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🎵arrest me, but make it sexy 🎶

🎶arrest me but make it sexy🎶

HE TWERKED. THE MADLAD TWERKED. HERMES TWERKED

What is a character's core?

I've used this term and variants of it in a few of my posts and I wanted to take a quick moment to define it because I'm not sure how commonly discussed this topic is, but it's an important one to keep in mind when evaluating and writing certain types of media.

Most genres of fiction make use of standard character roles/tropes. The plucky sidekick, the dastardly villain, the last girl, and so on. This isn't a bad thing. The existence of this stuff is a big part of how we define genres and how we evaluate writing quality. For example, if you're writing a romance, you're going to have romantic leads. Two (or more) individuals who will be together by the end of the story. If these roles don't exist, then you don't have a romance. And if their relationship feels toxic and unhealthy? You may not have a romance. Or, at least, not a classic romance. The worse the relationship is, the more you wander into the genre of "dark romance," which is all about enjoying deeply unhealthy fictional relationships.

This brings us to Miraculous and why I feel comfortable defending Adrien and Marinette as victims of bad writing.

Unless the writers are doing something truly insane, the love square is our end game couple. The ones destined for a happily ever after. That means that everything the writers do with these two and their relationship can be evaluated through the lens of, "are you honoring the characters' roles as the romantic leads?" And if the answer is, "No?" Then the writers are failing because "romantic lead" is a defining aspect of these characters. It isn't what they should be, it's what they are. Anything that goes against them being a good couple is bad writing.

This doesn't mean that they must be perfect. They're allowed to make mistakes and have flaws. Those are the sorts of things that drive a story! But the mistakes and flaws have to be treated as such by the narrative, they have to have some sort of resolution, and they have to be maintained in balance with the whole "love interest" thing. Too many mistakes and flaws and we've gone from "romance" to "tragedy," which is what I'd currently define Miraculous as.

This role evaluation thing isn't limited to romantic leads. Any character that has a clear role in the story can be evaluated via this criteria. For example, Alya is clearly meant to be a good best friend and reliable confidant for Marinette. You can tell this because of things like her learning Marinette's identity and her helping Marinette discover the secrets of the miraculous, big story moment that are treated as positives by the narrative. So anything Alya does that makes her feel like a bad friend is bad writing. It's why I get the Alya salt, but don't participate because I can't view her as the awful person the Lila stuff makes her out to be. That's not who Alya is narratively speaking.

Generally speaking, this core/role thing is my main way of evaluating characters in genre content like Miraculous. It's the driving force behind most of the character discussion on this blog and something I strongly encourage people to think about if they enjoy reading/writing genre content as it's a great guideline! Figure out the role a character is supposed to be in, generally honor that role, and you're golden! You have room for flaws and conflicts while still having something to keep you in check from straying too far off course.

The Causal Chain And Why Your Story Needs It

The most obnoxious thing my writing teacher taught me every story needed, that I absolutely loathed studying in the moment and that only later, after months of resisting and fighting realized she was right, was something called the causal chain.

Simply put, the causal chain is the linked cause-and-effect that must logically connect every event, reaction, and beat that takes place in your story to the ones before and after.

The Causal Chain is exhausting to go through. It is infuriating when someone points out that an event or a character beat comes out of nowhere, unmoored from events around it.

It is profoundly necessary to learn and include because a cause-and-effect chain is what allows readers to follow your story logically which means they can start anticipating what happens next, which is what is required for a writer to be able to build suspense and cognitively engage the audience, to surprise them, and to not infuriate them with random coincidences that hurt or help the characters in order to clumsily advance the author's goals.

By all means, write your story as you want to write it in the first draft, and don't worry about this principle too much. This is an editing tool, not a first draft tool. But one of the first things you should do when retroactively begin preparing your story to be read by others is going step by step through each event and confirming that a previous event leads to it and that subsequent events are impacted by it on the page.

maribat ideas that don’t involve maribat:

Alya getting an internship in the Daily Planet because of her work reporting the whole series

Luka keeps on figuring people’s identities out and it becomes such a problem for the Bats

Alix pops around the timeline befriending people and driving Booster Gold mad

Nino gets a Green Lantern ring and everyone is annoyed that he’s so naturally talented except no he already had training so now suspicion is cast upon him

Juleka and Rose go to a gala at Gotham via the ‘Jagged is from Gotham’ trope and meet Tim & Bernard and they both think Rose is insane

Colt Fathom is related to Thomas Wayne and Felix brings Kagami with him to the reunion gala and the Bats try to get information about Paris

Kaldur finds out Plagg has returned and immediately goes to try and appease him only to find Adrien

Nathalie knows Talia from her adventuring days and asks her if she could watch over Adrien while Nathalie handled the trial and then the Teen Titans show up

Superman’s identity is about to be exposed and Marinette shows up via Alya and creates a plan that completely derails the broadcast

The whole class is caught in a villain attack and their terrifying hypercompetence in the situation had everyone alarmed

Do You Feel That?

Idea. So imagine the bats are going to Amity (or a place nearby) to investigate something. A building that had very strange readings, maybe even investigating a case. Probbaly starting in a forest. So this place is haunted naturally, and the ghosts can’t be perceived by the human eye. In this universe, Danny can technically become visible in his ghost form if he concentrates, along with many powerful ghosts, but their default is intangibility and invisibility and it’s just inefficient to use a that much power just to be seen. So most things that happen in Amity are not seen by normal people. Those infected by ectoplasm (the pits and ectoplasm being two separate things in this) are able to see ghosts after enough exposure. So if a hero were to come to Amity, they would see the destruction happening but it would look like some kind of invisible force, and then if they ask why others aren’t panicking, they just say Phantom is taking care of it.

Anyways, so the bats do not know about ghosts and are investigating this house and basically every kind of malevolent spirit you can think of is there and trying to mess with them. After all, even if they can’t see a ghost, that ghost can still affect them. And Phantom sees these idiots getting closer to one of the designated danger zones in his territory. (Or he was visiting a nearby haunted area due to the rising danger level and sees the bats right in the middle of it) The place all natives know to avoid at all costs. So the bats go anyways, completly oblivious to the danger. Danny arrives just in time to stop a ghost who was inches away from digging their claws into Red Robin.

And it goes on with Danny desperately keeping the ghosts back, tackling them, shooting them, growling and hissing and doing everything in his power to shield the oblivious heroes and keep them safe. He can’t even warn them because he’s spending too much power just keeping them alive in the woods. Because of course they decide to investigate the most haunted woods near Amity. Most of these spirits are old, angry, and wild.

And the bats are just casually going about their buisness, discussing the case and the evidence they found.

Danny tackles a ghost wolf to keep them from biting their fangs into Red Hood’s neck.

They follow some tracks.

Danny grabbing the shadowing tendrils attempting to strangle Nightwing.

They even joke around and push each other.

Someone temporarily possessed Red Robin and he starts reaching for a batarang with bloodlust in his eyes, before Danny digs his hands into the bat’s chest and rips out the foreign entity.

There is screaming, snarling, screeches, and lots of punches thrown, all unheard by the bats.

By the end, Danny is panting as they finally made it out of the forest. The bats are tracking a signal, and heading towards an abandoned house. Danny looks up and sees the place absolutly overflowing with spirits. They are crawling up the sides, eyes and teeth and tentacles moving through the wooden boards. Banshees and wraiths, eyeing them through the windows. Skinny limbs with barely any form creaking as their claws try to escape the house and reach towards the group below. Hundreds upon hundreds of spirits all confined to this small hut and ready to tear apart any who enter.

Danny takes one look at them, overhears the bats say that they have to head inside, and decide that he’s not dealing with this today. So he shoots a small laser to cut their power. No signal? No lights? No search.

He can hear the bats complaining but eventually, they have to turn back as they lost the signal and they are unable to continue. And hears them talk about how the place was so weird. Almost like something was watching them.

Phantom sags in relief once they are finally gone.

While they leave, Danny squares his shoulders because he needs to deal with all these ghosts before they get back.

Later, after not finding anything strange about the house or forest or the cause of their case (possibly a death? Or maybe just trying to find information connecting to something else?) and all the previous evidence and traces were gone. So they call in the magic users to use a spell to show the past and figure out what happened. And they can see the group in a sort of 3D holographic image as they investigated. But the spell doesn’t just show them, it shows every being from that time….so the group gets to see just exactly how close they all came to dying.

Part 2 with the misunderstandings:

Tim was suspicious. He was inherently suspicious – how else did he get to live so long in the superhero community? But he was suspicious for a good reason here. He swears.

Damian was smiling. At a joke. There was something so deeply disturbing about that image – his stoic, 13 year old brother smiling at something someone else said – that he had to pinch himself, to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. The sharp flare of pain proved he wasn’t.

He looked around at his family, in their superhero personas, and sees his disbelief mirrored in their faces. Nothing as large as a dropped jaw or anything resembling a physical reaction. But it can be seen in their widened eyes, the drop of their shoulders. Good. So he wasn’t the only one seeing this; not a hallucination made from a sleep-deprived mind.

He turns back, catching Damian throwing his head back as he laughs. That’s when his curiosity snaps.

There had to be a spell here, a chemical gassed somewhere. Yes, this was the Watchtower, but the chance of something happening was low, but never zero.  Seeing that no-one was going to do anything, he braced himself, preparing himself to save the demon brat from something he wouldn’t thank him for.

Marching himself towards Damian and the unknown, he slips into his Wayne persona.

“Robin! What’s happening over here? We could hear the laughing from the other side of the room!” Jerking his head towards the other Bats, he looks him over, looking for any sign of mental manipulation, any sign that he was feeling unsafe.

His face drops into a scowl, and the unknown laughs at him. “Aw, little –” and here he speaks something in a language he doesn’t understand, “doesn’t like people checking up on him?” he asks, green eyes still laughing at Damian.

The scowl is aimed at the unknown now, and Tim breathes a little easier, knowing that he wasn’t so far gone as to be unable to give anyone a murder glare.

Damian looks back towards him, scowl still in place. “It’s none of your business Red Robin,” he says, chin tilted up stubbornly. Tim internally sighs, knowing that talking to Damian when he was this obstinate was a no-go.  He looks to the unknown, deciding to pursue another avenue.

“So, I’m Red Robin, as you heard the brat say,” he says, fake smile fixed in place. There’s a beat, where the unknown doesn’t say anything and they’re staring at each other. Measuring the other up. The moment stretches on for too long, and Tim thinks that the unknown won’t give the courtesy of giving him a name.

“Phantom,” he says finally – but only after his eyes flick over to Damian. Interesting.

And then he’s back to smiling, but not before his demeanour slips for a second. Not enough for a normal person to catch, but someone obviously affiliated with Robin, and a Meta to boot?

He sees Phantom give a ghost of a smile, fangs peeking through, and internally curses himself.

“So what brings you here, Phantom? It’s not anyone who’s able to be invited into the Justice League’s headquarters,” he asks, doggedly keeping up with the persona.

“Oh, a rogue of mine was able to leave my – kingdom? I guess you’d say, so I had to return her,” he replies, utterly relaxed. In fact, so relaxed that he floats up, white hair billowing around him. It pisses him off, the fact that an unknown was able to be so relaxed in space, amongst the highest calibre of heroes – including Batman. He tunes back into the conversation, compiling the information for a profile.

“Did you have to take her to Walker?” Damian asks, a small frown in place.

Phantom sighs, crossing his arms behind his head. “Yeah, but it’ll only be for a couple weeks at most.”

Damian rolls his eyes, frown disappearing “You know Walker’s a stickler for the rules,” he says, and Tim watches the conversation with bated breath, hoping that they don’t notice him. “She’s going to stay there for at least a couple of months.”

“That was before,” Phantom says, face losing some of the good humour. “It’s my kingdom now; I can say that she doesn’t have to stay for even a day. I’m just giving Walker some goodwill here.”

“Our kingdom,” Damian mutters under his breath snidely. Tim’s stomach drops. Their – kingdom?!

He must have made a noise, because Damian catches his eyes, and his eyes widen.

Phantom looks at him too, and smiles a toothy grin that does nothing to belay the panic he’s feeling.

“Not your kingdom until you’re dead Da-,” he cuts himself off then suddenly, and Tim whips his head to stare at Damian. He’d given out his civilian identity?

But Damian isn’t even looking at him, instead looking at Phantom. His face softens suddenly, and Tim feels his heart drop. He knows he’s not going to like what comes out of his mouth.

“It’s alright نصفي الآخر,” he says, hand going up to catch Phantom’s wrist. “I know you’re still adjusting.”

Tim feels suddenly like he’s intruding on a private conversation, but the panic he’s feeling roots him to the spot. He tunes out the rest of the conversation, translating the Arabic that Damian had spoken.

“نصفي الآخر,” he hears on a loop in his head. “My other half,”

What the fuck?

Dcxdp #22

Danny's human half dying as collateral during a fight. That human half goes into reincarnation and is reborn as Damian Wayne. He isn't born with all of his memories but he definitely feels that something is wrong. they would get their Memories Back at about 8 and have a horrible time dealing with being an assassin. Danny would try to stick to the personality they already had before but there's definitely slip-ups of them being like yeah this is wrong and Talia thinks they take after their father because of it. 

The first thing Danny does when they're not being monitored by their mom or the bat family is to look for Phantom. Phantom to have run away to the ghost Zone and has built a reputation as a merciless ruler. He's a good ruler and he's not a tyrant but  he doesn't have the reputation of kindness. Damien as the moral compass of the duo is really funny to me.

 There's a situation later that involves ghosts which is where Danny/Damian and Phantom meet again. I want there to be a very big misunderstanding that heroes think Phantom is obsessed with Damien but in reality they are literally other halves of a soul. Phantom keeps doing and saying things that no one else would get away with around Damien. Phantom would be saying things like making fun of his height or giving him nicknames but as far as anyone else sees Davian doesn't even flinch.

Danny/Damian and Phantom have lived Separate Lives for a while so they don't automatically fuse into one person. I think they would fuse for a few hours just to feel themselves be one Soul again but they have Separate Lives so they can't stay that way. The bat family is very concerned with Damien continuing to talk to the obsessive ghost that keeps possessing his body.

Dani is hunted by the JL

So dani was traveling around the infinite realms and came across a universe that she and danny would LOVE

Their are super heros, and clones and wizards, and alians

Dani send danny hlthe location of the universe with the caption:THE WORLD OF HEROS AND ALIANS WHICH WILL YOU MEET FIRST

Danny texted her back a voice massage of his screaming thw word alians

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Do dani was exploring this new universe wjen she saw asshole.1 berating a teenager about how he's not fit for this life

The asshole.2 chimes in and AGREES with asshole.1, at this point the kid looks upset

and dani could understand teenagers in the superhero business is not the best(she asked) and sometimes tough love is what it takes so she was going to leave

Then she heard asshole.1 say" clones should just be terminated to save everyone problems like this"...

No...dani didnt hold back in teaching asshole.1 a lesson in clone rights via: trial by fist

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But now 3 months later she decided to ask the assholes what they want and why they keep harassing her

She didnt expect a rant about how an unsupervised meta(and a clone asshole.1(whos name is superman WTF is super about him))

Then they all had a meeting about her IN front of her

The options ranger from finding her original to termination to imprisonment to forcing her to be a superhero

They eventually decided to make her a superhero in training...

These people are IDIOTS, if you dont trush her why put her WITH A TEAM, why not just let her leave, the most she did was get payback for the insensitive shit superman was saying but the sheer notion she was a clone was enough to FOECE her into a life she dosent want...

Oh hell no

So when the JL and clones in the background came up to tell her that they decided to give her a chance at "redemption"

She looked then in the eyes, sniled a too sharp smile said:no

Then she screamed

PAPA

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The next thing anyone knowes is the watchtower is in an unknown location with a person that looked scarily similar to the unknown clone

And then he said

WHY DO YOU HAVE MY DAUGHTER