#nothing was forced!! because i know for a fact more than half of the writers were women

[princessgiggles333]

so rarely are comedy movies targeted towards teenage girls. so rarely are the ones “for” teenage girls actually funny. so rarely do comedy movies for teenage girls incorporate lgbt characters as part of the main theme without directly mocking the gay community with bigoted “jokes”.

and yet here we have: Bottoms 2023.

[burst-of-iridescent]

I hate when people say(*writers*) when zuko is an emo bad boy. When zuko acts "emo" and "badboy" as they say it's him reacting to his trauma and abuse as a kid(most of time. Zuko is still badass. But badboy no). Is it an excuse? No. But when zuko is acting that way in canon, his obsession with honor, his yelling, his moodiness, his short temper. That is the product of having his empathy literally beaten/burned out of him by his father(and mocked and emotionally abused by Azula). The reason Zuko is doing this whole thing is because he wants to please his father. Become someone he's not. His struggle of who his father wants to be with who he is. It's because of the abuse of his father and his family. As the series goes on you get more and more flashes of the person Zuko was and the person he can become. By the end of the series it's such a great contrast and Zuko is much more happier because he's with the gaang. His family. He got out of that abusive situation he was in and finally became himself. A dorky, empathetic, caring, skilled swords men, a balanced person. Does he still have moments of anger? Yes. But over all Zuko becomes a fully balanced person.

gasp! but if we don't call zuko a bad boy, however will we make sure people don't get any ideas about shipping him with katara?

jokes aside, you're absolutely right and i roll my eyes so hard when people point to bad things zuko did, or his behaviour pre-redemption as indisputable proof of the kind of person he'd be post-redemption. like you said, a lot of zuko's actions and mannerisms before day of black sun is a direct result of the trauma he suffered, and though that doesn't excuse him - and neither does the show allow it to - discounting it entirely is to erase the abuse zuko endured and how that shaped him.

using the first half of book 3 as evidence of zuko being a supposed bad boy irks me in particular because a) the narrative makes it pretty clear that this is zuko as the worst version of himself, the opposite of everything he actually is and could be, and b) he is stuck in an abusive household at the mercy of his abusers, in an actively life-threatening situation.

zuko knows that he is in a situation where he has no real agency, freedom or control. he knows that aang is alive, that azula has turned him into a scapegoat and that his life will be forfeit if his father finds out the truth. that is an incredibly terrifying and stressful situation to be put in and it's worsened by the fact that he can't even admit it - not just because doing so would mean accepting that he gave up everything that actually mattered in the catacombs to gain nothing in return, but also because no one around him will allow him to do so.

his girlfriend can't understand his experiences or his turmoil and doesn't seem to particularly want to, brushing off his anxieties and encouraging him to stay the course. he is manipulated by his father and gaslighted by his sister, aware deep down that he is entirely under their control and that they have a vested interest in keeping him helpless, yet forced to pretend as though nothing is wrong. he is isolated from the one person who could help - his uncle - physically and emotionally, both because visiting iroh puts zuko in danger, and because zuko's choices have created a rift in their relationship.

all of this compounds the psychological stress zuko is experiencing, forcing him into a constant state of fight-or-flight, and this context is vital to understanding many of the decisions he makes and how he behaves in the first half of book 3.

(this is why i don't agree with the take that hiring combustion man is an ooc moment for zuko because even though i think the idea of combustion man himself is stupid - not to mention disrespectful to the hindu origins it's pulling from - it's a fundamentally desperate move, and zuko at this point is more desperate than he's ever been.)

that's why it's unlikely that zuko post-redemption would behave similarly since many of the factors that contributed to his anger, hostility and moodiness would no longer exist! judging zuko's future behaviour based on a time when he was constantly abused, gaslighted and threatened is just not an accurate or fair means of measurement, especially since we know what he's like at his best. the zuko we see with the gaang still has a bit of a short fuse, sure, but he's also sincere, honest, awkward, shy and far happier than he's ever been. because shocker, people tend not to act the same way in healthy, supportive environments as they do in abusive, traumatic ones. who would've thought?

people who make this argument also usually tend to compare zuko to aang, especially to glorify how aang remains cheerful and peaceful despite his trauma, and... no. just no. first of all, the show barely gives a fuck about developing aang's trauma the way it does zuko's so of course it seems to affect him less, and secondly, there's something to be said about how trauma responses like aang's are a lot more palatable and comfortable for audiences than responses like zuko's, or even katara's in the southern raiders.

anger or moodiness, or wanting to punish the people who hurt you, are not inherently wrong ways to react when you've been wronged and traumatized. praising aang for remaining cheerful and forgiving while calling zuko a bad boy for being angry and moody implies a sense of moral superiority that comes with reacting to trauma in the "right" way, which is both inaccurate and insensitive.

zuko will never be aang, and that's fine. he doesn't have to be. he ends the show reclaiming everything his abusers tried to take from him, having found himself and his destiny, in a place of healing that is all his own. that is an incredibly meaningful and powerful narrative, and the last thing zuko deserves is to have all of his complexity and development stripped just to be reduced to the tired trope of a "bad boy" when he was never one in the first place.

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

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

Part 1

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

#14: Transmission

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#15: Determination

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#16: Conformation

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

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

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

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

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

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

#17: Representation

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

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

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

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

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

#18: Revelation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#19: Illusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#20: Confrontation

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

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

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

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

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

THIS IS WHAT THOMAS ASTRUC ACTUALLY BELIEVES.

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

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

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

#21: Revolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

.....

#22: Adoration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#23: Collusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#24: Pretension

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#25: Derision

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#26: Emotion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#27: Re-Creation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[mwalani]

Danganronpa!FPE Au - oneshot

𝑼𝒍𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝑳𝒖𝒄𝒌𝒚 𝑺𝒕𝒖𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒕!𝑶𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝑿 𝑺𝒉𝒚!𝑼𝒍𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝑾𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒓!𝑹𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓

☆summary - In this alternative universe of Fundamental Paper Education, Oliver and Reader got kidnapped to a school, forced to now play a killing game. Reader is the Ultimate Writer, and when they fall in love with the bully, Reader begins to write fanfic between them, but someone ended up finding out...

☆characters - Ultimate Lucky Student!Oliver and Ultimate Writer!Reader

☆warnings - mentions of killing, reader is really shy and can get flustered easily, Oliver is a big tease, after the line it will be written in 3rd person, I call reader "author", not proofread, they/them pronouns for reader

When you first arrived this school, everything was a complete mess. No one knew what was happening or how did they got here, the only thing they knew is that this teacher called Miss Circle explained the rules to everyone.

The thing that was shocking those people, was the game you were playing. It wasn't just a "normal" game. How could it be? It was a killing game, where the students needed to kill each other to get out.

After one or two nights in this school, you already had a good impression of everyone in there. Abbie was pretty shy, just like you. Engel was fine, he's friendly to everyone, and you hope it's really how he is and not a lie. Claire was also fine, nothing too much to say about her. But there was one person in there that had caught your attention more than you've wished for.

Oliver. You had no reason to like him, at all. He is a bully, always annoying people and being a complete asshole. Even to you sometimes when everyone's talking and you were minding your own business he said you're really suspicious just because yes.

But oh, how did you love him. Maybe he has a natural charm with him, maybe it's his hair, his voice, or his eyes, maybe his... Okay stop. You just can't help but fall in love with him! And you poor little thing couldn't stop thinking about this boy to the point it was getting annoying, so you decided to have a way to get those thoughts out of your head.

Write about him. See, you're the ultimate writer, if you're having problems with getting something out of your head you just write about it. That's how you managed to get yourself half of a notebook worth of fanfic with Oliver.

No one knew about this, for obvious reasons. You never really talked to anyone but Engel, Claire and maybe Abbie, and they had no idea about this little secret of yours. No one even suspected a thing! Or at least that's what you to believe.

The boy whom you were obsessed with was the only student aware of that fact. He's not sure if it's his ultimate talent - Ultimate Lucky Student - or if he is a very observer. Either way he knows about it, and now, Oliver needs to find a way to get his hands on your notebook.

Which he actually managed to somehow. You let the object with all your thoughts about him, in view, on a table, to anyone who wants to grab it. That's how Oliver got here, almost night time, reading those fanfics you wrote about him in front of your dorm door waiting for you.

The author was going back to their dorm, panicking because the most precious thing to them in that place was missing, and no one should ever read that, especially-

Oliver.

He was reading through the pages of the notebook with a smug face, before looking up at them and standing up.

"Hey, lost something?" — Oliver asked you while holding the notebook in front of them, holding the author's wrist that tried to grab the object.

".. Uhm, hey Oliver.. Could you please, give me this?" — He looked at the person in front of him, raising an eyebrow — "Why? I'm sure you'll be able to write a lot more content with us."

That made them freeze. It was obvious he was reading through them, but there was still a hope that just maybe he wasn't paying attention to it. Oh how wrong they were.

"Listen, I.. This wasn't really... Uhm..." — Oliver now was smirking as he saw the poor author's face change from a worried one, to a totally flushed one.

".. This is... Uh.. I wasn't thinking.. Straight! And.. I-" — They were cut off by Oliver's lips touching theirs, kissing them with passion.

Author was so surprised, that they almost missed when his lips weren't touching theirs anymore, now whispering in their ear.

"Meet me here around an hour before night time. Every day." — That's all Oliver said, before going back to his usual posture and walking away smirking, and trying to hide how happy he was.

Author just stood there, in shock, blushing for a whole minute before quickly going inside their dorm and starts giggling from excitement.

By the next day, author seemed different. They seemed more happy, excited, even! No one knew why, but Engel was glad to see them finally beginning to get used to the place. It's not the ideal place, right, but it's better to get used to it than submit to despair.

The day went by quickly, and an exact hour before night time announcement, author opened the door of their dorm, jumping slightly as they got scared from Oliver staring at them.

"Hey, why so jumpy? Got scared?" — He asked you, grinning from his teasing as their face got slightly red.

"No, no.. I just.. You're just there standing like a creep.."

"Heh, I guess you're right."

The two stared at each other, Oliver's smile only getting bigger the more uncomfortable they got, until they spoke up.

"Uhm.. About yesterday..." — Before author could even finish talking, Oliver already interrupted them.

"What? Want another kiss? I'm not giving away free kisses you know. You owe me one for yesterday." — He said casually, still smiling as they looked at him with their face getting a new shade of red.

"I-... What, no!! That's not what I was going to say..." — They looked down, tugging their sleeve as Oliver made a fake surprised face, gasping.

"What? No way, so you don't want anything from me? Guess I'll just leave then.."

"NO! I do want to kiss you again but-"

"Aww, so you do wanna kiss me. Don't lie to me little author.." — Oliver leaned down a bit to face the author, pouting slightly.

Author just looked at him with an embarrassed but also angry face, before sighing and looking away.

"That's what I wanted to talk about.."

"About the kiss?"

"NO! About how you act..." — They told him, a bit of disappointment appearing on their face which got Oliver a little nervous for the first time.

Noticing that the boy had shut up for a second, author finally managed to speak up.

"Listen, I.. I think you know that I.. Uhm, like you, a lot.."

"Yeah I read that."

"Ahem.. Anyways... It's just that.. I don't think we would work if you kept on being like that to me.."

Oliver stared at them for a moment, still smiling nervously, asking — "Like what?"

"Always bullying me! I.. I don't know when you're being serious or not, and it doesn't seem like you actually like me??" — Hearing those words hurted his heart and pride a little, but he sighed and placed a hand behind his neck.

"Uh.. Listen, I'm not good with this but uhm.. I don't really know how to get your attention if it isn't by annoying you. It's weird I know, but it's just my way of showing love."

Author was really shocked at those words, as they never saw Oliver being so norm around someone, without saying something about them or teasing.

It was clear how he was trying to be better for author, even if it got him out of his comfort zone. This was everything you needed to hear from him.

"... Oliver, I totally understand that. I.. I myself am not good with this kind of stuff as you can see, but I'm really interested in you. Can we.. Can we maybe start again?"

...

"Isn't this one of the things you wrote?"

"You really know how to break the mood don't you?"

"It's on my veins, I can't help it love." — And there it was, the Oliver who teased you to death just to see the different shades of red your face could get.

After that, Oliver was always pulling you with him whenever he wanted to interact with someone other than friends.

Actually no, he just pulled you every time because he's a complete asshole who just wanted to see you get embarrassed trying to explain to your friends why he did it.

You can also expect Oliver to (lovingly) bully you about your fanfics. He says that you should keep writing those, because it could give him ideas of what to do with you. He definetly said that trying not to laugh.

He's also going to hide your relationship from others. They might want to kill you, or even himself to bring despair, it's better if you two stayed as a secret.

Inside his dorm, he likes to pet your head and just really be in physical touch with you. That's something he's not saying out loud, but he is giving hints.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA if I confronted my boyfriend about not feeling praised enough? Over dumb D&D shit?

Background - I (20s F) live with my boyfriend (30s M) and things are usually great. He's always been supportive, emotionally intelligent and caring and we've had no major problems. We met via D&D several years ago so it's pretty important to both of us, and I'm a DM. Before we met, he was involved in a years-long campaign with some friends and is generally more experienced in D&D than me (I've been DMing around 5 years, he's probably closer to 10).

The current campaign that I'm running is something I'm really proud of. It's a mid-length campaign and I made the story myself (I typically plan mine to be 6-8ish months to avoid things fizzling out) and I've tried really hard to step up my writing and story planning for this one.

I've put in a LOT of extra time and effort and have been holding myself to a much higher standard than I usually do. As a DM I get self-conscious over how much time people are spending with me each week, and I want to make sure it's REALLY worthwhile. And because my boyfriend is more experienced in D&D than me, I've been looking to him for feedback and/or praise, as it would mean a lot to me coming from him.

And I've been getting close to nothing. At the end of each session he immediately falls asleep and doesn't talk about it at all. It makes me feel like I'm keeping him up/boring him. So I started asking him things like "hey what did you think about how I handled X" and he'll give a brief response like "yeah it was great" without explaining anything.

He didn't even give much thought into the character he's playing either - for his old campaign he created a HUGE story for his character, background, goals, etc. I know for a fact he's an incredible creative writer and could have come up with something wonderful for this. But he didn't put down anything other than basic character sheet stuff. When I asked him about it, he says he only goes deep into character when it's "long campaigns like my old one" and "too bad a long campaign like that will never happen again. That's D&D at it's best but now we're all adults, and we're too busy to ever do that, half my friends have kids, it'll never happen again and it's so sad" etc etc.

It made me feel like shit - like anything I try to do is a waste of time and pointless compared to this legendary "old campaign". Like it's barely worth staying awake for, like it's some kind of chore he has to sit through every week just because I'm his girlfriend and he's just humoring me.

The other players have been EXTREMELY enthusiastic and supportive - they send me art they make based on the campaign after every session and have contacted me privately to compliment me on certain aspects of the campaign. I want to make it clear that this is NOT something I EXPECT, but moreso I just really really love and appreciate that they do this for me, especially while my boyfriend is kind of leaving a void where I'd want this kind of praise.

Full transparency, one of my worst fears is forcing people to play along with something that I am passionate about, but bores them to tears. I never want to make a big deal over something that means a lot to ME but doesn't mean that much to someone else. So maybe I should just let this go because, at the end of the day, it's just a game? And taking it so seriously makes me an asshole and I should touch grass? I feel like potentially starting a fight over stupid nerd stuff would be pointless on my end. But at the same time, the more we play the more I feel deflated and I really hate feeling that way. I'm not sure what to do tbh.

What are these acronyms?

[yubellia]

How they could have written Lila, to be a better villain

(Just a theory) and keep in mind, english is not my first language

——————————————————

Well hello there! I am working on a new chapter for my miraculous fanfiction. I know it has been a while.

But before that, let’s think about our favorite local liar, Lila Rossi/ Cerise Bianca/ Iris Verdi (whatever name she feels like using).

People hate her but I don‘t think it’s just because of the things she does. Let’s be real. The things Marinette is doing are also…. Questionable at best sometimes. And that’s the protagonist. So we can‘t just talk about the bad things.

I think people are mad because of what happens to the other characters the moment Lila starts to speak. It’s kind of a joke in the fandom but Lila‘s lies turn pretty much everyone into idiots. Except for Marinette. Even Adrien almost fell for it if Marinette didn’t expose her as ladybug. Her lies are stupid and sure, we as the audience can see through it easily but that’s not an excuse for how everyone acts. (Unless my theory about superpowers in miraculous ladybug is correct. Look it up in my masterlist!)

Some of them are so easy, we could hit our heads on a table (repeatedly) and still see through it. So, let’s pretend we turn back the time. How could the writers turn Lila into a really well written villain?

1. SHOW us that she is smart and a good liar. NOT tell us!

This is the one golden rule for writing. The audience hates it if they are told something. Even more so, if there is no evidence to back it up.

Her lie about being friends with Ladybug HAD to blow up in her face. Especially knowing how Marinette acts if anyone gets too close to Adrien. Even more so in the early seasons.

So what could they do?

Well, one of her moms works at an embassy. She might not be a diplomat herself but Lila doesn’t have to tell anyone about that. She could simply tell them, that because of her moms job and because she has no other relatives around really, she has to move with her a lot. (That’s only half a lie). From there, she could use that for more convincing lies like „oh that one time, we stayed for a year in (please insert country). And there I saw (insert important person).“

And here‘s the thing. With the embassy thing, even Marinette couldn’t really talk against her if Lila plays her cards right and doesn’t show up in front of her.

Also, it’s not like they didn’t know how to do it. The first time Lila goes to Adrien’s house, Nathalie wants to throw her out. Lila starts a lie, that Adrien struggles with something at school.

Now, Nathalie knows who and ‚what’ Adrien is. She knew him the longest right after his parents. She must have known that Adrien CAN‘T fail. He was supposed to be perfect.

However, even if that is so, she couldn’t take the small chance that Adrien MIGHT be failing for whatever reason. So she let Lila stay. If the writers had used this somehow, explained it more. Either from Lila’s pov or Nathalie‘s, it would have been so much better. They could have made Lila look smart. Using the high expectations Adrien’s family has for her advantage.

2. Don‘t overdo it with her lies.

The biggest Problem with her is the fact that her lies are too big. Instead of big and impressive things, they should have used little lies that built up. Small ways that make her look resourceful and smart. She was way to aggressive in her desire for fame in that school.

3. show us some skills.

This plays into the first thing but still. I think everyone was impressed when we met her third mom and found out that Lila knows sign language. We know little to nothing about her real family so they should have explored that. Why does she know that?

The same thing with her using Tsurugis laptop.

She opened it with force, using tools like a screwdriver. Ok, I buy that so far. But than what? She used hacking skills and they didn’t show us? LAME!

We see Ladybug and Chat Noir in every episode. It wouldn‘t hurt anyone if we followed one of the villains for one episode and learned more about them. An entire episode I mean. Not scenes. It was about to get interesting and they take it from us.

And again, it’s not like they can‘t do it. Lila isn‘t an idiot (if the writers have a good day) she knew she needed something solid to show Adrien that she is a hero. So she took the book and got herself this replica of the fox miraculous. The same one she used later to frame Marinette for theft. Also she wasn’t afraid to fake an injury and get herself into danger to frame Marinette either.

4. make her a threat in the background.

This kind of plays into the first point again. Lila didn’t show up too often at first. In the early seasons I mean. That way and because of her introduction in ‚volpina‘, we as the audience knew every time she shows up ‚oh no here we go again.‘ this also combines with the little lies I talked about.

Her impact would have been much greater, if she had been there all the time and in the end we learn that she had a plan B or that everything worked exactly how she wanted it. That’s something most people like. A surprise villain, a twist, something we can‘t see coming.

Also, again, they kind of did that when we learned about her multiple identities. Marinette didn’t defeat her at all. Didn’t hurt her in the slightest. Only her ego and she will be back for that.

——————————————————

I really think that, if they had changed Lila just a little, she could have been more liked. Not as a character but a villain. Also what do we learn? The writers can do it if they want to! (And if they had a good day)

Throughout the show, Lila had her moments. Like when Gabriel threw her out and she called him ‚Monarch‘. We knew that he hurt her where it hurts the most. Her Ego. And not taking her seriously was one of the biggest mistakes.

The writers don‘t really have a choice. From what it looks like, Lila is confirmed to be The next big bad. And they also stated, that there are multiple more seasons to come. So they have to explore her more.

Let’s wait and see. I hope you liked it and I see you again. Later!

[ohmyfate]

One of the most frequently discussed problems of the series can be safely called the relationship between Stolas and Blitz since it was to please these relationships that the series changed its vector of development. From a black comedy with elements of drama, it turned into just a drama of the level of romantic novels from young writers with no experience. But more about this some other time.

So what is the main problem with this relationship? The fact that they are toxic and built on blackmail? This is the problem most often referred to and I understand why. "Stolitz" is one of the most striking examples of romanticization of unhealthy relationships.

Their relationship remains one-sided to this day. Unhealthy love can only be observed from the side of Stolas in his stalking of the object of affection, attempts with all his might to get Blitz’s love and complete ignoring of his daughter. Blitz at the same time does not show any signs of sympathy. Yes, in several episodes he showed some concern for Stolas's condition and unwillingness for his death, but this is not enough to indicate romantic feelings. It looked more like he didn’t want to lose his ticket to the human world which at the moment only Stolas had. And I will remind you that his business is built on the human world and it is vital for him to have access to it. And in the first episode of the first season, Stolas took advantage of this for their monthly deal. There was no sense that Stolas saw Blitz as anything more than a toy for entertainment that he enjoyed using. But at the same time, they are clearly trying to convince us that he is the most damaged party in this “business” relationship, because Blitz rejects him over and over again. And it could have worked if we were shown that Stolas recognized the unhealthy nature of their current relationship. If he was committed to sincerely apologizing to the imp and trying to make their relationship just a little bit better. And there's even a good reason for this. Stolas grew up completely alone, surrounded only by servants. He has not seen true love and does not know how to show sympathy in a normal way. And then romance novels or TV series come onto the scene, which he might be interested in. We all know very well that very often unhealthy relationships are transmitted to us, and in Hell, where love is ridiculed in one of the rings, this can be even worse than ours. Stolas could have adopted an unhealthy pattern of behavior from the hell media or communication with Asmodeus and reproduced it in his relationship with Blitz. At the same time, one could ridicule such novels. Helluva is a comedy after all if I remember correctly. It would also be possible to make it so that it was Blitz who proposed this deal, since he has nothing else to pay the aristocrat with. And Stolas would again perceive this as a sign of attention to his person and therefore would see something more in their relationship. The main thing in such relationships is to show that this is wrong and unhealthy. And such a plot would work even taking into account the following problem.

There is no chemistry between Stolas and Blitz. Since the series decided to take the path of exploring a romantic relationship between two broken personalities, it should be obvious to the viewer where this love came from. But even after half of the second season it is still unclear what they found in each other, other than mutual benefit. The series spends a lot of time on these two, but generally doesn't explore their relationship to each other on deeper level. They don’t really spend time together, and if they do, it’s either a forced measure (“Loo loo land”) or their relationship is going through tests (“House of Asmodeus”). There was no more relaxed interaction between them where we could have been shown why they can love each other, since the authors are most often focused on creating tests for these two, where they have to show their love, but they have nothing to show.

The relationship between Blitz and Stolas completely changed the direction of development of the series and almost completely freed it from the original concept. In fact, this problem is much deeper and I want to discuss it in another post separately, since series began to change not only because of the Stolitz, but also several other factors. However, for the sake of the relationship between these two we almost completely lost the originally stated plot. They didn’t want to write the series in such a way that the activities of the IMP and the personal lives of the characters would run parallel to each other in the same episode. As a rule, all episodes pay attention to one thing, and if the authors try to carry out a parallel plot, it turns out to be a C grade at best.

I know that these two have several more problems, but I decided to limit myself to the most basic and related to both of them at once. Sometime in the future we will discuss Stolas and Blitz separately, where I will talk about the rest of the problems with their relationship. For now, that's all. I'd love to read your thoughts on these two!

[jalebi-weds-bluetooth]

hi, jalebi, hope life is treating you well.I watched your interview with Utkarsh Naithani,it was absolute delight and kind if a tutorial class of story-writting.keep it up and waiting for many more interviews like that.And I got to see your face too😍,which was a sight for sore eyes.

I want your absolute opinion on the fact that do you think that the introduction of kidnapping tract had disrupted the flow of IPKKND and kind of destroyed what the writters had previously had in mind?

thank you.

Thank you so much for the sweet comment <3 Uff, you and your taareef.

Now, regarding to your question;

do you think that the introduction of kidnapping tract had disrupted the flow of IPKKND and kind of destroyed what the writters had previously had in mind?

To be very honest, the introduction of the kidnapping track brought the show back on track - for me. The show started addressing everything that was needed. The circumstance of the marriage. The fact that Arnav wouldn't believe Khushi. The fact that the situation was against Khushi. And that Shyam was upto something, he would take revenge against Arnav.

All the characters and situations were put on a RUDE pause from the end of Holi until the terrace scene (which worked into the kidnapping).

I have, legit, NO idea what the writers had in mind. Because the writers were writing aimless comedy, forgot the weight of the situation. And the months from Holi to Arnav leaving for London had absolutely little sense. It raised FAR too many questions, character rewrites, motivation rewrites, than anything else.

I believe, given the situation Arnav and Khushi was in - nothing would've been able to shift them away from bitterness apart from the fact that they loved each other UNTIL it was, literally, a matter of life and death between the characters.

We got back the telepathy, the hurt. Khushi is no longer a stupid woman trying to get back at the man who holds the reins of her sister's marriage in his hand by annoying him? (WTF was that logic)

Rather she's back to being the intelligent, hurt woman, who painfully knows that if things were fine - he'd never say he loved her.

So what went wrong with the show is not the kidnapping track but how they showed the investigation.

I laughed at them forgetting Khushi is a Raizada. If, let's say Manish Malhotra's relative goes to the police fearing Manish Malhotra's safety. The police is not going to laugh at it. We know how the police treat the elite class. Remember how upon Lavanya Kashyap's (who is not even a Raizada) phone call the police had arrived at Shantivan personally to do an employment check?

Which by the the police don't have to carry out by themselves. Employees submit themselves and police verifies the history and fingerprints. But just because the house was Shantivan - they were ready to do basic duty. Secondly, not everyone in Delhi can just gently hold Delhi Police's hand and escort them out of the house.

Arnav Singh Raizada can.

So, the kidnapping, Khushi's intuition and disbelief over Arnav's confession, her constant panic and the family sending her to Lucknow and even she and Mami getting suspicious of Arnav reaching London or not were BRILLIANTLY done.

And even with Arnav, right. Forced upon this horrific situation he is stripped of his prejudices, fears and doubt. He loves her. She feels strongly for him (she nearly confessed before he left). She wanted his trust.

It was a great way to reset the dynamic between the two.

And FINALLY Shyam is doing something as a villain. He wants everything Arnav owns, everything Arnav has. It starts with his assets and ends with Khushi.

Also Khushi knows Shyam is enough of a horrid man to actually pull something like this off? She's suspicious of him from the START. And we see her dealing with her abuser and the threat of Shyam being under the roof as her.

What went wrong is in the execution of second half of kidnapping track:

Arnav's LIFE is at stake. Just why has she NOT confided in Akash? He's right THERE. Why not in Payal? Just how is the 'ghar ki shanti' more important than the life of the head of the household?

What was the whole stupid James Bond thing with Manorama?

WHY WAS NO ONE UNDERSTANDING THAT A RAIZADA WAS SEEKING HELP?

What was the stupid "let's honeytrap Shyam" plan?

Just why were they doing Tom and Jerry stuffs to trap Shyam?

In short, why did the intelligence just disappear in the execution of this track?

WHY DO BABLI AND MASALA MAMA EXIST? (Honestly, I felt if Akash and Payal had a more relevant, important track the kidnapping track could have felt better than this demon child cause EVERYONE loved Akash Payal).

Actually introduced a really good cameo of a private detective/police inspector who would work in private sensing a bigger threat.

Either way, I have far less issues with the stupid kidnapping track because I got Arnav and Khushi back, and I got Shyam back. The three wheels of the story, their characterization, their plots, were on track.

And this is my absolute opinion of the kidnapping track.

Best,

Jalebi

[9leaguesofmirrors]

How It Feels To Hate (a Ross Gaines x Joseph Lisgoe fanfic)

I don't know if this will ever see the light of day but, if you're reading this, that means it has and I've lost the small amount of shame I was clinging onto. Mad respect to smut-writers, because this was difficult!

WARNINGS: Hate-sex, knife play, very light choking/breath play

Ross Gaines and Joseph Lisgoe despised each other, it was obvious from a mile off. In the rare moments the two of them were together there was calm chaos, like two electrodes coming together to create a spark that threatened to set them both alight

Yes, they really did despise each other

Which is why Lisgoe hated the fact that Ross would continuously fall behind on his debts, forcing him to take time out of his day to sort it out

"What the fuck," he emphasised the question by pushing Ross hard against the door as it shut behind him "is your problem?"

"Not even a hello? What a shame."

That's another thing he hated, the fact that Ross seemed to take great pleasure in being a smarmy prick. Especially so, since his wit was quick enough to prove a challenge

"Why do you insist on making my life difficult? My freetime gets pissed down the drain because you'd rather play silly buggers!"

"You don't have to come, surely your subordinates could take over. Maybe not the fat one, but that tall man could easily take your place."

Ross expected the silence to follow, and the hard glare Lisgoe frequently gave him. What he didn't expect was the patronising smile it ended up contorting into

"Something tells me you wouldn't be too fond of that."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm not stupid, Ross. You're not the kind of person to forget their debts this many times," as Lisgoe spoke, his voice became more condescending, hands on his hips "you're usually so good."

Ross hated the way that tone made his stomach turn, in a way that he couldn't equate to sickness. It was the type of turn that settled deep within up, his lower stomach... and somewhere else below. For a split second, he moved his head away and suddenly felt his chin being grabbed and tugged back with such force it almost knocked his glasses off

"Fucking look at me when I'm talking to you."

"I tend to tune out of conversations that bore me."

There was something about Ross' eyes that gave Lisgoe the creeps. They were blue, but reminded him less of skies and oceans, and more of ice. Yes, they struck through him like icicles and he hated the fact he couldn't pull away

"You have no fucking idea," Lisgoe tightened his grip on Ross' chin, stepping closer in a sharp movement "how much I fantasise about dragging a knife across your chest."

"Fantasize?" Ross repeated, looking him up and down with a glint in his eyes "What an interesting word."

"What that means," his hand moved from Ross' chin and wrapped slowly, almost teasingly, around his throat "is that nothing brings me more satisfaction than imagining every single way I could hurt you."

Ross hated the way his pelvis dropped when he heard that

"You wouldn't do that." He showed no signs of being affected, keeping his face as neutral as possible

It was the exact face that pissed Lisgoe off

"Is that right?" He replied in a half-whisper, pressing gently against Ross's neck "And why's that?"

There was something oddly amusing in all of this. Toeing the line, hatred boiling into something else. Something that rested deep within both of them, and this was all part of the game. How long before the fire started?

"Because," Ross' voice came out hoarse, but didn't lose it's smugness "I don't think you hate me half as much as you claim to."

He managed to move his knee between Lisgoe's legs, taking the breathy groan that slipped up from the bottom of his throat as a small win

"I think you're full of fucking shite." Came the retort "I hate you just as much as you hate me."

"Then show me."

That wasn't what Lisgoe expected to hear

Hell, it wasn't what Ross expected to say!

"Show you what?"

Regardless of the unexpected demand, Ross kept his demeanour calm and collected

"You talk a lot about the pain you want to inflict on me, but you're yet to actually do anything about it. It's not as if I don't have plenty of knives for you to play with, but if you don't have the guts-"

"Cut the shite, what are you on about?"

"Show me how much you hate me."

Lisgoe's jaw tightened, considering where this could go. If he were more collected, perhaps more logical, he'd have thought about how this would further complicate whatever strange relationship they had

But Lisgoe was never good with logic

"Right." His lips were brushing against Ross' ear, murmuring into it "This is what's gonna happen. I'm heading for the kitchen, you're can either wait here or leave. I don't give a fuck what you do but, if you decide to run off, god help your sorry arse when I find you."

As soon as he felt Ross nodding slightly, he was off

Ross knew he'd be in deep if he left, but then again, he didn't really care. It's my house, he reminded himself and he invited himself here. I can do what I like, who does he think he is? With that, he took his keys off the hook beside the door and left. Part of him wondered whether he should lock Lisgoe in to teach him a lesson, put him under citizen's arrest, but he quickly decided against it. He hated him, why would he want him in his house for that long?

So Lisgoe came back to nobody

"That bastard!" He snapped, fully prepared to turn the whole house apart before he noticed the unlocked door, which he swung open and stormed right out of

"Come out, you fucker..." he muttered to himself, making his way to the back of the house - where he saw Ross at the other end checking, presumably, for him

Wasting no time, he darted over and grabbed him by the back of the neck, pulling him into an iron grip. His torso was pressed against Ross' back and he had a knife under his chin

"I just want to talk." His voice was unnervingly soft as his eyes trailed the length of Ross' throat, meeting his eyes with a hard stare "Why do you have to piss about?"

"You're talking way too much, it's like you're overcompensating for-"

Ross was cut short by teeth running up his neck and his shirt being unbuttoned. Before he knew it, his back was slammed into the brick wall behind him. Despite the growing feeling of heat through his body, his face was unmoving

"As I was saying, it's like you're overcompensating. You're stalling." At this point, his face contorted into one of cold arrogance as he leaned towards Lisgoe, peering at him "You're scared."

"Scared, am I?" Was the response, in that dangerously soft tone "You have a lot of fucking nerve." He took his hand to Ross' throat, using it to push his against the wall again

The cold tip of the knife met Ross' lower stomach, but in a way which showcased a rare gentleness. It hovered slowly up his torso, barely touching his skin, and sent a sensation which caused him to lean his head back and sigh. It wasn't long before he could feel the bladed edge at the side of his neck

Each stared at the other. Eyes fixated, as if neither was able to move in that moment. Perhaps they didn't want to. There was something electric which had somehow become magnetic

They hated each other, but they didn't hate this

All at once, Lisgoe's mouth was on Ross' and his other hand was following the path his knife had taken, this time moving down the body until it reached his belt and-

Ross' right hand was shielding the buckle. He broke the kiss and stared at him with a cold expression, as if he wasn't being held at knife-point

"The fuck are you doing?" Rasped an impatient Lisgoe "If you didn't want it you should've said-"

"I do."

Lisgoe lowered the knife in his confusion

"I want this, but I'm not sure you do."

"What the fu- I'm the one that fucking started it!"

"And I'm not convinced by you. At all."

"OK? What am I meant to do about that?"

"Beg me."

That caught Lisgoe completely offguard and he moved back slightly. Once the shock had melted away, he couldn't help but laugh

"You're taking the piss, me? Begging you?" He brandished the knife in front of his face "I don't need to beg you for anything."

"I'm the one that's put in most of the work," Ross shrugged, as if he were discussing business plans with a colleague "you just waved a knife around and got a little violent." He pushed the knife away with a look of superiority "If you really want it, convince me."

Lisgoe's smirk melted into a sneer as he grabbed Ross' right wrist

"We both know I could rip your hand off if I wanted to."

"But you won't, because that's boring."

"If you don't shut your mouth, I'll leave you high and dry."

"You won't do that either."

Ross' eyes showed no signs of intimidation, and it was pissing Lisgoe off. To ask such a thing of him with such little shame, it was unheard of. The worst part was that he couldn't say he disliked the push-back

He moved closer, one hand gripping at Ross' wrist and the other grabbing the collar of his open shirt. He was close enough for his mouth to brush against his neck

"You're a thick bastard if you don't think I want this." He muttered sharply, running the flat surface of the knife down his throat "So cut the shite and just..." by the time he reached his collarbone, he felt something in him slipping and he let his hand rest over Ross' right hand "Please Ross, put me out of my fucking misery."

A smarmy remark brewed in Ross' head, but ultimately died there when his brain realised just how nice it sounded to hear the slight hint of Lisgoe's need slipping into what was clearly meant to sound like a demand. He moved his hand away from his belt, felt a hand move down his trousers, and everything blurred. It was just heat, friction and breath. Lisgoe's mouth pressed hard on Ross' and their heavy breaths syncronised in a way that made them both light-headed, breathing in each other's exhales until they were both pleasurably dizzy. It was like, if Ross didn't dig his nails hard into Lisgoe's back (which tore out someone quite nice from the pit of his throat), he'd end up falling. Clearly, this was a shared feeling; as Lisgoe had dropped the knife and his free hand was against Ross's jaw, his fingers gripping the back of his head like an anchor

As soon as Ross ripped his head away for air, Lisgoe took the opportunity to go for Ross' neck, but was stopped

"Work tomorrow." He panted, leaning his head back against the wall "I don't feel like explaining it to them."

"Would make you more interesting."

Ross retaliated by moving the collar of Lisgoe's shirt down and biting, hard, at his shoulder. The sound that followed send shivers through Ross' whole body and resulted in him being grabbed by the throat and held there as Lisgoe's hand pumped faster. The bitemark was prevalent, even now, despite the top of the tattoo sleeve on the man's arm

"Suits you." He breathed out

Lisgoe didn't respond, he was too busy watching every movement on Ross' face. He was trying to keep composed, it was obvious by the way his jaw clenched, showing all his teeth. And the way, every so often, he'd bite down on his lower lip to muffle any sound that might come out. He leaned in close, his breathing heavy against Ross' ear

"Next time, I'm marking you."

"Next time?" Ross raised an eyebrow, somehow not losing his smugness despite what was happening "I thought you hated me."

"And?"

"Why would there be a next time?"

This got a breathy, slightly gutteral, laugh from Lisgoe and he pressed a kiss to Ross' mouth, pulling his lower lip between his teeth

"Let's not be fucking stupid."

A/N: DONE IT'S DONE! I hope you all saw that because I will NOT be doing it again... or will I? /hj

[nobodyfamousposts]

If Adrien didn't have the ring, what do you think he would be doing? For me, he wouldn’t be at school al all, so probably just complaining about his life and doing model work?

Not salt, just genuine curiosity. I mean with the way the writers made him, there’s a 5% chance of him EVER suspecting his father as Adrien isn't curious about him and his relationship with Kagami would basically amount to "she's the girl I have fencer with, oh your mom is friends with my dad?"

So, at most we'd get his poutiness over not being out there or seeing his extra curriculars. It's not like he has a BIG interest in gaming, even when they say he watched anime, we're not really shown that.

It really depends on how you mean. Narratively vs storywise? It differs.

The biggest issue is that narratively speaking, the main source of entertainment in Adrien's scenes is usually Plagg. Adrien himself doesn't actually do much that's interesting. To be fair, he does more as Chat Noir, but criticism has been made that his personality as Chat Noir is so detached from his personality as Adrien with very little cross between the two that the two sides could arguably be two separate characters.

If you take the Ring away from him, Adrien has neither Plagg nor Chat to make him interesting as a standalone character. Most of the Adrien focused scenes are dependent on how other people react to or around him rather than anything he himself does. The stance of the writers and Thomas that he's perfect and never wrong wouldn't work in this way as Adrien is a passive character who is reliant on having others in the scenes with him. As it is, he's too insubstantial on his own to be able to carry a scene.

And made worse by the fact that most of Adrien's relevance to canon comes from the attachments the writers have given him to other things. Son of the villain. Top model. User of the Black Cat Miraculous. Hero of the city. Friend of Plagg. One half of the love square. But taking away the Ring removes a majority of that relevance. He'd still be the son of the villain, but we're going on five seasons now where that has yet to really matter.

So narratively, either Adrien would need to be removed from the story to offer time and energy to other things or some change would have to be made to Adrien and how he acts to make him work as a character. He would have to DO things. And without the Ring—without either Plagg or his identity as Chat to work off of, he would need to be able to stand out on his own. He would need to have real flaws that he would need to address and a range of emotions that isn't stuck on one of three settings. He would need to be a person instead of a plant. And he just can't do that with the current setup of canon.

That's just narratively/meta wise. But if I was to go story-wise...

Treating Miraculous as a real story and Adrien as a person, I'd imagine that without the Ring, other things would fill in the gaps in his life.

Let's bear in mind that Adrien got the Ring because he helped Fu that first day. Let's say he didn't. Fu wasn't there. So there was nothing to distract him from getting into school and he makes it day one. Good news is that this prevents the gum incident that made up his first meeting with Marinette. Bad news is that without that, the classmates really only know him as Chloe's friend and are less than willing to befriend him as a result. Cue Adrien having to make more of an effort to interact with his classmates and make friends.

Gamer would mean more if Adrien was the one to beat Max in the tournament because he only took the time from his supposedly busy schedule in order to try to make friends and it backfires. Same with Horrificator as he would be dealing with Nino trying to use his involvement in the movie for some fame points. Plus all the issues that would come with Chloe still regularly bullying everyone and him being forced to actually witness and respond to it. Slowly but surely, he'd make friends with the others in the class.

But most of all, I personally would see him becoming buddies with Alya. They both like heroes and could bond over that interest and their favorites, as well as their admiration for their city's own hero, Ladybug. Alya canonically likes comics and makes herself into a sort of Lois Lane. Adrien seems to have a thing more for anime, given his seemingly practiced magical girl transformation ready to go from Origins. So I could see the two of them becoming friends. Alya running the Ladyblog and being a journalist. Adrien being her assistant, her Jimmy Olsen if you will.

Cue the two of them having more dual screen time and shenanigans as they record akuma fights and hang out with each other. This would also add to more issues with Adrien's relationship with Gabriel since he would no doubt disapprove of his son's interest. It could also play into Adrien's development of his own interests outside of being a model, especially if he realizes he'd rather be the one on the other side of the camera than the one in the photos.

Then grow into Alya and Adrien trying to track down who Hawk Moth is...and the implications as they start to get ever closer to THAT particular revelation...

[benoitblanc]

hey arwen, long time no see!! hope you're doing well! 💜

i know nothing about txf besides what i've gleaned from this hellsite which is a) mulder is a lovable idiot, b) scully both loves him (almost against her will??), and c) they literally invented shipping BUT tell me about your top 5 txf episodes!!!

hi mitali i have been EXTREMELY patchy on here lately haven't i lol. local woman appears on tumblr to write ten meta posts about the x files and then disappears again! i'm doing okay; my real life has been kind of chaotic (had to last-minute cancel a trip i have been desperate to go on for years so :/ but! on the bright side it means i get to see my flatmates sooner than i thought and i miss them even though i've been gone from my flat for like a week and a half lol). how have you been???

those are very accurate txf vibes but i will say that scully is a very active and willing participant in being in love with mulder even though he can be very very stupid at times lol. i hope you watch it someday- i think it would be right up your alley! kind of similar doctor who ecological niche of being weird, heartfelt, politically relevant sci-fi with no consistent quality or tone.

ANYWAY. top 5 txf episodes, bearing in mind that i've technically only watched up until the end of the fourth season so far; i'm just a ho for spoilers:

pusher (3.17)... what can i say about pusher that i haven't said already. a lot, probably, because every single day i log on here and i see someone's written new meta about pusher that makes the entire show make more sense. it's just... it's txf distilled to its barest elements. it's about trust and codependency and a supernatural force that is made all the more unsettling by the fact that at its core it is just some guy. it's funny and terrifying and heartfelt all at once. the russian roulette scene changed television

clyde bruckman's final repose (3.04) is also just so txf. darin morgan (the writer) tended to write episodes that were so absurdist they wrapped back around to satirical, but this is far and away my favorite of his because it's not too bonkers. i love coprophages and from outer space especially, but clyde bruckman is a little more grounded, and it manages to be sarcastic and sincere in equal measure. and i love when scully gets to solve the mystery

irresistible (2.13), which is famous for being pretty much the only txf episode where there isn't actually an x-file. and it's SO fucked up. it is hands-down the most fucked up episode of the entire sh- well. besides the episode that they banned from reruns for like a decade for being so fucked up, it's hands-down the most fucked up episode of the entire show

beyond the sea (1.13) and paper hearts (4.10) are thematic sisters so i'm keeping them together. they're both about choosing to move past grief instead of wallowing in it and choosing the future over the past. so what if a criminal says they can give you the answers you've spent your whole life chasing? what matters is that you're at your partner's hospital bedside when he wakes up from an injury, or that you save a little girl's life

right now? probably ice (1.08), because i just rewatched it with my flatmate (who is going through s1 for the first time and is almost as obsessed as i am). it's like if midnight doctor who and the thing had a baby. normally i think this slot would go to duane barry/ascension/one breath (2.05/2.06/2.08) or nisei/731 (3.09/3.10), which are the tightest, tensest episodes relating to the show's overarching mythology

honorable mention goes to elegy (4.22) because the a-plot is a very 90s depiction of neurodivergence and it's not the best-handled thing i've ever seen, but the character showcase of scully in the b-plot gave me fucking brain worms. i cannot stop thinking about it. it's haunting.

also, memento mori (4.14). vince gilligan and gillian anderson you're splitting my therapy bill

ask my top 5/10 anything!!!

[thekingofwinterblog]

Glad to see you be more critical to one piece, to me it seems obvious that there has been a large shift of direction at some point - I think the Gorosei going from real-politik buerocrats, that do horrible things through tears for "the greater good", to "hahah humans are insects haha, we are literal demon monsters" is the best evidence.

The problem with the tonal shift is that Oda obviously wanted/planned to go through a shift into darker territory starting with the last part of Paradise, and then continuing into the New world.

He opened up with Luffy, sanji and zoro murdering pacifistas in rather graphic ways, the fake straw-hats being buried alive, Caribou's crew seemingly all being killed when their air bubble burst, with plans to delve into the destroyed Shogunate of Wano, Big Mom's horrific dystopia, have the kingdom of Dressrosa go through the bird cage, explore child experiments at Punk Hazard, and have the driving force for most of the New World be Luffy signing his name and crew unto several assassination plans regarding Kaido and Big Mom to take out his biggest rivals for the title of Pirate King. Nothing heroic about that.

On paper, all of that sounds like it would lead to a second part that though comedic, took itself way more seriously than part 1, and led to a comparitively darker follow up.

Of course, anyone who has read One Piece knows this did not happen. Oda ultimately didnt have it in him as a writer to go down this path he had set for himself, and the tone set early into the second half was quickly forgotten, and One Piece single biggest flaw, Oda's complete inability to ever kill off a character unless he absolutely, positively has to, returned and worse than ever, castrating the effectiveness of almost all of the part 2 arcs in one way or another.

The ultimate result is that part 2 overall actually feels way lighter in tone than part 1 ever did, with absolutely nothing part 2 ever did coming close to the horrors of the Alabasta civil war, the Marineford war and the torture palace of Impel Down.

Which puts the final part of the series in a bit of a mess regarding it's tone.

Because Playtime...

Is over.

Oda has now finally reached the point where he now HAS to write One Piece as he originally envisioned it, with the dark tone, and brutal battles he originally had in mind, where characters die, because he actually needs to remove them from the board now that we are here at the finish line.

The problem is the fact that it's so fucking jarring.

Also he is realising he doesnt have the time left to let things play out in a slow burn as he has done all through part 2.

I have no doubt that Oda originally had some plan in mind where the Gorosei would act as the usual Miniboss squad of One Piece's villains and would be fleshed out over time... But the simple, brutal fact is, he doesnt have the time left.

Oda is both Old and tired, and does't have the energy he had 10-15 years ago, but even if he had, he doesnt have the arcs left where he could take the time to introduce them one by one.

I honestly thought that was what he had in mind for Egghead, but then suddenly he realised halfway through that there wasn't gonna be any arc to do this after it. So he had to basically cram everything about them into the arc now, now, now, and he was forced to saddle all of them with the one, single fleshed out elder he had planned, so now they all have god complexes, when that probably was only supposed to be spider guy's thing.

Hey, remember that there was one of the Gorosei(The boar guy)that objected to just wiping one of their kingdoms from the face of the world for a test drive before falling into line when push came to show?

You probably dont, because it's obvious whatever that was supposed to be setting up that one of them had scrouples seems to have been abandoned/forgotten.

There are a lot of Problems with part 2, but basically most of them boils down to the fact Oda's editors didnt force him to follow through on the tonal shift, and didn't reign him in when the arcs began to baloon, and that spiraled until we ended up here at the end when everything is now for all the marbles.

[sixstepsaway]

changing alicent's backstory so drastically was such a horrible decision to make from a writing perspective

book!alicent is power hungry and wants her family on the throne. she's working with otto, she seduces viserys, she tries to deal with the problem of rhaenyra by marrying a teenage girl to her 2 year old son. she manipulates and schemes because she wants everything

rhaenyra and alicent are both intelligent, powerful, power-hungry women fighting within the bounds of patriarchy and misogyny to try and get what they want, and alicent goes one way (knocking anyone out of the way and putting her male child on the throne) and rhaenyra the other (ignoring the patriarchy as if it means nothing and sitting on the throne herself).

in the show, alicent has been split into two characters shoved into one body. you have the book alicent who has to put her son on the throne, who wants power and glory and hates rhaenyra for what she represents, and you have the teenage show alicent who never wanted any of this at all, and was groomed and manipulated by otto into seducing an adult man for otto's goals.

all the way through the show it's otto pulling the strings, otto fighting for power, otto who wants the hightowers on the throne, not alicent. alicent reaches out to rhaenyra again and again because half of her character is the teenager who was best friends with her, but they kept in the other half, the cruel half that judges rhaenyra's choices and destroys her life at every turn

it's ridiculously jarring to watch alicent argue over the truth about rhaenyra's children, knowing that she knows that if that truth came out, rhaenyra and her children might just be put to death for their crimes (rhaenyra for having bastards, her children for being them), and then argue a few episodes later that killing rhaenyra in the chase for her own power is Bad, Actually

it's jarring to watch the young version of alicent in all the scenes where she's miserable and clearly showing all the signs of having been abused and hurt and forced, while in other scenes she seems fine and happy and reaches for viserys and seems to care very much for him

(to be clear, I do know that victims of abuse can be that way, that they can care for their abuser, and have mixed feelings when that abuser dies, but i don't trust the writers of this show to pull that one off, and they don't put enough energy into making it clear it is that way. not to mention that you don't see viserys himself abuse alicent aside from one sex scene where he checks on her and she reassures him that he should continue (i think? i'm pretty sure?). in the context of the world, alicent was old enough to get married and have children, much as rhaenrya was (although she waited until she was older because she was sifting through the options for her own suitor as a way of putting it off), and it was otto who groomed and abused her into being with viserys, pretending (?) to care for him and love him and want him. the only implication of anything untoward is when viserys asks alicent not to tell rhaenyra about their talks because "she wouldnt understand", which is a deliberate (? i think?) decision to make viserys sound like a child groomer, but it feels completely out of place when set against how viserys is portrayed the rest of the time and against the fact alicent was sent to him, he didn't seek her out or even know otto was setting them up)

I genuinely think the problem for me is that alicent feels like two different people, as i said. they made the decision to completely change her roots and motivations, but then while adapting the books kept big chunks of her actions and decisions in. it would have made more sense if she'd been secretly a black and otto was the one pulling all the strings, threatening her children and manipulating her, rather than somehow continuing to keep her being on the other side from rhaenyra and failing to balance that against her motivations

in fact, I don't... know alicent's motivations? viserys mutters something about wanting aegon on the throne, in her eyes, and...okay? and otto swears rhaenyra will kill alicent's children and she believes him? but also reaches out to her in 1x08 despite this?

alicent's motivations aren't power, she doesn't want power. she doesn't seem to want power for aegon either (she hates him, from what i can tell, and certainly doesn't trust him as far as she can throw him), all she really wants is for her children to be okay? why she married aegon and helaena to one another I have no idea? I know why the targaryens do it (to keep the bloodlines strong, give them more claim to the throne, keep the distinctive silver hair etc) but why did alicent do it, when she didn't even expect aegon to be on the throne?

up until the end of 1x08, she's anticipating queen rhaenyra? it's only when viserys hallucinates and dies that she thinks the plan has to change?

i also hate that everyone was scheming behind her back to put aegon on the throne. like, come on. the woman has absolutely no agency, both as a character and as a person

(to clarify what i mean by this: to take a character's agency away is a writing maneuver. choosing to turn alicent from personally power-hungry and making decisions based on that desire for power (seducing viserys, isolating rhaenyra, putting aegon on the throne) to someone who is simply bobbed about by the men in her life making decisions for her and scheming behind her back takes away the agency of the character.

to take a person's agency away is decisions made by otto and co to not tell her their plans. she was inconsequential. they forced a marriage on her, they forced children on her, she was used as a pawn and nothing more.

compare to rhaenyra, whose agency is taken away by viserys making her marry laenor as penance for what she did with daemon. her character still has agency: she chooses to pursue a relationship with harwin, she names (most of) her children, she makes her own decisions.

alicent the character nor the woman has any agency at all, and she should)

every time i think, "Oh no, I hate Alicent?" they switch flip her back to the other character and I go "oh no, I love Alicent" and then they flip her back. they gave her weird purity culture christian slut shamery as a reason to hate rhaenyra, then dropped it right after it reached its peak in 1x08 and had her reach out to rhaenyra despite nothing having changed (and how disgusted she was by the fact she was (allegedly) fucking daemon originally)

I love Alicent, I fucking adore her, but the lack of consistency keeps jarring me so bad I'm never sure if I love Alicent, the idea of Alicent, the young Alicent, the older Alicent or the book Alicent, because they're all so very different

i'm hoping maybe in s2 she'll be more consistent? but the decision to make a huge thing of her best friendship with rhaenyra has completely shredded most of the plot beats from the book, so they're going to have to change so much to make it work, i think?

also the idea that aemond could kill luke and then things could be okay again between rhaenyra and alicent is fucking laughable, not only because what the fuck alicent's son killed rhaenyra's son but also because alicent tried to murder rhaenyra when luke took an eye from aemond, so the idea that alicent might be like "hey, i'm sure this murder of your beloved son is forgivable <3" is so fucking funny to even consider

the girls would need a lot of fucking therapy and alicent would need to offer aemond's hands in penance at least for rhaenyra to even consider forgiveness

anyway they were so busy thinking "hey we could tell a cute lil first love semi-wlw sad little teen love story with this character and rhaenyra to make it hurt more" they never wondered if they fucking should

(and honestly, I think at least a chunk of this decision was rooted in racism. they decided to be outwardly anti-racist by making the velaryons black, which is gorgeous and i love that they did that, but then doubled down on being really racist (in my opinion!) by almost removing baela and rhaena from the plot entirely (and deleting all their scenes with their father), and by changing laena's everything so drastically and so cruelly.

they took away the fact she and rhaenyra were friends, that even when she and daemon were married, rhaenyra was often at her side, was there when she was pregnant, was there to support her, was possibly even lovers with her (replacing her with alicent in the show), and then changed her death from tragic and so very sad where she died from consequences of childbirth with her husband and her best friend by her side, sitting vigil over her, to... suicide by dragon when her child might have survived had she not had them both crispy fried? that's such a baffling and gross change of the plot and i hate it. justice for the real laena (in personality, not appearance - i love her casting so much and I wish we'd seen more of the actresses that played her))

[curatoroffiction]

The Curse of Alice: Chapter 1

This is the first chapter of a new series for the Ikemen: Villains series. In it, the reader is gender-neutral and accidentally wanders back in time due to having a curse of their own. (Really, it's more an excuse for me to play around with time-difference shenanigans.) ----- Also Tumblr deleted half my Content Warnings in the tags, so please let me know if I'm missing any -----

Content for this series is likely to include;

Canon-typical violence (For any of my readers who are more familiar with my Twisted Wonderland and Obey Me writings, please note that "Ikemen: Villains" is SIGNIFICANTLY MORE VIOLENT AND DARK than those two combined.)

Canon-typical trauma triggers (Again, this series is so much darker than the other ones I write for, please, please, PLEASE pay attention to the content warnings for this series as I write it. I'll be doing my best to thoroughly tag)

Spicy romance scenes (These will also be thoroughly tagged so my romance-averse/touch-averse readers can avoid them.) I might later have some specific single stories that address AFAB player content in this same AU, but those will be separated from this series (You will not find AFAB-specific content in any chapters from "The Curse of Alice", but if you're seeking that content out, you might check out other stuff I've posted for this fandom)

----- Content warnings for this chapter;

Suicide mention

Suicide/Forced Suicide (It's a background character, but it's still DARK and vivid.)

MURDER

Blood touches the reader

Abduction

----- You aren't fond of tours.

You never feel like they really show you what you want to see on a tour. At least, nothing you couldn't learn from a written tour guide. Those usually have more information in them, anyways. Tours are always focused on showing you exactly what you're meant to see, and your heart calls to see what people don't want you to see. You yearn to see things that people keep secret.

If it weren't for the fact that you'd heard that this mansion had a particularly intriguing piano from the 19th century, cursed by the soul of a man who committed suicide in front of it, you'd have never even come here. A story like that is stoked with tragedy. You heard that the man had a long list of sins that came out after his death, which made you curious about the story, because it made it dark. Did he kill himself because he felt guilty? Did he kill himself because his sins were going to come to light? Did those sins only come to light because of his suicide?

If anything, it would make for a fascinating story study.

You're an aspiring writer who likes to test your mettle against darker plotlines, so you're attracted to learning stories that touch the macabre.

Unfortunately, the mansion only allows guests to go along with a guide. So you're trapped in a night tour. The mansion's corridors are lit up only where the tour guide leads everyone. There's many more corridors darkened by the night's ambiance, giving an eerie sense to the experience.

You bought a tour book, but out of respect to the guide, you aren't reading it. It's stashed away inside your backpack.

Most of the information the guide is giving is about how people used to work in this building, showcasing some of the old art of the time from around when the suicide took place. What intrigues you is that they don't really mention the artists of the architecture that much. They make some over-all claims about the designers and architects, but they can't tell you exactly who designed or crafted the banisters of the stairwells, or the tiles of the floor. You take several pictures of these fixtures, especially some of the more run-down areas.

When the tour reaches the room with the famed piano, you take a video of the instrument as the tour guide talks about the stories of the night that the man killed himself. Some passerbys that night had faintly heard the sound of piano music on the night of the incident. Particularly, a postwoman had a haunting account of the song being played. She couldn't place it, but she remembered it sounding mesmerizing, like it would have drawn her in, had the front door not been locked.

You take diligent notes, writing small comments to yourself about things to research as you do.

The hallways of the mansion are a veritable labyrinth. So when your tour continues, you find your eyes drawn to the hallways you're not allowed to go down. You look down a particularly dark hallway and see a small, white bunny rabbit on the ground, you pause and blink. "...." You look back to your tour guide group, but something calls to you about the rabbit. The tour group is already moving on, but surely.. They won't notice you missing from the group, right?

The white rabbit sees you and darts down a hallway, and you turn to follow it, separating from your group. The hallway it turns into is outside the grasp of the light from the hallway you came from.

It's almost as though there's a threshold here. In your heart, you feel like if you walk past this point, you'll be walking into the night itself. An impenetrable darkness.

Impenetrable by all except that little white rabbit, which you can see at the end of the hall, staring at you.

You feel.. Compelled to follow it.

You were so bored, and this is so interesting and exciting and it feels like you're actually chasing a story. Getting to see something the tour guides won't show you. There was no mention of rabbits. Does someone keep a collection of them here?

It feels like everything you were seeking would be found if you follow this rabbit, which is such a strange and foreign experience that you just.. Follow it.

It's hard not to, when it feels so right.

Corridor after corridor, you find yourself following the rabbit through the halls, until the rabbit disappears entirely. No matter how much you look, you can't find it. You must have scared it. What was a rabbit doing in this place anyways? You have so many questions, none of which are getting answered.

Looking around, you have no idea where you are. There's a room number on a nearby room plaque though, so you decide to try to figure out how to get back to your tour group by checking out the map. By the light of your cellphone, you figure out where you are and begin to head towards the main entrance. You'll get in trouble, but that's fine. You're used to getting in trouble for straying from groups, ever-curious.

As you're walking through a hall that you swore was lit earlier, you begin to wonder if the tour closed down early. You couldn't have been gone from the group for THAT long, could you? What if it's closed down already? You're walking into the darkened main foyer when you hear a hauntingly delicate tone drifting through the halls of the mansion.

The sound of the piano.

Ah, the tour must have ended, and someone was now playing the piano to make sure it was operational. You'll just have to explain yourself to whoever is in there that you got yourself separated from your tour group and apologize.

Phone blasting light, you open the door to the room that the music is coming from, only to get hit with a splash of something warm.

Something dark.

Something red.

You see the body of the man in front of you on the floor first. The last breath escapes the man who has obviously killed himself by stabbing himself in the neck with a knife, in the light of your phone's flashlight. A shiver goes down your spine as you're going to be sick. You're covered in a dead man's blood. Your phone has no signal.

The piano playing stops and you look up, your phone light illuminating 8 figures in the dark.

Is this.. Some kind of sick after-tour live action retelling of the suicide? "... I uh.." Your eyes keep traveling down to the man at your feet. It's so convincing. You're visibly disgusted. "... Sorry, I got separated from my tour group. ..." Your eyes watch the man on the ground. He doesn't look like he's acting. He doesn't look like he's breathing anymore. His body went limp, even with your interruption. Too convincing to be just an act. The wound looks too realistic, too. Blood pooling out from under him in a growing pool that makes you step back. Maybe it's a convincing mannequin? Your mind wants to make sense of this in a way that doesn't focus on reality. .... Whatever it is, your stomach is churning. Those special effects have to be really good, if they're special effects.

"Well, well..! I wasn't expecting a guest." You hear a voice from deeper in the room, which is dark. Too dark for an after-tour play. In the dim lighting illuminating the room, you can see seven figures all standing around in the dark. The man speaking to you, however, is stepping away from the piano, making eight people total. When he sees you in the light, he cocks his head to the side with a soft, excited grin. "Hmmn.. I'm not familiar with you."

"Hrm.. That's a bit troublesome. What should we do with them?" A man with rose-pink hair and a soft, milky-smooth voice asks, looking in your direction. "And what is that light?" He asks, his curiosity piqued at your phone.

"Sorry to spook you, but this is just a rehearsal for a play." A very easy-going man with a cocky grin looks up to you in the dim light.

"..." You look down to the body in front of you. "... It uh.. It looks pretty real. ... What kinds of special effects are you using?"

"It's a secret."

"...." Your face tells them everything, that you're not convinced.

"... Y'know, it really would've been better if you had at least pretended to believe it." His smirk is palpable. Like you just walked into a trap. It drops as he looks to the guy who'd been playing the piano; "What should we do, Will?"

"We should take them with is, of course - To the Palace's Reaper."

There's a click of a tongue and one of the men to the side is visibly scowling as he mutters; "That's why I toldja to lock the damn door!" a particularly gruff man says, audibly scowling.

Another man chuckles. "Well, I didn't think we'd have a tresspasser! You're a naughty little thing, aren't you?" He smiles to you, and you think you can make out a rifle on his back.

They're all so non-chalant as they stand around. The body on the ground has stopped sputtering, and has released its last vestiges of air. You know this isn't fake. They've killed this man and made it look like a suicide. Why? And why here, in this room?

"Why don't you come over here? There's no escape at this point anyway." The gentle tone of a dark-haired man beckons you deeper into the room.

Every part of your spine is tingling with danger. You have to leave. You need to leave. You've followed the rabbit into something horrific and now you're ready to go home.

As though he could sense your growing panic, the man from the piano looks to you with crimson eyes and a smile that's much too warm and inviting; "Come here, pitiful one." The words feel so much heavier than anything else said tonight.

Your legs begin moving on their own. You're visibly startled. What is this?? Why are you moving? You're moving against your will, and you want to run, but you can't. They only stop when you're standing in front of the man.

"Pardon me." He says, tugging you in closer so he can see your face better in the illumination of your phone's light. Your light also shows you his eyes in a way that showcases their vibrancy and deep crimson - Like the blood you can see splattered on your own clothes, it looks too real to be fake. You've seen red contacts before. These don't look like contacts. He reaches up and wipes the blood from your face with his thumb, and he grins. ".. There." releasing you from his touch and his control. "Forgive me for not introducing myself sooner. My name is William. William Rex. I'd like to invite you to have dinner with us tonight. What is your name?"

Your knees buckle as you're released from his verbal commands, and you drop tot he ground, barely able to stand. You're visibly dazed. The pink-haired man comes alongside you, looking at the device in your hand, peering over your shoulder. "And what IS that thing?" he motions to your phone.

"...." You slowly look to him, and give him a questioning look. His question is so outrageous it's ripping you out of your mental shock. "... It's a phone..?"

"Doesn't look like anything I've ever seen.." The even-toned, deep-voiced man with the rifle expresses, curiously.

"You'll have to tell us more over dinner." William kneels beside you, holding a hand out to you. He doesn't command you. He's practically asking you to come along, like you didn't just witness something horrific and somehow magically had your body controlled against your will.

When you stare at him in quiet shock, visibly perturbed by the idea of taking his outstretched hand, eyes darting between his eyes and his bloodstained glove, your heart sinks.

You're surrounded, and there's no getting out of this.

William can sense your hesitation, and he he begins to ask questions about you, redirecting your attention to talking about yourself. You're wary and not wanting to comply, but he doesn't force you like he did to make you come into the room. They stand around, patiently waiting for you to get your story out as William calms you down. It's like they have all the time in the world.

At your own pace, you explain your circumstance to the men, and how you got here. As they hear your story, William's eyes can't help but to light up as he watches you. But all of the men appear to be surprised, and intrigued.

"I promise, if you just help me find my way out of here, I didn't see anything-"

"Ooh, it's much too late for that now." William smiles, almost apologetically. "There's someone who will want to meet you."

Despite your protests, you're brought along and taken to their base of operations.

---

You didn't expect the horse-drawn carriage. Or for the block to look so... Different than it did when you came out of the mansion. It's the first clue that you're not where you're meant to be. The city in the distance looks completely different too. This isn't the city you've been exploring all day, this is something older. The buildings look different, both newer and older. There used to be a building with lots of windows out front, but now it's just.. Small shops?

Except that doesn't make sense. One moment, you were taking a tour, then you were following a white rabbit, and now the world is different around you. None of this makes any sense. You wrack your head as you stare out the window of the carriage. Did you bump your head? Have you gone crazy? Are you in a dream?

It's too vivid to be a dream.

Maybe you're crazy. It'd be easier to swallow if you'd gone mad. Maybe they'll let you go if they think you're crazy too.

What's weird is that they didn't take your phone from you. Kidnappers would take your phone, right? You look to it repeatedly, and you've gotten zero bars this entire ordeal. And now you're going further into what looks like the countryside. You're even being allowed to see the entire route to get out here. Why wouldn't captors take your phone? Wouldn't they cover your head to keep you from knowing where they work and how to get back?

One of the men in the carriage is eyeing you as you peruse your phone. It's a touch-screen. "... What a curious device."

You glance up to see a man with dark hair and a weary smile on his face. Like he's tired. Too tired. He smiles warmly to you. There's a blonde man sitting at his side who looks almost picturesque. Like someone hand-crafted his face. You look back to your phone. "...."

The dark-haired man taps the windowsill of the carriage, causing you to look up again, and he motions to the castle coming up in the view. "We've arrived. This could be the place where your life ends, the root of all evil - Or rather, our base." He's still smiling as he says this.

You look up to see the castle and it's astounding how beautiful and dark it looks in this lighting.

You knew you made a mistake following them into the carriage. You were just so thrown off by how the whole street looked different from when you arrived, that your brain went into auto-pilot, and you let these strangers cart you away.

Now you might die here. The word 'Might' is pulling a lot of weight in giving you a sliver of hope in this whole ordeal.

".. Is this real?"

"Unfortunately, yes. It's neither a dream, nor an illusion. It's what you may call the harsh, inescapable reality." His words ring out in your mind. This is not a dream, this is reality. Something tickles at your mind and you harshly find yourself rejecting it.

"This can't be real." Your answer causes him to chuckle, but you can see sadness in his eyes as he does.

"If you want to believe in a sweet dream, who am I to deny it?"

---

As you walk up to the castle, the curious pink-haired man comes up alongside you, asking a million questions about your phone. You show him the device, explaining it to him, confused. It really is like he's never seen one in his life before. When he sees that moving pictures can show up on the screen, and that you can interact with it by touch, he wants to learn everything he can about it.

You're hesitant to hand him your phone, as it's the only contact with the outside world that you might have, wherever you're going - But you do choose to open up a game on your phone to show him what it looks like. He's practically glued to your side as he watches you play, learning about this game. He's overflowing with excitement to get to see something so novel to him.

But you don't understand why he's so enthralled. Everyone here should know that phones exist, shouldn't they?

One look around at the prying eyes stealing glances at your phone tells you that they likely don't. While the pink-haired man is the most curious, the gruff man with black and white hair also keeps stealing looks towards your device.

---

A bright, excited, celebratory man's voice calls out as you and the men enter into what looks like a dining room, and there's the distinct popping sound of a party popper. You blink, confused. Is this how assassins typically celebrate their kills? His eyes rest on you. "Oh..? Who is this?"

"This is ___. They just happened to be at the target's mansion." William explains. "They appear to have technology that's strange and different, and the story they told us was quite interesting."

"Wow! What a.. Fateful coincidence!" The dining room man with dark, long hair looks to you curiously.

"You don't even know the half of it." William chuckles, then looking to you. "___, this is Victor. He serves as Her Majesty's personal aide."

..... What?

You stare in complete shock, not sure what to do. Surely, these guys are just fucking with you at this point, right? Your mind refuses to believe any of this could be real. It has to be some kind of twisted dream mashing up everything you'd interacted with that day. You must have bonked your head without realizing it, and will be waking up any moment in a hospital or something.

This can't be real.

Victor walks you through your experiences with the group, and asks questions about how you came to find them.

When you explain that you were on a tour group for the building and then you followed a rabbit down a hallway and found yourself lost, his expression shifts to earnest surprise as he only has one question; "What color was the rabbit?"

".. White?"

"...." Victor glances to the group, who all appear to have the same thought as there's nods all around. He looks back to you. "Do you have anything from the tour?"

You nod and rifle through your backpack, producing the tour guide - And your notes from the tour. "This was the tour I was on, and those were my notes."

He begins reading through the tour guide, intrigued. The dates and comments in it are intriguing him the most. Accompanied by the quality of the paper and the print on it. He's never seen anything like this, or any machines that can produce this quality of work. When he gets to your notes, however, he's even more impressed. "... And what year would you say this is?"

"----...?" you say the year you came from, visibly confused.

"......." Victor looks to the cocky guy from before who has been staring at your eyes as you speak. He gives Victor a nod. "... Fascinating. Well, ___, I think this might have actually been an incident of fate."

"...?" You look to him questioningly.

Victor reaches into his jacket pocket and produces another party popper, which he'd stashed just in case the first one failed, and he pulls the popper, letting out a loud sound and spraying confetti at you with a bright smile; "You're cursed!"

You stare at him in exhausted silence.

He coughs and straightens up to explain; "You see, we all here are cursed. You're familiar with fairytales, yes?"

"... Yeah?"

"Fairytales, stories, they all hold some tokens of truth to them, I would say. We each are cursed with a fairytale curse, which binds our destinies to a dark and turbulent path. I think you've got the curse of 'Alice'!"

"....." You look even more exhausted than before. Are they going to kill you, or induct you? Is this a cult? Have you been abducted by a death-cult?

"... I see you must have many questions. Please, feel free to ask away."

".. What is this 'Curse of Alice'..?"

"It's a term I just came up with right now!" Victor beams proudly. "I've never heard of someone with a curse like yours. Jumping through time to completely different realms.. Hahh.. That must be such a fascinating experience!"

".. Jumping through time?"

"The year at this time is 1886."

"......" You shake your head. "Nah. I don't believe that. Nope. That's just not true. Look, I know you guys murdered someone tonight, if you could skip the mind games and just kill me, that'd be appreciated."

Victor laughs, shaking his head. "Oh no, no. We can't kill you, we'll need to study you."

"Oh, absolutely not."

You hear a voice behind you, the gentle voice; "Should we kill them then?" You peer back and lock eyes with the gentle expression of Ellis. The dark-haired guy who told you that you couldn't escape and coaxed you deeper into the room where the murder happened. He stares at you in almost.. a vacant kind of way. "I don't think it would make them happy, but if you ask me to, I will." He seems to be addressing Victor as he says this.

"..." You turn your attention back to Victor. "So uh, what kinds of experiments are we talking about here?" wanting to avoid the outcome that points at death.

"We'll need to thoroughly understand your curse, which means we'll have to keep you under surveillance. And you'll have to work with our resident medical professional, Roger."

You follow Victor's motion to meet Roger. Your voice is completely disturbed as you flatly say; "... Nice to meet you, Doc."

"Oh, I'm not a doctor. My license was revoked." He gives you a big smirk.

You immediately look back to Victor; "... Please kill me instead."

"Is that what you truly want?" William asks, eyeing you with interest. Something deep inside him is intrigued by how his curse reacts to yours. He wants to guide you. He wants to know you. He wants to watch you come apart.

"...." You grimace as you realize they're taking your jokes literally. "... No. I'm just frustrated. And I don't want to be experimented on."

"Might be more careful about voicing such false desires." William motions behind you and you turn to see Ellis has gotten right up behind you without you noticing. You visibly startle at how close he is, and the soft-spoken man just smiles warmly to you with his dark purple eyes.

You feel a shudder run down your spine as you feel like your body just narrowly escaped death in this moment. You turn back to William. "... I'll keep that in mind."

Victor takes charge again; "You must have a lot of questions about us. Go ahead and ask away."

"... The thing is, you've read that guidebook now, so even if I asked if this was the murder of 1886, you'd know that you could say 'yes' to cover it up. I don't know if you're on a power trip and you're just messing with my head because you can, or if you're actually telling the truth. It's impossible for me to know." You explain everything. "And honestly, I'm not entirely sure that I'm not just crazy. That'd explain this whole thing so much more. I'm going to wake up in a hospital bed and discover I slipped and fell on those old tiles or something. I just know it."

The cocky man from before smiles as you speak. He likes how little you trust them. It's a good sign that you'll make a good partner in their line of work.

"Patient exhibits delusions of fantasy." Roger is already making notes. You shoot him an annoyed look. He grins to you.

You look back to Victor. "None of this seems real. Can you somehow prove that it's real?"

"You experienced a curse firsthand tonight." Roger motions to William.

The gruff man with the annoyed expression scowls at Roger, admonishing him for spilling 'state secrets'.

William just smiles to you and nods. "Yes, cursed people have special abilities, and you experienced mine earlier tonight. I can command people to do anything I want them to, just with my voice."

You're reminded of when your body moved on its own at his command. That feels real, but you're still not sure. "... Do it to me again."

William raises an eyebrow at you, curious. His lips wear a smile, but he's interested to help you believe that this is reality. So he holds his hands upwards, as though beckoning you into his arms. "Dance with me."

Your body moves on its own once more. You're pulled into his arms, taking up the position as the lead in a dance you've never learned before. You're visibly shocked and surprised. William dances with you around the room, amidst the circle of onlookers, before he releases you from his control.

You can feel that heaviness from before overtake you once again, except this time it's much less intense. You were a willing participant in this command. The more he has to overwrite your will, the more energy it must take to control you. You're still lightheaded though, as you spin out of the dance, visibly dazed. ".... Okay. I'll believe that. If that's the case though, then what's MY power?"

"Well, isn't that the question of the hour." Victor grins to you again. "It seems you can travel through time, though not at your own choice, which is a fascinating problem. Might be quite the handful keeping an eye on you. Just don't go following any white rabbits while you're here, alright?"

"Where IS here?"

"This is the headquarters of Crown, the root of all evil in England. Where we fight evil with evil. The cursed carve a path for goodness to survive in this world, and we learn more about the curses as we do." Victor begins to explain to you about Crown's operational code.

".. Evil?" Your tone is audibly skeptical.

Liam, the pink-haired man, speaks up now; "Yes, cursed people are doomed to commit evil and meet a tragic end." He smiles warmly to you. Much too warmly for the subject matter. "For example, when someone has the Cat's Curse, they can't suppress their curiosity. Ever heard of 'Curiosity killed the cat'?"

"But satisfaction brought him back - Yeah, I'm familiar."

Liam is pleased that you're familiar, but his eyes get a little sad as he looks to the side; "Well.. Satisfaction doesn't always bring the cat back. I have the Cat's Curse at this time. According to the records, the person who received the Cat's Curse before me dabbled in all sorts of horrific things. Arson, robbery, self-mutilation, adultery.. All to satisfy his own curiosity. He was tortured and had his limbs torn off, but still, he laughed through the tears and screams escaping him to laugh "This is a great new first for me!" before throwing himself into a bath of sulfuric acid."

You shudder at his story. It would make a great scary story to tell around a campfire.

Roger speaks up now, looking to you in the eyes. "If you truly do have a curse, which I think you do, then the safest place for you will be right here, with experts who know how to deal with such things, who can understand if you begin to do evil things."

"... I haven't had any evil impulses."

"Really?" Alfons, the man with the tired eyes, smirks to you. "Trespassing.. Leaving your tour group behind to follow a little rabbit into places you knew were off-limits.. The need to tell people when you think they're wrong even if it makes things worse.. Following a group of strangers into a vehicle to an undisclosed location.. Do you think these are the actions of someone who wants to be a law-abiding citizen?"

"......." The curse definitely would explain a lot of your behavior today. Though you've always followed things that catch your eye. "... If that's true though, then why now? Why did this happen now, instead of when I was a kid?"

"It's possible that it did happen to you when you were young, and you just didn't know." Victor explains, looking to you empathetically. It's not every day that someone finds out they're cursed and doomed to tragedy.

"..." Your nose scrunches up as you think through your memories. You did wander a lot as a kid. You still wander a lot. It would definitely explain some things. "... Don't like that."

"Not many people do. I'm sorry we had to be the ones to tell you."

"So what's this about fighting evil with evil?"

"You saw that in action tonight as well. We killed that man."

You think back on how the man died. It looked like a suicide. Your eyes meet William's, and he just gives you a warm, knowing smile and a soft nod. You shudder. ".... Why?"

They explain how the man was a key figure in some horrific underground organizations. The list of his 'sins' as dictated in your notes wasn't even half of the things he actually was 'sentenced' for, and the list was already pretty bad.

They go on to explain that cursed people are often regarded as dangerous and evil, but England is, at this time, the only place which has organized and nationally recognized them and their potential. That 'Crown' is an organization of cursed individuals, and everyone in this room is cursed. They go into the hearts of the most evil places in this country where police and military cannot touch, to wreak havoc and disrupt evil.

Victor explains that, because the nature of cursed people is to commit evil acts, this organization is meant to allow them to do that without fear of punishment, so long as their evils benefit the country.

And now, as a cursed individual who has seen this organization and knows what it's capable of, they have to make a decision about how to deal with you.

"We'll need to study you, that's certain.. But hmm.." Victor wonders out loud. His mind returns to your notes. They were very well taken. "... Do you like writing, perchance?"

".... Yeah."

"Then I think I have a solution~! While you're stuck in this time period, you shall be our fairytale keeper!" He's very pleased with himself. "You had wonderful prose and writing in your notes from what I saw, so I have every belief that you can write something worthy of using as our reports to Her Majesty. You'll write all the evil deeds committed by the people here, including yourself, and write them as fairytales. How does that sound?"

"That sounds like a fake job."

"I just designed it right now, isn't that exciting?" Victor's eyes dance with excitement.

- "It feels like you're just trying to avoid doing more paperwork.." The cocky man gives Victor a sideways glance.

His insinuation isn't stopping Victor's excitement train. "Well, what do you say, ___?"

".. If I say no, are you gonna keep me against my will anyway?"

"Naturally. You know too much and will still need constant supervision."

"And will saying 'yes' and doing this job for you at least give me some kind of freedom in this arrangement, and a chance to earn your trust that I won't go spilling your secrets?"

"Of course."

"Then I guess I'm on-board."

Victor claps his hands excitedly. "This calls for a celebration! Our cursed little family just got a little bigger tonight~! Now, let's get you acquainted with your new home. This calls for a tour!"

...

You really hate tours. -----

End

-----

Next Chapter ----- If you like this chapter, you can stay easily updated when more chapters come out via AO3;Link All of my other random off-shoots for this fandom will also be posted there under "The Curse of Alice - A Collection" series. Thank you for reading!

[kitkatopinions]

I think that V9 really just made me convinced that the friendship between Team RWBY is pretty out of obligation and that their friendships and relationships will not last with the possible exception of Ruby and Weiss. Like, the writers might continue on to make them 'bffs forever' with relationships we're supposed to think are perfect, but I really just think they barely even like each other.

Trigger warning for discussions of attempted suicide.

Ruby spends the entire volume going through a terrible depression and grieving over the loss of her friend and struggling with trauma and very clearly not okay, and meanwhile only one of her friends really seem to care and only when she's not distracted. Ruby then blows up that she doesn't want to be the leader anymore, doesn't want to be treated like she's perfect, doesn't want to be the one who provides answers, and basically admits that she feels like no one cares what she goes through. Then her friends don't do anything when a forty year old man screams in her face that she's responsible for all bad things, don't do anything but watch as she basically tries to kill herself after being tortured, don't care much after the fact, and then when she comes back, they all basically says she's perfect and would never be weak and announce they're still looking to her as a leader for all their answers.

Blake and Yang have never addressed any of their actual past issues and Blake became a completely different person and the doylist reason might be that the writers just changed her character but in universe it feels like she did that for Yang, but then in V9 Yang is pretty much just blowing off all of Blake's concerns while Blake tries to control Yang's temper for her by coaxing Yang like a mom with a toddler, they were forced into confessing their feelings for each other and what Yang said to Blake basically amounted to 'I think it's cute that you're a minority, also here's some incorrect things that indicate that I don't pay attention to you or your past as an abuse victim,' and then the little sister that Yang supposedly cares about killed herself after implying that Yang was ignoring her for Blake's sake.

As for Weiss's relationship with Blake and Yang, did they even talk outside of Weiss telling them that Ruby was going through too much and sharing eye-rolls about how exasperating the Ever After was? Weiss put way more work into her friendship with Jaune than them and basically acted like they were just her co-workers and she was Angela in the first season of the Office.

And you know what, let's include Jaune in this too, because despite the fact that Jaune was closer to Ruby than almost anyone for the majority of the show... This whole thing made me not believe in them as friends from here on in. Jaune screamed in her face victim blaming her for stuff that wasn't her fault while basically saying she has no right to feel anything bad, after Ruby dismissed the Paper Pleasers as imaginary, and Jaune is now young again but has spent like twenty years apart from her and it would only make sense for Jaune to care way more about a lot of different things and it seems like he has a lot of resentment towards her built up. And meanwhile, I have no choice but to think they're trying to set up White Knight but he's??? Forty in his head??? And also Weiss was one of the people dismissing him as an unreliable crazy person. Which Blake and Yang also did, and he'd barely talked to Blake and Yang EVER before falling into the Ever After, especially Blake. Their little group hug meant next to nothing when half of them had no real relationship anyway and if there's a romance between Jaune and Weiss I cannot and will not believe that it'd ever work out especially now that's he's like mentally twenty years older than her.

The reason why I think that Ruby and Weiss have a chance for their friendship to survive is because they both still act like they care and would be willing to admit when they've been wrong. I honest to god feel like if Ruby tried to sit Yang down and have a conversation about feeling like Yang's past actions hurt her, Yang would get defensive or just be like 'what are you talking about of course I love you' and then go on doing the same stuff she was doing in volume 9. Of course I don't think the writers are actually going to act like anything is wrong or that anyone in the team needs to change and adjust and especially not anyone but Ruby (who somehow managed to get partially thrown under the bus this season for the power couple and the fandom's best girl and best boy 🙄) But I really just feel like no matter how much longer they writers try to make us think they're close friends, I'm still gonna feel like a year down the road Yang and Ruby will have very little contact, Blake and Yang will have broken up, Jaune and Ruby will be fighting, Weiss will have fallen out with Yang and Blake, and Ruby and Blake will have an incredibly awkward 'let's hang out some time,' small talk infused conversation like once every two or three months, and that's it.

[jessequinones]

Be kind to young writers

When I was young, I started my writing career through fan fiction and it was brutal. I didn't just get hate, my stories was put on a forum called the "The Literate Union". It was a group of gatekeepers who tried to keep Fanfiction.Net a "pure" website, or whatever. To make sure everyone followed the guidelines and my stuff was reported on mass.

Un announced to them, FanFiction.Net doesn't actually do anything when you report stories so nothing happened but some of the reviews were so nasty, I legit cried. I'm actually surprised I'm still a writer. This was one of the reviews I received and keep in mind, I had to censor most of these words because this "review" would violate every possible harassment guideline on any social media website.

I'm only sharing this as a reminder, I was a child who had no idea what I was doing. Be kind to young writers, they need support not harassment. Oh, and if you want to know what fandom I was in to received this level of hate? it was the Warriors Cats fandom.

"I'm not going to sugar coat this; your 'story' is so very, very bad that I would prefer being force fed a glass full of [redacted] that has been thrown in a blender with coffee creamer and toenail clippings and made to look like a smoothie before being heavily diluted by [redacted] and [redacted] and covered in [redacted]. It is reminiscent of a kindergartner's first attempt at a story, minus the endearing spelling errors and five-year-old innocence. In fact, a [redacted] from the [redacted] could have done a better job of this.

Now that I've given you fair warning, you are free to stop reading at any time, as I'm sure your tiny little brain may have trouble understanding some of it.

This 'story' is a perfect example of how a twelve year old with a keyboard and half a brain cell can thoroughly [redacted] the English language, then laugh as it lays sobbing in its own [redacted] and [redacted]. I was fighting tears and vomit with every line, because quite frankly, this is the worst horror you could ever inflict on a person. A respectable author would have first written everything out, proofread it, realized it was shit, deleted it, tried again, and then sent it off to a Beta who would then tell the writer that it was shit, and repeat these steps until you have a story that is both readable and good. At one point I actually pulled out a screwdriver and began to take apart my computer in an attempt to destroy this plague against all works of fiction, when I realized that destroying my computer would not handle the problem efficiently. My cat's [redacted] has more creativity and format than this 'story' does, and it saddens me that no one has informed you of how extraordinarily awful this abomination is. I do hope that you'll find yourself a respectable Beta and some self-respect before you continue to ruin the eyes of whatever unfortunate soul happens upon this 'story' next.

Hugs and Kisses,

Ker0s3ne K1d"