Starryarchitect - Architect Of The Stars

Shallan

I genuinely wasn't sure which version I prefer (my sister likes the first more, my mom likes the second) so I went with posting both. What does the internet think?

Shallan is supposed to be summoning her Shardblade (well, Patternblade) here, but I'm not sure how well that was communicated. Oh well. The "fractally" spirals are cool though. I mean, they're not actually fractals but they're still reminiscent of Pattern, so good enough.

(From the fantastic fantasy series the Stormlight Archive. Can't wait for Rhythm of War!)

Plance Steampunk/Fantasy AU

Pidge is a mechanic with a knack for chemistry (see Varian from TTS). Her father and brother go exploring in neighboring lands for their kingdom, but contact with them is lost during a storm. Pidge has to use all her engineering skills to find and save them. The kingdom fights her and her search every step of the way, for reasons Pidge hasn't been able to determine. Do they just not see the point of wasting resources saving two people? Or do they have something to hide?

Lance is a guard who escorts Pidge home after she storms into the castle demanding the royal family send a rescue team after her family. He starts spending time with her and helping her on her mission--partly because he believes it's wrong the kingdom refuses to give her aid, and partly because he can't help but find the ruthless little genius fascinating.

Almost definitely never going to write this, but I do like the idea, and I had to illustrate it. Pidge hasn't bothered to get a haircut recently in this drawing--her hair is overgrown and messy, but also rather cute.

Fall Leaves

I heard that Ladrien can be called Sunspot and this is the image that came to mind:

Huh.

Huh.

I can't decide whether or not Optygami lived up to my hopes.

On the one hand, we definitely saw the negative consequences of the Miracle Queen reveal. Optygami was the closest Ladybug has come to being found out, and it was a tense and frustrating episode. There were definitely at least moderately disastrous consequences.

But on the other hand, none of those disastrous consequences were permanent. Ladybug and Chat Noir were not outed, no one lost a miraculous, no one was hurt or injured. Causing lasting harm to plot or character is difficult with a show as episodic as ML, but we have seen lasting damage done in one specific area: relationships. Friendships, and romantic ships, have been injured in this show before--when you get down to it, those are our stakes. And no relationships were damaged irreparably in Optygami.

So the writers probably upped the sense of stakes with this episode. But they also gave Alya her miraculous, permanently. I'm overjoyed at this in terms of Alya and Mari's friendship, as well as both of their character arcs, but it seems like a . . . questionable decision narratively.

I don't know. We'll see. In conclusion, my thoughts on Optygami are as ambiguous as the episode was. It definitely showed some negative consequences of reveals, but showed a lot more positives and took the Alyanette reveal arc even further into risky territory.

Hopes for Optygami

Miraculous Ladybug set up a good stakes system in the first three seasons with this simple rule: identities must not be revealed. If they are, there will be dire consequences. Hence, while we don't really believe that our main characters are ever at risk of dying, we can accept that they might someday lose their masks, and that that would be bad. It's a risk that adds real weight to the action and plot. It also justifies the endless identity dance between Marinette and Adrien. But then Miracle Queen happened, and all the heroes except for our main two were outed. We saw no consequences in that episode. We saw no consequences in the NY special, and we've seen no consequences in season four yet, either. This makes the entire narrative feel far less convincing and lowers the tension immensely. Not to mention that it almost completely invalidates how Adrien and Marinette continue to hide their identities from each other. (It doesn't invalidate their secrets completely because we're not going to forget Chat Blanc any time soon, but it still lowers the stakes considerably.) Not only are almost all the superheroes out, but Alya still sometimes runs around as Rena Rouge, despite her identity being publicized. And she knows Ladybug's identity, which we've been told is dangerous, but we haven't seen anything that convinces us it's dangerous. The thing is, we have seen negative consequences of identity reveals. Chloe being akumatized is one instance, and another is Chat Blanc. But the show has done nothing with the biggest large-scale identity reveal so far (the one at the end of season three), which makes the "we must keep our identites a secret" spiel very hard to swallow, and makes the entire plot feel almost risk-free. I hope that Optygami shows us the negative consequences of this large-scale identity reveal, and returns strength to the narrative by doing so. TL;DR: With a few rare exceptions, we haven't seen much to back up the story's constant claim that identity reveals are dangerous. I hope that Optygami will finally show us some of the disastrous consequences of identity reveals, thus adding more weight and stakes to the narrative and justifying Marinette and Adrien's continued secrecy.

Septimus Heap has the ultimate found family. You start with the core seven-son family, which is already guaranteed to have at least nine members. Not to mention they have a crazy aunt and at least six uncles, as well as a tree or two.

Throw in an adopted daughter, 1.5 ducks and 0.5 of a cat, the youngest son's adoptive mother/mentor/BFF and semi-adoptive father/kidnapper, the adopted daughter's biological dad, the youngest son's best friend who will someday be the adopted daughter's boyfriend, a ghost uncle, the youngest son's first best friend/adoptive brother from his childhood in the army who is probably also the second oldest son's boyfriend, the youngest son's dragon, and the oldest son's wife.

Oh, and don't forget the ghost uncle's ghost girlfriend, the mother, father, and brother of the oldest son's wife, the second youngest son's girlfriend and her transforming panther, maybe a couple witches (or maybe not), the adopted daughter's ghost mom and ghost grandmother, the oldest son's pet tennis ball, the adopted daughter's pet rock(s), and a centuries-old magical grandpa who you can only see by exiting time.

And we haven't even gotten to the sequel series yet!

One of my favorite things to explore is the way Adrien has been affected by growing up in an arguably abusive household. Normally I think about behaviors he's learned as a defense mechanism (timidity, selflessness, submission, being endlessly good-natured), but this is a good example of learned behaviors that involve imitating something harmful, instead of reacting to something harmful.

So I was watching the English dub of Sentibubbler, and there was a scene that I remember made me feel uncomfortable when I saw it the first time:

I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.  Then, later in the episode:

And that punched me in the gut.  It scared me.

I don’t think I can write out a whole essay on this rn, but I needed to throw it into the void.  What I can say is that Chat Noir demolished something because he was angry.  I’m not saying that he was angry at Ladybug necessarily, but the situation didn’t go his way, he felt like he wasn’t being heard, and he hit something so hard that it shattered.  And I’m saying he learned that from somewhere.

me tagging when i first started posting to A03: ok i’ll tag the main characters, relationship, and content warnings.... maybe a little explanation of the plot? oh jeeze i hope that’s not too much...

me tagging now: welcome, readers, to the director’s cut (with commentary)

It just occurred to me that we've heard all the protagonists of Infinity Train sing:

Tulip sang for nearly half of episode four.

Jesse sang "Travel Friends" and Lake improvised on the same song mockingly.

Simon and Grace's VAs sang two lines each in "When I Look at You, I See Me".

Ryan and Min-Gi basically spent all of season four singing.

. . . I'm adding this to my looooong list of reasons to love this show.

did Gilmore Girls invent the coffee shop AU