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thmgau · 1 year

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CHAPTER 6 - BANANA STRIKE BACK [wattpad link]

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Coming to consciousness, Cherry found herself in a near-empty room, tied up in a chair. The last thing they remembered were last night’s events, when the bananas got them. She had thrown her sword to save Leslie, but got caught by the bananas herself. They knew Leslie was a kind soul. Cherry knew they’d be back to save her.

But right now, Cherry was gonna have to deal with being tied up in a really uncomfortable chair.

“Maybe I can try to untie myself..” they thought. As they fiddled with the rope tying their wrists together, the door handle jingled a bit. Cherry stopped what she was doing instantly as Pim entered the room.

“Well, well, well.. look at what we have here!” Pim said, spinning the Bananainator in his hands. “Alright, asshole. Cut to the chase. Just do the thing.” “Oh, you mean the thing where I turn you into a banana? I wasn’t planning on doing that to you... yet.”

Cherry raised an eyebrow. “Yet?”

“You see,” Pim hummed. “You’re here as bait.” “Bait?” “I know you have friends. Remember when you all came to eat here just 2 days ago? You all were wearing those little necklaces.” “What do the necklaces have to do with anything anyway?” “Friends often wear matching necklaces to symbolize their friendship. At least, that’s how it is where I’m from.” “Does everyone where you’re from wear stupid banana costumes too or are you the outlier there?”

Pim gasped, as if he were offended. “A COSTUME? You think this is a COSTUME?”

“What else would it be?” “Uh.. my SKIN?” “You’re.. a banana?” “Well, half-banana, if we’re going off technicalities. My mom’s a human. My dad’s a banana.” “I don’t even want to think about the logistics of that- hold on a minute. Don’t you run a banana restaurant?” “Yes? Cannibalism’s legal where I’m from, it’s fine.” “Alright, not gonna question the morality of that. Why am I here as ‘bait’ anyhow?” “Oh, c’mon, I just went over that. You’re here as bait so I can turn you & your friends into bananas! Simple as that.” “Why bananas, though? Like, couldn’t you just kill us?” “Why would I kill a potential employee? That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.” “..Potential employee?” “I’m sure you’ve noticed the lack of employees here, yeah? I turn people into bananas so they work here at the restaurant & then I can take over capitalism!”

Cherry was dumbfounded. “...what?”

“You heard me. I’m going to take over capitalism!” “..first of all, you can’t take over capitalism. Second of all, why take over capitalism? Capitalism sucks bad, dude.” “Why do you want to know?” “Because what the fuck else am I supposed to do?” “Oh, I don’t know.. stay silent, maybe?” “Whatever. Better than talking to you, anyway.”

“Rude.” Pim crossed his arms. “Not like you’ll be needing to speak for much longer. I’m about to let the bananas out into the city. Soon enough your little friends will be crawling their way back to this place. Better get comfortable!”

With that, Pim left the room & shut the door, leaving Cherry alone to her own devices.

Leslie had stayed awake all night long.

Energy drinks & coffee mugs were scattered all across their apartment. One of those mini-whiteboards was on the coffee table, with incomprehensible writing & sketches on it. Various other papers laid around as well, with even more incomprehensible writings. Its laptop was sitting on the couch, with multiple tabs open all to the varying degree of “how to fight bananas”.

Leslie had to get Cherry back. It was racking its brain with any ideas - anything at all - to get its friend back. They were afraid Juniper, Nora, & Kalani wouldn’t believe them. Cherry getting kidnapped by bananas? It was absurd!

As they scribbled something down on another piece of paper, an alarm went off on their phone. They pulled out their phone to check it.

Class was in 15 minutes.

“SHIT!” it yelled, grabbing its laptop & the charger in a frenzy. They ran out of their apartment faster than they ever had.

“So, what’s the plan?” “Uh.. I dunno.”

Juniper & Nora were relaxing in Kalani’s apartment. Juniper was sprawled across the couch, while Nora sat in the recliner. Kalani was hovering (not literally) over the couch, with a cup of coffee in her hand.

“I guess we could watch TV.” Nora shrugged. “Not like we have classes today anyway.” “Sounds like a plan to me.” Juniper grabbed the TV remote & flipped the TV on, flipping through the channels.

“Have any of you heard from Cherry or Leslie lately?” “No. Last I saw them was yesterday at the mall.” “Same here. Usually Les sends us a good morning text, but.. nothing.” “That’s strange.

Juniper stopped flipping the channels. Ze had landed on the news station.

“The news? Really?” “Leslie was gonna break into that banana restaurant, weren’t they? Maybe they’re on the news.” “Alright.”

The news reporter appeared on screen, along with some footage of bananas with arms & legs walking around.

“Good morning, Cincinnati! Today we have some concerning news for you. Starting around 3:47 AM last night, people have reported seeing human-sized bananas walking around the city. Most of them seem to not be doing much harm, but others have reported that the bananas have broken into homes & buildings. We recommend you don’t go out today, & lock your doors, but if you must then please stay safe.”

Kalani, Nora, & Juniper looked at each other.

“What?” “I’m as confused as you are.”

Kalani thought about it for a second.

“The book!” he exclaimed.

Juniper & Nora turned to look at him.

“The book?” “The book said we had to ‘maintain the balance between good & evil’! Maybe this is our chance to do that!” “Oh, you’re right!” “Let me go get the book! Hold on!”

Kalani rushed to the other room.

“You really think someone would write a prophecy about fighting bananas?” “Maybe the bananas are just a stepping stone to something bigger. Something more dangerous.” “Like what?” “I dunno. I’ve never been a prophesied hero before.”

Kalani ran back into the room, book in hand. She opened it up & flipped through a couple of the pages.

“What are you looking for?” “How to get back into those sick outfits.” “You forgot already?” “Hey, not everyone has a perfect memory like you.” “My memory isn’t perfect!” “Didn’t you memorize 150 digits of Pi once?” “I did. Not anymore.” “Fair. How do we get back into the outfits?” “Just pull on the necklace.”

At once, all three of them pulled on their necklaces. They were in their magical girl outfits once again.

“Alright! What’s the plan now?” “I guess we go & find the source of the bananas.” “But where is the source of the bananas?” “I don’t know! That’s why we have to find it!” “Let’s go do that then!”

“AAGH! SOMEONE HELP!”

As Leslie rushed to class, they heard a scream ring out from their classroom.

They swung the doors open. Natalie was the only human there, cowering in the corner. A couple of bananas were surrounding her. Leslie had no idea how the bananas ended up getting to college campus, but nonetheless, it knew what to do.

Pulling on their necklace, they got back into their magical girl outfit, with their scythes in hand. They ran up & sliced the bananas in half. Natalie looked at Leslie with relief in her face.

“Oh, thank you- Leslie?” “Um.. hey.” “Out of everyone who could have saved me, I was not expecting it to be you.” “Well, y’know.. hold on, what are you wearing?”

Now that Natalie wasn’t surrounded by bananas, Leslie could see her outfit clearly. It was similar to the magical girl outfits, but everything that was white about the outfit was now black, & Natalie’s tie, skirt, gloves, & shoes were purple. She was also holding a small hammer in her hand, very obviously painted over with purple paint.

“Oh, uh..” Natalie stammered. “This was.. supposed to be a surprise. I was gonna rob a Walmart today after class, & you & your magical girl friends would show up, & I was gonna have a cool villain monologue &-” “Is that a.. squeaky hammer as a weapon?” “UM. NOO. IT’S A NORMAL HAMMER.”

Leslie took the hammer out of Natalie’s hands & hit it against the wall. It made a squeaky sound.

“Yup. Squeaky hammer.” Leslie yawned, handing the hammer back to Natalie. “Well- it’s all I had! Shut up!” “Ok, whatever you say.” “Anyways, what’s up with those banana guys?”

Leslie rubbed its eyes. “Um.. so Cherry & I broke into that new banana restaurant last night &-” “What new banana restaurant?” “Y’know.. Banana Man’s Banana Land?” “Haven’t heard of it.” “Oh well. We broke in there last night & found out that the owner was, like, turning people into bananas, & then we had to fight off the bananas & then Cherry got taken by the bananas &-”

Leslie yawned in the middle of their sentence.

“& I’ve, um.. been up all night trying to come up with a plan to get her back.” “You pulled an all-nighter? Jeez, no wonder you’re tired.”

Natalie spun the squeaky hammer around in her hands. “How about we make a truce? For now.” “A.. truce?” “I can’t fight you in the state you’re currently in. Not to mention, the bananas.. So we’re forming a truce!” “Um... ok.” “Alright! Let’s go, trucie!”

“Did I ever tell you guys my sibling’s coming back to Cincinnati?” “They are?”

Juniper & Kalani were in the back of Nora’s car, driving around. They were still looking for the source of the bananas walking around the city. They thought it would be nice to have some conversation so it’s not boring.

“Yea, they said somethin’ about dropping out of college.” Nora explained. “I get it.” Juniper nodded. “College can be stressful sometimes.” “When are they comin’ back?” Kalani asked. “Oh, sometime tomorrow. I’ll have to go pick them up from the airport.” “Ah. Good luck.” “Thanks-”

Nora was interrupted by her stomach growling. “Oh, maybe we should get some breakfast, huh?” “How about we go back to that banana restaurant? The food there was pretty g-” “THE BANANA RESTAURANT!” Kalani perked up. “That might be where the bananas are coming from!” “Oh, you’re right!! How did we not think of it before?!” “To the banana restaurant we go!”

It had probably been a few hours. Cherry couldn’t tell how long she had been here, & everything hurt a lot. Their limbs were starting to go numb due to the lack of blood flow.

“Oh, that’s it!” she grumbled to herself. “I’m getting myself outta here!”

They attempted to untie the rope binding their wrists together. It was kind of difficult, considering they couldn’t see what they were doing. After a couple of minutes, Cherry had successfully freed her wrists!

“Finally!” she sighed, shaking her hands to get the blood flowing again. “Alright, now I gotta get the legs free.. let’s do this.”

Once their hands felt normal again, they went to work on untying the ropes around their ankles. It was easier this time, now that Cherry could actually see what she was doing. She got the knot untied in no time.

Finally, after who knows how long, Cherry was able to stand up! Sitting in a chair all tied up in a skirt was incredibly uncomfortable. They pulled on their tie & poofed back into the hoodie they were wearing before.

“Alrighty..” she stretched. “Let’s see if there’s any way outta this stupid room.”

Now that they weren’t tied up in a chair, Cherry could get a good look around the room. There was a door, but Cherry assumed there was a good chance it was locked, & she did not want to attempt to lockpick anything again.

There was a desk to the side, covered in old newspapers & diagrams. Cherry walked up to it, hoping it could give them some clues on how to escape. She grabbed one of the newspapers. It was from sometime in 2019, based in a place that Cherry had never heard of.

“BANANA ECONOMY IN SHAMBLES!” the front page of the newspaper read.

“Banana economy?” Cherry wondered. This intrigued her, so she kept reading.

The newspaper talked about the economic crash of the banana society. Cherry didn’t even know there was a banana society.

There was another newspaper right under it, published about a week after the first newspaper. The headline on this one read, “HUMAN ECONOMY DOING FINE.”

“Why are bananas getting news on how humans are doing?”

Cherry thought back to what Pim had said about himself early.

“My mom’s a human. My dad’s a banana.”he had said. That means Pim could easily pass as a human, which he had! Cherry & the others had simply just thought he was wearing a banana costume.

“He must have moved here because our economy was better..” Cherry mumbled. “Still not sure what he means by ‘taking over capitalism,’ though.”

At that moment, they heard the door opening. Cherry quickly threw the newspaper back on the desk as Pim entered the room, Bananainator in hand.

“HEY!” Pim yelled, aiming the Bananainator at Cherry. “How’d you escape?!” “You kind of suck ass at tying knots, dude.” Cherry replied, tugging on her necklace & transforming back into Hero Mode.

“Ohh, you’re gonna pay for this!” “I’d like to see you try!”

Despite all the bananas walking around the city, it was actually quite a nice day. There was a mild breeze, but it was sunny, & everyone knows sunny weather is the perfect time for motorcycle rides.

Leslie sat on the back of Natalie’s motorcycle, fighting off any bananas that got close (which was few, due to the speed of the motorcycle). The velocity of the motorcycle was enough to keep Leslie from passing out.

Earlier in the classroom, after the truce was made, Natalie mentioned that she had a motorcycle they could use to get to the banana restaurant & save Cherry. As Leslie’s only other form of transport at the moment was walking, they agreed to hitch a ride on the motorcycle.

“So.. you ride this motorcycle to class?” “Of course! Way faster than walking.” “Alright.”

It was silent for a second.

“It’s a nice motorcycle.” Leslie said. “Thanks!” Natalie grinned. “Got it for my 18th.” “Sweet.”

Natalie pulled up into a parking spot at Banana Man’s Banana Land & stopped the motorcycle. “We’re here.” she nodded, hopping off of the motorcycle seat.

As Leslie hopped off of the motorcycle as well, another car pulled up into the parking lot as well. Leslie recognized it as Nora’s car instantly, due to the parking ticket on the windshield wiper that Nora had flipped over on its back & wrote “NORA’S CAR” on.

Nora, Juniper, & Kalani exited the car & spotted Leslie.

“Les!!” the three of them exclaimed, running over to it. “Oh, hey!” Leslie waved. “Are you ok?” Juniper asked. “Yea, I’m.. I’m fine.” Leslie said, yawning.

“Your friend here stayed up all night long.” Natalie leaned against her motorcycle. “They never would have gotten here if it weren’t for me.”

“Jesus, Les. You must be exhausted.” “Wait a minute,” Nora glanced at Natalie. “Aren’t you the girl who stole our book yesterday & demanded to join us?” “Yea. That was me.” Natalie shrugged. “What are you gonna do about it?”

Nora, Juniper, & Kalani summoned their weapons.

“Oh.”

“Hey, wait,” Leslie said. “We have a truce.” “A truce?” “Yea, me & Leslie here formed a truce. Once we’re all done with this banana business, your group & I are back to being rivals.” “We’re rivals?” “Listen, I was gonna do this whole thing where I robbed a Walmart & had a big villain speech & it was gonna be cool!” “I see. Does this have anything to do with the almost-matching outfit?” “Yes. I made it myself, in fact!” “Oh, you did? That’s cool.” “Thanks. Self-taught.”

“Alright, enough small-talk.” Leslie stretched. “Cherry’s in that restaurant & we need to save her.” “Cherry’s in there?” “It’s a long story, but she’s in trouble.” “Well, we have no time to waste, then! Let’s go!”

Either it was the adrenaline or the fact that she would be turned into a banana if she fucked up here, but Cherry was handling her sword better. Not completely better, but it was fine for the time being.

Pim was attempting to shoot Cherry with the Bananainator, but they were blocking every shot with their sword.

“Why won’t you just give UP already?!” Pim yelled, firing another shot from the Bananainator “I don’t give up very easily.” Cherry responded, blocking the shot with her sword. “Plus, I’m a big fan of not being a banana.”

Pim fired a few more shots, but Cherry blocked all three of them, albeit barely. The two of them had been at this for a while, & Cherry was noticeably getting more & more worn out.

“You’re getting tired!” Pim grinned. “Might wanna take a rest for a second!” “& let my guard down? No thanks.” “You know, overworking yourself is very- OW!”

A hammer flew into the room, hitting Pim directly in the back of the head. It made a squeaky noise as it hit the ground.

“Who did that?!” he yelled, turning around. “That’s what you get, banana boy!”

There stood Natalie, with a grin on her face. Behind her stood Nora, Juniper, Kalani, & Leslie.

“You’re gonna PAY FOR THAT!” Pim turned his aim toward Natalie. “Try me, bitch!”

Pim fired a shot. Natalie ducked, along with everyone else, & hit the window in the main room, shattering it.

“OH, YOU-”

Natalie ran off before Pim could finish his sentence.

“HEY, WAIT! GET BACK HERE!”

Pim shoved past everyone else & ran up the stairs to chase after Natalie. The other 4 went down & over to Cherry.

“Cherry!!” Leslie smiled, embracing her. “Les! You came back!” “Of course I did! I spent all night trying to come up with a plan to save you!” “All night? Jesus, Les, we are getting you a nap after this is done.” “Speaking of.. this situation, we’ve got some fighting to do!” “Yeah! Let’s kick some banana ass!”

The group started heading up the stairs.

“So what’s the banana guy’s deal anyway?” “Oh, Pim? Turns out he’s using this restaurant as a front to take over capitalism. Also, that’s not a banana costume.” “He wants to take over capitalism? That’s not possible!” “That’s what I was saying!” “Are we just skimming over the part where you said he wasn’t wearing a banana costume?” “Oh, yea, his mom’s a human & his dad’s a banana.” “That sounds disgusting. & also genetically not possible.” “Don’t we share 50% of DNA with bananas?” “Yea, I guess so.”

They arrived back upstairs to the main area of the restaurant. Pim was trying to shoot Natalie with his Bananainator, but she was dodging every shot.

“WHY WON’T YOU STOP DODGING?!” “Why won’t you stop having bad aim?” “I- SHUT UP!”

The group looked toward each other.

“So what’s the plan?” Kalani asked. “He seems to rely on that Bananainator he has too much.” Cherry said. “If we can disarm him & break it, he won’t be able to fight back.” “What about the other, uh.. banana guys around?” “I dunno. I guess we just fend them off?” “Sounds good to me!”

Kalani aimed her wand at Pim, who was busy trying to hit Natalie with the Bananainator.

“Just as a warning, this is the first time I’ve ever used this thing.” “Some training before-hand would have been nice, wouldn’t it?” “Yeah.”

Kalani fired a magic blast at Pim. It hit him smack-right in the face.

“OW!” he hissed, turning his attention toward Kalani. He fired the Bananainator at Kalani, but Juniper slid in & blocked the beam with eir spear, sending it flying into the sky.

“So that’s how you wanna be, huh?” Pim scoffed. He snapped his fingers a couple times. “BACKUP! BAAAAACKUP!!!”

All at once, a few dozen bananas approached Pim. He pointed at the group. “Get them!” he commanded.

The bananas turned toward the group.

“Ah, shit, here we go again.” “Again?!” “Don’t worry about it.”

The group readied their weapons as the bananas raced toward them.

Cherry, despite being tired from blocking Pim’s attacks earlier, still had some fight left in them, & was slicing some bananas in half. Nora used her whip to push back some of the bananas, & even cut some of them. Leslie used its scythes to dice the banana in half. Juniper was stabbing bananas with pheir spear, & Kalani used his wand to send magic blasts at the bananas.

As Leslie sliced a banana in half, they noticed that Natalie was being surrounded by bananas. Pim had his Bananainator aimed at Natalie, & there was no way she could avoid it.

They had to act fast.

Pim had his finger on the trigger. Leslie ran over to where he was standing, scythes in hand. Its plan was to use one of its scythes to flick the Bananainator out of his hands. However, there was a rock on the ground & Leslie had tripped, their scythe cutting deep into Pim’s glove.

“OUCH!” he shrieked, dropping the Bananainator on the ground.

Leslie swiftly grabbed the Bananainator from the ground & rolled over, standing up. Pim noticed this very quickly.

“HEY!” he yelled. “Give that BACK!”

Leslie smiled as it threw the Bananainator into the ground as hard as it could, shattering the device into various pieces.

“NO!!” Pim screamed, running over to the now-broken Bananainator.

All of a sudden, all of the faceless bananas (the ones that weren’t dead, anyway) all transformed back into humans. They looked around, confused & unaware.

“Where am I?” “Why the fuck am I in a parking lot?” “How’d I get here??”

The group just kind of glanced at each other, not wanting to explain that everyone had just been turned into bananas.

“Uh.. don’t worry about it!” Juniper gave a thumbs up to everyone. “Just go home! Everything’s normal now.”

Everyone just shrugged & walked away.

Pim was grasping at the remains of his Bananainator. “My plan.. it’s RUINED!!” he sobbed. “Damn. That sounds like a skill issue.”

Pim glared at the group (+ Natalie), tears in his eyes.

“Just you wait until my BOYFRIEND hears about this! I’ll have my revenge on you, just you wait & see!!” Pim yelled, running away.

The group looked at each other.

“Well.. we did it.” “We did! Isn’t that neat?” “Yeah!”

“So, Natalie..” Leslie looked at her. “Does this mean our truce is over?” “Oh! Uh.. yeah! No more truce! From now on, I’ll be your worst enemy! Mwahahaha!!” “Alright, you have fun with that.” “See ya later, heroes!” Natalie chuckled, hopping on her motorcycle & riding off.

Cherry sighed, leaning against the wall of the building. “So... I guess we’re officially heroes then, huh?” “I.. guess so, yeah. We just kind of saved the world.” “Well, we didn’t save the world. We saved capitalism, which is frankly worse, but who cares?” “Let’s just ignore the capitalism part & say we saved the city, huh?” “Yeah. Let’s go with that. C’mon, let’s head home.” “Alright! Nap time!”

So, they all got back into Nora’s car & drove back to their dorms, with the thought of their heroic actions in the back of their minds. They had saved the day! But.. what would come next, they wondered?

They were sure it would be fine, whatever it was.

#thmgau #banana strike back

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kitkatopinions · 2 years

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Lie and Steal for the ask game?

Dude, I had to look this up because I've never heard of this ship before, but it's Sun x Ren aka apparently 'Lie and Steal' for the RWBY shipping ask game.

What I think works about the ship: Ren needs someone who can contrast his more quiet, contained, realistic personality - he needs a push sometimes. But he also needs someone who is patient and understanding and will see where he's coming from and respect his boundaries and Sun is great for that role. Sun needs someone grounded and logical to offset his 'go where the wind takes me,' impulse driven personality, but also someone who can appreciate his goofiness and his goodness and value what he brings to the table and Ren is great for that role. Also I feel like Sun has a type and that type is dark haired quiet cynical people, so hey, Ren fits that.

What season I think they were best in: So Ren and Sun never really talk, but I'm gonna say that the time they have the most potential is actually season one, before Sun got too deep into his feelings for Blake and before Ren got too deep into his feelings for Nora.

How I would get them together in canon: Ren in Vacuo decides that he really was right about them being way in over their heads and not knowing what they're doing after he thinks Jaune is literally dead. However because of everything that went down in Atlas, Ren starts having a really hard time trusting the authority of people like Winter, Theodore, or Ozpin. Due to that, he kind of settles into just doing his Hunter job and detaching himself from the others around. Enter Sun, who is in Vacuo and is also working as a Hunter. He's mourning what he thinks is the loss of Blake, the two bond over it (while Ren is also avoiding Nora who made it very clear she needs time to figure out who she is apart from him.) When Team RWBY and co return and the main group leaves Vacuo, Ren decides to stay behind, still not feeling like he's ready to be part of the whole 'save the world' mission. Sun tries to reassure him and get his confidence and belief in humanity at large back up, Ren starts loosening up and has Sun's back, and they wind up developing feelings by the time Ren sets off to join the rest of Team JNR again. Ren tells Sun he can't pursue anything immediately (still confused about his feelings for Nora) and Sun says that's cool with him and he might need time too (still confused about his feelings for Blake) but then they do the 'if we don't have anything else and our feelings for each other last by the time two-five years have passed, we should meet back up right here' trope.

How I would get them together in an AU or re-write: Okay, an entire AU where Ren and Nora go to Haven Academy instead of to Beacon, and they wind up on a team with Sun and Neptune. I can't think of a color that works but they can be Team WNNR (pronounced like 'Winner,' with W for Wukong.) They get along pretty well and Ren develops feelings for him almost right away, but doesn't really act on them.. But I feel like Ren would get frustrated by Sun's 'go with the flow' attitude, especially when he runs off to Beacon for the tournament early. Ren gets kind of passive aggressive, leading him and Sun to spend part of the night of the Beacon Dance off fighting in the corner. Eventually, Sun apologizes and they wind up moving on from it. During the Fall of Beacon though, Ren gets injured, and Sun decides he can't just leave and needs to stay and take care of his teammate (maybe in this version of things, I would have Nora become the Fall Maiden and kind of feel like she has to leave to go find Ozpin and join the fight against Cinder, idk, just something that makes it so that Ren has no one else available to look after him.) While Sun helps Ren recover, Sun starts developing feelings for him and confesses that he has them almost right away. Ren still can't make himself make a move right away, but Sun is patient, and Ren gets there eventually.

What struggles I think they’d have to work through: Mostly I think that Ren is a very hard-working person, and although he has a sense of humor, he's very serious about being a Hunter, and like I said before, I think he'd find Sun's 'go with the flow, I'm just here for adventure, it's cool if I run off for a couple months, right?' kind of behavior to be very frustrating at times, and... I don't really think he's wrong? So yeah, I think Sun would have to adjust a little if he and Ren wanted to make a relationship work.

Some songs that I can connect to this ship: The Promise, by Superfruit. Soap, the Oh Hellos.

Do I think they’d stay together: Yes! Sun is a full commitment for all time kind of person where only extreme circumstances could ever make him stop loving someone and be able to move on, and Ren is also a full commitment for all time kind of person where only extreme circumstances could ever make him stop loving someone and be able to move on, so I think even if they ever broke up they'd just get right back together again. XD

How I personally feel about this ship: Tbh until today, I had never once thought of this ship outside of knowing my sister ships the polyamorous relationship between Sun, Ren, and Neptune. I can definitely see the appeal, but it's not really something I'd seek out.

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “The Final Word”

Well, we made it to the finale, everyone, and if you're reading this it seems you've survived the watching of it too. Barely. To say that some questionable choices were made across these 20 minutes is... an understatement.

But before we delve into the episode, I want you to cast your mind back to November 7th, 2020. A horrible year that heralded a horrible RWBY volume. There, coming off the shaky writing of Volume 7, I posed a number of questions and concerns that the show needed to tackle, with the promise that we would return to these expectations in four months time. Now, here we are! Let's refresh everyone's memory, yeah?

Taken directly from that recap, what RWBY promised us, through various teasers and Q&As, included:

Emphasis on Ruby’s leadership and how Summer’s death has impacted her

Insight into Ren and Nora’s flaws

May Merigold will supposedly have a larger part

More information about The Long Memory (Ozpin’s cane)

Theme of the volume is that you can respect someone but that doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with them

Very short timeline (supposedly just two days)

Yang in particular is very suspicious and distrustful

And you know what? They did all this. In the spirit of being fair and honest to this show, RWBY succeeded in delivering on everything they promised... it was just our foolishness that expected that these ideas would be delivered well. Ruby's leadership took center stage in the form of her hiding for multiple episodes and then others telling her she's still The Best before the plot dropped a solution into her lap... one she could have used at any point prior to this. Summer's death certainly has an impact, though it's an impact born of a crazy reveal that Summer likely isn't dead, but turned into a horrifying grimm monster. Ren and Nora both delve into their flaws, but heaven forbid either grow from that reflection. Ren learns that if he pushes past his primary flaw of keeping his emotions buried and actually expresses his doubts for once, he'll be yelled at and ignored until he admits how wrong he was. The "real" flaw is being a bad friend, with "bad friend" equaling "Not agreeing with Ruby 100%." Meanwhile, Nora considers that maybe she shouldn't rush in recklessly and hit things with her hammer... which is why she rushes in recklessly, hits something with her hammer, gets grievously injured, and is told that this is just who she truly is. No growth there, not unless we count her sudden desire to figure out who she is without Ren... but that exploration hasn't started yet. Too bad she wasn't the teammate separated at the end of the volume!

Meanwhile, May did indeed have a larger role to play, one I quite liked, it's just that this role — like all the others — inevitably circled back to realizing how wonderful Ruby is. May challenges Ruby to make a decision, but instead of being the catalyst for Ruby's growth, May becomes another forgotten side character who does a sudden about-turn regarding her perspective, leaving the group with the contradictory message that Ruby is actually doing her best, she's just a kid, no need to try any harder... everyone who claimed otherwise up until now was mistaken. May is another Cordovin. She's another Qrow. She's another Maria.

Fun fact: we don't even know if Maria is alive right now. That's how little she means to the show!

Actually, wait... anyone remember this nonsense from Volume 7?

I was too lazy to change the date.

Moving on, Ozpin's cane turned out to be a stakes obliterating bomb that came out of nowhere, makes no sense logistically — how do battles store energy that only hurts grimm? — yet nevertheless seems to have killed Hazel? It's a disaster of unanswered questions. Similar to the disaster of our two day timeline when, I'm fairly sure, we've had an unnatural number of sunrises and sunsets. I'll have to take a look back at the volume as a whole now that it's complete to be sure of that though. As for our themes... did we really explore the idea of respecting someone even if you disagree with them? Because Ironwood wasn't shown any respect. Ren wasn't shown respect. I think the closest we got was Oscar calmly validating Yang's worry about getting buddy-buddy with Emerald, but the whole point there was that Yang was wrong. She wasn't wrong, but that's what the text would have you believe. She is indeed "very suspicious and distrustful," but that's hardly unjustified in these circumstances. I'm still boggling at the fact that it took the group three volumes for forgive Ozpin, even while he was actively working to assist them, yet I-helped-destroy-Beacon-and-tried-to-kill-everyone-you-love Emerald is the group's new BFF after she... ran away with Oscar? She didn't save him, she just went along for the ride. At the very least we might have gotten a scene where Penny was like, "Hey, why are you all laughing with the woman who just tried to kill my dad?"

But oh yeah, the story doesn't remember Pietro exists either. His daughter is DEAD and he hasn't been on screen since Episode Five, let alone there when she passes.

I had my own list going in, including such expectations as "Ozpin bb you got done dirty please acknowledge this" and "Queer baiting, queer baiting… you’re on thin ice at this point, RWBY. Just skate on over to the queer snack bar before you fall straight into the lake." Obviously these needs were not met.

So what, given this mess of expectations, did we end up with?

Our finale — for some reason — breaks the one word title trend with "The Final Word." It's an expression that refers to the final word in an argument or a discussion, the idea of winning by making a last, devastating point. It can also refer to making the final decision on something, which is the best way I'm able to apply the title to this episode (outside of any “final” comparisons). Penny's death is certainly all about choice and making some kind of decision... but on the whole, this title doesn't feel like it fits well. Not like "Worthy" or "Creation" or "Risk." The two latter titles had obvious connections to the episode in question through dialogue and plot, while the former was a deliberate callback to Watts' speech. "The Final Word" feels... less obvious in what it’s trying to say.

That's a minor nitpick though. Let's get into the meat of the episode.

We open on the grimm whale still disappearing, which is weird. I get that it's massively bigger than any other grimm we've seen, but they all turned to dust near instantaneously and it's been, what? At least an hour since Oscar blew it up? Likely longer when we factor in their walk back to the manor, the fight with Ironwood, fixing Penny, and this entire evacuation. It certainly makes for a nice visual, but like so many details in RWBY, it raises unnecessary questions along the way.

The important bit though is that amidst the whale carcass a blob of evil is swirling about. Salem, obviously.

She’s not reforming in time to actually do anything though, don't worry.

Instead, we cut to the Ironwood vs. Winter fight and there's at least some dialogue this time. Ironwood yells that he's sacrificed everything to keep Remnant safe. Winter yells back that he actually sacrificed everyone else. Obviously, Ironwood should be called out for things like, you know, his unprompted murders, but instead they have Winter listing stuff that she was never shown to have a problem with before. The embargo? "Squeezed Mantle until it broke?" She, as Ironwood's second hand, understood and supported both the decision to close the border and the need to collect resources for a plan designed to take out Salem. I hate that no only did she turn without an ounce of hesitation or grief, but now they're having her act as if Ironwood forced these decisions on everyone, rather than everyone supporting him through them. We all remember Volume 7 when Ruby pressured him to finish Amity, right? And in trust RWBY fashion, most of these words are meaningless. Mantle "broke"? What does that mean? The class disparity did not come about through Ironwood: that's been in the works for generations. The lack of resources made things harder, yes, but when they were reclaimed by Robyn nothing improved. Watts is the one who turned off the heat and Salem attacked Atlas, leaving Mantle alone. Now, all the citizens have escaped through magical portals. So how is Mantle "broken" exactly? More importantly, why is Winter upset over this vague, nonsensical dilemma when she could be yelling about Ironwood wanting to bomb Mantle?

Again: this woman watched Ironwood shoot the councilman, shrugged, and continued to believe in him up until she realized his bomb threat was real. That was one of the main reasons why I thought the councilman might be alive, with Ironwood only shooting a warning shot past him. Because this is how you react to a good person unexpectedly killing someone else

whereas this is what we got from Winter and Harriet.

Hell, Weiss has more of a reaction to Yang telling Ruby things aren't super great right now.

So either Ironwood didn't do something that bad, thereby justifying these tame reactions (unlikely, given where his character ended up), or we should believe based on the animation that everyone was super chill with him killing an unarmed civilian. Which is then directly contradicted when they're like, "You're going to shoot Marrow? Bomb a city?? How could you do such horrible things??? 😲" Friends, buddies, fictional pals... you already watched him murder a dude.

The point is, there's a lot for Winter to be upset about, but she's not upset about that. There's a lot that Winter herself believed in, but the writing has forgotten that. This entire arc went off the rails a volume ago.

Also, why is Ironwood fighting with that giant gun? This is his final battle, presumably ever, and he's wielding this awkward, sluggish weapon we saw him randomly pick up two episodes ago? Let him use his regular guns! Give us a fantastic battle like he had with Watts! Instead, RWBY's final showdown consists of him using this no-name weapon as a unwieldy club in some of the most boring choreography we've seen to date. It doesn't help that this fight needs to share time with three others. Instead of an epic showdown, we're given glimpses of the battle before continually cutting away from it.

During that first cut we return to the Team RWBY battle where Penny, doing her best to stay out of Cinder's reach, is whisked away on Weiss' wasp.

Too bad she didn't do that for Yang...

Jaune and Nora watch this horror unfold until Jaune says, "Priority one!" and they split. Except... what is priority one exactly? Helping the civilians? I guess, because they don't enter the fight until the very end of it, when everyone else seems to have made it to Vacuo. And you know what, I like that. For once it feels like the group — or at least the B Team — is acting like huntsmen, putting the needs of the people over their own, personal desires. I'm sure Nora wants to help the group after Yang's (presumed) demise and that Jaune would like nothing more than to get his hands on Cinder, but they put those grievances aside to do the work they signed up for. Good job!

My only real gripe is that we don't really see this struggling in the animation, I'm just assuming it's there. In particular, there's a moment when Jaune sends Nora through the portal for reinforcements — not knowing they can't return — and they seem a little too jovial when, by this point, three friends have died.

There's letting your cast be supportive, and then there's having them ignore that three teammates have perished in an abyss. It really doesn't help to sell the idea that Yang, Ruby, and Blake are in any danger here.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Penny tells Weiss that since Cinder is really just after the Maiden powers, she can buy the rest of the group time to escape. Weiss, obviously, isn't fond of this idea... and then the both of them are blasted off the wasp by Cinder's fire. Which they deserve, frankly. They're just having this casual conversation about sacrifice while in the middle of a battle. Did they somehow forget that Cinder can fly too?

Note that multiple attacks from Cinder, another blast, and a hard landing on the pathway gives their auras a knock, but doesn't break them. The primary defense for Yang's aura shattering in a single, simple hit was that everyone is exhausted and running on little to no power... yet here the rest of the cast is, tanking multiple hits as we've come to expect. There is no explanation for Yang's defeat except that the writers chose to ignore the rules of their world for a dramatic death scene... even though that drama was erased a week later as half our team falls into the void too.

We'll get to that though. For now, Cinder corrects Penny's belief with "I want it all" and proceeds to try to finish them off, only for Blake to arrive, having made her choice from last episode about who to help. It's a legitimately nice attack, but I happened to pause at the bEST MOMENT

Anyway.

We leave that fight to return to Qrow and Harriet who have, off screen, started an entirely different battle. What I mean is, last we saw Qrow had broken through the windshield of the airship, roughly pinned Harriet, and was taunting her about getting the fight she wanted. Now, suddenly, he's going “You’re making a mistake, Harriet, what happened to Clover—” as if he's been trying to talk her down this whole time. It's jarring, especially when we consider that Qrow had a volume long "kill Ironwood" arc that was dropped because... Robyn reminded him that murder is bad? RWBY feels like a storytelling pinball machine. Characters bounce from one personality to the next, one perspective and another, round and round until you don't know where they'll end up.

Harriet screams for Qrow to just shut up already and honestly? Same. I love Qrow, he's one of my favorites, but I can't deny that he's been done dirty like so many others since Volume 6. I love who Qrow was, not the mess RWBY has created the last few years.

Time to delve back into fic after recapping!

Sadly though, this strange dialogue wasn't the only "wtf" moment. Harriet is still trying to drop the bomb — which is its own mess of confusing motivations — when Vine and Elm show up on Harriet's ship. Elm begs Harriet not to do this "because you’re our friend!”

Am I glad that they finally acknowledged that the Ace Ops have always been friends? Sure, but why did we spend two volumes claiming otherwise? They were friends, a fantastic team, then Harriet announces that's a lie and we get a bunch of "Team RWBY is superior because they're actually friends" messages. Except this entire time we're still watching the Ace Ops be kind and playful with one another. But they're not friends, the story says. Not friends as they fight these battles. Not friends as they grieve for Clover. Definitely not friends as they react in horror at Ironwood nearly shooting Marrow. No, there's nothing there... until Elm claims there is! Then Harriet reacts in shock. I have friends?

Except Elm was labeled the one "just following orders" by Yang. Elm is the one who shook off Vine after the whale exploded. This isn't the story of one character, Harriet, thinking she was alone and then realizing that people do care for her, this is a story that, seemingly at random, had this group being BFFs or acting like they hated each other — and at each point the visuals are contradicted by the story's message. When they act like friends, we're told they're not friends. When they don't act like friends, we're told they really have been this whole time. I mean, do any of them even care that Marrow teamed up with Qrow and Robyn to take them out five minutes ago? All three were going along with Ironwood's scheme until they were physically stopped, but now Elm is convinced this is a bad decision she needs to talk Harriet down from with the power of friendship?

None of these characters are characters, they're just slapped together reactions based on whatever the plot needs. Who is Elm? I've got no clue. Her personality changes every episode.

Also, love that Qrow moves to stop the bomb from dropping and Harriet screams at him to "Get out of the way!" rather than just... attacking him? She even throws her hands out like she's having a temper tantrum. This feels like schoolyard bickering, not a life or death struggle.

Even though, you know, the audience is aware that the people of Mantle have already been evacuated and Qrow's group is aware that Atlas is falling on top of Mantle as they speak, so... why does the bomb matter? It's going to, what? Destroy the city thirty seconds before Atlas does? Oh no, the horror.

Things then, if you can believe it, get even worse. The bomb is still about to drop, so instead of doing anything to stop it — I mean seriously, we know it takes four people to shoulder the bomb's weight, but you're telling me Qrow and a reformed Harriet can't snag it in a pinch? — Qrow sits there, looks at Clover's pin... and the bomb careens towards the side of the airship instead, stopping.

Because I guess Qrow has good luck now? Or always did and somehow never noticed it? Or his semblance evolved?? Again, we don't know, but it's a bad moment any way you slice it, imo. Qrow has always been defined as the guy with a bad luck semblance and, much like Penny's android struggles, the allure was in watching him overcome those challenges, not having the show erase the challenge entirely. Especially when we don't even understand how it was erased. Qrow just... stops drinking, stops caring for Ironwood, stops wanting to kill Ironwood, stops causing bad luck, I guess. RWBY takes major character traits and flips them off like a light switch, leaving the audience with no emotional tether. We didn't watch Qrow overcome his drinking, or realize he can't bear to kill Ironwood, or discover a way to live life with the horrible hand he was dealt, he just blinks one day and those things are gone. Why? No one is sure. Not even the writers, I'd wager, because otherwise they would have written explanations into the text.

Many in the fandom insist that any basic information provided by the story amounts to "hand holding" when in fact there is a massive difference between the sort of unnecessary exposition that bogs down a tale, and having facts enough for the audience in its entirety to be on the same page about what is actually happening. For example, recently someone argued strongly that the "Penny is human" take is incorrect because Penny isn't human, she has an inhuman body made entirely of aura... yet where in the world does this exist in the story? Ambrosius may have been unsure about what Penny would be prior to removing her robotic parts, but that ambiguity is gone once her body forms, the equivalent of worrying about that gun only for a flag with 'BANG' to appear instead of a bullet. Worrying about something doesn't mean that something actually occurred. Penny appears human, expresses human sentiments, and then, this episode, dies as a human. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and succumbs to the mortal peril that all ducks face... it's probably a duck. As I said in a recent ask, I implore the fandom to stop writing RWBY's scripts for them. Or rather, do so in some amazing fanfics. Don't do it on critical posts as a means of insisting that your revision is canon.

So Qrow has good luck now, maybe, but this character change doesn't amount to anything because Watts remotely starts the bomb's countdown.

At least he’s entertaining and competent. We had that for a time.

Back to the main battle, Neo is kicking Ruby's ass. Why? Because there's no consistency in power levels in this show. The ancient woman who hasn't fought in decades dances circles around Neo, highlighting how weak she supposedly is, yet now Neo dances circles around our main character. None of us should expect fights to follow the logic of the world, only what drama the plot wants to stir up. Ruby is eventually knocked down from a hard hit — yet her aura's intact! — and is saved at the last second by Weiss tossing Neo into one of the portals.

Far more of a problem than the power leveling is that Ruby gives no indication here that Neo just murdered her sister. Again, that's what the characters are meant to believe, yet Ruby is as stoic as she would be fighting a bunch of White Fang grunts. If you showed this scene to a RWBY fan on its own and asked, "What do you think happened prior to this?" the answer would be, "Uh... nothing? Ruby is just fighting Neo like she did on the airship in Volume 3." Nothing about this scene — from dialogue to animation — sells the idea that Ruby just lost the person most important to her in the world.

When we do finally mention Yang, it's Weiss who goes, “Come on, we have to do this for Yang” and the delivery is... meh. Honestly, I normally don't pay much attention to the voice acting, but I had a problem with most of Weiss' lines this episode. The "Leave her alone!" during this fight and later a "Get back!" as she attacks Cinder both fell really flat for me. Given the devastation and charged emotion that's supposed to be here, we can't give her anything better than generic cries that, again, she’d throw at any grunt? In that later scene the animation absolutely helps sell Weiss' distress, but the dialogue is common and the delivery has no emotional punch, leaving it feeling like Yang is just hanging out in Vacuo and they promised they'd beat the baddies before catching up with her. No one but Blake is acting like Yang died.

In fact, we see more emotion from Ruby when Weiss shoves her back, taking the brunt of Cinder's blast.

Weiss' aura breaks, not that that's a danger or anything. Everyone falls before they're injured, Winter gets the Maiden powers, Ren barely has to fight. Losing aura in this show used to be a moment of peril, where just last volume Winter was bruised, bleeding, and now needs an assistive device because she had to continue a battle with no aura. Now it's a joke. Aura breaks left and right across the volume with no repercussions attached to that.

We see a bit of the Blake and Penny vs. Cinder fight where Cinder blasts Blake off the edge. Penny rushes after her because at least one character remembered that they can fly.

Ruby, meanwhile, remembers that she can fly when it benefits her. After getting hit down onto a lower level and watching Crescent Rose plummet, she taunts Neo into an attack with a move that's actually quite good. I like the confidence with which Ruby riles her up and I like the strategy of darting behind Neo to knock her off the path instead. “Whatever you wanted, I hope it was worth it."

The only thing I don't like is that this speed and ingenuity had to disappear to justify Yang falling.

Cinder breaks Ruby's aura from behind though, sending her over too and grabbing onto Neo's leg. In an obvious moment born of the trope, it looks as if Cinder is reaching to help Neo, only for her to snag the Relic instead. “You should have never threatened me," she tells Neo and to Ruby: "you should have never been born.”

Love that they erased all that cool growth from last episode! And by "love" I mean "hate." As I said last recap, I'm not going to pretend that Cinder's character isn't riddled with problems, but realizing she was stronger by teaming up with Neo and Watts was one of the best things they've ever done for her. It made Cinder dangerous again and showed Watts' speech having a clear impact. It also made her more entertaining, creating a new dynamic among the three villains. Now though, Cinder is just... Cinder. The same boring, stupid Cinder we've had since Volume 4. She betrays Neo and then later betrays Watts.

So Cinder kicks Neo and Ruby both over the edge because why would we want to make her interesting? Neo falls, but Ruby has friends there to catch her! Unlike Yang. Jk. Weiss’ aura is gone and Blake actually tried both times, so major kudos for her. Using momentum supplied by Penny, she snags Ruby and hooks her weapon into one of the pathways... only for Cinder to cut the ribbon. Both plummet and once again Penny has a more believable reaction to all this, just like she did last week

Speaking of reactions, does anyone else find it weird that Cinder finally succeeded in killing Ruby and... doesn’t seem to care?

No? Just me?

At least we get that good animation with Weiss I was talking about before, even if the dialogue is lacking. I love that she snagged Blake's weapon and uses it to try and take out Cinder, shaking the whole time. Those are some great details.

Back to the bomb, Qrow is trying to escape, but Harriet says there isn't enough time to get out of the blast range. "I've killed us all." Vine has the solution though, using his semblance to wrap up the airship, thus containing the blast when it goes off. His final words are to reassure Elm that he can give his life, "if it means saving all of my friends." Just in case you missed the part about the Ace Ops being super close this whole time. Even though they also weren’t. Trying to eat your cake too, RWBY?

Frankly, I didn't feel much of anything during this scene, not when Vine made the sacrifice, nor when Elm and Harriet look on sadly while Robyn pilots them away (that's her contribution this episode).

All I can say is, good on RWBY for not killing one of the three dark skinned characters, or just murdering the Ace Ops as a whole. What the story is going to do with them though, who knows.

Jaune and Nora have that ‘You can do it!’ moment after three of their friends have presumably been killed. I swear, about 80% of Jaune's scenes do not work tonally and oh boy, things only get worse from here.

First though, I like his entrance. He slams into the fight against Cinder and lines up with Penny and Weiss, who is still dual-wielding her and Blake's weapons. That's an epic shot.

It looks as if they stand a decent chance against Cinder — Weiss' lost aura notwithstanding — except then Cinder's arm starts going crazy and she gleefully announces that Salem has returned.

Working on a time limit now, Cinder unleashes a volley of attacks that Penny steps in to protect the other two from. It's here that Cinder grabs hold with her grimm arm.

It's here that Penny dies. Again.

For the third time.

Friends, I am tired. This moment honestly deserves the most epic of rants, but that, in turn, requires energy. Energy? In this economy? Ha! That's hilarious. Taking this seriously though, the problem here can — as usual — be boiled down to a single question: What was the point?

Penny died in a horrible attack that shook the cast and audience both to their core.

That emotional impact was erased through her resurrection.

The resurrection did not create a new emotional impact for our heroes to grapple with.

Penny is given the Maiden powers, solidifying the fact that she's always been a "real girl."

That lesson was erased when the story decided to make her human for unexplained reasons (because no, she never needed to be human to survive the virus).

Penny then dies, passing the power to Winter... who was set to get the power in the first place.

We have, once again, come full circle. You can take Penny out of the story and nothing changes. Does Ruby lose any lessons or emotional growth? No. Does anyone survive who would have otherwise died? No. Does her getting the powers lead to someone unexpected snagging them upon her death? No. Penny's existence was filler. She was put in the story to take up time and, that done, was removed from the story once again. It's a choice that wouldn't be half as horrible if that filler hadn't done so much damage along the way.

First is the obvious: that Penny didn't deserve this. As a character, she didn't deserve to be brought back just to be killed off again, seemingly without narrative purpose, serving only to draw in viewers who RT knew loved the character. Second, keeping her in the story led to her entire arc unraveling. Initially, Penny died as an android in the world's eyes, but those who actually knew her — Ruby and Pietro — mourned the girl she really was. Now we have this horrible message that being a machine isn't real enough, so she has to die as a human being. It's a disservice to her character and, as an allegory for many minorities, downright insulting to the audience. Third, this offensive 'better to die as a human than live as a robot' message is wrapped up in the claim that Penny finally gets to choose something — “Let me choose this one thing. Trust me” — but she already did that when she chose to take the Maiden powers. We already had the better written version of this last volume!

And the fourth issue...well.

Fourth and fifth are the real kickers. Fourth is that Penny's death was an assisted suicide. She explicitly asks Jaune to kill her so she can ensure she's thinking of the right person when she passes (never mind that her thoughts would probably be on Jaune while this is happening) and that's... pretty horrible. Look, I'm no purist. I like a great deal of dark, gritty stories whose plot exists to make us uncomfortable. That's a valuable emotion that fiction can generate. The problem is not that RWBY is tackling a sensitive topic, but that they aren’t tackling it well. Yes, they put in a content warning and (from what I've heard) a suicide helpline as well, but providing the already necessary resources is not the same thing as writing that kind of scene with respect and care. All of the above tells us that, no matter what RT may have intended, that respect and care weren't communicated to the audience. Like Yang, they didn't even bother to keep Penny's death within the rules of their world. Jaune is right there ready to heal her and Penny says no, there's supposedly not time.

Um... since when?

Jaune's aura boost is instantaneous. The second he amplifies aura is the same second the healing starts and their talk could have been spent saving Penny. There was certainly time to save Weiss in Volume 5. To have a character go, 'Nah, it's too late' when the solution is right there is the ultimate cop-out. Suddenly announcing that the solution will no longer work For Reasons is not a legitimate limitation and it's made doubly insulting that RT didn't simply use the limitations already available to them. Jaune has been running low on aura since the whale. He then expended a great deal of aura boosting Penny to keep the virus in check. Every other ally has had their aura broken in this fight so, there. That's your solution. Have Jaune take a few hard hits from Cinder, his aura breaks, and then when Penny is mortally wounded he no longer has a semblance to heal her. It's that easy! Yet instead they had Penny reject help so that she could ask to die. That's what's offensive here.

Finally, reason number five... why is this moment given to Jaune? That's another easy solution: Jaune has gone through the portal and can't get back to heal Penny. There. Done. But logistics aside, this scene should have gone to any other character. Who is Jaune to Penny? Or Penny to Jaune? No one! They don't have a relationship. I get that the writers didn't want any of the girls at her side because then it would be hard to justify Penny not passing the power to them (which I get: making one team member a Maiden changes the show drastically), but you know who should be there instead of Jaune?

Pietro.

Pietro, who built Penny as a weapon and who was never given the chance to apologize for that. Pietro, who told Ruby he could only rebuild her once more, setting up an expectation that he'd sacrifice himself for his daughter (despite the complicated racial issues that would bring up). Pietro, who watched Penny plummet and has no idea what happened to her, let alone that she's been made into a human girl. Pietro should have been at her side, saying goodbye to his child and helping her complete her last wish.

And it would be so very easy to pull off. All it takes is a single line where Penny remembers that her father exists, asking Ruby to ensure a portal opens up in Amity. There's a quick reunion along the pathways before Cinder attacks. We hear a cry of despair as Penny falls and she looks, seeing her father racing towards her, though she thought he'd already made it out. There, you’re done. We open ourselves up to a lot of attacks whenever we say, "Why didn't RWBY just do ____?" because those who vehemently defend the writing like to go, "Oh, you think you could write RWBY better?" and no, I don't. I struggle with long-form storytelling and massive casts. I don't think I could do justice to the sort of show RWBY wants to be, but I do think I'm a decent enough writer to spot when there are major problems like this. The question of "Why doesn't Penny remember that her beloved dad exists?" and "Why, out of that massive cast, is Jaune the one to do this deed?" are both things that a newbie writer can spot, and a sometimes okay writer can figure out how to fix them both simultaneously. A good writer will start thinking about themes — what might it mean for Pietro to kill the creation he made? — and a great writer will find a way to pull that off without having that insulting, discomforting feeling pop up. At this point, our RWBY crew feels less like new writers making mistakes (because they're not new, not at all), but rather just writers who haven't bothered to learn from their mistakes after eight years. That's a lot harder to watch.

Because putting Jaune here doesn't just mess with RWBY's internal rules (not using his semblance) and it's not just useless in terms of Penny's development (she doesn't know him outside of "dude who boosted my aura for an hour"), but it also falls back into a pattern I thought RWBY had finally broken from: making Jaune the story's emotional center. This is not the JAUNE show. It's the RWBY show. Yet here, once again, we have Jaune in the spotlight. Why, after a whole volume of Ruby avoiding making decisions, does Jaune finally make the hard call? Why, after a scene where Penny asked Ruby to kill her, does Jaune do that deed? Why, after a divisive arc where all the grief for Pyrrha went to Jaune, is Jaune now set to shoulder the grief of Penny? At least Jaune had a relationship with Pyrrha, even if Nora and Ren did too. Yet with Penny he seems to be there solely because the writers can't bear to keep him out of that center spot for long. All of Team JNOR make it through to Vacuo... except Jaune. Jaune falls into the abyss too because, if the show goes this route, we apparently can’t have a volume just about Team RWBY, the main characters. The main characters are separated from the rest of the team and it's Jaune, not Oscar and Ozpin with a connection to the lore, not Nora or Ren whose development now hinges on them learning who they are without the other, it's Jaune who follows the title characters into a new dimension.

The issue is not whether Jaune deserves to grieve over the truly traumatic thing he just did now that he’s done it. He obviously does. The issue is the writers setting up a scenario where Jaune is situated to do that emotional work in the first place.

I like Jaune as a character. I don't like how the writing uses him as a character. RWBY is built on the idea that these four girls are the heroes of this tale, not the expected blond, blue-eyed, sword wielding guy we’ve seen in so many other stories. So why does that guy get the most important scene of the finale? Yes, Jaune had much less screen time this volume than he did in the past, that’s a good thing given the number of important characters RWBY has to balance, but that hasn't erased the problem of him being given significant moments that should be going to title characters. Does Ruby’s team rescue Oscar and take on Salem? No, Jaune's team does. Does Ruby's team save Penny? No, Jaune's semblance keeps her grounded and then holds the virus off. Not everything is a problem — we've also got good choices like having Ruby defeat the Hound and Ruby's team take on Cinder for the majority of the fight — but that doesn't erase that Penny’s death wasn’t something Jaune should have been a part of. Not unless he was going to heal her. Doing better than they have in the past doesn't mean that RT isn't still slipping when it comes to giving him undeserved focus.

They took one of the most controversial characters, controversial because of how much emotional focus he's gotten in the past, and had him help a fan favorite commit suicide while he cried about it, showing more emotion for a near stranger than our title character showed for her sister. This is a character who, up until two or three episodes ago, had no connection to the victim and still has no reason to thematically be the one committing this act. That is why the fandom goes, “The crew loves Jaune and does everything they can to put him in the center of the action.” Ruby, as main character and Penny’s first friend, is the obvious choice here. Pietro, as Penny's father, would be a good choice too. Hell, Nora is a better option given their moment in the Schnee manor this volume. Or Winter given their moments in Volume 7! Have her escape Ironwood, find Penny, receive the powers, and then finish him off. Literally anyone would be better than Jaune, not because Jaune is a bad character, but because Jaune has no emotional stakes here and putting him in a position where he could heal Penny but doesn’t is massively stupid. No one should be surprised that a lot of the fandom is upset about this. It was one hell of a reach to give him this moment and, since Jaune's problem has always been getting too much screen time and emotional nuance compared to our main cast, it's no wonder this act brought up a lot of bad memories. RT fell back into an old pattern after two volumes of improvement and they did so at the worst possible time.

The tl;dr is that Penny's third death is a writing travesty, just like her second. I shouldn't be surprised, given that this is the same volume that tortured a kid and the only thing they did with it was have him blindly trust his torturer... yet I find myself surprised nonetheless. Because Penny had such potential as an android Maiden and, as much as I personally hated it, potential as a former android learning to be human too. But why explore any of that when you can kill her off instead? Again.

As a final, far smaller note about this scene, we have the continuing problem of what purpose Cinder's arm is serving. If everyone recalls, its threat comes primarily from the fact that she can "siphon off" power from other Maidens.

She did it to Penny during the Amity battle and now she does it again, a great deal of green energy absorbed into Cinder. So what's left to give to Winter? Why doesn't Cinder become noticeably stronger with each successful theft? Like so much else in RWBY, we're told it exists without actually seeing the impact of that. Winter isn't a weaker Maiden for having lost power and Cinder isn't a stronger Maiden for having snagged it. It's just.. there, hanging out and looking vaguely menacing, I guess.

Outside of this unnatural not-transfer, we get to see how the power normally passes as Penny meets with Winter in some in-between place. It's a soft, heartfelt scene... with the exception that Winter says, “You were always the real Maiden at heart. I was just the machine. Just following orders."

I don't know how any viewer can doubt that RT now believes machinery = evil. Penny's machine body is magicked away so she can be a real-real girl. Yang announces that the arm she worked hard to make a part of herself is just "extra." The man with half a metal body is made this volume's villain and losing his second arm is, by the authors' own admission, a symbol of his lost humanity. Mercury with two metal legs remains a bad guy while Emerald and Hazel are hastily redeemed. Tyrian with his cybernetic tail is the most devoted crazy of the bunch. Maria, blind and in need of assistive lenses, is so forgotten by the story she was left in the tundra nine episode ago and won't be mentioned again until next volume (if then). Pietro, the guy in the wheelchair, is forgotten too, despite it being his daughter who dies on screen.

Now Winter, also bearing an assistive device, says that she's the real "machine" here and tells Penny, now human, that she was always the "real Maiden." I don't know what happened to make RT do a 180 lately, but the disability rep is no longer what it was.

Penny reassures Winter that she'll always be a part of her and then passes on, for good this time.

The rest of the episode feels lackluster, if I'm being honest. Images of Cinder beating Weiss are intercut with Ironwood beating Winter, getting her to a point where her aura breaks.

But then the powers appear and, as we'd expect, she easily turns the tide.

Gorgeous animation there.

But RT once again rewrites earlier scenes by having Ironwood claim that the "destiny" he chose for Winter has finally arrived — isn't that Cinder's MO? — and Winter shoots back that he chose nothing, this was a "gift." Except, it was never about destiny or orders? This was why Weiss' anger in Volume 7 was ridiculous. She acted like Ironwood forced Winter to accept the powers and Winter told her point blank she chose this. Ironwood didn't decide anything, he offered and Winter chose... kind of like how Penny is choosing now. I hate how nearly all of Ironwood's character has been ignored or, during times like this, outright lied about to make him seem super duper evil. He tried to bomb a city! You don't need to make him seem evil anymore, that job is done! Like their sudden change regarding disability, RT now seems to be allergic to nuance. Heaven forbid Ironwood be allowed to have valid points like he did in Volume 3. No, if you've got an antagonist every single thing they've ever said must be twisted into a display of their evilness.

Unless you're Hazel, who Oscar trusts for #reasons. Unless you're Emerald, who the group immediately embraces. Unless you're Cinder, who gets to cry on a rooftop and secures the trust of her allies long enough to betray them again.

But Ironwood? Nah, screw that guy.

Salt aside, the fight is pretty boring. Winter literally just throws up a wall of ice and Ironwood's blast rebounds, taking him out.

Winter flies through the portal and we return to Jaune. His sword is broken by Cinder, so weapons should be quite the problem in Volume 9.

There's a bit of sword vs. sword Maiden battling — this episode really pulled heavily from both Volume 3 and 5's finales — before Cinder gets smart again and attacks Weiss, currently trying to escape with Jaune. Weiss goes right off the edge and Winter isn't able to reach her in time. That's the entirety of Team RWBY, lost to the magical void.

Kudos to Winter's VA and the writing here though. This feels like an appropriate reaction to losing a sister. Screaming, sobbing, falling to her knees and beating the floor... Ruby, take notes.

A roar sounds through all the portals though, the sort of roar a pissed off witch might give. Jaune convinces Winter they need to leave Cinder behind, but before they can escape Cinder... makes a new wish?

Look, it works on all the major fronts. Cinder has the staff, check. We've basically established that Ambrosius can make an unlimited number of things per era, check. We know the previous thing disappears when a new wish is made, check. My only question is the timing. In all honesty, I'll have to re-watch the scene to be sure, but at the time it felt like the portals began disappearing almost the second Cinder left. Did she really have time to summon Ambrosius, deal with his explanatory nonsense, and get him to make a new wish without any fiddly concerns? Sure, fire is just fire, but it still felt like way too much happening too fast off screen.

Either way, the portals are gone and Winter makes it through in time, but Jaune does not. He falls through the void along with Team RWBY. And Neo.

Neo is the only addition I'm looking forward to here.

We get a few shots of our other characters as Winter arrives, saving the day by taking her grief out on the grimm. So glad something came of Ren breaking his aura again! Maybe they'll be more fighting at the beginning of Volume 9? If we see any of this group outside of 9's finale. My worst fear right now is that we'll spend an entire season away from the main action — remember how I said it would be stupid for Team RWBY to go on a side adventure while Salem is attacking the world? — and when they return there will have been some major time skip. Salem has destroyed most of Remnant, only pockets of survivors remain, it's all dark and dystopian... and oh look, every bit of character development happened off screen. How did Nora discover who she is without Ren? She did it while Team RWBY was gone. That merge we've been teasing for five years? That happened while you were gone too and, btw, Ozpin has ceased to exist. So sad, right? Not that anyone will actually mourn. Just take comfort in the fact that his last line was an "Oh no" about Ambrosius and his last major scene was apologizing for how the group treated him. Emerald's redemption? Off screen. Winter's grief? Off screen. Any and every one of these challenging beats to tackle can be waved away with, "We went through that arc while you were lost in the magical realm. Just get to know our new, improved selves now!"

Please, oh writing gods, don't let that happen.

Though I do worry because my last prediction came true.

But we all knew we’d end up here. My current theory? The portal should still be open at the vault. Winter will fight Ironwood, escape through it, and it will close right before he escapes too. He’ll fall with Atlas and everyone will act as if it’s some beautiful, poetic justice for him to perish with the city.

Ironwood didn't make a break for the portal — too busy being unconscious — but we got everything else. Winter left him, he falls with Atlas, and this is some poetic justice, I guess. Really, it's just an undignified death. I'd hoped for a sympathetic kill, something that showed the characters still cared about him even if they knew Ironwood had to be stopped. Baring that, I'd hoped for an epic battle that took him out with style. Instead, no one even bothers to kill him. Ironwood is now beneath the entire cast, not even worth finishing off. Winter casually tosses his blast back at him and leaves. Cinder throws out a "that's checkmate" and leaves. I don't think Salem even looks at him. Ironwood (presumably) dies with no one and nothing, just a casualty of the city Team RWBY made fall. And I say "presumably" because the audience isn't even given the satisfaction of being sure he's passed on. Like Hazel, Ironwood's death is this weird, ambiguous moment that, based on the other character reactions, isn’t meant to be ambiguous. Is he dead? Most likely. Is it possible, based on what we've seen, that he'll pop up two volumes later like

Yes and, memes aside, that sucks. I don't want to be wondering for the next couple years if Ironwood survived and if they'll bring him back just to drag his character through the mud again. Move on.

But no, we don't even get that.

I've spoken at great deal about Ironwood both in these recaps and on my blog more generally. Last week, I said I'd covered it all and there was no need to rehash it all again. I stand by that, so let me just conclude this travesty with a final note: if your bad guy's final moment is using the last of his strength to point a gun at the actual villain of this story, and you don't realize the problem of how this image contrasts everything else the story has insisted about his character? … I just don't know what to do with that.

Oh, actually, final-final note: Ironwood’s semblance is officially a Schrodinger's semblance. It is both canonical and noncanonical simultaneously. Wooo.

Cinder tells Salem she used her wish to "add more flames to the first of Atlas" and we cut to Watts, trapped in a roaring fire, unsuccessfully trying to break his way out. Wow, I hate that too! Next to Tyrian, Watts was our last remaining, entertaining villain. He carried a lot of the last two volumes and, I had hoped, was going to add some bright spots to the coming volumes as well. Apparently not.

Just another waste.

In addition to this casual, second murder of her ally, Cinder successfully convinces Salem that Neo killed Ruby and Ruby used the Lamp's last question, but she's back in her good graces since she snagged the Relics anyway. “You’ve done well, Cinder. Our work here is done" and they leave, blasting off like a less cool Team Rocket as Atlas plummets into Mantle.

Let's spend a second to tally things up then, shall we? What happens if Ruby, instead of throwing a moral fit, says, "You're right and we never should have lied to you, or betrayed you. But we want to help now. You get the Relics and the Maiden to safety in Atlas, if you can, we'll defend the people of Mantle"?

Well, they can still tell the world about Salem and call for help, much more easily now since Ironwood would likely just give them the code rather than them needing to spend an episode stealing it.

The Staff at least may not have ended up in Salem's hands and the group could have actually focused on getting the Lamp back (also solved if they'd been smart and just put it in the vault to begin with).

Mantle would still have been safe because Salem was never interested in Mantle to begin with.

Atlas wouldn't have fallen.

Ironwood wouldn't have died.

Penny wouldn't have died.

Even Vine wouldn't have died!

Our heroes unambiguously made the situation worse. Rather than banding together with their allies to fight the real enemy, Salem, they pushed until they made enemies of Ironwood and the Ace Ops both. Then they asked for help — which a pinch of logic said would never arrive — and twiddled their thumbs waiting for it. When it was clear none would come they...did nothing. They sat around, upset that the people were in danger, but not willing to do anything about it. It's only when one of their own, Penny, is threatened that they kick into high gear, hitting on a solution that they could have posed to Ironwood from the very start if no one liked the fly away plan. Yet instead of taking a few minutes to brainstorm other ideas — doing anything other than denouncing Ironwood to the rest of the group and attacking the Ace Ops — they spent two days sitting around, fixing minor messes they’d helped to create, then rushed through the portal plan, messing up the wish and stranding an entire kingdom in a sandstorm, with only Winter now to protect them from grimm.

Fantastically done, team.

The villains won, yes, but not because the villains were smart and compelling. Watts' hack on Penny and the heat petered out to nothing and Salem... well, she sat around for the whole volume, expending energy only to torture Oscar and try to (unsuccessfully) stop some escapees. Neo and, miraculously, Cinder did the most damage, but only in the final hour, with this "damage" being that our characters fall into a void that we now know looks remarkably like a paradise! Everything bad that happened was a result of our heroes being stupid and stubborn. That's a compelling story to tell... but RT isn't trying to tell it. Our heroes caused so much damage, yet that damage goes unacknowledged — or worse, ignored into silence like with Ren — and everything else is waved away with the magic wand the series claims isn't there. The cold doesn't kill anyone. Oscar has no problems walking off the torture. Nora hops back out of bed. Ruby one-shots the Hound. The civilians lost to the void must have survived too. The entire kingdom successfully makes it to Vacuo... unless you count the massive army we never saw making use of the portals, but who cares about them, right?

The villains won, there was indeed something resembling consequences, but none of it was emotionally satisfying. Not even when the series tries so hard to insist that emotion is there.

Qrow watches Atlas fall, mouthing Ruby and Yang's names, but it's too little, too late. Where was this care for his nieces when he was obsessed with killing Ironwood? When did they care about him? Was it when Ruby shrugged at his arrest, when neither cared that he was missing, or when they were designing an escape plan that didn't include putting a portal where Qrow could reach? RWBY markets itself around the found family-ness of its cast, but they're done a poor job in recent volumes (not others) of convincing me that most of these characters care for one another. We went from Ruby denouncing all adults, to Ruby pulling an Ozpin with Ironwood, to Ruby watching blandly as her sister falls to her presumed death. This is my hero? This is the simple soul we're supposed to rally behind? Ruby doesn't feel like a character who cares about other people anymore and, given that she leads the charge, neither do most of her friends. Or, when that emotion appears, it's jarring and undeserved. Jaune cries over Penny's death? That's tonally and characteristically backwards.

This volume was the culmination of so many mistakes over the past two years. No, Covid couldn't have made things any easier for the crew — the fact that they got a volume out at all is amazing — but the pandemic isn't to blame for the problems in the story. These seeds have existed since Volume 5, with some (like Jaune) going back even farther. I don't think we're ever going to get that flawed, but emotionally fulfilling RWBY back. The show has dug too deep and unless it somehow manages to create a clean slate — those time travel ideas get more and more alluring! — there's nothing they can do but keep on digging. At this point, I can only hope that the series does wrap up within the next two volumes, rather than dragging RWBY to a Supernatural-esque length.

Our final shot of the episode proper feels fitting for what this volume has been. Atlas and Mantle flood rather than exploding, something that makes a certain amount of sense, sure, but definitely wasn't what I was expecting. And after all these shocking images — Penny dying, the grimm attacking, our main characters disappearing in a puff of gold dust — we end it all with bits of random debris. It's strange and underwhelming. Out of everything you could have done with the options you had, you choose to do this?

Of course, RWBY always has an after-credits scene (RIP Raven's, still amounting to nothing). Here, the sounds of water return to show us a beach. Crescent Rose imbedded in the sand, mirroring its classic pose in the snow.

There's a tree. It's a very different kind of tree from what we saw in Volume 6, but the height and shape is nevertheless reminiscent of Light's domain.

A tree of life, anyone? After all, the group has fallen into a dimension created by a Relic, the gift of Light himself. It certainly seems as if RWBY is heading towards another encounter with the Gods, though what that will look like and how narratively satisfying it will be remains to be seen.

As for our bingo board, RWBY certainly pulled its weight! Only three squares got gold stars: Watts and Jacques didn't manage another team up because both are dead, Oscar didn't apologize for getting shot because he was too busy being tortured, and Qrow didn't drink likely because he didn't have access to any alcohol across the whole volume. Can't say that's a stellar result. The final image is something to behold though lol.

What a mess.

And on that less than exciting note... we’re done. This has been the volume of desertion, with a large number of fans telling me that they will no longer watch RWBY, but baring something entirely unexpected in my future, I'll be back next volume, for whatever that's worth. It never ceases to amaze me that even one person would give these nonsense recaps the time of day, so in all seriousness: thank you for reading. You rock.

Now go forth and fill the hiatus with great RWBY content!

✌️

#suicide tw #rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #mymetas #rwby recaps #rwby the final word

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ayoalex · 3 years

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I didn't expect for me to do a rant about bumbleby but I've been rewatching RWBY while me and my friend wait till February for the next chapter and holy shit, there's a lot to talk about.

Maybe it's because the first time I watched RWBY was all together without needing to wait like all the fandom but I'm pretty sure bumbleby was either a thought, a path they had as one option or being something it was going to happen no matter what since they started writing RWBY.

All the hints, subtext, etc were there, since the first moment Yang and Blake meet.

We all know RWBY doesn't have all the time neither the budget to make a 30min or 1h long for every chapter, so all the faces, the details, body movements are there for a reason and not to waste time and money.

Yang sees Blake and it's immediately interested, Ruby tells her she knows her and what Yang do? Uses Ruby as an excuse to go closer to Blake and talk to her + this will help Ruby to come out of her shell.

Now, before I continue I want to say that I personally head canon Yang as a lesbian because I relate to her as one but it's perfectly fine if y'all head canon her as bi or pan, what we all know it's that the girl is NOT straight.

Let's continue, Yang try to start a conversation and Blake was not vibing with it until Ruby started talking about books. It's quite a funny moment for me because Yang is so used to people wanted to be with her or wanted to flirt with her that she gets awkward and her confidence start going low the moment she is the one actively going for it and not the other way around.

Yang is quite an interesting character because at first it looks like she's a flirt and knows clubs and illegal stuffs, she's really cool, confident and really attractive. But then as the series progress we see how damage she is, such a low self-esteem she has in certain stuffs, how she's really smart, she doesn't actually flirt and when it's someone she likes she gets all awkward and stuff.

Then you have Blake, we see since the beginning the strong sense of justice she has, how passionate about it she is, she's lowkey most of the times, serious but then we see all her issues, her low self-esteem, how scared she is and how humorous she is as well, assertive and direct. If Yang is not there then the person making the jokes is Blake and I find that really cool.

I mention this because the Blake we see in Emerald Forest is assertive Blake.

Yang gets into the forest and start looking for Ruby while Blake seems to have been following her since they landed in there. She's in the shadows keeping an eye close to Yang, she sees her fighting the Ursas and took advantage of that to help her and appear in front of her. Purposely smirking while looking her directly at her eyes.

Now, why would Blake choose Yang? Why not Phyrra? Or Ruby? Well, because Blake is attracted to strength. It's the same thing that attracted her to Adam, she sees the similarities but there are so many differences as well.

As they continue their journey to find the relic Blake seems to enjoy Yang company, smiling and smirking at her. We basically see a different Blake than we saw when Ruby and Weiss were around, this is more direct, assertive and flirty.

At this point Blake is attracted to Yang, smiling at her jokes, smirking, going all sassy, the way she walks or behaves around Yang.

The best part? She loves it.

My favorite part of bumbleby between v1 and v3 is absolutely when Yang tells her "I love it when you are feisty" and Blake smirks and it's loving it.

Blake loves when Yang gives her attention. It always been there, I'm so sorry y'all can't see it.

But between v1 and v3, while she absolutely loves being around Yang, she's still feels the weight of her past, which makes her still closed and not as free as she would like.

Before I talk about v4 and 5 and the end of v3 I want to talk about Sun.

He's important for Blake's growth and I feel a lot of people don't like that but this is what the media does every single time with women, they present them in the narrative only to make the main dude to growth so, it's actually nice seeing it the other way around + Sun does get a bit of growth and he has some plot in the books I think (I still need to read those but I can't find them 😭).

Since the moment Sun sees Blake he's attracted to her, understandable, she's hot. He tries to catch her attention by helping her, etc.

Blake does not shares the same sentiment until like v3 or something, in some funny way Yang is the one that pushed her to Sun by making her go to the dance and spent time with Sun.

But Blake goes to the dance because of Yang and she specifically tells Sun, in a really smug way btw, how her first dance is reserved for someone else. In the dance she constantly smiles to Yang and then we see her having an amazing time with Sun and Neptune which helps her to relax and making new friends!

At this point Blake seems to be attracted to both Yang and Sun or at least she's a bit attracted to Sun in a sexual way and not romantic wise. Blake loves the attention them both give her, is not in bitchy or selfish way(?) It makes her confident and tbh that's such a human like reaction, knowing that really attractive and amazing people are attracted to you? Please, I would be worst than Blake.

Then we have the end of v3, where Adam appears and everything goes to shit.

It's interesting how they decided to animate and write Blake, Sun and Yang in the Fall of Beacon.

Blake is constantly worried about Yang, specially after what happened, Yang calls Blake and wants to be sure she and Ruby are ok.

Later Blake goes after a Grimm and Sun and Yang are finally in the last place Blake was before disappearing.

Instead of Sun going after Blake it was Yang, he just stays there, behind Weiss.

Is in this volume that we find out that Adam wasn't Blake mentor, they were together in a romantic sense (which is disgusting because it means Adam not only abused her but groomed her). Adam tells her he's going to destroy everything she loves and in that exact moment Yang comes into scene yelling for Blake and poor Blake is mortified and Adam sees this which for him means that the blonde girl is someone that Blake loves.

The freaking meaning of all this is AMAZING, the narrative presents Yang as someone that Blake loves.

When Yang lose her arm it's when Blake gets out of her black state to protect Yang, she could have died but she didn't cared because she needed Yang to be alive, that's her partner and someone who she has confused feelings about.

Because that's the thing, yes Blake knows she's attracted to her but what does that mean? Adam is still around and she knows Yang is vulnerable and can't take much emotional damage.

So Blake leave because at least without her around Yang can still be alive because Adam is looking for her not Yang.

Here's something important, bumbleby of v1 to v3 is something fun, is a teenager thing but then bumbleby of v4 till now is more important, is deeper and goes beyond a crush.

Sun stalks Blake which was pretty bad specially cuz Blake was paranoid about Adam which makes her react violently (she slaps him which is bad as well).

Blake character development in v4 and v5 is really important, not only Sun helps her a lot but spending time with her parents help her heal some stuffs.

But it's in v5 that everyone should have got the confirmation needed for black sun.

There's a moment when they are talking about Adam and Blake tells Sun that she's thankful that he helped her and that's what she wants to do, she wants to be that friend to help Illia, the same thing Sun did for her.

This implies so much and the most important one is that for Blake, Sun is a friend, a very dear one btw, and that she wants to be a friend to Illia as well, she wants to be that safety net that Sun and her parents were for her but with Illia. This is so powerful because Sun is more than ok with that, he only wanted to help Blake and if she ended up falling for him? Cool, and if not, cool as well.

Sun already knew this, since the beginning.

In the end of V3 he saw it and came to terms with it.

You know who were looking out for Blake and Yang when Yang was unconscious and Blake was taking her hand while crying and apologizing? Ren and Nora, who were both tired. And in front of them was Sun, looking at them like "oh", like he understood that Blake eyes we're always on Yang and not on him.

That's why in all the conversations of blacksun in v4 and v5 Sun always brings up Yang and how she may feel because he knows that's the person for Blake, not him.

Because if not, tell me why no romantic business happened? It was perfect to expand their relationship! But they didn't.

Later he was the one pushing Blake to go with her team, he knows, Sun knows how important is for Blake to be with her team and to be with Yang. At the end of the day, the person Blake felt safe with after Adam was Yang.

Now, v6.

Listen, Ruby and Weiss don't get why Yang can't seem to forgive Blake but... Blake does, back in Beacon Yang had an heart to heart with her about her family, Blake knew about what leaving would be for Yang and that's why she so angst about Yang in v4 and v5.

So she tries her hardest, and while I agree that there's some parts that should be written better and they need to TALK about it... V6 was good for them.

The Apathy mini arc was amazing but it was the end of V6 that settle bumbleby to be canon.

Blake finally understanding that they need to be equals in their relationship, them both going against Adam, Adam rage to see how much they love and respect each other, the final blow, Blake break down...

But the most important of all was the beginning of the second part of Blake and Adam fight, because Yang listen everything that Adam said to Blake and it clicked for her.

Blake didn't left because she wanted, she left because she loves them. And the moment Yang hug her, comfort her and reassure her they are fine it's the moment she forgives Blake and a new stage in their relationship starts which lead us to v7.

V7 bumbleby is v1/v3 bumbleby but mature. They talk more (as we see with the scene about Robyn), they want to be more close and close to each other, etc.

Assertive Blake is back! She keeps flirting with Yang, keeps making Yang to compliment her, to pay attention to her, she giggles at Yang's jokes, she goes to a club!! Blake doesn't usually goes to clubs!

In V2 we see Blake can dance but in V7 she doesn't seem to find the rhythm... Ohhh the classic "please help" You give to your crush to make them get closer to you so you can flirt with them and maybe make a move. And Yang? She goes with the flow, because is what Blake wants and Yang wants Blake to lead because Adam is still fresh.

That's why she gets worried about what Blake thinks of her in V8, what they have is new, they are aware of the attraction and the feelings but haven't done anything about it.

I love making it seem they are clueless but they aren't, they are smart and observant young women, Blake knows Yang find her attractive, she encourages Yang to watch her, to flirt, to get closer.

There's a scene in V7 when Yang is watching Blake through the mirror and Blake purposely gets flirty when putting her make up on.

They know they are dancing around each other.

It's so great seeing an wlw couple being like this, I love it. Bumbleby is a slow burn and it's a really cute and adorable one, it's a shame people hate it or claim is queerbaiting.

Yeah, maybe there's some stuffs that could be written better but overall? Bumbleby has been here since the beginning and the development is beautiful to see.

Highly recommend to rewatch RWBY with all this subtext in mind so you will find Bumbleby since day one lol.

Btw, ship whatever you want guys, blacksun is a cute ship, just stop being dicks to the VAs and the writers of the show for something that's your fault, like... Literally, your fault, all the signs were there.

And sorry for making this so long and all over the place, I hope you enjoy this rant tho lol

#bumbleby #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #sun wukong #rwby #adam Taurus #blake and yang are gay and in love y'all #sun has a bet with weiss and ruby of when they start dating and for now weiss seems to be winning

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inmyarmswrappedin · 3 years

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So, because Fatou’s season ends today and, as far as we know, Druck hasn’t been renewed yet, I want to go over the things I feel the team did well in this season and the things I hope they take with them when they sit down to write the next season (which I’m manifesting will be Ava’s).

I think that s5 and, perhaps to a bigger extent, s6, were the team’s attempt to address fan feedback for and criticisms of s3 and s4. So I have hopes that, after possibly the most scrutinized season of any Skams, they are still willing to read even more feedback and sit down once again to craft a couple more seasons (possibly even 3 or 4 more seasons!).

So, without further ado, things that were done well! (Do I have to add “in my opinion”? Do I??)

I liked that for both s5 and s6, the thorough-line for the season wasn’t made obvious or shared in a press release, but rather it was up to fans to connect the story threads for themselves.

I loved that the team sought to address one of the biggest criticisms of s3, that is, that Matteo was given so many symptoms of a mental illness, but it ultimately went unaddressed in the narrative. They did this by giving Nora a dissociative disorder, and Fatou dyscalculia. (Matteo has been headcanoned as being mentally ill and having a disability.) It allowed the teams to develop both fan theories into full-blown seasons and give each of them the importance they deserved.

I have said this already, but I really appreciate that the team chose misunderstood, misrepresented and underrepresented mental illnesses and disabilities. I feel like s5 and s6 will be referents for many years, because they really took the time to portray a dissociative disorder and dyscalculia in a down-to-earth, unhurried way that isn’t meant to shock and awe, but simply allow us to understand why and when Nora and Fatou will struggle. Druck got the viewers to anticipate when Nora and Fatou would struggle, and that’s the first step in being able to anticipate and accommodate the needs of the Noras and Fatous of the world. I really can’t overstate how important this is and what a difference it makes in a real, tangible way. These seasons aren’t meant to be enjoyed for voyeuristic reasons, but they will legitimately help people.

One of the biggest criticisms of s4 was that Amira and Sam didn’t connect as women of color. In fact, it seemed like in s4 Sam was treated as another white friend, when in s2 both she and Amira were the victims of Kiki’s racism. The team addressed this by giving us Ava and Fatou’s friendship, which I want to say might be the first friendship between main characters of color where their race is a substantial reason for their bond. (There are the Sanas with their Jamillas, but the Jamillas aren’t main characters, and then there are friendships like Jo and Megan and Zoya, or Imaan and Liv, or Luca and Yasmina, but iirc in every case their bond as women of color isn’t made explicit.)

Another criticism of s4 was the way Kiki turned into the world’s most understanding white friend offscreen. The team addressed this with the Ava and Mailin storyline, which I think was wonderfully and subtly set up in s5, then built on with the biology test leaked answers.

On the topic of race, I think a major criticism of s3 was that David’s ethnicity wasn’t acknowledged (to the point where a white actress was cast to play his sister gvhvhv). The team has made up for this with Josh (more in the s6 sm than in s5, but I still count it) and with Kieu My. Fatou and Kieu My bonded over being first/second gen children of immigrants, and in doing so, they acknowledged that these characters aren’t white and have different experiences than white Germans.

The first 6 episodes of this season were some of the finest writing in the Skams. The storylines all connected and built on each other. The motifs were just so good and beautiful and fitting. The themes were all clearly defined and easy to follow.

The tortoise plot was one of the most fun and imaginative storylines in any Skams, it connected Fatou and Ismail in a believable way. And not to rave about a fucking tortoise, but animals can be really uncooperative and that tortoise delivered every fucking clip. Druck has a reputation for being one of the most depressive versions of Skam, but the Maike/Burger plot was just plain fun.

I feel like some of the old gen’s instas were a bit self-indulgent. I’m thinking specifically of Matteo’s memes and how they they weren’t necessarily the kind of memes a gay dude born in 2001 would pick, but someone a decade older. I think this is much better done with new gen. Fatou’s memes reflect her age and her sexuality, and not just that, but Ava, Mailin, Kieu My, Josh, etc. all pick memes and even focus on different aspects of recent news, based on their gender, race, personalities, interests, etc.

I appreciate that the team found a way to fit a sex scene between Fatou and Kieu My to add to the small catalogue of wlw sex scenes on Skams (I’m including the scene in lovleg or we’d only have two lol). While I understood the reasons eskam opted not to include one, I thought there were ways to feature a sex scene that didn’t sexualize the actresses and didn’t require nudity. Cases in point: the lovleg scene, and this scene in Druck.

And it also needs to be said. This is the first original season with a main of color, and the third season overall (after Liv and Imane) where 10 episodes are given to a character of color and no one else. Of the three, it’s certainly the season that loved and respected its main the most. The bar is so low it’s in hell, but Druck did clear that bar!

With all that said, let’s talk about the things I would really want the team to address in following seasons:

The thing I most want them to fix might be small or unimportant for a lot of people, but I think it’s at the core of why the season has been unenjoyable or certain plot points haven’t come across the way the team wanted, for many people. I am talking about the overly expositional nature of the writing. It appears as if the team approached the writing of the clips with the intention of hitting each beat as noted in their agreed upon outline, and absolutely nothing else was to be added. This is an issue both in s5 and s6. It’s just less noticeable in s5, because s5 is setting up stuff for Fatou’s season, and possibly even seasons that haven’t been written yet. The fact that absolutely every second counts makes for a stressful watching experience for me, because the narrative tension is always heightened. Whereas with Skam, the narrative tension would build throughout the clip. Take the Pride scene in Skam, for instance. The clip allows for Isak and Eskild to get increasingly more agitated as they butt heads. I feel like if this Druck team had done the Pride scene in s5 or s6, the clip would’ve started with both Isak and Eskild already on edge, and cut much of the dialogue that got them there.

On the topic of naturalistic dialogue, this season doesn’t have it. Here is an example from ep 10 clip 2, Wieder vereint/Reunited 11:37.

Fatou: I’ll get a certificate too and bring it over to you. And I checked it, I only have to change one course and my schedule will work.

Teacher: Miss Jallow, you are not the first one to come to me with an epiphany. We could fill entire school weeks with the lessons you missed. In addition, Doctor Steinberg told me about your, well… activities. You don’t have a lot of arguments on your side.

Fatou: But I’ve spoken to all of the teachers and they said they are okay with it.

Teacher: You seem to have friends among the teaching staff. Mrs Pavlovic put in a word for you. Okay then, do it and go before I change my mind. [translated by @kieu-tou! Thank you!]

Like. This is the bare bones version of a dialogue. This should be the first draft, not the final version. The coordinator goes from absolute no to yes, with just one line from Fatou. The coordinator gives reasons that would necessitate more than one sentence of counterargument, like Fatou’s absences and the Biology test leaked answers. The coordinator even says Fatou doesn’t have a lot of arguments on her side, and yet it takes Fatou one line to change her mind!

And of course we viewers don’t want or need a lot of time with the coordinator. And particularly at this point in the season, no one would enjoy a naturalistic dialogue with the coordinator of all people. But my point is that this is an issue with the dialogue all this season (and last season as well, but this season has been more scrutinized), the reason I picked this example is because of how easy it is to see here.

Which brings us to the pacing of the clips, and specifically the Friday clips. Because the script goes straight to the information the team wants to convey to the viewers, skipping the build up to it, many Friday clips have fallen flat, felt abrupt, and have been, tbh, unsatisfying. Again, I had this issue in s5, but as that season went on, I felt like the team had a better grip on Friday clips. But then they did it again in the first Friday clip this season, and so I think this is something the writers really should work on. The first Friday clip in Isak’s season closes on Isak being sandwiched by Emma and Even on a bench, visually setting up the love triangle, or more accurately, the personifications of who Isak should want to hook up with and who he really wants. But in order to get there, we’re shown a good amount of info, from the way Vilde, Eva and Sana are handling Noora’s absence, to Chris and Kasper, Even hovering around Isak, Emma trying to impress Isak, Isak escaping and, like, draping himself on the walls because he’s so over it all. Isak playing a game on the bathroom to stall for time. The paper towel maneuver to immediately give us a sense of what a weirdo Even is. A conversation between Isak and Even that gives us some clues about Even’s shame, as well as establish interests in common (like weed), and this is all before Emma even joins them! Just think of all the stuff we learn about who Isak, Even, Emma, Eva, Vilde or Sana are as people, before we get to the point of the clip! Fatou’s season simply didn’t have that. Compare it with the first Friday clip of Fatou’s season where the cashqueens quickly talk about the leaked answers, one of the major storylines this season that only gets a couple lines, before Fatou says she doesn’t want to talk about school (Fatou’s struggles with school, another major storyline), and then we’re onto the point of the clip, which is that Kieu My likes girls too. AND FADE TO BLACK. When people say they want longer clips, what they mean isn’t artificially inflate the clip length or add more plot stuff. Just let us watch the characters interact with each other so that we get a feel for how they relate to each other. I know I wish we’d have gotten more of Ava and Fatou interacting with each other before things turned to shit, and Ava with the other girls, so that I know why they all like and value Ava so much. I wish we’d have gotten more of Kieu My talking to the cashqueens about, like, why she didn’t make use of the biology test answers, instead of getting it on a chat. Or food combos they don’t like. So it makes more sense that later on Kieu My actually thinks she and Fatou are friends. And every line doesn’t have to count. In Skam España, the characters are constantly talking and not everything they ever talked about ended up being relevant. When one of the characters lied about her house undergoing renovations to hide the fact that she was poor, the characters joked about Italian marble and put on bad Italian accents and made that Italian hand gesture. None of this was important to the plot because those renovations weren’t real to begin with, but they made viewers feel like these were real friends joking around, instead of characters needing to hit every storyline beat in a clip.

I have this joke with my friends about Druck always going 🤪🤪 in the last third of every season, in which a season that was very tightly written and cohesive suddenly pulls something inexplicable and pretty much impossible to resolve in 1-3 episodes. Hanna’s season suddenly switching to Mia, Björn creeping on Mia in episode 9! of a total 10, David getting outed in episode 8 and then disappearing for a whole week, Amira’s season pivoting to Mia and Hanna. It has happened in every season except Nora’s, so I thought the team had learned its lesson, but then the forgotten date with Ava happened. To be clear. It really makes no sense that Nora would have hung out with Ava several times since Tuesday, and the topic of the cashqueens being officially introduced to Kieu My wouldn’t have come up. it’s just not realistic.gif I feel like at that point the writing for the rest of the reason became super contrived to keep Fatou miserable and apart from Kieu My and Ava to artificially delay the reunions until episode 9 and 10. Why add a cheating insinuation and the main checking her partner’s messages in episode 8 if you know you won’t be able to properly resolve it? Why make Kieu My mock Fatou’s “uhm” if it’s not going to be addressed in their reunion clip? Kieu My had taken the initiative for a lot of the relationship, so it’s okay for Fatou to take the initiative when it comes to making up. You don’t have to add things that can only be resolved through an expositional info dump. (Please no more exposition than it’s necessary! I think we’ve established that at this point lol.) In the case of Fatou’s season, this is even sadder because I feel like Kieu My’s intimacy issues could’ve been the reason to drive them apart for two weeks, rather than the Maya/uhm stuff. This could’ve also been resolved through Fatou and Kieu My explicitly negotiating their boundaries and how they want to be comforted and how they want to comfort each other, which I thought was the issue with Fatou rejecting Kieu My’s attempts to help while wanting physical touch, while Kieu My didn’t want to be touched but rather seen.

There are going to be many thinkpieces on why a myriad of stuff didn’t work for people, so I’m going to keep this simple and address one last thing. I think that choosing to focus on Nora’s mental illness and Fatou’s disability is a great choice that doesn’t complicate the themes too much, but Druck (and all the Skams, but I’m invested only in Druck succeeding at this point) still struggles with being intersectional. This is the major reason why the Ava/Mailin storyline ended not with a bang, but a whimper. There just wasn’t enough work done to connect Fatou’s struggles not just to her disability, but also to her race (and even her sexuality). I think that if people really want (and lbr, it’ll be mostly poc who will put in that effort and work), they can see how Fatou’s race affected the way other people and especially adults reacted to her, but this wasn’t made explicit. If Ava and Mailin are going to argue about racism all season, why not connect that with Karin firing Fatou from Aquarius? As it stands, Karin fired Fatou because of a disability neither of them knew Fatou has, and that was the resolution to that storyline. Why not make it explicit that the Physics teacher had preconceived ideas about Fatou because Fatou is black? Why wasn’t Fatou’s disability addressed in the meeting with the coordinator? Why didn’t Fatou express to Mailin that Fatou, too, had issues with how Mailin was acting wrt racism? It felt like, with the way the season was putting so much emphasis on racism, all these threads were going to be connected. In the end though, it almost felt as if only Ava is affected by racism (aside from Mailin mentioning Fatou in the last episode). It’s not like talking about how racism affects Fatou is going to make the topic redundant for Ava’s or Ismail’s season. As a light-skinned black lesbian with a disability, Fatou’s life is going to be impacted by racism in a different way than Ava’s will, as a dark-skinned black fat straight cis girl, or Ismail’s, as a Turkish-German possibly Muslim possibly non binary person. All these experiences are specific enough, and different enough, that they can be touched upon in different seasons without becoming redundant. The fact that Fatou’s season almost seemed to forget at times that she is a black lesbian, doesn’t bode well for Ava’s and Ismail’s season to acknowledge all their struggles.

The bottom line is that this season really was great and did a lot of good, and I feel like the writing just needs to be tweaked a bit for further seasons to be even better and more enjoyable overall. I am very pleasantly surprised by how the team took s1-s4 fan feedback to heart and worked to implement suggestions, and so I really trust them and hope they keep working on the show. It’d be a shame if Druck wasn’t renewed, with this team at the helm.

#druck #this post is 3K+ words in word I'm so sorry #but I really hope it makes its way to the writers and is helpful

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littlemisssquiggles · 3 years

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Maybe the sudden drop of RG from CRWBY is because a huge portion of the fandom considers this shipping problematic (mainly because we don't know how much Ozpin is involved, which tbh is a fair point in my opinion)? One way or another, it is weird that this is happening now. RG has been criticized for this for years at this point. Little late to drop the ship because of this on CRWBY's part if you ask me.

Hey there Seaberry.

…Yeahhh…here’s the thing with that---a lot of the complaints that the so-called antis made against Rosegarden was denounced in the actual canon and this is inclusive of the whole “Ozpin issue”.

Part of my main reasoning for never factoring Oz into the Rosegarden equation stemmed from the important fact that despite sharing a body with Ozpin, Ruby has always treated Oscar as his own person regardless of this. From Ruby’s perspective, she has always differentiated the two souls from each other and her relationship with either reflected that. Not once throughout the entire series has Ruby ever treated Oscar as Oz. While everyone else ultimately came to see Oscar as part of the group outside of Oz in later seasons, Ruby has always been mindful of the fact that Oscar has his own identity from the beginning and this point is emphasized by the show constantly drawing attention to the importance of Oscar’s own individuality and his fears of losing that with the impending merge.

Not to mention that the showrunners themselves already denounced the “Oz issue” back during V6 in the Lost Fable episode.

In V6CH3, I specifically remember a part of Ozma’s backstory that highlighted him sharing a lifetime with a successor who had a family of his own.

As I recall correctly, despite sharing a body and duty to protect the world with an ancient soul---this Wizard---who I dubbed Henkle---was still able to have a life of his own with a loving wife and kids despite Ozma’s presence.

Despite sharing a body, the canon PLOT indicated that Ozma ultimately learned to live in harmony with the men he was paired with by showing one of them with his own family while Ozma looked on in the background; allowing this man to have his own life with his loved ones and never coming between that.

It is for reasons such as this why I always rolled my eyes at the antis who kept using the “Ozpin issue” in arguments against the Rosegarden pair since the show already debunked this and said it wasn’t a problem. So forgive me if the idea of the showrunners listening to these fans now all of sudden doesn’t make sense to me when they themselves denounced this issue in their own writing seasons ago.

This just makes me not understand the CRWBY showrunners even more now. Ever since newcomer CRWBY Writer---Kiersi Burkhart--- felt the need to comment about the Rosegarden moment from V7CH9 in the V7 Commentary, I’ve had a sinking feeling that the showrunners might “change” something about Rosegarden dynamic moving forward for V8. Because of all the RG moments that’s been tossed out over the seasons, I felt it odd that the one that received the most backlash from certain-certain folk in the FNDM was the one to be talked about.

And yet here we are for V8 where it is very clear that the showrunners are toying with this ship. It’s not to say that they’ve actually dropped developing the bond between Ruby and Oscar. We still received some moments with them for this season as shown during the first episode and the last episode.

As a matter of fact, I still get the vibe that the showrunners are low-key pushing the bond between Ruby and Oscar since they still frame their moments like they’ve always done in the previous seasons. However my reason for feeling as if the showrunners have toned down on the RG is because I can’t understand why they felt the need to have their hug be the only one to be interrupted.

As I said in my post---the Rosegarden reunion hug is the ONLY hug to be interrupted for this season that was said to have “many hugs”. Every other hug we got to see in perfect view but Ruby’s with Oscar was interrupted by Emerald. And what’s sad about that is the showrunners didn’t have to do that since they could’ve just as easily let Ruby hug Oscar before taking notice of Emerald entering from the back.

But that’s not what they did. They framed Ruby going into hug Oscar before having her stop right before the two got a chance to hug.

We got to see Ruby hug Penny [multiple times] and Oscar hugged by Jaune and Nora. But their hug is the one to be interrupted out of ALL the hugs for this season so far. The ONLY ONE. Really showrunners?

Why do that? Why tease the fans who like this pairing like this? Why have this hug be the only one to be interrupted from happening while every other gets to happen and be seen by the audience?

I’m sorry this bugs me so much and what hurts about it is…as a Rosegardener, as I’ve said in the past, my reason for starting to like this ship was encouraged by the show constantly pushing Ruby and Oscar together onscreen since V5.

You pushed them together for three seasons straight and now…just to have them share a hug...no let’s interrupt that. We can’t have them hug onscreen.

And dude, what’s bothering me even more is that it’s just a hug. It’s not like I’m asking the showrunners to make Oscar and Ruby kiss or even become a couple. It’s just a hug. One hug.

As a Rosegardening Pinehead, all I wanted was a hug between them. Just one emotionally driven hug between these two kids to cap off all the hell that the little prince suffered through on the whale by reuniting with his rose.

After EVERYTHING that Oscar has been through for this season and is going through currently regarding his fears of the Merge, the one thing I was hoping for is for him to get a warm welcoming hug from his closest friend or at least the closest thing to one he has one the hero team--the person the writers have pushed him towards for the past couple of volumes.

And they don’t do it. Even though they teased they were gonna make them hug. I can’t believe the showrunners set up a hug between Ruby and Oscar and then they don’t do it. They teased a HUG. WHO TEASES A HUG.

It’s not even just that they didn’t do it. They framed it. Made it look like it was going to happen and then it doesn’t happen. So they teased it. I feel like the showrunners are starting to play the same games with Rosegarden that got them in trouble with BlackSun and Bumblebee and I’m sorry but I’m not liking that at all.

Don’t play games with my shipping heart CRWBY showrunners and please don’t play games with my favourite ship. Not these two. Anyone else but these two. Not my two favourite characters in this glorious mess you call an animated series [ that I still love despite how much its writing frustrates me at times].

~ LittleMissSquiggles (2021)

#squiggles answers: rwby #oscar pine #oscar and ruby #rwby rosegarden #rwby volume 8 spoilers #seaberry-siren

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ackb · 3 years

Link

I feel about this book the way I feel about looking at myself in the mirror. It’s like, 15% “Ah, look at that poor human just trying to get through a life.” and 85% “Blech.” Like, there’s some compassion there, sure. I have no doubt that Haig has been through some shit, and congrats to him for making it through and writing a book a lot of people love. But also...”Blech”

There’s a line in one of my favorite picture books, The Hello Goodbye Window, by Norton Juster (yes, THAT Norton Juster) and Chris Raschka: “You can be happy and sad at the same time, you know. It just happens that way sometimes.” We say this a lot in my family because it’s relevant a lot. And it was handy to have in my mind as I finished this book because there was a moment* during which I got truly sucked into it, nodding through tears, but I also kind of hate this book.

I should have known this type of both/and ride lay ahead when Nora mentioned that her favorite philosopher is Henry David Thoreau. Like, on on the one hand, my personal take on Thoreau is very:

On the other hand, my beloved English teacher, my very own Mrs. Elm was an absolute FANGIRL for Thoreau. She named her son after him. She quoted him all the time. She adored Thoreau and I adored her. So. Both/and.

But now, it’s hard for me to read Thoreau (or have his words foisted on me) without reeling at the deceptive fakery of it. Thoreau offered a cultivated identity of independence and self-reliance while hiding all the work that made his success happen. His words may be inspiring, but they’re hollow. And I wanted more than hollow words for Nora.

As the story wears on, Haig communicates he wants Nora to make decisions that support her own self, that her regrets were largely tied up in the ways she adapted to others’ dreams instead of fulfilling her own. But then every time she left a life it was because of how her choices hurt others. What are we supposed to learn from that? We get story after repetitive story about how her success somehow sucked the life from a different family member. But maybe it’s not Nora’s fault that everyone in her life is such a fucked up wanker?

I mean, maybe the answer to how to get by when you’re surrounded by alcoholics is just don’t be successful, but I’m guessing there’s more to it than that?

Here’s the thing: Haig has written a book that looks like it’s an affirmation of life, but it’s actually filled with all the self-hatred he’s still carrying around. Like, I really hope that dude has a good therapist because this book is not the book someone writes when they’re healed. This is the book someone writes when they’re on the dopamine high of having survived. But the crash will come. Because, to paraphrase Haig: dopamine is like a mosquito bite, you think it’s going to itch forever, but actually, eventually, it goes away.

And yet, here we have yet another book—yes, there are plenty—where our reluctant hero learns a life’s worth of lessons in an evening, makes a good choice, cleans the smudges off their glasses and the world is bright and new. The end.

The sad reality is that Nora doesn’t get help. That is a failure far more significant than anything else she did or didn’t do. And it breaks my heart that this book is out there, selling a shot of dopamine instead of the kind of real work that keeps people alive.

*So, if you’ve read it, you probably know the moment, but I’ll share below a cut for those who don’t want spoilers

And, of course, it’s absurd to say “spoilers” as if you didn’t know exactly what was going to happen the whole way through. But, still.

So, like, you know, EVERYONE, I’m a suicide survivor. And the experience of attempting suicide and then surviving it—intentionally—is a particular kind of something, right? Each of us have our own stories that are some part unique and some part universal. When the library is burning down around her and Nora is trying to find the right words, I know I’m not the only one who fell hard into that moment, urging her to write “I AM ALIVE” before she said the words.

Because for all I don’t remember, I absolutely, viscerally remember that moment of decision, like a lightning strike. And the beautifully horrible feeling of dragging my self-drugged body out of bed, throwing up, and saving myself through Herculean effort, that’s something that I will always have done. And I’ll always feel terrible shame about it, and I’ll also always feel vast pride about it. Life is complicated. Death is complicated. The give and take between them is complicated.

There’s something heavy and cathartic and glorious about encountering this echo of your own life. It’s an indulgence that feels good. But it’s also a temptation that feels dangerous. And maybe, more than anything else, the thing I think about this book is that it’s a little dangerous. Not in a good way.

So I’m going to put it away. If any of the above is familiar to you, I hope you can put it away too. There’s a better life out there for all of us. All it takes is a lifetime of hard work, a lot of luck, and the Herculean effort of staying around to experience it.

#2021 reading challenge

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na-klar · 4 years

Text

druck nora ep 2 translation

Friday, 17:03

Ava: Do you want to drink something?

Nora: Oh yeah, thanks.

Ava: Exhausting day?

Nora: Yeah... until 10th period, dude. You?

Ava: Mh, pretty chill.

Nora: Nice. We were in the same class in fifth grade, right? But I feel like I haven’t seen you for a long time in school.

Ava: Yeah, I was a year in Alaska.

Nora: Alaska?!

Ava: Mhm!

Nora: Whaaat? Okay, that’s wild.

Ava: Yes...

Nora: Oh wait, sorry.

Zoe: Hey Nori, we’re on our way to the parking lot. Are you coming? We’d be really happy ☀

Nora: Good, uhm... should we start?

Ava: Let’s wait for the others. I’m sure they’re coming soon.

Nora: Okay.

Ava: The owner of this Späti(*) is super nice, by the way.

Nora: Really?

Ava: Yes!

Nora: Cool.

Ava: Yeah. We’ll have to have all our Abi meetings here.

Nora: Yeah, definitely. Support your local Späti, right?

Ava: Yes, exactly! Do you think the others are really all drinking alcohol right now?

Nora: I think they are, unfortunately. Let’s see.

Zoe: Guyyyyssss! Tomorrow huge parking lot rave! We’re drinking away all the money!

Constantin: The abi is getting cancelled so we’ll drink away all the money.

Ismail: Fuck Corona, fuck Corona.

Nora: My god, that’s so embarrassing. What?

Ava: Sorry. Damn! I just had a thougt... when I was in Alaska - it was really rough with these guys in 9th grade. Maybe you noticed it, too.

Nora: I didn’t really know them back then-

Ava: It was extremely shitty. And I thought, yeah, I’ll go away for a year, forget about it, and become a new person! Then I come back and the great thing is they’re still the same assholes. I’ve learned to defend myself but... but they always find something to show how great they are. I don’t want to let these jerks win all the time anymore. What’s that?

Nora: Ah, I found that...

Ava: Show me. Okay? What is that?

Nora: Okay, this is going to sound weird but some dude ran into me, I let my phone fall, it’s cracked now, and then I found his fanny pack and now we’re writing stickers to each other.

Ava: Okay, that sounds cool. And how..?

Nora: Like I said, he smashed my phone to the ground and then I took his fanny pack--

Fatou: Hey, where is everyone?

Nora: Nobody else came.

Fatou: But Kieu My and the rest posted it in their stories, didn’t they?

Nora: We’re the others.

Fatou: Oh...

Ava: Yep. We’re not the party, we’re the abi committee. You swapped the addresses.

Fatou: Fuck.

Mailin: Hey guys, we have to go to that parking lot immediately.

Fatou: Yes!

Ava: No! We’re the abi committee and you are?

Mailin: I know, I’m Mailin. I saw what they posted in their stories. We can’t let them do that! They’re drinking away all the money from our year! We have to stop them somehow.

Ava: Okay. How?

Mailin: I have an idea. Constantin and Ismail and everyone, they can wrap it up. Are you coming?

Ava: Let’s go, hm?

Nora: Alright, let’s go.

Nora: Hey!

Ismail: Oh, look at that.

Zoe: Nora!

Ismail: You’re hanging out with her now?

Nora: With Ava? Yes.

Finn: Do you want a beer?

Ismail: Shut up.

Ava: Little bit of a 90′s village festival, here on the parking lot, don’t you think?

Constantin: What do you want?

Fatou: Your souls.

Mailin: It’s just really rude what you’re doing here. Anyone who saw the story can come over and steal the money.

Constantin: Don’t be annoying.

Ismail: If you want your 10 € back, go on. But let us have fun here.

Nora: Wow, you guys are so cool. I see 10 people showed up!

Zoe: Nora... let it be.

Nora: Man, no! You’re not ruling over our whole fucking year. You’re in school acting like you’re the absolute greatest and are dragging other people down only because you have an inferiority complex. I’m not part of this anymore.

Mailin: Woo! Okay guys, I got the money!

(* Späti: convenience store in Berlin)

#druck #druck translation #druck clip #druck s5e2

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philliamwrites · 3 years

Text

Ocean Eyes, Golden Mind

Fandom: All For The Game (Nora Sakavic)

Pairing: Neil/Andrew

Tags: #math nerd neil, #neil with glasses, #no exy

Summary: In which Neil hates his new prescribed glasses until they attract the interest of a certain Andrew Minyard.

Commissioner: Ziegenkind

Notes: Title taken from Billie Eilish’s ‘Ocean Eyes.’

Ocean Eyes, Golden Mind

Dude, it’s just a frat party. Who doesn’t go to frat parties?

The message flashes Neil’s screen white, its sender none other than his roommate Nicky who is supposed to study for an upcoming test in Public Policy in exactly nineteen hours. That’s what Neil writes him. Nicky’s reply comes instantly.

Those who study tend not to party. You know. Like you.

Neil leaves him on read. If he wants to party, he’ll lock himself inside his room, two bottles of Jack Daniel’s by his side while watching every existing compilation of cats attacking people on the small screen of his phone. He knows how to have a good time, alright. Not everyone has to set their scale like Nicky: More than once Neil has been the spectator of him coming back to the dormitory completely wasted, but still eager enough to get frozen waffles from the fridge. Being too drunk to put them in the toaster, he usually just climbs up to his top bunk and puts them between his thighs to eat them partially defrosted. It’s this fragile line between genius and stupidity that has Neil doubting if he should fill in a request for changing roommates or just live with the fact that Nicky Hemmick is one special kind of man.

So instead of spending his night curled into himself, wall against his back and eyes on every stranger distributing awful shots, Neil sits at the Math Tutoring Centre on the west side of the campus and gives group tutoring sessions.

Math comes to Neil like breathing. Like Bertrand Russel said, not only does Mathematics possess truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture. It is sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. It is poetry—elegant and deep—of logical ideas to create harmony in a written line. Once he tried to explain that to Nicky over microwaved Mac n Cheese with Girls running in the background, clearly overestimating him, because Nicky only stared into space for a few seconds, and replied, “You really need to get laid, man.”

Reluctant at the beginning, Neil only agreed to join the Tutor Program because his math professor promised to throw in some extra cash. Something about raising the graduate numbers in order to get the board of education off his back. That’s where Neil’s jurisdiction of interest ends, but he has enjoyed it more than expected—the empty hallways, the harsh light of the ceiling lamps, the smell of chalk, the faint echoes of students still lingering in classrooms. There’s this magic about the Palmetto State University at night—a vulnerability that can only live once the sun sets behind the horizon. When else would he find a kid sleeping under a table in the library, or seniors breaking down in tears for exact 10 minutes before continuing their studies as if nothing has happened.

There’s another reason he’d rather spend his evening on campus, one Nicky doesn’t need to know because then Neil won’t hear the end of it. That reason being 5’0’’ tall chemistry prodigy Andrew Minyard, sitting in the last row of Neil’s math sessions each Friday. He only knows about him thanks to Nicky’s never-ending complaints, but that never really stopped him from throwing a few or more glances in Andrew’s direction. Just curiosity, of course.

So when he stands in front of the blackboard now, putting away his lesson papers which are full of numbers and equations—the kind that has enough letters to look like sentences—he feels dozens eyes burn holes in the back of his neck, and one pair belongs to Andrew. No one asks why he’s here, but everyone knows he doesn’t need to be.

In his one year of giving tutoring sessions, Neil has learnt that exactly three types of students exist: Students who are really good, certainly not in need of the extra lessons, but going anyway for some extra ego-buff and unnecessary brain-flexing. The second type is students who are okay, doing their tasks, following the lesson, not really attracting any attention safe for some crude jokes. The last type has Neil questioning his belief in the educational system of the whole state because he doesn’t understand how they are allowed inside the sacred halls of PSU.

Andrew is a special type on his own—the enigma that keeps Neil awake at two in the morning because he’s desperate to solve it, but without knowing where to start, he’s just running in circles. His fingers itch to solve an equation with multiple variables, to find the solution to a problem and get it off his mind.

He doubts it will be this easy with Andrew.

“Before we continue to look at scalar products in R- and C-vector spaces, we’ll consider bilinear and semi-bilinear forms in general, and link them to matrices for their representation to chosen bases.” Neil’s hand flies across the board, leaving letters and parenthesizes that look like bizarre drawings—art in its most complex form. Once he’s finished, he takes a step away, wipes the chalk on his fingers off on his jeans, and turns to his audience. “What happens to this equation with the semi-bilinear form σ?”

Two hands shoot up immediately. He ignores them; no need to feed their ego, and instead picks a freshman who’s been staring at his phone for the last ten minutes. Making way, Neil moves back to the student’s seats and leans against a desk.

Is it the farthest place away from the board? It is.

Is it the closest that will get him to Andrew? Might be so.

It certainly gives him a good look at what Andrew’s been doing since Neil started—and that is not solving a single task on the paper Neil has handed out at the beginning of the session. Andrew, apparently bored before it even started, has taken out a slip of paper with a sudoku puzzle on it and is solving it against his leg, completely linked out of the instruction.

Neil tries not to stare too much at Andrew’s bare arms, and instead looks back at the board.

“Does that look right?” the freshman—Rhys or Rheeze or something like that—asks, turning around.

Neil narrows his eyes and squints at the board. He can’t make out a single thing, and that’s bad, yes, but his feet betray him, staying rooted where they are instead of reducing the distance until he can distinguish σ from a.

“Where does the l come from,” he asks. Multiple heads snap in his direction.

“That’s a j, Josten,” someone says from the other side of the room.

Neil squints harder. “And the u?”

“A μ.”

“No, it’s a v,” a girl next to Neil says, and that’s when the everyone starts shouting about what’s on the board and what isn’t.

Neil bears it for a solid minute before he surrenders. He pulls a small case from his pocket, opens it. Puts his glasses on.

The whole room goes silent.

Neil checks the equation, nods. “Correct. Who’s next?”

Multiple people stir, one manages to get up, and walks straight into a table leg. Neil questions that ‘straight’, because only then the freshman guy stops staring at Neil and steers his attention to the equation on the blackboard.

It was a bad idea, and Neil still hates Allison for forcing him to go. She’d dragged him to the doctor last week to get his eyes tested, annoyed by his never-ending questions of ‘What’s written there?’ or ‘Is that a six or an eight?’.

“They’re my eyes,” Neil had said, arms crossed as he sat in the office and waited for his turn.

“And it’s me who has to see your ugly squinting face,” Allison had replied.

Two hours later Neil had finally his prescriptions but that didn’t mean he was free from Allison’s clutches. He would have been fine with some glasses from the dollar store, but she insisted that if he’s going to wear them more than once a day, he should get designer glasses—thin frames and a color that matches his copper hair. She suggested gold. Neil picked black. The look of disappointment on Allison’s face was something that deserved its own painting to commemorate it. But once they’d finally chosen the right pair, she’d given him the very same look most of the students are giving him now—a mix between slight awe and disbelief as if he’s grown a second head. Or owes them all a month’s worth of lunch money.

“Well,” had Allison said at least, turning away to pack up and go home. “Tigers have their stripes. I have my eyeliner.” She threw him another scrutinizing look over her shoulder. “You have your glasses.” If it was supposed to make him feel better, it didn’t work, and right now he regrets nothing more than allowing Allison to drag him around.

Neil’s eyes land on Andrew’s sudoku puzzle, now half-hidden under his papers, and he sees now that he isn’t even solving the thing, but simply coloring in the empty squares.

He takes a second too long and meets Andrew’s eyes staring back at him.

“Problem, Josten?” Andrew asks with a blank expression, tapping the end of his pen against his monochrome picture of black and white squares.

Neil wants to see how far he can push until he walks against a brick wall and breaks something. He returns his gaze to the board but feels Andrew’s eyes like a solid touch on the back of his neck.

After the session, the students hurry outside, still throwing curious glances over their shoulders at Neil and if he could merge with the back of his chair and disappear forever, that would be totally okay. It isn’t until a shadow looms above him that he looks up from his own homework and draws in a careful breath when Andrew towers above him.

Neil raises an eyebrow. “Problem, Minyard?”

Andrew’s face gives nothing away, and when he stretches out a hand, Neil doesn’t flinch. His glasses slip off easily, held between Andrew’s thumb and index finger.

“Nicky told me he’s trying to convince you to join him tomorrow,” Andrew says. Neil needs a second, because that is the most words he’s heard out of Andrew’s mouth.

“I have no reason to go,” Neil says, his eyes jumping up and down, from the equation that makes his sight blur to Andrew leaning his slender waist against the table.

“You have one now.” It’s barely neutral enough to not sound like a threat, but Neil stares at Andrew nonetheless, and when he puts Neil’s glasses on, Neil’s heart does a weird stutter. He’s still starring at Andrew when he leaves the room, and no, his eyes don’t stray, they stay on Andrew’s broad back, and if they dip lower it’s because of the light.

Once he’s alone, Neil takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. Puts his head in his arms and counts to ten in French first, then again in German. His heart still does this weird thing, trying to bruise his ribs from the inside.

He gets his phone, texts Nicky he’ll go to the frat party tomorrow and puts it away, not interested in his roommate’s reply. There’s still the equation he needs to solve, but for the first time Neil’s heart isn’t really into math, and he is quite alright with it.

#philliamwrites #ao3 #fanfiction #aftg #andreil #andrew minyard #neil josten #all for the game #andrew x neil #neil x andrew #andrew/neil #neil/andrew

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norgestan · 3 years

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norandro, eva/nora, amiris 👀❣️

NORANDRO:

i mean, starting off pretty strong with my favorite eskam couple. oh god. THEM. as someone who cannot stomach season 2 and also skipped william's clip and william's clip only when season 4 of skam came to an end... i will ALWAYS love what eskam did for this couple. i think i explain it pretty well on my season 3 review, but to sum up those thoughts: i think this is what noorhelm was truly supposed to be, they're both pretty flawed characters with great arcs who make their get-together super interesting and organic, alejandro is my baby and the most developed william and i'll die on this hill, etc.

especially i think that norandro, for a ship that got way less screentime that all their other counterparts, is by FAR the most developed couple in all of them and up there in eskam too, and although they weren't the focus of most of the show, it's clear as day that the writers really tried to tell a compelling story with these two - and they succeeded. it's shocking to me that eskam actually got to link the "everyone is fighting a battle" motto that has become a meme for how poorly incorporated it is on the skamverse, as alejandro effectively behaved around that motto: during season 3 and onwards, which is where i believe he's fully reformed as a character and love interest, he never hurts nora - nor anyone - in any way. he struggles to tell nora how he doesn't want a relationship because he doesn't want to hurt her, and in the miscommunication fest that their first clip of s3 is, i've always LOVED that nora calls alejandro a "fuckboy" still, and he's clearly annoyed by this, but doesn't bite back. he's always so mindful of her feelings even though he's struggling himself, BECAUSE he understands that his suffering is not the center of the world! because treating people with kindness is a strength in itself! and it continues like that for the rest of the season. like, at his most petty, he just sends a text to nora calling her a "fuckboy", which is honestly hilarious. he deals with a lot of jealousy because of nora's new relationship, yet he values her friendship so much that he never snaps at her, he never lets it show when he's talking to her, and he's never passive-aggressive about it - you can tell that he's so genuinely glad that they're still friends after all. god, the clip where he realizes that miquel is a shit boyfriend while he's talking to nora... imagine the things any other william would've said there. imagine the ways alejandro could've been petty or overprotective and fuck everything up. instead, he recognizes nora needs space and even though it hurts to be away from her, he does it because he understands it's what she needs - and his own feelings and entitlement (that he previously showed, too!) aren't the most important thing. it's beautiful. UGH. what a great character eskam crafted, there.

i like them well enough in s4, too. i think, for what they had to work with, they took them in a good direction and their happy ending feels deserved. it's just that... personally, i wish there was more introspection of nora's aftermath in s3, which is also one of my complaints with season 3 - and where characters like emma could've been SO good. although i understand the intentions, a lot of nora's internal turmoil regarding her abusive relationship with miquel are only tied to her desire to be with alejandro. it's frustrating that it became so boy-focused when the girl squad was the center of the emotional climax of nora's season. to me, the solution is still in giving the pov's to the girl squad and not... random characters lol, but oh well. i think eskam did good there and i still love this couple the most!!! i just wish there was an universe where their story doesn't have to be wrapped up in one season and we can get actual glimpses of a beautiful slow burn where they can finally get together and make their relationship work - and this is where the fanfic part comes in, i guess! as someone who loves the couple, i liked seeing them lovey-dovey in the background of s4, but also i wouldn't have been too mad if they held off from making them completely canon and only hinted their status as endgame, kinda how they did with eva and jorge. oh, and speaking of eva, i guess...

NOREVA:

i guess, the main thing with them is that i love norandro so much that i can't really see nora with any other love interest??????? now, platonically. UGH. 12/10. anyone who's seen season 3 should know and i shouldn't even have to explain it tbh. i love the focus that is put on their friendship and how emotionally charged it is when it comes to miquel and the aftermath of all that. like, a similar thing is done with norandro - because at that point, nora and alejandro were exclusively friends, but it becomes even more relevant when it's about eva. eva who, you know, was in a toxic relationship herself. i love that she herself brings up her relationship with jorge when she's talking about miquel, and how wary she is of everything that happening. the fact that she's the first one to sense it feels so right!!! i love that eskam really made them close and gave them the window scene, which is both so powerful on its message and a true love letter to female friendships.

i think eva is a really underrated eskam character as it is, like... people really don't understand how great of a character she is and how much she's grown. they are quick to call her a boring, ooc party girl once s2 rolls around, like eskam didn't spend TIME making eva herself declare that hooking up with cristian (and cristian ONLY!) was something she did out of fun and she was decided to stop as soon as it stopped being fun for her. moreover, eva is such a perceptive person: she's been that way since s1 and it has only carried across for the entirety of the show since then. and when pairing two really good characters together, like eva and nora, you really can't go wrong. their friendship brings great things out of both of them and it goes through its own arc during nora's season, whereas other seasons either dump eva as noora's bff midway through or just make them really close to introduce character drama but don't really do anything to their dynamic as it is.

romantically... sigh. i'm sorry LOL as much as i love girls kissing and wlw romance done right... i don't see potential for this relationship outside their platonic dynamic. which is, btw, incredibly strong and beautiful. i'm super contented with how eskam handled their friendship and therefore i wouldn't want anything else from them, and it's not like nooreva where the chemistry was THERE. however! i'm always open to see people's interpretations of what romantic noreva could be. wasn't it you who wrote that beautiful fic of nora realizing she's bi and falling for eva after season 3? because now THAT'S the shit i'm looking for. i think there's a lot of potential there which i'd like to see explored in fic, but other than that, i love their relationship how it is and i've never felt a desire to see them as each other romantic interests.

AMIRIS:

first things first: why did eskam NEVER confirm cris having an embarrassing, sweet, confusing childhood crush on amira? i mean, it's my headcanon that she'll later realize it and she'll jolt awake and think "holy FUCK" but like... it's a thing that isaks are into their jonases. why didn't it happen here :(((((

being honest, childhood friends to lovers has never been my thing? a simple friends to lovers doesn't do it for me: i like my relationships rocky, with lots of character moments and whose survival and success depend only on the people involved making efforts to change and do better. if you've seen s4... yeah, that's not really the case. it's just disappointing because damn, amiris is the realest thing indeed, but also... what case are the writers doing for them? because it was only irene and hajar doing the intense gazing and bringing all the chemistry home. s4 cris is a mess and a half, and while i like the idea of the bench scene featuring both of them, and being more about cris reminding amira the reasons she's made it this far instead of lecturing her about sucking it up better... the result is still lackluster. there are SO many issues on their friendship that were introduced and then dropped, and it's really nice that cris finally is there to comfort amira when shit goes down, it truly is! but what else is there? it's just a small part of s4 being a bunch of missed potential. they could've REALLY done something great with their relationship and bring back and close cris' development in the show, but we only got... well, nothing. back to 0. amira has to live with those problems, now. things like that really make it seem like once amira broadens her horizons, she won't really go back to her friendship with the girls, and cris will be a lingering wound of the past. oh well.

ehem. romantically!!!!!!! as i said, cris was totally crushing on amira at some point. like... canon really makes a point at making cris' brother amira's love interest, where dani has nothing to offer to amira than cris hasn't done yet. iftar on a rooftop? ha, loser, cris did it first. admiring her passion and her faith? cris does it arguably way better than dani. longtime pining? dude. go home. okay, i'll cut dani soto some slack since it's not about him lol. point is, if amira was charmed by all of those things, then what tells me that the option of her and cris being a thing is off the table? at the end of the day, they're indeed a relationship that needs a lot of work and patience to last. the 500k slow burn is writing itself, really.

(regardless of amiris' future, i still think irene and hajar have to do a cute romcom romance at some point. their chemistry is off the charts.)

#skam españa #putting a read more thingy because as usual i've gone in too deep #also yes. i did mark 'i want to kiss them' in every ship. and what about it #thank you so much for your ask adelaide!!!!!!!! <3 #answered

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concealeddarkness13 · 3 years

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WHG 15 Post-Games Brains and Brawn Part 8

A couple days before the masquerade! Tagging: @ratracechronicler, @maple-writes, @pen-of-roses (also thanks for Reine!), and @thoughts-of-nora!

A couple days after Shine met Triel, I still couldn’t get my mind off of her. Shit. I hated having a one-track mind.

So when I remembered that Reine had invited me to steal from an apartment near ours, I walked over to Reine’s room to see if she’d still be interested. I knocked on her door and smiled a little when she looked up. “So, you said about stealing from a fancy Capitol idiot?”

“Was wondering when you’d show up about that. Yeah, a building not far from here and enough stuff that one or ten things would hardly be missed.”

I smiled wider. This would be great! “Sounds like fun. Lead the way, if you’d like.”

She looked me up and down, and I had to stop myself from bristling. She was sizing me up, probably checking to see if I was capable enough for her standards. Shit. I was fine. But she just nodded and started walking.

I followed her, but I couldn’t just stay silent. I had to have some kind of distraction as we walked, or my thoughts would just return to Triel. “So, do you know how to dance? With that masquerade coming up, and all.”

“I’ve had some time to learn, yeah, though I don’t know what to expect for the Capitol’s version of dancing. You?”

I laughed. “I have no idea how to dance. Shine’s found some videos for me to practice with. I don’t know how good I’ll be though.”

“Well maybe we’ll be out before you’re forced to? Or maybe someone will cause a scene big enough to distract from how horrid you are at.” Her voice was light, and she looked back with a wink.

I grinned. “If anything, I’ll be the one causing the distraction. I’m good at being obnoxious.”

She sounded confused. “Obnox-” Pause. “Oh! Like annoying.” She didn’t know that? Well, I only knew it because the Shades called me that all the time, so understandable. She looked thoughtful. “I still don’t think that’s the right word though, not from what I’ve seen of you.”

How sweet, but she was wrong. “Then you haven’t seen me at my best.” I laughed a little. “Since you know about dancing, do you know anything else about parties? I’ve never been to one.”

“Generally? It’s loud and flashy, but there’s food and drinks and people tend to share way too much information after a while and their guards are dropped.”

The food and drink would probably be awesome! The other info didn’t sound so good, but oh well. I grinned. “Food and drinks I can handle. Not so sure about crowds, but I can try.” I lowered my voice to a mumble. “Maybe I can smuggle a feast out of the party.”

Reine laughed quietly. “I’ve seen people get a fair amount from them, I think you could manage it.”

“That’ll make it all worth it.” We walked outside, and I tensed slightly until I confirmed there wasn’t anyone around. I didn’t want to have any unwanted attention. But…speaking of unwanted attention, that guy who had been visiting Reine. Every single time he came, I always seemed to run into him. He was creepy, with that smirk and those analytical eyes. Might as well ask her what was going on. I glanced over at her. “So, who was that dude that came over and talked only to you?”

She tensed as well. So, not a friend probably. “He’s…Conor. Someone who just keeps showing up in my life despite best efforts.”

I frowned. “And I suppose that you don’t like him. You want me to punch him next time he shows up?”

“I—no, don’t do that. Thank you though. He’s a friend.” Yeah right. “I think,” she said quieter, not looking me in the eyes. “But he’s also trouble.”

Oh, I’d punch him. No worries about that. And then he’d know who he was dealing with. “If he’s a friend, what’s he doing working with the Capitol, and what does he want with Triel?”

“That’s the trouble part. I don’t know, I never with him, never understand his games. He helped get us out of the Games, but,” she laughed, sounding strangled. Oh, I was gonna punch him so hard. Possibly multiple times. “Out of one and into the other. He promised to help again, hopefully it’s just him hoping for entertainment.”

Entertainment? Shit, that sounded like the Shades. “I really will punch him when I see him again.”

“Yes, he does have that effect on people,” she said dryly.

I frowned. “So, how do you even know a Capitol escort?”

“I made a mistake and failed and got him killed.” She paused. “Nearly. So I felt responsible for him for awhile. That turned out so well.” She shrugged halfheartedly.

I kept frowning. Jerk. “He’s a sneaky one for an escort, it sounds like. I’ll have to plan out my attack.” I sighed. This was making me frustrated and her unhappy. “But enough topics that don’t involve stealing. Are we close?”

“Yeah, right up there.” She gestured up at a balcony on the top floor of the apartment building we were close to. Oh boy!

I grinned. “So, we’re climbing?” I didn’t wait for her as I trotted up to the building and scanned for hand-holds. It shouldn’t be a bad climb.

“You can if you insist,” Reine said behind me.

I jumped and looked over at her with a frown. “What other sneaky way could we get in?”

She snorted and glanced around. Then she rolled her shoulders and revealed…brown wings. “I think my way will be faster.”

Holy shit. My face immediately flushed, and I couldn’t stop staring. They were beautiful. “Well.” My voice cracked. Shit. “I suppose that would be faster.”

She laughed. “A bit, yes.” She held out her hand to me, and my face got hotter. Holy shit. I wasn’t prepared for this. But I also was. Flying! I was actually going to fly again! This time without metal around me.

I took her hand. “How—how fast can you fly?” And would I be able to go that fast now?

She shrugged and pulled me close. Shit. Hopefully, she hadn’t noticed my blushing. “I can keep up with some pretty fast cars, though I’ve never really put the effort in to find out, kind of hard to keep it hidden when doing test on it. Hold on.”

I held on tight as she shot up into the air, and I stared. The wind in my face, the different vantage point, it was beautiful. Amazing.

It was over too soon, as Reine touched down on the balcony. As I got my feet back under me, I turned to Reine with a grin. “How did you get those wings? Do you have magic besides that? Have you tested how high you can go? What kind of wings are they? A type of bird’s?”

“Short answer? I was born with them in a way. And I think they’re like some form of owl’s? At least that’s what Aleksis said after hours of researching, and I can fly high enough for the air to get thin.” She shifted and rolled her shoulders so the wings disappeared again. “As for the magic and stuff…let’s just say I’ve been around for longer than you’d think.” She gave a forced laugh, but then she winced.

Oh, she was uncomfortable. And I had just asked her to talk about her magic. I should have known better. Stupid piece of shit. So, I should repay her with at least showing off my magic. Lucky me, the doors to the balcony were locked, so I found water in a vase on the inside. I activated my magic, and the water crystallized into a knife and cut through the lock. I opened the door, and bowed. “After you.”

Reine bowed back and smiled. She slipped into the room and looked around before starting to look through the items strewn about the room. Damn. It was a mess in here. They wouldn’t miss any of it.

I took a few small things until I picked up a gaudy, sequined shirt and a felt pirate hat, and I grimaced. Those idiots from the costume store. “Holy shit. I might have already met these people.”

“And your opinion of them?” She looked up from the crate she had been sorting through.

“Loud. Obnoxious. Think they know everything about pirates when they know nothing.” My voice got quieter. “Think they know Triel when they know nothing.”

“Well then.” Reine pocketed an antique spyglass and straightened up. “I was planning on being subtle and not leaving a clue, but…maybe a bit of destruction and robbery wouldn’t do too much harm?” She looked over at me with a mischievous glint in her eye.

I grinned back. “Nah. I don’t think it would.” I knocked over the vase I had already taken the water out of, and it shattered on the floor. “Whoops.”

Reine knocked over a ship in a bottle. “Oh no. How terrible.” Then she upended the crate, letting everything scatter on the floor. She was so awesome.

I grabbed something off a shelf, but before I could throw it, I actually got a good look at it. It was a compass, and it actually looked valuable. “Huh. This actually looks rare.” I held it up for Reine to see.

She swallowed hard and took it carefully. “Yeah, this is…probably really valuable. Doubt they even know they have it or what it’s worth.” She kept staring, running her fingers over some kind of engraving.

I frowned. “Do you recognize it? A possession of an ancestor or something?”

“Or something. Father’s.” Huh. I guess she had said she lived longer than usual. But still. How old was she? That compass looked old. She pocketed it and looked around. “Oh look a closet. Is there anything in here not covered in glitter or sequins?” She held up a long coat with weird fur or something on it. “Or…are these feathers?”

“It’s shit, that’s what it is.” I grabbed the coat and used the crystal knife to cut a message into it. Dress like a real pirate.

Reine laughed and handed me some more before she paused on a long black coat mostly free of sequins and glitter that actually didn’t look too bad. “Actually, I think I might take a page from Triel’s book here, think they’ll recognize this at the masquerade?”

I blushed again, just imagining her wearing that. I smiled a little. “I don’t think you’ll be wanting for dance partners, that’s for sure.”

“Wait till you see my mask and you’ll probably rethink that.” She winked and tried the cloak on, and I flushed more. “Not as good of material as the real thing, but it’ll do its job-” Her eyes wandered over toward the door, and she said something I didn’t recognize, and she had an accent when she spoke again. “I think they might be coming back.”

I frowned. How did she know that? I hadn’t heard anything. But I trusted her judgment. I swore and ran over to the balcony. Wait. We flew up. I glanced back at Reine. “Would you be able to do the wing thing again? Or should I start climbing down?”

“Wings.” She ran for me, and I threw the coat I had knifed at the door just as it opened, and the person who had come in was met with the coat in their face. Just as Reine took off and flew us back toward the ground.

We both laughed, and I grinned. “We make a good thief team!”

“Simply the best!”

“So, we gotta steal more after all this’s over!” I paused as we got closer to the ground. I hadn’t been tons of help. She hadn’t had to bring me along. “Thanks for letting me come along.”

We got back to the ground. “Oh we should definitely do this again. And as if I could get you to stay if you heard what I’d planned.”

“You got me there.” I held out a fist to fistbump and winked at her. “And I owe you a clumsy, awkward dance at the party.”

She fistbumped and winked back. “I dare anyone to say anything about it too.”

#writeblr hunger games #writeblr

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sassyduckqueen · 3 years

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Miraculous: Rise of Anatis 38

One more til Heroes Day! So I'm really happy with how this turned out. I think adapted it well. Though this didn't need as much changing as a few of the others. Also the nickname Luth that Anatis gives Leatherback. It is actually another name for the Leatherback turtle as it is sometimes known as either the Lute Turtle or just the Luth. Yep, I did my research. Anyway, hope you peeps like this chapter :D Keep an eye out because I'm able to start work on Ikari Gozen so that should be out by the weekend if I keep going on this little roll I have :D

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Chapter Thirty-Eight: Anansi

"Look at them go," Adrien grinned as Nino and Alya danced around the living room. He had managed to sneak out of the house with Kagami again, who nodded as she watched them. Ivan and Mylene were sat next to them on the sofa and Rose and Juleka were curled up next to each other. Marinette was sat at the kitchen island, next to Luka, who was writing a song. He would occasionally glance up to see what was happen but was mostly focused on his song. Not that anyone minded. They all knew that's how Luka was. Sadly, Nathaniel and Marc couldn't make it, due to having to finish the next comic of the Adventures of Anatis and Lady Noir and neither could Chloe or Alix but that was ok. They would hang out with them on the weekend. Alya and Nino slid across the ground before finishing the dance with Nino posing like a ballerina, causing everyone to laugh. The screen on the TV told them that they had beat their high score.

"Nice!" Nino grinned, happily. "Ok, who's next?! Adrien, Kagami... you up for it?"

"Oh, you guys know I have two left feet," Adrien laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. "What about... Marinette and Luka?"

"Adrien, I'm more clumsy then you," Marinette pointed out, making everyone laugh. "Besides, he's writing,"

"I'll say. Poor Luka will end up with a flying Marinette as a dance partner," Alya grinned cheekily, causing Marinette to gasp before they both began to laugh. "How about you and Mylene, Ivan?"

"Sure, we can give it a try," Mylene smiled, getting up as Ivan nodded. The two of them began to dance as the door to the apartment opened as Alya's older sister, Nora, came in and glanced around.

"I didn't know we were having a gathering of fly weights today," She mumbled before dumping her gym bag on the floor as she looked around.

"Nora!" Alya gasped as she looked at her. "Is your match over already?"

"First round! Totally knock out!!" She grinned, holding her arms up before lowering them and pulling Alya over to her, hissing something at her before straightening up and glancing at everyone. "I recognize Cappy and Baguette but who's the rest of the gang?"

"Oh, I'm Adrien," Adrien smiled before gesturing to Kagami. "And this is Kagami,"

"It's a pleasure to meet you," She replied in her calm voice, making Nora rise an eyebrow.

"Uh huh," Nora nodded before glancing at the rest of the gang. "And who's the emos and the pink one?"

"I'm Mylene and this is my boyfriend, Ivan," Mylene smiled as Ivan waved. However, Nora didn't look impressed as she glanced at them. Rose grinned at her.

"I'm Rose! It's really nice to meet you!!" She gasped as Juleka played with her hair.

"Juleka... um... I'm Rose's girlfriend..." She mumbled, quietly as she twirled Rose's hair in her fingers. Nora nodded and turned to Luka, who was scribbling down some notes. Noticing Nora in front of him, he glanced up as Juleka cleared her throat. "That's my older brother Luka,"

"Hmm, don't seem like much to me," She replied, making him frown before gesturing to herself. "The name is Anansi! Like a spider,"

"I prefer Ladybugs over spiders," Luka muttered quietly, making her frown but everyone else giggle. She narrowed her eyes and glared at him. "Just saying,"

"Well, no one asked for your opinion on it, Tips," She stated before walking over to the fridge. "Anyway, what are you all still doing here this late? Shouldn't you be heading back home? Don't you have school tomorrow?"

"We're waiting for it to get dark," Alya stated as Nora took out a carton of milk and began to drink it. "It's the world cup fireworks display tonight and we're going to watch it from the Place de la Concorde Ferris wheel!"

Nora spat out the milk and turned to face Alya, causing everyone to glance at them.

"Oh no! Baguette and Cappy can go with the rest of your little gang if they want but you are staying here!" She declared, pointing at Alya before crushing the cartoon and crossing her arms as she gave her best stern look. "It's far too dangerous!"

"But Nora... I mean Anansi... you can't do that!" Marinette gasped, causing everyone to agree.

"Yeah, no way, dude," Nino gasped. "Alya has to come with us,"

"Yeah, we're not going without her," Ivan added, making Nora frowned deeply.

"Look, Sis, I appreciate you worrying about me and all but I'm not a little girl anymore," Alya gasped, causing Nora to face her. "Besides, Mum and Dad are cool with it and we've been planning it for a while,"

"I don't care. You're not going," Nora declared before shaking her head. "There's been way too many akumatized peeps in Paris recently. Literally just a few days ago, you were captured by that weird musical one. Desperate or something,"

"Desperada," Luka pointed out, making her glare at him. "Again, just saying,"

Nora rolled her eyes and ignored him, turning back to Alya.

"Just look at how many times you've been in direct danger," She pointed out, making Alya frown as she remembered. It had been quite a bit. "So you're staying home safe and sound period!"

"That's ridiculous! The twins were akumatized right here, at home!"

"Well, that never would have happened on my watch!" Nora growled back, slamming her fist on the table. Luka flinched a little and grabbed his notepad, putting it in his bag before moving over to where the rest of the group were. Marinette moved over to him and asked him if he was ok, getting a nod of him. Not that Nora noticed. "I won't let anyone mess with my family!"

"You mean like the other day in the square?" Alya pointed out, making everyone look at her as Nora looked nervously. Luka frowned a little before turning to Marinette.

"I'm a little afraid to ask what happened," He mumbled, getting a nod of agreement from Mylene and Rose. Alya sighed and pinched her nose as Marinette glanced around nervously.

"What happened?" Adrien asked, causing Marinette to look over at him.

"Well, we came across a man handing out flyers..."

"And Anansi here thought the man was akumatized and wanted to turn me into a banana zombie," Alya stated, glaring at Nora.

"Uh... well, how was I suppose to know that it was a stupid costume?!" She pointed out before turning around and holding out her hand. "Anyway, what if the ferris wheel stopped working because some akumatized dude decided not to pay?"

"Uh... that's not how akumatizations work..." Luka mumbled, causing Nora to spin and glare at him.

"Oh and I suppose you're the authority on akumas, Tips?!" She growled, making him frown but he bit his tongue. He would love to turn round and say 'well, I should know since I'm Anatis' but he couldn't reveal his identity plus that would be petty. Funny but still petty so he remained quiet, making her smirk before crossing her arms. "Once you flyweights can actually defend yourself, like me, we'll talk about it,"

She then proceeded to show off by kicking and punching the air.

"Well, it doesn't matter because Anatis and Lady Noir will save us if there's any problems," Marinette pointed out, causing everyone to agree. Nora rolled her eyes and glanced over at her.

"And what if Miss Whiskers is chasing a mouse and that beetle's been sprayed with bug spray," She pointed out, causing Luka to frown and take a quiet breathe. It took all of his strength not to point out that they weren't really those animals but he could imagine Lady Noir trying to catch a mouse. Knowing her, she would probably keep as a pet instead of trying to eat it... unless she got hit by Malediktator again. Then she would probably try and eat it. "What you gonna do then? Rely on Cappy to protect you?"

"Well, I'll try," Nino gasped, causing Nora to laugh.

"That's sweet but who's gonna protect you when you fail?" She grinned, pressing her finger in his chest. He frowned and glanced down but to everyone's surprise, Ivan stepped up.

"Hey, leave him alone," He gasped, making Nora look at him. She ran her eyes over him, clearly not impressed. "If it came to it, I'll protect my friends!"

"Uh huh," She grinned. "The only thing you've got going for you in your build but build isn't enough. You need strength and speed. Think you got that, Big Guy?"

Nora laughed, causing Ivan to growl a little.

"I do anything to protect my friends!" He declared, making her nod.

"Alright, Alya can go out with you guys..." She stated before walking over to the table and placing her elbow down on the table. "If you or Cappy can beat me in an arm wrestle.. you know since you two are so determined to protect everyone,"

"Please, don't arm wrestle on my account," Alya sighed, clearly embarrassed by Nora's actions before she looked at her. "Nora, I don't need to be protected,"

"No offence, Nino but you're not strong enough to go against Anansi," Adrien pointed out, making Nino frown.

"But neither is Ivan!" He pointed out, making Ivan also frown.

"But if we don't go soon, we'll miss it," Marinette gasped, looking at her friends. "We have to do something,"

"Forget it," Alya sighed, looking down as her shoulders slumped. "You guys go without me,"

"Huh?" Juleka gasped as Rose gulped like someone had destroyed the color pink.

"No way!" She gasped, causing everyone to stare at her. "We're not leaving you behind!"

"Yeah, you're our friend so you should come with us," Mylene nodded, causing Nora to snort as she laughed.

"That's all cute and all but Alya ain't going unless one of you flyweights beat me in an arm wrestle," She grinned, causing Marinette to grin as she got an idea. She caught Luka's eye, who gave her a knowing smile.

"You'll honor that if you're beaten no matter what right?" He asked, making her glance at him.

"Yeah, I'll honor it, Tips," She grinned, clicking her neck. "Not that I'll need to though. None of you have a chance,"

"Ok, Nino? You wanna go? Or should Ivan?" Luka asked, causing Nino to rub his neck nervously but Ivan stepped up and sat down. He wasn't sure what the two bluenettes had plan but he trusted them. He took Nora's hand and nodded. She grinned as Adrien stood by them and held out his hand.

"Alright! In position!" He called, causing everyone to gather around. He lifted his hand as the two looked at each other. "Ready... set.... go!"

He swiped his hand down, causing Ivan to try and move her hand. Nora yawned but then her eyes widen as he managed to move it, causing her to push against him. His arm returned to it's position before Luka glanced at Marinette, who grinned in a mischievous way.

"Oh no! An akuma!" She gasped, pointing at the window and causing Nora to look that way. Seeing a chance, Luka grabbed Ivan's hand and pulled it downwards.

"And the winner is Ivan!" Adrien called out, making Nora look back.

"Huh?!" She gasped, making Marinette gasp.

"Oops, it was just a fly... my bad," She grinned, causing Ivan to grin and get up. He gave Marinette and Luka a knowing look but didn't say a thing as everyone grinned. "Come on, guys, let's go. If we leave now, we can get there on time,"

"You're a bunch of cheaters!" Nora growled, slamming her fist on the table and causing everyone to flinch before she pointed at them. "There's no way I could have been beaten! If I hadn't been distracted, I wo-"

"You said you would honor the agreement if he won regardless of what happened and he won," Luka pointed out, causing her to glare at him.

"Stay out of this, Tips! Or I'll crush you!" She growled, causing Alya to pinch her nose.

"That is it, Nora!" She shouted, making everyone look at her. "You lost the challenge so deal with it! I've had it with your overprotective, big sister smothering! I'm going out with my BFFs and I don't care what you think! Alya out!"

"Uh... we should all go too...." Luka pointed out, causing everyone to nod and begin to leave but not before Nora hissed at them. The gang left outside and began to head to Place de la Concorde before Nora decided to intervene again. Alya turned to them and gave them a smile.

"Thanks guys for sticking up for me," She smiled as they walked over. It didn't take them long to get there but as soon as they did, Rose grabbed Juleka's hand and rushed over to the wheel, causing most of them to follow but Luka, who decided to go over and listen to a street musician who was playing. Alya gently nudged Marinette and gestured towards Luka before heading up into the wheel. Marinette walked over to him, causing him to look down at her.

"Aren't you gonna join the others?"

"Nah, I've been on the Ferris wheel before plus it was Alya's idea. She wants to film them for one of her blogs," She replied, making him nod. "What about you?"

"Fireworks aren't really my thing," He admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "I kind of just came along because I get to hang out with you... and everyone else too... you know it's not very often we get to hang out with Kagami or Adrien so yeah... plus Juleka and Rose insisted I come by,"

"Yeah," Marinette nodded, smiling a little at his comment. "Well, I'm glad you came along. I like hanging out with you,"

"Really?" He asked, looking at her with a little surprise. She smiled and nodded, making him smile back before she gently nudged his arm.

"You're my friend, Luka and I like spending time with my friends," She smiled, causing him to smile back as the fireworks went off. She looked up and waved at Alya and the rest of their friends who were currently riding the Ferris wheel. However, she stopped and frowned, making him frown as he looked at her. She looked confused and a little pale.

"Marinette, are you ok?" He asked, making her glance at him before she frowned.

"I thought I just saw-" Before she could finish her sentence, people began to scream and run away from the Ferris wheel. Both teenagers glanced over and gasped as they saw a super villain crawling on the wheel and covering it in webs like a spider would before it glanced up at them and hissed. "Um... Luka, I think we should run...."

"Agreed..." Luka stated back in a way before jumping out of the way as the spider spat webs at them. She turned towards Marinette, stalking towards her. Luka frowned and glanced around. He noticed a store selling hula hoops and ran over. He grabbed one and looked around. His luck vision lit up another store and the hula hoop. He smirked and threw it at the tent, causing it to bounce off the material and fly over to the villain. It landed around her arms and distracted her enough for him to run over and pull Marinette to her feet. The two of them ran off as the akuma tried to break free from the hoop. They went down into the metro before stopping as they let out a breath. Luka straightened up and glanced at her. "Are you ok?"

"Yeah," She nodded before gently kissing his cheek. He blushed a little before clearing his throat.

"Uh... I need to g-go find Juleka and the rest... they might be in danger..." He mumbled, making her frown. He thought she would argue with him but to her surprise, she nodded. Both of them knew that arguing would be pointless anyway. Marinette played with her hands a little.

"Just... be careful ok?" She asked, making him nod.

"I will," He replied before he ran off. As soon as he was out of sight, Marinette rushed over to the steps of the platform and headed down them, away from prying eyes. She opened her purse and Plagg flew out, stretching a little before he glanced at her.

"Did you have to wake me from my nap, Dollface?" He asked, causing her to nod.

"Sorry, Plagg but Paris is in trouble again," She replied, holding up her hand. "Plagg, Claws Out,"

Plagg yelled out a little as he was sucked into the ring before a green light engulfed Marinette, transforming her into Lady Noir. She jumped out and ran up the stairs, just in time to see the Ferris Wheel roll away and Anatis chase it. She ran over and caught up with him, causing him to glance at her before pointing ahead to the two lion statues. She nodded and took out her baton before extending it and throwing it at them. It landed perfectly in their mouths and stopped the Ferris Wheel. The two of them rushed over and helped everyone get off it.

"Thank you, Anatis and Lady Noir," A woman gasped as they got off, causing Anatis to turn to his partner.

"I'm glad you turned up when you did," He smiled before throwing his yoyo around a car and dragging it over to the wheel. He placed it so the wheel was leaning on it and grabbed Lady Noir's baton before jumping back over to her and handing her the baton. "Not sure how I would have stopped it if you hadn't turned up,"

"I'm sure you would have worked something out," She grinned, taking it before glancing up at the wheel. "But there's one booth missing from the wheel?"

"Yeah, the spider took it just before I got there," He replied before taking out his yoyo and throwing it. It wrapped around one of the flag poles on a building. "It was this way,"

He swung off, causing Lady Noir to jump up and follow him before they jumped down and landed near the booth. Juleka was stood shaking, jumping as Anatis and Lady Noir landed near them. Luckily, Kagami and Adrien were stood with her but Rose and the others weren't there.

"Anatis," She gasped, rushing over. He frowned at her panicked expression. "It's Alya's big sister. She took Rose!"

"Who's Alya's big sister?" Lady Noir asked, frowning as Kagami walked over.

"It appears that Nora has been akumatized," She explained, making both heroes frown. "She took three victims. Alya, Mylene and Rose. I imagine she took them because they are the 'weakest' in her eyes. While we know Alya can defend herself, Nora considers her weak as she is her little sister. As for the other two, I'd say that's pretty obvious,"

"Nino and Ivan went after them," Adrien gasped. "Juleka was going to join them but we told her to stay here and wait for you two,"

"A good suggestion," Anatis nodded. "Stay here. We'll rescue your friends,"

"My brother, Luka, is also missing... I don't think Anansi got him but I haven't seen him," Juleka gasped, causing Adrien and Kagami to nod.

"And our friend Marinette," Kagami added in, making Anatis frown.

"Luka is fine. I ran into Luka on my way here and told him to hide in Tuileries Gardens," He mumbled before frowning. "But I haven't seen Marinette..."

"She's ok!" Lady Noir gasped, making everyone look at her. "I also bumped into her on my way here. She was hiding by the metro station but I advised her to hide in the platform. Anyway, we should try and capture us a spider. Stay here and be safe, kay? Annie, let's go,"

"Right," He nodded before the two heroes jumped away and followed the trail of webbing. The two of them heard a yell and frowned as they saw Ivan flying across the sky. Anatis threw his yoyo to create a web and caught him in it before letting him down. He jumped over and landed next to him as Ivan got up. "Are you ok?"

"I'm fine, Anatis but my friends are in real trouble," He frowned, glancing over to the Arc de Triomphe. Anatis glanced over and frowned as he saw a huge web between it's arc. He took out his yoyo and zoomed in. Alya, Rose and Mylene were trapped in the middle with Nino next to them, making him frown. He put it away and turned to Ivan.

"Stay here and leave this to me and Lady Noir," He ordered, making Ivan frown. "I promise we'll get your friends back,"

"But Mylene... she's so special to me, Anatis," He muttered, looking a little love stuck before he shook his head. "I won't let anything happen to her,"

"And I admire that but I wouldn't forgive myself if you got caught so please stay back," He ordered again before swinging towards the spider's web with Lady Noir. Ivan frowned and chased after them. The two heroes landed in front of the spider and took out their weapons as Anansi glanced at them and smirked.

"So it's two vs one now?" She asked before holding up her six arms and bouncing side to side. "Fine by me! Round two!! Fight!"

She threw a punch at Anatis, who dodged and ducked. Lady Noir jumped up to hit her with her baton, causing her to punch her into a car before she swung at Anatis. He dodged and backflipped over to Lady Noir, who was rubbing her jaw as Anansi laughed.

"On the floor already? We just started," She laughed, punching the air a few times. Anatis landed by Lady Noir and offered her his hand, helping her to her feet before he lifted her chin to check for an injury. He was honestly worried that her jaw had been broken.

"Are you ok, kitten?" He asked, concern covering his features as he gently touched her jaw. She blushed a little and gently pushed his hand away, making him frown a little.

"I'm fine, Annie," She grinned, making him look relieved before they turned round. Anansi was bouncing around, punching the air as she waited for their next attack, causing Anatis to frown. "Where do you think the akuma is?"

"I'm thinking it's in her head gear," He mumbled, causing Lady Noir to frown a little.

"I agree but she's so strong that I don't think I can get close enough to destroy it," Lady Noir admitted, making Anatis frown but he nodded never the less. "Got any ideas?"

"How about a change of plan?" He suggested, making her to look at him. "I'll distract Anansi and you rescue the prisoners,"

"Of course, that might distract her enough for her to drop her guard and for you to restrain her,"

"Exactly, then you use your cataclysm to destroy her head gear," He grinned but he suddenly pushed Lady Noir out of the way as Anansi threw a car at them before picking up another one.

"Ding, ding, ding. Bell's ringing!" She declared, holding it above her head before she threw it at them. "Round three! Fight!"

They jumped out of the way, causing Anatis to dive at her and try to kick her. She blocked and tried to get a hit on him before he blocked her attack and moved under her arms before wrapping his yoyo around her legs and pulling her down. She caught herself and threw her fists at him but he grabbed them and used them as leverage to land a kick to her face before backflipping down and dodging another one of her attacks. Seeing Anansi busy fighting Anatis, Lady Noir to the chance to jump and begin to climb up the web but her hands got stuck on it. She frowned and tried put her hand free, only for her other hand to get stuck once she had free the first.

"Seriously," She gasped, pulling that one free and trying to climb up but her feet had gotten stuck too. She tried to pull free but she ended up rolling on her back and getting completely stuck. She tried to pull away but was completely stuck. "Uh... Annie! I think I've gotten myself into a sticky situation,"

"Looks like I've already got a catch," Anansi laughed evilly as both her and Anatis looked up at Lady Noir before she turned her attention back to Anatis, who was spinning his yoyo. "You'll be next, Beetle,"

"I don't think so!" He declared, blocking her hits with the yoyo before throwing it at her. She moved her head to the side and grabbed it before spinning him around and throwing him away from the web. He hit a car and bounced off it, rolling on the floor. He groaned and looked up, trying to get up but found his foot stuck on some of the webbing. Anansi smirked before jumping up onto the web and stalking up to Lady Noir. Anatis frowned and tried to pull his foot free as Lady Noir to tried to hit her with her baton but Anansi grabbed it and threw it aside. It landed by Anatis just as he got his foot free. He grabbed it and looked up as Ivan rushed over.

"Anatis, are you ok?" He asked, helping the hero up.

"Yeah but I'm gonna need some help," He declared, glaring up at Anansi. He hooked Lady Noir's baton to his belt and threw up his yoyo. "Lucky charm!"

He caught the candle and rose an eyebrow as Ivan watched him.

"A candle? What are you gonna do with that?" He asked as Anatis glanced around. Nothing lit up so he glanced back at it before his eyes widen in realization. "Anatis?"

"Of course... but I don't have time to do that," He muttered, glancing up at Lady Noir.

"Well, maybe I could help," Ivan suggested, causing him to look at him. "Uh... I mean... Nevermind... I'm not exactly a hero... I tried to save Mylene and my friends but I'm not strong enough..."

"Ivan right?" Anatis asked, making him look at him and nod. "Been a hero isn't about how strong you are. It's about determination and courage,"

He took out Lady Noir's baton and held it out to him.

"We can't let Anansi get Lady Noir's miraculous," He declared, placing it in Ivan's hands. "Use this to defend yourself and distract her from getting the ring. I won't be long,"

"Alright, Anatis!" Ivan grinned before turning to face Anansi as Anatis threw his yoyo and swung onto a rooftop. He ran across it as fast as he could then jumped off the edge and swung through the city. He landed in the ally near Master Fu's and detranformed, catching Tikki before rushing Master Fu's shop. He ran up the stairs as fast as he could and burst through the door, causing Master Fu to look up startled.

"Luka?"

"Master, Ivan won't hold off Anansi for long," He gasped, holding his knees as she sucked in a breathe. He looked up as Master Fu gasped. "She has Lady Noir caught in her web and she's able to get her miraculous,"

"We can not allow that to happen," He gasped, getting up as Luka gave Tikki a macaroon. He moved over to the phonograph and put in the combination as Tikki began to eat the macaroon before taking out the miracle box and placing it in front of Luka. "Luka Couffaine, pick an ally you can trust to fight alongside you this mission,"

He opened the box, allowing the draws to pop open as Luka glanced at them.

"Choose wisely. Such powers are meant to serve the greater good," Master Fu stated, causing Luka to nod and reach out for one of them. "Once the mission is over, you must retrieve the miraculous from them and return it back to me. Do you have one in mind?"

"I need a protective miraculous..." Luka mumbled, glancing at all of them yet none of them called out to him. He glanced to the side and noticed Master Fu's bracelet before pointing to it. "That's the one I need, Master... uh... that's if it's ok with you and Wayzz?"

"I'm fine with it as long as you are," Wayzz nodded, causing Master Fu to smile and take it off.

"Do you have someone in mind, Luka?" He asked as he held to Wayzz, who disappeared back into it before handing it to Luka. Luka picked it up and walked over to the draws before taking out one of the small boxes and placed it inside.

"I think I've found just the right person," He grinned before placing the box in his pocket and bowing to Master Fu. "Thank you, Master,"

"Good luck, Luka," He replied as Luka rushed out. Once back in the allyway, he re-transformed and jumped up onto the rooftop before heading back to Arc de Triomphe. He got there just as Anansi threw Ivan across the sky again. He swung by and caught Ivan, landing on the roof with him. Ivan let out a sigh of relief.

"Thank you, Anatis," He smiled, leaning against his legs. "I thought I was gonna be toast then,"

"No problem, Ivan," Anatis nodded as Ivan straighten up.

"Did you get what you needed?" He asked, causing Anatis to nod.

"CATACLYSM!" Lady Noir shouted, making both boys look over as she glared at Anansi, who growled and flipped back. She placed her hands behind her and closed her eyes, making Ivan frown.

"What's she waiting for?" He asked as Anatis frowned.

"For Lady Noir's transformation to drop," He replied before turning to Ivan and gesturing for him to move. They jumped down to a slightly lower roof but it was one that took them out of the sight of everyone. Once they were on it, Anatis turned to Ivan. "I'm gonna need help to defeat Anansi so are you still willing to do anything to help save your friends?"

"Of course," Ivan nodded before glancing at him as he reached into his yoyo. "Why?"

"Because I need you to be a hero," He replied, taking out the box and holding it out to Ivan, who blinked in surprise. "Ivan Bruel, this is the miraculous of the turtle that grants the power of protection. You will use it for the greater good,"

"Me?" Ivan asked, pointing to himself. Anatis smiled and nodded, causing Ivan to smile back and take it. He opened it and jumped a little at the bright green light that circled around him. "Whoa,"

Anatis smiled as Wayzz formed and looked at Ivan, who blinked in surprise.

"Hello. My name is Wayzz,"

"Uh... I'm Ivan...." Ivan muttered in a shy manner before looking at Wayzz. "Are you like a genie or something?"

"Oh, no. I'm a kwami," Wayzz explained as Ivan listened. "I can't grant wishes but I can give you super powers,"

"Once the mission is done, you must return the miraculous to me," Anatis stated, causing Ivan to look at him while he put on the bracelet. "Can I trust you?"

"Of course, Anatis," Ivan nodded, making both Anatis and Wayzz smile.

"Then all you have to say is Wayzz, Shell on," Wayzz explained, causing Ivan to nod before he took a deep breathe and held up his arm.

"Wayzz, shell on," He declared, causing Wayzz to be sucked into the bracelet, charging it up. Feeling the energy build up, he stomped on the roof and pushed his arms out, causing a green energy to creating his outfit. His main suit was a forest green with brown sides and he had armor across his chest that resembled a turtle's stomach. His gloves were brown and matched his boots but his transformation wasn't done yet. The green energy burst from the center off his chest, creating an emblem that resembled a turtle's shell attached to a harness that was green and brown in color. On his back was a shield that also resembled a turtle's shell. The energy traveled down his arms, leaving a gray strip in it's place before causing green spikes to burst from his gloves before he pulled down a pair of goggles over his eyes. At the same time, the blonde tuff of his hair turned a forest green, completing his transformation. He glanced down at his hands and turned around as he checked out his new look. "Whoa... this is so cool..."

"Don't get carried away," Anatis stated, making Ivan face him. "Normally, I'd give you a whole brief but time is of the essence today. We need to save Lady Noir and the others before her transformation drops. To that, we'll need your power and mine,"

"How do I use mine?" Ivan asked, following Anatis as he climbed back on to the higher roof.

"You'll need to lift your shell and use the magic word, Shell-ter," Anatis explained, glancing around. "It will create a force field around you for roughly six feet and is basically indestructible but before you use your power, I need to use mine. Lucky charm!"

He threw his yoyo up in the air and caught the boxing gloves that were created, causing Ivan to frown as he looked at them.

"You're not going to try and fight her, are you?" He asked, worried as Anatis looked around in his luck vision. Ivan lit up, followed by the Arc de Triomphe then finally Lady Noir.

"Why not? It's a simple plan after all," He grinned, hooking the gloves onto his belt. "I need you distract her while I make us a boxing ring and then when the time is right, you'll need to protect all of us. Can you do that?"

"Uh... I'll try my best, Anatis," Ivan nodded, causing Anatis to smile at him as they dived off the building and ran towards the web. "So are your plans always this crazy?"

"Well, this one is pretty simple compared to some of my other ones," Anatis replied as he took out his yoyo. Ivan nodded and threw the shield at Anansi, causing her to jump down and land in front of them before holding up her arms.

"Change of pet? You replaced your kitty with a turtle?" She asked as Anatis grinned at him and Ivan caught his shield.

"What can I say? I love animals but I'm not overly keen on spiders!" He replied, throwing his yoyo. Once again, Anansi moved her head to the side and grinned at him.

"You missed,"

"Did I?" He replied, grinning before Ivan dived at her, getting her attention. Anatis ran around them, wrapping his yoyo's string around the pillars of the Arc de Triomphe as Ivan fought against Anansi, giving her as good as he got. He used his shield to block her attack and protect himself before landing hits as well. Anatis jumped over the string and put on the gloves once he had finished making the ring. "Anansi!"

"Huh?" She called out, causing Ivan to jump back as Anatis grinned at her before he pointed one of his hands at her.

"I challenge you to a fight," He grinned, causing her to raise an eyebrow at him. "One match. You win, I'll surrender my miraculous but if I win, you free your prisoners,"

She remained quiet for a second, causing Anatis to continue.

"Come on, what have you got to lose?" He asked, making her look at him. "Lady Noir's only got a few minutes until she transforms back anyway,"

A purple butterfly mask appeared around her eyes, causing her to shake her head.

"Don't worry, Butterfly man," She stated to Hawkmoth before clicking her neck. "This nasty bug is no match for Anansi... alright, bug boy, you're on,"

She walked over to the middle and held out her arm. Anatis walked over and tapped his fist against it. Anansi smirked at him as Ivan took out Lady Noir's baton.

"I'll devour you, little nasty bug," She declared as Ivan hit his shield, signaling the beginning of the fight. Anansi charged at him, pulling her arms back. "One hit will be enough,"

"You can't punch the wind," Anatis replied back, dodging her hit before jumping over the other side of the ring. She growled and ran back at him, punching him. He ducked and slid over before backflipping out the way as she tried to punch him again. He jumped over to another side and grinned as she cornered him.

"It's over!" She shouted, throwing her fist at him. Only for him to duck and roll out the way before flipping back to his feet as her fists hit the pillar, cracking it.

"Not by the looks of it," Anatis replied, holding up his arms, causing her to growl and face him. "So much for that one punch huh? Course it would be nice for you if you could actually land one,"

"Why you?!" She growled, trying to punching him again but he moved around, dodging her hits as he continued to back chat her. "Shut up!"

"Why? Having trouble doing two things at once?" He asked, jumping back and landing by another pillar. She growled and charged at him, throwing her fist but he jumped out of the way again, causing her to growl as the pillar cracked. "Missed me,"

"Uh! Stay still!" She growled, throwing fists at him again but once again, he dodged and she hit another pillar cracking it. She turned around and dived at him again but he flipped out of the way. She growled again as he did. She threw her weight into the next punch but he ducked and stepped out the way, causing her to crack another pillar.

"Wow. All those hits and you didn't hit me once," He grinned, bouncing on his toes. She yelled out and threw more hits at him but none of them hit. "Missed me! Missed me again! Wow, Anansi, you're really bad at this!"

"Why you?!" She growled, kicking him and grabbing him. She threw him onto the other side of the ring and landed before stalking over to him as he leaned on the rope. Ivan looked extremely worried as he did. "You can't win this, Nasty Bug so just give up and give me your miraculous,"

He laughed a little as he glanced up at him.

"You wish," He grinned, pulling back on the rope and causing it to cut into the pillars. It was enough to causing it to collapse. A piece of brick fell and caused Anansi to dive out of the way as Anatis took off his gloves and fixed them back on his belt. He then grabbed his yoyo and pulled back the string, freeing the Arc de Triomphe. Ivan rushed over as Anatis placed his hands to get. He jumped onto it and Anatis pushed him up, causing him to land onto the web. He climbed over to the girls and Nino as Anatis threw his yoyo and pulled himself up onto the web, moving over to Lady Noir. "This is where we need your power. Everyone, get ready,"

"Shell-ter!" Ivan called out, throwing his arm up while holding the shield. A green light burst from it, creating a ball of force field around them and cutting them free from the web as they fell to the ground. Nino grabbed Alya and Ivan held Mylene. Anatis caught Rose and Lady Noir, making sure no one was hurt as the Arc de Triomphe fell around them.

"Everyone ok?" Anatis asked, getting nods of everyone. "Excellent,"

Ivan lowered the forcefield as Lady Noir dusted down her ears before grinning at Anatis.

"Are you creating a zoo?" She asked before a fearful expression appeared on her face. "Wait! You're not placing to replace me, are you?"

Anatis opened his mouth to answer but before he could, Anansi broke through the rumble and growled, running towards Anatis.

"You cheater!" She screamed, going to throw her fist at him but Lady Noir kicked out her feet, causing her to fall on the ground and before she slammed her hand onto her helmet, destroying it and releasing the akuma. She stood up straight and flicked her braid with pride as Anatis smiled.

"Thanks, Kitten," He grinned before taking out his yoyo and capturing the akuma. He released the now purified butterfly before throwing up the boxing gloves. "Miraculous Ladybugs!"

The gloves burst into the magic ladybugs before swarming over Paris, fixing everything their path. Anatis smiled as Anansi turned back into Nora and looked around confused.

"The beetle and Miss Whiskers?" She asked, looking around. "What's going on here?"

"You were akumatized but everything is ok now," Anatis stated, making her look at him in surprise before he knelt down. "Look I know you were just trying to look out for your sister but she's not a little girl anymore, Nora..."

"I... I know..." She mumbled, looking to the side. "I just worry about her you know,"

"I get it," He smiled, standing up and offering her his hand. She took it and he helped her onto her feet as Lady Noir's ring beeped. She gasped and nervous waved before running off, causing him to look at her. "Lady Noir!"

She stopped and looked at him.

"You know you're irreplaceable," He smiled, making her blush before she ran off. Ivan was stood with Mylene but before he could say anything, Alya squealed and held up her phone.

"This is a first for the ladyblog! A brand new hero!!" She gasped, moving around him and causing him to blush a little from the attention. "So what's your name?!"

"Uh... I'm...." He looked towards Anatis, who was smirking with his arms crossed. He gave him a nod of approval before Mylene cleared her throat, making everyone look at her.

"Um... you call call yourself Leatherback... as in a Leatherback turtle... they're a vulnerable species you know and your suit looks like one... so maybe you call name yourself after one..." She mumbled, making him smile.

"Leatherback... I like it..." He grinned, making Anatis smirk.

"Come on, Luth. We need to get going," Anatis grinned before saluting Alya and the video. "See ya, bugheads,"

The two heroes ran off and jumped onto the building before disappearing into the city. The two of them dropped down into an ally and Ivan called off the transformation before taking off the miraculous and handing it back to Anatis.

"Thank you for choosing me, Anatis," He smiled as Anatis put away the miraculous. "If you need help again, just let me know,"

"Thank you, Ivan. It means a lot," He smiled before throwing his yoyo and disappearing into the rooftops. Ivan smiled and ran off to find everyone else. Anatis grinned as he looked down before swinging off into the city to return the miraculous.

~Later That Night~

Luka gasped as he heard the sound of something been knocked down, causing him to frown as he got up. Tikki was still asleep as was everyone else in the boat so he carefully moved through the living area. He moved up the stairs and carefully sneaked onto the deck as he heard the person move by. He frowned as he saw their silhouette before grabbing one of the guitar cables and throwing it at them. They hissed and caught it as he turned one of the stage lights, causing the person to gasp and fall over covering their eyes. He quickly moved over and blinked as he saw Lady Noir.

"Lady Noir?!" He gasped, rushing to turn off the light as she got up and dusted herself down. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to see if everyone was ok. I've already checked on the others but I was worried... about... you..." She mumbled, rubbing the back of her neck. He blinked in surprise. "I know Anatis said you were safe and it's not that I don't trust him cause I do. I trust him with my life and I don't think he was lying... I was just worried..."

"About me?" He asked, generally surprise. Part of him was afraid that she had worked out his identity. "Well... not that I'm not grateful cause I am but Lady Noir... it's 3 am..."

"Yeah... I couldn't sleep..." She grinned, cheekily. He chuckled and shook his head.

"You know my friend, Marinette, is exactly the same," He replied, failing to notice her panicked expression. "Do you want me to get you a dish of milk or would you prefer some tuna?"

"Ha, ha. Very funny," She stated before tapping her finger against her chin. "Though some cream sounds really nice,"

"Only cream we have in is Irish cream and that belongs to Ma," He replied, making her shake her head. "Are you ok though? I know you said you were worried about me but you've never turned up here before,"

"I guess... I guess today's akuma kind of hit close to home in a way..." She replied before letting out a sigh. "Not that I should be bothering you with this. God, Anatis would probably tell me off if he knew I came here today,"

"Hey, I don't think he would and isn't it better to talk to someone then bottle it up?" He asked, making her smile at him before sitting down on some of the boxes. He sat next to her. "So what's on your mind, kitty-cat? Did you know the akuma?"

"Yeah... I can't tell you how but yeah, I do..." She replied, nodding. "And it's not like I'm emotionally invested in her you know but if she got akumatized then anyone can and I worry that maybe one day, Hawkmoth will claim someone really close to me and I'm afraid I won't be able to keep my cool like Annie does. You know he's so strong and brave. If I had been the one choose to take down an akuma like Princess Justice, I don't know if I could do it,"

"I think you're stronger then you give yourself credit for," He smiled, making her look at him and blush a little. "And Anatis is lucky to have a partner like you,"

"You think?" She asked, looking over at him. Her ears twitched a little as she played with her braid before she looked to the side. "I think it's the other way round. I'm the lucky one to have Annie as a partner, which is kind of ironic since I'm never been that lucky..."

She let out a little sigh, causing Luka to frown a bit.

"You sure you're ok?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine," She grinned, nervously. "Just having self doubt again. Honestly, I don't think I could do this whole hero gig without Annie,"

"Really? Cause I think you do a great job," He smiled, making her blush. "You're both really good heroes and I think you'll could do this 'gig' as you put it solo but the point is you don't have to. You have Anatis's back and he has yours,"

"You understand this quite well," She grinned before tapping her chin as she made a thinking face. "Say you're not one of the other heroes, are you?"

"Me? Oh no... I'm not..." He gasped, a little surprised as she cackled. "It's just... well, it's like been in a band right? Like Kitty Section... you've got me on guitar, Juleka on bass, Ivan's our drummer and Rose sings... each one of us can play on our own easily. Probably do good as well but we work better together. It's like our individual songs come together and work in sync with each other. The drums help keep the timing of the song going but the bass keeps the rhythm. The guitar brings it together and acts like a glue and the lyrics breathe life into it... on their own, these things are good but together they create something amazing. I guess that's how I see it with you heroes. Alone, you both are good and can save people but together, you become a powerful melody that gives people hope and save the whole city. However, for that melody to be heard, it requires both of you so you say you couldn't do this hero gig without Anatis but I think you're wrong. I think you would be a hero even if you didn't have the miraculous,"

"Really?"

"Yeah... the miraculous is like an amplifier and you're the melody that is played. In your every day life, you play your melody on an acoustic guitar. It's loud enough to be heard but sometimes people miss it but when you become Lady Noir, your melody is been played at full volume on an electric guitar but it's the same melody that's been played. The only different is that it's been amplified and played a full volume. It's still you but just played in a different way,"

"Wow..." Lady Noir gasped, looking at him with amazement. He gasped and rubbed his neck as his neck. "That actually makes a lot of sense. You're really wise you know,"

"I dunno," He mumbled, looking to the side shyly. "Music just makes sense to me,"

"Yeah? So I'm guessing you're a musician then?" She asked, making him smile and nod before he yawned.

"Sorry," He mumbled, rubbing his eyes a little.

"Oh no! Don't be! I'm the one who should be sorry. I'm gonna get going so you can get some sleep," She stated, jumping up. She went to walk away before she stopped, causing Luka to look at her. "Thanks for listening and talking to me..."

"Anytime, Lady Noir," He smiled, making her smile back before she jumped off and headed into the city. He smiled and shook his head as he went back inside. "Silly kitty, you're my best friend. I couldn't do this without you,"

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Next Chapter: https://ultra-sassyduck.tumblr.com/post/637262678330589184/miralcous-rise-of-anatis-39

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