#but anyway. wip be upon ye

[direwombat]

tagged by @socially-awkward-skeleton (tysm~!)

tagging @trench-rot, @cassietrn, @strangefable, @voidika, @madparadoxum, @adelaidedrubman, @aceghosts, @josephslittledeputy, @inafieldofdaisies, @g0dspeeed, @simplegenius042, @miyabilicious, @strafethesesinners, @confidentandgood, @jillvalentinesday, @poetikat, and anyone else with something to share! (to be added/removed from the taglist, please like/unlike this post here!)

once again i am bringing you some werewolf au, first a bit of syb just trying so hard to do her job, and another snippet from jacob's pov of him continuing to be a violent and possessive creep <3 (also just for context, at the start of the first snippet, they're talking about renovations being done to st francis.

“Quite the project you’ve got goin’ here,” she remarks. “How long’ve’ya been workin’ on the place?”

“Couple months,” he answers, but doesn’t offer anything further. 

Jesus, this is gonna be like pullin’ teeth, ain’t it? So, she tries again. “Y’all’ve worked fast,” she hums, pointedly admiring the work done and emphasizing her awe -- give his ego a little stroke. “Good craftsmanship too, by the look of it. Think you’ll finish it all before winter?”

He tilts his chin up, puffing his chest out -- preening ever so slightly at her words. Yeah, that’s what I thought, she thinks. 

“That’s the goal,” he nods. 

But, once again, he doesn’t volunteer any more information. So, she presses once more. “What’re ya gonna do with it once it’s done?”

He pulls to an abrupt stop outside a set of french doors and gives her a stern look and folds his arms over his chest. “Is this pertinent to your investigation, Deputy?”

She blinks, taken a bit back. “Well, no --” 

“Then I’m not obligated to answer that.” He grasps the door’s handle, pushes it open, and steps inside. 

Sybille narrows her eyes, focusing on the point on his back where his shoulder blades meet. “You realize that makes you sound suspicious,” she says evenly, and she follows him into a large office. The walls are covered in renovation plans -- blueprints, schematics, and various paint swatches cover every last inch. Even more documents and plans lay scattered across the desk, and tucked away in the corner is a small cot. The bed has been made, the corners of the worn green blanket are tucked neatly at the corners. Army regulation.

Wonder if he slept here last night?

“And you realize you can’t do a damn thing about it,” he says shortly. “Private property is private property, Deputy. What we do here is our business.” He strides over to the desk and fishes a ring of keys out from one of the top drawers. “Now, if you have any questions that are actually relevant to your investigation, I’d be happy to answer them. You and I both have more important things to do than engage in chit-chat.”Giving the bulk of the keys a little flip around where his finger is hooked through the ring, he walks back over to her and gestures to the door. “After you.” 

Were she a smaller or less hardened woman, she might have been cowed by how he towers over her. There are some people who intimidate as easily as they breathe, and it’s become clear to her that Jacob Seed is just That Kind of man. Even his “after you,” a phrase and gesture that’s so becoming of a Southern Gentleman from Georgia, hides within it a direct order. A command she is expected to obey, lest she break the social parlance.

It’s not a fight worth having, so she nods and shuffles out of the office. The door clicks shut behind the two of them, and they begin walking back towards the courtyard. 

“So,” she tries again, once again falling in step beside him, “how late were you here last night?”

“All night,” he grunts. 

So, he did sleep here last night. “Anyone else with you?” To confirm your alibi? She doesn’t say. 

“No.” 

“You hear anything strange last night?” 

“No,” he repeats. 

She frowns. “What about any wolves howlin’?” 

He glances down at her from the corner of his eye and snorts. “This is wolf country, Deputy. I hear wolves around here nightly. It’d be strange if I didn’t hear them howling.”

“How about screamin’? Or gunshots goin’ off?”

“Do you know what a mountain lion sounds like, Deputy?” Jacob asks. 

“Pardon?”

“If you don’t know what you’re hearing, the call of a mountain lion sounds a lot like a human scream. Most accounts of people claiming a forest is haunted because they heard shrieking, are just people hearing mountain lions,” he explains dismissively. 

“Fascinating,” she answers flatly. “Doesn’t answer my question, though.” 

He sighs heavily, as if frustrated that his half-assed question for an answer wasn’t satisfactory to her. “No, Deputy. I didn’t hear any screaming or gunshots last night.” 

and a bonus jakey pov of him continuing to be creepy <;e3

As tempted as he is to give the Deputy the run around -- to see just how fast and far she’d run to catch him -- she doesn’t give him the option to. Her cruiser’s front bumper never strays more than a few feet of his own back one, making it explicitly clear that she isn’t just going to let him take off with the beast currently held on the bed of his truck. 

Besides, after smelling the shift in her scent when he picked the Feral up and carried it to his truck, he decided that playing nice, at least for the time being, would give him what he wants. The quickening of her pulse and the sweet, albeit suppressed smell of her arousal at his display of strength told him everything he needed to know. She’ll deny it -- loyal women like her always will -- but there’s a part of her that’s drawn to him. 

She likes that he’s strong. 

Picking up a dead body is nothing, his Wolf salivates. Let her see what we could do to Eli. Show her how strong we really are.

His grip around the steering wheel tightens until his knuckles turn white and he glances at his rear-view mirror. She’s driving with one hand on the wheel while her other arm is draped through her open window, a cigarette dangling from her fingers. Do it, the Wolf urges. We know where he lives. We can end this little problem right now. His fingers move of their own accord and he barely catches himself before subconsciously flipping his signal to turn back north. 

No, he barks back. She’s human and has human sensibilities. She wouldn’t react to the normal mating rituals the same way a fellow werewolf would. He needs to be patient. Careful. If he’s going to pursue her, he has to treat it more akin to a hunt, rather than a courtship. He needs to lure her out; get her to trust him so that when she gets injured or frightened she comes running to him rather than Eli -- he needs to prove to her that he can protect and provide for her. 

It isn’t enough to force her to be his. He needs her to choose him over Eli. Her submission to him needs to be voluntary. That way, when he finally does destroy the Hunter, he’ll do it in every way conceivable. He’ll break his spirit first, then his body. Maybe he’ll claim her in front of him. Just to see the betrayed look in his eyes when Jacob kills the love he thought he had. Just to make him hear how his dear, sweet Deputy howls like a bitch in heat, begging him to bury his knot inside her cunt and fill her with his pups.

Eli Palmer will die a humiliated and broken man.

His Wolf makes a low, pleased growl and is placated by the thought. Fine. The sheep suit can stay on, for now.

[wombywoo]

beach boys 🏖️

[arsonkuma]

chilling by the campfire with gale...

[wifihunters]

my aesthetic choices for this poor old man are not helping beat any allegations of him just being 40k thnatos lmao

[internetgiraffekid1673]

KittyBella AU: Revamping the Magic System/Lore

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

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

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

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

So without further ado, here are the changes!

Things that 100% WILL be in KittyBella:

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

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

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

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

All miraculous users can now purify akumas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Peacock cannot create sentient life

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

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

Guardian Order Re-Write

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kwamis are more actively involved in using their powers

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

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

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

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

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

The butterfly and the peacock are not miraculous.

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

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

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

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

Some of the miraculous powers need to be changed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Miraculous Powers overhaul

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

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

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

Here's my crack at just editing their powers:

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

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

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

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

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

Five Charges of Your Power

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

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

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

Adjusting the peacock's powers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[mamawasatesttube]

bleughghhh im sick and my brain isnt working so i cant work on actual fics with plots rn but i wanna write... help

i will probably nab results in…. an hourish? unless i forget which is possible. we'll see!!

[backpackingspace]

I am once again thinking about my swinger! con artists! Odypen and diomedes being their much younger bratty thrid au

[lionacuty]

kitties

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

Seven Sentence WIP Game

Tagged by @sageadvice thank you!

Wasn't sure if this was supposed to be the last 7 sentences I wrote or just pick 7 from anywhere, so combining the two with almost the last 7 from the last page I worked on, in the ongoing jumping around mess i've created of scenes between my Juniper Aldwir & Lucanis:

"I think you're funny. And clever. And kind." Rook opens her eyes, meeting his directly, and he has to remind himself to breathe. "And a really good cook." Lucanis shoves down the surge of emotions that well inside him. "It's nice to be useful," he tells her, resuming rubbing small circles at her temples. She closes her eyes again, tilting her head back into the pressure of his hands. "You don't have to be useful, either. Just yourself."

tagginggggg @baejax-the-great @m-m-m-myysurana @songofamazon @luzial @serbarris! and anyone else who wants to consider yourself tagged and @ me in it bc i have suuuuch a hard time remembering who writes vs draws vs etc whenever i get tagged in things. and need more people to bother with them lol

[pensamentos-de-droides]

Ocs doodle I'll finish eventually

[eightfreak]

Hopefully this doesnt double post

[bluebellwrenart]

It’s not Wednesday, but here’s a WIP anyway

[cheriboms]

doctober day 29: 2023

remembered this exchange from ahsoka show and uh yeah QwQ

[midnightwind]

writing being meh today so we're engaging in other enrichment featuring: Renn's outfit she wears in the Lighthouse and likely the base layer of her gear

[direwombat]

ough...my wednesdays...they've been wipped

kicking off a wip wednesday with a little bit of katc and a little bit of th&tw for your reading pleasure today (altho warnings for vomiting in the first snippet and uh...allusions to murder in the second)

tagging @inafieldofdaisies, @theresaruggedroad, @wrathfulrook, @madparadoxum, @socially-awkward-skeleton, @strangefable, @jillvalentinesday, @adelaidedrubman, @g0dspeeed, @gaeadene, @ivymarquis, @aceghosts, @voidika, @confidentandgood, @purplehairsecretlair, @cassietrn, @neverthesameneveranother, @deputyash, @miyabilicious, @simplegenius042, @trench-rot, @euryalex, @clonesupport, @josephslittledeputy, @alexxmason, and anyone else with something to share (and again, here's the opt-in/opt-out of wip tags post which i'll be using starting in october)

An already quick drive is made even quicker by her lead foot. She speeds out of town, roaring down the empty roads. If she believed in such things, she might’ve considered it a miracle that she doesn’t come across any Project trucks along her way, but she’ll take the good fortune where she can. There’s a distinct pit in her gut that tells her such luck will be in short supply in the coming days. 

She pulls into the driveway and her stomach drops when she realizes that Augustine’s Jeep is nowhere to be seen. Dammit. There was a part of her that desperately hoped he was able to make it home and hunker down until she got there. 

Apparently God’s good will  doesn’t extend quite that far. 

Throwing herself out of the car, she staggers up the front steps and through the door that hangs ajar off its hinges. Immediately, she’s on high alert, a shot of adrenaline pumping through her veins and dulling the pain in her gut. She pulls her sidearm from the holster at her thigh and carefully proceeds inside, prepared to clear her home of any and all threats. 

Broken glass from the windows crunches under her boots, and the entire place has been torn apart. The kitchen cupboards are thrown open, thoroughly cleaned of all non-perishable goods. The refrigerator is in a similar state, door wide open while the food left behind already smells like it’s beginning to spoil. The television screen has been smashed and couch cushions have been thrown to the floor. 

Peggie handiwork, no doubt. 

She moves through the house, into the bathroom, but something nags at the back of her mind. The Hell were they lookin’ for? The pantry raiding, she understands, but why rip apart the living room? She files that question away to ponder later. The pain in her abdomen is nigh unbearable, and before she can open the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, she’s vomiting beer and bar food into the sink. 

Every heave and cough only makes it worse. She fumbles with the faucet, turning the knob to wash away the mess. With her head still bowed, a trembling hand reaches out to pilfer the cabinet. But as she gropes blindly for the bottle of Tylenol she remembers buying, she finds that these shelves have also been emptied. 

She sucks in deep, gasping breaths and lifts her head. Through bleary eyes, she finds all her prescriptions gone as well. 

The only thing left behind is Augustine’s emergency box of Claritin. 

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, really?” 

and some of the horror and the wild

She leans up against the car, pulls a carton of cigarettes from her uniform’s breast pocket, and lights up. Extending the carton to Staci, he gratefully takes one and she holds out her lighter for him as well. They stand, smoking in silence for a long moment before she heaves a sigh and exhales a thick plume of smoke. “Somethin’ ‘bout this don’t sit right,” she says. 

“I’ve lived here all my life. Never seen anything like that,” Staci says. He rolls his cigarette between his fingers, looking at her anxiously from the corner of his eyes. “You really think a wolf could’ve done all that?”

“On the record? Couldn’t say,” she shrugs. “But off?” She sighs heavily and shakes her head. “Ain’t no way this was just a wolf -- or even a pack of them.”

“What do you mean?”

They watch as the pieces of Chad are carried from his cabin in a body bag. 

“I ain’t sayin’ there weren’t an animal attack,” she starts, “but wolves ain’t exactly known for B’n’E -- whole no-thumbs thing makes it kinda hard. Besides, weren’t no glass on the floor from the windows; the only thing broken down was the front door -- which I will remind you is made of fortified steel -- and on top of that, Chad ain’t exactly easy prey. Why would some wolves go to the trouble, expend that much energy tryin’ to get inside a cabin to go after a strong, healthy man when there are weak, sick deer that are much easier to catch?”

“What do you think happened, then?” 

“Need more evidence before I can say anything for certain, but -- gut instinct -- I’d say someone broke down the door and let the wolves in.”

Staci’s eyes go wide. “You think this was murder?”

“Like I said, we need more evidence, but this sure as Hell feels targeted to me. Someone wanted Chad dead and they didn’t want it easily traced back to them.” 

Pratt blinks and exhales deeply, sliding down against the cruiser. “Pack of wolves as a murder weapon,” he breathes with disbelief. “Fucking Montana.”

[derelictheretic]

wip round up

Tagged by the lovely @englass !!

Tagging @adelaidedrubman @henbased @megraen @deputyash @inafieldofdaisies @aceghosts @alexxmason @carlosoliveiraa @shallow-gravy and anyone else who wants to!!

It's been a bit since I did a tag game, finally got time and active wips for once so here we go :D

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your wip folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! Tag as many people as you have WIPS or how many you want

▪︎ SMFYaM Lola Jail Scene

▪︎ Road trip

▪︎ And There Was Only One Bed (x reader)

▪︎ From Summer To Spring / When The Leaves Fell

▪︎ Zombie Messiah's Are Too Much Trouble Part 2 (x reader)

▪︎ Stuffy

▪︎ SMFYaM CH?

▪︎ Dean tears a dudes throat out

▪︎ Joseph staring at Dean like a creep. again

▪︎ In The Wreckage of the Wicked World

▪︎ In The Woods Somewhere (x reader)

▪︎ When I First Saw You Honey