#and by retcon i mean shes lying shes just up and lying

[penguwastaken]

About Brainwashing in Danganronpa

Hello to all 3 of the people who see this account. A few months ago, I made a thread on hit website Twitter dot com about brainwashing in the Danganronpa Series. I discussed where it came from, how it works, and how the brainwashing of class 77-B was never a retcon. The thread got a lot of attention there, even getting a "debunk" on other hit website Reddit dot com (lmao). Due to that, there's been a lot of responses and questions. Since I can't really update a Twitter thread, I decided that I'd make the Ultimate™ Brainwashing thread and hopefully dispel any information on the subject while making my original points more clear and covering things I failed to cover. So here it is: Brainwashing in Danganronpa, how it works, where it came from, and how it was intended from the start. (a 🧵 except not really) *Massive spoilers for Danganronpa Zero, Danganronpa 2, Danganronpa Another Episode, Danganronpa Togami, and Danganronpa 3, as well as the series as a whole*

Danganronpa Zero: First Sighting

Brainwashing has its roots all the way back in the second official entry produced in the series, Danganronpa Zero. During the story's events, Ryoko comes across a secret cult made up of students from the reserve course. They're seen staring at a strange video, seemingly turning them and turn them into mindless zombies.

The video depicts members of the student council killing each other. Ryoko is stunned while watching it. She can barely look away, but eventually through force of will she does. This same video is later used to convince the reserve course to rebel.

The way it's described to work is that it uses their “pent-up emotions,” implying that their emotions played a role in its effectiveness. It's also worth noting that the novel itself refers to what is happening as brainwashing, making this objectively the first depiction of brainwashing in the series right from the second entry.

Danganronpa 2: Now it Gets Dubious

Our next instance of brainwashing comes from Danganronpa 2. The concept is brought up multiple times, such as when Makoto states that the Ultimate Despairs were brainwashed or how the Neo World Program is good at treating brainwashing, though the details of what brainwashing actually means in this context are kept vague.

It's also worth noting that Danganronpa 2 was being written around the same time as Danganronpa Zero and Kodaka wanted concepts from the novel to appear in Danganronpa 2, likely so readers would feel validated. This is why things like Izuru Kamukura and the reserve course play huge roles in Danganronpa 2, it's not too much of a stretch to say that the same applies with brainwashing. One detail we’re given about the brainwashing is from Monokuma, who states the Ultimate Despairs were brainwashed by Junko taking advantage of their feelings. Specifically love, hate, grudges, and "anything really". If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s exactly how the brainwashing video from Danganronpa Zero was described to function, using their pent-up emotions.

I should mention that Monokuma and Junko are known for being unreliable narrators who often stretch the truth, exaggerate things, and use hyperbole to manipulate people into believing their narrative. Monokuma describes the Ultimate Despairs as “nothing more than Junko’s limbs”, which contradicts the existence of characters like Nagito. Who, while in his despair state, did not work with Junko nor did he look up to her (at least in the normal sense like the other Ultimate Despairs). In fact, it would have been impossible for them to really obey any of Junko's orders as Ultimate Despairs because Junko was trapped inside of Hope's Peak with minimal connection to the outside world. This isn't a definitive "Monokuma is lying" statement, but just note that his word isn't 100% reliable. Meanwhile, someone like Makoto who outright mentions brainwashing, is a much more reliable source.

Danganronpa Another Episode: More Brainwashing! (kinda irrelevant tho...)

The next time brainwashing is used is in the next entry, Danganronpa Another Episode. Though its purpose in this discussion isn’t the most useful, as the brainwashing is caused by Monokuma helmets, which don’t have their functionality explained. I figured it was worth mentioning and describing at least, as its another example of brainwashing at least.

I did figure it was worth adding how the brainwashed children act. They obey the Warriors of Hope’s every command, as if they have zero control over their actions. This is different from how the Ultimate Despairs act, who still some free had free will after presumably being brainwashed judging by the actions of Nagito, who is also in this game.

Danganronpa Togami: I Hate My Life

Okay. As mixed as my opinions are on this novel trilogy, it does feature brainwashing. In fact, it might feature one of the most detailed and important descriptions of brainwashing in the series, and even outright CONFIRMS that class 77-B were brainwashed (sorta).

"Hey um... Tumblr/Twitter user Pengu... what do you mean by 'sorta'?" Well my uninformed reader who I guarantee has probably never read this book, there's a twist. I regret to inform you that the canonicity of Danganronpa Togami is rather questionable, as it depicts an extremely unreliable narrator’s warped viewing of events due to this thing called the K2K system, which means not everything in the novel is meant to be taken literally or at face value.

This doesn't mean that everything should be discarded or immediately dismissed however. This just means that we have to use our brains a little and decipher what the hell Yuya Sato was cooking when he wrote this novel trilogy. In the novel, we discover the existence of the elusive despair novel. When read, the novel will turn the reader to despair and inflict them with the despair disease. This novel is what's used to plummet the world into despair, as well as being what caused the class 77-B to become the Ultimate Despairs. There's no known ways to avoid it, once you read it, it's joever. 😔

As I said earlier, the events of Danganronpa Togami can’t be taken literally. Due to this and prior context, we can safely assume that the despair novel is most likely the K2K's warped idea of the despair video from Danganronpa Zero. Instead of being a book being read that brainwashed people, it was a video being watched. What makes me so sure? Well let's look over the similarities. The way the despair novel works is that it uses cruel words to overload the reader with negative emotions, causing them to snap and turn to despair. That sounds almost exactly like the despair video, overloading the viewer by manipulating their emotions until they turn to despair.

However, a major difference comes from the fact that Danganronpa Togami confirms towards the end that the despair novel doesn't literally brainwash people, acting as a placebo and an excuse for people with despair to use.

However I don't believe this suddenly breaks the connection to the despair video in Danganronpa Zero. All it shows is that the novel doesn't create despair, which is something we already established with the brainwashing video. It doesn't make despair, it makes it stronger. Whether it be via the disturbing imagery on the screen or the words on a page giving you an excuse, all it does is amplify despair. Basically it doesn't make despair come out of nowhere, it incites it. This connection's a little bit of a stretch but I'll bring it up anyways. The technology used in the despair novels was originally to bring hope. (Take notes, it will probably be important assuming you buy this connection.)

Essentially, the despair novel works in a similar same way as the despair video, but instead it’s a book and you read it instead of watching it. This means that class 77-B and the rest of the world were most likely brainwashed via the despair video, and that is what caused the class to become Ultimate Despairs.

Danganronpa 3: The One People Really Don't Like

And all of this brings us to the most detailed yet controversial usage of brainwashing: Danganronpa 3. Many assume that the anime’s usage of brainwashing is a retcon, contradicting the words of our holy savior Super Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair High School. However, I’d like to debate that. In fact, I'd like to finally put a nail in the coffin of this really stupid debate and finally show you that Danganronpa 3's depiction of brainwashing is exactly how it has always been described.

In Danganronpa 3, we are introduced to Ryota Mitarai and his anime. Using the power of subliminal messaging, it heightens the viewer's emotions and makes them more powerful. What was once a slightly emotional scene is now a complete tearjerker fully capable of tearing at the viewers heart strings! While he acknowledges that there are unethical things that can be done with this technology and it's technically brainwashing, his goal is to use this technology to make the world a better place, even if it can be dangerous. If that sounds familiar, that's because it's what Hope's Peak tried doing with the despair novel in Danganronpa Togami. Though I'll admit, this single point is a little bit of a stretch as there are differences. I just figured it was worth at least a mention.

Using her analytical prowess, Junko gets a rough understanding of how the technology works, so she develops the despair video, featuring the student council killing each other overlayed with subliminal messaging technology to make the despair felt while viewing the video stronger.

The video works on Mikan, however Junko fears that the video may not be powerful enough to fully go through with her plans due to not understanding the technology nearly as well as Ryota does. Because of this, she forces Ryota to create a better, more powerful despair video. A despair video v2 if you will. Junko’s fears weren’t unfounded, as we discover that Chisa had the mental fortitude to resist the despair video, similarly to how Ryoko was able to resist the same video in Danganronpa Zero. This is exactly why Junko needs a more powerful video, one that she knows can’t be resisted.

"Ermmmm, Tumblr/Twitter user Pengu, how come Ryoko and Chisa are able to resist the despair video but Mikan and nobody in the reserve course could?" Good question, the answer is pretty simple. As mentioned before, the video takes advantage of the emotions of the viewer. Mikan is already pretty weak minded, so there wasn't much issue in controlling her. The reserve course already hated Hope's Peak and would take any reason to hate them more, so a video that shows them the sins of Hope's Peak would affect them as well. Ryoko and Chisa have no connection to the reserve course however, and neither are particularly very weak emotionally. Ryoko has the analytical prowess of Junko and Chisa is just a very strong willed person in general, and paired with Junko's lack of knowledge about subliminal messaging when creating the video, it's pretty obvious it wouldn't be that effective on them. All the more reason for Junko to force Ryota to make a better despair video.

The despair video v2 that Ryota is forced to make comes in the form of Chiaki’s execution video, where the stronger subliminal messages paired with witnessing the representation of the happiest moments in their miserable lives and their closest friend suffer makes class 77-B unable to resist. Ultimately this causes them to finally snap, being overloaded with despair, and now they turn into the Ultimate Despairs. (side note this is so freaking cool idc what anyone else says)

This resembles Monokuma’s explanation from Danganronpa 2. Junko used class 77-B’s emotions and years of getting closer against them to turn them to them to despair. Now featuring the added context of her using the video designed to manipulate people’s emotions. Also as @jelimore pointed out, Junko leading the class to Chiaki's execution itself was manipulating them. This depiction of brainwashing fits perfectly with the information provided throughout the series, even down to the little details. It’s so close in fact that I can say without a doubt that Danganronpa 3 did not retcon anything. “But Tumblr/Twitter user Pengu, that isn’t how the video is shown to work during Hope Arc. Therefore it actually contradicts previous entries and is inconsistent!" To that I say, you’re correct! ...at least about the hope video functioning differently, but that doesn’t make it inconsistent. The hope video behaves pretty differently. Instead of overloading the viewer with negative feelings, it simply just shows them a repeating video loop that turns them into a mindless zombie, likely caused by even stronger subliminal messaging. The people affected can also snap out of this state with some time, as seen with Aoi.

The reasoning for this is actually pretty simple, it’s just different technology entirely. It’s stated that the hope video was developed later on after the despair video. If anything, it behaves very similar to the Monokuma masks from Danganronpa Another Episode, which we also already established uses different technology. The hope video doesn’t contradict the despair video at all because they both use completely different tech. This can also be seen with how the despair video uses subliminal messaging, meanwhile the messaging in the hope video couldn’t be further from subliminal. There is no inconsistency, just two different things.

The reason the hope video needed to be broadcasted everywhere was so that since it would be airing everywhere, nobody would have time for the effects to wear off or resist it. This would turn the world into mindless zombies who obey every command, similarly to the Monokuma kids. It's just that now they don't have to force bulky helmets onto everyone.

Debunking Common Arguments

With the hope video out of the way, I think it’s very safe to assume that not only is the despair video’s functionality very accurate to previous descriptions, it’s also always been the reason for the brainwashing of Class 77-B, long before Danganronpa 3. Even if you disagree and think the cause of brainwashing was never explicitly mentioned in Danganronpa 2, there's still the fact that Danganronpa 2 outright says it was brainwashing. So even if a video wasn't the direct cause of it, them being brainwashed was still always intended (though given the context and the fact the video was introduced in a tie in novel for the game, I'm certain that it was always the culprit). Many point to this line where Kazuichi asks why they became the Ultimate Despairs and Makoto says he never got an answer to debunk this. But... this doesn't change anything. He asks why they became Ultimate Despairs, not how. And this is completely ignoring the fact that Makoto clearly has done his own digging into the situation, he discovered the Remnants of Despair were hiding among Future Foundation after all. The Future Foundation had access to brainwashing videos, they found them, so of course Makoto is going to know about the brainwashing. What Makoto is saying here is that he doesn't know every little detail, all he knows is that they were brainwashed. I wrote a bit more about it here, but there's nothing contradictory in this scene.

Many also point to Mikan stating that it was her many human relationships that led her to being the way she is. Once again, this changes literally nothing. Mikan was the only one of the remnants who actually knew Junko, she was the only one who spent time with her because she was the first subject. This is why she gets more attached to her, and even why she'd believe what Junko would tell her when they spent time together. Monokuma also says that Junko used "hopeless methods overflowing with charisma and humor" to control the masses. I don't even know why I have to address this, but this statement is so vague you can interpret it as a million things. Like for example, this is how she got Ryota to work for her. While pretending to be Makoto to manipulate the people in the trial, Junko tells them that they all became Ultimate Despairs while coming into contact with her at Hope's Peak and they were subjected by her terrifying influence. Again, ignoring how vague "terrifying influence" is, this is literally Junko trying to LIE AND MANIPULATE them. This is quite possibly the worst example you could have used because we know for a fact that she is lying to them while pretending to be Makoto. There's other examples of Junko trying to manipulate them, like mentioning how everyone hated them and their all Ultimate Despairs at the end of the day. But that's just what this is, manipulation. You would think that the "Junko manipulated class 77-B" crowd would understand that saying "everyone hates you but I saw your potential" is literally manipulation 101. She even states that Izuru killed the entirety of a student council, which we know for certain is a lie because Danganronpa Zero (which came out before) says otherwise. Some say that the brainwashing turned them into mindless zombies and eliminates all blame from their actions. While I would agree that it does make them less at fault, they still have the ability to make choices and still have free will. Their original personalities haven't been overwritten, their brains were just rewired to crave despair. They're still each their individual person with their own ways of feeling despair, and characters like Chisa and Nagito show that they regain their free will to an extent. I also wrote more about that here, LOL.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

This whole debate stems from people misunderstanding Monokuma’s words and going along with the popular interpretation, which turned out to be wrong. Whether you like the use of brainwashing or not, it objectively isn’t a retcon as it's been developed ever since Danganronpa Zero. Personally, I love the use of brainwashing. I think the way it's developed throughout the series and its usage in Danganronpa 3 is super interesting. If you disagree, that's fine! Heck, if you choose to headcanon that Junko manipulated 15 individual teenagers into all becoming despair hungry terrorists capable but ending the world and fighting off every military in the world in less than a year, that's cool too! But the truth is, Danganronpa 3's brainwashing is canon and it's also not a retcon nor does it contradict anything. Contrary to popular belief, Kodaka was involved with the writing of the anime. He provided a large draft and outline of the plot and oversaw its development. He produced the anime, he did his homework, the team even played the games to prepare for writing the anime. He knew what he was doing. I'm sure if Kodaka intended for them to all be manipulated one by one, that's what he would have went with. All information implying that it was manipulation is very few and far between and questionable at best, not to mention outweighed by everything implying it was brainwashing. Mind manipulation stuff is not new in this series, its been around since the first game and brainwashing was established in literally the second entry ever produced. Whether you love it or hate it, think it's the best thing since sliced bread or the death of the series, brainwashing was the answer the whole time. Some people just never noticed it, and instead of acknowledging that they were wrong, they stuck with a headcanon that they believed so much and jumped to the conclusion of "retcon". I hope this mega post managed to inform some people, maybe change some minds too. If you still don't buy it, then I guess there's nothing I can do. Thanks for reading all of this though, I tend to yap a lot about this franchise lmao.

[theloneotaku158]

As of Batman: The Brave and the Bold #12, local precious-gremlin-who-I-would-die-for, Maps Mizoguchi, is now officially(?) the sixth Robin. Or at the very least, she's now "in" on The Secret™.

If this isn’t a set up for her taking up the Robin mantle officially then I genuinely don’t know what is.

As one of the twelve Gotham Academy enjoyers in existence, I am having the extremely normal reaction of "FUCKING FINALLY! LET'S FUCKING GOOOOO--!"

In all honesty, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't seen this coming from miles away. Like, Maps has appeared in a number of seemingly random cameo roles recently, including Batgirls (2021), and even technically as Robin in the backup issues of Batman (2016) #119-121, and in a short story in Batman Black & White. And most of those got collected in a standalone titled "Maps of Mystery", which specifically gathered all her appearances as Robin (and the Gotham Academy Belle Reve story).

And then, of course, her recent time-travelling Future-Trunks-esque appearance in Birds of Prey (2023), as the tech-based Meridian, from a potential future timeline where she apparently makes it as a superhero using gadgets she apparently designed, proving that she's hero material.

That's not something you do for a character for no reason. That's the sort of thing you do when you want to keep a character in the conscience of your readers for whatever reason, because you have bigger plans for them.

Also interesting to consider that, in the "Mother's Day" story where this took place, Alfred is standing right there and not lying down six feet under wood, dirt and a stone slab, and that Bruce is in the old Batcave under the manor so he still has Money™. So we must assume this was some nebulous time in the past (after GA: Second Semester(?), but before City of Bane)... which I won't bother to analyse the exact timeframe of because DC doesn't care about the post-Flashpoint / New 52 / Rebirth / Prime Earth / idfk / Dawn of DC timeline, so neither should I.

But I think it's really funny that this presumably means Maps has known The Secret™ for a long time relative to present-day comics, but always acted like she didn't.

But if all her appearances are in chronological order, that means Bruce is only the fourth Bat whose identity she discovered.

Like, she discovered Cass' identity almost by accident on a trip to the zoo, Damian showed off his grapple gun and gave her an actual Batarang during the three hours he was enrolled in the school (as if she wouldn't immediately put two-and-two together even back then), and she even found out Terry fucking McGuinness would become Batman in a future via a time-travelling grandfather clock.

No I did not make that last part up. Read Gotham Academy istg.

Did Cass know that Maps had been acting as a Robin when she met her, both at the zoo in Batgirls and her future version in Birds of Prey?

Does Damian know the one (1) friend(?) he made in Gotham Academy is potentially in the running for his job?

Is Bruce himself aware that she knows as much about their identities as she currently does?

How is DC going to retcon this so it all makes sense in the barely-functioning canon of the modern DC universe?

I'm digressing. Where was I going with this?

Point is, she's destined to become a Robin, and I'm glad DC finally pulled their fingers out their asses and capitalised on that destiny.

Let's just hope it doesn't take another year for them to follow up on this plotline again.

Bonus: Jason Todd, after learning of Bruce taking yet another happy kid under his wing as yet another Robin, giving her some advice:

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

The fact that Hagrid keeps werewolf pups under his bed is so fucking hilarious like you mean to tell me he kidnapped a bunch of children and just... stuffed all of them under his bed. Without anyone in his dorm noticing. Or maybe they did, they were just too afraid to say anything about it

Guys I think we just found out the real reason he was expelled

To give slight credit:

A) Entirely possible the diary was lying to Harry when it said this had happened. A bit of a strange thing to lie about given the Acromantula thing had occurred/there was no need to make Hagrid look worse or guiltier but it is possible.

B) JKR probably hadn't figured out werewolves yet/what she wanted to do with them as Remus shows up book 3. As much as JKR claims to have thought of things 20 years in advance she has a bad habit of retconning/convincing us a thing that existed last book works totally different now. Could be werewolves were going to be more wolves and then... they... weren't...

But yes, canonically, Tom Riddle noticed and chewed him out for it, but he wasn't expelled until Myrtle died. Could be the other dorm mates were too terrified and... it's telling that no one questioned that it was Hagrid who killed this girl except for Albus Dumbledore. I imagine Hagrid got a lot of side-eyeing from kids who had known him in school when he became groundskeeper.

[chaifootsteps]

Still thinking about Viv's claim that she thinks both sides are in the wrong and it's bugging me enough to do a quick episode run down to see how exactly that claim stacks up. Hopefully quantifying a bit more will help see where we're actually at

Ozzies: Between episodes 6&7 Stolas gets a personality transplant and goes from calling Blitzo his 'impish little plaything' and demeaning him to being head over heels for him, calling him by his name and bowing to him. When the car drives away the camera lingers on Stolas crying, though the episode ends on Blitzo and his emotions so we'll call this one even

Queen Bee: We see Blitzo's emotions in the aftermath in the form of a self-destructive bender, but noticeably what he says to Loona is that he's upset that he'll die alone. He doesn't say anything about being upset about feeling used or mistreated by Stolas (he even says his name along with the others before he throws up)

The Circus: Retcons galore backstory about how Stolas and Blitzo were childhood friends and despite using him for sex all s1, Stolas was apparently really in love with Blitzo the whole time?? It doesn't make a lot of sense but go with it. Episode ends with a song where Stolas not only implies Blitzo was somehow lying to him this whole time (Genius.com contributor suggests Stolas believed Blitzo actually loved him, which seems the obvious interpretation of these lyrics) but also makes him out to be a weak victim. He shows no guilt whatsoever for the part he played in making Blitzo feel degraded and used.

What’s between you and I Just a comfortable lie I’m the fool who believes When you look in my eyes

Seeing Stars: Stolas being framed as badass while he's choking his butler and it not being remotely bad on his part that he continues to sexually accost Blitzo in their first meeting after Ozzie's. Any criticisms Blitzo makes of Stolas (not remembering his own spells) are dismissed by Stolas with nonsensical arguments (it's relevant Blitzo can't remember Moxxie's phone number, apparently?)

Exes and Ohs: Stolas isn't in this episode or mentioned at all

Western Energy: Text message exchange after Ozzie's show Stolas giving a non apology where he doesn't actually address the problem, literally doing a 'I'm sorry if something I said or did upset you'. Episode ends on Stolas alone in the hospital where the viewer should pity him that Blitzo didn't come to visit :(

Unhappy Campers: No Stolas!

Oops: Blitzo dismisses the notion that Stolas cares about him by using examples obviously meant to favor Stolas. He is framed as jaded and unreasonable and Fizz is the obvious voice of reason. The imp who hates royalty is called a supremacist, Blitzo is the in between who dislikes Stolas and Fizz - the one who capes for royalty - is presented as in the right

Full Moon: Blitzo again criticizes Stolas, without getting to mention anything specific from s1. He is framed as going too far and tries to apologize. Stolas acts like the deal was a mutual thing even when admitting it was wrong

By my count that's basically no examples in Blitzo's favor. And I imagine if we counted all the Twitter likes from Viv on posts favoring Blitzo we'd turn up a big goose egg there, too

Careful, now! You laid out all the facts and stated them plainly, and we know that that makes a certain subset of fans angry and scared.

Viv can claim that "they're supposed to both be in the wrong" all she likes, but it doesn't mean a thing if every other word of writing in season 2 suggests the opposite. I guess the real test will come in Apology Tour, when we get to see who's actually doing the apologizing.

[utilitycaster]

Hiya! After finishing the last episode of Downfall, i’ve seen this theory pop up quite a few times in the CR tag, what do you think of the fan theory that the kid the gods saved from Aeor’s destruction, Hallis, is Ludinus?

I personally think it’s very far-fetched and doesnt have anything to base itself on, but I’m wondering if I missed something during the watch that might lead some credence to it?

I didn't see anything that would lend credence to it; I've seen the theory and my attitude is "nothing really contradicts it except the timing, which is a complicated thing for several reasons, but nothing really supports it either, and I don't think it's especially interesting, so it's a total wash."

The precise timing of the fall of Aeor in relation to the length of the Calamity is unclear but prior to the reveal this was a century in to the Calamity, it was stated to have happened relatively early. Again, we know that unless Halas was lying or there's been a retcon, Zemniaz fell over 50 years after Aeor. Quite a number of known events in the Calamity haven't occurred, and the fact that this truce lasted decades rather than months also pushes back the timeline. In other words, I'd be surprised if Ludinus Da'leth were born early enough to have seen the fall of Aeor given that Matt has said he's still very young at the end of the Calamity. I certainly wouldn't rule it out, both for "elven ages provide considerable wiggle room for vague terminology" and "Matt is a great storyteller but math and precise timeline accuracy has historically not been his forte" reasons, but I don't think there's strong evidence in its favor either.

More generally it's a case of like...firstly, while Brennan is a very good GM and pulls off a number of excellent forced card trick moves against the players, notably in the final combat, someone saving Hallis wasn't a guarantee. It was certainly heavily seeded, but by no means promised. It's not like the Cognouza Ward where the GM can just say it happens. Secondly, and this is true of a lot of Ludinus Da'leth theories past and present, I think he becomes more impressive as a wizard if all he has achieved from Aeorian tech came without any first-hand experience of the city when it existed. I know I and many others have been dunking on him, because that's a fun thing to do with villains, but I do think "very intelligent person who, for very real reasons of trauma and anger has romanticized and bought into a mythos of Aeor that he never once experienced for himself" makes for a more compelling character than "lived in Aeor as a very young child". I feel especially given that Cassida was secretly religious and clearly had no shortage of issues with Aeorian priorities, even if he was young and ill, as an intelligent child he probably would have picked up on some small part of that. I also don't believe Cassida's race was given but it feels like a case where one might want to state on the record she was elven; it's hard to explain but the way she interacts and is described I do imagine her as human - she feels like someone born during the Calamity herself, someone who only has about 40-something years of life experience in Aeor's most totalitarian era. I get this is all very vibes-based, so again, I'm not ruling out the possibility, but there's nothing particularly strong or convincing about the theory other than "young boy during the Calamity."

[spidersmiceandeverythingnice]

Oooo anyway I just remember why I Hate and Loathe the big High Lord meeting in ACOWAR and why it fully cements SJM in my Worst Authors category for like a billion reasons

1. Feyre refuses to bow to the Dawn Court. Weird choice and completely fucking awkward to read - I guess this is meant as some kind of Girlboss Moment - like "no, I won't bow to the stinky old fashioned MEN!!!! who run this world. My super hot boyfriend gave me this title and I'm the master of the universe now." But it's... childish. Also? Way to disrespect Thesan but this is going to become a pattern because of course the gay Asian High Lord has no special powers apart from super good healing that literally every other character can accomplish, and of course he's gentle, and passive (ultimately willing to "bow [to Rhysand] if the other [High Lords] will") and of course his lover has no name and never speaks. Great! Hate it.

2. Morrigan and Vivian. On paper this seems interesting as far as a relationship goes like - what kind of interesting Court relations did Night have pre Amarantha and can those bonds be salvaged? But instead of asking those questions the scene decides to immediately undercut Vivian's character as a badass general and warrior who defended Winter in her childhood friend/future husband's absence by making her squeal like a literal 13 year old when the Night Court - who is suspected of murdering 24 children - shows up. Vivian proceeds to throw a fit and snarks about wanting to be a High Lady. Rip Vivian we hardly knew ye.

3. Do I even need to talk about Helion being the worst bisexual rep. Do I even need to say it. Good lord.

4. Do I even need to talk about Fantasy China and Helion being allied with the Faerie Confederates. Do I even need to explain this. It gets worse, somehow!

5. Tamlin and Tarquin actually have a case against allying with the Night Court given literally everything that happened in the last two books but this isn't painted as reasonable distrust of a group of lying backstabbing sycophants who purposefully play up their cruelty and keep secrets from the other Courts. No, of course not. Tarquin immediately forgives the Night Court because he has no backbone whatsoever apparently. Tamlin is considered unreasonable for not trusting Feyre and Rhys, who have continuously tried to hurt him and his people and undermine his authority as High Lord.

6. Everyone immediately forgets that Rhysand worked for Amarantha for 50 years and distrusts Tamlin, who has worked for Hybern for all of five minutes and also brings tons of information on their troop movements and positions, confirming that all of his so called alliance was a fraud and he's been spying on them the whole time.

7. Literally the whole fucking deal with the Winter Court. Like I'm sorry that Rhys is so sexual traumatized by Amarantha but children fucking died in a horrible, gruesome way that now, nobody can be accountable for. This is on my top 3 of most egregious SJM retcons because I'm supposed to believe that some daemati we've never heard of before, is never mentioned or seen again, is supposedly the missing link to absolve Rhysand of the fact that he murdered 24 children in book one and devastated the Winter Court. Give me a fucking break. And Feyre gets so SAD and hurt when Rhys says he was confined to Amarantha’s bedroom, but I guess dead kids in Winter and Spring are just the price you pay for loving a morally gray bryonic hero uwu. I'd say, "Get fucked," but i think Rhys and Feyre would enjoy that too much.

8. When the Autumn Court says mean things it makes them irredeemable, but when Azriel and Feyre break all the rules of magic and physically retaliate and hurt other people, it's a-okay, and totally justified! Oh, the Lady of Autumn (another unnamed, sad silent [white] victim who only exists for Helion to angst over) gets hurt by virtue of being a bystander? Totally cool and normal, and since she's been a victim of domestic violence before, it means that she's a secret good guy who will totally understand and forgive Feyre for her totally justifiable outburst. Fuck off.

9. Feyre speaking to and ordering Azriel around like a literal rabid dog. Do I even need to explain this and why its bad. Do I even need to say it.

10. This scene was a joke and everything about it was a stinking trash fire.

[sincerely-sofie]

Thinking about the Hollow Knight time-travel fix-it fic I talked about in these tags and losing my mind. I dug through the old snippets I have for the AU and I’m so sorry but I need to yeet them into the great void of the interwebs so I don’t explode. Context indented below, but feel free to skip it and just read the snippets.

During the events of the Embrace the Void ending, Ghost has become the next Lord of Shades (a sort of inherited godhood in this fic). After defeating the Radiance she immediately sets to work remaking history, and after some finagling is able to erase the Radiance from existence past a certain point in the timeline. Once she's done so, she enters the timeline and starts manually fixing everything she couldn't correct by abruptly retconning an entire goddess— and this means starting by rescuing the surviving vessels who are still trapped in the Abyss.

TPK brings up the Hollow Knight as his daughter after the Radiance disappeared and he came to the worrying realization that the mindless weapon he'd been raising was actually, for all intents and purposes, a rather normal kid. He has issues with his past but shunts the guilt to the background so he can function as a king and father. But once Ghost enters the new timeline, he starts having visions of there being other vessels who survived in the Abyss— and he starts going on a wild goose chase through all of Hallownest looking for his kids as he's forced to face the impact of the Abyss head-on.

(Ghost searches for survivors after giving herself a mild concussion:)

The first thing Ghost did upon entering the new world was materialize into the Abyss and immediately knock herself out by banging her head on an overhang. She definitely misjudged the size of this form.

She woke with a headache, one of her horns snapped off and lying at her feet, and surrounded by too-tiny, too-empty shells.  

She wanted to be sick. 

But she was on a mission.

Ghost took in a deep breath and called out.

Silence was what met her at first, then a single, quiet cheep. 

Ghost called back with a coaxing chirp. 

A head popped up over a large mound of corpses. Just one horn on this one— just one nubby little horn that sat over their brow. Ghost would have thought they were cute if they didn’t look so horrified. She reached out to them, cooing softly, and their fear gave way to interest. They rushed over and hopped onto her back so they could scramble onto her head and pat near where her horn snapped off. 

“Did you fall?” They asked through the Void, the question twisted with worry, and she could hear in their voice that they were a little boy.

“No, I didn’t fall. Just hit my head.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” She tilted her head forward to slide the sibling into her outstretched palm. A brother. She figured there must have been at least some boys among the hatchlings in the Abyss, but the only other vessel she knew was Holly. She had a little brother. The thought made her weirdly dizzy. “Where are the others?”

“Eating.”  

Ghost froze. There was nothing down here but stone, Void, and corpses, and only one of those was remotely edible. She fought down the terrible memories that crawled up— she remembered the crunch of empty chitin in her own jaws, how it scraped her throat and did nothing to fill her belly— and she reached into her Void to find the supplies she’d been given by Mato before she ascended the Pantheon. Her claws closed around the bundle, and she didn’t even wait to see if they were still good before calling out a sharp, commanding chirp. Come, there’s food here.

The number of little vessels that peered over the mounds of carapace and raced over to her was overwhelming— There were eleven. Eleven survivors, including the one on her shoulder. She didn’t come too late after all. But then she saw what they were all gnawing on and fought the urge to be sick all over again. 

“Don’t eat those,” she snapped, and several vessels looked down at the pieces of carapace clutched in their hands, confused. “They’re bad. Come here. I have something better.”

She undid the tie holding the bundle of preserves closed and set it on the ground in front of the other vessels, mentally thanking Mato for his parting gift. There were berries, crawlid jerky, bread, roots and mushrooms and vegetables she didn’t have the energy to name. The vessels eyed the food warily. 

“It’s… bright?” One ventured. 

“Colorful.”

“Smells weird,” another said. 

“Where did you find it?” Asked the one with the single horn. 

“Outside. Eat, eat.”

(Ghost is tunneling out of the Abyss with the surviving vessels:)

Ghost carved another stretch of path in the rock wall and swept the rubble out and away, over and over again, hoping she knew what direction she was digging. The vessels on her back questioned her relentlessly while she worked. 

“What happened to your thingy?” Asked one, gesturing to her two curled-down horns. 

“Horn,” Ghost corrected, and focused less on answering her question and more on ensuring that none of the vessels were swept away with the rubble or slipped from their places on her back while she dug upward.

“She hit her head,” said the one-horned vessel. 

“And it broke?” The curled-down horns vessel was aghast. “I didn’t know that could happen! Did it hurt?”

“I was alright.” 

“But your thi— your horn!” 

“It’s okay. I brought it with me, see? We can find a cloak to tie it back on.”

“But she said there weren’t any old shells outside,” said a bored-sounding vessel with horns that stuck out rather than up or down. “How are we supposed to find a way to tie it?”

While the vessels debated how to reattach her horn, which the one-horned vessel apparently brought with him without her realizing, Ghost made a mental note to check all of their hands when she had the chance. She was so concerned with getting them to drop their siblings' carapace they were gnawing on that she hadn’t looked twice at the wicked-sharp horn in that vessel’s eager grasp. She needed to confiscate it. 

But when she broke through the other side of the stone wall and stepped out into Greenpath, only to be met by the Hunter looming with claws at the ready, she knew she had bigger things to worry about. 

(The Pale King is able to track down and reunite with the vessels while Ghost is away hunting... at least at first:)

The vessels all crept forward in their own time, until he was able to hand them the rest of the loaf to pick at to their content. He counted them— eleven in total, ranging in height from his knee to his waist. Eleven survivors. Eleven children to take home and ensure they’d recover from their early years. 

Oran felt a small weight lift from his chest. 

And then he heard a blood-chilling shriek, shot to place himself between the sound and the children, and he was slammed into the cavern wall with a resounding crack. 

Oran was not an idiot. He heard that shriek start as a growl that sounded like a blade dragging across ice, like an echo of the language of wyrms, and he knew it meant get away. He was not an idiot. But by the gods was he stupid sometimes. 

He snapped to his feet, ready to fight a vengefly king and lead it away from where his children stood on unsteady legs, hungry and weak— easy pickings. His stomach dropped when he saw not an apex predator, but a bug with a pitch black shell rushing towards them. A lance of light sprung into his hands without a thought, but he couldn’t move fast enough, it had already closed the distance—

—And looped its wyrm-like tail in careful coils around the children, then roared at him in a primal rumble he understood on instinct: If you draw any closer to my young, I’ll kill you.

A god— no, a goddess. A goddess with a shell like midnight, eyes like suns, claws like scythes, horns like castle spires. And she was hunched low to the ground, terrified, trembling as she bared her teeth at him. The Lord of Shades, reborn.

(Ghost threatens the Pale King for a good few paragraphs when he thanks her for protecting the vessels before he could rescue them.)

A pale-shelled head popped up from over the coils, shortly followed by all of its fellows. One small vessel chirped— chirped— at the goddess, who simply rumbled tightly and nudged them back down with her cheek, keeping her eyes on Oran. For every wide-eyed vessel that she hid away, two popped back up, intent to watch what was happening outside their guardian’s coils. It was difficult to reconcile the fact that his life was being threatened by the newly reborn Lord of Shades with the sight of his children peering up at him excitedly from where they perched in her coils. Adorable, the father within him remarked when one of them pointed and waved. Horrifying, the survivor within him said when the Lord of Shades fixed a vicious glare upon him as he reached out to them. 

The one-horned vessel raised the loaf of bread he gave them and prodded the Lord’s cheek with it. She bared her teeth at Oran, eyes still trained on him, until the vessel tapped her top-most coil and trilled irritably at her. She pouted at them, no longer wearing the face of a feral beast ready to rip him limb from limb, but rather an exhausted elder sibling being pestered by their junior. “What?”

The one-horned vessel held the loaf of bread over their head excitedly. 

“Where did y—?” She glanced at Oran narrowly. “And it didn’t make you sick?”

The vessel shook their head, patting her coil happily. They pointed to Oran and bounced up and down, and the bewilderment in her face deepened.

He took the opportunity to speak. “They’re starving. I brought them food. Please, I intend to take them home to my palace to be cared for. I don’t know why you’ve decided that they belong to you—” She bristled, growling at him once more. “— but it’s clear that they recognize me as their kin. They deserve to be with their family. Be reasonable.”

She paused, expression crossed with grief, and sat back on her haunches while relaxing the coils of her tail. The vessels clambered out and gathered around her legs to chirrup gently at her. She stooped down to sweep them into her arms and stand at her full height, towering over Oran as she spoke to them. “Are you sure?” She asked the larger one as they shrugged and moved to perch on her shoulder. “He’s not… he isn’t…” One nudged her jaw with their brow, and she returned the gesture of affection. “No,” she sighed. “No. I don’t like him. He hurt me. He hurt us.”

One small vessel hopped down from her arms and cautiously stepped toward Oran, holding something that didn’t quite fit under their cloak. They held it out, revealing a long, jagged, midnight-colored horn, snapped off near the base— and pointed to the goddess, posture hesitant in its silent question. He furrowed his brow. The tinier vessel pointed again, more insistently this time. It was then that Oran noticed the goddess, who still stood speaking to the vessels perched atop her, was missing a horn on the left side of her head. The dots connected. 

He accepted the horn from the vessel, then turned to the goddess. “I am able to repair your horn, if you’d like.”

She gaped at him, silent for a moment. “You… really?”

Motioning for her to kneel, he wove Soul around his fingers in a spell of mending. She shrugged the vessels off and slowly bowed her head into reach. He held the broken-off horn in place with one hand and traced the break with the fingertips of the other, murmuring the incantation to fuse it together under his breath. The carapace snapped back into place, and the goddess flinched away. 

"That was a seal of binding," she said. 

He quirked a brow. "I suppose one could describe it as such." 

Baring her fangs, she hissed, "If you ever work those spells near any of us, I'll swallow you whole."

(Ghost accidentally reveals that she is related to the Pale King during her explanation of how she stitched together time in a way that would mend the damage he did. The Pale King awkwardly changes the subject.)

The vessels finished their game and stood up to cluster around the god’s legs, tugging on her cloak and asking to be picked up. 

“What are their names?” He found himself asking. If what she said were true, perhaps the goddess had picked up his own tendency to dodge questions. 

She knelt down to let the vessels climb onto her back and shoulders, perch between her horns and crawl into her many arms. When she stood, her expression was dark. “They have none.”

“And yours?”

The goddess leveled him with an icy glare. “I am the Forsaken, Failure, Refuse and Regret, Master of Dreams, She Who Swallowed the Sun, Lord of Shades, God of Gods. I knew no name until the Daughter of the Beast branded me with one. I am the monument to my sire’s sins. I am the Ghost of Hallownest.”

Oran buried the dread that bubbled up at that damnation of a name and waved over a servant to ready the royal tram. 

A child named after the things he’d done in another life. Things he would have done in this life, had she not swallowed the sun. A child who had slain his greatest enemy, and would not hesitate to cut him down as well should he prove himself anything other than tolerable. 

He had so much to explain to his Root when he returned.

(Ghost + TPK + the vessels travel to the White Palace and meet the White Lady, who is confused by TPK introducing Ghost as Hollow's twin)

The White Lady’s brow furrowed. She idly rubbed the back of her knuckles over the branching-horns vessel’s cheek as she spoke. “Dear one, Calla’s not even a quarter of this bug’s size, nor do they look remotely alike. Forgive me my skepticism.” 

Ghost looked down at herself. It hadn’t occurred to her how different she looked now— she’d actually been enjoying her new height and shell. But maybe… 

Ghost shrugged the vessels perched on her back onto the ground. The King and Lady snapped to look at her when she abruptly burst into Void, leaving scattered pieces of carapace in her wake, only to reform as her old self. It hurt, being in this ill-fitting shell again, but she stayed in it long enough for recognition to dawn on both of their faces, then snapped her new shell’s pieces back into place over her Void. 

“Oh, stars,” the Lady gasped. “She looks just like she said.”

The King had gone paler than normal, if that were possible, and stood in silence, shaking. 

“Dear Life, Calla needs to hear this. My Wyrm, you’ve sent for her, haven’t you?”

“Not… yet?” He choked out, remarkably undignified. 

“Go, then, Oran, she deserves to know.” She watched him until he staggered out of the chamber, nodding once he left. And then those sapphire eyes were back on Ghost. “Is something the matter, child?”

“You… have arms,” she blurted out, recalling the White Lady’s bindings in the old world. 

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“You can see us? And— and the room?”

“I’m not blind, little one. And I’d be rather disappointed if I were. I’m beyond relieved to see your faces.”

“And you know I’m impure?”

The Lady’s eyes widened, brows drawing up in concern, lips pressed into a thin line. “Oh, child,” she breathed. She reached out to Ghost, cupping the side of her mask with a gentle hand. “Child, you’re no less pure than I am.”

(The White Lady didn’t care much for Ghost’s presence beyond reminding her of the King. Ghost had gone through so much, traveled so far, fought so hard to be nothing like him, and the White Lady mistook her for her father the second that she entered the dusty chamber. The White Lady looked down on the Grimmchild with open disdain, told him that the very earth rejected him with good reason, and told Ghost to destroy the charm that gave him life while she still could. The White Lady didn’t see Ghost, she saw a vessel, and she told her to cut down Hollow and take the failure’s place.)

Yeah. Yeah, that was a wonderful compliment. Ghost took the branching-horned vessel out of her arms a little too snappishly to be subtle, and the vessel voiced his protests through the Void. Ghost ignored them. “Where will we be staying?”

“There’s a guest chamber in my and my Wyrm’s wing of the Palace. Though we’ll have to build more rooms so each of you have your own in the future, I’m afraid.”

“We’d prefer to stay together,” Ghost scoffed. Was it really not obvious with how the other vessels clung to her and each other? 

The White Lady led them to a chamber that had obviously been tidied recently— everything inside glittering with cleanliness— and Ghost slammed the door in the Lady’s face.

(TPK ruminates on Hollow describing a sibling making the climb to reach him alongside her:)

Oran took the long elevator ride up the Watcher’s Spire in stride. He was handling this with inexplicable grace and majesty. And by that, he meant he was pacing circles in the narrow space and fighting off a panic attack.

Calla had spoken of a twin when she was younger and still learning to sign. It was difficult to understand what she was attempting to get across with such frantic, disjointed signs and spotty grammar, and in the years following she seemed to have either forgotten about the issue or given up on trying to explain it.

(But Oran wouldn’t— couldn’t— forget. Not the way the grub phrased it. “Calla-Two stop climb. Down. Big crunch. Quiet.” Confusing as it was, it settled like ice in his stomach. Something horrible had happened. He knew it. He found Calla drawing the next week, several pages of vessel-shaped blobs of colors scattered across the floor, and the room spun around him when he spotted a page showing a vessel very much like Calla clinging to the lip of the final overhang, Calla standing above them, and Oran himself off to the side. He was there when it happened. There was a vessel that nearly finished the climb with Calla, that he could have taken home, and he hadn’t noticed.

(And now that vessel had returned, and she hated him. Poetic justice, he supposed.)

The elevator stopped. He stepped into the Watcher’s office.

(The vessels explore the room they're staying in at the White Palace:)

The vessels took one look at the massive, fluffy bed in the guest chamber and decided they didn’t like it. The chorus of sleepy confusion that tumbled through the Void was as hilarious as it was exhausting.

“Why is it squishy?”

“It feels weird.”

“Why does it smell like that?”

“What’s it for?”

“I’m tired.”

“Can we go to the Abyss? I wanna sleep.”

“We are not going to the Abyss.”

“But I’m tired!”

“Me too.”

After watching her siblings toss and turn in a struggle for comfort, Ghost tore off the sheets and untucked the downy comforter and pillows so she could stuff them under the bed. When the comforter in particular brushed up against the weary group of vessels, she could hear them gasp in awe at how nice it felt. They chirped excitedly as they tangled themselves up in the blanket, squishing it in their hands as they marveled at how something this soft could exist. And then one of them touched the silk sheets and they all lost every last one of their collective marbles.

“It’s too bright in here.” Ah. That was a fair point. Even with the curtains drawn and the lights out, the Palace managed to be significantly lighter than the Abyss. She blamed it on everything being white. The vessels wandered the room for a while longer before deciding that the only logical place to sleep was on the floor beneath the bed itself.

(Ghost saves Tiso from an unexpected strike, and Tiso has no filter, much to Quirrel's exasperation:)

Ghost lowered her outstretched arm, waiting until the vengefly skewered on her claws stopped squirming to uncurl herself from around a stunned Tiso. 

He looked from the vengefly, to Ghost, to the arm still wrapped around his middle, and back again. “Not gonna lie, that was pretty hot.”

“Tiso!” Came Quirrel’s exasperated shriek.

(Ghost stumbles across Hollow and TPK while walking around the White Palace, and Ghost has some emotions about the sudden reunion with Hollow and a revelation about TPK's character:)

The King halted abruptly when Ghost rounded a corner and nearly bowled him over, and she was so busy glaring at him that she hadn’t noticed the Hollow Knight in his shadow. 

There she was.

Hollow— no, Calla. She was alive, and safe, and she had paint and charcoal smeared on her mask. Ghost hunched in on herself to be closer to her sister’s height (how weird it was, to be the tall one all of a sudden) and reached out shakily. 

Then the Pale King stepped between them, and she was tempted to take off his head for that, until she saw his face. His jaw was set, and he tilted his head in such a way that showed… something. She couldn’t figure out what he was trying to communicate. But then a small hand took hold of his, and it became clear. 

Calla had tucked herself behind him, peering out from his side, tightly gripping his hand, obviously frightened.

Ghost had scared her. 

Ghost was scaring her. 

She decided at that moment that she hated being the tall one. 

She dropped into a shadow on the wall, mind alight with shame and anger at herself, shaking. 

The Pale King said something to Calla. She nodded and left down the corridor on her own, a little too quickly to be at ease with her surroundings. And then the King turned to the shadow Ghost had tucked herself into. Apparently she wasn’t being as subtle as she thought with her shadow-travel if he knew exactly where she was then. 

“I need some time to break the news,” he murmured. “She has a lot on her mind at the moment. I don’t want to overwhelm her.”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.” 

“If you wouldn’t show your smaller form, I believe it would be easier on…”

“It hurts to stuff myself back in there anyway.”

“Thank you.”

Silence. 

“Is that all, or—?”

“You won’t show her that vision,” he said, voice suddenly sharp and clear and indisputable. Ghost hadn’t ever heard him speak as a king before, never heard him announce decrees and demands, but she could see him doing so in that tone. 

“That vision,” she echoed. 

“The one that I cannot sponge from my mind no matter how I try. The one that has haunted every last one of my waking hours. You will never show it to her, you will never discuss it with her, you will never so much as allude to it around her. If you feel so inclined to be cruel enough to touch on what happened in that gods-forsaken moment, you will choose me as your victim. Not her, nor her mother, nor the other children.”

“It affected you,” Ghost observed. 

His glare was icy. “And how did you expect I would react, if not by being affected?”

“To shrug it off. To brush it aside. To ignore it.”

“She’s my daughter. My flesh and blood, pride and joy, and you thought I would ignore seeing her do that?”

Ghost let the light of her eyes shine through the shadow. “Forgive me, I should have spoken more clearly— I expected you to look me in the face and say there was no cost too great.”

He fell silent. 

“I wouldn’t dream of doing what you described. I swallowed the sun, yes, but I didn’t inherit her cruelty, Pale King. I stitched this world together so my sister could be happy. Void swallow me whole if I’m the one to ruin that.”

He sighed, long and heavy, and strode away. Ghost slipped into his shadow as he passed. 

“… I scared her.”

“You did.”

“I didn’t want to.”

He didn’t reply.

“If I can’t use my old shell, how am I supposed to not scare her?”

“Don’t approach her.”

“She’s my twin.” Ghost barely kept from wailing indignantly. “I can’t just sit here and… The last time I saw her, she was barely clinging to life, and not willingly. I want to talk to her!”

He paused at that. “She survived the…” He swallowed dryly. “The attempt?”

“We weren’t going to let her die before she ever had the chance to live. I channeled all the Soul in the area into healing her, and Hornet—”

“Hornet?”

“You might know her as the Gendered Child, depending how far along we are in this world.”

“No. Nettie— Hornet was with you when that happened?”

Oh. His voice was tighter than she realized. The clipped element of his tone wasn’t anger. It was fear. 

Ghost squirmed. The shadows felt claustrophobic all of a sudden. “… She didn’t stay away. She said she would,” Ghost murmured. “She didn’t want to stand by like she did when her mother…”

The Pale King took a sharp left as he walked, locked himself in an empty council room, and sobbed. 

Ghost began to understand, seeing his glow brighten and brighten until the whole room was nothing but white light as he choked on his tears, that this wasn’t her sire. He was a sire, yes, but also a father. One who wept at the thought of his children suffering and being abandoned, let alone dying or witnessing each other’s deaths. He was a sire so unlike hers. She’d been placing her grudges and burdens onto someone who didn’t deserve it. 

(And that is why she was so like him. So like him that when she visited her mother that’s all she saw. So like him that his enemy thought her a disguise he’d taken on. So like him that she was following his every step.) 

Ghost left him to weep.

(Ghost gets into a scuffle with the Nightmare King and wakes up with the same injuries she gained during her dream:)

Promptly expelled from the Nightmare Realm, Ghost jerked awake on the floor under a massive bed and curled around her little siblings as they snored softly. She reluctantly rose and walked the castle grounds, staring at the gashes, gouges, and burns running all the way up her arm. She’d have to explain this to someone at some point. How would she phrase it? Would she just bluntly state that her tendency to pick fights had risen to threatening gods now? Yeah, that wouldn’t send anyone panicking. 

She was so numb with exhaustion that she didn’t notice the Pale King in the corridor across from her. They locked eyes. Neither moved until he glanced down at the arm she was favoring. He wordlessly reached out a hand in offering. 

Silence. 

She drew over to him and knelt closer to his height, then placed her arm in his reach. His brow knit together in worry as he traced his fingers over the wounds, never touching, just hovering over them. He reached for another pair of arms, and it was then that Ghost realized the palms of this pair were badly burned from when she strangled Nightmare. She hadn’t even noticed. 

He spun Soul around his hand in a luminescent glove. The Pale King didn’t lift his head all the way to ask if he could help, simply glanced up warily. Questioningly. Ghost nodded. 

He healed the wounds in silence. It was obvious what had inflicted them, and he couldn’t erase scars made by a god. They both knew that. But it was painfully clear that he was trying. He passed over the mended burns several times, and Ghost recognized the words he mouthed as a spell to change something’s colors. Nothing returned the singed-white claw marks in her shell to their original black. He tried so many times, but the spell bounced off the scars uselessly with each attempt. Finally, long after Ghost had accepted his efforts were futile, he tucked his arms back into his robes, shaking his head slowly, mouthparts working in frustration. 

Ghost was the one to walk away. She could feel the King's eyes on her until she passed the corner, and it was only then that she heard him turning away.

(TPK and Ghost have a chat, and Sofie has a favorite trope that is totally not used here at all:)

“How old are you?” The Pale King asked. 

That gave Ghost pause. “Strange thing to ask a god, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps if the god in question had ascended more than a few months ago, but not in this situation, no.” He looked her up and down. “This form looks significantly older than you behave, and it’s also the form every Lord of Shades would take while walking among mortals. It’s not clear what age you truly are.”

Ghost had to consider that. “I must be an adult by now. As for numbered years, though, I don’t know.”

“You don’t—? What do you mean?”

“Hallownest was in stasis when I entered it. There was no way to mark the passage of time, and it seemed like most things were… blurry. They could age, but not correctly. Some didn't age at all. And before I set foot in the kingdom, I was in the Wastes outside it. That lends itself even less to a good estimate of how old I am”

“If you had a caretaker, I’m certain they would have an estimate.”

“I was on my own until halfway through Hallownest.”

“Gods,” he hissed under his breath. “What world did you live in where a child was left to fend for themself and fight wars on their parents’ behalf?”

“Same world where a child cut down every last member of the Pantheons.” She gave him a narrow look. “I wasn’t an ordinary grub—” 

“No, because you never had the chance to be one. I’ve heard of children being forced to mature too soon, but to ascend to godhood because of the pressure heaped on you…”

“I got the job done.”

“And what did you pay for it?”

“My life for the kingdom. It wasn’t very much.”

“I’d think that’s far too great a cost to pay from any child’s purse, even one capable of swallowing the sun.”

She froze. 

“You were a child,” he murmured, “no matter how old that stasis made you. You were meant to laugh and play, and to be swaddled and doted on— not to kill a primeval goddess simply so others could have that basic right you’d been deprived of.”

[desertfangs]

I feel for people just getting into the books lol. But I agree and I think it's fair to ignore Merrick since Anne also ended up disregarding it herself. I remember during the book tour for The Wolf Gift, Anne did an Q&A talk, she said she didn't consider Merrick, Blackwood Farm, or Blood Canticle canon by the time she began writing Prince Lestat.

Which I found confusing because she mentioned Quinn in Prince Lestat, but she felt that just because the character exists doesn't mean the events that unfolded are canon. Which I found more confusing. I also recall Anne saying (maybe in the same interview maybe in a different one?) she tried to merge her witches and vampires together, but she never felt like she managed to reach the right tone. Which I do agree with.

Oh anon!! I also feel for people just getting into the books! In some ways, it's probably nice to just binge the books back to back and not wait years wondering (like after MtD came out and it was like... Is Armand really dead?????? Where is Daniel???) but also a lot gets shifted or retconned and it must be jarring to go from one to the other with the discrepancies and changes so apparent.

For me, I feel like canon has always been sort of nebulous. Like you can just pick the things you like, you maybe explain away the things you don't (Armand was TOTES lying when he said he sold most of Night Island! 😒), and you can also just sort of ignore stuff if it doesn't really work for you. But that said, I also totally get the desire to be as true to canon as possible and trying to reconcile all of it the best you can, which is a total valid approach as well! I do think canon has a lot of little unexplored nuggets and things to unpack and try to figure out. It's like the crossword puzzle of book series which is part of why I think it has so much staying power for me personally. There's a lot left off the page to explore or explain or try to work out.

It's so interesting to hear she didn't consider Merrick or Blackwood Farm canon anymore!! I don't think I'd heard that, although I am not surprised about Blood Canticle, that book feels like a failed experiment and I agree it did not succeed as a VC/Mayfairs crossover. I think the Talamasca's existence and maybe Quinn was enough of a crossover, tbh, I don't know anything more was needed. (Granted, what I remember about BC is Lestat being in the midst of a manic episode and Rowan being involved, and that's pretty much it.) I do recall she was trying to build up to some war with the Talamasca and I guess that never really came together.

Prince Lestat definitely felt like more of a return to form and trying to get all of the vampires in one place and even wrap up some loose ends from previous books and tell us where everyone ended up. Well almost everyone. I agree it's funny Quinn gets a mention.

As for Merrick, I'm sure there's some interesting stuff in there, at least about Louis, but I've never been able to convince myself to reread it. I do like the implication that he and Armand came together after the events of that book and he moved in Trinity Gate because of shared trauma over suicide attempts, and that they found some healing with each other. But overall, it wasn't a book I enjoyed.

Thank you for sharing, anon!! This is really good stuff! Also LMAO thank you for reminding me The Wolf Gift exists. That book was a wild ride for sure! 💖

[kitkatopinions]

Little quiz for some rwby fans who apparently don't know what canon and headcanon is...

Ruby was written to exclaim over cool weapons in volume 1, however as far as I know she hasn't expressed interest in weapons since. If someone said "Ruby is interested in weapons and weapon design" would they be a) listing a true fact about Ruby, or b) making up a headcanon?

Blake was established to like books and reading in volume one, but since then hasn't in my recollection talked about liking books. If someone said "Blake likes reading" would they be a) listing a true fact about Blake, or b) making up a headcanon?

Jaune was written in volume one to not know what aura was before Pyrrha told him. He's never talked about having not known what aura was since. But if someone said "Jaune didn't know what aura was in the first season" would they be a) listing a true fact about Jaune, or b) making up a headcanon?

Now say that someone said "I think that Ruby was just joking around or pretending when she expressed interest in weapons," that would be..... A headcanon. In fact, it would be a headcanon that actively goes against what we've seen in canon. If someone said "Blake was just kidding about liking reading" they'd be disregarding a piece of canon. If someone said "the events in volume one don't really matter, so Jaune actually did know what aura was when he first got to school" they'd be disregarding canon - as well as kind of devaluing it tbh.

How about this one: Yang openly leered at and purred at a group of shirtless boys while talking about being happy with the fact that they were all staying the night in the same room as the girls. Now if someone said "Yang showed clear interest in men in canon" would they be a) listing a true fact about Yang, or b) making up a headcanon? And if someone said "I think that Yang was just joking or pretending when she did that" that would be.... A headcanon. Because there's never been a moment in canon actually establishing that Yang was joking or pretending. And if someone said "well volume one just doesn't count, it was ten years ago" they'd be disregarding and kind of devaluing the early seasons.

The fact that it hasn't been brought up again doesn't mean that it didn't happen or no longer counts. The fact that it happened in season one doesn't mean it didn't happen or no longer counts. There's nothing in canon actually indicating that Yang wasn't sincere in her interest, no indication that she was only joking to get Ruby to loosen up or lying to herself to perform comphet (and she's the least likely of any of the rwby girls to care about that anyway.) Deciding that this just doesn't mean anything or doesn't matter or doesn't count for this or that reason is baseless. Having headcanons that go against canon is great! If people like the idea of Yang being a lesbian, more power to them! But it's not canon, and it isn't a headcanon to say that she's attracted to men. Unless the rwby writers specifically write it into the show that Yang only faked interest in men, that moment isn't any less real than Ruby's weapon interest, or Jaune not knowing what aura was. And if the writers now wrote Yang to say "actually that was a joke" nine seasons in, it would very much so feel like a retcon just like it would feel like a retcon if Ruby was like "oh yeah, I was only kidding about liking weapons."

But more importantly, why do people want so badly to dismiss that moment of interest? Why is it so important to people to try to reason out how Yang could leer at a group of shirtless men but that can't mean that she's bi or pan or anything? Like I don't want to accuse anybody of biphobia, but I just think that if people actively dislike the idea of Yang being a bi woman, or they dislike the idea of Yang showing interest in men, maybe they should think about why. If they feel like they have to try to invent reasons for why Yang leering at shirtless men isn't real, they should unpack that. Like I'll be generous here and assume that most of this does come from basic enforced fandom opinions like "you must ship Blake and Yang" making people twist reality, as is the norm. But it comes across to me as a bi woman as uncomfortable and cutting it real close to acting like Yang would somehow be less good or less queer if she had any interest in men in canon.

[cartoonkitten]

my thoughts on 200% wolf because i have a lot of jumbled thoughts after finally seeing it after waiting 2 years

SPOILERS ‼️‼️‼️

i’m gonna tell you all right fucking now, that this movie is seriously so perfect and mind-blowing i’m not joking. it might be just me, considering a lot of outsider’s thoughts on it, which are now completely illogical to me cause i genuinely thought this movie was so fucking perfect in practically every way. like i’m shocked this comes from the same franchise i’ve been watching for 4 years (not in a mean way just in an insanely grateful way!!!)

OK I MUST ADDRESS THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. THE ANIMATION IS JUST AS FANTASTIC AS IT IS ADVERTISED. LIKE seriously!!! they weren’t lying when they said it was pixar-level, because IT IS. the production value for the entire film is incredible enough, but the visuals are seriously impressive. they are off the charts good!!! the animation is so beautifully, fluid, rhythmic and have such a good flow to them that make everything so eye catching. the character acting and attention to details in it every movement is so well thought out and contributed to each character well. the slapstick, bounciness, and toony nature of it too make it sooo fun!!! like the trailers and clips were one thing, but getting to watch the entirety of it, you just really get immersed with out visual stunning it is. such a thing to behold!

another thing i gotta point out is the score and pacing, which go hand in hand to me. the pacing in this movie is actually so refreshing and it all flows well together, with the score only amplifying every scene (seriously, the score in this movie is insane!). i honestly didn’t think any scenes dragged out too-too long or went by too overwhelmingly fast. of course, with the visuals and everything else (and me being autistic for this franchise) it’s easy to be distracted otherwise, but still. i actually found that very satisfying. it also makes the action and other really good scenes all the more fascinating to see.

even the beginning of the movie automatically set me up for a breathtaking experience. the pan over the moon’s surface, the moonspirits’ theme and role, along with moopoo’s introduction. the establishment already made me excited— AND FREDDY’S NARRATION AT THE BEGINNING IS STILL FUNNY TO ME. hardcore awesomeness. AND ALSO that whole blimp rescuing scene is genuinely so good and fun to watch, like the slapstick and action are so good and funny and such an exciting start. and freddy and batty’s dynamic is still my most favorite beloved thing ever.

"it’s easy for you to say, you’re 100% wolf!" and still, freddy is actually the realest one in the room. HES TRYING HIS FUCKING BEST. disabled trans allegory real.

AND WHEN HE BECOMES A WOLF HES LITERALLY SO SILLY. HIS MONTAGE OF SILLINESS. also moopoo tries to eat a crow for some reason after pissing off freddy and it’s even sillier. AND AGAIN, THE HUMOR IN THIS MOVIE IS ACTUALLY INCREDIBLY GOOD. LIKE it’s genuinely funny and works so well, especially with the slapstick.

THEN TO THE DOGS. though they’ve weirdly became irrelevant especially after being retconned from the series, seeing them again here is.. honestly awesome! like they’re actually really funny and entertaining in this movie!! TWITCHY GROWING A SOFT SPOT FOR MOOPOO AND ACTUNG LIKE HIS MOM IS VERY CUTE. also the traveling scene on the buses was actually so funny. AND BATTY BEING AFRAID OF BATS IS ACTUALLY IRONICALLY SILLY, especially with her friendship with gar-gar later on, which i love by the way, their scenes are so blessed (also gar-gar is so cute i love him, he’s so somft. his name reminds me of gor-gor from gwar).

ALSOOOO THE MOOPOO DREAMING SEQUENCE IS SO INCREDIBLE TO ME. LIKE ITS SO FUCKING SWEET AND IM OBSESSED WITH IT. I LOVE HIM AND HIS MOM AND THE LULLABY SHE SINGS HIM. EVERYONE HOWLING ALONG IS SOOOOO (PUNCHES THE FUCKING WALL).

also this is so silly to me but i love when max makes freddy do a trust exercise and he attempts to do a trust fall and plummets on the ground and she’s like "what are you doing? no, go fucking kill those dogs"

moopoo starts to become vaguely corrupted with the earth magic that lies within that area. and it’s leaving me to theorize that it probably only, or at least predominantly, effects anything that is or comes from some form of moon magic. that’s just my idea. cause moopoo didn’t use and spells he just started becoming evil for no reason so, yeah, that’s what leads me to believe that.

as for more extensive character thoughts. max is actually an incredibly good villain. she’s insanely badass, intimidating charming, funny and vicious, yet there’s a level of nuance with her— which is kind of why i genuinely would’ve preferred had they redeemed her if i’m being honest. i dug her almost character turn around, because it honestly wouldn’t be too far from realistic to push her in that direction. in character context, her betrayal /does/ kinda still make sense, but also with the fact that she’s humbled herself over the years serving her consequences, and even vaguely accepting her difference, she still admittedly does acknowledge that, despite not deserving the treatment she initially got, she still did bad things that hurt innocent people, fronting defensively out of hate or corruption (arguably both). it probably wouldn’t have been a very drastic change to the plot had they had her fight them after being "betrayed" first, show that freddy can use the magic and overcome the corruptions. then have freddy confront her on how "you can’t force respect, and you can’t earn respect either if you hurt other people that could have," still implying how him and moopoo are misfits like her, and respect her enough to search for her help. having her confront what she’s been too scared to admit all along, and be able to combat corruption herself. then she pushes the moon back into place. freddy goes to help moopoo, who is presumably still being corrupted by all the magic being thrown around, and thus, the rest can continue how it did. although, i’d prefer max not be given her wolf form back like freddy did. let her state accepting her consequence and that she’ll take her time re-earning her respect again. if this all makes sense. that’s really my main idea for max, i just thought it would’ve been cool, and also a subversion compared to all the other villains.

another thing i wanted to talk about it how i appreciate how they worked with freddy’s character. anyone that knows me knows how heavily critical i am of the first movie (which makes this incredible movie feel like a fever dream), and especially how i feel about the writing surrounding, weirdly enough, freddy himself. it was all kinds of disappointing and underbaked with the message totally mixed up. to be honest, this movie take that same message and redoes it more considerably i reckon. freddy doesn’t get inherently villainized for unrealistic reasons, and he honestly feels even more in character in this movie. like freddy is such a good protagonist and i feel like this movie molds him into the most fitting and well thought out way for him. i greatly appreciate it.

there is probably more i will be talking about later, but this is what my main thoughts are. this movie is fucking amazing and i can’t believe it’s real i’m gonna cry

[inksandpensblog]

You know, I find it funny how we all just forget that, in the first Portal game, the whole “the companion cube can’t speak, and if it does please ignore it” schtick was preceded by a warning that prolonged exposure to the tests often led to test subjects experiencing hallucinations and superstition, leading them to “perceive inanimate objects as alive.”

Like. That wasn’t the facility trying to reverse-psych us. That was supposed to be legit reassurance that the companion cube is not alive, and that if it seems to be alive that’s just us hallucinating. Because we’ve been testing for a prolonged time.

(Which makes GLaDOS bringing it up during the boss fight all the more twisted; because she’d be preying on a completely delusional attachment.)

Chell doesn’t hallucinate, so the companion cube, indeed, does not speak or make any sort of noise. It’s, legit, just a cube. It’s legit not alive.

But a lot of people, post-GLaDOS reveal, take this whole sequence to mean that the cube is alive and that GLaDOS is trying to gaslight us into thinking it’s not. This is by far the most popular interpretation of that test chamber and of those dialogue lines. But considering the first game in isolation, I’m not sure if it’s right.

While it would be insidious to be forced to incinerate a living being only to later have our murderous deed rubbed in our faces, I personally see a completely different level of insidiousness in having a harmful delusion of ours be fed and encouraged to further another being’s manipulation.

…

And then the second game comes along, and suddenly the companion cubes can be heard singing when Chell stands near them.

Okay, well, she has been asleep for 9999, maybe it’s finally enough test exposure for her to start hallucinating. Nobody and nothing in the facility shows any awareness that the cubes are making noise now.

…and then GLaDOS tells you that they’re sentient.

So…taken all together, what’s this supposed to mean? Is it a retcon? Is she lying about them being sentient? Or maybe they’re sentient now, when they weren’t in the first game? Are they actually singing, or is Chell hallucinating after all? Maybe they have been sentient all along but they truly can’t make noise and the song is a hallucination??

[mopeing]

It really frustrates me when I go into threads about JK Rowling, because there are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate her, but most of the comments are completely made up reasons? Please don't lie and spread misinformation even about people you dislike, because it'll make your own position look weaker under scrutiny.

If you need to lie to make a point, people will think it's because you don't have one. So don't lie in the first place.

Not reasons to hate JKR:

- there is a star of David on the floor of Gringotts bank. This was in the movies, it was not described in the books. Unless evidence comes out that she asked Chris Columbus or whoever for that detail to be included, it is not evidence of antisemitism (that is not to say that the goblins in general aren't problematic though)

- she didn't say Hermione was black all along, she said casting a black actress as Hermione doesn't contradict her description (although it does)

- all the retconning and "oh actually X character was Y all along" after the series has ended. This isn't "problematic", it's just cringe. Nothing to get mad about

- she did not retcon Dumbledore as being gay after the series ended. I distinctly remember this being a topic of discussion while the 6th book was coming out. She didn't include it explicitly in the books, but it wasn't an after-the-fact change (Although it is a valid criticism that not including it explicitly in the books means it isn't representation)

- Seamus Finnegan being a clumsy Irishman who makes things explode. This was in the movies, not the books. In the books it was often Neville who was used for this comic relief

- she's a bad writer. I'm not saying this is incorrect, just that it's not a reason to hate her. People don't deserve hate for being bad at something, she deserves hate because she is a bad person. Please do not conflate these two; it is possible for bad people to make good art and it's possible for good people to make poor art. A lot of this insistence comes from people who used to be big fans of Harry Potter who now that they don't like her any more are now saying "well the books were shit all along anyway..." It just seems performative tbh.

- a trans character in Hogwarts Legacy being named "Sirona Ryan". Honestly this is the biggest stretch I've ever seen. Look - there's plenty of things to criticise about this game. The fact that one of the early writers was apparently a bit fashy and is responsible for the leaning even further into the goblin antisemitism for example. But this one character? I highly doubt JKR even had to approve of details that small, let alone the fact that the name likely isn't problematic at all. If you're reading this and, like me, you have no clue whatsoever what is apparently wrong with the name - it begins with "Sir" - implying that trans women are actually men, and ends with "Aryan" - implying that trans people are nazis. At this point, people are actively looking for things to get mad about even when they're not there. I'm not even sure the "sir" in "Sirona" is even supposed to be pronounced like the English word. How about getting mad about the actual obvious actually harmful things she does instead???

Actual reasons to hate her:

- her transphobic tweets

- the fatphobia in the books

- her transphobic articles

- the whole "Hermione is dumb for being anti-slavery" subplot

- her transphobic actions

- lack of regard for other cultures, whether it's the naming of foreign characters and places, or the fact that the wizarding Irish government apparently still isn't independent of the UK's

- her defending and associating with people more mask-off transphobic than she is

- she is a billionaire, and there are no good billionaires

Inb4 "how dare you defend this bad person" - correcting misinformation about a bad person is not defending them. Good people should also care about intellectual honesty. It isn't good to lie about someone just because the person you're lying about is bad.

[goddessofwisdom18]

your favorite character being largely disliked by both the stans and the antis is actually so devastating. where am i supposed to go

there are three main opinions about mor in this fandom:

1. she’s fine bc she’s feyre’s bestie but you don’t really care about her personally (probably bc she’s queer because the stan girlies used to LOVE mor when moriel was semi-canon. i remember. i was there)

2. she’s fine but annoying bc she ~lead azriel on~ (main opinion on the acotar subreddit). never mind that if this was true, it would be as a result of a retcon, because again, pre acowar, moriel was going to be canon. sarah made mor sapphic because we were asking for more lgbt characters. (again. i was there.) and besides, i frankly don't think it is true, because azriel is the fucking spymaster with a million chances of knowledge at his fingertips and mor spent 80% of her time at a gay bar so idk how he couldn't have fucking known?

3. or she’s the fucking worst because she was. idk. mean to nesta. you know who else was mean??? and people love that about her because it's a result of trauma, it makes her flawed and relatable? literally nesta T_T this is not anti nesta i just don’t get it.

4. she's the fucking worst because she… supposedly lied about eris? ?? i'm not even going to begin to unpack this. why y'all IMMEDIATELY take the man's side and think what he's saying is bible… i don't fucking know. learn to decenter men in your life my friend. sometimes women ARE telling the truth even if they're basic or pick mes or whatever.

mor’s traumatized as hell and definitely has as much to back up her occasional cattiness as nesta had to back up her literal life long bullying. but few people will give her a feminist reading. few people will analyze how sarah wrote her story or what that means. few people will even give her credit as a real villain. she’s just an annoying pick-me bitch and that’s the end of it.

think about the lack of grace rhysand gives nesta. think about what that might mean for mor, to whom rhys (and his friends) was a sort of savior, because her life in the hewn city was that bad that somehow dealing with rhysand is better. that was who she grew up with; that was what she was taught to see as good because at least it wasn’t keir.

not to mention that her life is shaped around her survival via her desirability to males. ESPECIALLY as a sapphic woman can you imagine what that would do to her psyche?

but no. no fan posts about her. no headcanons. nothing nada. just me and the mor week posts and the occasional obligatory stan reference bc she's part of the main cast.

i understand being annoyed bc of the double standard in canon between her and nesta's heavy drinking, but even then i see posts all the time about "i would love rhys if it weren't for the narrative's worship of him!" and none for mor because she's just a ghost. she's nothing to anybody. despite being A MAIN CHARACTER!

not to mention but like. generally positioning yourself perpetually in opposition to the paradigm rather than just having values whether they're popular or not is not a great way to go about things. i completely understand liking eris regardless of what he's done - i am a tamlin stan despite the fact that he was very well abusive in acomaf - but the fact that there are antis out there who are so convinced mor is lying, or who want sarah to write that storyline, is so digusting to me. women in groups you don't like, political sides you don't like, women you think are annoying - they still deserved to be believed. don't give into respectability politics. come on now.

[blaperile]

Homestuck: Beyond Canon (reactions pages 554- 576)

Wow, that was quite a heavy update.

I love that we finally got some insight into Yiffy's personality! Feels like she got a lot from Rose there, haha.

Too bad we still don't have dialogue from her yet though, I wonder when we'll get that honour.

But yikes, that tension between Kanaya, Rose and Jade. When Kanaya started putting on her lipstick I got REALLY afraid that the lipstick was going to turn into her chainsaw and that she was going to attack Jade with it. Good thing that didn't happen.

Rose and Kanaya's relationship has gone through a lot across both Meat and Candy!

What's drawing my attention MOST OF ALL though is that shot of Jade's captchalogue card!!

That's clearly a hand with stitches on it… which heavily implies it to be a STUFFED CORPSE. :o

We know Jade and her Grandpa had quite a history with stuffing corpses, so this immediately makes you wonder… whose corpse is this? And just what is the Homestuck Beyond Canon team planning on doing with it?

The most obvious candidate is Candy Dave's corpse! He recently died, from Jade's perspective, and she was most likely the first one to find his corpse. So if her old mannerisms surfaced again, perhaps she immediately stuffed him?

It's kind of a strange pose for this hand, but maybe his corpse is still lying in about the same pose Jade found him in?

If they all end up in a new SBURB session, does this mean we're going to get a new Davesprite???

And what impact would it have on Davebot, if any? Seeing as it's technically Candy Dave's consciousness (in ultimate self form) inhabiting the robot, would it be pulled from the robot into the sprite and cause the robot to explode (just like Aradia experienced when she went God Tier)?

Even the "WEE WOO" text beneath the panel is heavily implying this, using red and orange text, much like Dave and Davesprite's text colors.

An alternate interesting theory raised by abundantChewtoys is that it's Candy Dirk's corpse. I don't think it's very likely considering that they had a funeral for him and all, but it would be another notable corpse here in the candy timeline Jade could technically get her hands on AND it also fits with the text colors (Dirk's orange and Arquiusprite's red).

Finally another excellent point abundantChewtoys raised is that this update made sure to point out that Rose never buried her Mom. But then what DID happen to her body? Was it left on the Battlefield?

I may recall John or pre-retcon Jade having mentioned that they had a funeral for the dead Guardians on the 3-year trip on the Prospitian battleship? I might be remembering that wrong though. I can't find it with the search function, so my mind might be making it up.

But in any case, post-retcon Jade was ALONE on the ship, she had no John or Davesprite with her. So, knowing her family history, it's POSSIBLE she stuffed the corpses of John's Dad and Rose's Mom (and Dave's Bro?)… and that she still has those corpses with her?!

Anyway, most likely it's "just" Candy Dave's corpse, but it's hilarious to think of the other possibilities as well. At least we know for sure it's not a troll corpse considering the white human-like hand, hahahahaha.

I also just want to point out that this green captchalogue card implies this to be Jade's Pictionary modus… which would mean Jade had to DRAW the corpse to captchalogue it… think about that for a minute. Yikes. :(

It's interesting how in both Meat and Candy we currently have someone holding onto a dead corpse (Terezi holding on to John's body and Jade hanging on to this mysterious body who may or may not be Dave). Where is this leading? New Sprites in a SBURB session or something else entirely?

Finally I just want to talk about James Roach his newpost, where he hints one or more [S] pages are upcoming a few months from now!!!

I'm VERY excited about that, but also very curious what it could be about…

Ever since this new creative team took over we've got plenty of updates which seem to be building up to everyone heading to the Plot Point at the meteor. So are we going to get an [S] page featuring an epic confrontation between Jane and the rebels at the meteor, tying up everything that's happened so far in Candy and ending this "Act"?

Maybe that same page will also be the one to finally reveal what the Plot Point truly is. Is it some kind of portal (like from Hiveswap) to the Meat timeline or is it something else entirely?

My mind has been going crazy on theorizing and imagining where this could be going.

If everyone is gathering on the meteor and the Plot Point will activate then and there, what if it will somehow transport the entire meteor to the Meat timeline and have it go to Deltritus??

That would be an absolutely crazy but also amazing way to merge the Meat and Candy storylines into one.

Alternatively, I would find it hilarious if the Candy meteor transports to Meat Earth and it turns out that Calliope and Caliborn grew up there in the distant future (making it a combination of Candy and Meat, which is an appropriate symbol for both Cherubs).

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

What makes you think Azula was lying about hurting Suki? She took her clothes and somehow knew Sokka was her boyfriend and already traumatized about losing his first love

I mean, the episode itself basically screamed "AZULA IS LYING! SHE'S A LYING LIAR WHO LIES!" during that scene was a pretty good hint. She was fighting the Gaang to prevent them from going to finding her father before firebending came back, "warned" them about a trap waiting for them where Ozai was (which we know was bullshit), and only then does she suddenly go "By the way I have your girlfriend as my prisoner and she thinks you failed her!" to hurt Sokka - aka the one who was telling Aang and Toph to just ignore everything she said.

We literally see a few episodes later, and sure, she's in prison, but she's clearly not hurt. And more importantly, during their escape, when Suki says this is a rematch she had been waiting for, she is focused on TY LEE and on not letting her hit her once - which could suggest Ty Lee was the one to take down all the Kyoshi Warriors, with Chi blocking, like she did with the Terra Team in Ba Sing Se.

If Azula had done anything beyond just capturing and maybe taunting her over the defeat, don't you think Suki would have wanted to at least punch her in the face or something? Hell, she's more mad at Zuko than at Azula, since he burned her village.

Not to mention, Sokka taunted her in Ember Island Players over losing to Azula, and Suki just looks bothered by the mention of the defeat, not like she's reliving some terrible trauma. The writers could be insentitive at times, but I think even they wouldn't do something like "This character was tortured/raped in prison and her boyfriend makes fun of her for it."

As for Azula knowing Sokka and Suki were a thing, he LITERALLY told Ty Lee about it at the end of season 2, when she's trying to flirt with him. Plus I can totally see Suki going "My boyfriend is friends with the Avatar, and they'll kick your ass and save me" after her defeat.

(Seriously guys, "Dude that is friends with the Avatar and openly supports him is dating the leader of a group of warriors that also supports the Avatar openly" is not exactly top secret information that Azula would need to torture people to find out about).

Also I don't think she show is implying she knows about Yue and how much it affected Sokka. There's a literal war going on for longer than Azula has been alive, Sokka's home was one of the areas the Fire Nation attacked the most, and he has been traveling the world for months, meeting a ton of new people - it's practically mathematically garanteed that he lost someone at some point. Plus "I captured someone you care about and they lost all hope" is the kind of shit that would upset ANYONE, even if they never lost someone before that.

As for the whole "Azula stole her clothes" thing: The Northern Water Tribe stole clothes and armor of Fire Nation soldiers and the Gaang did the same thing in book 3, and Zuko was also made to wear inmate uniform like Suki. "This character had to take this off at some point" does not mean "They were abused while changing clothes."

For fucks sake people, we see Hakoda humiliate the warden and only be sent to his cell, we see guards mocking Sokka for wanting to beat up a prisoner (who just happened to be the traitor prince) as they see that as "new guy trying too hard" aka that's not something that usually happens in the boiling rock, and even the cooler is a punishment for picking up a fight not a place to throw prisoners in randomly. The ONE torture session we see in the boiling rock happens because an escape plan was discovered - and AZULA was the one to stop it, before she even knew what the hell was going on.

("But she visited Suki in the comics and it was implied that Suki was being starved!" Retcons don't fucking matter, we literally see in the show that Suki was fine, just sad to be imprisoned and away from everyone she knew. She was not tortured.)

Azula is no saint, but this "theory" that she tortured or raped Suki is nothing but fans being oddly fixated on the idea of this kids show secretly being Game Of Thrones.

[k7l4d4]

K Reviews and Rants: Miraculous Ladybug Season 5! Episode 20

And here we are, the episode where Lila does Lila things!

I'll be blunt; this episode, more than any other, illustrates the problem with Lila. Even ignoring all the instances of people being gullible lemmings at the writer's insistence when it comes to Lila, this episode shows how cliched and forced her competence as a manipulator is. Why? Because throughout this episode, despite it opening by revealing that Lila is manipulating three separate women into believing she's their daughter somehow AND making all of them believe she's famous and important... Lila spends the entire opening of the episode drawing as much attention to herself as possible, without any thought towards the possibility that her adoptive mothers will see the pictures and videos being taken of her posted online, when at least ONE OF THEM thinks she's in freaking AFRICA of all places.

This episode showed that not only is Lila not bothering to put in any effort to keep from getting caught, but she's actively making it harder for her lies to be kept by making sure people see her and notice her as much as possible, which is the last thing you want as a liar or manipulator who is keeping multiple contradictory lies running at the same time.

Oh, and Lila somehow being able to pressure a new election for Class Rep into place. Which makes no sense as I literally checked the timeline and she wasn't a student until AFTER the Elections were held, making her entire argument meant to push people into agreeing with her plan fall apart. It's not undemocratic for a person who was never eligible for an election in the first place to not get a chance to run.

Additionally, this episode just highlights how some of the reveals and retcons introduced this season just don't work. The show tries to push the narrative in this episode that Chloe is beyond helping and that Marinette's antagonism towards her is justified... when this same episode literally revealed that Chloe cheating on her coursework has been an open secret, and Marinette neglected her responsibilities as Class Rep in not reporting this to the teacher, when everyone would've backed her up on it. For an episode that had one of the very first "morals" in the series being "for evil to triumph, good has to do nothing," Marinette has apparently been doing a heaping load of nothing... and when the info finally gets out, Marinette basically throws a fit that Chloe... is being made to redo her work, just because her teacher didn't frame it as a punishment, when as an educator, Miss Bustier's focus SHOULD be that Chloe is getting an education... and the fact that she'll be apparently making up YEARS of work means it's still a punishment regardless.

I could go on... but I feel that if I do, I would be writing an entirely new review. Anyway, onto the REAL review, and as always, warning for my profanity.

Episode 20: Revelation

Okay, and the opening scene is of Lila lying to her mother about being in the Savannah. Wow, what a brilliant lie, much effort was put into being believable. Clearly a teenager with no background would be entrusted with aiding in the rescue of endangered animals from poacher traps, that isn't something that is restricted to trained professionals at all! And then we get a deaf woman coming in, who starts signing, and then Lila signs back, calls her mom, and says that the woman she was talking to was her "agent." She says they've "just been reunited," which if this is meant to imply that she's impersonating some woman's actual missing kid, or if there was a missing kid in the first place... this is utter bullshit. And I mean this is beyond the NORMAL fucking bullshit of this nonsense season, in that not only is the idea that Lila COULD EVER FOOL TWO WOMEN, LET ALONE THREE, INTO BELIEVING SHE IS HER DAUGHTER IS RIDICULOUS, HOW IN THE WORLD COULD ANY OF THIS WORK WHEN LILA'S LIES ALL INVOLVE CALLING AS MUCH ATTENTION TO HERSELF AS FUCKING POSSIBLE!? Seriously, the lie she told her "deaf mom" falls apart right from the outset because she says she's going to a "movie shoot in Mexico." Just, just how STUPID is this woman supposed to be!? If her alleged daughter is meant to be a movie star, surely she's been in films before!! It's not as if films don't get subtitles, so it's not as if she could say that this woman just hasn't seen the films because she's deaf (which is exactly the kind of tone-deaf ablest answer I'd expect from Astruc if someone asked about this)...

Yeah, I'm gonna move on before my blood pressure pops.

And we get a scene of Lila walking to an art class, smug in how famous she is with her face plastered all across Paris as the girl on the Alliance Ring... this, this alone shoots down her ability to maintain ANY OF HER LIES because we literally get a scene of her taking a selfie with a woman who she deliberately called attention to herself who recognized her!! This is the kind of thing that gets plastered across social media!! Heck, her fake moms should be plastering her across social media too, because "she's their daughter," of course they are gonna spread the image!! And then we get a scene of her using her fame to get a free bus ride, UGH!!! And then she ends up telling one of her tall tales to the people riding the bus, who are actively filming her, THIS IS FUCKING STUPID!!! PRO TENNIS!? CHARITY WORK!? THIS IS WHY HER LIES ARE SO RIDICULOUS!! SHE IS UTTERLY UNABLE TO AVOID THE SPOTLIGHT EVEN IF IT WOULD KILL HER!!! THE IDEA SHE COULD MAINTAIN ALL THESE LIES THAT INVOLVE NO ONE QUESTIONING HER OR LOOKING INTO HER IS FUCKING NONSENSE, BECAUSE SHE MAKES HERSELF AS VISIBLE AS FUCKING POSSIBLE!!! GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!!!

And we see that the art class is being taught by Sabine (for some reason, how the fuck is she able to teach a class when she helps run a bakery??), and simultaneously tries to butter up to Sabine while bad mouthing Marinette about not taking advantage of her mother's teachings on art. Thankfully, before it can get stupider, all the Alliance Rings announce a short update... I'm feeling some anticipation and dread in equal amounts. Yup, she got replaced by Kagami, PFFFHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!! OH man, that is fucking hilarious. A terrible idea, since this basically shatters the established brand of Lila being the face of Alliance, AND alienates one of Gabe's best operatives; granted, she had it coming by shooting her mouth off at her boss, but still, it's too little too late to cut her off.

And after a brief look of anger, Lila tries to blow it off like she just "forgot about the update." Yeah, no, they cut her off and are hanging her out to dry. PFFHAHAHAHAAA!!! It's hilarious how stupid this is. I'm feeling spiteful right now! Now she's spinning a yarn about being "tired of fame and all the superficial connections" BITCH YOU ARE FUCKING FULL OF IT!!! Like, this isn't even fucking clever!! This is a non-stop gullibility train that involves everyone taking every fucking word out of her mouth as gospel!!

Her going "You're like a mother to me" makes me feel gross inside. With how she treats her current "mothers" that isn't a compliment. Then we pop back in with Gabe, ooh, that Cataclysm damage isn't looking too good, maybe you shouldn't have literally wasted your remaining lifespan with non-stop and pointless resets? Then Nathalie, who is clearly still working for him despite no longer being on his side, what the fuck is up with that, lets him know that "someone" is at the gate. Who could it be... yeah, it's clearly Lila. I'll give her this, when she's feeling slighted, she does not waste time.

Ooh, a double-whammy of an ego train! Lila apparently has quite the high opinion of herself for being "the face of Gabriel's brand," which is completely unjustified seeing as she's a two-bit congirl who only GOT her agreement with Gabe because she lied her ass off about Marinette being "a bad influence," but while Gabe is spot on that she's only the face of his brand because of their deal, him acting as if Lila failing to keep Marinette away from Adrien is anyone's fault but his own is fucking rich, and a "media friendly pairing," AS IF YOUR SON ISN'T ALREADY REJECTING YOUR CONTROL AND HAS MADE IT CLEAR MORE THAN ONCE HE WANTS NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING WITH KAGAMI!! God fucking DAMMIT, how dense is this titanium tightwad!? Okay, he's actually aware that Kagami and Adrien being together is a facade... but the fact that he thinks he'll be able to force it into existing is stupid on so many levels.

"Such intense hate, it's almost tempting. But entrusting power in someone who hates me so much wouldn't be a good idea." AS IF YOU HAVEN'T FUCKING DONE THAT WHO KNOWS HOW MANY TIMES ALREADY!? FUCKING DAMMIT, GABE, HOW FUCKING STUPID ARE YOU!? I'd say that he's being smart, but if this episode is the one I think it is, we all know he'll break that bullshit. Also, apparently he can sense emotions even outside of his Hawkmoth form, which is all kinds of disturbing, honestly. And we get one-hundred percent confirmation that Lila knows Gabe's true identity! ...Yeah, this is not gonna end well, at all.

Okay, it looks like Marinette and Adrien are about to learn about the Alliance update... oh boy. Here comes the fireworks. Oh, and a creepy comment from some girl about shipping Adrien and Kagami and needing to write a fanfic about them. Also, confirmation that Adrien did NOT know about the update.

Ignoring Rose's uncomfortable description of Marinette and Adrien's relationship as "the most romantic love story ever," YES, Gabe knows god damn well his son isn't dating Kagami anymore (not that it was much of a relationship to start with), he just doesn't fucking care. WHY IS THIS SOME KIND OF SHOCK!? THE DUDE HAS BEEN A COMPLETE AND UTTER ASSHOLE SINCE DAY FUCKING ONE!! I'd say I hope this makes them kick him out of the Resistance (which mysteriously has had no real relevance since its establishment), but we all know the odds of THAT happening.

Yes, Adrien, Rose is fully aware that the Avatars aren't actually you and Kagami, that doesn't mean they can't be used as a way to harass you and Marinette or feed into tabloid bullshit. Okay, it looks like we are about to get the reveal to Ms. Bustier that Sabrina has been doing Chloe's homework. And... Sabrina literally admits to making cheat sheets for Chloe upon Miss Bustier pointing out that two tests both have Sabrina's names on them... when Chloe could've just said that she had been daydreaming and put Sabrina's name on her own test. It's not as if she wouldn't have believed it!! At worst she would've just made them redo the tests!!

Seriously, WHY THE FUCK IS CHLOE JUST ADMITTING TO ALL THIS!? HOW STUPID DO THEY THINK SHE IS!? And THERE IS NO FUCKING WAY SHE AND SABRINA WOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO KEEP UP THE PRETENSE OF CHLOE DOING ALL HER OWN HOMEWORK FOR LITERAL YEARS!! NO FUCKING WAY!! THAT IS NOT REASONABLE BY ANY SANE METRIC!!! THAT IS JUST STUPIDITY FUCKING SQUARED!!!! And that's not even getting into the question on how Sabrina is apparently the better student of the two, so unless she's deliberately doing the homework badly so as to fit Chloe's skill level, Chloe should be getting bumped up grades from Sabrina doing her homework. I'd comment on the cheat-sheets, but given that they are stated to be for end of the year exams, odds are she usually doesn't have cheat sheets and just doesn't bother putting in any effort at all.

And, after taking in a breath, and processing everything, Miss Bustier states that Chloe is going to need a lot of help to get caught back up... Marinette butts in. Oh boy... And she pointblank admits that literally everyone knew Chloe was cheating... and NONE OF THEM TOLD THE TEACHER!? IF EVERYONE FUCKING KNEW, MARINETTE, THEN YOU COULD'VE JUST TOLD MISS BUSTIER THIS ENTIRE FUCKING TIME!! YOU DON'T GET TO BE MAD AT CHLOE FOR "TAKING ADVANTAGE OF SABRINA" WHEN YOU HAVE APPARENTLY BEEN ENABLING HER THIS ENTIRE FUCKING TIME!!!!

Also, Marinette, this "help" is literally just going to be tutoring and forcing her to make up all the work she's fallen behind on. So getting off on an angry rant on Chloe "getting off easily," despite this basically amounting to Chloe having most of her free time taken away to catch up her grades, IS FUCKING STUPID. Also, Lila gave an evil smirk, so she's gonna do something, you can literally tell.

Wow, they are really hammering home the "Chloe is a rich idiot" button as hard as they can. This is literally fucking stupid. This, I cannot even begin to go into how low-effort this is. This isn't Chloe. This is a cardboard cutout they slapped her name on and played voice recordings to imitate speech for.

Also, it's really fucking stupid how both Chloe AND Marinette seem to think Chloe will have any choice in making up her lost work. And now Lila is butting in, acting shocked that Chloe didn't tell her about "having trouble in school." And Chloe, because of course she's that stupid, doesn't pick up on Lila's blatant attempt to pretend this is actually about Chloe struggling and not just being lazy, so she sends Chloe an email. There's also a snobby speech about school being pointless, but I am actively trying to tune it OUT.

Oooh, Lila calls out Marinette (politely, of course) about Marinette not telling the teachers about Chloe's cheating, despite clearly knowing about it... that's actually clever. "She doesn't have difficulties, only privileges," wow, they are literally having Marinette parrot Astruc's BS, and Marinette... TELLING THE TEACHER A CLASSMATE IS CHEATING IS LITERALLY YOUR FUCKING JOB AS CLASS REP, YOU ARE THE ONE IN THE WRONG HERE. Also, badmouthing the teachers, in FRONT of your teacher!? They are really showing off that Marinette's no smarter than Chloe in this. Also, Chloe saying her father would kick the teachers out of school, despite her dad not having that power.

Lila throwing doubt on Marinette not being fit to be Class Rep anymore would be good... if she weren't making it about Marinette's relationship with Adrien, instead of, you know, NOT DOING HER DUTIES AS CLASS REP WHEN IT COMES TO CHLOE DESPITE HAVING THE AUTHORITY AND ABILITY TO EXPOSE HER LONG BEFORE SHE AND ADRIEN GOT TOGETHER!!! And NOW we get the claim of Lila trying to replace Marinette as class rep. This feels like another case of the writers trying to insist "we're totally in on the joke!" despite not getting the joke at all.

If it weren't reliant on all the phony good will and trust she's generated by lying her ass off and people taking her at her word, this would actually be a good plan on Lila's part. Then she goes and tries to throw shade on the election being "undemocratic for not giving her a chance" since she didn't get a chance to run the last time  around... WHEN SHE WAS NOT EVEN A STUDENT AT THE TIME!! Seriously, Marinette, YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS!!!

"I always thought Chloe was a gifted student!" Miss Bustier... HOW BLIND ARE YOU!? CHLOE IGNORES CLASS, IS RUDE TO HER CLASSMATES, AND FREQUENTLY IGNORES WHAT THE CLASS IS SUPPOSED TO BE DOING ALL THE FUCKING TIME!!! HOW BLIND ARE YOU!?

And we see that Alya and Nino still swallow Lila's bullshit hook line and sinker. And they literally brush off Adrien sticking up for Marinette, WOW, WHAT GREAT FRIENDS THESE TWO ARE, HUH!? What a "great bestie" and "great bro" they are for their best friends!! Clearly these are two people Marinette and Adrien should trust!!

Also, them describing "saying anything to stick up for his sweetheart" and describing it as being a real couple is disgusting. Legitimately disgusting. If the writers think unconditionally backing up your partner even when they are in the wrong or lying for them is something a real couple should do, or is "sweet," that is disturbing on multiple levels.

"We can't talk about it openly, Lila is too good of a liar!" NO SHE ISN'T!!! YOU CAN LITERALLY DISPROVE MULTIPLE OF HER LIES JUST BY CALLING JAGGED STONE, WHO YOU PERSONALLY KNOW, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!!!

Wow, loving how Alya and Marinette are just shutting down any possibility of Chloe ever changing, what great heroic spirits these two have, because clearly refusing to believe someone has changed or can change is heroic!

Alya trying to convince Marinette to trust her falls apart upon the fact that Alya STILL believes Lila unconditionally, despite literally now knowing that one of the very FIRST lies Lila ever told her (that she's best friends with Ladybug) is fake, BECAUSE MARINETTE, WHO IS LADYBUG, IS LITERALLY TELLING HER SHE DOESN'T TRUST LILA AT ALL!! FUCK! THIS!! NOISE!!!

Also, the juxtaposition of Alya sticking up for Lila by insisting that she's a nice girl with Lila literally describing wanting to "exterminate Marinette like the vermin that she is" is disturbing, not funny. It makes Alya come off as delusional and Lila as UTTERLY PSYCHOTIC. Describing another human being as "Vermin to be exterminated" IS DISTURBING, NOT FUNNY.

Them trying to give Sabrina a sad face over Chloe listening to Lila falls apart from the simple fact that Sabrina has always been Chloe's accomplice without any word of complaint prior to this Season.

Miss Bustier, LILA WAS NOT EVEN A STUDENT DURING THE LAST ELECTION!!! THIS IS NOT BEING FAIR, THIS IS BEING STUPID!!! SHE CAN LITERALLY COMPETE NEXT YEAR WITHOUT ANY ISSUE!! Or she could theoretically, anyway. Also, Marinette is going to bomb this election; this entire episode has done nothing but hammer home how Lila functionally rules the school when it comes to the writers bending over backwards to put things in her favor. There is no chance she WON'T win.

Also, it's disturbing how the writers are using Lila as a strawman against the idea of redemption. Specifically, as a strawman against CHLOE'S redemption. This is just plain unhealthy. Also, Chloe's reaction to Lila asking her to be her deputy makes no sense; even ignoring the context of Lila basically telling Chloe "do whatever I say if you want to get rid of Marinette," CHLOE has always been the class rep prior to Marinette, and if she's not reacting with annoyance at being the "deputy" instead of the Class Rep entirely, she should be having a smirk at regaining her "rightful power and position." But that would undermine the message that "Chloe is a lazy brat with no redeeming qualities and who is lazy."

Wait, Nino phrasing how weird it is that Chloe would willingly agree to not be the one in charge does highlight how odd this is... but COME THE FUCK ON, HOW DOES ANYONE NOT SMELL HOW SUSPICIOUS THIS FUCKING IS!? SHE'S GOT THE CREEPIEST FUCKING GRIN ON HER FACE, WHAT IS WITH THAT!? Also, the fact that Alya's immediate reaction is that Chloe's an impostor instead of this being a set-up is eye-roll inducing. Marinette literally having a meltdown and rabidly angry at her desk (she is LITERALLY vibrating on screen) over Lila's lies really goes to show why people don't believe her; heck, if Lila weren't such a transparently bad liar, I'd be hard pressed to believe her myself! Granted, it took about five seasons for her to get to this point, but you get the picture, right?

Wow, the insistence that it's because of Marinette's love life that she couldn't "fix Chloe" is kinda hilarious, since that's arguably accurate. The show has sacrificed EVERYTHING on the altar of pushing Marinette's obsession with getting with Adrien above all else. So in a meta way, it WAS because of Marinette's love life that Chloe never got "fixed"! Of course, that's under the assumption they would've let Chloe change to begin with.

Seriously, Chloe's smile in this is DISTURBING. It looks wrong on every level, and NO ON SHOULD BE DUMB ENOUGH NOT TO REALIZE HOW FAKE IT IS!! Seriously, does NO ONE think that maybe she's just playing along to spite Marinette!? NO ONE!? And it all gets brushed aside in favor of Lila's lies about how "trustworthy" she is, and her "humanitarian work." This episode's moral feels like it boils down to "trust no one because no one can be trusted."

Her saying she's gone into conflict zones is an immediate red flag, literally no ethical humanitarian organization would EVER have someone her age actually near a conflict zone, and her bringing this up in regards to redeeming Chloe feels like it's a stealth attempt at an insult.

And now we get Marinette's speech, talking about how they hoped Chloe would become a better person, and saying how Ladybug, Miss Bustier, and basically the class reached out to her. Right off the bat, this is wrong. Oh sure, they TECHNICALLY reached out to her... and going by this show's track record, that "reaching out" amounted to a single gesture of basic decency and then leaving Chloe to her toxic homelife without ever actually addressing ANY OF HER PROBLEMS. Heck, Adrien in particular is the worst example in that he literally extracted a promise from her to be better, and then did FUCKING NOTHING WITH IT for literal months, only bothering to use it when she'd already decided "Fine, if you want me to be bad, then I'll be bad." FUCK THIS BULLSHIT.

When did they reach out to her? HOW did they reach out to her!? Seriously, this entire fucking sequence just feels like them insisting that "everyone already gave her a chance, never mind when it happened, she squandered it and that's all there is to it!!" The fact that they literally had Chloe NOD HER HEAD IN AGREEMENT to Marinette's cruel description of her really hammers home that Chloe is just a strawman at this point. It's really funny how Marinette describes helping Chloe as "wasting her energy in vein," when it's very obvious to anyone who has seen the show that she's done basically NOTHING when it comes to redeeming Chloe, and as stated earlier, literally has been neglecting her duties by enabling Chloe's bad behavior.

Also, her description of "I'd rather help the majority who are nice rather than help the one difficult person who needs it most" is really disgusting. And then we get Lila withdrawing her candidacy from the Election SHE insisted on having. This is literally a blatant attempt at manipulating the votes by artificially generating sympathy. The fact that she's putting words in Marinette's mouth (calling Lila an idiot, which she never did), it's honestly hard to take Lila's manipulations seriously when they have weird sketchy sounding music on. Instead of making this feel like a dangerous moment of Lila turning the class to her side by acting like a wounded gazelle, it feels like it just highlights how thick the class is when it comes to Lila's character.

This, ALL of this, would make so much more sense and be workable, if they hadn't also shown, however unintentionally, that Lila's lies are a house of cards propped up by luck and the gullibility of her audience. The fact that the people who literally watched Marinette's speech, which didn't include the word "idiot" even once, are taking Lila's crocodile tears at face value is stupid beyond words.

Miss Bustier is honestly being a good teacher in this episode; her insisting that Marinette go after Lila is spot on in this case, as while it would be best if Miss Bustier went herself, class is still going on, and as Class Rep, Marinette IS obligated to provide some degree of support for Lila, even someone she dislikes, when the entire reason she's even in this situation (ignoring Lila's idiotic lies and blatant manipulations) is because she shirked her responsibilities as Class Rep by letting Chloe's actions continue rather then reporting them as she should. It's telling that the show is framing Miss Bustier as being a reasonable, if slightly naive, authority figure as being in the wrong here.

Oh, now we see Lila stashing her phone in the locker, camera pointed out. THAT probably doesn't mean anything! (Sarcasm)

Oooh, now we see Monarch spitting on his own promise NOT to give powers to someone who deeply hates him, who didn't see THAT coming!? For real, he's SHOWN that he can sense WHO is feeling certain emotions at a given time, so he should know damn well that this is Lila, and she would ABSOLUTELY turn those powers against him the second she gets the chance! What is this moron thinking!? Seriously, he KNOWS she hates him, and FELT her hatred TOWARDS him earlier, WHY THE FUCK DOES HE THINK THAT SHE WON'T GO AFTER HIM, JUST BECAUSE HE'S NOT THE IMMEDIATE SOURCE OF HIS RAGE THIS TIME!?

Also, why the fuck did he describe her emotion as "despair?" He can literally sense emotions, and KNOWS that what she's feeling is hatred. Also, the powerset he gave "Hoaxer" is literally just making her figurative ability to make people believe whatever she says, no matter how contrived or stupid, literal. It's idiotic.

I'm confused on when exactly he gave her the power to teleport. Also, the fact that Marinette literally walked in and she decided that using her powers to turn people against Marinette and attack her FOR her really shows how stupid she is.

Seeing as this entire "fight" is just gonna be Lila brainwashing people (not gonna comment on why Mylene and Ivan weren't affected, since them being "no tech" has never been hinted at before EVER), I'm gonna skip to the end of it for the sake of my sanity.

Okay, I'll add one thing, Hoaxer using her powers to brainwash Nathalie into sending her all the dirt she has on Gabe without letting him know is actually clever. It's the ONE THING I'll give her.

Alright, I'm at the end of the episode, and Lila fakes "rejecting an Akuma," which at least in her case makes more sense then the numerous other times it's happened, as she accepted it willingly to start with. And now, here at the end, we get Adrien telling Marinette he was wrong to give Lila a chance, which wouldn't be a problem... if it weren't for the fact that Marinette NEVER gave Lila a chance and routinely tried to call her on her lies, this feels like another meanspirited "Bad people never change, they just stay bad meanies!!" rant.

And they make it about Adriennette, again, of course. It's "funny" how they put a superficial coat of paint over the show's flaws by trying to reframe the character's actions rather then, you know, LET THEM HAVE JUST PLAIN FUCKED UP. Even this is more them acting as if Adrien did a lot to help Lila and Chloe... when literally all he did was stand to the side and, AT MOST, put in a lukewarm effort to get Chloe to shape up that he never followed up on. It's pathetic. AND ANOTHER CASE OF ASTRUC USING MARINETTE TO PARROT HIS OWN BIASED AS FUCK TALKING POINTS, HOW ORIGINAL!!! Because NO, "the good you see in others is just a reflection of your own" is cynical BS spouted by narcissists and egotists who don't wanna admit to being in the wrong or having fucked things up with their personal relationships by making the other person out to be the sole fucking bad guy.

And of course they gave Lila the unanimous vote, because why the hell not. And it ends with Marinette shutting down Alya congratulating her for giving Lila a chance by spelling out that she was just letting Lila have her way so she has a better shot at exposing her lies, and Lila retrieving the email Nathalie sent her. And with that, I'm done with this episode, and it's time for me to grab dinner for tonight. I hope you enjoyed seeing me lose my shit over this. It was actually fun to just vent on how stupid this episode was!