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This reminds me of a zombie dream I had as a kid. Long story short, I was hiding terrified in a table, thinking to myself, "I wish this was all a dream"; then I realized it was a dream, and I shut my eyes tight to force myself awake. I woke up on the couch with my mom asleep in the armchair next to me, and I was so freaked out that I made sure to check if she was a zombie.
These days, I can actually lucid-dream a bit. I'd realize I was in a dream, and I could feel completely at ease knowing I could take control at any time; and sometimes, I'd even be able to restart or rewind my dream to either do something different or repeat something I like.
I sunk into really, really deep snow and couldn't climb back up to the surface and then after a few seconds went, "Wait, I know how to get out of this one," and instantly woke up.
One thing I actually dabbled in (in thought, not on writing) is Lila not really being fourteen but an adult mage who was either a scorned member of The Order of Guardians or someone who wanted the miraculouses (of course, sans "flirting with Adrien").
I figured it would make sense, because besides having time for the evil intentions to marinate in her personality, but her ability to miraculously fool people could have an explanation.
On the topic of Lila, her character made a lot more sense when all we knew about her was that she was the daughter of foreign diplomats. Judging by the fact that they brought her to France, it's safe to assume that her parents probably cart her around everywhere. Now, an ambassador serves on average for about three years. A kid who's moving to a different country every few years can't keep friends around and has to start from scratch everywhere they go. Lila was naturally going to end up being very lonely. So, what makes the most sense to me is she started lying to seem more interesting, and became addicted to the effortless popularity and clout she got by doing it, to the point where all her other motivations fell away. The fact that she was always moving also had the effect of insulating her from consequences—by the time anyone could figure her out, she was long gone.
I strongly agree with everything you said. The more we learn about Lila, the less anything about her makes sense. She went from a pretty logical, but poorly executed character to a massive question mark! Nothing about her makes sense! How did a fourteen-year-old convince all these people that she was their missing kid? How did Lila even identify people with missing kids? I'm so confused.
A part of me really wants to know the answers to these questions because it's such a weird twist, but then I think about all of Lila's other lies and I lose most of my interest. I just don't trust the writers who came up with the oh-so-brilliant lie of, "Jagged Stone wrote a song about me!" to be able to tell a convincing story about maternity fraud.
Was doing the last of my work, middle of the night (12-5am) hand in pain, and was pretty much on the verge of an emotional breakdown.
AND THE ONE THING THAT KEPT ME FROM DOING THAT WAS:
"I have no time for this."
What's up with my mental? Did I just procrastinate on a mental breakdown?
I remember something that somebody mentioned to me here, which was when I was questioning the whole "senti-Adrien" thing, and why Emilie and Gabriel never considered IVF or adoption. After all, Emilie was toted as an angel, so pretty sure biological connection shouldn't matter.
What they told me was that there wasn't much to Emilie anyway. Sure, she was represented as kind, but there was next to nothing else besides that. She was practically a blank slate, so unfortunately, there was nothing to contradict her.
Which, in a show that also toted family love as one of its strongest values, is sad when the LITERAL DRIVING POINT to the whole story has next to nothing going for her.
Wondering about how much of Adrien is real seems to be the tip of the "Astruc didn't think things through" iceberg. How much of any senti-person is genuine? Does Tomoe only think Kagami can't draw because she cannot? Is Felix an ass because Colt Fathom was?
(Post this ask was in reference to)
I'm always wary of laying all of the blame at any one person's feet without hard evidence that this is only their fault since there's a core writing team and pretty much every episode has multiple credited writers. Add in the fact that many other people are also directly and indirectly involved in the writing process and it becomes real hard to point fingers from the outside, which is why I tend to generally wave at the whole crew under the banner of "writers". Other than that issue, I agree with you. It seems like everyone involved either didn't think the idea through very well or they thought it was a kids show, so the horrifying implications didn't matter.
I never know what a kid will pick up on and Miraculous' target demographic is pretty young, so this may indeed be something that flies over most kids heads. It's still not a risk that I would take, though, and I'm baffled as to why they even did it.
This isn't supposed to be a super dark show, so you generally want to avoid including dark elements unless they're absolutely vital because why risk upsetting your audience when you don't need to? And the writers really didn't need to. They went the "Emilie had no idea that the peacock would kill her" route and, once you go that route, you don't need to give her a complex motivation for using the peacock. Complexity is only required if she knew that using it would kill her. And even if they did go the "she knew" route, they still picked a terrible motivation! If your infertility is effecting you so badly that you're willing to die to get a baby, then you don't need a magic baby. You need mental health support because you are in a very dark place.
It just really makes me mad, seeing how Chloé and Adrien's relationship devolved. The idea that one of the protagonists was childhood friends with one of the antagonists—note, antagonist, not villain—was such an interesting one, because I'd never seen something like that before.
In most TV shows, the petty bully character was just someone to stir the pot and to oppose the main cast, and any friends they did have were just patsies. But knowing that Adrien and Chloé had that established relationship was something I wanted to see.
If only they'd explored their relationship more. Besides learning more about their pasts, it also would've given us a look-see into how their upbringings impacted them and how their relationship came to be. I would've loved to see them have things about their friendship that made it unique, like shared secrets between them.
Plus, from a Chloé-damnation arc perspective, it would've also put some more emphasis on her downfall, because the show would've shown us the difference between the Chloé Adrien knew and the Chloé that hit the ground face-first. I also feel like it would've been a good gut-wrenching moment to really hit home just how low Chloé fell, because we would've seen her go from the friend Adrien knew to a seething hateful villain.
If Thomas Astruc really wanted that damnation arc, then he could've weaponized hers and Adrien's childhood relationship to deliver a truly painful emotional downfall, because then Adrien would've had to face the reality that the person he knew was well and truly gone.
Wasted potential aside, I never really understood the Derision episode in Season 5, where Adrien confronts Chloé for "traumatizing" Marinette and demands an apology. Chloé broke off their friendship in Banana Queen—SHE told Adrien they weren't friends anymore. So what was even the point of having Adrien tell Chloé "You're awful, you traumatized my girlfriend, apologize to her"? So Adrien can have the last word or something? You'd think he'd know better than to believe she'd actually apologize just because he said so.
When it comes to people being against Chloe getting a redemption arc one of their excuses is that Marinette/ladybug helping Chloe is bad because "it teaches kids that they should help their bullies regardless". But when was it ever said that Marinette had to be the one to help Chloe. Adrien is right there! Have him be the one to help Chloe. It'd even be a perfect excuse to give him more screentime too!
It's weird because the earlier episodes that set up the idea of Chloe turning a new leaf showed Adrien taking the most pity on her and pretty much told Marinette and Ladybug that they should trust her more (Antibug, Malediktator).
The show even set up the idea of Adrien and Chloe's friendship being tested through Adrien actually calling her out, but after a single episode ended with him giving up on actively trying to help her change, it pretty much stopped (Despair Bear). the show did nothing with their friendship in Season 3, retconned it so Chloe only saw Adrien as arm candy in Season 4, and finally had him end their friendship in Season 5 after her bullying indirectly affected him thanks to his girlfriend being traumatized by her.
In short, the show was seemingly going in the direction you suggested, anon, but then stopped halfway through Season 2 for no real reason.
I love it ♡
It's really cute!
Unfortunately, it comes off that way—that Chloé never had a strong chance at redemption or damnation—because they never bothered to give her an arc.
The episodes always have to structure with 90% of the camera's attention on Marinette. It's about Marinette and HER struggles, so the episodes have to relate to Marinette somehow.
But you can't do an arc without giving the subject in question some attention. To do a damnation arc, you need to show just how many obstacles they tripped over on the way there. We needed to see Chloé fail time and time again, to see that frustration build, until it exploded.
But we didn't get that.
When Chloé wasn't Queen Bee, she was the same petty brat who cried for Daddy when things got tough. And when she was Queen Bee, she was a damn good hero. Then we just get jumped with the "Sorry, you can't be Queen Bee anymore" and Chloé just goes right back to being bratty until Miracle Queen, after which she was suddenly an irredeemable villain.
Her damnation arc was very much a tell-don't show situation, and it just doesn't work that way.
Do you remember the famous Astruc words “We thought she (Chloe) was redeemable. She wasn’t”? I think that under that he meant “We tried to redeem Chloe. We failed”.
The translation that I've seen was:
They said that [they gave] Chloe everything to be redeemed, Thomas Astruc even [said] that he really wanted to redeemed her but that was just out of character for her to become good and a real person in her place will not choose to become good.
Which I would not interpret to mean that they messed up Chloe's writing and can't admit it. To me, it reads as something much sadder. It sounds like they think that they wrote an actual arc for Chloe where people tried to help her and failed because people like Chloe are beyond redemption.
You must have a pretty depressing view of the world if you think personalities are set in stone at 14 and a pretty lackluster idea of what it means to help someone if you think that the show really showed people trying to help Chloe change.
My feelings about Chloe have always been that she had no arc and I stick by that assessment. She never had a strong chance at redemption or damnation. She was a petty brat from day one and she stayed a petty brat until the end both through her own failings and because no one cared to help her change (looking at you Adrien), making her "story" a massively unsatisfying waste of screen time.
Oof, I didn't even think about that. But now that it's been put out there, one realizes just how messed up the whole sentimonster thing is.
It also brings up questions about what a sentimonster is, what it can do, and how the Peacock Miraculous holder influences it.
Most sentimonsters present in the show aren't capable of free will, like the Banana Gorilla and the Reflekdoll—and the one that did gain it was the Sentibug, who just got poofed anyway by Mayura in the end.
However, Adrien never had that "break-out" moment, and if he did have one, we never saw it. So, the question really does put in a dark turn to the whole Adrien being a sentimonster.
One can argue that Adrien rebelling against his father is a sign of free will, but you have to wonder how much of that is Adrien's personality that he cultured himself and not some pre-programmed behavioral traits that Emilie wanted in a son.
The same goes for Félix. How much of his personality is his, brought about his father's abuse... or are they behavioral traits his father programmed in him or lingering emotions Colt was expressing himself before he died.
Then there's also the twin rings, and how Félix stole one of them that had his amok in it, so he could gain control back. Doesn't that imply that if you gain a sentimonster's amok, you could control it, even if you aren't the Peacock Miraculous holder?
I don't think Thomas Astruc thought this whole sentimonster thing through, because you've basically got several cans of worms that put darker twists into this whole Miraculous Ladybug stuff that can't just be ignored.
However, I highly doubt that he'll do anything about it. It kind of makes me wonder if he even realized exactly what he was doing by making sentient sentimonsters.
I think one of the worse things about Adrien being made a Senti is that now, I got to question how genuine he is and what is potentially influenced by Gabriel subconsciously.
Like, Adrien's stance on Chloe and Lila, both of whom help Gabriel with his agenda, it could be through Gabriel's influence that Adrien sides with them/discourages Marinette from challenging them. If they are stopped, Gabriel wouldn't have them to help him.
And then there's the matter of his romantic feelings and how he works off Ladybug. Gabriel wants to know who she is under the mask, and Adrien is often pushing for a reveal. Gabriel has a spiteful obsession over Ladybug, to the point he skipped out over his easy win with the Rabbit, and you got Adrien unable to divert away from Ladybug even when he starts dating another.
Is it possible that Adrien is just echoing Gabriel's agenda and intentions and is mistaking that for romantic love?
Given that whoever holds the item can fully control the senti, supposedly, yeah I now got to wonder what's truly Adrien and what's Gabriel's influence.
It goes even further than that. Whoever has the amok seems to be able to control literally every facet of your personality and those commands seem to hang around until someone overwrites them, so is anything about Adrien real? We know that Emilie was wearing one of the rings in her coffin, implying that she entered her magical coma while wearing it, so it's quite reasonable to assume that she actively used it pre-coma. In that case, what commands of hers are still controlling Adrien? What command of Gabriel's and Nathalie's were never undone? Who even is Adrien?
Like is his lack of strong negative feelings about his mother's death real or just the result of her telling him to not mourn her like she told Gabriel to not mourn her? Is he into piano because of natural interest or because his mom wanted him to like piano? Is his lack of career goals because no one bothered to program them in? Is he even capable of developing his own wants? Is his interest in Ladybug real or is it because she's kind of similar to Kagami and Kagami was the one he was supposed to fall in love with, so he just imprinted on the wrong girl? That last one is not helped by Kagami falling for Adrien's clone at the drop of a hat.
All of this is yet another reason why the sentistuff repulses me on a fundamental level. It just completely undermines everything about Adrien's character. This is not the sort of plot you pick for a rom-com and I'm here for the rom-com.
I also think the show should have also worked on Adrien's crush on Ladybug, because he was also essentially romanticizing her. Would've been nice, and I feel like it might help with their developments.
What I find weird about Marinette's crush is that Origins has her not caring about Adrien being a celebrity or the son of a fashion designer she admires which sets it as being a normal crush on a person you know (who happens to be a celebrity) but then the rest of the show mostly treats it as a celebrity crush
There's a reason that I've often said that Origins the best writing that the show ever gave us. While it's not perfect, for me, it was the moment where the show suddenly got good and had true potential. My possibly far too generous read of that squandered potential is that the writers wanted to write a strong romance, but they used the wrong trope to guide that romance in the wider story, so we get a story that's the worst of both worlds. It fails to fit the mold that it's guiding trope is supposed to fit and it fails to be a strong romance because the chosen trope doesn't allow for a strong romance, so let's talk about why that is!
It's really common for formula shows with a teenage lead to have a character for that lead to crush on. Kim Possible had Kim crushing on Josh Mankey for the first few seasons. Phineas and Ferb gave Isabella a crush on Phineas and Candace a crush on Jeremy Johnson. Danny Phantom had Danny crushing on Paulina. I could keep going with examples because this is such standard trope! In fact, if you look at how these shows play these crushes, then you'll actually find a tame version of Marinette's writing where the crushes are often used for comedy.
The problem is that this trope is pretty much never used to develop a serious romance between two leads. It's either used to create tension between the true romantic leads or to give a character a little extra depth because people get crushes and it's a nice, relatable element for kids and teenagers.
The reason why you don't use this trope with romantic leads is because romantic leads are supposed to have an actual romance. We're supposed to watch them fall in love and be invested in their relationship! That simply doesn't fit the way this trope works because this trope is all about the experience of having a crush, not about the experience of truly falling in love.
To go back to the Kim Possible example, Josh Mankey is what TV tropes calls a "satellite love interest." He is truly just there to be shipped with Kim because she's a teenage girl and teenage girls have crushes so we need our cool teen girl heroine to have a cool crush. However, somewhere along the line, the writers decided that Kim and her partner Ron were going to be the end game couple. Once that choice was made, Mankey was out! But Kim didn't start treating Ron the same way that she'd treated Josh because Ron wasn't just a cute boy for our cool teenage lead to crush on. Her was her costar. A romance between them mattered as it's success would redefine the entire show! It's failure would straight up end the show! That meant that this couldn't be your standard teen romance. It needed to feel so much more real and powerful and lasting.
This is where Miraculous' problems come in. When we look at Origins, we can see that the writers really do want our romantic leads to feel like romantic leads. They want this romance to feel real and powerful. We can also look at season five to back this up. Once the square is together, they have some truly adorable moments. For example, the hand raise scene in Kwami's Choice was about the only good thing that episode gave us. We can even look at the final episode of season five to back this read. While it's generally a massive failure, it is all about Marinette's relationship to Adrien. He isn't just a cute boy that she's crushing on. He is massively impacting her life.
But when we look at the leadup to this romance happening? The things that took place between Origins and Kwami's Choice? There's nothing of substances. I can't even tell you why Adrien's crush flipped to Marinette or if Marinette's crush on Chat Noir was supposed to feel like anything more than a rebound. There's not even much substance once they get together because substance would require them to have deep conversations about their lives and they can't do that while the secret identities remain a thing.
This is part of the wider problem that every side of the square feels like casual friends at best because the their story wasn't written like a romance. It was written like two sets of impossible crushes where the focus was on the struggle of having an unrequited crush and not the thrill of a romance. Adrien isn't Marinette's Ron, he's her Josh Mankey. Same goes for Ladybug and Chat Noir. While Ladynoir was closer than Adrienette, we never got moments that showed them as close friends with a bond like no other. Alya and Marinette are closer than any side of the square and that's a pretty massive writing failure for a rom-com unless Alya is secretly Marinette's end game romantic partner.
To continue our Kim Possible case study, Kim and Ron really don't feel like a couple for most of the show. For the first three seasons, the focus was on their friendship to the point where I didn't even think about shipping them when I first watched the show. But when the relationship suddenly happened in the final season? It still felt natural and right! Of course these two would get together! How did I not see that?
If Miraculous wanted to make the square feel like a true romance, then they needed to take a lesson from shows like Kim Possible. They need focus on making Ladynoir and Adrienette extremely strong friendships with a background element of pining and romantic tension. You could keep Marinette's failed confessions, but they should almost always fail into cute friendship moments like Adrienette gaming in Gamer. Same goes for Ladynoir with moments like that one episode where Chat Noir could have learned Ladybug's identity, but chose to respect her boundaries instead. These kind of moments keep us excited for the square because they make it feel like they're obviously meant to be. But when it's just Chat Noir hitting on Ladybug and failing to get a positive reaction or Marinette failing to even talk to Adrien? That's not love. That's a hopeless crush.
This doesn't mean getting rid of Alya. Kim Possible had a female best friend, too! Her name was Monique and I loved her, but Monique and Kim's relationship never felt more important than Kim's relationship with Ron. There was even an episode where Monique tried to replace Ron since he was unavailable and she failed hard because, without Ron, Kim can't be a hero. If you want another show to look at to see how the square should have been written, then I'd check out Danny Phantom. That show has an endgame couple - Danny and Sam - and their relationship always had a romantic tension to it, but it was primarily a friendship for most of the show. I'm not saying that these two shows were perfect, but they did a great job with the romance element and show how Miraculous could have made the square work.
There are actually a lot of ways that show's like Kim Possible could have inspired and guided Miraculous. It's why I like using it as an example where I can. It's really sad to see a 2016 show failing so hard when there's a wildly successful 2002 show out there that had already shown how to succeed when using similar concepts. Marinette and Kim are even similar characters as are Adrien and Ron and even Plagg and Rufus. The template was out there, guys! Kim Possible even shows us how to take a comedy side kick and develop him into something more as the series goes on. Episode one Ron and end of show Ron aren't the same character. End of show Ron feels way more important!
This is also why it's so useful to study tropes. They're the building blocks of stories so it's very useful to understand why certain builds are popular so that you know when and where to use them. Don't like a trope? That's totally fine, but you generally want to start by asking "why is this popular" instead of just dismissing the trope all together assuming you're working in a genre where that trope dominates. Like I'm personally not a big fan of the satellite love interest, but I appreciate why they're a thing and understand when you should use them.
I wonder... How do people just. KNOW. their sexual orientation?
I know some people know immediately, and some know later, but it just amazes me how they are able to realize it and just... go with it?
I can't even make a decision on what kind of coffee to buy, how do you do it???
Needing more screentime to flesh out supporting characters and their arcs and not getting it, while claiming it happened—Chloe *cough* "damnation arc" *cough*—seems to be a common theme in this show.....
*Lucille Bluth voice* I don care for Zoe.
Look, I'm that dumb salty fan that simply can't get over her fave character being sacked. But is sooo anoying that not only the bee hero was replaced, also the cute girl, the creative girl, the gay girl, the actress girl, the rich girl, the shy girl, the etc girl... all by the same character. And Thomas was all like omg you cant wait to meet her shes so like the coolest omg you see her already? Didnt told ya she was thE cooLest?? OMG
Zoe is not the swiss knife that TA thinks she is, otherwise she would have her own show, but that would be starting from zero and I guess is easier having long lost sisters out of the blue or whatever.
I'm sorry for the vent Mr. Iota. What do I know anyway, I'm not the creator of the show that is more famous than pokemon.
At the very least, Zoe should have been introduced earlier to better establish her as a character so she isn't just seen as Queen Bee's replacement. A lot of the traits the show gives her could work in the right context, but she doesn't get enough screentime to really flesh out things like her past with bullying or her growing feelings for Marinette.
I'm only in my early twenties, but God I felt 105 when I saw this 😭
I was telling my niece about flash games and she asked what's flash oh god
Thank you for answering! Putting this into one of many notes about Spanish 😄
Sorry about this question, since it might be a bit vague, but I just want to be informed.
There's something I came across, where "tengo qué" means "I have to". Why? Is "qué" a versatile word that has multiple meanings, depending on context?
Yes and no
qué "what" is considered different from que "that/which", and then sometimes has idiomatic uses with other verbs
tener que + infinitive is "to have to do something" [in Spain and in older Spanish you sometimes see haber de + infinitive]
That's considered a more idiomatic usage of it, but like tengo que hacer la tarea "I have to do the homework", or tengo que hacer unos deberes "I have a few chores to do" is considered an idiomatic expression of tener; and the que doesn't have any specific grammatical meaning
But it doesn't have an accent mark
-
If you see qué it's an unknown thing, a "what". Primarily it's questions, but it can just be an unknown noun
If I saw tengo qué I would interpret it as ¿tengo qué? "I have what?"
The que without the accent mark is often "that/which", a word that connects clauses [two or more subjects and verbs]
In other words, es un lugar que conozco "it's a place that I know"; the que separates es "it is" and conozco "I know", separate subjects and verbs
...
There are other uses of que as idiomatic, like in some commands or indirect commands; very different from what you were asking about so I don't want to confuse you
Thank you! 🤗 Because this was screwing my head over, and Google wasn't helpful in the slightest.
Another dumb question, if you don't mind!
I see it often that hijos means "children", but when I google if "hijas" mean the same thing, I'm getting mixed signals. One answer I got from my look-see is that somehow, if you say hijos, it means "sons/children", but if you say hijas, then it's exclusively "daughters".
Is this correct? If it is, why? Is it another one of those nuance questions, or is it a regional thing?
Yes, the default word for "children" is hijos which is also "sons"
But if someone asks ¿Tienes hijos? "Do you have children?" you might say Sí, tres hijas "Yes, three daughters"
hijas by itself only ever means "daughters"
Is there a reason why hijas only means "daughters"? Or is it just one of those "it's just Spanish rules" things?
Another dumb question, if you don't mind!
I see it often that hijos means "children", but when I google if "hijas" mean the same thing, I'm getting mixed signals. One answer I got from my look-see is that somehow, if you say hijos, it means "sons/children", but if you say hijas, then it's exclusively "daughters".
Is this correct? If it is, why? Is it another one of those nuance questions, or is it a regional thing?
Yes, the default word for "children" is hijos which is also "sons"
But if someone asks ¿Tienes hijos? "Do you have children?" you might say Sí, tres hijas "Yes, three daughters"
hijas by itself only ever means "daughters"
Honestly, I don't hate this take. It would've been another interesting aspect in MLB that could've added more substance to Gabriel's character and how his mind works. One could even evolve it into a situation where Gabriel doesn't realize his views were that similar to the views of people whom he condemned. It could even showcase a short-sightedness and a lack of self-awarness, which could've impacted his villain persona.
Basically, he had an ironic self-importance about himself because he pulled himself up by the bootstraps to get where he is, and without thinking, looked down on others for not doing what he could (basically ignoring that just because he could do it doesn't mean they can).
I would've loved to see that, a Gabriel that was so high-handed and arrogant without realizing it, but also had a heart that deeply loved his family and was devoted to it to the point of taking drastic measures to keep it together—like becoming Hawkmoth to fix what he now considered his broken family.
Unfortunately, in the grand scheme of things, your brilliant take won't work, and it's so frustrating because I haven't seen something like that yet. But MLB has this ridiculous consistency issue that pulls their personalities this way and that until all we get is this overstretched piece of taffy that's held together by silly string and a Hail Mary. It doesn't help either that Thomas Astruc wants us to think of Gabriel as a good father, and God forbid he was anything else than that.
This is probably small in the grand scheme of things, but how did Emilie being noble play any impact in the story at all?
I mean, I'd get it if it was just a small detail to help deepen Emilie's character, but why nobility of all things? I don't know, from what I'm seeing so far, the whole "Emilie renounced her noble title" shtick just feels worthless if it's not going to impact the story or add depth to Emilie's character (like maybe upbringing or personal values?).
I don't know. Like everything else, the noble part just feels shallow and means nothing to the story, especially for a character like Emilie, who is the plot device for the whole show. Any detail about her, like her personality and life story, is supposed to influence the story and characters one way or another, namely Hawkmoth since she's his driving force.
So what was the point?
For context, this ask is about Félix's play which says that Emilie gave up her title to be with Gabriel. I'm gonna give a slightly larger section of the transcript of the play for full context, but the relevant but is at the end of the last paragraph:
Félix: The king and queen's twins grew up, each day as different in heart as they were similar in body. The firstborn, curious and brazen, despised life at court and escaped at every opportunity. The younger daughter, well-behaved and respectful, did everything she could to please her parents, and stayed quietly in the castle. Félix: (as Mr. Graham de Vanily) Oh, my queen. Did we entrust our legacy to the right princess? Kagami: (as Mrs. Graham de Vanily) She will fall in line, eventually. Félix: Confident that she would settle down as she matured, the king and queen allowed the curious princess to leave to study beyond the sea in another kingdom. There, she immediately found true love in a humble tailor. Félix: The tailor was making clothes so magnificent that they revealed the beauty of the soul of anyone who wore them. Although it made her parents furious, the curious princess gave up her rank, her wealth and her kingdom to live a bohemian life with the tailor.
Story wise, I have no idea why any of this was added since it adds nothing to canon. It's not like this finally explains why Gabriel and Emilie are poor while Amelie is wealthy. Along similar lines, it's not like Amelie's title has ever mattered. Prior to this play, I don't think that we even knew that she had a title or that she was the younger sister. The play is all about explaining things that we never had reasons to question in the first place.
My best guess as to why the writers wrote this pointless backstory is that they wanted to make Emilie seem even more pure and perfect so they went with the tired old trope of a rich girl giving up material things for the sake of love and art because good pure women don't care about material things! Only nasty, shallow women care about money. (Way to play into sexist tropes, guys.)
There may also be cultural elements at play here given that France doesn't have the greatest history with nobility, so giving up a noble title may be seen as good and pure to a French writer, but I don't know enough about French culture to say that with any certainty. If anyone who reads this blog is French and would like to chime in, then feel free!
While we're on the topic of the play, I wanted to point out that the above quoted passage is why I say that the Graham de Vanily parents can be as kind or as abusive as you'd like to make them. It's incredibly vague and you can read into it whatever you want to read into it. Were they good loving parents who were just upset about their daughter living in poverty or were they miserable controlling classist who Emilie fled England to get away from? It's up to you because you can get both reads from this. The play commits to almost nothing of value. Politicians could take lessons from this impressive level of noncommittal writing.
A better version of the play would have focused on things that actually matter to canon like the details of finding the miraculous and/or Emilie learning she's sick, but you could only have those details if they were coming from Nathalie or Gabriel. Félix is a terrible choice for a character to tell us the show's backstory because he knows so little of it, thus the play focusing on his largely pointless backstory.
The only one I can think of about Adrien having a good memory of his mom is just this one freaking photo of her head on Adrien's—and that's a stretch for me. He also has her on his computer, but I don't think it counts.
She's nothing but a plot device. Plain and simple. And that's sad.
I think it‘s also kind of weird that, if I remember correctly, that we never had a flashback of Emilie interacting with Adrien? We get something how Emilie was with Gabe, Nath, Audrey and Andre when they did their archeology trips (we see that in s5 I think) but nothing with Adrien.
Just seems like their relationship… really doesn‘t matter all that much?
Their relationship really doesn’t matter beyond her use as pity fodder for Adrien
Adrien’s mourning of her feels so superficial and impersonal and while it’s almost definitely just the writing being Bad, I can’t help but think they really didn’t have much good going on as a result
Now? Well, this is the current list of characters with a messed up home life: Kagami, Zoe, Chloe, Adrien, Felix, Luka, Juleka, and probably Lila. Add in Rose's serious illness, Mylene's mother abandoning her, and Marinette's traumatic past dealing with a straight up hate campaign on top of all the trauma introduced over the course of canon and I just don't care anymore. I am drained dry. They have introduced way too many serious elements without exploring any of them in depth and that is a massive writing faux pas.
Should really say something about Fairy Tail then. Natsu, Erza, Gray, Lucy, and so many other characters all had a tragic backstory one way or another, but one: they all varied in weight and depth; and two: they were all given their dues to be explored and to add substance to the characters, while also making sure it stays relevant throughout the story even if the arc is finished.
Natsu lost his only family when he was young, Igneel, and it added substance to his persistent philosophy of family; Gray lost his only mentor and pseudo-parent, Ur, and it's shown through how he uses his magic, and his tragic backstory is explored later on; Lucy lost her mother and later lived a neglected and miserable home life (sound familiar?) and while it's not shown in much of her life, her love for her mother is shown with how she literally writes letters to her and how she treats her spirits, and her family issues are also explored later on; and Erza, who was kidnapped and endured all sorts of horrific abuse in the Tower of Heaven before escaping, showed how that experience shaped her in her manner and her artificial eye, while also having her backstory also explored later on.
And there's so much more of them in Fairy Tail, in different guilds and different people that also vary in the stakes involved. Jellal, Oracion Seis, Loke, Mavis, Lyon, Ultear, and more. Their backstories are even mentioned in passing, even if it's not surrounding the trauma in general but memories related to said issues.
Goes to show that having multiple characters with different tragic backstories isn't inherently bad from a story perspective—if you do it right. The problem is that a majority of their "tragic backstories" are mentioned once and never talked about again. The Couffaine twins, Rose, Mylene, and Marinette all got a feature episode, and then go bye-bye afterwards. It never impacts their daily lives, or how it impacts their lives afterwards.
Others—like Kagami, Adrien, Felix, Chloe, and Zoe (iffy on this one)—might get the multiple-parter specials, but it's either mentioned in one episode, gets dropped for several more, and then mentioned in a later one as if they've been telling us about it the whole time; or it gets banged out in a row and never mentioned again. In the end, there's no build-up, no proper exploration, no lasting impressions; the "traumas" are just used for plot or excuse their behaviors (unless you're Chloe 'cause God forbid she ever had anything bad happen to her that she didn't deserve.)
I highly doubt any of these will ever be focused on in Season 6, because TA wants us to focus primarily on Marinette and her life; and to explore anybody else's trauma or tragic backstory, the camera needs to focus on them. But it likely won't, since anything that has to do with other characters has to do with how it impacts Marinette.
Do you think they should have made Colt a good father to Felix? Or are you fine with him being a bad father?
I don't think that Colt should have been anything. He died off screen before we even met Felix and Felix is a minor character. Why is he getting more backstory development than Kagami when Tomoe is alive and actively involved in the plot? Wouldn't it have been far more interesting if the play was her story?
But if we must include the mustachioed cowboy man, then I would make him a good father or, at the very least, a mediocre one. I'd do this for reasons that have nothing to do with me wanting Felix to have a happy childhood. I'm fine with him having a tragic past! The problem is that this is a story and, in terms of story telling, there is no reason to give him a tragic past. It adds nothing to the story. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that it detracts from the story, but we'll get to that in a minute. First let's go over why it's a pointless addition.
In his titular episode, Felix is a brat who tries to destroy Adrien's life. Those actions actually made more sense when we thought that Felix loved Colt and was acting out over Adrien not coming to Colt's funeral. Now that we know the full story, we're left asking, "Okay, so, why did Felix do any of that?" And don't say that it was to help him get the ring because it didn't help him get the ring. He got it from hugging his uncle and there were far simpler ways to get a hug.
And why did Felix even want the ring? That has yet to be explained because, in Strikeback, he was planning to go out of the country as "Adrien" without ever offering to exchange the ring. He simply stole the fake peacock and got out of dodge. He had no possible way to know that Ladybug would come to him for help, allowing him to offer up the miraculous and use the ring to sweeten the pot. I also don't believe for one second that he needed to sweeten the pot. He could have offered up the miraculous and nothing else and Gabriel would have gone for it. So once again, what was the plan with the ring, Felix? What was the plan?
While we're on the topic of Felix getting the peacock, Colt being abusive adds nothing to that plot either. Whoever has the peacock can snap any sentimonster out of existence. Felix could have the best damn childhood on the planet and it would still make perfect sense for him to want the peacock!
The only reason to make Colt abusive is if you want to explore that and use it to develop Felix's character, but I have absolutely no faith that they're going to do that. Colt is the Jagged Stone nonsense all over again. They're introducing a very serious issue that would dramatically affect the psyche of most people and then acting like it's no big deal. I think I saw someone say that Colt was only introduced to shut up the people calling Gabriel and Emilie abusive by showing us "real" child abuse as if abuse was an Olympic sport and you need to qualify for the team. I'd buy that theory, but I wouldn't bet money on it.
Even if I'm wrong and they are going to explore Felix's trauma, I still think it's a bad move. There's a thing called compassion fatigue. It's commonly experienced by health care workers who deal with traumatic cases day in and day out, resulting in thing like the inability to feel compassion for your patients because your compassion meter has been rung dry. You can experience a lesser form of this just from watching the news. Story after story of people in need to the point that you're desensitization to these events evoking horror or sorrow.
When you're telling a story, you need to keep this phenomena in mind and be very careful when introducing multiple sources of trauma. The more trauma you introduce and the quicker you introduce it, the less impactful that trauma will be for your readers. If you're a good writer, then it will also be less impactful for your characters. Allow me to explain with a quick example.
I had a brief Marvel phase and, while I never wrote anything for that fandom, I made up a few stories in my head. A lot of them revolved around my favorite character, Tony Stark (aka Iron Man). Tony becomes Iron Man after being kidnapped by terrorists and I love confessions of traumatic backstories, so I was working out how to do one for him and the Avengers to help bond the team. Then I realized that his teammates are all orphans and that the majority of them were raised in poverty. Most of them have also gone through scientific experimentation of some sort and not all of it was voluntary. In other words, in the world of the Avengers, Tony's trauma isn't really special. His team might sympathize with him, but they wouldn't be deeply impacted by his story the way I wanted them to be because most of them have gone through equal or worse trauma.
Circling back to Miraculous: they keep heaping trauma on these kids and it's a terrible move. When Adrien was the only character with a messed up home life, things were interesting.
Now? Well, this is the current list of characters with a messed up home life: Kagami, Zoe, Chloe, Adrien, Felix, Luka, Juleka, and probably Lila. Add in Rose's serious illness, Mylene's mother abandoning her, and Marinette's traumatic past dealing with a straight up hate campaign on top of all the trauma introduced over the course of canon and I just don't care anymore. I am drained dry. They have introduced way too many serious elements without exploring any of them in depth and that is a massive writing faux pas.
Generally speaking, when telling stories, you should default your characters to whatever a happy home life is in their universe unless you're going to do something with the non-happy home life. Non-happy home lives complicate stories and you don't want to introduce a complication if you're never going to explore it. This is why I think that Colt should have been at least a decent parent. It's also why you'll see me say that Emilie should be at least a semi decent parent even though canon has made that option impossible unless you ignore a lot of the unpleasant implications found in Adrien's backstory.
While I love evil villain couples, Emilie is in a coma, so she can't be Gabriel's co-conspirator and I personally have no interest in her waking up to start a new villain arc. When she wakes up (or finally dies), the Agreste's story is over and so she basically has to be nonthreatening for that ending to work. It also circles back to the issue of keeping the trauma tight and focused so that the trauma you do include really pops!
Reminder that the above is a discussion of story telling, not a commentary on what makes real people interesting or the commonality of home life issues. There's also nuance I didn't get into because this was already really long. Writing trauma well is a really fascinating and complex topic.
My cousin had to write a text about her favourite food for her english homework. Her favourite food happens to be a (swiss) dish called Fotzelschnitte (sweet, fried bread similar to French Toast; Armer Ritter in standard German).
Now. When she put the word Fotzelschnitte into google translate, it turned out that google translate isn’t familiar with the word Fotzelschnitte (or the word Fötzel/Fotzel for that matter), and it simply translated the words it did know, resulting in the funniest sentence my cousin’s english teacher will probably read this year:
I was pretty unimpressed with the actual show, but I started reading early fandom fanfic between our watching sessions and that kept me interested enough to keep watching.
This was sort of me. Except I was a bubble-headed young thing (13-15?) who watched Season 1, read lots of fanfic, and merged the fanfic MLB cast with the canon, so I had some serious rose-tinted glasses slapped on from reading fanfic that actually put them in a decent light.
My first introduction to the show was a friend showing me the episode "Horrificator", already halfway through, so I basically missed the first half and ended up in the second half, where I saw a cool-looking monster with an interesting superpower, and two teenage superheroes that—at the end—were one person pining after the other. (I didn't know about Adrien's crush on Ladybug until later.)
So, what made me like the show was the love square, because it was the first time I'd ever seen anything like it—two secret-identity superheroes, with feelings for each other but they don't know it, and I was super excited to see how that dynamic developed. And thanks to fanfic, I was basically feeding that fantasy with so many fictional scenarios that only got me more hyped.
For me, Season 1 was the best season of the entire show, probably because the drama was low-stakes and there wasn't too much lore—basically your classic "Season 1 is the intro, Season 2 is when the story develops further". Aside from the "I have his entire schedule" thing, I didn't get any red flags off of her, and Adrien also received decent screentime to explore him and his feelings.
"Gamer" and "Stormy Weather" are probably my favorite episodes. In "Gamer", I enjoyed how Marinette and Adrien interacted, and it showed that once Marinette and Adrien had more time together, she was able to get comfortable and talk to him like a normal person. It was basically fanfic Adrienette merging with canon Adrienette, and I was all for it.
As for "Stormy Weather", besides the top-tier animation and lighting, I loved how Ladybug and Cat Noir's dynamic was like. They worked great together, didn't need too many words to understand each other, and both had their chances to shine. It wasn't all about Ladybug.
I had dropped off watching the show from that because Season 2 hadn't come out yet, and even if it did, I didn't know it because I didn't have dependable internet at the time. By the time I got back into MLB, it had 3 seasons, and I was still thinking of Season 1. Even then, I saw only a few episodes of Season 2, like "Anansi", "Queen Wasp", "Malediktator", and "Sapotis", but I wasn't too mad about it. (Also, sidenote, when I first learned of Lukanette and Adrigami, I was PISSED because I was still Adrienette endgame; now, Adrienette makes me sick.)
My initial gripes about Season 2 and Season 3 weren't major at first. It was more or less just over unnecessary drama between Ladybug and Cat Noir and too much of people stanning Ladybug. But Season 4 was when I began actively hating MLB, for reasons stated already by so many people here.
And then Season 5..... well, I already had no hope for the show at that point, but I was still disappointed.
Silver lining though, MLB pretty much inspired my OC fanfic to improve the show, so there's that! 😃
Tell me, what did you think of ML when you first discovered it? I thought Chloe's arc in season 2 was decent for this type of show, even if it could have been better. I also never took Marinette's obsessive behavior over Adrien that seriously until it started getting really grating.
My first interaction with ML consisted of me looking for kids shows to watch in Spanish, finding Miraculous on Netflix, watching maybe three minutes of The Bubbler, and then turning the show off because it didn't seem very good. That's the episode that starts with Marinette freaking out about giving Adrien a birthday present and it gave me the impression that Miraculous was doing the classic female-protagonist-pines-for-the-male-protagonist-who-barely-even-knows-her-name trope, which is not a trope that I'm into. I'm way too ace for that shit. This is the scene in question as I looked it up to make sure I was remembering it correctly:
Marinette: Ah! (she stops right in front of Adrien.) Um, he-- Hey! (she gets nervous as she holds her gift behind her back.) Adrien:(surprised, shyly) Hey. Chloé:(as she watches what's happening outside) Wait! Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing? Don't tell me it's Adrien's birthday?! Sabrina:(checks her tablet, gets surprised, and makes excusing noises while smiling sheepishly.) Chloé:(facepalms) Ugh, do I have to do everything myself? Seriously, what are you good for? (walks toward Adrien.) Marinette:(nervously) I, uh, I wanted to, umm, gift you a make-– I mean, gift you a give I made-- I mean... Chloé:(yawns while Marinette is talking and then shoves her away) Out of the way. (she acts sweet.) Happy birthday, Adrien! (throws herself onto him and gives him a kiss on the cheek.) Mwah! Adrien:(surprised) Yeah, thanks Chlo.
This backs up my vague memory that my initial assumption was that Adrien and Chloé were friends while Adrien didn't know who Marinette was because he was clearly much more comfortable with Chloé. Same goes for Nino who was talking to Adrien earlier in this scene.
I'm not sure when this first watch occurred, but I know it was at least a year before I revisited the show. I made a friend in another fandom and that friend was transitioning out of Miraculous, but they had a lot of really good Miraculous fanart and even some fanfic which got me curious as I couldn't understand why anyone would be into the show given my dismal initial impression.
On this friend's recommendation, my SO and I started watching Miraculous an episode or two at a time. I was pretty unimpressed with the actual show, but I started reading early fandom fanfic between our watching sessions and that kept me interested enough to keep watching. My initial impression of the show didn't really change until we watched Origins. That's the episode that really made me fall in love with the canon characters as it took everything about the show and elevated it. The crushes had depth! The Chloé/Adrien thing wasn't just the bitchy rich girl going after the popular boy! Gabriel was confirmed to be the big bad! Things were suddenly going places and that honestly wasn't surprising.
It's incredibly common for kids shows to have lackluster first seasons where they don't really commit to anything major re plot because they're just testing the waters to see if they'll be green lit for more seasons. Because of this, I was under the impression that Origins must have been when they got green lit and season two was going to do the standard kids show thing where they really get to dive into the plot and characters in a big way now that they're making money. This assumption was backed up by the addition of the new heroes to the show's intro.
For the first half of season two, I was invested as it seemed like we were finally getting seasonal arcs. Chloé seemed to be getting set up for some sort of character arc, which I was all for as I enjoy a good mean girl arc. We also had some tension brewing between our heroes with Fu favoring Marinette, a dynamic that felt more accidental than planned since it only happened because Marinette found the grimoire at the end of season one. I thought all of that was going to come to a head with Chloé's Queen Bee debut as things had seemingly been set up for Chloé to be Adrien's pick for a Miraculous.
Then Queen Bee actually happened and my excitement quickly faded. I still cannot think of a less interesting way for Chloé to get and use the bee. No one gives it to her and she outs herself on national television right away? Talk about wasting an idea. Clearly this had just been a one-off thing done so that the show could drive up hype for season two based on promo images of Chloé as a hero.
But it wasn't a one off thing. For some reason, they kept bringing Queen Bee back and that's when I knew we were in for a bad time because that should have never happened. It especially shouldn't have happened when Marinette was giving out the miraculous. I could maybe see a setup where Adrien gives Chloé a second chance, but Marinette trusting Chloé made no sense:
Marinette: I must choose someone who's not impressed by people in power. Who can help me trap Malediktator. Huh?! Of course! That's it. (reaches for the Miraculous of the Bee) Wait, what am I thinking? (facepalms)
Yeah, what are you thinking? Alya was your first choice for the bee, she isn't impressed by people in power, and she wasn't hit by Malediktator, so go grab her! Why would you pick Chloé?
Long story short, I kept watching because the show wasn't terrible, my SO enjoyed hearing me dunk on it as we watched it, and I was really enjoying the fan content, but I didn't have much faith in canon after the midpoint of season two and I continually lost faith as the seasons progressed. I never pictured it getting as bad as seasons five, but I only had hopes for Miraculous to be truly good for about 2 weeks as that's how long it took us to get from Origins to the Queen Bee mess. I was also disappointed by Alya and Nino's hero journeys. I expected them to be chosen for grander reasons. As is, it felt like they only got recruited because their loved ones were in danger.
Since you brought up Marinette's crush, I'll end by saying that I have never been a fan of that style of crush-based humor (once again, way too ace for that shit), but it didn't bother me in a serious way because it was very obviously meant to be humorous. I just suffered through the jokes when they happened and then moved on as there was no reason to dwell on them. It probably helped that I was reading a lot of fanfic and even the people who love the show generally agree that Marinette's crush should be played down in more serious stories.
The only time Marinette's crush bothered me was Derision as that episode straight up destroyed her character. It also made the writers look awful because they made Kim the bad guy for laughing at Marinette's behavior, but we'd just spent over four seasons being told Marinette's behavior was a joke, so what is the lesson here? Are we all supposed to feel guilty for laughing at a trauma response we didn't know was a trauma response? Are the writers saying that trauma is funny? How can you be so tone deaf?
It's so offensive how they missed the chance to call him, "First Lord".
Instead, what we got was, "First Gentleman".
SMH 😔
I mean, Adrien didn't always fuck around. In Season 1 (the best season in my opinion) he still got the job done. The most goofing he did was making cat puns and joking about the situation, but he was always dependable and still helped save the day.
It's just that later on, they decimated his personality more and more until he's more comic relief than an actual hero who's meant to learn and grow.
You probably know better about the show making it seem like he's doing Ladybug a favor by screwimg up so she could focus; I had always thought Adrien's character just got degraded to a shadow of is former self. But if that's true, that they're trying to sell a narrative that Adrien being so unserious and a complete goofball in serious moments somehow helps Marinette, well.... I guess the show is more messed-up than I thought in trying to sell narratives.
And unfortunately, they can't just write him off like that. I don't want Adrien to get written off, but at this point, it's hard to believe the show will even improve him at all. After all, it's Thomas Astruc, and he's basically admitted that Adrien is a prize made for Marinette.
The show itself seems to impliy that Adrien's only useful if his repress his personality. Like they really wanted to kill the true selves theory, but honestly i think I prefer that over this.
I really don’t know what they were thinking making it so Adrien is consistently coddled out of making any changes that would improve his performance as a hero
I’m sorry but I’m just not buying into the idea that letting him fuck around to his heart’s content is in any way better than expecting him to control himself a little and do a better job
Because, iirc, they’ve showed us on at least two occasions that he can be focused and efficient if he wanted to, he just repeatedly chooses not to. Not only that, they also try to make it seem like he’s doing maribug a favor by regularly messing up fights bc otherwise she’d be too busy swooning to focus herself.
Get for fucking real
If he’s not gonna shape up, he should ship out
Write him off and replace him with someone that cares
That, and the fighting was BS. It felt so clunky and awkward, and I didn't really see how "Mirakung-Fu" was giving Ladybug and Cat Noir a run for their money.
I literally saw this thing where Su Han got up on one foot, folded the other foot underneath him, bent his upper body parallel to the ground, and then started punching one of them in the torso with both fists. It looks exactly how it sounds, and it's weird. He's completely unbalanced, most of his strength would be in his legs and abdomen to keep himself up, and how would that pose be better than ANY other style of fighting?
And while we're at it, wtf were Ladybug and Cat Noir doing fighting melee style? Ladybug's yoyo in a range weapon, and Cat Noir's staff can lengthen to as long as it wants! So why bother even getting close?
The thing that bugs me about Mirakung-Fu (aside from the abysmal name) is that the spiritual aspect of it is completely ignored in favor of "Haha monks punch hero."
It says a lot when a movie where Jack Black voices a panda did a better job representing the ideology of kung-fu than this show did.
I didn't get into the details in my other post because I wanted to focus on the Luka stuff and because I didn't want to come across as making a definitive statement on something I'm not an expert on, but the spiritual thing is a big part of why I said that mirakungfu feels disrespectful to me. The way it's presented makes me feel like they didn't put any thought into what it meant to give an ancient order of monks a special martial art or really any beliefs and, if you're not going to put in that kind of effort, then why associate the monks with another culture? Su-Han and Fu could just as easily be European for all that their heritage matters to the show. The whole thing has this "Oriental mysticism" vibe to it that makes me uncomfortable.
To end on a positive note, the Kung Fu Panda movies are a great example of honoring the source culture while still using comedy! They prove that you don't have to be serious and deep about this stuff. You just have to be respectful.