#star tourney

[star-tourney]

FINAL ROUND

Polaris

The North Star that lays on the tip of Ursa Minor’s tail. It’s been designated as such for several hundred years and will remain as such until it eventually moves out of that vicinity. It appears still as stars circle around it through the night.

Methuselah

One of the oldest stars, if not the oldest star, ever observed. It is projected to have an age of ~13.7 billion years. For reference, the age of the universe is also a value of ~13.7 billion years (give or take many millions of years).

[gayelderstourney]

OLD MAN YAOI BRACKET ROUND 2

Propaganda:

Sheo/The Nailsmith:

It's really nice because you unlock it after the nailsmith asks you to kill him with the pure nail and you refuse and walk away. He then says he was wandering hallownest without purpose until he found sheo who helped him discover that there was more to life than just one calling. These two are probably the only characters in the game to have a genuinely happy ending

The nailsmith loses his purpose in life after finishing his ultimate masterpiece, his lifelong goal, the pure nail. He requests the protagonist to try the nail on him, but If you refuse, he will find sheo who helps him to find new meaning in life and realise that there is more to life by teaching him different crafts. They can then be seen sculping figurines together, and sheo is also painting the nailsmith.They share a common love for art and crafts and inspire each other. Sheo's story is that he was a nailmaster, but got tired of it, and put down his nail to pick up a paintbrush. I think it's beautiful that he could help the nailsmith realise what he himself did. They both also used to live in solitude without even realising how lonely they were, and I think it's cute tuhat they can do art together now :]

They are two bugs retired from their career and making better lives for themselves and they’re gay about it. Nailsmith believes at first that he has nothing left after creating the perfect nail and asks the knight to strike him down, and if you don’t, he meets Sheo, a retired nailmaster finding a new calling in painting and sculpting. They find a shared love in creating things and Nailsmith finds a new calling in art as well. The achievement you get for uniting them is called “Happy Couple”

Gay bugs gay bugs gay bugs (Cw mention of suicide) They both used to pursue their one passion in life: forging the perfect nail (sword) for the Nailsmith and the art of combat for Sheo. Sheo realized he could just leave that life when he lost his passion for fighting, and he found himself a new purpose in life: art. However, he always seemed very lonely, completely isolated by all other bugs in his hidden house in the middle of a thorn jungle. When The Nailsmith achieved his goal and forged the perfect nail, he lost his purpose in life and his will to live. He asks the player to kill him. However, if the player refuses, he can later be found in Sheo's house, modelling for Sheo or sculpting figurines with him. He thanks the player for not fulfilling his request, because he has found a new calling in life here, making art together with Sheo. They both express how happy they are to no longer be alone. This also gives you the "Happy Couple" achievement, confirming that they are a couple.

THEY'RE CANON!!! They're fucking canon!!! You can talk to them at one point after doing a Bunch of Stuff to get them to meet each other and you get an achievement called "Happy Couple"!!! Gotta love old man yuri

Jean-Luc Picard/Q:

theyre kind of the ogs. q fucked that old man for SURE. if they arent old enough for you in the next generation (1987-1984) they probably will be in picard (2020-2023). also when i went looking for the pic i included i googled “star trek picard q in bed” and there were actually multiple different instances of that happening that popped up

um it’s unclear what age Q is supposed to be in TNG but in Picard they’re both undeniably old as balls. Q has godlike powers that he just uses to hang out with this bald old man in increasingly strange and annoying ways. And call him “mon capitane” like a freak and materialize next to him in bed and say Good Morning Darling and lounge all over the Enterprise like a fruit anyways I think they’re abnormal and I like them

what if you were an all powerful nearly omnipotent being who has been worshipped as a god on planets across the farthest reaches of space and the first guy to just not give a shit about you makes you fall madly in love with him

I can’t get my thoughts clear right now but they mean so much to me. They’re meant to be with each other ok. the sequel to spirk. they would be canon if paramount werent COWARDS

if I were an entity as old as the universe itself and I kept visiting some old guy on a spaceship trying to justify the existence of humanity it would 100% be for gay reasons and Q understands this concept on an intimate level actually

[yall-hate-kids-tourney]

Ezra Bridger (Star Wars: Rebels)

Y'all Hate Teens propaganda

The amount of people who have complained they "just couldn't get into the show" because one of the several protagonists happened to be a 14 year old boy who lived on the streets on his own fighting to survive since he was 7 years old, who committed the crime of being... *checks notes* mildly annoying.

[hubristicassholefight]

Hubristic Asshole Fight: Round 1 Part 1b

Anakin Skywalker (Star Wars) vs Feanor (The Silmarillion)

Propaganda below cut

Anakin

Decided that he would become stronger than death to stop those he cares about from dying after failing to accept his mother's death. When he begins getting visions/nightmares like he had before losing his mother of his wife dying in childbirth, he decides to team up with an evil sorcerer and mastermind to learn the secret to stopping death. The price he willingly paid was leading the slaughter of the community of peacekeeping monks who had raised him from nine years old, feeling guilt about his heinous betrayal even as he unflichingly continued the massacre (sunk cost fallacy to a very extreme degree). The unintended price he paid was the loss of his limbs and independence after his injuries during a fight with his mentor and brother figure, his wife dying on childbirth due to the great stress of his heinous actions, and being separated from his children until they were adults firmly opposed to the imperial regime he became the attack dog for (only knowing of their survival until after he had personally attacked them both); He literally did not have to do any of that. his wife Padmè very very very very much did not want him to do any of that. He was completely absorbed in his own inability to deal with loss that he deadlock refused to consider losing family again and then he went and killed what amounted to his extended family, his wife and the man who raised and guided him from age 9. And his own kids unknowingly. In terms of accomplishing your goals there really really wasn't much more he could have fucked up. And when it comes down to key moments, all he had to do was not cut off mentor and co-worker Mace Windu's hand with a laser sword and everything would have been fine. He's a nominee for Fail King of All Time to me

He thinks he's hot shit which, he is, but like cool it dude you don't have to mass murder maim mutilate your way through life to prove you're the extra most specialest bestest psychic space wizard;

Hubrised so hard he 1) lost his limbs and his skin 2) became what he hated 3) caused the very death he sought to prevent, betraying and destroying himself for nothing; So soaking wet and self aware that he cried committing atrocities. If he knew what hubris was, he'd agree he has a lot of it

Feanor

The definition of hubris. Created the silmarils who were so perfect even the gods praised them. Got them stolen by the gods evil brother (so essentially fantasy satan). Then decided to go fight the evil god to get the silmarils back and swore an oath binding him and his sons to get them back no matter who would stand in their way. This drastically backfired when some other elves stood in his way so he murdered them. Got cursed by the gods for this (together with his entire family and everyone who followed them). Told the gods that they were of the same kind as fantasy satan and that they would end up following him

Morgoth (a god) shows up at his house and Feanor (professional hater of gods) tells him to get fucked* and slams the door in his face. *”Get thee gone from my gate thou jail-crow of Mandos!”; He has never spent anything wrong ever aside from all the war crimes.

The Valar (gods) asked Feanor for help in saving the world from being in total darkness and he said “no, figure it out yourselves”. Repeatedly and intentionally goes against their orders leading to war and chaos; I know it’s left open ended to what really happened to him after he died, but I hope he never repents. I hope he stays an antagonistic and egotistical bastard after being reimbodied (brought back to life) and continues to make it everyone else’s problem. I love him.

I’m gonna have to try to do this without a sing Tolkien scholarship words so bear with me. Basically my dude is one of the smartest and most talented elves in the world. Unfortunately he has a lot of daddy issues AND mommy issues largely due to the fact that his mom died when he was a kid and decided not to come back (as elves can do). No one else has this problem. He invented a ton of important stuff and had seven sons. His most prized creation was three gems called the Silmarils, which contained the light of the Two Trees, which gave light to the world before they were destroyed. When the Valar (the gods of Tolkien’s world) asked if they could use the Silmarils to potentially create another light source, he emphatically refused and in fact became so jealous of them that he and his sons swore an oath that anyone who so much as touched them would die by their swords. Sauron’s boss steals the gems and Feanor decides that he will lead his people on a crusade to retrieve and avenge them. This results in the death of him, most of his people, and almost his entire family minus one of his sons, Galadriel, and Elrond; He once yelled at the devil to get off his lawn

went to war with morgoth (satan basically) against the will of the gods and made a whole speech to said gods about how they were gonna feel really silly when he killed morgoth and saved the whole world. he never actually did battle with morgoth because he died on like day 1 of getting to middle earth (he left like 2/3 of his forces behind because he didn’t trust them) and spontaneously combusted upon his death; he’s a huge asshole and a mad scientist and linguist and prince with daddy issues and also mommy issues

Dude thought he could win a fight with the devil, tried to just walk into Angband (Mordor before Mordor actually existed), made an oath to kill everyone that tries to take his creations even the Valar (angelic like beings) and ends up causing his death, his sons deaths and a bunch of other deaths; His name is quite literally spirit of fire Is basically regarded as THE greastest elf Is in fact THE best smith of the elves and crafts their most precious jewels (that end up causing so much death) Is THE linguist to the point of creating the alfabet every one uses even after The Crimes, creates a bunch of things that are used even after The Crimes actually Loves his dad more than the things he made Is the only recorded elf with seven kids Is married to a sculpter that is so good that people confuse her statues as actual people (a propaganda because he had to be good to actually bag her you know) Manages to create jewelry so good even the the angelics beings sent by god are surprised he managed to do it So good at making speeches that it leads to a rebellion against said angelic beings and a lot of people to leave paradise with him His mother died because his spirit was too powerful Invented kinslaying after trying to steal some boats for said rebellion Swears an oath that destroys his whole family (but adds a great flavour to the rest of the story) Tells the devil to fuck off and slams his house door on said devils face Dies via auto combustion because his spirit was just too powerful for a normal death Gets stuck in the afterlife (that elves can usually just return from) for spiting the Valar Is said he will have an important role in Tolkien’s version of Ragnarok by letting the jewels he previously promised to kill for be destroyed to defeat the devil

Because of his pride, he went against the gods because the evil god Morgoth stole his life's work (the Silmarils, 3 shiny gems that radiated the light of the two trees that a huge evil spider had sapped dry). Swore (with his 7 sons) an oath to hunt Morgoth and retrieve his shiny gems. Commited kinslaying, burned some boats, combusted to ashes after suffering mortal wounds at the hands of corrupted demi-gods. Consequences of his actions could be seen long long after his death: the oath was passed on to his sons to hopelessly fulfill (failure after failure, including two more kinslayings, one of them casting himself into a fiery volcano, another wandering the shores for eternity);

[fuckable-old-man-battle]

[fruzmig]

Welcome to THE QUIRKIEST EARTHBOUND INSPIRED TOURNAMENT!

By request of a few people I'll be hosting a Tumblr version of Nekobot's quirky EarthBound inspired tournament from Twitter.

Rounds will last 1 week and they will begin as soon as the previous round ends, results are separate from Twitter's (meaning that there may be different winners in each version).

May the quirkiest win. (～￣▽￣)～

Round one matches:

OneShot vs DELTARUNE

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley vs Omori

In Stars And Time vs Misao

Corpse Party vs Mogeko Castle

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG vs END ROLL

Yume Nikki vs Rakuen

Toilet in Wonderland vs Knuckle Sandwich

Ib vs Mad Father

[bestfictionalhome-tourneygirl]

Welcome to the

BEST FICTIONAL HOME TOURNAMENT

Where there’s no place like home💕

Below the cut are the listed contestants in order!

If you don’t see your submission, don’t lose hope! Some of the entries that bent the rules a little will be added as the wild card entries before the finals.

Reminder: Owl House will go against the winner of the brackets in the finals on merit!

Best of luck to your home sweet home!

Side A

The Planet Express Building Futurama

The Lake Hoohaw Houseboat PB&J Otter

Mystery Shack Gravity Falls

Blue’s House Blue’s Clues

Strawberry Shortcake’s House Strawberry Shortcake: The Animated Series (2003)

Oscar’s Trash Can Sesame Street

The Heeler’s House Bluey

Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends

Squidward’s House Spongebob Squarepants

The Loud House The Loud House

742 Evergreen Terrace The Simpsons

The Dreamhouse Barbie: Life In The Dreamhouse

Zim’s Base Invader Zim

The Pineapple Spongebob Squarepants

The Tortuga The Wild Kratts

Sector V’s Treehouse Codename Kids Next Door

Side B

Housey Rolie Polie Olie

Catdog’s House Catdog

The Farmhouse Pettersson und Findus

USS Enterprise Star Trek: The Animated Series

The Big Blue House Bear and the Big Blue House

The Flinstone’s Cave The Flinstones

McDuck Manor Ducktales

The Funny House Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared

Golden Oaks Library My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

Granny’s Mansion The Looney Tunes Show

Finn and Jake’s Treehouse Adventure Time

The Hazbin Hotel The Hazbin Hotel

USS Cerritos Star Trek Lower Deck

Busterfield Library Between The Lions

Robot Arms Apartment 00100100 Futurama

The Beach House Steven Universe

[girlbosstourney]

GIRLBOSS TOURNEY ROUND TWO: SURELY THERE WAS AN EASIER WAY TO DUMP YOUR BOYFRIEND

Select which one you think is GIRLBOSSIER, i.e., which one is the better girlboss

Propaganda

Madalena:

rises from peasantry to royalty by marrying the king when he kidnaps her (she's ambitious and he's an idiot), sets about ruling the kingdom with an iron fist and invading a neighboring kingdom for their prized jewel. all of this eventually culminates in bringing in her husband's brother to help stage a coup (when she finally gets sick of her husband and wants to kill him), when the plan falls apart she kills the brother and does the coup herself, making her husband"s personal knight/childhood best friend her second in command/king later. after that she goes on to rule the kingdom with an even ironer fist and learns magic specifically to decimate her enemies in an upcoming battle and completely subjugate the kingdom she invaded earlier (she already has a powerful army, she doesn't need the magic, the magic makes her so much more powerful) (the magic is called the Dark Dark Evil Way (the D'DEW) and it makes her eyes glow red)

T'Pring:

She’s so logical even Spock couldn’t find issue with it. She made him fight his best friend to the death just so she could get a divorce. She literally didn’t have to do that they could have just gotten the divorce normally but she’s insane and loves drama. She was in one episode and slayed so much she’s a main character in Strange New Worlds. I love her very much.

[furry-media-tourney]

ROUND 3 BATTLE 2: AND THE WARNER SISTER FOX

[boatmediatourney]

🛸Spaceship Media Tournament🛸

BRACKET A: Round 1, match 13

[star-tourney]

THE TOURNEY IS OVER!!!

Congratulations Polaris AKA The North Star!! You are the best star of all!!!!

I'd like to thank everybody so much for sticking with this all this time :) I am glad we could all join in a moment of appreciating space and all its beauty and making things fight each other.

pinglist: @sylph-of-gender@idkareallyreallygoodname@akasanata@awildlion@toxicandtrans@peri-universals-universe

[gayelderstourney]

OLD MAN YAOI BRACKET ROUND 1

Propaganda:

Jean-Luc Picard/Q:

theyre kind of the ogs. q fucked that old man for SURE. if they arent old enough for you in the next generation (1987-1984) they probably will be in picard (2020-2023). also when i went looking for the pic i included i googled “star trek picard q in bed” and there were actually multiple different instances of that happening that popped up

um it’s unclear what age Q is supposed to be in TNG but in Picard they’re both undeniably old as balls. Q has godlike powers that he just uses to hang out with this bald old man in increasingly strange and annoying ways. And call him “mon capitane” like a freak and materialize next to him in bed and say Good Morning Darling and lounge all over the Enterprise like a fruit anyways I think they’re abnormal and I like them

what if you were an all powerful nearly omnipotent being who has been worshipped as a god on planets across the farthest reaches of space and the first guy to just not give a shit about you makes you fall madly in love with him

I can’t get my thoughts clear right now but they mean so much to me. They’re meant to be with each other ok. the sequel to spirk. they would be canon if paramount werent COWARDS

if I were an entity as old as the universe itself and I kept visiting some old guy on a spaceship trying to justify the existence of humanity it would 100% be for gay reasons and Q understands this concept on an intimate level actually

The Once-ler/The Lorax:

Thank fucking god you were already considering them because I felt insane

Old man Oncler and Lorax Old Man Oncler I need this ship to be in the final completion I need them please just look at them

It's funny and it could have saved us from oncest

[yall-hate-kids-tourney]

Alya Cesaire (Miraculous Ladybug) vs. Courtney (Total Drama)

Y'all Hate Kids: Screwed By The Writers

Propaganda below the cut

-

Alya Cesaire (Miraculous Ladybug)

cw racism

"The amount of hatred Alya gets in the fandom is absolutely insane. There are over 800 fics tagged with ""Alya Cesaire Bashing"", and that's just the ones that actually TAG it - many of them either use a a non-canonical tag or just take their demonization of her as canon. It's not just that a lot of fics bash her either, but that the fics that bash her are disproportionately popular. If you go through the ""Miraculous Ladybug"" tag on AO3 and sort by kudos, I'd say around a third of the top 500 most popular fics use this gross caricature of her in order to justify inflicting some sort of insane punishment on her, or at least replacing her with ""better"" friends and leaving her to wail in despair.

Basically, Alya is the best friend of the main character, Marinette. She's really into superheroes and aims to be a reporter someday, to the point that the first time a supervillain cropped up in the series, she immediately got out her bike and cycled after him so that she could be there when a superhero showed up to fight him (Lois Lane would be proud). She runs a blog called the ""Ladyblog"" which reports on what the superheroes are doing, and sometimes makes some fun videos, like about the most impressive feats of one of the superheroes. 

More relevantly though, she acts as Marinette's support a lot of the time, often being the one to push her to confess her feelings to Adrien, to help her with plans she comes up with, to talk things out with if she's having trouble processing something, and trying to act as the voice of reason if Marinette's gotten to into her own head. It can sometimes head into Black Best Friend territory of having her mostly stick around to support her bestie, but she DOES get a decent amount of screentime and focus at least.

Then the first episode of season 3 aired, and the fandom went BALLISTIC.

This character, Lila, debuted back at the end of season 1 as being this attention-seeking liar who pretended that she knew a lot more famous people than she actually did, including being best friends with Ladybug. Alya, being a naive 14-year-old, believed her and put Lila's interview on her blog. Since Marinette IS Ladybug, she knew this was not true, though she was initially more freaked out about the possibility that Adrien (the boy she has a crush on) would find her supposedly amazing life to be entrancing and that Lila would steal Adrien away from her, to the point that she actively wanted to stop Lila and Adrien from spending time together to prevent Adrien from falling for her.

Fast-forward to Chameleon, the first episode of season 3, and Lila's back and lying some more, this time about having Tinnitus (which would mean that she needs to sit at the front of class, next to Adrien). The class has a whole seating rearrangement in order to accommodate the move, and because some of them just wanted to change seats. Since Marinette was late that day, she didn't get to give input, so she wound up sitting alone at the back of the class, instead of next to Alya like she usually did. She's upset by this, but can't prove that Lila doesn't actually have the disability (she doesn't even have evidence that Lila doesn't have hearing problems, it's just that her story of how she supposedly got the disability is suspect), so she puts up with it for the class period.

Then lunch time rolls around and Marinette tells Alya and Alya's boyfriend, Nino, that Lila's a lying liar who lies. Alya asks why Marinette hates her so much, since she barely knows Lila (this isn't the first time that Marinette's nitpicked at Lila's stories, but she's never actually managed to prove that Lila's lying, Lila's good at coming up with explanations for any hole Marinette exposes in her tales). Marinette tells her how, after Lila first arrived at school, she followed her and Adrien, eavesdropped on them, and then saw Ladybug show up and tear into Lila for not knowing her. (Presumably that's what she says, the episode skipped past her actual recounting of what she saw). Alya and Nino are more concerned with the fact that she stalked Lila and Adrien, with Alya also being skeptical that what she heard might have been out-of-context, given how common out-of-context eavesdropping is in fiction for causing issues, with Alya saying, ""A good reporter always verifies her sources. Can you prove she doesn't actually know Ladybug?""

Since Marinette can't actually prove anything without revealing that she's Ladybug, she decides that the sane and reasonable thing to do is to throw a wadded up napkin at Lila while she's eating lunch, and when she catches it (Lila's pretending to have a sprained wrist), to loudly declare that she obviously doesn't have a sprained wrist. Lila quickly pretends that catching it did actually hurt, the classmates Lila was sitting with scold Marinette for hurting her, and then Marinette goes off to seethe in a bathroom, where Lila finds her and threatens to turn her friends against her if she continues trying to expose her lies. 

Then at the end of the episode, Adrien goes to sit with Marinette at the back of the class to keep her company, the teacher thinks that Marinette ALSO has hearing issues so she's brought back to the front (and away from Adrien again), Lila pretends that her hearing has been fixed so she can sit at the back with Adrien, and Alya spots that Marinette looks miserable about sitting alone at the front, so she chooses to sit next to Marinette to keep her company and everyone ends up going back to their old places, except that Lila's sitting at the back of the class now.

And that's it. That is, for the most part, what kicked off the entire Alya hatred and demonization onslaught. While there ARE more things that happening in following episodes, they have a pretty small effect on the demonization Alya's put through, almost all of it is derived from Chameleon and hasn't changed much since then.

So for starters, in fanfics Alya is often made to ditch Marinette constantly to hang out with Lila instead. This never happens. She's often exasperated when Marinette starts talking about how Lila is awful and points out that she doesn't have proof of that, but she doesn't avoid Marinette, and the closest she ever comes to hanging out with Lila outside of class events is when she called Lila over to babysit hers and Nino's younger siblings when Marinette canceled at the last minute.

But most Alya-bashing fics don't just leave it there. Oh no. If you look through a bunch of the most popular Miraculous fics, you'll see Alya made out to be some sort of ringleader for the class in bullying Marinette, hitting her, pinching her, poisoning her, destroying her things, saying nasty, heinous things to her, the works, and inciting the rest of the class to do the same, sometimes to the point that even LILA is shocked at her cruelty. Usually in these cases, Chloe, who is canonically the class bully (and Marinette's bully in particular) is inexplicably Marinette's primary protector against the eeeeeevil Alya, becoming Marinette's best friend and support and basically taking on Alya's canon role and some of her personality traits, despite the fact that canonically, Chloe's as susceptible to Lila's lies as anyone else, and that in season 5 Chloe actually became Lila's partner in crime in trying to hurt Marinette in particular. (I don't like how Chloe's treated in canon, but that's a different story).

I've never even seen any justification given for why Alya's so frequently made to be outright violent or cruel towards Marinette, it's just widely accepted in fiction now, even with nothing pointing to her ever being malicious like that. There ARE other things Alya canonically does that I see her taken to task over though, but that fall apart when you examine them.

One of the biggest offenders is criticism towards Alya over how she handles babysitting. In Christmaster, Alya and Nino pick up Nino's little brother after Marinette babysits him for them while they're on a date, in Timetagger, Marinette's slated to babysit for them while they're on a date but cancels at the last minute, so they call Lila over instead, and then in Simple Man, Marinette books herself to babysit Alya's and Nino's younger siblings and the daughter of one's of her mom's friends, a little girl named Manon, all at the same time.

Alya receives heavy criticism for not paying Marinette for her babysitting, for having Marinette babysit for her secretly behind her parents' back without their knowledge, and for pressuring Marinette to babysit for her even though Marinette's so busy.

A few problems with this.

1. We see babysitting happen several times, sometimes with Alya helping Marinette with babysitting Manon and sometimes with Marinette just babysitting Manon without anyone else's involvement. At no point is payment brought up, and yet the absence of such a discussion is only ever used to demonize Alya.

2. There is no evidence that the babysitting Marinette does for Alya's sake is done behind her parents' back, the only thing pointing to that is a lack of Alya ever flat-out saying that she has her parents' permission to have Marinette babysit for her, but there's no evidence of sneaking around. MARINETTE, however, DOES canonically ditch her babysitting duties by having Alya babysit for her without the parent's knowledge. In Prime Queen, Marinette accidentally double books herself to do an interview as Ladybug at the same time that she's supposed to be babysitting Manon, so she calls Alya over to watch the interview with her, lies to her that she's just gonna go downstairs for a few minutes to talk with her parents and for Alya to please watch over Manon while she does that, and then leaves to do the interview while Alya watches over Manon the whole time. Nadja definitely didn't know that this happened, because she was surprised and worried when Alya and Manon called in during the interview with Marinette nowhere to be seen. In addition to this, in Simpleman, Marinette foists off all the children she's babysitting onto her grandpa against his will so that she can run off and help with Adrien's photoshoot after he calls her. The people demonizing Alya for supposedly having Marinette babysit for her secretly are not upset about the examples of Marinette canonically doing these things.

3. Of the three times that Marinette has, to date, been scheduled to babysit for Alya's sake (Christmaster, Timetagger, and Simpleman), for Christmaster she spent the next several hours after finishing with babysitting making Adrien's 50th birthday present (he's currently 14 years old), so I wouldn't say she was pressed for time, for Timetagger, she literally called Alya at the last minute to say she was too busy to babysit and Alya said it was no biggie and made other arrangements, and for Simpleman, Alya offered to cancel her date and take care of her younger siblings herself the instant she saw that Marinette was already babysitting Manon, and Marinette told her to go ahead and go on her date and that she'd look after her siblings.

So clearly, the people clutching their pearls about how horribly irresponsibly Alya is handling babysitting and how she's wronging Marinette in the process don't actually care about babysitting ethics here, because otherwise, Marinette would be getting the brunt of the hatred, not Alya. Despite this, I've seen a fair number of posts in the past tearing into Alya's babysitting for the reasons I already gave, and a bunch of fics that make it so that Alya pressures and guilt-trips Marinette into babysitting for her when she's struggling to keep up with all her work, only to have her parents find out and be horrified by how Alya's lied to them about who's been doing the babysitting and that Alya's been getting an increased allowance because of that, so they pay Marinette out of Alya's allowance and ground her, take away privileges, just have this be used as an excuse to punish Alya for supposedly wronging Marinette.

And then there's the subcategory of Alya demonization towards her for putting up Lila's interview on her blog without verifying that Lila was telling the truth. Admittedly, this was foolish, but she's 14. Retractions exist for a reason. And yet, fics frequently have her reputation be completely destroyed because she put up one interview that had a false statement by the interviewee in it, and sometimes even to be completely blacklisted from ever being a journalist in the future, things that are completely insane and would have even the most storied and well-respected of reporters be unable to ever get a job. 

She also frequently gets demonized and bashed for ""believing Lila over Marinette"". My major issue with this: what she's specifically believing Lila over Marinette for is on the topic of ""is Lila an awful person"". I don't think it's unreasonable to have a higher standard of proof for believing that someone is an awful person than for believing that your friend might just have some biased interpretations. Alya thinks that Marinette doesn't like Lila mostly because Lila has hit on Adrien, Marinette's crush, before. This isn't unreasonable considering that Marinette's first reaction to Lila is to freak out about her stealing Adrien away, and that when this other girl, Kagami, started hanging out with Adrien, she freaked out about that too. Specifically, she called a meeting of all her female friends to try and stop Kagami and Adrien from going away together to London for the weekend in Backwarder, helped Chloe in trying to get Kagami covered in food at a fancy red carpet movie opening in order to drive her away and steal her seat next to Adrien for the movie, and when she and Kagami were paired up for a ""friend-making game"" where the goal was to locate where Adrien was in Paris and the prize was to spend time with him, she pretended to genuinely want to be Kagami's friend so she could sabotage both of them and prevent Kagami from spending time with Adrien. So it's not like the belief that Marinette might be unfairly biased against Lila because she's made moves on Adrien is an unfair assumption.

In addition to that, on the occasions when Lila HAS tried to frame Marinette for something, Alya hasn't believed it, or hasn't been shown to believe it at least. In Ladybug Lila tries to frame Marinette for cheating on a test, for stealing a necklace from her, and for knocking her down the stairs. Despite the evidence Lila planted, Alya doesn't believe it and investigates to try and find out what really happened. She doesn't uncover any solid proof, but she still believes in Marinette. She doesn't believe that Marinette's assumption that Lila's behind this is necessarily correct, since Marinette's leaping to that without presenting proof, but she doesn't believe that Marinette's the culprit either. And in the two following cases when Marinette's framed, Alya never actually gets a chance to say what she believes after the accusation is made against Marinette.

Just... the amount of demonization towards Alya TO THIS DAY, often for things she NEVER EVEN FREAKING DID, is absolutely insane. Even over 5 years since Chameleon aired, fics with Alya being made into this malicious, awful bully so that Marinette can get some new friends to publicly denounce her, get her arrested, or otherwise be punished are frequently on the front page of the most recently updated fics on AO3, and are often some of the most popular ones. If you go to ""Fandom-Specific plot"" on Tvtropes, saltfics like these have multiple files going through all the common salt tropes. When looking through fics, I frequently search for Alya's name because she's often the first person to be unfairly demonized, so if she's safe, then everyone likely is. 

I suspect that racism plays a major factor in this. It doesn't make sense that Alya's often painted as being a violent, malicious bully and leader in getting the rest of the class to physically hurt and terrorize Marinette, I haven't even seen analysis arguing that she'd do that... but it tracks with the ""Black Brute"" archetype. This becomes even more obvious with Chloe, who's white and canonically DOES do some of this stuff, taking on Alya's canon role and some of her personality traits in these sorts of stories.

Then there's the standard Alya's held to for how she handles her blog. It's way higher than anyone would hold real-world reporters to, much less 14-year-olds. But it makes sense if you factor racial bias into account, and how Alya, being Black, is going to be held to a higher standard than anyone else, and be punished more for failing to meet that standard.

For things like the babysitting double standard, it makes no sense if you're actually looking at the stated criticism, given that the same criticism isn't leveled at Marinette... but it makes perfect sense if you're going off the assumption that Alya, as Marinette's Black Best Friend, is supposed to solely function as her support and that she's simply fulfilling her duties by always being there for her when needed, including for babysitting, but that if Marinette ever attempts to repay in kind, then Alya's being unfair towards her because Alya's obligated to always support Marinette, but that relationship is supposed to be a one-way street. Alya is supposed to function as Marinette's support, never the other way around.

And as for the way Alya's demonized for asking for evidence before believing that Lila's lying, well... again, Alya's expected to act as Marinette's support, and her ""failing"" that in any way, even if it makes sense from her point of view, is viewed as a betrayal. She's supposed to be loyal to Marinette, and only to Marinette, not to think for herself or to have multiple other friends or values that she needs to weigh. And anything that she does to go against that ""justifies"" Marinette intentionally trying to hurt and punish her for failing to live up to her role.

In conclusion, the way Alya's treated by the salt side of the fandom is grossly unfair, often has little connection with anything she canonically did, and has some gross racist implications, and is likely at least partially spurred on by racism, especially with how common and popular it still is to this day."

"(Note: This is an addendum to my earlier essay about the fandom's mistreatment of Alya. Here, I'm focusing more on how the writers' treatment of her helped to exacerbate that, since I saw that this version of the tournament had more of a focus on that. Please add this on at the end of my previous essay).

While Alya is primarily screwed over by the fanbase, there are some aspects of the writing that exacerbate her ill treatment. In season 4, Marinette confesses her secret identity to Alya, letting her know that she is Ladybug. Despite now knowing why Marinette was so convinced that Lila wasn't friends with Ladybug, and that Lila's interview stating that she's best friends with Ladybug is a lie, the subject just... never comes up, even when Lila starts being important again. It's not that Alya's ignoring what Lila lying on those subjects means, it's more like the writers just completely forgot that Lila told those particular lies, since Marinette doesn't bring them up either. This creates an inconsistency with the fanbase, who really, really, REALLY haven't forgotten those lies. 

There ARE ways to explain this - Lila lying about being friends with Ladybug in order to try to boost her reputation, especially when she's the new girl, isn't really all that heinous. Marinette lies a lot as well, even if you don't count lies told to protect her secret identity or other ""necessary"" lies, sometimes out of embarrassment, sometimes to to try and prevent someone's feelings from getting hurt, and sometimes because she thinks it's the fastest, easiest, or most certain way to get the outcome she wants. And yet, even though Marinette lies a lot, she's not ostracized for that since it's usually not for malicious reasons - foolish reasons at times, but rarely malicious. It would make sense that Lila too, wouldn't be thought too badly of for merely lying in an attempt to make friends.

None of that actually comes up though. Alya later, in Confrontation, states that, ""Marinette, you know we'll always believe you. But every time you've accused Lila, there's been no evidence. And at worst, it was just a misunderstanding."" Marinette doesn't say anything about the previous times Lila has been proven to lie, so it seems like either it was decided offscreen that the more understandable lies she's told don't matter, or that the writers just plain forgot about them.

There were other opportunities created by Alya knowing Marinette's identity that were ignored. Alya concludes that Adrien backing up Marinette's statement that Lila's bad news was just due to him wanting to defend his girlfriend. This is also a bit of a writing flaw, while wanting to back up his girlfriend's stance IS a decent reason for Adrien to be biased against Lila, this is Adrien we're talking about here. He's nice and understanding to a fault, and is known for giving people the benefit of the doubt and second chances. It makes far less sense to believe that he'd believe the worst of Lila, even if Marinette does, than it does for Marinette to be biased against Lila. That being said, Adrien wouldn't have been present for Lila's more indisputable threats and statements directed against Marinette, so he can't actually verify for sure whether or not there could've been some misunderstanding.

There WAS, however, someone who was always with Marinette, and who could actually back up Marinette's statements more definitively. 

Tikki. She was present for every threat Lila made, for everything she ever claimed. While it's possible that both Tikki and Marinette may have misunderstood Lila in the same way, it's far less likely, especially since Tikki would have had different biases from Marinette. Tikki could be an important witness. Yet that never comes up, is never proposed, because that would end the plotline too quickly. 

Alya was also screwed over in the immediate aftermath of Lila being exposed, though not by the writers per se? There was a short scene planned after Lila's exposed where Alya apologizes for not believing Marinette about Lila being a liar and generally an awful person, we've even got leaked footage of it, but it appears that it was cut somewhere between being written and voice acted, and the episode being aired. 

All of this only really affects detailed arguments about how well (or poorly) Alya's story arc with Lila was handled, its affect on the actual fanfiction produced about Chameleon salt was minimal, I saw no change in its frequency, severity, or general handling of the characters with any season after season 3. I highly doubt that even the changes I suggested here would have done much to persuade the saltdom against Ron the Death Eatering Alya, especially since a lot of the hatred against her has so little to do with the show.

There IS some hatred thrown at Alya for non-Lila related reasons - well, reasons that aren't DIRECTLY Lila related, most of that hatred still stems from people hating her for Chameleon stuff and then retroactively justifying it by looking back at other things she did that irked them. The most common one (that actually has some sort of argument to it, not the ""Alya's a horrible babysitter and is abusing her friendship with Marinette"" nonsense I listed in the main essay) is that Alya's pushy about getting Marinette together with Adrien. 

This is more a product of Alya's usual role in the story than anything. I mentioned in the main essay how Alya sometimes falls into ""Black Best Friend"" territory, and this is one of the biggest examples. One of her most common roles throughout the series is as the person who pushes Marinette to actually confess to Adrien, to hang out with him, to pursue her romantic desires even with her anxiety holding her back, and to be honest with herself during the times when she's trying to deny her feelings for him. She's Marinette's sounding board whenever she's having an anxiety spiral about... actually, just about anything, and acts as the voice of reason when Marinette gets in her own head too much.

Thus, Alya sets Marinette and Adrien to end up somewhere alone together, or tries to push her to talk to him, or to be honest during the times when she tries to ""move on"" from Adrien by denying that she still has feelings for him (which is blatantly untrue). She IS okay with Marinette dating someone else though, if she honestly seems to want to do that. She had no problem with her dating Luka, for instance. She DID protest Marinette's seemingly sudden interest in Chat Noir, but that was mostly because Marinette seemed to be grabbing at her new attraction as an attempt to run away from her feelings for Adrien, something that Tikki ALSO noted.

That's another thing - Alya's the character who's most frequently thrown into this role, but she's not the only one, nor even the most extreme one. A new character that was introduced for the Miraculous New York Special, Jess, observed how Adrien and Marinette acted around each other, and decided to try to get them to confess their love by faking a supervillain attack on them, with the supervillain kidnapping anyone that no one loves in order to compel Marinette to FINALLY confess to Adrien. (Alya thought it was stupid, but agreed to help since it might actually work). When Marinette, Adrien, Luka, and Kagami went out to the wax museum together, Luka intentionally locked Adrien and Marinette in a room together so that Marinette would stop running away and would be forced to talk to Adrien. Marinette is written in such a way that other characters are compelled to meddle in her lovelife, because otherwise she'll continue making her own extreme plans and pining away, but never actually confess her feelings. 

So while Alya could be said to be ""pushy"" to an extent, it's mostly for Marinette's benefit. I would like if this was a less frequent role for Alya - I think it does her a disservice, since it locks her firmly into Marinette's orbit rather than emphasizing who Alya is as her own character. Most of the hatred towards Alya for this is tied up in ""Die For Our Ship"" being directed at Adrien though, with Adrien bashers hating that Alya's trying to set Marinette up with what they see as an inferior option. Ironically enough, while Alya's role in this situation is one of the primary examples in the show of her being treated by the writers as a ""Black Best Friend"" who exists to serve Marinette's character, it's actually one of the cases where I think racism is a pretty minor part of the hatred by the fanbase over it, since I think that's mostly motivated by hatred towards the Lovesquare.

In conclusion (again), there is an issue with the writers bending Alya's character in order to tell a particular story, particularly a Marinette-centered story, while ignoring how little sense that makes with what happened earlier on in the plotline, or how it centralizes Alya's role and character around Marinette in ways that exacerbate already existing writing patterns in media.

Courtney (Total Drama)

She starts off a bit bossy and slightly entitled. She tries to take charge of her team and flaunting mediocre accomplishments as if they make a perfect resume. She's a rules girl that's too uptight and needs to loosen up. Her character arc in season one is too loosen up. Then cracks start to show at the end of season special she seems as bossy as she used to and a little uncaring of her boyfriend. In season two these traits get worse. The writers make her willing to break any rule to get her way and keep control. She threatens straight up murder casually to get an advantage. Her bossy attitude and need to be in total control gets worse. She sees the people closest to her as nothing but tools. All this for the sake of drama and never ending love triangles.

[time-traveler-tourney]

And here we have it! 32 Time Traveling contestants who are ready to give their all!

The Battles on the left side will start on the 28th and the right side on the 30th of March, both at 10:00pm!

So, as long as you can’t hop through the passage of time yourself, stay tuned!

And our travelers are:

The Doctor (Doctor Who)

Henry Stickmin (Henry Stickmin)

Homura Akemi (Madoka Magica)

Max Caulfield (Life is Strange)

Silver the Hedgehog (Sonic the Hedgehog)

The Chrono Trigger Group (Chrono Trigger)

Ingo (Pokémon)

Jayfeather (Warrior Cats)

Bunnyx (Miraculous)

Cavendish and Dakota (Milo Murphey‘s Law)

Jack and Annie (The Magic Treehouse)

Casey Jones jr (Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)

Grovyle (Pokémon Mystery Dungeon)

Galacta Knight (Kirby)

Artemis Fowl (Artemis Fowl)

Nadia Vulvokov (Russian Doll)

Doc and Marty McFly (Back to the Future)

Number 5 (The Umbrella Academy)

Dave Strider (Homestuck)

James T. Kirk (Star Trek)

Link (Legend of Zelda)

Phil Connors (Groundhog Day)

Time Keeper Cookie (Cookie Run)

Celebi (Pokémon)

Claire Foley (Professor Layton) (My Pick) (Please vote for her)(thanks)

Sissel (Ghost Trick)

Sam Becket (Quantum Leap)

Yoo Joonghyuk (Three ways to survive in a ruined world)

Bill Preston and Ted Logan (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure)

Lilith Clawthorne and Luz Noceda (The Owl House)

Brainstorm (Transformers)

Frisk (Undertale)

[doll-tournament]

And the official best Novi Stars Doll is Vera Tabray!

Winning in a landslide! Never bet against pink i suppose

Now i'm going on a little trip so next tournament won't be a for a while, but my ask box is open for which tournament you would like to see next.

[zombiecicada]

Anti: Um, Hello, Ms. Wolfbell! I'm Anti, one of the contestants in the tournament. Nice to meet you! I have to say, you look super duper adorable!^^

Also, is it okay if I hug you? If that's okay.

Wolfbell: Ms. Wolfbell s-sure sounds fancy. It’s nice to meet you too… and.. thank you! I-I find …people are usually weirded out by my appearance… so it’s nice to hear positives.

Acquired! 1 Wolfbell Hug and 15 minutes of purring. Your bones and muscles have been healed ever so slightly and the horrors are kept at bay.