#so it’s not as focused as the other posts but
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So on my recent revisit of centaur bodyplan challenges on my Centaur Wheelchairs post there was some talk of how centaurs would be stretching to make up for the decompression horses usually get in their backs when they graze, and also I've just seen a few tags and other notes curious about centaurs stretching and folding so.. here ya go! Some new stretches focused on stretching more like how horses do with their necks, and then just a collection of all my wibbly wobbly Big Stretch! and general range of motion doodles
#centaurs#for once not asked and answered!#range of motion#basics#centaur basics#call and response#sort of#covering it because there was quite a few tags I was seeing#and then somone on my last post theorizing!
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So I am not a painter and color/value is actually one of the biggest things I struggle with, but I've been doing 15-minute painting studies of clouds before finally moving onto more solid subjects. I've been watching videos of other artists' processes and listening to their advice, and I gotta say I'm really happy with how much I'm learning.
These are posted in chronological order with about a week and a half between the first apple and the can, which I did just today. The first apple is kind of embarrassing to post but it was an important step to realizing that I just need to worry less and things will work out.
Some of the thoughts I was mulling over while I painted today
Something that I heard today from a HeavyPaint process video is that the artist didn't concern themselves with picking accurate colors, but rather colors that were interesting to them. The important thing was to maintain the color relations. It makes sense because the color relations (and by extension value relations) are what convey the edges and form of the subject.
It reminds me of what I heard yesterday, that "Art isn't about drawing what you see, but what you want your audience to see." Originally I was very concerned with capturing the colors and values as closely as possible and hoping that by doing that, I could convey the edges and forms. This time, by focusing less on that and more on making sure the colors *relationships* are maintained between the colors I *am* using, I was able to effectively convey all the planes and shapes, which are the actual important thing to me.
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through your clothes
spencer reid x fem! reader
summary; it was supposed to be professional in between the two of you, but a night alone in the BAU makes it difficult for the two of you to keep your hands off each other
cw; +18 content!, minors dni!!, previous kissing, making out, lots of sexual tension, two idiots pining for months, age gap (about ten years), post! jail! spencer, teasing, voyeurism(?), lots of lingering glances, sex over the clothes, dry humping, almost getting caught, switch spencer and reader!, dirty talking, hair pulling, spencer cums in his pants, non-graphic oral sex (fem! receiving), praising….
along the last couple of months in which you’ve become part of the BAU, this… tension with one of your coworkers had grown. it was a craving, a crush. he was handsome, always prancing on his tight suits, curls perfectly combed and his glasses on the bridge of his nose. he was intelligent, too intelligent, a true genius. his grand knowledge attracted you, made you shaky and hot, your eyes glued to his lips when he would rant about scientific facts. it was impossible to not like him. not want to take him from his tie and pull him down against your lips, kiss him until his glasses would fog up and his mind would go absolutely blank.
but he was your superior. you shouldn’t feel this way about him. you should make no move towards or to him. you needed to keep it professional.
it was late at night, around 3AM. you’d stayed behind to continue working in this case… it was difficult to say the least, really challenging. there were a lot of pieces that didn’t fit. you were leaving your brains on it, your eyes heavy with sleep. but your body was tense. cause he was there too.
things had been a little uncomfortable since a night out with the whole team turned in the two of you having a couple of drinks and unknowingly ended up making out in a secluded space to not get caught. you two had brushed it off as a little tipsy mistake. you two had a great age difference, about 10 years, so it was clear that it most likely was a slip. but it was clear that things had changed.
the lights on his office were lit. seemed to be a late night for him as well. you sigh, yawning.
coffee. you needed a coffee.
while on the kitchen you decided to be kind and bring him some as well. he’d most likely needed it. something you liked about him was how much importance he gave his job and how hard he worked, even after jail. his life hadn’t been easy, but he still tried hard, and that was admirable.
you add his usual amount of sugar. if you were to try the beverage you’d most likely scrunch your face at its sweetness. but he liked it that way. he was a man with a sweet tooth. maybe that’s why spencer found himself being so attracted to you.
you were sweet. sweeter than his coffee, intelligent, attractive… a whole sunshine coming down on him after a hard time of pure rains and cloudy skies.
you take a sip of your coffee as you made your way towards his office, basking in the warmth of the liquid down your throat. you knock twice, waiting for his voice to ring in your ears and give you permission. when he does, you creek the door open.
“hey…” you meet his hazel eyes framed by his glasses. he looks tired. exhausted even. and tense. “brought you some coffee, thought you might need it.” he gives himself a moment while you talk to compose and focus himself, putting on his most professional face and pretending to be completely focused on work. he looks up at you, watching you enter the room and trying to pretend he's not already affected by the way you look and the way your outfits fits your body.
you’re wearing an office black skirt that almost reaches your knees and shows the curves of your hips and thighs along with a button up shirt, which’s upper buttons are unbuttoned to give yourself a breath and more comfort. the heels you wear seemed comfortable as you’d been wearing them the whole day, and added to your stature. they made you taller, but even with them you still had to look up at him to meet his eyes, something he found truly endearing.
“oh. thanks.” he gave you a soft smile as you handed him the cup of coffee, taking a sip. “i actually needed some, i was about to fall asleep.” he joked, and you giggled.
“working on the case?” he nodded. you took some of the files on his desk, leaving your cup of coffee aside. “doctor reid…what do you think about this unsub?” you question, taking a look at his profile. “i think something's definitely not right... something doesn’t fit…”
"yes, I was thinking the exact same thing..." he says, looking up at you as he leaned back in his leather chair to get a better look at the papers spread in front of him. he's trying his best to be professional, but can't help his eyes trailing quickly over your body as well. he cleared his throat. “his behavior is confusing. on some scenes he’s methodical, doesn’t commit mistakes, whereas on others he’s frantic, irresponsible and impulsive.”
you looked down at him, at his spread legs. his black suit pants perfectly fitted to his now more muscular thighs. he seemed to had gained strength while in jail. your mind wandered to the possibility of sitting down on them, on the muscle of his thighs in between your legs. “his mind is scattered…” you bit down on your bottom lip, trying to trail back to the matter.
he caught the way your eyes darkened as they settled over his spread legs. it was almost as if he could tell what you were thinking, his brown puppy eyes reading you like an open book. he had to bite back a groan at the sight of you pressing your teeth into the full flesh of your lip. he could almost remember taste the alcohol out of them he had been craving for weeks after your kiss.
"mhm...” he nods, humming. his tone sends shivers down your spine. you seem to have more on mind. “what’s on your mind?" his fingers come up to his glasses to push them up the bridge of his nose, your attention drifting to his large slim fingers before you got back to your trail of thought.
“uhm... well. he seems to be obsessed with his victims...” your words were dying quickly, your body crumbling underneath the tension that slowly drowned the two of you. your eyes trailed down to his crotch. there were so many scenarios running through your mind…
he feels heat pour into his veins under your gaze. your voice is getting rougher, your eyes glued to him. he wants to stand up and pull you into him, but he stays fixed in his seat. he can't take his eyes off of your darkened ones as he speaks.
keep it professional, reid.
"yeah... and?"
“and... uses them. like toys, just before dumping them.” a shiver runs down your spine at your words.
haring the shiver in your voice sends one up his spine in the same way. “he plays with them. enjoys the power of submitting them under him before his game ends.”
and even though he shouldn’t, he thinks about how it would be to use you like a toy, for you to submit to him.
"mhm..." He responds in a low hum, watching as you start to tremble before him. he leans back, getting more comfortable in his seat as he stares up at you. you don’t longer think the two of you are in the right space to talk about this murderer.
“doctor reid...” you called for him, his hazel eyes catching the last on yours as you stared at his spread legs. he watches from under hooded eyes as your gaze trails over that obvious bulge that has you so entranced.
“what is it, agent y/l/n?" he inquired letting the words escape low in his chest. his heart beats faster at the sound of you breathing in that title as you look down at him.
“what are you doing?” you breathe out, your whole body tingling with the need to move closer, to touch him.
"me?" He echoes back as if he's innocently confused, his tongue running over his lips as he looks up at you with feigned innocence on his face, on his hauntingly beautiful face. "just taking a seat, getting comfortable... working..." he's trying desperately not to give away the game, the hunt and teasing, even as he sees the way your eyes get even darker and more intense.
“yeah...” you coughed, looking away from his lips as his tongue dampening them had caught your attention. you could almost feel them against yours, feel his tongue in your mouth. “then maybe i should... i should get back to my desk. there's a lot of work i need to do and...”
he's practically shaking in his chair as you speak, his breath coming in a shudder as he hears you struggle to maintain your composure, the words you speak seeming to do nothing to keep that desire out of your voice.
"no... you should stay." he says gently, cutting you off, his voice dropping to a huskier tone as he looks up at you.
“what?” you shake, your throat drying up.
"just... stay. sit." he softly reached out and touched your hip to gently pull you in front of him. he lets his hand trail down your thigh, his touch making the skin under your skirt prickle.
“w-where...? there are no more chairs...” you stutter, your nervous eyes scanning the room. he was still moving into the office, he was lucky he had gotten a chair and desk.
he looks up at you through dark eyes, a tiny smirk on his face as he sees the effect his touch is having on you. he wanted more. he wanted to drive you crazy.
“i think you know exactly where, agent.” he softly says. “come, sit..." his hand trailing around to the back of your thighs to pull you as he speaks, moving you to settle comfortably in his lap. your cheeks flush, a whimper leaving your chest as your pussy lands right against his crotch.
he shivers at the feeling of your warmth and your weight against his thighs, having to bite down on his tongue to keep from groaning out loud at the feeling of your body His hands trace over your thighs, fingers digging into the skin of your legs as he relishes the feeling of you on him.
“we shouldn't be doing this...” you tried, breathing heavy. “that kiss... it was a mistake...”
he shook his head immediately at your words, his eyes still fixed on you as he watches the way your chest rises and falls with every breath, the way your body trembles like you're already falling apart on top of him.
"no... you weren't a mistake. this feeling isn't a mistake..." he whispered breathlessly, hands slowly slipping to the edge of your skirt as he looked up at you with eyes full of nothing but complete desire and need for you.
“spencer...” you moaned, biting down on your lip, your hands on his shoulders.
hearing you moan his name sends him over the edge, any ability to hold back completely gone as he feels you start to melt on top of him. he looks up at you hungrily under his lashes before he's finally closing the distance between you, his hands snaking up your back to pull you closer as he presses his lips firmly to yours.
you gasped at the first contact, your hands hurriedly coming up to his hair, kissing him hungrily. he tastes just like you remembered, although now there’s a tang of sweetness on his lips.
he lets out a deep groan as he feels your hands in his hair, his body practically trembling under your touch as he kisses you deeply. he lets one hand slip up your spine to the back of your neck to keep you close, the other trailing down to your waist as his tongue slips forward to press hot and insistent against your bottom lip until your mouth opens for him, your tongues meeting as you tug on his hair.
“doctor…” you sighed, hips thrusting against his in need, making his mind go absolutely hazy and a deep groan coming from his mouth as he feels your desire rubbing so wantonly against him. “this is bad... oh god. we should stop...”
he's so lost in the bliss of your body against his that he can barely process your words, but even as you try to speak them his hands are pulling you tighter against him. “no... don't stop... don't..." he practically begs in a gasp, his head tilting to trail kisses and bites down the side of your neck, humming contently when your head tilts backwards to feel more of his kisses. “anyone could come in... they could catch us.” and it was true, anyone wanting to start early could come into the BAU earlier than normal and hear the two of you.
he moans with your words, the sound of your voice even more delirious with desire only serving to make his mind fuzzy. he knows you're trying to stop this, but his body feels too good, too incredible.
"let them walk in... let them hear you..." he said huskily, his teeth gently nipping at your skin as he moves to the sensitive spot behind your ear.
you can't help but whimper, feeling his cock growing harder against you as you roll your hips against him, what makes him let out a deep groan, his head tilting back and his eyes squeezing shut as his mouth falls open around the low sound.
"s-stop... you're going to kill me..." he groans the words out in a gasp, his body growing hot at the friction you're creating with your body.
“you want me to stop?” you whisper on his ear, and he bites down on his lip, shaking his head. “no... no... don't ever stop..." he says gruffly, letting his hands trail up from your waist to your sides, feeling your skin through the thin fabric of your shirt. you kiss his jaw and neck. he feels like he's starting to lose his mind at the feeling of you grinding against him, his breath shuddering out in a groan as he feels his body start to shake. "oh my god..." he moans, his chest rising and falling faster and faster with the way you're moving against him. his eyes squeeze shut as he tries to keep himself together, his hands starting to clench around your sides.
“spencer...” you cry out, feeling your stomach tightening at the constant rubbing of your panties against your clit. “feels so good... you feel so good...”
he moans desperately at the sound of you saying his name like this, biting down hard on his lip as he feels you grinding against him so deliciously, your voice so wanton and full of desire for him
"yeah...? feels good?" he shudders out, his eyes flickering behind his closed lids as his head falls back even further against the chair.
you knew you shouldn't. your relationship was meant to be strictly professional. you were supposed to be just team mates, but you wanted to make him cum on his pants. you wanted to make a mess out of him, and that's why you ground your hips harder against his crotch, whining.
he chokes out a groan as he feels you working against him, his hand clenching around your thigh as he tries desperately to keep some modicum of control, fighting the shuddering waves of pleasure that start to roll through him at your motions. his breath comes in sharp through parted lips and they sit against your neck. "oh god... oh god..." he moaned helplessly, desperately trying not to give in right there in the chair.
you leaned on his ear, like the devil on his shoulder. “cum for me, doctor, i'll clean it all up later with my mouth.”
he's already on the edge, his head swimming with the words and the way you keep moving against him. he's never been so far from in control. “fuck.” he groans as he feels himself starting to reach his limit, desperately fighting his body, which only craves release.
“you close, spencer? gonna come for me in your pants?” you mutter only for him to hear against his neck, leaving wet kisses on his skin and tugging at his hair.
he chokes out another moan at the way you taunt him, his body starting to shake under your touch as he nods. "oh god... yes, please..." he whines, his moans starting to sound more and more desperate, even as he can hear the sounds of the crew finally getting in for work, moving around outside the door.
"go ahead doctor. be good for me.” his whole body starts to shudder as you speak, hearing the way you're talking to him like this undoing something inside him. his head falls back with a long, deep groan that you have to quiet with a kiss as his eyes squeezed shut, the force of his orgasm overwhelming him.
you moaned at the warmth of his load spreading through the front of his pants and in between your thighs, your hips grinding down on him to help him ride out his high.
he's breathing hard by the time the rush is over, his mind starting to come back to reality again as he feels your hips and body against his. he keeps his eyes closed for a moment before he's looking up at you with a shuddering groan, his eyes dark and full of satisfaction as he shakes his head.
"you're evil... you know that?"
“you were the one who asked me to not stop, doctor.” you smirked, gasping when his strong arms picked you up and places you on top of his desk, his knees hitting the floor as he positioned himself in between your thighs. “what are you doing?!” you whisper-yell when you feel his fingers tug at the hem of your underwear, his lips leaving a soft wet kiss on your inner thigh.
“returning the favor.”
#spencer reid imagine#spencer reid smut#spencer reid one shot#spencer reid x oc#spencer reid fanfiction#spencer reid fanfic#spencer reid criminal minds#dr spencer reid#spencer reid#spencer reid x reader#spencer reid x fem!reader smut#spencer reid x self insert#spencer reid x y/n#spencer reid x you#spencer reid x fanfiction#spencer reid x fem!readr#criminal minds x you#criminal minds x reader#criminal minds
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misconceptions about narcissism
made by a girl with "borderline personality disorder with narcissistic traits" considered treatment resistant
1. narcissists think they're extremely attractive
focus on appearance in narcissism is a result of insecurity and need for control. a narcissist who expresses self-obsession regarding appearance is doing so to preemptively prevent others from thinking they're insecure and vulnerable.
2. narcissists are unfeeling
really not sure why anyone thinks this as 'feeling' is incredibly easily triggered in narcissism. with fear of being taken advantage of by others, narcissists will over-analyze people's behavior and (often incorrectly) assume they are being slighted in some way.
3. narcissists are ceos and political leaders
a narcissistic personality actually hinders your ability to advance in your career as you become focused first and foremost on whether or not your coworkers see you as vulnerable. a competitive environment is highly triggering and ends up creating many enemies as others see through the facade.
4. men are more often narcissists than women
confusing misogyny for narcissism--does your ex have a narcissistic personality when not with women? does he express the same level of entitlement and assert superiority when with male friends? if he is able to maintain relationships and not debilitated by narcissistic traits, he's just a garden variety misogynist.
5. narcissism is a mental illness
no one is born with a narcissistic personality, it is developed to cope with and defend oneself from a toxic or abusive environment, just like every other cluster b "personality disorder". narcissism at its core is fear of appearing vulnerable. this leads to fixation on control over others and crafting a confident facade.
6. everything a narcissist does in a relationship is meant to manipulate you
i've seen this said SO much and it's just not true. narcissism is triggered in specific circumstances, and narcissists have incentives for treating someone kindly outside manipulation even if these incentives may be more focused on self-benefit--and in my personal opinion incentive doesn't matter if the resulting behavior is a net positive.
7. narcissists raise narcissists
if a narcissistic parent is abusive the child could develop a narcissistic personality in response, but this is not a given or specific to narcissism.
8. you can tell someone is a narcissist when their eyes darken
what is being referred to here is a result of adrenaline that literally happens to all humans. your pupils will dilate when your adrenaline is raised, which can happen during conflict involving intense emotions...so yes, someone's eyes can 'darken' when angry, but it's a human thing, not a narcissist thing.
now that the post is over, PSA: if you're one of the idiots on here who thinks anything other than praise of cluster b personalities is ableism please just block me instead of bothering me with your comments!
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soft yandere photographer who accidentally snaps a picture of you for one of his projects when he was supposed to take a photo of a butterfly who decided to take a break from flying and rests it's colorful wings on the top of your sketchbook. your creative mind too busy to get distracted with such a small little thing.
ever since then, soft yandere photographer has been following you wherever you go. snapping pictures of you in different scenery, different clothing, but you're always stuck in that precious sketchbook of yours.
you were always so focused, the serious expression on your face never budging. but sometimes it'll be different, your face subtly expressing a bunch of emotions as your fingers lifts up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, your brows furrowing with the smallest amount. he figured it was to help you create more expressive characters.
he can never get too close to you, as for some reason aside from your art, you were gifted with really keen senses. flinching and turning your head away from the pages of your drawings to see what made the grasses beneath you rustle a bit. he nearly stumbles on his feet, pretending to be just walking past you, heart skipping a beat when you make eye contact and give each other a small smile.
it's almost like a little play for him, appearing as a different role each time just to catch a glimpse of you.
after that, he can only observe and take a photo of you from a good enough distance that you'll think he's just another person amongst the people enjoying a cup of coffee in that favorite cafe of yours you usually like to go to. or he's just one of those people who like to read their books near mother nature as he sits on one of the benches in the park which is coincidentally in the same row as yours.
all of those times he's sneaky with his camera, using his surroundings to his advantage. faking to post about the cafe's interiors to promote them, when it was solely your pictures that contains the storage of his camera.
it was always the same routine, until one day, when he managed to find the perfect spot that's a little closer to you than usual—he noticed something from that little sketchbook of yours, zooming in closer to create a more clearer image for him. his breath suddenly getting trapped in the back of his throat.
it was... him. all of them. drawn in seemingly different art styles as if you were testing which one suits him the best. he even recognized some of the poses you used for him. there was one where he was in your favorite cafe, with his own ordered coffee as he remembers sitting on a different table across from yours. there was even one where he was at the park sitting on a bench, where he was supposedly to be reading the book he brought with him.
and what's strange about those specific drawings of yours, is that you've drawn him with his trusted camera on his hands, blocking half of his face as the little slashes of lines around the sketched camera indicates that he was taking a picture. almost as if you knew what he was doing...
he felt his heart almost jumped out of his chest when he zoomed out from your sketchbook, because instead of finding you burying yourself in the world of your sketchbook, he saw you looking towards his way. acknowledging him. your eyes meeting his through his camera.
you seem to attract butterflies a lot, when another like before joins you for this special picture, his shaky hands trying their best not to drop his camera on the ground as he snaps a photo of you smiling cheekily at him. the little butterfly giving him more cute pictures of you laughing and giggling as it tickles you, playfully kissing you in the nose.
#𝐈𝐌𝐏𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐃 𝐌𝐔𝐓𝐔𝐀𝐋 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆#just a cute silly idea i thought of#soft yandere#yandere x reader#yandere x darling#yandere x you#yandere fic#yandere imagines#yandere#yandere headcanons#yandere x y/n#yandere concept#yandere x gn reader#yandere fluff#yandere drabble#yandere writing
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See this is what’s just plain sad: Ryan talks excitedly about Eddie’s new character arc/path as a reset and that he’s exploring new things and then every other post concerning him and it is about Buddie.
Why can’t the man have his own separate story line from Buck’s? Why can’t his OWN journey be focused on him instead of it being instantly tied back to this Buddie BS? It’s seriously an insult to the actor and character when they seem really excited about new developments and all everyone can focus on is their imaginary relationship with a character who has their own (very stable and happy) arc?
I for one cannot wait to see where they’re going with Eddie’s character because seriously, he could have a hard reset and that’s huge for an already established character. So please, can we just focus on what EDDIE’S journey could be separate from Buck’s? And maybe *GASP* they could both be happy separately?
P.S. If you’re going to be nasty, I will block you.
#911 abc#911 spoilers#911 show#eddie diaz#ryan guzman#oliver stark#evan buckley#christopher diaz#but for real get that doppleganger out of here#she really creeps me out#aka bravo devin
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BEAUTIFUL CRIME | LW
BEAUTIFUL CRIME ⸻ persephone! leah williamson x hades! leitor.
Warning: Based on fictional books about Greek mythology, alternate universe - modern, Reader and Leah are soccer players, Reader is a female version of Hades, Leah doesn't remember her past life but Reader does. English is not my first language!
Y/N, since she was a little girl, was an ordinary girl in a small town. Her days were filled with school, friends, family, and above all, a passion for football. The ball was her inseparable companion, and the field, her stage. She dreamed of becoming a professional player, and at the age of 18, her dream opportunity came true: a spot on Chelsea, one of England's biggest clubs.
However, the fulfillment of this dream was accompanied by strange events. Vivid and recurring dreams transported her to an ancient world of gods and mythology. In these dreams, she was Hades, the Greek god of the Underworld, and lived a forbidden love story with Persephone, the goddess of spring.
The images were so real that Y/N felt the emotions of the characters as if they were her own. Confused and scared, she decided to tell her parents about the dreams. They listened attentively, but as always, downplayed the situation, thinking it was just stress or anxiety from football.
Frustrated and without answers, Y/N also sought help from a psychologist. However, the professional didn't pay much attention to the dreams, classifying them as simple fantasies. Feeling lost and unsupported, Y/N decided to move on, focusing on football.
At Chelsea, she quickly became one of the most talented players on the team, earning the admiration of fans and teammates. Among them was Leah Williamson, the talented defender of Arsenal, Chelsea's rival. Leah was different from all the other women Y/N had ever met. There was something about her that inexplicably drew her in.
In one of the most important matches of the championship, Y/N found herself face to face with Leah. The tension was palpable, and in the heat of the moment, Y/N looked directly into the defender's blue eyes. At that moment, something extraordinary happened.
A surge of energy ran through Y/N's body, and she fainted on the field. When she woke up in the hospital, everything was different. The memories of the dreams were mixed with reality, and Y/N finally understood the truth: she was not just Y/N, the football player. She was Hades, the god of the Underworld, and Leah Williamson was Persephone, his beloved goddess of spring.
The locker room buzzed with post-game chatter, the air thick with the mingled scents of sweat, adrenaline, and victory. Y/N, still basking in the glow of a hard-fought win, found their gaze drawn to Leah Williamson, the Arsenal defender who had been their nemesis on the pitch.
Leah stood out from the crowd, her presence both imposing and enigmatic. Her fiery blonde hair cascaded down her shoulders, framing a face that was both striking and serene. Y/N couldn't help but admire the way Leah carried herself, with an air of quiet confidence that radiated power.
When their eyes met, Y/N felt a familiar jolt of electricity surge through their veins. The same spark that had ignited during their previous encounter on the field now flickered between them, creating an undeniable connection.
Y/N's heart pounded in their chest as they approached Leah, their mind racing with a thousand unspoken words. They wanted to tell Leah about the dreams, about the strange and undeniable feelings that were churning inside them. But they hesitated, unsure of how Leah would react.
Leah's gaze softened as Y/N drew closer, her lips curving into a playful smile. "Well, well, if it isn't Chelsea's underworld Hades," she teased, her voice laced with amusement.
Y/N's cheeks flushed, a mix of embarrassment and delight. "I'm not Hades," they protested weakly.
Leah's laughter echoed through the locker room, attracting curious glances from their teammates. "Oh, come on, Y/N," she said, shaking her head. "You're as dark and mysterious as the Underworld itself."
Y/N couldn't help but smile back at Leah, their heart fluttering with a new sense of lightness. Leah's playful banter was disarming, a welcome contrast to the intensity of their rivalry on the field.
"And you," Y/N replied, their voice gaining confidence, "are as radiant as the spring sun itself."
Leah's smile widened and her eyes sparkled with mischief. "Well, I do have a soft spot for flowers," she admitted.
Y/N felt a surge of hope. Could this be a sign? Could Leah be open to more than just a friendly rivalry?
Before Y/N could respond, a teammate called out, interrupting their conversation. The locker room emptied as the players headed for the showers and changing rooms, leaving Y/N and Leah alone.
The silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken words and possibilities. Y/N took a deep breath, their heart pounding in their chest. This was it. The moment to take a chance, to step out of the shadows and into the unknown.
"Leah," Y/N began, their voice trembling slightly. "I..."
Leah's eyes met theirs, a flicker of curiosity dancing in their depths. "Yes?" she prompted, her voice soft and inviting.
Y/N took another deep breath, steeling their nerves. "I want to take you out," they blurted out, their words tumbling over each other.
Leah's eyes widened in surprise, a hint of a smile playing on her lips. "Really?" she asked, her voice laced with amusement.
Y/N nodded, their heart pounding in their chest. "I mean it," they said, their voice gaining strength. "I've never felt this way about anyone before."
Leah's smile widened, her eyes sparkling with a newfound warmth. "Well, I've never been asked out by a Hades before," she said, her voice teasing. "But I think I might be able to make an exception."
Y/N's heart soared as a wave of relief and joy washed over them. They had done it. They had taken the chance, and it had paid off.
As they walked out of the locker room together, Y/N couldn't help but grin. The future was uncertain, but one thing was for sure: it was going to be an exciting ride.
Y/N looked at Leah, her heart pounding in her chest. "Leah," she began, her voice barely a whisper, "I...".
Leah's eyes met hers, and for a moment, the world around them seemed to fade away. Y/N felt a connection with Leah that went beyond words, a bond that transcended the boundaries of time and space.
But just as Y/N was about to pour out her heart, Leah's expression changed. A mischievous glint appeared in her eyes, and she leaned in close, whispering in Y/N's ear.
"Maybe another time, Hades," she said, her voice laced with promise. "But for now, let's keep this between us."
With that, Leah turned and walked away, leaving Y/N standing there, her heart pounding with a mix of confusion and excitement. What was Leah trying to say? What did she mean by "another time"?
Y/N was left with more questions than answers, but one thing was for sure: her feelings for Leah were more undeniable than ever. And she knew she would do whatever it took to win Leah's heart, even if it meant facing the gods themselves.
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the trojans social media au (pt. 5): okayyy soooo let me start by saying i’m a fraud tumblr user and i’ve been stalking for so many years instead of posting so idk how everything works and what the tumblr dynamic is when it comes to interacting but during my previous posts some things have been brought to my attention
first of all @fanthyng-mego mentioned this:
so in reality i just forgot to turn on the checkmark button 😭😭 but i truly like your version better where neil earned his checkmark by being a menace.
still i’ve turned on the checkmark for everyone who i perceive as being verified so yeah
also @tara-the-star said this:
so shawn isn’t an oc. he was mentioned by name only in the book (like what? 3 or 4 times? idk). jeremy mentioned he studies communication, so yeah. i’m pretty sure he hasn’t actually said anything tho, but since i wanted this au to be more focused on the trojans instead of the foxes i tried to include some of the background characters :)
i did have to come up with my own characteristics for shawn tho (i didn’t expect it to go this far 😭) but it could easily turn out that nora will include him in tsc2 and my characteristics get lost on me and i’ll look like a loser LMAOOO
the same goes for all the other unfamiliar characters :) everyone should be named by name at least once in the sunshine court
so yeah. i guess i just really wanted to point those two things out :) i’m a fraud on tumblr and actually don’t even know how to use the app properly and i didn’t know if i replied to the reblog it’d just end up under my own post instead of the reblog so yeah…. hope this is okay
#the trojans social media au#a bit of jealousy from jeremy :)#sorry for the rant at the end yall can just ignore it :)#all for the game#aftg#the sunshine court#tsc#jean moreau#jeremy knox#kevin day#derek thompson#nabil mahmoud#tony jones#laila dermott#derrick allen#lucas johnson#shawn anderson
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Miraculous Ladybug Season 5 - An Overview
Well... that certainly was... the fifth season of Miraculous Ladybug.
While I was overall mixed on Season 4 with how much it varied in quality, I think I have a more concrete opinion of Season 5.
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Yeah, this season was a real pain to review, but not for the reason you'd think. Most of the episodes were either dull or average, so there wasn't a lot for me to really talk about. Of course, when things were bad, dear lord, were they bad. This analysis is somehow longer than my Season 4 one and the ranking post. Other than real life stuff getting in the way, there's a damn good reason why this took so long to finish. I basically wrote a college thesis on this season.
The Things I Liked About Season 5
Let's get all the good things about this season out of the way first.
For one thing, one of my biggest complaints about Season 4 was sort of rectified, the portrayal of Adrien. While I still have problems with him (which I'll get to in a later section), they're more about his impact on the story. As for his personality and attitude, it's a big step up. There's much less complaining, he's more active in the action, and is far more intelligent. Compared to Season 4, where Cat Noir was affected by an Akuma's powers or taken out of commission in order to raise the stakes eleven times (Lies, Mr. Pigeon 72, Mega Leech, Guiltrip, Optigami, Sentibubbler, Wishmaker, Simpleman, Ephemeral, Penalteam, Risk), here, funnily enough, it only really happened five times in Season 5 (Jubilation, Illusion, Derision, Emotion, The Final Day). It's honestly amazing. There were times where I thought he was going to be taken out or get portrayed as an idiot, but that almost never happened this season. Even some of the weaker episodes this season featured Adrien in a more active role, like “Passion”, “Reunion”, “Elation”, and “Deflagration”.
Also, as much of a problem that I have with Cat Noir trying to Cataclysm his enemies, I'm glad that the show at least tries to acknowledge this by showing his worst nightmare is a world where everyone is dead because of him. It's not handled well, and it's only done just to bench him for the finale, but I'll at least give the writers credit for putting in the effort to give him more nuance. It's a hell of a lot better than what they did with Gabriel, but I'll get to him later. By extension, his relationship with Ladybug is much more tolerable. The two work together well, talk about the conflict with Monarch more often, and for the most part, feel like actual partners. Yeah, that dynamic falls apart towards the end of the season, but again, I'll give the writers an A+ for effort.
Another thing I like is that this season tries to focus more on character pieces, with episodes focusing on characters like Nathalie (Passion), Kagami (Perfection), Luka (Migration), and Zoe (Adoration). They're not handled the best, but I'm glad the show is at least trying to give the supporting characters time in the spotlight, even though they don't have their Miraculous anymore.
Speaking of, I like the idea of the Alliance rings. It's really the only time Gabriel actually takes advantage of his status as one of the most influential people in Paris to push the use of something specifically designed to help give his Akumas more power. Given how prevelant the marketing for Alliance rings is, it's easy to see his plan working in the long term.
We also had a couple decent new Akuma designs, like Safari, Bugfighter, and... uh... Yeah, I got nothing else. This is pretty much the most praise this season is going to get from me. Sure, I'll go into some other aspects I like during later sections, but other than that, this is it. Hell, even the parts I listed earlier are only mentioned for the ideas they present, not the way they're executed.
The Final Season... Of Filler
We've finally made it to Season 5, the climax of the conflict with Monarch. This is going to be epic, with all kinds of compelling stories that can be used for episodes, leading to a final product that will go down as—my God, why is this season so boring?!
Like I said earlier, this season was a lot harder to review than Season 4 was, and this was one of the biggest reasons why. As bad as that season was, I at least had stuff to talk about. Here? Almost nothing. A good chunk of the episodes I reviewed just didn't leave an impact on me. Most of them were either forgettable, mediocre, or just okay. Some of the episodes had decent ideas and a handful of good scenes, but it wasn't really enough to reach the highs of earlier seasons, including Season 4.
It's strange, because at first, it seemed like the show was learning from its mistakes during the first three episodes of this season. “Evolution”, “Multiplication”, and “Destruction” were far from perfect, but you could at least tell the show was trying something different. There was tighter continuity, clever mind games on both sides, a rare instance of nonlinear storytelling, and major changes to the status quo. They explained why Monarch can't just beat up Ladybug and Cat Noir himself, why the Rabbit and Rooster Miraculous can't be used to end the story, and why the Alliance rings were created.
When Ladybug got the Rabbit Miraculous after failing to get the other fourteen back, you would think that this would lead to an arc where Ladybug and Cat Noir gradually reclaimed the Miraculous from Monarch until the final battle, but what did we get instead in terms of plot development?
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For what was supposed to be the final season, it felt like almost nothing happened. Sure, as always, the show tried to trick us into thinking stuff was happening, but several plotlines introduced this season were either abandoned or rushed through after a few episodes. The Resistance? Only relevant for five episodes, and even then, they didn't do much (Illusion, Deflagration, Confrontation, Revolution, Representation). Trying to discover how Monarch is giving the Akumas Miraculous powers? Only relevant in a single episode (Illusion). Felix having the Peacock Miraculous and being a total wild card? Only relevant for three episodes (Emotion, Pretension, Representation). The reverse Love Square? Only relevant for four episodes before it petered out (Determination, Passion, Reunion, Elation). Lila manipulating Kagami for some reason? Only relevant for two, maybe three episodes if you count that one scene in “Emotion”, and that was dropped in favor of her learning Monarch's identity offscreen (Perfection, Protection).
You'd think for a season with stakes this high, there would be bigger stories or more character drama, but we got nothing. The only real ongoing story we got was the Love Square finally happening, and trust me, I'll get to that later. There were plenty of ideas for story arcs here, but the writers pretty much ignored all of them.
Retcons! Retcons Everywhere!
This one's shorter, because it's a problem with the show in general, and I'll go into more detail about specific examples of this later on.
Miraculous Ladybug is a show that has always struggled to be consistent with its lore, worldbuilding, characters, story, and... well, a lot of things. I've talked about how often the show retcons things in order to justify whatever story they need to tell, not just for individual episodes, but story arcs too. There were so many episodes with stories that contradicted previous events or changed the motivations of certain characters on a whim.
In case you didn't keep track, here's a little highlight reel of some of the retcons this season.
Evolution: After both him and Ladybug were able to use multiple unifications last season with no problem, Monarch can't use too many of his powers without collapsing in pain. It also goes against what was established in “Kwamibuster”, the idea of using multiple Miraculous being enough to damage your sanity, where here, Monarch's body is damaged.
Multiplication: Adrien's reason for falling for Marinette was due to all the times she helped him, when it was usually the other way around in earlier seasons.
Determination: Adrien reveals he's had feelings for Marinette since the events of “The Puppeteer 2”, even though it never influenced any of their interactions between that episode and this one. It also contrasts the previous episode, where it said that Adrien was just starting to fall for Marinette for different reasons.
Derision: Chloe's bullying of Marinette had severe psychological damage that explains why she acts the way she does around Adrien... but ignores the romantic feelings Marinette has had for Luka and Cat Noir, and didn't act the same way around them, to say nothing about how she acted around Nathaniel when he had a crush on her during “The Evillustrator ”.
Intuition: The Snake Miraculous somehow makes Gabriel's Cataclysm wound worse even though the form of time travel it uses is mental, not physical.
Protection: Gabriel and Tomoe want their children to be in a relationship, yet Adrien and Kagami kept it a secret while they were dating.
Adoration: Zoe suddenly has feelings for Marinette despite showing no signs of it beforehand.
Emotion: Felix reveals he's doing everything for Adrien's safety, even though in his previous few appearances, he's done nothing but screw his cousin over by smearing his public image.
Pretension: Felix is against using a Sentimonster to defend himself and Kagami due to not wanting to force an innocent creature to follow his orders, yet he had no problem using a Sentimonster in the very last episode and in his next appearance.
Revelation: Lila has multiple secret identities she uses while pretending to be the child of several women, which had never come up at all during the last four seasons.
Representation: Kagami apparently learned Marinette was Ladybug right before she was akumatized in “Perfection”, yet Monarch didn't learn this like he did with Luka.
Do you see the problem here? Hell, I didn't even list every single retcon, or else we'd be here all day.
I don't get how a show that wants to be serialized can keep changing details like this. It's not even a case of the show replacing its writers with new ones who don't know as much as the old ones. This is mostly the same writing team for almost four seasons at this point.
Sometimes, the show will retcon stuff in order to justify stories when it doesn't need to. Remember how at the beginning of the season, Marinette was feeling guilty about her failure at the end of Season 4, and that influences her hesitance to accept Adrien's advances? The writers sure didn't, as “Derision” exists to give Marinette a whole new reason to not be comfortable around Adrien. Why the hell would you give Marinette a perfectly valid reason to not want to pursue Adrien, only to write an episode that gives her a different reason to not want to pursue Adrien? There was literally no reason to do this, especially during the last season of your first major story arc!
This season is clearly trying to be the most serialized of the bunch, yet the writers keep changing details about the story like that one Wallace and Gromit meme.
Season 5: The Show's Greatest Hits Album
Something I've noticed about this season is just how repetitive it can be. I know that sounds weird given this is a show that literally gave us the Status Quo-Yo, but please hear me out.
So many major story arcs and focus episodes are just rehashed versions of older things in this show, and not just the reused Akumas. Not only does the first half of Season 5 restate how complicated things are for Marinette's love live and how she can't love Adrien after what she did (something she gets over rather anticlimactically once Adrien confesses). Then there are other times where even plotlines established this season will get reused, and more often than not, it's worse.
In “Perfection”, Kagami is akumatized thanks to Lila's lies, and manages to break free from Monarch's influence thanks to her friends showing that they care for her. And then four episodes later, Kagami is akumatized again thanks to Lila's lies, only this time, she isn't able to break free. What... what was the point of having that emotional scene in “Perfection” if you're just going to treat her like a run of the mill Akuma a few episodes later?
And it's not just that. Big moments that happened in earlier seasons are pretty much redone but with a few changes to make it seem like they're different. Did you like seeing Adrien give up being Cat Noir in “Kuro Neko”? Well how about seeing Adrien and Marinette give up being superheroes in “The Kwamis' Choice”? Did you like seeing Chloe break off her friendship with Adrien in “Queen Banana”? How does seeing Adrien break off his friendship with Chloe in “Derision” sound?
But the worst of this has to be in the last seven episodes of the season. So much of what is essentially the culmination of five seasons' worth of story is just recycled. Let's go over why. In “Confrontation”, Marinette (and by her, I mean Sabrina with help from Marinette) manages to outsmart Chloe and Lila and put an end to their tyranny in the classroom. What are the next two episodes about? Marinette needing to outsmart Chloe and Lila, only now, they have reign over the city. This feels like something that should have been one major story, not something split up into two two-parters. Hell, you can't even say it's original to see Chloe in control, because this is also something that was done back in Season 1's “Rogercop”, only with the titular and the police following his orders for no reason instead of Chloe and her bootleg Daleks.
But hey, if an army of robots capable of using Miraculous powers, at least we can expect something even more creative for Monarch's ultimate plan, right? Yeah, Project “Perfect Alliance” is just a combination of Chloe's murder boxes and the exact same plan in “Heroes' Day”. People are brainwashed like in “Heroes' Day” and they get Miraculous powers like the robots in “Revolution”. Seriously? Nobody took a look at this and thought “Didn't we do this already?”
What's the point of making these two different evil plans when they're essentially the same thing? Why not give Chloe's robots various weapons instead of Miraculous powers if you're going to have an army of villains who have the same Miraculous powers two episodes later? Why not make it so the Miraculized are really the robots designed to help Chloe, only here, they have the ability to turn anyone wearing an Alliance ring into one of them, sort of like the Borg from Star Trek?
It's clear that after four seasons, the writing on this show has gotten incredibly stagnant if the major plotlines are just reused from earlier seasons. At best, it comes across like blatant fanservice, and at worst, it's a symptom of the writers struggling to come up with new ideas for stories. Either way, this is one of many reasons why not a lot of people are looking forward to Season 6. How can you expect interesting stories in the future when the writers keep recycling their old ones?
Felix and the Struggle With Sentimonsters or: This Is Starting to Sound Like a Bad Comic Book Plot!
Before I get into the problems with Felix this season, consider this: With Chloe (who I'll get to later), she was an example of someone who wouldn't get a redemption arc. Felix? This is the writers intentionally trying write a redemption arc. How did that turn out?
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The obvious problem with Felix is mostly due to, like a lot of things in this show, poor time management. He only had three focus episodes, and in that time, the writers needed to explain his motivations, establish him as a wild card, have him realize the error of his ways, develop his relationship with Kagami, and help out Marinette. They really wanted to do a lot with Felix, yet with how rushed his arc was, I have to wonder if there was some trouble behind the scenes that prevented him from getting more focus.
It doesn't help that what little we got was confusing as all hell. I've already gone into detail about the problems with Felix's motivations not explaining his actions, but here's a list of all the problems with Felix.
If Felix wanted to get the Peacock Miraculous from the start, why didn't he try stealing that in “Felix”?
If Felix cared about Adrien, why did he spend most of his appearances mocking him and ruining his reputation by impersonating him in “Felix”, “Gabriel Agreste”, “Risk”, “Emotion”, and “Representation”?
If Felix knew who Gabriel was, why did he come up with this elaborate plan to get the Peacock Miraculous in a trade with him instead of going to Ladybug for help in “Strikeback”?
If Felix realized Gabriel was dangerous and capable of wiping him out, why did he decide to give him fifteen Miraculous in exchange for a single Miraculous without doing anything to stop him in “Strikeback”?
If Felix could easily get rid of Gabriel with a single Sentimonster like he did in “Emotion”, why didn't he immediately do that as soon as he got the Peacock Miraculous in “Strikeback”?
If Felix wanted to stop Gabriel, why did he decide to wipe out all of humanity alongside him in “Emotion”?
If Felix cared about innocent lives, why did he decide to wipe out all of humanity without showing any remorse except for when he had to get rid of Red Moon in “Emotion”?
If Felix didn't want to create any Sentimonsters just to end their lives in “Pretention”, why did he do just that in “Representation”?
If Felix knew Marinette was Ladybug, why did he choose to tell her who Gabriel was in an unnecessarily complicated way instead of telling it straight to her face in “Representation”?
If Felix really hated his abusive father, why didn't he show any hatred for Gabriel (who gave Colt the damaged Peacock Miraculous and did nothing to stop the abuse) as well during his little play in “Representation”?
If Felix cared about stopping Gabriel, why did he only decide to go to Ladybug for help when Gabriel was getting in the way of his relationship with Kagami in “Representation”?
If Felix was willing to tell Marinette about Gabriel being Monarch in “Representation”, why didn't he do anything else to help her stop Monarch in “Comformation” and “Re-Creation”?
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With how many flaws his plans have, I'm surprised Felix hasn't said anything along the lines of “My pwan is gweat!”
For someone who claims to be doing a lot of things for Adrien, Felix tends to either screw over his cousin as part of his plans or forget him entirely. I don't mean he screws over Cat Noir, as his identity is one of the few things he doesn't know, but rather, how little his plans actually benefit Adrien. Putting aside his previous appearances in Seasons 3 and 4, in the span of a single episode, Felix pretended to be his cousin and smeared his public image, used a Sentimonster to wipe out all of his friends and loved ones while needing to be told by Adrien that doing so wasn't cool, and after that, he pretty much abandoned caring about Adrien.
Yeah, starting with “Pretension”, the writers once again change gears so Felix's primary goal is to help Kagami, not Adrien. It's Kagami that really helps inspire Felix's true turn to good, it's Kagami who he chooses to visit when she and Adrien are taken to London, and it's Kagami that helps him decide to tell Marinette Monarch's identity. Even though he only has three major appearances, the writers still decided to shake up his character arc for some reason. How does a team of paid writers struggle to stay consistent with any story or character arc they've written?
The worst part is that for a redemption arc, Felix shows little to no remorse for his actions. Not once does he apologize to anyone he's personally wronged, like Adrien, Marinette, or Kagami. He doesn't see anything wrong with giving Monarch more power and depriving Ladybug of almost all of her allies, and he had to be told that wiping all of humanity from existence was a bad thing. Felix has done so many terrible things in his quest for freedom, which isn't a bad idea, as it could make for an interesting discussion about whether the ends justify the means, but the show doesn't go that route. Instead, despite doing almost nothing but making things worse for Ladybug and Cat Noir, we're supposed to see Felix as a great person who just wants to have friends. Sure, having good social skills is a big part of being able to manipulate others, but let's just ignore all the people he's tricked and assume he doesn't know how to properly socialize with someone without stalking them.
It doesn't help that of all the characters this season, Felix makes the most progress in stopping Monarch. Puting aside his little genocide attempt in “Emotion”, he actually made an attempt to take Gabriel out of the equation, and later on, passed on intel about his true identity to Marinette. Think about that for a second. Marinette, despite being a hero with the ability to deduce what to do from simple clues given to her, isn't the one to figure out Monarch's identity. Instead, she has to be told who Monarch is, and is able to beat him only because Felix told her what to do. The worst part is that Felix doesn't even take part in the final battle when he has no excuse to not get involved. Remember, he doesn't have to worry about getting snapped away by Gabriel, so even though he cares so much about Adrien and Kagami, he does nothing to save either of them from their glorified solitary confinement.
Felix isn't a character. He's a glorified plot device who only shows up to advance the story instead of letting any character make progress by themselves. While Marinette and Adrien are focusing more on their love lives this season, Felix is the one actually getting things done. Because God forbid the two characters the show is named after actually do anything to stop the villain this season, am I right?
And that's not even getting into the Sentimonster stuff. Yep, to our collective horror, not only is Felix a Sentimonster, but it's also hinted that Adrien and Kagami are Sentimonsters too. I'm not sure why the writers are so hesitant to flat out say the latter two are Sentimonsters after all the obvious hints, especially when this is a show that loves to overly explain every plot detail and character trait. I don't know. Maybe they're just hedging their bets in case things don't go over well with audiences, but I can't possibly see anything bad coming from this. After all, how can you think of any uncomfortable implications stemming from the three major victims of child abuse literally being inhuman monsters who are physically unable to resist their abusers' orders?
With the Sentimonster “reveal”, Adrien and Kagami, two characters who were previously doing their best to be independent from their parents as they could at their age, are now physically incapable of even having a single negative thought about them without being ordered around while showing no resistance. Like I've mentioned before, it's a blatant retcon because it's never explained why Gabriel and Tomoe didn't do this during Seasons 2 and 3. It also gives the writers the opportunity to remove any agency Adrien and Kagami have in the plot, even though one is one of the two main characters, and the other plays a crucial role in helping another character expose the main villain's identity.
We're supposed to see Gabriel and Tomoe as wrong for ignoring their children's protests and forcing them to do things they don't want to do, but it doesn't lead to an arc where Adrien and Kagami rebel against their parents and break free from their influences. As soon as either Gabriel and Tomoe touch their respective rings, Adrien and Kagami are completely helpless, and there's no way for them to resist because of how powerful the link with their Amoks is. There's no hint that they have the potential to break free from their Amoks' influence, and the only time we saw that happen, it was a complete accident that Felix didn't even cause (Representation). Adrien and Kagami are both reduced to damsels in distress thanks to being Sentimonsters, and even though the show is trying to say they're trapped in a terrible situation, there's never a way out.
The most Adrien and Kagami do is express frustration with their situation, but most of the progress made in escaping their bad relationships is done by their respective love interests, Marinette and Felix. Yes, support systems are important, but rather than help Adrien and Kagami earn their freedom, Marinette and Felix do pretty much all of the work to save them during the latter half of this season. Hell, they couldn't even get that completely done by the time of the finale! Gabriel dropped dead and Adrien thinks he's a hero and Kagami's still living with Tomoe, only now she has her Amok ring. We're supposed to see this as a happy ending when they're both still influenced by their abusive parents, even if they don't have any physical control over them. The whole idea behind making Adrien and Kagami Sentimonsters should have been something about them, but with Gabriel and Tomoe, the writers only see them as helpless victims who can't do anything to save themselves. Sure, both of them have fought supervillains before, but we can't have them actually showing agency, can we?
I'm going to get into other ways Adrien and Kagami's characters were butchered this season, but for now, let's get into all the uncomfortable things this plotline implies. Now before I go any further, just remember that I am far from an expert on abuse or child psychology, so please take what I say with a heavy grain of salt. If there is anyone reading this who is a victim of abuse or knows someone who was, please don't be afraid to speak your mind about my analysis or correct me if I get any details wrong.
I get that making Adrien, Kagami, and Felix Sentimonsters was probably done so it'd be a way to explain the concept of child abuse to younger audiences, specifically to show how helpless the situation can be for victims, but the problem is how the allegory is handled. It wants to show how cruel the idea of child abuse is, but it doesn't want to outright vilify abusers like Gabriel or Tomoe. They usually try to sugarcoat it by saying that the two have good reasons for doing what they do, but that's a common problem with abusers. Abusive parents almost always believe that they're doing the right thing while their children think that they're just being punished for their own good, and the season ultimately takes that stance by the end.
The show is clearly trying to use the Sentimonster concept to tell a story about abuse, but I have no idea what exactly it's trying to say about it. “Child abuse is bad”? Okay, then why aren't you going to condemn the abusive parents for being abusive parents? And no, brief mentions of abusive parents who we never actually see onscreen don't count (Derision, Pretension, Representation). “Help out abused children”? Big talk coming from the season that only has two people actually fight to help the victims of child abuse, while treating another victim of child abuse as getting her just desserts (Revolution). “Parents have good reasons to do what they do”? Yeah, that normally applies to stopping your kid from getting a tattoo, not forcing them to whatever they want against their will.
The thing about writing abuse is that you need to acknowledge just how unhealthy it is, and do whatever it takes to take them out of the toxic environment. Here, nobody ever tries to remove Adrien from the toxic environment or tell him that what his father is doing isn't right. Sure, Felix tries to take Kagami away from her abusive mother, but that was only for like an hour at most, and then he just let her go back to her mother. Adrien doesn't even get that luxury. Hell, he isn't even allowed to know just how terrible his father was because he's just a sensitive baby according to the show. Portraying abuse victims as too emotionally fragile to know the truth is a pretty bad idea because, like I mentioned before, a big problem that abuse victims go through is that they're conditioned to see their treatment as normal at best, or see it as their fault at worst.
Like so many other serious topics discussed in this show, the writers clearly want to tell a story about abuse, but they're too afraid to actually take a proper stance on it, so they kept trying to play it safe in an attempt to not get backlash from audiences. Of course, because of that, they ended up portraying victims of child abuse as soulless husks who have almost no free will of their own, while ending the season by having them still under the influence of their abusive parents, even the dead one. Real bang-up job, there, writers. It says a lot when a Spider-Man PSA from almost 35 years ago did a better job tackling child abuse than you did.
And finally, let's talk about how this season's treatment of Sentimonsters indirectly influences our perception of them across the past two seasons. Even though the Sentimonsters created have shown almost no individuality from Seasons 2 to 4, only now are we supposed to see them as sentient beings, with Felix himself even taking offense at the idea at being called a Sentimonster. Never mind the fact that Felix never actually comes up with a proper alternative, so he just comes across as whiny when we're supposed to see him as a champion of the Sentimonsters.
In regards to the narrative the show decided it now wants to tell about Sentimonsters, I have two questions.
First, why should I care about Sentimonsters if the previous two seasons have portrayed them as nothing but soulless killing machines? If you're going to write a plot twist that changes the way we see Sentimonsters, you need to explain why we were wrong to only assume they're dangerous, especially since Argos' first Sentimonster literally wiped out all of humanity. For comparison, Ultraman Z did a similar plotline by having the main character realize that several of the monsters he killed as the titular hero weren't intentionally trying to harm humanity, so it caused him to doubt himself as a hero before he vowed to start finding non-violent ways to stop monsters if he could, while viewing the act of killing monsters that couldn't be reasoned with as a necessary evil. This show has no such arc and just expects us to ignore all the damage the Sentimonsters have caused since the end of Season 2.
Second, what about the Sentimonsters whose lives have been snuffed out by Mayura, Shadowmoth, and even Ladybug? The writers want us to sympathize with Sentimonsters and believe they get a bad rap? That's fine, but even if we did, what about the ones who were already wiped out of existence? Are we just not going to talk about them? Why should we only value the lives of Felix, Adrien, and Kagami and not any of the other Sentimonsters created in previous episodes? What, because they're not main characters, their lives don't matter?
All in all, everything about the Sentimonster was either poorly thought out or too preachy to take seriously, and Felix is emblematic of those problems with how he and the Sentimonsters are written. Oh right, I forgot Felix had a sidekick too, Kimberly—I mean, Kagami.
Kagami Never Hesitates to Be a Complete Idiot
If you read my overview of Season 4, I sang high praises for how Alya was written. Season 4 managed to take a character I had previously disliked and turn her into one of my favorite characters in the show. Now, with that being said, I want you to imagine the opposite of that happening to a different character, and you have my feelings on Kagami this season.
It's weird how, after she had made it through the past three seasons with her character somewhat intact, the writers decided to give her even more prominence by involving her in two separate arcs this season... and only made her nothing more than a damsel in distress who constantly needed to be saved in both of them. I'm not saying that Kagami should be able to beat the crap out of Monarch with her bare hands, but my point is that Kagami just lost so much agency this season.
When she wasn't being manipulated by Lila (Perfection, Protection), she was playing second fiddle to Felix and acting like he didn't hand over almost every Miraculous in Ladybug's possession to Monarch (Pretension, Representation). It's really strange, considering a defining character trait of hers is her hating liars like Marinette does, since it's why she dumped Adrien, yet here, she gets tangled up in the schemes of two different liars, Lila and Felix. I can at least get Lila (as dumb as her episodes are), since she's supposed to be seen as this master manipulator, but she just brushes all of Felix's crimes aside because he “doesn't know how to express himself”. Because even though she's always been loyal to Ladybug, she has no problem working with one of the only two people to betray her trust. But she loves Felix, so that makes it all okay.
What made Alya's arc last season work was that even though she was primarily Marinette's confidant, we also got episodes showing her struggling to balance her own desires with what needed to be done for the greater good (Optigami, Sentibubbler, Hack-San, Rocketear). She had to step up and become more than just one of the many temp heroes Ladybug called on, someone trustworthy enough to temporarily use the Ladybug Miraculous. Yes, she made bad calls, but when things went south because of her bad decisions, she normally took responsibility for her actions and vowed to do better. With Kagami, we don't get any internal conflict like that at all. She just blindly goes along with whatever Lila and Felix say, and even when bad things happen as a result, she never even thinks to call out either of them other than rarely saying something along the lines of “Hey, not cool.” (Protection, Pretension).
Kagami just doesn't get to do anything on her own terms this season. Her entire arc revolves around following Lila and Felix around like a lost puppy. And just remember, we're seriously supposed to act like Kagami is trustworthy enough to see that her defending Felix from Ladybug is enough to prove that he's a good person deep down... when this same season showed her easily falling for Lila's lies and getting akumatized twice as a result. It's like believing Dr. Nick can perform a life-saving kidney transplant after seeing him botch an open-heart surgery.
Even Kagami figuring out Marinette is Ladybug, something that should be a big deal like with Alya and Luka learning last season, is something we learn through a flashback and is, you guessed it, is only relevant to one of Felix's plans. And yeah, reveal your friend's secret to someone who someone who betrayed her. What could possibly go wrong? Again, when Alya screwed up, she was at least able to admit it to Marinette's face. Kagami never tells Marinette that she knows, and never faces consequences for throwing her lot in with Felix. What's her excuse, that she has too much love in her heart for Felix?
Speaking of which, let's talk about the biggest problem I have with Kagami this season, the way her relationship with Felix is handled. Let me make one thing clear: my problem isn't with people who ship the two together. Much like with the Love Square, my problem is how the show handles this romance. The two had almost no episodes together, and from what little we saw of them interacting, Kagami didn't like him, and for obvious reasons. But then “Pretension” came. Not only did Felix develop feelings for Kagami offscreen, all it took for Kagami to fall for Felix was a single conversation where he showed basic human decency. Yeah, Marinette fell for Adrien for similar reasons, but at least she and him took a while to actually get together. These two shared a handful of conversations, and now they're just made for each other.
The problem with this is that the relationship basically reduces Kagami to Felix's girlfriend and sidekick. All of her major appearances post-“Emotion” were in relation to Felix. She only helps him because of their relationship, and their relationship was the whole reason why Kagami convinced Felix to do what he should have done from the start, tell Ladybug who Monarch was... even though Astruc said this kind of relationship was toxic when discussing Lukloe.
You see, the difference between Lukloe and Feligami is (MAKE UP EXPLANATION LATER AND DON'T ACCIDENTALLY LEAVE THIS SPOT BLANK). And that's why we shouldn't see this as blatant hypocrisy on Astruc's part.
While it's par for the course, given how almost every female character in this show is connected to a male character in some way, the way Kagami is written this season is still part of a bigger problem. Kagami is not everyone's favorite character and not one people fiercely discuss as much as Marinette, Adrien, or even Chloe, but it's still baffling that out of all the characters in this season, Kagami would arguably sustain the most damage out of the entire cast. Given that this is the same season as Nino becoming the braindead leader of the Resistance, Chloe's brief stint as a tyrannical mayor, Nathalie choosing to do nothing about Gabriel until she was about to die, the baffling reveal of who Lila supposedly is (again, more on these later), or... really, a lot of things with both Marinette and Adrien, this is actually saying a lot. If you want to look at it at a particular angle, Kagami's actually a direct victim of practically all of the biggest problems in this season and I've had to mention her a lot more in this analysis than I anticipated. Then again, I suppose that's me showing more care to Kagami as a character than the writers did.
The Story of The Resistance (In Name Only)
I've already gone on about how underdeveloped most of the temp heroes are, so you can imagine the season where they try to help Ladybug without superpowers doesn't really change my opinion of them.
Remember how in episodes like Season 1's “Antibug”, Season 2's “The Dark Owl”, and even this season's “Jubilation” made it clear that trying to be a superhero without a Miraculous or proper training was essentially suicide? You know, how it was better to leave things to the actual superheroes? Well the writers sure didn't, as now we get to see a bunch of idiots try to take on supervillains with paintball guns and whatever they can throw at them. I'm pretty sure the writers put more effort into all the codenames themed after condiments than actually coming up with creative ways to fight Akumas. Because we all know how hilarious (citation needed) the flower codename gag from “Gigantitan” was, so let's do something like that, but for multiple episodes this season.
I'm just going to be blunt here when I say the Resistance this season sucked. Putting aside the fact that the writers couldn't come up with a less generic name or a name that wasn't already taken by the Ox Miraculous' power, this subplot was just so pointless. You have a team of former heroes who want to find a way to help Ladybug and Cat Noir stop Monarch, and rather than do things like pass intel along or find ways to stop people from getting akumatized, they decide to try taking them on themselves with their most powerful weapons being paintball guns. Congratulations, you now have all the equipment you need to take on Bart Simpson in a fight. Sure, they try to pass on intel to Ladybug and Cat Noir in their first episode, “Illusion”, but Nino's plan was so stupid, they ended up helping Monarch in the long term by letting his civilian identity into their team. Oh, I'm sorry, did you forget how Gabriel and Lila were inducted into the Resistance at the end of “Illusion”? It's okay, the writers did too.
And the idea of them passing on intel could have worked, as it would give Marinette a support system to help solve problems she can't figure out on her own, following up on her character arc from Season 4 where she learns to put her trust in people, but like a lot of things this season, the writers got bored halfway through and decided to change up this plotline. Now, they're prepared to fight anyone who gets akumatized. How many Akumas did the Resistance manage to stop completely on their own? One, and it was offscreen (Deflagration).
Trying to make the Resistance seem competent and effective comes at the price of making the villains look like idiots who can't handle a few teenagers without superpowers. Monarbug, someone who managed to unify with the Ladybug Miraculous, lost it thanks to the Resistance dogpiling him. Then, later on, they managed to stop Nightormentor, an akumatized Gabriel, by just throwing stuff at him. Do you have any idea how lame this makes Monarch look? It's like that scene from Robocop 3 where that kid somehow managed to make ED-209 as loyal as a puppy in a matter of seconds. It's not cool to see it happen. It diminishes the threat the formerly menacing villain posed.
The show loves to play up the Resistance as this amazing underground organization Nino is so proud of, but it doesn't work because you can count the number of times they've actually helped out on one hand, and even then, that's being that word Chloe doesn't know the meaning of (Deflagration, Revolution, Representation). Even then, they still fall for Lila's lies which, like Kagami, doesn't help establish any of them as trustworthy. The whole Resistance subplot is basically an excuse to make it seem like the former temp heroes aren't just sitting around, which again, isn't a bad idea, but nothing comes of it. We don't get to see any of them worry that they can't do anything without their Miraculous, we don't see where or when Nino got the idea to form the Resistance, and we don't even get any scenes where the worry about the captured Kwamis. The show just has them all operate under the same goal and makes it seem like they're making a difference when they barely do anything. None of them really feel like characters, and it shows this season.
Nino, despite labeling himself as the brave leader of the Resistance, is anything but. He constantly brags about how effective he is, but not only does he let anyone into his top secret organization without even thinking if they can really be trusted, all of his genius plans amount to, you guessed it, throwing stuff at the brainwashed people with superpowers. He's also so confident that he was awesome as Carapace when all he did was occasionally help Ladybug out with his Shelter, and then whines about not being chosen by Tikki and Plagg when Scarabella and Kitty Noire temporarily take over (Illusion, Deflagration). He's also so poor at gathering intel that not only did he fall for Gabriel's ruse and act like he figured out how the Akumas have Miraculous powers, he didn't even know his best friend was going to London until he got on the plane (Representation). I wasn't kidding when I said Nino was such a terrible leader, he makes Zapp Brannigan look competent by comparison.
And remember when Alya was a major character? Neither does the show! Out of the entire season, she was really only relevant to the plot when she became Scarabella for a few days, and even then, she didn't think that maybe she should take off the Alliance ring that monitors her every move if she's going to be a full-time hero again (Transmission, Deflagration). There is absolutely no follow-up to anything that happened to her in Season 4. She doesn't regret blowing her cover, she doesn't worry over not being able to help Ladybug as Rena Rouge, she doesn't worry about the safety of Trixx, she doesn't even consider the fact that she's not used to going back to full-time hero work after half a season of being undercover as Rena Furtive. At best, the whole thing with Alya exposing her cover to Nino last season gets played off for the sake of a cheap joke (Illusion).
Then there's Zoe. Like Season 4, I can definitely say that out of all the supporting characters, she was certainly one of them. They clearly try to give her these big moments in an attempt to endear her to the audience, like her brief stint as Kitty Noire or her coming out to Marinette, but because of how nonexistent her character development has been, these don't feel earned. I can't buy her friendship with Marinette or anyone else because of how little she appears. Hell, she was specifically introduced to act as a good counterpart to Chloe, and she did nothing to really contribute to her ultimate downfall other than sharing a single conversation during “Revolution”. That's how little the writers care about her, they don't even have her interact with the character she was designed to replace. I take back what I said about her being a Mary Sue way back in my “Sole Crusher” review, because at least those types of characters get plenty of focus in the narrative. All I can really say about Zoe after two seasons is that at least she's more interesting than Socqueline, a character so boring, this is the only time I'm going to mention her in this entire analysis.
And that's it for the Resistance. Only three side characters are actually worth talking about this season. That is how pointless of a group they are.
Chloe’s Arc That, in Case You Forgot, Was Totally Planned From the Start
I really don't know what else to say here. Remember, this entire blog was started because of how upset I was by Astruc's response to criticism of the Season 3 finale, specifically how Chloe's “damnation arc” was claimed to have planned out from the start.
For the sake of argument, let's go over this arc and just what happened with this character over the past eight years. In Season 1, Chloe started out as a standard high school mean girl who used her father's influence to get whatever she wanted, but wasn't that much of a threat compared to Hawkmoth and the Akumas. In Season 2, we got to see a different side to her that started a character arc, showing she was capable of changing and becoming a hero in her own right. In Season 3, while it seemed like Chloe was changing for the better, the finale had her betray Ladybug and go back to being the same mean girl she was before. In Season 4, we were introduced to Chloe's never before seen half-sister, Zoe, who only existed to replace Chloe as the user of the Bee Miraculous, and even though the very same episode where Zoe first got the Bee Miraculous hinted that there was still a chance of Chloe changing, the rest of the season acts like she's always been a menace to society with no redeeming qualities. In Season 5, Chloe was portrayed as a heartless monster who is worse than the main villain of the entire show, is simultaneously smart and cunning enough to bully Marinette in a way that would leave lasting mental scars for a year and also too incompetent to take seriously, and even though the season has made a big deal about how terrible child abuse is, her being sent off to live with her verbally abusive mother is seen as a perfectly suitable punishment for her.
I don't know what's worse, the fact that none of the writers had second thoughts about this character's “arc”, or the fact that Astruc probably thinks he made an antagonist as complex as Lady Macbeth. I also love how, despite all this supposed planning, not once do we get any explanation as to just why Chloe hates Marinette so much other than the fact that one's a rich person and the other is the main character in a cartoon.
Chloe's character was already going in a downward spiral in Season 4, but with Season 5, it feels like the writers just abandoned all attempts to be subtle and were determined to stop people from liking her. Like, it's amazing just how much time was spent hammering the point home. She got more focus as a villain than Lila and even Gabriel. We had about eight episodes this season that featured her in a major antagonistic role: “Determination”, “Deflagration”, “Derision”, “Adoration”, “Revelation”, “Confrontation”, “Collusion”, and “Revolution”. Almost a third of this season is dedicated to showing how evil Chloe is, as if she's somehow worse than people like Gabriel or Tomoe. And that's not even counting episodes where she got a line or two to remind the audience of how bad she is, like “Multiplication”, “Passion”, and “Reunion”.
The weird thing is that even though this was supposed to be the season where Chloe was at her worst, it still seemed like the writers couldn't make up their minds on what they wanted to do with her. For example, let's take a look at her relationship with Monarch. In “Multiplication”, she believed that Ladybug and Cat Noir should just give Monarch what he wants, implying she's still on his side. Then, in “Determination”, she blamed not having the Bee Miraculous on why Monarch was able to win, implying she wants to stop Monarch. And then in “Deflagration”, it's hinted that she once again willingly accepted an Akuma out of a desire to get revenge, implying that she's still on good terms with Monarch. Finally, in “Revolution”, she initially wanted to arrest Monarch when he arrived in her office, and had to be convinced to work with him again. Seriously, this is almost two seasons after she started working with Monarch in the first place. How the hell are the writers not sure if she's working with the villain or not?!
Of course, that's the least of my problems with Chloe this season. One such problem that it seems like the writers specifically went out of their way to ruin the few positive relationships Chloe had just so her fans would have less ground to stand on. Her friendship with Adrien? He finally decided to write her off as irredeemable just as he learned just how miserable she made Marinette (and only Marinette) at the end of “Derision”. Her friendship with Sabrina, as one-sided as it is? She doesn't even see Sabrina as a friend anymore, specifically referring to her as an underling starting with “Adoration”, and then Sabrina turns against her after she finds one specific scheme to be going too far. The sympathy Ms. Bustier had for Chloe, even though it wasn't relevant to her character after “Zombizou”? Chloe basically ignores any attempt made to reach out to her, and we're supposed to act like her wanting to help Chloe get a decent education because it's her job as a teacher is the stupidest idea in the world. Chloe's relationship with her own father? This season decided to make Andre out to be a man mentally broken by the bad treatment he gets from his daughter and totally not a corrupt politician, and outright disowns her in favor of adopting someone who isn't even his biological daughter.
It already felt like Season 4 exaggerated Chloe's negative traits, but now, the show doesn't want anyone to like her in-universe, as if showing basic human decency to her in the first place was off the table. Remember, in “Revelation”, Marinette's speech to Adrien was basically copied and pasted from one of Astruc's tweets, as if this was meant to address anyone who still liked the idea of Chloe changing for the better.
And trust me, I'll get to the characters who actually got redeemed later.
For now, let's talk about the main issue I have with her portrayal: The writers want her to be seen as a threat... but they don't want her to actually be a threat. Almost all of Chloe's appearances this season had her acting as a pawn to either Gabriel or Lila. This season also started to use dumb blonde jokes in order to show how incompetent she is, like having her struggle to understand the concept of the word “generous”, making her out as an idiot. The whole point of the “irredeemable villain” archetype is that the character is usually so big of a threat, there is absolutely no way of talking them down, so they need to be stopped through the use of force. Chloe is far from a threat, which is why all this talk about her being a monster falls flat.
At the end of the day, Chloe is easily at the bottom of the hierarchy of the villains on this show. She has no Miraculous like Gabriel, she has no advanced technology like Tomoe, and she's nowhere near as cunning as Lila is. The problem is that the show wants the audience to see Chloe as if she's the worst of them all. Fine, she may have the most obnoxious personality and least amount of redeeming qualities by the writers' standards, but this is a superhero show. You don't just rank villains on how mean they are, but also by how much of a threat they are to the hero. The moments where we're supposed to take Chloe seriously, the show keeps reminding us that she's only getting as far as she has because she's being used by other villains. It makes the moments where the heroes triumph over her ring hollow.
I'm not even joking here when I say that out of the show's entire rogues' gallery, Chloe is literally the only one who actually gets punished. Sabrina was able to wash their hands of her association with the bully, Andre was more than happy to give up his position as mayor and kidnap Zoe, Tomoe was never even exposed, Lila only faced a minor setback when she was exposed, Nathalie was healed by the wish, and even though he died, Gabriel died a martyr who never actually answered to any of his crimes. But Chloe? As fucked up as it was, she was the only one who received some form of punishment for everything she did. Congratulations, Ladybug and Cat Noir! After five seasons, you finally managed to defeat the Ringo Starr of your rogue's gallery, and all it took was unlocking the full power of your Miraculous.
I was initially angry at the show for just throwing away a character arc and mocking anyone who was interested in it, but now, I'm angry at the show for a different reason. Even if we were to assume that everything about Chloe was planned from the start, that she was supposed to be a fallen hero turned enemy, the show did nothing with it. If you're going to make Chloe a full-blown villain, then go nuts with the idea! Have her dedicate her life to beating Ladybug out of hatred, maybe even through a suit of armor like Princess Morbucks. Instead, this is the writing equivalent of intentionally setting your house on fire, but deciding you don't need the insurance money.
I'm actually going to say something that might sound blasphemous, especially coming from someone who has spent a lot of time talking about Chloe's character assassination, but I'm just going to admit it: I think Chloe should have been the next Hawkmoth, not Lila.
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Yes, that's probably what you're thinking, but I'm serious. Think about it. Between her and Lila, who has the closer connection to Marinette as an enemy? Who has a more fleshed out reason to hate Marinette? Who got more focus as a villain this season? Who has more resources at her disposal? Essentially, the show put so much effort into making Chloe out to be Marinette's most personal enemy, that it makes no sense for them to not just go all the way and make her the next big bad. The writers already go on and on about how irredeemable she is, so why not make her an actual threat for a change?
But no. Instead, let's just keep her as comic relief who somehow gets more screentime than almost every other villain this season. That's a good way to tell our story, right?
Now You See That Evil Will Always Triumph Because Good Is Dumb... And So Is Evil, Apparently
This section should be relatively easy for me to get through, since not much has really changed with the villains since Season 4. They're all still idiots even though the show wants us to see them as a threat to the equally idiotic heroes.
Let's start with our only newcomer to the show's rogues' gallery, and definitely the weakest, Tomoe. I'll give the show a lot of credit with the foreshadowing for Tomoe here. Unlike other plotlines where the show bashes you over the head with obvious hints like with the Sentimonster stuff, the hints leading to the reveal of Tomoe being in leagues with Gabriel are far more subtle. They spend a lot of time in Seasons 3 and 4 discussing things offscreen (probably about some version of the Alliance rings), and both of Tomoe's akumatizations happen offscreen as well (since their conversation would give away their alliance). It's handled pretty well... which is more than I can say for Tomoe as a villain.
Tomoe is just such a confusing character, both conceptually and the way she was used this season. She's meant to be Gabriel's new confidant after Nathalie decided to stop being a villain while still mooching off him, but she pretty much does the same things Nathalie does, including the constant nagging about how inefficient he is. She even serves the same role Nathalie served in earlier episodes as Gabriel's technical advisor. Tomoe is basically a second Nathalie, with the only differences being that she's blind and that she wants Kagami to be with Adrien. Of course, this makes no sense because, like I mentioned in the retcon section, Adrien and Kagami tried to keep their relationship secret before their breakup. How could Tomoe not notice this? What is she, blind—oh right...
There's also the issue I have with the way Tomoe's nationality and disability is portrayed here, and how it really highlights how terrible this show is with representation (not to be confused with the episode of the same name). Like with my Sentimonster section, if there's anyone reading this who is disabled or a person of color, and you'd like to say anything about this part or how this show's representation is handled, feel free to voice your opinion or correct me if I get anything wrong.
With Tomoe, it feels like the writers slapped on every Japanese stereotype you could think of and called it a day, because we've seen all of these before. She's dressed in very traditional Japanese attire, is named after a famous Japanese warrior, uses a kendo shinai as a cane instead of a walking stick, is a strict parent to her child who expects the best from her, makes references to Japanese culture like samurai (Pretension) and taiko drums (Protection), is a technological genius, forces her child into an arranged marriage, and uses Japanese honorifics while talking with Gabriel even when they're not speaking Japanese. I'm not saying Japanese people can't talk about their culture at all, but when you're writing a character who happens to be a person of color, you need to do more than make references to their heritage.
With Tomoe, almost everything she says is referencing her heritage, which makes it come across like the writers cared more about her being Japanese than anything else. Because somehow, the writers were worried kids wouldn't pick up on the fact that she's Japanese... when she's wearing something that makes her look like she just stepped off the set of an Akira Kurosawa movie.
But hey, at least they say Tomoe is Japanese. I don't think there's a single indication that she's blind. At most, they give her the stereotypical superpower every blind person in superhero media seems to have, enhanced hearing. Of course, while characters like Daredevil and Toph Beifong have in-universe explanations for how they're able to “see” without their eyes (Daredevil's enhanced senses came from the same chemicals that blinded him in the first place, while Toph learned an advanced Earthbending technique that gave her the ability to sense others through vibrations in the earth), Tomoe just has them because the writers thought it would be cool. I know it might seem strange to say this after I talked about how too much focus was given to Tomoe's Japanese heritage, but you'd think more would be done with her being blind, and how it would factor into her motivation to create a better world through technology or her ideology about self-discipline. Instead, she acts like every other character on this show, to the point where all three times she was akumatized, she got her sight back.
The main problem with Tomoe is how other than her heritage and disability, she has almost no personality other than being a strict mother to Kagami (something that is also a negative Asian stereotype) and her vague ideology about suppressing her emotions. She's basically a female Gabriel, and because she's a woman in this show, lacks any depth or redeeming qualities. There just wasn't enough time to really develop Tomoe as a character in the same season she was revealed to be a villain. Sure, they try to hint at her having history with Gabriel, but that never goes anywhere, and we never even learn just why she's working with him in the first place other than some vague desire to make the world more technologically advanced in spite of also being a traditionalist who loves honoring old beliefs. Just remember, Chloe got eight focus episodes as a villain this season, yet Tomoe only got one.
Now for Lila, the most competent of the villains... by comparison. The show clearly wants her to be seen as a master manipulator in the same vein as David Xanatos from Gargoyles, but how they show it is just poorly executed. Sure, sometimes she would get ahead in clever ways during episodes like “Illusion” and “Revelation”, but other than that, a good chunk of her plans rely on contrivances that we're supposed to see as part of her plan when she would have no idea if it would actually happen or not. In fact, let's go over all the things Lila did during her last five episodes of the season and see how her master plan played out.
Step 1: Revelation – Convince Ms. Bustier to hold another election for class representative, lie your ass off to get the position while making it seem like you rejected an Akuma, and win the election.
Step 2: Confrontation – Tamper with confidential school documents while hoping your enemy doesn't plan anything to stop you, and if your plan falls through, abandon your identity entirely and hope nobody ever tries to look for you.
Step 3: Collusion – Convince your pawn to record a conversation between the mayor and the man you somehow know is Monarch and then after the conversation leads to an Akuma forcing him out of office, tell your pawn to accept an offer from Monarch's civilian identity that you somehow knew he'd make, leading to your pawn becoming the new mayor by force who everyone is too stupid to even think of opposing.
Step 4: Revolution – Tell your pawn to take an offer from the same supervillain she's willingly worked with before, watch her go mad with power and assume that Ladybug and Cat Noir will defeat her, and then in the chaos from her defeat, assume that one of Monarch's associates will randomly leave her computer behind for you to use.
Step 5: Re-Creation – Develop an immunity to magical nightmare dust, hack into the heavily-guarded mansion you know where Monarch lives while the city is being swarmed with supersoldiers, hope you don't run into Monarch or any heroes trying to stop him on the way there, take the hole created by a Cataclysm you know would be there, assume that Monarch will lose, and seize his Miraculous from the ruins of his lair that you somehow know how to navigate after surviving all of reality being rebooted.
General Patton, eat your heart out. I think we all know who the real tactical genius is here.
Seriously, how the hell did she even know half of the stuff involving Gabriel and Tomoe would happen? Yeah, she had Tomoe's laptop after the events of “Revolution”, but she didn't see how their final fight would play out. You could also argue that we technically never saw her go into Monarch's lair during the final battle (all we got was a shot of her looking down into the hole Bug Noire created with her Cataclysm), but why didn't she go down if she disguised herself to infiltrate Monarch's lair? Was she just scoping out the area? Was her entire plan just to steal Monarch's Miraculous? There were so many ways this could have blown up in her face, so let's go over all of them, shall we?
What if Ms. Bustier didn't agree to hold a reelection for class representative?
What if Marinette won the reelection anyway?
What if Lila wasn't able to escape during the chaos caused by Monarch's Megakuma targeting Mr. Damocles?
What if the school managed to contact one of Lila's moms and tell her about what her “daughter” did?
What if Chloe wasn't able to record the full conversation between Gabriel and Andre?
What if Andre agreed to use the police robots without any manipulation?
What if Miss Sans-Culotte wasn't able to get Andre to resign?
What if Andre did resign, but managed to appoint a interim mayor until the next election?
What if Chloe didn't accept Gabriel's offer?
What if Chloe didn't accept Monarch's offer?
What if Chloe managed to arrest Monarch with her robots and got all of the Miraculous herself?
What if the French military was sent to stop Chloe's abuse of power?
What if Ladybug and Cat Noir weren't able to stop Chloe and lost their Miraculous to Monarch?
What if Chloe double-crossed both Lila and Monarch and managed to get Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous herself?
What if Tomoe didn't carelessly leave her laptop behind during the final battle with Chloe and her robots?
What if Tomoe realized she lost her laptop and sent someone to track it down?
What if Tomoe installed a kill switch on her laptop to make sure nobody would be able to do anything with it in the event it got stolen
What if Ladybug didn't learn Monarch's identity?
What if Lila fell victim to Nightormentor's nightmare dust?
What if Lila was attacked by some of the Miraculized before she could make it to the Agreste Mansion?
What if Gabriel caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?
What if Ladybug caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?
What if Nathalie caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?
What if the Gorilla caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?
What if some of the Miraculized caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?
What if Lila got caught in the crossfire during the final battle between Bug Noire and Monarch?
What if Bug Noire didn't Cataclysm the floor and beat Monarch at the entrance of the mansion?
What if Bug Noire wasn't able to defeat Monarch?
What if Ladybug managed to find the Butterfly Miraculous before she did?
What if Ladybug caught her while she was trying to find the Butterfly Miraculous?
Do you see why I only think Lila is the most competent villain by comparison? A good chunk of Lila's “plan” amounted to her waltzing over and reaping the benefits from every coincidence she's around to see. And she's supposed to be this criminal mastermind who thought this all out from the beginning?
Lila's planning makes about as much sense as her motivation. Why does she hate Marinette and Ladybug? They both called her out on her lies back in Season 1 and 3 respectively (Volpina, Chameleon). That's it. This is enough for Lila to want to become a supervillain and terrorize Paris. I get that the idea is to contrast with the more noble goal Gabriel had as a supervillain, but you need to give more of an explanation if you want the audience to care about Lila becoming the next Hawkmoth.
At the very least, if the writers wanted to build intrigue about Lila, have this be the season where she first appears. Build her up as this mysterious new girl who wins over Gabriel's trust, only she has an agenda of her own. By having most of her appearances be this season, it's more obvious that she has a bigger role to play, and would eventually become the next Hawkmoth. Instead, it seems like the writers put a bunch of names on a dartboard, Lila's name was the closest to the first dart they threw, and that's how they decided who Ladybug's next arch-enemy would be. And once again, Lila hasn't even touched a Miraculous in five seasons, yet we're supposed to believe that with the help of that vague glowing light she saw as soon as the first put on the Butterfly Miraculous, she'll be able to take on eighteen superheroes who have plenty of experience fighting Akumas?
Speaking of, let's get into the final main villain, Gabriel. Compared to the others, he had a pretty decent start. He felt a lot smarter than he usually did, like how he used his influence to market the Alliance rings in order to boost his Akumas' powers, or once again trick Ladybug and Cat Noir into thinking he isn't Monarch. He even managed to outsmart Scarabella and Kitty Noire by using the Alliance rings to learn their identities, and almost got their Miraculous as a result. For the most part, Gabriel was a pretty clever villain who capitalized on every screwup the heroes made, and actually came across as a threat... that is, until “Protection”.
Starting with “Protection”, Gabriel decided that even though he has only a few weeks to live at best, he needs to focus more on meddling in his son's love life instead of getting Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous in order to save his wife. It comes across like he cares more about stopping Marinette than he does stopping Ladybug in the latter half of the season. Hell, Gabriel doesn't even set up any plans for what would happen to Adrien if he died despite once again claiming to be doing everything for his family. Also, for some reason, he really wants Adrien and Kagami to stay together and become a couple for reasons that I can only assume is because of some kind of social commentary on the rich. Is Gabriel trying to start a eugenics program? Is this how Khan was born?
The abrupt detour Gabriel's motivations take is connected to one of the bigger problems with this season: How Gabriel's Cataclysm wound is handled. We're supposed to sympathize with Gabriel and how his days are numbered thanks to what happened, all while he's desperate to achieve his goal... when not only did Gabriel Cataclysm himself at the beginning of the season, he almost never brings up his wound until the writers want to add unnecessary drama to the story. At most, he'll either flinch in pain a little because of the wound (Elation, Perfection, Intuition, Protection, Emotion, Confrontation), or show his purple hand to show how serious it's gotten while saying he doesn't have much time left (Passion, Pretension, Revelation, Collusion, Conformation). At least, we're supposed to see it as serious, as the injury never really gets in the way of his plans.
Rather than a painful injury that's slowly killing him, the show treats Gabriel's injury with the seriousness of a sprained ankle. Yeah, it's painful, but nothing serious. Aside from one episode (Intuition), we don't see Gabriel struggle that much with his deteriorating health or how it gets in the way of his plans. Compare this to how Nathalie's condition has been portrayed. As Season 3 progressed, Nathalie got weaker to the point of forcing Gabriel to abort his second outing as Scarletmoth (Ladybug), she became so sick, she had to be benched as Mayura by the end of Season 3, and needed cybernetic crutches just to help her walk during Seasons 4 and 5. While I criticized her sudden wrinkled appearance by the events of “Representation”, the show still made it clear that Nathalie was struggling to go about her everyday life over the course of the last three seasons. As for Gabriel, whose condition is supposedly more serious to the point where not even the Ladybug Miraculous can heal it? At most, it's less something influencing his belief that he has nothing left to lose, and more a mild injury at best.
Another problem I have with Gabriel is the same one I have with Tomoe and Lila: The lack of a proper backstory. Yes, we know the basics of it (his wife is comatose and/or dead, so he became a supervillain to get Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous and save her), but we know nothing about his life before that. Thanks to “Revelation”, the most we get is that before he became a fashion designer who took an interest in discovering the Miraculous, he used to work in fast food like Skeet from Jimmy Neutron. Hell, the two even have similar haircuts.
Whether Gabriel knows the difference between salt and sodium chloride is still up for debate.
The show wants to say that Gabriel used to be different, but we don't get to see that side to him. If you want to say Gabriel used to be nicer, then give us a flashback to show how much Emilie's death affected him. That way, it would also give the scene in the finale where he breaks down have more weight to it, as it would show him letting down his emotional defenses.
Also, why was Gabriel so interested in the Miraculous in the first place if he found the Butterfly and Peacock Miraculous before Emilie got sick? The show establishes that Gabriel went exploring with Emilie and Nathalie, but why? What were they looking for? How did this lead to them getting into fashion? How did Gabriel and Emilie get so rich if Amelie inherited the Graham de Vanily fortune? This was the season that was supposed to wrap up the storyline regarding the Agreste family drama, yet we still know so little about them or how Gabriel and Emilie even met.
Finally, let's get to the Akumas. The season makes a huge deal about how dangerous Gabriel is now that he has almost every other Miraculous at his disposal, how hard the battle against him will become. How do the Akumas reflect that idea? Very poorly. Twelve of the season's Akumas were reused models (Ikari Gozen in “Multiplication”, Darker Owl in “Jubilation”, the Collector in “Illusion”, Glaciator in “Elation”, Sole Destroyer in “Deflagration”, Dark Humor in “Derision”, Riposte Prime in “Protection”, Vanisher in “Adoration”, Matagi Gozen in “Pretension”, Hoaxer in “Revelation”, Reflekta in “Confrontation”, and Nightormentor in “Representation”), and only ten of them were original (Manipula in “Determination”, Safari in Passion, Kikou in “Transmission”, Ryukomori in “Perfection”, Gold Record in “Migration”, Bugfighter in “Intuition”, Miss Sans-Culotte in “Collusion”, Queen Mayor in “Revolution”, King of Plastic in “Action”, and the Miraculized in “The Final Day”). I've also gone over this several times, but despite the main gimmick being that the Akumas have Miraculous powers now, the show never really explains why Monarch can't just give them those kind of powers himself, especially when he could easily recreate Miraculous powers as far back as Season 1 (Copycat, Antibug, Volpina).
Most of the Miraculous powers didn't actually feel like upgrades and just excuses to recycle Akumas on the basis of acting like they have new powers when it's almost always just giving them the same old powers. Either that, or with the new Akumas, they'll just make it so their only powers are related to their Miraculous powers, like Safari getting all of her gear thanks to the Goat Miraculous' Genesis, Kikou and Ryukomori's only abilities being related to their respective Miraculous powers, or Queen Mayor getting the power to control robots with multiple Miraculous powers. There were exceptions like Manipula getting the Ox Miraculous' Resistance as an added precaution, or Vanisher mixing her stealth with the Dog Miraculous' Fetch, but they were few and far between.
Overall, almost every villain this season was just so underwhelming. While the Akumas were once again mostly reused character models, we learned almost nothing about the villains other than the fact that they're idiots. Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot the fact that by the show's logic, almost all of the villains aren't really villains. Let's talk about how the show handles redemption arcs now.
The Redemption Misconception or: The Power of Love Always So Strong?
While younger readers might not understand this, there was once a time on the internet where one of the most debated shows was Steven Universe, and mainly for one reason: How it handled the topic of redemption. Pretty much every major antagonist had changed their ways by the end of the show, including Lapis Lazuli, Peridot, the Cluster, Bismuth, Spinel, Jasper, and even the Diamonds. While the quality of each of these redemption arcs varies from character to character, as is the moral status of each character, there's one thing I can say about how the show got the moral about redemption across: It was consistent. Aside from one or two characters like Eyeball or Aquamarine (who were more ignorant than anything else), there was never a case about someone being physically incapable of changing their ways, which tied into the overall theme of how important compassion is. With the way Miraculous Ladybug handles its redemption arcs, I unfortunately can't say it does it the same way Steven Universe does.
Pretty much every major villain, antagonist, or associate in the show gets a redemption of some kind. This includes Nathalie, Felix, Sabrina, Andre, and even Gabriel, while Chloe, Lila, and Tomoe are all viewed as beyond saving. The problem is rather than actually acknowledge the things any of them did as wrong before they start to change their ways, pretty much every “redemption” in this show amounts to downplaying their crimes. If the writers don't retcon the story so characters like Nathalie, Sabrina, and Andre were forced to help a greater threat instead of being willing accomplices, they'll retcon the story so characters like Felix and Gabriel were perfectly justified in their actions due to having a tragic backstory. Yes, while the point of a redemption arc is to have a former antagonist realize the error of their ways and turn a new leaf, it doesn't mean that the character who goes through this arc was never bad in the first place.
Like a lot of problems with this show, this is obviously contradicted by the way it handles Chloe. Any argument made on why every villain who was redeemed this season was stated to not apply to Chloe for some reason.
“Felix is a victim of child abuse and has a lot of emotional baggage!” Funny, because I remember in “Derision”, Mylene made a point about Chloe having a deadbeat parent not being enough to justify her actions, so by that logic, Felix shouldn't be getting away with anything.
“Sabrina and Andre were being forced to go along with Chloe's evil plans, so it's not their fault!” Chloe was also a pawn in Gabriel and Lila's schemes, yet we're still supposed to see her as evil. “But she still went along with Lila's plan!” By that logic, so did Sabrina and Andre, since they still listened to Chloe for a while instead of distancing themselves from her far earlier than they did.
“Gabriel and Nathalie are doing everything they can to help Adrien while they're both in poor health! Chloe didn't actually care about Adrien!” Sure, it's clear that (according to the retcons in Season 4), Chloe only cared about Adrien as a meal ticket, you can't say Gabriel and Nathalie care about Adrien either, since one is an abusive parent and the other did nothing to actually stop the abuse. Also, why should I feel bad for either of them when they routinely endanger lives and are only on death's door because of their own terrible choices?
I'm not saying that the show doesn't make decent points about why Chloe can't be redeemed. The issue is that these rules are never applied to anyone else who does get redeemed. The show tries to use characters like Chloe and Lila as a cautionary tale about how easy it is for your kindness to be taken advantage of, yet we never get any examples of compassion being a key factor in any major redemption this season.
Pretty much every villain who changes their ways only does so out of self-interest. Nathalie was fed up with Gabriel's constant failures and her own declining health, Felix only cared about doing things that would benefit himself like hooking up with Kagami, Andre was more than happy to resign even though he was forced to do so by an Akuma, Sabrina chose to stop helping Chloe after one particular plan goes too far (without actually apologizing for all the times she still went along with Chloe's schemes, no less), and Gabriel only stopped trying to hurt people once he got exactly what he wanted and died a martyr.
For a show with the lyrics “The power of love always so strong!”, why do we never actually see the power of love in action? And it's not just them. Whenever a character shows some form of compassion for an enemy, it's usually met with a dismissive attitude or fails miserably, and if it's not that, it's all lie to trick someone else.
In “Illusion”, Gabriel's plan to throw off suspicion that he's Monarch involves pretending to let Ladybug and Cat Noir get through to him.
In “Derision”, Rose pointed out Chloe's relationship with her mother as an excuse for why she's so mean, only for Mylene to argue against that despite being in a different boat than Chloe is.
In “Revelation”, Lila kept lying about having a caring attitude and believing that anyone can change, which was obviously meant to mock anyone who had that kind of viewpoint.
In “Collusion”, Ms. Bustier tries to reach out to Chloe after everything she's done, only to lose her job as a result.
In “Re-Creation”, the whole reason Bug Noire manages to beat Monarch was by putting him in a situation that would take advantage of his compassion for his wife, and later on, Gabriel manages to get the upper hand by taking advantage of Marinette's own compassion for him.
For a magical girl show, these writers are really terrible at teaching the lesson about showing kindness to your enemies, because more often than not, it's just violence that solves everything. Just ask the citizens of Paris in “Revolution”.
It doesn't help that the morality in this show isn't a complicated spectrum that weighs every action a character does and allows for other stances besides good or evil. Instead, it's like a light switch with two settings: “So good, you volunteer at the local children's hospital” and “So bad, you voluntarily send children to the hospital”. Characters in this show are either good or bad, and there's no room for in-between. Even when characters supposedly do change their ways, the show goes out of its way to claim that this is what they've always been like, which completely undermines the idea of what a redemption arc sets out to accomplish.
The thing is that I've actually seen examples of “Character X was only doing bad things as part of their plan!” and “Character X was only forced to do bad things for the villain!” done with one character, and it was a very recent example too. In the recently concluded Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger, one of the major villains was a tyrant named Racules, who took advantage of several monster attacks to secure more power for his kingdom, but later on, it's revealed he had a reason to do so. Long story short, Racules was the latest in a long line of rulers who was essentially blackmailed into carrying out a war by an immortal being from space named Dagded. However, Racules had a plan to secretly find a way to kill Dadged, and it involved playing along by pretending to be a heartless tyrant. By playing up his persona of a villain, not only did Racules drive his brother Gira (who was revealed to be an immortal creation of Dadged) to gain the weapons necessary to fight Dadged, Dagded trusted Racules so much, he decided to give him the power to kill an immortal. Guess who Racules chooses to kill as soon as he gets that ability.
While the reveal that Racules was good all along happened very late into the series, it worked far better than any redemption in this entire show for one reason: Racules isn't let off the hook for what he did. Everyone, Racules included, acknowledges that he did terrible things for years, and as soon as the situation is resolved, Racules is imprisoned for his crimes. Racules even admits to going mad with power at one point before he focused on his goal again, and he doesn't complain while he's in prison.
We never get any moments like this with the other redeemed characters. Nobody ever acknowledges that they went too far. They do one or two good things, and therefore, they're perfectly okay in Marinette's eyes.
Like a lot of topics it covers, this show wants to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to redemption. It wants to show characters changing their ways, but it doesn't want to actually hold those characters accountable for their actions. It wants to explain that not everyone can be redeemed, but it doesn't want to explain what causes people to want to redeem themselves. It wants to have an idealistic view of solving problems with compassion, yet it goes out of its way to mock those with that same ideology while claiming that violence is the only answer.
Maybe if Astruc spent less time arguing with people on Twitter over the concept of redemption, he and his team could have put more effort into fleshing out the all of the half-baked redemption arcs this season.
Adrienette Is Finally Canon! The Love Square? What’s That?
Well, it finally happened. After seven years, five months, fourteen days, 115 episodes and three specials since the show originally premiered in France on October 19th, 2015, Marinette and Adrien have finally gotten together for real. No cop-outs, no reset button, no misunderstandings, this is real. Credit where credit is due, the writers could have easily kept stalling and wait until the very end of the season for Marinette and Adrien to get together and called it a day, but they gave us over half a season of them in an actual relationship. Unfortunately, this also meant the writers had to rush the development of the relationship in order for Adrienette to become official in the first place.
Like a lot of stuff in the first half of this season, the writers pretty much speedran through the plotlines building up to Marinette and Adrien getting together. During the course of a mere eight episodes, we got a plotline about Marinette feeling guilty for letting her feelings for Adrien make her screw up, a plotline where Adrien realizes he has feelings for Marinette, a plotline where Marinette falls in love with Cat Noir, a plotline where Adrien stops having feelings for Ladybug, and finally, a plotline where Marinette stops having feelings for Cat Noir. These are all plotlines that we should have gotten over the course of the past four seasons, but instead, the writers are just cramming them all into less than a dozen episodes.
Considering how this was meant to be the final season originally, you can tell the writers realized they actually had to actually resolve the “Will they or won't they?” plotline instead of just padding things out like they normally do. But that's the problem. This was something fans, shippers, and general audiences were told to look forward to for years. Keep in mind, one of the biggest arguments you could make for just why the writers waited until Season 5 for Marinette and Adrien to officially get together was because they had something HUGE planned. This is a big deal for the show, something you can't take too lightly. If Astruc and the other writers were so intent on hyping up Adrienette for over four seasons to the point of showing two alternate timelines where they get together to tide viewers over, they needed to make sure they had a payoff so incredible, so satisfying, that their audiences would see it as more than worth the wait.
Just how was the big moment where Marinette and Adrien officially got together this season after so many years of buildup?
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To be perfectly honest with you, I had absolutely no goddamn idea that the end of “Transmission” was meant to signify them finally starting a relationship. It just felt like the writers were doing the same thing about them being friends with a hint of something more on the horizon, but then the opening of “Deflagration” made it clear that here was major progress made in their relationship, though Marinette denied it due to her own anxiety, and by “Perfection”, it's confirmed that the two are dating. I just... really? This is how the two finally get together? It just... happens? No big dramatic confession? No romantic first date building up to this? Not even a kiss? The two talk for a few minutes, watch an Akuma fight, and now they're an item. Are you kidding me? Sure, most of the big moments in their relationship are saved for after they get together, but there's the problem: the writers half-ass the moment where Marinette and Adrien get together! It's more or less an afterthought in a two-parter involving a battle with Monarch where nothing was really accomplished.
You'd think for all the uncertainty Marinette felt over her feelings for Adrien this season, them getting together would be seen as a big moment, but it just doesn't for some reason. While you could argue it's a lesson in your fear of confessing being harder than the act itself, not much attention is given to Marinette growing closer with Adrien, because, for some reason, the writers decided to hold off the love confession and the first kiss for far later in the season (Pretension, Revolution). That's right, even after Marinette and Adrien finally get together, the show still needs to find a way to draw out the development of Adrienette.
I don't get it. Why couldn't the confession and kiss be what cements Adrienette, so more focus could be given to other plots? You can't say the “Will they or won't they?” stuff is the only draw to Adrienette, because there are plenty of plots you could write now that Marinette and Adrien are together. You could have an episode where Marinette invites Adrien over to breakfast with her parents in a follow-up to “Weredad”. You could have an episode where Marinette and Adrien try to go out on a perfect first date, only to struggle to balance their superhero lives getting in the way. You could have an episode where both Marinette and Adrien worry they're not good enough for each other, only for them to realize they love each other for who they really are. You could have an episode where Marinette and Adrien finally get closure on their former relationships with Luka and Kagami respectively. There were plenty of options for stories here, yet rather than do literally anything like that, not only did the writers drag out Marinette and Adrien's first kiss, they had the main villain take a break from trying to get the Miraculous to focus on breaking up the two.
As I mentioned earlier, we get a new arc all about Gabriel trying to break up Marinette and Adrien so Adrien can start dating Kagami again. Now I know what you're probably thinking: “IOTA, wasn't it implied that while Adrien and Kagami were dating, they were keeping their relationship a secret from their parents? Why are their parents suddenly obsessed with them getting together?” Well, you see, the answer to that is... that I have no answer because this makes no sense and is yet another excuse for a story arc that is somehow relevant to the overall plot. It's because of Gabriel's irrational hatred of Adrienette that Adrien is sent to London, and as a result, is absent from the final battle.
The sad thing is that I honestly thought Marinette and Adrien had some cute moments as a couple this season and had some believable chemistry. It's nothing groundbreaking, and there are plenty of flaws that I'll get to later, but for all intents and purposes, they still made a decent couple. It's just too bad that everyone else won't shut up about how amazing they are together. When their friends aren't trying to set up these cinematic scenarios for Marinette and Adrien that keep failing (Perfection, Protection,), they're gushing over how amazing of a couple the two are (Transmission, Deflagration, Revelation). At best, it comes across as the writers saying “How do you do, fellow shippers?”, and at worst, it comes across as the writers taking a victory lap while treating Adrienette as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Adrienette just dominated the latter half of this season, and it really got in the way of the overall story regarding the conflict with Monarch. What's that? You're saying I forgot something, like the other three sides of the Love Square. Ah, good eye, my friend.
SO DID THE FUCKING SHOW.
For the thing that got a lot of people interested in the show in the first place, the rest of the Love Square is criminally underutilized this season. Marinette randomly develops feelings for Cat Noir for a handful of episodes, Cat Noir randomly moves on from Ladybug, and I don't think we even got a single Ladrien scene this season. It really felt like the writers realized this was meant to be the last season, so not only did they have to get Marinette and Adrien together as quickly as they could, they also had to acknowledge the other sides of the Love Square. Of course, they did that without actually doing an identity reveal.
There are theories that the reveal was going to happen this season with how much Marinette and Adrien only talked about each other and not their superhero partners (implying they both knew who the other was), but the writers changed it at the last minute because they got renewed for more seasons. I suppose it makes in a meta sense, but what about the in-universe explanation? What's stopping Ladybug and Cat Noir from learning each other's identities when literally every other hero in Paris can get their Miraculous back, even the ones who had their identities discovered? Were the writers so uncertain if people would still watch the show if there wasn't any mystery in Marinette and Adrien's relationship? What exactly is there left to explore with the Love Square when Adrienette is canon, while Ladynoir, Marichat, and Ladrien are all dead in the water?
Like a lot of things this season, the handling of the Love Square started off strong and gradually petered out to the point where I just don't care anymore. I started this season assuming the reveal would actually happen, but of course, the writers just won't let this subplot die already.
Adrien Who?
While I don't really have a lot of bad things to say about Adrien compared to last season, this is unfortunately part of the bigger problem with how he was handled this season.
Like I said earlier, it seemed like the writers actually learned from their mistakes last seasons with how Adrien was written during the earlier episodes last season. He stopped whining about how he was totally important and started pulling his weight in battle. He was very active in fighting Akumas and actually felt like an equal to Ladybug. Yeah, Ladybug still called the shots, but the two stopped bickering over stupid things and had more conversations about other things. It didn't matter if they were more casual chats about their lives (Perfection) or discussions on the enemy's plans (Intuition, Revolution).
The problem, like a lot of things this season now that I think about it, comes in the second half. Remember how last season made a big deal about how wrong it was to leave Adrien out of the loop with so many secrets? Once again, the writers seemed to have forgotten this major story arc that they wrote themselves. Now, not only does Gabriel crack down on his horrific treatment of Adrien through his ring, not only does Adrien's character regress to being nothing more than Marinette's trophy boyfriend, by the end of the season, Adrien is literally reduced to a damsel in distress who needs to be saved, instead of, you know, A SUPERHERO. And remember, the writers were very proud of how this was planned for almost a decade, all because they got to supposedly subvert fairy tale tropes.
I feel like this whole “Save Adrien” plotline could have worked if Adrien wasn't already a superhero, and was just a civilian Marinette knew. Yeah, it would still be using an overdone trope, but at least if that happened, Adrien would have an excuse to not be able to fight back as opposed to the several he made during the finale. Instead, for the majority of the season's second half, Adrien takes a backseat to a major story arc revolving around his family and isn't even given proper closure by the end.
“But IOTA!” You might say. “The show's called Miraculous Ladybug, not Miraculous Cat Noir! Of course Ladybug has to save the day! She's the main character!” That may be true, voice in my head, but here's the thing: If Adrien wasn't going to be part of the final battle, why wasn't this about Marinette's family? Why not make Monarch Tom or Sabine trying to bring back their spouse? Marinette is the main character, yes, but so much of the backstory in this show is connected to Adrien's family. The show tries to connect Marinette to this through her relationship with Adrien, but with how often she and Gabriel fight over what's best for him, Adrien kind of just sits around, not protesting against his father in the slightest. I'm not saying Adrien should be the main character. I'm saying that Marinette should be tied more into the story if you were going to base a lot of the drama on her perspective during the final battle. It's almost like making it so Adrien physically can't rebel against his father was a stupid way to keep him out of the conflict.
Why the hell couldn't we have gotten a scene where Adrien's connection to Gabriel was broken? There were plenty of options the writers could have used. You could have had Nathalie steal the other ring back from Gabriel to give to Adrien, have Argos use the Peacock Miraculous' powers to override Gabriel's commands, or have Adrien unlock a new form of Cataclysm that severs the bond with his Amok. And that's not even getting into the excuses the show made for why he can't get involved, because God forbid one of the two main characters in the show's title get to take part in the final battle.
In fact, I'm pretty sure this is why Felix was introduced, to do the things Adrien should be doing. Felix is the one who has a vendetta against Gabriel, a deeper connection with Kagami, knowledge that he's a Sentimonster, and an overall influence in the plot. The writers are so obsessed with coddling Adrien that they created an entirely different character to fill in a role for him, and Felix wasn't even in the final battle. And just remember, Adrien was originally created to replace Felix in the story, so Felix taking over Adrien's role as the character who helps advance the plot makes even less sense.
Even if the final battle is meant to be over Adrien, it comes across less like Marinette and Gabriel are fighting over his freedom and more who gets to control him. Gabriel doesn't use his wish to free Adrien from the shackles of the rings. He just gives Marinette the rings and hopes she won't do the same kind of things he did with the rings. Nothing changed over Adrien's treatment except who gets the keys.
It'd be one thing if Adrien at least chose Marinette over his father, but Adrien isn't even allowed to know the full story on anything, not even the Sentimonster stuff. Okay, putting aside the fact that Adrien has lots of friends and family to help him cope with this, maybe I can buy not telling him about Gabriel. Not telling him he's a Sentimonster is something I can't excuse. This is like not wanting to tell someone they have diabetes and hoping they know how to use their own insulin while they're downing Pepsi after Pepsi. It's not just a matter of hurting Adrien's feelings. His fucking life depends on those rings. He should obviously know to keep them safe and not trade them for magic beans or something stupid like that.
But the biggest problem with Adrien this season is how it goes against everything the show has said about him and his relationship with Marinette/Ladybug the last four seasons, and especially Season 4.
For the past four seasons, the show has loved to say that no matter what happens, Ladybug and Cat Noir will always be here for the other, even against the world. Put aside how unlikable Adrien was last season, that was the ultimate lesson, about the two reaffirming their bond. And yet, here we are in the Season 5 finale, when literally the entire world is against Ladybug and Cat Noir, and Cat Noir is nowhere to be seen.
One of the main reasons why Adrien jumped at the chance to be a superhero was the freedom it gave him from his restrictive lifestyle, and how it led to him making more friends at school. And that very same story ends with Adrien admitting it's a good thing for him to stay inside and never acknowledge the fact that his father was kind of a dick. Remember, this was planned in advance for YEARS, and absolutely nobody thought it contradicted one of the most important aspects of Adrien's character: his desire for freedom. Now the same person who would demand to not be kept in the dark about so many things (Lady Wifi, Syren, Lies, Sentibubbler, Rocketear, Risk) is now sitting around like a coward while everyone else saves the world instead.
I still think Adrien was at his worst in Season 4, with how much of an whiny and insufferable idiot he could be, but Adrien in Season 5 is a close second. Yes, I wanted him to stop acting out and demanding that the world cater to his every whim, but I also wanted him to prove he was as valuable as he says. The first half of this season seemed to understand this kind of criticism and reminded the audience that Cat Noir was still useful, but when the actual story kicked in, the writers were so determined to keep the secret identity bullshit going, Adrien somehow got less focus as a hero than the Resistance, a group of temp heroes who actually lost their Miraculous. And consider the fact that this season wrapped up the drama with the Agreste family, so for all we know, Adrien will get even less screentime next season.
If Adrien is supposed to be an invaluable ally to Ladybug, then why doesn't the writing accurately reflect it?
The Problem With the Biggest Idiot of Season 5: Moronette, “Of Course I Know What I’m Doing!” Royal-Pain, AKA, Ladydumb
You know, it's funny. I kept defending Marinette when the writing kept making her out to be a terrible hero last season while Adrien got by without a single criticism, to the point where I considered Adrien to be the worst part of the entire season. Oh, how the tables have turned with dear old Marinette, as the season that chose not to criticize every single action she took is when she's arguably at her worst.
You have to wonder if the writers finally realized how much crap they put Marinette through over the last few seasons by having her always forcing her to learn some contrived lesson and were like, “Oh yeah, she's supposed to be someone the audience is supposed to root for.” Unfortunately, they went way too far in the other direction with how they handled Marinette.
The way Marinette was written this season felt eerily similar to what happened with Adrien last season. Suddenly, her personal drama is of the utmost importance (Determination, Passion, Reunion, Elation, The Kwamis' Choice, Perfection, Migration, Derision, Adoration, Pretension, Representation), she's making incredibly stupid decisions in battle (Evolution, Destruction, Determination, Pretension), she becomes the moral compass of the show who lectures others on what to do (Revelation, Confrontation, Collusion, Revolution), and she's never really called out for her actions by the other characters despite how often she makes things worse.
So much of the first half of this season is the exact same crap over and over again. Marinette complains about how hard things are for her and her conflicting feelings for Adrien. I wouldn't really mind something like this if it wasn't for two things.
First, there's no real arc involved with this. Marinette keeps complaining about her love life, and she never really learns anything from it. She doesn't even get to confess to Adrien and show her growing as a character. Adrien confesses to her, and bam, the two are a couple now. Glad to see all the discussions about Marinette's anxiety was completely pointless since she doesn't get to be the one to really confront her inner demons. Well, there was one time in “Derision”, and we all know how well that turned out, right?
Second, more often than not, it seems like Marinette is prioritizing her personal life over the situation with Monarch. You know, the guy who has access to fourteen different Miraculous? After you only managed to get one back? I'd understand if we got this kind of arc in the earlier seasons, but by doing this, you're undermining the current threat Monarch poses. She's even willing to give up being a superhero if it means being with Adrien. That is how important her love life is to her. She's willing to let Tikki force the responsibility onto someone else if it means she can be happy. Of course, this isn't too surprising, as Astruc once said that the show is supposed to focus primarily on romance, not superhero action.
THIS IS WHAT THOMAS ASTRUC ACTUALLY BELIEVES.
Just like with Adrien last season, the show seems to care more about Marinette's personal issues at the expense of other characters. Do you want to know how many episodes this season focused on Marinette's love life in some way? EIGHTEEN (Multiplication, Jubilation, Determination, Passion, Reunion, Elation, Transmission, Deflagration, Perfection, Derision, Protection, Adoration, Emotion, Pretension, Revolution, Representation, Conformation, Re-Creation). Literally two-thirds of the season includes Love Square drama. Even if you want to be generous and count both two-parters as single episodes, that's still more than half the season. This is yet another problem with waiting until what was originally supposed to be the last season to resolve your plot. You need to force all of this development through almost every episode until people get tired of it.
Because of this, Marinette basically took over the narrative of Season 5. Almost every major conflict revolved around her, even the stuff with Adrien. Rather than make a story about Marinette and Adrien working together to break free from Gabriel's influence, Marinette is the one who has to do the heavy lifting and save Adrien herself. I've already talked about this with Adrien, but it bears repeating, as this is same issue I had with Season 4. Just like how Adrien got more focus during a story arc that should have been about Marinette last season, Marinette is now getting more focus during a story arc that should have been about Adrien, to the point where Marinette gets to use Adrien's Miraculous during the final battle with Monarch.
I'd at least be somewhat forgiving towards the shift in focus if Marinette actually got to do anything to advance the plot herself. Because of how often the show focuses on Marinette's love life, very little time is dedicated to showing Ladybug making an effort to actually stop Monarch. The closest we got was in “Illusion”, and that was a plan spearheaded by Nino. Like I said earlier, Felix does more to advance the plot out of any character, even Marinette, THE ONE THE SHOW IS NAMED AFTER!
We have three separate episodes where Ladybug has Monarch at her mercy, but she decides to talk about how she's totally won and that Monarch can't get away at all, and then Monarch gets away in a matter of seconds. I just... this is “SHOOT THEM WITH THE DEHYDRATION GUN!” levels of stupid here! The only reason Monarch gets as far as he does is because Ladybug can't just grab any the Miraculous he has all over his body.
We're seriously supposed to see Marinette as an amazing hero when she keeps screwing up every opportunity she gets to stop Monarch. In the span of one season, Marinette went along with being forced to retire because she got a chance to date Adrien (The Kwamis' Choice), chose not to form a temporary alliance with an Akuma even if it meant possibly getting the Peacock Miraculous back and stopping a potential threat (Pretension), had absolutely no plan to stop Lila until someone else came forward with information on what she was doing (Confrontation), decided to let another Akuma force the mayor out of office (Collusion), and failed to stop Gabriel because she got tricked again and was completely helpless as the entire universe was recreated before she took credit for defeating Monarch afterwards in the new reality and then decided to honor the insane supervillain's wishes and keep her boyfriend completely in the dark about the truth even though she learned not to keep secrets from others (The Final Day) and MY GOD, I HATE THIS SEASON SO MUCH.
When Marinette isn't making terrible decisions, she's lecturing others on how to act around their enemies, and when I say “how to act”, I mean “refuse to give them even the slightest bit of respect after doing the bare minimum to help them try and change”. Marinette really lets her own personal biases toward Chloe and Lila get to her this season with how the latter half of the season had her tell others not to even consider trusting them because of how easy it is for them to take advantage of kindness. You know, something you'd hear someone like Superman or Spider-Man teach kids about.
In fact, here's a little game any aspiring writer can play when writing superhero characters: If you can't imagine someone as noble as Superman saying something like this...
Marinette: But sometimes, the good we think we see in some people is just a reflection of our own, and we end up being fooled by our own kindness.
Unless your intent is for them to be flawed or in the wrong instead of a complete paragon of virtue, you need to go through your drafts.
And just like Adrien, even though Marinette keeps screwing up, she's never held accountable for her actions. She's never allowed to be wrong, and is almost always the one who gets to lecture people, mainly towards the end of the season. A good example of how poorly written Marinette is this season is when she whines about Ms Bustier not punishing Chloe enough when not only does she fail to understand that Chloe is still being punished, but she did absolutely nothing to bring Chloe's cheating to her teacher's attention when as class representative, it's her job. I don't care how stupid that idea sounds, that's what the show goes with, and it makes Marinette's inaction come across as very irresponsible.
But then again, neglecting her duties at school is nothing compared to acting like Marinette didn't fail to save all of reality while not showing the least bit of remorse for it. I'm just saying, when even Ben 10: Omniverse of all shows does this kind of story better, you know you've screwed up. Again, we're supposed to see it like Marinette won because the universe is in one piece, when, once again, SHE FAILED! Like I said, she failed at pretty much everything she set out to do this season and didn't stop Monarch outside of warding off his Akumas. This is seriously how the show was supposed to end, with Marinette failing to save the universe and the audience just needing to accept it. Well, in case it wasn't obvious on my front, I don't. Hell, forget Ben 10: Omniverse. Even Star vs. the Forces of Evil had the main character save the day, even if it meant potentially screwing over countless lives by destroying all magic in the world. Marinette? “Well, everyone I know and love is technically dead and the madman I spent five seasons trying to stop gets to die a martyr, but everything looks like I saved the day, so that technically means I didsave the day! Man, I'm a great hero. Good thing the other characters basically exist to remind the audience of how amazing I am.”
If there's one thing to take away from everything that's happened, it's that this was the season where Marinette has arguably become one of the biggest examples of a show failing to make the audience like their main character. There was much time dedicated to rationalizing and trying to justify the worst possible decisions she could've made and acting like she's still an amazing hero. Stuff like this only serves to further validate the criticisms people have had for her as a character ever since Season 5. And remember, this is coming from someone who went out of their way to defend Marinette last season. In an attempt to show her at her most heroic and virtuous, Season 5 pretty much cemented Marinette as a terrible main character, a terrible superhero, and a terrible role model for children.
Eight Years for This?
I'm going to be perfectly honest with you guys. This season just broke me, and there was a good reason why this analysis took so long to write.
While there were a number of outside factors that made it hard for me to get the time to write (work, the holidays, family gatherings, etc), there were still times where I either didn't have a lot of material to work with, or I just couldn't find the motivation to work on the reviews. I guess throughout all these years, I figured that after all this buildup between the Love Square and Adrien's relationship with his father, there would at least be something I could find this season that would allow me to say this was worth the wait. Unfortunately, it was just disappointment after disappointment this season, with a universally hated finale to boot.
To me, this was the season that burned away the remaining goodwill I had for the show, because there's just no salvaging it at this point. The writers pretty much butchered every single character in some way, excused the main villain's actions for a sorry excuse for a heroic sacrifice, and literally reset the universe so all of the characters we've come to know for almost a decade technically don't exist anymore. Even the cliffhanger for Season 6 really excites me, because why should I care about a character we still know nothing about becoming the main villain? Why should I care at all when the writers have made it clear they don't care either? They don't care about writing character development, they don't care about writing consistent lore for their world, they don't care about approaching serious subjects with the delicacy they deserve and they certainly don't care about telling a consistent story.
Season 5 of Miraculous Ladybug was a failure in every conceivable definition of the word. It failed to deliver a satisfying conclusion to any of the stories that had been set up for years, and if this was how the main story ended, I don't really have a lot to look forward to when Season 6 premieres.
#immaturity of thomas astruc#iota#thomas astruc#thomas astruc salt#miraculous ladybug#miraculous ladybug salt#marinette dupain cheng#ladybug#adrien agreste#cat noir#chat noir#felix graham de vanily#argos#alya cesaire#nino lahiffe#kagami tsurugi#gabriel agreste#hawkmoth#hawk moth#monarch#chloe bourgeois#nathalie sancoeur#tomoe tsurugi#lila rossi#Youtube
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I think Laios post-canon is so happy and in love whenever Kabru infodumps to him, because Laios loves telling people about monsters, so for someone as cool as Kabru to share what makes him passionate and happy just makes Laios feel honored. Like he doesn't understand a lot of it but he's taking notes, he's asking questions, he's engaging Kabru in what he loves because he knows how good it feels when people take an interest in his field and he wants to know what makes Kabru so focused
Yes yes yes!! Where they end the series in their respective character arcs is just gorgeous; Kabru letting himself drop the mask and be vulnerable and wanting to better understand monsters to better understand himself, Laios finally feeling like he has a connection with humanity after they banded together to save his sister, and wanting to show his gratitude by being the best king he could be. Once they're finally comfortable enough around each other to start yapping, I doubt the yapping would ever truly cease.
And like, it would still require effort from both of them. Subtle nuances in human interactions would still be difficult for Laios to get a handle on and Kabru would still be repelled and disgusted by monsters. But they're both in a place now that they want to make the effort to care, and I think that's so much more meaningful than if they were already the sort of people to have already been interested in that in first place. They're just both at the perfect point to truly start relying on each other and continue growing as people and it's just ooooouaagghh
And isn't that just the autism 4 autism dream? Having someone who, even if they don't quite get it, still genuinely wants to learn more about your passion? Being able to make that someone happy by listening them talk about something they're passionate about and learning something new? I think not.
#dungeon meshi#dunmesh spoilers#labru#infodumping as a love language#i.e. the best tag ever#personally them not getting it is half the fun#nothing's worse than warming up for a yap only to find out the person already knows all of that stuff lmao#... yaps anyway
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Felix and lovie:
L: but... arent promise rings meant for bfs and gfs?
Felix: i mean, we made the promise to always be close so its our promise ring i think.
L: i guess youre right!
Farleigh: 🧍🏾♂️
i want to queue posts before i go on my trip but i also i love instant gratification ahhh
this isn’t exactly promise rings but i think it feels pretty close
His room still smells the same--faint traces of smoke and cologne blending into slightly humid air. You're not sure what you expected. Felix left for a weekend for some family function his mother wanted him to attend. Two days.
Not a significant amount of time. Not enough time to change anything, and yet you felt every second of it. You missed him. Missed him more than you think you'd ever be willing to admit.
"Did you miss me?" There's no way he knows what you were thinking about, but there's something about the slight tilt of his head and his barely there smile.
You hold his gaze for a beat before letting your attention fall to your shoes. "Maybe a little."
Felix's mouth falls open in a mock gasp. "Maybe?" And then, still completely appalled, "A little?"
You press your lips together into a firm line to keep from laughing at his reaction. Felix moves to stand, leaving his bed in favor of approaching you. In an attempt to hold your ground, you cross your arms in front of your chest. Felix disregards your feeble line of defense, continuing forward until you're within easy reach.
"I could say--" Felix places a firm hand on your shoulder. A sound between a laugh and something slightly more panicked tumbles through your sentence. "I could say I missed you a lot, but--" Another hand on your other shoulder, another clumsy laugh. "But I don't need to feed your ego."
He pulls you forward gently until your face hits his chest. You halfheartedly lift your arm in an empty attempt to push him away. You're quicker to embrace defeat, glad for the excuse to be near him, really near him.
You hugged Felix when he first got back to campus, but with his usual crowd all desperate to catch up with him and Farleigh right there, you felt a little more watched than usual. You couldn't do what you really wanted, couldn't take a beat to just absorb Felix's warmth.
"So you were being mean."
You're only half listening, more focused on wrapping your arms around Felix. The scent of his detergent is stronger than usual, nearly obscuring the scent of his cigarettes entirely. Maybe he smoked less this weekend. You try to picture Felix under some kind of authority, sneaking cigarettes out on a patio to avoid upsetting his parents. It's so normal, a part of you regrets not getting to see him like that.
His hand presses against your back. "Lovie?"
You lift your head enough to look at him. "Yeah?"
Felix's eyebrows briefly pull together. He watches you for a moment before grinning. "You missed me."
His smugness has the instinct to protest crawling up your throat, but there's something so content about his expression, you can't bring yourself to deny it the way you usually would. "I missed you. A lot."
Felix's grin broadens. He tilts his head downwards, his lips briefly brushing against your forehead. He straightens before responding, "You could have come with me."
You did meet Felix's sister during your Christmas break trip, and she was really nice, but Felix's world is still something you're vaguely wary of. Maybe you could have come around to the idea of meeting Felix's parents, but the thought of attending some event intended only for his family was a little overwhelming, especially because Felix didn't invite any of his other friends.
"It was a family thing."
Felix lets out a soft sigh. "I brought Farleigh."
"Farleigh's your cousin, he was already invited."
He pulls back slightly, his hands moving away from your back as he lets go of you. "No one cares if you bring a date to those things." It's the same argument he used in an attempt to get you to go with him. "It's to keep the night bearable."
"Bearable?" You beam. "You missed me."
From you, it's an accusation. Felix's eyebrows draw together, like he's unsure why you felt the need to say something so obvious. "I missed you." He shifts back on his heels in a way that borders on uncertain. "So much, I brought you back a present."
You raise your eyebrows at that. Felix is a thorough person. When he gives someone his attention, that person has his entire focus. When Felix gives presents, he tends to be just as generous. It's not a bad thing, but it is something the two of you have talked about. Yes, you're best friends, but that doesn't mean you want Felix splurging on you. Even if it's not splurging to him.
Felix turns, walking towards the bag that he left on his bed. With his back to you, it's a little easier to watch him openly. He went to English countryside for some charity event put on by some cousin. What could he have gotten? "A present?"
He unzips his bag. "Yes," Felix shifts through his close, "A present."
When Felix turns to face you again, there's a something small and square in his hand. The closer Felix gets, the clearer the object becomes. A box that's oddly reminiscent of a jewelry box.
With an abruptness that doesn't seem to suit him, Felix extends his arm to hand you the box. You watch Felix as you take the box, doing your best to decipher his expression. He's strangely blank.
You open the box, revealing a ring safely tucked between cushioned velvet. There's an image carved into the flat face of the ring. The carving of an arrow-pierced hand emerging from a crown is vaguely familiar. You might have cared about placing the image more if the ring was less stunning.
"You um--you wear a lot of rings, so I thought..."
You do wear a lot of rings, there are several on your fingers right now. "It's really pretty."
"My mum was going through some older pieces this weekend and it reminded me of you." The explanation is mumbled cautiously, Felix's attention shifting from you to the ring and then back to you.
Your lips part, an uncertainty you're not accustomed to feeling around him making it hard to speak. You don't know everything about Felix's family history, but you know enough to understand that when he says something from his home is old, he means it.
"Lex." The gesture tugs at a sentimental part of you that exists solely in the pit of your stomach. "That's really sweet, and it's really pretty, but I can't take some family heirloom from you."
His eyebrows pinch together in a way that feels more confused than directly unhappy. "You're not taking it, I'm giving it to you." Felix shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "C'mon, I've got loads of these, it's just been sitting in some closet."
Felix is watching you with wide, almost pleading eyes. You let your gaze fall back onto the ring. With no warning, Felix places a hand over yours. "We'll trade."
You don't fully understand what he's getting at until Felix starts to straighten your fingers. He twists the ring that's on your ring finger. It's a nice ring, a simple band with thin carvings that you picked up at a vintage jewelry shop on a whim, but it's not exactly an even trade.
Felix slides the ring off your finger. A trade is a little easier to accept. The two of you share things like bracelets all the time. "Okay," you pause to take a breath, "But if you ever want it back..."
"Yeah, I know." The words feel like a dismissal. You narrow your eyes briefly, but don't push the subject the way you normally would. You're too happy to see him to care about technicalities.
Felix pulls the ring out of the box and slips onto your finger. You bend your fingers and turn over your hand to get a feel for the ring and its size. It fits. "It's really nice."
"It suits you."
Before Felix can pull your ring onto his finger, you put your hand over his. He lets take your ring from between his fingers. You hold your thumb beneath Felix's palm, the rest of your fingers curling over his knuckles. Felix keeps his fingers straight as you place your own ring on his finger. "There."
Felix grins. "There?"
"Yeah, it's--" You ignore the warmth attempting to make its way up your neck. "It's in place."
He stretches his fingers, studying the way the band looks on him. There's something about his expression you can't quite read, but it doesn't seem unpleasant. He drops his hand before you can attempt to decipher his thoughts any further. "Do you want to watch a movie?"
You drag your thumb against the side of the ring. "Yeah, a movie sounds nice."
----
fun fact the design carved into the ring is supposed to be the catton family crest :)
taglist; @vader-is-hot @spiritofbuddha @getosangie @freyafriggafrey @ilovehyperfixating @aryiannarae @willowpains @ker0senebunny @lilyrachelcassidy @khxna @imbabycowboy
#bestfriend!felix#felix catton x reader#bestfriend!felix x reader#felix catton x you#saltburn x reader#jacob elordi#jacob elordi x reader
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MHA didn't create some miracle way of helping others. It was never promised to be this way. And when it came to villains...
Spoilers for manga all the way to chapter 423.
The only way to get anything in life in MHA was to be born "normal" like everyone else and that way of thinking never left Izuku with Toga getting the same treatment she did before from everyone from her family to her "normal" classmates. It was Ochako who helped Toga even if just a little by lifting the weight of all the feelings that Toga had.
She couldn't save Toga the way one could save a civilian by saving them from harm. If it worked that way Dabi would've saved Toga even before Ochako could apologize for failing to notice Toga. She was so lazer focused on saving everyone else, that she was just another villain to stop, not a human.
Even if by the end of it Ochako helped Toga to deal with her grief, acceptance as it was wasn't something possible when a quirk makes you want to drink someone's blood from jealousy.
We got a bittersweet ending with Toga, in which she probably died from blood loss just like her double did in MVA. If it wasn't for Twice she would've died back then.
Giving away her blood for Ochako wasn't a redemption or a way to save Toga in the end, more as it was her being true to herself until the very end.
Just like Twice chose to stay with the League even if Hawks offered him a way to survive that battle. He refused and died protecting his friends who accepted him instead of choosing to betray them and accept Hawks' offer.
After Twice's death... It was a matter of time that more 'active' LoV members would join him as well. As sad as it is, we now can return to Izuku.
Who, after his time OFA-AFO quirk space, now wanted to help a "crying boy" he saw in Tenko just as before with Katsuki in chapter 1. He didn't forgive Tomura and didn't excuse the way he chose to solve his problems.
It didn't mean that Tomura would survive in their battle, even if Izuku didn't see killing others as a way to solve problems. He didn't understand Tomura, but he still wanted to try, and try he did.
The rest of this post was nothing more than a contextual prologue to understand that it's not the first time a hero failed to save a villain and in Twice's case we know that he died and his death was the reason Toga started thinking about her own possible death and Dabi finally revealed himself as Toya.
The goal of saving a "crying boy" never was an end-goal for Izuku in the Final arc, since helping Tomura deal with his feelings just left him hollow with a goal that clashed with Izuku's. As being a hero for villains meant destroying the world for them to help them live freely.
But that was before AFO resurfaced.
Sadly after that Tomura who was talking about making his own choices for a while now stopped doing that. Even if he still had a goal of helping villains and only villains, Tomura was almost gone. And his goals were now unreachable.
Izuku helped Nana who in turn kept Tomura from fading away entirely. In MHA there were countless situations where Izuku's help affected people by helping a different person to keep hope, All-Might being the first one and Nana being the last one at the moment.
Hollow after Izuku helped him to get rid of his hatred Tomura could do the only thing he did - accept the situation as it was.
Accepting AFO as his Sensei, accepting Stain's ideals and Overhaul's deal was the way he solved his problems. Just like Izuku had a problem of understanding something outside of his norm, Tomura was accepting too many things, which lead to his downfall after accepting AFO's quirk.
Just like Twice could've given up everything that he had for his friends so did Tomura.
With Izuku helping as much as he could let Tomura to finally rest as he wasn't really living ever since waking up in the hospital. With his body now affected by AFO's wishes instead of his own until the end.
In a way Izuku didn't succeed in his wish for Tomura to stop ever since PLF war arc. As he "kept fighting to destroy" no matter how hard Izuku tried to stop him.
The only thing he succeeded in was changing Tomura's mind about himself, instead of viewing himself as a monster he accepted that he was a human just like Izuku said. A "crying boy" who couldn't really destroy Izuku's hands in the end.
For a group of Villains who weren't supposed to get profiles of their own at the start of the series, League is slowly fading as the most memorable group that there was in MHA, getting backstories, their own Villain themed arc all the while being as human as anyone else.
As sad as their story is they were not "unlucky", they didn't need a happy false ending where they would need to change to be normal - they chose to live this way and they lived it to it's fullest.
#bnha#bnha manga spoilers#bnha analysis#league of villains#shigaraki tomura#tenko shimura#toga himiko#mha twice#midoriya izuku#ochako uraraka#todoroki touya#dabi#spinner#shuichi iguchi#not art#While writing this I've been rewriting it time and time again#But by the end of it I just started crying because god... I didn't want them to end like this#Also I finally found the tracks that connect to the scene of Twice's death#Which may or may not have been a reason I started crying#Anyway the reason I wrote this was as simple as that - I read Twitter got sad and needed some way to cope#Because I'm getting sick from all 'oh they'll survive' yes HEROES might survive all of this VILLAINS would not#Magne died Twice died wnd Kurogiri literally became a cloud in the sky#I do hope that Spinner would be at least alive because leaving Mr. Compress alone with no sushi too is just too cruel#While writing this I suddenly found myself so frustrated with Izuku that my last tries to write this ended in a trashcan instead#it's so fucked up#To be a LoV stan and see how Class 1-A is getting the best ending they can with so much hope while LoV is... Dead :(#this is a mess
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Batfam Reality TV show
Ugh FINE I'll tell you about my Batfam Reality TV show HC's okay? jeez... (nobody asked).
Before i yap, this idea has been swearving around in my brain like a wagon tied to a angry rhino for a while now. I can't remeber if i was inspired by other posts so if im accidentally stealing someones idea or someone has similar posts pls lmk so i can I'll tag them :). Also reminder that these are Head Cannons, if you don't agree then thats okay. These are just the senarios I play in MY head. (pls ignore all spelling mistakes, im lazy)
Okay, I feel like a reality TV show centred around the batfam would be so funny. Like, a bunch of self aware traumatized orphans hanging around in a mansion. The Kardashians but actually likeable, humble (well, it depends) and absoloute chaos, and not the "omg youre so chaotic lmao" but instead "Ah shit, someone is trying to break in to confess their love to Brucie again, someone call the cops" kind of chaos.
Bruce Wayne is the prince of Gotham. He has built Gotham from the ground up and he is loved by the majority of Gotham residents and even villains. In this cenario, Bruce's billionare playboy days are behind him, and works more like a tired dad who is just trying his best (good parent Bruce Wayne basically). He really has no idea how or when most of these people became a part of the family but is just happy they're there. Mabey Selena Kyle /or Clark Kent could be a side character and there could be a B-plot where Bruce is panicing about proposing or something. Is chronically reading the newspaper. Bruce is also the type of parent to really try to BOND with his family. Puzzles, games, trips, picknics, lgbtq+ merch ect.
Dick Grayson lives, and even has a key to the city of Bludhaven but still visits home regularly. There is an on-going gag where Dick always talks about longing for a relationship but when sees his ex'es while out and about and turns 180° and hides. (its my HC i can do what I want. Dick is a terrible long-time boyfriend, okay).
There is also a scene where Dick makes fun of Tim for being emo (he was just on his phone) and the rest of the Batfam in their one-on-one interviews show pictures and share horror stories from Dick's 'Hot topic, MCR, stealing dads car, eyeliner, youre not my real dad, ugh' phase from his teenage years and a screen shot of Bruce Wayne holding up a picture of Dick with a joint hanging out of his mouth becomes a meme format. Another clip that went viral is a home video where Alfred is scolding Dick for staying out late and he goes "UGH" and backflips out of the room. It cuts right back to Dick where he is smiling and hugging Damian being all ":D".
Jason Todd is thought to have been dead by the people of Gotham for years but as the season progresses, can be seen more and more often in the backround like walking into rooms while people are giving their one-on-one interviews and slowly backing out, or him just walking past a room, or as soon as the camera crew enters a room Jason makes eyecontact with the viewer and just turns around and leaves. There was an intstance that sparked a lot of controvercy online where Roy Harper came to the mansion looking for Jay and the batfam just stared at him, looked to the camera crew and then looked back at him. He swiftly left after rambiling about his terrible grief. (nobody bought it)
They all grew lazy nearing the end of the season and Jason just sits at the dinner table with everyone there, the camera never focuses on him and nobody mentions that he IS actually alive and is sitting RIGHT THERE. Jason just covers his face with his free hand while he eats and can just be seen in the backround while people talk. Jason says something and the camera turned to Bruce, and the editors, very poorly, tried to make it seem like Bruce was the one talking when it was obviously Jason.
In season two of "THE WAYNES" Jason finally joins the cast and admits in a one-on-one interview that he is, in fact alive and that its not a big deal (they make up an excuse and say that he just didnt like papparazzi/had a brain injury or something so he faked his death). This is never mentioned again.
Duke Thomas lives in the manor and was adopted by Bruce (again, its my HC i can do what I want). Duke is the moral compass and seemingly the only one that actually does their own chores. He is constantly just staring out into the madness that is the rest of his family since he is one of the newer member of the family. He, along with Tim are the only ones that can cuss out Bruce without reprocussion. Damian gets kind of jealous of Duke becasue Alfred the cat seems to like Duke a lot, and Dami is afraid of Alfred the cat choosing Duke as his new favorite person. Duke is extremely aware of this and shoo's Alfred the cat away and pretends to not like cats when Damian is around (to soothe his soul a bit).
Tim Drake is also one of the few members of the family that actually lives at home. Tim is a skater kid and Ipad kid at the same time somehow. He is also the ONLY person in the manor (Alfred excluded) that Bruce doesn't scold (it would be weird, since Tim basically babysat Bruce after Jason died).
Tim and Bernard Dowd start dating during the filming of S1 so there are a lot of scenes of Tim freaking out because Bernard is coming over and of the others making fun of him for looking into every detail of their interactions and overthinking them (was that a romantic gesture or not??). Bernard finally makes an appearence where he gives a short one-on-one where he introduces himself. Bernard quickly rose in ranks in terms of the internets white boy of the month (the TikTok edits went hard).
Cassandra Wayne was also legally adopted by Bruce and is his little princess (she is highly dangerous). She changed her last name from Cain to Wayne, bc i feel like she sees the Waynes as her real family. She looks nice enough but once the audience gets to know her they become aware of her insane competitiveness and how she has everyone in the manor wrapped around her pinkie. She dominates in board/video games and is the only one that can convince Alfred to get take out. Cass also practices ballet and is selectively mute and uses ASL most of the time (i just like the idea of her being SELECTIVELY mute, okay).
She is dating Steph (ITS CANON IN MY EYES). Cass, Tim, Bruce, Alfred, Damian and Duke are the only actual residents of the Wayne manor, the others just come and go like its an open buffet.
There is a scene where Cass, Steph, Tim and Bernard all sit on the couch and tell the camera crew that, "well yes Steph and Tim used to date and didn't get along for a while but now we're all friends". "Steph is tecnically dating her ex's sister but its not that complicated, REALLY". "Well yeah, Bruce conciders Steph a part of the family but its not weird or anything guys I PROMISE". "Well yeah actually, both Tim and I realized we weren't straight during our relationship. Why?" Cass and Bernard also get along really well but Bernard doesnt know any sign language and has to rely on others to translate/ Cass has to write thing down for him (they talk MAD shit).
Stephanie Brown. Damn, how the fuck does she keep get in? Sometimes Steph just sneakes into the manor to watch TV or to raid the fridge, while texting her girlfriend, Cass about how much they miss each other when Cass is litterally just upstairs and they're both too lazy to move. Bruce offered her a key to the mansion but she just responded by saying "nah its more fun this way". Steph is constantly accused of being a gold digger within the home and she doesnt deny the claims but its obvious that she does genuinely hang around because they have all become a family to her (found family basically, ugh im such a sucker).
Damian Wayne is still young so there is not a lot of scenes going into his personal life like at school and stuff but he is still there a lot. Anytime Damian says something socially strange or offputting, the others just chuck it up to Damian being a little weird sometimes teehee, or just tell people to not mind him because he is kind of new around there. Meanwhile, Damian speaks in a very professional and sophisticaded way which creates conspiricy theories among viewers about his upbringing, ESPECIALLY because Damian said something in passing about being raised in a secret mountain society.
The camera crew caught a glimpse of Damian in the yard casually accomplishing amazing feats with a giant sword and then immidietly stopping dead in his tracks when he noticed a wild rabbit in the garden. Keen viewers also noticed this strange phenomenon where Damian somehow wins every argument EXCEPT for when its with Alfred.
(I both love and hate the idea of Damian being a spawn of satan in everyones eyes. It can be funny sometimes but in my universe, Damian gets along well with everyone. Sure Damian is crude and weird but he's a kid, and i want him to have a supportive family that understands why he does and says the things he does. I basically just want Damian unapologetically being a kid.)
Alfred Pennyworth is an interesting person for newer fans of the Wayne family, since he is practically unknows to the public. Alfred introduces himself as the only butler in the Wayne manor and a long time friend of the Wayne family. Viewers quickly realize that Alfred is really the man of the house and it becomes previlant when he goes on a short weekend trip (with a secret girlfriend perhaps, Maggie Page perhaps) and everything falls apart. Bruce doesnt know where he is supposed to be at any given time, a hirearchy is established (Cass is a very unfair leader) and the only person making sure the others are fed is that mysterious figure in the backround (Jason).
Alfred makes it sound like he is only the butler but the rest of the batfam all talk to/about him as the essential part of the family that he is and how he is everyones badass, british, grand papa, dad, butler- babysitter-cook, friend thing.
Barbra Gordon is another unofficial member of the Wayne family. She is always over for game and movie nights and just in general. Barbra and Dick used to date but are on really good terms (suprisingly). Barbra is especially close with Jason, Cass and Dick, and is kind of a mentor/cool older sister figure to the others. Sometimes Jim Gordon visits as well, since he and Bruce are fellas.
In the opening scene of the first episode, the batfam are asked to make a family tree or list of sorts since there are so many of them and Barbra was the only person who remebered that Jason was supposed to be dead (nobody bought it).
This will do FOR NOW. I wasn't be able to fit everything here so ill prolly make a pt.2, where i tell yall abt some silly situations that would take place in a Wayne reality TV show. This is more like an introduction into the convoluted storyline that has been building up in my head (what else am i supposed to do at work?).
I also want to state that Leslie Thompkins is also concidered a family member to me since she is like a surrigate mother figure to Bruce but she won't be hanging around the manor as much as the others.
Ik i skipped a lot of characters that are concidered to be in the batfamily but even I dont know who IS concidered to be in the BatFam atp or I skipped characters that i just dont like/think about as much bc im shallow like that lol.
ALSO ALSO im not a huge BatCat or SuperBat shipper but i just felt like them being in the family dynamic would be interesting. Timid ol' Clark or the HBIC Selena Kyle. I also didnt include friends and stuff that would prob be at the manor all the time too like Roy, Wally, Jon, JLA, TT, YJ ect. blah-blah-blah you get it, I'll stop yapping now.
#batfam headcanons#batfamily#batfamily headcanons#batman#robin#dc characters#dc comics#young justice#justice league#teen titans#bruce wayne#brucie wayne#dick grayson#jason todd#reality tv#batcat#superbat#roy harper#duke thomas#signal dc#dc robin#batkids#batboys#batgirls#spoiler dc#orphan#cassandra cain#black bat#batgirl#oracle
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You’re his babysitter
[Ghost x You]
Insta: blvck.mvlck [Will start posting bots and fanfics there too]
You loved children dearly. Simon, on the other hand, hated them, to him they were more of a burden than a blessing.
What are children good for? They cry, shit, eat, sleep and cry some more.
He was really tired of this 'being a dad' shit. It wasn't easy.
The baby cried every night for hours until the clock struck morning. He wasn't focused on his duty anymore because of the lack of sleep.
Yes, he hadn't slept much before, but now he couldn't even get two hours of sleep.
That was it, he finally had enough.
He slammed open his computer and searched for a babysitter. He has found an acceptable babysitter for his son.
You.
Simon has been watching your interaction with his son for a whole week. And shit, you're good at what you do.
He enjoyed watching you form a bond with his son, a bond he never had.
Not that he ever wanted one.
In his eyes, he was a mistake that haunted him after a stupid, meaningless fling.
Simon was gone for weeks or months sometimes when he was on missions or deployments, he even set up a room for you in his house and paid you very well. You didn't need any other jobs. So you can concentrate fully on your job; his one-year-old son.
His son loved you endlessly. He saw you somehow as something similar to a mother who took care of him, bathed him, played with him, made sure he had fresh food on the table and... loved him.
Today was one of the few days Simon spent at home, he was off duty until the next mission in a week's time. Nevertheless, he showed little to no interest in his son. As always.
"Simon, dinner's ready," you shouted from the kitchen as you put the food on the dining table and the little toddler, who you had in your arms while you were cooking, back in his chair.
Simon came down the stairs with sauntering steps, the smell of lasagna rising to his nostrils, almost melting in his mouth.
He was grateful that he had you, even if he couldn't really show it. Thanks to you, he was able to take a step back and didn't have to take on the role of being a father, in which he would fail anyway. Just like his own father did.
His son didn't need a father like him when he had you.
Simon sat down opposite you and stared at his food that you had prepared for him, his heart pounding painfully hard in his chest; he was goddamn thankful .
"Thank you, YN."
"... not for that."
Simon took a forkful of the lasagna and hungrily stuffed it into his mouth. The lasagna tantalized his taste buds, he had to stifle a small groan that threatened to leave his lips when he tasted the warm sauce and the perfectly layered noodle plates.
After all... Since he arrived this morning he hadn't eaten a thing. He was more than thrilled with your cooking skills and he thanked god for it.
His dark eyes fluttered back and forth between you and the little boy, who had red sauce around his little lips, like a little vampire. God he is so unbearable, he kept trying to tell himself, but the tugging in his chest kept reminding him painfully that he was too soft to hate his own son.
Maybe it wasn't hate he felt, but simply the need to push him away.
"Let me feed him, you have to eat, YN," he said bitterly, looked in your eyes.
His heart skipped a beat or two.
He was torn. On one hand, he didn't want to feed his son, on the other hand, he couldn't watch you feed his son and end up eating your food cold.
You didn't want to interfere so you handed Simon the childish blue spoon without even millisecond's hesitation. Your heart leapt with joy and hope that Simon was getting a little closer to his son, even if it was only a small interaction between father and son.
Your manicured fingernails ran gently over the head of the little boy, who went by the name Luce.
"He's lucky to have you," Simon murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. He reached out, his gloved hand hovering for a moment before gently resting on son's head, trying to mirroring your affectionate gesture.
Luce deserved a father, someone who could be there for him, even if Simon struggled with the concept of fatherhood himself.
Growing up with a bastard of a father who constantly tortured and tormented you... it left its scars, both physically and mentally.
The touch was brief, almost hesitant, as if Simon was still grappling with the unfamiliar sensation of blossoming like a snowdrop in spring, slowly thawing from the cold winter.
But it was a step, a crack in the thick wall he had built around himself.
Deep down, Simon knew that he couldn't shield himself from these emotions forever, no matter how much he tried. A part of him began to wonder if there was room for more than just duty and detachment in his life.
"I'm just the babysitter in this whole thing," you said with a shy smile on your plump lips that makes his thoughts spin. Lips, which he has fantasized many unspeakable things in his imagination on lonely nights.
"Just a babysitter, eh?" Simon replied, his voice tinged with a smoky pitch that he owed to years of smoking. One of his few bad habits that couldn't get rid of.
"Well, you're doing a damn good job at it."
As the evening wore on, the three of you continued to share the meal in the cozy warmth of the room.
Simon eyes occasionally flickered towards you, his gaze lingering for a moment longer than necessary. There was a certain comfort in having you around, a feeling that makes his mind go silent.
He knew that his time at home was limited, and soon he would have to return to the life he led based on duty and detachment. Missions and wars.
But for now, in this moment, Simon allowed himself to savor the peace and the connection that had unexpectedly blossomed between you and his son.
And perhaps, just perhaps, there was a part of him that dared to hope you're more than just a babysitter for his little burden... for him.
But wasn't it your job as Luce’s aunt to look after him?
English isn’t my native language, , I’m sorry for mistakes :)
#simon ghost riley#ghost#ghost cod#ghost x reader#cod mw2#cod x reader#cod mw3#call of duty#simon riley x reader#simon riley x you#simon riley smut#simon ghost smut
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Pedro Scouts of Tumblr Summer Camp begins June 2, 2024!
*What is PST Summer Camp? It's 8 weeks of extra fun - new badges, activities, and silliness - all built around a classic Summer Camp theme.
*Is it different from Scouts? Think of it as an 'extra.' Scouts is the organization; Camp is just one more thing you can participate in if interested!
*What should I know before signing up? Camp will be built around more community interaction. While Scouts is focused on things you can do on your own, many of the activities at Camp will be done with your bunkmates.
*What the hell is a bunkmate, Megan? Great question! Once you sign up for camp, you'll be sorted into cabins with other Scouts! These other Scouts will be your bunkmates! There will be certain activities that you'll do with your bunkmates as a team.
*If I hate people, can I still come to camp? You can, sure. But if you are dead-set against the teamwork aspect, you'll probably have more fun skipping Camp and just doing the usual Scouts stuff.
*Does Camp replace Scouts? Nope! There will still be the usual Scout badges and activities running concurrently. Scouts is the cake; Camp is frosting. That's why there are two separate blogs - if you aren't interested in Camp, you can safely not follow this one and you won't miss any of the typical Scouts content.
*Okay, this all sounds good. How do I enroll in Summer Camp? It's easy, but it's important so I'm gonna put it in a bigger font, so get ready.
To enroll in Summer Camp, drop a thumbs-up emoji into the comments on this post between today (May 20th) and May 27. After that time, signups will be closed in order to allow me time to get everyone assigned to a cabin. If you have questions, the inbox is open!
Your Camp Director,
Megan
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Sorry I’m gonna be a bitch now. You know damn well people would take Izzy’s abuse of Ed more seriously if it had been physical. If in ep 10 izzy had physically hurt Ed when he confronted him a lot more people would take Ed’s emotions seriously. Ahem. Anyway. Sorry for ranting in your inbox! You don’t have to post this I just needed to get it off my chest cause I’m tired of people still thinking izzy was just being “a little mean” and I know I can trust you to have good ed takes 🫡❤️
Mhm let's say this a little louder for the folks in the back. I know I'm preaching to the choir here on this blog but you're right and we should say it.
Now, even if Izzy had physically hurt Ed, there already would've been a few things that make it harder for some people, especially white fans who haven't put in the work to examine their biases, to sympathize with Ed:
Obviously, he's a man of color, who is physically taller than Izzy. Portrayals of men of color as victims of abuse are vanishingly rare, and I've seen arguments that Izzy couldn't have abused Ed because "Ed is stronger than him." There are no physical perimeters at which abuse becomes impossible but Ed does not ""look"" like a victim.
Ed is an imperfect victim. He gets angry and he lashes out. He reacts in a very human way, and even if we can see that any violence on Ed's part is almost always reactionary, he once again does not fit the image of what a victim of abuse "should look like."
Izzy's specific MO of emotionally abusive behavior towards Ed focused on quantity over quality; he fails to understand Ed as a person so many of his attempts to encourage specific behavior are like throwing things at a wall and waiting for something to stick. He is not good at manipulating people but he is good at being consistent - he does not fit the stereotypical image of what abusive behavior "should look like," with most of his tactics looking like lying to Ed, isolating Ed, gaslighting Ed, etc., with varying results. It's realistic (people who abuse others in real life do not have to be smart or particularly good at manipulating others) but it's not what some people will expect.
Izzy is often specifically trying to trigger violent behavior in Ed, again making him look like a "bad" victim
Izzy is, obviously, a masc white man, and many people will be willing to take him at his word when he yells at Ed that he has to manage Ed's behavior even though the show contradicts this
And when you add in that Izzy doesn't physically hurt Ed, but is physically hurt himself as a result of his actions? Yeah. It's pretty easy to see why so many people will tell you that Izzy was ""just yelling.""
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