#Also I don't know precisely what God has planned but I am discovering that I will simply not have enough to pay ALL the bills

[thegreenleavesofspring]

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[mlwritingprompts]

Submitted prompt: For what goal does hawkmoth akumatize people when not trying to get some magical jewelry?

This is technically a crack, but it can become serious.

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"God, this is life!"

Hawkmoth, paris's terrorist was relaxing, drinking his lemonade cup in this hot day.

His son was in the school, his bodyguard was more or less.

And Nathalie was dealing with his company's bussines.

Which was exactly why he had used this chance to deal with the dirt and dust.

But, with him being a billionaire and terrorist and all that, he didn't find it in himself to waste time hiring some people to clean his huge mansion, as not only will it take too much time, but he also won't be able to trust them not to put their noses where they don't belong.

Which is exactly why he used a much better method to do that.

"Cleaning. Cleaning! Yes! I'll make this entire mansion sparkle from the cleanliness!!"

He used nooroo's power to akumatise someone to have them clean the mansion with such precision that even experts will become jealous.

The akuma in question wasn't someone he cared about.

Just some person who has problems with being dirty and liked things being in order.

They were simply and unfortunately in the wrong place.

But it worked for Gabriel just fine.

He gets his home clean, doesn't have to make a convoluted plot to hire people to clean his freaking castle of a house, and he gets to do this without ladybug fixing it because she simply doesn't know about this, and it's all free.

*******

For those who might see this, I am sorry to say that while this is possibly a crack, but it's actually much more along the lines of horror if you think of it.

Not sure if I missed something from the show, but apparently, only Henri(that's adrien's bodyguard's name in this tumblr page right?), nathalie and the unnamed chef work as staff in the huge agreste mansion.

Which makes no sense at all, because how the hell does the house stay so ridiculously clean without constant maintenance?

I might be overreacting and all that maintenance stuff happened off-screen, but we never see anything to prove it.

Which makes Gabriel all the more creepier if that was true.

Like, for how long was he doing this? Did he only start after Stoneheart or earlier? What was Emilie's stance on it?

And how did nathalie actually get roped into his plans? Did she somehow discover one of those akumas at the wrong time?

And most importantly, what other shady situations are occuring inside that mansion that we don't know about?

And I'm sorry if the prompt downplays gabriel's cruelty and horrible action, I can't write this idea as a tragedy or horror.

If someone wants to use this and play the situation with the emotional feel it deserves, please do.

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(Yes, that is the name i gave Adrien's bodyguard, Henri Kenneth as his full name, if anyone wants to use it. Hes named after Khenarthi, goddess of the wind, because she's cool)

[mysticalmusicwhispers]

HELLO I'M BACK!! GUESS WHO HAS A TERM BREAK COMING IN A FEW DAYS I'M VERY HAPPY :D this ask is Very Long so i'm going to split it up into a few parts

part 1/2

But honestly, it would probably be something like “I’m going to bring a (dead) chicken to class for show and tell and you two need to act horrified and cause a ruckus because it would be fun and it would scare the other kids :)”. (this is probably bullying, so in an effort to make them slightly better kids, an alternative plot is that a stray cat has been coming to their school and in order to make friends with it, they feed it a whole-ass dead chicken Nyo China got from the butchers and was planning to cook for dinner. The teachers are horrified and confiscate Yao’s backpack for fear of germs and salmonella.)

hhhhhh the first idea is SO FUN my gremlin repressed anger eight year old self would've loved it. the idea of bringing a stinking plastic bag to school, opening it, revealing a dead, fly-infested chicken and then maybe playing a small game of lobbing the chicken around for funsies is both simultaneously horrifying and amazing. however the second idea is also amazing, one of my previous schools had stray cats and staff and students would feed and pet them (and i miss it :( ) and it was the Best feeling... or maybe they could do BOTH? but this time they're planning to bring a dead chicken to feed the cat (aw, even if yao probably gets detention. also a lecture from nyo china on what exactly you should feed a cat, including why you shouldn't steal the chicken she bought to feed it.) and the next time they can bring like. a bunch of dead flies to show their classmates but in a not bully way. i went once to this family friend's house in a part of the countryside that had an abundance of flies. (i literally haven't thought of this in years i'm remembering so many childhood things because of this omg) they had this paper covered with glue that the flies would land on and then be stuck on the paper. it was both disgusting and amazing to watch a black mass of bulbous bodies straining with their legs (which were probably thinner than my hair) to escape the paper. i also think that indchuran, being both little sadists in the making and having an abudnace of fascination like many children, would take great delight in watching an unsuspecting fly landing on the glue, watch it still, glancing around eerily similarly to when humans realise they have gotten themselves in a bad situation, and then start struggling with all their might to get out. but fuck the flies tho they landed on our food all the time there and it sucked. they can die :)

THE PROBELM is... how will they get that many flies in what i assume would be a gentrified ass area with frequent fumigation efforts given that nyo china would not accept anything than the best elementary education for her ward?? (i have a solution) maybe indus has friends in the countryside and she goes with aditya to visit them. and while they are talking aditya wanders about and discovers a few pieces of paper filled with flies. because he is a gremlin, he is Fascinated with these pieces of paper, and he takes one out to Further Examine. all the adults yell at him, but he is Fascinated and will not be stopped. and then a Thought occurs to him: who would probably enjoy this as much as he would? duh, his friends of course! good things must be Shared even if they're kind of disgusting! so what he does is he gets a disposable plastic tupperware like container, very gently places the fly paper into it, pokes a few holes for air, sprinkles some sugar because he thinks that'll keep them alive, and wraps most of it up in duct tape he found so indus can't see it. unfortunately most of the flies died on the way home because the container was stuffed into aditya's bag and the paper slid to the side + there wasn't enough air, BUT the dead flies are still a Sight to behold when he visits iran's house (which yao is /coincidentally/ visiting) to show them. then he brings it to school after the weekend, and everyone is Fascinated and thinks it is Very Cool, at least until the teachers see it and start screaming. they throw it away but indchuran get an Idea to put dead flies into the bags of people they hate (this is now just bullying) so that opens up a very few interesting weeks of attempts to collect flies in a fumigated city and Horror for the school. fun times for all!

😔 finding and reading that encyclopedia is probably one of my formative memories now and i wish it wasn't 😔 i bet yao during his teenage years would look back on it and be like "... oh my GOD." but i think he would appreciate her directness even if he didn't absorb all the information correctly or remember most of it lmao because it seems like only a very small percentage of the world has actually good sex ed and i don't think indchuran's school would be an exception. at least nyo china like you said instilled a good sense of consent with them 😔 also the idea of saying fuck in mandarin makes me break out in hives the AUDACITY of saying fuck in your first language but of course he would. he WOULD. nyo china probably wouldn't even have purposely taught him that which is why he doesn't know what it means, just that it's an insult, but once they come up to her to complain all she does is give them a Terrifying Contemptuous Glare and steer yao away from them. yao is her kid and therefore entitled to say fuck whenever he wants.

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First things first I hope you had a good term break! this is... very overdue sorry about that :(

Second, ALSK:FJ:SLFDKSFDLKJSLDF the fly infested chicken is disgusting and I want so badly to intervene,,, they need hELP. Please learn about proper sanitation, children, I’m begging you T-T. Also, headcanon accepted: they’re ostensibly bringing it to feed the cats (which is hopefully allowed) but also they want to terrorize (or awe) their fellow classmates with this discovery. Watch the school call up nyo china about this, but she gets annoyed only because yao wasted human food in order to feed cats, not because he brought an inappropriately dead chicken to school that scared the younger kids and fellow classmates lol; what a great value system. Also this scenario def happened:  School: your child got in a fight. Nyo China: Oh no! Did he win?

I am both fully revolted and half fascinated by the flypaper thing because on one hand I CANNOT stand flies, and killing them is 178% gross. But also the way you described it is... very compelling and I would like to experience that, gross as it is lol. So yea I can definitely see those three nastily observing the flies getting stuck to the flypaper one by one... they all intently watch the flypaper with round and curious eyes and it really looks very cute from far away, three heads of fluffy hair close together and bent over something, carrying on an animated whispered discussion, until you get closer and see that they’re watching flies on flypaper •—•;; An even more gross scenario would be if one of them accidentally squashes one and they crowd around to see what fly guts look like 😭 bonus points if it happens during school. Also YES to Indus’s countryside friend; I feel like India would have a lot of fun exploring over there and would be able to bring back v cool stories for city slicker Yao, and also Iran (although I don’t know where they’d live precisely. I feel like they’d probably have a medium sized house with very nice art and Classy furniture (they got good taste from somewhere), but they’d also knows a lot about how rural areas work and stuff, so uh.. suburbs? Or something like that?)

“then he brings it to school after the weekend, and everyone is Fascinated and thinks it is Very Cool. . .” O—O sigh... three balls of absolute chaos. At least the other kids are fascinated this time instead of apprehensive ^-^ but the dead flies in lockers AL:KDSLFDSJF PLEASE NO me as an elementary student would have been absolutely horrified and I. really hope they get detention for that lol; Please Tone Down kids 😔 (also do y’all get flies in the lights at school? Because every single classroom I’ve been in has either had flies, wasps, moths, or some other black spots in the lights and they’d multiply as the year went on 😭 I never thought about it too much but... what if they linger around to watch the lights get cleaned? o-o)

“i bet yao during his teenage years would look back on it and be like "... oh my GOD."” YEAH there’s always a select few memories that make you realize “what even WAS that” and I think this is one lol. Yao just buries it in the back of his spacious mental closet and makes India and Iran swear not to bring it up again but inevitably they do :))))) they find it rather hilarious, actually. Also yes at least Nyo China did a good job in that department!

“also the idea of saying fuck in mandarin makes me break out in hives the AUDACITY of saying fuck in your first language but of course he would” lol I wrote that thinking he'd call someone a 王八* (because it could technically pass as a regular noun o-o. Who knows, maybe he was insulting someone for being slow like a turtle but it got out of hand due to word choice lol) but... the second scenario is quite something... I don't know whether I should laugh or cry. RIP the other parents who just have to fervently hope that disgraceful kid from next door grows out of his foul mouth soon (he never does, just gets better at pretending his language is elegant and not at all dirty XD)

*for non mandarin speakers 王八 is literally a soft shelled turtle, but is actually a pretty big insult in mandarin :)

[giorgiastastes]

Cidade De Deus (2002)

“Why return to the City of God, where God forgets about you?”

 Let’s start from the title, which is certainly enigmatic. Calling city of God, a suburb that is the scenario of a reality abandoned by God is not a mistake, nor is the frequent recourse to religious faith seen as the only motivation, the last hope of these young men for a better life, that does not lead them in a coffin before the age of twenty. I am in favor of full religious freedom and belief, but I cannot fail to notice how, if faith can lead to extremism, bigotry and fanaticism, very often it is also the only light of those who have already touched the bottom or are about to do it.

Speaking of the plot, the film begins in medias res, in the Cidade de Deus, one of the most dangerous favelas in all of Brazil.

The initial scene, so frenetic and almost surreal, is part of the history of cinema, with the chicken running away through the alleys of the neighborhood, while at least twenty boys chase her, trying to catch her with guns and rifles, as if it were Pablo Escobar reincarnated.

The chicken finally ends up clashing with our narrator, aspiring photographer, now stuck between the street gang and the police.

 Masterfully we see the camera rotating around this boy, over and over again soon becoming an hypnotic rhythm, while at the end of the last turn we find ourselves in another time space, in the 60s, accompanied by the phrase A PHOTO COULD HAVE CHANGED MY LIFE, BUT IN THE CITY OF GOD IF YOU ESCAPE YOU ARE DONE, AND IF YOU STAY YOU ARE DONE, IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN SO, SINCE I WAS A CHILD.

The protagonist, faced with such a difficult choice, returns to the past with his mind and begins to tell us about a naive gang of thieves in order to narrate with their story, also the reality of the favela, which, using the the film’s wording, is too far from the idea of a Rio’s postcard that the government wanted to portrait at the time.

After a series of episodes that I don't want to spoil, we will move on to the next decade. This initially will seem like a positive turn and then will turn out to be only a patination of the neighborhood, which in the end is even more socially structured and cruel than how it used to be.

 Finally, let’s move to the strongest part of the film, the children. They are the ones who make the choices that will most mark them.

In the city of God you cannot live your childhood with carefree, you must immediately decide which side to stand on, and this childish decision, you will take to your grave.

Among the children there are those who immediately think of themselves as an outsider in that climate of crime and violence, but according to them, not because of a sense of morality,but simply because they’re afraid of getting a bullet.

Then we find those who were born for it, and even plan for new robberies, who feels strong and great showing off a gun often bigger than their head.

To say that the film offers us several times the philosophical doubt of WHO ARE GOOD ONE AND WHO’S THE BAD would be redundant and perhaps too direct even to be discussed, with the police who often behave worse than the bandits, and the only “non silent” citizen is the one acting the most violent crime, so I want to focus on other points.

 

Can you choose which side to fight for or are you facing a one-way street? And then, badness, evil and violence are innate or you learn them, you discover them with living?

Answering the first question, the most objective and direct of the two, there is certainly no doubt that in such ill-famed neighborhoods, it is the crime that pursues us and not the other way around. When you are so abandoned by institutions and authorities, often even with a lack of reference figures from which to take example, Crime is not a choice, simply because there are no choices, it is the only option, even if unjustly glorified.

About the second question, on the other hand, in my opinion, the evil is innate, but not because it is to be considered hereditary, more because but it is part of the human nature, of the animal part in each of us, which, unfortunately, is not held back by human intelligence, but brought to extreme sadism from this intellectual capacity which other animal species lack.

It is morality that then represses these instincts, but if we left the world to anarchy, only a few would stop, and as Plautus says, Homo homini lupus.

To better explain my thoughts, I must refer to another masterful work.

I'm talking about Dogville by the controversial but brilliant Lars Von Trier. I won't talk about this film, but just to summarize the idea, we are faced with a town where cruelty is so eradicated in the population that it is a same child who starts the cycle of violence and abuse. This episode perfectly reflects how human’s evilness is, in my opinion as much as that of the director, genetic, and that can also be seen in City of God.

The undisputed head of the city, Ze Pequeno, begins his rise to power at the age of eighteen, as soon as he realizes that he wants to become the absolute king of the favela.

But if we were to talk about his desire for blood, that was born much earlier, when he was still a child and, as the narrator tells us, "he wanted to act out his whim of killing" and then took advantage of the robbery at the motel to make a massacre.

Certainly the number of its victims grows with its age and so its desire for power but, however questionable this choice is, it was not homicide for futile reasons. In fact, he decides to exterminate all the main drug dealers in the area with the intention of becoming the only owner, when he begins to understand that it was necessary to switch to the drugs field.

What makes me reflects is that, although the character will always be easily triggered, and it is not uncommon for them to put a hole in someone’s head, the reason why he killed as a child was not even money, it was just an innate desire to kill, to take the life of another human being and watch him take his last breath.

 

His disturbing laugh proves it.

Even the punishment, albeit excessive, that will lead him to death, inflicted on children who had robbed a rotisserie, is still part of his plan to be the owner of a favelas that respects him because in good or bad it is he who protects the city.

And it is precisely in that scene that we see how the cycle begins again, when Ze Pequeno forces a child to kill another child, or when those same children make up any type of story just to receive a weapon or the same one who will then take control of the city at the end of the film, probably taking the man they killed as an example.

They are always the victims and executioners, as well as the heart of the story. Of course, in the seventies we see the protagonists grown up, but of adult men they only have the appearance.

Their character is still that of the decade before, as well as their choices and behaviors. One of them was marked by the sight of a camera as a child and this became his greatest passion as a teenager and then an adult. The same one, despite knowing who his brother's killer is, decides not to take revenge in order to respect the choices he made years before, that is, to abstain from evil.

I don't even need to dwell on the exceptional and impeccable shots because, although there are unforgettable scenes such as the death of Benny between the screams and the intermittent lights of the disco, each shot would have to be studied and likely more than that, the transitions between one and the other.

The plot remains a rhythmical crescendo, we never get bored and the story remains in evolution: we don't have a real incipit, a problem that upsets the balance, a resolution of the problem and then a conclusion, it is a story that it follows changes without actually being a real beginning and end, just like a cycle.

Another and final theme is the power of art, the only means of escape from such a difficult reality, but art itself can often be used improperly to advertise and almost glorify this underworld. In this case we are talking about photography, but it could be any type of art from poetry, cinema to music.

The film must be said that it has no clear defects, but if I could have put my own I would have made the symbol of the camera even more important, since mainly we see it in the very first scene and in the change of decade, and then obviously for the whole last half an hour, while I would have made each photograph part of a chapter of the story, which did not happen.

All in all, I went too far and if you still didn't get the message, run to discover this masterpiece of cinema.