I Was Pretty Unimpressed With The Actual Show, But I Started Reading Early Fandom Fanfic Between Our

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?

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'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"

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.