#fortuna spoilers

[polynumerus]

My dealer: Got some straight gas 🔥😛 this strain is called “Fortuna” 😳 you’ll be zonked out of your gourd 💯 Me: Yeah whatever. I don’t feel shit. 5 minutes later: Dude I swear I just saw The Sun God My buddy, Helios v1, pacing: The other gods are lying to us, student.

[fortuna-et-cataclysmos]

Season 5 and the symbolism of pancakes

Guys, I swear I have a life outside of speculating the meaning behind pancakes in Miraculous...

But seriously, they're important. They symbolise the future (as made explicit in Pretention).

[Small note: they look like pancakes, they're called "pancakes" in the French dub, I don't know if they taste like pancakes, but I do know that they are not "French toasts" as the English dub claims. So I'll stick to "pancakes"]

Illusion

So we are introduced to the pancakes in Illusion, where for the first time Adrien sees his father in the kitchen, preparing breakfast.

Seems benign enough. Gabriel is even considered enough to ask Adrien how he likes his pancakes. He likes them "well-toasted."

Illusion is an episode where Gabriel fakes having changed, and him giving Adrien a choice is in line what that change. Of course, he still manipulates him into making him think that he has the freedom to not be the face of the Alliance, by basically threatening to withhold his newly expressed fatherly love if Adrien refuses to agree with him (more on that in this post). Pancakes are just a device for Gabriel to add to his illusion of good parent, and the illusion that Adrien has a choice.

Passion

Adrien and Gabriel are in the kitchen. Adrien is looking at his extremely decorated pancakes.

As we learn from Nathalie a second later, he likes his pancakes plain. She tells him to not eat them "to please his father", while Gabriel seemingly naively points out that if Adrien didn't want bananas, he could have told him.

Sure he could tell him, except that the last time Adrien asked for something from Gabriel -to not be the face of Alliance-, he emotionally manipulated him to withdraw his request, and even made him wear the said Alliance.

The bananas and the fancy toppings are basically a metaphor for the fancy model life Gabriel wants to give Adrien, while Adrien really doesn't want any of it. And just as many people like toppings on their pancakes, they also would like to have a life of fame, hence think Adrien is lucky (as seen in the S4 Finale). Meanwhile, Adrien doesn't want any of it, he likes his pancakes and and his life plain and simple, "au naturel".

Nonetheless, Adrien still continues eating his father's pancakes, saying that he doesn't mind, that he likes them.

Pretension

This is where the pancake business gets serious.

First, we learn that indeed, Gabriel's pancakes taste bad. Plagg cheers for being saved from eating another serving of Gabriel's pancakes. This is bordering to over analysis but, given that Plagg couldn't eat them while Gabriel is in the kitchen, I assume that's Adrien's opinion which he must have confessed to Plagg at a more appropriate time. And still, Adrien keeps eating his father's pancakes.

Later in the episode, the pancake/future metaphor is expressed very clearly by Gabriel. He tells Marinette that she can have her pancake and life however she wants it, but the one thing she can't do is to share it with Adrien.

He says very clearly:

You think that you have a choice, but all you have is the illusion of a choice. And I decide which choices you get.

And where do we get this exact claim in practice? In the episode Illusion, where Gabriel manipulates Adrien into thinking that he has a say over his future, while Gabriel is the one making all the choices that matter.

And he gives two "choices" to Marinette:

To eat the pancake, receive Gabriel's backing and be a famous designer

To refuse the pancake and have nothing

Once more, the way he frames it, Gabriel gives the illusion that Marinette has a choice, while neither of the two choices includes being with Adrien. So he basically leaves her with no choice but to break up with him.

Now comes the breaking point. Marinette fully understands that the pancakes are a metaphor for her and Adrien's future, and she continues the same metaphor to get her message across to Gabriel (talk about power move).

First, she refuses to eat them. She has "lost her appetite."

This refusal is in contrast with Adrien who kept eating them even though he didn't like them. Unlike him, Marinette "doesn't even need to try them to know that they are bad."

Normally, this is to be understood as her making the choice no 2: refuse the pancake and have nothing.

As such, she is escorted out the kitchen. The scene composition clearly shows that she is stuck between Gabriel on the one side, and the Gorilla on the other.

Because, she refused the pancake. Per Gabriel's rules, she is supposed to have nothing.

But Marinette defies that. Not only she runs upstairs to hug and tell Adrien that she'll never abandon him, but she also gets back downstairs without needing to be restrained by the Gorilla, hence protecting her composture.

Look at how she goes down the stairs, having not only the physical but also the moral high-ground:

She looks so intimidating that in the next frame, even the Gorilla steps aside to let her pass. Both Gorilla and Gabriel are surprised by her move, if you zoom in you can see it in their faces. Gabriel did not expect her to do something outside the two "choices" he had given her.

And then comes the death blow, where Marinette tells Gabriel:

You know what's your pancakes problem? They have too much flour and not enough butter. You use an outdated recipe, no one likes them like that anymore.

Yup. She calls Gabriel's entire fashion, but also life practices, outdated with one simple metaphor. My girl slays.

At the end of Pretention, during dinner (no pancakes here sorry), we see that a parallelling breakthrough happens in Adrien's front.

Gabriel tells Adrien that he can spend as much as time as he wants with Marinette, for he will be in London next year. Again, Gabriel is creating the illusion that he is free to date Marinette, except that, as Adrien now realises, he is not. Adrien gets visibly furious at his father for the first time.

He does quickly calm down, but what is his reaction? He says that he has "lost his appetite," just like Marinette did. The boy who kept eating badly made pancakes with the toppings he didn't like finally refuses to eat the illusions his father is feeding him.

This, coupled with Adrien's terror at going to his room at the beginning of the episode, leaving Marinette alone despite himself, become a turning point for him: he finally acknowledges that he isn't free, and that his father keeps forcing his decisions onto him. Maybe also getting one step closer to discovering/accepting that he is a sentibeing.

All this story, told through pancakes.

[cephalonserotonin]

do you think Solaris United know the tenno is a child?

do you think Ticker heard her Stardust stumble through a physics concept or mess up a word and thought, little one, you may be as displaced in that body as I am in mine.

Not necessarily understanding the mechanics of it and not especially caring. Just another luvvie who needs her help.

You're one of us now, and I take care of my own.

do you think Eudico put her faith in Sparky only for it to hit her, in the middle of her work in the back of her head, why the tenno don't quite behave like other soldiers? Did the guilt make her fall to her knees? Legs, the Ventkids, just more kids I am putting in danger.

When she realized that Little Duck knew all along, did she lift the spymaster up by her lapel and raise a fist, only for the Business to gently intervene?

do you think Roky put it together second, after Ticker, because obviously a grown-up wouldn't hang the k-drive like that! Confused at why the other Solaris are so upset, because why wouldn't childhood be anything but a mad dash for survival? That's all she's known.

do you think Zuud keeps the tenno at an emotional distance on purpose? So she doesn't build another family to lose? But the guns will still keep you safe. I know my guns.

I'll tell you what I think: Nef Anyo could encounter the tenno time and time again, and never connect the dots: he didn't get to where he is by now by putting his enemies at eye level.

[wainwrightjakobshammerlock]

Drusus had a WARFRAME as his assistant?!??! So does this mean he's a Cephalon or maybe a Necramech Construct?

[flodoeslancer]

warframe is a delight. if you know, you know.

[w1tchybusiness]

i could write a 100 page essay about what a fucking masterpiece warframe is. i will write many words in the tags. please readem if you want my 'tism.

[bandagegirl]

FASTEST SHAMURA KILL EVER, THANK YOU, FORNAX

Dyed them gold💜💛💜💛💜💛

The them💜💛💜💛💜💛

[idettaglihere]

quanto sono ridicola e stupida se sto piangendo bevendo un caffè ginseng annacquato seduta nel letto solo perché mi sento sola????

[polynumerus]

Helios v1 would make the perfect Ace Attorney killer man. Bro's even got the DL-6 type incident.

[fortuna-et-cataclysmos]

In defense of s5 finale

I hear and see a lot of people expressing dislike of the season finale, some also in the tags and comments of my analysis/speculation posts. So I wanted to further expand on this.

Gabriel's victory -being remembered a hero despite everything wrong he did, especially abuse to Adrien- has left a sour taste in many people's mouth; many blaming the scenarists and not shying away from calling it "bad writing."

But I think that that was exactly what the scenarists wanted to do? The perfect world Gabriel leaves behind is unsettling, unfair, and I think that the creators have done their best to show that implicitly but clearly. I think that we are supposed to be irked by the finale.

Why do I think that? Because there were a lot of small things that gave the message that, as @emsylcatac iconically put it, "this is the bad place." I touched upon some of those in my previous post on how this was a victory for Gabriel and Lila, and a defeat for Ladybug. I'll try to list them more clearly here.

Gabriel a hero

This is the one thing everyone has the most problem with. At the end, Gabriel was declared the hero who gave his life to defeat the Monarch, who was none other than himself. Some artistic choices here are so over the top that I believe they were specifically made to irk us.

If the silver statue itself wasn't enough, the exact quote of Caline Bustier is:

All the rings that have been highjacked by the Monarch have been recycled into a statue in honour of the great Gabriel Agreste.

Then Tsurugi Tomoe goes on to say:

Beyond the visionary entrepreneur and genius creator that he was, we are celebrating a hero today.

See, everything bad about Gabriel has been flipped. If you count literally exploiting people visionary entrepreneurship, sure, he was that. And genius? He couldn't get the miraculouses of two teenagers for an entire year despite having all the resources, and he ended up succeeding only with the help of another extremely powerful person (Tsurugi Tomoe) and even then he ended up dying himself.

As of creator, he was literally a destructor. He destroyed Paris more times than anyone can count, and everything was fixed every time only thanks to Ladybug. Let's not also forget how he destroyed the Miraculouses to exploit their power.

Adrien's comment about his father

This is another thing many people have had problem with. It is so outrageous that I won't believe the creators would expect us to take at face value.

At the end, Adrien acknowledges that his father died to take down the Monarch, and says:

I don't know if one day I'll manage to become like him.

Lo and behold, the man who had emotionally neglected and abused his son to no end has turned into the said son's hero and role model. Adrien not only looks up to him, but also wants to make an active effort to become like him. Hell, he even doubts if he can be as good as him.

No way this line can taken at face value. There are many children's shows with abusive parental figures nowadays (like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, the Owl House) that have all handled the conclusion to that abuse generally well. The watchers' expectations are high in this respect; the scenarists would know that such conclusion, if not ironic, would not satiate the expectations of the spectators.

Lack of accountability: Gabriel and Tomoe

As many many people have pointed out, the general lack of accountability in this season finale is infuriating. So Gabriel mentally tortured THE ENTIRE WORLD POPULATION and not only never faced consequences in life, but also is remembered as a hero in death?

What about Tomoe?

Not only she has not faced any repercussion for being basically a supervillain, but also she is still a respected public figure who can go and make a speech backed by the mayor, in front of the freaking French flag. If that doesn't irk you, I don't know what will.

Worse is that, she goes as far as saying in her speech that:

I'll make sure to continue his legacy.

So she'll continue to be evil. Great hint that she'll continue being an antagonist in season 6.

As you can see, the new world that has been created is extremely unfair and problematic. No way this can be "the good place," an actual "happy ending."

Everything is fixed! No problems anymore!

Also, you'd realise that the world is perfect, a little too perfect. It is like a green utopian dream.

Caline Bustier has been the mayor "only for a few weeks" (direct quote from the episode), and she has already fixed all the problems possible in Paris. Not only that, she has also solved inequality and class struggle (again, mentioned by herself). Let's make Caline the President of the World already.

Funny that LITERALLY ALL THE PROBLEMS of a city could be solved, while the exact same episode showed Majestia, the freaking Supergirl of the ML universe, acknowledged in her nightmare that:

Even with all my superpowers, I'll never manage to solve all the problems of the world.

Well, Bustier says that she has no superpower, that people working together can accomplish that. Kudos to her and her democratic spirit. But like, perfect city in a few weeks? Even Mayor Bourgeois who wanted to send all the trash of Paris to space would realise that that's impossible.

There is no perfect solution, yet the world is perfect

Ladybug acknowledges that there is no perfect solution to Gabriel's situation. Trying to bring back his wife, he has caused irreparable damage to himself and to Nathalie, effectively leaving Adrien an orphan. He still hopes that Ladybug can fix it all. But she can't because of the nature of the wish: for one thing gained, another thing should be lost. In Ladybug's words:

There is no perfect wish. Every time a power is used for personal gain, it causes catastrophes. (...) We'll find a solution, but it will never be as perfect as one would wish.

Interesting, given that the world ends up being completely perfect?

All the problems are solved, literally everyone is happy, Marinette and Adrien are finally together. But the wish was made for personal gain, no? So where are the consequences? Where is equivalent exchange? The catastrophe, the price of the perfect, green, just world? I think we'll see that in season 6.

The dream world

The new world is seriously giving me weird vibes. Like it is a movie set. For those who have watched The Good Place, you'd know how in the town everything feels a bit too bright, artificial, perfect. I get the same vibes from the post-wish world.

The Agreste mansion is covered by green vines?? Way to hide the atrocities that were planned and happened here.

Here is a screengrab I found on the internet from The Good Place (the ladybug is a funny coincidence lol)

I am getting the exact same vibes!

Also, I have expanded on that in my post on "running out of time" theme, but basically in the ML universe usually the "real" stuff are associated with the night and the rain while things that happen in the sun turn out to be fake or erased/forgotten. So the feeling that I get from this finale is that, this new "perfect" world is not genuine; that the seeming happiness it brings will be soon destroyed (I doubt erased), just as it happened in other fake reality episodes like Chat Blanc, Ephemeral, Oblivio, or Jubilation. As I argued before, this is not a permanent victory. Hell, it isn't even a real victory, not with the secret Marinette is left to keep from Adrien.

Not a real victory

Another thing that makes me think that this ending is not genuine is the lack of Chat Noir in the finale. Yes, I am a fervent Ladynoir stan who was hoping for some Ladynoir action (if not reveal) and was hugely disappointed by the lack of Chat's engagement in the final fight, but now that I think of it, this may have been on purpose.

Notice how in Conformation, Ladybug says:

Our only way to win against him is to fight him together.

And yet, soon thereafter, she is catapulted into a fight with the Monarch.

Notice also it wasn't her choice to unify the miraculouses and face the Monarch alone. She had to, because Chat Noir wasn't there.

Let's remember that this show spent the entire season 4 explaining how Ladybug assuming all the responsibility alone leads to disaster, how she needs Chat Noir to share the burden with him.

Let's also remember how in season 5, especially at the beginning of it, we see Ladybug change her behaviour towards Chat Noir: she gives him more responsibilities (the Bunny Miraculous, the identity of certain holders if I am not mistaken), and how at one point she confesses that Chat Noir has been very serious and responsible lately (and then promptly develops a crush on him).

So taking on the Monarch herself is really against everything they have built up in season 4 and the beginning of season 5. That's why I think that this "victory" is so wrong: it was "won" only by Ladybug. Maybe if Chat Noir were there, he would have prevented the Monarch from making the wish (hypothetically, then we would have an entirely different timeline). If his identity were revealed the way Marinette's was, Gabriel could have controlled him through his amok. In any case, their defeat or victory would have looked very different from this.

In the end, we must remember that this world is far from being a victory for Ladybug: she has, after all, LOST. She couldn't stop Gabriel from making the wish. And while this world looks perfect, and we got what seems like a forever happy after ending for Adrinette, their happiness is set in a non-genuine victory and world.

So I think we shouldn't be angry with the show-runners: there is a reason why this ending feels and is wrong. If it were all wonderful, it wouldn't be the season finale. It would be the finale, period. And I believe that everything that has been disturbing us in this season finale will be addressed, if not consist of the core conflict of season 6. Let's all take a deep breath and turn to fan fiction or fan art till we get the new season now :) (at least that's what I'll do lol)

[mishy-mashy]

Concerning the Witch Cult and the Seal in Elior Forest;

So I watched through the episodes where Pandora and Regulus show up in Elior Forest, and Emilia is frozen, and had some wonders

First, Petelguese, when he takes the Witch Factor, apologizes to "Flugel-sama". But why Flugel? Remember, Flugel wasn't actually considered anyone great, and was only known because he planted a big tree and carved "Flugel was here" on it

Then there's also the Seal that the elves protect. Fortuna says that if the Seal is unlocked, the world will definitely end this time. But, at this time, who actually can destroy the world? Even looking at the Seal's colors and decorations, they befit Satella, who TRIED to destroy the world and was partially successful.

The world will definitely end this time. There was a past attempt, and this was only ever done by Satella.

So I'm assuming the Seal is containing Satella. The key only appears to the one qualified to open it—and that's Emilia. The same identical half-elf that the Witch Cult believes is the perfect vessel for Satella; the vessel can open the door, and has the key, no one else. Methinks if Emilia opened the door, she might be possessed or become a martyr

Yeah, it's said that Satella was sealed beyond the Great Waterfall. BUT BUT BUT, REMEMBER, they consider beyond the Great Waterfall as THE SAME AS A PARALLEL WORLD. Yin magic can easily sever reality and space, and create a pocket dimension or open to a new reality, just by upgrading Shamak.

For example, remember Beatrice's Door Crossing? The Seal could easily just be the doorway to a pocket dimension like Shamak, and it would still be considered beyond the Great Waterfall.

What the Elves are guarding is the tomb of Satella. That's why the Witch Cult's docile faction helps out the Elves; the Witch Cult reveres Satella. The Elves hid Emilia from the Cult on purpose, but Petelguese found her anyway; and Petelguese sacrificed himself in an attempt to keep the Witch of Vainglory (Pandora) and the Archbishop of Greed (Regulus) away from Emilia. The docile faction definitely had a different goal from the radical faction, the latter which always chases Satella's vestiges.

Petelguese definitely knows something more about Flugel than "Yeah, he made a tree" because to the public knowledge of the Re:Zero world, Flugel is only a guy that grew a tree that happened to live long. It's only realized that Flugel is who the Sage Shaula actually refers to, by Subaru's party in the Pleiaides Watchtower; a place even the Sword Saint couldn't reach. As part of the Witch Cult, Petelguese probably knew a lot of the truth of Flugel and Satella, if he revered Flugel, knew the implications of an incompatible Witch Factor, and knew of the Seal.

Petelguese knows what happens if you take in an incompatible Witch Factor: some sort of insanity. Even Regulus warns him about knowing the price to pay, yet Petelguese still took the Witch Factor. Petelguese knows about Flugel, so he probably knows about the Witch of Envy VS Satella; whenever he refers to the Witch of Envy, he mainly says Satella. There might be parts where he says Witch of Envy, but he mainly says only Witch or Satella. Petelguese taking the incompatible Factor his own choice kind of parallels Satella's own incompability, that it brings the question: was Satella also forced to make a similar decision?

The Elves guard the Seal of the Witch of Envy. The Seal is technically beyond the Great Waterfall. Petelguese probably knew the truth, and Emilia's oddly the only person that can access the Seal's key; that's what I think.

[grineerios]

TIL that Veils are Kuva-powered.

Seriously, at this rate, what can't Kuva do??

[ganurath]

When was the last time you sighed?

(bet you can't do a worse ask)

Yesterday, while playing Warframe. I was trying to do a Fortuna Bounty to farm Narmer Isoplasts, and I kept getting dropped into groups that were already far enough in progress that I'd miss out on the earliest stages, where the probability of being rewarded Narmer Isoplasts are highest.

Irksome, it was.

[flamingphoenixfox]

[myrfing]

I can tuna

[lonelysmile]

ho appena finito di vedere la seconda parte di mare fuori e sono distrutta per l'addio di filippo

per me mare fuori sono lui e carmine, mi mancherà molto vederli insieme