#i don't think i'm capable of writing about these characters without thinking about the implications
Text
Some thoughts on Itachi
So, I've seen a lot of comments circulating about my tags on this post, and I'm intrigued at the interest. I didn't expect it, as I see much more pigeonholing of Itachi's character than honest to god analysis. No hate- I'm no stranger to Kishimoto's writing. Some of his characters were unfortunately butchered or never given the chance to be developed properly, and Itachi is most certainly no exception. That said, I like to grant him a bit more nuance than I see on most blogs. I think people get a little wrapped up in the supposed "moral implications" of exploring how Itachi was also a victim of the system, as well as someone who victimized many people. But it's silly to equate character analysis and context consideration with condoning genocide.
I have a good laugh every once and a while at the metaphorical gymnastics people do in order to stay in the good graces of a bunch of internet trolls who are just Waiting for any opportunity to tell you you love murder and think it's delicious just because you made a post exploring a character's background. Media is grey; it's layered and wonderfully complex. There are many wrongs and rights in every story, and many wrongs and rights within those wrongs and rights. That's what I love about Naruto. Often times it's really too much like real life. Instead of people being black and white, right or wrong, bad or good- they're usually in a tough situation, trying their best and falling short, don't have all of the information, acting with good intentions or acting on what they believe will bring about a lesser evil, and then end up hurting others.
But it is much easier to assign blame and move on. A so-called bad person will always be the perfect scapegoat for issues bigger than them. In Itachi's case, the fascist government in the Leaf. It's easier to say Itachi could have just refused and decided not to be involved, than to recognize that like almost every other character in the narrative, he was under extreme duress, living in a military state. He was a child whose existence, along with all the other children and adults in the Leaf, was only valuable as long as he could serve as a tool for the war machine in the shinobi world's fucked up political system. And saying this is not the same as saying he was not capable of better decisions or that everything that he did thereafter or in general should not be read critically or subject to hypothetical consequences. It is the same as a saying his actions cannot be fully understood without complete context, and the themes of Naruto will never come through if every villain is just "evil" with no further nuance. And it would be boring too LOL
That said, I love to think about Itachi's situation back then. The ages in Naruto are a bit muddled, a little inconsistent, subject to change and interpretation, but Itachi was a child when he murdered everyone in the Uchiha compound. Most sources say he was 13. It should go without saying that someone so young isn't capable of the same decision-making or critical thinking as say, a 30-year-old, someone whose brain is finished developing and has much more experience on Earth.
Itachi's experience at this point in his life is informed by his age, and it's obviously informed by his childhood, as he has no other place from which to draw conclusions. Itachi grew up in a warring state. He saw people die and was subject to extreme violence in his formative years. To make matters worse, he was taught that war was inevitable and the only thing he could do to guard against it was kill others before they got the chance to kill him (threaten the village). Thusly, Itachi internalized at a very young age that what was in his power was to minimize damage (to himself, to his village, and to the world). What was not in his power was to stop this violence entirely (by adopting a critical mindset and going against fascist powers).
A part of this I think people often forget is that Itachi has absolutely nowhere to adopt this mindset FROM, as even though his father and the other members of the Uchiha clan seek equity in the Leaf, if they were to overthrow the Hokage and create a new system, it would still presumably center around the same ideals (minus, of course, the oppression of the Uchiha as a group). Fugaku is the head of the Uchiha clan at this time. As someone who imposed near impossible performance-related expectations on both of his sons, and withheld love and affection whenever they came up short (so often that it was at the cost of having any considerable emotional bond with either of them), there is absolutely no good reason to believe that Fugaku would reform the Leaf using a non-fascist ideology. And if he did, there is no good reason to believe that he would be some kind of visionary LMAO
This is important to remember because when it comes down to Itachi's decision to either kill everyone in the Uchiha compound and his family, or be part of the coup that would overthrow the Leaf, some people treat it as though it's a choice between fascism and non-fascism, which it most certainly is not. And if it was, Itachi, as a child who had grown up immersed in this ideology, would not be able to appreciate the difference. This context allows us to understand further what Itachi was really weighing in that moment. Accounting for his young age and limited worldview, the only valuable difference in this moment to Itachi was the amount of bloodshed that he would "allow" to happen. Essentially, he sees the options as follows:
Either give in to Danzo and kill everyone in the Uchiha compound, or facilitate a coup where the current government is (hopefully) overthrown and risk starting another war.
Here, Itachi pauses. He has known war. He knows how it affects children, adults, families, and whole nations. The peace he's living in currently is bought with blood, but it's the only peace he's ever known. The alternative is horrifying. And a war in this context, Itachi likely thinks, would be his fault, as he has now been put in the position to "prevent" it. Danzo and the whole shinobi system have groomed him into thinking so. Itachi, at age 13, cannot understand that there would be no war; it exists only as leverage for Danzo's argument at this point. His sensitivities are being played on.
Fugaku, though he is not the same as Danzo, offers about as much help as he does (that being none). Fugaku has no interest in avoiding war; if a war breaks out, it's justified because it will still mean his clan will no longer be living in oppression. This idea is valid, as fascist systems and discrimination can only cease to exist when we rise up against them; unfortunately, this most often calls for righteous violence, as the oppressive powers will not be moved with peaceful shows (not to mention they are willing to go to extreme lengths to avoid losing their hold on the people they have crushing power over, i.e. the Uchiha massacre). But Fugaku has no words to explain this to Itachi, who fears the worst and further fears being responsible for the worst. All he does is act as if it's a moral failing that his 13-year-old son is unwilling to stage a coup, which he believes could mark the abrupt end of a peace that's only just begun.
That said, let it be known that Itachi does appreciate this situation with SOME nuance, though it isn't of the kind that might have enabled him to see he was being manipulated. He at the very least understands that Danzo is a warmonger and oppresses those he fears (the Uchiha). He understands that the rights of his clan have been sorely disrespected, and that the issue needs correction. He understands the anger of his friends and family. This is why it takes him much deliberation before he can even come close to making a decision. He plays both sides right up until the end, listening to Danzo, as well as Fugaku and Shisui, paying attention to the current atmosphere in the Leaf as he tries to decide.
It is something he doesn't want to do. Here's where I get to the part I put in the tags of my drawing.
In this situation, it's almost worthless to write an analysis about Itachi's feelings at this time, his understanding of what was actually going on, his loyalty to his clan or his loyalty to the Leaf, because really, he could not grasp it. He was never prepared for this. He never knew he would be asked to make a decision he could only understand as "your family or the world?"
Itachi was put in a position that had no happy ending. There was no decision he could make that would not hurt. That could not result in a cataclysm that split him right down the middle. There was no version of this story that a 13-year-old could carry out thinking "I have done the right thing."
And that's the important part. Both sides asked him to make this decision, and so both sides are guilty of placing an immeasurable pressure on a child who should never have been put in such a position. Regardless of ideology, regardless of price, regardless of oppression or loyalty or devotion or any other thing- someone else should have made this decision for Itachi. Someone else should have been responsible. An adult, at the very least. Someone who COULD understand the implications of both options. Someone who COULD go forward and appreciate the evil of fascism and know that a coup was necessary. Itachi was never capable of such a thing. If he made the "wrong" decision, than every child who can't explain to you what a fascist government in a military state looks like and explain what the difference is between a hate crime and resisting a hateful power, is also wrong. Here is the nuance. These are things a 13-year-old in this universe cannot be expected to understand unless they are taught. And Itachi had no teacher. Quite the opposite. There were only forces pressing him from both sides, saying "choose."
Had his father done this for him, had Shisui been in this position, had any other adult Uchiha acting as a spy been put to this task, it would be a much different narrative. But of course, it had to be Itachi, who Danzo knew he could manipulate. It had to be a child, someone skilled enough to do the job, but inexperienced enough, afraid enough, to be willing to sacrifice everything they had to see the mission through. Someone you could whisper "greater good" to and have them hand over their well being on a plate. Someone who didn't understand they had the power and strength to destroy the system threatening them.
On a narrative level, Itachi exists to illustrate this point. How young people are systematically indoctrinated to serve a greater purpose, be it under a specific government, religion, or otherwise. We see it in real life fascism, in real life cults. There's no mistake. It isn't an accident that Itachi's story begins like this.
Which brings me to the rest of his life. The reason I drew the picture in the post referenced at the top. Itachi's character is a bit of a mystery the rest of the anime. Be that because of bad writing or an intentional omission, his motives, thoughts, and opinions are largely left ambiguous. However, there are still a few moments that interest me as far as the implications of his development.
When Itachi first comes back to the Leaf village, he faces Kakashi. On the one hand, this could simply be a narrative tool- the big bad meets the big good. He takes Kakashi out of commission! The first rogue shinobi we see who is able to defeat the pillar of the Leaf, the Copy Ninja, and without even breaking a sweat!
On the other hand, I find the brutality of Itachi's attack very intriguing. Again, it could be the tough guy act, but he's able to keep three jonin busy easily using standard genjutsu (with the help of Kisame). It wouldn't be a stretch to say that using the tsukuyomi is overkill, and at a considerable price, we learn later.
Why then would Itachi, who has been shown to have excellent battle intelligence, who is strategic to a fault, be willing to jeopardize his health among other things just to... scare the Leaf? Make sure Kakashi wouldn't be a nuisance in the future? Sure, the last one would make collecting Naruto less complicated, but they dispatched Kakashi easily enough, and surely Jiraiya, who Naruto was with at the time, would pose a bigger problem than Kakashi.
It doesn't make strategic sense, which makes me wonder if Itachi has a special animosity toward Kakashi. Being his superior in the ANBU before the Uchiha massacre, someone who was willing to conduct surveillance of the Uchiha compound without question, Kakashi could have become a symbol of the indifference of the Leaf for Itachi. He could very well have been a reminder of the inoperable position Itachi was put in when he was still a child, and Kakashi, of course, was an adult. Another adult who did nothing. Noticed nothing. Did not help Itachi.
And while I'm certain that Kakashi would have taken severe issue with the goings on in the Leaf at that time, judging by his reaction when he finds out the truth in Shippuden, Itachi knows him only by what he did then. Facilitated surveillance of the Uchiha compound, was a supportive superior, but nothing greater. A bystander whose compassion, while well meaning, was entirely unhelpful.
I don't think it's far fetched that Itachi fucking crucified Kakashi because he was so angry at what being in the Leaf did to him. At some point, as he got older, he realized how terrible it was. He realized there were people like him. Children who were "born killers". Pawns in the game of the shinobi powers.
After leaving the village, Itachi joins the Akatsuki, who are also seeking peace through war (another story). He is supposed to spy for them, but doesn't follow through in any enthusiastic way (that we're shown). He works alone for quite some time, or else with a group (briefly he was shown with Conan and Kakuzu). He is partners with Orochimaru before he's expelled from the Akatsuki. He is partners with one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. He grows up and meets many people, sees lots of stories unfold. He learns that he isn't in a minority. Many shinobi are just like him.
And then, as an adult, he is partnered with Kisame, who he finds excellent camaraderie with because of their similar backgrounds. We see in this relationship that he understands what happened to him and what he did enough to acknowledge that, while neither of them are monsters, as many people say, they are human. And humans make mistakes. Humans are complicated. Wrong and right and wrong and right. They understand each other, and Itachi understands more clearly what the world puts these children up to. What it forces shinobi to become. That it isn't all his fault, but he still did it. And so he is responsible. He appears to be able to live with that.
But when he returns to the Leaf, those feelings bubble up. He hates the Leaf. He hates that system. He hates what he did. Maybe he even hates being a shinobi, how his excellence was weaponized, how being an Uchiha doomed him and his clan. And for what?
Itachi is played as a character who is only sensible, only logical, only interested in practical things, has nothing to express. But the way he behaves toward Kakashi in that moment bares all his grief and anger. I just like to think about it. We have so few moments where we get to see Itachi genuinely. The fight with Kakashi, the Sasuke/Deidara fight, his thoughtful moments with Kisame. Just makes me wonder what could've been if Itachi's story had gone a little differently.
Anyway, if anyone would like me to expand on any points or has additional thoughts, feel free to hop in my ask box or leave a comment. Thanks for the interest, I love to talk.
136 notes
·
View notes
Text
Skies forever blue — Neuvillette x GN!Reader
Genre: Mostly fluff with a little bit of comfort.
Summery: You have been trying to approach him without knowing he was always there.
A/N: I think I haven't like a character this much since Wanderer and Dimitri so I needed to write something about him <3. Since his character isn't out yet and all we have are his interactions in the Archon quest it may be a little OOC, but I tried my best to keep his character like in canon. Also English isn't my first language and I'm dyslexic so feel free to correct me if you notice any mistakes. ^^
If only one word was needed to describe Neuvillette, it would be "Unattainable."
Like the clouds that float upper in the sky, everyone admires him from the ground, giving their own interpretations of the shapes they present. So lofty and magnificent, people find themselves raising their hands with the dream of touching them, ignorants of the fact that it's impossible for a human being to feel them with their hands.
But unlike most who gave up over the pass time, you kept trying over over, extending your hand towards the sky, hoping to reach them someday. He couldn't understand your persistence and your determination behind it, but even though he questioned it multiple times, he never protested, slowly letting you in without you even noticing.
"Do you see the same sky as I?" You asked him once.
A long silence followed that question. It was unusual from him. That composed and unalterable person whose job is to answer questions and find them to the ones which didn't have, not knowing what to say when a simple one was presented in front of him. And yet, the silence between the two of you lacked of tension. In some strange way it was comfortable, even comforting.
"I do. " He finally responded in an almost inaudible, soft tone. Nevertheless, the implication of it felt surreal. How can someone, who stands so firmly from above, capable of changing someone's life with just a few words, and at the same time so human to grief for the fate of others, coexist in the same world as yours?
It only took a rainy afternoon to find the answer you were truly searching for.
Those days when the clouds suddenly darken and their tears don't stop shamelessly falling from the sky, only to realize that all this time you outstretched your hands you were unawarely touching them.
Even though everyone can feel the rain, you're the only person who has seen him weep, you realize, gently caressing his cheeks as his crystalline eyes simply stare at you. Admiration and sadness accompany his gaze equally, plunging you into a storm of conflicting feelings that slowly consumes both of you.
However, in the moment you lean towards him, Neuvillette doesn't fade between your fingers as you always thought he would, indulging himself in the warmth of your touch as the sky slowly starts clearing again.
326 notes
·
View notes
Note
Had a thought, I think what's bothering a lot of people about recent Force stuff is that Filoni/new shows are treating the Force like a "soft magic" system. As in it's flexible to whatever the plot is and the few rules can change. Vs the more solid "hard magic" system the original stuff operates on. Only certain people have it, there's established things it can do, and it's main point of flexibility is that if you don't think you can do a thing with the Force, you can't.
Like movies/clone wars/even Rebels establishes that having the Force is an innate thing and while non Force users can "hear" the Force (various other practices we see like Chirrut) they can't utilize it. That there's certain abilities are things everyone has and more rare abilities exist but don't seem to be learned (at least not easily). I'm even willing to say Force Healing works in the og system set up in that it's a rare ability and it takes energy. You can't bring someone back from the brink of death without killing yourself or someone else.
But things like Sabine suddenly able to use the Force or Ahsoka able to use abilities out of nowhere and established to be innate and rare basically throws the hard rules out and gives it a confusing inconsistency that just makes it unenjoyable.
I think the problem is, in part, that canon itself treats the Force as both soft AND hard, depending on what aspect you're talking about, because Star Wars runs on Rule of Cool sort-of above and beyond anything else sometimes. For example, the Force Ghosts. Even within the original trilogy, the implications about how the Ghosts work seems to change from ANH to ROTJ, and then you get into the prequels and TCW and the sequels and now the Mandoverse and the Ghosts are just... wackier and wackier every time. There are NO RULES for the Force Ghosts beyond that the person ghosting should be definitively dead, not a Sith when they died, and they should look bluish. Like that's... really it. Beyond that, everyone seems to do whatever the fuck they want with it and they always have, even Lucas himself.
And then you have other things that seem to have remained fairly static this entire time even if they went unsaid, like who is capable of wielding the Force and who isn't, whether it's something you're born with or just something some people can learn easier than others. Up until the Ahsoka show, everybody seemed to agree on this one, so even though it's never been outright stated in canon that you HAVE to be born with the ability to wield the Force or you'll never be able to, it's just a generally accepted part of the worldbuilding and one that a LOT of the character narratives sort-of rely on. BUT, because it's never been outright stated and OTHER elements of the Force and how it's used can be pretty "soft magic", I suppose it's not shocking that eventually someone would try to switch this one up. It's infuriating and it's bad writing just because what little we DO know about it is so important to how these storylines go, but it's not shocking.
It's not like I hate "soft magic" systems in general, but in a lot of those stories, how the magic WORKS isn't actually important to the story being told most of the time. Like in Lord of the Rings, how Gandalf can do magic is completely irrelevant to the themes and messages sent through the story of Frodo and the Ring and the Fellowship. It doesn't MATTER.
But in Star Wars, the way the Force works is baked into the themes and messages of the whole ass story. What darkness is, where it comes from, what balance means and how it can be achieved, all of this is VITAL to the story being told throughout the first six films. And so a lot of the little stuff that gets added to the overall "how the Force works" stuff (psychometry, midichlorians, etc) should all sort-of work within those overall themes already set up. Midichlorians are important because Anakin is DEMONSTRABLY super powerful, more than anybody else in history, and it DOESN'T MATTER. He's literally MEASURABLY more powerful than anybody else and he still fails to do anything he actually wants to do. His power makes it so that his choices change the fate of an entire galaxy, but they're also completely useless in any way that actually matters to him. The fact that they can measure his power helps that message get across. Psychometry takes a lot of the stuff about how the Force allows you to dial into the emotions of other people and just takes it up an extra notch to really hammer home some of those themes about control over your own power and being connected to the world around you.
So Star Wars, in many ways, DOES have a "soft" magic system, it always has, but the things that are changed or added to it SHOULD generally still fit within the overall themes and messages that Star Wars has set up prior to this. Sabine being Force sensitive randomly very explicitly goes AGAINST all of these themes and messages and that's why it sucks. Changing the system so that literally ANYBODY could have the Force if they just worked hard enough at it (and having Sabine gain her ability to wield it only when she FEELS the most emotions as opposed to when she CONTROLS her emotions the best) completely fucks up a lot of the narratives for other characters. What makes Luke so special if literally ANYBODY could have just learned to do what he did, but apparently they just weren't trying hard enough? If Ahsoka felt this way this entire time why wasn't she training up TONS of people in the Rebellion to utilize the Force, why was she HOBBLING the Rebellion by keeping this from them? It's just... SO so stupid in so many ways. Why does Filoni seem to think that fans want the space wizards to be LESS special? It's ridiculous and it's insulting.
I think that at this point we're also just VERY tired of Filoni's blatant favoritism for his own characters and the ways he very intentionally will bash other characters in order to lift up his own faves, and quite honestly THAT'S what pisses me off the most about the Ahsoka show. Sabine and Ahsoka can't be special on their own, they HAVE to call the prequels Jedi failures because they were elitist in order to make Sabine and Ahsoka seem like they're so much better and more enlightened than those OTHER Jedi. And that honestly just stinks of a lack of imagination on Filoni's part. If he can't figure out how to make these characters feel special without tearing down other characters in this franchise to do it, then maybe he's just not that good of a fucking writer to begin with.
So while I'm not PERSONALLY a fan of the way the Force is often very "soft" in the way it's written, that doesn't make it bad in and of itself, but Filoni (and the Mandoverse in general, but mostly Filoni) feels like he's actively flipping the bird at prior accepted assumptions about the worldbuilding and the way those things really helped build the NARRATIVE just because he wants to insist that HIS characters are NOT IRRELEVANT and are in fact more important and cooler than everybody else. When I consume a Star Wars story, I'm EXPECTING something about how it's better to accept and acknowledge your own darkness so you can let it go and control it rather than letting it control you. I'm EXPECTING something about being selfless and compassionate over being selfish and greedy. I'm EXPECTING something about how destiny exists but it isn't everything and your choices still MATTER (both good and bad). And that's just... not what Filoni gave me. The things he changed DON'T suit the narrative of Star Wars, regardless of whether the Force is a soft magic system or not.
#star wars#dave filoni critical#filoni critical#mandoverse critical#ahsoka show critical#anti ahsoka show#ahsoka tano#jedi#pro jedi#sabine wren critical#sabine critical#so for example: sabine being force sensitive COULD'VE been... fine#it still would've been STUPID to retcon her into a force user but it's not any stupider than bringing maul back in tcw#BUT#sabine being force sensitive SHOULD'VE still worked the same way it always works#she should've been born with it but for whatever reason just had been weak enough in it that no one noticed it or something#she should've had to learn to control her own emotions#she should've had CONSEQUENCES for her selfish choices#ahsoka should've been RIGHT about letting go of ezra the first time and sabine should've let AHSOKA go later#like making sabine force sensitive was (no pun intended) forced and always would've been so#but it still could've been done RIGHT without violating some of the primary themes that make star wars what it is
61 notes
·
View notes
Text
Arrogance vs. Humility: Thor
There's an interesting post circling in fandom with many great metas and povs and it inspired me to expand on one of its threads. I have made a new post so the length and a different direction of meta doesn't bother op. I have also divided this meta into two parts. The first one is titled Thor because it is mainly an analysis of og Thor and og Loki in Thor 2011 . The second part will analyze Loki series for those who are interested.
Initially what sparked this meta was @tori-artemis (Artemis)' tags under an addition by @geehollow (Hollow). Initially I only wanted to write a short answer but I'm doomed by the narrative so I thought to first see what science has to say and I came across an interesting study and decided to use it in my analysis.
I used colors to quote each person because I'm going to quote two people, a study(indented) and add my own thoughts and I can't keep tagging or writing their names :P :D
So without further ado let's start. The topic was about the vice of Thor vs Loki. While perhaps the goal of the og post was to analyze the the topic through the concept of seven sins and virtues I don't intend to do that because it doesn't include every possible personality trait and it's not accurate enough from a psychological pov.
Vice is the first trait one should consider when creating a character. Vices embody the vibe that sparked the character in your mind, and in turn spark virtues, goals, backstories, everything. Of course it's different when dealing with characters inspired by already existing mythos, that already carry traits one has to grasp.
In the MCU, Thor's initial vice was arrogance. Deep seated arrogance born of being the golden prince, revered and indulged. Loki's initial vice was also arrogance, but born of thinking he's smartest than everyone else, due to having had to act covertly in order to get what he wants because he is not revered and not indulged. For both of them these are things we can and should infer during the first movie.
As you've read Hollow states that the vice of both Thor and Loki was arrogance but in different ways. Artemis wouldn't call Loki's arrogance because Loki clearly behaves in a different way than other arrogant characters like Thor and Tony Stark. Therefore we must first define arrogance.
According to a new study there are three types of arrogance that can be dissected into 6 components.
Individual arrogance: an inflated opinion of one’s abilities, traits, or accomplishments compared to objective truths;
Comparative arrogance: an inflated ranking of one’s abilities, traits, or accomplishments compared to other people
Antagonistic arrogance: the denigration or derision of others based on an assumption of superiority.
The types and components of arrogance depicted in Figure 1 are meaningful together because some of the concepts seem to implicate others. One cannot be overconfident about one’s knowledge in a domain (second-largest box) without first having some relevant limitation in knowledge about that domain (largest box); if one disparages others unfairly (smallest box), one is likely to fail to take their perspective and, further, one is likely to believe in one’s superiority compared to them (third- and second-smallest boxes, respectively); and so on. Therefore, the position of each component in the figure reflects a close dependency. Yet, it is possible for causation to flow from smaller to larger boxes, as well. For example, if one hates an individual for any reason, one might be motivated to underrate their capabilities or motives.
From this definition we can say that both Thor and Loki have levels of arrogance from the start but while Thor until the point Odin banishes him has checked all the six components in the picture, Loki is at a level two.
Thor with limited knowledge and an overestimation of his power decides to go to Jotunheim. He resists the disagreements about his limits and chances and fails to consider perspectives of his friends, his brother and father and Jotuns. He considers himself and his race superior to others and insults and criticizes Jotuns and his father. Loki on the other hand has overestimated his knowledge, abilities and whether or not everything goes according to his plan.
After his banishment, Thor comes down from the level of his hubris. When he fails to lift Mjolnir and after Loki's visit, he realizes that his rash actions had terrible consequences not just for him but for his family too. He's left alone and powerless. He doesn't see himself superior to these humans anymore. Jane helps him see things from different perspectives and as weak as a human he learns his limits. He knows he doesn't have the power to fight the Destroyer so he tries to do the only thing he can do, apologize to his brother. And when it seems that Thor's dying, he doesn't care about glory or what tales Asgard would say of his bravery. All he thinks about is that Jane is safe and that humility and selflessness restores his power. Loki though, in his desperation for acceptance, has made all the wrong choices.
Just as Thor overestimated his power, his physical strength and fighting skills in his attack to Jotunheim, Loki overestimates his power which is his intelligence and planning skills.
Loki in his arrogance thinks he can stage and ruin a heist, prevent Thor's rampage, and get rid of Laufey and Jotunheim through his usual method of solo strategies. He learns consequences when his plans inevitably stumble into variables he hadn't accounted for–the guard taking too much time in warning Odin, learning he's a rejected Jotun prince, being actually made regent, the Warriors Three and Sif and Heimdall betraying him. It's not the fact that he grew up learning underhandedness was his most effective method, it's that in the MCU he applied it presumably for the first time to real big events and had to deal with the consequences.
Loki lacks foresight. Like he lacks seeing all of the possible outcomes of his own schemes. That's how he ends up in a lot of messes in the first Thor film. So yeah - he definitely doesn't fully think things through as much as he'd like to believe himself to. Tbf he's not psychic. But it's more of an over reliance on his schemes working perfectly. That he doesn't consider all of the possible ways that those schemes can go south real fast (and end up doing so). So to me...it's less of it being arrogance of his own intellect and more like his over reliance on the schemes themselves. As well as an overestimation of his own control over the situation. Which *could* be considered arrogance... tho I don't think the film really displays it as such. Or it's just not very *clear* in displaying it as arrogance - like aside from occasionally calling Thor an oaf basically(which tbf he's kinda right with that assessment). And like - considering humans and Jotuns as weak and inferior at best - and monstrous at worst(which is less of a character vice and more of a symptom of Asgard's imperialism).
According to the definition of arrogance, what Artemis describes is in fact a complete list of all the reasons why Loki is arrogant. I also like to add that even the imperialism that causes Asgardians to be biased toward other races is rooted in political arrogance and their sense of superiority(Although we can argue that Loki up until his conversation with Odin, did not believe the Asgardian propaganda as he asked why the truth was hidden from him. It was only after he thought his parents see Jotuns a monsters that he tried to radically separate himself from his race).
Like many aspects in this movie, these brothers are once again a yin and yang to each other. Thor's brawn against Loki's brain. Thor's strength represents Odin's warrior side and he is praised for it. While Loki's wit represents Odin's cleverness but unlike Thor, Loki isn't appreciated for a trait in which he is similar to his father and that's sth he wants to change.
Loki has a good plan, but he fails to consider how his action seem shady to those who didn't like and suspected him. And how that can motivate them to betray him. Everything would have gone according to his plan otherwise. He had managed to trick and kill Laufey, he unleashed Bifrost on those race of "monsters" and he had bested Thor in the battle of brain vs brawn. He was pinned but he thought he had won. He was at the top of arrogance level in his grief and madness.
"Look at you, the mighty Thor, with all your strength, and what good does it to you now, huh?"
He didn't consider that Thor, hot headed Thor who looked down on other races and tried to solve everything by throwing a hammer at it, would try to think his way out of this situation to save the people he previously hated.
In my eyes, Odin's banishment, Jane's and Selvig's and Darcy's companionships are only the stakes that make him walk in the shoes of the other side of the violence, but the real wake up call is seeing Loki behaving and talking as Thor used to.
Thor 1 is the origin story of both Thor and Loki, young princes who discover they were still untested, and Avengers 2012 shows the progression of their arcs after their vice has been exploited with one differing element: a support net being present or absent. Thor always had a support net, Loki never did, and their intertwined story shows exactly how in real life people go down their respective paths.
So if Loki's vice is arrogance why he doesn't behave like Thor or Tony?
Bc tbh I probably wouldn't have even thought of arrogance as a vice for Loki. Like my initial reaction was ''wait no that's Thor". But when phrased like the above... it makes a lot of sense. Like tbh I don't know if I'd call it arrogance in his own intelligence - while he's certainly clever he never seems to overbearing about it. Not in the way similarly clever + arrogant characters like Tony Stark display it anyways. Loki never really... seems particularly arrogant?? Like I wouldn't call him humble either but... arrogance just seems a bit exaggerated tbh. I'd say he definitely has pride... tho I'm not sure I'd call it a vice. Bc let's consider other characters that are clearly written to display arrogance at various levels. Like. Anakin is arrogant. Tony Stark is arrogant. Theon Greyjoy was arrogant. And then there's Thor. And like I know there are probably levels to this and it could be argued that Loki's on the less extreme side...But for a character to be arrogant there's almost always like an indicator to that arrogance in said character's personality? Like something about the way they carry themselves... something in the way they display their genuine belief that they're The Best. I don't really see that with Loki. Again I wouldn't call him humble... but he doesn't have *that* attitude I guess. Compared to Anakin ''I would even stop ppl from dying!'' Skywalker. Or Thor 'throws violent tantrum after dad said no to war w/ Jotunheim' Odinson. Or like... half the shit that comes out of Tony Stark's mouth. XD
Yes Loki doesn't have that attitude. That's because individual differences in unawareness of intellectual limits and personality traits affect how the components of arrogance show themselves in people.
We can illustrate potential relations between personality variables and Components 2 (unawareness of knowledge limitations), 4 (failure to consider the perspectives of others), and 5 (a feeling of superiority).
Related to Component 2, Schaefer, Williams, Goodie, and Campbell (2004) examined how the Big Five can predict overconfidence in one’s performance. Only the trait of extraversion correlated with overconfidence (the difference between accuracy and confidence). The extraversion factor may be most related to the aspect of arrogance involving inflated self-appraisal relative to objective reality (Lee & Ashton, 2018). There also have been occasional findings of relations between overconfidence and other Big Five traits like openness to experience and agreeableness
Thor and Tony are both extroverts, so their arrogance or at least the part that involves inflated self-appraisal shows itself through overconfident extrovert behavior. That doesn't mean that Loki doesn't act overconfident. It just shows itself in more subtle ways, like the way he stares at his opponent and in his knowing grin. He's less like boastful I'm-the-best-and-I'm-going-to-beat-you, and more like silent I'm-so-smart-and-you've-fallen-for-my-plan.
Even in Avengers when Loki acts arrogantly more than any other time, his real arrogance is not in the way he presents himself to humans in Stuttgart. That was just theatrics. His arrogance is in the way he grins every time his plans work. In Avengers Loki is in his most arrogant state because he's being influenced by the scepter. The same scepter that can bring the worst of every person in its vicinity which almost made Tony and Steve fight, and even Thor reverted back to his old self calling humans petty and tiny. I also like to mention that it was Tony who understood Loki the most and one of the reasons was because he saw the same arrogance of himself in Loki.
Avengers 2012, Dark World and the stories that followed should have picked up the threads left from the first movie and continued the progression of the vice (flaws+virtues+background) Vs consequences. Some of them did. Some of them did not.
Tldr: both Thor's and Loki's vices were arrogance built in different ways and their arcs showcased how society's (=worldbuilding) support influences the consequences of the same vice until the franchise was rebooted (=different worldbuilding and vices)
Source: Foundations of Arrogance: A Broad Survey and Framework for Research
Next: Loki
34 notes
·
View notes
Text
Agent Ursula Schäfer in Der Wolfsjäger is canonically 32. I picked her age for a few reasons:
1) I wanted her to have history, experience and authority
2) I wanted to give her a canon age so people didn't self insert their own real-life age when the Jäger, the love interest, is 36. I want to characterize her more and let the listeners use their imagination to see the story through her eyes, not their own.
3) A lot of media with mostly female audiences does this weird thing where they take a female lead with clearly adult personality traits, skillsets, backstory, and responsibilities, then canonically make them teenagers for some goddamn reason and I high-key hate this trope. There are tons of women older than the YA demographic who favor reading and enjoying YA novels over "adult" novels and I sincerely think there's just a shortage of fun adventurous romantic stories featuring them over the age of like 23 and I think that's just so tiresome.
4) A lot of audio roleplays are set in schools, where the characters the listeners roleplay as would explicitly be younger than (most of) their real-life selves. The reverse almost never happens. I don't like the implication that you can't see yourself having an exciting, fun, and romantic adventure if you're over the age of like 25. Most of my listeners are in their early to mid 20s, but I want them to be able to imagine an older version of themselves that's still exciting, capable, desired romantically, and experiencing new things.
5) My channel is for adults. It's fine if teenagers listen to it and there's no NSFW content in it or anything, but I'm targeting adult listeners because I want an audience that appreciates more mature and complex storytelling.
6) I want to cater to my 30+ audience. There are a fucking billion school bully roleplays and anime-high school channels with MHA characters catering to teenagers, but basically nothing for listeners (especially in M4F) who are explicitly 30+. I might be an outlier here but according to my analytics, only ~9% of my audience is under 18. People seem to think audio roleplay is more popular with high school-aged teens than it actually is and less popular with older adults than it actually is. I actually have more listeners over 35 than under 18.
7) I want to bring my content to more people, and I want it to be something that they aren't embarrassed about. I'm sick to death of people talking about audio RP like it's this embarrassing thing for lonely people that you should be ashamed to listen to. I want it to be unique and exciting and cool as fuck and I want to make characters and settings that a fully mature adult would want to share with their friends and talk about openly and not secretly ashamed of and I do in fact think that having more mature characters helps with that.
8) I'm doing it for myself. Besides Ivan (a 33 year old divorced dad) and Jäger (a 36 year old with a long history), I have future concepts for characters that are older than my real-life self because I want to also picture my future self as interesting and desirable, and not see aging as something to dread. I kind of tested the waters with this long ago, where I made Basher 48 and Benji 42, albeit in the bodies of their early-20s selves to make it more palatable. I wanted to play characters older than myself from the beginning.
9) I want to give the listener characters some character. Building everything around being perfectly suited for self-insert is constraining and literally so boring. By making something fit everyone, you leave the listener with nothing. There's a few things I leave open to interpretation for inclusivity (ex: the ethnicity of the Listener character) but I want to start giving more of my characters a canon age, canon backstory, and more for the sake of contextualizing their place in the story.
10) I want my 30+ love-interest characters to just be themselves so that I can write love stories without also having to account for the the possibility of my more mature characters being interpreted as a "DILF" or the subject of some kind of taboo age gap fetish. I want it to be clear that they see each other as equals from the start.
Anyway, long ramble over. I wanna make more mature characters and I have a lot of thoughts about it.
37 notes
·
View notes
Text
my head is all currently midnight burger podcast so here's everything i like about this wonderful piece of media:
it's pretty fun and very funny!! i smile like an idiot on public transport and on my way to class at least once a day listening to this.
the characters are so. idk how to describe them but theyre so full of life and you can tell that they are loved greatly by the creator(s)
the WRITING. i could seriously pluck a quote from damn near every episode to carry me through the day. i don't need affirmations i need gloria to talk me through my problems.
i was doing a lil analysis of the themes in this show and i came up with "the best thing you can ever do is the best thing you can do right now" and it is FUEL, babey.
The el triste monologue. also just gloria being a POC and being proud of herself and her culture. there's a lot of cultural mish-mash in podcasts, so this is very refreshing.
It's very, very sweet and heartfelt. kind of like wolf 359 if they communicated more instead of dodging their issues until they came to a peak (love them for it.)
the PHYSICS of it all. i'm a physics/astrophysics major because i think space and looking at the stars is my lifeblood so i won't shut up about it. i don't want ava and leif (certainly ava) to shut up about it ever. HOW much reasearch did they have to do to get this kinda grasp on it. im in awe, i'm LEARNING actual things from them. i could go on. the gravity waves, the stellar nuclear fusion, the time dilation of it all. and all without using over-flowery language!!! i can actually follow a good chunk of the time. are we sure ava didn't take one of those science communication seminars. maybe 5 phds does it. when she and leif talk i vibrate like an electron in a lazer. wonderful.
star sequencing??? stellar nucleosequencing??? right up my alley. thats my kinda stuff. the romanticization of space, i've seen. the romanticization of physics, however, is not something i haven't seen in such a beautiful modern fashion. (Ie, not oppenheimer or even richard feyman)
and it's not too science-y to the point that they think they can't have fun. yes they discuss the implications of gravity waves and wax poetic about space and pulsars. (it beats for you, berts) but they have FUN! they meet their parents because they can. they get a plant drunk. there's an atmosphere(?????) around the diner that allows them to fly around and mind-numbing speeds and look at the curvature of spacetime and also sit on the roof. (I imagine the entire place is the temperature of a summer night.) they have a whole wild west planet. leif builds things inexplicably. how? where does he get the materials??? shhhhh don't question it just let him have the gravity wave detector. nobody actually knows what engineers do, not even engineers. let him be. also time crystals??????
ALSO ava being a woman in stem and being so blunt yet covert about it. she's been dealing with it for so long. why are all (recognized) physicists a)white b) men c) both. it's such a sucky thing to work into because of the outward appearance. ava is a proud mad scientist which i aspire to so much. i am keeping her in my little arsenal of people to think about when i don't want to study. (picture the do it for her meme but it's pics of ava) I don't think i aptly put how much i love her. i'm not all the way finished yet but i've heard she was forced to marry someone? i think it would be a thing for sure if she cheated on him. so many physicists cheated on their spouses (wives ): ) and i think ava should also do it. as a treat. if that's what she'd like.
when people have done bad, bad things but show/are capable of redemption upon reflecting on their past/current shortcomings is just something that gets me so much directly in the heart. the hiddenness of people. the tragedy. we contain MULTITUDES and this show demonstrates that so well. how they support each other! they are everchanging and that's good for them. Leif the engineer the ex criminal the diner cook.
leif exploding a man in cold blood. if i could draw i'd draw that. maybe i will anyways.
food as a form of affection/way to bond. grief. doing your best. making amends. using the time you have. death is inevitable but that's okay.
And if time and tide roil you too harshly, or diurnal courses leave you with no safe havens, just remember we’re out there, somewhere, lookin’ for ya’
they open at six
#midnight burger#fiction podcasts#my rambles#hopefully this will get it out of my brain#i believe in womens (ava and gloria) rights and also their wrongs#we open at six
53 notes
·
View notes
Note
In regards to Doctor Who, I also stopped around the same time as you and recently picked it back up.
I like some of late Capaldi, but the early stuff was really uninteresting to me. His episodes suffered from a few writing issues, but the second half of his run was okay in my mind. Some episodes better than others.
I liked Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, but I wanted to scream at the writers the entire time. We'd get to a point of understanding where the mystery or theme of the episode finally got revealed, and I'd start to get interested. And THEN they would spoon feed it directly to the audience, like noooo, let me be lost in the horrors for a bit before you spell it out like the end of a children's TV program, PLEASE. I promise I'm capable of exploring the implications for 5 seconds before you read out the message like the back of a cereal box, I beg of you. Her specials were alright, though, they were kinda fun, if a little out there...
Haven't seen the new specials, but I really REALLY hope they do the new Doctor justice. A lot of fans kinda ate Jodie alive, but it wasn't her fault. I'm gonna be really upset if they set him up for failure! People are already making assumptions based on bias. I really want them to set him up for success!
I honestly just think Capaldi isn't the type of actor I want to watch play the Doctor. So when he was announced I just sort of went "mm. Meh." and then stopped. And I had a hard time connecting with Clara, so the combination of a Doctor who I was fairly meh about and a companion I also was fairly meh about more or less killed my interest in the show.
I've said before but not super recently I think but I actuallyyyyyyy am not very interested in alien or time travel stories because I think individually they are very boring and together they are a bit contrived. Unfortunately that is like 99% of the point of Doctor Who so 9, 10, 11, and their companions were able to keep me from going "wow I really don't like alien or time travel stories" because I was invested in their personal character arcs. But if I start off already not really liking the main character draws to the show, then I have to actually focus on the alien and time travel plots, which I don't want to do, because I don't like those genres.
[it's why torchwood worked for me but not star trek, I can focus on something other than aliens in torchwood because I'm mostly having fun watching Jack and Ianto shenanigans, but star trek is *about the aliens* so unfortunately Spock shenanigans were not enough to distract me from disliking the other 99% of the show]
However. Hot Black Doctor. But then I feel like I'd have to watch 12 and 13 to catch up to Hot Black Doctor. Also I am trying really hard to reserve judgement because maybe it makes sense plotwise but I am somewhat annoyed that we have Double Doctors with one of them being a white dude who has ALREADY PLAYED THE DOCTOR AND IS SUPER POPULAR AS POSSIBLY NEW WHO'S FAVORITE DOCTOR [albiet, a white dude whose Doctor I did really like] who is at extremely high risk of majorly overshadowing Hot Black Doctor. Can't even have a standalone black generation without white people making sure they're included.
26 notes
·
View notes
Note
What superhero setting do you see Taylor being happiest in?
Marvel
Dc
Or my hero academia?
In one of my earliest coherent posts on this site, I clocked Worm as the result of a Marvel or DC style setting being allowed to run twice as long as either of those settings have ever allowed their canon to advance; the in-universe timeline of the modern cape era is 15 years at Marvel and an ill-defined 10-20 at DC. Worm is at the Kingdom Come bad-future stage; it's the gritty elseworld of a more conventional superhero setting that rotted on the vine. Crucially, it's very, very hard to justify why the wild-west walking-atom-bomb settings of Marvel and DC wouldn't devolve into something like Worm, if allowed to press forward. In both of those settings there have been scads of storylines predicated on the idea that the settings are inherently unstable powder kegs, but they're almost never allowed to reach that true inflection point. (I would consider Secret Wars a credible exception to this; taken together, the Bendis/Hickman metaplots read like the Last Great Reckoning of the unaccountable cowboy capes, with their fuckups and overreach ultimately leading to the literal destruction of the universe. But it did go right back to normal, so.)
This is a long-winded way of saying that I think Taylor would hate or at least be uncomfortable in both settings; assuming this is a Taylor with any kind of experience, she'd read the writing on the wall, and she'd realize that this is basically the larval stage of the dysfunction that ate Earth Bet. And she'd be in a much worse position to do anything about it, because the looming dysfunction is so decentralized; no final boss, just a succession of increasingly powerful cosmic fuckheads who try to paint themselves as ultimate threat material, each stepping over the cooling bodies of the ones that tried this last month.
(Actually, I'm now envisioning a Marvel or DC crossover where the twist is that Taylor being dumped into the setting imported the narrative rules under which the Wormverse runs, and this presents an apocalyptic threat to either setting. One week of cold-open tier adventures leaves New York an unlivable ruin. A hero actually fails to stop a stolen nuke from going off and it leads to noticeable atmospheric changes. Capes abruptly start to weigh each other's shady behavior and interpersonal betrayal with a weight appropriate for, say, secretly running a villain brainwashing scheme for several years and wiping the mind of any hero who learns about it, and no team is capable of functioning. Capes start staying mostly dead. Capes start aging. There's a period of everyone's lives in which they've started operating under the laws of causality, and a ten-year dream-time blur in their memories where an impossible volume of events happened. Etc. Etc. Etc.)
MHA.... I don't actually know an incredible amount about the setting, beyond the fact that powers are ubiquitous, have been for a while, and the settings cape scene is unbelievably rigorously regulated and yoked compared to that of the Wormverse. Because of the circles I run in on here, It mostly comes up in the context of how it's perceived to have failed to thoughtfully grappled with its worldbuilding implications and character arcs, but I can't really comment meaningfully on it. My tentative assessment is that Taylor wouldn't get on with a cape scene that's that aggressively regimented without the justification of the Endbringers; I can't really get a good read on how she'd react to the suppression of quirk use (is this a thing?) outside of approved hero contexts, although I doubt that it would be a good reaction. One real difficulty when trying to extrapolate Taylor's politics (as opposed to her ethics) is that we only see her as a traumatized teen in a war zone, followed by a hyperfocused optimizer, so it's hard for me to project how she'd bounce off the political mundanities of a cape scene that's dysfunctional but not untenably so. Honestly it might depend on who antagonized her first.
Ultimately, though, a version of Taylor who's seen enough for this question to have any crunch is a version of Taylor who's gonna have a very difficult time being happy anywhere. Even the ending isn't "Thank God I can move on with my life" Taylor. It's resigned Taylor. There is no place for her in a world that doesn't need her. And a world where she can thrive is sort of its own condemnation.
141 notes
·
View notes
Note
Please tell me more about your OCs, Fredrick, Sarah and Annie?
Sure!!! They are main characters in the vague sequel story to my wip red & riotous light that I'm writing + they are tenant farmers on a vaguely located estate owned by a fictious marquess somewhere in co. antrim, ireland, in the mid 1790s. Their family situation is best explained I think by this diagram but to shorten it, Frederick and Annie are the nephew + niece of Sarah's toxic boyfriend Jem, who she basically adopted after she moved in with them. She also has 2 more younger kids but she sent them off to help F&A's father on his search for work in scotland, so they don't factor in to the actual story much. I will go through them in depth one at a time.
Frederick
Frederick is 11 and he's like. one of those annoying street urchin artful dodger type characters but in an almost wholly rural setting. He's def. got what would be today recognised as undiagnosed ADHD and he's working through a lot of complicated feelings surrounding his relationship with his mother (which swings between loving and being like a cage fight like a pendulum) as well as his place in the world and what he's meant to be doing about the incredible violence he's witnessing around him daily. In some ways this manifests as him having grown up far too quickly -- he's already an active member of 1 of the most feared gangs in his area and him stabbing a man without batting an eye is what starts the plot -- in other ways it's him acting at all times like he knows exactly what's up and like he's 100% in control even when he's obviously just a helpless kid.
Some facts about Frederick:
When he grows up he wants to join the army, ideally as an officer + ideally in the cavalry
He is a narrative foil to another character, Seamy, who I went into detail on here
He slowly develops the ability to see snatches of the future in his dreams, although he doesn't typically tell anyone about these dreams so for now it's more of a mounting dread situation than something with any massive effect on his life.
Sarah
Probably the main facet of Sarah's character, imo, is that she really does not give a shit. About anything. She has been utterly miserable due to the fact that she and Jem both despise each other (but she won't leave cos she wants the children to grow up with some kind of father figure + is too exhausted to find anything or anyone else. not answering questions on whether or not this was inspired by anything I have witnessed in real life at this time) for so long that she crossed the threshold of not caring about people's opinions/consequences/moral implications wrt any of her actions years ago. This typically does not end well for people who anger her, especially when taken with the fact that she spent so long blaming herself for things other people did to her that she swung to the opposite extreme + the fact that she is living most of her life now in survival mode, and therefore no longer regards a single one of her actions as her own fault. It does not take much to push Sarah over the edge. If she decides you are jeopardising her survival AND aren't useful for anything otherwise that's you done with this mortal coil and good luck trying to talk her out of it.
Some facts about Sarah:
She is fluent in english, irish, and latin + she can read + write in all 3, and though her family members only know english she often says simple commands and asks simple questions in latin to her children. Her favourite book (a copy of which is owned by a local schoolmaster) is ovid's metamorphosis
She is also a narrative foil to another character called Lady Durham, who I've not made a big post on yet
For many years she sang all the psalms at the local chapel (before she got into a fight with the priest and stopped going)
Annie
Ah, Annie. She is a 12 year old eldest daughter and she has all of the complications that implies. Tbh, she's probably the most capable in her family, or she would be if she didn't spend most of her time wandering around climbing trees and pretending to be a wolf or whatever. She and her mother tend to both blame each other for every single thing that is wrong with the world + fight constantly about everything, but ironically they're very similar -- Annie, too, is very independent and a loner by choice, though she doesn't necessarily dislike company if it's someone who can keep up with her, and she has more than a little of Sarah's ruthless streak in her. Her head is often in the clouds but she isn't incapable of being more practical, nor is she not razor-sharp, she just chooses to get a little whimsical with it. If the rest of the world wants to know what she's talking about they should simply come up into the clouds with her.
Some facts about Annie:
She has a tortoiseshell kitten called Chicken which Sarah gets her early in the story to patch things up after a fight
There is some kind of bizarre cosmic horror monster following her around and doing whatever she tells it to. This manifests as the ability to kill people basically with her mind, though the trade-off is that Annie spreads plague and misfortune wherever she goes as a result of its malign influence leaking out. More lore posts on this coming soon 👍
She enjoys going to see plays &c a lot. Her current favourite is shakespeare's titus andronicus, which she saw when a troupe of players came to perform it for the Marquess (he was so scandalised he nearly perished on the spot) and the local innkeeper Lazarus managed to entice them into doing a cheap showing of it at his inn
#there is more Lore but this is a good introduction to them imo!!!#c: sarah connolly#c: frederick craig#c: annie craig#wip: 8gog#jory.txt
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Getting Feedback as a Writer is the best thing (examples provided)
Here's to my creative writing class! Professor = Kind of a mess, but the students were great, and I'm gonna miss having class with them. Super thankful for getting to know them (and I can't wait for us to continue sharing our stories). It means so much to me to hear from them about my writing, something I've really struggled to share for years.
In memory, mostly for myself, here is a compilation of some of my favorite pieces of (written) feedback I've received with 0 context for any of you:
"I’d definitely want my own clothes too."
"Feels real." (newsflash, it was)
"But damn, I sure as hell enjoyed it!!"
"The first many paragraphs I devoured, because your use of diction was so well-done-- not over done, but poetic in the implications that all your descriptions had."
"Holy shit."
"The root of you. All I can say is a 100% relate. My favorite part was the story you added into it. Instead of giving us just straight what you thought, you gave us a story to explain why you thought this was your root." (not me using stories to process my life...)
"The style of writing here feels more slow-paced and reflective, and full of emotions. You do a great job of conveying what the characters are feeling. Your descriptions seem to be very in-depth and elaborate."
"I can feel your conflicting emotions with your kindness. This whole segment had a very clear voice that was yours."
"I read your work a few days ago and the writing has still stuck with me."
"I really found myself immersed into the world you had created. ... I also like how vividly everything was described in the story. I feel like it could really be made into a movie."
"I love reading your writing and I really hope you publish your work someday."
"The biggest thing I noticed about your writing style is that it's so intentional. Every moment, movement, and detail plays a part in the bigger picture."
"I really wanted it to continue or read the whole book."
"You take your time and make sure that nothing is rushed"
"You also did a great job describing emotions, especially difficult ones like anxiety."
"I really enjoyed the concept of this story and I hope you keep writing it and then maybe share the finished novel somewhere!"
"This is GREAT. It reads super easy and I really was interested in reading the rest (even though I'm not a fantasy fan)"
"the TEABAG"
"Also, if I may be honest, it sounds a bit forced-poetic-Tumblr-2014 and doesn't do your writing justice at all, which is really effortlessly poetic most of the time."
"There's this mysterious aura to this piece, like there's a lot more to be said."
"I really liked that part of your novel, and I'd be interested in knowing when/if it will be published"
"We come to terms with ourselves and others, but never forget what people are capable of so we don't let them step on us over and over again."
"I never thought about this dimension, and it definitely made me think. I do think its very true that people that are always kind are infantilized, especially because we consider sadness, darkness, a certain "edge" to be part of being mature and growing up."
"Queen, this paragraph is so good."
"I don't think piece of shit and trash should be right next to each other. Seems a little redundant?"
"Stop this is so sad"
"I like this whole interaction. It feels realistic and educational without sounding forced, it's really good"
"I really feel her anger here. You did a really good job with making her very relatable and bringing her emotions to life."
"*poetry snaps*"
"Heart is breaking currently"
"I like this. It feels bittersweet because we clearly realize that she's a caring person, but she doesn't allow herself to support someone because she feels remorseful"
"Ugh love"
"I feel like I'm really inside your head at this moment."
"THESE ARE SO REAL. Because I know they actually are but they're such good specific details and I love it."
"The realization of this is *chef's kiss*"
The combination of these two, one right after the other: "You are too pure. Never think of that as a negative quality trait. It's who you are, and it's beautiful." & "UGH this line is so good. Literally makes the reader think exactly what I did ^^ and then immediately want to take it back. The emotions you are bringing out of me is so good."
"thats so awesome :D let us know when you publish it?!?!!" (no haha)
"First, thanks for sharing something so personal. I like how you write. You reflect how the buildup to a stressful conversation takes a toll on us - even if it's such a mundane task like serving food."
"I think you wrote about the internal struggle the character is going through really well! It feels nuanced."
"I really enjoyed all the psychology in your piece! I actually have a recommendation for you; Read The Yellow Wallpaper, it has a really similar feel to your piece!" (mmmm not my piece about butterfly stickers and CPS being related to the infamous The Yellow Wallpaper)
Just reading these all again has made me smile, laugh, and tear up. So glad I got to share some pieces of myself with these great people.
*A note to non-writers: if you have a writer in your life, and they share a piece of writing with you, that is literally them baring their raw soul to you. Take it, know that your interest, your questions, your feedback means more to them than anything.
#writing#writers#writing feedback#saving this so i can come back and read it again and again#this means so much to me#wish i could bring it all back to younger me#and be like look#people are reading your writing again! It wasn't you!#They're interested! They want to read more!#I'm going to get better at sharing my writing again. It's a scary promise#but one that I need to make.#so#future me who's reading through this again#remember that.#remember how it felt to laugh about it all over coffee and tea and freshly warmed muffins#I'm gonna take baby steps#but I'm gonna get there
0 notes
Text
what you’ve kept hidden (i’ve always known), 7.2k words, Marinette Dupain-Cheng/Jim Lake Jr.
My Jimari Secret Santa gift to Aly (let me know if I should tag you!) combining the prompts for a confession with angst and a cute first date. Also on Ao3.
The video is blurry, filmed from a cellphone camera just behind a nearby building, but it's the best they have. There aren't any news crews in the area, but Toby is diligently looking for any other coverage on his phone. Jim doesn't think he could be watching this without him.
The camera is shaking as it shows the back of a man in a purple suit, holding up a girl with one hand and reaching for her earrings. Ash falls from the sky around them, and there are sirens in the distance.
It can’t end like this, is all that Jim can think. Ladybug's too strong, too skilled, too smart to be caught like this. She must have some sort of plan, some kind of power that can fix this. He’s seen her do it before.
Reports of magical heroes in Paris had slowly made their way to Arcadia a year ago. While most people had thought it fraudulent or some kind of publicity stunt, Jim was far less likely to dismiss claims of magic these days. He’s followed her rising career through a few blogs and home videos, watched a couple of newscasts, and found some comfort in the idea that he's not the only hero out there. He almost envied Ladybug for being able to go public with her identity, being able to see and communicate with the public she was protecting. At the moment all he feels for her is cold dread.
Hawkmoth makes a quick movement, and there's a shimmer of pink light. Jim wants to look away, grant her the privacy he knows is being violated, but can't seem to make his eyes move. As the costume falls away revealing a very familiar looking face, his jaw drops.
“Marinette?”
—
Jim doesn't quite remember when it started. Somewhere on the forums for one of the many games they both played, teaming up to defeat virtual monsters and chatting only through text. Over the years they’d grown closer, started voice chatting and then video chatting, beginning to share a little more of their lives and themselves. Their relationship had lasted far past the usual expiration date of online friendships and they were still going strong. She was the only reason he still spoke French, and he helped her with her English homework. They had fallen into an easy pattern of late night gaming marathons in middle school and homework sessions in high school, calling each other to chat during the time zone window where neither of them were sleeping to chat and swap baking tips and laugh over bad jokes.
She was the first person he’d told about Claire, back when he had time for things like crushes. She’d encouraged him to ask her out, and Jim had countered asking when she was going to do the same for Adrien. He wanted to tell her about the amulet, but knew that there wasn’t a chance. Besides, what would she be able to do? She was an ocean away, and even if she was here it wasn’t like she could grab a sword and fight Bular for him. Or so he’d thought.
“Is it Steve again?” she’d asked one afternoon, when training had gone rather poorly and he’d signed into their video call exhausted and with the beginnings of a rather sizable bruise on his shoulder. She couldn’t see it, but she was perceptive enough to notice the wince every time he moved.
“It’s not him,” he promised. “I’m doing some… extra curriculars. After school credit stuff.”
“Oh?” Marinette asked, her eyebrows rising. “Like what? I thought you had to turn down culinary club.” It felt like almost a lifetime ago, when he’d been occupied with trying to keep his grades up and take care of the house, when the fee for participation had been enough to make him put off joining until he could find a summer job and pay for it himself.
“Yeah, I joined… wrestling,” he decided, racking his brain for what kind of extracurricular could involve physical injury. “Trying to get my phys ed mark up, I haven’t been doing so great.” Which was true, due to a lack of attendance rather than ability but Mari didn’t need to know that.
“Wrestling?” she echoed, confusion in her expression. Jim had wondered if she was going to press, felt a cold knot form in his stomach at the thought of lying more to her. But to his relief she’d only frowned and accepted it, saying that it sounded dangerous and she hoped he’d try to be safer before changing subjects.
Now his mind is running through those old conversations, wondering if he’d missed any of the same signs from her. Any sprained ankles or healing cuts, any sign of a burden they could have shared.
“Marinette is Ladybug? Your Marinette?” Toby is saying, but Jim can hardly hear him over the buzzing in his ears.
Hawkmoth has dropped her, and she's coughing. Jim realises that he’d been strangling her, that she’d have a necklace of bruises marring her neck tomorrow. If she makes it that far, a nasty voice in the back of his mind whispers, one Jim immediately shoves away.
“Come on, Marinette,” he whispers, leaning closer to the screen like he could reach her through it. Hawkmoth has grabbed her arm and is starting to drag her away, but another figure strides forward and stops him. Chat Noir, Jim thinks with a rush of relief, and then anger, because how dare he let this happen to her? How could he let it come this far, let her be unmasked on live video, let her stand up to a supervillain by herself?
He redirects that anger, since Chat Noir has been trying to protect her, is probably taunting Hawkmoth right now trying to get him to release her. They're too far away for the video to pick up on their audio, but not far enough to keep Jim from seeing how he raises a hand, threatens to slap her. And how she flinches.
Then Chat Noir moves, lunges forward and there’s a flash of light that turns the video into a blur of static. They sit there in horrified silence for a moment before the feed shuts off completely, leaves them staring at a dark screen with an error message.
“NO!” Jim screams, and Toby’s scrolling through his phone but he’s not fast enough, Marinette is in danger RIGHT NOW and Jim doesn’t know what’s happening. Can’t see if she’s hurt more, can’t see if she’s gotten free, can’t see if she’s even still alive and nothing matters in this moment except the fact that there’s an ocean between them keeping him from helping her and he’s terrified.
It’s the longest two minutes of his life until they find another video, but this one’s only Rena Rouge. “-all okay,” she’s saying to the reporters who have finally showed up, far too late to catch anything other than a repaired and empty street with their cameras. “Hawkmoth has been defeated and turned over to the proper authorities, and everybody is safe.”
The reporters are falling over themselves asking questions, most about Ladybug ( what’s her name , like it’s not going to be all over the internet within the hour), and Rena declines to comment. “There will be an official statement released in the future,” she says before leaving, a pale and shocked reporter taking her place in front of the camera. She can only repeat facts Jim already knows, so he turns off the television and sits there in silence.
“She must be okay,” Toby finally offers, and Jim nods. Marinette has to be okay, not because of the reporters’ questions or Rena’s composure or even because she’s Ladybug, but because the alternative is too terrible to think of.
“Do you ever feel like you need to be perfect?” Marinette had asked him once, when Jim had noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the flat tone of voice, dulled from her usual vibrancy. “Like everything’s depending on you, and if you aren’t enough then people will get hurt?”
All the time, was his answer, but he couldn’t say why so he didn’t say it at all. “Do you feel that way?”
“Sometimes, yeah,” she said, and he knew that she too really meant always. “It’s just a lot, you know? With school, and the bakery, and…”
“And the akumas,” Jim guessed. The previous day had been a particularly drawn out fight between Ladybug and an akuma, and while he’d been confident Ladybug would win he still worried. This was Marinette's home, her friends, her school. And although they hadn’t discussed it in detail, Marinette trying to change the subject whenever he asked questions until he figured she simply didn’t want to discuss it, he knew the akumas fed off emotion. What was that like, being unable to let yourself be truly angry or afraid, with the constant threat of being weaponized hanging over your head?
“You don’t need to be perfect,” he’d told her. “You just need to be you. That’s all anybody can expect.”
“And what if I’m not enough?” Mari had asked, and Jim had wished that he could place a hand on her shoulder.
“You’re always enough,” he’d said.
Now he's wondering how many other conversations they’d had that were really about Ladybug, and wondering if there was anything he could have said that would have been better. Encouraged her more, made her job the tiniest bit easier. He can't remember saying anything monumentally stupid like let Ladybug handle it, but he wouldn’t put it past his memory to be a bit faulty on this matter.
How had he not known? How had he missed all the signs? Him of all people, who knows exactly what it's like to be fighting evil in between classes, how it feels knowing that you're the only person standing between genuinely evil beings and your home, what it's like keeping everything secret as you attempt to live a double life without either side crumbling.
He’d messaged her as soon as he got home, a quick are you okay before he realised that her phone was probably turned off if she wanted to have any peace. If Jim was exposed as the Trollhunter, everybody would be too busy with the underground secret society of trolls to really bother him. Ladybug was a national figure, and she’d just been unmasked on live television.
So Jim starts stress baking, because while he can’t make sure that Marinette was okay he can make sure that this pie crust stays perfectly golden brown. It doesn't help much, Marinette and baking being permanently linked in his mind after too many nights spent on the phone trying out new recipes together, but at least he’ll get some muffins out of his anxiety instead of just a sleepless night.
“What happened?” his mother asks when she comes home to a kitchen filled with assorted baked goods. She knows him too well for him to pass it off as nothing, and besides he’s tired of lying, but he doesn’t want to tell her about Ladybug. Maybe she’ll find out, but it’s not his secret to give.
“Marinette’s in trouble,” he says. “I haven’t heard from her, and I can’t...” he trails off, unsure what to say. Can’t stand not knowing, can’t help her from here? Can’t breathe properly until he hears her voice, hears from her that everything will be okay? All true, but saying it won’t change it.
“Oh honey,” his mom says, and she’s hugging him and Jim lets himself fall into the embrace. He hopes Marinette has her parents with her right now, hopes they’re hugging her and letting her melt like he is now, hopes more than anything that she’s safe and happy because she deserves to be.
If she were here nothing would keep him from getting to her house. He’d scale the wall and meet her on her balcony, wait by the back door until somebody let him in, do whatever it took to see her. But all he can do is wait for her to reply.
His phone is ringing. In the moment it takes for his half asleep mind to register the noise he’s already reaching for it. The ringtone is a familiar rock song, one he associates with Marinette before Jagged Stone, and a shot of adrenaline clears all the remaining drowsiness from his mind when he remembers why this call is so important.
“Marinette?” he says, the words tumbling out of his mouth as soon as he presses the button and lifts the phone to his ear, and he hears ragged breathing on the other side.
“Jim,” she gasps, and he feels as though a weight has been lifted from his shoulders.
“Are you okay?” he asks, standing and starting to pace.
“I’m fine,” she says, and then she’s crying. “I wanted to tell you. I’m so sorry.”
“Mari,” he says, wishing that he could be next to her, wrap an arm around her shaking shoulders and hold her close. “I don’t care about that, I’m just glad to hear that you’re safe. You don’t know how worried I was.”
“I didn’t mean to,” she replies, and he can still hear the tears in her voice. He hates the sound, hates her choked gasps as she cries, but would take them any day over not hearing from her at all. “I wanted to tell you, I just couldn’t. Hawkmoth... “
“I know,” he says. “I understand.” And he does, more than she knows, and a knot of guilt forms in his stomach. He knows how it feels to want to tell, to share this incredible burden with your best friend, and he understands exactly what prevents that. “I’m just glad you’re okay. You don’t know how scared I was.”
“I know,” she says, and she sniffles. Her tears seem to be running out, and Jim takes a deep breath.
“What happened?” he says, and then it all comes spilling out. She talks about the plan they had, how she was going to be the distraction, how it all went wrong when they found Hawkmoth’s identity (and something in his chest clenches at that, the scar of an old betrayal aching again), and how the ladybugs repaired all the physical damage but they couldn't undo the unmasking. All of Paris knows who their hero is, after she’s worked so hard to keep it a secret.
“I was so worried you’d be upset,” she says. “It’s been such a big part of my life, and I wanted to tell you, but… ”
“I understand,” he says. “Superheroes always have a secret identity.” She gives an embarrassed laugh at that, and he could picture the blush spreading across her face. “Marinette, would you promise me something?”
“What?” He had been sitting down but now he stands, walking over to the window as he decides how exactly to make his request.
“Please, don’t do this again,” he says. “I know you’re a hero, I know you’re smart and capable and strong, but please. Don’t put yourself in danger like that again.”
“Jim… I don’t think I can promise that,” she says, and Jim nods. It’s part of the job, and he can’t make the same promise back. Though she doesn’t know it he's been as much danger as she was, if not more. And he probably will be again.
“I know, I know,” he sighs. “Just… be careful. Seeing you in danger, and I was too far away to do anything, and I… I haven’t even gotten to tell you…” he trails off as his mind catches up with his words. Tell her what? That she makes him smile more than anybody else, that hearing from her always makes his day better, that when he thought she might have been killed the world felt wrong until he heard her voice? All true, but not what he’d been about to say.
“Jim?” Marinette prompts, and he mentally shakes himself.
“We haven’t even gotten to meet,” he says. “In real life. And you’re not allowed to be hurt before that happens.”
“Right,” she says, a bit of a smile returning to her voice. “But all bets are off after, right?”
“It’ll be different after we meet!” A smile begins to tug at the corners of his mouth. “I’ll be able to protect you.”
“Which one of us is the superhero again?” And just like that they fall back into their usual easy banter, and it feels like nothing has changed. It’s like he always knew, like no secrets have ever hung between them, because more important than her being Ladybug is her being Marinette. Yet woven through it all is a pattern of relief, a whispered we’re here and we’re safe as steady as a heartbeat carrying their conversation.
They talk well into the early hours of the morning, and when his alarm wakes him Jim finds the phone fallen on the pillow next to him. They must have fallen asleep talking, as the phone informs him they spent far more hours on call than he remembers, and there’s a text from her. Goodnight Jim! Thank you.
He holds his phone to his chest and stares at the ceiling, eyes stinging from not enough sleep, and wonders just what he had been about to tell her.
—
They parked a news van outside her house. She kept the curtains drawn and couldn’t go out, communicated to her friends and other heroes over phone calls and video chats. The official press release had been delivered by Rena Rouge and Carapace. Chat Noir had vanished; Marinette told him that his identity wasn’t her secret to share, but he was safe and recovering. But Paris still wanted to hear from Ladybug, and she just wanted to be left alone.
Chloe had surprised both of them by hiring a full bodyguard detail to guard the shop. Marinette thought it was her way of apologizing for some of her earlier behaviour at school, but she was mostly grateful that she hadn’t asked any questions. Her parents were trying to run the shop but kept getting people who just wanted to meet her, and had ended up resorting to mainly doing deliveries to keep gawkers out of their house. Marinette couldn’t leave, and although she tried to stay positive Jim knew she was feeling trapped.
“Come stay with me,” Jim had said, the words out of his mouth before he could think them through. But it made sense. In America less people knew or cared about Ladybug’s secret identity; she could take a vacation and wait out the media storm, return when she could take a walk outside without needing to worry about paparazzi.
It had been a whirlwind of planning, dates and phone calls from both their parents, but the day has finally arrived. Chloe lent Marinette her private jet; her parents will follow in a few days once they can close down the shop and move into a small condo they’ll be renting. So Jim has prepared a spare bedroom, given what little Ladybug memorabilia he has to Toby with threats to keep him from showing her any of it, and warned the trolls that he’ll have a houseguest. He has not informed them that he’ll be telling her about being the Trollhunter. It’ll be easier to ask forgiveness than permission, when they don’t know Marinette like he does. She can keep a secret, and she deserves to know.
He had thought about bringing a sign, but was worried it might call unwanted attention so refrained. Now he wishes that he brought one, if only to have something to hold. What’s he supposed to do with his hands? It’s ridiculous, this is Marinette, but it’s also the first time they’ll be seeing each other in person and he can’t help but feel suddenly uneasy, like something will go very wrong the moment she steps off the plane. What if he steps forward to greet her and steps on her foot? Or trips and falls into her? And that breaks her nose? Or maybe he’ll knock her over completely, and...
His catastrophic thoughts ground to a halt the moment he sees a flash of hair so black it’s almost blue, and suddenly he’s running forward and so is she. They have never met each other before but they’re flying into each other’s arms, and she fits so perfectly it’s like they’ve done this a million times before.
“Hey,” he says, a little breathless as he pulls back to look at her in the eyes, and he’s smiling so broadly that his cheeks hurt. Marinette’s smile is even more beautiful in person.
“Hi,” she replies, and they stand there for a moment in each others’ arms only to jump apart when his mother clears her throat.
“Marinette, it’s good to meet you,” she says, pointedly ignoring the blush spreading across Marinette’s face. Jim can feel his own cheeks heating and suddenly finds the floor very interesting as he attempts to gather himself, to concentrate on all the words he was planning to say instead of only thinking of the way she felt in his arms.
“It’s lovely to meet you too Ms Lake,” Marinette says, composing herself quickly and holding out her hand.
“Please, call me Barbara.” His mom shakes her hand with a warm smile. “How was your flight?”
“It was good, thank you,” she says.
“First class treatment! What was it like?” Jim asks, and she grins at him.
“I saved you some of the pretzels,” she says, pulling out a package of them from her pocket.
“And this is why we’re friends,” he says, and she laughs.
“Because I give you food?”
“No other reason,” he says.
“Glad to hear your friendship is so easily bought,” she teases. “A single pack of stale airline pretzels?”
“Private jet pretzels,” he says. He returns her grin and then their smiles soften. “It’s really good to see you.” The words aren’t enough, can’t convey the sense of rightness he feels at having her here, but she seems to understand anyways.
“You too.” Marinette blushes and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. The moment is broken by a man clearing his throat, somebody who looks like he just walked out of a Men in Black movie which is contrasted by the pastel pink suitcase and duffel bag he’s holding.
“Excuse me ma'am, we can bring your luggage to the vehicle,” he says, and they’re both stepping forward in tandem.
“Oh, thank you but that’s okay,” she says, while he’s saying “I can take that for you,” and thankfully the man doesn’t fight as they pull the luggage from his hands (her with the duffel, him with her suitcase) because even with his Trollhunting-obtained muscle Jim’s not sure he would win a tug-of-war with him.
“Shall we?” his mom says, leading them out to the car, and Jim feels a rush of excitement as it begins to sink in that he can finally show Marinette his home.
“It’s not a limo, but I hope it’s fancy enough,” he says, and she rolls her eyes.
“I’m sure I’ll manage.” Then her mouth quirks up in a grin that he recognizes, and she takes off after his mom. “Race you!” she calls.
“You don’t even know which one is ours!” Jim shouts back, while trying to convince the wheels on her suitcase to maintain a pace they were never built for. They fall into the backseat with flushed cheeks and racing heartbeats, and he spends half the drive home pointing out things for her to finally put an image to and the other half admiring how much better she looks in person compared to a video feed.
—
The creaking floorboard wakes him up. Not that he’d been sleeping too well anyways, his dreams a confused muddle of anxiety he's thankful didn’t break out into a full nightmare. He considers rolling over and trying to go back to sleep, but then remembers that Marinette is here and there’s a chance Draal has ignored all of his warnings and decided a midnight snack is appropriate right now. It takes a moment to locate his house robe and shrugs it on over his pyjamas before creeping into the hallway. Marinette’s door is also open.
He finds her in the kitchen, softly opening cupboards. She’s already located a mug and it’s waiting on the kitchen island, and her eyes go wide and she winces an apology at him when she sees him.
“I didn’t want to wake you,” she says, and he shrugs as he heads for the drawer where they keep their tea bags.
“It’s fine,” he says, holding them up for her to inspect. “Chamomile?” She nods and he starts the kettle boiling. “Jet lag? Or something else?” She looks away, and the dark rims under her eyes are too pronounced to come from one night.
“I don’t think I want to talk about it right now,” she says, and Jim nods. He pours them both a cup and beckons her over to the couch.
“If we use subtitles we can watch something,” he says. “Unless you’d rather be alone.”
“No,” she says, sitting down next to him. She’s wearing a blanket over her shoulders and pulls it up, tucks it around her until only her head and her hand holding her tea are poking out. “Company is good.”
They don’t say anything else as Jim pulls up Beauty and the Beast (the Disney animated one, she’d told him years ago it was her comfort film) and sets the subtitles to French. They’d been speaking English all day with only occasional slips into French, but he thinks she might need something familiar right now. Halfway through the villagers singing about how strange Belle is she shifts and her free hand creeps out of the blankets to the couch cushion between them.
“I keep seeing their faces,” she whispers, the words solemn and heavy. “There were casualties when we fought him.” He hasn’t heard anything about casualties, probably because Lucky Charm always fixes everything at the end of the battle. Everything but the guilt in her voice, the fear in her eyes, the way she flinches when he reaches out and takes her hand in his.
“It was his fault,” he says. “Not yours.” Her breath hitches a little, and he knows she’s on the verge of tears. “You saved them. You did everything you could, and you won.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“What?” He turns and looks at her, the movie forgotten as he tries to figure out what on earth he has to be disappointed about.
“I know you admired her,” she says, her eyes flicking over his face. “Ladybug, I mean. And to find out that it’s just me, and that I’m…”
“Marinette, you’re amazing,” he says honestly, squeezing her hand. “You’re brave and selfless and kind, and the only difference between you and Ladybug was that she had superpowers. You’re a hero with or without them. I could never be disappointed.”
Maybe she moves towards him or he moves forward first, but however it happens they’re bundled together in a hug. She’s shaking, and Jim wishes more than anything that he could take this from her. She doesn’t deserve this burden even if she is strong enough to carry it, and it’s a tragedy she has to.
She pulls back a little and they watch Belle sing about adventure, still wrapped in an embrace made mostly of blankets, and when Maurice heads into the castle he shifts slightly and reaches forward for the box of tissues, silently offering it to her.
“Thank you,” she says, grabbing a few.
“I wish I could help more,” he says, and they both know he’s not talking about the tissues. She looks at him, eyes still a little too wet, and gives him a smile.
“You did,” she says, quiet conviction in her voice. “Jim, you were my rock. Some days the only thing that kept me sane was knowing that I’d be able to talk to you afterwards, even if I couldn’t tell you the details.” He tightens his arm around her shoulder but says nothing, and her face scrunches up in a frown. “It’s true, you know,” she says. “I didn’t need you fighting beside me. I just needed a friend. And you were always there, no matter what time it was or how little I was saying.”
Their minds are likely both flashing over other midnight conversations, texts sent in the middle of classes and calls made by sneaking out of study hall, and although they were sparse on some details like names and events they certainly hadn’t hidden how they were feeling.
He still feels guilty, still wishes that he could have been next to her in that final battle and all the previous ones, but he has to trust that whatever little he was able to offer was enough.
The movie goes on and he feels something in his chest tighten at the library scene, as all the characters sing about something there that wasn’t there before. But was it really, he wonders? He always wants to protect his friends, always wants to help people, but sometime when he wasn’t looking Marinette quietly claimed a piece of his heart that he only just realised was missing. Falling in love with her was so easy, so natural, that the landing was soft enough to go unnoticed.
“I think I’m in love with you,” he whispers as Beauty and her Beast dance through the dazzling ballroom, and his stomach falls at her silence until he looks down and realises she’s drifted off to sleep, head using his lap as a pillow and hands curling around the blanket.
I’ll tell her soon, he promises himself as his own eyelids start to droop. But they have time, and right now they both just need to rest.
—
It was an awful fact that whenever one promised to do something tomorrow the fated day never arrived, forever shoved aside in favor of endless todays until it's suddenly Marinette’s last day staying with him. She still likely has a few more months in Arcadia, but the packed suitcase in the hallway makes him feel like his window's closing. It was so easy to let their conversation be light and easy, to spend their days biking through the town and introducing her to his friends, that he’s managed to put it off until now. But today would be the day.
They’d planned a picnic. Just the two of them, and if he’d actually had this conversation before this could be their first date. She’d insisted on finding a red checkered blanket to spread on the ground (they’d eventually found one in a thrift store) and they’d made each other weird sandwiches (peanut butter, bacon, and banana for him, pear walnut for her), and everything was loaded in his picnic basket. The amulet was in his back pocket.
Maybe it’s better this way, he thinks, staring at his bike like it'll offer some sage wisdom for the situation. If she doesn’t feel the same it would be awkward if she was still in the same house. Or if the trolls freak her out he supposes she won't mind moving, but he can’t help but feel that confession will be the easier out of the two. After all, he’s met Tikki, and kwamis seem a bit more shocking than trolls.
“Ready to go?” Marinette asks, closing the door behind her, and Jim nods and smiles as she mounts her bike.
“No earrings?”
“I think Ladybug deserves a day off,” she says, and he wonders if Tikki knows some of what he wants to say and has decided to give them alone time. “Let’s go!”
She’d memorized the layout of the town very quickly, something she credited to years of biking being her main transportation through Paris. She also had a bad habit of looking for cars driving the wrong way while crossing the road, and he was trying to at least get her to look both ways before darting out into the street. His caution has sadly not yet caught on, and she’s quickly outpacing him as they ride towards the woods.
They dismount and leave their bikes behind a bush before walking further into the woods, Marinette admiring the surroundings with wide eyes.
“No forests in Paris?” Jim asks, and she shrugs.
“There’s some parks, but nothing this size,” she says. “And this is just here. You can walk in any direction and run into more forest.”
“Maybe we can go camping,” Jim suggests. “When your parents have gotten settled in, we can spend a weekend at Yosemite or something.” He hasn’t gone camping in years, but he’s learned plenty of wilderness survival skills from Blinky. Granted he was fairly certain only a few of them applied to humans, but it would still be fun. He’d probably find trollish lessons fun if he was doing them with Marinette.
They plan their camping trip as they cross a river, and Marinette’s laugh distracts Jim enough that his foot slips off a rock and ends up drenched in river water. She’s concerned at first but soon enough they’re both laughing over it, and they finally reach the clearing. Buttercups and daisies dot the grass between dandelions, and they spread the blanket and lie down, looking up at the cloudless sky.
“I bet the stars out here are beautiful,” Marinette says. “We have to come back some time at night and stargaze.”
“I can try and borrow Toby’s telescope,” Jim agrees. “Have you gone stargazing before?”
“Not really,” she says. “You can’t see too many in Paris from light pollution, and my nights were usually too busy to stop and look. You?”
“Same,” he says. “I’ve tried to pick out constellations a few times, but I’m terrible at it. They all look the same to me.”
“You just have to start with what you know!” Marinette says. “Find Orion’s belt or the Big Dipper and go from there.”
“So you have gone stargazing!” He props himself up on an elbow to look at her, and she shakes her head.
“No, I’ve just used star maps,” she says. “I was making a skirt design that used constellations and I wanted it to be accurate!”
“You know you could probably just make random dots and nobody would know the difference, right?”
“I would know the difference!” she says, sitting up. “Haven’t you ever taken pride in your work? Done it right for the sake of doing so?”
“Of course! I used to drive my mom crazy by insisting on making pie crusts from scratch.”
“They taste better that way!”
“Exactly! But I never had time to make them, so we went without pie for a while until I caved and went store bought.”
“Jim!” she gasps, her hand covering her mouth in faux horror. “Never let my parents hear you say that, they’ll never let us speak again!”
“Scandalous, I know!” he agrees. “But if I have you to ask for help I won’t need to resort to such desperate measures in the future.”
“You can spend all day baking with my dad, he’ll love it,” she says. “He thinks that’s the best way to get to know somebody, so expect an interrogation while making a layer cake.”
“An interrogation? Don’t they already know me?” Marinette blushes and looks away.
“They do, but not as well as they want to,” she says. He sits up, but she still refuses to meet her gaze. “After all, they think… well…”
Tell her now, his mind screams at him. This is the perfect time! But suddenly his tongue is made of lead. “Marinette,” he says, and it’s a wonder she can hear him over the sound of his suddenly too loud heartbeat. But hear she does, and her head turns towards him maybe a little too quickly.
“Yes?”
“I…” And despite how much he wants to tell her, for whatever reason the only words he can force out of his mouth are “Would you like a sandwich?”
“Oh,” she says, deflating a little. “Yeah, sure.” His hands tremble a little as he opens up the picnic basket and passes her the food. He grabs his as well; the plan is for them to take the first bite at the same time, but he’s not sure if he can manage to eat anything from the way his stomach is twisting. “Ready?” Marinette says with a grin, but it’s not as wide as it was before.
“Wait,” he says, and she wrinkles her nose at him.
“This is a bad time to tell me you’re allergic to peanut butter,” she says, and he smiles.
“Not that,” he says. “I was actually going to tell you… well, I…” She doesn’t say anything, just stares at him with eyes bluer than the sky, and Jim wonders why this moment is harder than leaping into the Darklands.
“Marinette, you’re a great friend,” he says, and he wants to kick himself as he sees her face fall. “That’s not what I meant!” he says, and now she just looks confused. “I mean, I wanted to say that while I love our friendship, I also… I might think of you as more. More than a friend.” HIs cheeks are ablaze and he can’t meet her gaze, instead choosing to focus on his sandwich. The pickle juice will make the bread soggy, but eating it is the last thing on his mind.
“Jim, is this a date?” Marinette asks, and her voice is soft enough that he can’t discern her feelings.
“Maybe,” he says. “It can be, if you want it to be.” And he’s so ready to hear her gently turn him down (he knows she likes Adrien, and he’s just Jim! He can’t hold a candle to an actual model) that he almost misses her reply.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Yes, I’d like this to be a date.” He looks at her, and he’s never seen anybody look as happy as she does in that moment.
“You mean you-”
“Yeah,” she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I think I’ve liked you for a while now. I just wasn’t sure how to bring it up.”
“Me neither,” he says. “I thought Adrien-”
“We’re friends,” she says. “And Claire?”
“Friends,” he says. They went on a date once and it was terribly awkward, and at the end they agreed a platonic relationship was better. But he doesn’t want to think about Claire right now, not when Marinette is there and she apparently likes him too. “I figured it out when I was watching the battle,” he confesses.
“Because you learned I was Ladybug?” she asks, and he shakes his head.
“Because I realised I couldn’t lose you,” he says. “It was more of a catalyst than a deciding factor.” It’s not Ladybug he fell in love with, it’s Marinette and all the little things about her that make her extraordinary.
“I figured it out on the plane ride over,” she says. “Alya told me to tell her all the details about ‘my new boyfriend’ and I spent the whole flight thinking about that.”
“Oh,” he says, and his cheeks are beginning to hurt from his smile. “I should have told you sooner, shouldn’t I?”
“Yes!” Marinette agrees with a laugh. “We could have been dating this whole time!”
“It’s only been a few days,” he says. “And besides, I don’t think we would have done anything too different.” Now that he thinks about it a lot of their excursions around the town could have been dates: going to the museum, petting the dogs in the pet shop, eating at his favourite cafe, visiting the library.
“I could have done this sooner,” she says, and she leans forward and kisses him. It’s a quick peck on his cheek, but he feels as though a shock of electricity has gone through him. “Sorry,” she says, pulling back. “I should have asked first.” But he puts down his sandwich and reaches out for her, slowly cupping her cheek.
“May I?” he asks, and she nods. And he lowers his lips to hers.
It’s not like a dream, or something magical. It’s better than that because it’s real, he’s really and truly here with Marinette and they are kissing, and when he finally pulls back he can’t help but marvel at the flushed and beaming expression she’s wearing because of him.
“You’re lucky I did that before I ate the sandwich,” he says, and she laughs.
“I’d let you even with pickle breath,” she says, and not even the strange food combinations they’ve made can cause their smiles to dim. They eat and exchange the second half of their sandwiches, and drink lemonade and eat apples and toss the cores as far as they can (he’s got more strength, but yo yo throwing has made her accuracy unbeatable). And as the shadows are beginning to lengthen he doesn’t want to leave, exit this perfect afternoon and go to the next moment where he’ll have to let the rest of the world into this new and wonderful thing, but decides that since the future will hold second and third dates and hopefully many dates after that it won’t be so terrible letting this one end.
“I'm really glad that you finally told me,” she says as they pack up the picnic, shaking the crumbs off the blanket before folding it. “Despite how hard it was to get the words out.”
“Next time I’ll just use Romeo’s speech,” he says. “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Marinette is the sun.”
“I’ll need to brush up on my Shakespeare if I want to keep up,” she says, and he shrugs.
“If you want, but I can’t think of anything better than you,” he says. “The words you speak, I mean. And the way you say things.” His cheeks are burning again, but she smiles at him and gives him another kiss.
“Sometimes you talk too much,” she says, and he nods and kisses her again. All good things must come to an end, as kisses are limited by lung capacity, but he can’t bring himself to mind now that the prospect of many more kisses await both of them in the future.
“If this is the result, I don’t think I mind being unmasked,” she tells him, and he nods. “Plus, we don’t need to play the awkward secret identity game this way.” With a flash he remembers that there were two things he wanted to tell her about, and while he doesn’t think this will be a dealbreaker he’d much rather get it out of the way sooner rather than later. He’s learned his lesson about hiding things from Marinette.
“Actually, there was one more thing I wanted to tell you about,” he says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the amulet.
#my fic#jimari#jiminette#ml fic#trollhunters fic#jim lake jr#marinette dupain cheng#trollhunters#miraculous ladybug#today on fics that turned out much longer than i thought they'd be#'i can write fluff!' i say 4k words into this. 'it just takes some time!'#i don't think i'm capable of writing about these characters without thinking about the implications#jimari secret santa 2020
15 notes
·
View notes
Note
can i ask why is the staged finale so important to the story?
because if the only people who knew it was staged were dream and punz (i dont think sam knew because he seemed to truly believe the prison was made for tommy) then all the damage and trauma the whole incident inflicted on tommy, tubbo and other characters is still the same. it doesn't really make it any better. tubbo still believed he was going to die and so on.
like i get why dream apologists cling to it like lifeline- dream mustn't be all evil if it was staged right? but overall, unless they plan on doing a huge reveal and have a big arc about it, i cant see how it changes anything
btw i don't doubt the finale was staged, i just don't see how its so important and you seem like a person who knows their lore
I'd say it changes more about c!Dream's character than the story at large, but still has a significant impact on the story. This got kind of rambly and long so I am putting it under a cut.
1. This isn't my first time seeing it, and I always find it odd that the assumption of people who were never that into Staged Finale is that the main point of the Staged Finale theory has been making c!Dream "better" somehow. Morally, that is. I don't doubt it's the reason some c!Dream apologists clung to theory, but it wasn't the reason I was in favor of it. I liked the idea of the Finale being staged not because it makes c!Dream Less Evil, but because it keeps him a consistent character. BlueBell talked about how genuine Finale made c!Dream inconsistent here.
2. The Disc Finale is staged. All of it. The Attachment vault, including the Skeppy Cage, were never going to be used. The monologue c!Dream gave c!Tommy about how he needed him to continue bringing attachment to the server was a lie. c!Dream was never going to kill c!Tubbo. You are right in saying this in no way diminishes how traumatizing the event was for c!clingyduo, but as I've said, that wasn't the point of it all. All of this doesn't serve to make c!Dream morally better as much as it serves to show just how complex of a character he is. In the Finale, he ticks off all the boxes of the Stereotypical Pure Evil Villain criteria: he has the evil monologues, the simplistic motivation of control, the arrogant dramatics, etc. Staged Finale reveals that the Stereotypical Villain was an act, a persona.
This gives c!Dream a lot more depth and counters the perception many in the fandom have of c!Dream as the one exception to the server's "everyone is morally grey" rule. And I'd like to clarify that by saying c!Dream is morally grey, I'm not saying all his actions are justifiable, it's just that Morally Black or Morally White characters tend to lack depth and exist mainly to fill out a role in the narrative. c!Dream is not that character. He has his own internal worldview and does not exist solely to serve c!Tommy's, or anyone else's, narrative.
3. This is more a matter of opinion, but I always found the Disc Finale kind of sucky, as I talked about here. It followed conventional story structure but did so in a manner that didn't appeal to me. The Finale being staged has massive implications for the writing of the Dream SMP and what the writers are capable of when it comes to storytelling, especially when it comes to foreshadowing and long-term planning. What people put down to bad writing turned out to in fact be intentional.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Staged Finale is that to further his plans, c!Dream utilized narrative conventions, in-universe, without breaking the fourth wall, which is something I have never heard of in a story before. He handcrafted a Hero's Journey for c!Tommy, and the perfection of it all was part of what made his plan so convincing both for c!Tommy himself and the fandom. This aspect of the Dream SMP story — characters using narrative conventions in-universe — is something I find very very interesting.
4. I do not think the initial reveal is the end of the Staged Finale's impact. Other characters will likely learn about it and have to deal with this new information, which will be interesting to witness. I'm especially interested in how c!Sam will react when he learns that c!Dream trusted him not to abuse his power. Especially considering how c!Sam grasps onto every opportunity of justifying himself. It'll be a trainwreck and I am going to enjoy it immensely.
So even though it may seem like not much has changed, yet, I'm sure more changes are still to come.
There is probably more to be said on Staged Finale, especially by someone more knowledgeable in storytelling than me, but this is all I have on the matter. TL:DR It massively changes c!Dream's characterization, making him consistent, has great implications for the writing of the Dream SMP and is sure to have a bigger impact on the story than what we've seen so far.
512 notes
·
View notes
Text
Part 1 - Basic Concepts of Miraculous Ladybug: Miraculous Jewels
Alright! I promised you meta and now I deliver!
I feel like people mostly watch Miraculous for the romance these days. Shipping is all everyone cares about. I wonder why? Probably because writers themselves don't take their worldbuilding very seriously and because they don't put much effort into making the audience care about something other than Love Square, like the mythology behind the Miraculous, or motivations of the main villain, or some pretty heavy topics for a kid's show that they bring up and then refuse to touch again. You know, all the good things. And this is coming from someone who is a passionate multishipper. I have lived through several shipping wars in different fandoms and came out victorious after all.
I am probably the only person out there who cares about the big picture, the overall storyline and the worldbuilding of Miraculous in addition to all details and implications that could develop into fascinating plotlines relevant to the main story. It is a rather lonely fandom experience, I must confess. But, hey? Who cares? I am here to have fun and bring to the table discussions no one wants to have.
So, let's talk about the basics.
If you, as the writing team, are capable of keeping only 1 thing consistent, then please, I beg you, let it be the basic concepts of your universe. Because in this case, one has to actively put effort into writing characters and conflict resolutions badly. And also because nothing can save bad worldbuilding.
I don't have high worldbuilding standards for Miraculous. They certainly aren't as high as the ones I had for Legend of Korra (which was a badly written trainwreck, that ATLA doesn't deserve as a sequel) or the ones I currently have for Dragon Prince. Therefore I won't be too harsh in my criticisms. Granted, I think that Miraculous has better worldbuilding and lore consistency than Winx Club for example (I haven't seen the reboot yet, so writers might have fixed their worldbuilding at least a little bit). Even though I enjoyed Winx when I was younger and some elements of this story still attract me.
Both serialised and episodic shows as well as movies to the lesser extent must have some flexibility in worldbuilding and plot because you can never be 100% sure where your story is going. Maybe, you'll get money for more seasons, maybe not. However, you must never lose sight of your basic concepts. They have to stay the same no matter what, because rewriting lore and retconning major developments every new season is not and never will be called good writing.
Forgive me for using architectural metaphors, but you need a solid foundation to build any kind of structure. Otherwise, everything falls apart.
I like to apply this logic to writing as well. When designing a world where your story takes place, you must lay a few ground rules. It's especially important if you have a magic system. What kind of ideas absolutely must exist? What kind of conclusion do you want your story to have? Does your magic system has limitations? Where is the grey area? Could you introduce new elements later on?
And I feel like the writing team of Miraculous Ladybug did not ask these questions. This may feel like I am nit-picking canon material and looking for problems that simply aren't there, but I promise that I am not. You see, things that I am about to point out only seem small at first glance. But these details are actually the source of the largest plotholes in the series. And their presence negatively affects character development, conflicts and resolutions of said conflicts.
That doesn't mean that I have nothing good to say about the magic system of the show and its elements. There are a lot of great ideas and concepts. And some of them have the potential to contribute to the delightful story.
Let's dive right into it, shall we?
Camouflage
I have to give credit where it's due because the idea of camouflage and shapeshifting for Miraculouses is brilliant. It seems like Miraculous can't fundamentally change its type of jewellery or accessory. The ring will always be the ring but with a different ornament, colour or shape. This is true most of the time (Monkey Miraculous is an exception since it transformed into earplugs/headphones/headband/circlet) It makes sense and avoids plotholes. Grimoire doesn't have the pictures of each Miraculous in disguise for identity protection. That was very neat too. I have no comments. This concept was very good.
Also, since Marinette wore a nose ring of the Ox in "Kwamibuster" without any problem and Adrien wore Ladybug's earrings in "Reflekdoll", we can assume that you don't need to have piercings to wear a Miraculous. Miraculous just magically passes through your skin.
I'm interested to know the following. Can Kwamis recognise a camouflaged Miraculous on a person? Can the holder order them to confess the identity of this person? This shouldn't be possible for identity protection just like with Kwamis sensing each other. But more on that in later posts.
Power Levels
For a long time, we assume that there are only 7 Miraculouses. Turtle belongs to Master Fu, Gabriel has Butterfly and Peacock, Marinette and Adrien have Ladybug and Black Cat. Everything is pretty straightforward. Then it's revealed that there are more jewels and more boxes. It makes the worldbuilding interesting, but it also majorly complicates things, making them inconsistent.
Their position in the Miracle Box implies their power levels. Creation and destruction are the most powerful forces in existence, therefore they are at the top. Moreover, it makes this Box the most important, the most powerful out of all others. Su Han in "Furious Fu" calls it "Mother Miracle Box". Fox, Turtle, Bee, Butterfly and Peacock have less power than the main pair, but more than the Miraculous of the lower Zodiac tier (since they correspond with animals of the Chinese Zodiac).
1. Ladybug can create anything out of nothing (Lucky Charm, which gives what you need the most at the moment). This Miraculous can resurrect the dead, reverse the effects of the Cataclysm. The power of Miraculous Cure or Miraculous Ladybug can work in several ways:
it simply repairs the damage (puts stuff back together, heals injuries and so on)
it reverses time for the matter, restoring things back to the state they were before the destruction occurred (however, the Cure doesn't erase people's memories of everything that happened unless they were mind-controlled, frozen in place or transformed by Akuma into something else - this is an important point that I'll discuss some other time)
How does Miraculous Cure work when there are no supervillians? In NY Special Marinette just says this.
Excuse me, what? What was that? You can't do anything when the villain is gone? What the hell?
*insert here every scene where Ladybug fixed Paris after destroying akumatized/amokized object (this action causes the Akuma victim to detransform/sentimonster to disappear - villain is gone) and purifying butterfly and feather*
It was such cheap angst. I couldn't even be upset when Adrien gave up his Miraculous, because that whole situation is just stupid. But, never mind. We aren't talking about that today.
Apparently, Lucky Charm and Miraculous Cure only work when summoned to battle a specific villain. What is the point then? Huh? You can't tell me that Ladybug has the power of unlimited creation and then say that she can't repair the damage without a special Lucky Charm that was magically synchronised with specific big bad of the week.
Ladybug also can purify Akumas. It makes sense for Ladybug to have the ability to reverse the magic of less powerful Miraculous. But this power can't be applied universally. How does this power of reversal apply to different situations where there is no evil Butterfly holder? Can Ladybug reverse the magic of any Miraculous?
The unlimited power of creation introduced in season 4 ("Mr. Pidgeon 72") is another fascinating thing. On one hand, it's logical and proves the status of this Miraculous as the most powerful. On the other hand, by introducing this power, you have created a plothole. Look, Marinette can create the charm which repels Akumas. If Ladybug can create anything then what stops her from creating a tool for finding Hawkmoth (like special glasses for discovering identities or a compass)? I mean, the show says that the power of creation is unlimited, it means that the creation of such tool is possible.
2. Black Cat can destroy anything with Cataclysm, even other Miraculous. He can kill living things and turn them into ash, but not himself. This Miraculous is supposed to have other special abilities that we don't see. And they should be equal to powers of Ladybug, both in number and in potency. Unfortunately, after 3 seasons writers didn't give us anything. It makes laughable the idea of balance between Ladybug and Black Cat.
Now, to the second tier. These Miraculouses have a singular ability, but they need a second one to keep the power balanced between Zodiac and the main pair.
3. Butterfly creates champions with different superpowers. But how does the time limit of children work for Butterfly? In theory, the countdown should start right after the creation of the Akuma since for Ladybug and Chat Noir countdown starts after activation of their powers even if they don't use them. However, if the countdown of the Butterfly begins after Akuma creation then there's no point because the holder has to stay transformed to guide their champion. The charged butterfly won't have time to even grant powers before the transformation of the child-holder drops. This issue is never explored because Gabriel doesn't have a time limit. However, I feel like it should be addressed in flashbacks of past Butterfly holders for example.
This Miraculous should be less powerful than Ladybug and Black Cat. It's often not. Some Akumas are too overpowered. Stormy Weather can move the Earth away from the Sun, Timetagger can send people through time and jump through time as well, Chat Blanc destroyed the world with a single energy blast, Miraculer could steal powers of those more powerful than her by default. These are the most notable examples. One could argue that Chat Blanc was a different case. Hawkmoth simply gave the most powerful Miraculous a boost. However, we know that even without a holder (the wildest and the most powerful form of uncontrolled Miraculous magic) Plagg's Cataclysm can't destroy the universe just like that (he presumably wiped out dinosaurs and sunk Atlantis on his own without a holder). I think that the less powerful Miraculous (Butterfly) shouldn't be able to increase the power of destruction to such a degree and give Black Cat the power to destroy celestial bodies and galaxies.
Writers want us to see Hawkmoth as the formidable villain. But it's not easy because he is less powerful than your main heroes by default of your worldbuilding. Sometimes writers make the Butterfly more powerful than creation and destruction to raise the stakes, breaking the laws of their magic system. So, how do you solve this? Let Ladybug and Black Cat keep their status as the most powerful and instead of giving Hawkmoth more magical power, make him smarter, more cunning, inventive. Gabriel is a fashion designer, whose creativity makes him a very good Butterfly holder. He has a life full of experience, he knows much more about things than the main teenage characters. Catalyst was very interesting for this very reason. Gabriel sort of discovered a cheat code to boost his powers. Show us how he experiments with his powers, how he analyses his past Akumas and tries to find the most effective ones. Maybe Gabriel tries to design Akumas that can specifically neutralise Ladybug and Chat Noir. This exploration could also give writers an opportunity to explain how the powers of Butterfly work. Can he control the type of powers he grants? Can he control the appearance of Akumas? There are many things to be explored.
4. Peacock creates sentimonsters. I remember that fans were very disappointed when the power of the Peacock was revealed at the end of season 2. I was one of them. The concept of Amoks is far too similar to akumatized butterflies. Other Miraculouses have unique abilities and keywords for their powers, while Peacock just looks like Butterfly 2.0. That glowing mask effect just adds insult to injury.
You have to start by figuring out the powers of the Peacock in a normal situation. If a holder is a good person, then how does their power work? For example, make them related to sight (because of the "eye" pattern on feathers). Maybe, Peacock grants the ability to see the several possibilities of the future, but only a few minutes ahead. Maybe, this Miraculous gives you the ability to see through someone's eyes for a few minutes (and the victim is completely unaware of the intrusion). Perhaps, Peacock allows the holder to use feathers (or tiny peacocks) as cameras one at a time and be all-seeing. These feather-spies can be destroyed by the holder or disappear on their own after some time. Such power could be devastating when used against heroes in canon.
5. Bee can paralyze. This power is pretty straightforward. Once I read a fanfiction focused on very vell done Chloe Redemption, where she fights alongside Ladybug and Chat Noir. Eventually, she grows and becomes a better person. This fic ends with an Akuma battle, where LB and CN are trapped and Akuma is ready to kill them. But Chloe uses a second power of the Bee on the villain - Miraculous Stinger. It's deadly both for the holder and for the victim (because bees die when they sting someone). Chloe kills the Akuma with a Stinger before it can get LB and CN, but she too dies making the ultimate irreversible sacrifice. I will add a link if I find it again.
6. Turtle can create a shield. I don't have much to say on this either. It feels underpowered compared to others in the second tier. Maybe Turtle can also slow down opponents (because turtles aren't the fasters animals out there).
7. Fox creates illusions and acts as their puppeteer. In order to create a balance between other powers, these illusions must hold for as long as the holder needs them to. I propose this mostly because we see that Venom of the Bee lasts very long, the shield of the Turtle lasts either until it's destroyed or the holder wants to remove it, same goes for Akumas and sentimonsters who disappear only when the holder wants them to or their affected object is destroyed.
Let's talk about Zodiac tier. Miraculous of the third tier shouldn't have the second ability like more powerful ones. These powers are the most inconsistent. Even if we haven't seen all of them yet.
8. Mouse can create many small clones of the holder. It is unclear how these clones communicate with each other and how many of them this Miraculous can create. The holder can control the number of clones. This power was very convenient in "Kwamibuster" and it makes sense symbolically for the mouse. What activates the time-limit for children? Marinette didn't have any problems with it when she became Multimouse.
9. Snake can create a 5-minute time loop and has the ability to come back in time. This Miraculous feels a bit overpowered for the Miraculous of the Zodiac Tier. The holder can reset the time as many times as he/she needs to. It's was a good source of drama and trauma in "Desperada". I was honestly surprised that Adrien was capable of fighting after spending months in a loop. But this doesn't change the fact that Snake is overpowered. You can give this Miraculous the power to hypnotise or keep the time ability but place a limit on the number of resets. How does the lyre work as a weapon? Who knows? No one!
10. Dragon can shapeshift into elements: water, wind and lightning. It has the coolest transformation words hands down (Bring the Storm and Open Sky). Apparently this Miraculous doesn't have the time limit.
11. Rabbit can time travel or jump through alternative realities, even writers aren't sure. Time-travel in this show is so badly written it gives me a headache. This Miraculous shouldn't exist just like its powers. Snake belongs to the same tier, but 5 minutes and whole centuries of time jumps aren't comparable in power levels. They are not and this is the hill I will die on. Give the Rabbit powers related to its symbolism in China like an ability to de-age people, heal them or give them a speed boost in contrast with Turtle who might have the ability to slow down.
This Miraculous is so special that its Kwami - Fluff can live separately from his Miraculous in a Miracle Box for millennia (Fluff lives in the Box in "Sandboy", but his Miraculous, pocket watch, was passed down for generations in Alix's family). This is a discussion for a separate post, however. There's a lot to unpack. We'll do that some other time. You will suffer with me but at a later date.
12. Horse can create portals. They could lead anywhere, which is pretty cool. On the other hand, this power is not very useful in direct combat, especially when it's used by a child since we can have only one portal per transformation.
13. Monkey can cause a malfunction in powers of other people. What is the point of this? This power was specifically created by writers to defeat Akuma in "Party Crasher". That's it. What if your target is not magical? How does this Miraculous work in different circumstances?
14. Pig shows people their greatest desire. Both the holder and the recipient of this power can see this desire. Chat Noir wasn't impressed in "Guiltrip" and neither was I. It's underpowered compared to other Miraculous in this tier. Also, why does the tambourine can shoot energy beams? Why?
That's all I have to say on the matter. I'll update the power analysis as needed.
#miraculous ladybug#ml#miraculous analysis#miraculous meta#ml meta#ml analysis#miraculous transformations#miraculous critical#miraculous ladybug critical#miraculoustalesofladybugandcatnoir#mt of lb and cn#miraculous jewels
47 notes
·
View notes
Note
If you think their stories lacked empathy do you think Hama and Jet were redeemable? I don't hate Iroh or Azula or Zuko tbc, I'm just hearing a lot of people say it's unfair that people from the fire nation got to change when the people the Fire Nation hurt weren't.
My answer to the question of ‘could this character be redeemable’ is almost always going to be ‘yes’, unless the character in question is the literal embodiment of all evil or something. Galactus? Probably not redeemable, he’s a massive planet eater with no real conscious thought except, well, eating planets.
Can be redeemed is not the same as should be redeemed, though, and it also isn’t the same as ‘with the way this story has been constructed and executed thus far, I think a redemption would make sense’. Sometimes, the hero just has to kill the villain, or at least put them down/imprison/otherwise depower them to keep them from being a threat. (I’d argue that Ozai could not have reasonably been redeemed, given the story that was set up, and also that he wasn’t actually sufficiently depowered, and that even if Aang wasn’t gonna kill him, he should have been brought before a tribunal and executed for crimes against the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes, and that leaving him alive indefinitely is the reason the New Ozai Society was able to gain traction, because his political power was not intrinsically tied to his bending, but that’s another rant altogether.) And, typically, if there is a villain getting redeemed, there needs to be a Bigger Bad who gets put down in their stead. (Zhao was this for book 1 Zuko. Palpatine was this for Vader. Etc.)
The reason I say that just about any villain you could name (barring, again, eldritch abominations or The Literal Embodiment of Evil) is redeemable is because redemption, when boiled down to its bare essentials, is simply this: the choice to do and be better.
Every sentient being is capable of making this choice, and so that possibility exists for every fictional sentient being, too--whether or not it would make sense for their character is entirely dependent on the surrounding narrative, and also their overall character arc. There is no real ‘point of no return’ for the ability to make this choice--however, there usually is such a point for the audience’s ability to believe they reasonably would make that choice. The farther down the path of villainy the character has gone--the more harm they’ve caused, the more people they’ve killed, the more evil they’ve done--the harder it will be to accept that they would ever actually decide to change.
This can be offset, of course, by giving the villain a sympathetic backstory and reasons for their actions--cool motive, still murder will usually apply, but if you write it well enough, you can believably chronicle the villain’s journey to the side of good. Some of your audience may not think it’s enough--for some people, any villain redemption for someone who did anything worse than say some mean things to another character is ‘villain apologism’ and not to be tolerated--but if the narrative scaffolding surrounding a given villain is sturdy enough, a majority of readers/viewers will accept it.
(As a side-note, a villain redeeming themselves is not--or should not be--reliant on the people they’ve hurt forgiving them. That can also be included, of course, but just as it’s entirely in character for some villains that they just would never make the choice to be better people, it’s in character for some heroes that they cannot forgive someone once they’ve done enough harm. Everyone has a breaking point, and if you’re going to go the ‘everyone forgives and welcomes them to the hero group’ route, that will need to be set up and constructed believably as well.)
Now that I’ve rambled for ages about redemption itself, I come to the actual point of your ask: yes, I do believe Hama and (especially) Jet were redeemable, and I do believe the fact that a man complicit in war and genocide for decades was allowed, by the narrative, to choose to be a good person and do good in the world, while characters who were victims of the war helmed by that man’s family were not granted the same dignity of that potential choice.
If either Hama or Jet had their stories end differently--if Jet had been allowed to heal on his own terms, without being brainwashed into being Nice and then killed off and only referenced once in the rest of the show via an off-hand joke about his casual demise, or if there had been a line or two at the end of The Puppetmaster where Katara expressed regret for what Hama had become and perhaps hope for being able to return for her, after the war, and get her the help she desperately needed (rather than appearing content to leave her languishing in the Fire Nation prison that was the source of her trauma), then it may not have seemed so much like the narrative was saying ‘victims of trauma who do not react in appropriately pacifistic ways will be punished for their anger’. But because both of them were treated so cavalierly at the end of their respective arcs/episodes, it leaves some unfortunate implications, particularly when contrasted with Iroh’s pre-series redemption, and the way so many fans call for Azula to be redeemed because ‘she’s a traumatized 14-year-old girl’ without extending the same to the traumatized 16-year-old boy who was basically murdered on-screen.
Jet was no worse, in terms of his character and his crimes, than Azula--little miss ‘I’m gonna suggest Daddy burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground’ does not have any moral superiority to lord over anyone. Hama was no worse than Iroh, when you consider the deaths he was responsible for as a wartime general with decades of military service under his belt, nevermind the siege of Ba Sing Se that was nearly two years long. If they both could believably be redeemed--if, as Azula stans so frequently claim, she deserved a redemption arc after everything she went through--then so could Jet and Hama. And the fact that the latter did not get that treatment, but instead were figuratively (and literally, really) left to rot by the narrative, while it could be seen as a consequence of the realities of war, still has unfortunate implications when you consider the way the characters who had ‘appropriate’ responses to trauma left by the war were treated.
246 notes
·
View notes
Note
Hi, I'm writing a zombie apocalypse story with a main character who is blind. I'm debating on whether or not to include a zombie animal that follows them about and protects them from threats. I don't know if it would be offensive. For further context the main character has already survived months without the zombie animal protector. I thought the idea of one was cute at first. But then I started to worry that it might imply that the main character isn't capable of surviving by themselves.
Hi!
I think it could be cute. Just have some moments where the animal is protected and cared for, too. It should balance out. Having the blind character help or save the animals will balance things and avoid any implications of helplessness.
14 notes
·
View notes
Note
Hi I'm a new reader! I love your JayRae fics!!!! I admit I was skeptical at first but when I started reading your fics but I fell in love with this ship!!! So I'm wondering what is the reason you shipped JayRae and how did you had the idea on shipping them? since they don't have any interaction in comics and in animations
Hello,
I’m glad you’re enjoying the stories, and I hope you continue to join us on the JayRae ship as it is a lot of fun!
As to shipping them, they have one canon interaction ever; other than the speculation of Jason Todd being Red Red X (and even then, only one significant interaction).
When Jason, in the comics as Red Hood, broke into the Titan’s Tower to beat the ever living shit out of Tim and his teammate he didn’t raise a hand to Raven, instead he gave her a sleeping aid to keep her mind asleep and he wished her good dreams, saying Raven had always warned him of his anger and had tried to help him. The insinuation alone implicates that perhaps Raven and Jason had had a friendly, if impersonal, relationship before his death. It also insinuates that Raven might have been trying to help Jason, as Robin to get over his anger, or learn not to be lead by it. Also, in the comics, this is not off the 80′s ones, but rather when Raven’s on Tim’s Titan’s team, it makes them roughly the same age, younger or older is unclear, but as Raven’s always de-aged, I get the sense that she is roughly between Jason and Tim in terms of age. So in these aspects, it is a unique idea that perhaps Raven and Jason had formed a slight bond, like she has with the other Robins.
Then there’s the RaeX angle, where Raven asks is Red X needs a lift when he lands on the yellow school bus strapped to a rocket; there’s more expression in that scene between those two than the other characters. Raven’s face and exasperation and Red X’s bafflement are just priceless.
My shipping of Jason and Raven; while they would look nice together, actually has very little to do with their looks. I like Jason and Raven together because of their base personalities. I believe I stated in an earlier post that this was a main reason, but there’s also the reason of a lot of what they’ve lived through.
Jason and Raven appear to have similar bases in certain aspects. And in many others they are a complete contrast to one another. Which is a good part of the fun.
On one hand you have Jason, who is a wild card personality. He’s very passionate, very intelligent, lethal, and he’s a very strong personality type. He’s known for being run by his emotions, however he’s also shown to be brutally cold logic wise, he’s always in command of his situations, but rarely in control of himself.and is capable of making truly hard calls. Jason is intensely loyal, and he’s temperamental and shown to let his temper rule him, however he is not completely unjust in his ruthless capabilities. Jason’s ability to be ruthless though is what makes him a great wild card, because of how far he would and could go for everyone he loves and cares about is known and it’s impressively terrifying.
On the other hand you have Raven, who is a stable personality. She is very cold, apathetic, highly intelligent, lethal, and she’s also a contrasting strong personality type. She’s ruled by logic, showing a level head even in the head of a crisis, she’s a quiet person, who keeps much to herself, she’s always in control of herself, and not exceptionally emotional. However, her emotions run deep, unwavering, true and unyielding; they are a drive of many of her abilities, her emotions; like for Jason, are a fuel of inner strength and power. Her intense loyalty, and unwavering kindness is what keeps her from embracing her darker nature and helps her keep her humanity. Rather than letting herself be utterly ruthless; though she’s been shown to be on occasion.
Together, their contrast is similar to fire and water. I think Jason would brink out the best of Raven, bring her out of her comfort zones, and make her live a little. He would embrace her demon heritage as another part of her and he could and would let her be herself without pushing her to be different from who she truly is. In contrast, I think Raven would be able to dampen some of Jason’s rage, she’d be able to embrace who he is, and what he is capable of without much judgement known she could be like him. She’s bring out the best in him, in many ways, and I think Jason would bring the best out in Raven in many ways. But I also think their ability to bring out the best in each other can also be the greatest ability of confronting the worst the other has to offer.
The contrasting personalities, and the contrasting behaviors would make them as a team almost unbeatable. The contrast of them as a team leaders is something I think would benefit Jason’s Outlaws; Jason’s ability to lead on the fly, forming plans on the go and Raven’s ability for keeping level in a fight and a level head in the thick of chaos is a good contrast. The complementary personalities would lead to little conflict because the two would be in tune with each other, as empathetic souls they are.
Then there’s the contrast in their abilities.
Raven is a DC true powerhouse character, who is rightfully over powered but never over played. She’s the only daughter of Trigon, she’s the most powerful empath in DC continuity, and her possibly power ability, with her heritage, makes her something to be revered and feared. Jason is one of the most lethal characters in DC, shown evading Lady Shiva’s punches, besting Deathstroke, beating his brothers and Batman, while also being trained by the All-Caste, the League of Assassins, Batman, and in some continuities, Deathstroke. So, I think that there is nothing either party could do which would unsettle or unnerve their counter party.
Also, Raven and Jason are extremely empathetic souls, with great compassion and great empathy for survivors and victims, they love without conditions when they love, and when they rage it is with every ruthless part of their being. Though morally and ethically they contrast it is rather like Jason’s and Cass’s contrast in morals and ethics. I think that while they would be a grand contrast this way, their ability to level each other out would have them frequently working well together. No, I do not believe their partnership would be without conflict, and without pain of different opinions, but I also don’t think this would lead to them berating, belittling, and hurting each other. I do not think they would be degrading and tearing each other down, but rather confront their conflicts, and probably strive to solutions and compromises; though it wouldn’t be easy for they are two unyielding personalities.
And then there is the matter of Jason and Raven are my two favorite characters in DC, with their complexities, personalities, and they are the two characters I relate to best. They are also frequently given the shaft in terms of writers who: deage them, write them OOC, or just fucking destroy them to drive them away from their families, friends or teammates. So I decided that I want to write them together, not as a ship always, but as friends for sure, and maybe stop isolating my two favorite characters.
I don’t ship Jason and Raven as a just romantic pair, I love the idea of them being friends, and the bond that would bring about, and yes, I love the romance angle; I do, but after writing a lot of romances and living a bit more in my life than being a teenager I find that relationships are in general a lot more complex than presented. Jason and Raven, I believe would have not only a great romance when and if they got to that point in their relationship, but they would also have a truly great friendship which could be forged in Hell, and tested to be unbreakable and unwavering, the romance would be just as intense and calming as the friendship if you ask me.
Overall, I think they would be good for each other. Rather like a raven and a wolf being friends. Something unique, and unfathomable, but also something familiar and comfortable.
18 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
fireballn
sol
akikazekotogakko
Akikaze Koto Gakko
umudubitmisgokyuzu-blog
Y A S E M I N
dw-523
洛洛性福大放送+LINE：dw523 微信+lang809090
vvh1sk3y
✿ whiskey ✿