#Yes I know he didn't feature much overtly

[tumblingxelian]

Alternate Season 3 ML Ending

I have been musing on an alt Season 3 finale that could catch the same general vibes while also perhaps serving as a culmination of Chloe's redemption arc efforts, Lila's whole 'thing' and while still shaking up the status quo as canons kind of did, here's what I have:

Post Ikari Gozen, there's a minor subplot in Party Crasher of Chloe trying to get in contact with Kagami who assumes its to shout at her about hero stuff. She's half right as at the end of the episode Chloe uses Adrien's mobile to lure Kagami in & says they need to talk, hero to hero.

Post Party Crasher, through The Puppeteer 2, a spin on Cat Blanc (Maybe) and Félix there's little scenes of them meeting to discuss their findings. These relate to feeling like Akuma are around them at night, finding Lila suspicious as fuck cos either Ladybug's bestie is too loose with details or Lila knows way too much and is trying to make Akuma happen.

They agree to keep watch over Marinette. Barring Chloe & Kagami, she seems to be her main target.

The next three episodes all fit together, with Heart Hunter first.

Heart Hunter changes:

Lila cuts the Bee Signal before the Akuma arrives, negs Chloe & then stalks Marinette, Adrien & Kagami.

When Kagami speaks to Ladybug she figures out its Marinette & while hurt at the sabotage date she still shares what she & Chloe think & they both realize today is an ambush.

Not having seen Ryuko, Chloe's not totally given into despair & upon claiming Pollen tries to fight Hawk Moth. She but gets injured reclaiming the Miracle Box & has to be saved by Kagami.

Hawk Moth & Mayura retreat with the tablet and Fu gives up being Guardian due to the strain of the battle nearly killing him.

Chloe's hospitalized as she tried to use Venom more than once. Ryuko is still upset with Marinette, Chat's upset about Chloe, Marinette is upset about Fu & feels incredibly alone.

A terrified Lila assures Hawk Moth she knows 'another' Miraculous Wielder and this one will break, Marinette.

Ladybug

Marinette tries to adjust to having all the Kwami with her & with translating the book.

Chat & other heroes are cycling in and out of Chloe's hospital room where she remains unconscious.

Despite going through a day from hell, Marinette still has to go to school the next day cos she can't even tell her parents what's wrong.

At school only Alya is present (She did her shift) Adrien's visiting Chloe as a civilian and Nino is (Sick) guarding Chloe.

Then everything goes to hell when Lila presents a video of Marinette stealing from her locker. They are sent to the principle.

Alya realizes something is sus.

Marinette 'can' get super jealous and see the worst in people but she isn't a thief. So Alya follows them.

She arrives in time to see Lila reveal an Akumatized appendage that jabs a needle into Marinette & sends her into a nightmare (Basically the rest of the canon episode) then tries to steal her ear rings.

Lila only gets one before Alya tackles the fuck out of her and then Lila starts vomiting up an Akuma that infests Marinette's remain ear ring much to her despair.

"I needed that!"

Cue half transformed, fully Akumatized Ladybug, partialy trapped in a nightmare despair mode going on a rampage.

The Battle of the Miraculous:

Lila flees, carrying Alya & a fading Tikki who explains Lila's being turned into an Akuma, & that they need to call in 'everyone', revealing IDs.

Hawk Moth sends Mayura and a fake Sentimonster Ladybug to get the Miraculous (Having realized Lila was covering for having figured out Ladybug's identity to steal the miraculous for herself) While he takes Marinette towards the hospital to kill Chloe & lure out Chat Noir.

Ryuko, Alya & a partially feral Lila defend the Miraculous Box, with the other heroes showing up to help after Mayura is driven off.

Lila also reveals Hawk Moth's identity, so Chat knows via phone call.

Chloe awakens in time to finish her redemption arc by basically goading Marinette & HK into focusing on her over Chat.

Nino catches Hawk Moth in a bubble shield and Chat has to destroy the ear ring to free Marinette & everyone gangs up on Hawk Moth.

He is un-masked publicly but manages to escape, despite Chloe's murder effort, thanks to unleashing a swarm of Akuma from Lila.

The Akuma are captured and purified before they can do much harm, but the Miraculous Cure is not working properly. The ear rings are only half usable at best. Worse, if they want to avoid Lila becoming a permanent Akuma she needs the remaining one to stay herself.

The heroes get Marinette out of the public eye before her ID can be revealed & she's allowed to have a good fucking cry. Adrien reveals his ID & he probably has a small breakdown too. But everyone resolves to go to the Agreste Manor & end things.

Sadly, Hawk Moth has fled, blowing up the manor and sending an Akumatized Gorrila to collect Adrien. Leaving behind only a weird basement ruin with no sign of his plans.

Epilogue:

Because of this, the Miraculous are divided up with their various users, though some are likely swapped or have other security precautions.

Until Marinette decodes the book & fixes Tikki's Miraculous she is left as Multi-Mouse and with a half functional Miracle Cure courtesy of Lila who 100% cannot fight but is hiding out with their crew anyway.

Hawk Moth is shown repairing the Peacock Miraculous and unveiling his Unification/Rebrand. Though where he is or who is harboring him is still a mystery. His identity may be publicly unknown to protect Adrien who has moved in with his aunt and cousin.

This leaves us with a massively shaken status quo, a full hero team, an empowered but no longer anonymous and much more personal villain, no more school rivals and no more mentors or secret identities among friend or foes.

[teabreakpancakes]

𝐖𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐖𝐄

AVENTURINE X GN! READER

Can we become we

No longer known as just you and me

Two separate lives now in unity

Stuck here together but

Will this always be just an arrangement?

cw: ooc aventurine, idek if it makes sense, no beta we die like *cough*

Genre: Hurt/Comfort

Unfathomable.

How could a human being be so kind? you were more akin to a lapdog than a person, and yet, for that reason alone, he trusted you. He had rescued you purely out of impulse, he didn't even know why because for the first time, he had done something without thinking about what he would receive in return. In fact, you were the one who sought him out for the sole reason of paying him back, the one who tracked him down, the one who didn't feel deterred even in the face of harsh rejection. Had he known better, he would've assumed you bore a grudge against him, but your eyes showed no such thing.

He believes that there is no person who doesn't hide something, no person could be so open; to express everything without preservation would be to seek death, and yet here you were, showing no deceit, being so honest and sincere, but a bit rude if he had to be frank about it.

Why were you so awfully out of place in that category? you were too kind to deceive anyone, but too overtly rude as a person to be considered pleasant. Just who do you serve? what even is your aim? were you out to foil his plans? to raise him above the clouds only to be the reason for his plummet?—

"Hey, what's on your mind?" you piped up, waving your hand in front of his face. Upon hearing no reply from him, a frown surfaced on your lips. "Aven, are you alright?" you questioned worriedly, placing your face uncomfortably close to his own.

The sudden proximity broke Aventurine out of his stupor, prompting him to place his hands on your shoulders. “Y, Yes, I’m alright, no need to get so up close for confirmation” he sighed out, pushing you away gently. You blinked owlishly, gracing him with another one of those smiles, those smiles that blinded him. “I was just concerned because erm.. You’re gripping onto my hand too tightly for comfort sir” you spoke sheepishly, gesturing towards his hand that really was gripping onto your own like a vice.

Two-toned eyes drifted downwards, widening slightly in diameter upon realising that he really was holding onto your hand for dear life. He quickly released your hand, a hint of shame visible on his features as he smiled at you awkwardly. “I hadn’t realised, I apologise” he muttered. Strangely enough, you didn’t seem displeased until he let go, looking quite disappointed when he did so.

“I never said to let go but alright then” you shrugged, appearing to be a tad dejected. The blond man could only stare incredulously as he stared at your form that quickly perked up. “Aven” you called out, ‘and there goes the honorific’ he withheld a chuckle. Aventurine hummed, peering at you through his rosy lenses. “What is it?” he inquired, deciding to indulge in his… he didn’t quite know what to call you, his servant? no, his follower? that did not sound right, oh well, he’d ponder about what you were another time.

You shifted on the couch slightly, fiddling with your tie—the one he gifted you, the one he put on for you daily—a clear indicator of your nerves. He raised an eyebrow, cocking his head to the side slightly, ‘What is it this time?’ he wondered. Finally, as if gaining the courage, you gaze into his eyes, blurting out a quick “Can I see your eyes without your glasses”.

He could only really blink at your request, he had thought that it would be a troublesome matter, it was just the same request you’ve had of him over the long duration you’ve spent with him. With an exasperated sigh, he snaps his fingers and his shades disappear, and with that, he was fully “bare” before you. You were always so fascinated by his eyes, calling him pretty and bathing him with praise until he had pretty much gotten drowned by it.

“Permission to touch you sir?” you requested, as polite as you could possibly get. He nodded, leaning back into the soft material of the couch, this had become routine at some point. He watched as you eagerly took of your gloves, walking off into the direction of the nearest sink, you washed your hands so aggressively that he wondered why they weren’t raw.

Not even a minute later, you’re seated next to him, your soft hands cupping his face gently as you stared, no, admired him. It wasn’t like the gaze of those previous owners or buyers, no, it was too kind, too gentle, too innocent. It was the gaze of someone that was staring at something they cared deeply for. He had seen this look before, It was as if you were staring into the vastness of the bright universe outside of the spacecraft the two of you boarded.

Your hands were warm on his face, smelling of the body wash he had chosen for you. Your fingers gently trekked over the smooth planes of his skin, massaging his cheeks and jaw; Your gaze never faltered, always holding that same warmth and adoration. Had he not experienced this on the daily, he would’ve been beet red by now.

You two are stuck in that position for quite a while. Your humming soothes him, so it’s a delight to hear while you do whatever it is you’re doing, and yet, when that’s broken, he doesn’t seem to mind, because the words you utter out have become his favourite part of this “routine”.

“I love you” you spoke, voice only loud enough for his ears to hear. Part of him urges him to say it back because liars that refuse to admit how they truly feel are cowards, and yet another part of him refuses to believe that it’s true. Why would such a loving person such as you love someone like him genuinely? What right did he have to have someone that loved him so dearly, it simply didn’t make any sense to him, even if he had grown to love you just as much, it just didn’t make any sense. It’s dead silent between you two afterwards, a weirdly comfortable tension growing.

“Why?” he uttered out after a few minutes, his hand crawling up your arm to encompass your hand. He presses your hands against his face, fingers shaking slightly as he bites back a chuckle, ridiculing himself. “Why do you claim to love me? You say it so sincerely, y, you bare your raw feelings, displaying them on a silver platter and yet,” he releases a deep sigh, eyes watering as he bows his head. “And yet.. I cannot comprehend that it could be sincere, and dear, believe me, I want it to be sincere” he swallowed the lump in his throat, suppressing the crystalline fluid threatening to overflow from the very eyes he grew to hold hatred towards.

Your hands, they never wavered, they never let go. You instead gently tilted his head up to face you, caressing his cheeks with a soft smile on your lips. Your pain was evident in your eyes but you still chose to put on a smile instead.

“Aven, I adore you as if you are my night sky, I love the darkness, the light scattered across your vast sky,” you began, gently wiping the tears away from his eyes. “I had always been content with the night view from my planet, that is, until I met you” your face broke out into a joyous smile. “I had never thought that I would meet a person that I loved more than the vastness of the universe laid before me, but now I don’t seek to admire the sky, I wish to love and adore you, not out of anything but the sole reason that you are you”

It was as if the world stopped, because in that moment, all of his focus shifted towards you, paying no mind to anything else.

“Kakavasha, I love you and I am so proud of you and how far you’ve come, and wherever you may go, I will follow, and if it leads to our demise? Then I could not have cared less, because a fate without you would be a fate blind to the stars I love so very much”

Tears never seemed to stop flowing, but the difference was that the sweetest smile you had ever been graced with came from his face. His shoulders shook with silent laughter as he pulled you into his arms, burying his face into the crook of your neck.

Fine, he lost this time, he admits that it’s a foolish bet to lose, “I will never reveal true weakness to anyone”. Well, who knew he’d be here years later.

As your fingers carded through his sandy locks, he can’t help but utter out an “I love you”. These were words that had not come out of his lips in countless years, and you, the one who loved him for so long, had finally heard it.

is it ooc? most likely ^^

[hislittleraincloud]

You know what...

Fuck it.

Life is too short.

I just re-read that story of mine and it's too sweet to relegate towards DMs. I like their coupling, and I really liked this show. It appealed to my obsession about Renaissance Italy. Caterina Sforza is my spirit animal.

You like my writing? Then you have to familiarize yourself with the Renaissance. The Serpent Queen is/was a current show devoted to similar themes (so was the Medici show, but that was fucking awful compared to...), but the show I wrote for was Neil Jordan's Showtime show, The Borgias.

The big story was called 'Cardinal Pleasures', and it was about Cardinal Ascanio Sforza's illicit affair with Lucrezia Borgia (and there is no show canon for this, however it still can fit in canon quite well...and like all older men that I feature in my stories, I had/have a thing for grumpy Cardinal Sforza/Peter Sullivan 🫠).

I am

Yes, it's age gap (but Lucrezia is 17, I think, when they get together, and by then she's already been married off to and SA'ed routinely by her husband, Giovanni Sforza...and she has a child by the stableboy she had an affair with at the time). Ascanio was 40 when they got together, and the main story is not overtly smutty (and even the smuttiest part in the extras is pretty mild/tame compared to what I usually write).

I also wrote REAL smut with Cesare x Lucrezia (down at the bottom, the Bound By Blood tryptych...the second one is the smut). This is the real E/NC-17 one (Cardinal Pleasures rates an R for violence and sex/incest, but not really explicit sex). Their incest is canon, Third Season...they sleep together on her wedding night to Alfonso because Alfonso is too much of a little boy at heart, and Cesare had always been her bae since Season 1 (so...much...sexual tension...throughout the whole show).

I also wrote two screenplays for their Season 4, but all of my notes for the rest of it (as well as my other Borgia writings) were destroyed when my ex (and fkn heinous building manager) removed and trashed all of my belongings from my apartment when I was on a retreat in Rome. I had to get my fans to lend me money to rush back (I paid them all back), only to find the only thing left in here was my dog (and he was scared shitless in his open crate with nothing else around him). I didn't have the will to continue after the notes were gone, but maybe someday in the future, after a re-watch, I might be inspired. (I also never got to write the Civil War-era Borgias thing I was going to do...and that saddens me.) You can d/l the .pdfs of the screenplays from the link...a couple of actors from The Borgias featured in the scripts liked them on Twitter. 💀 I have but one typo in the second one. Hey man, I don't have Betas. I do everything myself in the end, even if I have someone read it over. And the first script has a non-script version/prose version. I didn't get around to doing that for the second script.

Unfortunately I can no longer re-watch on Netflix...they moved it all to Paramount Plus, which I don't have rn. If you do, and you like lush, dramatic, UNDERRATED period pieces, give it a watch.

Anyhoo, here's the direct link to Cardinal Pleasures. It's not a massive monster like Afterburn. Shouldn't take but an hour or so to finish if you're a fast reader, maybe more or less if you count the three extra birthday-themed fics I wrote for @brenli for her birthday. No idea what the word count is since it's only published here on Tumblr and not AO3.

Happy reading...hope you know some Latin 👹 (go grab your translator app).

[nicanario]

this post is a product of its time

tw: discussion of racism, homophobia, misogyny and a short mention of sexual abuse.

ok, this is basically gonna be a very long rambling post about my not fully developed thoughts on the justification many people give to bigotry when talking about the past: "it was a product of its time"

it would be fair to say, with me being a raging SJW socialist scumbag, that I don't think this is a very good argument and is most of the time actually an excuse to not think about the problems inherent to our society, historical or not, and, by extension, the problems with ourselves. but I do think that sometimes, just sometimes, this can be a valid point, or at least one that raises some interesting questions.

I'm going to cite examples from several pieces of media, but fear not, I'll try to make this as accesible as I can.

so, let's take Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) as our first case study. this show has, correctly, been called progressive by everyone except for clueless people who don't know much about Star Trek's history, Star Trek's crew, Star Trek's cast, or, frankly, Star Trek. because if you ignore the clear, sometimes in-your-face political history and present of the franchise, I don't think you know much about it at all. I do think you can call yourself a fan if you like it, you may have watched every single episode for all I know. but lots of mental gymnastics are needed to ignore the political progressiveness Star Trek has had since its very beginning.

episodes like Let That Be Your Last Battlefield are obviously anti-racist, at least in their intention. but the episode in question really is "a product of its time," and at the very end fails to uphold its ideals. the episode ends with the two aliens (who are LITERALLY. BLACK ON ONE SIDE. AND WHITE ON THE OTHER. BUT IN THE OPPOSITE SIDES.) fighting each other on their devastated planet, and the crew is like, "oh yeah if they both would give up on their hatred that they both share both of them equally" when it has been firmly established that one is the oppressor and the other one is the oppressed.

and that's a lot of Star Trek, not just TOS. even Discovery, one of the most recent series, has done Bury Your Gays (and Trans) TWICE (though both times literally rectified it, which is cool). there are episodes of the franchise that are overtly racist, or misogynistic, etc. TOS is lauded, mostly justifiably, as very progressive, especially for the standards of the time. they put a woman of colour as one of the senior staff, for fuck's sake. of course, when you analyse that same character, as with most of their intentions at being progressive, you'll see that she was relegated and sometimes even outright mistreated when she had the potential to be much more. but, at that time, it was a lot.

I had a friend (emphasis on "had") who, after I told him about TOS's both progressiveness and constant misogyny, told me something like "imagine feminists trying to complain about a show from the 60s." so, with unearned spite, he was, in some way, trying to make the argument that it was a product of its time.

you could say Star Trek, all of Star Trek, is "a product of its time" in the sense that it's not always perfect. uh, yes, I would agree. but that doesn't mean people have to accept it. well, I mean, the show is kinda over, you have to accept it's that way. but you don't have to accept that it's not wrong just because it was a product of its time.

H. P. Lovecraft, as another example, was a greatly influential writer whose works still shape a lot of people's ideas to this day. I have only ever read like one of his stories, so don't expect me to have an opinion on his works. but I can have an opinion on what I know about him as a person (he did have a life outside his writing, after all). and, yeah, he was a huge asshole. if you want to know more in depth about the subject, please watch Hbomberguy's video on him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8u8wZ0WvxI

but basically, he was incredibly racist & homophobic. some people might even say, "he was a product of his time." well, there are two possible rebuttals to that. the surface level one, and the one that examines why that argument is wrong to the core.

The Surface Level Response to "it was a product of its time": um, no it wasn't. Lovecraft was more racist than a lot of people even in his time. he wasn't just a guy who carried the racist beliefs of his society like everyone else, he was a reactionary who actively thought and discussed how racist he was, and how right he was for being that way. but that's only applicable to Lovecraft. one can't argue the same for Star Trek: TOS, because TOS did try to be more progressive and more anti-racist than the rest of its society. that leads us to the next response.

The Response that Actually Deals with the Fact that No Matter How Progressive You're Trying to Be, Your Failings Can Still be Criticized: the thing is, trying to excuse Lovecraft's or Star Trek's bigotry because they were "products of their times" misses the fact that racism is still wrong, and some people knew that in those times as well. people from these times weren't all naive or stupid or whatever. they had the capacity for rational thinking. they could stop and think, "hey, maybe what we're doing is wrong." and the fact is, some people did. not perfectly, not to our standars, but they did. everyone could have stopped and think. but most of them didn't, and we can criticize them for it. racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. HURT PEOPLE. horribly. massively.

also, even if you agree with the "it's a product of its time" argument, some people aren't criticising people's or work's bigotry: they're explaining why they don't want to experience it.

The Talons of Weng-Chiang is a 1977 Doctor Who serial, and it's one of the show's more racist stories. almost all the villains are Chinese, every single Chinese person is a villain. there's yellowface, slurs, stereotypes, the Doctor speaking nonsense words instead of actual Chinese, and a general belittling of Chinese culture.

note that I'm neither Chinese nor of Chinese descent. I have been searching for hours for a few posts I've read a while ago (some by people who are of Asian descent) about this episode and I can't find them. sorry.

suffice it to say, even though I love Jago & Litefoot (the audio series and the characters), it's not an acceptable episode at all. but it's also important to remark that, because of it, some people aren't going to want to watch it. sometimes, people aren't saying "the episode shouldn't be this way," which causes others to answer that it was "a product of its time." sometimes, people are just saying, "this is an episode that attacks real people. I don't want to see it. I don't care if it was common in that era to be racist, i don't want to experience it."

however, there is an interesting point to the "it's a product of its time" argument. after all, everything is influenced by its society, for better or worse. and we can't change it anymore. TOS sometimes didn't quite understand the political themes it wanted to explore. Lovecraft was a horrible bigot. Talons was racist towards Chinese folks. and that's that. I don't think we should change the episodes/stories or anything. edit them in any way. that would be, in a sense, changing history. and we wouldn't learn anything from it, about how we can do better.

I think there are two solutions to this:

1. warnings before starting the text: this was done with The Talons of Weng-Chiang. on Britbox, where you can watch Classic Who, this serial has a content warning before the start. that's good.

2. the removal as a whole of the text from some places: I think before applying this one, there should be a lot of thought put into each case. I don't think removing a whole serial of Doctor Who or Lovecraft's stories from anything would be, well, fair. especially on tv episodes a lot more people worked on those, not just the writers and the directors. Lovecraft's writing influenced thousands. we shouldn't erase them or anything. but sometimes, for some cases, we should.

those in the US might seen a Confederate statue being taken down. that is, in a way, a form of removal of a piece of history.

but that is a good removal. statues glorify. one sees a statue and probably thinks "this was a person worthy of admiration." they should be taken down, maybe even with a permanent mark of why this was done (a plaque that reads "a statue of X was here, but he didn't deserve it because of Y" could be put in place of the statues, for example).

another example is the removal from DVDs of the short episode A Fix with Sontarans, a Sixth Doctor minisode that featured Jimmy Savile, a presenter who was later found out to be sexually abusing children.

the removal of that minisode is good, actually. it's not a full episode (it's not even Doctor Who). some might say that's "erasing history" but, like, you can still find it online or information about it if you want. this minisode deserves removal from DVDs and Blu-Rays and whatever more than content warnings. it's not an important part of the show and it prominently features a horrible person who did horrible things during that time.

so, after all that, I have explained why I don't like the "it's a product of its time" argument. it is an interesting point that deserves to be examined, but it's not very good.

I have had this in Drafts for so long I've probably forgot some of the points I was going to make, but eh, what can you do? hope you enjoyed reading this.

bye