Fictionology

diana is made of clay and it shows in her coloration.

she was sculpted to amazonian ideals of beauty so she’s got an aquiline nose and a strong jaw and thick brows and wide hips and broad shoulders and everything about her just looks STRONG and SOLID.

40s diana had real curly hair and i want to go back to that.

she’s always had blue eyes because any really old comic character ends up having those because of coloring difficulties. but anyway. i like a ridiculously pale blue. they’ve barely even got color in them. they’re almost more silver. it is gorgeous and terrifying.

i want the hidden ocean kingdoms of dc to be bros. atlantis and themyscira, adjacent and allied. united in their agreement that those dudes on the mainland over there are some batshit motherfuckers. maybe they have traditionally always had a queen in atlantis and part of taking his rightful place as ruler was that aquaman had to prove himself to hippolyta. this is turning into aquaman ideas but i want these two to be bros and i am keeping jason momoa aquaman as far as looks are concerned.

amazons are immortal and their ideals are basically peace and love and yet they have a reputation for kicking the most ass? even though they theoretically live on secret magic island? so what if they are like mercenaries, except instead of fighting for money, they fight when there is an enemy so thoroughly counter to their ideals that they cannot be borne. and they always win their battles, but it isn’t always enough to win the war.

diana is hundreds of years old and has been through a few of these. hippolyta would love to keep her home and safe, but she represents all the hopes and dreams and ideals of the amazons and that means she has to punch nazis. she can’t not punch nazis. nazi punching is in her magical blood. she gets a special uniform because she is the general leading the charge.

she becomes like a mythical figure? the first writings about diana within man’s world are not in english so they have gone from being in themysciran to something else to something else to english. claims of a woman showing up out of nowhere to kick a bunch of ass seem dubious at best and like a bad translation. woman of wonder sounds a lot better in themysciran. not all of the context and connotations really survive the switch to wonder woman. it’s not that big a deal for her, though.

that would mean that the first time bruce i-know-every-damn-thing-just-in-case wayne sees wonder woman he probably just thinks that this is the latest wonder woman. he is surprised that she is real but it takes some doing to convince him she’s as old as she is. he is still dubious. the clay thing does not sound like a real thing. that sounds like the amazon equivalent of the stork. is she 100% sure she knows where babies come from. he should not have asked that. no you don’t have to show him. it’s fine. he has decided the clay thing makes perfect sense and this conversation can be over now.

amazons usually stay on themyscira because trying to fight all injustice all the time would destroy them. also it would be meddlesome. it’s very hard to find an enemy that is objectively bad enough for them to come out and fight. and like i said, sometimes their help just isn’t enough. emotionally that takes a toll. hippolyta is still angry about the conquistadors. or anyone who brought a plague with them, really. you can’t punch a plague.

the reason diana ends up staying around a while is because there are people like superman and batman and the flash and whoever else, all trying to fight against injustice constantly. clearly, within their culture, there is a precedent for doing the thing that she has always wanted to do. that makes it okay. she is totally not violating the prime directive. they have pizza and cat videos now. it is very important that she learn more about these new technologies, because reasons.

she has a lot of different costumes. so many. most of them show off her arms and her back and her thighs because LOOK AT ALL THESE MUSCLES, GET REKT. if you think she does not flex when she knows people are looking you are wrong.

amazons have a certain amount of telepathic ability but it requires physical contact and for both parties to be open to it. what diana’s lariat of truth actually does is bypass those requirements. amazons honestly consider it to be her most terrifying and awful weapon because it bypasses consent.

speaking of which i still like aphrodite’s law but “losing your powers if you allow a man to bind you” should be more literal with the ‘allow’. it literally requires consent. which you would think would mean it’s not really something to worry about but really it means that the only thing that can kill an amazon is trusting the wrong man.

hippolyta gets so anxious, her daughter is so trusting, please be friends with fewer men p l e a s e

diana having a connection to animals because she’s been blessed by the goddess of the hunt is cool and i’m keeping it. don’t try to sic attack dogs on diana. they are her dogs now.

wonder woman’s flight is a lot more… forceful? she is made of earth, she likes to stay on the earth. her flight is generally toward something, there is a real weight to it and a sense of inertia. unlike superman, who is a floaty motherfucker who can just drift around aimlessly like an asshole. diana is capable of a more weightless flight, it just requires a more meditative state that can be difficult for her to achieve. because she has shit to do.

i am sticking with 5′11″ diana because a couple centuries ago she was the tallest person around but all y’all have been eating your wheaties lately because you got tall

there is a lot of lore even through a lot of reboots about diana not being able to take her bracelets off. sometimes she loses her powers, sometimes she goes into anime berserker mode because NOW HER LIMITERS ARE BROKEN WITNESS HER TRUE POWER. which i will be honest, as awesome as i think that is, i am not keeping that. have you ever seen what someone’s arm looks like after being in a cast for a while. it’s gross. diana takes her bracelets off to shower because she is a civilized person and these are not flimsy little friendship bracelets you can wash around.

So we all know the Potters had a cat, right?

All we have per descriptions of this cat is that 1. It was enough of a Potter to make the list when they went into hiding and 2. Harry scared it with his new broom he got from Sirius.

There is further no mention of said cat.

On the other hand, don’t we know another, really old, beaten down, ugly, sad, sad cat?

A cat that befriended Sirius Black and seemed to KNOW Peter Pettigrew’s smell, hold a grudge against him, even?

Part-kneazle, so it has a remarkable ability for finding things that are shiny and that it has a connection to, like, say, a family member.

A cat that knows it’s way around Hogwarts, around the Whomping Willow, almost like it had been there before with another owner.

A cat that absolutely REFUSED to let Hermione leave that shop without him after seeing a certain rat, was CRAZED, almost.

We have no mention of this cat/kneazle’s age, except that it had been in the shop for a while and no one had wanted it. Magical creatures live a long time. Cats live a long time. It’s within reason that this cat could be 30, even 40 years old.

It makes too much sense.

So we just got back from toysrus and guess what we found?

This man knew that knights were supposed to say something in Latin as the Queen knighted them, but didn’t remember the line, so he quickly said “ma nishtana halaila hazeh micol haleilot”

You’re a first-year who can’t cast Wingardium Leviosa yet? Whatever, sure, just pay up. There’s no way you’re going to be chosen against Angelina “Can Probably Crush You With Her Thighs” Johnson, but at least you can tell all your eleven-year-old buddies that you Did A Cool Thing.

You wanna forcibly enter your friend without their consent? Hell no, get that shit out of here. I’m a Slytherin, not a complete bastard. If I’ve hear about you trying this shit again, I’mma curse your butt into the Lake and report you to Flitwick. You might think that’s funny because he’s short, but you will learn, young padawan. You will fear the Flitwick.

You’re a third-year who thinks that becoming the Hogwarts Champion will impress your crush? Okay, into the fiery cup. But also lmfao, have you even seen Cedric “Hottie McDreamy the Hufflepuff” Diggory? Like, hot damn. 

You wanna enter your owl? Your cat? Your toad? Go for it, man, that’d be effing hilarious. I would actually pay to see that Tournament.

You’re a fifth-year who genuinely wants to enter the Tournament? Well, okay, but man, I am roomies with Cassius “Wake Up Before Noon At Your Own Risk” Warrington and he’d be grinding you into the floor under the heel of his handmade, Italian, dragon-hide shoes before you even knew what hit you.

You wanna enter… McGonagall? No, no, nonononono. That’s how people effing die, man. Like, she would destroy the competition and it would be glorious to behold and I would cry tears of awe at the sheer beauty of her wrath… but also, I am too young and beautiful to die. She would find us and we would die. Best scenario is she keeps us as pet mice forever.

So after the Weasley twins get their Age Potion issues fixed, a tiny Slytherin first-year girl sidles up to them in the halls and whispers, “You wanna enter the Tournament? Phil can hook you up. But you didn’t hear it from me!” And so the Weasley twins go find Phil, and Phil tells them straight up, “One slip for a sickle, three for two, five for three, and ten for four.”

Fred’s like, “Does entering your name more than once actually do anything?”

Phil, “Don’t know, don’t care.” (It doesn’t, Phil’s checked. He’d charge more if it did.)

And how does Phil get away with entering all these names? He tells all the supervising professors that he’s entering his own name - again and again and again - for a better chance at being selected. Professor Sprout informs him gently that this won’t make a difference and Phil tells her with the wide-eyed innocence of someone running a major scam operation that “Might as well try, Professor! Maybe diligence with pay off in the long run!”

Sprout’s heart melts, and everyone in the know facepalms. Everyone not in the know looks at him with “cheating Slytherin!” expressions and Phil dgaf because he’s got a giant pile of money now, suckers. [Snape noticed something was up, but didn’t care enough to stop it. Moody also noticed, but didn’t do anything. (Barty approves.)]

Entering more names doesn’t help because it’s not a lottery, the Goblet actually chooses, so a person can only really be entered once. It’s probably actually a good thing that Cedric “Tried to have a won Quidditch match made invalid out of fairness” Diggory and Harry “I am confused and I don’t want to be here” Potter were chosen. Because if fourth-year Ravenclaw Travis Collins had been chosen, the Goblet would have spat out all one-hundred and eighty-three scraps of paper with his name on it.

“Kids these days have too much pocket-money,” Phil comments as he comforts his boyfriend, Cassius Warrington, for being passed over in favor of Cedric “Made of Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice” Diggory, and counts the massive pile of money he’s collected. “Kinda wish the fiery cup had picked that kid’s Kneazle, though. That would’ve been awesome.”

Frankly, I am completely convinced that the Goblet of Fire is a horrible hodgepodge of experimental magic as some random witch tries to create some way to choose Champions. I have henceforth named her Gonilda and she is the magical computer programmer of 1294, and the creation process of the Goblet was a fucking disaster.

Like, “Shit, I’ve got this super ugly pot that my kid made me in his pottery class the other day, will that do?” “Okay, okay, how do I make the Goblet have only three schools?” “Fuck, Fredreich, made a note to make sure that it won’t explode if more than 13 students are entered because apparently this stubborn piece of ceramics can’t count for shit.” “HOW THE FUCK IS THIS JUDGING PROCESS SUPPOSED TO WORK? IF THIS SON OF A PITCH DOESN’T COOPERATE, I’M MAKING THIS SHIT RANDOM.” (’Gonilda, no.” “GONILDA, YES, DAMN IT!”) “Okay, okay, I think it works now. But also, I have no idea how to reset it. Can we only hold this shitty tournament once?” (”Gonilda, no.” “Fuck you, Fredreich.”) “OKAY, NOW IT WORKS! Just one more tiny detail an- Shit, it’s on fire now. …Can I just leave it on fire? I’m leaving it on fire.” (”Gonilda, no.” “I’m done, I’m out. It’s on fire and I’m not going to do shit about it.”)

Person in charge of running the Triwizard Tournament: “Ah, Fredreich, wonderful! And you met our deadline! Please give ours thanks to Mistress Gonilda for her exceptional wo- … Why is it on fire?”

Gonilda (in the distance): “BECAUSE FUCK YOU, THAT’S WHY.”

So basically, the Goblet of Fire works because nobody fucking touch it. It’s on fire, we don’t need to make it explode, folks. Just nobody do anything weird to it and we all collectively pray it keeps working.

And then along comes Barty Crouch Junior and he’s like, “I’mma Confund this cup for this Evil Plot by the Dark Lord Voldemort so it chooses Harry Potter.” Except the Goblet of Fire is a disaster and Barty’s Confundus works for maybe five minutes before something in it breaks, and it’s magical programming is basically just flipping through magical error messages.

Error 400: Bad Request - What the Fuck Are You Doing, Dipshit?!?

Error 403: Forbidden - Dear Fredreich, Stop Doing Shit, You Don’t Know Crap. With Much Love, Mistress Gonilda.

Error 405: Method Not Allowed - Seriously, Dipshit, What the Fuck?

Error 409: Conflict - With Literally Everything. Great Going, Assface.

Barty, why? Why would you try and poke an ancient disaster like this? You were so preoccupied with whether you could do it that you didn’t stop to think if you should. You did it, you crazy son of a bitch, you did it. See, here I am now by myself, talking to myself. That’s Chaos Theory.

Anyway…

Cue small, adorable, innocent first-year voice rising out of the crowd at the Champion Selection Ceremony: “Headmaster Dumbledore? Why is there black smoke coming out of it?”

Cue second small, adorable, innocent first-year voice: “Is it supposed to be making that tea-kettle sound? Why is it screaming?”

Then the Goblet just starts spitting out Champions like it’s freakin’ Oprah or something. Set fire to the fucking rain. YOU GET TO BE A TRIWIZARD CHAMPION! YOU GET TO BE A TRIWIZARD CHAMPION! EVERYBODY GETS TO BE A TRIWIZARD CHAMPION!

(Errol Weasley, Trevor Longbottom, every female Durmstrang student, Professor Trelawny, the Weasley twins twice, a Hogwarts seventh-year from every house, Fleur Delacour and a group of Beauxbatons boys that looks like a boy-band in disguise, Harry Potter five times over, that one kid’s Kneazle, etc. The list goes on.)

Cassius Warrington looks beside him to his boyfriend, who is currently trying to slide underneath a table and maybe phase himself out of existence by sheer willpower, muttering about how he’s now going to die at the hands of Minerva McGonagall and running away to Barbados.

crump?

“You’re the Zodiac Killer,” he said aloud, emphasizing the final word bitterly.

Behind him he heard Ted shuffle nervously. “I thought you wouldn’t love me anymore if you knew.”

Donald sighed heavily. “I trusted you, Rafael. And you’re no better than one of them.”

Footsteps approached, muffled ever so slightly by the swollen wooden floor of the dock upon which they stood. “It doesn’t matter.” A pair of arms wrapped themselves around his midsection as the Senator whispered into his ear, tone drenched with megalomaniacal lust. “We can still make America great again.”

Marinette is pregnant.  It was an accident, a late night at a club where she got drunk and went home with someone, but it’s still there.  She’s pregnant.  At least according to the seventeen pregnancy tests she took.  Alya’s away, and Hawkmoth seems to be on vacation, so she’s not able to talk to anyone until after she’s been to the doctor to confirm it.

She’s pregnant.

So she goes to patrol that night, the first patrol with Chat since she took the tests, and cries on him for a while.  She’s not getting an abortion–she’s pro-choice, but can’t do it herself–and she still has to talk to the father.

But Chat’s there.  He comforts her, says he’ll be there for her whether the father is or not.  He lets her cry on his shoulder for hours, and patrol never actually gets done.  They decide to meet up tomorrow night, even though it’s not a patrol night, so they can talk after Marinette talks to the father.

Which doesn’t go well.  Actually, that’s an understatement.  The father is furious at her for being pregnant, wants her to get an abortion, and wants nothing to do with the baby if she has it.

So Marinette leaves in tears, and skips her classes that afternoon and goes immediately to their patrol spot to just sit and cry for hours, waiting for Chat.

Chat left an hour early for patrol, barely having allowed himself to wait that long, and finds Ladybug already on the roof.  She tells him about how it went with the father and starts crying all over again.

“I’ll be it’s father.”

“What?”

“A baby needs a father.  Mine was never around, and I know that’s messed me up.  So I can be this baby’s father.  I mean, if you want.”

“I…I’d like that.”

So they sit there for hours until Ladybug’s tears subside, holding onto each other.  When they decide it’s time to leave, Ladybug suggests they reveal their identities because “I am not going to the doctor as Ladybug, and I am not having Chat Noir take me there.”

So they reveal themselves, and are freaking happy that they are Adrien and Marinette, because that makes introducing themselves to their friends much easier.

The next morning, Adrien is sleep deprived and freaking out because he spent all night on the internet looking up everything about babies and pregnancy and “should I propose, Plagg?  Do you think she’ll expect me to?  What do babies eat?  Oh god, what if there’s more than one baby?”

(he’s also spent an insane amount of money on baby clothes and stuffed animals)

So when Nino calls to ask why he’s late for lunch, you really can’t blame him for blurting out:

“I’m not ready to be a father!”

“…what?”

“I’m not ready, Nino!  What if I’m as terrible a father as mine?  What if I kill it?  What if it hates me?  What if–”

“Adrien?”

“What?”

“A father?”

“Yes!  I’m not ready!”

“…who did you get pregnant?”

(you also can’t blame him for hanging up and not going to lunch after all because Marinette didn’t want to tell anyone yet and he almost blew it with the first person he talked to)

They tell their friends a few weeks later, saying that Adrien and Marinette got drunk and hooked up one night, and no they’re not together but they’re both going to be in this baby’s life.

Alya and Nino are thrilled and decide that they are going to be godparents and Alya announces it on the Ladyblog (Marinette and Adrien laugh later about how relevant a post that really was).

The pregnancy goes well.  Adrien does not, in fact, propose, though he does discuss it with Marinette, who decides that maybe in the future, but only if they actually have a relationship together.  They get an apartment together, and Marinette has to hide Adrien’s credit cards because he’s a stress shopper and “we really don’t need six cribs.  You need to send some of them back.”

Ladybug disappears around sometime around the third month, Chat Noir fighting akumas on his own and bringing her the butterflies after for purification.  Chat Noir assures the public that Ladybug is safe and sound, and that she’s only disappeared because there will be a new little bug in a few months, and, no, he will not comment on whether or not this bug is also a kitten.

(Alya freaks out because “Marinette, your baby will be the same age as Ladybugs!  They’ll go to school together!”)

Adrien freaks out at every ultrasound, crying and squeezing Marinette’s hand.  He buys her whatever food she’s craving, and sometimes Chat Noir will be found begging at the door of a closing shop because “Ladybug needs pickles and chocolate fudge can you please stay open just another minute?” and because these stores will usually let Chat Noir in but not Adrien.

(Chat Noir also can’t go more than half a block without people giving him baby supplies.  Sometimes he has to refuse because “Ladybug would not be happy if I came home with a seventh crib.”)

(This leads to the rumours that Ladybug and Chat Noir are having sextuplets, which Marinette finds hilarious.)

(Adrien is just relieved that these rumours aren’t true because one baby is stressful enough and it hasn’t even come yet.)

It’s around five months when Chat Noir almost dies in an akuma attack.  Marinette watches on TV and begs Tikki to let her transform to help, but it would be too dangerous for the baby, so all she can do is watch and cry.  Chat stumbles in the window a while later, barely conscious and bleeding all over the floor.  Ladybug cleanses the akuma and it heals Chat, and they both release their transformations as Marinette throws herself at him, crying.

“I almost lost you.  You have to be more careful, Chat.  I can’t lose you.”

Neither of them notice, at first, that she kisses him.  It seems natural.  He almost died.  She was upset.  So of course she’d kiss him.

Of course, they do notice, and both make things awkward for a few hours before they decide that maybe they should try this for real.

The baby comes a few days early, and Adrien was at a shoot on the other side of Paris when he got the call from Nino.  It would take hours to get there, hours he doesn’t have because Marinette is in labour and he isn’t there and he is seriously stressing out.

So he ducks into an alley and transforms and races across the rooftops.

When he reaches the hospital, the nurses and patients in the waiting give him weird looks but he ignores them because he has to find Marinette.

He barges into Marinette’s room with a “Marinette!  I’m here!” and doesn’t know why everyone turns to stare.

Mr. and Mrs. Dupain-Cheng glance between their daughter and the man who barged in, squinting and trying to put the pieces together.

The nurse who had been checking on a machine drops her clipboard.

Nino narrows his eyes and closes the book he had been trying to distract himself with, rising in a defensive stance.

Alya takes a picture.

And Marinette?  Marinette bursts into hysterical laughter.

“You’re an idiot.”

“What?  I got here as fast as I could.  The shoot was on the other side of town.  I–”

“Adrien.  You’re in costume.”

He looks down at himself and groans because he knew he forgot something when he jumped off the roof.  He releases the transformation and goes to the bed, deciding to pretend like it never happened and asking Marinette how she’s doing.

“That means you’re Ladybug,” Alya says, not going along with Adrien’s plan to ignore his mistake.  “Right?  Because Chat Noir hasn’t said that Ladybug’s baby is his, but he also hasn’t been subtle about the baby being his.”

“Can we talk about this later?” Marinette groans out as a contraction hits.  “Preferably when I don’t have a baby trying to rip its way out of me.”

“Fine,” Alya agrees.  “As long as I get an exclusive about Chat Noir and Ladybug’s baby.”

Hugo Michel Dupain-Cheng-Agreste came into the world a few hours later, by which point all of Paris knew Ladybug and Chat Noir’s identities (becuase Chat Noir running through a hospital screaming for Marinette Dupain-Cheng was not very subtle, and it was common knowledge that Marinette was having a baby with supermodel Adrien Agreste, so Chat Noir’s own identity wasn’t a stretch) and the section of the hospital has to be cornered off to keep out the cameras and the fans.

Gabriel Agreste comes to see them later in the day, to visit his grandson.  He takes his son aside before he leaves, apologizing for being such a horrible father.

“I’ll be better to him, if you’ll let me be in his life.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

But Gabriel doesn’t answer, instead handing a small brown box to his son.

“I am so sorry.  I can’t do this anymore, not when it means hurting my family.  I hope you can forgive me, and that you’ll listen to my explanation one day, but I understand if you won’t.  You don’t have to worry about this anymore.”

And with that, Gabriel was gone, leaving Adrien alone and confused in the hallway of the hospital.  He looked down at the box again, it was so familiar but he couldn’t figure out why.  Slowly, he opened it.  Inside sat a purple butterfly broach.

It’s a few months later before Ladybug and Chat Noir make an appearance again, chasing each other across the rooftops and laughing, stopping in alcoves to kiss.

The papers the next morning feature this:  Ladybug with her arms around Chat’s neck, beaming as he kisses her cheek.  A green sling around Chat’s body, one of his arms holding it to his chest, the other around Ladybug’s waist.  And a baby, tucked in the sling, a little head with cat ears sticking out.

clearlyiwaswrong submitted:

I don’t know if you’d seen these already but my eyes just rolled into the back of my head. Thanks for the crotch shot.

And of course the male equivalent is the opposite of sexualised. 

Those posters sum up PERFECTLY the problem with gendered double standard in depicting fictional characters and how it traverses through various media, as an MMO gets adapted into a movie.

Everything about those characters that should be equal, isn’t: makeup, costume, posing.

@nicholaskole took notice way back of how male orcs are big and unequivocally monstrous, while female ones are just conventionally pretty ladies painted green with small fangs (and that Garona’s mixed ancestry is not given justice either). Basically this:

Also reminds me strongly of @krudman’s take on sexual dimorphism in character design.

We assure you, WoW the Movie, designing big badass orc women (and/or sexualized orc men) isn’t that hard! We have a couple examples in our orc tag.