#this is going to take a lot longer than I thought

[nina-ya]

Can I have a scenario where Law is jealous of Bepo because you’re always hugging and cuddling with him like the big cuddle bear he is but Law is too shy to admit that he’s jealous

A/N: Hi there!! I had a lot of fun writing this I hope you enjoy! Pairing: Law x Reader CW: none just fluff WC: ~800

It’s truly hard to resist the lure of the comfort that Bepo brings. Everyone knows this. Everyone on the crew has succumbed to the furry comfort of the polar bear, and you were no different. Especially during those cold winters, trying to steal Law’s body warmth is not enough, so you often turned to the furry companion.

You often found yourself nestled comfortably against Bepos warm fur. As you lay there, you caught a glimpse of a certain captain out of the corner of your eye. You couldn’t help but notice that something was wrong. You would notice how his stares would linger on the two of you when you were cuddling, or how his attitude would be the slightest more passive aggressive if you were to talk to him after cuddling the polar bear. 

You brushed off any thoughts of jealousy, chalking up the more sour behavior to stress from future plans. As the days went by though, you couldn’t shake the feeling that there was indeed something wrong with Law, yet every time you would confront him, you would be met with a short and sweet “nothing’s wrong.” 

‘Nothing’s wrong’ he claimed, yet those stares never stopped that constant upset mood never stopped. It’s as if he was jealous that you were cuddling Bepo or something… holy shit he was jealous that you were cuddling Bepo!

Once you put two and two together, you couldn’t help but find this all amusing. His denial of anything being wrong was slightly infuriating, but his lack of communication is something you would work on later. For now, your main focus is exploiting that newly discovered jealousy until he owns up to it.

You started purposefully avoiding Law as often as you could to cuddle with Bepo. Every time he would see you, you would be cuddled into the side of the polar bear. This only heightened his jealousy further and further with each passing day.

Today, the Polar Tang was surfaced, and the crew took the opportunity to go star gazing at night. All of you lay on the main deck, watching the stars above, and you of course were planted right in the arms of Bepo, your new favorite spot. The crew was passing around food and drinks, chatting and laughing under the night sky, until Law left the group early. He was quieter than normal tonight, and you were honestly wondering if you were starting to take this jealousy thing too far.

Then, a blue bubble encompassed the entire deck and suddenly, you were no longer on the main deck in Bepos arms, but you were in the captains quarters, in Laws lap.

You stammered in confusion, trying to make sense of the disorientation caused by the sudden teleportation. Law’s arms wrapped around you, pulling you into him. As if by instinct, you melted into his arms, your body molding into his as if it was the most natural thing in the world. You nuzzled your head into his neck, mumbling against his skin. “Are you okay?” The care for him evident in your tone.

He let out a small grunt in response, wrapping his arms around you tighter. “Just stay with me for a bit,” he muttered to you, a subtle vulnerability laced in his voice. 

With a hum, you settled further into his arms, taking in the scent of his cologne and the warmth of his body right against yours. The tension that had been building finally began to dissipate the more you settled into his touch. His tight grip around you softened, and you could feel his worries easing with the sigh he let out. It was as if all the weight of his jealousy had been lifted off his shoulders. 

You nestled closer to him, resting your head against his chest as you listened to his heartbeat. It’s moments like these where words are not needed, just each other's presence. He rested his head against your own.

Law broke the silence, “I’m sorry,” he murmured against your skin. “ “for acting so…” he trailed off, not quite sure how to articulate his feelings.

“Jealous?” you finished for him, your voice gentle as you looked at him with understanding. A pause filled the air as he took in that word. ‘Jealous’. Law hesitated for a moment before he finally nodded with reluctant agreement.

“Yeah, jealous.” he admitted, confirming your thoughts. 

You sensed his discomfort and shifted in his lap to get more comfortable. “You know,” you began, your voice tender as you reached up and brushed a stray hair from his face. “This is my favorite place. Right here, with you.” you punctuated your words by squeezing him tight. 

His eyes softened at your words, “Good,” he murmured, voice barely above a whisper, “lets keep it that way.”

#nina responds~✦ #nina writes~✦ #one piece x reader #trafalgar law #trafalgar d law x reader #one piece fluff #trafalgar law x reader #law x reader

[ham1lton]

50 + jenson button where he goes to readers childhopd room and sees loads of photos of old f1 stars (and him)👀

050. a childhood home or bedroom w/ JB22.

— part of a series of drabbles! <3

you had been seeing jenson for a little while. he was seemingly perfect. you both got along incredibly well, he was funny and obviously very attractive so when your family asked if he could come along for your biweekly sunday dinner, you obviously said yes. if you’d known what was going to happen, you would have said no.

“is that me?” jenson laughed as he walked into your bedroom. you hadn’t been home in a while, so you had completely forgotten about your decor which comprised of young jenson, young lewis, young nico and young sebastian plastered all over your walls.

“i was young!” you attempted to defend yourself, cheeks heating up in embarrassment. why hadn’t your mother taken these down? but at least, you know that your parents were so out of touch with celebrity culture that they never would have thought that the jenson in the poster was the same one lounging on your hello kitty themed bed.

jenson grinned as he stepped closer to inspect the posters. "wow, i never knew i had such a dedicated fan," he teased, tracing a finger over his younger self's face.

you groaned, hiding your face in your hands. "i was a teenager! we all have our embarrassing phases."

he laughed, a warm, genuine sound that made your heart flutter. "it's kind of adorable, actually. but now i feel like i have a lot to live up to. do i still meet your expectations?"

you peeked through your fingers, meeting his playful gaze. "you've exceeded them, honestly."

just then, your mother called from downstairs. "dinner's ready! jenson, we're excited to get to know you!"

you took a deep breath, preparing yourself for the evening ahead. "ready to face the family?"

jenson reached out, taking your hand in his. "as long as you're with me, i think i can handle anything."

as you both headed downstairs, you tried to ignore the sinking feeling in your stomach. dinner started off well enough; your family was sweet and welcoming, and jenson's natural charisma shone through, easing your nerves.

but then, just as you were beginning to relax, your younger brother piped up. "you know, you look a lot like that racer dude on the posters in my sister's room."

your father's eyebrows shot up. "racer?"

before you could intervene, jenson chuckled and said, "it's true. i used to be a formula 1 driver."

there was a moment of stunned silence. your mother blinked in surprise, and your father's face split into a wide grin. "no kidding! my daughter has had those posters up since she was a kid. she was obsessed with racing!"

you cringed, wishing the ground would swallow you up. but jenson squeezed your hand reassuringly. "well, i guess you could say she has good taste."

your family laughed, and to your relief, the conversation shifted back to more mundane topics. as the evening wore on, you found yourself relaxing again, especially as jenson handled your family's questions and quirks with ease.

later, as you walked him to his car, jenson turned to you with a smile. "your family is great. and the posters... well, they make me feel like i've been a part of your life for longer than i knew."

you smiled, feeling a warmth spread through your chest. "honestly? i'm just glad you didn't run for the hills.”

he hummed and leaned down, pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead. "not a chance. besides, who wouldn't want to date their biggest fan?"

#ham1lton’s drabbles 🝮 #formula one x reader #f1 imagine #f1 x reader #formula 1 x reader #jenson button x reader #jenson button x you #jb22 x reader

[chaepink]

Money, Money, Money! | sub!izuku midoriya

wc: 1.3k+ words | masterlist

dom!gn!reader, sub!pro-hero!izuku, sugar daddy x sugar baby relationship (reader is the sugar baby), degradation, bondage, financial domination, shoe humping, use of vibrator toys, gagging/choking, not really proof read

note: anon wanted the character to be changed to delu for context

AND GOD DAMN AM I PROUD OF THIS ONE

"Do you like it, baby?" izuku lifts his head up, his hazy, glassy eyes staring at the way the new outfit you just bought today looks on you. it looks incredible but he isn't able to voice that thought out, not when you've attached a ball choker around his head and in his mouth which prevents him from saying anything.

You smile when he nods eagerly, taking your sweet time to pose for him so he could see the entire outfit. Though you take longer than usual to do so, just so you could tease him.

You walk towards him, each loud step of your shoes on the floor making izuku's heart race at what going to happen next.

When you've reached him kneeling on the floor in front of the bed, you lick your lips at the delicious scene in front of you.

Drool is dripping down izuku's mouth as it drips onto his legs and even on his leaking cock. a vibrator toy sits attached to his hard dick, waiting to be turned on. his hands are tied behind is back and you dont even need to tie his legs apart, izuku is obedient enough to do that himself. His body is fully revealed to you and if you were to see him from behind, you would be able to see a vibrator toy in his ass too.

You coo at him. "look at you, already leaking like a whore when i haven't even touched you yet." Izuku whimpers but you see the way his dick twitches at your words, his face flushing a bright red. He’s been in this position for a hour now and his dick has been hard almost the entire time. everytime he moves, his dick bumps against his stomach and he can't help but let out a moan each time.

"what? don't lie, you really are a whore for me." You stand in front of him, looking down to stare at the hearts in his eyes. "after all, you let me do all sorts of stuff to you." You chuckle before remembering something.

"oh right! i almost forgot about the toys on you, let me just grab the remote it came with." You reach for the nearby remote before reading the instructions carefully. You just bought the toy today for him and you were eager to test it out, wanting to see all the reactions it would emit from izuku.

"they both came together so i assume they're connected somehow." You quickly scan the paper.

"it says here.. that if i press this button-" You press a button and izuku sudden jerks forward, his eyes widening and tears immediately prickling his eyes. He whines and shuts his eyes. You can hear the sound of vibrations and when you glance at the one attached to his dick, you see the way its vibrating.

Holy shit. You assumed it was going to work well since it costed quite a lot but you didnt know it would work this good. Izuku’s face scrunches up and you realize you started the vibrations on high but you don't move to lower it.

A muffled gasp escapes from him as the toy in his ass immediately hits a spot in him that makes pre cum spurt out of his dick. You watch in amusement as izuku quickly falls apart at the feeling of being played with from both sides. He can't think properly on whether or not he focusses on the pleasure coming from his dick or his ass.

Drool escapes through the openings of the choker and he stares up at you with glassy eyes, pleading you to take it off. And so you do, you want to hear all the adorable noises he lets out obviously.

Though when you move towards him to do so, you purposely bump your leg against his dick, pressing it against his chest. Izuku lets out a cry at the friction.

You’re then surprised to see cum shoot of his dick, staining his chest. You watch in shock and disbelief but izuku is quick to apologize now that the choker is off him.

"s-shit [name] ah!" Izuku whimpers when his dick immediately becomes hard again and he realizes you haven't turned off the vibrations. If anything, he feels you increase them, making him widen his eyes.

"wait! i-i didn't m-mean ngh to c-cum!" You narrow your eyes at him and you suddenly grab a fistful of his hair to yank his head back.

"but you did cum anyways, didn't you? without my permission too like a brat." Izuku hisses at the pain and shuts his eyes. He slowly nods, not wanting to disobey you.

He feels you let go of his hair and stare down at him with narrowed eyes. You’re looking at him like he’s some dirty plaything for you and while he is, fuck do you look hot doing it.

You feel some movement against your leg and you stare down, seeing his dick move against your leg. Izuku must be doing it subconsciously because when he follows your gaze, he gasps and stutters out another apology but you quickly cut him off.

"what, you want to hump my shoe or something? you want to be a dumb whore for me?"

Izuku bites his lip but he then nods eagerly and you let out a small laugh. It’s addicting, really. The feeling of having such power and control over someone who could easily overpower you. He could break out of the bondage right now but you know he won't. You know he wants to be a good boy for you.

You stick your foot out in front of his leaky dick, presenting your new fancy leather shoes that izuku assumes are really expensive.

Well he knows they were expensive actually, he bought them for you for you twos anniversary recently.

With almost no hesitation, Izuku begins grinding his dick against your shoe, groaning at the friction of the rough material against his sensitive member. He can’t help but lean forward to lay his cheek on your thigh and stare up at you as he falls apart from your shoe. You feel the way his dick vibrates from the toy attached.

“F-Fuck ah! Y-Your shoe feels s-so good, baby.” You giggle and lean down to wipe the drool from the corner of his lips, making his eyes flutter.

Since he’s still sensitive from his first orgasm, his second one quickly approaches and he’s quick to warn you. He lets out a groan as he stares up with you with glassy eyes and you already know what he’s asking for as his mind is probably too foggy to even ask or think properly.

You play with the remote in your hand before turning the toys to its highest setting, making Izuku let out a choked whimper.

“Go on, baby. You’ll be a good boy and cum for me right? You finally asked for permission this time.” Izuku nods rapidly as his pace against your shoe speeds up even more. He suddenly lets out a cry as cum shoots out of his dick and stains your shoe along with your lower leg.

You feign a pout. "my shoe is all ruined now!" Though izuku doesnt seem to care, only continuing to rut again your shoe even though he just came for the second time. The pleasure must've gotten to his head, you think as you watch in amusement. You glance down and see as his cum drips down your shoe and onto the floor underneath.

You use a finger to tilt his head upwards towards you, a small grin on your face. "but you'll buy me a new pair right? you'll be a good boy and do that for me, wont you?"

Izuku stares up at you dumbly, hearts practically in his eyes. He nods eagerly.

"anything for you, [name]."

ty for reading to the end! ❤ - chaepink

╰┈➤ masterlist | rules

#chaepink.nsfw #dom!reader #sub!character #dom reader #dom fem reader #sub!mha #sub character #sub izuku #izuku x reader #midoriya izuku #izuku midoriya #sub midoriya #midoriya smut #midoriya x reader #sub bnha #bnha smut #bnha fanfiction #bnha x reader #bnha #mha x y/n #sub mha #mha x you #my hero acadamia x reader #my hero academia x reader #izuku mydoria #dom gn reader #fem dom reader #mha smut #mha x reader #mha fanfiction

[howtofightwrite]

re: the question about stunning someone with head trauma (and how you Should Not unless you're okay with them dying) would knocking the wind out of a character be a better way to have that happen?

Yes, but no.

So, knocking the wind out of someone is a lot safer. I wouldn't say perfectly safe, this is how Harry Houdini died, after all. However, it's a lot safer that head wounds, and usually wouldn't result in any major injuries.

The downside is against a trained opponent, who's ready for the hit, it's not going to work. This isn't called a, “sucker punch,” without reason. If your abdominal muscles are tensed for the punch, they will absorb a lot of the blow. So this works better against the unaware or the untrained.

The other problem is, it's not going to take someone out for the duration of the scene. In a self defense situation, winding your attacker is great, because it lets you create an opening to start your escape. But, it's not going to stun someone for minutes. From personal experience, you can measure the time you gain from winding your opponent in seconds.

There are combos that start with winding someone and lead into more painful blows that can extend that opening. But, there is a continuity of force: Incapacitating someone for longer requires inflicting harm that is increasingly difficult (impossible) to moderate.

If the goal is to escape from someone who means you harm, then yeah, an elbow strike to their stomach, will give you the opportunity to get out of there.

If the goal is to have a prolonged conversation while standing over a defeated (but still living foe), that's not really something you can do intentionally. At the same time, intentional application of lethal force isn't as reliable as you might expect. For example, gunshot wounds to the head are only fatal ~98% of the time.

The issue with this train of thought is that the individual inflicting harm cannot moderate for the desired outcome. Knocking someone out, only for them to recover, is 100% possible. However, you can't do that intentionally. And having a character who does bounce another person's head off the pavement until they stop twitching, is an incredibly violent act, and it's not going to be a casual, “well they're just knocked out.” It's a, “Carl, that kills people,” moment.

If you want a character that is disproportionately violent, and probably scares everyone around them a bit, this will feed into that presentation. If you want a character who's a good person because they don't kill people, then attempting to inflict life altering injuries on someone is probably not the best way to demonstrate their ethics.

(Remember, Batman doesn't kill people, he just shatters their spines; leaving them at the mercy of the American health care system. So, the real moral lesson of Batman is that it's better to be psychologically unwell and wealthy, than economically disadvantaged. You can murder half of the city, and he'll gently deposit you in a padded cell that you can escape from whenever you get bored of the place, but if you so much as imply that you'll resort to less than legal means to put food on the table for your starving family, he will end your existence as a vertebrate.)

And, yes, I fully realize that, by the nature of his character, and comics, Batman (like most superhero comics) is poorly suited to discuss the complex factors involved in street level crime. This this is more of a critique on the treatment of “violence is okay, so long as no one ends up in the morgue,” more than a specific character critique.

There's another part to this that worth remembering, and I know I've said this before, but when you're writing, violence offers diminishing returns. Violence releases the tension you've been building. You can think of it like a rubber band gun. Until you pull the trigger, that rubber band is under tension, and the moment you release it, you hit your audience. Now, getting hit a rubber band is a sharp, and somewhat unpleasant experience, but the second time is going to annoy you less than the first, and if you're constantly bombarded with them, you'll quickly become numb to their impacts.

I'm not saying that you can't, or shouldn't, use violence, however as a writer, you are paying a very real cost whenever you use violence to resolve a scene. It's something that you do need to consider carefully. Part of my aversion to questions like this comes from this structural consideration. A lot of writers make the mistake of using non-lethal violence somewhat indiscriminately. This can absolutely harm the credibility of your characters, and your world.

There is absolutely a place for violence in stories, however, this is a tool that is most effective when used sparingly, or deliberately. (This doesn't mean the violence itself needs to be deliberate, just your use of it.)

A lot of the time when someone says, “I want to use violence to temporarily remove a character from the scene,” that's a scenario that will harm your story. There are a lot of ways to remove a character from a scene, and I don't mean, “alternatives to fighting,” like hiding from them or talking them down. The limit here is your creativity, and in a lot of ways, violence is the least interesting way to achieve your goals.

-Starke

This blog is supported through Patreon. Patrons get access to new posts three days early, and direct access to us through Discord. If you’re already a Patron, thank you. If you’d like to support us, please consider becoming a Patron.

#how to fight write #writing advice #writing tips #writing reference #starke answers

[allforrafe]

Rafe and reader who are friends get drunk on a live stream of reader end up fucking during it

Please write somethinh like that

okay ur gonna have to bear with me bc this is my first smut request so !!! (hope u like it aaaa)

also i made them already dating because it meant more of an intro but oh well

sub!reader & streamer!rafe

warnings: 18+ !!!!!, p in v sex, drinking, live-streaming sex, use of nicknames, idk

rafe did a lot throughout the day, but when he had time, he would livestream. usually, it would be playing silly little war games or talking with friends but this time, you two thought it would be fun to drink on stream, and so you did.

it was about a couple hours into the stream and you and rafe were a few drinks deep, the alcohol pursing through your veins.

"hey-" rafe says, passing you another glass of the drink you liked. you sip it, feeling the next round of alcohol hit the back of your throat. "thanks baby" you smile softly at him.

"god you're so beautiful" he says, leaning down to kiss you softly, his smooth lips grazing yours, "my beautiful girl".

he places his drink down and sits in the chair next to you. "c'mere", he gestures towards his lap.

"you sure? we're live-"

he nods, "im sure. what's the harm in showing everyone you're mine, hm?". you chuckle softly, climbing to straddle him, "see? perfectly fine baby"

you shuffle around in his lap briefly, in search for a more comfortable position. "shit baby don't do that to me", he chuckles softly, aroused quite clearly, considering his growing erection beneath you.

you giggle, looking down and back up to his face.

"you noticed that then, hm?" he asks, noticing you looking down. you nod.

the pair of you had completely forgotten about the camera livestreaming you two, and despite it being there, things between you two got more heated over the next 2 minutes.

the next thing you know, rafe has you in his arms, your legs wrapped around his waist. he places you down on his bed, slightly back from his desk, yet still in view of the now-intruding camera.

he begins to slip out of his shirt, and his pants, leaving his upright cock straining against the black material of his boxers. you lay there in awe, admiring every inch of him, his defined abs, his beautiful blue eyes and that sexy face he always made in times like this.

he slides your shirt over your head, leaning down to kiss you deeply, his dancing tongue filled with hunger and passion. before you know it, he's removed your skirt along with your bra.

next was nude.

he slips off his boxers, revealing his large, erect dick. the veins throbbing visibly, alike to how you were throbbing for him, "mm rafe" you whimper. as your pussy speaks for you, you beg him for attention before he finally gives it to you, practically ripping your laced panties off of your body.

he lines his cock up with your soaking entrance, looking down to your face, pausing for a moment. "you ready m'love?" he asks as you nod eagerly.

it takes him next to no time at all to slide his cock all the way in, abusing your cervix with the one thrust.

the unholy noises the pair of you begin making as he thrusts his hips back and forth should be illegal. the deep groans escaping rafes mouth just got you going even more.

your alcohol ridden brain couldn't hold you together for any longer, your body beginning to shake from the immense amount of pleasure.

you hear a notification pop up on the screen.

"shit! shit! rafe- the stream!" you say, an urgency to shut it off running through you.

he shakes his head, "don't worry pretty girl, just showing everyone you're mine."

continuing his actions, rafe begins to slam into your aching pussy yet again, his pace after and his attacks on your cervix even more brutal than before.

"rafe- daddy, i'm, i'm gonna-"

"i know baby, me too..." he whimpers back to you, shortly after, filling you to the brim with his white hot seed, your body shivering and releasing all over his sheets.

"shit..." he exhales, switching off the computer.

"rafe how many people saw that?" you look at him, eyes wide in fear.

he clears his throat, "thirty-six thousand..." he admits.

your eyes widen even more than before, you collapse back onto the bed, "fuck."

#allforrafe #rafe cameron #drew starkey #rafe fic #anon ⋆ ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ #outerbanks rafe #rafe cameron fanfiction #rafe smut #rafe cameron x reader #rafe x reader #obx rafe cameron #rafe #rafe cameron imagine #rafe cameron smut #rafe cameron x female reader #rafe cameron x you #rafe fanfiction #rafe fluff #rafe imagine #rafe obx #rafe outer banks #rafe x y/n #rafe x you

[cobaltperun]

To Never See You Again

Tara Carpenter x female Reader

Summary: She was unattainable, radiating with blinding beauty that went above and beyond her appearance. And though you knew you shouldn’t, you flew too close to the Sun, hoping one day she would look at you the way you looked at her. (Set right before Scream 5)

Warning: Angst! And I don’t usually write full on angst with no happy ending, but I tried. Big spoiler, since I know some of you prefer to be warned about this, Reader dies. Also, a request, you know who you are, love you!

Masterlist

Word count: 2k

Growing up in Woodsboro didn’t exactly come with a lot of perks, in fact, it came with occasional Ghostface lunatics terrorizing a very specific group of people. Somehow, you didn’t care much about that. You weren’t a fan of horror, despite your best friend being a biggest horror fan you knew.

You didn’t dare to try and get into horror, fearing it would make your feelings for the girl even more obvious than they already were. Because Tara Carpenter wasn’t just your best friend. She was the strongest person you knew, going through abandonment after abandonment and still finding it in her to let new people in. She was gentle, accepting of anyone who wasn’t against her or her friends, and she was fiercely loyal and protective. And you loved her, you’ve been in love with her for years, yet you never said anything, because…

Well, Tara didn’t feel the same way.

And honestly, a part of you felt like you weren’t worthy of her love.

It wasn’t anything Tara did or said, you just felt like she could do better, and that she deserved better. It wasn’t even your self-esteem, you hoped, it was more the fact that Tara deserved perfection.

So, that was where you were. Sitting in her living room with an almost completed school assignment between the two of you. She looked so focused on it you dared to look at her a bit longer than you usually did.

“Y/N?” she suddenly said your name and you jumped, embarrassed that you got caught staring, but Tara just laughed a bit. “You can tell me if I have something on my face,” she rubbed the corners of her lips, trying to find the nonexistent smudge.

“There’s nothing on your face, T,” you laughed, looking away to avoid meeting her puzzled eyes. “You just looked kinda cute,” you tried to brush it off.

Tara rolled her eyes. “You always say that,” and you did, you very much did often say that.

“It’s true!” you defended yourself, turning to once again look at her and seeing that slightly mischievous look in her eyes. She was teasing you, thinking the compliment wasn’t serious. You couldn’t blame her, regardless of how lovestruck you were you thought you were fairly good at hiding your feelings for her.

“Sure, it is,” she brushed it off and somehow, for whatever reason you felt compelled to just tell her everything.

“I like you, Tara,” you ignored how hot your cheeks felt, how small your voice sounded, how loud your heart was beating, pounding against your chest. You ignored all of that and waited, suddenly finding the floor between your feet to be the most interesting floor to have ever been made.

“Well, yeah, we’re friends, I like you too, Y/N,” she said, puzzled over your decision to just suddenly blurt that out.

You should have taken the way out. She was serious. She didn’t realize what you meant. You should have accepted the chance she was unknowingly giving you. But you didn’t. “As more than a friend,” you told her, because deep down you felt guilty for having these feelings for her, for threatening to ruin your friendship, and for looking at her the way a friend shouldn’t. How long would it take for you to start blurring lines, to hug her as the one you were in love with instead as your best friend.

She needed to know. She had every right to know.

“As more- oh!” she gasped as she realized what you meant.

You dared to look up, to look her in the eyes. She looked surprised, but there was no anger, no disapproval in her eyes, just acceptance and apology.

“I’m sorry, you’re important to me, but just as a friend,” she didn’t move away from you, she kept the same distance as before you confessed.

“No, I didn’t expect you to! You deserve much better than me, anyway!” you tried to tell her, to make her known it was fine, that you never expected anything from her. Sure, you hoped. Who wouldn’t? But you didn’t expect her to return your feelings.

Yet, Tara frowned, scooting a bit closer and looked you right in the eyes. Her eyes, her big, expressive dark eyes were filled with anger. “Don’t ever say that again, you hear me, Y/N? It’s not about deserving more than you. Anyone would be lucky to be with you, I just never thought of you that way, you hear me?” she said it so firmly, without a hint of doubt, with so much conviction you didn’t have it in you to argue against her words. “Okay? I’m sorry I can’t return your feelings, but it isn’t because of you, I swear. There is nothing wrong with you,” there were no lies, no dishonesty in her words, Tara was completely honest, and you found yourself nodding.

“Please don’t apologize, I’m the one who blurred the lines,” you weren’t trying to make her pity you, you genuinely wanted to help her as well, because she was going to feel sorry, no matter what you said, and you wanted to lessen that feeling as much as you could.

“We’re okay, Y/N, you can’t decide who you fall for,” you could tell she wanted to tell you more, but she held back and that may have broken your heart more than her rejection.

Something did shift, she was holding something back from you, and she never did that before. And you knew you had to leave, to give her space and let her think things through. “Would you look at the time, I should get going,” you lamely said and just barely noticed the sadness in Tara’s eyes. She opened her mouth, as if to tell you something, maybe to stop you, though that was wishful thinking on your part.

In the end, she just nodded, getting up almost at the same time as you did and walking you to her front door. You stood there for a bit, silently taking the night in. It was late, close to midnight. You weren’t supposed to stay at her place for this long, but working on the project took more time than either of you predicted. Finishing it might be a bit awkward, but there wasn’t much work left to do, so you’d push through it.

At least your parents were out of town, so no one was worried about you. Even if they were, they likely would have guessed you’d sleep over at Tara’s place instead of walking back home at this hour. Well, either way, they weren’t home, so they couldn’t worry.

“Bye, Y/N,” Tara told you as you walked down the stairs. You turned around and saw she was smiling softly, her bright eyes still filled with an apology or not returning your feelings.

You smiled back at her, accepting her decision completely. You weren’t owed a chance at a relationship, no one was. Heartbreak hurt, but judging by Tara’s reaction you could still stay friends, though it would probably be best to keep your distance for a bit, just to let the feelings still in your heart fade for a bit. “Bye, Tara,” you said, raising your hand to wave at her as you took a few steps back. And then you turned, walking down the road through the darkness, you glanced back and saw she was no longer there. Of course she wouldn’t be, as much as she tried to be strong for you, you knew the talk was emotional for her as well, she needed her rest.

And then, just as you turned around you caught a glimpse of a cloaked figure and a white mask and before you could even realize what was happening you felt something sharp cutting through your flesh.

You didn’t hear anything but the pounding of your heart in your ears as you reached up, your bloody hand touching the mask. You looked at the eyes, barely visible in the darkness and saw cold, almost angry gaze bearing down upon you as you collapsed to your knees and the figure of death took your life.

~X~

Stabbed.

Gone.

Dead.

You were dead and Tara couldn’t remember the last time she cried her heart out the way she did today, at your…

Fuck… how could this happen?

Maybe you could have been saved, if anyone found you in time, but you were already dead when your body was found in the pool of your blood in the early morning. Cold, alone, with the killer not even bothering to hide your body or move it from the sidewalk. You died all alone, less than quarter of a mile away from Tara’s home, and she didn’t have any idea. She didn’t dare to call you, to make sure you came back home safely, because she didn’t want to make things even more awkward, she just sent you a text, one you never even opened, and she just thought you didn’t want to open her message. She thought it was a justified reaction. She didn’t think twice, even as the dread filled her. She thought it was dread of what’s to come, of how your feelings and her rejection of them would affect your friendship.

She was no stranger to losing people. First her father, then Sam, but they were, as far as she knew, alive. You were dead, there was no hope of fixing the relationship, of making up for the time that would be lost from now on.

She lost you. And she cried so hard she nearly had to use her inhaler, she cried and sobbed until there were no tears left to cry.

It wasn’t like she suddenly realized she had feelings for you, that she loved you back, or anything like that. She didn’t. She never looked at you like that, and she wasn’t in denial. She lost a precious friend and she grieved for a friend. And when she wondered if she should have done something differently, she wasn’t thinking about her feelings, but just letting you go home that late.

Because she had the same feeling she had when Sam was about to leave, that unexplainable dread that something important was about to be ripped out of her life and that she had no control over it as she watched you leaving. And Tara hated herself for that, she hated that she didn’t act on that feeling. She didn’t want to make it awkward between you two by asking you to watch a movie, let alone spend the night because of how late it was. She just turned you down, after all. And then she came to a conclusion the dread was just her reaction to what would happen between the two of you now, and she relaxed, letting it flow through her, instead of holding it in. How foolish was she to believe that? To not insist on making sure you came back home safely?

She could never look at you the way you looked at her, but she would forever regret that her last words to you were. ‘Bye, Y/N,’ such meaningless words, small, so ordinary. And Tara feared those were the very last words you ever heard spoken to you. Thinking of them now, they were even chilling last words to hear, so innocent and not in any way sounding like the final words. She wished she could have told you something else. She wished she could have properly explained to you that her rejection didn’t mean the end of your friendship, that she cherished every moment you spent together and that you were one of her best friends, if not her best friend.

She didn’t though. She thought she’d have time. That she would let you process everything and then try and see if the friendship could be continued or if you’d be prefer to keep your distance. She should have known better.

She should have known better.

She should have never left anything unsaid.

The sound of landline phone ringing in the kitchen broke her out of her thoughts and she reluctantly got up from the sofa to answer it.

#tara carpenter x female reader #tara carpenter x reader #tara carpenter #tara carpenter x you #scream #jenna ortega x reader #x reader #x female reader

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Am I the asshole for refusing to help my friend out financially after they got a new dog even though they need financial help often and are currently in debt?

Everyone is this story is mid to late 20s.

I have a friend in America who is on social benefits. So I know they don't have a lot of money. I'm also not rich but I earn minimum wage in my country and can afford to pitch in a little sometimes which I don't mind doing generally. I'm also not a big spender at all and I'm able to save up something every month.

In the past I've helped them with buying groceries and even gave them some so they could buy a laptop for art commissions and some games. I don't mind doing that at all. When their old dog got sick I helped out as well. Since I figure some people are going to want to know, in the last 5 years I have given maybe about 2000 dollars.

They got a new dog after the old one passed, which I get. A dog can be a good companion. I did find it a little irresponsible to get a new puppy when they at the time needed several hundred dollars for rent. I told them it might be better to wait until they where no longer in debt with their landlord before getting a new dog. They told me they understood my concern but they got the puppy for free from a friend so it would not be a big deal and they would be able to feed the puppy.

I did tell them puppies can get sick and end up costing a lot more than anticipated but they told me they were willing to take that risk and I decided to not push any further. I had given my opinion and there is not much else I can do. I did tell them not to count on my help financially especially since I had some things of my own that needed fixing and they told me they understood and not to worry.

But then a few weeks later the puppy ate their medicinal weed, which for some reason was within reach of a puppy, and had to get it's stomach pumped and stay overnight at the vet clinic for a few nights.

They came to me and asked if I could help out with the bill and how they would pay me back in part. The bill was over 4000 dollars. I told them sorry but no I can't. First of all, I don't even have that much, I'd have to take out a loan. Second, I warned them this could happen and that I would not be able to help out financially. They seemed a little pissed at that but I just thought it was because of the stress of the situation. They said they would try and get the funds elsewhere and asked me to share it around, which I did.

Unfortunately they didn't manage to get enough to pay the vet and ended up having to give the puppy to a shelter. It's a cute and calm pup so I have no doubt it will be adopted out quickly but it's still sad and I do feel for my friend. But now I'm being blamed for it. I've been getting several angry messages from mutual friends about how I'm the reason my friend lost their emotional support and how I'm the reason they are having a breakdown and suicidal thoughts.

I feel really badly for my friend but I also don't think it's fair to put the blame on me. The reaction from my online friend group makes me feel like I'm missing something that does make me the asshole.

#aita #am i the asshole

[utilitycaster]

like actually it's wild to me as someone who mostly exists on the fringes of the D20 fandom, since CR is by far my main one, that a lot of the really popular voices there are popular fanartists who low-key hate like 99% of what D20 is and tend to fixate on like, ships between barely-seen side characters. Like okay, so you don't like D&D as a system and think it's inherently imperialist and violent; you don't like that they no longer do hour-long Adventuring Parties (which started when they were in full lockdown and quickly ended once the industry was back on fairly regular footing); you don't like that they joke around in the talkback show even though that's true of every AP talkback show and I listen to at least four of them; you don't like the D20 formula of ending with a big combat at the end; and you don't like that characters weren't redeemed because you feel as though the narrative didn't give them time to be redeemed and this season should have been longer despite it being standard length for an Intrepid Heroes season and "the narrative" is shaped by Brennan Lee Mulligan, DM, as well as the cast's choices.

Like, real talk, I watch/listen to a lot of actual play and at least four talkback shows (for CR, NADDPod, WBN, and sometimes D20) and when fans get mad that the talkback has too much joking around it's an almost flawless litmus test that person hates the show but their blorbo is on it or their fandom identity rests on it or some other sunk cost fallacy. And if they start talking about the story as if it is not driven by the DM and the cast, you know they're really mad about the DM-ing and the cast choices but are too cowardly to say "Hey, I disliked what Brennan did here." And if you add it to the fact that D20's fandom in particular has a real problem with "liking the right stories is activism :)" and this story doesn't spell out Capitalism is the BBEG (thought it does, hilariously, take some very good shots at Evangelical Christianity and the hypocrisy of the religious right) you get this. I really think a lot of these people don't like D20 much; they like some platonic ideal of D20 mixed in with no small dose of their own personal desires and it's like, if you want a more than 20 episode series that's low combat...why are you going to D20.

#people going FULL conspiracy theorist too like did the writer's strike hurt it? why isn't this the brennan i know BECAUSE YOU DON'T #d20 tag

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

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.

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?

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?

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”?

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.

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?

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

[ladykailitha]

Never Hold Back Your Step... Part 8

Hello! It does look like there is only one more chapter to write on Paper Hearts so yay!!! I'm not sure how much longer Sweet Home Indiana is but it's nearing it's end too.

Steve is never going to go to another party after this, Eddie gets book two of the Boy with a Bat, and they have a frank discussion about how Eddie gets paid for his less than legal side gig.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

trigger warning: homophobic language by an OC.

****

At least the swim team knew to how to throw a party. Lyle was hosting and even though his family wasn’t well off, not like Steve’s parents, there was still enough room for the whole team and a few of their friends to have a good time.

Granted there wasn’t any booze, not openly anyway, but there were ice chest after ice chest of canned sodas. And all kinds, too. Steve was on his third Coke and had already sussed out the dude with the beer and was working his way over.

Going right up to the guy was asking for trouble that neither of them wanted.

The music wasn’t too loud, but you could dance to it in the main part of the house. People were actually laughing and having fun.

Which really should have been Steve’s cue. The universe was out to get him and wouldn’t let him have a moment’s peace.

He had almost reached the guy with the beer when Ezra blocked his path.

“Hey, Steve,” he greeted syrupy sweet. “I’m so glad you made it out. I wasn’t sure if you would come without Eddie Munson.”

Steve frowned and tried to move around his co-captain. “I go lots of places without Eddie. I went to nationals without him, didn’t I?”

Ezra put his hand on Steve’s chest to stop him. “Sure you did, but we didn’t win nationals now, did we?”

Steve looked down at the hand on his chest. “We swam our hearts man, the other teams were just better. Hell, that team from Georgia was on fire.”

Ezra snorted and rolled his eyes. “They only got where they were because they were black. They didn’t have any real talent. Not like us. Not like you and me, Steve.”

“Are you saying Lyle and Nick held us back?” he asked with his brow furrowing deeper in his confusion.

“We’ve always known that Lyle is a strong swimmer and not a fast one,” Ezra moaned waving the drink in his other hand around. “But he’s all this shit town has on offer.”

Steve gently pushed Ezra off of him. “Hey, how about not talking shit about the actual host, man.”

Ezra rolled his eyes. “Whatever,” he huffed. “That’s not even why I’m over here. I’m here to warn you about Munson.”

And there it was. Everyone in his life had felt the need at some point in the last six months to warn him off the super senior.

The other boy leaned in close, his lips a snarl. “He’s a queer, a little faggot boy,” he hissed, the spit landing on Steve’s face. “It’s the town’s worst kept secret.”

Ice slid down Steve’s spine. Oh shit. Of all the places he thought the other co-captain was going to go, that was not it. Drugs. DND. The ranting on table tops. All that slid away to sheer terror.

“And you better not bend over in the showers,” Ezra continued, “a pretty thing like you would just be his type.”

Steve’s eyes went wide. “Wha–what do you mean?”

“Everyone knows that if you can’t pay for your weed,” Ezra sneered, “that he’s willing to take a blowjob as payment instead.” He leaned further into Steve’s space, so that they were almost touching, the stench of weed radiating off the other boy in waves. “I saw Harry Masters sucking him off for a gram of the good stuff.”

Steve stomach lurched and swooped, bile rising up in his throat. Harry Masters was on the baseball team. He was tall, good looking, with that devil may care charm of Rob Lowe. Looked like him, too.

“What he does or doesn’t do doesn’t effect me, man,” he said, trying to aim for nonchalant and missing by a mile.

Ezra laughed in his face.

“Dude,” he cackled, “if you didn’t want people to think you’re down bad for ‘the Freak’ maybe rein in the eye fucking. I’ve seen the way you look at him and it makes me sick.”

That was when Steve got it. He had been wondering what the hell this conversation was.

“Oh my god!” he laughed. “Fuck, man, you were scaring me for a second there. You’re just jealous I don’t have the hots for you.”

Ezra pushed him. “The fuck I do, Harrington!”

“No, no!” Steve crowed. “I’ve got it all figured it out. All the times I caught you staring at me, all the times I felt someone watching me, all the times you’d try to keep me late after practice. You wanted me all to yourself.”

His co-captain turned purple with rage and swung at Steve, but before he could even flinch, there was someone at his side, holding Ezra’s wrist to keep the hit from even going anywhere near Steve’s face.

“Eddie!” Steve breathed. “What are you doing here?”

Eddie smiled at him with that soft dimpled grin Steve loved. “Hey ya, Stevie. I was just plying my wares when I heard the commotion and came over to make sure you were all right.”

“So you are my good luck charm,” Steve said brightly.

Ezra wrenched his arm out of Eddie’s hand. “This doesn’t concern you, Freak!”

Eddie leaned in close and cocked his head to the side. “It does, because you were talking shit about me and Stevie, here. And as Stevie’s good friend, I’mma gonna come to his rescue. Now, you’re going to skedaddle on home and sleep all this off.”

Ezra spat in his face. “Or what?”

The older teen just smiled menacingly. “Or else that gram you smoked will be the last you ever smoke, because I’ll report to you for doping for matches.”

Ezra paled and he gulped. “You can’t do that! I’ve never done anything but weed.”

“That’s true,” Eddie admitted. “But they’d have to do this big investigation and your name would be dragged through the mud. Or you could toddle off and go to college and leave this town in your rearview mirror.”

Ezra turned on his heel and ran out of the house as if the hounds of hell were on his tail.

Steve shook his head. “You do know this is where all the allegations about you being a devil worshiping cult leader come from, right?”

Eddie threw back his head and laughed. “They can think all they want.”

*

Eddie and Steve talked about what Ezra had said about how people make payments for their weed.

“I won’t deny that people have offer to blow me or even have sex with me in exchange for drugs,” Eddie said as they lay curled up on his bed. “But I’ve never taken anybody up on that.”

Steve twisted his head to look up at his boyfriend. “I can’t say I’m not pleased to hear that, but is there a reason why?”

“Several,” he admitted pulling Steve in closer. “One is that there is an actual fucking pandemic going on regarding gay men, and I wouldn’t trust those assholes even with a condoms. Another is that if I say yes to one, then I’ve got to say yes to next guy. And as my supplier wants actual cash for his product, blow jobs aren’t currency in any country I know of. And despite what Ezra said, most of the people offering aren’t men.”

Steve hummed as he snuggled under Eddie’s chin. “I can see that. Any other reasons why you won’t?”

“Does having a super hot boyfriend count?” he chuckled.

Steve kissed the underside of his jaw. “That’s a very good reason.” His hand slipped down his boyfriend’s side and to his belt. “A super hot boyfriend who is very grateful for the rescue.”

Eddie moaned as Steve’s fingers ghosted over his zipper. “Yeah and how are you going to show that gratitude?”

Steve slid down Eddie body and undid his belt. “I was thinking it was such a shame you didn’t get those blow jobs when your cock is so delectable.”

Eddie gasped and threw back his head as his super hot boyfriend’s breath felt hot on the front of his boxers. “God, baby. Show me what you’ve got.”

And Steve spent their evening doing just that.

*

Steve fidgeted nervously at Eddie’s locker after school. He had finished the most recent comic with only a week of school to spare. He had made sure that Jonathan and Nancy weren’t staying after school for any reason so they didn’t see him make the hand off. He knew he should have just done it at the trailer, but with him cutting it so fine before the end of the year, he didn’t want to make Jeff and the others wait for it.

Eddie loped over to his boyfriend and looked around. “Hey, sweetheart. You okay?”

He thrust the comic at Eddie, his eyes downcast. “It’s the most recent comic. There’s an explanation like before. But please don’t let people see that part.”

Eddie cradled the comic to his chest. “I’ll be careful, I promise. I’m guessing this means you aren’t coming over tonight?”

Steve shook his head. “Lucas wants to go see the latest Bond film, but his friends don’t want to go with him...”

“So you offered to take him,” Eddie finished. “That’s sweet of you.”

Steve snorted and shook his head. “His parents think I’m taking him to ‘Meet the Littles’ or some shit like that.”

Eddie threw back his head and laughed. “Yeah, that’s more like the Steve Harrington I know and love.”

“I’ll call when I get home, though...” he muttered, running his fingers through his hair.

“Okay,” Eddie murmured. “Well talk then.”

*

This time Eddie went straight to the back page to read the explanation first.

“Hey, Eds,

Again there are parts in between this, parts that don’t include me, that I’ll some day tell you all about. But I’m focusing on the parts I was part of. This time it all started with what the kids thought was a new species of lizard and turned out to be the beginning stages of an Upside Down monster. One they they dubbed the demodog.

I can just picture you frowning as you try to remember where you heard that from and the answer is you heard it from me. You asked me what it was and I told you it from one of their game thingies, but that’s only part of it. These demodogs have flower faces and run on four legs. They are part of a hive mind that allows them to communicate with each other.

Dustin had taken one of these things home and it ate his cat. His cat. You can be disgusted, I know I was. He had originally gone to Nancy’s for help but she had gone off with Jonathan about something related to Barb Holland. This was right after our fight at the Halloween party.

I was on my way with roses to apologize to her, when he intercepted me. And the rest is as they say is history. I would do anything for that kid now.

The other players are Lucas Sinclair and Max Mayfield. I don’t know if you need to know that, but I feel like you have to understand that for the rest of it to make sense.

I have so many tales to tell you but I can’t because it could get you hurt and that is the last thing I want to do.

Also, (blurred words) show you all the times I was brave, that I did the (more blurred words) when it came (blurred words) because I love you so much and (blurred words again) less of me.

Love,

Your Stevie”

Eddie hated how easy Steve had pegged him for frowning at the name like he said he would or how he knew he would be disgusted at the poor cat. He stared at the blurred words for a moment before his own eyes welled up.

Steve had tried writing over the parts with what were clearly tear drops but all it had done was make it worse. Why he didn’t just write again, Eddie didn’t know.

But Eddie could now make out the words, “Also, I wanted to show you all the times I was brave, that I did the right thing when it came to it, because I love you so much and I didn’t want you thinking less of me.”

He flipped back to the beginning and started reading. It was thrilling and exciting. That was if you didn’t know it really happened. And happened to the sweetest boy he had the privilege of knowing.

He wiped away his tears and made a promise to whatever it took to protect this boy with every fiber of his being. Because by god, someone had to.

****

Tag List: @mira-jadeamethyst @rozzieroos @itsall-taken @redfreckledwolf @emly03

@spectrum-spectre @zerokrox-blog @gregre369 ​@a-little-unsteddie @chaosgremlinmunson

@messrs-weasley @chaoticlovingdreamer @maya-custodios-dionach @danili666 @goodolefashionedloverboi

@val-from-lawrence @i-must-potato @carlyv @wonderland-girl143-blog @justforthedead89

@vecnuthy @irregular-child @bookbinderbitch @bookworm0690 @anne-bennett-cosplayer

@yikes-a-bee @awkwardgravity1 @littlewildflowerkitten @genderless-spoon @cinnamon-mushroomabomination

@dragonmama76 @scheodingers-muppet @ellietheasexylibrarian @thedragonsaunt @useless-nb-bisexual

@angels-of-hades @mugloversonly @y4r3luv @greeniebean911 @birbsauce

@acingthecounts @cryptid-system @counting-dollars-counting-stars @kultiras @ravenfrog

#my writing #stranger things #steddie #ladykailtiha writes #boy with a bat

[venerawrites]

Thanks for the headcanons of Itachi and the s/o who has illness🥰. Oh my god your writings are just awesome keep it up❤️💪

Can I request some headcanons of itachi,kakashi,naruto when their s/o is pregnant?🤭

author's note: oh my god, this has been sitting in my drafts forever! I have only one assessment left, so I finally have the chance to catch up with my requests! Thank you so, so much for your patience and for requesting! Hope you enjoy!

➤ Itachi

I think I am going to disappoint a lot of you, but Itachi was definitely not happy when he first learned that his s/o was pregnant.

HEAR ME OUT PLS!

It is not that he is not loving his partner, but given everything that has happened to him and all the decisions he had to make throughout his life, he has promised himself that he would never have children. He didn't want to put them at risk, or worse, make them suffer because of his own mistakes.

The initial reaction was shock.

He was always so careful and they always used protection, so how did that happen??

I imagine he would leave for a few days just so he can clear his head and gather his thoughts.

Itachi is naturally a carer and also loves kids, so it doesn't take him long to come around. After a few days, he is already back to his s/o and they better believe he would not leave them for ANYTHING.

Very overprotective, sometimes quite unreasonable - even in the early stage of the pregnancy, he would insist on taking care of his s/o, cook for them, clean the house etc.

Does not like the idea of his lover leaving the house by themselves, mainly because he is paranoid that either Sasuke or any of his enemies would target them. He always accompanies them when they want to go out, and when he does, he keeps his arm wrapped around their back or shoulders.

As the pregnancy progresses, so do his worries, and if his s/o doesn't want to be overwhelmed by him, they have to set clear boundaries and let him know they need some space to breathe.

Totally a man who would deliver his baby at home!

The moment he heard his baby's cry, he started trembling. No one loves like the Uchiha after all, especially when it comes to their love for their children!

➤ Kakashi

Just like Itachi, for most of his life he was of the firm opinion he DOES NOT want kids.

His s/o, however, was the one that brought up the question at some point in their relationship, and since then he couldn't stop thinking about it.

When his lover told him they were pregnant he was surprised, but not shocked. With the amount of "practice" they were doing, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

I think internally he would be worried and stressing about his s/o, but he would try and act cool about it.

He would purchase dozens of books about pregnancy and would read them all the time. (including during missions and night outs with friends!) Guy and Kurenai would find it cute and would often discuss their own tips with him, while Genma and Anko would roll their eyes at their antics.

Knowing how important is for him to give space to his s/o, he would subtly help around the house, but would still let them go out on their own, do chores or if they are a ninja, even go to low-rank missions.

The more their belly grows, the more fascinated he becomes!

Very touchy - his hands are constantly on his s/o's belly, caressing it or sometimes just holding it.

Kakashi would do that only when his lover is asleep, but he is totally talking to his s/o's stomach and telling his baby random stories.

During the last months, he would also become quite overprotective.

He won't bother his s/o that much, but he won't allow anyone to get close to them, touch their stomach, or bother them for longer than few minutes.

Overall, very supportive and sweet partner, who is going to make his s/o's pregnancy as easy as possible, despite his own fear of failure.

➤ Naruto

0 clue about what's going on! 0!

At first he thinks it is exciting - having a baby is fun, right? You get to dress it, feed it, take it out... it is like playing with a doll!

Buys tons of clothes and toys literally a week after he found out his s/o is pregnant, despite not even knowing the gender yet. (yes, they had to return most of them!)

Comes with a ton of weird names for their little one, because he wants them to be 'unique'. Oinks, Huggy, and Nemar (which is just 'ramen' spelled backward!) were on the top of his list.

The first months are pretty nice and fun! When the hormones start to kick in, however...

I love Naruto, he is one of my fav boys, but I bet my soul that he is so annoying during his s/o's pregnancy!

He would not understand when he needs to give his s/o space and instead will be in their face 24/7. I imagine that he would also (try to) do some housework, but because he put only like 10% effort, his lover would have to constantly go after him and re-do it!

Lots of small petty fights!

Which would always end in Naruto bringing his s/o their favourite snack or takeaway, so it works out!

Very proud to be a future dad - he would go around the whole village, telling everyone how excited he is and how he can't wait to see the baby!

Not scared or nervous at all - he knows that in the end, everything is going to work out! Plus, he and his s/o are going to have each other, so why fear?

His s/o better be prepared to take care of TWO babies, because it would take a long time for this man to become serious and laid back!

cc artwork: Clement Tingry

#itachi uchiha #itachi x reader #itachi headcanons #kakashi hatake #kakashi x reader #naruto uzumaki x reader #naruto x reader #naruto imagines #naruto headcanons

[yuesya]

“Lyra! Have you seen the children anywhere?”

“The bunker.”

“Yes, but half of them are missing. I don’t… if any of them were caught up in another conflict, or ran into slavers…”

“… I’ll go take a look.”

Robin should’ve known better than to take her little sister’s words for what they were at face value.

It hadn’t occurred to her, at first. Robin had spent the rest of the day doing her best to help with the relief efforts, and soothe the rest of the worried children who were extremely distressed by their missing companions. The children of a war-torn world were resilient, but even resilience and concern for loved ones were not mutually exclusive.

In between carrying out her duties, Robin had done her best to search for the missing children, too, hoping that they didn’t wander into dangerous zones where small-scale conflicts were still taking place. There were also slavers to worry about. Men who circled these parts like greedy vultures, and Robin was worried.

Her worry continued to increase when Lyra remained conspicuously missing in their room that evening. But her concerns abated slightly, once she caught sight of a note tucked under their shared table lamp. It was good that Lyra was finally aware that she needed to be more proactive about–

Sister,

The missing children were taken by slavers, and shipped to a different planet. Going to get kidnapped to see where they’re going.

Be back in a few days.

–Lyra.

…

Shock and incredulity are her first reactions, before it’s followed by fond frustration. She can guess her little sister’s line of thought –Robin was concerned about the missing children, so Lyra would find them and bring them back so Robin wouldn’t worry anymore.

Did it somehow not occur to her feathery little mind that Robin would be worried for her, too?

Robin huffs, letting out a helpless little laugh.

Admittedly, she’s… a lot less worried for her sister than she is for the missing children. Even as a young child, the girl had always been very capable when it came to taking care of herself in face of physical dangers. Halovians generally weren’t fighters, not with their slender forms and brittle bones, but Lyra was an exception to the norm. It was why Sunday had, eventually, agreed to Robin’s itinerary –albeit very grudgingly and with great reluctance– when Lyra expressed curiosity in traveling along with her.

“Listen to Robin, alright?”

“Alright.”

… Robin wonders if the current predicament can be attributed to their brother’s parting words, somewhat.

She closes her eyes a moment longer, then reaches for her phone.

Right now, Robin has a missing little sister to find and corral in. Everything else can wait. 

#Writing #zenith of stars au #halovian au #loosely related to the aventurine pov last time #robin perspective! #:3

[yourlocalcryptidbee]

⭐SFW Alphabet with Lucifer Morningstar (finally)

The SFW Alphabet I was meant to do awhile ago. At any rate, grab some snacks and a beverage, get comfy and enjoy <3

Template can be found here

~ 2.2 k words GN! Reader mostly, F! Reader at times Want the NSFW one? Find it here! NOT PROOFREAD

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

This man is so affectionate, he cares so deeply about you, Charlie, Vaggie even. The only problem is well. . . it can be hard to see how much he cares sometimes. One of the ways Lucifer shows his affection is by being somebody to lean on or someone you can trust to take care of things. It may not be in your face obvious but trust that he’ll always be there when you need him.

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

A friendship with Lucifer would be hard because he’s either wary of your motives or deeply in love with you. No inbetween. It would be a few lifetimes before Lucifer could consider you to be his BEST friend. At any rate, know that it’d be one of the most fulfilling friendships you’ve ever had, filled with laughter and good times. We’ve all got to be honest with ourselves, friendship between you and the devil would have had to start either working for him or naturally through Charlie. He does not get out much, not that you complain, just means more Lucifer for you ;)

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

A real cuddle bug this one here. He is just wrapped around you, he loves being able to curl up into someone after years of not getting to. Surprisingly though, he likes to hold you more than he likes to be held. It makes him feel better when he gets to protect you from the cold, makes him feel useful, wanted even. 

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

He was ready to settle down the moment he saw you. In terms of cooking, Lucifer is an amazing chef. You can best believe that you’ve tested his cooking, thoroughly. Whatever you want he can make for you, all you’ve got to do is ask suagr. Cleaning on the other hand. . . well he knows how to clean. . .yeahhhh, he’s pretty messy but he knows where everything is! At least he thinks he knows where everything is. 

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

He’d be incredibly calm. If he’s breaking up with you then ya’lls spark has long since been dead. Lucifer would never do something like break up with you, spur of the moment so understand that he’s thought it over plenty and it’s better if you two split. Even though he’s no longer in love with you, he still respects you, so the breakup would be done gently and he’d do his best to leave with no bad blood between you. 

F = Fiance(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quickly would they want to get married?)

After Lilith, Lucifer isn’t the most eager to go and get married again. Don’t get him wrong he wants to get married to you eventually but give him some time, will you? He’s been through a lot. The day he realized he was ready was the time where Lucifer called you Charlie’s mom to Charlie. “Charlie, can you ask your mom when that art gala is?” “. . . . .my-my mom?” “DID I SAY MOM? WHA-HAHA! AHEM, I MEANT MY WIFE-SHIT GIRLFRIEND! FuCk mE”

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

He is a very, very, VERY thin piece of glass-he’s surprisingly durable, but still is glass. Lucifer hasn’t really been able to catch a break, between being thrown out of his home, being villainized by the creatures he helped give free will to, the natural stressors of being king of a realm, his wife of like forever abandoning him and finally being thrust into a long depressive episode, yeah gentle is an understatement. Lucifer would trade his Angelic strength for a little stability any day. 

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

A good marker of how much Lucifer loves you is how tightly he hugs you. Are your airways closed? Then Lucifer is absolutely enamoured with you. Can barely feel his touch? You're dangerously close to being in Alastor levels of hated. He always has to touch you, your hand tucked snuggly in the crook of his elbow, his hand around your waist, his tails rubbing slow circles on the back of your calves, the list goes on and on. Holding onto your waist with his head on your shoulder while you two sway to some music is his favourite way to hug you. 

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

It took him a while before he said it to you. He tried so many times but he chickened out last second every time he tried. The first time he said ‘I love you’ was adorable. Lucifer started out loud, suave and confident and then it was time to say the word and all that confidence fell faster than he fell out of Heaven. He barely whispered the word, his face getting redder and redder and- you get the picture. Your stupid little smirk did not help his situation! He blames your gorgeous face for all his struggles. 

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)

You may as well call this man Nick Jonas because He. Is. So. Jealous. Fair enough though, have you seen yourself? Lucifer wants to keep you all to himself, baby. I’m sure you don’t mind. He channels this jealousy in a very. . .long way. If you want to see what Lucifer does when he’s jealous then let me direct you here <3 

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

Lucifer will always kiss you on your hand, right above your ring, once a day, every single day. Best believe he kisses you feverishly, passionately. Why breathe when he can keep kissing you? Lucifer’s kisses will range between slow and sensual to boyish pecks all across your face and arms. Although he will always love it when you kiss him on the lips, there’s something in the way you’ll kiss his horns or tail when they’re out. Helps make the pain of what he went through hurt a little less and he loves you for it.   

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

1000/10. Kids love him and part of him misses the days of toys scattered across the house, the pitter-patter of tiny feet and how Charlie used to fit so perfectly in his lap. He’s not getting emotional, you are! He’d take the sleepless nights if he got to have those kinds of memories again. And hey, getting to see you pregnant is a welcomed bonus.  

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

With his job, the two of you don’t get to spend too many mornings together. His side of the bed is often cold by the time you wake up. There are those special days though, where Lucifer doesn’t have to get up at the ass crack of dawn and he cherises those mornings the most. The mornings where he gets to wake up with you in his arms and he gets to lie there and reflect on all the reasons he loves you until you wake up. He can wrap his wings around you both until well into the afternoon.  

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

Your nights have a specific routine. The two of you will sneak out of your room and down to the kitchen, the staff long since gone home. You’ll make some tea while Lucifer will scavenge for something sweet to snack on. You’ll sit on the ground and catch up on all that happened that day, some days you’ll sit in silence, others you're trying to muffle your laughs to not wake the whole damn manor. At some point, Lucifer will portal you back to your room and you’ll curl up in his arms and fall asleep.

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

You will be learning things about this man for the rest of eternity. Some scars were made from pain others were made when he went to Georgia. He’s slow to open up but that’s because he’s been hurt so many times, give him time.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

He’s got the patience of a saint until you threaten his family. All of a sudden he’s got to go the patience store because he just ran out! 

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

Lucifer has a really good memory! His Achilles heel are names but hey he’s never messed up Charlie’s name! That’s because he named her He remembers all the important things like he knows Maggie's birthday! He knows when she fell from Heaven, etc. Lucifer should know those things though, Angie is Charlie’s girlfriend after all. 

R = Remember (What is their favourite moment in your relationship?)

Lucifer’s favourite moment in your guy’s relationship was when you were teaching Charlie something and you looked every part her mother. He knew at that moment everything was going to be okay, his girls got along and he finally had a full family again.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

Lucifer is incredibly protective. He is the big boss of Hell, he’s got his ways to protect you. Nothing is too much for his girls. Lucifer is a fallen angel, nothing in Hell can hurt him. He doesn’t need you to protect him, like he does for you. He needs you to protect his heart though, it’s bruised and could use your loving, so be kind. 

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

If it’s for you then there is no amount of effort that is enough in his mind. Lucifer believes there is nothing that he can do to show how much he loves you, he tries to though. Every date, gift, and anniversaryhe plans is done so meticulously.  

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

He loses track of time very easily. It’s so bad that he didn’t realize just how long it had been since he last saw Charile. And the last time Lucifer saw Charlie was when she still lived in the manor, aka its been a long time. The only thing he could remember was how long Lilith had been gone for, which. . . didn’t help his depression. He’s getting better now, especially with you by his side! Instead of knowing how long Lilith had been gone down to the hour, it down to the month. . .progress! amiright?

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

Sin. of. Pride. He knows damn well what he looks like. Korean skincare ain’t got nothing on his routines.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

Lucifer will feel weird if he hasen’t seen you in the last few HOURS. This man would crumble without you. If your not there what’s the point? Truly? 

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

Lucifer could recite the Bible word for word if he wanted to. He found one eons ago when a distraught sinner came into his home complaining about being in hell, waving the book around like it meant anything. He read it. Every last word. The book has some. . . interesting opinions about him. So what if he still has it? So what if he’ll read it to feel like he is still divine and he hasn’t been completely corrupted by sinners. And so what if every story including him has been ripped out, never to be seen again. So what if he is homesick? So what if that stupid book is tattered with pages falling out? It’s his only piece of home that wasn’t marred by the blasphomous place he rules over. 

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)

He doesn’t like when people blindly follow him. Why do sinners do this? Lucifer didn’t chose to be king. This is his eternal punishment. Why would he do anything that would benefit the thousands of thorns in his side? This proves just how idioctic sinners are.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habits of theirs?)He’d never admit it but. . . he has a dad snore. It is the LOUDEST thing as well. Especially when he’s in a deep sleep. Lord help you and your neighbours. Baby boy is loud. Lucifer also falls asleep soooo quickly, he’ll lie down and is immediately out and to make it better, when he’s out, he’s out. There is no waking him up.

#lucifer morningstar x reader #hazbin hotel #lucifer x you #hazbin lucifer x reader #lucifer morningstar #lucifer #lucifer magne #x reader #this was meant to come out a long time ago #i post as often as one sees a cryptid #least the names fitting?

[toxic3mmy]

Toxic quackity baby trapping us is so hot for some reason

yesss omfg, he would be so so hot at it, too

prompt: alex keeps you for himself

warnings! slight smut!

your boyfriend was nice to you and all but he never met your needs. he was always too busy with work or too tired. those were his excuses for not buying you flowers, taking you out on dates, and especially for disregarding your needs in bed.

but you loved him. he was your first everything. it was just hard because you needed more than just someone being with you. you needed attention and simple pining as if he was still trying to win you over, just like at the start of your relationship.

“he doesn’t deserve you, y/n. you’re too good for him, you know?” your best friend, alex, would often tell you this

alex was your closest friend and any time you needed someone to vent to about your empty relationship, he was there. he held you when your boyfriend made you cry. when you were with alex, he kept your mind off of how badly your relationship was failing.

you began to spend almost all of your time with alex. it’s not like it made any difference to your boyfriend. he didn’t really notice when you were gone.

so you happily would spend nights and even weekends with alex. the two of you were strictly friends.

sometimes, though, you two would smoke a little or even drink a little and the two of you got more touchy. you were comfortable together. you would hold hands and even cuddle a lot.

“i could treat you so much better than that lazy son of a bitch”

“yeah… i know, lexie”

and that’s where that conversation would end. it came up a lot, honestly. and the two of you had had a number of instances where everything would get quiet. the world would stop and it was like the universe would wait for one of you to pluck up the courage to kiss the other.

but that never happened. one of you would awkwardly cough and change the subject and that would be that.

you woke up on this particular rainy spring morning with excitement. you and your boyfriend had been together for three years and today was your anniversary.

your boyfriend had already left for work and so you began to prepare for your wonderful weekend. you cleaned, cooked a huge meal of all his favorites, and even had time to doll yourself up. you were hoping that this could help repair the distance between you two that had been apparent for these last few months.

your front door closed shut and you excitedly went to greet your boyfriend.

“hi! how was work?”

“long… where are you off to?” he asked absentmindedly, only slightly glancing your way

“dont you know what today is?” you frowned

“it’s friday.. thank god. hey, maybe we could catch the basketball game at the bar down the street. i’ll even buy you some girly alcohol drinks, oh and i can invite all the guys!”

“but.. i cooked all your favorite food…” you said quietly

“that’s okay sweetie, you can put it in containers and i’ll eat it throughout the week. while you do that,” he said untying his tie and emptying his pockets, “i’ll go get changed into my jersey”

you held back tears as he left to change out of his work clothes. you sniffled as you thought everything over. he wasn’t even your boyfriend at this point. he treated you like a friend. he forgot your anniversary and you spent your whole month planning a nice weekend full of fun things to do together to celebrate your three years of love.

so much for love, you scoffed

you quickly put on your shoes and got into your car. you drove as fast as you could.

this was the last straw. he no longer felt like a boyfriend to you. you two were practically only roommates.

you wiped your eyes as you parked and walked towards alex’s house. the rain was coming down hard and you realized you were in only a skimpy short dress. but that didn’t matter.

“y/n? whats wrong?” alex said when he opened his front door

you were wet and cold from the spring rain and your makeup was definitely ruined from your crying.

“i need you alex…”

he nodded with an empathetic expression and brought you inside. he wrapped a towel around you as you began to explain what happened between broken sobs.

“i’m so sorry… you never deserved anything like this” he sighed softly

“make me feel better, i need to forget about him” you said with eyes full of lust. you pulled alex to your body, his hips pressed to yours, and hungrily began to kiss him passionately.

“the way you’re looking at me right now… how can i say no?” he said in between kisses,

“i’ll make you forget. i told you for so long that i could treat you better and i meant it. i don’t want you going back to him after tonight, understood?”

a loud mew escaped from your lips as his mouth was immediately mouthing at your wet pussy. he licked you up and down and made sure you felt every second of it.

“just lay down and i’ll take care of you, princesa. i’ll make sure you never leave me for him again” he hungrily had his way with you, eagerly stretching you open with his mouth and fingers. he began to pump his cock and lined himself up at your quivering hole.

as he entered you, you felt loved. his cock inside of you while he panted and planted sweet kisses all over your naked body are what made it easy to completely get lost in him.

he took his time, making sure to focus on you completely. it wasn’t until the two of you came down from your highs that you realized.

“uh… alex?”

“yes?”

“please tell me you wore a condom” you shut your eyes tightly as you already knew the answer to that. you felt his load leaking out of you

“i told you, you’re not leaving me. aren’t you ovulating right now? well, i guess now you’re all mine” he smirked and held you close

he had always showed you the love and care that a boyfriend should. he treated you the way you deserved.

“did you seriously just baby trap me? wow, very mature of you… you’re lucky you’re my best friend and that you’re cute” and wow was it incredibly sexy of alex to remember that you were ovulating…

you didn’t mind that he did this without you knowing. it was kind of sweet, in a sickening way. but hey, who likes being normal?

“i know” he smiled and held you tightly while the two of you fell asleep for the night.

#alex quackity #alexis quackity #quackity #quackity x reader #quackity fanfic #quackity x y/n #quackity smut

[doctorbitchcrxft]

The Benders | Supernatural Series Rewrite | Dean Winchester x Reader

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader (Eventual)

Warnings: people are crazy, canon violence, canon gore

Word Count: 2370

A/N: I'm scheduling two of these today since this one's so short!! The Benders episode makes me really uncomfortable, tbh, so I kinda sped through it... lol

Series Rewrite Masterlist

You and the boys sniffed out a case in Hibbing, Minnesota. A child had watched a neighbor get dragged under his car. When you spoke to the young boy, his mother didn’t seem to believe him at all. You decided to head to a bar to collect your thoughts and grab a beer. 

You and Dean played darts while Sam explained to you that his dad had earmarked this area due to the insane number of disappearances in this area. In the midst of his explanation, you realized you needed to change your tampon and hadn’t brought any into the bar with you.

“Dean, keys?” you asked.

He tossed them at you. "Why, you stealin' my car?"

“Gotta go get some girl stuff,” you responded.

“Gross. Don’t wanna know.” You knew he was kidding by the smirk on his face.

You scoffed. “It’s not gross, it’s natural! Asshole.” You shoved his shoulder playfully and headed out of the bar. On your way out, you heard a noise and stopped. You turned over your shoulder to the other cars lining the gravel parking lot, feeling uneasy. You pushed through it, deciding that it wouldn’t take you longer than two seconds to get back inside after you’d grabbed your products. 

You turned at another sound, hurrying over to the Impala. You reached into the trunk and grabbed what you needed. Before you could even turn back around, you were lying on the gravel out cold.

***

The next thing you knew, you jerked up in a metal cage covered with hay at the bottom. Your hair felt a mess, and the back of your head was tender from your fall. You looked to your left and noticed the guy you’d originally come to investigate the disappearance of asleep in the cage next to you. You scrambled to your feet, trying to kick the cage door open. Nothing was working.

Stirring in the cage next to you caught your attention. “You’re alive! You okay?” you asked.

Mr. Jenkins groaned. “Does it look like I’m doin’ okay?”

You stretched your neck. “Touché. Where are we?’

“I don’t know. The country, I think. Smells like the country,” the man responded.

“You’re Alvin Jenkins, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“I was lookin’ for you,” you told him.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” you nodded.

“Well, no offense, but this is a piss-poor rescue.”

You kept up your plucky attitude in spite of the sinking feeling in your stomach. “Well, my friends are out there right now, too. They’re lookin’ for us. So—”

“So, they’re not gonna find us. We’re in the middle of nowhere.” He nodded at the door of the building you were in. “Waiting for them to come back and do god-knows-what to us.”

“What are they? Have you seen them?” you asked.

He looked at you confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Whatever’s got us, what’d they look like?”

“See for yourself,” he said.

At that moment, the door opened and two men wearing black hats and coats walked in. One walked over to Alvin’s cage and kicked the side of it. Alvin moved back into the corner, yelling at them not to touch him as they entered the cage. Instead of doing anything to him, they just left a plate of food on the floor and left.

“I’ll be damned,” you said more to yourself than your fellow kidnappee. “They’re just people.”

Alvin looked at you like you were stupid. “Yeah. What’d you expect?”

You paused a moment. “How often do they feed you?”

“Once a day. And they use that thing over there to open the cage.” The man pointed at a panel on a post a few feet away.

“And that’s the only time you see ‘em?”

He shrugged. “So far. But I’m waitin’.”

“Waitin’ for what?”

“Ned Beatty time.”

“That's fucking gross, dude.”

“What do you think they want, then?”

You began trying to climb the walls of your cage to grab a long metal wire stretching from the top of the pole next to you to the ground. You got hold of it and began pulling down the wire. “Depends on who they are.”

“They’re a bunch of psycho hillbilly rednecks, if you ask me. Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places.”

You continued to pull on the wire, doing your best to hold yourself up, and it gradually began to detach from the pole.

***

Hours had gone by. You were still trying to pull the wire off; climbing back up and continuously slipping down the cage’s metal bars.

“Why don’t you give it up, sweetheart, there’s no way out,” Alvin told you.

“Don’t call me that!” You used your anger and frustration to finally tear the wire down. A piece of metal fell with it. “It’s a bracket.”

Alvin scoffed. “Well, thank God, a bracket. Now we’ve got ‘em, huh?” 

His cage suddenly swung open on its own. He scrambled out of it. “Maybe you knocked somethin’ loose.”

Your heart rate began to pick up. “I think you should get back in there, Jenkins. This isn’t right.”

“Don’t you wanna get out of here?” 

“Of course, I do. But that was too easy.” Your mind was going a million miles per minute.

“Look, I’m gonna get out of here, and I’m gonna send help, okay, don’t worry,” he assured you, turning for the door.

“I’m serious, dude! This might be a trap!”

“Bye, sweetheart.” He pushed the door open and left. 

“Jenkins!” you called. “Alvin! Dude! Come back!”

Moments later, Alvin’s former cage slammed shut. 

You shivered on the floor, hugging your knees to your chest in the center of the cage. You began to count the minutes going by. You counted all the way up to twenty minutes before you heard a distant scream from a voice that sounded a lot like Alvin.

Not even an hour later, another woman was dragged unconscious into another cage next to you. You watched her carefully until she woke up.

“You alright?” you asked her once she’d gotten a glimpse of her surroundings.

She turned her head to you. “Are you (Y/N) (Y/L/N)?”

You furrowed your eyebrows at her. “Yeah…?”

“Your friends are looking for you.”

You laughed, relieved. “Thank god. Where are they?

“I, uh, I cuffed ‘em to my car,” the woman explained.

You sighed. 

Moments later, the door of the barn burst open. You couldn’t see who the figures were, but you backed up into the corner of your cage. Finally, Dean’s face came into view.

“(Y/N)?” 

You scrambled to your feet and grabbed onto the bars in front of him. “Dean!”

“Are you hurt?” Sam asked, looking you over.

You shook your head.

“Damn, it’s good to see you," Dean breathed out.

You smiled at him and ignored the way your heart fluttered in your chest.

“How did you get out of the cuffs?” the woman in the other cage asked.

The older brother turned toward her. “Oh, I know a trick or two. Alright. These locks look like they’re gonna be a bitch.” 

“Try that box over there,” you suggested, pointing to the control panel.

“Have you seen ‘em?”

“Yeah, dude, they’re just people.”

“And they jumped you? Must be gettin’ a little rusty there, sweetheart.” 

“Shut up, asshole.”

Sam walked over to the control panel and started trying different buttons. “What do they want?” 

You shrugged. “I don’t know. They let Jenkins go, but that was some sort of trap. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Well, that’s the point. You know, with our usual playmates, there’s rules, there’s patterns. But with people, they’re just crazy,” Dean responded. He was still sizing up your cage, occasionally looking to the door to see if they’d been followed.

“See anything else out there?” you asked.

“Uh, he has about a dozen junked cars hidden out back. Plates from all over, so I’m thinkin’ when they take someone, they take their car, too.”

“Did you see a black Mustang out there? About ten years old?” the woman in the other cage asked.

“Yeah, actually, I did.”

She seemed sad.

“Your brother’s?” Sam asked her, looking upset when she nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“Let’s get you guys out of here, then we’ll take care of those bastards,” Dean jumped back in. “This thing takes a key. Key?”

You shook your head, and the brothers set off to find it.

“Guys?”

They turned back to you. 

“Be careful.”

Dean nodded and left with Sam.

***

You abandoned your jacket and looked over to the woman in the cage next to you. “You hurt? Your face is all scratched.”

She shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

“I’m (Y/N), by the way.”

“Kathleen.”

“I’d shake your hand, but, uh—”

She laughed at your joke. 

“How’d you meet the guys?” you questioned after a moment’s silence.

“They came runnin’ up into my station. The pretty boy nicked an ID off another cop and was raving about some girl he needed to find. That was kinda my first hint that he wasn’t really a cop.”

Your stomach did a somersault. “He seemed worried about me?”

“Yeah, he did.”

“Huh.” A silence settled over the two of you before you spoke again. “You said you had a brother?”

Kathleen nodded. “Riley. Disappeared about ten years ago. I’ve been looking for him ever since.”

“I’m sorry,” you told her.

She didn’t answer. The two of you sat in silence again for quite some time until the door reopened. You could tell it wasn’t the two brothers, though. This man was wearing a hat and a puffer vest and inserted the key into the panel.

‘Fuck,’ you thought and grabbed at the bracket that had fallen to the ground. The door to your cage unlocked and you backed up against the far wall.

The man in the cap opened the door and aimed his gun straight at you. You threw the bracket at his gun, knocking it off-kilter, and used that opportunity to lunge at the man. You tackled him to the floor and began fighting with him for his gun. Shots rang out three times as he attempted to shoot you in the midst of the struggle.

“You son of a bitch, let go!” you screamed. You twisted your body to where your foot was on his throat and leveraged yourself that way. You pushed your foot in one direction and pulled the gun in the other, finally managing to get the gun away from him. You hit him with the but of the shotgun thrice in the head, knocking him out cold. You tried to fire the gun at him, but it didn’t work

“Fuck.”

You quickly took the key from the man on the floor and unlocked Kathleen’s cage. She helped you drag the unconscious man into the cage and relock him inside. You then smashed the control panel with the gun to disable it and keep the man locked inside. 

You heard footsteps approaching the barn and ducked behind a bale of hay. You hadn’t been able to see where Kathleen had gone, and held your breath when you heard the door open.

“Lee!”

‘Oh, that was his name.’

“Where are ya? Lee!” A rough voice called again. “Damn it, Jared, get the lights!” 

The barn stayed dark despite the switch you could hear being flipped.

“They must have blown the fuse,” a second male voice said.

You could hear the men running in separate directions; one clambering up the ladder and the other going in the opposite direction of your hiding place. You suddenly heard Kathleen grunting and fighting one of the men before hearing a gun cock.

“Hey!” you called, jumping up from your hiding spot. You ducked quickly when the man fighting Kathleen turned to shoot you. A voice behind you groaned in pain after you’d ducked and you ran over to Kathleen and the man she was fighting. You jumped on his back and began strangling him in the crook of your elbow. Kathleen wrestled the gun away from him while he fumbled through fighting you. 

“(Y/N), drop!” Kathleen told you, and you listened just before she hit the man with the but of the shotgun. He collapsed to the ground and the two of you turned your attention to the older man on the floor behind you. 

You dragged the man over to Kathleen’s cage and locked him inside. Out of breath from lugging his heavy body, you turned back to Kathleen who was aiming her gun at the older man on the ground.

“I’ll watch this one. You go ahead.” 

You stared at her, motionless.

“Go ahead,” she urged you.

You sprinted out of the barn, trying to make sense of your surroundings. You found nothing but trees, dirt, and old cars. “Motherfucker.” You then heard a snapping twig coming from the woods before you.

“Hey!” you yelled. “Come out, motherfucker!”

“Whoa, whoa, (Y/N), calm down,” Dean told you, appearing with Sam from behind you.

You breathed a sigh of relief. “Dean!” You threw yourself into his arms and squeezed tightly. He hesitated for a moment, but hugged you back strongly. You reveled in the feeling of his touch before forcing yourself to break away. You turned to Sam and hugged him, thanking the boys for coming to find you.

A gunshot sounded before Kathleen emerged from the barn. “Where’s the girl?”

“Locked her in a closet,” Dean chuckled. “What about the dad?”

“Shot. Trying to escape.” She looked uncomfortable, but you took her word for it.

Later after you’d said your goodbyes to Kathleen, the three of you were walking back to the police station to get the car.

Sam walked a little in front of you and Dean.

“Never do that again,” the older brother told you.

“Do what?”

Dean muttered, “Go missin’ like that.”

“Aw, look at you.” You playfully pinched his cheek. “You were worried about me.”

“All I’m sayin’ is, you vanish like that again, I’m not lookin’ for ya,” he grumbled.

You rolled your eyes. “Sure, you won’t.”

“I’m not.”

You giggled. “So, you got sidelined by a thirteen-year-old girl, huh?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Just sayin’, gettin’ rusty there, sweetheart.”

“Shut up.”

Series Rewrite Taglist: @polireader @brightlilith @atcamillanorrman @jrizzelle @insomnia-bookworm @procrastination20 @mrs-liebgott @djs8891 @tiggytaylor @staple-your-mouth @iloveshawn @jesstherebel @rach5ive @strawberrykiwisdogog @bruhidkjustwannaread @mxltifxnd0m @sunshine-on-marz @big-ol-boat @mgchaser @capncrankle @davina-clairee @chervbs @simpingdeadcharacters @nesnejwritings @stillhere197 @stephshaww @tearsforhan @take-it-on-the-run @iloveyou2mia @maxinehufflepuffprincess @ohgeehowdigethere @here-for-the-extravaganza @seninjakitey @berarenado @s0urw00lf @princessleahorgana @quarterhorse19 @rei0812 @isla-finke-blog @silverdoragon @karacaroldanvers @gayandfairycore @examishbookwyrm

#dean winchester x reader #dean winchester x y/n #dean winchester x you #dean x reader #dean x y/n #dean x you #dean winchester #supernatural #spn #supernatural series rewrite #spn series rewrite

[booksndpoetry]

Chapter One: Meet-Cute

a/n: This was not the fic I was hoping to publish and I don't know what this is (it's a mess). I might make more if you encourage me.

wc: 2.4k words

pairing: art mogul! Hyunjin X writer! Reader

tags: friends to ??, reconciliation, use of cheesy epithets, me trying to write slow burn.

genre: a pinch of angst, fluff

triggers/warnings: Whatever this is, it is not good. Read at your own risk.

Ten.

No, not Ten from NCT.

Just ten more minutes until you could excuse yourself for the evening and it wouldn’t seem suspicious.

You take in deep breaths and try not to make eye contact with anyone lest they try to make conversation with you. You were deliberately dressed discreetly for the same purpose too. Baggy jeans, vulcanized sneakers, a white shirt with a logo you’ve never bothered to investigate, and a pin on your braided hair. You were sure you looked like you didn’t belong, and you felt it too.

Being a bestselling author has its perks, your editor had told you, her voice tinged with something like awe when your book sales had skyrocketed. You thought it meant that more people would leave you alone to write. Though, to your dismay, it meant events held at ridiculously expensive hotels, with overpriced champagne and people at every corner trying to please you so they got a favour out of you.

It should be pretty obvious in your behaviour that you hate these events. You weren’t even a good actor. Although, knowing your agent, she probably set you up to meet your next best sponsor or another journalist who would try to get an interview with you.

The more you thought, the more you tensed up. Checking your watch for the umpteenth time that evening, you let out a ragged breath. Eight more minutes until your freedom.

Or maybe not, you think when you see Frank, the editor-in-chief for [famous magazine name] making his way towards you. Frank was known to be relentless with his requests and you were cemented about the fact with your experience in his studio.

“Hello Miss, how’ve you been doing since I last saw you?”

You hold your hands behind your back, not fooled by his polite façade.

“Good. How about you Mr. Frank?”

“Good, good.” He nods his head, more to himself than you. “Great weather today, innit?”

The sky was pretty magnificent today. The event was being held on one of the top floors of a famous hotel, and the large glass windows were set perfectly to watch the sky. The sky was a cerulean blue, with streaks of pink and orange, like the trails were smeared by the tiny fingers of a child, bold and [synonym for pretty] in their forms.

“Truly.”

He chuckles again, “Always a person of a few words, Miss ‘Name’. Although, can I hear them?” There it was, the unspoken request. He would once again wear you down trying to convince you to spare some time for an interview and a magazine shoot, and you would have to refuse again. You hated refusing, as much as you had to do it, and you didn’t like people who took no for an answer.

You simply take a step back, as if a physical distance would help you say the words easier.

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Frank. I have an impending project and I don’t want to distract myself. Maybe next time.” You offer him a weak smile, trying not to let your grimace show. You were bad at this.

He simply waves you off, expression more sombre than it had been seconds ago, and your heart drops. You had disappointed him. You seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

Unable to stand being there any longer, you rush past the faceless bodies, feeling the need to go away, to run away somewhere.

You go down the elevator and text your agent.

<<Attendance: done.

You silence the device and pocket it, finally reaching the lobby of the hotel. You swear not to stay in the damn hotel for any second longer, but the universe gives you another reason.

Luckily, it’s in the form of someone familiar. Unluckily, it belonged to your best friend you hadn’t seen in seven years.

Hwang Hyunjin.

You trip in the middle of the lobby.

Hyunjin hadn’t known what to expect that evening. He had been offered an invitation, just like any other month. He was unsure about whether he had to attend the event. After all, he had a business to run. But after one of his clients had finished the meeting early, some deal about an upcoming art exhibition place, he was having second thoughts. But some part of him had insisted on his attendance, as he’d heard that one of his favourite artists would be coming, and that’s how he found himself at the entrance of the skyscraper.

What he absolutely did not expect was to see you, standing right in front of him. Until you tripped, and he couldn’t help his laughter.

You quickly get up and pretend to inspect your shoes for any indication of dust. Damn five-star hotels and their extremely slippery granite floors. For what purpose were they made so smooth and shiny? For one to see their reflection when they faceplanted there?

Hyunjin’s still laughing lightly when he comes near you.

“You okay?” he asks, concerned. You hear his voice, and it is still the same smooth tone, albeit deeper. You missed that voice. But the way he speaks, polite yet guarded, you think that maybe he doesn’t recognize you.

“You haven’t changed one bit. Still tripping down flat surfaces, Miss Writer?”

And he proves your assumption wrong. You frown at how easily he can annoy you with just the sight of his stupid face, handsome or not.

Your lips straighten themselves into a thin line, and he remembers why he’d teased you countless times when you were younger. You were adorable when you attempted to look angry, like a tiger cub trying to sulk. He smiles, eyes taking you in again.

“You haven’t changed either. You laughed at me when I fell!”

That wasn’t true. He had changed, in more ways than one. Time had carved him beautifully, with elegant lines and soft beauty, evident on his face. And he was no longer Hyun, your best friend. He was Hwang Hyunjin, the rising art mogul, and founder of the famous ‘Hwang Designers.’ The man sought after by rich men and women alike.

The laugh he’d been subduing comes out in full force once again at the memory, and he clutches his jacket. For a moment, he’s your Hyunjin again.

You hit him on the shoulder, and he stops laughing.

“I haven’t seen you for seven years and this is how you greet me?”

He sobers up quickly. He knew he had to apologize, sooner or later. He decides to do it now.

“Ice cream?” he asks.

“Butter-scotch and Strawberry?”

“Yes. It’ll be just like old times.”

“Deal.”

When the both of you walk out the set of doors, you don’t look back at the gigantic building and to your surprise, neither does he.

The both of you stumble into his car, a spacious Audi, and he puts the car in reverse. It reminds you of the countless things you’ve missed. Like the first time he learnt how to drive. It saddens you a little, and he notices.

“The nearest dessert place is pretty far. You sure about this?” He wanted to make sure he wasn’t intruding on your schedule.

“I’m sure, Hyun. Now, let’s go.” You punctuate your statement with impatient slaps on the centre console. He chuckles, starting the car.

Once on the road, he thinks back on your words earlier. You had called him Hyun, after such a long time. He’d been called a lot of things, but he thought this epithet was something he wanted to keep being called. It’s a physical entity of your friendship, showing how it is still intact. And he feels like he’s sixteen again, sitting with you on your rooftop, as your shoulders brush. Like nothing has changed.

He drives past trucks and numerous cars, taking turns until the roads are empty.

You roll the windows down, and let the wind flow between your tresses.

The cool air feels heavenly against your burning skin. You close your eyes just as a strong gust of wind blows. You lean against the rails of the windows. It felt like freedom, like being alive at last.

Hyunjin watches you intently, eyes flickering between you and the road. It had been so long since he’d seen you, and he physically could not keep his eyes off you. He still remembers the mole above your left eye, the numerous dimples on your cheeks and the little bump on your nose bridge. He’s dreamt about it every day you’ve been apart, to be honest, but now was not the time.

Driving through empty highways at night was not how he envisioned his reunion with you, but there you were.

“Do you want to go somewhere in particular?” he asks you, voice soft, in that same tone he used to talk to you.

“Just keep driving, please” you swallow thickly. You didn’t want to return to your reality, not yet.

He nods once, then “Shall I take you somewhere? You’ll like it, I promise. Unless you don’t want to.”

You hesitate, then “Okay. I trust that you won’t get rid of me.”

He rolls his eyes, “Come on, ----- you should know me better than that. I would’ve done it already if I wanted to.”

You huff, “And here I thought you wouldn’t even dream of it.”

He just smirks and shifts the gear, speeding up.

“Slow down, I don’t want to die yet.”

He side-eyes you, “I’m not getting you killed, darling” He slows down anyway.

You feel yourself flushing because of that word. This was new. The Hyunjin you knew always called you silly names, but not this. This was different, mature. The tone of his voice was suddenly deeper.

No, no.

This was Hyunjin you were talking about.

He was your friend years ago, and you have yet to determine what he is to you. You will not be having such thoughts. Shaking your head, you lean back in your seat, when he stops the car. He’s brought you to the spot near the bridge, overlooking the river reflecting the city lights. You get out of the car and he leans against the hood with you, simply watching the scene before you.

It’s beautiful, the vast cityscape, stretching along the length of the river. The flashing lights dance over the waterbody like stars twinkling over the Milky Way. It feels so grandiose. But, you know that despite it looking so enigmatic, it is not so glamorous in reality. And the sudden weight of the expectations of others weighs down on you, all at once.

The distress must have shown on your face, because he stands in front of you, holding your face like he used to do when you were upset.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

He’s wiping your face, and you realize you’ve been crying.

“Nothing.”

“You know you can tell me anything.”

“I thought I could, until you went away to another corner of the world, leaving me behind.”

He flinches a little at the words. It’s true, he did leave you behind. It’s time he owns up to it.

“I’m sorry, ----. We were going to be far apart, and you and I were still young. I’m thankful for our friendship, but I thought that we could leave it behind. To revisit it one day, if we wanted to. I didn’t want to burden you with a friendship so pressing with its demands just to keep it alive. I thought I gave you a choice. Nonetheless, I’m sorry I didn’t contact you. I wanted to, but each year held me back when you’d gone years without speaking to me. But I believed I was still your friend,” he bends down and holds your hand. “I thought we’d survive despite not a single word being exchanged between us. And I know I’m right. But please be upset, I don’t like you being upset with me.”

You hold his hand, fingers curling around his wrist.

“I’m not mad at you, I understand. Maybe not then, but I do now.”

You give him a genuine smile, and his heart soars.

“So now, you’re back to being my best friend, no takebacks. Or I’ll knock you out.”

“Woah, ease up there. It’s been barely five seconds since we’ve made up and you’re already threatening me?”

“Like I said, I’ll knock you out.”

He immediately moves away from you, hands positioned in a poor imitation of some jiujitsu pose you know he has no idea about.

And you laugh, a childish sound coming from your mouth. He sees you, head thrown back and he feels his lips curling upwards.

You stay there for what feels like hours, catching up. He teases you and you threaten him, and he makes you laugh. You forget the ice cream. It feels just like old times.

When it gets darker, Hyunjin drops you off at your home after saving your number, with promises to meet you tomorrow. You wave him off, beaming.

Later, you stumble into bed with a heavy heart, sad that the evening had ended so soon. You know you won’t get any sleep, and yet you try. When you finally feel like you’re dozing off, your phone vibrates with a notification. Cursing whoever decided to message you without your permission (how dare they, when you were just about to fall asleep?) you unlock it to see a message from an unknown number.

>>>See you tomorrow, Miss Writer.

You smile and type something to send him too.

<<<See you tomorrow, Mr. Hwang.

And he’s the one who’s kicking his feet when he receives your message.

Labels: @straykidsland

© booksndpoetry 2024. All rights reserved. Please do not plagiarise, translate, repost or steal my works in any way. All idols used in this piece are just inspiration to characters. They do not reflect the real people in any way.

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