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therosefrontier · 2 months

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TWST Family Lore: Heartslabyul Part 1

As a fanfic writer, the family question has been coming up a lot for me with these guys, especially with me wanting to potentially actually write these unseen family members that get mentions thrown out there, so I started collecting information, and then, I thought I'd make a post about it! This first part is just Heartslabyul, about their family members and what we know about them (that I could find, anyways), plus some of my thoughts/guesses. This very well might not be exhaustive, but maybe if I see something more I'll add on!

That said! Spoiler warning! I am including info from various vignettes, card voicelines, and events, including JP server only cards, but I will try to avoid too many specific JP event story spoilers (which in this post is pretty much just a lot of White Rabbit). I include main story stuff from book 1 and also the first part of book 7 (which is out in EN), but nothing from the rest of book 7 which is out in JP. Which probably doesn't have anything Hearts-related anyways (I do not know)? I might be waiting for the rest of book 7 to come out before posting a Diasomnia edition to this, though...

So anyways! Let's get to it!

ACE TRAPPOLA

He has an older brother (seven years older than him, as mentioned in his school uniform vignette), whom he seems to be fairly close with. We also have mention of his dad, but so far, as far as I can tell, there is mention of no one else. He does mention his parents in the plural once: in his ceremonial robes voicelines, he says that "I think my brother was happier than my parents when we found out I made it into this school." We also know that his brother was a student at NRC himself and was also in Heartslabyul, which may very well be one reason for his enthusiasm at his little brother getting into the same school. At the freshmen orientation ceremony, Ace shows no surprise to getting chosen for Heartslabyul, assuming that he'd end up in the same place as his brother (Ace robes vignette).

But first, Ace's dad! He gets mentioned in his birthday boy vignette. He is not a mage (implying that, perhaps, Ace and his brother get their magic from their mom's side? As it does appear to be a genetic thing of some sort according to some mentions, but also, it can skip generations, as is seen with Epel), but he is really good at old-fashioned magic of the sleight-of-hand variety. When asked what got Ace into sleight of hand by Yuu for the birthday interview, he says it'd be his dad, who was "ridiculously good" at it.

(image credit: Songstress Studios)

Ace goes on to say that he learned the "nuts and bolts" of it from his brother, whom he believes was also inspired by their dad, and he also says that whenever he visits home, he and his brother will show off to each other and challenge each other to spot the trick!

Ace also talks about his brother in relation to learning tricks in his dorm uniform vignette. He shows sleight of hand tricks to his dormmates, and when Riddle shows surprise and awe over the 'pick a card' trick he's definitely never seen before, Ace says that he reacted in pretty much the same way when his brother first showed it to him. When asked about his brother, Ace says that he "started playing around with cards for funsies" while he was a student, and Ace later learned from him, but not directly. He never gave away the secret, but Ace learned by watching him. (And he learned well, too! Ace has been shown to be very good at this, also coming up notably in the Fairy Gala IF event, for instance).

(image credit: RedAngel)

Earlier, Cater had asked Ace to show him the secret, and Ace made a deal with him for it since he'd never do it for free, and after hearing Ace's story, Cater guesses that Ace's mentality of never giving away anything for free could have come from his brother.

It also seems that Ace's brother was absolutely the type to tease him. In his birthday boy vignette, Ace tells a story of how on his birthday, his brother gave him a box with a fancy watch inside, which got Ace all excited, but then he clarifies that the watch was *his* watch, not Ace's. Ace's gift was the box. His brother afterwards fills the box with candy, but Ace was not amused.

And in other notes:

He is bad at cooking, according to Ace, who says he "doesn't know a cake from a steak" (school uniform vignette).

He taught Ace how to "kill time in the dorms" (school uniform vignette).

He took a theme park management internship in his fourth year at NRC, and he's continued to work there after graduation (Book 7, Chapter 4).

(Also, this thing about the theme park might be a reference, maybe?? In the Tokyo DisneySea park, there was this "villain recruiters" show that ran from 2015 to 2018, featuring original minions of various Disney villains who would make a pitch to invite guests to join the "Villains' World," and there was a Queen of Hearts card soldier character named Jack Heart, whose costume design does resemble Heartslabyul's! And he does the heart thing with his hands like Ace does in his official art! So, might have been inspiration? Anyways, this tumblr post by ceeyuin666 has a nice summary of it so there).

Anyhow, back on track and back to the school uniform vignette, Ace mentions how before he came to NRC, his brother would "take him about everywhere," which does seem to imply they spent a lot of time together, and he also seems to have been a big influence on Ace. For better or worse :). In this vignette, Ace does a favor for Trey in exchange for a slice of cherry tart, when tips for the history test were what he really wanted, a second motive Trey totally expected, and when asked if he was lying about loving cherries so much, Ace said that he wasn't: his brother told him "the most convincing lies are sprinkled with a dash of truth." Knowing Ace, Trey is not surprised.

(anyways I really want to meet this guy so please Ace hometown event please!!)

DEUCE SPADE

(translation credit to Ekala on Youtube!)

He has no siblings and was raised by his single mother, whom we have actually met! In the JP server, anyways! She shows up in Deuce's hometown event, the White Rabbit Festival. So, we have a name! Meet Dilla Spade (or Dilah? Dira? Deela?)! Romanization isn't clear yet; I'll just say "Dilla" for now. Also, we find out she's a delivery truck driver for the thematically-named White Rabbit Delivery company.

Deuce is shown to have been very close to his mom growing up, noticeable enough to the point that his old middle school friends teased him for it and called him "childish" (starsending vignette). We find early on that this is an important part to his story—when Deuce was in middle school, he was acting like a delinquent: skipping school, disrespecting teachers, being reckless and getting into fights. Then, one night, he overheard his mom talking to his grandma (only mention of his grandma that I know of, but, noted that she's in the picture too!), and he could tell that she was crying. She was feeling like a failure of a mother, and said that "maybe she never should have tried to raise him herself." Deuce, however, doesn't blame her at all. Seeing her like that really shook him up, and he resolved to "never do anything to make her cry" again. This is his motivation for wanting to be an honor student; he wants to be the opposite of what he was before and prove himself. He wants to be "someone she can be proud of."

As far as I know, we don't have any mention of Deuce's father or what happened to him. From context and with what his mom said on the phone that day, she might have been a single parent from the start, with the father never being in the picture.

Deuce, in talking to Silver during Silver's Wish in the Starsending event upon Silver mentioning his father in his wish, talks about his mom and how she raised him as a single parent, saying "I know she's had her share of hard times... So I just want her to be happy now. I'd love for her to live a long life." In chapter 10 of the event, Deuce wishes to be a police officer, specifically a magic marshal, which is a hard job to get, saying that he is "sure my mom will worry a lot less if I get a respectable job." He also talks about this in his event vignette! He reveals that upon getting a bad reputation at home, people stopped trusting him, and they'd accuse him of things he didn't do, but if he said he didn't do it, there were always two people who believed him: his mom and the neighborhood police officer. The officer would always come by to talk to him and hear him out, and both he and his mom were very grateful for that. Deuce says that if he could be like that, maybe his mother wouldn't worry so much, so he decided that he wanted to be a police officer.

At the end of the event, in chapter 12, Dilla calls Deuce in excitement over the falling stars in the sky. In response to Deuce saying that yes he saw it, because he's a Stargazer, his mom replies that "Night Raven College couldn't have asked for a finer Stargazer than you." And she says she's proud of him and it's really sweet :)

And then he starts crying happy tears :)

Anyways! Deuce's character arc can be a whole essay in itself, so back to his mom! Some of the stories we got include:

"Battlefield" Sales Shopping. Dilla would bring Deuce with her when shopping limited-time sales, which she seemed to seek out actively. Deuce recounts spending "forever" thumbing through pamphlets looking for sales, and Dilla would then coax him into coming with her, saying things like "Deuce is so strong, and can carry a lot." Deuce remembers getting shoved around a lot by the other customers, and so, he takes his sales quite seriously today (school uniform vignette, new year's vignette).

Spring cleaning! Or, winter cleaning? Dilla and Deuce would go on a cleaning frenzy after the holidays and before the new year, because “if the house is clean, we’ll feel renewed too” (new year’s voicelines)

In his apprentice chef vignette, Deuce recalls how recently, his mom got sick with a cold but didn't tell him until she was better. This made Deuce sad, because he wished she would depend on him a little more when she was struggling, so he was motivated to learn to cook so he could be more dependable.

Also in his apprentice chef vignette, Deuce says that he did help his mom "a little" with cooking back home and knew how to dice vegetables, and the ghost chef was impressed by his skills! So she seems to have taught him well.

In her own words she claims that she is not very good at cooking, but she does know a lot of egg dishes, because Deuce likes them (White Rabbit, 2-4)

She would bring Deuce to the office sometimes, so her coworkers know him (White Rabbit, 3-10). In the event, they were a little nervous around him at first but then were surprised to find how different his behavior was now compared to middle school, and they complimented him on getting into NRC.

She made Deuce a bunny outfit for the White Rabbit Festival long ago, saying that Deuce was complaining over not having anything special to wear, and she didn't have the money to make or buy an outfit, but she asked her coworkers for some spare fluff and made it work. She looks back on this fondly, saying she was just happy to see Deuce having fun at the festival. (chapter 6)

She is great with cars, but terrible with electronics (White Rabbit Festival, birthday boy vignette). Deuce has to show her how to do stuff and recounts “fixing” home devices by simply changing the batteries, and he is the one to set up appliances at home, as she refuses to read instruction manuals. She only uses her smartphone for calls and pictures. Dilla calls cars "trusted partners" but says that electronics are too “self-important” (White Rabbit, Chapter 2-6).

In this scene, Dilla also praises Deuce in front of his friends for "fixing" so many electronic things around the house, which embarrasses Deuce as he does not think it was that big of a deal. She also mentions embarrassing stories like she knows full well what she's doing, teasing in a very affectionate kind of way.

I do wonder if Dilla dragging Deuce onto shopping trips all the time was in part her way of finding ways to spend time with him. She really seems to care about him a lot, and quality time is something that means a lot to her, but perhaps she also struggles with connecting and really getting through to him. In White Rabbit, she mentions sadly how she used to take Deuce to the festival every year, but then he lost interest. Deuce sees this as normal, but it seems there were some growing pains there.

Also on another note which I honestly just find funny, there is a point in White Rabbit where Dilla is worried about Deuce having gotten hurt, and he says it's fine because he's "used to it," and she's just like...I don't how I feel about this but I support you! (sorry Dilla, your son's a budding shounen protagonist and his school's a disaster magnet. He's going to get so used to this haha)

One more thing we really get to see from the event, Dilla definitely seems to have nerves of steel, too. Not revealing too much about what happens, she doesn't back down from this gang that is harassing her festival stall that her coworkers are terrified of, and then joins in with the idea to challenge them without hesitation. Deuce seems to allude to this when introducing Epel, saying that he thinks they'd get along because Epel has "grit and iron courage," as if he sees his mom the same way.

Going back to Deuce's story at the beginning...I feel like this is pretty significant, too. The impression I get from all of this is that she's scrappy and resourceful, strong-willed and vigorous, someone who'll keep an easy sense of humor and a smile in the face of a challenge... but also, she's someone who will bend over backwards to hide her struggles, such as when she hid her being sick with a cold from Deuce. Which is to say, she doesn't seem like the type to be brought to tears easily. This being just speculation on my part, but what if, that day Deuce overheard her on the phone, that was the first time Deuce really saw her break down like that? His mom, the strongest person he knows, the one always keeping up a smile? Although, in the background, she probably hid so many of the struggles she did have? Just saying, it'd have a lot of impact, I'd think...realizing the turmoil he put her through to get her like that...

But that said, I think it's important to note that she cares about him a lot, and she is proud of Deuce and who he's become, and I don't think that hinges at all on him becoming an honors student. Deuce struggles to try to make himself more reliable, but Dilla says as much in White Rabbit: he doesn't have to "go overboard." It doesn't have to be complicated. She just wants him to live life and be happy, simple as that. And also he could come home every once in a while, too :)

#twisted wonderland #twst #twst lore #twst family lore #ace trappola #deuce spade #anyways I am very invested in all of these people now #deuce's relationship with his mom giving me so many feelings #it's so sweet #and I'm also sobbing for them both :')#maybe one of these days I will write that Deuce essay #on top of all the other things I want to write #anyhow in other news I'm serious about wanting to meet Ace's brother #he sounds like such a gremlin #I love him already XD

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im-a-goat-in-disguise · 2 months

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Images of despair [stellaris version]

#when you're fighting the scourge and making 700+ alloys a month but you NEED MORE #genuinely so glad I invested into a dyson sphere early on to suck the market 100% dry of alloys #pumping out ships because my life depends on it #just imagine. you're a space trader and you heard there's some invasion of bugs somewhere in the galaxy #then the strongest military you've ever seen rolls up and offers you 'any price you name' for spare metal on your ship #you laugh and say '600 energy credits and I'll give you four metal pipes!'#the military says 'deal' and immediately deposits 900 energy credits [the market price of alloys is already increasing]#anyway I'm now sitting here with a military over five times larger than my naval cap #and over four times the population I had before the war #reason: people evacuated the planets the scourge bombed #thousands of pops have settled straight into my empire even in the most dire planets #every square inch of living space is now taken up and every single job is full #every single planet has unemployment [i have an overabundance of consumer goods so I'm just giving them all free stuff]#oh and since I'm gearing the economy now towards 'well. they gotta work SOMEWHERE' [building as many commercial districts as possible]#I am spending hundreds of special resources I do not produce to keep massive company complexes running #imagine this: strange otherworldly beasts are running down your homeworld #you escape into space in a small cargo ship stuffed with people #it's barely enough to be considered a transport but it gets you far enough away to feel safe #as you are running you see the largest collection of ships in your life warp into the system #they unleash hellfire on the aliens and then neuron sweep the planet [the very ground of which got infected]#you shed a tear and look away from the window #three days later you're told you've arrived #you touch down in an extremely busy landing area #there are hundreds of thousands of people everywhere. the mood is joyous #there are screens set up in the square broadcasting the eradication of the aliens #you see people in the crowd you've never seen before. people speak in tongues you've never heard #a guide calls over to you and all the other new arrivals #apparently you weren't the first to run. you won't be the last either #this planet has more than quintoupled its population and is still recieving many people every day #luckily the government has declared they are going to be constructing massive projects to introduce new jobs

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skimmeh · 10 months

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I accidentally stumbled upon some videos of my old undertale fancomic that was dubbed and subbed over

And I find it so very sweet and heartwarming!! Even though it was years ago now ... Seeing how many people that silly lil comic series touched is cool

Though I admit at the time in my life I don't remember much because I was going through a lot of shit ..and the comic was basically my escapism from that

All I wanna say for the people who enjoyed that comic or even have stayed following my art since those days I thank you!!!

And I'm sorry for sorta leaving that story unanswered haha, I couldn't tell you how it ended cos it was a long time ago now.

But I do hope to create something as loved as that comic again!!! Because even though it was the worst time in my life the comics and story was also the most fun I've had online!!!

And I wish to run a series like that again!!!! :D

#it was also in a different language which is beyond cool ...as the channel that dubbed it in grateful for that !!!#the time and work that must have taken is inspiring #and though i do wish to speak more than one language than i do #for the people who do and also put so much time int translating comics and stories for others ... that is just the coolest!!!#anyway haha #undertale days were something else haha it had a grip on me for 6 years #though ive sorta moved on and am now far more invested in different characters #undertale and all that stuff still means a big tun to me #its all real nostalgic hah #also i do think i remember the channel asking me if they could sub and dub the comics years ago and i agreed #they put credit and everything which im grateful for!!#its just all very sweet

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childofaura · 1 year

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Ok I thought I was gonna be making one nitpicky rant about TLoU show deaths but

I guess I’m actually making two. Because I saw another death and while I find there was nothing broadly wrong with it, there was some cinematic choices that drove me bonkers that I just wanna stress over.

So the rest will be under the cut, but for starters, this is about Sarah and Tess

Ok so Sarah isn’t really the meat of this rant, but I do want to talk about her death scene in the show because several things about it had bugged me. And please, I’m not really here to talk about the race swap. Overall I think it’s a little sus, moreso because the actress is the daughter of one of the executives of the show; so it suspiciously indicates nepotism. But the actress herself actually managed to do a pretty great job for Sarah’s death so really I couldn’t give a shit. ANYWAYS, the show’s death. What bugged me about it was the fact that there were CUTS while Joel is trying to comfort her and struggling to pick her up. The beauty of the cinematic choice in the game, where it turns into one continuous shot the moment Joel crawls over to Sarah, is that it inherently puts us in that moment with Joel, and by panning the camera over instead of cutting each time, it really shows how Sarah is right at death’s door, like you can HEAR the exact moment that she cries her last little whimper and just... goes quiet, right when the camera pans towards Tommy’s face. The problem with having scene cuts is that it drags the scene out in such an awkward way. Plus, Sarah’s still actively crying while Joel is screaming for Tommy to help him, and then the moment it cuts to Tommy the audio just cuts out very clumsily. As it cuts back to Joel Sarah’s just already dead, and additionally it makes no sense for Tommy to call to Joel to have him realize Sarah’s dead when she was still screaming and crying right as the camera cut. And then additionally, I’m not fond of the addition of Tommy saying Joel’s name, it feels almost... cold and detached. Like the tone of that line is “Joel she’s dead, it’s too late”. Whereas in the game, he’s moving towards Joel and Sarah and he’s in so much shock because he’s watching his niece dying in a crying, bloody mess.

So long story short, nothing wrong with the scene itself (though I gotta say I don’t think I’m a fan of Pedro Pascal’s line deliveries while he’s trying to stop Sarah’s bleeding. That’s less of a “one’s better than the other” and more of “that’s just my opinion that the emotion of the line delivery in the game was better”). Scene stayed true to the game.

But ohhh, OHHHH, you wanna know which death REALLY ruffled my feathers? Tess. Tess’ death was done so damn dirty in the show compared to the game (and side note, I hate the change to Tess’s character design. I loved the short hair held up by the headband, and I loved the short sleeves that showed her arms). I think by changing the entire death in the show, you take away from the character herself, and let me explain how.

In the game, they get to the Firefly meeting place, the Fireflies have been wiped out, and we find out Tess has been bitten. The military shows up, and Tess tells Joel that she’ll buy them some time and convinces both him and Ellie to leave. And the IMPORTANCE of her line “I WILL NOT turn into one of those things!”, which I’ll talk about. Joel and Ellie leave, Tess composes herself and gets ready to fight the soldiers. As you leave, you hear gunshots and hear Tess scream, and you find out she took out two soldiers; there was six guys and Tess took down two of them. This death is a perfect encapsulation of Tess’ character: resilient, stubborn, tough-as-nails, takes matters into her own hands. That is a death that treats the character with respect and actually plays into the character’s personality. It FITS. Tess is a woman whose life, her choices, it’s all in her hands and she will do what SHE wants to do.

In the TV show, they get to the Firefly meeting place, the Fireflies were killed by infected, and everything still plays out the same with Tess’ infection reveal (and I gotta say I’m not a fan of the dialogue choices nor am I a fan of the fact they tried to heavy-handedly push how Joel and Tess are a couple with the cuddling scene, whereas in the game the ambiguity of their relationship plays better into that final scene. I like the “Look, there’s enough here that you have to feel some sort of obligation to me” way more). Joel hears the infected, Tess starts tipping over some gasoline and grenades, and Joel and Ellie leave. Tess is panicking and frightened as the infected approach and flood in while trying to light the lighter, and then the BULLSHIT. The FUCKING KISS from the infected. And no I don’t wanna hear any ‘bUT it’S NoT A kISS, iT’S INfeCTiNg HEr’ excuses. It’s a fucking kiss disguised under the thin veneer of being some cool new infected lore, and it changes the entire death from a defiant last stance to a creepy, voyeuristic scene that’s going for a cringe-out factor. Like... Sure, you COULD explore that method of infection, it COULD be a neat behavior that we haven’t seen before.

But you don’t do that for Tess. She’s the wrong character to explore that with, and the show better actually try to stay consistent and show that again if people are gonna use the excuse of that scene being necessary. And the reason why it bugs me so much is because Tess, despite her short time in the story, is such a poignant character. She’s Joel’s partner, she’s OUR first partner. Taking that power out of her hands, putting her in this freaky powerless position where it’s like she’s being taken advantage of, does not compliment the character, especially when the death is a very easy to pull off trick that only solely relied on the lighter not working for cheap tension. If you wanted to give us a tense action scene, they could have actually shown us the Tess gunfight scene from her perspective, maybe give her one or two more kills than she had in the game. But this death was really insulting to the character.

TL;DR I’m incredibly autistic about all this dumb shit and it really just boils down to a difference of opinion.

#The Last of Us #TLoU #The Last of Us HBO #spoilers #I don't know if I even need to be putting spoilers for a nine year old game lmao but let's do it anyways #And honestly it's all just a matter of getting my knickers in a twist; I know there's a lot of people who are fine with it #And I'm not knocking them; that's their opinion #But I swear if it turns out that they don't EVER show that mouth-to-mouth behavior from them again in the show I WILL be pissed and call BS #And this isn't me saying the show is BAD; I think it's fine and I think at least (besides Tess) they're doing a faithful #and relatively thoughtful adaptation #I guess to me this doesn't seem like one of those franchises that needed a show adaptation #If you ask me we should have gotten a TV adaptation of Death Stranding #Just cast everyone from the game and boom; you have the perfect show #But anyways post edit in this section of the tags: why am I so ass-blasted over how Tess was handled?#1) I may be a little gay for her lmao; she was just one of my favorite characters #2) As someone who is so deeply invested in the character of; well; character this one really rubbed me the wrong way #And now that I type this I'm actually very nervous over how they're gonna handle Henry and Sam #You leave my boys alone you monsters; those guys practically wrote themselves all y'all need to do is follow the game #And let them die as they did; no M. Night Shamylan (however it's spelt) twist where Henry's infected instead and Sam shoots him and himself

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two-calicos-in-a-trenchcoat · 7 months

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Ahhhhhhhh

I wanna watch ofmd

But I dont know if my parents are planning on watching it

I mean I'm definitely cool watching it more than once

But will my dad be upset i didn't wait for him is the question

#fuck it #i think i need to watch it on my own first anyway #i cant emote as much as i would like when other people are around #i will say that watching with my parents has the bonus of forcing me to actually start the episode tho #im just staring at the episodes trying to decide if im ready or not #like mentally and emotionally #but if i watch now i can read the fanfiction with all the context #it also doesnt help that my dad hasnt gone to bed yet which has thrown off my routine #cuz he pops his head in to tell me goodnight which interrupts what im doing #and the anticipation makes it hard for me to start things until after my parents have gone to bed #like its not like a big interruption or anything but an interruption is an interruption and the more emotionally invested i am in the thing #im doing the harder it is start something when i know its gonna be briefly interrupted #and im very emotionally invested #like come on man you usually go to bed at like 8 #its NINE go to bed lol #i feel like im going to explode

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ghostprinceiii · 2 years

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(MCC 24 spoilers in tags sorta)

#I have a headache rn so my excitement is kinda curbed but Whoo! Second place!!#I haven't watched all of them (not from the start and I think I've missed a handful too) but usually for MCC I've been watching Ranboo's #POV consistently. First POV I watched so it's the one I've stuck with. This time though I decided to watch TommyInnit's POV cuz there were #more people on that team that I was familiar with (3 vs 2). So the plan was: Ranboo pre-show (but I woke up kinda late and it wasn't as #involved as previous times) & on side monitor + Tommy main POV + Wilbur during Ace Race. I did stick with that for the most part and I #unmuted Wilbur's stream during that event but for everything else I didn't really switch back to Ranboo cuz I got really invested in the #orange team :) Really liked the vibe! Way more team communication and explanation of game mechanics than I'm used to seeing so it was a lot #easier to follow and felt a lot more organized and chill. I've been meaning to watch Tommy's POV for a while now but I haven't been in the #habit of rewatching alt POVs of streams I've already seen (especially MCC cuz I know how it ends y'know?). Might keep watching Tommy's POV #from now on though cuz I really like the structure of his streams and how he creates content in general (I can and have go(ne) on a long #tangent about that btw) but I had a lot more fun watching this time than most other times so I think I might do his POV for live and Wilbur #/Ranboo to watch after the fact especially if they keep teaming together. I also find they get the most clips showing up on tiktok for me #so even if I miss what happens live I'm almost guaranteed to see a condensed version of it later lol.#Anyways congrats to the winning team and this month's event was fun to watch! This was mostly just a personal post cuz I wanted to process #my thoughts I'm gonna go get some water or something :3 Would love to play in an event like this myself it seems so fun but I am a very #stressed person with chronic tech issues lol so I don't think it'd work out so well x(#ghostprince posts #MCC #MCC24 #Comepletely forgot to add the tags clarifying that I like Ranboo's POV I just find it to be a bit loud and hectic sometimes and harder to #follow live specifically so it's more enjoyable to listen to later I guess? Idk this doesn't really sound better tbh #Whhhhhhh blogging time over gonna go back to sleep and hibernate until the 25th

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absolutebl · 1 month

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This Week in BL - The Industry is Having Issues But the Spice Spicy Must Flow

Organized, in each category, with ones I'm enjoying most at the top.

March 2024 Wk 4

Ongoing Series - Thai

Two Worlds (Thurs IQIYI) eps 1-2 of 10 - One of those "he's dead Jim so time travel" thingames starring MaxNat. I'm over this concept but I do enjoy MaxNat. Phupha (Gun) and Khram (Nat) love each other but Phupha is murdered. Then Khram is pulled to a parallel world where, years ago, Khram and Tai (Max) were in love. However, Khram was killed by Tai’s dad. Now Tai finds alter-Khram. But then there is ALSO an alter-Phupha to deal with. (Phupha is played by Gun Thanawat who was Khom, the repressed butler bodyguard from Unforgotten Night. We like this, but we scared of the love triangle aspect.) Did that make sense? Yeah, okay, see what I mean?

Initial thoughts?

The subs are troubling but I’m enjoying this show a lot. It’s nice to see MaxNat get something meaty to sink their teeth into - that’s not just each other. Also it’s so smart of them to give us a fully fleshed out entire episode developing the alter romance rather than just a separation + death. It makes Khram’s grief and motivation that much more believable. Also it’s really nice to see Nat have good chemistry with other actors.

Deep Night (Thurs iQiyi) ep 3 of 8 (10?) - I'm still enjoying it. But Two Worlds is objectively better. So this one has lost ranking. Also, unexpectedly chili (the name of my heavy metal Thai cover band).

Lovey switchy and verse main couple too.

This is all quite pleasing.

The bit where the hosts pretend to be a BL couple actor ship was epic on so many levels.

Also unsettling.

All sex work is performative, and in a way there is something more honest about this depiction, in this setting, than what BL actors are made to do on the promo circuit. Which then begs the question, how different is BL from sex work? That's the unsettling bit, for me anyway. Not to slam on sex work AT ALL, we pro-the-true-pros on this damn blog, but actors have been shaded by association with True Professionals for a very long time and BL has already had one epic shut down in this regard. (See the PerthSaint scandal around Love By Chance, no I will not explain.) Where was I? Oh yes, so anyway, see the Gossip section for the part where they better be paid either way!

Also, since I'm a warped fucker, I found this scene funny.

And then hilarious when all of those BL tropes were just trotted out. Like a greatest hits reel.

Truly beyond meta. (How Absolute BL of them.)

Note he’s even standing in yaoi's patented "hands in pocket with the shoulders back"?

Meanwhile, the gayest bridge in Thailand made its quarterly appearance:

And lip serviced was paid to the most touristy romantic things you can do in Bangkok.

And I mean lip service literally.

To Be Continued (Thai C3 Thailand grey) ep 5 of 8 - I’m still enjoying it but getting more and more nervous. We getting too close to Promise territory for comfort. EXPLAIN Ji’s reticence well and do it now or risk audience mistrust. We have to be given a GOOD reason for Ji's behavior, or he'll be irredeemable.

City of Stars (Fri iQIYI) ep 8 of 12 - NO SINGING. Yes smiley kisses and good communication and a nice healthy relationship. But no singing!

1000 Years Old ep 6 of 12 - Dropping in the ranks. I’m sorry it’s just gotten boring. It has, however, inspired me to invest in my own ridiculous cream fuzzy sweater. Which I plan to wear with leather trousers and huge stumpy boots, like the Kpop queer I truly am. Or do I mean vampire?

Kiseki Chapter 2 (Sun iQIYI) ep 1 of 6 - Seems to be an excuse for a small posse of Thai actors to wander around Tokyo playing tourist and sing in public . Someone stop them?

“Most people think this kind of thing is bad manners .”

Anyway, it’s v boring. I’ll give it one more ep but I suspect I’ll DNF.

Close Friend Season 3: Soju Bomb! (Weds iQIYI) eps 1-2 of 6 - Meh. This is also looking suspiciously DNF-a-licious.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Unknown (Taiwan Tues Youku YouTube & Viki) ep 5 of 11 - It's brilliant. I love it. I'm ready to hurt. Let’s do this thing.

Distribution note: This one has been picked up and is also airing on Viki now, so it may lose YT distribution in soem territories. I like Youku's hard subs better than Viki's subs, but that's a matter of preference not information since I don't speak Mandarin.

Love is Better the Second Time Around AKA Koi wo Suru nara Nidome ga Joto (Japan Weds Gaga) ep 3 of 6 - It is good. Every week I like this show a little more. I'm enjoying a reunion romance explored in Japan's quintessentially contemplative yet slightly surreal way. The juxtaposition of the tenderness of the sex scene with this Japanese brand of authenticity was oddly elegant - for lack of a better way of putting it. All in all, this is a good show. Thought provoking. Stylish.

AntiReset (Taiwan Fri Viki/Gaga) ep 9 of 10 - It remains lovely but they sure are reusing a lot of footage. Also, this was a classic penultimate doom episode. I do wonder how they are going to resolve this show ethically.

My Strawberry Film (Japan Thurs Gaga) ep 6 of 8 - It is what it is, and it isn’t my style of show no matter what country of origin. Oddly that's one of the reasons I don't like it. Anyone could have made this, it's not as Japanese as I want it to be, it's just indie film club high school angst. Yawn.

I watched it, finally

The Servant and the Young Master (Vietnam YouTube) 7 eps - I dislike vertical filming, but I kind of enjoyed this show as a BL. I like class conflict romances. For me the rich kid is a bit too dictatorial (edges into bulling), but it’s kinda works. It’s sparse and underdeveloped and a bit plotless, but mildly entertaining. If you're missing Vietnamese BL you might give it a try. 6/10

Began Beginning (Myanmar YouTube) 8eps - A Burmese BL that I had thoughts about but actually ended up recommending. Read the saga here:

It's done, ready to binge, but I suck

What Did You Eat Yesterday Season 2 AKA Kinou Nani Tabeta? Season 2 (Japan Gaga) 10 eps

It's airing but...

Graduation Countdown (Taiwan YouTube) ep 1 of ? - on one hand it's micro-installment vertical, on the other it's adorable and from Taiwan. I blame @heretherebedork entirely for my conundrum. As indeed, I did for My Type back in the day. (That was Nat Chen's first BL, yes of Kiseki: Dear To Me fame.) So I think I will also simply lean on Here to let me know when it's done and binge all at once. It's just too much to ask me to keep up with 2 minute pieces, I don't have that kind of endurance training, not even for BL.

Time the series (Tue Gaga/YT) 10 eps - it's finished now, I dropped it at ep 4. Should I bother?

A Secretly Love (Thai Sat WeTV grey) 10 eps - I watched the first ep but grey is too much work for this inferior of a show. I may pick up and binge if it gets distribution but for now, it gets a DNF from me. KimCop might have held this crap together but Kim without Cop? No thank you.

Lady Boy Friends (Thai WeTV grey) 16 eps - reminds me a bit too much of Diary of Tootsies only high school. Not my thing. DNF unless it turns a corner and is truly amazing for some reason.

Man Suang that MileApo vehicle from last year is coming to Netflix in the USA. I haven't heard much about it and since the KP stans would have lost their tiny minds if it was any good at all, I'm assuming it's not good at all.

Gossip

Thai BL actor Yoon breaks with his former company and talks about some very very VERY shady goings on in the Thai BL industry. Including not being paid.

And whacha know, same thing happening in Korean BL.

Have I mentioned recently how much I hate the film industry?

Next Week Looks Like This:

Starting Soon

3/31 Only Boo! (Thai GMMTV YouTube) 12 eps - New main couple for GMMTV in an idol romance about a boy who dances good and a food stand vendor. Other side of the tracks grumpy/sunshine pair who fall deeply in love but, of course, baby boy idol can't date. Boyband but from GMMTV? Control your singing and I'm game.

4/1 Love is like a Cat (Korea ????) 12 eps - This completed filming Aug 2022(!) which means there have been serious problems with post-production. This is another of Silkwood's Korean+Thai colab projects. Mew Suppasit plays a rookie film star, called the Cat Prince (for his cold arrogance) who goes up against a charismatic puppyish animal daycare director (JM of JUST B). There is also a side romance (love triangle?) with a veterinarian. Geonu of JUST B is also in the cast.

I wonder if this was part of the hold up, with Geonu on Build Up right now, they might have tried to muffle this one. Or maybe it's just that bad...

4/3 We Are (Thai GMMTV YouTube) 12 eps - University ensemble BL featuring PondPhuwin, WinnySatang, AouBoom, MarcPawinPoon - basically the good kind of messy gay friendship group (so more My Engineer and less Only Friends). Looks a bit like the Kiss series but everyone is queer. I'm IN!

Knock-Knock Boys (Thai WeTV?) - 4 college friends conspire to help their friend lose his virginity. Familiar faces like Seng (yes, Billy's previous partner), Best and frest face, news here.

Upcoming BLs for 2024 are listed here. This list is not kept updated, so please leave a comment if you know something new or RP with additions.

NOTE: It looks like one of my personal favorites of last year Unintentional Love Story is getting a spin off!

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Without ghost girl.

With ghost girl.

I think she may be my favorite part of 1000 Years.

CLASSIC tsundere seme description of a sunshine uke. Like classic'est of classic. (Two Worlds)

Is there such a thing as a tired trope in a BL? Since it is a genre that is made up entirely of tropes quilted together? Your philosophical question for today brought to you by Deep Night's kabedon (Japanese trope) + punishment threat (Thai trope).

Love me a lap sit moment. (City of Stars)

(Last week)

Streaming services are listed by how I (usually) watch, which is with a USA based IP, and often offset by a day because time zones are too much work.

The tag BLigade: @doorajar @solitaryandwandering @my-rose-tinted-glasses @babymbbatinygirl @babymbbatinygirl @isisanna-blog @mmastertheone

If ya wanna be tagged each week leave a comment and I will add you to the template. Easy peesy.

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meatballlady · 15 days

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I'm not gonna directly @ people or respond to the post because I know NG doesn't need backup at all and OP is probably getting enough hate as it is (I've gotta assume ignorance here - I'm sure OP had the best of intentions - plus this is all fun and games anyway - absolutely no ill will I promise)

but. yALL. this is SO NOT COOL! This was (imo) one of the better theories. Now it probably won't happen. Even if it *was* the plan, it isn't now. Maybe it was never going to happen, sure, but STILL. NOW YOU HAVE GONE AND RUINED IT. YOU HAVE OPENED SCHRODINGER'S BOX.

Your question was whether or not this is true, or whether it will happen? Congratulations, now you know. The very act of sending it to NG has now guaranteed that it won't.

Look, am I too emotionally invested in this show? Yes. But like. Come on, man. These kinds of asks absolutely ruin my day/week, no joke. I feel like I've been putting together a puzzle or watching someone else put together a puzzle. and some random person shows up and takes away all the pieces that one person was working on. and then they go sacrificially burn them in order to ask God if they were in the right order. like?? wow thanks so helpful?? just let us put together the damn puzzle???????

#gos2 #good omens #aziraphale #crowley #good omens spoilers #screaming into the void #good omens meta #good omens theory

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br-disaster · 2 months

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CQL's crybaby Nie Mingjue appreciation post

I always see people talking about CQL's Nie Mingjue crying constantly, and they're right to do so, but I haven't seen those scenes compiled so I thought it would be a good idea to do it, since it's one of my favorite things about this version of NMJ.

*I'll consider the times he was tearing up too because I think they're important, but i'm only considering "full crying scenes" the ones where there are actual tears falling down his face.

*It's all in chronological order.

Episode 41 - defending Meng Yao

Why is NMJ crying? Crying is his response to everything, okay? NMJ is very emotionally invested in everything he does. He's very mad these men for saying terrible things about Meng Yao while benefiting from his labour. He's so emotionally invested in everything he does.

Is it a full crying scene? No, he tears up the entire time he's scolding the cultivators but those tears don't leave his eyes.

Episode 10 - being threatened by Wen Chao

Why is NMJ crying? Wen Chao is being very disrespectful, as he often is. And it's understandable, NMJ is hurt, his home was invaded, some of his soldiers are dead and it's overall a terrible time for everybody. To be honest, though, I think he's tearing up out of pure rage because Wen Chao just mentioned what Wen Xu did to the Cloud Recesses.

Is it a full crying scene? No. I almost didn't include this one because it's very subtle but his eyes look too shiny to be ignored.

Episode 10 - expelling Meng Yao from the Unclean Realm

Why is NMJ crying? It's a very emotional and conflicting moment on top of a terrible day, on top of a very stressful period of his life. He was betrayed by his friend who saved his life right afterwards; his home was invaded and they're at war! He has every right to cry as much as he did.

Is it a full crying scene? Hell yes, and it's glorious. They even end the episode with his miserable little crying face.

Episode 41 - Everything, really

Why is NMJ crying? Everything sucks, he's defeated and hurt in front of the man who killed his father. He didn't get his personal revenge and he didn't free the world from Wen Ruohan's tyranny either. Instead, he watched helplessly as his men were murdered and now he has to watch his former deputy mock his father's death and threaten to have Wen Ruohan damage Baxia like he did with his father's blade.

Is it a full crying scene? No, only because he's being very brave about it. I have no idea how those tears didn't fall.

Episode 41 - confrontation at Jinlintai

Why is NMJ crying? Very difficult topics being discussed here. People who are way better with words than I am have already written amazing meta on how having his worldview challenged like this affects NMJ emotionally, so I won't go there. But between the song of turmoil making him more emotionally unstable and the disdain with which JGY talks about the men he killed, evoking this very traumatic moment I just mentioned on the previous crying scene; I think it's very understandable.

Is it a full crying scene? Yes! Most of the time he's holding back tears, but you can see the one dramatic tear running down his nose (on the outside of it) on the second gif!

In conclusion: he has so much to cry about, it's surprising he didn't cry more, it must have taken so much strength (or he was just crying offscreen, which is plausible, because sadly this isn't The Nie Mingjue show and we don't see him all the time)

Anyway, I am not here to claim he's not a crybaby because he absolutely is, but on the actual show we only have 2 full crying scenes. They were so impactful it feels like much more crying happened. Fatal Journey is it's own thing so I made a separate post for those tearing up, crying and emotional breakdown lovely scenes <3

#nie mingjue #this isn't meta this is me discovering the joy of making decent gifs #cql #long post #kinda #despite often being at the crime scene i won't tag jgy or nieyao because i don't go there and i'm not a fan but yall do whatever you want #i just wanted to look at his pretty crying face and have more than just screenshots of it #like look at him!! how can you say mean things to him or in his general vicinity knowing it will make him cry?#monsters all of them #the zoom on the second to last gif makes it so funny though #anyway i hope my gifs aren't horrible to tumblr standards

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genderkoolaid · 2 months

Note

Cw: "Aaron" Bushnell https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/bushnell-gaza-immolation-protest-trans-identity

I thought I should let you know if you didn't already. Rip Lilly

While there is evidence pointing to Lilly/Aaron being trans, I still think we should be careful in how we talk about it. I don't really have a problem agreeing that the username and the reddit history does feel like someone who, at least, is exploring their gender identity. A person who says they knew him/her in life is very insistent that s/he could not have been a trans woman based on private information. However, others who have said they spoke with him/her online frequently insist s/he went by Lilly and used she/her and he/him. Although I don't think there's any reason necessarily for those folks to be lying, I do wish there were actual screenshots of the pronoun use in discord servers? Given that rn the conversation is just People Online Making Claims.

I'm still unsure of how I feel we should talk about this tbh. Lilly/Aaron was very deliberate in how s/he presented his/her gender to the public. As the person interviewed says, I don't think Bushnell would be upset by being seen as trans if s/he was a cis man. But even if s/he was trans, I am hesitant to make assumptions about what is best for a trans person's legacy. The issue of trans recognition in death is very sensitive for most of us, so I understand why people are so invested in this. But it should be kept in mind that the discussion around Bushnell's gender should not overshadow support for Palestinians. That was his/her goal and its clear that s/he cared more about that than making a statement about his/her own gender. It is fully possible for a trans person to make the decision to let themselves be assumed cis, and be comfortable in that decision, and its not up to other trans people to decide whether they made the wrong decision with their own legacy.

Its possible s/he made that decision solely because s/he wanted to prevent his/her message from being derailed by transmisogyny. But again, that shows to me that s/he wanted more than anything for his/her death to be focused entirely on raising support for Palestine. I don't want to be patronizing about Lilly/Aarons's decisions and I definitely don't want any Discourse on this to do exactly what s/he was trying to avoid. Additionally, Bushnell is reported as having used he/she pronouns. The person who claims s/he used both uses both Aaron and Lilly. Its very easy for genderqueer and nonbinary people to have their identities reduced to binaries in death, even by other trans people. If s/he was trans, why are we making assumptions about if s/he was fine with being called a woman, or that s/he wasn't okay with being called a man? There is too much grey space and too much exorsexism that goes unchallenged in our community for me to not feel the need to point this out.

Anyways. I guess my Take on this is that both trans and suicidal people tend to have our choices undermined, and have people on all sides debate over what we Really mean and what we Really want. We are rarely seen as being the experts on ourselves, or having our autonomy respected even when it makes others confused or uncomfortable. I don't think anyone online discussing this can have a full picture of The Truth. Like I said, I don't think there's any reason to assume people claiming they knew Lilly and that s/he used she/her and he/him pronouns are lying right now. But more than anything I'm concerned that the debate over this could end up doing exactly what Lilly/Aaron was trying to avoid. And I don't think its my place to insist any trans person has to be out. I want to respect what s/he wanted for his/her legacy. I don't want him/her to be a trans hero if that results in detracting from his/her goals.

I think this is part of larger moral issue trans activists have to deal with when it comes to trans history: when is it okay for us to correct the language someone used for themselves? When is it illuminating and respectful, and when is it whitewashing someone's own self-perspective to fit our goals? Bushnell was extremely purposeful in everything s/he did as a part of his/her suicide, and that includes how s/he presented his/her gender. I don't want to disrespect those decisions.

#m.#ask box #suicide tw #aaron bushnell #lilly bushnell

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immaturityofthomasastruc · 9 months

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IOTA Reviews: Emotion

Hey, remember Felix? You know, that minor character who is the entire reason Gabriel has all of Ladybug's other Miraculous? The writers remembered he existed more than halfway through the season.

Let's get into the eighteenth episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fifth season: Emotion

We start off with Marinette and Adrien getting ice cream, and just like last episode, right when they're about to kiss, Adrien stops at the last second. While we don't see it, it's heavily implied that Gabriel is behind this. It turns out that Adrien has to get ready for some dance for rich people. While it has a name and I think it was mentioned in a few earlier episodes this season, it's really just some dance for rich people, so I don't care enough to remember it. Of course, all of the rich characters we know are invited, like Kagami, Chloe, Zoe, and Prince Ali. Lila, on the other hand, wasn't invited. This might sound important, but nothing happens with her until the end.

Zoe isn't going because of the “character development” she's gotten, so she offers to let Marinette wear her dress to the dance, which just so happens to be a masquerade ball. Tikki asks why Marinette even wants to go to this party she wasn't invited to, but all Marinette says is that it's so she can tell Adrien that she didn't have to keep the dance a secret from her. Why didn't Marinette just call Adrien? Because then we wouldn't have a story.

At the ball, Adrien and Kagami are the king and queen or whatever because their parents are really determined to make their ship sail even though the two show no real interest in each other (insert your own joke about the writers here), but they're interrupted by Amelie, Emilie's twin sister and Felix's mom. She's worried because her son has been missing for weeks, but Gabriel couldn't care less about the little twerp.

At the party, we get a somewhat amusing joke where Chloe fails to recognize Marinette under her mask, where Marinette not only says her name is Zoe, but her “underling” is named Chloe too. But speaking of...

Chloe: How rich are your parents? Rich? Very rich? Immensely rich? Of course, otherwise you wouldn't be here! It's too bad we can't bring out underlings with us. I'm sure these tin cans can serve properly but we can't make fun of them! (grabs a drink from a butler robot before kicking it) So lame!

Okay, did the writers just stop caring about writing convincing dialogue for Chloe? This is a problem I've noticed a lot this season. Yeah, Chloe was bad in the last four seasons, but here, she constantly talks about how Sabrina is her “underling” (Passion), or how she finds Marinete's suffering to be amusing (Derision). It's not really out of character, but it's weird how she's so much more blunt when it comes to boasting about how full of herself she is. It feels like a lot of her lines this season were meant to be placeholders for stuff the writers thought they'd change later, but then they decided to keep it in anyway. And of course to show how stuck up the other rich kids saying the same kind of stuff Chloe normally says, which is somehow less subtle social commentary than Hop Pop shouting “EAT THE RICH!”.

Adrien and Kagami talk about how they're expected to follow orders, while pretty much saying that Kagami is a Sentimonster since the camera really wants to show off her ring.

Oh wow. what does this mean? Wow, this is such a compelling mystery with so many twists and turns. I am so very invested right now.

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However, as the two talk, it's clear that Adrien isn't himself, literally.

“Adrien”: Let's leave, I dare you.

Kagami: Are you insane? We can't do that.

“Adrien”: Of course, we can. I can.

Kagami: (gasps) You'd do that?

“Adrien”: Wanna bet?

Kagami: No, we can't.

“Adrien”: See? You're not as free as you claim. Don't you think we should be able to decide our future?

I'll get back to this later.

Marinette tells “Adrien” that she loves her, but Chloe figures out that Marinette crashed a party she wasn't invited to. Of course, because this is Chloe, we're supposed to ignore how unnecessary this plan was for Marinette. Seriously, Marinette crashing the party in “Gabriel Agreste”, as illogical as it was, made sense, because they needed to stop Chloe from showing Gabriel incriminating footage of Marinette. Here, Marinette had no real reason to crash this party when all she had to do was call Adrien, and Chloe, like her or hate her, makes a good point in that she wasn't invited. But again, since this is Season 5 Chloe, she could say she opposes human trafficking, and the writers would still find a way to make her look like the bad guy.

Chloe tells the other rich kids to help her expose Marinette, but because they're so stuck up and entitled, they refuse to touch her. I'll give you all a moment to groan from that unfunny joke. Then we get this conversation between Marinette and “Adrien”.

“Adrien”: All eyes are on you.

Marinette: They're looking at me like I'm a monster.

“Adrien”: Look closer, Marinette. (whispers into her ear) They're the monsters.

I officially take back everything bad I ever said about the Canto Bight scenes from The Last Jedi.

While I get what the episode's going for, we really haven't seen a lot of the 1% doing things that would actually warrant this level of scorn from the audience. Yeah, most of them were egotistical snobs, especially Chloe, but you can't really see this as a shot at the elite when it's aimed at their children instead of their parents. All we've seen in this episode is the rich kids being jerks (and even then, it's played for laughs), Chloe rightfully trying to get Marinette thrown out of a party she had no reason to crash, and Gabriel and Tomoe trying to pair their children together. If you want to show the audience how bad rich people are, you need to show them actually abusing their power and mistreating others. As bad as the aforementioned Canto Bight scenes were, they still worked because it managed to back up the point it was trying to make.

Compare this to characters like the Ferengi from Star Trek or the World Nobles from One Piece. These are allegories for the 1% that work because they do a better job at exaggerating aspects of them that can translate to how we see the elite in our world. With the Ferengi, they represent everything wrong with cutthroat businessmen who base their entire society over financial gains, and with the World Nobles, they represent the disconnect with the common people by being so arrogant, they wear helmets that prevent them from breathing the same air as the commoners. If you wanted to show how bad the rich were, especially considering what's going to happen in a few minutes, you needed to do more to make the audience not like them so we'd be more happy to see them get their comeuppance.

Marinette figures out that Felix impersonated Adrien once again (it honestly stops being impressive when he's done it during literally every episode he appears in), and he decides to transform using the Peacock Miraculous in public for some reason, calling himself Argos.

Argos' design is okay. The suit and coattails look pretty nice, and the coloring on his face works a lot better than Gabriel's. The only problem I have is the way the hood looks. It looks too goofy to go with the rest of the suit. It kind of reminds me of that salmon suit Squidward wore in that one episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.

Before anyone else at the party can do anything, Argos reveals a Sentimonster he created, Red Moon.

Red Moon is... a red moon. It's just a red moon that floats above the city, and it gives Argos the ability to make anyone bathed in its light disappear with a snap of his fingers. If anything, this shows how overpowered the Peacock Miraculous is, and that Gabriel was a real idiot for not trying anything like this while he was Shadowmoth.

Anyway, after making everyone think his cousin is a supervillain as part of his brilliant plan, Argos decides to tell everyone in the room about what his Sentimonster can do. He demonstrates this by, of course, choosing to snap away Chloe before targeting Gabriel and Tomoe. You really have your priorities straight, buddy. Argos then carries Marinette outside before throwing her in a dumpster, because if he snapped her away, than Ladybug couldn't fight him.

But then Argos decides to go to the streets, and decides to snap away a bunch of innocent civilians... while singing a jazz song. To anyone curious as to what it sounds like, I must warn you, it isn't for the feint of heart.

I take back everything bad I ever said about the Hawkmoth rap.

First off, I'm just going to say it, Bryce Papenbrook cannot sing. Argos is clearly trying to sound like a suave and confident villain like Doctor Facilier from The Princess and the Frog, but his delivery is terrible. It either ranges from flat monotone to trying to shout while dealing with a sore throat. The point I'm trying to make is that there was a good reason someone else did the singing voice for Adrien in the recent movie.

Second, this doesn't do anything to make us root for Argos as a character, because there's no reason for him to be doing this. I can understand why he'd use his power to get rid of Gabriel and Tomoe (even Chloe, given we know how much she's done), but why is he suddenly going nuts snapping a bunch of random people who haven't even met him before? The episode tries to make him a character who only does bad things because he has no choice to, so him doing this to a bunch of innocent civilians makes no sense.

Finally, WHY THE HELL IS THIS SCENE A MUSICAL NUMBER?! It's hard enough to see Argos callously wipe out a bunch of bystanders, essentially committing genocide, but the tone of the song is all upbeat and cheery, while the lyrics are about how Argos should get whatever he wants. What is the purpose of adding a song here? Are we supposed to find this funny? Is it meant to establish Felix as a wild card? Is the song supposed to make us like him more because of how catchy it is? What was the writers' endgame here? Like I mentioned earlier, this flies in the face of the characterization the episode is trying to establish for him.

Marinette transforms into Ladybug and arrives on the scene, confronting Argos over what he did last season.

Ladybug: You're the reason why I lost the other Miraculous in the first place! And why he took them! You gave them to him without any regard for the consequences it might have with the people of Paris!

Argos: True, except I work for no one. I only helped Monarch cause it served my plans! I needed the Peacock Miraculous and today I need yours and Cat Noir's so I can make my wish!

Ladybug: Your wish?! What do you want?! What are you trying to do?! You're destroying the world and we don't even know why!

Argos: When I merge your Miraculous together, I'll make a wish to create a better world! A free world, where no one will be under anyone's control anymore, where no one will be excluded like I was! A world without people like you to decide what's right or wrong! Who gets powers and who doesn't!

Dude, you're literally playing God right now by snapping away people who did nothing wrong, while singing a song at that. You have no right to lecture Ladybug on how to use power responsibly. And once again, even though we just saw him happily snapping people out of existence like the kid from that one Twilight Zone episode, the episode is going back to portraying him as someone who's only doing this because he has nothing to lose.

Ladybug tries to use her Lucky Charm, but gets nothing in response. This is because her plan is to get Argos to give up, but even in episodes where her plan was to get Akumas to give up, she still got her Lucky Charm (Rocketear, Qilin, Penalteam, Reunion, Perfection, Intuition), so this doesn't really make any sense. Ladybug calls Argos' bluff, so he wipes out everyone from existence. After running into Kagami and snapping Adrien back into existence, Argos is surprised that they aren't thanking him for wiping out all of humanity, and in fact, see him as a complete psychopath.

We then learn Felix's true plan. Earlier that day, Argos capitalized on a opening he had been hoping he would get for weeks, and then created Red Moon. Right after Adrien's date with Marinette, Argos ambushed Adrien, and snapped him out of existence with Red Moon's power. He then decided to impersonate Adrien so he could infiltrate the dance and snap Gabriel, Tomoe, and everyone else out of existence.

I think my feelings on this plan can be perfectly summarized by Tony Stark.

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First off, why did he need to sneak into the dance? All Felix had to do was transform into Argos, and nobody would know who he really was.

Second, why did he need to impersonate Adrien? Felix claims he's doing this for him, yet all he did was steal his girlfriend and ruin his public reputation. As a matter of fact, why did he even snap Adrien away? You're already wiping out all of humanity, so I don't think temporarily doing the same to Adrien will earn you any goodwill.

Third, why did he waste so much time screwing around with Marinette and Kagami? I sort of get why he would try to get in Kagami's good graces (keyword being “try”) by trying to convince her to rebel against her mother more, but why did he dance around with Marinette while pretending to be Adrien? Felix later says he wanted to spare Marinette for Adrien's sake, but he barely knows her, and whether she finds out Felix impersonated her boyfriend or not, she's going to be pissed at either you or Adrien because of your galavanting. In fact, I don't think he ever told Adrien that he danced with Marinette while at the dance in the first place.

Finally, he really needed to wait for this for weeks? If your goal was to get rid of Gabriel and Tomoe, why didn't you just ambush them yourself instead of waiting for a public function? This isn't like has last few appearances where he needed to rely on his intellect. He has superpowers now. All he has to do is create another Sentibug or some kind of assassin Sentimonster and he can be rid of them easily. Instead, he waited weeks for a chance to steal his cousin's identity, dance with his girlfriend, talk trash about Kagami for listening to her mother when he's supposed to be helping her and Adrien, blow his cover in a crowded area by transforming, and use his killer moon to erase all of humanity from existence while singing. Remember, this is the show that usually makes jokes about Marinette's obsession with unnecessarily complicated plans.

Anyway, Argos tries to use his powers to bring Marinette back, but for some reason, they won't work. My best guess is that it's because Marinette transformed into Ladybug, but that shouldn't chance the fact that Argos snapped her with Red Moon's power. After trying to justify his genocide by saying he never wanted to hurt Adrien and Kagami, Argos remembers how his powers work and brings everyone back. After Ladybug lets him go scot-free, Argos goes to a private place realizes that he may have made a few mistakes for almost wiping out all of humanity, tearfully snapping Red Moon out of existence, calling it “his sister”. Because I guess we were supposed to emotionally connect to the giant moon that showed little to no signs of sentience this entire episode? Argos transforms back to Felix, and we learn that Amelie knew where he was the whole time, and she was apparently testing Gabriel for some reason.

After Adrien explains to Marinette that his father ordered him to not tell her about the dance, Adrien goes to talk to Gabriel about it. Gabriel, being Gabriel uses his control over Adrien to force him to never talk about Marinette again. Gabriel then gets a call from Lila, and even though she's been nothing but helpful to him since Season 3, he's apparently tired with her. Why is he suddenly rejecting the help of his most competent (by comparison) ally?

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Also, the episode ends with the revelation that Lila somehow knows Gabriel is Monarch. Why? How? I DON'T CARE, BECAUSE THIS EPISODE SUCKS!

Oh my God, this episode was just terrible! “Derision” and “Adoration” definitely got to me with the way their stories were handled, but this was the first episode in a while to really piss me off. The plot was contrived as hell, basically being a repeat of “Gabriel Agreste”, and you all know how I wasn't exactly a fan of that episode. Think about it: Marinette sneaks into a party, Felix tries to scheme against Gabriel, and Marinette and Adrien end up getting caught in one of his schemes.

The social commentary about how bad the rich were just felt more pretensions than anything else. I get that it's meant to teach children a lesson about the real world, but the episode feels so confident in what its trying to say when it's not that deep, even by kids' show standards. Rich people are bad? Yeah, I think someone like me who lives in the same country as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg knows that. Will you actually teach kids about the financial conditions that allow the wealthy to abuse their power or the cutthroat methods they'll resort to in order to turn a profit? No? You're just going to tell kids that rich people are jerks without giving any actual evidence in the same episode you're using to try and to teach them? Man, these writers just keep hitting it out of the park here!

This whole “Rich people suck” message also falls flat because Felix is the one pushing it. You know, someone who already comes from a rich family? It's not like Bruce Wayne where he uses his money to help the people of Gotham, as Batman or not. Felix just whines about how “tHeY'rE tHe MoNsTeRs.” when he's just as well-off as they are. The episode tries to do a subtle discrimination message as evidenced by his rant as Argos earlier, but it doesn't work because we have never seen anyone discriminate against Felix for who he is. Yeah, the episode once again tries to hint at him being a Sentimonster, but because the show hasn't just pulled the trigger and confirmed it, it's hard to really sympathize with him being “excluded” when we've never seen him being treated differently by others in earlier episodes, and even if he was a Sentimonster, nobody would know or be able to discriminate against him in the first place.

I don't know why the show keeps trying to excuse Felix's actions when once again, he pretty much committed fucking genocide yet the episode still wanted us to feel bad for him realizing his actions had consequences. If he actually wanted to own up to his mistakes, he'd either hand over the Peacock Miraculous to Ladybug or help Ladybug stop Monarch. For someone who claims he hates when people abuse power to make others suffer, he's no better, judging from how both times he's gotten to use a Miraculous, he's either screwed over Ladybug (Strikeback) or endangered a lot of innocent people. And if you're wondering why I didn't point out any double standards between the treatment of Felix compared to Chloe, that doesn't really matter. No matter how you feel about Chloe, whether you feel like she got screwed over or not, it doesn't really make how the writers are glorifying Felix any better or worse, as his potential “redemption arc” isn't off to a good start.

The plot was stupid, Felix was an idiot, and it felt like more effort was put into the musical number than the writing. In my opinion, this is easily the worst episode of the season so far.

Although at the very least, now that we have even more evidence that Adrien, Felix, and even Kagami are all Sentimonsters, I think I know what clip I can start using to describe my feelings on this plotline.

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THE BIGGEST IDIOT OF THE EPISODE IS... FELIX

For someone who managed to outsmart Gabriel on multiple occasions with no superpowers, Felix's intelligence really took a nosedive the second he got the Peacock Miraculous. He came up with a completely unnecessary plan that involved impersonating his cousin's identity and mocking his friend when he's supposed to try and win their favor, he danced with his cousin's girlfriend without his consent, transformed in public, smearing his reputation even further, and proceeded to gleefully wipe out humanity through a musical number, and needed other people to point out how immoral his actions were. Of course, Marinette gets second place thanks to her plan to break into the party and later letting Argos get away.

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man-down-in-hatchet-town · 9 months

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Hey, uh, just wanted to say, leaking a recording of the Nerdy Prudes digital ticket online is just... very fucking uncool. I know piracy is all the rage right now for dealing with Hollywood, and frankly until the streamers sort themselves out it probably should be, but Starkid aren't HBOMax or Netflix or whatever. They are a tiny, independent theatre company held together by everyday working creators who don't even necessarily always have health insurance, and they put incredibly high value recordings of their shows online for absolutely free. They are the goddamn Gold Standard in making theatre accessible (both financially and geographically) and the least we can do to help them keep going is to respect the handful of content boundaries they put up and the few months it takes them to get their recordings online. Nerdy Prudes is coming so damn soon, guys. We can wait.

(EDITED ADDENDUM: As a writer heavily invested in the strike I should probably clarify my pro-piracy stance. I am invested in piracy as a means of preserving and archiving the art that the studios are disappearing entirely from the face of the planet. Especially when those streamers are barely paying the people who create the work anyway, so the traditional idea of "pay to support the artist" doesn't always hold up. But the WGA has NOT called for a strike of streamers, so please keep using them as much as you used to!

But none of that has anything to with Starkid. Don't leak their stuff!)

#starkid #team starkid #hatchetfield #nerdy prudes must die

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lovelyyandereaddictionpoint · 1 year

Note

It's Valentine day, and some fan service when Crewel daughter lost a bet and wearing a bunny outfit that hugs her curvs bit too well ( think of Jessica Rabbit level of sexy ) and all confident of her body as she sings on stage for them

All the boys reaction seeing both display and the show

I'm not doing all of them

🖤🖤🖤🖤

Valentines Performance | Yandere TWST x Crewel Daughter Reader

First and foremost Crewel’s daughter never loses a bet

But charity does look good on her record so she’d do it

Heck you might even suggest it

“What? I know from my head to my toes that I’m practically irresistible. Of course you’d want me to be the main performance.”

You wouldn’t do it for just some boys wishing to ogle you for their own desires

That would be of no benefit to you

In fact, you’d force Crowley to pay

Who in turn forces your admirers to cough up a significant amount

But if you’re going to go through the trouble of dressing up and performing it will be for a good cause and for a good paycheck

So many lonely, sad people on such a day is something a princess shouldn’t ignore

If you have curves than great but even without you’re just as alluring

But like everything you do it has the boys drooling:

Azul Ashengrotto

He was proud to be apart of the latest cashgrab charity that the school was fundraising

And he was even happier to call upon you under that pretense

Its been years since he’s heard you sing

He can only imagine what its like now

And with the excuse of being practice he’ll hear the chords you so casually ring out as the charity dinner is mapped out

But only when you’re fully made up and singing does he feel like his investment was truly worth it

“A-a-ah (Y/n) that was–”

“Amazing, I know. I can tell you’re excited but don’t go inking all over the floor before the finale.”

“Y-yeah.”

He really does have to stop himself

He’s just so enamored

One day he’ll have to ask trick you into singing a serenade to him

“A mate’s song needs to be, at the very least, decent enough to attract. Naturally, (Y/n) would exceed that, she truly is a prime mate and the only one I’d ever bother chasing after.”

Kalim Al Asim

He loves that you’re scheduled to perform

Money isn’t an object anyway so he’s happy to pad your paycheck and donation

He just loves loves loves anything you do

You could go outside in a chicken wunzie and sing horribly he’d still fling his money in your direction

But as he watches you appear on stage make up done, dress hugging tight something burns

His cheeks get warm and suddenly his clothes feel too hot to wear

A yearning that Kalim barely acknowledges to dangerous takes over and he’s in a daze for the entirety of the night

Don’t interrupt the performance

Don’t bother him while he’s watching you sing in that sultry tone

Or you can see what its like when Jamil’s happy to follow Kalim’s orders+

“(Y/n) you should sing more often! Your voice is so beautiful!”

“Thank you, Kalim.”

“Will you be doing another set? I’d love to play along side you!”

He’ll be replaying your performance in his head for years to come

Always letting a smile come to his face

“Wow I can’t get her voice out of my head! Maybe I should ask her to sing to me everynight!”

Vil Schoenheit

If he isn’t hired himself to join you he’ll donate his talent with a small fee

But to be seen by millions as the most beautiful dream couple

Neige could never

But ego aside he loves nothing more than performing with you side by side

Brought back to the days you two would make little plays and shows for your fathers to watch

Now this was just fate in work, wasn’t it

That you two would be preparing a duet that’d have the world talking for weeks

“Are you ready to delivery our harmony of ecstasy?”

“You know I am. I like your trim by the way.”

“And I yours. Though we both know anything you wear is better than couture.”

For this moment and this moment only will he encourage the hunter to share his recordings

He won’t be able to hear your voice out in the crowd

But it couldn’t compare to the sound of being beside you

As it was always meant to be

“Becoming a duo? Who’s to say? We both have big plans for the future but naturally we’ll be together asitsalwaysbeen.”

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blu-oo · 7 months

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Buggy was Roger’s good luck charm

So I’ve had a headcanon for a while now concerning Buggy and his place on Roger’s crew. It’s no secret that both fans and characters within the One Piece world will look at Buggy and go “How/Why the fuck were you on Roger’s crew?” Hard to say definitively whether or not Buggy actually has good luck considering the absolute hell he has to go through in order to face plant into his power/status, but you still can’t argue that he gains things he is 100% undeserving of lol. Oda’s trolling aside, let’s say that his failing upwards IS purely a result of him having his luck stats set to fucking max with a few buffs tacked on. We can even make this more fun and say the reason Buggy’s luck is so paradoxical is BECAUSE his luck goes to others instead of being reserved for himself (either that or the only reason “failure” is tacked onto this is because Buggy is a jackass and karma doesn’t sleep on her prettiest degenerates). I can see this going down a few different ways:

Maybe they were on an island along the grand line and came across a vendor selling good luck tokens. An ornate looking box catches Roger’s eye, and the vendor starts gushing about how it’s their most “luckiest item” and that it’s very VERY much worth the hefty price tag. It’s also most definitely “a worthwhile investment, trust me! It’ll all pay off in the end!” Whatever that means. Roger’s gut feeling doesn’t need to be told twice, so he buys it. This could be a moment similar to Shanks where they take the box back to the ship only for “SURPRISE! CHEST BABY!” :D to happen again. Roger is no longer allowed to go shopping/haul treasure back to the ship without Rayleigh’s stink eye supervision.

Maybe there’s something similar to the Sabaody slave market where he’s being explicitly advertised as a good luck charm. The person selling him shows off his luck by playing simple tricks (like using cards and gambling with onlookers. Look, if you’re gonna try to sell someone's luck, ya might as well make an extra buck while doing so. And hey, this just proves his good luck charm is working). While the seller is distracted, Roger easily sidels up and eyes Buggy’s mean mug. He asks if Buggy is actually lucky and gets a rudely gestured affirmative. “Great!” He says before yanking the kid up and running off laughing. Rayleigh: what the fuck is that. Roger, tankard in one hand, clown child in the other: a beer.

Maybe Roger just happens upon Buggy and and witnesses his luck in action. Sees how instant karma comes to collect after some pompous jerk spits and belittles little Buggy and immediately he’s shamed and humiliated in front of a bunch of people (in addition to Buggy pit pocketing him in retaliation). He witnesses a merchant make snide and haughty remarks and refuses to sell to Buggy because he’s a visible street rat and then immediately afterwards a flock of rabid seagulls dive bomb his stall and peck at his toupee (a piece of bread is flung and lands right before Buggy’s nose). A group of older teens beating the snot out of buggy and stealing whatever he gained that day only to then immediately run into Roger? Well. Etc. etc. etc. Roger sees all this and more and at this point he decides to take Buggy along just because of how hilarious this all is (Buggy’s eventual love for Roger and therefore his luck beginning to include Roger was just an added bonus).

And since this is such a loose concept (and ignoring that Roger was a D so the following woulda happened anyways lol) we can even say that his luck to Roger is the reason for all the success at the end of his career lol. Edd war? Buggy. Living past his initial expiration date? Buggy. Making it to laugh tale? Buggy, except wait- things didn’t go 100% to plan with that one, huh 🤔🤔🤔🤔 and guess who wasn’t there 🤨🤨🤨🤨 im playing or am i

GASP. OR MAYBE HE HAS ABSOLUTE SHIT LUCK AND HE SAPS THAT SHIT OUTTA EVERYONE AROUND HIM EXPLAINING WHY THEY ALWAYS SOMEHOW LOSE OUT IN SOME WAY INSTEAD OF HIM—

#luck is stored in the nose #buggy #buggy the clown #one piece #one piece headcanons #gol d. roger #gold d roger #roger pirates #op #op buggy

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