#while i feel like claude needed a partner more than a teacher by the time post-ts rolls around

[somepinkthing]

I know dimitri went through the most drastic change during the timeskip, but I feel like claude went through a pretty significant one too. I’m told the japanese voice acting makes it more stark and I agree, but also just in general. And I think, in part, that’s got a lot to do with the alliance and how leading it has affected him

Claude pre-timeskip has a lot of the same ideas he’ll have five years later, but absolutely no plan to make them happen. He knows he wants open borders, an end to xenophobia, to tackle ignorance with facts, and to allow people everywhere more social freedoms. He's enamored with the idea of choice, with the vision of people living together as a community without worrying about their birth status, with busting open fodlan's insular bubble and giving people options in life.... but he’s not lying to you when he says he doesn't really know where to begin. His initial plan was to find the magic goddess sword in the hopes that it’d uh??? Teenage claude is a mass of ideals with no solid plan to get what he wants. He sees what’s wrong with the current system and arguably considers the most perspectives, but unlike his peers he has no idea what he should do about it. Mostly, he spends the school year rummaging for information and asking a million questions

The claude we meet five years later? He’s much more confident in his goals and considerate of the logistics of achieving them. Claude’s still focused on challenging social norms and still determined to tackle the ignorance that's preventing that change. By in large, he even managed to stay that same idealist who believed people just need to be provided a chance. However, he also now understands the importance of tempering his idealism so that freedom doesn’t become a free-for-all. Pre-timeskip claude talked about what he wanted to see change in fodlan, but not really what would be taking its place. Five years of leading the alliance has taught him that just getting rid of what’s wrong isn’t gonna cut it.

Because honestly? What is the leicester alliance if not a melting pot of good ideas and meh execution? Freedom from oppressive autocracy, voting on decisions, a community of different territories coming together and supporting one another — that's what the alliance wanted to be when it broke away from faerghus. The result? A bunch of nobles watching out for themselves and endlessly squabbling without a shared goal in sight. Yes, the strict social class systems we see in the kingdom and the empire seem much more lax in the alliance. Yes, opportunities are a bit more abundant. Yes, the church has very little political sway in the alliance. So there are things they got right. But greed mixed with the toxic remains of traditionalism that weren't properly chased out plagues the alliance and the benefits of breaking out are probably not felt by all equally. The extra freedom afforded to the alliance nobles only made this issue worse. After five years of barely keeping the alliance territories from descending into all out war over something as stupid as greed, claude now understands this. It's why he needs byleth and lorenz. He admired them before but now he needs them.

TL;DR claude spent five years wrestling civil war away from the hands of various greedy, rich nobles and came out the other side knowing that these assholes were gonna need some ground rules and a keeper if he didn't want to risk his ideals turning this country into a buffet for the rich and powerful. Promoting social freedoms and ending isolationism are very big and very good ideas... if they are throughly executed

[diamaker-moon]

Moving Forward - Chapter 4

Chapter Four

First day and investigations

—————

"Haven't you heard?" She asked back in a cold tone.

"Heard what?"

"You're class... drove Marinette to transfer schools. All because of you guys." She said in an icy tone before passing by him then rest left him in the locker room— gaping.

— previous chapter... —

Adrien was stunned.

'Marinette transferred schools?! When did that happen?!'

He stood there for a few minutes before fishing up his phone and texted Marinette, he waited for a reply, but nothing came. He came back to his classroom in a daze.

He didn't bother sharing the information with anyone, thinking that Lila might steal the spotlight again. And besides, he was too busy thinking why Marinette needed to transfer, and why she didn't inform him— her friend.

Nino was worried for his best bro. Adrien barely spoke throughout the day.

Meanwhile, Marinette was given a few hours in the morning to roam and get acquainted inside campus grounds. She was joined by Allegra, who happily toured her and introduce her as well to every student they pass by.

She was enjoying her time in Jeanne.

But behind all the happiness she was feeling at the moment, there's a huge responsibility whispering in her ear. The Cat Miraculous is currently in camouflage mode in her right ring finger as a rose gold ring. She needed to find either a new permanent cat holder or a temporary one. Part of her wants to trust her dormmates. She couldn't trust her temporary heroes anymore, aside from Viperion and Ryuko. 

She could imagine Allan using the Turtle miraculous since he is already protective of his friends. She was stuck between Claude and Allegra for the Fox miraculous.

Claude is a theatre kid, he can imagine a lot of things and that can help during battles but he's more of a fighter than hiding in the shadows. Allegra, however, can do the opposite.

But for now, her main priority is to find a cat holder, even if it has to be temporary. It was a good thing that she had bought a mini fridge for Plagg's camembert stash and stored it in her room or else her dormmates might think she's a cheese hoarder!

All the teachers and students in Jeanne were very welcoming. Her classmates were friendly to her, and her teachers are fair educators. When there is a disturbance in the class, they reprimand both students not only one, and Marinette noticed that there's no 'model student' treatment like the one she had in Dupont.

It was lunchtime, she and her dormmates decided to eat in a nearby restaurant. She missed how she just goes home and eats lunch in her home then sometimes returns with a bag of pastries as snacks. She missed her home and her parents' bakery.

Marinette and Allegra were busy chatting about Marinette's current state in Jeanne, while Claude and Allan are busy bickerings on who will win if Batman and Iron Man fought.

Félix just observed them, and from time to time read on his book.

None of them saw a blonde looking at them with a melancholic look. The blonde smiled bitterly before they left the restaurant.

"Are you all done? Lunchtime is almost up." Félix announced.

The other four nodded and paid for their meal, then walked back to school.

Marinette wants to thank her luck and Tikki, for not having any Akuma throughout the rest of the afternoon.

Upon returning to the dorm, she went inside her bathroom and stared at the mirror. She was looking at her reflection, but somehow it felt unfamiliar to her.

The girl in the mirror, has her hair down, wearing a white button-up shirt underneath a black blazer that had red accents and trimming, the school crest sewed on top of the front pocket and a red tie. Paired with it is a plaid red, white and black skirt that reaches up to her mid-thighs, she also wore black knee-high socks and strapped two-inched heels.

She moved her hair on the right side a bit and saw her signature black stud earrings which are actually the camouflaged ladybug's miraculous earrings, then the rose gold cat miraculous on her right hand that moved her hair.

It was a huge change.

She was used to seeing her previous look since Dupont doesn't require school uniforms but Jeanne does.

Marinette sighed then stripped out of her uniform to take a short shower.

Once she came out of the bathroom, she was wearing light pink high-waisted shorts, a white halter-top with her signature flower design, then a sheer black cardigan.

She turned the soundproofing on then locked her bedroom door before she let the kwamis out of the miracle box.

"Did you have fun on your first day, Marinette?" Tikki asked.

Marinette hummed before answering. "Yeah. It was quite strange to see all the students wear the same outfit, but everyone was very welcoming. Quite different in Dupont. And there were no Akuma attacks today!"

Tikki smiled at her holder. The kwami thought that the girl deserves it. She needed a new environment away from the previous one since it was toxic.

Marinette was skimming through the Grimoire, and the kwamis knew not to be close enough since it is prohibited to know about the knowledge inside the book.

Shadowmoth. A unified Butterfly and Peacock miraculous holder.

Hawkmoth was becoming stronger, and Marinette needed to be ten steps ahead of him. She cannot use her previous temporary heroes.

Rena Rouge, Carapace, Pegasus and Roi Singe betrayed her in their civilian lives, unknowingly. She cannot trust them in battle, even if they were efficient heroes.

She was alone at the moment. No temporary allies, and no partner.

But she might have a lead on who Hawk—Shadowmoth is.

She looked at her bulletin board that is hanged on the wall.

If anyone ever saw the board, they might think she is a detective, due to having a map of Paris wide opened, with marks, sticky notes, red strings, etc.

She closed the book before putting on a sleeve cover for the book then plainly placed it on her desk together with a stack of books.

"Marinette?"

She hummed before looking at her left seeing the kwamis stare at her.

"We finally might have a lead on who Hawk—Shadowmoth is. Why does he need to change his name? The hawkmoth is already a stupid name, but he had to change it to Shadowmoth! Ugh!"

The kwamis laughed at their guardian's frustrations.

"Who do you suspect, Master?" Wayzz asked.

"Plagg, do you know where your previous holder got the book and tablet?" She asked the cat kwami who's busy eating a wheel of Camembert on top of her chaise.

Plagg looked to her before swallowing the rest of the whole wheel then answered.

"In his deadbeat of a father's office. That's where we found the book first, inside a safe behind her mother's painting."

Marinette hummed.

She had valid points at the moment to suspect him. And no one can prevent her from suspecting the fashion guru like before when she had Chat Noir as her partner. He was adamant that the guru isn't Hawkmoth, but now she understood. The man was his father. If the fashion guru is Hawkmoth, he'll be losing both his Mother and Father.

Something clicked in her mind. The alternate reality that she prevented: Chat Blanc.

She gasped. Then hurriedly grabbed her notebook that has all her points and suspect list with a list of reasons. She flipped the pages towards Gabriel Agreste's page.

Possible Suspect: Gabriel Agreste

Affliation: Fashion Designer

Relationships: 

◈ Emilie Agreste (Wife)

◈ Adrien Agreste (Son)

◈ Nathalie Sancoeur (Assistant)

  Reasons why suspected?

- Mme Agreste has been gone for three years, can use the ultimate power to wish her back.

- Secluded from the outside world.

- Assitant is very devoted, can possibly be the ally— Mayura.

- Another possible ally— Lila Rossi. Got akumatized after leaving from the first bathroom confrontation looking all smug, and has been akumatized repeatedly. Also might be involved with the Heroe's day illusion of Dark 'Ladybug'.

- Akumatized when suspected before. Hypothesis: possibly to divert attention?

- Very attentive and tried to reach for earrings and ring before during 'The Collector' after getting de-akumatized...

- Briefly saw an intrigue look on his face when he saw Chloé open a miraculous box in public.

- Has the Grimoire. Now, he also had Master Fu's tablet (stolen possibly during Miracle Queen battle)

-Theory: Chat Blanc said that Hawkmoth was a reason why the alternate timeline was destroyed by Blanc, Marinette is almost akumatized before (in original timeline), is it possible that in that timeline, Hawkmoth tried to akumatize Marinette then accidentally finds out Chat Noir's identity, leading up to a possible confrontation? It is quite hard to choose between a family relative and a relationship...

Marinette observed the page. If she was impulsive, she'd probably march up to the Agreste Mansion, but if her possible suspect is truly a villain, she cannot impulsively attack since he had two miraculouses that can create an Akuma and a Sentimonster.

She was a tactician. She always thinks about how she can use her lucky charm, and mostly in the most complex ways on how to use it.

The only thing she can do for a while is observing the Older Agreste.

"It's decided then," She looked at the kwamis then continued her sentence.

"We're going on a stake-out outside the Agreste Mansion, and possibly the inside as well. But that mansion is heavily guarded with cameras! How am I going to enter it?!"

She annoyingly said the huffed.

"Kwamis can help with the cameras and if there are alarms!" Trixx reasoned.

"Hmm... That can be useful... But how am I going to get an inside look? If there's a hidden safe behind Mme Agreste's painting in M. Agreste's atelier, I need an entrance."

Plagg thought about it before gasping.

"I can look around! I've been in the mansion for a long time, I can search around that room to see any open windows or entrance!"

Marinette actually smiled at that statement, she scratches Plagg behind one of his ears which made the cat kwami purr in happiness.

"Looks like someone earned a prize!"

The kwamis laughed in seeing the stubborn cat kwami happily purring due to the young guardian scratching him. Marinette needed a thorough plan. A plan to look around M. Agreste's atelier without being detected. And if she is lucky maybe retrieve one of the missing miraculous.

—————

"Nathalie!"

The woman flinched before she composed herself and made her way towards her boss's atelier with a tablet in one hand.

"Yes, M. Agreste?"

The man was seething, and she didn't know why. The last time she saw him like this was when they caught Adrien taking the miraculous book to school.

"Where's the Grimoire and the tablet?"

Nathalie blinked. "It's in your hands Monsier. Or maybe safely hidden in the safe."

Gabriel sighed deeply. "The book and the tablet is missing. I check the cameras, Adrien got it again, but when I asked for it back, he said you had it."

"I'm sorry, M. Agreste, but I didn't even know that it was in Adrien's possessions. I'll look around the mansion, maybe Adrien misplaced it, I'll also ask him to remember where he left it."

Gabriel nodded and dismissed her.

Inside Nathalie's head, it was trouble. They were fortunate to steal the previous Guardian's tablet that has a translated version of the book, to fix the Peacock miraculous. They had also found a translated pages about the power-ups but we haven't figure out what it actually means. They also don't have a backup copy of the translated pages!

"Adrien? Adrien."

Nathalie knocked on the younger Agreste's door. She heard a faint 'wait, Nathalie!'. Soon the door opened and revealed a dishevelled Adrien who was currently drying his hair with a towel.

"Yes, Nathalie?"

"I heard from your Father that you had the book and tablet he's looking for. Do you remember where you left it?" She said and noticed how Adrien paled.

"I was only looking at it, I left it on my desk but the next morning it was gone. I figured that you might've found it on the desk and took it back to Father... That's the only place I left it before going to bed."

She observes the young boy and hummed. She instructed Adrien to try and look around thinking that it might've been misplaced.

'I have a bad feeling about this. It's already bad that it's missing, but if my theory is right that it is in Ladybug's possession, we might be at a disadvantage.'

Chapter 3 — Moving Forward: Masterlist — Chapter 5 

[unmaskedagain]

Rate this (Trust is Hard to Come By)

Its six am here and I just got to work. And am now writing a drabble at my desk. Again tweaked prompt a bit. Oh and I just realized that based on this and my last few “drabble” that are long that some picture books… I don’t know what a drabble. Or least I know it doesn’t apply to what I usually write.

No one would who or what had caused the akuma this time. However, when a thirteen-year-old superfan of Ladybug got Akumatized, everyone knew it.

A loud voice boomed in the ears of all the citizens in Paris, “Beware Paris, I am the Gardener, protector of the Loveliness. Those who have failed our Queen Ladybug will be revealed. A number you shall be given on a scale to 100; the higher the number, the more trust the Queen has in you. Low numbers have failed our Queen, betrayed our queen, betrayed the loveliness, and will be punished!”

“Loveliness,” Adrien asked, already preparing to make a break for it to transform.

           Unaware that Marinette decided to wait for a bit. Some lessons needed to be learned the hard way.  All the kids were at lunch and seemed to be enjoying the day until the alert happened.

           Max pushed his glasses up, “A group of ladybugs is called a ‘loveliness of ladybugs.’. Gardeners love Ladybugs because Ladybugs protect their gardens.”

“Cool!” Kim grinned. “We get to see how much Ladybug digs us.”

           Alya preened, “I’m at least a 90.” She pulled out her phone. “I’m so going to live stream this.”

“I think I’m like an 80, dude,” Nino smirked.

           All the kids gave their guess; most figuring they were at least in the 70s. It was Alya who joked, that Marinette probably had a ten.

           The others agreed; thinking the girl had been such a bully lately, and so mean to Lila.

           Marinette overheard them from where she, Chloe, Kagami and their new friends sat. A smirked spread across her face. This would be good.

           A blindingly flash filled the cafeteria. When it was gone, all the kids had numbers above their heads.

           One by one the excited grins on the students of Bustier’s class faded.

“A two,” Alya paled. “How can I be a two?” A dark ugly red 2 floated above her head. She touched the number and words appeared next to it: Warning: Disloyal. False friend. Bully. Anger control problems. Easily swayed. Bad journalist… etc.

           Nino frowned, “I got a four.” How could he have a four? He was carapace. Ladybug had chosen him herself. Or at least she had. He hadn’t gone Super in over a year. Was that when Ladybug lost her trust in him?

           He touched the number. His warning said: bad friend. Disloyal. Bully. He touched it again before he could read any more.

           Kim had a five. Alix had a three. Mylene had a seven. Rose and Juleka had 10s. Ivan had an eight. Nathanial had an eleven. Max had a six.  All were in the red. All had similar warning signs.

           Adrien had frozen in his seat when he saw his number. A 14. How could he be a 14? Why did Ladybug barely trust him? They were partners, friends, maybe more one day. But how could they be any of that she didn’t trust him.

           He touched his number. His warning sign read: Naïve, Spineless, pushy, Bad friend, and, in bold letter, COWARD.

“We should go,” Max whispered. “People are staring.”

           And sure enough they were. Most of the student body had numbers in the 30s or 40s, it was respectable seeing as they barely dealt with the hero. However, this meant it was easy to find the kids who ranked so much lower.

           Slowly suspicious eyes fell on Bustier’s class. What had they done, most wondered. Whatever, it was they knew it was bad. Somehow the students of Bustier’s class had hurt Ladybug. And as far as the rest of the school was concerned, and those watching from Alya’s livestream, if Ladybug couldn’t trust them, they couldn’t either.

           Marinette watched with cold eyes as her classmates and ex-friends scrambled to rush out of the cafeteria. Still she kept a smile on her face as one by one student came up to thank her for whatever she had done for Ladybug; for being such a good friend to the hero.

           A glowing, bright beautiful emerald green 92 floated above her. It was the highest number anyone had seen so far. Her words attached were less of a warning and more of brag: Loyal, Honest, Good. Trustworthy. Caring. A great friend. Hardworker. Heroic. Brave. Then her warning was: A bit too insecure but working on it.

           Aurore beamed at her friend, livestreaming from her own phone to her new Bugout. She had a neon green 70 above her head. Her words: Honest, Hardworker, loyal, good friend, amazing journalist. “Everyone post a pic of themselves with the number above their heads; it’s blowing up Twitter.”

           Chloe gave everyone smug grins, as she had the second 86 above hers. Her words: Brave, strong, loyal, good. A great hero. A great friend.

Kagami had a 72. Her words: loyal, confident, headstrong, good, good friend.  Marc a 67. Ondine a 66. Claude a 71. They all had similar ones to Kagami.

“You’re in Bustier’s class, right, Marinette?” A girl who had come to thank Marinette had asked. Her question drew attention from everyone. “Are you going to be safe there? With them?”

           Claude frowned, “Maybe you shouldn’t go back there.”

           It took a lot of reassurance to get her friends and even quite a few of the other students who had been in the cafeteria to allow her to go back to her class. Even then, Marinette found Ms. Mendeleiev, who had a solid forest green 71 above her head and had a bit more pep in her step that usual, escorting her and Chloe to class.

           Students in the hall moved out of Marinette way as soon as they saw her coming, a look of awe on their faces. The bluenette couldn’t find the pink blush that crept on to her face.

           They knew they had gotten to Bustier’s class when they saw the red glow emerging from the room

           Alya couldn’t believe it. How couldn’t Ladybug trust her? She was Rena Rouge. Or least she had been. There had been a new Fox running around with Ladybug, lately. Rena hadn’t been seen in over a year. Still, Alya ran the Ladyblog. Alya thought they were friends. But how could that be true with a 2 above her head. And she wasn’t a bully or disloyal.

           The rest of the class had a similar mindset. Even Bustier, who had a three, had a sorrowful look on her face. She didn’t understand what she had done wrong.

           When green glows entered the room, they all noticed. Mouths dropped.

           Ms. Mendeleiev with a 71, they could understand. She was a great teacher, no one could deny it. The beautiful blond Chloe they could sort of understand. She had an 86; maybe she had done more good as Queen Bee than they knew about. Marinette though? Their minds just couldn’t compute.

           How could Marinette have a 92?

           They read the words attached to her and Chloe’s numbers with disbelief.

           Said girl thanked Mendeleiev who had taken to blatantly staring at Bustier with distrust. It occurred to Mendeleiev, that the younger teacher did have an absurdly high number of Akuma transformation from her students. When Mendeleiev and told everyone what she had seen and realized; most of the other faculty would begin to keep a close eye on Bustier and her class. Something just wasn’t right with that lot.

           Marinette and Chloe made their way to the seats in back. The green above their heads looked a halo.

           Alya wanted to scream. “Why does Ladybug trust you?” She asked the girls.

“She’s Queen Bee,” Marinette pointed at Chloe. “A loyal ally of Ladybug.”

           Chloe smirked, “Don’t you remember that it was Marinette who first got you that interview with Ladybug; the reason your blog became as popular as it did?” She asked reporter. “Marinette’s Ladybug’s friend.”

           Any scathing thing the students had been thinking to sneer at the girls died on their lips. Marinette was Ladybug’s friend. They knew Marinette knew the hero but never thought about how close they were.

“Why do think Ladybug stopped giving you interviews?” Chloe leaned back in her seat. A euphoric feeling filling her. “She only started working with you in the first place because she knew you were Marinette’s bestie. Once that changed, well… Ladybug just didn’t want to work with you anymore. Something about Journalistic Professionalism. How is your website doing by the way? I haven’t checked in a while. I normally use Aurore’s Bugout blog. Ladybug endorses it, you know?”

           Marinette could have kissed the blond. The devastation on Alya’s face was finally karma for all the nasty texts she had sent to Marinette before she change her number.

           Nino pulled his girlfriend into a hug.

“She read those texts you sent me by the way.” Marinette sent them a cold smirk as horrified looks overcame their faces. “Every last one. She was so disappointed.”

“You showed her?” Rose whispered. “How could you show her?”

“Why not?” Marinette shrugged. Rose hadn’t sent as many mean texts as the others in class and weren’t all that mean; just accusatory and claiming that she refused to be friends with a Bully. “I trust her. She trusts me. I even sent her videos of what a day in our class has been like lately. Ladybug got to see and hear everything personally. She has so many concerns about the goings on in this. She’ll be going to the school board with the videos.”

           Bustier paled. She knew the students had gotten a bit out of hand but surely they weren’t that bad. They were just kids after all. (The teacher would get her answer a week later, along with a pink slip.)

           Alya sobbed as she remembered everything she sent Marinette. How could she know Ladybug would read them? No wonder Alya got a 2. Ladybug probably hated her. “I only sent that because you were being such a bully.”

“Yeah,” Alix hissed. “It’s not fair. You were being such a freak about Lila!” There were nods.

           And as the old saying goes, speak of the devil, and the devil…

           Lila had taken her sweet time getting to school that day. She had lied to her mother that it was closed for the morning because an Akuma. And it was just her luck that one would appear. She had stayed in bed all day, earphones blasting music in her ear, wondering just how she’ll amazing her classmates that day. It felt great to be adored.

           When Lila got up to leave for school, she looked in the mirror and saw a dark, blood red glowing Negative 51 above her head. She shrugged and left her apartment. Earphones still in her ears. A happy smile on her face.

           She didn’t notice the shocked and disgusted looks on people’s faces as she passed them. Or why a mother picked up her a child and ran in the other direction. Lila didn’t see the brave man who reached out, with shaky hands, and touched her number as she passed by. Nor she see the People taking pictures of her and her warning signs. The photos went viral almost instantly, everyone wanted to know just who was the girl with the only negative number in all of Paris… As far they knew.

           When Gabriel Agreste saw Lila’s image on the web, he ordered Nathalie to sever all connections to the teen girl and release a statement making it clear the company had no idea just what Lila Rossi had been capable of. Afterwards, Gabriel wondered what Lila had done to earn such a dramatically low number.

           Gabriel himself was at a respectable and average 30. While Nathalie was at solid 34. Decent not too green numbers. Though as Hawkmoth, they were both an Ugly negative -2. He knew he was a Supervillian; Ladybug regarded him as a bad guy. But she seemed to regard Lila Rossi as pure evil.

           …Maybe Hawkmoth should sever his connection to the Italian girl as well.

           Lila arrived at school, just at the end of lunch, students had just started to leave the cafeteria for lunch. She didn’t notice that students stopped in their tracks to stare at her. Or the teachers with horrifying and calculating looks on their faces. She didn’t seem Damocles’ pale and rush off to call her mother.

           She didn’t notice anything. Lila just smiled pleasantly; having decided to go with a Prince Ali story that day. Maybe that he asked her to marry him. She’d be the envy of all the girls in class.

           However, when Lila got to the class she did notice the shocked looks she got from her classmates. But not the cold smirk on Marinette’s face.

“What?” Lila asked looking around. “Did something happened? Oh, no is the Akuma still around? How awful!”  She said fighting the smile off her face. Hopefully Ladybug was getting her ass kicked, she thought.

           Alya dropped her phone. Negative? How could Lila be negative? How could she have such a low negative number at that?

           Everyone in class read the giant warning label attached to Lila Rossi’s number: Liar, backstabber, nasty, bully, untrustworthy, manipulative, rotten, villain, horrible person; the list went on and on. However, it was that shook them to their cores: Evil. Not bad. Not awful. Evil.

           Alya collapsed against her boyfriend, “No. No. I didn’t know. I swear.”

“Shh, it’s okay,” Nino comforted her. “None of us knew.” There were nods from the other students.

           Marinette and Chloe looked at them with narrowed eyes because: What the hell.

“Except I told you she was a liar,” Marinette glared at them. “You didn’t listen. You turned against me… for her.”

“You turned against Marinette,” Chloe said slowly. “The girl who did everything for you. And for what? A few glittery stories and false promises?”

           Adrien closed his eyes. Was this why Ladybug distrusted him? Because he didn’t side with Marinette like he knew he should’ve. Plagg had warned him he was wrong. But he just didn’t want to risk losing all his friends like Marinette seemed to be losing hers.

Marinette looked at Rose, “Now I want you think again about every text you all sent me because of Lila Rossi.” Once again the students turned pale. They had been so mean, so harsh, so unbelievable cruel to the girl that had been so dear to their hearts. “Now I want you to remember again that Ladybug saw them.”

           Rose was the first to break out in tears. “I’m-I’m sorry!” She sobbed and struggled to find her words. She had disowned one of her closest friends for a villain. “I’m so sorry!”

           Other students were in the same boat she was. The fiery Alix was had been contemplating going on another tirade against Marinette when Lila walked in, felt her anger be snuffed out a like a campfire in a thunderstorm. The pink haired girl remembered helping lead the charge in showing Marinette what it was like to be bullied; tripping her, ripping of her homework, shoving her. What she done? Kim had been crushing on Lila hard felt crushed. Marinette had been since friend since pre-k, and he just… left her.

           Lila looked honestly confused. She had missed something, and it was big. “What’s going on?”

           Nino glared at the girl; his eyes red, tear streaks his face. “Those numbers tell the world how much Ladybug trusts you. Or how much she doesn’t,” He said darkly, thinking about his own number and his actions against the girl he once called his best friend. “And why.”

“The lower the number,” Adrien added. “The less she trust you.”

           Chloe leaned forward in her seat and sent vicious smirk to the Italian girl, “And guess who has the only negative number in Paris.” She teased. “Besides Hawkmoth, but at least he was smart enough to hide. You’re trending by the way.”

“No!” Lila said, looking around desperately, but all she saw was cold stares. “No!” She pulled out her phone, and sure enough the name Lila Rossi was trending. Her picture with the giant negative number above her head seem to be everywhere. “This can’t be happening! How can this be happening!”

           Marinette stood up, “Because you’re a bad person. You’re mean and you’re cruel. And worst yet, you dragged everyone down with you.” She said. Her voice was righteous or angry. It was like she was stating a fact from a history book. Marinette looked over every single one of her ex-friends, “Ladybug will never trust you again.”

           The bell rang.

“Time for class,” Chloe sang. “Maybe you guys will finally learn something.”

[oceanbaby888]

Hey babies! I'm back from my break! And I just wanna say:

MARS IS NOW IN CANCER!!!!! 🔥♋♋

Ik ik it's been in cancer since yesterday, yet, here is what you may need to know for your astro forecast!

We know by now Mars is that planet of action!! Its direct, blunt, aggressive, and cuts through the bs.

And we have Cancer. Generally known for being on the softer end. Very nurturing. Loves family and all things THEY know they can enjoy. This is because Cancer expresses 4th house themes (family, comfort zone, roots, etc.) being the 4th sign and all.

So, we have Mars in Cancer. Dont be fooled, this doesn't mean you will be scared to fight. This means you'll fight for what MATTERS to you! Meaning, keep in mind that while Mars is a fighting energy, that doesn't mean heavy Cancer placements may find themselves fighting EVERYTHING in life, it just means they may be a bit more direct about defending and protecting what MATTERS to them. Cancer is still a cardinal sign(the modality that is associated with taking initiative mainly) and it's a crab at that and it will pinch the hell out of you 🤣🤣😭.

Generally, this means you may find yourself a bit more defensive about your relatives (at least the ones you care about), home life may get more rowdy, and you may be more defensive about your comfort zone and not letting anyone push you out of it right now(even if the other person may mean well).

Yet, to be more specific, this may differ depending on what house mars in cancer transits for you.

If Mars in Cancer is transiting in your:

1st house: Definitely may be a bit more protective about your self-image and not letting anyone misunderstand you. You may be more clear about who you are in the world and how you fit in. Especially if you know as a Cancer rising loving and protecting is a big part of who you are.

2nd house: You may find yourself defending or being more protective of assets, money, and materials. Especially if they come from a close source like family. You want no one fucking up that bag or messing with your sentimental values. Esp if its like an heirloom (this is because Cancer is associated with the past, so passed down things are of importance to you possibly rn).

3rd House: Definitely may have a more forward approach to how you speak, esp if we're talking about signing contracts. Writing may be more forward and direct as well. Also may be protective of siblings and neighbors around this transit. Yet, do be mindful to not argue with women alot in your neighborhood or your mom during this time since cancer does rule women. Driving is also something to be mindful of as well (dont wanna fear monger, just be mindful on the road like always 😊). Activate that defensive driving!

4th house: Protective of home environment. Lol I hope nobody is getting into it with your family because you may be right there with them around this time. Or vice versa, you may be getting into it with them at home (I hope not 😰). Dont want others penetrating your comfort space rn. Also may be very forward in your approach if you're looking for homes or work in real estate. You may just be like "okay well how much is this and how far is this location from my job, etc."

5th house: Definitely will defend children during this transit. Also, if you play a sport, you may have more energy during your games in this transit (idk who is playing sports in a pandemic, but I know someone is). Anyway, I digress. You also may have a more direct approach in how you want to foster your next creative project and you have alot of energy for it.

6th house: May find yourself defending people at work. As in if you see someone getting bullied at work you may just be like "hey man, stop fucking being a dick to xyz" lol or something like that. Your health may see alot of attention as you have the energy to tend to it. Be mindful of eating too many spicy foods as it may hurt your stomach.

7th House: Defending people in general lol. But remember, some people need to defend themselves as well so dont go overboard with it. You ain't tolerating any mess especially if its within a group of friends. You will definitely become the "mom" friend in this transit and get folks together if you see them bullying others. You also may be very protective of your romantic partner as well. Not letting anyone disrespect your baby iktr.

8th house: Joint assets are going to be your focus here. Making sure no one fucks it up. You also may be very vocal and defensive of your sexual health (as you should) because people like to underestimate how important that is. Also, if you hear about someone talking about your friends or family (gossip is secretive=secrets=8th house), you may find yourself defending their honor in their absence.

9th house: Very protective of your ideas and not letting anyone shut them down! Your ideas and opinions matter too! Also, if you see a friend being bullied by a teacher (9th house = teachers), you may just call the teacher out! (Tell me if you do 🤣🤣♋). Your are firm in your spiritual growth and not comparing yourself to others. You know your higher self and are growing and no one can take that away from you.

10th house: OOO the career moves and getting that bag!!! You are not playing. 10th house represents capricorn, the opposite of cancer. Cancers are usually not a fan of the public(cancer =4th house = privacy), so publicity (a 10th house theme) may not appeal to them until now LOLOLOLOL. You may make some career moves to get your name out there or may feel more confident in public than usual. Even if you really arent a publicity person, who may mess around and do something in your career that may garner attention/respect. People may look up to you more for your willingness to defend others and passion for people.

11th house: You definitely may feel moved to protect the people in your community/your friends. You may find yourself doing this on the internet as (11th house = Internet). May be very vocal in defending issues that are dear to you and wanting people to be aware of that, even if it's something people may not care for yet. 11th house represents progressive thinking, so these issues you're defending people may not understand, but defend them anyway.

12th house: Okay, this is a little tricky. While you may feel the need to defend, you may not know why, but you know you need to. Intuition may help in this case. Also, you may be very protective of your secrets, the 12th house represents the subconscious and things we may not be physically aware of, like secrets. May not tell people what they shouldnt know and if they ask, you may be a little direct like "because it's my business" LOL. Definitely dont wanna cause issues unless you intuitively know FOR A FACT somebody on some bullshit.

That's the astro forecast! I know I didnt cover everything but I hope you're more aware of whats to come with Mars in ♋.

Love yall,

-Claude

[summonerscenarios]

Okay so this may not make sense unless you seen BNA, But How would Guilds of your choice react to the fact that MC is a beastmen, but can switch between their beast form and human form(Going off on that they thought MC was fully human), and maybe a little on Shino would react 😖(cause well..you know when it comes to his past love and the whole-thing) Sorry if this seems like a lot and if you don't want to do it, you can just delete this. Have a good day or night.

Yessss I just started watching it actually and it’s SO GOOD!!! I do hope that these hcs are what you were looking for! Also I’m doing this under the assumption that MC knew they were a Beastman! Enjoy hun~

----

Summoners

With how close you and the Summoners are on a daily basis this was bound to come out eventually, so when they all learn that you’re not entirely human like they had all first assumed needless to say there’s a whole lot of questions. Shiro at first goes off on a tangent, speculating that your sudden shifting ability could maybe be some undiscovered ability of your sacred artifact since all the other transients you guys have met with similar abilities have all been because of their sacred artifact. He lays off when you assure him that you’re pretty sure you were a beastman long before you came to Tokyo but that just brings about a whole bunch of other questions about beastmen types and abilities. He’s honestly so intrigued that for a moment some of his questions probably push the boundaries of what he’s usually like so just be sure to give him a lil nudge to think before he asks.

Kengo doesn’t really see what the big deal is - to him it’s just one more cool thing about you! However even he thinks it’s pretty neat that you can switch between two different forms at will. He’ll ask the obvious questions about the differences between your human and beastman form - does it make you stronger? Give you special powers? Make you look more intimidating? Though he has to remind himself that you can change forms whenever you want because you’ve shocked him more than once when he turns away for a moment and then turns back to find you’ve changed in that momentary time span.

Ryota can’t stop himself from fawning over your new appearance, asking you why you never told them about this before because you look so cute! If you’re okay with it he really wants to feel the new changes that come with your beastman form; he’ll compare his hand to yours and cuddle up to you as he admires your new appearance, the whole time asking if everything’s okay at different intervals. Plus if you have fur fully expect him to give you plenty of fuss because it’s just so soft!

Hanuman is super psyched when he finds out! He’s constantly asking you to switch back and forth to see how quickly you can shift and if you humor him with it he’ll be grinning like a dork the whole time because it is so entertaining. Agyo swiftly jumps in eventually to scold Hanuman into letting up and giving you a break, even as you laugh it off and say that it’s fine. Agyo doesn’t have nearly as much of a reaction as you thought he would, but if you’re some kind of beastman though he makes an offhand comment to himself that you look like you’d make a pretty good guardian dog partner now!

Moritaka, similar to the others, is taken aback when you first tell the Summoners, but doesn’t truly believe it until he sees you shift back and forth with his own eyes - somehow seeing it happen right in front of him suddenly makes you beastman abilities more real than just simple words. He’s equally entertained watching Ryota fawning over your new appearance and Hanuman egging you on with the switching, but acts as a voice of reason if they get a bit too much. To him it’s almost like you’re just like any other therian when in your beastman form, but he goes out of his way to remind his rambunctious friends that even while not being entirely human like they all first though you’re still you. A part of him also ponders how Yatsufusa would react upon learning that the one who holds the soul of his beloved is a beastman, but that’s a question to wonder for another time.

At this point there’s been enough surprises and sudden revelations about you that Toji thinks he’s seen them all. But then you switch from your human form to your beastman form and suddenly he’s right back to being absolutely mystified about just how many surprises you’ve got up your sleeve. Most of the questions he’s asking are about how many people know and if the teachers have been notified and things along those lines but you can tell that he’s looking over your new form pretty damn intensely. You jokingly ask him if he wants to join Ryota in the impromptu petting, and though he refuses the fact he keeps looking back at you from the corner of his eye is obvious he’s considering it. If you’ve only told the Summoners about being a beastman then Toji makes a comment about how this could be useful if you ever need to go into hiding - just about every big player in Tokyo has their eye on you so being able to shift into another species than what they all know you as could play into your favor if you need it.

Berserkers

It doesn’t occur to you that you probably should have given the Berserkers guild a bit of a heads up about being a beastman until you walked right into the Colosseum in your beastman form. You don’t even make it past the door before Garmr all but barrels you over, the joy of seeing you back melting away to alarm and confusion seeing that you aren’t in your human form. The poor therian is conflicted because you definitely smell like you, but you don’t look like you, and he spends so long sniffing and running circles around you trying to determine whether this is some kind of trick to make him think you’re his master that his head is spinning by the time that Bathym peeks his head out to see what the commotion is, dragging an unwilling Andvari out with him. 

Neither of them buy your assurances that it’s really you at first, because obviously you were a full human, right? But then you turn back into your human form and all of a sudden you’re being swarmed by all three at once. Garmr is absolutely ecstatic knowing that it’s definitely you and won’t let go of your arm, Bathym is trying to pry for all kinds of details wanting to get a good ol look at all the changes your beastman form causes, and Andvari is already rattling off the possible marketing schemes this new development could bring in like it’s some kind of neat parlor trick - honestly not the reaction you were expecting.

By the time you actually manage to worm your way inside the commotion has brought some of the other fighters out from the locker rooms, and any hope of keeping that little secret to yourself goes out of the window because of course Bathym’s gonna spill the gossip to them. Ikutoshi’s nonchalant about it really and just assumes that it must be some kind of thing to do with your sacred artifact similar to his own, but he does have a couple questions of his own when he sees you shift into your beastman form.

Nomad nearly has a damn heart attack when he sees you in your beast form, and almost fools himself into thinking that someone must have done something to you to cause the transformation. Do the guy a favor and let him know that you’re a beastman before he convinces himself that he’s got to add someone else to his revenge list; Once you do explain to him Nomad calms down significantly and mostly just makes a comment about how he gets why you didn’t go out of you way to tell the other berserkers since most would probably wanna put your skills to the test in a fight the moment they found out.

SPEAKING OF FIGHTING. Macan takes the whole beastman thing in stride, but he gets super excited if you’re some kind of lion/tiger/cat beastman because. If anything he’s insistent about taking you on in the ring in your beastman form, which when coming from Macan is probably an offer you’re going to want to turn down unless today’s the day you’ve decided who’s gonna eat who. It doesn’t help that Claude is also eager to see your beastman prowess in combat, having been notified by Snow of your presence and the situation during your encounter with Garmr. He desires to see what you’re capable of in this new form especially if you’re one of the bigger kinds of beastmen, and if you agree you’ll probably end up earning yourself a couple more brownie points in his favor, but if you’re firm he’ll relent and leave the matter be for now.

Genociders

You bring the fact that you’re a beastman up to the Genociders so casually, but honestly out of all of the guild’s their response is arguably the calmest. I mean Arc already had some suspicion that there was something about you that wasn’t entirely human, so when you first confide in them that you’re in fact a beastman it only confirms their suspicions. If you’re worried about their reactions about keeping it from them you really don’t need to be because they take it all in stride. 

It takes a little bit of helpful coaxing from the guild master before they’re able to convince you to show off your beastman form around them, and they remind you constantly that no matter what form you take you’re still the same person in their eyes. Arc spends some time talking to you about different kinds of beastmen as well as if you only have the one form (depending on if you retain this information since coming to Tokyo is another matter entirely but Arc still appreciates that you go out of your way to answer their questions in a bid to get to know you better. 

Of course it doesn’t take long for Azathoth to butt in too to get a good look at you, giggling to himself as he asks all about how you ‘unlocked a new skin’ and when you were gonna tell them you unlocked that achievement. Though from the way that he grins and laughs to himself the whole time, you have a feeling that he knew long before anybody else thanks to the previous loops. It still doesn’t stop him from trying to poke and prod at your beastman form, having plenty of fun messing around with your new fur, feathers or scales depending on the kind of beastman you are.

Of course to Babalon and Surtr you will still be their darling child. Upon seeing your beastman form Babalon is quick to dote on you, cupping your face in her hands before smoothing a comforting hand along your ears and cheeks. The way she coos over you is just as motherly as before, but you can tell that she finds amusement in the way you relax into her touch when she finds the spots that ease the tension right off of your shoulders. This is only further amplified when Surtr brings a hand to rub fondly atop of your head, going off on some long winded speech about how you should never be afraid - that you’ll always be his beloved child regardless of if you have feathers/fur/scales etc. Honestly you’re pretty sure that he gets off topic about the whole thing but at least you know that he’s being genuinely kind about it.

Bonus! Shino

Shino is absolutely stunned by the revelation that you’re a beastman. To know that you, the one who carries the soul of his beloved can take on the form of a beastman within these Tokyo walls leaves him feeling conflicted. There is some naive part of him that thinks this could be some twisted fate, that his inability to be with you in your past life no longer barred by his status as a beast, that the version of you here and now is no longer held back by the concerns of the past world. This is also conflicted by his torn feelings about the whole thing however, where he feels as though he still doesn’t deserve his relationship with you regardless of whether you’re a human or beastman. While he doesn’t really make any movements when you change his eyes are trained upon your beastman form, intently watching the way you shift between forms. So intently that it’s easy to feel a little intimidated under his gaze, but he snaps out of his stupor upon hearing your voice calling out to him, bringing him back to the present moment.

[my-miraculous-headcanons]

Heres some heacanons for the pv (what the show should have been personally): the thing that seperates brigettes timeline from marinettes is in the pv timeline its brigettes mom who is ill and not felix's leading to felix being more loved and secluded and brigette missinf mom and distant making her develop seperation anxiety and a fear of lonliness(hence the clinginess)

Personally, I don’t care as much for the PV as I care for the original starting concept of everything, when Marinette was named Marietta, had more of a straight cut to her pigtails, and was known as the Mini Menace Ladybug. 

I’m also… not the biggest fan of Felix or Marinette’s personalities in the PV. The darker themes were great, I loved everything from a design point of view, as well as the other characters, Alan, Claude, and Allegra, but I don’t think I would have been able to stand the show with a love square like that. It would have been infuriating. Regardless of the reasonings behind their personalities, Felix and Marinette’s behaviour in the PV really rubbed me wrong.

If I were to personally change the show to fit something more to my liking, using the first concepts and the PV as inspiration, I would have changed a LOT more than simply whose parents were more unfortunate.

Let’s start with Marinette:

Okay, to start off… I LOVE this version of Marinette. I love her hairstyle and ribbons a whole lot more than canon Marinette. I love her civilian clothing, and I love the much more menacing look that she has when she’s Ladybug, using a mask with white covering over her eyes. I also love the fact that’s she’s older. 

And I can’t say enough how much I love that her suit’s not just magicked on. (Don’t get me wrong, I love the magic of the whole show, but I also really love when magic doesn’t do everything for you. Yeah, here’s a magical indestructible super suit, but you’re gonna have to put it on and take it off yourself!)

THIS Marinette, who was previously named Marietta, is cunning, daring, stealthy, and efficient. She still has all of my favourite qualities that Current Marinette has, being smart, creative, and strategic. But there’s a lot of differences; Concept Marinette clearly isn’t a goody-two-shoes, for one.

LOOK at this intense look in her eyes. Those are the eyes of someone on a fucking mission. Those are the eyes of someone who isn’t going to let anyone stop her, no matter what. If that means being a wanted criminal and having to avoid the police at every turn, then so be it. 

This is a Marinette who’s combined with not only the cute and quirky Marinette we have currently, not only the stern focus we have in Ladybug currently, but ALSO with the TOTAL BADASSERY that was unfortunately cut out altogether in the final production. This Marinette is cute, focused, and sly. And clearly not afraid to hurt anyone, if the state of that officer is anything to go by. 

This Marinette never had troubles making friends. She’s ALREADY confident and outgoing. This wasn’t the kind of girl who would sit quietly in class and never make meaningful relationships with her classmates. This is the kind of girl who didn’t NEED magical jewelry to shine. Instead, the magical jewelry found her BECAUSE she shined so brightly. 

I mean, seriously, look at this. I don’t know about you, but this isn’t the kind of ballsy attitude you get just because some new kid gave you a pep talk. Clearly she was already born with it, and is assured of her capabilities. This is the confidence of someone who’s BEEN confident for a very long time.

This is the Marinette I’m dying for. This is the kind of main character I would be utterly entranced by. It doesn’t need to sacrifice all the other quirks that we have with Current Marinette, all it does it adds on to her and makes her the type of hero I would have followed to the DEATH as a kid. 

This is the Marinette who still designs, who still bakes, who still gardens, who still probably does that adorable butt wiggle thing when she’s excited, who still squeals in delight and still makes handmade gifts for her friends.

And this is ALSO a Marinette who’s broken the law on multiple occasions, will expertly kick your ass in the name of good, super suit or not, is probably BOTH a bad influence and a good influence on the people around her, has powered on and made more connections in the fashion world than other teenagers her age would have had the guts to do, and doesn’t solely use her powers in the face of other magical happenstances. This girl will use her powers on regular old drunkards if the situation calls for it. She has NO mercy, and is perfectly fine on her own.

Of course, she isn’t alone, is she?

The Mini Menace: Ladybug is partnered with another Mini Menace, and his name would be Chat Noir:

Now, don’t get me wrong, as much as I love the Mini Menace concepts of Ladybug and Chat Noir, Beanie Boy here isn’t my favourite concept of catboy.

Believe it or not, my favourite concept art of Chat Noir is the one that’s a good mixture between both Felix and Adrien. A combination of Adrien’s general friendliness, awkwardness, and genuine playfulness, while still having Felix’s emotional distance, willingness to be a little mean-spirited at times, and the capacity to be deceitful. 

THIS is my Chat Noir. He’s full of genuine expression that is in no way a façade to win Ladybug over, bright and silly and mischievous. This is a boy who would probably laugh at someone who slipped on a banana peel, but would still get up to help that person back onto their feet, still laughing the entire time. This is also a boy who would make light jokes and tell dramatic stories to make you FEEL as though you’re close friends, even though he hasn’t told you a single thing about himself.

This is a person who knows how to be completely distant while masquerading as an open book. 

And I need to add, I LOVE this concept of Adrien, which seems to place somewhere in the beginning when they were transitioning from Felix to Adrien as a character. This Adrien is amicable, smiling in in the company of another friendly face, and has an open expression. This seriously does NOT look like someone who dances around in a skintight leather catsuit at night, breaking the law and provoking policemen. And that’s what makes it brilliant to me. 

The ONLY thing that seems similar between Chat Noir and Adrien is that they both manage to stay emotionally distant while putting up the mask of someone who isn’t. The brilliance of this is that they do it in completely different ways.

Current Chat Noir’s openness isn’t a joke, as far as we’re concerned. Current Chat Noir is TRYING to be as open as possible, his attitude is how he really want to be. Concept Chat Noir is different, instead USING that goofy attitude as a shield. He’s still Adrien, but part Felix as well, very attached to their protective bubble and not willing to slip out their cover.

Speaking of Felix, we should dive more into how we connect Felix and Adrien’s vastly different personalities.

To put it simply, Felix is kind of a jerk. And Adrien… isn’t. Felix doesn’t let anybody force him to do anything and will outright tell you to get lost. Adrien’s kind of a doormat and would sooner sacrifice his personal comfort for the sake of other people around him.

Felix is willing to use his bad luck abilities to purposely hurt a girl who has a crush on him simply because she’s walking towards him. Adrien’s the kind of guy who would stand still and let any girl who likes him cling to him like a leech, whether he’s uncomfortable or not. How could you possibly mix those two personalities together?

Well… pretty easily, honestly.

Felix acts out and does pretty mean-spirited things when he’s annoyed or just doesn’t want to deal with things. He’s selfish and cares little for what other people think of him. Adrien does, though. He cares about what other people think, his father especially, and wants people to like him.

This Concept Adrien is still going to be selfish and do mean-spirited things from time to time. He’d probably make use of his misfortune abilities by ruining the days of people who are just plain rude, taking great joy in their misery. That kid from earlier who made some gross comment about girls? Use a little misfortune to tangle his shoelaces together and make him late for class. That teacher who for some reason takes pride in failing his class? Gets his tie stuck in a paper shredder, wonder how that happened. Someone laughs at his use of a cane? I hope you like spraining your ankle and having to use crutches for a little while.

Concept Adrien still really cares about making good impressions to people who deserve it, however, and would refrain from pulling pranks or using his misfortune on those people. Marinette is on that list. She’s probably at the top of the list, honestly. Class president, super popular, probably the most sweetest girl in school, and strong enough to protect all her friends with raw strength alone? Yeah, definitely someone he wants to make a good first impression with.

Concept Adrien is a good person with some gray areas. He might enjoy other peoples’ pain too much, at times, and some of his ‘pranks’ can go a little overboard. His reasoning for helping Ladybug here and there will probably be for personal gain, rather than out of the goodness of his heart, and they won’t be very close to each other. Concept Adrien can be a little manipulative when he wants to be and can trick people into telling him the information he wants to know.

And yet, Concept Adrien is still firmly on the Good Human Being side of the scale. If he hears someone on the city streets in need of true help, he’ll be there. While he remains distant, afraid to tell too much about himself, he still very deeply cares about his friends and will be there for them when he’s needed. And while he has the power of pure destruction and misfortune at his fingertips, he never uses it for anything extreme.

Speaking of powers…

Chat Noir having added powers like this excite me. And I’m really excited by the fact that he’s seemingly capable of calling upon these powers outside of the magic suit— it gives credence to my theory that the original concepts were that Marinette and Adrien are CONSTANTLY infused with magical power. It doesn’t only ever exist when they change into the super suits. All that strength, agility, and their magical powers are well within their capabilities at all times. 

I love that Chat Noir’s powers are more diverse. He has more up his sleeve than a simple Cataclysm, like how Ladybug has more than just the Lucky Charm. Ladybug’s also capable of literally restoring any damage caused by another Miraculous.

And, speaking of abilities and Ladybug, let’s dive onto her side now.

This Ladybug doesn’t have new magical powers necessarily like Chat Noir does, but what she DOES have is an entire arsenal of different weapons, all in one yoyo. 

This absolutely feels like something more inline with the Ladybug Miraculous, considering it’s literally all about good luck and creation. It makes absolute sense that she should be able to imagine whatever weapon she wants and have it mimicked through her yoyo. Bombs, swords, staffs, and even a shield that’s probably capable of cutting through things like butter. It also falls in line with Concept Marinette’s personality. She’s willing to go to extreme lengths to accomplish her goal, so in comparison to Current Marinette, Concept Marinette would likely think of a whole host of different weapons to help her out.

I mean… remember that scene in Malediktator where Ladybug’s Lucky Charm was a fucking. machine gun. You remember how she just picked the laser pointer off it and threw the gun away? Yeah. Concept Marinette would not have done that.

You guys can probably tell what the common theme of the concept universe at this point is. Darker, more violent, more morally grey, and full of much more weapons, powers, and villains unrelated to magical influence. 

There’s SO MUCH more I want to get into, I’m justing dying to delve more into Concept Hawkmoth/Gabriel, the kwamis, Concept Origins, Concept Love Square, Concept Fu, Concept Plot, etc, etc. But at this point the post has run on for much too long. This took me long enough that I had to stop for the night and fall asleep. I’ll expand more if anybody asks, I suppose. 

[withlove-so]

headcanons on byleth doing subtle matchmaking please?

This looks like an invitation to share my ships with ya’ll, cause I can tell you that’s definitely how I approached it, hah! I was also influenced by other creators and their Headcanons, cause I’m weak and a multi shipper, so it was hard to only pick a few. I also threw one in that I thought would be interesting, so I hope you like it!

Byleth absolutely loves and adores her students. She would never, ever do anything behind their backs.

Well... almost never.

But there was one thing that Byleth could never tell them, she knew that if she did she would lose all respect as a teacher.

She loves pairing up her students.

(And not to brag, but she’s already started two relationships through this method)

Bernadetta had always acted so flustered around Caspar after their first project together, so she figured why not give them a little big push?

Anytime there was a group project, she’d always pair them together, much to Bernadetta’s dismay(?)

She wanted to encourage her to open up to someone, while also thinking of how cute they were together!

Bernadetta always looked so happy when they were working together, so it definitely seemed like it was a good call.

This quickly became a hobby of Byleth’s, just watching her students interactions so she could pair them together.

Her second victim was Felix.

She couldn’t help but notice that the swordsman always conveniently chose Dimitri as his sparing partner.

And anytime they were in class, he seemed to space out during lessons, though he’d never admit why.

How suspicious.

And how cute!

So of course Byleth requested that Dimitri and Felix went on a group quest as a sort of project.

They tried to question why they would be the only two going, but she wasn’t having any of it! She simply sent them on their way with the vague instructions of “Find this one plant out in the forest and I’ll give you a passing grade ;)”

Both of those respective groups came out as couples in no more than a few weeks

(Gods knows what happened in those woods...)

Caspar and Dimitri were the announcers, while the other two chastised and complained to their partners.)

Byleth was in way too deep at this point, what other deep seeded relationships could she unearth?

Sylvain was the perfect candidate as a test run, he flirted with so many girls it seemed impossible for him to not be interested in somebody.

And he certainly had eyes on somebody, though it wasn’t how Byleth had pictured it.

She found him flirting with a random girl when he just sort of... stopped. And he walked away without a word.

And headed straight for Mercedes. Bingo.

He seemed to start with a nervous greeting, complete with a hand behind the head gesture. A known stance for awkwardly talking to your crush!

He couldn’t seem to get any words out, it was almost adorable, while Mercedes just giggled at his attempts.

There was no way Byleth wasn’t going to use this information against him.

She gave Sylvain and Mercedes a project they needed to present, which meant lots of communication. And where there was communication, there was trust. Trust blossoms into a strong friendship and, with the right pinch, a relationship! It was fool proof!

But it would take time, so she set her eyes elsewhere in the meantime.

Marianne didn’t like talking to the other students much, in fact she seemed to avoid them most of the time.

It’d be difficult to pair her with any of the students, so she was initially going to leave it be.

Until she saw it. An unbelievable sight.

Marianne approaching someone! And initiating conversation as well?? Unheard of, she simply had to know more.

So while shimmying around the corner she eavesdropped on investigated the situation.

“P...Please don’t say anything about what happened. A, And I’m sorry about kicking you out like that. It was uncalled for.”

“Aww, don’t fret Marianne~ I won’t tell a soul what happened. Besides, it was pretty cute how you sang to-“

CLAUDE?

“QUIET! Er, I- S,Sorry...”

That was Claude’s voice there, right? Marianne seemed to talk a lot more confidently with him. What had he seen? What did he know that the other students didn’t? What was their relationship??

... Byleth began considering getting a new hobby. Maybe she could pick up fishing. After this, of course! Maybe.

Byleth felt like she didn’t have to do much for this one, friends who keep secrets together are bound to last! Or was that fall apart? Hmm...

So she simply requested that Claude tutor Marianne so they could spend time outside of class and see where this takes their relationship.

He was more than happy to accept the request, and she couldn’t help but overhear Claude as he was leaving the class.

“Hmhm, Marianne, eh? Maybe she’ll serenade to me this time, hah! That’d be...”

Nice? Bad? WHAT DO YOU WANT BOY??

Gods, she was getting way too invested.

But she couldn’t give up yet, because now was the time to pursue her most difficult challenge yet!

Interhouse relationships

Byleth couldn’t help but notice that Dorothea was very quick about leaving class, sometimes she left before Byleth could properly dismiss her.

That in itself is suspicious, right?

So checking in on her student was just the natural thing to do, as a concerned teacher of course!

She followed Dorothea far enough so she wouldn’t notice her, until she saw her stop and greet someone.

When Byleth peeked around the corner, she was admittedly shocked.

Dorothea was talking cheerfully to Ignatz, though she couldn’t hear their conversation from so far away.

He was flipping though a small book and showing it to Dorothea, while she seemed to be gushing about... something.

Gods she wished she could hear.

But they seemed to be doing... really well.

They were smiling and happy, and were clearly passionate about whatever they were talking about.

How many times had they met at this point? It was clearly planned, but why be so secretive about it? It’s not like talking to the other houses was banned, honestly, it was encouraged!

Unless, they had a reason to hide it? Perhaps they already...

Byleth didn’t even feel the need to intrude on this one, she just gave them an encouraging thumbs up from the shadows.

If only her other students could be as proactive as these two.

It even made Byleth wish she could- reel in her own catch!

Haha! Oh yes, she definitely had to take up fishing so she could use that one.

If you liked these, my asks are open!

[edelgoth]

hi,, i never done this so forgive me if im making some mistakes!! but i wanted to get a matchup with a fe3h male character! im an istp, introverted mostly (but like other people, once you get to know me i'll do crazy shit), and love to draw. things i tend to look in for a partner is that they joke around but serious when needed, someone who actively tries to get me out of my shell and include me in stuff,, yeah. some other stuff i can say about myself is that im short (5ft baby), i dont really-

-care about school, but i still pay attention and whatnot. i love helping out others and listening to their problems, mostly because i like to say my opinion on things. when people my age are rude to me, i don’t really stand up for myself. it bothers me but im too shy to say anything back. when teachers are rude, i’ll be polite and smile to show respect. thats my personality on the outside, but i’ll crack jokes and playfully hit my friends if they say weird shit LOL sorry if its too long! thanks

i match you with…

caspar!!

i think you two would gel really well! you’ve got enough things in common to get along, but enough difference to keep things interesting 

you’re a lot quieter than he is, and i think you could be a good grounding force for him? caspar’s the sort of person who’s always going a hundred miles an hour, and he needs someone to slow him down

but that doesn’t mean you’re the reasonable one out of the two of you all the time,,, well, the crazy shit that you’d get up to 

caspar has big chaotic energy, so i really feel like you could really get up to some Antics

while you have trouble sticking up for yourself, caspar really doesn’t. whenever he saw people being rude to you, you can bet on him stepping into to stick up for you 

but at the same time, i feel like you could teach him when to reel it in? sometimes being polite is simply the more diplomatic option, and i feel like that’s something he needs to learn

he’s also absolutely the type of partner who’d try to help you out of your shell; he might be a bit gusto about it, and he’s probably going to fuck up,,, but it’s sincere

i think caspar fits your profile of an ideal partner, and i think you could have a lot of fun together!! you’re both the sort to crack jokes often, and you’d always be laughing together

he definitely says a lot of weird stuff,,, it’s just who he is,,, pls be gentle with him,,, 

number one fan of your drawings. always asking you to draw him; even if you already have 

also the sort of guy who’s always asking for your opinions, and really takes your advice to heart. he really wants to do well by you, you know? 

please love my good punch son, i really do think you’d be great together 

alternative matchups

sylvain: well first of all; cute height difference!! second of all, i think you’d get along pretty well? sylvain’s a very smart guy, and he’d be able to read the room, but,,, i don’t know, he tends to avoid being serious where he can? and because of that, it might be hard for you to get to a point of being comfortable with him as a partner? he’s still a great choice though! 

claude: i have more of a vibe here, is that makes sense? i just feel like you two would get along super well. he fits the bill for your ideal partner (he’s very good at going between being more playful and serious), and he’d hit a lot of the same beats as caspar imo. i just liked caspar more?? sometimes it’s hard to explain why i picked one person over the other, but claude would still be a good match!

[somewhatcoherentrambles]

Lost His Marbles

Even though he was 67 years old and an accomplished professional, he carried marbles in his pockets and only wrote in crayon.

Scratch that- if the document was really important he used pen. During our break at 3:00 pm on the dot he would quietly play with the marbles by himself, sometimes mumbling something I couldn’t hear. He only wore a suit when he absolutely needed to and if you looked over he’d break into a goofy smile. I mostly tried to avoid him at all costs, but it was hard to since I was an intern. At lunch, he ate weird things, like PB&J’s or pizza rolls. I wondered how someone like him worked his way up the firm.

The accounting firm was small and family-owned, with just a few locations. I’m for sure working my way up in years time. Lord knows how dense my competition is. They couldn’t even get black coffee without somehow messing it up. It was this particular day, as I watched him sit at his desk contently, that I prayed I wouldn’t ever have to work on a project with him; I knew better than to open myself up to karma.

I got a bad feeling in my stomach as we went through the daily briefing. Being an intern usually meant getting the scut work, like filing. Something told me I was in for a change today. The head of my department began describing an upcoming project for us and apparently, we’d be helping prepare local tax returns. I don’t know how we land big jobs as such a small company, but I’ve learned to accept it. This internship is coming to an end soon so it was obvious they were assigning the project to help decide which intern would get the job offer. Senior department members would be partnered with interns and lower department members to fill out the files and create a presentation.

Like a high school teacher dooming some apathetic teens to a group project, my superior read of the list of partners. My hopes for someone competent were dashed as I heard my name: “Jonathan Keys,” and then the name I had been dreading: “Claude Bairn.”

He spotted me down the row and gave me a half wave. I knew then and there I’d have to take over most of the project if I had any chance of winning the job. Half of the time it looked like all the old man could do was make copies of things. I reluctantly approached his desk after the meeting ended. Today he was wearing a blue button-up shirt that was slightly too tight with an uneven collar. His khaki pants had a stain or two on them but he didn’t seem too bothered.

I got straight to the point and told him I’d handle all the math and filing, he just had to put all my work into a presentation. I prayed that at the bare minimum he’d be able to make a powerpoint.

“Wait, Jonathan?” He called out as I walked away.

I turned and nodded.

“You don’t want this promotion as much as you think you do.”

“What?”

But Claude didn’t respond, just went back to playing with his marbles and eating his pop tart.

Delusional I thought.

The rest of the assignment, fortunately, went on without a hitch. I did all the work and Claude stuck it into text boxes and bar graphs. Sometimes he’d furrow his brow or tilt his head in a way that made me suspect he didn’t truly know what we were doing or what it all meant. We usually worked in silent derision, but I began to grow curious.

“What got you into accounting?” I asked.

“I was sort of forced into it.”

He darted his eyes and didn’t say any more on the subject.

Three days later we all had to sit outside the conference room and wait to go in. It struck me as odd that the company thought this was the best way of determining who would get the promotion. It must be one of those “alternative” and “modern” workplace practices.

After fifteen minutes of waiting and preparing, we were called inside.

“Mr. Keys, Mr. Bairn.” Greeted the Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Keres.

The higher-ups sat like a judge's table, each with notebooks and faces of stone-cold indifference. It was a rather short presentation, I started out with the bank reconciliations then moved into the general ledger entries. Claude stood to the side, silent, hunching his shoulders and rocking faintly side to side. They all stared at me with wide eyes, watching my every move.

At the end of the presentation, the panel turned and looked at each other, seemingly communicating in a secret language only they could understand. Mr. Keres opened the floor for up questions.

“Is that your natural hair color?” A man on the panel asked.

I looked to Claude then back up to the man.

“Yes?”

The panel just shook their heads in agreement and continued to scribble down notes.

“Do you have a history of hereditary diseases in your family?”

“Not that I know of,” I said.

Maybe these questions had something to do with the company provided health insurance, which would mean the job is as good as mine. I smiled at the thought.

“Excellent job, excellent job indeed.” Said Mr. Keres after a moment of silence.

“Mr. Bairn you are dismissed,” He said, “Mr. Keys if you wouldn’t mind I’d like to discuss something with you.”

“Of course.”

We walked out of the room while the rest of the panel spoke in hushed murmurs.

“If you would just come right this way…” Mr. Keres said, leading me down the hallway.

“Jonathan wait!” Claude called.

Mr. Keres nostrils were flaring and his eyes were wide but an uncomfortably big smile still sat on his wrinkled face.

“Claude, what is the meaning of this?”

“Jonathan don’t go! You don’t want this! It’s a sham and this place is just a tar baby, a tar baby I tell you!”

I saw Mr. Keres hurriedly gesture for two men to escort Claude away, as his crazy pleas got louder.

“Their evil! Evil, evil, evil! Mommy said to stay away from the bad men, stay away…”

I watched in shock, as Claude’s lips trembled and he was forcefully taken to another room. Blinking, I turned to Mr. Keres, hoping for some sort of explanation. His eyes were entirely fixed on the room Claude had been dragged into.

“It’s a shame,” Mr. Keres said shaking his head, “You see Mr. Bairn is the grandfather to our other financial advisor James Portman.”

It made so much more sense why Claude was apart of the company in the first place.

“His episodes that have only gotten worse with age.” Mr. Keres continued.

“It’s a shame indeed,” I said.

“Well,” Mr. Keres said, clasping his hands, “Shall we proceed?”

Part of me hoped he would be awarding me the promotion then and there. He lead me to the elevator and pressed the second floor. I hadn’t been there, nor did I know what was located there. When the doors opened we faced stark white walls and a hallway that has riddled with thin glass doors.

“You see Jonathan I like to think that we’re more than an accounting firm,” He said as we turned right.

I nodded, unsure of where he was going with this.

“Accounting is more of a side quest. We do important work here. Groundbreaking, life-altering type of work.”

He unlocked a door at the end of the hallway and lead me inside. It was all white as well, with two chairs and a table with all sorts of science equipment. I looked at him skeptically.

“We are trying to help humanity. Do you know what the common man’s greatest plight is Jonathan? What irrefutable struggle has incarcerated all of humanity?”

“No, sir,” I said with hesitance. Maybe Claude wasn’t the only one with a few screws loose.

He chuckled and walked to the cabinet on the other side of the room.

“Water?” Mr. Keres offered. I took it. He sat in the chair at the center of the room and gestured for me to sit.

“It is our mortality,” He stated, “Futile as it may seem we spend our short existence doing nothing but distracting ourselves from the inevitable closing of the curtain.”

Part of me felt like leaving and not turning back, but for some reason I didn’t. I should’ve.

“But someone like you and me, we can see that math, that science holds the answers.”

“Scientists at Harvard University,” He transitioned, “Discovered a protein called GDF11. When it was injected into older mice, their bone and muscle strength changed to resemble their youthful selves.”

He stood up.

“Now. Imagine if this same science were applied to humans.”

“You could...live forever,” I said, wondering what any of this had to do with me or accounting.

“I see something in you, Jonathan. An ambition, the type of ambition we want here.”

I rubbed my hands together, hoping he was granting me the promotion.

“The question is, do you want to change the world? Do you want to do more than accounting?”

“Yes?...”

He chuckled once more.

“Good. We have completed one human trial and hope to do more-”

“Here? At an accounting firm?”

“Why yes. Now the only problem is we had to take the GDF11 protein out of younger mice for it to work.”

“So you need a young candidate for the next human trial?”

“See? I knew you and I thought on the same wavelength.”

“Oh no Mr. Keres I c-couldn’t possibly, I-I would never-”

“This is the future Jonathan. An end to the infinite torment that haunts our lives. You would, would make history! Help liberate the human race!”

My eyes widened as I started to make my way towards the door.

“Don’t bother trying to leave. The drink I gave you should start to take effect.” Mr. Keres said.

He walked over to me as I leaned on the wall.

“It’s a shame. I was hoping you’d cooperate more.” He sneered. “You know the last human trial didn’t go so well. Our first candidate was much too young, following the loss of the protein he aged rapidly. Maybe you’ll do better.”

I was sitting on the floor up against the wall now. I tried yelling for help but no sound could force its way out of my burning lungs. I looked up at him, desperate to keep my eyes open, to no avail.

“After you pass out we’ll start. Congratulations Jonathan.”

[secondsightcinema]

Of Monocles and Mystery: Charles Douville Coburn

As Stanwyck’s shipboard cardsharp “father” in All About Eve (1942)

He’s one of the preeminent character actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and, like Sydney Greenstreet and Marie Dressler, among the small club of performers who started hugely successful movie careers around age 60, which at the time was not “the new 50,” it was less Golden Age than Golden Years—time to sit on your laurels and yell “Hey, kids, get off my lawn!” Instead, having only months before lost Ivah, his beloved wife and professional partner of 31 years, Coburn got on a train to Hollywood for a one-picture deal at Metro and immediately became as indispensable to the movies as he had been to the American stage for nearly four decades.

I’m as fascinated by the latecomers as I am by the Rooneys, Garlands, and Dickie Moores who started their screen careers when they were barely out of diapers. I love to watch people grow up and find their voices, see how they chart their uncertain course in the business and in their personal lives. But those who come late to the party, fully formed and with full lives already behind them, are equally intriguing. What’s the story they carry in their voices and faces, where did they come from, what did life throw at them along the way, and how did they respond? What did life make of them, and what did they make of life?

In Coburn’s case, he was prominent enough that I figured there’d be a full-length biography, or if I got luckier, even a memoir.

I didn’t get lucky.

So after the obligatory stops at his Wiki and his entry in David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Film, I started nosing around for other blog posts. I read just one—Cliff Aliperti’s at his Immortal Ephemera site, mainly looking for clues and sources—and started poking around for online links.

This kind of research always puts me in mind of Citizen Kane, and I indulge in an entirely unearned identification with the nameless reporter character who spends the better part of a week trying to plumb the mystery of identity before wanly saying No, he hadn’t found out what Rosebud was, but in any case it wouldn’t have revealed who Kane really was—it was just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle.

Some of you know what this is like. You find contradictions and errors, or intriguing little factoids that raise way more questions than they answer.

With Coburn, this begins at the beginning, with his birth. Some bios say he was born in Savannah, Georgia, but it was actually, per Coburn himself, Macon, Georgia, in 1877, and it was a few years after that his family moved to Savannah. So Coburn was born in the heart of the Confederacy, where veterans of the war would have been everywhere and as Faulkner famously said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Do the place and era of his birth explain the fact that Coburn was supposedly a member of White Citizens’ Councils, white supremacist groups? He was a proud son of Georgia who left his papers to the University of Georgia. I ran across one reference to his railing against the 14th Amendment in a late-life interview. It is painful to confront things like this about a beloved actor, someone you feel as if you know. But of course, you don’t, and people are complicated.

All accounts say he began his theatrical career at the Savannah Theatre as a program boy, though he said he was 13 and other sources say 14—I’m inclined to go with his own recollection, though one can’t ever be sure the source isn’t exaggerating for effect….

But all sources including the primary one, our boy Charles, agree that having risen through all available jobs at the theater, when he was 18, he became the Savannah’s manager. This would make it 1895.

I found no references to his parents or the circumstances of his upbringing. Was he at the theater out of love, or did his family need the money? I’m thinking here of Claude Rains, who began his work in the theater at the age of 10, his childhood one of grinding poverty. But of Coburn, at least with what I found poking around online, we have to speculate or leave it alone.

Rich, pervy Uncle Stanley, In This Our Life (1942)

In 1901, he moved to New York. That leaves six years between 18 and 24 for him to practice his trade and prepare to take on the big time. He says he originally hoped to become a “light opera comedian,” but when he saw a Shakespeare play, he was lost, or maybe found. The classics would always be the foundation of his passion for theatre.

What was that New York like? Now I’m thinking of Marie Dressler in Dinner at Eight, her eyes misting with nostalgia as she recalls the New York of her greatest years, when she was the toast of the town, young, beautiful, talented, successful, and surrounded by adoring swains. She pictures snow, and carriage rides to Delmonico’s. Dressler could probably have drawn on her own memory for that moment. Coburn’s turn-of-the-century New York was probably a bit less misty, but it’s always a good idea to have one’s salad days in one’s youth, when one is strong and has a high tolerance for squalor.

But look, by 1905 he starts his own company, the Coburn Players, and meets Ivah. They marry in 1906 and until her death in 1937, they are partners in life and work. Supposedly they had six children. Supposedly one of them became an auto mechanic who married a teacher, moved to California, and fathered movie star James Coburn. Is this true? I do not know.

I found that Playbill has a terrific site with a database of old programs, and while it doesn’t list all of the 30-something Broadway shows in which Coburn was actor, director, producer, or all of the above, it did provide a bit of background for this largely ignored part of his career. Here’s Coburn’s bio from WHO’S WHO IN THE CAST of Around the Corner (1936); according to Playbill, it ran for only 16 performances:

WHO’S WHO IN THE CAST

CHARLES COBURN (Fred Perkins), one of America’s foremost actor-managers, was honored last June by Union College with the degree of Master of Letters in recognition of his services to the American theater. Having embarked to the “enchanted aisles,” that marital and professional partnership known as Mr. and Mrs. Coburn entered upon a lifelong devotion to the classics and other nobilities of the theatre, with a repertoire eventually accruing of sixteen plays of Shakespeare, one of Moliére, three from the Greek and more than a score of the Old English, early American and moderns. They have played under the auspices of a hundred colleges and universities and once—the only actors ever invited to do so—they gave an evening performance on the White House grounds. Some of Mr. Coburn’s most important New York appearances have been in “The Better ‘Ole,” “The Yellowjacket,” “The Imaginary Invalid,” “So This Is London,” “The Farmer’s Wife,” “French Leave,” “The Bronx Express,” “Old Bill, M.P.,” “Falstaff,” “The Plutocrat” and “Lysistrata.” Mr. Coburn was in the all-star casts of “Diplomacy,” “Peter Ibbetson,” “Trelawney of the Wells,” and The Players’ production of “Troilus and Cressida.” He was Father Quartermaine in “The First Legion.” Last season he was starred with William H. Gillette, and James Kirkwood in the revival of “Three Wise Fools,” and last June he played the title role in The Players’ revival of George Ade’s comedy, “The County Chairman.” Ol’ Bill, Falstaff, Macbeth, President of the Senate of Athens, Bob Acres, Rip Van Winkle, Col. Ibbetson, and Henry VIII are among the fine portraitures in his gallery of stage characters. At the invitation of President Dixon Ryan Fox of Union College, Schenectady, the Coburns have been importantly engaged during the past two summers in organizing and directing at that college The Mohawk Drama Festival and the separate but related enterprise, The Institute of the Theatre. The central feature of the Summer Session is a festival of great drama, presented by a distinguished professional company, now established as an annual event of national significance taking on a character similar to that of the Stratford and Malvern festivals in England. /

The Coburns were part of the top echelon of the New York theater scene. For the 31 years of their marriage, they moved in those circles. I found this 1942 New York Times piece on Coburn, which has some wonderful color and detail about his life, where he lived, his sense of humor.

“Piggy,” Lorelei Lee’s dishonorably intentioned diamond mine owning friend in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

NYT, 1/18/42, p162, by Theodore Strauss via TimesMachine

A Man and His Monocle Charles Coburn, Traditionalist, Keeps Step in a Changing (Show) World

Charles Coburn is 63, a fact which alone gives him the right to appear in public with a monocle. Happily he also has the rather special sort of face a monocle requires, a certain paternal austerity, a benign aloofness—in short, the countenance of a man well fed upon a rich tradition. If the man is also of a height ordinarily reached by other men only on stepladders, that helps greatly too. Most of all, however, it is the tradition that counts, and in Mr. Coburn’s case he has aplenty. He has been a pillar in our theatre for longer than most of us can remember, and if latterly he has made a pretty farthing by displaying his talents in the West Coast Shangri-La in such items as the forthcoming “King’s Row,” it is a tribute to his culture and attainments that Hollywood is the place where he works contentedly eight months a year. New York is where he lives. It is understandable, of course. Mr. Coburn was nurtured in a mellower climate than that which made Sammy run. Though by no means an old fogy to sit in slippered state at The Players, his mind is solidly furnished; it has the bright polish of old brasswork. It is stocked with reminiscences of those years before the theatre became prohibitively expensive and movies alarmingly cheap, and it is strewn as full of Shakespearean quotations as a brook with pebbles. Over the years his mind has obviously assumed a sort of protective coloration that blends well with the comfortably old-fashioned furnishings of the lofty-ceilinged studio salon near Gramercy Square.

Charles Coburn, Esq. Mr. Coburn first moved into the premises in 1919 when Bohemia still stood on a bearskin and daubed pigment on six-foot easels. Somberly paneled, and with a fireplace large enough to roast a fair-sized midget, the room itself is a veritable museum of carved mahogany, portrait paintings, and assorted abracadabra. Most of the furnishings, Mr. Coburn explains, are props accumulated from that long line of plays in which he and Mrs. Coburn appeared and often produced, from their marriage in 1906 until her death several years ago. “I couldn’t sell the stuff for a nickel,” he confides gently. “But it’s a kind of reminder. It reflects the lives of a couple of people who lived here for quite a long time.” Like an elder craftsman who can wear the toga with authority, Mr. Coburn is apt to become troubled over the future of the art of acting. America, he says, has not produced an outstanding actor since 1926. Personalities, yes, and glamour boys and girls, but not an actor who can play a gentleman one night and a guttersnipe the next with equal effect. The old stock companies, where a young actor could spend his apprenticeship among experienced performers, are gone, and the colleges, where acting could be taught in concert with more mature talents, have thus far failed. The result, Mr. Coburn gloomily believes, is an art dying in the hands of those who could still pass it on.

Cycles and Bicycles Mr. Coburn himself began early. At 13, he took a job as program boy in the Savannah Theatre and five years later became its manager, the youngest entrepreneur in the country. During the two years under his aegis he saw such stars as Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Maxine Elliott, Mrs. Fiske, Modjeska, Otis Skinner, Richard Masterfield and Stuart Robson walk across his stage. Meanwhile he in turn was preparing for a career as a light opera comedian in amateur productions of “The Mikado,” or “The Little Tycoon,” and he still remembers the lingering glow of that night when Emma Abbott, a reigning favorite, snatched him from a crowd of enthusiasts and kissed him roundly. Ever since, he has been “flattered beyond words” by requests for autographs—thinking that perhaps some youngster may feel as he did. “That is as it should be,” he says, falling into quotation. “It is a world of make believe, and it is in ourselves that we are thus and so.” In later years, and before his long association with Mrs. Coburn as an actor-manager, he spent his apprenticeship as utility man, advance agent, and once, as a means of making a living while looking for work in New York, as a member of the “greatest bicycle racing team of all time.” But when that career threatened to take him from his Broadway precincts, he pawned his bicycle for $29 and hasn’t been on a wheel since. In fact, Mr. Coburn no longer cares for healthy exertion as its own reward. “Look at all those people who exercise regularly,” he exclaims. “What happens to them? They die!”

Listen to that—he sounds just like Charles Coburn!

And then in December, 1937, Ivah died, leaving Coburn bereft of his companion, his wife, his theatrical partner. But a man of such energies, an entrepreneur who had acted, directed, produced, and run his own touring company for decades, was not ready to fade away from grief at 60. Ten months later, in October, 1938, he got on a train and headed out west to begin his next act, the one we know him from.

NY Times, 10/10/37, no byline CHARLES D. COBURN TO APPEAR IN FILM Stage Actor Leaves for Coast for Role in “Benefits Forgot,” His First Motion Picture

Charles D. Coburn, stage actor, the director of the Mohawk Drama Festival at Union College, Schenectady, NY, left by train for Hollywood yesterday afternoon to appear in what was said to be his first motion picture.* He is to play in “Benefits Forgot,” a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production, in which Walter Huston will be starred. J. Robert Rubin, vice president and general counsel for M-G-M, said that Mr. Coburn had been signed to a one-picture contract with an option on his future services. Production work on “Benefits Forgot” will start next week, he said. As director of the Mohawk Drama Festival, held every summer at Union College, Mr. Coburn has repeatedly voiced the belief that there is now a “crisis in the American theatre” because there were no stock companies to serve as a training school for young players. Mr. Coburn appeared on Broadway in March in “Sun Kissed” and in 1936 played with the late William Gillette in “Three Wise Fools.” For many years Mr. Coburn appeared on the stage with his wife, the former Ivah Wills, who died last December 27.

A few months later, he’s comfortably ensconced in his Hollywood Blvd apartment, throwing a reunion for cast members of a popular show he had been in 30 years before. I’ve boldfaced names you’ll probably recognize…

NYT, 1/3/39, “Old Bill” Holds Reunion Coburn is New Year’s Host on Coast to ‘Better ‘Ole” Actors Special to the New York Times

Hollywood, Calif., January 2—Survivors of “The Better ‘Ole’” company made New Year’s the occasion of their first reunion in twenty years as guests of Charles Coburn, the original Old Bill, at his apartment here. Stage and film celebrities turned out to greet him and the others comprising “three muskrats,” Charles McNaughton, Bert, and Collin Campbell, Alf. Others of the old troupe present were Mrs. Kenyon Bishop, the original Maggie; Lynn Starling, who played the French colonel; Eugene Borden, the French porter, and, collaterally, F.H. (Frankie) Day the Gramercy Park greeter of the dawn who played with Mr. Coburn in the sequel play, “Old Bill M.P.” The “muskrats,” the Tommies created by the wartime crayon of Captain Bruce Bairnsfather, donned white aprons in their post-war “pub” and served guests, who included several members of The Players in New York and many once associated with one of the five companies that played “The Better ‘Ole” on Broadway and on the road. Among them were Mr. and Mrs. Guy Kibbee, Mr. and Mrs. Monte Blue, Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth MacKenna, Mr. and Mrs. Patterson McNutt, Walter Connolly, Nedda Harrigan, Mr. and Mrs.Charles Judels, Pedro de Cordoba, Fritz Leiber, P.J. Kelly, Thomas Mitchell, Andre Charlot, Janet Beecher, Olive Wyndam, Marcella Burke, Georgia Caine, Emma Dunn, Marjorie Wood, Frieda Inescourt, Esther Dale and Irene Rich. Mr. Coburn is the only living Old Bill. The others were DeWolfe Hopper, James K. Hackett, Maclyn Arbuckle and Edmond Gurney. In the New York company, the late Mrs. Ivah Coburn played Victoire, the French maid.

So the years pass, with Coburn occupying himself on screen, stage, and radio, splitting his time between L.A. and New York.

Then, in 1959, the second-to-last mystery I found: his second marriage.

NY Times, 10/19/59 Charles Coburn Marries LAS VEGAS, NEV., Oct. 18 (AP)—Charles Coburn, 82-year-old actor, dropping his famed monocle only to kiss his 41-year-old bride, today married Mrs. Winifred Jean Clements Natzka, widow of a New York Opera Company basso. The ceremony took place in the chambers of acting Justice of the Peace J.L. Bowler.

…and this leads to yet more questions. Did he marry for love, or for a tax deduction? He railed about tax rates in some of his late-life interviews, using the issue as a hook to promote You Can’t Take It With You, the show he was then touring.

And the final mystery: Most sources say this second marriage produced a child, a daughter. To which I say, seriously? Is an octogenarian Coburn supposed to have been up to siring a child? On the other hand, he managed to sire six of them 50 years before, and he was obviously a man of remarkable stamina. But perhaps his bride was pregnant by the opera singer who had widowed her, and that’s one reason why she was interested in marrying a man twice her age?

So, like Rosebud, none of these things definitively answer the riddle, Who was Charles Coburn? But they fill in some important blanks, they give us the flavor of his life in the New York theater, and the life he carried around inside himself when he made all those glorious movies we’re still watching.

And also like Charles Foster Kane, on August 30, 1961, death came for human dynamo Charles Douville Coburn, then 84, following minor surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. One obit said his wife and one of her two sons from her previous marriage were with him when he passed.

Not a word about the baby daughter, or, for that matter, any of the other six Coburn offspring, either in this obit as survivors, or mentioned a month later in a piece about his will and estate.

So if I ever get to have a cocktail with him in that cozy little bar in the sky, I’ll see if he can clear any of this up.

This was written for the 2019 What a Character! Blogathon, hosted by Aurora, Kellee, and Paula. Please go take a look at the other fabulous entries—you’ll be glad you did.

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Fire Emblem: Three Houses Review

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Fire Emblem: Three Houses Review

Before its resurgence in popularity on the 3DS handhelds, there was a time where the Fire Emblem series once lived on home consoles. Twelve years after Radiant Dawn on Wii, Fire Emblem: Three Houses

has finally returned to the living room on the Switch, and it’s better than ever. With a vast and open base hub to explore, new ways to turn the tide of battle with your chosen band of colorful characters, and a story that’s as brutal as the choices you’ll have to make on the battlefield, Three Houses is everything I’ve ever wanted in a turn-based strategy game. Its grand adventure is filled with drama and intrigue across whichever of the titular three houses you choose to join, and each brings its own unique perspective. Following just one of these paths from humble beginnings to a full-blown war for dominance took me over 70 hours, and left me hungry for more.

Battles take full advantage of the relatively powerful Switch (as opposed to the 3DS) to create some impressive looking maps. With new battalions that you can equip to enhance and support your units, armies actually start to look like armies as the map zooms right into the fight to show the opposing forces slam into each other. The music dynamically shifts when moving into combat from its upbeat rhythm to heighten the percussion — raising the tension in the process — before soaring back over the battlefield. I was amazed to find you can even zoom in when inspecting the map to glide along the terrain and see the armies assembled, taking in some extraordinary sights that you’d normally only get glimpses of in combat. You’re even able to select and command units by having them run around the field while zoomed in instead of just picking a map point to move to — though it’s a lot harder to get a sense of the battle from this angle.

Fans of the series may notice that the traditional “weapon triangle” of swords beat axes beat lances beat swords has been all but abandoned in Three Houses. Instead, there’s a bigger emphasis on choosing the right weapon for the right person — depending on their skill level and the stats of the weapon itself (swords still have the best overall accuracy, while axes unleash the most raw power, and lances are balanced in the middle). Training up units unlocks many custom moves to make them more effective against armored or cavalry units, and those with high enough proficiency can even unlock “breaker” skills to give them advantages against a certain weapon type which brings back that weapon superiority feel. Because of this, I hardly noticed the weapon triangle’s exclusion.

I was especially surprised to see several combat arts lifted from the Fire Emblem Heroes mobile game, of all places, and the inclusion of strategic unit repositioning abilities was a most welcome one, allowing me to swap, shove, or quickly relocate my more vulnerable units out of danger. Having equippable battalions of troops that could bolster an individual character’s stats meant new strategies too, including the ability to stun attackers in place – and beware, the enemy can use that trick on you if you get complacent in simply forming a wall of tough units. That made me rethink my defensive strategies.

Permanent character death is still present if you so choose, and the thought of losing your best units feels as terrifying as ever…

“

Permanent character death is still present if you so choose, and the thought of losing your best units feels as terrifying as ever, until you realize how many options are available to you. Being able to rewind time a bit (which made its debut in the last 3DS game) alleviates many of those fears, and seeing which units your enemies plan to attack can save you a lot of grief as long as you’re paying attention. I appreciate that if you challenge yourself to keep going after a beloved character falls, there are many opportunities to try and recruit faculty or students from other houses to join your ranks — or even ask another student to tag along for a single mission.

Study Halls

Unlike those that came before it, Three Houses provides a welcome respite from battle after battle by introducing the Garreg Mach Monastery, a huge explorable fortress that’s home to both a church housing the dominant religion of the land, and an officer’s academy for the three nations that make up the continent of Fodlan. Students are divided into houses representing these nations, and you’ll choose one of the houses to teach and lead into battle. Imagine Harry Potter’s Hogwarts except teenagers come to learn how to do battle instead of magic and Dumbledore is also the archbishop of a powerful militarized church who routinely orders teachers to lead students to war against bandits and blasphemers.

The houses of the Black Eagles, Blue Lions, and Golden Deer are unique in more ways than one. Each boasts a lively cast of endearing characters that instantly drew me in, and their individual skills, flaws, and personalities offer an incredible amount of possibilities. Even though your initial house choice is only skin deep, each one gives you so much to work with and discover along the way. What really excited me was just how fleshed out each character was beyond the face value of their personality archetype — and how interconnected and important their own stories were to the world at large.

Ingrid from the Blue Lions house idealizes knighthood due to her late fiance (who was the brother of another student), but his recent tragic death caused her to be deeply mistrustful of the people she believes to be responsible (which includes yet another classmate). The young leaders themselves — Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude — are equally full of promise in both their abilities and backgrounds, and leave enough of an air of mystery to leave you wholly unprepared for where their stories lead when war engulfs the land after a five-year time jump.

But a continental war of this scale doesn’t just happen overnight. Instead, you’ll spend the first half of Three Houses’ epic 70-hour campaign acclimating to life at the monastery through teaching students, wandering the grounds, and undertaking missions for the church. Where instructing students is concerned, Three Houses could have easily fallen into the pitfall of monotony. Instead, the entire process of building up your students’ abilities and combat arts is quick and efficient, and can even be automated if you so choose. Training becomes a very satisfying way to alter the makeup of your army and adapt to new confrontations. For instance, when my land-heavy army had to fight along the water, being able to plan ahead and reclass several units into wyvern and pegasus riders made me feel like a tactical mastermind. If you don’t feel like spending time setting specific goals for your team or nurturing budding talents, letting Three Houses automate the process still ensures your units will follow their own class goals and be ready to fight.

the entire process of building up your students’ abilities and combat arts is quick and efficient, and can even be automated if you so choose.

“

Three Houses moves the story along on a month-to-month basis, and with a week’s worth of decision making done at a time (which concludes in a few short moments), the bulk of your time is spent on free days at the end of the week, and the story mission battle that caps off each month. You’re smartly given multiple options on how to spend each day off — which lets each of us focus on what we want out of Three Houses. The “Explore” option lets you walk around the impressively sized monastery in a fully 3D environment — a series first. It’s practically bursting at the seams with students and faculty wandering the grounds, so it’s no surprise that I encountered a few areas of minor slowdown when trying to sprint through crowded areas. Fast-traveling gets around that annoyance, of course.

There’s so much to see and do that it becomes almost overwhelming, and thankfully the additional areas and activities are gradually rolled out over the course of the year you spend teaching. Despite my lust for battle, I was excited to come back each new month to find new opportunities, like going to the monastery pond for a fishing minigame and then cooking up the fish into stat-boosts for my team, or entering students in tournaments and watching them endure a tough gauntlet of fights to win prizes. Certain activities limit how much you can do in a session, adding an additional element of strategy as you plan out how to spend your finite time. Even hosting tea parties to raise your bonds with a character requires some strategy — as you’ll need to keep your partner interested by picking from a list of conversation topics that reward you for paying attention to what that character’s likes and dislikes are.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses Screenshots

The amount of choice and freedom of how to spend free days is impressive, and there are pros and cons for every option. If you stick with only one option on your days off, you may find your character and team slipping in certain areas. By exploring the monastery, I was able to chat with students to unlock support conversations and raise motivations, as well as getting faculty training for my own character. But training up skill levels is nothing without a character’s own experience, and by taking on auxiliary missions I was able to line my pockets and increase unit levels and stats so they could hit harder using the skills they learned from my teaching. Even resting on a day off ensures that students have an increased amount of motivation to raise their skills during the next week’s lessons, which can heavily impact how much they can learn from a week’s session. I found myself changing up my plans from month to month to better prioritize whatever I felt was lacking, and never once felt like I made a wrong turn to where I was unable to continue. If I had chosen to neglect my time at the monastery, I’d likely miss out on some interesting conversations, whereas if I passed over all the side quest battles, I might have missed out some rare loot. Not only does this Fire Emblem have choices that appeal to everyone, it does so in a way that never gets in the way of a continually rewarding sense of progress.

Heroes of Academia

Bonding with your characters and learning more about them via support conversations has become increasingly popular in Fire Emblem games over the years, and to say Three Houses pulls out all the stops to serve that ever-growing demand doesn’t do it justice. The writers and voice actors have done an impeccable job of making each character’s quirks, hopes, and fears seem believable — and having a chance to pick some dialogue options (some answers can even further increase your bond) is a nice touch that made me feel more involved instead of just a bystander.

It also shows admirable restraint: Three Houses has dialed back on concepts like every character being able to become romantically involved with any other character, and the resulting conversations are better and more focused for it. I especially loved seeing the more hostile character interactions, as having units that worked well together in battle but not in the monastery made these relationships feel more nuanced and human. Certain conversations are only available once the war is underway in part two, giving actual weight to the idea that years have passed since the last heartfelt talk.

My only real complaint comes not from the conversations themselves, but the settings they happen in. Instead of putting both characters in a legitimate 3D room for their scenes, they are placed in front of a still image backdrop that’s been warped to create the illusion of a 3D environment, and the results range from distracting to disastrous due to the low resolution of the background. Still, I’m thankful there’s at least a healthy dose of character animations happening to distract from what’s going on behind them.

While the monastery is loaded with an impressive amount of side activities, Fire Emblem is still, at its heart, a turn-based strategy game — if they’re not your cup of tea (sometimes quite literally) you’re able to skip right to the main story mission of the month and automate everything else. I don’t entirely recommend doing so (the amount of story content and activity rewards in exploring the monastery at least once a month should absolutely not be missed), and yet it’s a testament to how much work has gone into making every choice viable in Three Houses. You might be making things harder on yourself by hitting that automation button, but you’ll still find your team adequately skilled and ready to fight at the end of each month.

The amount of story content and activity rewards in exploring the monastery at least once a month should absolutely not be missed.

“

As for the missions themselves, I was really hoping to see more varied main objectives besides the usual “defeat the enemy commander” or “rout the opposing army.” Thankfully, many missions include some interesting side objectives — like racing to the aid of trapped allies or cutting off the escape route of thieves — that rewards you for taking on more risks in a heated battle. While Three Houses provides an assortment of enemies to go up against, the three-way battles between the titular groups are easily some of the standout missions of the bunch, and depict the chaos of battle alarmingly well. One such mission (which you can see an excerpt of in the video below) against the other teams found me trying to avoid antagonizing Claude’s matured group of Golden Deer students to the west while moving the bulk of my units up to hit Edelgard’s Black Eagles forces in the east. Without warning, Claude revealed a horde of mounted reinforcements to my side and behind me before all of them charged straight towards my own character — leaving me just a single turn to find a way to reform my ranks before getting flanked. These particular battles required constant rethinking of strategies to emerge unscathed, not to mention having to kill many characters I once regarded as friends at the monastery.

The story of Three Houses is expertly woven into the world it builds up: one that’s full of political intrigue, deception, and even religious dogma. While part one largely focuses on the mysteries surrounding your own character and their connection to the world and the Church of Seiros, it also sets the groundwork for the transformations of the young leaders set to rule their respective realms. In my first playthrough, I ended up choosing the Blue Lions and aiding the young prince, Dimitri, and I’m extremely glad I did. The way Three Houses reveals darker aspects of Dimitri’s past culminates in a satisfying way, and watching his character arc unfold through the second act was incredibly engaging, down to the way his shouts when performing critical moves reflected his changing personality. I loved how much attention was focused on the relationships between the opposing leaders, Dimitri and Edelgard, in the route I chose, though I did feel like Claude got the short end of the stick in terms of screen time — at least in the Blue Lions path.

Even though your days as a teacher are over in the second part of the story, fate has you returning to the monastery regardless of your chosen path to use as a base of operations during the war, and the lack of new activities for your second year at the monastery felt like a bit of a missed opportunity to keep exploration fresh by the end. That said, seeing my students return all grown up was an especially great moment, as was learning how each of them had to adapt during an age of conflict. Three Houses rarely shys away from the grim realities of war — as many of the opponents you’ll have to face were once students themselves, and the ramifications of fighting former friends is not lost upon your team. An especially somber moment came after a tough battle where one of my units — who I had convinced to join my house five years prior — quietly reflected on how we had just killed her former friend.

It’s safe to say that any expectations I had about how the story progressed through the war were deftly subverted multiple times. While Three Houses has a definite conclusion to the events of the war that dominates part two, it never truly reveals its full hand in a single playthrough. Seeing so many plotlines left unresolved surprised me, even though I found fulfillment in the 20+ story missions I’d completed. But it wasn’t until I started again in New Game+ and joined the Black Eagles that I truly realized how much more complementary story content the other two houses had to offer. I’m still only a little over halfway into my run with the Black Eagles, and I’m already amazed at how much a change in leadership has altered the course of the story. Unlike the routes of Fire Emblem Fates that were two sides of the same coin (and the “can’t we all just get along” extra route), each road taken by the different leaders in Three Houses feels incredibly driven and motivated. These paths may retread some familiar ground in their missions, but the new context and understanding of character motivations, as well as new surprises in some of the maps that are reused make each of the four(!) total routes worth investing in.

Source : IGN

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5 Directors That Should’ve Stopped After One Movie

Some filmmakers are like marathon winners; they stay consistently strong and fast for an inconceivable amount of time, and when they finish, you are left inspired by their existence. And some directors have careers like my performance in my second grade’s three-legged race. I fell at the start, busted my nose open, and writhed on the ground for a while as my partner walked away from me. The following five directors did similar things in their own metaphorical three-legged races. What began as a burst of glorious potential devolved into something hideous and often embarrassing.

5

Zack Snyder With Dawn Of The Dead

Zack Snyder has always been the Mountain Dew Code Red to Christopher Nolan’s iced coffee. They both direct grand adventure movies, but while Nolan’s philosophy is that of the kid in the back of the freshman year writing class with the scarf, Snyder’s is frat bro existentialism. Snyder is pretty great at examining the darkness that lurks in the hearts of men, but only when those men are grunting at each other, “HOLD ME BACK BEFORE I LAY THIS MOTHERFUCKER OUT, DUDE”-style. In any other case, it’s a toss-up. For example, in Watchmen, he totally got the plight of radioactive superman Dr. Manhattan. But the only female on the team, Silk Spectre, was shot like she was in an impromptu Axe Body Spray commercial.

Read Next

5 Superhero Movies That Are Only Worth It For One Scene

The only movie that Snyder has done that’s consistent throughout is his first, the 2004 Dawn Of The Dead remake. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a bunch of people being eaten by zombies at the mall. It’s also fantastic in a way that few remakes actually are, mainly because it does not seek to replicate or expand upon the original. A lot of times in horror remakes, directors try to cram in “answers” to questions that they think viewers have, which totally robs the movies of their potency. We’re scared of the things we don’t know. When we say “Oh, man. He uses a chainsaw? What the hell?” we don’t want the director to respond with, “Well, he got his chainsaw from the old slaughterhouse he used to work at.” There’s nothing terrifying about learning where Freddy Krueger shops for his sweaters.

Instead of that route, Snyder actually chops off any of the rough edges of the source material. The original ends with a bunch of bikers attacking the mall that the heroes are in, which leads to a lot of cool gore effects, but bites the face off of the movie’s sense of pacing. It robs us of the intimate climax that Dawn Of The Dead could’ve built to. Snyder’s version doesn’t have that problem, as it’s a horror/action film from the very beginning. Sure, it’s not as satirical as the original, but it doesn’t need to be. Snyder is not interested in creating a horror film that’s also an allegory. The zombies don’t have to represent anything. They can get by when they’re just being spooky zombies. Constantly reminding me that “The real villain … is man” is the best way to get me to hate both zombies and English teachers.

Sadly, Zack Snyder’s next project would be 300, which had cool action scenes but was the movie equivalent of a guy whispering motivational quotes to himself in the mirror at the gym. And since then, all of his films have either been bloated epics or that thing about warrior owls. It’s a shame. Because when Snyder makes films that aren’t really about anything other than what’s on screen, he shines.

4

Terrence Malick With Badlands

Terrence Malick is the #1 “Well, I appreciate his work” director in the world. “Well, I appreciate his work” directors are a rare breed, as they’re usually either obsessively loved or “appreciated.” And by “appreciated,” I mean “I know a lot of time probably went into putting all of those pretty colors on screen, so I can’t hate this one too much.” I truly appreciate Terrence Malick, even though his films feel like staring matches with an old computer’s screen saver.

His first film, though, is a refreshing take on a genre that needs all of the fresh takes that it can get. Badlands is a serial killer movie, and the biggest problem with the serial killer subgenre is that very rarely do such films actually make us disgusted with a serial killer. Instead, we marvel as the killer says awesome quips and performs super sweet serial killer melee moves. Silence Of The Lambs is a great movie, but it’s hard to feel bad about a guy who eats other guys when he’s Jason Bourne-ing his way out of police custody. Yeah, the hero should be the person who hasn’t wantonly killed multiple innocent people, but I saw the killer do a double backflip off the diving board once, so my vote is set.

Badlands makes serial killing look really awful. Like, “Dude in front of you doesn’t know how to work the self-checkout lane” awful. It’s the story of a 15-year-old girl who becomes enamored of a 25-year-old man, and then gets swept up in a life of theft, violence, and cross-country travel when he decides to start murdering South Dakota. So we see the killer through her eyes, and as her opinion of him grows sour, any chance that we have of admiring Martin Sheen’s sweet bangs slowly evaporates too. Sheen is a shitty dude in this one. Like, “Friend who doesn’t put your Blu-ray back in its case and instead just lays it bottom-side-down on the floor” shitty.

3

Roland Emmerich With Universal Soldier

From the mid ’90s to the present, Roland Emmerich has been a constant source of the loud and mediocre (Independence Day, White House Down, Stargate), the loud and dull (Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012), and the loud and very, very historically inaccurate (The Patriot, 10,000 BC, Anonymous, Stonewall). He is the “Hold my beer” to Michael Bay, and no matter what trends are popular in Hollywood or how financially successful his previous film was, we can always count on Emmerich to deliver something that somehow damages the intellectual standard of the explosion.

Emmerich started as a filmmaker in Germany, and most of the films that he made there are either impossible to find in America or were released years later and just on video. His first American film to receive a theatrical release was Universal Soldier, which features Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme as soldiers who get resurrected to become … universal soldiers? I’m not sure what the “universal” thing means, but I guess it’s because, now that they’ve been brought back to life, they’re not limited by the earthly definition of “kicking ass.” They can now kick all the ass in the universe. Side note: This theory is remarkably unconfirmed.

For Emmerich, Universal Soldier is amazingly subtle. And that’s not just because Van Damme is given the emotional range of a yam in this film. It’s mostly a big chase movie, and not just the typical Emmerich “Leave nothing in this major American metropolis un-fireballed” fare. Van Damme and his reporter girlfriend stop in a town, Lundgren catches up to them and shouts, Van Damme escapes, and Lundgren responds with more heavily accented shouting. Compared to Emmerich’s other stuff, Universal Soldier is Driving Miss Daisy.

I don’t know if “limiting the scale” is the key to fixing Emmerich, as he doesn’t have much luck in crafting personal tales. So maybe the key is Dolph Lundgren. Maybe Emmerich made a movie that was one big combustion, but Lundgren absorbed it all, and then released that energy by yelling. I’m no professor, but I think the science works out.

2

Seth MacFarlane With Ted

Seth MacFarlane is a comedy titan. Not satisfied with ruling Fox’s TV animation division, he’s also branched out into movies. And he’s made three so far: Ted, A Million Ways To Die In The West, and Ted 2. Guess how many of those were pretty solid? A hint is hidden in the title of this column.

Ted, the story of Mark Wahlberg and a talking stuffed bear, has some heart in it. There are plenty of movies about dude friends who have problems with each other whenever one of them gets in a serious relationship. They want to drink beer and fart out their dicks, but SHE likes organizing the apartment! Whatever will they do? Ted is still crass, but in centering the conflict around Wahlberg not wanting to abandon a literal stuffed bear, it truly nails home how infantile the whole “bros before respectable type-A females” struggle is. You can still have a fun life and chill with your bear, even if you’re married. And those who don’t understand that are the true dick-farters.

After Ted, MacFarlane made A Million Ways To Die In The West, which most closely resembles those Leslie Nielsen jokes-every-ten-seconds comedies, with the problem being that MacFarlane doesn’t have the warm presence of Nielsen. Nielsen was the comedy genre’s beloved uncle, while as an actor, MacFarlane is still its odd half-cousin. Ted 2 is about teddy bear rights, which expands a few jokes into a two-hour movie. It never ends up being as funny or likable as Ted, and feels like it was made not because MacFarlane wanted to make it, but because a Hollywood executive decided that Ted 2 was their only means of finally getting a third Jacuzzi installed.

1

Eli Roth With Cabin Fever

I’m always hesitant whenever a horror director says they’re making a homage to a certain era of horror films. This is usually because they let the homage aspects outweigh the actually-being-a-good-movie aspects. “But it’s a homage to ’80s slasher films! It’s not supposed to be a masterpiece!” Yeah, but it’s supposed to be competent and somewhat exciting, instead of a 90-minute declaration that you’ve seen Sleepaway Camp multiple times.

One of the only really good ’80s homages is Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever, which is sort of styled after The Evil Dead, but mostly does its own thing. Now, Cabin Fever isn’t perfect. Eli Roth’s writing would actually peak with Hostel Part II, which is a statement that no man should be forced to make. But Cabin Fever feels less like a guy trying to remind you of how great 1983 was, and more like a guy who’s trying really, really hard to make a fun, gory horror flick. Plus, it manages to pull off some gross-out moments that are sincerely shocking. Even in the age of things like The Human Centipede trilogy, which is edgy middle-schooler humor brought to life, Cabin Fever can still make you feel weird.

Roth’s next film, Hostel, desperately wanted to be like one of the graphic Asian horror films that Roth is a fan of. The biggest difference is that stuff like Takashi Miike’s Audition and Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw The Devil manage to place interesting stories and dynamic characters around their torture setpieces. Roth’s characters are a couple of dumb guys, which is meant to say something about how young American adults kind of treat other countries like playgrounds that they can fuck in, but it mostly comes off as Roth needing characters who explicitly won’t grow or change, because an arc doesn’t really vibe with a drill to the chest.

Roth would later make The Green Inferno, a movie that I saw on opening day because I can’t be trusted with my own money or schedule, and his next movie is a Death Wish remake. Remember that series, the one about Charles Bronson putting bullets in crime and crime-related activities? I don’t know whose idea it was to give that movie to the guy whose most famous scene involves cutting someone’s Achilles tendons, but I feel like it might have been a bad call.

Daniel has a Twitter. Go to it. Enjoy yourself. Kick your boots off and stay for a while.

Watch Independence Day right here if you’re a true American, and get one of the cool aliens in adorable Funko form and pity Daniel Dockery for hating everything amazing in the world.

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from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-directors-that-shouldve-stopped-after-one-movie/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/177815193117

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5 Directors That Should’ve Stopped After One Movie

Some filmmakers are like marathon winners; they stay consistently strong and fast for an inconceivable amount of time, and when they finish, you are left inspired by their existence. And some directors have careers like my performance in my second grade’s three-legged race. I fell at the start, busted my nose open, and writhed on the ground for a while as my partner walked away from me. The following five directors did similar things in their own metaphorical three-legged races. What began as a burst of glorious potential devolved into something hideous and often embarrassing.

5

Zack Snyder With Dawn Of The Dead

Zack Snyder has always been the Mountain Dew Code Red to Christopher Nolan’s iced coffee. They both direct grand adventure movies, but while Nolan’s philosophy is that of the kid in the back of the freshman year writing class with the scarf, Snyder’s is frat bro existentialism. Snyder is pretty great at examining the darkness that lurks in the hearts of men, but only when those men are grunting at each other, “HOLD ME BACK BEFORE I LAY THIS MOTHERFUCKER OUT, DUDE”-style. In any other case, it’s a toss-up. For example, in Watchmen, he totally got the plight of radioactive superman Dr. Manhattan. But the only female on the team, Silk Spectre, was shot like she was in an impromptu Axe Body Spray commercial.

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The only movie that Snyder has done that’s consistent throughout is his first, the 2004 Dawn Of The Dead remake. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a bunch of people being eaten by zombies at the mall. It’s also fantastic in a way that few remakes actually are, mainly because it does not seek to replicate or expand upon the original. A lot of times in horror remakes, directors try to cram in “answers” to questions that they think viewers have, which totally robs the movies of their potency. We’re scared of the things we don’t know. When we say “Oh, man. He uses a chainsaw? What the hell?” we don’t want the director to respond with, “Well, he got his chainsaw from the old slaughterhouse he used to work at.” There’s nothing terrifying about learning where Freddy Krueger shops for his sweaters.

Instead of that route, Snyder actually chops off any of the rough edges of the source material. The original ends with a bunch of bikers attacking the mall that the heroes are in, which leads to a lot of cool gore effects, but bites the face off of the movie’s sense of pacing. It robs us of the intimate climax that Dawn Of The Dead could’ve built to. Snyder’s version doesn’t have that problem, as it’s a horror/action film from the very beginning. Sure, it’s not as satirical as the original, but it doesn’t need to be. Snyder is not interested in creating a horror film that’s also an allegory. The zombies don’t have to represent anything. They can get by when they’re just being spooky zombies. Constantly reminding me that “The real villain … is man” is the best way to get me to hate both zombies and English teachers.

Sadly, Zack Snyder’s next project would be 300, which had cool action scenes but was the movie equivalent of a guy whispering motivational quotes to himself in the mirror at the gym. And since then, all of his films have either been bloated epics or that thing about warrior owls. It’s a shame. Because when Snyder makes films that aren’t really about anything other than what’s on screen, he shines.

4

Terrence Malick With Badlands

Terrence Malick is the #1 “Well, I appreciate his work” director in the world. “Well, I appreciate his work” directors are a rare breed, as they’re usually either obsessively loved or “appreciated.” And by “appreciated,” I mean “I know a lot of time probably went into putting all of those pretty colors on screen, so I can’t hate this one too much.” I truly appreciate Terrence Malick, even though his films feel like staring matches with an old computer’s screen saver.

His first film, though, is a refreshing take on a genre that needs all of the fresh takes that it can get. Badlands is a serial killer movie, and the biggest problem with the serial killer subgenre is that very rarely do such films actually make us disgusted with a serial killer. Instead, we marvel as the killer says awesome quips and performs super sweet serial killer melee moves. Silence Of The Lambs is a great movie, but it’s hard to feel bad about a guy who eats other guys when he’s Jason Bourne-ing his way out of police custody. Yeah, the hero should be the person who hasn’t wantonly killed multiple innocent people, but I saw the killer do a double backflip off the diving board once, so my vote is set.

Badlands makes serial killing look really awful. Like, “Dude in front of you doesn’t know how to work the self-checkout lane” awful. It’s the story of a 15-year-old girl who becomes enamored of a 25-year-old man, and then gets swept up in a life of theft, violence, and cross-country travel when he decides to start murdering South Dakota. So we see the killer through her eyes, and as her opinion of him grows sour, any chance that we have of admiring Martin Sheen’s sweet bangs slowly evaporates too. Sheen is a shitty dude in this one. Like, “Friend who doesn’t put your Blu-ray back in its case and instead just lays it bottom-side-down on the floor” shitty.

3

Roland Emmerich With Universal Soldier

From the mid ’90s to the present, Roland Emmerich has been a constant source of the loud and mediocre (Independence Day, White House Down, Stargate), the loud and dull (Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012), and the loud and very, very historically inaccurate (The Patriot, 10,000 BC, Anonymous, Stonewall). He is the “Hold my beer” to Michael Bay, and no matter what trends are popular in Hollywood or how financially successful his previous film was, we can always count on Emmerich to deliver something that somehow damages the intellectual standard of the explosion.

Emmerich started as a filmmaker in Germany, and most of the films that he made there are either impossible to find in America or were released years later and just on video. His first American film to receive a theatrical release was Universal Soldier, which features Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme as soldiers who get resurrected to become … universal soldiers? I’m not sure what the “universal” thing means, but I guess it’s because, now that they’ve been brought back to life, they’re not limited by the earthly definition of “kicking ass.” They can now kick all the ass in the universe. Side note: This theory is remarkably unconfirmed.

For Emmerich, Universal Soldier is amazingly subtle. And that’s not just because Van Damme is given the emotional range of a yam in this film. It’s mostly a big chase movie, and not just the typical Emmerich “Leave nothing in this major American metropolis un-fireballed” fare. Van Damme and his reporter girlfriend stop in a town, Lundgren catches up to them and shouts, Van Damme escapes, and Lundgren responds with more heavily accented shouting. Compared to Emmerich’s other stuff, Universal Soldier is Driving Miss Daisy.

I don’t know if “limiting the scale” is the key to fixing Emmerich, as he doesn’t have much luck in crafting personal tales. So maybe the key is Dolph Lundgren. Maybe Emmerich made a movie that was one big combustion, but Lundgren absorbed it all, and then released that energy by yelling. I’m no professor, but I think the science works out.

2

Seth MacFarlane With Ted

Seth MacFarlane is a comedy titan. Not satisfied with ruling Fox’s TV animation division, he’s also branched out into movies. And he’s made three so far: Ted, A Million Ways To Die In The West, and Ted 2. Guess how many of those were pretty solid? A hint is hidden in the title of this column.

Ted, the story of Mark Wahlberg and a talking stuffed bear, has some heart in it. There are plenty of movies about dude friends who have problems with each other whenever one of them gets in a serious relationship. They want to drink beer and fart out their dicks, but SHE likes organizing the apartment! Whatever will they do? Ted is still crass, but in centering the conflict around Wahlberg not wanting to abandon a literal stuffed bear, it truly nails home how infantile the whole “bros before respectable type-A females” struggle is. You can still have a fun life and chill with your bear, even if you’re married. And those who don’t understand that are the true dick-farters.

After Ted, MacFarlane made A Million Ways To Die In The West, which most closely resembles those Leslie Nielsen jokes-every-ten-seconds comedies, with the problem being that MacFarlane doesn’t have the warm presence of Nielsen. Nielsen was the comedy genre’s beloved uncle, while as an actor, MacFarlane is still its odd half-cousin. Ted 2 is about teddy bear rights, which expands a few jokes into a two-hour movie. It never ends up being as funny or likable as Ted, and feels like it was made not because MacFarlane wanted to make it, but because a Hollywood executive decided that Ted 2 was their only means of finally getting a third Jacuzzi installed.

1

Eli Roth With Cabin Fever

I’m always hesitant whenever a horror director says they’re making a homage to a certain era of horror films. This is usually because they let the homage aspects outweigh the actually-being-a-good-movie aspects. “But it’s a homage to ’80s slasher films! It’s not supposed to be a masterpiece!” Yeah, but it’s supposed to be competent and somewhat exciting, instead of a 90-minute declaration that you’ve seen Sleepaway Camp multiple times.

One of the only really good ’80s homages is Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever, which is sort of styled after The Evil Dead, but mostly does its own thing. Now, Cabin Fever isn’t perfect. Eli Roth’s writing would actually peak with Hostel Part II, which is a statement that no man should be forced to make. But Cabin Fever feels less like a guy trying to remind you of how great 1983 was, and more like a guy who’s trying really, really hard to make a fun, gory horror flick. Plus, it manages to pull off some gross-out moments that are sincerely shocking. Even in the age of things like The Human Centipede trilogy, which is edgy middle-schooler humor brought to life, Cabin Fever can still make you feel weird.

Roth’s next film, Hostel, desperately wanted to be like one of the graphic Asian horror films that Roth is a fan of. The biggest difference is that stuff like Takashi Miike’s Audition and Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw The Devil manage to place interesting stories and dynamic characters around their torture setpieces. Roth’s characters are a couple of dumb guys, which is meant to say something about how young American adults kind of treat other countries like playgrounds that they can fuck in, but it mostly comes off as Roth needing characters who explicitly won’t grow or change, because an arc doesn’t really vibe with a drill to the chest.

Roth would later make The Green Inferno, a movie that I saw on opening day because I can’t be trusted with my own money or schedule, and his next movie is a Death Wish remake. Remember that series, the one about Charles Bronson putting bullets in crime and crime-related activities? I don’t know whose idea it was to give that movie to the guy whose most famous scene involves cutting someone’s Achilles tendons, but I feel like it might have been a bad call.

Daniel has a Twitter. Go to it. Enjoy yourself. Kick your boots off and stay for a while.

Watch Independence Day right here if you’re a true American, and get one of the cool aliens in adorable Funko form and pity Daniel Dockery for hating everything amazing in the world.

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For more, check out 5 Reasons Great Directors Eventually Make a Bad Movie and 5 Famous Filmmakers Whose Dream Projects Were Disasters.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out 4 Directors Who Do the Same Thing in Every Movie, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. It’ll be worth it.

Nightmarish villains with superhuman enhancements. An all-seeing social network that tracks your every move. A young woman from the trailer park and her very smelly cat. Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, a new novel about futuristic shit, by David Wong.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/5-directors-that-shouldve-stopped-after-one-movie/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/09/06/5-directors-that-shouldve-stopped-after-one-movie/