#and i also did a rewrite of some plot elements

[ranticore]

how did you start writing books that had themes? i’ve been writing since i was 7 years old and i’ve always wanted to write a whole book one day, but i don’t feel like i write with enough intention for any of my stories to keep my interest long enough to write a novel. i love building worlds and characters, and i often understand the themes that i want to explore in a given piece, but i always feel like worldbuilding gets in the way of actually writing a plot or having something to say, or that i’m too interested in stuff that doesn’t matter as opposed to actually telling a story. that or i feel like my stuff is too derivative.

So I did the same as you from a very early age, a lot of writing that was kind of directionless, lacking overarching structures. I don't want to say it was immature but in the way of kids playing imagination games, it just kinda.. went on and on with no resolution just pure interaction where any random thing could happen because it seemed like the next step. But for that kind of writing, "the next step" was based off the one directly previous to it. To make the jump to what you describe as books with themes, "the next step" can't be based off the one directly previous to it. "The next step" has to be the extension of every single previous step, including the very first, because the entire story is built from the ground up to be a single unified whole.

I think the jump from the directionless writing to writing A Novel (with all attendant structural conventions - different to fanfic, tv writing, screenplays etc) is that the novel is approached holistically with every single event considered at the same time, instead of each little part examined as a discrete unit that links to the next at the end of the chapter/scene/etc.

What I did was write my entire series out - all three books - in rough draft format, changing it and retconning it freely as I went. the continuity in these drafts sucked and the themes are all over the place but when I was finished with these three book drafts I had every tool at my disposal. at the end of my book 3 rough draft I had worked out all my themes and my events sequence etc. which meant that when I went on to start writing what would become the final draft of stbh (complete rewrites from the ground up, no reusing rough draft prose), I knew from the very beginning exactly how the story would end and it gave me so much freedom and space to approach the full story as a whole, add foreshadowing that wasn't there before, coded hints to how the last book would end (nobody's spotted them yet... as far as I know), and so on

As for themes vs worldbuilding, and what details matter more, ultimately it's for you to decide what you want to focus on. But you also need to understand when a particular element needs to be cut to serve the narrative. If it's something you really really need to include, then you need to restructure the narrative around it (the rough draft -> rewritten first draft method helps a lot with this). There's plenty of plotlines I really liked which I axed in the end because, cool as they were, they broke the causal chain and therefore had to go.

When choosing themes you can approach it not as "what do I like" but "what do I want to say". This should clarify a lot of things. Sometimes what you want to say is "wouldn't that be fucked up or what", it isn't always some deep commentary on the world. For the imimata story I went at it with the initial core of "I am talking about dehumanisation, abuse, and celebrity culture". So I have to wrap my worldbuilding around that, rather than start without direction. The fact that the situation for imimata is so dire is a result of this theme. And so on.

Finally for worldbuilding it is possible to overdo it. I personally get turned off a story very quickly if I'm hit with eighteen walls of exposition and detail unrelated to characters, because I only want one thing and it's disgusting (character interaction), so I'm happy with a very loose canon setting. Not everyone's the same. When you do reveal world building details, link them to your theme. Let's say in Inver my theme was poverty and I want to talk about my worldbuilding around diets. I narrate that through a character who grew up in poverty reminiscing about having to go collect whelks in the bay mud. That teaches us about the physical geography of the city, what the view out to sea looks like, the coastal habitats, the types of food gathered by the poor, and also something about that character as well. Additionally, you might know one billion facts and figures about your setting but do your characters have that knowledge?

Also your own interests vs others' - write for yourself first or you'll be miserable. And if it's derivative or not - idk I mean I just avoid pulling inspiration without twisting it into what I want (and I also avoid pulling inspiration from ppl on my tumblr dash because that's how things get stale). I am a contrary bitch first and foremost and I approach a lot of stuff like "everyone's doing this? well I'm doing the opposite" ... ymmv

[demonecelestiale]

some weeks ago i woke up, chose violence and genderswapped + OC-fied some precure teams (mahou tsukai, hirogaru sky, fresh and you and idol) and now i'm gonna post my new boys. oopsie! (i'm also waiting to do the midseason duo for idolpre)

[randomthefox]

Let's talk about Dante and Vergil's swords, Rebellion and Yamato, and their "publication history" if you will.

In DMC1, Dante's default sword he starts with is Force Edge. It is described as being a "momento from his father."

However by the end of DMC1, Force Edge has its true power unlocked and becomes the devil sword Sparda.

It stays like that permanently afterwards, it never reverts back to being regular Force Edge. So when they were developing DMC2 they needed a new regular default sword for Dante because they couldn't just have him start out using Sparda, so they came up with Rebellion.

I doubt they put any thought into this whatsoever at the time. But when Itsuno was making DMC3, he decided to take the sword they came up with for Dante from the second game and rewrote it a little so that the Rebellion was the sword that Sparda left Dante after all!

Since he was also rewriting Force Edge to be the key that locked away the Underworld, and they had another non-Force Edge sword invented up, it opened things up so that they could take that sword they invented to replace Force Edge in DMC2 to have a lot more importance invoked into it!

And since they were also taking Vergil and completely changing his character for the sake of their plot for this prequel game, let's also give him a keepsake sword from Sparda! You might not realize this if you hadn't beaten DMC1 at least on hard mode, but the Yamato was NOT just some random cool samurai sword that they gave Vergil because he's so cool. You see back in DMC1 if you beat it on hard mode you unlocked the Legendary Dark Knight mode, which was a model swap for Dante where he was dressed up as Sparda. And along with Sparda's clothes and DT, you also got to use Sparda's sword the Yamato!

That's right, the Yamato as a sword actually predates Vergil the character as we know him. The detail that it has the power to DIVIDE things in two is even right there in the description from the original game as well! So Itsuno took this bonus weapon that is described as being wielded by Sparda, and decided it was the matching keepsake weapon given to Vergil in DMC3. Since Vergil is the older twin, he gets the sword Sparda actually used himself.

The way these swords of such esteem power and prominence have the origin of Itsuno taking disparate elements from the baton passing development of the first two games where the original was made by Kamiya and the second game was made under duress is really nifty to me. Playing DMC5 you'd almost think it was all planned out from the beginning, but nothing could be further from the truth. That's the mark of true creativity I think. Instead of just saying DMC2 was bad and ignoring everything about it, he took the default sword from that game and did something creative with it. Now in the majority of peoples minds, Rebellion is the signature sword for Dante. And by that same token, most fans don't have any idea that Yamato was an unlockable weapon all the way back from the first game because it's just so iconic as Vergil's signature blade.

Pretty cool, I think.

[sha-brytols]

I'm curious, since you've talked about how you enjoy the themes of Inquisition but not the execution, how would you rewrite the main story?

honestly i think just by virtue of making it more self-aware you would immediately fix like 75% of it's biggest issues. i mean the game already has sooooo much going for it in theory just by having it revolve around religion and faith and the way politics are inherently linked to both of those. i would love if the game actually dealt more with the implications of the inquisition being a theocratic military power that has to negotiate the fact that it's a) not officially part of the chantry anymore but still perpetuating the chantry's agenda and b) that there is literally no way it can ever hope to actually exist as a politically neutral force in the world. i think it would be very very easy to take the plot of inquisition and reframe it in such a way that the inquisition itself is the antagonist. not the inquisitor, not the advisors, but the very concept of a theocratic military force is inherently antithetical to the ideals you're trying to uphold. you cannot be both a force for peace and order and also a paramilitary organization with no oversight or accountability.

you know how dragon age origins is only kind of about the blight. like the blight is absolutely the big event that is driving all the major plot beats, but the game isn't really about fighting the archdemon. it's about the civil war that is going on in ferelden at the same time that happens to be creating the conditions under which the blight is allowed to fester. that's kind of what i think most people were expecting out of inquisition. a game that, in the most shallow and literal reading of it's premise, would technically be about closing the breach and killing the big bad guy, but would really be about the chantry schism that created the vacuum for someone to exploit in the first place. like the pieces were all There. we had the mage/templar war, we had that philosophical confrontation regarding the """true""" nature of spirits/demons and how much of it is perception, we had tevinter as a major player on the scene and a foil for the chantry's ideology and the way that gets taken advantage of. it was all there. but inquisition never really went for any of it. it introduced all this stuff and then the game just sort of. walks away? takes it completely at face value even despite those Liddol hints to a bigger picture.

and i know they kind of tried to fix this with the inclusion of trespasser and credit where it's due, trespasser DID address a LOOOOT of inquisition's most glaring shortcomings. it just. did it two years later in a short dlc. i want an actual version of the full game that goes into the actual meat of the chantry and all of its good and all of its bad. and i kind of? feel like? there WAS a version of that game somewhere in the blueprints? i mean i genuinely do not think it's possible to just accidentally stumble into all these hyper-specific plot beats right LOL like no matter how stupid you think bioware is you'd have to believe they're REALLY. REALLY. REALLY. REEEEEEAAALLLY stupid in order to believe that they never intended on any of that going anywhere. so it's not that i think the story is irredeemable, i think that like. somehow and for some reason a crucial element of its dna was removed, thus neutering its primary theme entirely and creating this hilarious oxymoron of a story that doesn't seem to realize its own irony

also i would make blackwall and cassandra bisexual.

[perseidlion]

The Interview With the Vampire TV show is a perfect example of how adaptations do not have to follow the source material closely to be an excellent adaptation.

(This is a spoiler-free commentary, but it does discuss the dynamics of the characters in general.)

I read the books back in the day, and of course, saw the original movie. Despite a laundry list of big changes, the series still feels extremely true to the books because it captures the spirit. It gets the characters and their fucked-up dynamics right. It doesn't shy away from them being melodramatic monsters. It keeps to the rules established in the source material. The show also makes sure to preserve key moments and key scenes, but always with a twist.

Since they did that, they were free to shift things in time, amp up and adapt certain dynamics, and change the race of characters in a way that deepens the story and complicates already extremely complicated power dynamics.

The original movie stuck more closely to the era and the appearance of the characters as described by Anne Rice, but I don't think the story loses anything by changing those two elements. In fact, it gives it modern relevance and room for political and social commentary.

I have never ascribed to the idea that an adaptation has to be slavishly accurate to the source material to be a good adaptation. It just has to be smart enough to identify what to keep and what can change. An adaptation adapts. Honestly, I find it boring when I see exactly what was in a book up on screen with no surprises. Where's the fun in that?

The difference between a good adaptation and a bad one is not how accurate it is to the source material, but how well the adaptation respects what made the story compelling to begin with.

What's important here?

Lestat is dramatic and powerful and a monster who is deeply charismatic, but also manipulative.

Louis is overdramatic and self-hating, but oddly drawn to Lestat.

Claudia is fierce, but bitter about her eternal childhood.

Their relationship is deeply toxic but with true affection. They are monsters, but monsters capable of intense love and devotion - to the point where it has the power to destroy them.

THAT is at the core of this story. THAT is what they keep intact. This frees up all sorts of avenues for play around a few key plot beats.

This room for play also gives opportunities to expand on thinner characters or rewrite them entirely. It's been a long time since I read the books, but I don't recall Daniel standing out as more than a framing device, especially in earlier books. But in the show, he's one of the best parts. Not only does he take a much more active role in the story, he delivers some of the most hilarious and cutting lines of the entire series. If the show had stuck closely to the source material, we wouldn't have this Daniel.

It was also smart of them to make Claudia a few years older. The eternal child element is preserved, but the layer of arrested teenaged hormones and womanhood that will never blossom adds an extra layer of angst and sadness. She is stuck forever in a state of rebellion, never allowed to settle and come into her own.

Having her be a young Black woman also deepens her attachment to Louis, visually, socially and symbolically. They are different from Lestat and they understand each other in a way he never can. She's still very much the Claudia from the book but with layers added to deepen her character and add new, fresh dynamics and complications.

It's also delightful to see the show take the homoeroticism that was subtextual in the early books with Louis and Lestat (and in the original film) and making it unapologetically text. Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles have always been incredibly queer and subversive, but it's amazing to see that side of it fully embraced and stated plainly with no ambiguity or qualifiers or hints. It's queer and that queerness is woven into the fabric of the entire narrative. Louis and Lestat are the toxic beating heart of the Vampire Chronicles.

It's also important because we need messy, dark, fucked-up queer narratives. Sweet, coming-of-age stories and romances are of course, important - especially for younger queer people. But us older queer folk not only want to see ourselves in multiple genres, we want permission to see imperfect, messy, and yes, even evil characters. It's a way of reclaiming the monstrous queer that was villainized for so long and making it our own. We want to find something beautiful in the dark.

If we all thought about it, we could probably think of dozens of examples where a show or movie went far off-script from the source material and was still an excellent adaptation.

Interview With the Vampire is just the most recent and one of the best examples of a stellar adaptation that respects the source material but also builds and expands on it.

I look forward to seeing how they surprise me next season.

[random-remzy]

It just occured to me that I never posted this rant on tumblr, but have smt i wrote abt Kai on the wiki fandom.

Sooooo... Hear me out.

As we have seen throughout the release of Dragons Rising, throughout this show, the writers have tried to improve the characters and plot points, such as; A big chunk of Kai's character, The relationship between Kai and Nya, The introduction of new characters/elementals, the new plot points, Jay's memory loss, Lloyds mental instability, etc.

So with these new "rewrites" (not really, I'm just using it for lack of a better word) I feel like it would be really interesting to explore the idea of blue fire.

We've already seen some hints of it with Wildfyre's new elemental, but with the confirmation that it is not fire, but heat, I'm still wondering if Kai could somehow achieve it. Kinda like, and ultimate form in a way.

Like how Lloyd summoned his Oni/Dragon form,

or How Cole did the Spinjitsu Burst,

or how Nya merged with the sea.

or how Zane became the ice emperor (I know this wasn't positive, but it still showed his "ultimate form" in a way)

So with that, Kai and Jay, are the only ones who haven't reached their "Ultimate form" yet. (unless I'm missing something and someone can remind me in the comments) (also i'm not technically counting Rogue because he shattred his goodness but that didn't do much just allowed him to not hold back)

So I find the concept of Kai embracing Blue fire to be really intriguing. Since blue fire is considered much hotter than regular fire, then maybe it would be something that would occur when he would experience extremely strong emotions.

I think a big part of Kai's character, (a trait he also shares with Nya) is the feeling of helplessness. He hates it when he's completely useless, and can't help anyone, even himself. And I feel like, if the writers do go in that direction, that, that is going to be the motivation, the feeling of not being able to help anyone or save the people that mean the most to him. We've seen it happen before, during SotFS:IceChap, When Kai got his power back and saved his friends.

I think something similar is going to happen, on a much larger and more serious scale though, which will, eventually bring out the blue fire in him.

But yeah.

If you made it this far. wow,

why-

I legit just ranted about pretty fire for a couple paragraphs.

But despite that.

Thank you for coming to my WU-Talk.

Tell me your personal theories in the comments :)

~

someone in the comments of that post suggested white fire as well and I feel like with the release of Monstrosity and the monochromatic format that could definitely be a possibility!

[starcurtain]

We are only in 3.0 but do you have any theories how the story is going to develop? (Especially with no one having any idea where the prophecy came from)

Also maybe it's just me, but I think they made Phainon just a little bit too fond of Mydei to the point I can feel my alarm bells going through the roof...i don't know if it's a death flag but it's defintiely some kinda angst flag...

How does it feel to be the smartest person in the room? Predicting them Phaidei death flags all the way from 3.0. Good job, anon!

To be honest, I have given up on trying to predict Hoyoverse stories because if at some point someone told me Penacony was going to be invaded by viral meme talking monkeys, exunt pursued by a ninja, I would have asked them what kind of crack they were smoking, but... here we are...

However, I do have a wild conspiracy theory about Amphoreus, and it goes like this:

Amphoreus itself is one gigantic "allegory of the cave" meets "lotus eater" plot.

The Amphoreus that the Trailblazer and Dan Heng are currently trapped in isn't a real world at all--it's a simulation maintained by the combined powers of Remembrance and Erudition (possibly with the third aeon involved. If the third aeon is actively involved, it may be Enigmata. If the third aeon is not involved with maintaining the simulation, it might be an enemy instead, i.e. Destruction). I believe that this simulation might be running with a person--Cyrene/Elysia--at its core. This is the reason that Amphoreus only appears in the Garden of Recollection's mirror--because it was never a real place and only ever existed as a fictional location in someone's mind/memory. It also would explain some of the inexplicable elements the plot keeps bringing up, like Trailblazer's synesthesia beacon being able to work on Amphoreus despite the planet supposedly never being connected to the Silver Rail.

My basic speculation is that the person at the core of the situation has lost their original world, and is using the power of aeons to keep their world "alive" through a simulated reality. This invokes the lotus eater plot: Someone is intentionally "refusing to wake" from a dream, indulging in a fantasy to escape from a cruel reality.

However, I suggest that the person who is maintaining the simulation isn't trying to accurately recreate their original world. Instead, they're telling themselves a story. They're not remembering a real world or 100% real people--they're filling in gaps, piecing together different elements of truth and creating entirely new material in efforts to produce a version of the story that will finally have a happy ending. Rather than attempting to bring reality back, they're creating a fairy tale, combining jumbled memories, rewrites/revisions, and entirely retelling portions of the tale when something goes wrong.

This invokes the "allegory of the cave" plot. The person at the core of the simulation isn't seeing reality, but instead watching nothing more than shadow-play, shallow imitations of forms, acting out one-dimensional imitations of reality and accepting that one-dimensional re-enactment as their only "truth." The story we are watching as players is, in fact, nothing more than a story in-game as well.

This accounts for the strange skips between times, places where the plot collapses in on itself--events are occurring both thousands of years and two years ago, all at the same time--places where things don't add up (how did Tribios escape on her own?) and the odd clash of archaism and modernity (people still use stone tablets as reading material but also have cellphones with cameras). It also accounts for the "black tide" manifesting in ways that look like computer viruses--the simulation itself is being attacked and dissolving.

In fact, we could see the "black tide" itself as the way the story reconciles with reality--the simulation may be crumbling or failing (either internally or because of external pressure such as an enemy aeon), and that manifests as an "impending apocalypse" inside the story!Amphoreus as well.

Simultaneously, there's a meta aspect to the "allegory of the cave" plot: None of the Amphoreus natives recognize that they're in a story. They all think that what they're seeing and experiencing is reality. This makes them literal "allegory of the cave" participants. They stare at the false projections on the "cave wall" and are convinced that's reality. At the core of their adventure is the idea of "flame-chasing"--that is, they are spellbound by the flame that projects the false shadows on the wall. The prophecy is the chains that keep them bound, unable to look away to any other possibilities and discover the truth outside their "cave." This accounts for the fact that the characters' themselves don't seem to notice the odd discrepancies in their timelines (i.e. Tribbie handwaving Tribio's inexplicable escape and Mydei not pausing to go "Something isn't right here" about the strange gaps in his own backstory). They don't question the story--because they're part of it. (Anaxa, then, becomes the one exception, the one character who is trapped in the illusion but aware enough to tell everyone that they're in an illusion.)

But this creates a conundrum. If the characters don't follow along with the story and pursue the prophecy, then they might be marching to their own inevitable ends, because it is entirely possible that either all of them are already dead or none of them ever existed. Trailblazer and Dan Heng obviously need to escape the simulation, to then and only then find the "true" Amphoreus--whether that is a real-world hidden from us by the simulation... or whether there's nothing left to find at all. But the Amphoreus natives themselves? They might not have anything left outside their shadows on the wall.

Basically, Amphoreus is just the plot of Princess Tutu, is what I'm saying.

That's my tinfoil hat conspiracy!

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Sorry if you've already covered this, I'm rewatching some of the show thanks to a younger sibling watching it, and I'm wondering how you'd rewrite chloes s2 (and some part s3?) episodes.

Style Queen/ Queen wasp alone end on a confusing note since I can't really tell if they want chloe to be seen as "possibly redeemable", "starting redemption" or "choosing to still suck". Allegedly, from the wiki, the staff said that *supposedly* they'd always planned for chloe to be a character that, I quote " willingly refuses to change...pulls ppl into toxic relationships by having them focus on potential good rather than ongoing cruelty".

I know you choose to avoid following what the staff say, but I'm curious, how could chloe have been written if she was meant to show how some people choose not to change despite potential for good? Or how would a proper redemption go?.

Again sorry for the long ask and if you've already responded to similar questions. I really love your analysis posts!

I'm glad you like my stuff and never worry about asking something that's been asked before. It's no big deal for me to link previous posts and, if you missed it, others probably did, too!

I've talked about redeeming Chloé quite a bit, so I'll just link to my Chloe Deserves Better tag as that's got lots of posts to read if you so choose. I've only really discussed damnation at a high level, though, so let's dig into that as it is a valid path.

Before we begin, I'll note that I would not take this path in canon because I don't think it's appropriate for little kids who may relate to Chloé (thus me wanting this message to come from Gabriel who no kid will relate to). If Miraculous were a teen drama, then this would be a fine choice as teens and adults are able to handle more complex and nuanced plots. (Reminder, Miraculous' target age group starts at age five so that's how I gage what I would and wouldn't do in canon. For the main plot elements, you generally want to aim to the youngest viewers, not the oldest.)

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let's damn Chloé!

The big problem with Chloé's canon "damnation" is this:

they'd always planned for Chloe to be a character that, I quote "willingly refuses to change"

While this is the right way to approach a damnation, it is NOT how Miraculous approached Chloé. While it's true that she doesn't change, it's also true that no one really asks her to and that's an important part of a proper damnation arc. Rare indeed is the person who just magically changes all on their own. They generally need to have something driving their change and Chloé never got that.

To dig into this, let's talk about Despair Bear because Despair Bear is basically a mini version of Chloé's overall story.

What Canon Did Wrong

In Despair Bear, Chloé does something mean, leading Adrien to threaten their friendship:

Adrien:(sighs in disappointment) Chloé, how long have you and I been friends? Chloé: Since we were adorable little tots, Adrikins. (Pouts) Adrien:(disappointed) Well, I'm sorry Chloé, but I can't be friends with someone who treats other people like this. You've gotta be nice to people! Chloé: N-Nice? Adrien: Yes, nice. It's not that hard.

This threat makes Chloé freak out and start acting nice because she wants Adrien to stay her friend. That leads to this:

Chloé: I know. This way, no one can be mad at me for calling the fire department. I'm really nice now, did you notice, Adrikins? Even Ladybug said so! Didn't she, Jean-Pascal? Adrien: I'm proud of you, Chloé. I think you've proven that you're capable of making an effort to be nicer to everyone. Chloé: Aww, Adrikins! So we'll always be best friends, forever? Pinky swear? Adrien: Pinky swear! Chloé: (Exhales and saunters off) (To Kim) So, those macarons are dreadfully ugly. (Kim sighs.) (To Mylène.) Those are so greasy, you can see yourself in them. (Mylène cries and faint.) (To Marinette.) Urgh. Too disgusting for comment. (To Rose.) Those look horrible. (Rose faints.) Adrien: She'll never change!

This is the problem with saying that Chloé had a proper damnation arc. She does what Adrien asks, then reverts because he let her off the hook. He made surface level effort and, unsurprisingly, got surface level change. You can't go to the gym once and get muscles! If you want muscles, you have to keep going for weeks! Months even! Progress is slow!

The same is true for damnation arcs. To properly damn Chloé, Adrien needs to stick to his guns and hold her to a higher standard for more than a single episode so that she can demonstrate true unwillingness to change. That's not what canon gave us. After this episode, this conflict goes away and Adrien says nothing when Chloé hurts people. He's not even disappointed when Chloé reverts! He's totally cool with her being mean again. This is the face he makes when he says that she'll never change!

[Image description: Adrien smiling and laughing as Marinette makes a face at Chloé who is offscreen being mean.]

To be clear, it's not Adrien's job to change Chloé, but this episode made him her motivation and then took that motivation away so it's wrong to say that she refused to change when asked. She did change when asked and maintained that change for as long as she had to.

It's also important to note that change is a slow and messy process. If you want to help someone change, then you need to allow them grace as they work toward their goal while also having clear boundaries for what you won't tolerate. Chloé maintaining her niceness for one episode and then reverting isn't enough to actually damn her because it's too big an ask. For this damnation to work, Adrien has to think that Chloé is working to improve over multiple episodes with only the occasional slip up.

To show what that might look like, let's rewrite Despair Bear and give it some proper fallout.

Rewriting Despair Bear

Our new version of Despair Bear plays exactly like canon, but instead of Chloé reverting while Adrien is still there, she now only reverts after he's left. We're also changing the ending dialogue a bit:

Chloé: I know. This way, no one can be mad at me for calling the fire department. I'm really nice now, did you notice, Adrikins? Even Ladybug said so! Didn't she, Jean-Pascal? Adrien: I'm proud of you, Chloé. I think you've proven that you're capable of making an effort to be nicer to everyone. Chloé: Aww, Adrikins! So we'll always be best friends, forever? Adrien: Of course! As long as you keep being nice to my other friends, we'll be friends forever!

With this little change, we let Adrien stick to his guns. Chloé now knows the rules she must follow if she wants Adrien to be her friend. She has also proven that she knows what following those rules looks like. This leads to an arc where Chloé is nicer to everyone, but only when Adrien is around. As soon as he leaves, she's back to her old ways. This shows that she truly doesn't care about changing and culminates in a moment where Adrien catches her in the act, then confronts her about it. This gets us something like this:

Adrien: Chloé! I thought you were going to be nicer? Chloé: I am being nicer! Adrien: But only when I'm around. Chloé: Of course, why would I be nice when you're not around? Adrien: Because you want to be a nicer person? Chloé: And why would I want that?

The dialogue will go on to make it clear that Chloé has no interest in changing and so Adrien cuts her off because he can't trust her anymore. This will lead to a scene with Plagg where we get something like this:

Adrien: I don't understand, Plagg. Why does Chloé want to be mean? Plagg: I don't know kid. But I do know that you can't make people change. Until she's ready to try, there's not much you can do.

This lesson will also be supplemented by Queen Bee's story.

Queen Bee Rework

I think we can all agree that Chloé's first appearance as Queen Bee was a total disaster! She was selfish and petty, proving that she was totally unsuited to owning a miraculous. This is a great way to show that Chloé isn't hero material! The problem is that she got a second chance to be a hero and that second chance completely undid the initial message.

Chloé's first time as Queen Bee was a fluke. She found a miraculous and misused it, but it's worth noting that no one asked her to use it to be a true hero. No one pushed her to be a better person. As soon as the miraculous came from Ladybug, Chloé started acting like a hero. This reframes the message to be that someone needs to believe in Chloé for her to be a hero instead of keeping the message that Chloé just isn't meant to be a hero. To make Queen Bee work in a damnation arc, Chloé needs to be a bad hero no matter how she gets her miraculous.

This is how I'd rework the Queen Bee arc to make that happen.

First of all, Chloé no longer outs herself to the world. Instead, she uses the miraculous selfishly, but maintains her secret identity from everyone but Ladybug and maybe Chat Noir. We're going to pair this with the civilian side of things. Marinette knows that Adrien wants Chloé to be a better person and Marinette loves Adrien, so she tries to help by letting Chloé stay Queen Bee even though Marinette doesn't think Chloé is a good pick.

Chloé proves Marinette right. Every time Chloé gets the bee, she's more focused on looking good for the cameras and being seen as Ladybug's friend than she is on saving the day. This will culminate in Miraculer, the episode where Chloé rejects an akuma. In the new timeline, this will be how Gabriel learns Queen Bee's identity, but only Chloé and Gabriel know that this happened. Chloé now has a very hard choice to make: does she act like a hero and tell Ladybug that she can't be Queen Bee again or does she keep the identity reveal a secret so that she can stay Queen Bee?

Chloé picks Queen Bee.

The season three final comes along and Chloé gets akumatized while Queen Bee. This only happens because Gabriel was able to manipulate her by putting her parents at risk. This is also how Ladybug learns about the identity reveal, meaning that Miracle Queen is 100% on Chloé and not Marinette.

We're also changing the fallout. Instead of Miracle Queen revealing the identities of the temp heroes, it's now how Gabriel finds Master Fu to completely remove all blame from Marinette's shoulders. The Adrigami fight goes away and the message becomes all about Chloé and her choices. If Chloé had been a true hero, none of this would have happened, properly damning her.

After that, I'd either remove Chloé from the show or let this be the thing that finally makes her change. Her extreme low point where she finally realizes that actions have consequences, leading her to want to change, but that's hard to do because she's burned all her bridges so she has to build some new ones. Not totally sure how I'd let her do that. Maybe have her take down Lila or use Zoe to redeem Chloé since Zoe is an outsider who hasn't been burned. There are a lot of options.

The Audrey Complication

I didn't address the issue of Chloé's mom in my rework because, if the goal is to damn Chloé, then I'd probably cut Audrey as there's no reason to make Chloé that sympathetic if you're not going to use that sympathy. You can still keep Audrey and damn Chloé, you just have to acknowledge that Chloé's situation is keeping her from changing. It's nice complexity, just not necessary and probably a little too much for Miraculous' indented audience. There's also the option to save the Audrey reveal until after Miracle Queen. That's the route I'd go if I was redeeming Chloé after Miracle Queen as I don't want to get into her backstory until it's time to start making her sympathetic.

If you keep Audrey and plan to totally damn Chloé, then I'd cut my suggested conversation with Plagg and Adrien and replace is with Adrien talking to a human character. My ideal choice for this is Luka. I like to change it up so that he and Jagged Stone have a complicated relationship, but that Jagged never fully abandoned Luka. Jagged was just on the road a lot and kept Luka a secret for his own protection, all of which gave Luka some issues that he had to work through when he was younger. This would help explain why he's so chill now. Therapy is a hell of a drug.

This means that Luka has been through the kind of things Adrien and Chloé are going through and can speak to them from a place of understanding. He can acknowledge how hard it will be for Chloé to change because of her parents' abuse while also acknowledging that her victim status doesn't mean that people need to let her hurt them. This is actually how I use Luka in a Chloé redemption, but it works just as well in a damnation as the message is the same no matter which path you take.

As you probably noticed, all of this requires some level of serialization because of course it does! Damnation arcs aren't something you can do in 20 minutes. They have to be given room to breathe which is why it's a terrible idea to do a damnation arc or a redemption arc if you're not allowed to have plots that span multiple episodes. You can do them in episodic shows, it just needs to be the type of episodic show where the episode-specific plots are episodic, but there are strong overarching sub-plots that are allowed to be serialized.

[wildsaltair]

This will be my single controversial rant about Gladiator and its sequel (specifically my thoughts on Maximus being retconned as Lucius' father), and then I will be silent on the matter because this blog is meant to be A Good Time and I just enjoy sharing my love for Gladiator with everyone on here :)

KIND OF SPOILERS FOR GLADIATOR AND THE SEQUEL (BUT NOT REALLY) BELOW

As everyone knows, Ridley Scott made the choice to reveal in Gladiator 2 that Lucius is actually the son of Maximus from a secret affair with Lucilla. In G2, it's apparently implied that Lucilla was trapped in a bad marriage, fell in love with Maximus, and kept the truth about Lucius' father a secret. Lots of viewers have been split about this, with some thinking that plot point was implied in Gladiator and others feeling that it contradicts what was established in Gladiator.

I am strongly of the opinion that this choice was a bad one, that it does interfere with the integrity of the original film, and that Gladiator 2 would have been much better without that change. I'll give my reasons below.

1. Yes, rewriting Maximus as a cheater does destroy his entire character arc in Gladiator.

We've all seen Gladiator, right? The one where the hero has everything life can offer but longs only to return home to be with his beloved wife and son? Carries their figurines with him into battle, cares only for them when his own life is threatened, lays down to die by their graves after he finds them dead? Spends the whole movie only wanting to meet them again in the afterlife and only gets peace once he's there?

Yeah. Apparently that guy cheated on his wife with a princess. His son and Lucilla's sons are the same age, which means Maximus would have to have been married to his wife while also sleeping with Lucilla.

Maximus' entire character arc relies on his pure, unconditional, self-sacrificial love for his family. Take that away, and you have a generic action movie about a guy who wants revenge because the Emperor tried to kill him once. Even when Maximus has lost everything inside himself and cares about nothing else, he still honors the memory of his family and fights to avenge them as well as join them. He is shown still talking to his wife in the afterlife through prayer and believing she can hear him. As @streets-in-paradise pointed out, it's the equivalent of having Aragon or Hector of Troy cheat on their wives — it's just painfully out of character for them.

There's also an element of Maximus' love and respect for his Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, another driving force in his characterization. I think Maximus has too much respect for Marcus to have had an affair with Marcus' married daughter, even if he knew Marcus maybe would have wished Maximus had married Lucilla. We never get much insight into that part of the past, but if we go by the virtues Maximus upholds throughout the movie, I just don't think Maximus would have considered sneaking behind Marcus' back to sleep with his daughter.

Either way, the emotional heart of Maximus' character is his love for his family, and retconning that so your sequel has a "bigger emotional impact" is nothing short of undignified and sloppy.

2. All the conversations between Maximus and Lucilla in Gladiator imply that they did have a romantic relationship — but that it was public (not clandestine) and took place before either of them were married.

Yes, Maximus and Lucilla definitely were in love at some point. Russell Crowe and Connie Nielsen have great chemistry, and their conversations (both of them) hold so much weight with "what could have been." Lucilla talks about how she wounded Maximus deeply as he did her, and their conversations are full of things like, "Is it so terrible seeing me again?" The weight of their previous emotional attachment pervades the movie in a way that is inextricable from the plot.

BUT. Maximus and Lucilla had their relationship A LONG TIME AGO. This is very clearly established by the way they talk to each other. Maximus has been in Germania for twelve years (taking breaks only to go home, but NEVER to visit Rome). He and Lucilla presumably met sometime before that, probably while the royal family was visiting some city where Maximus was serving in / commanding the army. The details are never established.

However, Maximus and Lucilla clearly had a public enough relationship that Marcus and Commodus knew about it, but there is never the slightest mention in Gladiator that Lucius might be Maximus' son — something Commodus surely would have exploited had he known it was a possibility.

Maximus and Lucilla were in love, but it was before they married other people. They were probably teenagers or young adults who fell madly in love, wanted to marry, but were stopped for whatever reason (probably Maximus not wanting to play politician's games, as he implies). Maximus met the woman he eventually married, Lucilla married Lucius Verus, and they carried on with their lives until they met again at the beginning of Gladiator.

Also, Maximus talks about the respect he had for Lucilla's husband (a far cry from what Gladiator 2 implies about Lucius Verus), and she talks about how she mourned Maximus' family. Sure, you can read into the script and find stuff about how Maximus could have been Lucius' father, but it explicitly goes against the values and implications of the overall acript.

Connie Nielsen stated that she played her scenes thinking that Maximus was Lucius' father. She's an actress, and she plays Lucilla brilliantly. But she's not the scriptwriter, and no matter what her intentions were, the script implies that their relationship took place much longer ago, before either of them were married. @becomelions made a great post about how Lucilla, too, can wish as much as she wants that Maximus was Lucius' father, but he couldn't have been. Not unless you retcon all of Gladiator as fanfiction.

3. Maximus' relationships with Lucilla and Lucius are not meant to replace those he had with his wife and son — they are meant to be reflections of some of the bigger themes of the film.

With all that said, this is not a hate post about how Gladiator should have been about Maximus and his wife and son, and how I hate Lucilla and Lucius' story and think it contradicts that blah blah blah. NO. The storyline with Lucilla, Lucius, and Maximus is one of the strong points of the whole movie — but not as a replacement for the family he has lost.

In a lot of ways, Lucilla represents Rome as the ideal Maximus always believed in: beautiful, noble, and proud. When he becomes disillusioned with Rome, he becomes disillusioned with Lucilla; when he starts to believe in the hope of Rome again, he starts to believe in Lucilla again. They're always linked. Lucilla is not the woman he wants to start over with and marry now that his wife is gone. She is an old friend and ally whom he eventually learns to trust again.

Lucius, on the other hand, represents what Rome can be again. Lucius is the grandson of Marcus Aurelius, and I think Maximus longs to honor his mentor by preserving the life of his last living heir. Lucius reminds Maximus of his son, yes, and he brings out the protectiveness and the desire to do for Lucius what he couldn't do for his own son. But that doesn't mean Lucius has to be his son for that relationship to have emotional impact, as I will explain further in point 5.

4. Maximus' relationships with Lucilla and Lucius are genuinely integral to the film, but as they are — not as what they could be.

Again, I absolutely love the dynamics between Maximus, Lucilla, and Lucius throughout Gladiator. Russell and Connie play off each other so well with those "I remember how you used to be but that was a long time ago" vibes. Russell and Spencer Treat Clark only share one scene, but it's one of the film's most memorable scenes.

However, we are not meant to question those relationships as "oooooh but what if Lucius is actually Maximus' son????" Maybe Ridley left that door open for the audience to consider, but again, I feel like the film contradicts that by implying that Lucilla and Maximus loved each other much longer ago.

When you make Lucius Maximus' son, Lucilla's seeking out of Maximus as his savior becomes less interesting. It becomes "I'm calling on you to save your son even though you don't know he's your son" instead of "I'm asking you to act out of the goodness inside you to save a boy who doesn't deserve to die any more than your own son did." The version we see in Gladiator is so much more impactful.

It also cheapens what Lucius' journey could have been in Gladiator 2! Again, @streets-in-paradise pointed out how much better the sequel could have been if Lucius had been acting in the shadow of a brilliant man who captivated the city of Rome but also was his friend for a little while. As I'll discuss in point 6, having the reveal of Lucius as Maximus' son is just the laziest possible route for a sequel, and it certainly drags down the dignity of the relationships we see in Gladiator.

5. One of the strengths of Maximus' choice to fight for Lucius' survival in Gladiator lies in the fact that he doesn't have any familial obligation to him.

This is one of my favorite points, because I do love the dynamics between Maximus and little Lucius! Maximus has a bone-deep obligation to save his family — he rides for days and nights to get home and save them, but he misses them by a matter of hours. He wrestles with guilt and misery because he feels like he failed them. He was supposed to be their protector, and he couldn't save them.

BUT. Maximus has no such blood ties to Lucius. This kid is the son of Maximus' ex, the grandson of Maximus' dead mentor, and the nephew of his most hated enemy. Maximus doesn't have an obligation to Lucius as his father: he doesn't even know him until Lucius approaches him in the arena.

And that's what makes his decision to fight for Lucius so powerful. Maximus sees Lucius as the hope of Rome, and he decides that's still worth fighting for — something he had given up on before. Even though he has no obligation to save Lucius as his son, he wants to save him as an innocent young boy caught in political matters over his head.

Again, making Lucius Maximus' son cheapens the impact of that decision. Ridley Scott built up so many amazing plot points and relationships, and it really disappoints me that he just cast them aside to make some easy money by relying on the success of the original.

6. Relying on such a trite, overused plot point to make up the emotional foundation of your sequel can only weaken your sequel and ruin the dignity of your original film.

My final point is simply that Gladiator 2 could have been really well done. They could have done something original with it (or something totally off-the-wall like Russell Crowe's vision LOL). But I think Ridley Scott was banking on that nostalgia factor, and he chose a plot point that he knew would be easily marketable — the hero of the second film is the son of the hero of the first film.

We've seen it done literally hundreds of times, from Star Wars to Superman to Toy Story, and having that be the big reveal of Gladiator 2 is just lazy writing. To have Lucius trying to live up to the legacy of Maximus the hero would have been interesting. To have Lucius discover that he's the son of literally anyone else would have been interesting. To have Lucius discover that he's the son of Maximus is an eye-roll-inducing move that should have been trailer bait and nothing more.

Primarily! Because it can't be the emotional foundation of the movie! Lucius has to have his own journey if it's his movie; he can't just walk in Maximus' footsteps and be like, "Father, speak to me," if he's not going on his own individual emotional journey. We as the audience have to relate to our hero because he's our hero, not because he's the son of our hero.

I'll be honest — I probably wouldn't go see a sequel to Gladiator no matter what it was about because I think Gladiator is a perfect standalone movie and should have stayed that way. I just don't think you can recreate the scale and impact and simplicity of Gladiator in today's film industry.

However, I could at least have had respect for a sequel to Gladiator if Ridley Scott had shown some respect for his own movie. I just hate the fact that Maximus' noble, honorable character is reduced to a cheating husband whose only character trait of note is that he served Rome. Maximus is one of the best characters of the 21st century, and I love him too much to support a movie that trashes that legacy (as well as tries to replicate the beauty of my favorite film of all time).

Final thoughts:

Gladiator is a movie. You can read into it whatever you want, and it doesn't hurt anyone.

I love Gladiator more than I can say, and it's really important to me not just as a cultural icon but on a personal level as well.

Anyone who knows this blog knows how much I love Maximus Decimus Meridius, and Ridley's choice to change Maximus' character so drastically is one that really just ticks me off.

To me personally, Gladiator 2 is not canon, and I will never consider it so on this blog.

[physalian]

“How do I know if my story needs work or if I’m just being hard on myself?”

As I sit here accepting the fact that at 70k words into Eternal Night’s sequel while waiting for my editor for Eternal Night itself, that I have made an error in my plot.

Disclaimer: This is not universal and the writing experience is incredibly diverse. Figuring this out also takes some time and building up your self-confidence as an author so you can learn to separate “this is awful (when it’s not)” and “this is ok (but it can be better)” and “this isn’t working (but it is salvageable).”

—

When I wrote my first novel (unpublished, sadly), years ago, I would receive feedback all over the chapters and physically have to open other windows to block off parts of the screen on my laptop to slow-drip the feedback because I couldn’t handle constructive criticism all at once. I had my betas color-code their commentary so I could see before I read any of it that it wasn’t all negative. It took me thrice as long as it does today to get through a beta’s feedback because I got so nervous and anxious about what they would say.

The main thing I learned was this: They’re usually right, when it’s not just being mean (and even then, it’s rarely flat out mean), and that whatever criticisms they have of my characters and plot choices is not criticism of myself.

It did take time.

But now I can get feedback from betas and even when I hear “I’d DNF this shit right now unless you delete this,” I take a step back, examine if this one little detail is really that important, and fix it. No emotional turmoil and panic attack needed. I can also hear “I didn’t like it” without heartbreak. Can’t please everyone.

The only time I freak out is when I'm told "this won't need massive edits" followed up by, in the manuscript, "I'd DNF this shit right now". Which happened. And did not, in fact, require a massive rewrite to fix.

So.

What might be some issues with your story and why it “isn’t working”.

1. Your protagonist is not active enough in the story

You’ve picked your protagonist, but it’s every other character that has more to do, more to say, more choices to make, and they’re just along for the ride, yet you are now anchored to this character’s story because they’re the protagonist. You can either swap focus characters, or rework your story to give them more agency. Figure out why this character, above any other, is your hero.

2. Your pacing is too slow

Even if you have a “lazy river” style story where the vibes and marinating in the world is more important than a breakneck plot, slow pacing isn’t just “how fast the story moves” it’s “how clearly is the story told,” meaning if you divert the story to a side quest, or spend too long on something that sure is fluffy or romantic or funny, but it adds nothing to the characters because it’s redundant, doesn’t advance the plot, doesn’t give us more about the world that actually matters to the themes, then you may have lost focus of the story and should consider deleting it, or editing important elements into the scenes so they can pull double-duty and serve a more active purpose.

3. You’ve lost the main argument of your narrative

Sometimes even the best of outlines and the clearest plans derail. Characters don’t cooperate and while we see where it goes, we end up getting hung up on how this one really cool scene or argument or one-liner just has to be in the story, without realizing that doing so sacrifices what you set out to accomplish. Personally I think sticking to your outline with biblical determination doesn’t allow for new ideas during the writing process, but if you find yourself down the line of “how did we get here, this isn’t what I wanted” you can always save the scenes in another document to reuse later, in this WIP or another in the future.

4. You’re spending too long on one element

Even if the thing started out really cool, whether it’s a rich fantasy pit stop for your characters or a conversation two characters must have, sometimes scenes and ideas extend long past their prime. You might have characters stuck in one location for 2 or 3 chapters longer than necessary trying to make it perfect or stuff in all these details or make it overcomplicated, when the rest of the story sits impatiently on the sidelines for them to move on. Figure out the most important reasons for this element to exist, take a step back, and whittle away until the fat is cut.

5. You’ve given a side character too much screentime

New characters are fun and exciting! But they can take over the story when they’re not meant to, robbing agency from your core characters to leave them sitting with nothing to do while the new guy handles everything. You might end up having to drag your core characters along behind them, tossing them lines of dialogue and side tasks to do because you ran out of plot to delegate with one character hogging it all (which is the issue I ran into with the above mentioned WIP). Not talking about a new villain or a new love interest, I mean a supporting character who is supposed to support the main characters.

—

As for figuring out the difference between “this is awful and I’m a bad writer” and “this element isn’t working” try pretending the book was written by somebody else and you’re giving them constructive criticism.

If you can come up with a reason for why it’s not working that doesn’t insult the writer, it’s probably the latter. As in, “This element isn’t working… because it’s gone on too long and the conversation has become cyclical and tiring.” Not “this element isn’t working because it’s bad.”

Why is it bad?

“This conversation is awkward because…. There’s not enough movement between characters and the dialogue is really stiff.”

“This fight scene is bad because….I don’t have enough dynamic action, enough juicy verbs, or full use of the stage I’ve set.”

“This romantic scene is bad because…. It’s taking place at the wrong time in the story. I want to keep it, but this character isn’t ready for it yet, and the vibe is all wrong now because they’re out-of-character.”

“This argument is bad because…. It didn’t have proper build-up and the sudden shouting match is not reflective of their characters. They’re too angry, and it got out of hand quickly. Or I’m not conveying the root of their aggression.”

—

There aren’t very many bad ideas, just bad execution. “Only rational people can think they’re crazy. Crazy people think they’re sane,” applies to writing, too.

I just read a fanfic recently where, for every fight scene, I could tell action was not the writer’s strong suit. They leaned really heavily on a crutch of specific injuries for their characters, the same unusual spot getting hit over and over again, and fights that dragged on for too long being unintentionally stagnant. The rest of the fic was great, though, and while the fights weren’t the best, I understood that the author was trying, and I kept reading for the good stuff. One day they will be better.

In my experience beta reading, it’s the cocky authors who send me an unedited manuscript and tell me to be kind (because they can’t take criticism), that they know it’s perfect they just want an outside opinion (they don’t want the truth, they want what will make them feel good), that they know it’s going to make them a lot of money and everyone will love it (they haven’t dedicated proper time and effort into researching marketing, target audiences, or current trends)—these are the truly bad authors. Not just bad at writing, but bad at taking feedback, are bullies when you point out flaws in their story, and cheap, too.

The best story I have received to date was where the author didn’t preempt with a self-deprecating deluge of “it’s probably terrible you know but here it is anyway” or “this is perfect and I’m super confident you’re going to love it”.

It was something like, “This is my first book and I know it has flaws and I’m nervous but I had a lot of fun doing it”.

And yeah, it needed work, but the bones of something great were there. So give yourself some credit, yeah?

[romantichopelessly]

invitation to speak more about the secret good td3 in your head, if you so desire!

Ok so I sat on this ask for DAYS because I wanted to have some cohesive, great answer, but the thing about The Dreamer Trilogy that haunts me is that I can never come up with good concrete thoughts about how to fix the issues I have with it, which is why I reference the “secret good td3 in my head” because it can never fully leave my head in any real way. That being said here’s a list of some elements I would change to make my secret good td3, in no particular order.

The visionaries don’t exist. Liliana, Persifal, etc. are just psychics that keep getting visions of the end, and die for reasons other than their power. Explaining what Visionaries are and subsequently over explaining the magic system of td3 is part of what made the trilogy so confusing and ruined a lot of the magic that the TRC universe already had for me. We don’t need concrete explanations, and psychics can still fill this role. The changing age and exploding added nothing?? to the narrative?? that I can think of?? We can even keep the age gap for Carliana if we want to, just make Liliana an older psychic like Maura/Persephone/Calla. It will even add to the excellent Carmen-Mr. Gray parallels.

Lean more into the themes of the age group. TRC is a coming of age story. It’s about being 17/18. It’s about learning your inner self and getting others to see the true you. TD3 should be more about being 19/20/21. To me, TD3 at its peak is like Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 6. Which is uniquely about the horror of being in your early 20s, losing support systems, having to learn to be a full self-reliant person, grappling with what your parents did to you, and the crushing loneliness of not being around Your People anymore. TD3 has all of these themes, but I really think they need to be fleshed out more, and given proper conclusion that isn’t just “yippee everything is fine now!”

Greywaren is longer. I think almost everyone agrees that Greywaren, as a book was just too short to wrap up all the plot lines set up, and does almost none of them justice. That book needed a whole rewrite. In theory, I’m completely fine with how it opens—Ronan being in a dream coma was foreshadowed from CDTH, and is an idea that I’d actually thought of as interesting before even reading the book. Other elements of this book like Declan’s rampage, Matthew going rogue, etc are great directions for the characters, I’d just want to rework them. I could make solo posts about any of these.

The Pynch breakup either doesn’t happen, or is set up further in advance and lasts longer. Personally, I lean towards the latter. Adam and Ronan’s conflict is set up from the very beginning of CDTH, or even from Opal (Adam warring between wanting to stay with Ronan and needing to follow through with his lifelong plans, and being frustrated that Ronan never asks for anything from Adam (specifically, to stay) ((side note: perhaps Adam’s insecurity here about Ronan respecting his boundaries so thoroughly stems from both having a family that never would respect his wishes, and Gansey (Adam’s model of love, Adam’s model of everything) having to learn not to ask things like that of Adam. What does it mean that Ronan never even tries?)) AND Ronan dealing with the crushing loneliness of being left and dealing with the consequences of having a long distance bf who is more successful than him). So they needed to have an argument about this. It’s also just in character that these two would not be perfect communicators. So. My idea: In CDTH we get no Adam POVs, just Ronan’s side of the story. We see, rather than Ronan just getting upset over one missed text, that Adam begins to pull away after the murder crab incident. We the audience don’t know why, other than Ronan’s unreliable narration and insecurity. So when Adam doesn’t respond to that one text at a vital fraught time, Ronan does what he does best, shuts down, pulls away and self destructs. Then MI rolls around and we start getting Adam POVs. We learn that after the murder crabs, Adam was throwing himself into trying to fix the nightwash situation for Ronan (Adam is not in contact with Declan here, unfortunately). After visiting for Ronan’s birthday and seeing the Lace, Adam starts to have dreams/premonitions about the end of the world (no visionaries in this universe, just psychics who are/were close to dreamers getting the visions!!). So he obviously sets out to fix this alone too. He calls his best approximations to contacts in this underground world that aren’t Declan. Henry and Mr. Gray. (+ maybe also Maura & Calla) ((Also don’t worry Henry doesn’t leave the Sarchengsey trip, just advises Adam on where to start)). Now that Adam has lost contact with Ronan (he was busy and missed the message and Ronan went off the grid like in canon), he goes full throttle into trying to solve everything while managing being his perfect Harvard persona (this gets him close to a breakdown, very reminiscent to Dream Thieves). Perhaps we get to see Adam and Declan working together to acquire sweet metals and understand the underworld of magic together. He and Ronan fight the one time they get to talk over the phone, Adam because he is truly scared Ronan will be the one to end the world, Ronan because he feels like this is another person perceiving him as a failure and wanting to control/baby him (+ he hates Adam hanging with Mr Gray and Declan of all people). By the time Greywaren starts, Adam is wrung out and hurting and Ronan is dead to the world, so yeah. He doesn’t think he can spend emotional energy playing safeguard to his boyfriend’s coma corpse. And then by the end of the book they have an actual argument/discussion no “they didn’t need words” cop out.

The number of Dreamers/Dreams has to be reduced. It’s cool to say that dreams were always integrated into this world, but it creates so many plot holes it isn’t even funny. There is no way Niall could have passed off the Greywaren being a box that brings dreams to life if Dreamers were such a common occurrence. No secret can be kept that well, someone in the black market would have known, and thus Greenmantle/Mr. Gray/Laumonier/ect WOULD HAVE KNOWN !!!

Declan does not have all his character erased by suddenly loving his mommy and daddy. Seriously what the fuck was that. Declan suddenly deciding to forgive his father because actually Declan was secretly the favorite child first is INSANE. Especially after seeing that that changed because Niall and Mor WANTED TO KILL HIS BROTHER!!! The two tenants of Declan Lynch in TRC were protecting his remaining family and fucking hating that Ronan idolized Niall just because Niall loved him best. So why make Declan turn around and do the same??? Suddenly Niall wasn’t so bad because actually he let Declan be shoved into a car trunk during a shootout out of love. I hate this plot line. Family doesn’t have to be forgiven. Understood, that’s one thing. Forgiven?? Not always. Sick of it. The real takeaway from seeing those memories should have been closure to Declan’s arc of learning that dreams should be viewed as people completely.

I definitely have other points but I cannot think of them right now. And I want to post this so I will. But TD3, as you can see, makes me an insane person.

[summerofspock]

You mentioned that your methods for getting through writer’s block are usually successful—could you explain them, please? (if you’re comfortable sharing)

For sure! I can't say this will work for everyone but I do a handful of things generally in order to shake my brain until it restarts

First, I try to take a step back and ask myself why I'm having trouble writing. Is it the project? If so, what about that particular project? Am I stuck because of plot and need to plan? Did I make a mistake a while back and need to rewrite (common)? Or is there an underlying emotional element going on for me? If there's an emotional element, address the emotions. More often than not, the emotions that cause writer's block for me are shame and fear of the invisible audience or the critic I'm making up in my head before I've even shared my writing. You've got to use a lot of self-compassion to work with that. And also, I remind myself the idea of perfect is the enemy always.

I always check to see if anything has happened recently that might be weighing on me creatively. I once read something about "creative injury" and it stuck with me. Basically, if you get your writing wrist whacked sometimes you need to give yourself some creative therapy. Injuries can range from having work stolen, having your work insulted, and simply overextending yourself to no end. Addressing the emotions associated with an injury can take time and kindness but it usually helps me to talk through it with a friend.

If none of the above are true (one at least usually is), then I just need a break. At that point I've run myself ragged and need to rest. When I take a writing break, I enforce it. Truly no writing allowed in order to take the internal pressure off. 1-7 days works fine.

If I come back from a break and still feel stuck, it's time to just read a TON. If it's fanfiction, review the source material but also lots of new books. I usually do this while I'm on the writing break but only by nature of having some hobby time freed up.

What I've learned in troubleshooting this is that writer's block for me is just exhaustion or shame or fear and so really I just have to address those things. Maybe that's what writer's block is for you too. Or maybe it's something else. Writer's block sounds like this insurmountable monolith, but if you ask yourself what's behind it, it can help a lot.

[crownedwille]

S3 alternatives/rewrite ideas: What if the truth about the video came out and August got exposed? What if Hillerska investigations looked different?

My preferred s3 outcome would've been August being actually punished and his actions having tangible consequences so let's think about that! Also 'fixing' a whole lot of other storylines and plot holes that are connected to that so here we go!

Disclaimer: This post is not looking for explanations or defenses in favor of s3 plots so please only interact if you're open and willing to fantasise and theorise and spin this imaginative story further and have fun with it

I also wanna link to this post by @raincitygirl76 that kind of addresses this whole bit and has some really valid points in my opinion.

This post by @resipsaloquitace also mentions some important plot holes I'm addressing here.

The background: Wilhelm has admitted to being in the video with Simon in front of live cameras and phones for everyone to hear and it's probably being spread like wildfire on the internet already. After the first shocked reactions, I imagine the second one would be "who the hell posted that video?"

The fact that apparently no one in all of Sweden or the rest of the world (because we know this 'scandal' has been international news and the crown prince of Sweden coming out wouldn't be any different) has seemed to ask the question of "who did it?" and tried to figure it out is just completely unrealistic. People care! We know they do, the way Wille's scandals were treated before are proof of that! And he wasn't even the heir to the throne yet during one of them! Imagine how much bigger it would be now that somebody did this humiliating thing to their Crown Prince! Wouldn't you want to know as a normal citizen and think there should be justice and consequences for that person?

The conspiracy theories would probably run rampant on social media and if Felice can figure it out after only a few days, then millions of people on the internet will be able to do the same. And millions of people are damn better detectives than just Felice. Not to mention there would probably be journalists diving deeper into this and articles discussing it, wanting to be the one to drop the ultimate exposing story.

Now that that's established, let's get to the alternatives/rewrite part of it: What would a realistic and accurate punishment look like?How would that exposé come along and what would happen when August is found out?

What about Sara's report? What if that actually meant something and the police is now involved and it's tricky and not so easy to brush under the rug? In one way or another, legally or publically, August won't get away with it. Sara is a witness after all. So even if August wouldn't get charged and be registered as a sex offender, there should at least be an effort made and a logical reason be found for that instead of ignoring what happened in the s2 finale because it's inconvenient now. The settlement in the show was too simple and easy for me and I feel like an entire writer's room should've been smart enough and come up with something.

We're talking about a crime committed against the crown prince first and foremost, that won't be taken lightly by the police, it's a matter of the country and if you will, also about politics. They have no political power but we're still talking about the son of the Head of State. They could consider this child pornography and a hate crime committed against the projected future Head of State and August essentially barely gets a slap on the wrist?

And also no mention of his estate Årnäs and Rousseau, the horse he bought? Oh and Alexander who was made the scape goat in the entire thing and then was completely dismissed in s3 like that never happened? I'm definitely open for suggestions how all that could be handled differently and all of these elements that were introduced in the s2 finale could be brought up and tied together in a more cohesive, satisfying way.

Of course this also asks the question - how does it affect August's storyline this season? Is he anxious and terrified of the truth coming out beforehand now that he can no longer control it and it's only a matter of time? And what about him after the truth came out? Will he actually learn from the consequences? Could he realise being rich and of noble birth does not protect you and lets you get away with things? Could it even be a good thing for his character and he could finally understand the real damage he has caused to Wilhelm and especially Simon and try and make up for it? Maybe he could heal even when the world is against him and his perfect image is shattered. Maybe that's exactly what he needs, to reconstruct himself. He doesn't need this facade anymore and has to figure himself out in the future without the pressure and significance he put on titles and performance now that it's no longer important.

Or if you just want to see him be punished and suffer the consequences with no healing in sight, this plot could still work. He will be stripped of his estate and the money, his name will have no worth anymore and be associated with shame and Wille and Simon can get actual justice for the crime committed against them and his place in the royal family will be taken away and they never have to deal with him interfering with their lives again.

And how does the royal court handle it before and after? How do their plans change of making August the back up now that that's no longer a viable option? Would the public question their involvement, would they be accused of covering it up and would the trust in the royal family go down? What kind of constitutional crisis could potentially arise from that? The show didn't dare get into that but let's get into that! Are they trying damage control, bring Simon and Wille into the spotlight to focus on their new progressive, modern royal couple or are they trying to keep them on the down low away from the press? What things might have to change and what will they do to keep Wilhelm in this position? What are they willing to do?

Another part are the Hillerska investigations that were a badly executed and unnecessary added drama plot in my opinion but if we keep it in this rewrite, they could be instead about the video logically. Simon and Wille were filmed in Wille's Hillerska dorm room and the person that filmed them must have been another student so that means the school is responsible and that could be really embarrassing for them.

Would the students be investigated? Would the whole day/the time the video was filmed be investigated? Would the society party be relevant and brought up again? Would the exclusive society that hinged on secrecy be exposed for what it is, promoting elitist, classist behavior and using it to consume drugs and alcohol? It would've been a good way to bring the Society back and also tie it to the s1 storylines since we had no mention of it again after that and it felt like a weirdly dropped plothole.

I bet there is a lot of attention and scrutiny Hillerska would receive after all that. How could they let this recording happen, the school doesn't seem to be safe etc. I think it would've been a logical step and feel more cohesive if the school's reputation was smeared because of the things we know have happened within the show's narrative and make it about that instead of making up a past event that has never been relevant before and was semi-retconning multiple character arcs and was put there as a shocking plot twist for drama.

This is a lot and I'm just putting these questions out there, maybe there's not an answer to all of it or there are a lot more questions to be put and it could be spun even further. And also maybe there isn't a case closed kind of solution to some of them but more an open 'what could happen after the show?' kind of implied ending (the future of Hillerska and the monarchy in the stars for example). And if anyone wants to add ideas or suggestions to this 'rewrite' (or actually rewrite it) I'm all ears!

[virtues-end]

Hello, so excited to see you active and working on this IF again! I hope this means you are doing better on a personal level too because I remember you telling us you were not feeling up to writing and working on this as you were in a bad mental and emotional state. So I hope things have improved on that front too! 😊

I love the new and updated story and demo. I was just curious whether there are any changes to the characters or story. For example, I remember male Shea was trans and female Elixis was trans. Is this still true? What about the rest of the ROs? Are they still included? I remember you said you had to cut some of them off the story as they were way too many to write and account for. Same with our backstories, I remember you said you were considering altering/cutting some of the possible entities we can choose to be bound with. Sorry for all these questions, tumblr search is just notoriously bad so I can't find any answers to my questions.

Hello! I've been doing a lot better these past few months, thank you. I reached out and got help when things got really bad, and it's helped immensely. :) Though there are always days that are harder than others, of course, but I've been doing pretty well overall, I would say! Hope you're doing good, also. 💜

The majority of the main plot has remained the same 'behind the scenes', so to speak. I was thinking of cutting out a few of the helspawn entities when I first started the rewrite but ultimately chose against it--it just didn't feel right to change those! I did end up having to cut a few of the main companions, however, as it just was too much work for me at the time. I'm hoping to add a few of them as minor characters in the future, and for the others, I've incorporated some elements of their backstories and personalities into the remaining four (Elexis has some traits from Eiri and Sinclair now, for example, and Shea some of Sutton).

Regarding gender identities, female Elexis is trans, and nonbinary Elexis is always feminine leaning. Male Shea is not trans, however, though Penrose is a trans man. Shea looks and acts fairly masculine in all their forms, but they're pretty agender and not too fussed about it. Idris is... Idris. :)

[internetgiraffekid1673]

KittyBella AU: Revamping the Magic System/Lore

It's no secret that the lore in miraculous is kind of all over the place, and is pretty frustrating to deal with. If I ever did a rewrite that keeps the same general plot and main characters, I'd completely overhaul it. But for KittyBella, that feels like a lot of work when I'm also having to write the changes to character dynamics and general setup from the kwami swap.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of writer unfriendly elements to the Miraculous Lore and Magic System that are both difficult to work with and that I personally dislike so much that I simply won't have fun working with them at all, so I'll still be changing some things.

This does leave me with an awkward gray area though of "things I would 100% change if this were a canon rewrite but that I don't know if I want to add to KittyBella."

I'm hoping writing them all out will help me decide, but I'm also opening this to you all, the potential audience for this fic to discuss. Any lore changes you think would be appropriate in a KittyBella AU, I'd LOVE to hear, and if you have opinions on what to add and what to save for a different AU, it would be much appreciated.

So without further ado, here are the changes!

Things that 100% WILL be in KittyBella:

The black cat is now required for the World Healing Wave/Miraculous Cure power

One of the most frustrating aspects of canon for me is that the Ladybug and the Black Cat are pitched as Equals: Ying and Yang, Creation and Destruction, Bad Luck and Good Luck. They're both required for the big wish and they're supposed to be equal partners.

But in practice, Ladybug is the only one who actually seems to be more powerful: between the akuma purification, the miraculous cure, and the magical anti-akuma charms that work for like one episode, Ladybug effectively has 4 powers to Chat Noir's one. Add that into the fact that the writers tend to overfocus on Marinette, to the point that she was made the sole guardian of the Miraculous and that Adrien actually got BENCHED FROM THE FINAL FIGHT in season 5, and it tends to look MUCH less like Ying and Yang and more like Chat Noir is relegated to. . .well. . .

I'm aware that Season 6 declares Miraculous Chat Noir is a power used to destroy memories or something, but this is a total ret-con, since that's not how it worked back in Oblivio. And even besides that, there are a lot of things the cure can do that should really be the black cat's job anyway, like destroying bread monsters or desubmerging Paris. So now, both the Ladybug and the Cat wielders have to be present for Miraculous Cure---it's a joint power.

All miraculous users can now purify akumas

Instead of making this a super dumb power that comes from the LADYBUG'S YO-YO IN PARTICULAR of all things, we're going to make this power available to ANY miraculous holders. Evil magic corrupts the akumas, miraculous magic purifies them/restores them to their natural state or whatever. We're gonna say it works just by catching it in your hands and doing the reverse of whatever the hell Hawkmoth is doing to them. Having something to catch them in like a yo yo is certainly helpful, but Chat's extension stick is nothing to sneeze at---you can stand on that and keep your hands free while zipping around.

Usual fanon changes to the 5 minutes and you detransform unless you "grow up" rule

Can. . . can we all collectively agree that part where Marinette and Adrien just suddenly "grew up" in the season 5 finale felt like a fever dream and ignore it? Cool, thanks.

Anyways, I'm just gonna use the familiar fanon rule that I think most of us thought was canon until. . .whatever that was: Your time limit slowly increases as you get more used to wielding a miraculous, increase your tolerance to magic, and finish growing.

So, like. If you gave an 8 year old, a 15 year old, a 21 year old, and a 35 year old a miraculous on the same day and none of them had any exposure to magic before and they were all naturally normal magic tolerance: the 8 year old would only be able to stay transformed for like 2 hours and would only have one minute after using their power. The 15 year old can stay transformed for like 8 hours and gets 5ish minutes. the 21 year old can stay transformed for 48 hours and gets a whole hour to use their power. The 35 year old can stay transformed for around a week and gets a day to use their powers.

However, having more magic tolerance increases your time limit, more experience with your miraculous increases your time limit, and if you start practicing when you're in adolescence, your tolerance when you reach adulthood will actually be BETTER because magic had time to adjust to your body when it was already making major adjustments. So if you had a 17 year old who'd been practicing since they were 13, they'd probably be able to stay transformed for up to two weeks and would have like 2 hours to use their powers---double the limit of a completely inexperienced adult.

Everyone in the Miracuclass is notable for having an unusually high natural magic inclination (Gabe also has high tolerance, Nathalie has regular tolerance, and Emilie has low tolerance which CERTAINLY didn't help). This allows all users to stay transformed as long as they don't use their powers for a full two days without any practice. If any akuma runs longer than that, they'll have to detransform, but nothing's taken that long so far.

The Peacock cannot create sentient life

This NEVER should have been a thing tbh. It just makes so many things on so many levels seem so questionable and needlessly complicates a lot. I do have tiers of how far I want to revamp the peacock's power since it's writer-unfriendly all around, but this is a must-have every time. Even if nothing else changes, this at least will.

Emily instead used the peacock to create a fertilized egg, which she could grow within herself and give birth the normal way. Basically magical in-vitro with a 100% success rate. Adrien's just a designer baby, not magically enslaved. Sentimonsters like the senti-Ladybug have no more autonomy than a robot, and have to be actively puppeted around by the Peacock holder to create convincing reactions. They can be told to do a specific thing, and will be stuck doing ONLY that thing until they're given new orders. They are barely a convincing simulation of life, say nothing about sentience and autonomy.

Guardian Order Re-Write

The Guardian Order seems INSANELY stupid and morally ambiguous the way it's written in canon. What do you MEAN you just left the six year old you kidnapped and starved all alone with a box full of magic nukes???? Why did you think that would ever work???? What do you mean all of your members are unwillingly trained from childhood??? What do you mean this stinky Su-Han man who just hates everyone is actually Fu's boss??? No wonder Fu is so incompetent bro, you all suck on every possible level! WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE USED TO BE HUNDREDS OF OTHER BOXES OF MAGICAL NUKES BEFORE THE HUNGRY SIX YEAR OLD BLEW THEM ALL UP?!?!?!?!?

If I was revamping ALL the lore, I'd nix the ENTIRE guardian order and probably Fu too, but that's, again, a bit much for a kwami swap AU. So for the purposes of this one, I'll probably just rewrite them.

In my AU, there is only one Miracle Box, and it was created by mystical sages who called upon the power of the gods and stored the magic of the ones they were able to contact in the jewels during a time of MAJOR MAGICAL CRISIS. Think like, they were regularly getting attacked by Kaiju and monsters from other dimensions and crud. There are more magic forces in the world than just the miraculous, and they were created with the express purpose of keeping that magic in check.

While there were initially anywhere from 3 to 12 sages, most of em were killed in the initial struggle, and it's become the responsibility of a singular sage and their apprentice to keep these Miraculous jewels safe and to hand them to chosen heroes during times of magical crisis. We're working by Sith rules here, there are only ever two at a time, and their hero flunkies.

The sages are necessary in case any of the holders ever get too power hungry or start behaving dangerously. They're very carefully selected from master to apprentice to be people that will not want to use the miraculous for themselves, and are very intensely trained in intuition and people reading to only choose good holders and a good apprentice. They're very secretive too, and do their absolute darndest to keep knowledge of the miraculous from spreading too far, since they know it would be catastrophic if world governments got their hands on it.

An evil sage has happened exactly once. They started idealistic, as someone who wanted to hand out the miraculous during times of peace and use their extraordinary powers to help people. When their master refused, saying that the Miraculous were created to combat dangerous magical forces and are too powerful to use mundanely, they betrayed their master.

They stole the miracle box and tried to wield a bunch of miraculous all on their own. The power made them crazy and they just about destroyed the whole world with the crazy overuse of the power. They eventually tore themselves apart from the magical overload, and the master was able to recover the miraculous and use their power to set things to right, but it came at a great cost. I haven't figured out what this is yet, if anyone has ideas yeet em at me!

Fu is in an unusual situation, because while he's been the full master of the miraculous for quite some time, the world has been unusually magically quiet as of late, which means he's having trouble finding someone magically in tune enough to be his apprentice. I debate on whether I want to give him one or not, I'll cover that in the "questionable" section. If he has one, it'll be someone the Miracuclass' age or a little older, to act as their more direct mentor.

The "lack of magically in tune people" issue is also going to be used to explain why our heroes are teenagers instead of adults, and why the apprentice, if I pick one, is going to weild a miraculous sometimes too.

In any case, it's been 4 or 5 guardians now since there's been a major magical conflict that would merit handing out the miraculous, so Fu is flying a little blind here. Which makes it very unfortunate that HE'S the guy that gets stuck dealing with the Butterfly and the Peacock resurfacing. Suffice it to say, Miraculous and the modern world interact quite strangly, and he's making some things up as he goes.

Kwamis are more actively involved in using their powers

In canon, Kwamis are something of a slave to their miraculous holder. They're magically forced to obey their holder's orders, they get no say in who uses their powers even if it's someone they would never choose, and they become completely silent and null once the user transforms.

I dislike this for a lot of reasons. They're gods! Do we really think they'd be that subservient? And if you're going to use magically merging two sentient individuals as part of your magic system, AT LEAST BOTHER TO EXPLORE IT! That is such a cool concept that is SO wasted with the way miraculous handles it.

In my lore, a Kwami has to sort of gel with their holder for their powers to work properly. While canon writes it so that any holder can pretty much use any miraculous, we're not doing that here. Certain personalities work better with certain powers, and certain kwamis also work better with certain personalities. If you're butting heads with your kwami, your powers will not only be weakened by circumstance (think Max the linear thinker trying to use Lucky Charm and it's unintuitive logic), but it will also cause the actual magic to deteriorate. People who are on the outs with their kwamis will have shorter time limits on their transformation, smaller ranges on their powers, and just generally weakened effects. Additionally, using a kwami that doesn't get along with you can be outright DANGEROUS, since their thought processes will merge with your own a little bit while transformed (this is how I'm choosing to explain Marinette's Ladybug Vision. I'm interpreting it as diegetic and as Tikki's thought patterns merging with hers. Everybody has some version of this). If you're radically different from each other, you'll feel yourself being pulled apart at the seams as your brains try to solve problems in different ways. Also also, not all the kwamis get along or work well together. Trying to dual wield Plagg and Tikki wouldn't be pretty for you. Neither would trying to dual wield a serious Kwami like Kaalki or Sass with a chaotic kwami like Xuppu or Daizzi. This is a big reason why using multiple miraculous at once can be dangerous. Having multiple Kwamis personalities affecting your brain in ways that oppose each other makes you go insane. Add that into the magical overload slowly eating away at and corrupting your body (especially if you're not particularly tolerant to magic in the first place), and you will literally and figuratively explode if you try to use too many at once.

I mentioned in my Alya Analysis post that I want her and Tikki to schism and butt heads a little bit. They're both very confident and sure of themselves, but while Tikki lives up to her Sugarcube nickname, Alya has a little more feistiness and bite to her that makes them disagree on how to deal with injustice in the world. This will have the consequence of weakening Alya's capabilities until she and Tikki can come to a compromise. But agreeing with your kwami ALL the time is a major no-no too. Imagine if your black-cat holder had just as much of a devil-may-care attitude as Plagg. They'd encourage each other to the point of dangerous negligence and break something very important. The ideal holder for a kwami is someone who is both able to work with their personality and keep their less savory traits in check. Just as examples: the ideal holder for Tikki is someone who's creative like her. They're chaotic and tend to think in bursts of inspiration that help them navigate her oddball lucky charms. They're a little impulsive and never hesitate, which helps them enact their lucky charm plan even if it's a little nuts. But, they're also someone who's got an intense sense of justice and some bite behind them. Tikki is all sugar, so their holder needs to be a little spicy to properly utilize her powers as a fighting force. Someone who was exactly like Tikki wouldn't ever bother fighting, they'd try to talk everything out and forgive and forgive and forgive and compromise and compromise and compromise. That's not super effective either. This can be seen in both Marinette and Alya, it's what makes them good Ladybug holders. The ideal holder for Plagg is someone who's. . . for lack of a better term, a bit of a little shit. Destruction is a power that works best when you know how to cause damage and like doing it at least to some degree. Good black cats are also a bit lazy. They prefer to watch and wait until they can take the problem down with a single strike, not micromanage it into submission. Black Cats also need to show the upsides to being selfish. Someone who takes a detour to help every single person and is constantly sacrificing themselves for the good of others will clash HARD with Plagg's style of helping others by taking care of himself. Someone who's too busy trying to save everyone else to think about what they want lacks the focus needed to wield destruction. But unlike Plagg, Black Cats can't be reckless with their powers. Destruction is simply too dangerous to have someone who uses it freely, so his best holders always have a lot of restraint compared to his own willingness to use his powers even when he's not attached to a holder.

You may notice, this leaves us with a major issue: how are Gabe and Nathalie using their kwami for evil if you have to be in tune with them for the powers to work? That leads in nicely to the next change:

The butterfly and the peacock are not miraculous.

I was gonna put this in the gray area section, but I changed my mind writing it. It's more work to keep them as miraculous. The butterfly and the peacock both work completely differently from any of the other miraculous: you're not really supposed to fight with them at all, you make champions to fight for you and they both have the freaky evil-izing power thing. They're supposed to create minions that lets you operate from a distance. They do not fit with the magical girl up close and personal fighting squad.

Now they're both dark corruptive gems from The Shadow Realm or something that let you manipulate others emotions into evil powers and force your influence onto things. It is the fastest simplest way to keep the same powers and to keep them as villains without having to rewrite things to make the miraculous powers consistent with each other. You can even keep Nooroo and Dusuu as their stewards but now they're evil corruptive entities or something.

This even lets you go ham on sending Gabe and Nathalie off the deep end by making these things eeeeeevvviiiiiillll magic that makes you eeeeevvviiiiillll the more you use them, but Gabe and Nathalie don't KNOW that when they start using them. Or hell, maybe they do and they're desperate enough not to care!

Like, I haven't hammered out the full Backstory TM for what these things are, but they sure as hell ain't miracles!

Some of the miraculous powers need to be changed

Having powers like the goat and the ladybug exist at the same time is really really bad for trying to understand the lore and the worldbuilding. If the Ladybug is creation, how come the goat is just better creation, (and how come the Peacock is even BETTER creation, down to being able to create sentient life)? Why is the rooster so ridiculously busted? You can just have (basically) any power you want? Why is Sass time travel, but then Fluff is just Extremely Broken time travel, and how come the Butterfly can just Give People Miraculous Powers?

If I was doing a full rewrite, I'd also massively pare down the amount of Miraculous there are. There are a whopping NINETEEN of them currently, which is way too much to juggle. I don't know if I'm going to get rid of any for the kwami swap, but SOME of them certainly need their powers changed if they stay. Which ones? It's a bit up in the air.

The ones I will for sure be changing are the goat and the rooster. Their powers are actively contradict established lore. There is no way I will be able to tolerate giving them their canon powers and write a narrative that feels cohesive at the same time. @princess-of-the-corner (sorry for the ping) has my favorite existing rewrite for their powers by giving them a Night and Day motif which I like. They give the rooster light manipulation that can range from lighting up a room to a flashbang to a concentrated beacon, which I'm stealing. They also give the goat dreamwalking, but I'm going to just give them the straight inverse with shadow manipulation. They can swallow an area in darkness, manipulate shadows, and hide people in them. This works for me with goats being a symbol of demons/evil. I am also probably going to straight up GET RID of the rabbit. Fluff's power is simply too broken and overlaps way too much with Sass for me to be comfortable. Sass's power is a good example of how you can make time travel work without it completely breaking everything. Fluff's is not. So now Sass is the miraculous of time. Unlike with a lot of these other miraculous, I don't even want to keep the rabbit for character focus reasons. Being the omni-universal steward of time who lives separated from The Now and has to be responsible for making sure nobody acts outside the way their supposed to is a very depressing and terrible power for anyone, but especially Alix. Alix is very aggressive, in-the-moment, and vivacious. She would NOT be just kicking around in the timeline and correcting people when they act in universe-altering ways. With my established lore, you could argue that it works to keep her sane (a user who's a bit less present would get easily lost in the many timelines and lose their anchor), but I'd honestly rather not have to deal with time travel. Just give her the snake if you have to.

That wraps up all the definite changes I think. onto the next category!

Changes that the lorehead in me would really like to make, but might be too confusing for what's supposed to just be a kwami swap

The thing about kwami swap AUs is that they're supposed to be mostly similar to canon and are not about fixing the magic-system, but are instead about how the character dynamics change when the roles and powers are shuffled around. Changing too much lore can get really confusing for both the audience and the writer.

For example, I won't be doing a deep-dive into the horror potential miraculous lore has in KittyBella (Sentimonsters being enslaved to their amok and also easily destroyable, Hawkmoth's presence creating a scenario where you have to supress all negative emotions and can't even deal with them healthily lest you risk becoming a raging supervillain, Guardian Amnesia, ramifications of kwamis using their powers without holders, etc.) because that has enough Implications that it deserves it's own AU and would be better explored in the context of our familiar setup and character dynamics, otherwise, much like Miraculous itself, I think there would be too much going on.

But, Miraculous Lore is deeply frustrating and inconsistent to me, so there are some things that I'd really REALLY like to change anyway. I need someone to either push me over the edge or reel me back in on these. I am screaming my need for assistance to the heavens and the void. I am about to mis-tag this post with the tags I might use on the fic so I can reach the potential audience so ya'll will tell me what you want because I am INCREDIBLY indecisive here.

More Miraculous Powers overhaul

Carrying on from the last point, I would probably change other kwamis powers to have more internal consistency and match better to real world mythology (probably everybody's powers except the fox, the turtle, and perhaps the bee), as well as massively pare down how many of them there were if I were doing a full lore rewrite---no more than 10, probably no more than 7.

That's too many differences for me to write effectively in this kwami swap, so now the question becomes: how far can I go?

If I were going to remove anyone other than Fluff for this AU, this is probably the order I'd do it in: the ox, the mouse, the dog, the pig, maybe the monkey, and maybe the tiger. If I hadn't rewritten the goat and the rooster's powers, then they would be the first to go, even before Fluff probably because I think they're THAT stupid. If I were doing a full show rewrite, I'd also probably remove the peacock completely, since it's powers completely overlap with either the butterfly or the ladybug, but I'm almost positive that will change too much for KittyBella. The peacock being damaged and Nathalie's role as Mayura take up far too much of the plot as-is for me to be comfortable axing it. If I do decide to keep everything though, I feel like I want to change some of their powers up, simply because I don't like the way a lot of them work. Take the dog for example: that's a really weird and hyper-specific power that doesn't fit well with concepts as broad as creation and destruction and time. The mouse and the tiger both have fine(ish) powers, but those are still really hyper-specific concepts when compared to elements or illusion. The pig miraculous representing joy fits lore-wise, but the way the power works is really weird and is either completely useless or completely broken depending on when and how you utilize it. The ox's power is literally just a "nuh-uh you can't beat me when I put up my everything-proof shield," and the monkey seems like it was created solely for fighting other miraculous users.

Here's my crack at just editing their powers:

Xuppu's power can stay the same, although I might choose to make his concept Reality/Truth instead of Disruption (I am 100% axing the -ion suffix rule because it's needlessly limiting). We just have to ever so slightly tweak it to say it extends to disrupting all magic and powers, not just miraculous ones. This means that any other hypothetical enemies I want to throw at these guys like a vampire or a shadow demon would also have their magic cancelled. This is a dangerous all-or-nothing type power though, because it also cancels out the abilities of your allies, and cancels out any sort of magical weaknesses somebody might have had (a vampire can't turn into a bat, but also no longer burns in the sun and probably still knows how to use a shotgun). It's a miraculous that's very situational in it's uses, and since one of the powers it cancels is the all-powerful Miraculous Cure, it's usually not helpful for the show. I also know that the show has a thing going where the different layers of the miracle box represent Ying and Yang and then the five Chinese elements, then the Chinese zodiac, but since I already killed off Fluff and that theme with her, I'm instead going to try to make it so every Kwami kind of has an opposite/comes in pairs. As I mentioned in the first section, Ziggy and Orikko represent night/shadows and day/light, while Tikki and Plagg are obviously creation and destruction. Trixx and Xuppu are going to be a pair with one representing illusions and the other representing stark reality. The ox is going to instead gain the power of strictly physical invulnerability. You can't be hurt by physical attacks, but you can still be brainwashed or hypnotized or subjected to good old fashioned taunts and emotional manipulation just like anybody else. It's domain is now strength. It's opposite is the dog. The dog now has the domain of loyalty. It's power is basically the ox but for your brain. You can't be brainwashed, hypnotized, tricked by illusions, or otherwise swayed from aiding your allies. In addition, you gain an innate sense of where all your allies are even if they're separated from you by magical means and even if you didn't know where they were before using the ability. The name of the power is now Pack Bond. The dog and the ox are both good support miraculous' but dogs struggle to deal with mostly physical opponents, oxen struggle to deal with mental ones, and both struggle with some of the more extreme magical abilities. The pig still has the domain of joy/jubilation, but now instead of the weird heart's desire vision thing, it fills all willing targets within a certain radius with joy, energy, courage, and willpower. It's a really helpful ability that's great for boosting team morale, but it's not great if you need to be sober and careful, since it tends to make people reckless and a little too chipper to be super focused and task oriented. It also can't be used to just break an akuma out of brainwashing unless their motive for getting akumatized was "I just wanna be happy/I don't wanna feel sad anymore," since the target has to be willing. Also, I'm changing the name of the power to Celebrate. I would have gone for Rejoice, but that's the transformation phrase lol. It's opposite is the tiger. The tiger now has the power of intimidation. You can target an individual and fill them with crippling, paralyzing fear. This miraculous is incredibly effective, but it is single target so it's not great if you're dealing with a large group of opponents, and sometimes particularly strong-willed or aggressive individuals react with fight instead of flight or freeze. The name of the power is now Ambush. It's opposite is the pig. The mouse gets the domain of the body and can shrink and grow ala antman. Power is now named Minimize or Maximize depending on which one you're using. It's opposite is the dragon.

Speak of the devil, the dragon's domain is the elements/natural forces. It's powers are all exactly the same except now it gets the five Chinese elements (Wind, Water, Fire, Earth, and Wood). It's opposite is the mouse, as one represents a creature's impact on nature and the other represents nature's impact on creatures.

The snake and the horse are the same, and I'm choosing to justify it as Space and Time simply being the two opposing forces that control the universe. They both warp the universe, just in opposite ways.

Bee and turtle are also the same, opposite each other (one is aggression/offense/attack the other is protection/defense).

So yeah my major dilemma is, do I alter everyone's powers this way? Can I get rid of the dog, the pig, and the ox? The monkey and the tiger? I'm not removing any of the main 5 and I don't think I plan to drag KittyBella out for all 5 and then some seasons. I kind of want to end after 3-ish seasons, so it's not like most of these extras will play major roles anyways. If they do, I'm seriously debating just having an existing team of 5-7 dual weild instead of dragging everyone else in, cuz that seems a little excessive.

Five Charges of Your Power

The miraculous all have a very cool, cohesive five-segmented design that gets totally wasted with the way I rewrite the timers, and tbh they're still kinda obsolete with the way canon writes the timers. You're telling me these things that are less powerful when minors use them and are therefore not to be used by minors most of the time are specifically designed to indicate when a minor's using them?

So, to preserve this cool design element, I like to make it so you can have multiple charges of your power the more experienced you get. At full power, you have five uses of your power before transforming back. But again, I'm stuck on if I actually want to add this or not, since it might make my power system too complicated to follow when we're also trying to keep track of the kwami swap.

Alternatively, I could also make it so you DON'T have a detransformation timer when you use your power, you merely have charges of how many times you can use them, and the kids only get one charge until they get more experience. But I feel like that takes a lot of the tension out of some of our identity shenanigan scenes, since they're basically never gonna be under threat of detransformation, so I don't know that I wanna write it like that.

Adjusting the peacock's powers

Even after we've removed the peacock from the miraculous framework, it's STILL stupid! It's basically just a knockoff butterfly that manages to be more powerful since your sentimonster is under your direct command and doesn't have emotions or goals of it's own.

So we gotta fix that. If I didn't need to care about the Mayura plotline and only needed to care about the Emilie one, I would just say Emilie used the butterfly to get herself pregnant (or akumatized gabe and gave him the power or vice versa) and the magical overload put her in the coma, but since I do need to care about Nathalie, I do need to keep the peacock around.

We've got two options for this. The first one is that the peacock is designed to work in tandem with the butterfly. Since they're no longer miraculous, I can make it so that they don't have to be capable of independent operation. Sentimonsters can only be created for Akuma villains. You can't just make one and have it do what you want. While this solution allows for the least amount of changes to the canon powerset, it does require me to put in some extra legwork in their backstory to explain why the malevolent emotional manipulation magical entity also has a sidekick that lets you make constructs, and I don't know that I wanna do that.

So instead, my thought was to change the peacock's powers the same way I did for the other miraculous. Now, it lets you create constructs you can project your conciousness into and puppet them around. This means that our heroes are PERSONALLY fighting against Mayura instead of fighting a proxy she's empowering the way Hawkmoth is. I like this better, it lets Mayura be a more effective second in command and lets her do the usual Villain's Right Hand Man job of personally screwing with the heroes while the villain schemes.

The constructs can't have any power you want: they can be any shape you want but they're basically just puppets at that point, so you usually wanna make it something that's small enough to move around but big enough to be threatening. You can puppet multiple constructs at once, but you only have so much awareness, so they start to get less effective if you're trying to control too many. A sentimonster possessed by Mayura is basically the default sidekick/babysitter to any akumatized villain when she shows up, and she makes fights much harder.

While the powerset is certainly better for story writing, it might be too big for KittyBella, so which route are we thinking would be better?

That took less rambling than I thought it would to be honest. I just would really like to hear people's thoughts on what kinds of changes they'd prefer to see, since I genuinely don't know which I'd rather do: make internally consistent lore at the risk of making it too complex to follow in a kwami swap as well, or compromise on some of the lore to spend more time on character dynamics.

And if you all have thoughts on lore changes you'd like that I DIDN'T include here, feel free to chime in! I'd love to know, as well as anything else miraculous/KittyBella related (or literally anything else I like being yapped at).

[thelouspicystash]

An artist I follow, they wrote up a whole story that they and their partner described as "an idealized, furry-ized, complete rewrite of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory premise" (took that right from the Ao3 page bio). Basically, all the guests are adults (and furries), and more of the incidents they get into are kink related, on top of the already expected blueberry shenanigans. I've been meaning to read it, since it sounds pretty cool, and the concept is honestly pretty great.

It did get me thinking though. The idea of making "idealized" versions of stories to better fit kinks. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is like, a prime example, because as cool as blueberry is, in the original story, it happens to a child. So, a rewrite where it happens to an adult is already an appealing prospect; while you're at it, why not change the OTHER incidents to be more kink focused? Hell, let's go full OC, make them furries, and tell your OWN version of the tale, using only the original material as a basic framework and jumping off point.

Now...what if I did that?

Now, the blueberry kink has the advantage of having a definite origin; there is exactly ONE source in which the idea of being big n round n blue was planted into a generation's mind. Not to mention the plot structure of the book/film is fairly simple, so making your own version of Wonka's Wacky Wadventure would be as simple as taking out parts that you don't wanna see and putting in ones you do. It's very modular, if you get me.

But what if I wanted to try this approach with other kinks? Like, ya know, pregnancy or weight gain, stuff like that. What could I exactly turn to as a basis for this? I suppose I am burying the lead here, because I already have something in mind thanks to jeffiot's M. Night video:

Old.

Basically, Old features an accelerated pregnancy; like, duh, where a year is a half hour, you're gonna go from flat to due within fifteen minutes. Only issue is that, tmk, this happens to a teenaged character, who is also only a teen because they were aged up from a six year old. Yeh not sorry but for me, I prefer dealing with women who are mentally AND physically of age, so while the concept is fun, the execution in the film is like. An obvious no for me. I mean, it is of course being played for body horror in the first place, but that's not the factor that is a turn off for me.

So, what do? Easy; rewrite the story with adult characters. Have THEM experience rapid aging in a way that is a lot more sexually charged. Maybe downplay some of the horror elements...change some of the rules...some of the character archetypes were fun. Like a shallow influencer type, or a tense married couple. I dunno I think there's potential here.

I already have a few character ideas myself...I'll ruminate on it, and if I come up with anything of worth, I'll make a follow up post. No promises, though.