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thenerdthatwrites · 11 months

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A/N; So, I know that some of the time (Well, lets face it, a lot of the time) I won’t upload to a schedule, but with this, I have started a slight schedule. I’ll write Monday - Friday and then on Saturday, I will upload it to wattpad (My username is @-thenerdthatwrites-). From there on the Sunday, I’ll do editing and then upload the finished shiny version on here, and then I’ll also edit the one on wattpad. So, yeah, Kapeesh? Kapeesh.

Chapter Synopsis; After the news about the voices, Kaitlyn and Jameson spend a while down at the lake, before being interrupted by someone unexpected, before an argument breaks out between Kaitlyn and Xander.

part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4 / part 5 / part 6 / part 7 / part 8 / part 9 / part 10 / part 11 / part 12 / part 13 / part 14 / part 15 / part 16 / part 17 / part 18 / part 19 / part 20 / part 21 / part 22 / part 23 / part 24 / part 25 / part 26 / part 27 / part 28 / part ...

Story Masterlist

Words; 1,281

An Eligible Bachelor

3 and a Half Weeks Later

Down at the lake one sunny afternoon a few weeks after my dramatic fainting down here before, I wanted to get some fresh air and get out of the stuffy castle. I was currently ranting to Jameson because, when, if the voices were correct, Father dies, he wants me to be married, and maybe at least with one child, so was having me look at different men Father had hand-picked himself.

“I just don’t get why we can’t tell him!” I ranted, annoyed at the deeply boring process I had managed to escape from.

“You know why darling. We can’t tell your Mother or Father, as there is a very high chance they will banish me from the kingdom,” Jameson said, looking up from his drawing to look at me as I read, my back against a tree nearby.

“So what! I would rather that happen and go with you than stay here and pick which man I should marry,” I said, sticking down my book.

“Well, what would you do then if that supposedly happened?” He asked, getting up from the rock he was perched on and walked towards me.

“I think I would be a hunter maybe? Maybe be like Robin Hood; steal from the rich and give to the poor?” I said, chuckling at what I said.

Jameson sat down beside me and I stuck my head on my shoulder.

“What would you do?” I ask him, looking across the lake as I did so.

“Show my art? Use the craft my Father taught me. I’m unsure just now,” He replied, continuing his sketch.

We sat in silence for a while, enjoying each other’s presence as we sat there, but all was forgotten as Sybil ran down to the lake, and we broke apart quickly.

“Oh thank goodness! Father was wondering where you were and I saw you sneak out this morning,” Sybil said as I stood up.

“Okay, and why did you run down here to just tell me this?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

“No one could find you, so after Father said at lunch that you hadn’t appeared for quite some time, I thought you may be down here reading, and it seems I was correct. One thing I do wonder is why on earth is the boy that found you when you collapsed-” Sybil said, but I cut her off partway through.

“His name is Jameson,” I say.

“Honestly, Kaitlyn, I don’t care. Anyway, why are you down here with him?” Sybil asks.

As she asks this, I hear the clinking of metal and scraping of feet against the pebbles leading down here and Xander appears before my eyes.

“Lady Sybil, you need to get back up to the Castle right now as your Mother is asking for you. Lady Kaitlyn, your Father has more Bachelors waiting in the Castle, and Mr Dorianna, your Father has appeared at the Castle asking his Majesty if anyone there knows your whereabouts. I would advise you all to come back to the Castle this instant before your respective parents become more worried,” Xander said and I could see he was trying not to yell at either Jameson or me for being so stupid by disappearing for hours.

“Alright, I better see you back in the Castle, Kaitlyn in the next hour,” Sybil said before turning and heading back up to the Castle.

After we were all sure Sybil was gone, Xander turned to us with a harsh glare on his face.

“What the hell were you two thinking! First of all, I was worried, second of all, you two were almost caught by your sister that likes to blackmail you! If you guys want to act like that I will just go and tell his majesty, if not, then you two need to start being more careful!” Xander said, trying not to get to the end of his tether and explode at us.

“If you knew why I was down here, you would understand!” I argued back, grabbing my book and starting to walk back, grabbing Jameson’s hand as I did so.

“Well, I think I bloody well do!” Xander yelled back, running to catch up with my fast pace of walking.

“I don’t care! What I currently care about is the man I want to marry, but can’t because my Father would banish him from the kingdom if I said I didn’t want to marry any duke, but a humble artist who I truly care for! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to getting so bored, I fear my brains may turn to mush and a ball to prepare for!” I say and give Xander one last glare and then run back to the castle, nearly tripping a few times as I did so.

{----------}

When I returned, I ran back to my room to find Alice sitting on my bed, one of my books in hand and sticking down when she heard the door open.

“I thought you said you were going to be out till an hour before the ball,” Alice said, setting the book down as I flopped down onto my bed beside where she sat.

“Well, Sybil came down and almost caught Jameson and I, so I had to come as she said she saw me sneaking out this morning, even with your distraction,” I said, sighing soon after and getting up to change my dress to something I could move more freely in than the dress I was wearing just now.

“At least you got to see him. I wasn’t even sure if I had given you enough time to even get to the front entrance without getting caught,” Alice said.

I laughed before replying.

“It’s safe to say Alice Olivia Lysandral, you are brilliant at distractions. Thank you. I needed it today. Ever since I collapsed, Father has been keeping a watchful eye on me and making sure I’m barely ever out of either his or Xander’s sight,” I say as I readjust my corset, letting myself breathe.

“You’re very welcome dear sister. One thing I will say is that I will need help thinking up ideas for the next distraction needed to get you seeing Jameson,” Alice said.

Alice was one of the first people to find out about my crush on the artistic prodigy as she caught me writing a letter to him. From there, we made a deal. She would help me with distractions and keep my relationship secret if I let her read any book she wanted out of my endless bookshelves.

“Okay then, but we need to make sure that Sybil is distracted big time with the next few. We can’t have something like this happening again,” I say.

“Well, then don’t disappear while Father wants to talk to you about something,” Alice says.

“Fine, I won’t do that again. Anyway, I need to change to go for sword fight training,” I say as I get out a pair of trousers that Mother would not approve of.

“Who’s teaching you this time? Father or Xander?” Alice questions as I stick on the clothing I would need for what I was going to go do.

“Both. Xander’s training me and Father is watching to assess me on my progress,” I say and then turn to leave the room as Alice grabs my arm.

“Kaitlyn, just please be back on time. I need my big sister to help me prepare for the ball tonight,” Alice says as I leave the room, grabbing the sword that was hidden in my room as I did so.

#original fiction #original work #original concept #original content #original story #story #romance #fantasy-romance #forbidden romance #fantasy #forbidden relationship #princesses #painter #ocxoc

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arrjaysketch · 1 year

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Future Plans! (March Update)

I figure it’s about time for another general update! HEALTH: I’ve been suffering from pretty bad insomnia the past month or two. Sleeping pills and melatonin weren’t helping. But, after starting up exercising again since falling off of it since 2019 and taking melatonin it’s helped me fall asleep much, much easier! However, I think I picked up a bug (not COVID) at the gym, and I have his bad persistent cough! So I haven’t been going to the gym and I just haven’t had my art mojo lately, so that throws in some delays. No worries, I’m seeking care for it! COMMISSIONS (UPDATE) I presently have no idea when I’ll open for commissions at this point! I really want to tackle personal projects first. UPLOADING GIFT ART, ART TRADES, & COMMISSIONED ART!! I still want to upload gift art, trades, and art I’ve commissioned! I’m planning on doing that no later than the end of March! REFERENCE SHEETS Regarding reference sheets, I have 1 more female character I want to do reference sheets for (Graphene Doodles, my Rule 63 gender-swapped version of my unicorn Graphite Doodles), as well as 7 male characters (Graphite Doodles my unicorn, Chris the mouse, Evan the rabbit, Kyle my red fox, Gabriel the squirrel, Trevor Dawson my wolf, and Bud Blaze, my MLP earth pony)! This means I have a total of 8 more reference sheets I want to do (for now). For my reference sheets I’d start with a base. I’m thinking when I do the male characters, I’ll put together some things that I’ve learned to make the reference sheets for the guys go much faster! With my insomnia and sickness issues, I’m thinking I’ll get the reference sheets wrapped up around June~July. If things work out well I might be able to hit May, but we’ll see! I’m setting a pace that feels comfortable for me! TRADES & GIFT ART After my current round of reference sheets, I was thinking about opening for gift art and trades. But, I’m honestly itching to work on other personal projects! These are personal projects I’ve been thinking about for decades! I still want to do trades and gifts at some point! My gut feeling is that I really really want to get personal projects done! Or at least started! EXPRESSION PROJECT Something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time is a better version of the 25 Expression Challenge. I’ve done a few challenges a long time ago, and I know I’ve done one recently-ish with Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. BUT! I haven’t done one when I’ve had this much self-esteem, self-compassion, and self-efficacy! Like, I feel like I could push myself well beyond what I’ve done before! I’m making a 100 Expression Challenge! You all are in for a treat! TREMMIE & EVAN SERIES After (or maybe before) the 100 Expression Challenge, I want to dive into a passion project I’ve been wanting to start for 15 YEARS. I’m going to have a Tremmie and Evan sex romp series/comic! It’s going to be everything from sweet, silly, to hot and heavy and gooey! I want to give myself a fun challenge, and I think y’all would love it as much as I do! SOFT SHADING I’m also planning on dinking around with soft shading in 2023! I think I could make my art really pop with some quality shading and lighting! POSSIBLY SELLING SOME OLD CHARACTERS AS ADOPTABLES I am thinking of selling some characters as adoptables! There are 12 characters of mine that I'm never going to draw again, and I’m not going to combine them. I was thinking of making a ref sheet for each and selling the character that way! (The characters are: Callisto the skadger (skunk badger (spoken for), Sheila the Ringtail, Helen the spotted skunk, Heather the hedgevixen, Mindy the other, Shazzy the felox (feline/fox), Brook the swift fox, Yasmine the red fox, Jessica/Jessie the arctic fox, Ian the whitetail buck, Liam the jackal, Nemo the snow leopard) and Todd Vickson, the [undecided] fox. I was also thinking I’d probably due ¾ front view and ¼ back view, and 1 fully clothed view, instead of the 5 views I’m doing for my own characters. FUTURE REFERENCE SHEETS (LATE 2023) I realized that there are also characters I wish to keep! There are 8 characters in addition to the above that I want to do ref sheets for. Some are my wife Mistletoe's characters! She's not involved with the fandom anymore, but we fully support each other's interests! She sees how happy my characters make me and still likes furry and MLP art! (The characters are: Betsy, the arctic wolf (may change her name), Celeste the genet, Holly Graham, the red Scottish vixen, Josh the striped skunk, Marissa the mouse, Miriam the mouse (thinking of a new design!), Mistletoe the snowshoe hare, Rose Bunny the arctic hare). PONIES I still love My Little Pony a whole danged lot! I’m absolutely expecting to draw more ponies from here until the end of time, honestly! I’ve been into ponies (1984) way longer than furry fandom (1996); I still love both fandoms a whole lot! I want to do art ranging from general audiences to smutty! HUMANS Re-uploading my old art on my Tremaine account back in 2018 made me realize how much I missed drawing humans! There are a bunch of artists whose humans really inspire me, and I absolutely want to practice drawing them! Once I feel I’ve got some decent progress made I’ll share some art! LEARNING NEW STUFF And, of course, I’m hoping to keep learning new things all the time! Goodness knows I’ve already learned so much since I started back on this path in May! Self-esteem, self-compassion, and self-efficacy have helped me a great deal in learning to take constructive criticism better, as well as learning to self-criticize with the aim of improving my art! I feel like as long as I make “having fun” a priority, everything else is so much easier! DISCORD SERVER (MAYBE, EVENTUALLY, BUT NOT RIGHT NOW) Definitely not at this time, but it’s something I’ll consider for the future! I’d like to be more active art-wise and grow my community a bit before I go that route! STREAMING! I am also planning on streaming eventually. My real concern is being able to split my attention between drawing and a chat! I think I’ll start after I’m done with my initial round of character reference sheets! I do want to watch more streams, too, but I still have the same problem! I pretty much ignore the stream to focus on my own art. I feel like this is a thing I’ll need to jump into and play by ear, so to say!

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#future plans #plans #status #status update

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bloggingbrin · 4 years

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Repost note: When I originally published this article it had some nice gifs. I'm sorry but they are lost to time and space. Hopefully you can just imagine them in your head. Love, Brin.

0) What is Magnetizer

It’s a small game that I made for a 3 hour jam. I really liked the core concept and wanted to expand upon it. It was a platformer, but you are a magnet.

I decided to go with a minimalist approach to the gameplay. Essentially there we no other mechanics added to the game.

This meant that what I wanted to do during the next few wees of development was: – Make the game as juicy as possible – Create levels that use the core mechanic in a lot of unique ways – Create a good pacing for the game – Work on “supplemental” features (saving, high-scores, achievements…)

1) What went right

I really wanna pat myself on the back here, but I think **visual juice*** was something that I did a good job with. What was just a block spinning later becoming a loving rectangle that wiggeled and waggled based on the player’s input, squished when it hit a wall and splatted the floor with color when it hit an obstacle.

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Towards the end of the development I really hit the home run. Thanks to a friends encouragement I added eyes and a mouth to the magnet. While this is recommended even in the classic “juice it or lose it” I didn’t want o do it at first. I didn’t want to “commercialize” the game. I felt like doing that would ruin the minimalist aesthetic of simple

Besides this being juicy visually, I think the core mechanic of the game was really strong and I am happy that I did not succumb to feature creep. Good job me, stay lazy on feature implementation 🙂

*I believe that I could have done a much better job at audio juice as well, however, for my next project I have an audio god on my side so that’s gonna be covered.

2) What went bad

Online stuff is hard.

When I uploaded the game to itch.io I had a high-score system that used google forms as a “back-end”. It would send data to a google form when a speedrun was completed that would submit it to a spreadsheet.

This spreadsheet was supposed to act as a sort of back-end system for the high-score that the game would pull data from.

This was a solid plan and maybe someone with more programming knowledge would be able to execute on it easily. However, I was f*ing lost. I lost about a week of development time trying to get this work, to no avail.

In the end the itch version linked to the spreadsheet instead of having an in-game high-score. This broke half way through and I don’t know how to fix it. The newgrounds version ended up using their built in highscore system, which worked quite well. Occasionally it reports an impossible time like 10 seconds, no clue how but hey I can manually remove those times so that’s nice.

Level design

Level design is also hard. I felt like one of the goals I was not able to achieve was teaching the player how to correctly play the game. From anecdotal evidence, players usually have the most trouble at level 4.

They are required to spin and then, spin again while still using the momentum from the first push, to travel further vertically. This is a core concept of the game that is used in other levels to allow the player to finish the level faster or to reach some of the hearts.

In my anecdotal user testing players completed this level without understanding what they did or they failed to complete the level.

I tried to amend this by introducing level tittles, this one being “Two spins = high jumps”. However, this was really dirty and the level itself didn’t really teach that to the player.

Reflectively, I should have put more of the obstacles that require the same trick to get the player to “get it”.

3) What I’ll do next time

A few bullet points for myself:

I will do even more playtesting

I will spend more time creating levels

I won’t waste time on high-score systems

Make sure that my code base won’t be super messy

Throw away the 3 hour prototype, build it from scratch next time!

Got to the end? Thanks for reading!

Now go play my damn game.

#brindoes #blogging #postmortem #gamedev

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t5ltherapy · 2 years

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#BlackPanther #ChewingGum #MichaelaCoel

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m39 · 2 years

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Doom WADs’ Roulette (2003): The Brotherhood of Ruin

You know what? After what I experienced with Scythe’s Fire and Ice, I think even Doomguy himself would like to take a vacation from hell spawns. Somewhere interesting, like some pyramids or something. Not the Egyptian ones, these were already visited a couple of times. But what about some ancient American shit left by Aztecs, or Olmecs, or Toltecs, or Mayans, or any other Mesoamericans that build these pyramids. I mean, what’s the worst thing that can ha-

Suddenly, your phone starts ringing.

Excuse me for a moment.

You pick up the phone.

Hello?

...

What’s that?

...

The demons are there too?

...

And the pyramids have demonic murals built on their walls?

...

The demons didn’t build them?

...

Okay, then. Thank you for the information. Have a nice day.

You put the phone down.

...

Poop.

#4: The Brotherhood of Ruin

Main author(s): Kristian Aro

Release date: 2001 (original release)/February 1st, 2003 (database upload)

Version(s) played: ???

Required port compatibility: Boom

Levels: 7

There is something interesting about The Brotherhood of Ruin. Not only in terms of its theme (that I mentioned above) but also in its release. While it is on the list of the Top 100 WADs of All Time in the 2003 roster, and it was uploaded to the database the same year, you might notice that something feels off when you take a look at the textfile and the date of making at the bottom of the title screen. And if you dig further and check out other websites that reviewed this WAD, you will find out that it was originally released around 2001, only later to be uploaded to the database in 2003.

Why was this WAD placed in the 2003 roster then? Maybe because it was completely unknown before the 2003 upload? Maybe there was no more room for the 2001 roster so the list’s main contributors put it in the 2003 roster due to the database upload? Or maybe-

Okay, you know what? That’s enough. If I’ll keep thinking and ranting about TBoR’s upload day we will be stuck here for ages. Let’s just take a look at the WAD itself now.

Since this WAD was actually released around 2001, I’ll partially try to go easy on it.

The Brotherhood of Ruin looks really damn good. I tend to be a sucker for some ancient civilizations’ architecture, and even though I’m not really that interested in Mesoamerican architecture, I was still fully amazed by it in this WAD.

For some of you, however, it might end up as somewhat of a chore to look at since after like the first two levels (at best), you have basically seen everything: temples, pyramids, valleys, underground systems, and other locations among stuff mentioned in wiki article about Mesoamerican maps. It’s the only style that you will see in this WAD.

Now look, as I said before, I like me some ancient architecture, so the theme of The Brotherhood of Ruin didn’t really feel monotone to me, but even I can notice that it might bore some people who aren’t into this stuff.

Changing the subject, the new music is pretty enjoyable to listen to. It really fits into this WAD’s theme, even the ones that weren’t created by Paul Corfiatis and two of these were borrowed from Heretic or Hexen. My favorite track is probably from MAP03, with MAP07 right behind it.

This WAD tends to slightly focus more on switch hunting, but I don’t think it ever goes too far. The maps tend to be medium-sized to big-sized, but honestly, if you will check every room clockwise style (or something familiar) on each fork, you won’t spend that long in each level, even if it is your first time playing it.

I would also be happier if the doors that require keys were showing more colors (for the lack of better words) to stand out from the normal ones. I think that only some of these tend to do that.

The Brotherhood of Ruin is somewhat of a medium challenge to finish. It can kick your ass in some places, but there is nothing that goes too far. I think I got numb to the hard challenges after WADs like HR, AV, and Fire and Ice map... that I beat days ago the third time.

This WAD has some dirty tricks in its sleeves, with ambushes and monsters having the high ground. But the hardest part was in the red key area in MAP07, where after grabbing the key, you end up sandwiched between two Arch-viles while they resurrect two Hoovies that you just killed. Other than that I can’t remember anything harder from this.

And I think that’s all what I can say about The Brotherhood of Ruin. Despite its problems, it’s another good WAD worth checking out. And the Mesoamerican theme only helps.

Not gonna lie folks, I’m really enjoying what the 2003 roster is offering so far, and it’s only four WADs by this point.

Now I do realize that the next WAD on the list is actually somewhat of a Frankenstein’s Monster of a PC port of Doom 64 with the subtitle Absolution (or just TC). But I’m gonna have to sadden you folks; I’m not going to review this fan-made port next. The reason for this is really simple: Doom 64 is an original game on its own with many of its mechanics being different from the Classic Doom. Plus, the Absolution port adds some additional monsters and levels. Describing all of this stuff would take forever, and I don’t like to take a very long time on a WAD or one of its episodes.

So here is the plan: Originally I was planning on making a month-long break from reviewing WADs, mostly due to reaching the end of Doomworld’s Top 100 WADs of All Time, not to mention the WADs that became addons for Bethesda’s Unity port of the Classic Doom. Now, I’ve decided to shorten the break to two weeks, and then review Doom 64 first (the 2020 port to be exact, not including the Lost Levels that came with the port), then the Absolution fan port and its added features. After that, I’ll take another two weeks of break. Then, I’ll start looking at the first Cacowards’ WADs (I won’t cover only the best 10, I can promise you that).

Anyway, that’s all I have to say for now. See you next time.

Bye!

#doom #Doom WAD #review #doom mod #Doom 2 #2003 #doom 2003 #the brotherhood of ruin #doom The Brotherhood of Ruin #Doom WADs’ Roulette

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sukunasbabymama · 2 years

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Hi, my children, hope you guys are doing alright; I want to address something real quick.

A couple of days ago it was brought to my attention that @/1-800-cherri had a work that was similar to mine. A lovely follower of mine messaged me first to make sure.

Before I reached out to her with my concerns I checked the dates to see if maybe it was a mistake and I was being dramatic, she replied in a good way and it was going really smooth and she told me that even though fics can have similarities and she didn’t plagiarize she would still check and edit so it won’t be similar. She was really easygoing and helpful with all of this so I told her to tell me when she was done and I could reblog it under the “recs” tag and y’all could see it, that way it could let y’all know that both writers are okay with the situation.

Now, after she told me she edited it I went to checked and it was the same, or maybe I’m in the wrong and I couldn’t see the change or just similarities. I apologize if that’s the case.

Again I reached out a second time and asked her if maybe she would like for me to pinpoint what exactly was similar, if not the same, so she could change it. She told me that it would be nice although she had important stuff to do that night and may not get to it. I thought that’s okay because we don’t live 24/7 on tumblr so of course we don’t have to get to it right away. But that was on Sunday and today is Thursday. I’m going to put here what I pinpoint to her.

I tried to talk things out so i didn’t have to bring this to the public eye, but it’s been a few days and the situation is still the same.

A couple of followers have found very similar if not identical some of the parts in her work and also reached out to her or to me and that’s the thing; I don’t want to be in this back and forth with every person that has seen mine and see hers or viceversa and I don’t want y’all to go and start disrespecting her.

This is inspired in the same scenario and my mutual gave me credits and although it can even be seen as the same universe, it’s not even similar, people can jump from her work to mine and can see that we just shared the same trope, the conversations and descriptions aren’t similar, nothing is. Just the trope from the same messy idea.

I put a lot of thought in the messy ideas because they don’t come from requests, it’s just silly stuff that I write based on the personal characterization that I have for the characters, I come here randomly to let y’all know every time I have a weird idea and couple days later y’all see it; it happened with the dojo owner, with the loser, with the maid and so on.

Because of this, I feel disrespected because I’m not even that confident in my English but I try to give y’all in scenarios or headcanons an extended version of the conversations I have with mutuals.

I know I have a bunch of requests and I have talked about new messy ideas but right now I don’t want to write anything so like I told my mutuals, I’m going to save drafts for a bit and then when I feel better I’ll share them. I ask y’all to stop yourself from being disrespectful, since we’ve already established that we don’t do that.

That’s all I wanted to say; I apologize for just reblogging and not uploading anything new. I don’t feel like it right now.

#☕︎︎. kk talks

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sillyroyalty · 2 years

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The Moon’s non existent glow

Part 1

Concept: Upon meeting you Akechi decides that maybe it’s okay to let you live a little longer

This is part one, I’ll upload more when I finish writing them later. They will be about 3 parts I think. Sae’s palace doesn’t exist in this version, they just gallant around mementos instead. Everything else is the same including Akechi, but don’t worry, he’ll live in his version haha. Please leave feedback on what you think :)

Akechi felt sick to his stomach. Of course fate would always find a way to make his job harder for him. He grit his teeth as he watch you jump around your fellow gang of thieves planning your next heist.

He ran around mementos for god knows how long looking for the glimpse of the Shujin students shadow, but the darn brat was no where to be seen. He groaned in frustration after another hour of searching led to nothing. Rubbing his head in frustration he tried to recall the face in the picture from the meeting he had with Shido and some old corrupt hag from before.

The old woman places a picture of a student in the table tapping on the girl in question’s face harshly with her long finger nail. “This brat here, class A of Shijin stole the title of class representative from my son! That bitch who does she think she is ?! GET RID OF HER OR ILL PULL ALL MY INVESTMENTS OUT THE THE ELECTION SHIDO!” She screeched. The old man, Shido, just simply tossed the picture to Akechi who was standing across from them, smiling telling her that it would be dealt with.

When taking on the job Akechi had felt a shred of sympathy for the unknown girl that was on the receiving end of the investors wrath, for such a petty reason too, the girls life was to be robbed ? But as time went on unable to find her shadow and get rid of it to trigger a mental shutdown, Akechi’s patience and sympathy was running dry. He wanted nothing more than to shoot the girl in question and finish his stupid job.

Now it all made sense…seeing you in your outfit a dress that seemed to spiral close to you, billowing at you feet as if gravity was nothing but a fictional concept. The light pink eye mask that curled into a crescent towards the end paying homage to your persona that was derived from the tale of Princess Kaguya, hair tied up neatly in a confusing manner that would not allow Akechi to make out where the hairstyle started nor ended. Of course you weren’t in momentous, you were one of them ! A stupid phantom thief and now finally making your acquaintance, as Joker introduced you explaining to him you were too busy to join in the previous heist because you were caught up in work due to classes, you were breathtaking. The sight of you as, Opal ( that was the code name you were referred to as) made Akechi take a step back to catch his breath. The ambiance of strong few hidden within you now unleashed by your persona awakening made his heart quicken. Getting to fight alongside you and hanging out as confidants- no…as friends…perhaps Akechi could argue with himself that you were better left alive. His head argued against him, he couldn’t just kill you ! Your phantom friends would notice and it would blow his cover… he was keeping you alive to extract information out of you…yeah that was it or it was already what he was telling himself. He wasn’t in love with your stupid smile. He didn’t enjoy your company. He never found your jokes funny, all those puns you would crack softening his heart. He told himself he didn’t cherish the watch you gifted him on his birthday despite being touched then that you were the only one that remembered the date and keeping the accessory safe in his drawer like it was a sacred jewel. He would simply weave you into his revenge plan, make you a pawn like everyone else and the rest of your friends. When the time was right he would knock both you and Joker off the face of this Earth. Yes… that sounded like a justifiable plan…at least it did for now…

#persona 5 x reader #persona 5 akechi #akechi x reader #goro akechi #persona 5 #persona 5 imagines #persona 5 fanfiction #p5 akechi #anime x reader

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kerasines · 3 years

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GIF Tutorial for Beginners

People keep asking me to teach them how to make gifs and I end up writing them long confusing messages, so I figured maybe it’s time to just write up an actual clean tutorial instead! This is supposed to be for total beginners! (Or people who want to switch to a new process that I’ve curated and streamlined over 8 years of making gifs.) I’ll try to keep this as barebones as possible, and won’t include all the advanced stuff I usually add. I hope it’s easy enough to follow, and I’ll include some links at the end for more stuff. I really do think it’s better to make a few simple gifs before doing more complicated stuff though, just to get used to it!

There will be three sections in this tutorial: #1 Basics - How to make a gif in PS at all #2 Sharpen - How to use sharpen/denoise filters in an easy way #3 Colouring - Just a few very basic adjustment layers

What you need:

A video (most common formats should work, although .mkv doesn’t always)

Photoshop (I use PS CC 2018 - this one because I'm morally opposed to Adobe’s subscription model - but versions aren’t super different from each other)

In the end, you should hopefully be able to make something like this:

This is gonna be so long. Sorry. You can make a gif with just part #1! The rest is just to make it look better.

#1 Basics

If any of the tools/functions aren’t where they should be for you, your best bet is googling it, you might need to change something in your preferences!

Make sure to save your PS file... often. PS has a tendency to crash, especially on laptops.

First, you need to get the video file. I recommend a shorter video, a few minutes long, if it’s longer you might want to cut it into shorter parts beforehand. This is just because PS’s video import tool sucks.

I chose the Butter MV, specifically Jungkook’s body roll at 1:24 because that’s what I want to look at for the duration of this tutorial. No further questions, thanks.

1. Open PS, go to File > Import > Video Frames to Layers

2. In the little pop-up, choose the part of the video that you want to gif. This will import every frame of the video into PS as a layer, so it has to be a relatively short part, or it’ll take ages (and gifs can’t be that big anyway). Now you can also see why it’s almost impossible to select the correct part if the video is too long.

The little controls at the bottom are for trimming, the one in the middle just for the preview. Make sure “Make Frame Animation” is selected! Then click OK.

3. Now you have your layers, and you have a frame animation! On the right are your layers, that’s where we’ll apply the colouring etc. later on. On the bottom, that’s your timeline or frame animation - that’s what the gif will be in the end! So if you delete frames, the layers will still be there, but they won’t show up in the gif. If you click on a frame, you can see the little eye checkmark on the layer that’s currently visible.

4. The timeline controls at the bottom that are relevant right now: set to “forever” so the gif will loop, you can play the animation with the play button, and you can delete the selected frame(s). The number on each frame is the speed of the gif, depending on the video I usually set it to 0.05 or 0.06 (photoshop lies to you when you play the animation, the only way to test this is to open the finished gif, preferably on tumblr or wherever you want to upload it).

5. As you can see, the animation starts a bit before the actual part that I want, so go ahead and delete all the frames in the animation that you don’t want! You can delete the corresponding layers too if you want, to make the PS file smaller, but it has no influence on the gif. (Hold Shift to select multiple frames as usual)

6. Next, we’re gonna crop the gif however we want! You can do this with the crop tool in the left sidebar, but with gifs like this where there’s a lot of moving parts, I sometimes just use the selection tool in the left sidebar, like so:

When you click on different frames, the selection stays, and you can check to make sure Jungkook doesn’t suddenly go out of frame if you crop it like that!

At this point, make sure the selection/crop isn’t smaller than you want the gif to be! For tumblr, what matters is the width (in pixels) of gifs. In the end, the width dimensions on tumblr should be 540px (1 gif per row), 268px (2 gifs per row), or 177/178px (3 gifs per row). Anything else will lead to very shitty resizing!

For this gif I’m going full sized, meaning 540px wide, so I made sure my selection isn’t smaller than that.

Then just go to Image > Crop, and it’s done!

7. Check to see if this is what you want, then resize: go to Image > Image Size to resize the picture. Make sure the little “link” between Width and Height is active (to keep the same aspect ratio), then set the width to 540px or whatever you chose. I always set the resample option to Bicubic.

Once that’s done, set the zoom to 100% right above the timeline, to see what it really looks like.

Almost done! A little note about the sizing: width is the important part for tumblr, but if you want to make a whole gif set (especially with more than 1 gif per row!!!) make sure to make all the gifs the same height, otherwise they won’t line up and tumblr will do whatever it wants.

I ended up making mine 540 x 400 and ended up with this:

8. Time to save the gif!! Go to File > Export > Save for Web (OR just use the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + Alt + S) (or whatever it is on Mac).

In the pop-up, you can change things about the gif, but most things should already be the way you want it (Image size, Looping option forever). Selective should be the default, just like the rest.

You can choose between Pattern and Diffusion, some gif makers swear on one or the other, I go back and forth.

On the bottom left, you can see the size of your gif. Keep an eye on that! I believe Tumblr allows every single gif to be up to 10mb, but I try to keep mine under 5mb or close to it, because I think tumblr adds compression if it gets closer to 10mb?? Anyway back in my day you couldn’t upload anything over 1mb. You’ll never know our struggles.

Then just save it, and that’s it, you made a gif! Well done!! Here’s the end result:

#2 Sharpen

There are countless ways out there to make gifs as smooth and clean as possible! Here I’ll show you the easiest way, but it also provides a good basis for other methods. The main difficulty is that you you need to sharpen the layers, but you don’t want to 100 layers one by one. So what we’re gonna do is convert the layers into a Smart Object, which functions as one layer!

1. Convert the frame animation timeline to a video timeline with the little button right underneath on the left:

It should look like this, and I’m sorry but I can’t explain this one because I’m not an expert here, but you can just ignore it:

2. Select all layers: Select > All Layers, or just manually.

Then right click on the layers > Convert to Smart Object. Now there’s only one layer left, but don’t worry, the frames are still there!

3. De-noise! It reduces noise, takes away some of that grain. More necessary in some videos. It also makes it less sharp, so I do this one first. Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise

My default settings are, Strength: 6, Preserve Details: 60, Reduce Color Noise: 45, Sharpen Details: 25, Remove JPEG Artifact: No. But you can play around, especially with the strength, and see how the little preview looks. Don’t apply too much of it! Or it will look weirdly smooth with no details in the end.

4. File > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen.

Settings: I usually have mine at Amount: 500, Reduce Noise: 5, and Radius at either 0.2 or 0.3, depending on the video. I’ll actually do 0.3 here, because I find it a bit blurry otherwise. If you sharpen more, it can quickly get grainy.

The difference isn’t huge, but here’s a little before and after denoise & sharpen:

5. Technically you can just save it as a gif (save for web) as shown above now, or you can convert it back to a frame animation, which I’d recommend especially if you use certain other sharpening methods (I’ll show you how to convert it back at the end of the colouring part), but for now, let’s go straight to the next part:

#3 Colouring

Now, you CAN do this part right after part #1, still in frame animation, without a smart object. I prefer it like this because sometimes PS acts weird, but if you want to skip the smart object stuff: select all frames, and add the adjustment layers at the very top, above all the other layers. (It only affects selected frames; and it only affects the layers under it.)

The adjustment layers should be above the layer tray, and these are the ones we’ll use today: Brightness/Contrast, Curves, Vibrance, Color Balance, Selective Color.

All of these are optional! You can do one, or all, or any combination. This is just the very most basic for me to get a gif to a point that I like. I’d recommend sticking to these for a start, but once you get the hang of it, definitely feel free to play around! It’s fun! Every gif maker has different preferences here, too, so there’s tutorials for everything.

1. Curves: Just click Auto, tbh. You can play around, but Auto works fine for me as a start, just to brighten or darken some parts as a base.

2. Brightness/Contrast: Usually videos are a bit dark, and contrast can help to make it seem sharper AND cut down on gif size, so I usually just up both of them a bit (but not too much! Or it’ll look cheap). Here I put them at B: 19, C: 23

3. Vibrance: I love very vibrant and colourful gifs, so I usually up the vibrance (and sometimes the saturation). This one is already very vibrant, so I only put +5, but if you try to colour, say, a very moody tv show, this can help wonders, especially if you want to work with the colours more later.

If you prefer less vibrant gifs, you can also lower the values here!

4. Color Balance: getting a bit more complicated now. Often, videos will have a slight yellow or green or blue tint, and this is where you can correct that. This video is a bit yellow, so I added +17 Blue. It was still too warm, so i added -11 Cyan as well. This neutralized the yellow tint, but I wanted some of the reddish tone back, so I added -5 Magenta. I usually do a similar process like that, depending on the tone.

Instead of Midtones, you can also do this for Shadows and Highlights individually.

5. Selective Color: now this is the most complicated, but also the most fun to play around in my opinion! Be careful here, if you do something too extreme it’ll look like shit or make the gif super grainy. I some rough goals in mind here: make the blue hair as blue as possible, make their skin tone a bit less pale, and enhance the black and white (which I always do).

You choose a colour at the top, and then add or subtract cyan/magenta/yellow/black values for that colour.

Skin tone: yellow and red. For this gif, I just added black to both, making them darker. Sometimes, if you change one or both those colours for a different part of the gif (for example, if I wanted to make the background less yellow, I’d subtract yellow from the yellows - but then I’d add yellow to the reds, to make the skin tone natural again.)

Blue hair: Just ramp up the cyan for the blues. Be careful with putting anything to +100, but here it’s already so bright that it should be fine. His roots are more purple, so I changed the magentas by adding cyan and black, and subtracting magenta and yellow. It’s not super clean, but fine for our purposes.

Black/white: depending on the gif, I often either add or subtract black to the whites. Adding makes the highlights less blinding, a bit darker, and flatter (I like to do that if one side of the face is bright white in the sunlight, for example). Subtracting creates contrast, makes it brighter, can wash it out. It can also lessen the gif size, and here it’s mostly just the tracksuit instead of important details, so I subtracted black. For the blacks, I almost always just add a bit of black, to make it more intense. Just like adding contrast, this can make the gif seem sharper and less grainy.

And done!

6. You could just save it as gif now, but as I said, I prefer to convert it back to frame animation timeline first, if only because I like to let it play through before I save it, and it works better for me there than in the video timeline.

Select all frames, then click the little menu on the top right of the video timeline > Convert Frames > Flatten Frames into Clips

7. When you scroll down to the bottom of the layers now, the old smart object + adjustment layers should be at the bottom, under all the new layers. Delete the old ones, we don’t need them anymore.

8. Convert the timeline back to frame animation, by clicking the little button at the bottom left of the video timeline:

9. Click on the menu top right of the timeline again > Make Frames from Layers

10. Now, just some potential cleaning left to do. Sometimes, there’s a doubled or empty frame or layer at the beginning or end, just delete those as necessary. The timing of the frames is probably off, too, just select all frames and set the delay time to 0.05 (or whatever).

Now your done! Save as gif, and you should get this:

I included some bonus links and tips after this but tumblr ate that whole part so I guess it’s going into a separate post. (Here is is)

Anyway, I tried to make this as easy to follow as possible for beginners, but feel free to send me an ask for clarification anytime. Hope this helps, now go make gifs and have fun!!

#photoshop #tutorial #gif tutorial #ps tutorial #btsgif #*#*tutorial #this took so much longer than i expected i'm not giffing for at least a week now

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eokaku · 6 years

Photo

wow i told myself i’d at least finish one drawing before october ended

#traditional #ocs #original #inktober #is over #kagami #i’ll upload a better version later #probably #maybe

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immaturityofthomasastruc · 3 years

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IOTA Reviews: Gang of Secrets

Well... I'll give this episode one thing. It's better than what we got from both “Truth” and “Lies”, and it did do one of the things I hoped the writers would tackle this season. That's not saying much, but I'll take what I can get.

Let's get into the fourth (chronologically the third) episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fourth season: Gang of Secrets

We start off right after an Akuma battle, and while Cat Noir is eager for their victory fist bump, Ladybug seems to be on edge, insisting that they go on patrol. Cat Noir thinks of a place that they can relax at without talking... and he chooses to take Ladybug to see a romantic comedy.

We're not even a minute in, people, and it already looks like Ladybug is considering using her authority as Guardian to take away Cat Noir's Miraculous.

Ladybug goes on a brief tangent summarizing what happened with Luka (which conveniently happens to reflect the events of the movie), and naturally isn't happy with the movie. Gee, it's almost like Cat Noir's plan was a bad idea. He seriously tries the whole “pretend to yawn as an excuse to put his arm around Ladybug” trick, so you can't tell me he didn't have romantic intentions here.

Why Kagami couldn't accept Adrien's “true self” is beyond me.

After storming out of the movie theater, Cat Noir tries to emphasize with Ladybug (key word being “tries”) by going on about how “he knows what a broken heart is like”. At least he didn't ask if she was single now. Ladybug decides to go for a swim, but we cut back to Marinette's house, with Ladybug in her aqua form, implying she went to the pool while still transformed. And here's a big problem with the episode. In theory, I like the idea of Marinette stressing over her new responsibilities, as it could lead to some interesting plotlines. The problem is that when we get something like that in this episode, it's played entirely for laughs. At one point, Alya mentions hearing Marinette crying in the bathroom because of the stress she's been going through. And instead of being a dramatic scene, she just runs out in some Groucho Marx glasses for some reason, because according to the writers, we're supposed to laugh at Marinette suffering from a potential mental breakdown.

This just raises several questions about the way we're supposed to treat Marinette's behavior in this episode. Are we supposed to take this seriously? Not completely, because of how a lot of the “jokes” in the first act of the episode revolve around Marinette's anxiety being driven up to eleven. Are we supposed to see all of this as a joke? Not completely, because the end of the episode is when the writers decide to take Marinette's inner demons seriously. It leads to a very conflicting picture the episode is trying to paint with the way Marintte's conflict is portrayed.

We then cut to what seems to be the only thing the writers like to do with this character now, Alya acting like has control over Marinette's love life.

Of course those are the only pictures Alya got of Marinette.

Uh... Alya? Honey? Have you even considered the fact that maybe Marinette didn't tell you about Luka because that's none of your damn business??? What gives you the right to know every single detail about your friend's life? I understand that you're a hardcore Adrienette shipper (and an unintentional metaphor for how obsessed the writers are with the Love Square), but why would Marinette be obligated to tell you about Luka?

I know that I asked Marinette if she told Alya about Luka in my “Truth” review, but that was because she continued to force the belief that Marinette still liked Adrien onto her. Yeah, I'm still confused as to why Marinette didn't tell Alya, but the difference is that I was more confused at her not explaining it, and felt it would have made the conflict in the New York special a lot easier. I don't think Marinette has to tell Alya, I just think it would make some things easier between them with how much Alya wants Adrienette to be canon. Marinette has no obligation to tell Alya anything about who she's dating. What goes on in someone's love life is a private matter, and we'll see that Alya has no regards for privacy.

Alya, along with Juleka, Rose, Mylene, and Alix, devises a plan to give Marinette a friendship bracelet to show their support for her. And as usual, Alix has the simple idea to talk to Marinette about what's going on with her, and of course, she's ignored. Sorry, Alix, but this is an Alya episode, where smart choices don't fly here.

We cut back to Marinette's room where we get a pretty good scene where Marinette confides to Tikki about how she knows she has no chance of having a love life. She points out how she had to end things with Luka because of her secrets, and knows that even if she worked up the courage to talk to Adrien, she couldn't do anything because of the same secrets. She can't tell her parents or friends about her secrets and is forced to lie to everyone all the time. The voice actress gives a good performance, and the animators did a good job rendering the red eyes Marinette gets from crying.

And then we get back to the stupid stuff, where Marinette decides to transform into Ladybug and demands Hawkmoth (even though he's Shadowmoth at this point) show himself. This is really just an excuse for the Girl Squad to barge into Marinette's room, where Rose sees the dollhouse Marinette uses to hide the Miracle Ball. Marinette quickly runs back in and tries to hide the the Miracle Ball from her friends, who confront her about her “problem”.

No, real friends respect boundaries and don't demand to know every single detail about someone's life. They understand that there are secrets they don't have the right to know about. If Alya found out that Alix still needs to sleep with a nightlight and told everyone, would you really be surprised if she got mad at Alya for exposing this secret of hers? Right now, Marinette is clearly uncomfortable about telling her friends about a secret she has, and rather than understand she doesn't want to, they just keep pressing on, and don't care how unhappy she looks.

Unsurprisingly, Marinette tells them all to get out, saying she doesn't want them as friends anymore. Okay, so we're in every salt fic ever written now. Again, we get a good scene where Marinette feels remorseful for what she said (as understandable as it was), while the girls leave with their heads down.

Shadowmoth sends out an Akuma for the friendship bracelet, and because the object had personal meaning to all of them, Alya, Juleka, Rose, Mylene, and Alix all get akumatized into their previous Akuma forms, Lady Wifi, Reflekta (yet again), Princess Fragrance, Horrificator, and Timebreaker respectively. Shadowmoth calls them the “Gang of Secrets”. But they were akumatized because of secrets. Wouldn't a more accurate name be something like “The Honesty Brigate” or “Truth Troop?”

When I reviewed “Felix”, I had talked about how the motivations for the three Punishers weren't didn't reflect their Akuma forms, which were twisted versions of what they were feeling like at the time. While the same thing applies here (as well as “Heroes' Day”, now that I think about it, though I always thought it was like a drawback to Scarletmoth's powers), the titular Gang of Secrets is actually a pretty good lineup.

I think my main problem in “Felix” is that we didn't get to see the three Akumas working together much because the writers were trying to prioritize Felix as the primary threat of the episode and failed miserably. Here, we get to see a lot of interesting combos and strategies I never really thought about. Lady Wifi uses her powers to freeze some civilians while Timebreaker skates by and absorbs their energy for her skates. Reflekta zaps some other civilians while Princess Fragrance sprays them with her perfume to brainwash them into looking for Marinette, even if it’s the only time this episode that we get to hear “At your service, Princess Fragrance~!”. Horrificator intentionally goes around scaring people while growing in size, acting as the muscle (even though she doesn't do anything in this episode). They all work surprisingly well together, acting like Ladybug and Cat Noir's own Sinister Six.

After making a new safe to hide the Miracle Ball, Lady Wifi breaks into Marinette's room again, so Trixx, the Fox Kwami, uses his power to create a mirage to distract her. But like when Plagg used his Cataclysm in “Style Queen”, it has a little drawback.

The funny thing is that this doesn't even crack the top 5 in terms of weirdest things to happen to the Eiffel Tower in this show.

We cut to Adrien's room so the show can remind the audience he exists before he transforms into Cat Noir. The two don't meet up in person, but Ladybug tells Cat Noir to keep Timebreaker busy so she doesn't travel back in time while Ladybug goes after Lady Wifi. Of course, she doesn't have the friendship bracelet, but that wasn't Ladybug's plan in the first place.

Her actual plan is talking to Lady Wifi in an attempt to get Alya to break free of Shadowmoth's control. It's short, but it's a nice scene, with Ladybug explaining to Alya that even though they can't know everything about each other, they're still friends. So against all odds, Alya manages to reject the bond with Shadowmoth.

Oh yeah, it's not like we saw Chloe reject an Akuma in “Miraculer”, right? And Chrismaster giving up his akumatized object for Ladybug to purify? That didn't count either. Alya is clearly the first person to ever do this, and this is why you should immediately accept what happens later on.

Alya tells Ladybug where the Akuma is, and in response, Ladybug gives Alya the Fox Miraculous, which she uses to transform into Rena Rouge... even though she was already benched in “Feast” for endangering herself by uploading a video about the history of the Guardians to the internet, just like how Queen Bee and Ryuko were benched earlier for similar reasons, and the latter only appeared again because Ladybug wanted to get Kagami away from Adrien. Because I guess we're just going to ignore one of the biggest plotpoints of “Miracle Queen” now.

The other Akumas have Cat Noir at their mercy, so Rena Rouge uses her Mirage to create an illusion of Marinette to distract them. Timebreaker goes off to chase the illusion, and while Horrificator, Princess Fragrance, and Reflekta are about to take Ladybug's Miraculous, Rena Rouge and Cat Noir are the ones to break the object. Overall, a really clever climax to the episode.

So after Alya returns her Miraculous to Ladybug, we cut back to Marinette apologizing to her friends, who never apologize for invading her privacy. And while she mentions Luka, Marinette suddenly talks about how hard is to confess her feelings for Adrien, something that was never mentioned in this episode, because the writers are desperately trying to encourage the audience to ship the Love Square again brutally shooting down Lukanette and Adrigami. And after all this, Alya goes back up after everyone else leaves because she can just tell Marinette has another secret. How does she know this?

youtube

Okay, fine, Alya can be supportive of Marinette, and even her worst moments like the New York special were motivated by what she thought would make Marinette happy. A little misguided, and yeah, her teasing can be annoying at times, but she's ultimately there to help push Marinette to be honest with her feelings. “Reporter” is stretching it a little. No matter what the show likes to say, Alya isn't a good reporter. She barely verifies her sources and just posts things online. I'm sorry, but the Ladyblog is basically the superhero equivalent to TMZ. Alya probably doesn't even know who Joseph Pulitzer or Edward R. Murrow are, because rather than reporting the news to the public, she just wants to find things that will get her clicks on her website. Alya's biggest flaw as a character is that she is incredibly impulsive, but like everything else in the show, this flaw is never acknowledged, and is basically rewarded. Why do I say that? Well...

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this scene. On the one hand, it's very well acted, and the interaction genuinely highlights Marinette and Alya's friendship. Before she tells Alya, Marinette is just opening her heart out to her friend, and the grievances are played completely seriously. Even the reaction Alya gives when she finds out is very subdued, simply showing her shocked face before she gives Marinette a hug, with no dialogue. It's a very profound moment, and it's arguably one of the best in the entire series. Even the ending card doesn't show an action scene, but rather, it continues to focus on the hug while the Kwamis watch.

And thankfully, the episode doesn't end with the standard upbeat “Duh dun dun dun dunnnn, DA DA DA DA~!” track that almost every episode, no matter how depressing, usually ends with. It's just a really great moment, and a good way to end the episode... on its own.

When you think about previous episodes, like what I've mentioned with Alya, it's just strange that despite all the times she has shown herself to be bad at keeping secrets (like the aforementioned scene in “Feast”, posting a picture of her and Cat Noir kissing on the Ladyblog without her consent, and invading her privacy in this very episode, demanding to know her secrets), Marinette suddenly decides to give Alya a chance. Even worse, she had just said that she wasn't going to force her to tell her anything, which seemed like a strong character moment for her, but then the writers go back on the lesson and have Marinette do what Alya was trying to do the whole episode and tell her she's Ladybug.

Sure, Ladybug told Alya she was the Guardian and to keep it a secret earlier, but this lesson in keeping secrets should have stuck when she first became Rena Rouge in Season 2. I don't have a problem with Alya being Marinette's confidant (lord knows she needs one at this point), but I just don't think Alya is ready for this. It's the same thing with what happened with Adrien in “Syren”, by saying him immaturely threatening to quit being Cat Noir because of Ladybug's secrets was meant to show how he was ready to meet Master Fu even though it showed how selfish he was and was anything but ready. How is an episode where Alya tries to force Marinette into telling her everything she's keeping a secret meant to show she's ready to learn Ladybug's identity. Maybe if this episode kickstarted a character arc for Alya where she learned about why people keep secrets and that getting the truth isn't the right thing to do, culminating in a later episode where Alya learns Ladybug's identity, I'd be fine with that. As it is, this just had some poor timing and was the result of the writers not really thinking this through.

I guess I'm still interested to see where this goes, and how Marinette and Alya's friendship will change as a result of this. Maybe Alya can help Marinette get away to transform, or worry about her safety after an Akuma fight. Although the worst case scenario is that if Cat Noir finds out about this, he'll use it as an excuse to bitch and moan about how Ladybug is still keeping secrets from him and of course, she'll be blamed for whatever happens as a result of that.

Though I can't help but feel like I'm forgetting to mention something. Wasn't there someone else who wanted to know the truth about Marinette?

OH YEAH, I FORGOT ABOUT HIM JUST LIKE THE WRITERS DID.

This is what really kills the episode for me, just how it goes back on everything established in “Truth”. The whole reason Marinette broke up with Luka in the first place (which motivated the conflict of this episode) was because she realized keeping secrets from him wouldn't lead to a healthy relationship. As much as it pained her, it was a necessary evil Marinette had to do in order to protect her identity.

But now you're telling me that it's okay for Marinette to tell Alya her secret? WHY? How is this any different from what happened with Luka? Like Alya, Luka also wanted to known the truth, but the only difference was the way he confronted Marinette. He calmly asked her about what she was hiding, and even though she couldn't tell him, he respected her boundaries, and they both managed to end things on good terms.

Alya, who has a history of exposing secrets to the public, who barged into Marinette's room and demanded she tell her all of her secrets, is more trustworthy than Luka? This is why I don't buy the writers making Alya Marinette's confidant. I get that they want to give her some more story presence after how she had mostly faded into the background in Season 3, but this just isn't the way to do it.

Barring that, what did I think of the episode?

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Yeah, it's just... it's just okay at best, mediocre at worst. There were a handful of decent moments in the episode, and some creative action scenes. Even stuff like Cat Noir's forced movie date and Alya violating Marinette's privacy isn't anything new, and unlike other episodes, the latter actually seems to apologize for that. The problem, as I already stated, was the ending. I think maybe the ending could have worked if Alya had found out Marinette's identity, but decided to keep it a secret. That way, it would make for an interesting dynamic, with Alya learning to be more responsible while secretly helping come up with ways for Marinette to get away to transform.

But as it stands, the episode is alright, but mostly forgettable if not for the ridiculous ending.

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