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immaturityofthomasastruc · 7 months

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IOTA Reviews: Collusion and Revolution

Well, the final confrontation with Lila was a bust, but maybe Chloe's swan song will be bett----HAHAHAHAHAHA! Sorry, I couldn't even finish that sentence without laughing.

Let's get into the twenty-second and twenty-third episodes of Miraculous Ladybug's fifth season: Collusion and Revolution

“Collusion” starts off with... oh, for God's sake... Gabriel monologuing to Emilie's body for the umpteenth time, only now, we see just how bad his Cataclysm wound has gotten, now making his entire hand black.

Marinette and Adrien wake up and we get a pretty cute scene of them talking on the phone while getting ready for their respective days. Afterwards, Gabriel talks with Adrien about being sent to London, and is somehow aware that Adrien hasn't told Marinette yet. Even when Gabriel tries to use his ring to keep Adrien under his control, Adrien still shows signs of resistance.

Later at school, Chloe walks up to insult Marinette and Adrien as usual, but Marinette has a little rebuttal of her own.

Marinette: Be mean while you still can, Chloe. I'm gonna let you in on a secret. Remember your friend Lila who used to hurt everyone with her lies? See her anywhere in this classroom? No, because I put a stop to her nastiness and I'll do the same with you!

Yeah, and you were only able to do so because one of Lila's minions decided they didn't like being evil, and had no plan of your own prior to that.

It's revealed that not only is Lila (I'm not calling her Cerise to make things easier for myself) still in contact with Chloe through their Alliance rings, she also somehow got her own supervillain lair. How did she set up here, much less find the resources to do so? You guessed it, never explained!

And yeah, let's just get this out of the way. I hate what they're doing with Lila here. For reasons I'll get to in a later review, it's clear that there had to be some changes made so Lila remains a key player, even after the events of “Confrontation”, so they decided to make Lila manipulate Chloe as part of her plans. For a pair of episodes that are meant to show Chloe at her absolute worst, it devalues her status as a villain if she's just going to be used as a glorified attack dog for bigger threats like Lila. Remember, we've seen Chloe come up with her own plans before (Mr. Pigeon, Dark Cupid, Darkblade, Kung Food, Antibug, Despair Bear, Zombizou, Frightningale, Queen Wasp, Queen Banana, Gabriel Agreste, Penalteam, Determination, Derision), and we know she's not a complete idiot. She doesn't need Lila to hold her hand and tell her what to do to get what she wants. I get that it's supposed to be ironic that Chloe, for all her bluster, is ultimately a pawn in a larger scheme, but it just doesn't gel with the whole “irredeemable monster” stuff the show has been going with whenever Chloe has been on screen for the past two seasons. You could easily take Lila out of these episodes and not much would really change.

During class, Chloe makes a scene by blasting some music and dancing on her desk, and we get what has to be the most unrealistic thing this entire show has done for the past five seasons: Assuming kids still care about school when the year is almost over.

Rose: Chloe, quit it! We wanna hear the lesson, we care!

When Ms. Bustier tries to send Chloe to the principal's office, Chloe calls Ms. Mendeleiev (who is the new principal after Mr. Damocles resigned), and essentially forces her to change the rules to music is allowed. After Chloe taunts Ivan, just as Marinette tries to stop Ivan from hurting her, she uses the opportunity to frame Marinette for hitting her. Oh, sorry. I mean Lila uses the opportunity to tell Chloe to frame Marinette for hitting her.

In the principal's office, Ms. Bustier tries to reason with Chloe by showing her the present she got her all the way back in Season 2's “Zombizou”.

Ms. Bustier: Chloe, do you remember this gift you gave me on my birthday? To me, that is proof that you're a fragile teenager who doesn't know love and is simply looking for attention. And... we all tried to help you. So, please, whatever it is you want, ask yourself if it's worth all the suffering you're causing.

Chloe: Did you hear that? A homeroom teacher using a student's feelings to blackmail her. This is inappropriate, utterly inappropriate! My father, the mayor, would never tolerate this in a school.

Remember kids, FUCK showing compassion to your enemies! Everyone knows Gandhi was a loser anyway.

The negative emotions attract an Akuma to Ms. Bustier, but she manages to resist Monarch's influence for now. Monarch transforms back into Gabriel, who has a meeting with Tomoe and Andre to discuss the state of Paris' law enforcement.

Tomoe: Your policemen mostly get paid for doing nothing. It seems that Ladybug and Cat Noir are the ones who have been enforcing the law in Paris the last few months, wouldn't you agree?

Because I guess Ladybug and Cat Noir have also been stopping drug rings off-screen or something.

Chloe storms into the office, and even though Lila has no idea what's going on, she tells Chloe to record the conversation. Once again, Lila has to tell Chloe just how to be mean and selfish while she chews out Andre, and that if she was the mayor, she'd ban superheroes, right before Chloe learns Adrien is going to London next year.

After a scene that's only there to remind the audience that Adrien hasn't told Marinette about London yet, we see Gabriel talking with Andre about replacing Paris' police force with robots... even though this should really be more a discussion for the commissioner. I guess the writers didn't have enough money for a commissioner model because they had to allocate resources for Ms. Bustier's baby bump.

Andre: Seriously, Gabriel, what's this whole police robot idea all about?

Gabriel: Have I ever offered a single bad idea to you, Andre? We've always helped each other, haven't we?

Andre: Remember when we were young and penniless? When Emilie, you and I would make the world right from our little attic room? You made me my very first suit so I'd feel confident and Audrey, whom I'd fallen in love with, would finally notice me? Don't you think we were much happier back then? That our lives were more beautiful, more fair?

Gabriel: Come on, you have everything to be happy, Andre. Your wife, your daughter, Paris City Hall...

Andre: A woman who barely respects me, a selfish, heartless daughter, and a City Hall that I never wanted. I only got into politics like dad to impress Audrey, you know that.

Gabriel: I have no idea what you're talking about.

Andre: Look at me, Gabe. All my life I've lied, I've cheated and I've abused my power. I used to be a dreamer, an artist, I wanted to make movies! Now I've become a tyrant in servitude to my family and friends...

Aw, poor baby. Did someone condition their daughter to develop an entitlement complex while refusing to divorce your abusive wife?

I'm sorry, but I don't feel bad for Andre at all here. While I'm happy to see that the show is trying to teach kids that male mental health is important too, it doesn't really earn him a lot of sympathy considering a lot of this is his own fault. Sure, we don't know what Audrey was like when they were younger, and she could have gotten worse as time went on, but considering how rich he is coupled with the fact that Audrey spends most of her time in New York, he doesn't really have much of an excuse to not divorce her. As for Chloe, he has even less of an excuse, since he was responsible for her upbringing. He spoiled her rotten, he refused to properly discipline her, and he failed to teach her the slightest bit of humility. I'm willing to accept that Chloe is a lost cause by the show's standards, but I can't accept the fact that Andre had nothing to do with how she turned out. He's as much of a failure as a parent as Gabriel is.

As Lila somehow finds where the two are talking so she can overhear their conversation, Gabriel secretly records Andre, altering what he says to make him look bad. While I can't exactly describe it through text, this clip from The Simpsons should summarize it.

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Ms. Bustier sees the video of Andre, and this time, she fails to resist an Akuma, turning into Wonder Woman—I mean, Miss Sans-Culotte.

Miss Sans-Culotte has a okay design. I like how it's meant to have a more patriotic theme with the color scheme, and the fact that it's based off some of the people in the French Revolution, aptly named the Sans-Culotte, is a nice way to teach kids about history. The problems I have are the golden armor, which goes against the fact that was previously mentioned in this very episode that the Sans-Culotte wore more simple clothing. That, and the guillotine blade for a weapon, which gives off some uncomfortable implications. The Miraculous power this time involves the Pig Miraculous' Gift, which somehow allows her to transform anyone her blade touches into balloons... even though the Pig never had that ability, and we saw what it really did just earlier this season (Jubilation).

Right when it seems like Adrien is about to tell Marinette about London, the two learn about Miss Sans-Culotte, and split up to transform into Cat Noir and Ladybug respectively. Meanwhile, Chloe hears the news about Andre before getting a call from Gabriel, who offers to “give her Andre's power”. Even though Chloe always uses her dad's power to get what she wants, she literally has to be told to accept the offer from Lila because she didn't think of the political ramifications. You see what I mean about Lila adding nothing to this episode? It'd be like if Thanos kept in contact with someone who had to tell him how to get the Infinity Stones at every step. As for Gabriel, I'll talk about his plan next episode.

Ladybug and Cat Noir confront Miss Sans-Culotte, demanding to know what she's doing.

Ladybug: Terror isn't a solution!

Cat Noir: There are elections to make your voice heard.

Miss Sans-Culotte: Or a revolution when everyone is corrupt. Nothing can stop freedom!

Because it's not like the video of Andre confessing to abusing his power, tampered or not, is an open and shut impeachment case, right?

Ladybug summons her Lucky Charm and gets a crown. After focusing on Miss Sans-Culotte and City Hall, she gets an idea.

Ladybug: Mayor Bourgeois is acting like the king of Paris, and maybe he should be removed from office after all.

Cat Noir: Are you saying we should give this villain free reign?

Ladybug: I don't know... I feel like that's what the Lucky Charm means. You're right, it's not up to us to decide who gets to be the mayor and who doesn't. An akumatized villain just needs to be deakumatized.

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Yeah, remember how Ladybug said it was too risky to forge a temporary alliance with Matagi Gozen in order to stop the person who stole almost every Miraculous she had last season? Well now, she's saying they should essentially let this Akuma force the sitting Mayor of Paris out of power, which is all kinds of illegal. Now this might just be because I'm not French, and don't understand how politics work over there, but here in America, the last time some people stormed a major government establishment to protest a fair election, they were seen as fucking lunatics.

Zoe tries to reason with Miss Sans-Culotte, but she's still in favor of using that guillotine blade in ways that don't involve balloons. They try to reason with her and convince her to reason with Andre... right as Andre is about to resign himself, so this whole conflict was pointless. Still glad to know Ladybug and Cat Noir are now willing to let Akumas use their powers to get what they want when that was almost always seen as taboo.

Miss Sans-Culotte once again rejects the Akuma with ease, Ladybug uses Miraculous Ladybug to fix the damage... only to be cornered by several police robots, and ones that look really stupid at that.

Remember, Gabriel and Tomoe wanted taxpayers to pay for these.

Yeah, somehow, the Lucky Charm was actually meant for Chloe, because, well...

Cat Noir: A crown for the queen of brats, of course!

What, did calling her the literal Antichrist not do well with test audiences?

Yeah, this makes no goddamn sense. Why was the Lucky Charm prioritizing Chloe of all people instead of the Akuma as usual? What was Ladybug even supposed to do here? Yeah, she really should have stopped Miss Sans-Culotte, but was she expected to know about the police robots or something?

Chloe tells the press that Ladybug and Cat Noir helped an Akuma force the current mayor out of office. This is all part of Gabriel and Tomoe's plan, but once again, she's not wrong. The two still helped a dangerous supervillain force a major political shift, and the resulting power vacuum that allowed Chloe to rise to power is really their fault. After Cat Noir uses his Cataclysm to free himself and Ladybug from the nets the robots used to trap them with, we get the start of a running gag where Chloe struggles to say the word “democratic”, because remember, she's blonde, and therefore stupid. This happens several times across both episodes, and none of them are actually funny.

The episode ends with Chloe unlawfully taking control of Paris as the new mayor, which is totally different from Miss Sans-Culotte unlawfully forcing Andre to resign. The last time I saw double standards this blatant, I was watching RWBY.

THE BIGGEST IDIOT OF THE EPISODE IS... CHLOE

If there's one thing I love about my irredeemable villains, it's that they're so stupid, it's impossible to take them seriously. Not only did Chloe need Lila to hold her hand through every major decision she made throughout this episode (and by extension, the next), she failed to understand her dad's political career falling apart and needed to be told to take an opportunity to own an army of advanced robots, and couldn't even say the word “democratic”, which isn't that hard of a word to say even if you're borderline illiterate.

“Revolution” starts off with Chloe essentially declaring martial law in Paris for the time being. Once again, Cat Noir says the sane thing for once and suggests they go and beat up Chloe themselves. Well, I say that, but somehow, Cat Noir contradicts himself in his very next line.

Cat Noir: We can't let Chloe make up the rules.

Ladybug: If she were akumatized, it'd be easy. Find the object, break it, de-evilize her.

Cat Noir: But there is no object, and we can't attack someone who isn't akumatized, or we'd look like the supervillains.

I think you forgot something, guys...

THE ENTIRE FUCKING REASON SHE'S MAKING THE RULES IN THE FIRST PLACE IS BECAUSE YOU HELPED A SUPERVILLAIN IN THE LAST EPISODE! HOW DID YOU FORGET THIS VITAL INFORMATION?!

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What the hell is with the sudden change of pace? They were willing to let Miss Sans-Culotte have her way by making Andre resign, so why can't they stop Chloe when she's already taken over Paris by force? I don't think you'd really look like supervillains if you stopped a tyrant instead of a democratically elected mayor. All you need to do is stop Chloe from controlling the robots, and you're golden.

In fact, where the hell is the rest of the Parisian government during all this, much less the French government? Why aren't they doing anything about this? We don't even get a throwaway line that explains it like Chloe bribed some politicians to keep quiet about the whole thing. Instead, despite an obvious violation of democratic rights, nobody outside of Paris is even bothering to stop this.

After a brief scene where some citizens are interviewed about Chloe, we see Adrien once again angsting about going to London. Like what Lila did with Chloe last episode, Plagg has to outright tell Adrien to talk to Marinette about this, because I guess this show has a really low opinion on the intelligence of people with blond hair. Also, good to know that even though Chloe is currently ruling over the city with an iron fist, she's still allowing air traffic to flow normally. Good thing too, as it's almost tourist season. Adrien tries to tell Marinette through a call, but she talks to him about Chloe, and how they can protest her regime.

Meanwhile, at City Hall, Chloe has already gone mad with power, as she orders her new box robots around, while Gabriel calls her to praise her for how she's been doing. Afterwards, Gabriel transforms into Monarch and absorbs the powers from a few Kwamis before Voyaging to City Hall. Chloe orders her robots to arrest Monarch, unaware than Tomoe is the one actually controlling them, only for Monarch to offer a deal... which Lila once again has to tell Chloe to listen to even though Chloe has worked with him in the past. Monarch offers to akumatize Chloe in a way that makes it look like she's not working for him. She accepts, and becomes Queen Mayor.

Queen Mayor's design is pretty simple, but I guess it works for the plan. It's just Chloe in an admittedly nice-looking jacket. Not sure if she can actually take it off like her other clothes or not, though. As for the Miraculous powers, Monarch transfers five of them to her robots, the Turtle Miraculous' Shelter, the Horse Miraculous' Voyage, the Ox Miraculous' Resistance, the Bee Miraculous' Venom, and the Rooster Miraculous' Sublimation, which gives her an unclear power. Given what she subjects her victims to later on, I guess it's the torture chamber she creates? I also don't get how the robots are capable of using the Miraculous powers when earlier episodes established you needed to have multiple Alliance rings to use them (Transmission, Pretension).

But now's as good a time as any to discuss Gabriel and Tomoe's plan, and why is makes absolutely no sense. In case you got confused, here's a quick summary: Tomoe created an army of robots designed to replace the police, and when Andre refused to use them, Gabriel recorded a private conversation so he could edit it, then transform into Monarch to akumatize someone and hope Ladybug and Cat Noir would let her force Andre to resign, then talk to Chloe about taking over as mayor, hope she says yes while Ladybug and Cat Noir do nothing to stop her, then pretend to give her control over Tomoe's robots before akumatizing Chloe so she can actually control the robots, all while praying that Chloe doesn't find out the truth, much the government doesn't get involved with this.

Gabriel and Tomoe did all of this instead of just, you know, akumatizing Chloe like usual. If the plan was to akumatize her all along while making it look like she's not akumatized, why didn't Gabriel just do that from the start as soon as Andre resigned and Miss Sans-Culotte rejected her Akuma? Also, why the hell is Chloe so crucial to the plan anyway? Yeah, they plan to throw her under the bus once they win, but wouldn't it make more sense if Tomoe, the one whose company made the robots, was the one who took over as Mayor?

It feels like the show is trying to recreate the plan from “Miracle Queen” where Chloe teams up with Monarch, but that plan at least made sense, as Chloe was crucial because of her connection to Ladybug. Here, it just feels like the writers needed an excuse to actually make Chloe a threat, but just like when Felix gave Gabriel all of the other Miraculous last season, it's forced. I'm not really seeing Chloe as a threat when she needed Gabriel to hand her the keys to an army of robots, and I don't care if that's the point. If the show wants us to take Chloe seriously as a villain, it needs her actions to speak for themselves instead of turning her into a glorified attack dog for Gabriel, Tomoe, and even Lila to an extent.

But here's my biggest problem with this plan. Consider the fact that Gabriel put Chloe in a major political position, presumably in order to bank on the fact that Ladybug and Cat Noir wouldn't use their powers to beat up a civilian. Gabriel then transformed into Monarch and akumatized Chloe into a form that would make it look like nobody would even tell she was akumatized in the first place. So let me ask this: If Gabriel's plan involves making it look like Chloe isn't akumatized, how is this going to actually attract Ladybug and Cat Noir so you can get their Miraculous?!

Yeah, Ladybug and Cat Noir eventually decide to fight Chloe anyway, but they don't learn she's akumatized until she blurts it out, and that's well into their fight. The plan is to turn the local government against Ladybug and Cat Noir and discredit in a way that prevents them from taking action against an obvious threat, but that just doesn't gel with Monarch's goal of getting their Miraculous. Did Gabriel and Tomoe assume that Ladybug and Cat Noir would just have no qualms with presumably beating up a civilian? If so, why even bother hiding the fact that Chloe was akumatized? This is a problem the plan faces no matter who the mayor is. Hell, if anything, it would be better if Chloe was akumatized from the start, as no matter how long she hides it for, she still has control over an army of robots armed with Miraculous powers, which wouldn't decrease the threat she poses in the slightest. This isn't even the first time an Akuma has hijacked the position of mayor (Rogercop), so it's even less excusable!

The next day, the students stage a protest at their school to get Ms. Bustier her job back, where Chloe (I'm calling her that instead because nobody else calls her Queen Mayor) questions why they're using their right to protest. She also plans to tell Marinette that Adrien is moving to London (something Gabriel told her earlier), but once again, Lila tells her not to. Also, you want to know how stupid the whole “Chloe can't say the word 'democracy' right” gag is? In the same scene where she struggles to say the D-word, Chloe uses the words “Libertarian”, “negative”, and “influence” correctly. It's hard to really buy Chloe as this illiterate moron while you still have her use words like this.

We get what can barely be considered a montage of Chloe abusing her power, but it's only like, three scenes before the plot kicks back in. We get a scene of Chloe screwing around in a private one-on-one class, an admittedly funny bit where she had a golden statue of herself commissioned to rest on the Arc de Triomphe, and then a scene where she shows Andre the ice cream man just how unfair her rule is.

Chloe: Did you pay the permit fee to sell your ice cream?!

Ice Cream Man Andre: I don't need a permit to sell love in Paris!

Chloe: Well, now you do! Otherwise, you'll end up in detention!

I mean, she reasonably calls out Andre for not having a permit to sell ice cream. How... evil of her?

Marinette goes back to her place, only to learn Chloe abducted her parents and placed them in “detention”, before doing the same to her thanks to one of her robots using a combination of Venom and Voyage. We do get an admittedly decent scene of Chloe threatening to tell Marinette about Adrien moving if Adrien doesn't become her deputy mayor, only for Adrien to vow to tell Marinette himself... even though he kept trying to tell her earlier in the episode, so this moment feels a little hollow. But hey, it's not like the finale will make this scene seem even worse in retrospect, right?

Adrien is sent to detention, a torture chamber where footage of Chloe mentally conditions the prisoners into believing that they're ridiculous or that they can always count on her, all while the prisoners are told to find a chair in an endless maze. Again, another decent visual I'll give the episode credit for. After Adrien, Marinette, and Alya escape detention, the former two transform into Cat Noir and Ladybug respectively and get ready to finally do something about Chloe.

Ladybug summons her Lucky Charm, a bikini bottom, and gets ready to stop Chloe alongside Cat Noir. Okay, Chloe has an army of robots on her side alongside the public's favor, so they'll need to come up with a really clever plan in order to—they're just going in guns blazing even though that's a terrible plan in a situation like this. Unsurprisingly, the two heroes immediately get trapped by a combination of Shelter and Resistance, nullifying the Lucky Charm and Cataclysm. Only now do they figure out Monarch is behind this, even though both of them saw the robots use Venom and Voyage to send them to detention, yet when Chloe actually says it, Ladybug is still shocked by this.

As Ladybug and Cat Noir start to detransform, they encourage the public to take action once they lose their Miraculous, even though Monarch will have won by then. As they do this, somehow, they stop detransforming until they manage to recharge their Miraculous by the power of because the plot says so. How did they do this?

Gabriel: I am an adult! Not transforming back is a power belonging to grown-ups!

Nooroo: I guess they must have grown up, Master.

Yes. Seriously. Even though there's been nothing else to signify that Ladybug and Cat Noir have matured this season, they now have the full power of their Miraculous at their disposal because now, they're adults. If you have to tell the audience that your characters have developed, then you've done a poor job at writing character development. Ms. Bustier takes the sash containing Chloe's Akuma while Cat Noir uses multiple Cataclysms to destroy the rest of her robots.

Ladybug de-evilizes the Akuma, oddly enough, doesn't use Miraculous Ladybug to fix the damage, doesn't give Chloe a useless Magical Charm because Andre says he's going to “correct his own errors”, and after being convinced by her students, Ms. Bustier decides to run for mayor.

We then cut to a private jet where Audrey is chewing her daughter out for failing, even though she supported her earlier when she was mayor. Yeah, you know how it seemed like Andre was finally going to properly discipline his daughter. Dream on! Instead, he just decided to send her away with Audrey, someone who he knows is a terrible person, and lets her deal with Chloe in a way that heavily implies she's going to put Chloe through hell when she isn't at school.

Audrey: Because of you, we've lost face! You've ruined our name and our reputation! You had all the powers in your hands and you foolishly lost them! Bourgeois do not raise losers. You think you're going to London on vacation? Dream on! I'm going to take control of your life again, starting with your education.

This is seriously meant to be an appropriate punishment for Chloe while Andre gets absolutely no consequences for being responsible for his daughter turning out the way she did. I have only one thing to ask.

WHAT THE FUCK, ASTRUC?!

How the fuck did anyone involved with this show think any of this was okay?! How did Andre think this was okay when in the previous episode, he pointed out how awful Audrey was?! Why the fuckare both Andre and Audrey, the two people who helped make Chloe the person she is, getting away scot-free while Chloe gets condemned for everything?! Why the fuck are we supposed to be happy Audrey is diciplining Chloe when we know she's worse than she is?! WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE OKAY TO GREENLIGHT?!

I can either interpret this scene in two ways.

The first way is that, like he's said for a few years now, Astruc still doesn't see this as child abuse, and that Chloe is being punished like any other misbehaving child is.

THIS IS WHAT THOMAS ASTRUC ACTUALLY BELIEVES.

The second way, and I consider this to be the worse option, is that Astruc's team is fully aware that this now qualifies as child abuse, and that Chloe deserves this treatment. Put aside the fact that a common mentality of abusive parents is that they believe they're helping their children by “toughing them up”, this is still a demented way to punish any character, no matter how bad they are.

“But IOTA! Chloe needs to be punished for what she did!” Yeah, she does, but not like this. Hell, you don't need to do a lot to change the ending and avoid the harmful implications. Just have Andre be the one to move out of Paris with Chloe with the intent to send her to boarding school. Also, rather than say he's “going to take control of Chloe's life again”, have him explain that while he still loves Chloe, he isn't mayor anymore, so she can't use his name to get out of trouble, meaning that like it or not, Chloe will have to grow out of her bratty attitude or else she'll get in even more trouble. That way, we see Andre actually taking responsibility for how bad of a parent he was, Chloe realizes her old tricks won't work anymore while the door is open for a redemption should you choose to bring her back next season, and most importantly, there's no implications of child abuse here.

But believe it or not, things were even worse for these episodes initially. As detailed in the Season 5 scripts, there was originally a scene in “Collusion” where Andre used his powers as mayor to divorce Audrey and steal custody of Zoe while leaving her to deal with Chloe herself, officially joining Jagged Stone in the Rich Deadbeat Dads Club.

And Astruc wasn't even aware it was taken out, not being told this until he found out on Twitter.

Because somehow, he considered Andre walking out on his family and leaving his biological daughter in the hands of an abusive bitch crucial to the story.

And do you want to know the worst part? No matter how you view this scene, either way, it's portrayed as Chloe getting punished, but the next scene plays Gabriel abusing Adrien straight, ordering him to pack his things as he'll be heading to London that night. The show literally can't make up its mind on whether child abuse is bad or not. Why is it okay for Chloe to be mistreated by her parents while we're supposed to sympathize with Adrien? No matter who the victim is, CHILD ABUSE IS STILL CHILD ABUSE.

I don't care how bad Chloe is, child abuse is NEVER justifiable, and it's disgusting that the show seems to take that stance, whether they intended to or not.

Let's just get the last few minutes out of the way so I can end this. Adrien is forced to pack for London, Nathalie does nothing to stop Gabriel from doing this, Lila steals one of Tomoe's computers, Gabriel tells Tomoe about keeping Adrien and Kagami safe in London while they execute “Operation: Perfect Alliance”, Marinette and Adrien have their first kiss for the third time in five seasons, Chloe calls Marinette to tell her about Adrien, but Marinette tells her to piss off, and Chloe ends the episode crying because Astruc thinks she deserves to suffer. THERE. I'M DONE.

THE BIGGEST IDIOT OF THE EPISODE IS... GABRIEL

Gabriel joins Marinette in earning the Biggest Idiot Award for the third time this season. He had no reason to include Chloe in his stupid plan, he was essentially banking on Ladybug and Cat Noir choosing to do nothing, and tried to create a scenario were Ladybug and Cat Noir wouldn't be able to lose their Miraculous. At least you could argue that Ladybug and Cat Noir needed to stay on the down low at first. Gabriel doesn't get that excuse.

These episodes sucked, but I honestly thought they were slightly better than the last two.

Yeah, all joking aside, I thought these episodes had more positives to them than “Revelation” and “Confrontation”. Where those two episodes were insulting and confusing respectively, these two episodes were the kind of bad I've come to expect from the show. There's plotholes, bad morals, and characters acting like idiots, but it's par for the course. I was far from a fan of these two episodes, but other than the ending of “Revolution”, I was nowhere near as angry I was with “Revelation” and “Confrontation”.

Surprisingly, I was more upset rewatching “Collusion” than I did “Revolution”. Yeah, “Revolution” was bad, but at least Chloe was supposed to be a bad example of how lead a city, unlike what Andre and Ms. Bustier were doing. Those characters both taught bad morals, intentional or not, and just like Ladybug and Cat Noir, were never called out for unintentionally leading to Chloe's rise to power. With Andre, we were supposed to just be expected to be okay with all the times he abused his power as mayor while cheering when he quit with no negative repercussions, and with Ms. Bustier, we were supposed to be okay with her attempting to stage a violent coup against Andre, the character the episode is already trying to make us sympathize with.

Between these two characters, along with Sabrina and Felix, the show really loves operating on the “There's Always a Bigger Fish” rule. It doesn't matter how many bad things you do, if someone else is pulling the strings, you won't get in trouble at all... unless you're Chloe, so, in that case, BURN IN HELL. Like I mentioned earlier, you can acknowledge someone only did bad things because they were pressured to while saying they should at least be held accountable for their actions in some way that doesn't involve kicking them out of the country.

The moral of when it's okay to use violence was pretty confusing, and not just because this is a superhero show where almost every problem is solved by fighting it. Ladybug tries to convince Miss Sans-Culotte that political conflicts shouldn't be solved with violence, but even if she didn't convince her to change her mind, Andre was already ready to resign as mayor, and Miss Sans-Culotte still angrily demanded he resign in a way that sounded like a violent threat. There's also the fact that despite saying that violence isn't always the answer, the conflict that was sort of resolved with no violence ended up making things worse as Chloe was able to seize power once Andre resigned.

Also, it's pretty funny how absolutely nobody ever tried to reason with Chloe after she became mayor, not even Ms. Bustier. In that case, violence was obviously the answer, but the show never really tells us what makes Miss Sans-Culotte better than Chloe. You can't teach an anti-violence moral in one episode and then lead into an episode where violence solves the problem instead of diplomacy. And I'm not one of those saints who believes that every conflict should be handled nonviolently. Sometimes, people won't listen to words, but will at least hear you out if you use your fists. I'd personally argue the conflict of “Revolution” would have worked if had this kind of lesson. Just have Ladybug and Cat Noir tried to solve things with Chloe diplomatically during the first act, only to realize that Chloe won't budge, so they have no choice but to take her out of power themselves. It'd make a hell of a lot more sense than having Marinette and Adrien do nothing while Chloe makes everyone's life miserable because the writers need to pad the runtime.

I already mentioned this, but for an episode that tries to show how awful Chloe is, she barely does anything on her own. She needs Lila to tell her to go along with Gabriel's plan, she needs Gabriel and Tomoe to pretend to give her an army of robots, and she needs Monarch to akumatize her to make the robots even more dangerous. If you need another character to do something to make Chloe a threat, why should we only see Chloe as the threat? These two episodes keep going back and forth on whether Chloe is the worst or not. When they're not showing her taking control of Paris on her own like should be doing, the writers take the time to remind the audience that Lila and Gabriel are pulling Chloe around by telling her what to do, all while they each muse about how this is all going according to keikaku. If you want to make Chloe a threat and have her live up to her reputation as a terrible human being, she should actually have agency and should be cunning enough to be a dangerous villain in her own right.

Unlike with “Confrontation”, which gave more focus to side characters for some reason, “Revolution” actually focused on the main characters and their conflict with Chloe, like we should have gotten with Lila. Yeah, Ladybug and Cat Noir wait far too long to stop her, but unlike with Lila last episode, they at least had a semblance of a reason for hesitating to beat up a civilian. Either way, it felt like an obstacle that Ladybug and Cat Noir actually overcame together instead of someone else helping them out at the last second. Yeah, the Miraculous boost was a glorified deus ex machina, but it was at least a thing established in the show since Season 3.

Even the stuff with Chloe actually felt like stuff she would do, unlike in Season 4, which tried to give her an interest in bananas and soccer for the sake of giving her screentime as a villain (Queen Banana, Penalteam). When Chloe had free reign of the city, she actually did stuff on her own that was clever, like the detention setup. We really needed more of this Chloe for the past two seasons if the writers wanted to make her work as a villain, yet they waited until the end of the fifth season to actually do something interesting, and that was after she was told what to do for most of the episode.

And then there's how the conflict was resolved. It's really hard to buy Ladybug and Cat Noir “growing up” and unlocking the full power of their Miraculous, because just like when it was first established in Season 3, it's such a vague term, and only leaves you asking more questions. Neither Marinette or Adrien really had a big moment of personal growth this episode. Yeah, Adrien wanted to tell Marinette about London, but he had been trying to do that since Chloe first took over as mayor. While it's a decent piece of character development after keeping it secret for the past few episodes, it doesn't really do a lot to justify Adrien “growing up”.

Then again, at least Adrien actually got a moment to show his growth compared to Marinette. All she did before she “grew up” was tell the citizens of Paris to keep fighting, but it was such a vague speech and doesn't really scream becoming an adult. If she was going to sacrifice her identity or do something dangerous in order to stop Chloe, that could have worked. Instead, what I can assume was her big moment came after she defeated Chloe, the call at the end, and even then, it was just her telling Chloe how much she sucks, something she's never been afraid to say since the show started. Once again, if you need to tell the audience your show has character development, you're not good at writing character development.

Overall, while these episodes were both really bad, I still think they're at least more tolerable than the previous two.

And with that, I am officially done with the poorly written Chloe episodes. Sure, I still have three more episodes until I finish Season 5, but least this means Astruc will hopefully stop using her in the show, or at least ranting about her on Twitter. Maybe I'll make a character analysis post about her or talk about her during the overview post, but for now...

youtube

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sugolara · 1 year

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𝐖𝐞𝐥𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐓𝐨 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝

Feat. Katsuki Bakugo x Shoto Todoroki x Izuku Midoriya x fem! reader

A series. Book One

cw: gore, quirkless! au, apocalypse! au, zombie! au, weapons, death, angst, lots and lots of blood, cannibalism, suicidal thoughts, updates thursday/sunday, slow burn, cross-posted on ao3, wattpad, qoutev

˗ˏˋ+ ´ˎ˗ After a deadly virus leaks all over the world, every country is forced to close down it's borders and airports to prevent anyone from coming in and out. Though, it's to late for some people. The dead has rose and is looking for revenge.

Inspired by, ''The Walking Dead''

(ongoing)

playlist!

" Space Junk - Wang Chung " Wolf - First Aid Kit " Into The Black - Chromatics " My Life In Rewind - Eagulls " Hush - Trills " Bad Before Good - Dayone " Run Boy Run - Woodkid " You're So Cool - Jonathan Bree " So Bored - Gorgeous Bully " Operations - Duster " Blue Light - Mazzy Star " Civilian - Wye Oak " Can't Stop - Red Hot Chili Peppers " Sweet Child O' Mine - Guns N' Roses " Skyfall - Adele " Struggling Man - Emily Kinney (original: Jimmy Cliff) " The Last Pale Light In The West - Ben Nichols " Up The Wolves - The Mountain Goats " Blackbird Song - Lee DeWyze " Be Gone Dull Cage - Kiev " Into Dust - Mazzy Star " Warm Shadow - Fink " Tomorrow Is a Long Time - Bob Dylan " Poison Tree - Grouper " Rhymes Of An Hour - Mazzy Star " You Are The Wilderness - Voxhaul Broadcast " Running - Delta Spirit " People, Turn around - Delta Spirit " The Lion's Roar - First Aid Kit " Pain - Boy Harsher " The Setup - Favored Nations " The Old Death - Ben Nichols " Revolution - Red Shahan " The Man Who Sold The World - Nirvana " Beautiful Mess - Balian " The Day The World Went Away - Nine Inch Nails " Mr. Splitfoot - Paris Motel " Empty Words - Bowery Electric " No Longer Making Time - Slowdive " Step Away from the Cliff - Blue-Eyed Son " Paradise - Silverberg " Take Care (To Comb Your Hair) - Ty Segall " Glad I Had a Friend - Galt MacDermot " Machine Gun - Portishead " Shadows of Planes - Duster " No Peace at All - Aldous Harding " Save Us from Ourselves - Digital Daggers " I'm No Heroine - Emily Wells " Salt in the Wound - Delta Spirit " It's All Right - Sam Cooke " To Build a Home - The Cinematic Orchestra " 6 Underground - Sneaker Pimps " Edge Of The World - Dayshell " Bye Bye Bye - School of Seven Bells " Arsonist Lullaby - Hozier " It's All Over - Johnny Cash " The Stars Just Blink For Us - Say Hi " Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division " Knockin' On Heaven's Door - Guns N' Roses " Runnin' Down a Dream - Tom Petty " Fly Like An Eagle - Steve Miller Band " You Are Not Alone - Mavis Staples " Welcome - Harmonia & Eno ‘76’ " Hope We Can Again - Nine Inch Nails " outside - Oneheart " sleepless - Odyzon " Alesund - Sun Kil Moon " Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd " Don Abandons Alice - John Murphy " Wicked Game - Chris Isaak " Rule of Rose OST - Playing Airship " 1908 - Repulsive " I Shall Cross This River - The Black Atlantic " Easy Way Out - Low Roar " Wherever You Are - Ulrich Schnauss

table of contents:

Season 1: Episode 1: Begin Episode 2: Not alone Episode 3: Gone but not forgotten Episode 4: You belong in this world Episode 5: Because all life is precious Episode 6: Musutafu, we'll meet again Episode 7: Izuku: I'd always thought there be more time

Season 2: Episode 8: During these two weeks Episode 9: Diopside, like your eyes Episode 10: For the first time in a long time Episode 11: Almost complete Episode 12: Determined to survive, stay alive Episode 13: Fear Episode 14: Katsuki: You are going to beat this world

Season 3: Episode 15: Away with you Episode 16: Three months ago Episode 17: Slowly withering away Episode 18: Don't die, not yet Episode 19: How long before I’m alone Episode 20: Nothing else to lose Episode 21: Shoto: Everything you would be will be gone

Season 4: Episode 22: Trouble Episode 23: For however long that'll be Episode 24: Searching Episode 25: The fallen city Episode 26: Stay who you are Episode 27: All together Episode 28: F/n: With you beside me

Season 5: Episode 29: Here Episode 30: Cruel Episode 31: Too loud Episode 32: Back on road Episode 33: All is lost Episode 34: Safe in your arms Episode 35: And so it begins Episode 36: At stake Episode 37: Sorry or whatever Episode 38: Familiar eyes

Season 6: Episode 39: A relief Episode 40: Upcoming trouble Episode 41: Never to easy Episode 42: To good for death Episode 43: Old memories Episode 44: A stroke of luck Episode 45: Be aware Episode 46: Bait Episode 47: A thump in my heart Episode 48: Belong to me Episode 49: One step closer (Towards you)

Season 7: Episode 50: Sorston Episode 51: Tenderness Episode 52: Here to stay Episode 53: The start Episode 54: Crushed Episode 55: Reporting to duty Episode 56: Good morning and goodbye Episode 57: An end to sorrow, grief & regret Episode 58: On the move Episode 59: Confirmation Episode 60: The world was on fire and no one could save me but you

Season 8: Episode 61: Not who you were Episode 62: Just you and me Episode 63: The Plaza Episode 64: The other side Episode 65: To be ready Episode 66: You're here Episode 67: So long, my dear Episode 68: Discard me Episode 69: Secrets you'll soon share Episode 70: I wish you nothing but the best Episode 71: For as long as I live Episode 72: Goodness and kindness can't survive, at least not in the world I dreamed of

Season 9: 6/16/04

to be continued...

Book two: To The One You Left Behind

taglist: @mikeyswifie @k0z3me @sky-angel101 @stevenknightmarc @nahwajinswhore @mn-0p @a-helen113 @azrral @mary-jinx @chixkadee @flowers-4-you @im-the-groot

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mahoushojo · 7 months

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The Life in the Valley: A Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life Zine is now up! I wanted to share some of the cosplay photos that my friends and I submitted. I had the best time spending the afternoon with these gals and was so happy to be a part of this love letter to the Bokumono fandom. 🌻✨

We really put our all into our cosplays and had such a fun photoshoot at our local sunflower farm! You can check out the full zine here!

Thank you so much to Renai_Photo on Instagram for being our photographer and to @iron-rose-revolution-blog for helping me with my Molly cosplay!

Cecilia: @princessvanellopevonschweetz Molly: @mahoushojo Lumina: @sunfloradesu

#story of seasons: a wonderful life #story of seasons #sos awl #bokujou monogatari #bokumono #sos molly #sos cecilia #sos lumina #molly #cecilia #lumina #cosplay buddies #kasei cosplay #sunfloradesuu #we stan these queer queens! 👑

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gale-gentlepenguin · 1 year

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Gale Reviews: ML Season 5 episode 22 Collusion

Spoilers below

-Gabriel doing his usual bit of talking to a corpse

-Dude really showing he's desperate

-Emilie knows her husband is batshit crazy

-The Adrinette is so f***ing cheesy I love it. THEY CALL EACHOTHER WHILE BRUSHING THEIR TEETH. UGHHHHH. Its dopamine

-And Gabriel just f***ing ruins the mood. The shift in adrien's expression, Just distraught.

-ADRIEN. MY BOY. HE CALLED OUT HIS S*** PANCAKES. I am so proud

-Plagg be spitting facts. Too bad neither of them know Adrien really has no choice in the matter

-They are trying to kiss but they both cant. Its cute but also... FUCKING KISS ALREADY! JUST KISS! YOUVE KISSED ALREADY. YOU CAN DO IT!

-Rose representing all of us right now

-" YOU TWO KISS OR I WILL KISS BOTH OF YOU?" Rose I dont think thats the threat you think it is

-Oh kwami they ARE INSUFFERABLE and I love it. If this was real I would HATE THEM SO MUCH. I feel Rose so much.

-Chloé and Sabrina are no longer friends after last episode, and Chloé just now a mean girl alone. Its just sad now.

-Lila (if that is her real name) still be out here plotting.

-So mendeleiev is the new principal, and just like before Chloé has the principal wrapped around her finger. This is getting really boring

-And cue Lila's plan

-Oh my gosh is this going to make Ms.Bustier go into Labor?!

-Ms.Bustier still trying to appeal to whatever organ is pumping the blood in Chloé's body. But this is season 5 Chloé, not season 2 or 3 Chloé.

-So Ms.Bustier got fired and I think Marinette is expelled. Sure feels like a recycled season 3 episode.

-WAIT... IS MS.bustier going to get akumatized and then they have to fight a PREGNANT WOMAN?!

-Ms.Sans-Culotte? Interesting reference

-Oh damn, she broke free. Impressive. She said no thanks and just broke the akumatization

-Monarch got akuma blocked

-So Ms.Bustier is leaving with a moderately attractive woman on a Motorcycle... Guess everyone is a Lesbian this season.

-Has no one seen robocop before? I know they have since there is an akuma parody of him. Its a bad idea

-OH NO ITS EVIL MARINO (lila as a waiter)

-Chloé now is just a mindless mean puppet. This is sad, At least before Chloé was mean and it was her choice and she did her own stuff, now its more like she is just a muppet to be used. Its sad really

-Lila manipulating Gabriel here, I respect the play, but im still annoyed by how dumb this is. Is chloé actually going to become the mayor?

-Tomoe out here just reminding Gabriel every chance she gets he's dying

-Rose, I love where your head is at, but not right now

-Andre talking to Gabriel about the good old days. Oh if only I cared about Gabriel in the slightest.

-Andre has a point, but he really should put a stop to the BS.

-And Gabriel creates Edited out of context videos using Alliance rings. Next time, deep fake images

-Gabriel selling out his homies like the bitch he is

-Yep, lesbians. Not surprising

-And now Bustier is going to get akumatized

-And just like that she gets akumatized

-Oh man that... that is just tacky. I dont like this at all

-And using the pig power

-SHE TURNS THEM INTO BALLOONS

-THE STAY PEACHY BIOGRAPHY IS BEING MADE INTO A MOVIE. HYPE!!! I HAVE BEEN SAYING SINCE SEASON ONE THEY SHOULD BE DOING THAT.

-Did... did she just advocate for state propaganda?

-Adrien was probably going to tell her... BUT interruption

-Lila really acting like Chloé's braincell. Is Gabriel really going to make Chloé mayor? They pulled this whole Villain is the Mayor s*** in Danny Phantom and it was stupid then

-Well Gabriel and Tomoe were right about one thing, the cops are useless here

-I feel like this message is hitting a bit too close to the French revolution

-Ladybug and Chat noir really just clowning on these akuma these days

-Ah some Zoebug, interesting

-So the mayor just quit, did not see that coming

-That was anticlimactic... something is not right here

-That was an onscreen kiss. Oh that is getting censored in the other areas

-THE LUCKY CHARM WASNT FOR THE AKUMA, IT WAS FOR CHLOÉ!

-And Chloe becomes mayor/dictator

______________________________________________________________

This dumb, this is really dumb.

I love the lovesquare stuff, but this show really jumped the shark. Chloé became Mayor with Robots, Lila/Cerise or whatever has multiple identities and puppeteers things is just already too much. This has just started going off the rails WAY too fast.

The show just feels so... off.

The episode was 5/10

I cant say I hated it, but i just cant find any enjoyment from this arc aside from the Lovesquare.

I cant say I feel as enthusiastic about this season as I was during Elation.

#ml spoilers #gale reviews #collusion spoilers #ml collusion #this went overboard

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m1ssword · 1 month

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My favourite retro animes with their perks and perils

Let's start straight away!

1. Lady Oscar / The Rose of Versailles

(70s)

Such a lovely manga/anime series. The story follows the life of a military general's daughter Oscar and Marie Antoinette. Oscar is raised like a boy to succeed her as the commander of the Royal Guards at the Palace of Versailles. The story is set in France before and during the French Revolution.

Perks:

Strong multidimensional female lead

Surprisingly historically accurate

Interestingly captures the large scale of femininity and being a woman

Cool soundtrack

Interesting fact: this anime inspired the makers of Berserk (1997)

Perils:

You'll cry

2. Lady Georgie

(80s)

Lady Georgie tells the growth story of a girl named Georgie who lives in peaceful and pittoresque Australian countryside. Georgie doesn't know the secret about her origin while the rest of her family knows it.

Perks:

absolutely endearing setting

the storytelling of their childhood is beyond cuteness

reminded me of the book "The Little Princess" by F. H. Burnett

Perils:

I was a bit weirded out by the love square (?) which included her two adoptive brothers

The ending is not satisfying and the manga is even worse

The love between Georgie and her main love interest is quite bland

3. City Hunter

(mainly 80s)

City Hunter is a humorous anime classic from the 80s. The story focuses on Ryo Saeba, a famous underground sweeper in Shinjuku, and his partner Kaori Makimura. They together help different customers - which are all beautiful women, since Ryo is also well-known for his lecherous habits. Kaori keeps Ryo in check with her hammer.

Perks:

fun anime with a lot of seasons and movies

interesting characters

pictures the city life of Japan in the 80s

Perils:

the love story between Ryo and Kaori is sometimes frustrating

The fetishism of women in almost every episode starts early to feel like a worn joke (notice the time context)

Episodes follow the same plot almost every time, may start to feel repetitive

Tsukasa Hojo, the maker of City Hunter, has also done an another manga named Angel Heart which shares the same characters with City Hunter but isn't it's continuation. I don't yet have a full review of AH, since I'm currently watching it. Thus far, I have cried during every episode, it's good but different. (Please tell me in the comments would you like to have full review of AH)

And a lot more...

There is a lot more retro animes that I didn't mention in this post, like Candy Candy, Cowboy Bebop, Sailor Moon, Utena, Ranma, Akira, Lupin the III, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Berserk (1997). This is just my list of favourites and I hope that you would like to share your favourites in the comments!

With love,

Jessica

#retro anime #anime and manga #anime #retro #lady oscar #the rose of versailles #lady georgie #city hunter

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soracities · 2 years

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I’m sure you’ve been asked this a million times but do you have a master list of all the different tags you use for posts? Possible to share?

i have been asked— so many times— but never gotten the chance to sit down and compile them all, so hopefully this will do for now:

basics

#photography:

#shadow play / #still life / #light

#hands / #bodies

#people

#places / #views

#black and white

#quotes:

#poetry (excerpts) / #poems (poetry posted in full)

#reading

#quotes about x

#poetry recs / #book recs / #book talks

#art:

#art detail / #flesh and bone

themed tags

intimacy, love, affection, connection etc.

#you are my sun and moon and all my stars

#the topography of love

#the lovers

#a country of two

#with your love as my witness

#infinitely and inexpressibly

#here and where you are

#to the point of invention

#one more kiss before we turn the lights off

#the world is ending and i love you

#two solitudes / #relation without relation

#it was you i drank (new tag)

#in this life and the next

#carnal appetites

#the aftermath of love

#the shadow side of love / #liebestod / #koschei

#dolor ante lucem

#a heart is a heavy burden / #foul rag and bone shop of the heart

#i love you like a cold river

#a lexicon of love

#variations on desire

#variations on a kiss (old tag, to be updated)

#i slithered here from eden

#bread is love among strangers

#anam cara

on literature, art, writing etc.,

#sanctum

#on poetry / #on writing / #notes on an art form / #art and the visual / #notes on the canon

#portrait of the artist

#on narrative / #on books and reading / #language

#die Grenzen meiner Sprache—die Grenzen meiner Welt

themes / specific topics (literature and visual tags, some are both)

#the woods are lovely dark and deep

#mother of otherness eat me

#deep sea dreaming (visual) / #wine dark

#a beast is pulsing in my heart

#if i show you the roses will you follow? / #gulistan

#eyes exist in the savage state

#tongues of flame

#touch is a sacred language / #the imprints of our hands will merge

#this too sullied flesh / #the body electric

#fragments of selfhood / #echoes of the other / #diaspora blues

#sing me down into the dark / #notes on the human condition

#um unter den Wissenden zu sein oder allein / #i wandered lonely as a cloud

#the futility of speech / #the limits of understanding

#nocturnes / #only the moon and i / #astral hymn (visual) / #a softness came from the starlight

#we are but ghosts tonight (visual) / #where ghosts and shades do tread / #beyond the river lethe there is memory healed

#the persistence of faith / #divinities / #old gods

#on culture / #of war and violence / #dispatches from the revolution (no longer active)

#notes on a haunting / #the witching hour is upon us (visual)

#monster theory / #wolf song

#the book of women / #she; portraiture

#a whisper from times past (visual)

#home fires

#what the water gave me / #a dream of water

#the new romantics / #the mystic / #the dreamer / #the scholar

#girl reading

#glimpses

seasonal tags

#the bone bare season / #winter (visual)

#autumn dreaming

#sing me a song of summer

comfort and hope, etc.

#on earth we're briefly gorgeous

#the wide wide world

#hope is the thing with feathers / #its not that we have hope we shelter it

#without tenderness we are in hell

#who is my neighbour? my neighbour is all mankind

#devotionals / #moments

#humanity i love you

#and still i rise

#life everlasting / #i was a bride married to amazement / #all these wonders still to be ours

#a brief primer for the hopeless days

#in the dark times there will be singing

#at the end of the world we learn to dance

specific asks compilation

#the road is long and we have time

#the kids will be alright

#notes from elsewhere

#ask #anonymous #tag directory #navi

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tallmadgeandtea · 11 months

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Turn Week 2023:

If I Could Change One Thing

Turn Week 2023 is already over! This week has flown by, and I hope everyone who participated had a wonderful time. I appreciate all the love on my first Dragoons post- and yes, I'm back with another one. This time, I am not sorry.

Tallmadge vs Tarleton

As I mentioned in my last post, after the Philadelphia Campaign ended, Major Benjamin Tallmadge and his 2nd Dragoons stayed up north, while other cavalry regiments went to fight in the Southern Campaign- where they arguably had most of their combat experience. Why did Tallmadge stay up north? Two reasons are that the dragoons were still needed for scouting and raiding the British forces in strongholds like New York- keeping the Hudson River in Patriot hands- and that by now, he was General Washington's spymaster for the Culper Ring in Long Island and New York City.

But that doesn't mean that Tallmadge didn't have his saber drawn in battles or skirmishes.

On July 2, 1779, Tallmadge and the 2nd Dragoons were camped in Pound Ridge, New York. They were suddenly ambushed by "two hundred British and loyalist cavalry." Although the 2nd Dragoons had strengthened forces thanks to Washington sending Moylan's 4th Dragoons, the British received a letter saying so. Leading the charge was Lieutenant-Colonel Banastre Tarleton, a British dragoon who would eventually become one of the most famous cavalrymen of the Revolution. Before 1779 and the Southern campaigns, one of his known escapades included being present at the capture of General Charles Lee.

Tallmadge and Tarleton's forces fought each other in front of the Presbyterian Meeting House during the Battle of Poundridge, going from on horseback to fighting on foot. When Tarleton's men and the 17th Dragoons entered the fray, it was clear that Tallmadge and Colonel Sheldon's 2nd Dragoons would not win the day. They retreated with the British pursuing them.

Along with his victory, Tarleton now had the 2nd Dragoon's regimental flag. But, especially unfortunate for Tallmadge, there were a "dozen causalities," and a dozen horses taken. One of these horses belonged to Tallmadge himself. Like any cavalryman, he kept his essentials in his saddlebags. Now they were in the enemy's hands. In those bags were, according to author Alexander Rose (doesn't that name sound familiar?) "twenty guineas" from Washington to Abe Woodhull as payment for his spying, and intelligence papers related to the ring.

How does this relate to Turn?

Season three of Turn takes place between 1778-1780. During this season, they did include the Battle of Stony Point- important in its own right- but why would they not include something that involves not only losing a battle, but information about the ring being stolen from Benjamin?

I think that instead of filling up screentime with the, frankly, at this point, ridiculous Robert Rogers and Abe doing what the hell they did plotline, they could've included the Battle of Poundridge. Could you imagine Benjamin's reaction to losing his horse and intelligence? And if they wanted to show Washington losing faith in the ring, wouldn't this be a good example? Instead, we had Robert Rogers and Abe running around in his little rat hole.

Also, if they wanted to use historical figures like Hamilton and Martha Washington to boost ratings and be like "please give us a fourth season," Banastre Tarleton is a pretty popular guy. Just saying.

And, lastly, you're probably like, "Amanda, are you saying that you, Benjamin Tallmadge's PR manager, want to see him get his ass beat?!" Yes. Yes, I do.

Further Reading:

Cavalry of the American Revolution - Jim Piecuch - Westholme Publishing (Cavlary Action at Poundridge, New York by John M. Hutchins.)

Tarleton: Before He Became "Bloody Ban" - Journal of the American Revolution (allthingsliberty.com)

Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring by Alexander Rose, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

Memoir of Col. Benjamin Tallmadge : Tallmadge, Benjamin, 1754-1835 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

#once again: i will never be normal about dragoons #I'm not the only one to write about this I'm sure but I wanted to give my thoughts on it #this is a very BRIEF summary of poundridge #lots of shit went down #benjamin tallmadge #turn week 2023 #military history #american revolution #real horse girl shit #I’m not an expert at British shit so I kept my mouth shut partially #long post #I just realized that I spell the town differently but sources differ on spelling leave me be 😭

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ask-sebastian · 6 months

Note

I’m a bit late, but…

15 & 28? 💚

Never too late!

15. A song that is a cover by another artist

28. A song by an artist with a voice that you love

#sebastian's musical owls #tori #time of the season - roses & revolutions #candyman - christina aguilera

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docholligay · 11 months

Text

You know, I have seen a lot of anime openings at this point and time in my life, just by the very nature of what it is I do with my time, and still the Utena opener, all these years later, remains one of my favorites.

Not just "Oh this is a banger" that itself wouldn't be enough to make me rate something like this so highly--I love the opening theme song to Attack on Titan and I won't even WATCH the anime--but in terms of both the song and the imagery both SERVING the anime in a way I think openers mostly don't.

I'm working from translation obviously, but the song repeats this notion of cycles*, directly references things that happen in the anime, and I'm not sure if it was ever en vogue for the song to be written for an anime--I mean, it might still be en vogue now--but this one either very clearly was, or Ikuhara liked it so much that he bent the anime to fit the song (this seems less likely to me) And I'm not sure I can think of another anime opening song I personally have seen that ties so directly into the anime itself.

And the images in the opener! The constant pulling apart, the destruction of the castle, the way Anthy is the one who hands the rose to Utena, Utena SPINNING ALONE at the end, without at all spoiling it for us, you go back to watching it after having seen the anime and go "Oh shit! Yeah, it basically told us a bunch of stuff that was going to happen" I mean I was deep in it even before I finished the anime I was making up THEORIES based on it.

I think the only other opener I remember that feels so related to the show itself was 'School-Live' (great show) and I would argue even it didn't take it as far as Utena--School-Live was reacting to the show, not predicting it--and other than that I can't think of any anime off the top of my head that's had an opener that felt so deeply tied into the show itself.

ANYWAY UTENA

*I will, to the end of my days, take a certain amount of issue with using 'revolution' as a translation for 'things that go around' when something like cycles, eras, seasons, depending on what it's meant for, IN GENERAL, works better, because in English we don't just have meanings, we have IMPLICATIONS. (Other languages of course do as well but I'm talking about English here) Revolution can of course mean "A turn of the earth or whatever" but that's not the common usage of revolution, and here I might go so far as to say that the wordplay is slightly intentional both to throw us off track and to highlight that what Anthy ends up doing in the end IS a kind of revolution in the more classic sense, but like, Pluto? That should not be translated as "soldier of revolution" if what you're going for is, you know, actual understanding. Send hate mail to: Doc Holligay, PO box 1621 Billings, MT USA

#Doc watches Utena #Utena: The Rebloggening #Utena Episode 34 #utena episode 34 #it's just gonna be this today people

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trelkez · 5 months

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Notes from my current Doctor Who rewatch, which has just reached s3 (having started with s4/early s5, at which point I gave in and started from the beginning):

We really don't give Nine enough homicidal credit for building a humanity-ending doomsday weapon out of loose wires and scrap parts and then putting his hands on the detonator

But then he took his hands off the detonator, unlike Ten, who decided to destroy the Cybermen by making them self-aware, thus effectively torturing to death untold numbers of innocent converted humans (...a thing I had completely blocked out)

(All of this really undermines Ten's point later about how Tentoo is him when Rose met him, before she made him better. The two of you unhinged each other! It doesn't somehow make things better that you're giving him to her pre-unhinged!)

On that topic: I don't rewatch s2 often and it's been so long that I had forgotten why, but Ten and Rose are just A Lot. Two mutually enabling sets of character flaws racing headfirst for tragedy, staring each other in the eyes on the way down

Some of those character flaws are interesting; some were just unnecessary. Why does Rose turn into a territorial misogynist any time the Doctor has a conversation with a woman? Didn't we address this in School Reunion and move on? Rose did not rewrite the universe in 2005's finest Punkyfish so that the writers could constantly undo her character growth

[ this space reserved for a lengthier rant about how Mickey deserved better ]

Tommy from Idiot's Lantern is gay? They went to great lengths to make the subtext as overt as possible and it still took me almost two decades to catch on

Knowing that makes the ending of that episode even worse. Don't tell that abused gay kid he's personally responsible for redeeming his horrible father! Why is that the moral of the story!! Just Walk Out! You Can Leave!

I've made it to Martha! She has always been one of my faves, but her season makes me constantly want to punch the Doctor in the face, so this should be ... another adventure

"Trelkez, do you even like Doctor Who?" yes I love it more than I can say but RTD Era 1.0 sure did have some content in it

That said, things I loved about s1-s2: Sarah Jane! Mortal Jack! The Runaway Bride! The Girl in the Fireplace! The Doctor Dances! Cassandra dying in her own arms, Jackie saving humanity because a guy with a truck owed her a favor, Mrs. Moore teaching herself how to be the tech support of the revolution, the Doctor finally catching on to Bad Wolf in Boomtown - that moment gave me chills again like it was 2005

I will not be watching Torchwood before/alongside s3 for the full experience, because I lived that and I am not going back. Torchwood stays in the box. No thank you

#doctor who #trelkez rewatches doctor who #with occasionally mixed results #long post #bc I cannot figure out how to read more a bulleted list

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teamlarl · 3 months

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Drabble - The Hero of Argus

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"Oh that?"

"It was a day unlike any other. The year? 57 PW. The Faunus Rights Revolution had been over for a decade by that point. The scars were healing all across Remnant. It was a time of peace. A time of prosperity. No one could have anticipated what would come for the city of Argus, located on Mistral's northern coast.

Now, Argus has always occupied a strange diplomatic gray area between Mistral and Atlas. Nominally, it's Mistrali territory. But it holds an Atlesian military base and culturally speaking, one could make the argument that it's closer to Atlas than Mistral. Which is something Atlas likes to take advantage of.

Rumor has it that Atlas was testing out some special, particularly destructive weaponry off the coast of Argus. With Atlas gone, I suppose we'll never really know the details but... they woke something. Out from beneath the waves it rose slowly. Methodically. Dangerously.

A great reptilian beast, larger than most skyscrapers. Black as night and covered in bone-like armor, as most Grimm are. Like a great, lumbering bear, but conforming itself like some grandiose, ancient lizard of old.

The Leviathan.

The beast had been angered by the weapon testing, either injured by it or incensed that its habitat had been disturbed. And, like all Grimm, it was beckoned towards the nearest human settlement. To exact its vengeance upon those that had a soul.

It turned towards the city of Argus, and began to march.

No one was prepared.

It rose out of the waves like some great herald of doom. As it entered the coastal waters of Mistral's Second City, it tore through the great bridge that made the city famous. See, Argus has walls surrounding it - but at the time, they only had it on land. The city was wholly unequipped for an aquatic attack. And this was no mere Sea Feilong, dangerous as those are! This was a beast out of the nightmares of the most seasoned huntsman!

And it began to attack.

Entire swathes of the city were destroyed within the hour. Neighborhoods that had stood since the founding half a century earlier? Erased from existence. Crushed beneath the Leviathan's sheer mass, like it was stepping on an anthill.

The Atlesian military did its best to repel the beast. But they were still using mid-century weaponry. Nothing like the railguns or dust-powered laser cannons they have now. Well, had. Still! Soldiers were crushed. Planes swatted aside. Artillery and missiles brushed off like they meant nothing!

Fun fact - the current Atlesian base in Argus was built in 58 PW. That's because the old one got destroyed in its entirety during this attack.

And then, like it had gotten BORED, the Leviathan retreated and slunk back beneath the waves.

Argus was left to recover, to pick up the pieces. But no one believed this was the end. No one knew WHY the great beast fell back, but everyone knew that it would be back. Grimm did not just RETREAT on the verge of victory. Except, perhaps, to further savor their meal. To play with their food.

So began the great defense of Argus. Communications were down all across the city, destroyed in the beast's rampage. There would be no help coming. Not from Atlas, not from Mistral. It would be up to Argus and Argus alone to defend itself. As if it could. Now, it’s true, Argus was home to Sanctum Academy, Mistral’s preparatory school for huntsmen and huntresses before applying for one of the Big 4 academies. But these were children. Less than even huntsmen-in-training. They would be no help.

And yet, in a roundabout way, Sanctum Academy would prove to be Argus’ salvation. Because, the morning after the initial attack, a team of freshly graduated huntsmen showed up at the gates of Argus. This team were intending to visit Sanctum and the job board located there, intending to pick their next mission.

And on this team was one Willow Schnee.

White of hair and pale as freshly fallen snow, garbed in the telltale colors of her illustrious house, no one would have blamed the young heiress for choosing a life of luxury. Of ease and comfort. And make no mistake, the woman has a taste for it, I can promise you that. But! She chose to become a huntress anyway. To work hard for her place in the world at that young age, like her father before her. So, at 21 years old, having just graduated from Atlas Academy a scant few months beforehand, Willow Schnee entered the city of Argus for the first time.

She was horrified by the destruction, as anyone would be. To think that a single Grimm had done all of this! But the ice princess, the once and future hero and matriarch, knew that she had a duty to the survivors, to the city. So she stayed. She and her team introduced themselves to the remaining forces of the Atlesian military, who knew that this was the only help they would be getting. Four, freshly graduated huntsmen. It would have to be enough.

Night fell. A storm rolled in from the sea. The city was dark, for most of the power had been taken out during the first attack. Even fires and candlelight were put out, for fear of drawing the beast’s attention. A wise precaution. For, before the clock struck midnight, a deafening roar like a demon from hell came from over the horizon.

The Leviathan had returned.

The only light in the entire city came from the port docks. A shimmering, ethereal Boarbatusk – white, instead of black – shone like a beacon to the entire city, and even to the Leviathan itself. And there, saddled on it like the ghostly Grimm was some great beast of war, sat Willow Schnee – saber in hand.

Slowly, the massive form of the Leviathan peeked over the horizon – trudging along the bottom of the ocean, splitting the waves like a knife. Even with half of it buried beneath the dark waters of the bay, each step was like an earthquake. But its challenger did not back down, did not move an inch. Eventually, the Leviathan reached the docks. It towered over all, its head reaching into the heavens, and it leered down at the bright, shining light offending eyes that were used to the deep depths of the sea.

The Leviathan opened its maw, large enough to eat countless people in a single bite, and roared in defiance – no doubt bursting the ear drums of anyone unlucky enough to not be wearing protection. Willow Schnee responded simply. She lifted her sword and shot out a shard of ice from its chambers of dust. The ice, the size of a boulder yet as sharp as the sword she carried, struck true. It embedded itself in the roof of the Leviathan’s still open maw.

No doubt, to the Leviathan it was the equivalent of a splinter, but as anyone can attest a splinter is deceptively painful despite its size. The beast roared in pain, and the battle began.

Willow CHARGED at the Leviathan, the summoned Boarbatusk she’d summoned running along the waves as if it were on land! In reality, Willow was using her semblance to conjure footholds of ice with every step that her steed took. Then, as one, the remaining functioning artillery of Argus fired – striking the beast while it was distracted with the ant that offended it so! The Leviathan once more roared in pain, and this did everything to boost the morale of the defenders. The beast could feel pain! The beast could be hurt! And if it could be hurt, it could die!

The sky LIT UP, both due to the flashes of lightning the storm conjured and the pounding of artillery fire upon the Leviathan! But in the end, these were just distractions. It had already been proven that the beast couldn’t be felled by the firepower available to the military. But the sheer force of the barrage forced the Leviathan to defend itself.

In a show of power unforeseen by the defenders, the Leviathan revealed its trump card. A low hum filled the air, even as the future Hero of Argus was slashing at the beast’s heels in an attempt to bring it low. It built, and built, and soon the beast itself was becoming yet another light in the stormy night. Some prescient commander ordered his troops to get down for cover, but it would do them no good.

FIRE shot from the Leviathan’s fanged mouth. With the intensity of a blowtorch, and all the power of the bombs that had been dropped on it that caused this entire disaster. A blinding flash of light filled the sky, blinding those who made the foolish mistake of staring directly at the blast. It was like the sun had risen, hours and hours too soon. In an instant, the entire Atlesian military base was VAPORIZED, all hands taken with it. There were no survivors.

A deafening silence filled the city as the Leviathan’s firebreath ceased – the only sounds coming from the pounding waves and the din of the rain. For a long moment, not even thunder rumbled across the sky. Then the beast leaned back and let out a bellowing roar of victory.

An utterly hubristic gesture that shows the folly of the Grimm. One must be careful to not declare their win before all of the combatants are down.

For the sting of a Lancer immediately took out one of the beast’s eyes.

All the while the Leviathan had been preparing its decisive blow, Willow Schnee had been herself preparing. Without dismissing her Boarbatusk, and directing it to continue harrying the Leviathan’s calves, she had summoned yet another vanquished beast – this time, a Lancer Queen. She’d hopped onto the back of the great wasp Grimm and launched into the sky. Willow had been smart to avoid the Leviathan’s attention while it charged its destructive blast. But now that the beast was finished and reveling in the death it caused, only then did Willow strike. And strike she did! The Leviathan did not even realize what was coming until the stinger of the Lancer pierced its eye!

The Leviathan roared in pain! But the damage was done. The beast was now blinded in one eye! And others were soon to follow, for Willow conjured up more great shards of ice to pierce the other two eyes on that side of the Leviathan! Utterly unable to see an entire side, such was the nature of its vision and the placement of the eyeholes in its skull.

The webbed paws of the beast, larger than some apartment buildings, began to swing wildly! Trying to knock the pesky insect that wounded it so out of the sky! The chase was on. On her Lancer, Willow Schnee dodged and weaved, doing everything in her power to avoid getting knocked off her flying steed. It was much like trying to swat an annoying fly out of your personal space, and much like that, it only takes one lucky hit to do so.

Eventually, the great beast did indeed get lucky. Those massive, clawed paws clipped the very edges of the Lancer Queen – and that was it. The summon disintegrated on contact, sending Willow Schnee tumbling out of the air and into the sea. The summoned Boarbatusk did its best to reach and catch its master, and it just barely managed the feat before Willow’s body collided with it – breaking her fall some but also breaking her hold on the creature, and it vanished as Willow Schnee herself vanished beneath the waves.

It had been the first and only blow Willow had taken during the fight. But when dealing with a monster like the Leviathan, it was enough.

For a long moment, it seemed like the last champion of Argus had fallen to their doom. That the Schnee heiress had perished before her life had truly begun. Then a shock of white peeked out from beneath the waves. There floated Willow Schnee. Battered. Damaged. But still holding on, albeit, struggling against the stormy sea. Distant observers noted the telltale flicker of white light – her aura. A single blow, a mere glancing blow at that, was enough to take it from full to nearly broken. She would not survive another.

And unfortunately for her, she had fallen on the Leviathan’s good side. It quickly noticed that its foe had survived her fall. The great beast then decided that, well, there’s no kill quite like overkill.

A telltale hum, one that haunts the nightmares of survivors, filled the frigid air once more. The spines on the beast’s back lit up one by one as the Leviathan charged its ultimate attack. And there floated Willow Schnee, utterly defenseless against the great God of the Sea.

The fire at the back of the Leviathan’s throat grew and grew until, finally, it was let loose upon its single human opponent. It was not prepared for what happened next. For a potent beam of lightning shot, not from the sky, but from beneath the waves! This blast met the Leviathan’s firebreath and held it at bay! Then, out of the waves, rose Willow Schnee! And beneath her heels was the horned, regal head of a summoned Sea Feilong!

The God and the Dragon battled for supremacy, their beams clashing in a light show that we will never see its like again!

But Willow Schnee was wise. The Sea Feilong held its own, but it would not do so forever. The Leviathan’s firebreath was just too strong. But that was fine. The Sea Feilong’s lightning breath was just a delaying action! Without so much as pausing its defense, the dragon unfurled its wings and leapt into the sky with Willow gripping its sleek, wet horns for dear life! Not once did its lighting cease battle the Leviathan’s fire, instead causing the great beast to turn and follow the dragon, directing the clashing beams out to sea rather than towards the city.

Just as planned.

Suddenly, the Sea Feilong shut its mouth and DOVE out of the way, the Leviathan’s fire breath shooting out into the night sky and parting the very storm clouds themselves! Once more, another sun momentarily filled the night sky and the storm itself dissipated, the clouds ceasing to exist. Such was the power of the Leviathan’s firebreath and the resulting shockwave.

The Leviathan lumbered. Clearly, using its ultimate attack so many times in a row, and for so long at that, took a bit out of it. And in that moment of weakness, Willow Schnee struck.

The Sea Feilong dove towards the Leviathan and wrapped its long, serpentine length around the great beast’s gilled neck! Like a python, it began choking the very life out of the great beast, bringing a God itself to heel! The Leviathan clawed and scratched at the dragon, but its massive clawed paws were more for swimming than grabbing. Making matters worse, the way the Sea Feilong had wrapped itself around its victim was deliberate. All at the behest of its master, the dragon had wrapped around the Leviathan such that the dragon’s head would line right up with the Leviathan’s pierced and bleeding eyeholes.

The Sea Feilong charged its lighting once more. And Willow Schnee raised her saber just as she had in the beginning of the battle.

The dragon’s lightning breath PIERCED right through the Leviathan’s skull like a knife through butter. After but a moment’s hesitation as it burrowed through the beast, the blast of lighting came out the other side and struck the waves at an angle, turning the sea utterly deadly until the attack stopped. The Leviathan twitched and shuddered, lightning pouring down its insides, and its maw remained opened in a muted scream.

Then the lightning stopped.

There was a beat. A pause that lasted but a moment but must have felt like an eternity. And then the great beast, the God of the Sea, the Leviathan… began to disintegrate. Like all Grimm do upon death.

The ghostly Sea Feilong, summon of Willow Schnee, began to flicker as well. Its master’s aura had run out. The vanquishing dragon flew towards the ports of Argus with all haste. But fate was smiling upon the hero of the hour. For the dragon only dissipated as it laid its head down on the closest dock.

And there laid Willow Schnee.

Battered. Most certainly broken in places. Utterly exhausted. But victorious.

And she laid there for a while, not having the energy to move. The ice princess stuck laying on the wet, dirty dock that smelled of fish – which had begun to float to the surface of the bay, boiled by firebreath and electrocuted by lightningbreath – until the survivors began to peek out of the rubble. Slowly they crept towards Willow, the one that saved them all. Many of them doubted if she was even still alive. But as they approached her it became clear that she was.

Willow Schnee was alive, and she had saved Argus.

Willow looked at the survivors and choked out a single sentence.

“I could really use a glass of wine right about now.”

A resounding cheer rose up from all of Argus! The people hoisted the battered, soaked form of Willow Schnee up on their arms and gleefully chanted one thing:

“The Hero of Argus! The Hero of Argus!”

Willow Schnee would only serve as a huntress for one year, effectively retiring once she married and gave birth to her first child. But it was a year etched in legend. To this day, there is a statue of Willow at the Argus docks. And, in the main hall of Sanctum Academy, there is a large mural of the battle. Depicting Willow atop her Boarbatusk, raising her saber and pointing it at the Leviathan that almost laid that great city low.

I walked past that mural every day while I was at Sanctum.”

@schneebriated

#;drabble #;renatus #schneebriated

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mahoushojo · 8 months

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🎶 What I'm really needing now Is a double shot of Crown Chase that disco ball around 'Til I don't remember Go until they cut me off Wanna get a little lost In the noise, in the lights Hey, bartender Pour 'em hot tonight 'Til the party and the music and the truth collide Bring it 'til his memory fades away Hey, bartender 🎶

I had the best time cosplaying from Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life with friends last month! We stopped by the local sunflower field for our photoshoot. 🌻✨️

This was an amazing day, and I'm glad I had the chance to spend it with these gals. When I was deciding on which song to use for this compilation video, I just had to go with "Bartender." It fits Molly so perfectly. 💖

Cecilia cosplay by @princessvanellopevonschweetz! Lumina cosplay by @sunfloradesu!

Videography by @sunfloradesu and Renai_Photo on Instagram!

Thank you to @iron-rose-revolution-blog for your help with my Molly cosplay! ❤️

Tiktok ate the quality a bit, so I recommend checking this out on my YouTube.

#story of seasons #a wonderful life #sos awl #bokujou monogatari #bokumono #cosplay #cosplay video #cecilia #lumina #molly #sos cecilia #sos lumina #sos molly #cosplay buddy #sunfloradesuu #kasei cosplay #c'mon he ain't worth the pain do what you gotta do to forget his name #tw: drinking/alcohol

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 5 months

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By: Colette Colfer

Published: Jan 17, 2024

A slow-burning religious revolution is transforming Ireland. The Catholic Church has waned to a smidgin of its former significance and much of the enormous space it once occupied in the Irish psyche has been vacated. A gap has appeared. We need to mind this gap.

At the same time as Catholicism is declining in importance, a new belief system centred around the concept of gender identity is gathering momentum, thrusting roots deep into the cultural fabric of Irish society, and filling parts of the expanse previously occupied by Catholicism.

This new belief system has implications for all sectors of Irish society including education, sports, legislation, and the media. It also influences popular individual understandings of the self.

‘I am large, I contain multitudes’ wrote Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892) in his famous poem Song of Myself. The kaleidoscopic complexity of the individual is often eclipsed when those espousing gender identity theory magnify gender identity out of proportion to other facets of the self.

Although the idea of gender identity is considered secular in nature, there are many religious parallels. A certain level of faith is required to believe in the existence of the scientifically unfalsifiable intangible internal essence that is the gendered self. This disembodied sense of self, elevated in importance above the body, mirrors ideas about the soul. Sacrificial rites involving the removal of healthy organs assert the primacy of gender identity that is bestowed with a sacred quality.

There are echoes of holy days and religious seasons in new calendars listing dates associated with gender identity. These include Agender Pride Day (19th May), Non-Binary Awareness Week (in July), International Pronouns Day (20th October), and Transgender Awareness Month (November). There are also quasi-religious symbols, priest-like leaders, slogans that sound like mantras and compulsory articles of belief including that sex is ‘assigned’ at birth, that everyone has a gender identity, and that social transition and affirmation are the path to finding one’s true self (or salvation).

Societies are always changing. When 108-year-old Florence Pannell was interviewed on UK television in 1977 about growing up in Victorian England, she was asked what had changed most during her lifetime. Florence responded: ‘Everything! Nothing is the same! Everything is changed!’ To be alive is to be caught in a web of change. The rate of religious change in Ireland is happening faster than the rate of population change. The Irish population rose 46% from 3.5 to 5.1 million between 1991 and 2022. During the same period, the number of people with ‘no religion’ increased by over 1,000 per cent.1

Ireland in the 1900s was steeped in Catholicism. Church steeples punctured skylines symbolising the highest societal value and pinpointing the geographical locus of the community. Streets and remote country roads were dotted with grottos of the Virgin Mary. Silhouettes of huge crosses were visible on hills and rocky outcrops. Weeks revolved around Sunday mass. People’s entire lifelines were patterned with religious rituals.

Catholicism in Ireland reached its peak in 1961 when Roman Catholics made up a phenomenal 94.9 per cent of the population. Since then, however, the proportion of Catholics has been in decline. By 2022 it had dropped to 69% and since then, the tide of Catholic belief has been receding further still.

Receding tides require attention. In 1907, a tidal wave resulted in the deaths of 70% of the inhabitants of Simeuleu in Indonesia. Survivors told the story of an earthquake followed by a receding sea and then a tidal wave. They referred to the sequence of events as smong. Stories of smong were passed down through the generations in popular lullabies and poems.

When a devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean on the 26th of December 2004 killed an estimated quarter of a million people, the island of Simeuleu was an anomaly in the region as there was only a minimal loss of life. Just seven victims were recorded from the population of almost eighty thousand. The high survival rate was accredited to the stories of smong. Islanders had recognised the signs of the retreating sea after an earthquake and had rushed to higher ground.

Declining religious adherence has potentially important implications. Sascha Becker and Hans-Joachim Voth point out, for example, that: ‘As the role of religion in public life declined from the late 19th century onwards, new ideologies and totalitarian world-views spread’. Becker and Voth mention that the ideologies of both Communism and Naziism were more popular in highly secularised areas of interwar Germany.

The decline of Catholicism in Ireland and the concomitant increase of those with no religion warrants careful consideration. Catholicism has faded significantly from the public sphere, scarpered from centre stage to a quieter corner in the wings. The stage is now peopled by those proclaiming the new gospel of ‘equality, diversity, inclusion’ and the stage is festooned with sacralised Progress Pride flags signalling the adoption of gender identity theory. The ideology of nationalism has more recently made a notable public appearance side stage and new belief systems or older ideologies could also emerge and rise to prominence.

Ireland’s National Census of 2022 indicates a religiously heterogeneous society with over fifty separate categories of religion outlined. This compares to the National Census of 1981 when just eight separate categories of religion were recorded and all the Christian denominations combined constituted 99.4% of the total population. A look at just some of the 2022 categories and numbers of adherents gives an indication of the level of religious change: Islam: 81,930; Hindu: 33,043; Taoists: 200; Scientologists: 132; Satanism: 189; Jedi Knight: 1,800, Jehovah’s Witness: 6,332; Buddhist: 9,053. A low-key online campaign in the run-up to the 2022 Census encouraged those with concerns about gender identity theory to identify their religion on the census form as ‘Believer in Biology’. Although the official census data did not publish details, a Freedom of Information request showed that at least 163 of the 8,064 in the ‘Other stated religion’ category identified their religion as ‘Believer in Biology’.2

Minding the gap vacated by traditional religion that is currently being filled, at least in part, by gender identity theory involves paying careful attention to the latest top-quality research on gender dysphoria, following best medical practice, developing guidelines based on evidence rather than ideology, allowing space for a diversity of beliefs and for healthy civil discussion that allows open conversation and respectful dialogue about the implications of gender identity theory on wider society including on single-sex spaces, sports, and children’s psychological and physical well-being.

The highest point in the urban skyline of Ireland today is the satellite pylon rather than the church steeple. This signals a switch in societal values and the locus of community formation. Social media is where new belief systems are promulgated and where younger generations are most likely to seek and find meaning. The trains of communication in the internet era are fast-moving. Mind the gap.

According to the National Census, 66,270 people had no religion in 1991. This rose to 736,210 in 2022 – a difference of 1,011% ↩︎

The numbers for ‘Believer in Biology’ only include records processed after November 2022. ↩︎

This speaks to the "Substitution Hypothesis," which suggests that as traditional religions decline, other quasi- and religious-like practices fill the void to satisfy human tendency towards religiosity.

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