(Milgram self-insert oc masterpost hehe)
Name: For the sake of posting online I’ll call her Rose!
Color: #E7355B [the pink in the art]
Age: I guess she’d be 20 given when Milgram started huh. Gross.
Status: Milgram Staff, Machine Technician
Symbols/imagery: ballet, musical theater, potted plants, board games, various bugs
Song genre: very similar to Mahiru's, something upbeat and extra pop-y
Tentatively she's number 011? She's not really prisoner but she's also not free to come and go, so I'm not actually sure if she'd get a number
Story: I figured since the project is supposed to be realistic/present day, the mv machine would be brand new and unpredictable tech, so they’d want someone keeping up on maintenance and making sure the brain-invasive process won’t cause any harm to the prisoners. She was studying abroad in Japan working on some cool neuroscience tech (irl I know nothing about technology or brains but shh) and she stumbled upon the Milgram team’s machine/plans. Long story short she was dragged into the experiment to make sure things ran smoothly.
Writer's Reasoning: She’s really fun for me to play around with, as she allows me to work with a character who is simultaneously trapped in the prison but hasn’t committed any murder**, someone who has a tiny bit of pull over Es’ mindset in conversation but not the final decision (aka the voting system), and someone who would have a reason to see all the canon content.* I really enjoy the character interactions and dynamics Milgram has set up so far, so it’s been super fun seeing how things change for better and worse when someone not quite aligned with either Milgram/the prisoners is thrown into the mix!
*As much as I love dramatic irony in fiction, it would drive me crazy if I knew every detail of of the vds/mvs but Rose didn't – and every single Milgram character is The Worst Communicator Ever so I couldn’t justify that she’d hear it second hand from them...
**I’ll also add that I don’t believe I’m above murder lmao – the main thing stopping me from making her a prisoner was a) the reason above, and b) there’s no way I could have produced a full music video, and it would've driven me crazy if she didn't have one 😂 Still, I imagine she has to run some tests on the machine to make sure things are calibrated correctly, so she'd extract little things here and there (giving me the opportunity to think up lyric snippets and recurring symbols for her without worrying about full encompassing music videos :))
Story roles:
She’s a bit conflicted -- she’s officially Milgram staff and knows she should remain neutral on the prisoners, since she won’t be allowed to interfere with the process/executions. At the same time, her job description is literally “make sure they all are safe and healthy” and she's way too emotional to avoid getting hopelessly attached to everyone 😅
I really enjoy the theory that the machine extracts videos based off of priming, so one of Rose’s duties involves listening in on the interrogation and making sure there’s been enough material discussed/not too much time has passed overall (hence the ringing of the bell happening at different lengths for each vd). She then watches the mvs along with Es to make sure there are no machine glitches.
I'm not afraid to admit she falls into Mary Sue territory every so often by being everyone's friend, because it's less about "aw everyone likes her" and more about "canon is too painful rn and I need a fix-it tool to take care of these guys and give them hugs and tell them someone forgives them and cares about them and unfortunately these characters wouldn't let anyone less than a friend do that." Rest assured she's definitely not perfect and will fuck everything up on occasion :3
Miscellaneous: Whenever I play around with normal au ideas she's still working on the machine (but in a public, more ethical setting), and she's Mahiru's roommate :) Her character isn't super focused on love, but if I had to pick a cover song it'd be Stickybug II. It's very much my vibe, the lyrics fit well enough (better than most songs, at least lol) and it's one of my favorites of the unchosen songs!
So yeah, I hope she's not too boring without a cool crime to decipher, but I wanted to share since I was really proud of her! It took a bit of tinkering to find a way to fit her into a perfect secret-third-thing role that runs very smoothly with all of canon, so I was very excited!
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Different nonnie, but Liiri always looked like a cute but bland little nugget to me, so I totally get liking Ying Ying’s character design better. The red-and-yellow glowing color palette that all the Renlings have made it harder to appreciate square-on, so I’m glad you’re switching the colors up too.
Your full answer to that ask reminds me, concerning which of your Miraculous WIPs you’d want to use this three-tier Miraculous setup on, you could honestly just have the Wish made by someone using the canon Ladybug and Black Cat in any of the MULTIPLE in-show close calls up to this point and then just alter and/or rewind reality from there, because SCREW all the unnecessary changes, additions, and retcons that this show’s lore has pulled over the last five seasons. The Prodigious, Order of the Guardians, Native American Miraculous, Miraculous potions, time travel, and so on were obviously far too complex ideas for the ML crew to handle properly, and now they’ve decided to delve even further into the idea of alternate universes for the upcoming Miraculous Paris special on top of all of that, so forget it, might as well use the one still-useful canon-established setup of a Wish to clean it all up so you can use your new lineup in any idea you want. After Wish AU? An accidental dual-Wish is already built into the premise, with Adrien wanting things to be different and Marinette rejecting that, and you get to play with the PV world’s interesting plot setups, a main cast whose characters are slightly to-the-left in terms of personality and looks, and a Marinette who remembers everything contrasting an Adrien who remembers nothing. Off to Italy AU? Maybe it’s later in Season 4 or 5 where Marinette is just tired and she Wishes she had gotten the chance to be a hero with actual support and/or really live her life with trustworthy friends and family at the start of it all, with both the Miraculous powers and her grandmother’s availability to take her to live in Milan with her shifting accordingly. Fortune Favors the Brave AU? Maybe Alya swipes Chat Noir’s Miraculous in Hack-san during their brief introduction-tussle and has the “bright” idea of making the Wish to make herself the Ladybug hero from the beginning only to find that a) main hero life is a lot harder than it’s cracked up to be, b) she’s now one of the five most powerful instead of the two most powerful as Karma for making the Wish without considering others, pressing the importance of teamwork in this new life even more than in the old one, and c) her new kwami is understandably NOT happy about how Alya not only betrayed her former owner’s trust but also reset the universe’s established power balances due to her Wish being too broad. And these are just three examples off the top of my head. All this to say that you’ve been a wonderful part of the fandom even if you don’t interact with it as much anymore, and I don’t think you’ll have to worry too much about which idea to fit your new Miraculous system into when the time comes given your writing track record. With all the grief that the canon plot has given you and everyone else, it’s only fair that you get to use its built-in Deus ex machina to your advantage.
I'll say that chances are I wouldn't do an After Wish au for a lot of the ideas, cause most I want to work off starting off fresh and no one having any recollection of a previous timeline and acting like this is the norm.
Like, the Off to series would have this set up since "Lady Lion" would be a character for Off to Milan, and Pixie Girl or Butterfly Girl will have Mantis. And Off to London, Sebastian the waiter is planned to have Songbird.
So Off to series will either be splitting up the Bagua set or it'll be all randomized on where Miraculous are, and Fu only has a few.
But After Wish au could happen for some ideas, especially since I do like @nobodyfamousposts Lament ideas and their take on the Wish. How the new reality deals with you can depend on your actions, where fighting against the new setting and not liking the changes makes things worse for you, and how rough a set up you'll have can depend on how selfish or selfless a Wish is. It's a fun set up and scenario to think about.
And oh yeah, full agree with all the choices and directions the show went. I'm certain a lot of it came down to doing what other superhero studios were doing. Like Marvel is trying to get the multiverse going and DC dabbled in it with that Flash movie, so clearly ML has to do it too! Which, I will say, there is potential in playing with the multiverse. Back when the show just started, this was the show for aus. Any au you could think of existed. ML being a tv show and the cast are all actors, kwami swap au, inverse/pastel au that just swapped or changed up their colors, personality swaps, life swaps, reverse love square, enemies to lovers, rivals to lovers, ect..
So Ml could work off the multiverse and have fun with it, but that does require creativity and a passion for the show, which given their lazy or odd choices, you got to wonder how invested they are.
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Man... I can't stop thinking about the things that were talked about on the stream, especially the answer on my question - so... get ready for a ramble! its a long one. oops. i dont even know where im going with this, im just dumping my thoughts somewhere. half is about ttcc lore in general and the streams, the other half is about cathal and me projecting onto him deeper.
before i even hop deeper into this, it wasn't until early today that i learned that there was a whole drama about cranky's answers (regarding the graham and flint question and the whole "keep it sane" thing. i thought it was...off, but i understood it as 'do what you want people, just don't start any harassment because of ships and your favorite pairs'.
definitely could have been phrased better, though. at least we got a good response and an apology later from maven on twitter. but i legit did not know this was a drama until those twitter posts were made LOL. i dont interact with the fandom so i do not know how that answer was percieved by most. or if anyone except for me and my friends have had any thoughts about the question i asked that got answered.)
and what im tryna get to is that i get cranky isnt the one to be answering lore things, and probably didnt know what to answer... but it's still something to think about
because being told "cogs and toons just dont become how they are out of the blue" (paraphrasing here) as an answer to what cathal initially thought of seeing his dad be bet up and thrown off a tower is... confusing? he did say first and foremost that it has to be built upon before saying that. i understand that this is... a lot of characters! and cathal did have some focus on him thanks to the comic and they wanted to focus on other managers... but some have deeper, more intricate lore that's easy to grasp (especially the more, well, angstier managers like chip and misty.)
and we have gotten some extra lore for other managers like belle, mary, tawny.... thanks to thomas' rambles.
and it's definitely difficult for a team of volounteers working hard on a fan game together to make lore for all the characters, that are still very young in their *life span*, having been around for less than a year. despite ttcc being more character driven and focused on the cogs, it's still a game they have to run so they cannot focus on lore only and some game management has to be done first. there's a bunch of things they have to consider, like consistency and how fans may react, or possible themes or what they want the story to be...
and. yeah. its hard since. come on lets admit it. clash has an issue with how these are all given to us. hell, there's lore bits i still dont know about and im still learning because it's..so all over the place. a new player will not know about it. maven acknowledged this in the tweet and i really appreciate that, as it's honestly been my number one issue with clash, especially as someone who is there for the lore. (i mean, and the gameplay, i know some people who don't play the game itself much. well i sure do a little TOO MUCH because i have PROBLEMS. but im interested in the lore, too, yknow?)
some lore you cant learn from the wiki, and unless you interact with the community, you may never learn *where* all of this even is. if you werent live for certain lore there, it's hardly accessible to you. lore locked behind one time events, an arg website, wikis, discord chats... all that. it's hard to keep track of! i'm sure it's like that for both the fans and the writers. these characters are great, fun, and i love them, but the way we are given this information is... not the best. it's very easy to miss certain details.
it's especially bad if you're like me - only ever interacting with a close group of people you trust, (because people are scary especially a lot of... lore driven fans. yeahnoimeanshippers.sorry.and just big crowds of people in general) having only gotten back into the game recently AFTER most of the major lore events (first played once in 2019, then never again until january 2023) and also you dislike youtube and video content, so you dont watch it. something in your brain would rather if you step on a nail than watch a playthrough video (especially with commentary).
like in general it shouldnt be necessary to go through all these hoops just to know the lore! especially for things that may have little lore...
anyways, uh, back to cathal. i cannot stop thinking about this.
it definitely wasnt an answer to what i specifically asked - but possibly more so about... why cathal is the way he is? and despite what my brain and low self esteem during hard times may tell me - i do not believe that anybody is truly "lazy". i just dont think that exists. there's always some reason behind a person being unmotivated or lazy. even the little things!
but like... that's just kinda obvious. all toons and cogs have motivations. thats like... one of the basics of writing characters. have motivations for characters and reasons for why they are how they are. doesnt have to be anything tragic, just.... how they are as people.
it's totally unrelated to the question of what cathal thought about seeing his dad like that... but oh well! i asked that because i made up my own story around that already, and i just wanted to see what someone working on the game thinks about the same idea.
not to be Tumblr User CathalBravecog, but, of course I have projected heavily onto cathal. i have already stated how important cathal is to me as a character, especially with appreciating myself when im.. not exactly the most motivated. when im not doing much. taught me to appreciate breaks. hell! i keep preaching this myself. its okay to take breaks! and yet i often end up not doing it and i overwork myself on games and art and other things.
there's... a lot of things "wrong" with me that i don't have names for yet, especially due to not having a diagnosis for them, but they're very real feelings and they cause me to be unable to do things a lot of the time. various mental blocks and a new member of the gang... physical pai! hooray.
this... endless productivity we are forced and expected to do. it can take a toll on you. breaks are just as necessary and to say it's a thing that has to be re-learned is... sickening. hooray for living in a Corporate (clash) society, fellas.
one thing i can say is that i absolutely headcanon that cathal has adhd - though, maybe not the same type i do. i do not think he gets randomly hyper and wants to (and does) jump around everywhere and blurt things out randomly and impulsively. cathal here has the low energy, yknow.
i like that a lot of the content around him doesnt even describe him with the words "lazy" and "sleepy" instead.
every day is the same... even if his job is relatively simple, just watching over the camera feed - it's definitely boring... and having to do it every day is not rewarding. and being mostly alone and without consequence, he gives into wanting to do something else. he's got these huge screens and a room to himself, and he loves watching shows and cartoons... so he's gonna do that. it's more fun. it's stimulating. and especially with his dad being the one to give him his position, he knows that he's got nothing to really worry about there.
i also think it's a bit hard to be motivated knowing that... this war between the cogs and toons is just. endless. hell, again, he has to see his dad *everyday* be attacked by them. his body damaged after the fall - only to be fixed again. rinse and repeat. i would too, find it pointless. especially if you're like cathal, since i pointed out before that he is very kind and caring towards the other cogs. he's also thoughtful, noting that yknow... a lot of stairs to get to his room.
why do all that when you can chill... and feel good. do something that feels nice...
i don't have any names for this, but with how sleepy he usually is, that's definitely a thing to consider too. and just, from experience... being tired and/or sleepy it... dismotivates you even more. its so hard to start tasks even if you *want* to do them. and considering cathal mooost likely doesn't want to do his work on his own - then these tasks can be just. impossible to start.
like, i have struggled with this my entire life myself, just because of my adhd screwing with everything, but after getting covid and most definitely getting a form of chronic exhaustion from it.. things have been even harder. i pull myself through day and i barely have the energy to even start anything. sometimes i dont even do anything all day and... woops! still no mood or energy to do anything. i just work on random bursts of motivation and things that captivate me...
not sure how it relates to cathal, but, hey, if im personal here ill ramble about it too because WOW it has been biting me in the ass and i need to speak to Professionals About It
like... i dont think hes being "lazy" willingly, yknow? theres a reason behind it. it definitely is just... being sleepy, the comfort... the fun and stimulation doing something fun he's interested in (his shows) are just... stronger desires and way easier for him to get to. why struggle through something when it takes up all your energy, and then you feel no reward for it? yeah. exactly. even just "not feeling like it" is a reson. "not having energy" is a reason. hey, are these things to get better about if needed? certainly. i wish i could get help with this, it would help me in my life so so much. but should it be seen as ENTIRELY negative and as being a "hinder to society". hell nah. and i think thats swag. cathal is swag he can do this, good for him lmaooo. my brain is deteriorating i apologize.
there was... another thing i wanted to say, but i forgot. so i'll move on.
but just... yeah. i dont think cathal is just lazy. i dont believe in "laziness". he's got reasons for why he prefers naps and just... watching tv instead of doing his work. perhaps he does want to do these things, but gave up on trying. its not worth the effort, it does not feel good. its not stimulating enough to keep him going.
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