#woo poorly explained lore

[vampwiz]

how i imagine my ice wizard came to ravenwood:

he just scored the game winning goal and he’s about to go celebrate with his team when he gets ported to wiz city and he turns around and merle is like, “hello young wizard 👴🏻” and he throws his [hockey] stick at him and tries to run off but he’s still in his skates so he trips and falls over and sprains his ankle. so the whole tutorial he’s like limping around and merle’s like, “you can do this” and he’s just standing there like “bro i’m literally shitting my pants rn who tf is this emo bastard and why is he sending his dragons after me!!???”

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

We watched Emotion today. Aka, Fèlix's mental breakdown episode also featuring the weird Diamond Dance that feels like a cult meeting, but apparently isn't.

My SO was highly critical of the Diamond Dance's lackluster security. For an event of that caliber, security would be required to memorize the guest's faces to prevent interlopers. Marinette would never get in the door.

I was highly critical of the Diamond Dance in general because it and previous episodes (ex: Gabriel Agreste) implied that there was some sort of rich people conspiracy, but that never materialized, so on a rewatch, it just feels stupid. What was the in-universe point of this dance? What did previous dances look like if Kagami and Adrien only met this year, but were supposedly meant to be all along? Why waste production money having someone model this room? Nothing about this makes sense and it's clear that the writers put no thought into the lore of this world.

Moving on!

SO thought that Felix was Adrien acting under a senticommand to woo Kagami which is actually not an unreasonable assumption. It would have been an interesting twist, but then the show would have had to acknowledge just how messed up the sentistuff is and they're never going to do that. SO only got that it was Felix when Felix suggested leaving.

Marinette sneaking into the party instead of just texting Adrien like a normal teenager (or waiting until the next time she saw him) was painful to watch. She's supposed to be clever! Why in the world would she think that crashing the party was a good idea??? Who would see this as a romantic move? Writers, are you okay? The more you try to write the Adrienette romance, the more concerned I get. If that had actually been Adrien and not Felix, then this whole scene would have fallen apart. It's a clear example of writing for drama instead of writing logical characters.

When we saw Felix create Red Moon, I was asked to explain how sentimonsters work and, honey, I don't even think the writers know that. I have no idea how sentimonsters are an emotion brought to life while not appearing to have anything to do with emotions. And - in the case of the sentitriplets - somehow having a full range of emotions instead of just the one they're tied to. Akumas are more tied to emotions than sentimonsters (which is part of the reason why the peacock's power is so bland and derivative, but that's a rant for another day.)

SO is very sad that the cute bug girl & cat boy show is so poorly written and sees why I found this season depressing. He's seen that since Derision, but the more we learn about the sentistuff, the sader he gets because Adrien can never be free now.

We're both fans of narratives about abuse victims escaping abuse and finding freedom, but Adrien will never have true freedom. He'll always have to be paranoid about his rings. I can just picture his future kids wanting to go in the ocean with him and he can't because then he'd risk losing his rings and it's not like he can take them off and leave them behind! They're not even safe from theft when he's wearing them (thanks for establishing that Felix)! Just what an awful, awful thing to do to a person.

My SO and I enjoy family-oriented shows specifically because shows aimed at adults are often depressing. Family shows are supposed to be a way for us to relax because we know that good with triumph and that the ending will be happy, but ever since season four, Miraculous is the worst of both worlds! They keep introducing serious, depressing elements and then not exploring them or outright ignoring them because those things don't suit the intended tone of the show.

Miraculous never needed to be deep. I never wanted it to be deep. And it's not deep. It's as shallow as a puddle of water, but the writers clearly think that they're being deep and it's painful.

For example, this episode shows all of the rich kids at the Diamond Dance being selfish and rude because that's totally why people don't like the uber wealthy! They're all meany pantses! It's certainly got nothing to do with the 1% using their money to hurt the planet or manipulate society or cause housing crises or anything like that!

But we can't talk about those issue because this episode features Zoe, Felix, Adrien, Kagami, Chloe, Marinette, and Lila. Only two of those characters aren't uber wealthy (as far as we know) and implying that special babies Zoe, Felix, Adrien, and Kagami are part of The Problem is just not going to happen.

To be clear, I don't think that a bunch of 13 and 14-year-olds are actually part of The Problem, but if you want to address the issues with uber wealth and you've decided to make a bunch of your characters part of the uber wealthy, then those characters need to have or develop an understanding of the problem and a desire to change it once they're old enough to do so. They're not doing that in this show. They've just made it that wealth is some sort of meanness disease that the special babies didn't catch for some reason and it's asinine.

[tewwor-moving]

🎰 (hiiii, beloved 🤍🤍🤍)

muse sampling & plots (accepting) ! please specify a at least 1 category listed on my muse roster ( the marked, harborview, hanuel's inn, supernatural, crime, mythology, misc. / testing, fantasy ) — not restricted to just romantic connections.

tonda & bishop — hm! i'll have to study up more on tonda's lore, but bishop is, in a way, tied to nature ( literally anywhere a wild hunt could've happened ). i never put it in his bio, but it's alluded that he left a part of himself there back when he participated in his first one as a human and lived. so maybe... there's something there i can parse besides bishop wandering in and having horse blinders slapped onto his big dumb head / walk to his death

august & clarence — what do i even say about this walking talking light bulb? he's a mess, but a positive one. always trying to catch up with the latest fads whenever he's back from space. can fix just about anything, albeit poorly and suspiciously ( he can use duct tape in a million ways to tide things over ). he's a chatterbox, sponge for knowledge, and puzzle maker extraordinaire. shows up in all the wrong places at questionable times, and has no control over what his body deems a threat / how it'll react to it. i can literally fit him into anything at any time for any reason ( which is so not helpful im sorry ).

silja & oram — oh??????? oram wanders just about anywhere whenever he's on land. and, yeah, he's really weird and super out of it most of the time, but there could've been a time he uh.. caused some sort of calamity via tsunamis and/or earthquakes ( idk wtf he does underwater ok ). or, idk, just vibes of a misplaced sea god and reaper having some casual conversation tickles me.

vincenzo & lior — i think like... this is meant to be??? hello, very italian once mafia man ( ignore the eel sea creature part ) that still stays in contact with past connections? ring ring does vincenzo need some assistance? just name the cause / place, and this wacky man will waltz over and have the time of his life. see, also, a possible double agent within the cassano family that's stayed loyal to vincenzo instead of his pissbaby stepbrother.

dalimil & m. — idk how i've rolled him this much? but i'm wheezing at the thought of some rendition of mothman in a desert???? granted, it'd explain any disasters that might happen around nereid or oros in general. he'd be a hoot and holler even if it doesn't make much sense ( just like m. ). just.. hide any lamps unless you want a show of m. trying to woo it.

[therentyoupay]

Hi, I was just wondering if technical difficulties is abandoned?

I hope you’re doing well!

*drops in after 5 years and 4 months with a technical difficulties chapter update*

*disappears*

cover art made by @angel-gidget ♡

03/08/23. HELLO, HELLO, HELLO, ALL, LONG LONG LONG TIME, NO SEE. ♡ Can you believe it? When I first published this story (first to tumblr, then to ao3), I had just moved to Japan! When I posted ch. 7, I was still living in Japan, and would stay there for another 7ish months... and in the 5 years and 4 months since posting the last chapter, I have moved to three different cities in the United States and started a Ph.D. program. (I am currently halfway through my PhD program!!!!!) What a wild ride. Also, we lived through the pandemic?! And I bought a house! Over the summer! The market was vicious.

So, then how did I get the inspiration/time/energy/motivation to write Ch. 8, you ask? Marvelous question. I lied down in bed last night to go to sleep "early" and ended up reading an utterly hilarious play-by-play commentary on Bad Books, Good Times of a popular fantasy novel series—and I'm not quite sure what it was about "poorly written books explained by hilariously clever book lovers" but I suddenly had a craving for fanfiction, so I opened up my Books app on my phone, and my eyes fell upon a sudden recommendation for my downloaded copy of technical difficulties. And I thought, "Am I suddenly and weirdly in the mood to jot down some notes to start Ch. 7 right now? By golly, I think I am."

4.5 hours later, I'd written the whole damn thing from scratch on my phone in my Notes app. (Messily! Half-assed! But I wrote all of it down!) I then spent another 6.5 hours today filling in the gaps and "editing." This chapter (and the one that will follow it) has been in my head for more than half a decade, but I just haven't had the space to get it out until now!!

I think one of the most beautiful parts of getting a PhD is how completely it blows your perfectionism tendencies utterly to bits, and one of the really interesting byproducts that has come up in my acdemic writing is just how quickly I can crank out decent-enough writing (skill-building!!). In my case, I think so much of it has to do with just being able to word vomit fairly well while not trying to fix anything until the whole damn thing is basically done. So, I applied that knowledge here! Behold!

This isn't to say that I'll be writing the final chapter anytime soon—I may be on spring break right now and may have had a stroke of Writing Inspiration in the Wild™ last night, but I'm still finishing my last semester of classes and learning advanced Python and working on my milestone paper for my doctoral program and preparing to present at my next conference in June and preparing my proposal for my dissertation next fall. BUT! The important thing is that I will post the last chapter of this story (and all my other stories)! Eventually!! ;)

No BETA for this chapter because I gotta THROW this out onto the internet and get back to coding, so bear with! I may do minor edits for it in the near or distant future. Also, please note that I have not watched any episodes of Miraculous Ladybug after the finale of Season 1, so this fic is very much a ~time capsule~ from the past. If there is any additional lore that might otherwise apply to the plot of this fic, please know that I don't know about it, and I am keeping myself selectively ignorant on all matters of Miraculous Ladybug season 2 and beyond until after I finish this story the way I originally intended. ♡ Woo!

as for, tumblr, sadly, to be honest, I'm never really online anymore! I'll respond to comments here on ao3 ASAP, though. ♡ LOVE YOU ALL, THANK YOU. ♡♡♡

[thelawgames]

The Otome games you’re missing out with luckily start here: With the prologue of Noctis Umbra by Rinmaru games. A choose-your-own-adventure, edgy, postmodern twilight-esque Adventure with a variety of diverse casting. Definitely worth a play, but only if Otome follows through and creates more chapters. Either way though, I had fun. And that’s what the spirit of games is all about, huh? Before we get started, let’s give a brief overview of this part of the game, in case you haven’t yet watched the playthrough above, made with @elvisqueso. WARNING FOR SPOILERS.

So basically you’re this edgelord who’s probably a PI and involved in some political scandal. Honestly, who knows what’s really going on there? That’s never really expanded on. What really matters is this guy Vinko tries to rough you up outside a bar and you’re “saved” by a couple of Cuteboys who later explain that they and you are what’s known as Nocturnals. And they have a little fun club called the Noctis Umbra where they hunt other Nocturnals and I guess either adopt them or kill them if they’re feral. The main Cuteboy is Valerius who we’re pretty sure is some kind of vampire. And then there’s Keelan who is spider man, but not, and way more important. There’s also Ae-Ri and her brother Tae and they don’t get a lot of screen time so god knows what they do. Then there’s you of course and you’re told you’re part succubus and never fail in your romantic endeavors. And as soon as you’re given that life altering nugget to digest, you’re pushed into going on a hunt with Keelan after a bad Cuteboy whose name is Luca. 

Luca takes you in his dreams and then tries to woo you, which works (on us) until he ruins it by thinking he has to play some weird game and literally pretend to be something he’s not. He does tell you that succubi are royalty among their kind, and you should join him and live freely, and not in the shadow of humanity. Eventually Rana, accompanied by Valerius break you out of the dreamscape to return to the waking world. You go back to Noctis Umbra HQ and have a Talk with Valerius for putting you in that situation and using you for information. He apologizes and says that joining the legion is Bad and the world that Luca wants would be chaotic and animalistic with real demons and wanton bloodshed. We think he’s overreacting, but whatever. He promises to be more straightforward with you, and there the prologue pretty much ends. Well, with that in mind, let’s dive right into what makes it disappointing.

My biggest issue with this game is that choices don’t matter. We tried so hard to be wooed by Luca and the promise of a more interesting tomorrow with the Legion, but instead we get stuck with anime boy Dracula and his poorly built Ikea desk. This is disappointing if you like the idea of being revered as royalty and taking back the land and culture that’s not only your birthright, but that’s been entirely mythologized by the human majority (And if you think Luca is cute and reminds you of a younger, better, Ed Sheeran).

At best, if you choose to act positively toward the Noctis Umbra, you get confusingly well dressed Valerius who tests you to prove your loyalty despite having kidnapped you the night before. Having any kind of loyalty makes no sense. Or maybe he thinks you’d have to be an idiot to side with the legion, in which case he’s insulting your intelligence, or trying to. No matter how you cut it, kind of a dick move to pull this stunt after doing absolutely nothing to prove himself to you. Where we left it with MC being apathetic enough to spitefully join the legion is probably the most realistic reaction from all the bs he presumes from you.

However we should keep in mind that this is only the prologue. Like I said at the end, I hope they’ve really considered the long game with this one. I hope they know we want to be in the Legion and listen to Luca’s whistley voice while he whisks us off to his sparkly dream land. I’m willing to lend them the benefit of the doubt that it may to too early on in the series to choose the join the legion in a way that would be narrative satisfying when looking at it from a big-picture POV.

A few other points… as Elvis mentioned: you can’t customize your MC’s appearance. Which is never fun. The writing style reads like something out of a 12yr old’s voice-password locked diary. It lacks variety and it’s laughably predictable. While I don’t think the overall plot or characters are in any sense of the word original, I do like how they are placed in this world. I’m impressed with how interesting each individual character is in terms of powers and overarching lore, even if those moorings are built on pretty bland sand.

So overall:

Character Customization: None, other than your name.

Writing: Just really bad.

Choices: Many, but don’t matter, probably except for the romances

Plot: predictable, overused

Lore: potentially rich. Definitely needs to be further developed.

For the serious casual gamer: it’s a good game to waste time with or play with non-gamer friends at parties. Don’t forget the accents.

[burstbombbitch]

📜 her family

      Send me a sunken scroll for some lore! || ★       No longer accepting.

            ☪️ —— Her family is a bit of a mixed bag, and I’m not fond of the nuts. I focus primarily on her grandmother, her father, and her mother. She is an only child.

We’ll go down the line. Bourbon Charbonneau is where her changed name comes from. She is her paternal grandmother, and presumably deceased. A war hero from the Great Turf War hundreds of years ago, she rose from the ashes purely out of spite. While size was supposedly not her forte, she more than made up with it in range, being an excellent sniper racking up kills that extend vastly beyond the weak threat that was her height.

She was born with nothing, and made something, despite it being grounded in once amicable blood. With the supposed loss of her eye, she retained her wealth by war profiteering. This money seldom went to frivolous thrifts, instead paying back to the slums she hailed from.

     Her son, Clair Charbonneau, was born without a father figure in his life — not that he needed one. The idea to have him alone was indeed Bourbon’s idea; she needed no one, she believed, but she wanted a child to spread her riches to, long after she was gone.

A shame he put it to bad use. As he grew, his fondness of money did too. Far too tired to police her son ( she quite heavily believed she did no wrong in raising him, and that money itself corrupted an innocent mind ), Bourbon, once he hit eighteen, opted to leave his life. He found no issue with this — she had left him a hefty sum and told him that he should try spending wisely, for once in his life.

To his credit, he did — he invested in manufacturing and in Cuttlegear, becoming a large stakeholder and supplier of their weaponry. Like mother, like son, he’d insist — war profiteering soon became his life. Though he never once stepped on the field himself ( even Turf Wars, when they had become a sport, were perceived as grotesque in his eyes ), fatter pockets tempted him — enough to secretly aid Octarians behind the company’s back, creating a need for new armaments.

With a never-ending cycle of weapon necessity, his bank account grew comfortable. He invested in Custom, another heavy armaments manufacturer, and sat pretty while doing as much damage as possible — as many do, using Custom weapons.

      On an extended visit to Wuzeiguo, he fell for the daughter of diplomat, named Chen Meiling. Her mother ran the Nouveau Corporation of Wuzeiguo, while her father extended their relations outward. Meiling was an artist, enthralled by the lighter side of things. Multilingual, and generally seen as a TCK, she was amused by the foreigner’s attempts at wooing her, for oblivious she was not. It was only when he ( poorly ) spoke her tongue that she opted to fluently speak his.

While business was indeed in her blood, Meiling preferred to enjoy the passions of life. Her designs and blueprints for Nouveau’s weaponry seldom go used ( oh, how an artist scorns their own work! ) but her craft found use elsewhere.

There was an initial distrust between this man and Meiling — though she enjoyed the variety of people that constant travel allotted, his weariness of self-detail piqued interest. It wouldn’t be the first time someone came solely to invest or benefit themselves down the line — Nouveau was by no means a start-up company, but their general demographic encompassed many influential children, and allowing them to enlist amidst wartime was far from their minds.

Proximity wore down her guard, and she ultimately reciprocated his feelings. Their eventual marriage ( and legal renaming to Celeste Charbonneau ) marked her step up in the world, for her mother transferred her to Inkopolis to become the CEO of the Nouveau Corporation there.

      Still, Celeste was one for her family — they would occasionally travel back to Wuzeiguo, to check on how they fared, and explain standings at the company. Clair would oft follow, though his ability to speak their language hadn’t improved ( why bother, when he found their own tongue to be fine enough? ). One such visit informed her family that she was carrying, and another found that her child was to be born urgently. Without time to leave, Chen Xiuying was born, premature and silent.

With little diagnosis as to explain why, they hung around Wuzeiguo, checking to be sure that naming her wasn’t for naught ( Clair was quite the pessimist — Celeste harbored disdain for that ). Once they were given the okay, she was raised temporarily in Wuzeiguo, only to return to Inkopolis when her health improved.

There, she was renamed Bonbon Charbonneau ( to Celeste’s growing irritation — homesickness began to quickly settle, with the birth of her child ).

Living in a mansion close to the city, their newborn’s room was soundproofed. In fact, Clair had decided ( single-handedly ) that their child would be raised deaf, for fear of her illnesses. Celeste, opposed to the idea, had grown tired and complacent — fine. Many of their lies, white as they might have intended to be, were to further a world where everyone spoke in hands. Bonbon grew up believing that the world was silent, indeed.

This was not the only decree Clair placed upon her — she was not to meet with other children, who might be far too rough for his delicate little girl. As such, he seldom rough-housed or allowed her to do much of anything on her own, while Celeste would steal her away to play ( to his chagrin, for he believed her to be made of glass, not ink ).

      Ultimately, she grew up to appreciate her father more than her mother, for when time came that she was informed that they had been lying to her, he was quick to pin the blame on Celeste. Her mother took it easily — she knew that, at this time, the man she had fallen for was fragile. He could not handle their daughter’s vociferous rage, and thus would crack under pressure. Patiently, she allowed for her own child’s hatred to boil her alive, smiling all the while. He would soon get his due reward.

The couple had long fallen out of love, but come Bonbon’s eventual moving out, they had a mutual fear for her naivete — especially when she completely cut herself off from their riches. It was with comfort that they heard their daughter’s name in bright lights, particularly for Celeste, whose heart would always remain in the arts. Clair, on the other hand, was simply ecstatic she had dropped the silly notion of going to war for his grandmother’s honor.

That was, until she returned, skeptical of his gains. Snooping about would find that she located her birth certificate — which clearly defined that she was, unlike first thought, not born in Inkopolis like he had insisted. Having an extreme loathing for lies, she dug deeper — and found more of his shady dealings, on top of their hospital arrangements for her in her youth.

Exasperated, she called him out on it — in public court, where he was to be tried for nigh treason.

When declared guilty, he plead for solitary confinement — a deal they accepted with Bonbon’s push. Bitter, she wanted him to feel as she did as a child — isolated in sound and comfort. Yes, this would mean that those who he encouraged to fight couldn’t beat him senseless, but she’d grown tired of battle as a whole — and would rather him rot alone.

Her mother, after the trial, explained everything to a reasonably devastated Bonbon. Celeste, however, was effervescent — their assets now belonged to her, and the first decree she’d enact was the reversal of her name. Others soon would follow — she took over the shares of the Custom brand that her husband ( soon to be ex ) possessed, and pulled out from supporting Cuttlegear’s actions.

      Striving for a world where the species oppressed by her ex’s actions could co-exist peacefully, Meiling now supports any and all endeavors above ground by Octarians. Art, once again, has become her life, and she actively brings artists from Wuzeiguo to experience life in Inkopolis — in the hopes that her daughter can too share their rich culture.