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drac-onion · 4 months ago

Text

Nothing to Write Home About - Chapter 6

https://archiveofourown.org/works/61616986/chapters/163216609 (Link)

Returning to his hometown after being exonerated from his false conviction, Akira tried to put the past year behind him. With a train ticket and packed bags, it was official: his wings were clipped. His life had peaked. All there was to do now was ride down the other side, away from all the connections he'd made. At least it would be an opportunity for some degree of normalcy. In this sleepy little town, there were no surprises... Or much of anything for that matter. Or so he thought. Turns out life had a funny way of working out sometimes.

Seems like Tumblr is still having issues with ao3 links showing up as a card. Bummer.

Oh well. It is what it is.

I'm gonna verbatim copy and paste my end note here since it's probably what I'd be talking about anyway. No need to pretend I didn't already write this out.

2000 HITS LET'S GOOOOOOO!!! Thank you! Anyways. A bit of a lighter chapter this time. I sort of wrote myself into a corner by having Akira mention this in BTM ch. 27, but it ended up being a really interesting chapter to write. I was torn on whether to include the pronouns bit, but I figured that with The Seekers being all about "being true to yourself" it made sense to include. On the same token, the Phantom Thieves are all about taking off masks, so y'know, there's some stuff there. Big thanks to my pal Flamy for helping me out with that part. I feel like Akira spent a lot of his childhood sheltered, so the last year in Tokyo was his first exposure to a lot of different things, people, and ideas. He's not entirely up to speed, but he's trying. Bless 'im.

Uuuuuh, yeah. Also it came out during the day on Friday instead of at 2am Saturday or something. No reason why, I guess this chapter was just easier to go through. There was less I had to touch up, I guess? There's only a 200-ish word difference between the version I had and the version I posted. Added some stuff here and there, removed some stuff here and there. Y'know how it is. I could sit there and edit for days but honestly? I think it's pretty good how it is.

I'm just gonna leave this graph here and you can figure out which spot I'm at: Perceived Skill vs. Perceived Lack of Skill Helix(this applies to art in the drawing/painting/etc sense, but close enough, right?)

You know how this goes:

Comments?

I like 'em.

Kudos?

I like 'em.

The knowledge that another person out there read something I wrote?

Makes me a little uncomfortable, but fuck it, we ball.

I don't like being perceived, but it's not me that's being perceived. It's something I put a year of effort, emotion, and thought into.

If you wanna talk about fear, let's get into passionate mediocrity.

Or secondary social anxiety.

Or making phone calls.

Yeah.

That's fear.

What was I talking about again? Oh, right.

Alrighty, well, there's this chapter done and dusted. See you on 3/21 for the next one.

(Just in case you wanted another link, here you go, champ. I'm not gonna make you scroll all the way back up. Come on, take it. It's free. Go on.)

#drac.txt #writing #persona 5 fanfiction #nothing to write home about #ao3 #AO3 fanfic

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miraculouslbcnreactions · 1 year ago

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Keep hearing people say maribug keep asking adricat if he's ok and he keep saying he's ok instead of telling her his problem but I don't remember it happened more than once in s4 in Rockettear but even then the circumstances of that episode did warrant the "nothing" answer he gave her unless he want to tell her that "nino tell me you let nino and alya know each other identity" which will reveal adricat identity. So when else did she ask? about the thing in hack-san, I think another credit goes to alya since she's the one who bring the topic to maribug who seems to be blissfully unaware that her leaving without telling adeicat that she send subtitute would be a problem.

I didn't get into this side of things in my other post because it was long and I wanted to focus on why Chat Noir's behavior was so frustrating, but this ask brings up the other big reason why the season four conflict was such a frustrating and terribly written plot line. Specifically, the part of your ask where you point out that Maribug seems blissfully unaware that her actions are having a negative impact on Chat Noir until someone points it out to her.

Yes, she is presented as blissfully unaware of this and every other interpersonal conflict we're given in season four. Your ask treats this as a failing on Maribug's part as if she should have obviously realized that she was in the wrong, but that's the whole problem. Telling kids - telling anyone really - that they should just magically know what others need is a frankly terrible life lesson as that's just not how the world works. You cannot just assume that everyone will have the same view of the world as you do and instantly pick up on the same issues as you do. That is the path to easily avoidable frustration and conflict. It also teaches people to assume that their view of the world is inherently correct when that is rarely the case. We often don't know the whole story and the other person's point of view may end up being equally or even more valid. This issue is extremely present in season four as Marinette has legitimate reasons to behave the way she does, which I'll get into in a bit.

If Marinette were written as feeling guilty about how she was treating Chat Noir, then this would be a different story. She'd be way more in the wrong and would shoulder a much greater portion of the blame. But as is? She has no idea that she's doing anything wrong. And until someone takes the time to tell her that her actions are causing harm, she is going to continue causing harm because she has no idea that she's causing harm.

In fact, I'd argue that the Alya thing in Hack San is a point in Maribug's favor. Throughout the episode, we see Marinette sending Alya messages on ways to be a good partner to Chat Noir, proving that she does in fact care about him. And then, as soon as Alya says, "You need to talk to Chat Noir," what does Maribug do?

She goes and talks to Chat Noir, giving him a pretty good apology for the problem she now knows she caused. Because, shockingly, Maribug doesn't actually want to hurt her partner. She also clearly cares about his feelings, making me want to take the season four conflict and tear it into itty bitty pieces because what is the conflict even supposed to be when you write shit like this?

I want to briefly step away from Miraculous and talk about this issue in a broader context via this YouTube short:

This short is from a Vietnamese woman who moved to Germany. Her YouTube channel is about her experiences there, including things like the short above which goes into the differences between what it means to be a dinner guest in Vietnam and what it means to be a dinner guest in Germany. In Vietnam, it's apparently standard for the guests to cook dinner with you where as, in Germany, you're expected to have the meal ready when the guests arrive, making this a situation where it's super easy to come across as rude just by doing what you think is normal.

Society is relatively aware that these types of culture clashes are a thing, but you don't have to be from different cultures to have these types of situations. Every person has their own unique needs and ideas of what "normal" is. The culture they were raised in will affect this, but so will their family, their personal needs, and many other factors. Two people can be raised on the same street and wind up with wildly different world views even though they supposedly share a culture. This is extra true when you add in compounding factors like neurodiversity, which is why it's an exercise in futility to say, "But Maribug should have realized..."

Well, she clearly didn't. And you can't change that she didn't realize whatever you're mad about. All you can do is have someone tell her what she's doing wrong. If she then continues the behavior, go ahead and judge away. But if she immediately corrects it like she did in Hack San? Doesn't that just prove that she truly didn't know that Chat Noir was hurting and would have probably fixed all of his problems if someone just pointed them out to her?

This is only exacerbated by the fact that Marinette's behavior in season four is largely unchanged from her behavior in previous seasons. The only major change is that she revealed her identity to Alya, but as soon as that's pointed out as a problem, she course corrects with an apology. After that, she thinks that everything is okay because why wouldn't she? Chat Noir said it was fine and everything else has been business as usual.

Bringing temp heroes into help as needed? That's been going on since season two. Having these additional members has been vital in multiple battles and there have been plenty of times where Chat Noir took a background role to the temp hero of the day like in Sapotis, Rena Rouge's season two debut. So why would Maribug suddenly think that this dynamic is a problem when it's been working fine for so long? We even had a whole episode about how Chat Noir was still needed in spite of the new heroes back in season three! Or, at least, I think that was Desperada's message? This show is shockingly bad at giving clear lessons.

Keeping guardian knowledge from Chat Noir? That's also been going on since season two and was even treated as a conflict that supposedly got resolved in the episode Syren which was the episode that ended with Master Fu coming to the mansion to talk to Adrien after everything was over.

When I watched that episode, I assumed this meant that Chat Noir was going to be more involved in things like picking the temp heroes. I actually thought this was how we were going to get Queen Bee because I knew she was going to be a thing, but it made no sense for Marinette to pick Chloe for a miraculous. Of course, I was wrong. Nothing changed after Syren. Chat Noir remained nothing more than the comic relief while Ladybug got all the insider info.

To be clear, I think that was a terrible move writing wise, but it doesn't change the fact that this is what they went with. This is the established dynamic. I can't even say that Alya learning Marinette's secret led to something new. She's just taken Marinette's old role while Marinette has taken on Master Fu's old role. This show loves it's status quo and Chat Noir has been at least tolerant of that status quo since Syren, so it's not surprising that Maribug doesn't register that this is a thing that should change and no one bothers to point it out to her even though she has a mentor in Tikki (and Su Han, I guess?) and a confidant in Alya and a whole slew of Kwamis who could also provide insight if they were allowed to do that sort of thing. (Sass and Wayzz were robbed of mentor roles.) Additional blame goes to Plagg because he should absolutely have told Adrien to talk to Ladybug. What is the point of giving these characters mentors who never mentor? It's aggravating in the extreme.

To circle back to the first part of your ask, outside of Hack San and Rocketear, I don't think there are any times when Ladybug invites feedback from Chat Noir unless you want to give credit to the end of Kuro Neko:

Cat Noir: (lands next to her) I've been a really temperamental kitty, m'lady. I didn't realize how much trouble I'd make for you by giving back my Miraculous. Ladybug: (sits closer to him) Just because I don't need you all the time doesn't mean that I don't need you at all, Cat Noir. No one could ever replace you.

Which isn't Maribug inviting him to tell her what's up, but she is clearly willing to listen to him and reassure him, further backing up my point about this conflict being some of the worst writing I've ever had to suffer through. If Maribug always fixes the issue as soon as she learns about it, you are not writing a situation where she's clearly in the wrong. You are writing an easily solved communication issue where she gets blamed for something she clearly doesn't realize she's doing wrong and it is so frustrating!!! I feel so bad for her. The next episode is Penalteam, btw, which starts the battle with this gem:

Ladybug: (laughs) Nice scare tactics, but it's not gonna work. Cat Noir and I are the best at soccer! Cat Noir: (Whispers to Ladybug) I don't know a thing about soccer M'lady. Maybe it's time to call the real team?

And basically just spends the whole episode making Chat Noir seems like a worthless partner while Maribug tries her best to make him - and everyone else - feel special.

Oh, and the episode before Kuro Neko? Well, it's technically Ephemeral, but that got magically overwritten so let's go one further back and we get to Dearest Family, which ends with this:

Cat Noir: (grabs a golden paper crown on the coffee table) Since I'm the king, (wears the crown on his head) would you be my queen, Ladybug? Ladybug: With pleasure, kitty cat! Tradition is tradition!

Oh yes, these two are in such conflict and Maribug does nothing to validate Chat Noir. He's in pain every episode and she's just totally oblivious to it.

If that was what they wrote, then I'd probably agree that we needed more instances of her asking if Chat Noir was okay. But it's not what they wrote. If you look through the list of season four episodes, you'll find that less than half of them deal with the supposed conflict of the season (by my count, only 8 of the 24 episodes before the final actually showcase the conflict and they are not in a logical order in terms of escalation as I tried to demonstrate above). The rest of the episodes flat out ignore it or even straight up work against the conflict like when Ladybug says this to Chat Noir in Guilttrip: "I probably don't tell you this enough, but I couldn't do this without you. And it'd be a lot less fun too."

Seriously, what even is this season? What is the conflict supposed to be? Because it sure as shit isn't Maribug undervaluing Chat Noir, if memory servers, season four sees her validate him more times than any other season. And it isn't her guiltily hiding things from him like so many fanfics claim because we have multiple points of evidence that prove that she's completely oblivious that there even is a conflict. So what conflict are the writers actually trying to write?

What's even more baffling is that none of this logically leads to the loss at the end of the season:

Maribug's new secrets didn't lead to her downfall. The only reason she lost was because of the secret that's always been there - a fact that's never revealed to her - and a freaking evil twin! So why did it matter that Maribug was keeping secrets? This is made even worse by season five maintaining all of the secrets, once again begging the question of what lesson were we trying to teach here???

Chat Noir wasn't needed for the final fight of the season, Maribug only needed the powers of a few of the temp heroes to win, a baffling ending to a season whose focus was Chat Noir feeling unimportant. You could scrap that conflict entirely and the ending would not change. In fact....

Adrien quitting to be nothing more than a good little boy who obeys his father would have actually saved the world from eventually being rewritten. If you think about it, the season four final actually punishes Adrien for being defiant. So does season five as, if Chat Noir had quit, his father would still be alive. I thought this show was supposed to be a romcom, not a tragedy. Why is Adrien being punished for being a hero? Is this supposed to be karma for lying to Ladybug with the whole Catwalker thing?

This shit is why I say I'm a writing salt, character sugar blog. I can't get mad at the characters when they're in such a nonsense story where things never logically tie together. They all deserve so much better.

None of this is meant to imply that ignorance is a blanket excuse for hurting others. Nor is it meant to imply that you have to forgive someone who hurt you just because they didn't mean to. There's a ton of nuance around these topics. But season four acknowledges none of that nuance while creating a situation that desperately needed nuance because there was no clear right and wrong here. Should Maribug work to be more aware of others feelings? Sure, but that journey can only start after she's made aware of her faults and no one ever points them out to her. Does Chat Noir need to work on clearly communicating his needs? Desperately, but no one is teaching him that lesson so he remains a terrible communicator who suffers in silence. What impressively bad writing.

#ml writing critical #ml writing salt #adrien deserves better #marinette deserves better #kuro neko salt #my queendom for some good character arcs #and good story arcs #there's just so much squandered potential here #ml fandom salt #ml fandom critical #Adding those tags because I am sick of people holding Marinette to unrealistic expectations #This was long so I didn't add this part of the rant but:#It's important to remember how much we know as an audience vs what Maribug knows #Adrichat is really good at putting up a front that everything is fine #And Marinette knows nothing about his homelife when he's Chat Noir #Plus the show has made this kids kinda terrible at understanding Adrien's home life #season four my beloathed #kuro neko my beloathed

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