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sillyzombiedelusion · 10 months ago

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To start with, Theon is a bad guy, but more importantly, a boring character. I actually stopped reading the books because of him (because the books were suddenly like, "here's what Theon's doing", and I was like, "the fuck? Who is that? I never heard that name before in my life. I better watch the TV show so I have faces to help me remember").

This doesn't make him a bad character, this means you personally weren't interested in him, which isn't a universal constant you can claim 💀

You could certainly do something with his split loyalties and bad decisions, but the TV show never made me interested. His choices never felt driven by his inner conflict, just by him being stupid and greedy.

So you didn't examine his character's nuance? Or the fact that someone being "stupid and greedy" doesn't make them uninteresting??

But then, and this is crucial, he has the worst redemption arc possible. First of all he kills two kids. We later learn that these kids were not actually the main characters we thought they were and the show treats it as if that made it okay, but no, it doesn't. And then he gets captured and horrifically tortured and mutilated and eventually gets released. Throughout this he barely makes any decision, nor does he ever give the impression that he might reconsider his actions. The show treats it as redemption, but he doesn't seem to have learned anything other than "Boltons are bad". The way he interacts with Sansa's storyline, portrayed as the hero even though he does almost nothing to actually help her, is particularly egregious.

I mean if you actually read the book you would have a better understanding of theon's character arc, but apparently you decided he was too boring 💀

I don't personally love theon's development throughout the show, but claiming that theon didn't show any remorse for his actions or help sansa is an unusual reach. He doesn't "make any decisions" except for, you know, killing miranda and deciding to help sansa escape winterfell. He's also... been tortured to the point that his mental state has almost completely detiorated.

(Not that Sansa's storyline was all that great to begin with, it took way too long for her to become a politician who proudly has her enemies murdered. That should have happened at least a year or two earlier.)

Not even gonna analyze this, this is just wrong.

Now you might say, isn't that literally the same exact redemption arc as Jaime, who is a great character who everybody loves? Yes, that is true, with one key difference: Jaime has charisma and charm, and he seems actually affected by what's happening to him. Not just in an "ouch ouwie ouch" way, but it genuinely makes him think and reconsider, and his relationship with Brienne is genuinely fun and interesting in a way that the few moments Sansa and Theon share absolutely aren't.

Once again this is your personal opinion and not a universal constant. Also you just admitted the thing huh 💀 "a redemption arc isn't valid unless I personally find the character charming" is really your whole argument here. Also, it's insane to me how you appear to be going almost completely off of show canon, but somehow insist that jaime is better than theon because he "actually changes".

Theon sucks. Theon deserved worse than what happened to him. Theon is boring, his redemption is completely unearned and also boring, and the pains and tribulations on his way to his redemption are also boring and annoying. I watched all of the last season and I still think Theon is my least favourite part of the show (mostly because there's no way to pretend that his story wasn't canon and doesn't count). Fuck Theon. Vote Zuko!

"I find this character boring so he is actually a horrible person and horribly written, and this cannot possibly just be my own personal opinion".

#what #the fuck #it was actually impossible for me not to copy paste this and disect it #I've never seen something so wrong in my life #Wrote this a week ago #wth I’ll post it #Theon greyjoy

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miraculouslbcnreactions · 9 months ago

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Wait, I was reading your posts and came across something I've found confusing. How is Adrien asking Ladybug wth she is doing in Volpina a bad thing? From Adrien's perspective, Ladybug's a celebrity tracking down a middle schooler with zero clout and humiliating her for lying about meeting her before. That's, uh yeah? Imagine if that happened irl lmao. Millions of teenage girls would perish at 1D's hands. My middle school would be a horror story. And it's made clear multiple times in the episode that her motivation is jealousy. It's one of the few episodes where the lesson Marinette gets makes sense I think, because she was genuinely spiteful in shitting on this random girl in front of her crush. That's significantly different than Ladybug just asking for a retraction from the Ladyblog. It's also one of the few times when Adrien's celebrity background actually affects how he acts, and it makes sense that Marinette doesn't make the connection between superhero=celebrity=not allowed to scream at middleschoolers in public. If half the kids in her school didn't lie about meeting Ladybug before, my suspension of disbelief is gone.

I've seen this argument before and it makes no sense to me, especially in the context of the lie that Lila actually told and the way the Lila confrontation actually goes down. A lot of people who have this take seem to think that Lila's lie was, "Ladybug saved me," and that Ladybug made a big public confrontation which is not what canon actually gave us. The confrontation was done in a mostly private setting and, while we never see Lila's full Ladyblog interview, this is how Ladybug sums up the interview in Volpina:

Ladybug:(sarcastically) Well hey Lila! How's it going? Long time no see. I saw your interview on the Ladyblog, awesome job. Oh sure! I remember our instant connection when I saved your life and we've been really good friends ever since! Practically BFF's! Uh actually, when did I save your life again, Lila? I don't recall. Oh yes! Of course, now I remember. Never! And we're not friends either! Miss Show-Off here was trying to impress you and everyone around her.

Lila didn't just lie about meeting Ladybug, she lied about having an ongoing, close relationship with Ladybug, two very different things. And Ladybug isn't just a celebrity, she's a superhero who is fighting an active terrorist. If I had to rewrite this confrontation, I'd keep it pretty much the same and just change the "Miss Show-Off" line to something like:

Miss Show-Off here was trying to impress you and everyone around her, putting herself and all of you at major risk! You know that Hawkmoth would do anything to get these, right? (gestures at her earrings) Did you even stop to think about what he'd do if he learned the identity of my supposed best friend? Of course not. You were too busy trying to look cool to stop and think things through like an actual superhero! We keep our identities and relationships secret for a reason!

Is this the kindest, most gentle way to confront someone like Lila? No, but it's very in character for Marinette to be filled with righteous fury when she sees someone using her name for their own personal gain. I really can't blame her for getting incredibly angry at this total stranger presenting herself as a Ladybug authority and using that authority to manipulate Marinette's friends. As I've said before, take away the crush complication and Marinette's actions still make total sense to me.

I'm not a huge proponent of virtue ethics. That's the idea that you need proper motivation for an act to be morally justified. If you do the right thing for the wrong reason, then the act is bad no matter how good the results and vice versa. If you view the world that way, then sure, you could possibly argue that Marinette's actions were wrong just like you can also argue that Gabriel's actions were totally fine, but I don't view the world that way. Switch Marinette's motivation from jealousy and a little righteous fury to pure righteous fury and almost nothing changes. She'd still need to confront Lila, the words would just be a little different.

It's not like this confrontation stops Lila, either. Chameleon gives us this:

Lila: (in flashback) Not only did Ladybug save my life, we've become very close friends. Marinette: She lies with every breath. Nino: Wait. You eavesdropped on Lila and Adrien? That's not cool. Alya: A good reporter always verifies her sources. Can you prove she doesn't actually know Ladybug?

Quick mini rant before I give the next Chameleon quote: this isn't how verifying your sources works, Alya! You should be verifying that Lila does know Ladybug, not the other way around! Right now, Marinette and Lila have equal authority on the topic as far as you know and there is no evidence to support either claim, so you should be looking for proof that Lila isn't lying! Proof isn't a first come, first serve problem even though a lot of people fall into that trap. This is especially true since Lila goes on to make claims like this:

Lila: Of course Ladybug saved my life. She never misses an opportunity to rescue her best friends. Max: Didn't your tinnitus give you vertigo when you went up the Eiffel Tower? Lila: Oh no. Ladybug knows me so well that she brought me an earplug to stick in my right ear.

So Lila keeps right on lying about her relationship with Ladybug, presenting them as close friends, making it even harder for me to get on the "Marinette was in the wrong for privately confronting Lila" train. If anything, Marinette was too tame! She needed to go full scorched earth and have Alya post a public retraction that included a message about the dangers of claiming to be personal friends with someone you don't actually know.

If the show went that route and had Ladybug give an equally furious smack-down and Alya posted it without a second thought, THEN I'd probably be on team "Marinette needed to tone herself down because she went too far" because that isn't a heat-of-the-moment reaction. It's something Marinette would have time to think through. But Volpina didn't go there. Instead, we just get Marinette reacting live to someone using her name to flirt with her crush. Remember, this is the setup to Marinette transforming and jumping in to stop Lila:

Lila: Not only did Ladybug save my life, we've become very close friends because we have something very special in common- it's what I wanted to tell you about. I'm the descendant of a vixen superheroine myself, Volpina. Adrien: Volpina? Marinette: Volpina? Adrien: Wait a minute! I think I read about her in my book. Lila:(stopping him from grabbing the book) Of course she's in your book. She's one of the most important superheroes. More powerful and more celebrated than Ladybug. Between you and me Ladybug doesn't even make the top ten. My grandma gave me this necklace. [Marinette runs off to transform] Adrien: (holding Lila's necklace) Are you telling me this is a Miraculous?! (Ladybug lands in front of them)

This wasn't a planned confrontation. It was Marinette reacting live to some pretty massive lies. If Ladybug had been swinging by and just overhead this, then the scene once again wouldn't change much. That's why blaming Marinette for confronting Lila in the "wrong way" feels so victim blame-y to me. "How dare Ladybug not be perfectly poised at all times and react with grace when someone lies about being her close friend and teammate!" is not a take I'm ever going to agree with. And if you want to use the middle schooler defense? Then it applies to Marinette, too. She and Lila are the same age. Why the different standards just because Marinette has fame that she never asked for or sought out?

I've never been much of a fan of holding celebrities to an "always on" standard where their every interaction needs to be done with poise and grace even if the interaction happens out in the wild and not at a planned even where the celebrity can be mentally prepared for dealing with fans. That's extra true for accidental celebrities like Ladybug. Marinette didn't take up the earrings for fame and they certainly haven't brought her fortune, plus she has no PR training. Expecting her to be a PR master who knows how to handle her accidental fame is, once again, a little too victim blame-y for my tastes. Ladybug is here to save the world, not sign autographs. You can hold her to politician standards when you start paying her for risking her life on the daily.

There's a version of Lila where I would have a different take. A version where the lie really is minor and Marinette really did "overreact", but even there my lesson wouldn't be "Marinette was totally in the wrong" because I genuinely think that sends the wrong message to kids and kids are the show's target audience. Think about what you're actually saying here, "Because Marinette is famous, she needs to accept that people will lie about her and just ignore them even if people believe the lie."

While that isn't exactly a wrong take, it's still really messed up. It's not okay for people to use Marinette's name like that just because she's famous. The reason she needs to learn to let it go is because that's what's best for her mental health, not because her fame makes her lesser than others when it comes to things like personal privacy. The lies are not magically okay just because she's well known.

Remember, Marinette is a fictional character, but the kids watching this show are very real and they're way more likely to be Lilas than Marinettes. And the kids that do relate to Marinette in this episode? They'll be kids who have dealt with the rumor mill spreading lies about them or their friends without the celebrity complication. The show should not be telling either set of kids that Marinette is the one in the wrong here. That is the wrong moral and why I hate this episode so much. I might feel differently if the intended audience was teens and if this plot was allowed to be more complex, but none of that is true. The show is aimed at kids ages 5 to 12 and every episode is supposed to teach its own moral with Volpina's moral being "Marinette was explicitly and totally in the wrong here."

This is the age of internet personalities where there are more easily-accessible celebrities than ever and where many of them do not have the wealth needed to protect themselves from fans nor the PR training to know how to handle extreme fans if there even is PR training for that! That means that it's honestly really important for kids to learn to view these individuals as people who it's wrong to lie about and who deserve the same respect as non-famous people. Treating celebrities as public commodities is how we get things like the Kit Connor scandal where an 18-year-old actor felt forced to publicly come out because the internet wouldn't shut up about his sexuality. Oh, and since you brought up one direction, I'll also note that the band members have publicly stated that online shipping discourse has negatively impacted their relationships. So, yeah, I'm never going to agree that kids should be told that it's okay to lie about celebrities or treat them as fictional characters to play with and that the celebrities are the ones who are wrong if they get upset about that behavior. That shit is toxic.

If we go the "minor" lie route, then my version of this episode would be a very sad one where Marinette learns that people are going to ignore her boundaries and lie about her and there's nothing she can do about it. A lesson in mental health training that will hopefully help kids who are dealing with bullies, but that does not present Marinette as totally in the wrong. It just teaches her when to pick a fight and when to let it go, which is a very important skill to learn even outside of lies about your own person. There will be many times when you hear people say something that you vehemently disagree with and it's important to learn when to pick a fight and when to just let it go, knowing that no good will come from speaking up even if you're 100% in the right. It's a very sad, but also very necessary skill.

I think Adrien has a place in that story. A place where he still tells Ladybug to let it go, but it should NOT have been played the way it was in canon where he acted like Ladybug was totally out of line. He needed to be way more compassionate and understanding of her very justified anger. I've written Adrien giving advice on this topic before and it's always presented as, "people are going to be assholes and you have to learn to ignore them for your own well being," not as, "you are wrong to be upset about strangers telling lies about you. You agreed to deal with this when you decided to be a hero" because what kind of asinine lesson is that?

You could also keep Adrien's canon reaction and have the lesson be him learning that it's okay to have boundaries. That his fame doesn't negate his bodily autonomy and right to be treated with dignity. That people chasing him down, invading his personal space, and otherwise preventing him from living a normal life is wrong. I love it when fanfics take this approach to Adrien's part in the Lila conflict. It's very cathartic to see his friends supporting him and protecting him from Lila.

I really have tried to see Volpina from the "Marinette was totally in the wrong" perspective because I've come across it several times, but I just can't wrap my head around it. If you've got a counter argument, then feel free to try to change my mind because I've given you my full thoughts here, but know that I'm probably not budging on this one. You'd have to make some pretty dramatic changes to canon for me to feel like this take has a point. I think the only way that I'd be on Lila's side is if it was very clear that no one believed Lila and Marinette still had the same reaction that we see in canon as that does feel like going too far. But everyone believed Lila so that's not a solid argument and I'm just never going to agree that people have to be cool with others lying about them just because they're famous. I honestly despise celebrity culture so much and hate that people are basically forced to deal with that bullshit if they want to be successful in certain artistic fields.

#anon ask #lila salt #ml writing critical #ml writing salt #volpina salt #ml's wacky morals

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