In The Distant Future, Science Has Found A Way To Change Your Personality. However, To Add A Personality

i love sunsets, i love discovering new music, i love stargazing, i love walking, i love the smell of earth after it rains, i love coffee, i love the smell of books, i love quiet afternoons, i love open windows, i love the underlying flavors in food, i love poetry, i love freshly baked bread, i love painting my nails, i love flowers growing through cracks in the pavement. etc etc

adrien agreste & the body language of abuse

anybody who has seen even only one episode of miraculous ladybug can perfectly describe who chat noir is - he's brazen, he's fun, he's witty, he's flamboyant and overdramatic. he's the kind of hero who will preen confidently, give you a captivating wink and then he's off to save the world. but he's not chat noir all the time, or even half the time. most of the time, chat noir is adrien agreste - a quiet and exceedingly polite kid, who is likely to fade into the background despite his supermodel status. and sure, he knows how to be graceful and how to exude charisma, and he's still capable of being a drama queen (like slouching down a wall from being lovestruck).

but this post isn't about that.

because adrien is gabriel agreste's son all the time - a cold, careless, intimidating man, who will raise his voice to force others into submission, and who is depicted almost always with clenched fists.

what i've tried to do here is outline through images how gabriel's abuse has altered and influenced adrien's body language. because of tumblr's image limits (and the limits of my own patience), i have definitely missed some scenes, but i believe that i've managed to present with commentary the most important parts.

warning: image-heavy post.

chat noir is larger than life. adrien agreste tries to make himself as small as possible.

one of the biggest visual cues that the show gives us about adrien is that he has the tendency to wrap his arms around himself as a way of protection, whether because he's afraid of being vulnerable in front of others, or because he's self-soothing. he will do that even when there are other people around him that are offering comfort. adrien avoids bothering others with his feelings as much as possible, and putting his arms around his front serves as a replacement for the tender and warm touch he craves. he can also slouch, or put his knees up while sitting, creating a cocoon of sorts to feel safe. we also see him standing with his arms crossed in the rare times he tries to confront someone (his father or ladybug usually). whether he's sad, angry, guilty, disappointed, adrien will try to retreat to safety by forming a shield, so to speak.

there is an indisputable link between body and mind when it comes to trauma. adrien tries to not take much space not only with his physical presence, but by also almost never speaking up in class (unless to defend marinette), trying to be concise when communicating, and rarely making jokes. he's extremely reserved.

one of the scenes between gabriel and adrien that solidifies that adrien is terrified of his father happens in the first episode of season 2, when gabriel forbids adrien from attending school as a punishment for stealing and losing the grimoire. notice how gabriel is speaking with his back turned to his son, insinuating that adrien is not even worthy of being looked in the eyes. at one point he clenches his fist, as if to threaten his son. adrien is sitting on his computer chair with his hands in his lap, only lifting them defensively when he tries to explain himself. gabriel stands directly in front of him, as if shadowing adrien with his anger and contempt.

let's take a look at another episode - 'captain hardrock', in which gabriel and nathalie are listening to adrien play a piano piece. the screenshots in the upper half are from a moment when adrien hits a wrong note - notice the sheer fear and panic in his expression. he is immediately stopped, reprimanded for making a mistake, accused of being irresponsible and influenced by his rock band friends, and he's forbidden from attending his friends' concert. what's interesting about this moment isn't how he once again tries to make himself scarce physically - it's the terrified glance he gives his father when he plays the wrong key. you can just tell that adrien has internalized his father's reproaches and that his disapproving voice lives in his head, even when gabriel isn't there.

and can anyone judge him? take a look at these two screencaptures from 'stormy weather 2'. what happened is that adrien walked into his father's office, bright and enthusiastic, eager to tell him about the interesting idea behind his last photoshoot, and not only did he dare to interrupt gabriel's villainy, but he also accidentally called him 'dad' instead of 'father', as gabriel demands. a dirty look over the shoulder, two clenched fists, and adrien immediately apologizes and retreats.

adrien lives life on the defense. he has a naturally delicate and sensitive personality, which earns only eye rolls and accusations of put-on dramatism (there is also something to be said about how gabriel and adrien's relationship neatly corresponds to male and female gender roles, but that's yet another meta for another day).

notice the scene with ladybug in the image above - a rare time where adrien's trauma body language has bled into chat noir. he's insecure because 'nobody tells [him] how awesome [he] is', and he refuses to look ladybug or alix in the eyes while saying it. adrien is uncomfortable with looking at people during his most vulnerable moments.

'glaciator' is one of the episodes that can serve like a crash course on the way adrien carries himself under stress, this time because he's disappointed and heartbroken that the girl he loves didn't come to his surprise.

when around his father, if there's somebody else around he feels close to, adrien might lean on that other person, in order to feel stronger and braver.

now. not to be a conspiracy theorist about a cartoon or something, but. as miraculous is told from marinette's pov, we don't have a lot of episodes that focus on the agrestes, so we, the audience, often rely on guesswork and speculation. what was the relationship between emilie and gabriel? what was emilie really like? is she really as good as adrien claims, if he was strictly isolated the entire time she was alive? i do think that adrien's life has been mostly unexplored in canon (so far), and that includes his relationship with gabriel. i want to make it as clear as possible - adrien is brave to the point of stupidity, and not just as chat noir. let's not forget that he jumped from the top of a skyscraper, lead only by his faith that ladybug will save him, who, by the way, was busy being captured by gorizilla and screaming for help herself. if that's not crazy, i don't know what is.

adrien is afraid of his father. you don't get a child that so obviously displays trauma symptoms with a few cruel jabs. i very, very strongly feel that we haven't even seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gabriel's abuse. look at the screencaptures above from the episode 'simon says'. adrien is familiar with his father's insults, very much so. who else remembers how his father was nowhere to be found when he won a fencing tournament in 'chat blanc', but the day his technique is slipping, his father is waiting at the top of the stairs of the agreste mansion, ready to reprimand adrien? and speaking of 'chat blanc'...

these two moments might be the saddest. we don't know yet if adrien knows the true identity of hawk moth in 'ephemeral'. i'm leaning towards yes, because adrien is so courageous that he had no problems fighting what he assumed to be the real hawk moth with an umbrella in 'the puppeteer 2'.

in both situations, he's being cornered. adrien's moving slowly (hell, he's crawling in 'chat blanc), his face frozen in a mask of pure fear. look at adrien in 'chat blanc' - a boy who has the power to destroy everything he touches is now trying to surrender and is begging with one palm in the air. in both cases, right before getting akumatized by his father, adrien displays the trauma stress response known as 'freeze', instead of 'fight' or 'flight'. he's immobile and passive. a classic adrien line is 'i can't stand by and do nothing!', and yet here he is, thoughts completely shut off, unable to plan a way to get to safety or fight for his self-preservation.

ladybug has said that chat noir is braver than her. he is reckless, for sure. but when it comes to gabriel, adrien retreats to an almost womb-like state physically, instead of the openness and 'world is my oyster' attitude he displays as chat noir. he mistakenly believes that the less space he takes, the less he is heard and seen, and the less he asserts himself as someone with wants and needs, the less angry and disappointed will gabriel be. and that is adrien's biggest mental fallacy, since we're talking about the man who will readily make adrien suffer, only because adrien is getting into his way.

VIDEO ESSAYS 2 (PT. 1)

The Adorkable Misogyny of The Big Bang Theory what happens to youtubers after they “expire?” the problem with aesthetics QUEERING THE SLASHER: SCREAM why you hate learning Heterofatalism: WHY straight women aren’t okay. How David Fincher Uses Pop Music Dunkirk - The Art Of Fear THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (2015): Style Vs. Substance Homosexuality Is Not Moral And Here’s Why Alternative self help is brainwashing you. How To Harm Your Audience - Wonder Woman 1984 Dark Academia: The Corruptive Allure of Aesthetic Beauty TW: trigger warnings aren’t helping you How CAGE THE ELEPHANT Overcame Their Fear of Music Netflix’s Decisions are a Very Funny Joke What Makes Disney Villains so Gay? Succession Deserves the Hype the problem with teen dramas Miss Congeniality’s Mixed Messages | Good & Bad Takeaways The Lotus Blossom Stereotype - Dangers of the Asian Fetish How To Do A Fight Scene Why the Media NEEDED Joker to Fail you’re not s3xually liberated, you’re 16 Why You Should Stop Using Times New Roman Why a movie like Who Framed Roger Rabbit will NEVER be made again The Babadook: The New Physicality of Ghosts in Horror Get Out — A New Perspective in Horror Why The Shining is Terrifying The Importance of Horror (Why Horror Movies Don’t Suck) Vaping: A Lesson in Irony I don’t have a dream job: self-help scam or revolutionary concept? How To Do A Plot Twist Hunger Games clones and how they work Why The End of Jenna Marbles Is The End of Authenticity This Angel YA romance killed my ability to feel joy or love tiktok is kind of bad for fashion The Problem with Museums Is TikTok Hurting the Music Industry? I HATE “Guilty Pleasure” Music (A Rant) our obsession with glowing up Triumph of the Will and the Cinematic Language of Propaganda Talent Belongs to the Beautiful - How Media Manipulates your Tastes Edgar Wright - How to Do Visual Comedy NIETZSCHE: THE MAN WHO VIBE CHECKED GOD KANYE EXPLAINED: A Guide To Bipolar Disorder & Creativity Sleep is Just Death Being Shy This Is NOT How People Talk Men In Black International — How to Build a Toxic Hero How Spielberg Shoots A Film At 3 Budget Levels

Essays

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love

also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!

Literature + Writing

Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag

The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*

Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*

A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi

How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik

Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone

Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman

Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom

The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*

The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes

Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*

Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*

Why I Write - George Orwell*

Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*

Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)

Looking at War - Susan Sontag*

Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz

Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker

The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews

In Plato’s Cave - Susan Sontag*

On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

Kalighat Paintings  - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri

Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past -  Maël Renouard

Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel

Cities

Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash

Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*

Timur’s Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur

The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai’s iconic railway station - Srinath Perur

From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective -  Andrew Harris

The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay

The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel

Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan

A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp

The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne

The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*

The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour

Philosophy

The trolley problem problem - James Wilson

A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*

Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer

The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*

The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape

If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood

Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart

The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*

The Science of “Muddling Through” - Charles Lindblom*

History

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan

The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*

From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*

Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*

All By Myself - Martha Bailey*

The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder

The sea/ocean

Rim of Life - Manu Pillai

Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery

‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*

The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*

Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti

Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*

Assorted ones on India

A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *

Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash

Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu

The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*

Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta

Our worldview is Delhi based*

Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)

‘Massa Day Done:’ Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*

Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh

When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger

Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*

Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha

MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*

Music

Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo

Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder

The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*

Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*

How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield

Concert for Bangladesh

From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen 

Gender

Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane

The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin

Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*

Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe

Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*

Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack

Food

How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)

Colonialism’s effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee

Tracing Europe’s influence on India’s culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu

Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*

From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*

The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*

How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*

Pav from the Nau

A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes

Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)

Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)

Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*

Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua

The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*

Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*

Travel

The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism

Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan

On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose

On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*

More random assorted ones

The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*

In El Salvador - Joan Didion

Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee

Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*

What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*

The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith

Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*

Credibility and Mystery - John Berger

happy reading :)

“I’m a royal that you, a pirate captain, just fished out of the sea, but you’re clueless about my status” AU

- (@nop)

What would you do with Infinity Gaunlet?

1. Every person gets food, water, shelter, and food Wifi so long as they are willing to contribute to society in some way shape or form.

2. Remove all rapists, Serial killers, and human traffickers from existence. (Pedophilc rapists get EXTRA painful removal) and any person that attempts to do such crimes from then on will immediately combust.

3. Fix all issues with the climate and make it physically impossible for humans regardless of their actions to impact the climate.

4. Invincible Penguin army to establish peace.

5. Fix the airing schedule of season 3 of ML, as well as some of the episodes I have beef with.

6. Have Free cures created for all diseases and disabilities. (Thus allowing for 1. To apply to everyone.)

7. Make Child birth Painless.

8. Make it so Women only get pregnant when the Woman wants to, and thus making ultimate birth control. (Thus making it easier for woman to get pregnant when they want to and not get pregnant when they don’t)

9. Feminine care products are much more affordable.

10. It is impossible for any animal to harm a person.

11. Make it so only I can weild the infinity gauntlet, and I can not be murdered.

“I just took the job as your bodyguard, and there are *how* many people trying to kill you? Seriously?!” AU

- (@thenextromana)

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

Give me Alex Rider’s politics teacher just being absolutely...astounded by the amount of knowledge this kid has on not only the socio-economic climate of literally every freaking country but the most freakishly good instincts of how each new politician that comes along is going to fare. It’s at the point he now has a secret cabinet of sticky notes on Alex’s off hand comments of each new public figure because God Dammit he always turns out to be right.

Give me Alex’s Riders politics teacher who stands up for him against others in the staff room because his essays provide the freshest viewpoints he’s seen in over 20 years. Ethics, politics, morality, social structures, negotiations, public figures, military influences and ulterior motivators; Alex Rider handles each topic with a grace and insight he hasn’t seen since university. Quite frankly he doesn’t know whether to be impressed or terrified. He settles on curious.

Give me Alex Rider’s politics teacher who’s family served in the army, who recognises the shadows of war in those dark brown eyes even if he can never understand why. The only one that seems to notice that seeing Alex’s controlled, efficient steps through a boisterous crowd of school children is like watching a ballet dancer glide through a swarm of drunk seagulls.

Give me Alex Rider’s politics teacher who let’s the poor kid take a nap in class or snack when he wants to (partly because 50% of the time he looks ready to drop) but mostly because deep down they both know there’s nothing that he can teach him here. Alex had an already pretty unusual and impressive grasp of foreign affairs before his uncle died and in the years since then? Well, he’s pretty sure Alex speaks more languages fluently than he has fingers.

Give me Alex Rider’s politics teacher whose subject gives him more of a glimpse into his talents than most people are allowed to see; who takes one good look at his extra little piece of the puzzle and thinks yeah. This kid is brilliant.