correct her moral shortcomings.

Ulysses had been with Rolance because he respected her ferocity, her strength and cunning, but also her passion for what was right and wrong. Though those lines blurred often, what did them in was that he had never forgiven the woman--he couldn’t, he couldn’t forget what she had done, but then again the hard part was always letting go.

This was his reality, his dimension where he could sculpt whatever he liked--right now, the product of that desire to create was a chain of eldritch rings. The gloss of silver and gold combined with the glamour and glitter of rubies and garnets, on Azeroth it would have been a weapon unlike any other, something that would have allowed for total and complete destruction of the planet, here it would be a tool of creation.

“You’re not alone,” he said aloud, “You’re never alone Rolance, that’s your problem. You relied on me to make you into something,” he wasn’t sure if the link worked both ways, though he just wished to speak the words out loud, to get the feelings that protested her assumptions out in the air, “You can’t be alone because you don’t know who you are. Your hair, your skin, your scars, always changing, even the powers you drew from were always changing. You have the heart of a dog. No meant yes, attention either good or bad wasn’t discerned, you just cared that you got it. You did not love me. You used me to make yourself feel better and I simply didn't care."

The finality of those words would echo here forever. This reality Ulysses was building was for himself, not for them both. Slipping the chain on over his neck, he grew a smile that seemed sad and genuine, “Without me, you revert to the same old tactics, throwing yourself in harms way to feel something, throwing yourself at the feet of controlling, abusive leash holders. You scorned me for wanting to break that lead. You kept crawling back, over and over when I had no desire to control you. I wanted to show you how to be your own person but you took that as a desire to be like me. To crave power and avarice and hunger for more. You got that from me, I know it. It’s not a gift to you like it is to me. You were always unwieldy with your emotions Rolance.”

A wave of his hand dismissed the forge he had created, tools and molds, foundations and furnaces disintegrating into dust. He no longer had need of it. Ulysses wondered what Rolance would have thought of him now, how both his mind and body had changed. As a god in his own realm, Ulysses looked younger--perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, though he had always been an ageless looking man, his hair was a brunette mane that hung about his shoulders, his body bore no scars or blemishes, even his tattoos, each and everyone one of them was gone, leaving a bare sun-kissed look to his skin, he wore no armor, only a simple cream colored long-sleeved shirt a belt, loose fitted black pants and some simple leather wrapped shoes over his feet, though his hands and ears were ever adorned with jewelry.

“Do yourself a favor: make something of yourself. I gave you every gift I had but I guess I could never give you the foresight on how to use it. You have the power of a god in your blood now, and yet you’re weeping on our old couch because no one is there to tell you how to use it. I love you Rolance, that’s why I dedicated myself to giving you that power. Death, injury, even how you feel right now? Irrelevant, you only need to see that to move to the next step. I let you die because that's the price. You learned that you are immortal."

Goddess. He had been trying the entire time to forge Rolance into a goddess, but he was a mere mortal then. He supposed in a way he still was here, though he didn’t need to be. Were someone to somehow enter his realm and destroy his physical form it wouldn’t matter, this dimension was sculpted with the very eldritch essence of Ulysses body, along with arcane and light magics, he would just manifest in another physical form if he needed it, though the reality of it was, he didn’t. He merely existed in this form because it felt comfortable.

“I have work to do. The Titans chain Sargeras. Someone must impose the order of creation without them.”

Someone indeed. His left hand reached up to the chain around his neck as that sad smile he bore turned a bit more pleased, Rolance was linked to him. Perhaps one day she would learn to dip into the powers he held now, perhaps not. He had work to do, he always did, emotions that were literally a reality away couldn’t and wouldn’t impede him now.

He lofted a palm and aimed it into the mostly black void of this still new, unborn reality, eyes lidding as he focused his powers. One by one, stars began to form, twisting, churning, candle flames igniting in the dark, distant or entirely to small. In a matter of minutes a galaxy would be birthed, and he held it between his palms. One day she would join him, then her pain and suffering would melt away, they could even become one singular being if they chose to make it so. For now, Ulysses had an eternity to craft. How utterly divine, he thought to himself.

Mentions: @high-inquisitor

[elizabethrobertajones]

Dean & Cas Are In Love

A hopefully one day conclusive study of these assholes, hopefully told as briefly as I can.

Written for the people in the fandom who care but sometimes need a pick me up on this, and not written to prove a point to anyone who doesn't already care. <3

There is a LOT to love about this scene, starting with the request for personal space and much alarmed checking out of Cas during one of the most intense, charged stares they ever share. But I think for the focus of this series, I love this moment the best, more than the weird Thelma and Louise don't-think-about-kissing-Cas moment that passes through Dean's head, more than any of the odd tension, lip-licking, general... wtf-ery this scene is renowned for.

Cas and Dean bluff and argue at each other, but when Dean snarks at Cas too hard, he breaks past the layers and Cas tells him in plain words WHY he wants Dean to accompany him. It boils down to emotional support rather than tactical (the same thing I think is obvious - to Dean in 5x02 when Cas comes in with misplaced anger and a resolve to find God for "strategic" reasons not emotional ones)...

Cas does all the legwork with the spell and summoning and knowing where to go and who to talk to, while the interview during the "involves talking to people" section is something we've seen Cas accomplish other times when he's in a hurry (6x21 for example) and while he may not be socially adept, he can still get answers if he needs them. He *could* have found Raphael, but he wanted the back up. And this request for emotional support is I think what Dean hears, surprised for one thing that Cas is even being emotionally honest with him, when he (significantly) changes his answer from Dean being his "bullet shield", to saying in a backhanded way that Dean is just required to show up and be there because he's the only one who will.

Cas is by now no longer overtly blaming Dean for their situation, but while he's still tense and angry left over from the mood he was in last episode, he's softening up. And choosing to work with Dean, because he will help him, because he's the only person on Cas's side... Once again Cas comes in asking Dean for help and Dean gives in because it's Cas asking, because he owes Cas this much even if it's just for picking his side since while the narrative becomes "the Winchesters started the apocalypse", the blame on Dean (such as it is - more his guilt) only goes as far as breaking the first seal. Cas's brainwashing and struggle to overcome it was actually the critical timing factor which got Dean to Sam a few seconds too late, if anything is to be blamed for the final seal beyond Ruby's manipulations.

But anyway. However it happened, it's a high tension situation between all of them, and Dean is currently alone and separated from Sam, and recognises in Cas once again something familiar that surprises him, emotionally, and convinces him to help from an honest plea. A common loneliness which is his emotional subplot about having Cas around this episode, from here to the last scene in the car when Cas leaves and Dean is immediately hollow again, and left with no distraction about his fight with Sam and the burden he'd carried over him.

One of the things that really strikes me is that the camera lingers so long on Dean while Cas is talking, favouring his reaction and showing him listening, coming to this decision to help, over Cas's delivery of the lines. This scene is very much from his POV and working as an establishing scene to show us how Dean feels about Cas... Uncomfortable in proximity? maybe some levels of personal self-esteem stuff that he's really ready to have such an intense thing in his life as Cas's laser focused gaze and declarations of loyalty a shade off what Cas gave to Heaven now handed to Dean...

Or establishing among the many different, important things like the seeds of Cas as his best friend and his attempts to have fun with Cas, *genuinely* having fun with Cas, Cas as someone who he can mutually lean on (literally leaning on him in the laughing in the alleyway scene, emotionally supporting him just as he is taking emotional comfort in having Cas around this episode), we have all that ridiculous sexual tension and accidentally-deliberate innuendo here too. And as this is the Bert & Ernie Are Gay episode as well, this isn't even the only time that happens.

And I think this multi-faceted meaning Cas gives to Dean is established officially here, and played often for the humour beats in this episode, but is going to be the devastating emotional core of the next.