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Qilin And Failing At The Last Moment

Up until the last few minutes of the episode, Qilin was on track to be one of my favorite MLB episodes ever

The animation wasn’t great but the pacing was really good and you get a spotlight on someone who we usually only see in the background, showing also that maybe Marinette’s ladybug vision is a family trait (actually not a big fan of how much the show is using this now-a-days but it works more for Sabine, I think, than most others) and how close she and her mom are, and showing Marinette’s struggles to maintain her life impact so much more than just school work and socializing- and that there’s atleast One (1) adult in Paris who recognizes this situation as being wrong and unfair to Ladybug and Chat- something that we kind of really needed considering how many adults are just pure shit in this show, and the clarity of the situation being wrong doubled with how quickly some jackass Karen is to jump to a POC being “aggressive” just because they’re not being 10000% apologetic over something that isn’t even their fault to begin with was done well in my personal opinion coupled with how quick the police were to fold to someone being irritating even though they KNEW what the truth was, all really heart breaking, Chat and Marinette having a GUN were both huge highlights and Sabine breaking her akumatization was GREAT

...And then in the last possible moment it erased all of this and put the message in a blender

I’m not the person to say if MLB should or shouldn’t be tackling police violence- not only given that I’m white but also that I’m definitely not a film or production expert of any kind so tackling the subject of “Does this specific show have the necessary format/timing/age of audience/tools at their disposal to do this well?” isn’t within my realm of possibilities either

But good Christ if they’re going to try to tackle it then they atleast shouldn’t completely trash the message in the process

If they should or shouldn’t regardless- they did, and they screwed it up

I’ve gone from loving this episode to honestly probably not ever re-watching it just because the ending pisses me off so much

I really thought a few times that Ladybug or Chat were going to bring up racial tension, although probably Chat given that 1. Ladybug would have to toe a thin line if she was going to point out the racism, especially if she were to imply or outright say that she was Chinese/half-Chinese as that risks her identity to even imply it (just out of the cast we have, that narrows the feild of her identity wildly) and 2. It’s not like this would be the first time that the White Boy Who Has Nothing To Do With This Message would get the opportunity to put his foot in the ring anyway.... Kung Food and from a charector perspective, not only is Chat much more impulsive than Ladybug, but Adrien is that special blend of “really wanting to help” and “tone deaf” that I don’t have a hard time picturing him bringing this up and forcing the cops to try and backtrack, meanwile only making Ladybug more upset at them (and depending on how well or poorly he handles it, more upset in general, or even more fond of Chat for trying, though I don’t think we would have seen much of the latter) but I certainly didn’t expect it and if this would have made things better or worse isn’t really my place to decide, but my point in bringing this up is that even without directly pointing it out, it was really clear where the “dispute” was coming from, especially with so many details in the episode focusing on Sabine being Chinese, so to then have Marinette offer to pay the fine is just..... it makes me so physically uncomfortable???? Especially considering that ultimately IT IS STILL SABINE PAYING IT

I get the idea being “Marinette is responsible but doesn’t have her life together yet so still needs her mom” and that is fine, I think the flowers, though, would have driven that point home enough without sledge-hammering the entire point of the episode out of orbit

I wish Sabine would have either said something like “No, that would be unfair” or “We already paid for our ticket though, so that isn’t right”, or literally anything to detour the situation, as I get that Marinette has this Thing forced by the writers where she has to take the blame for things that aren’t her fault- and I can understand how the episode is trying to frame this as being Marinette’s fault even though it’s quite clearly the fault of the racists, so one line from Sabine could have upheld that and still reinforced that she did nothing wrong to begin with

And seriously? They were ready to cancel the fine after getting proof that Sabine did nothing wrong but Marinette said “nah we were still in the wrong so I’ll pay it”??? It’s gotta be one of the most absurd decisions in this show, it’s not “responsible”- it would be if for some reason the fine had stuck, like if Marinette had forgotten to get a ticket and taken the bus without one- but these circumstances are just so...... heinous???

To say nothing of the fact that everything is meant to be ok at the end after Roger and the ticket douchebag were so aggressive and pretty clearly racially profiled Sabine, I know with MLB’s general tone it was always going to end with “Everything is fine :) “ but I really wish there had been some kind of consequence for those assholes at the end, even if it was just Ladybug mentioning that this kind of shit is why she’s constantly having to save the city and that as long as the police are doing this shit they’re forcing vigilantes like her to step in- I’m sure it wouldn’t have happened but I can dream

God I just really can’t get over how badly they screwed things up at the very end like that, it’s like someone in the MLB team Astruc is purposely trying to sabotage the show everytime it tries to do something good

Anyway, this is why MLB should belong to fic writers

[asagis-meta]

Can’t believe I have to say this but here we go-

It’s ok to feel bad for Stolas

It’s ok to feel bad for Blitz

It’s ok to feel bad for both of them because they are BOTH in a rotten situation filled with miscommunication, emotional constipation, and hurt feelings

There is no sole person responsible for this mess and there is no sole person hurt by it either- and that’s fine

Sometimes that’s the way life and relationships go

Here’s the thing:

Stolas does treat Blitz like a plaything, and although he’s been growing alot between episodes, it’s pretty likely that Blitz either doesn’t see it at all, or doesn’t see it enough, to see that Stolas is trying so hard for him- also never forget that we’re an audience, we get context that the actual charectors never do, Blitz has probably never seen Awkward Owl Bean like we did earlier in the episode, remember that in the first several interactions Blitz and Stolas had we only really saw Blitz’s perspective and it was always the same with Stolas being a thirsty owl lusting after him, we don’t know how often Blitz is met with that vs the softer side of Stolas that we, as an audience watching only moments in the day-to-day lives of these charectors, get to see much more frequently, that plus the entire incident at Ozzie’s with Stolas clearly being ashamed of the ordeal... Blitz’s blowing up isn’t exactly a surprise

HOWEVER

That doesn’t negate that Stolas’s first date possibly ever was essentially a hoax, that he was excited for something that ended up being little more than what his relationship with Blitz so often is- transactional, something that Stolas seems to be trying to edge away from (even if he hasn’t explicitly said as much to Blitz) and not only did he go through a pretty rough time at Ozzie’s, but even after sucking down his own raw emotions over the incident and putting himself out there TWICE, he was shot down in a pretty cruel way, and left alone and depressed when he was already alone and depressed

They’re both alone and depressed

That’s the thing too- they’re both so similar with their hurts and neither one of them can communicate their way out of a cardboard box, they both clearly want what Moxie and Millie have (and sidenote but can we please agree M&M are the best thing ever?) but neither of them know how to express that properly, and even when one of them tries to start putting some vulnerability forward, the other one doesn’t usually respond “correctly”- that may not be malicious (pretty sure Stolas wasn’t trying to hurt Blitz by hiding in shame, just like I don’t think Blitz was trying to hurt Stolas by inviting him to essentially a fake date) but it’s still something that happens

There are plenty of people much more articulate than I am who have already done essays about their individual issues and theories about how they can get through them and such so I won’t go into any of that, but TLDR:

Can we like...  maybe not demonize (ha) eachother for feeling more sympathy for one charector over the other, or, you know, for both? Because they’re both hurting and it’s completely valid and JUSTIFIED to feel bad for them both but more than that, sympathy is a weird emotion and some might have an easier time sympathizing with one party over the other based on personal experiences and their own hang-ups so let’s all be civil to eachother yeah?

[asagis-meta]

Supergirl, Courage, And Loss- What If Being Courageous Means Losing?

I’ve been thinking this since the episode aired and want to suggest truly my least favorite possibility ever for why Kara didn’t pass the Courage gauntlet-

What if she was supposed to let Alex die?

Supergirl as a show has a habit of using Kara and her story arc to get across more universal messages about personal growth, and that’s not always a bad thing.... but in this case I’m worried that it’s a really bad thing

Courage is poised as doing something we’re afraid of, facing a challenge that we’d rather turn away from, and when posed against episode one, Kara isn’t afraid of getting caught- not really, what she’s much, MUCH more afraid of is losing her sister

Alex has always been a guardian to Kara, it’s really not a secret that she would have been very lost without her sister, and terrified of losing her, Kara acted recklessly and against her own self preservation in order to prevent herself from living through her worst fear- losing Alex

Remember that the Courage totem has already proven that what it considers courageous is not necessarily the moral or just thing to do, just the bravest, the totems seem to act more on the impacts of Kara and Nyxly as individuals vs world at large, so there’s no argument to be made about “Yeah but that would be wrong-” because the totem doesn’t care, it just knows Kara acted out of fear and is targeting that moment in her life

So what if that’s what the Courage totem wants? For Kara to let Alex go and experience that fear, never becoming Supergirl in the first place?

Ofcourse, even if they revisit the Courage totem and Kara having to face what she did wrong the first time- and we probably will or else they wouldn’t have left that question unanswered- that doesn’t mean that she’ll choose to go along with whatever the totem implies she should do (more on that later), as just because something is the “better” or “right” decision, that doesn’t mean that it’s absolute, we’ve seen before that sometimes you have to make the decision that you want to make rather than the one you should make, sometimes your fate is what you choose it to be- and that could be the way they take things too, but we’ll come back to that

The season has been building up the theme that Kara can’t be both Kara Zor El and Kara Danvers, something that hit it’s peak last week when Kara quit Cat Co and essentially resigned herself to just being Supergirl all the time- we know this can’t work, she tried it before in season two and it didn’t go well, plus if this was the right move then it wouldn’t have been framed as a hopeless decision she made because she felt like there was no other choice

I’m afraid that this means Kara will learn to accept loss- accept that she can’t be there all the time for everyone and hang up the cape- this allowing her to be herself, help people as a reporter, and very much live up to the name of the episode- “Kara”

It would certainly live up not only to the themes set up for the season, but also set up throughout the entire series, that you can’t save everyone, that you can’t always win, that everyone- no matter how superpowered they are- has to experience certain things like anxiety and fear and loss sometimes

I would hate this ending, ofcourse

There is, however, a different possibility for the ending of the series IF this is the way the totem is meant to be taken- Kara ignoring the totem’s advice

It wouldn’t be the first time the show has demonstrated that sometimes you have to do what’s right for YOU over what the people around you think is right, this would be an excellent final nod to that messaging, Kara getting the message that she shouldn’t have become Supergirl in the first place and rejecting it by CHOOSING to be Supergirl- not just going “Well, people saw me so I guess this is my life now”, but making the conscious choice to stay Supergirl... just healthier where she can have her life and live it too

Although to be honest, even if this is the case, I would still vehemently HATE this to be the Courage totem’s Thing, I can understand where they’re going with it in an idea of “Accepting loss requires alot of courage” kind of way and trying to support people in real life going through that... but in universe it’s just a stupid message and sounds alot more like “Even if you can do something, you still shouldn’t”, especially considering that Kara becoming Supergirl- unlike, say, Barry going back in time- has brought HEAPS of good onto the world, saving countless people from countless threats and not to mention being the Paragon Of Hope (not that that matters anymore apparently) and it would just overall be a terrible choice

I really hope that I’m wrong and that the real courageous thing from that night is something much less dramatic, but I feel in my bones that that’s where they’re going with this and if that’s correct then I’d really much rather they just leave it as a loose plot thread never to be touched again, honestly