Saw This Guy And Now:

Saw this guy and now:

Gotta find and read/watch this.

Izutsumi “Asebi” (イヅツミ) - Dungeon Meshi - Episode 20

Baking a pie

Snow White: makes it look simple & easy

Me: BITCH YOU LIED TO ME HOW U GOT THE ARM STRENGTH TO ROLL THE DOUGH

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

I don't remember the exact phrasing anymore, but I remember seeing something that said: plot twists are not there to surprise the audience or shock them. They're there to enrich the story.

Basically, don't focus on the shock value. Focus on how the plot twist impacts your story and the characters in it. If your audience guesses your plot twist from subtle foreshadowing, then that's good. If your plot twist has shock value but none of the enrichment, then it's a useless foreshadow.

I miss the "Gabriel is Hawkmoth" foreshadow during Simon Says and the book Adrien found in Volpina. Since the episodes are pretty close together, it works. But then later episodes with plot twists just fail miserably, with no other answer except "we already wrote the script, so deal with it".

I think part of what fails in the Chloé betrayal and Adrien/Felix sentimonster thing is that in order to foreshadow correctly, attention needs to be paid to these specific characters, so the screen has to shift to them and their personal lives. But 99% of the episodes center around Marinette and how she navigates life, so there's next to no focus set on them unless she's involved—and unfortunately, putting her in the loop would be too problematic to address in the show's long run.

The reason behind using Chloé early on is actually pretty simple. The writers for ML have never met a twist they didn't like. they seem obsessed with outsmarting their audience. ( target 6-10yr olds, go team) Everything is a red herring of some kind until it isn't bit it is but not and whoa did we blow your mind yet?

I'm reminded of an OSP quote along the lines of 'You can only surprise your audience on the first viewing, but a good narrative can be enjoyed any number of times.'

Exactly. Plot twists aren't just there to surprise the audience. They also give rewatch value to the work.

Take Puss in Boots: The Last Wish for example. The twist of the Wolf actually being the Grim Reaper is shocking, yes, but rewatching the movie gives new meaning to the things he does. Just rewatch his first scene and see what I mean. Not only does the Wolf appear from out of nowhere like a ghost, he also points to the word "Dead" in the "Dead or Alive" on Puss' wanted poster, and wields a pair of sickles as his weapons.

It also makes you rethink the things he says to Puss during their conversation.

"Been following you for a long time." - The Wolf has taken eight of Puss' nine lives, so he's more than familiar with him.

"Everyone thinks they'll be the one to defeat me. But no one's escaped me yet." - Being Death itself, the Wolf has been there for everyone's eventual passing.

"So I've heard..." - A direct response to Puss' claim that he laughs in the face of death, which the Wolf is naturally insulted by.

Plot twists and foreshadowing go together well, but you need to make sure the audience has enough hints to either figure it out themselves or to recognize the buildup to the twist on a second viewing. Miraculous Ladybug does neither of those. Things like Chloe's betrayal and the other rich kids being Sentimonsters just come out of nowhere and don't hold up when you rewatch earlier episodes and see no foreshadowing for those revelations.

PLEASE TELL ME THIS WASN'T ACTUALLY THEIR PLAN

TALKING DOESN'T DO SHIT! SQUEEZING! WATER! BLANKET!

D.I.S.T.R.A.C.T.I.O.N.

Speaking from someone who had to help someone from a panic attack, just aggressively shoving things doesn't do anything.

What I did was stick cold water [in a bottle] in their hands and make them drink (learned these tricks from Pinterest). Then, when they could speak, I tried to get them to talk about topics I knew would turn into a long debate/discussion (less effective).

Honestly the class's plan to calm someone feeling negative emotions to avoid akumatization is pretty bad

I liked the scene in 'Guiltrip' where the class talks to Juleka and try to comfort her, which drives the akuma away

...and now in s5 (not naming the episode because those titles are not memorable, what was Astruc thinking??) Juleka is having a breakdown over having to redo school next year again and we have the class screaming at her and shoving her a giant picture of cute animals..

"Damnit, Juleka! Stop having a panic attack, or I SWEAR TO GOD, I WILL KILL YOU!"

I don't think the animal picture thing happened in "Confrontation", but I get what you mean with how poorly emotional stress is handled.

Orange

I like that idea, of sentimonsters being more durable and not having real blood. By designing sentimonsters as basically not being like real people, it also separates the Peacock Miraculous from the Ladybug Miraculous, since I've seen posts before complaining that by having the Peacock Miraculous capable of creating flesh-and-blood creatures like Adrien, it's basically Creation, which makes no sense.

As for the dysphoria idea, it would've been cool if he had some identity crisis (yeah, I'm cruel) about whether or not his perceived perfection—handsome, smart, gifted—was his own achievements or something that came with being a sentimonster. That would've been interesting to see, and how would've been able to work through it.

Thomas Astruc claims that human-looking sentimonsters are human in every way except the way they were born, but I've seen some fics where they were more durable and didn't have real blood. Do you think that would give our poor cat boy serious body dysphoria, even if it came with some advantages?

Depends on how he was designed, I guess? Or how you want to write him.

I should mention that dysphoria isn't necessarily that logical. That's not a criticism of those who experience the different types of dysphoria by any means! I'm just saying that what triggers it isn't easy to guess. For example, I've heard first hand accounts of water bottle shapes and lipstick color triggering gender dysphoria. Because of that, Adrien may very well not be phased by things like his durability, but find other, seemingly random things triggering. Brains are tricky like that.

I'd highly recommend reading up on first hand accounts of dysphoria and euphoria before including this element in any writing assuming that you don't have dysphoria yourself.