Me After Projecting My Entire Self Onto A Fictional Character

Lila’s threat 

Chameleon Miraculous Ladybug

❝I just don’t wanna feel so bad anymore.❞ Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck / Joker in Joker (2019)

go watch julie and the phantoms right now.

it’s amazing 

Me, getting out of bed to face the world: I’m proud, I’m confident, I’m Marinette!

reggie + milk and honey by rupi kaur

A Roadmap of Lucaya: Season 1

We all know Maya liked Lucas for a long time (and that the “she only liked him to see if he’s good enough for Riley” thing is bullshit). But when did he start liking her? When did it start becoming obvious?

In other words, I thought it’d be fun to map out the Lucaya story from the pilot until Texas, and see what we can see. Since this will take a while, I’m going to focus on season 1 only in this post; season 2 will come soon.

So, let’s take a look at the Lucaya moments, big and small, and then we’ll talk about them in a broader sense.

Pilot: The sloppy joe thing. Farkle uses sloppy joes and chicken pot pie as obvious metaphors for the girls (sloppy joe = Maya, chicken pot pie = Riley). Lucas is eating a sloppy joe, as is Maya. I personally don’t think this necessarily means Lucaya, but it’s an interesting minor observation. (It’s also a callback to a Boy Meets World episode and Cory and Shawn have a verrry similar lunch food=girls conversation)

Boy: The start playing their “game” of teasing each other.

Father: The game continues. Maya seem almost jealous when she can’t get Lucas’s attention back onto her as she’s teasing him while he walks away with Riley. At the school dance, he brings her a rose. She comments that he puts thought into their game; he agrees.

Maya’s Mother: Lucas shuts Farkle up when he starts putting his foot in his mouth in regards to Katy not showing up to Maya’s art show.

1961: The first time Lucas is outright supportive of Maya: he encourages to keep trying with her art.

We see more of their game when discussing his great grandfather - Maya sings a song about it, and Lucas doesn’t seem to mind. Likewise, Lucas is thrilled when he finds out Maya’s family comes from the Clutterbucket name.

And things start to get interesting here: Maya’s grandmother May seemed to have a “missed opportunity” - the theme of the episode - with Lucas’s grandfather. (Likewise, there’s a hint of this with Riley and Farkle’s grandparents.) While this connection is between the grandparents and not the kids, this is all VERY eye opening.

Crazy Hat: The birth of the first hahurr. It comes after Maya spent a day (offscreen) alone with Lucas.

Flaws: Lucas picks up Maya to stop her from doing something she might regret. Maya later jumps on his back to stop him from doing the same thing.

Friendship: Lucas appoints Maya as his Secretary of State, and it’s very clearly spelled out that it means he thinks highly of her. She helps put together a video for him that means a lot to him.

Their games continues, when Maya sings a song about him and he plays along on his harmonica.

First Date: There’s an interesting exchange between Farkle and Lucas about dating the girls, and Lucas says if Farkle started dating one, he’d start dating the “other one.” Moments later, Maya approaches him and he greets her as Other One.

He ends his date with Riley (that they’ve been on for all of 2 minutes, poor Riley) because Maya’s upset and encourages Riles to go to her.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t address this, even though I honestly, truly don’t know what to make of it:

Maya is wearing a yellow top, and Lucas is in a bright turquoise. In the background of the scene, there’s a boy and a girl at the water fountain (I think?), and she’s in a bright turquoise dress; the boy is in yellow.

So what does it mean? Possibly nothing, but it’s sooo strange. They’re not explicitly focused on, but they are very much in several shots, and it’s a little distracting and hard not to notice. I’m not saying this automatically means Lucaya, but...god it’s bizarre. If they were both in blue, or more neutral colours, I’d chalk it up to coincidence. But yellow and turquoise? That shit’s intentional.I just don’t know why.

Okay! Now that we’ve laid out the Lucaya moments, what can we gleam from this?

Well, it seems to me there’s been small nuggets of Lucaya from the early days. They start playing their “game” as early as the second episode, and it ramps up throughout the season. Lucas never seems to be genuinely upset with her about any of this; in fact, her encourages her and often joins in in some way.

Crazy Hat seems to be the turning point: they spend time alone together, and Maya hahurrs him, which quickly becomes a staple in their relationship. And to make it more interesting, we see them get more physical with each other directly after that episode. Interesting development, huh?

We’ve seen that despite their teasing, Lucas is protective of Maya and her feelings pretty early on. We also have it spelled out for us that he thinks highly of her - in the same episode where he takes Riley on a seemingly romantic princess horsey ride, no less.

Lucaya is low key in season one, but it’s there. We see their relationship develop and grow as the season progresses. Season 2 is where everything ramps up like crazy, but there are some eyebrow raising moments in season 1 for sure.

chat noir’s magical girl suggestions

nothing makes me feel more alive than being insane about a little show

when julie and the phantoms said "i'm going out of my mind"........ yea