clueblake74

[clueblake74]

not to bring tiktok drama on tumblr but like every time a ‘scandal’ comes out with one of these ‘production companies’ that make fan films i always hope we’re finally gonna discuss how they professionalize something that should be an hobbyist endeavor… and yet every single time i’m disappointed.

[clueblake74]

not to bring tiktok drama on tumblr but like every time a ‘scandal’ comes out with one of these ‘production companies’ that make fan films i always hope we’re finally gonna discuss how they professionalize something that should be an hobbyist endeavor… and yet every single time i’m disappointed.

[clueblake74]

You were sure your girlfriend knew your secret identity, so you were happy to flirt with her both in and out of costume. But today she confessed to cheating on you. With you.

[clueblake74]

misternette/buganette as promised :)

[clueblake74]

I love the draped peacock its great! The dress is def an improvement to his usual attire. 

peacock gabe design by lovely @wormzandgutz and butterfly dress bullshit by me 😔👍

[clueblake74]

You're absolutely correct.

marinette alya nino and adrien would watch the barbie movie in theatres together and when the credit rolls marinette and alya are in deep discussion on whether the message was effectively feminist or not and what worked and what didn't. meanwhile nino is like wasnt that a fun movie mec :-)? and adrien is just sitting there sobbing

[clueblake74]

Why was mime lady from the miraculous movie so hot tho

[clueblake74]

I know I just made a post harping on the movie, but this person makes great points. I will say, the identity reveal did not do it for me. It was nice. The way he looked at her was cute. And all of the things that are good about the movie are good for a reason. But some fell flat for me because they weren’t as earned.

Things in the Miraculous movie that were way better than the show

Everything

Ok but actually, adjustments made in the movie that vastly improved the show’s canon:

Marinette’s awkwardness being equally applied to everyone she interacts with. Having her reputation be that she is a walking disaster makes Adrien’s (and Alya’s) kindness to her more impactful. Also makes Chloe’s bullying more believable. IN GENERAL makes Marinette’s character more believable.

In the same realm, the entire school and world not revolving around how perfect and cool Adrien is fixes SO. MANY. THINGS. The only person at school who seems to care about his status is Chloe, which not only makes his overall character less annoying, but also adds to Chloe’s characterization.

Speaking of Chloe, making her an actual character and not a bitch who torments her classmates relentlessly for no reason? Like yeah she’s still a bitch and a bully but she has sense of decorum and won’t take it too far if her reputation is on the line.

Sabrina having agency? Hello??

The subtilization of Marinette’s crush on Adrien. Like, hello, she has a lot of shit going on! She doesn’t have time to be swooning over her classmate all day! Yet another thing that makes her more believable.

TIKKI AND PLAGG CHOOSING THEIR OWN HOLDERS. Fuck Fu. Kwamis are literal eldritch gods, why wouldn’t they have a bit of agency?

The entire sequence of Marinette saving Fu. A clever way to have Fu meet the holder while still having Tikki be the one who chooses. Also way better storytelling for him to not intentionally put himself in danger to find a holder, makes the whole thing more organic.

The addition of the rule that the Tikki and Plagg only awaken when there’s a miraculous-level threat. Gives actual purpose to the role of the Guardian, imo.

Unpopular opinion but Tikki’s personality change was great. Once again, literal eldritch God!

Not to harp on this, but once again, the kwamis still having some level of control and AGENCY even when their holders are transformed. Tikki being in Ladybug’s yo-yo and actually guiding her was cool af and WHY WOULDN’T SHE BE ABLE TO DO THAT???

Ladybug and Chat having more general abilities BUT not having their special abilities right away. The sequence where Chat caught the invisible bullet? Cool af. And Ladybug NOT having the reset button right away really raised the stakes and honestly just felt right. It was really rewarding and triumphant when she used it towards the end.

The earrings/ring glowing as a way to communicate when one of them is not transformed. Such a good and cool idea.

Adrien and Marinette frequently hanging out together in a group with Alya and Nino without it being weird!!! Jesus!! Let the kids be kids!!!!!

Gabriel Agreste being less of a piece of shit.

Chat Noir’s “You’re my sidekick!” To, “I’m your sidekick!” progression. Followed by Ladybug’s, “we’re partners!” Immaculate.

Marinette gaining confidence as Marinette from being Ladybug AND ALSO SPECIFICALLY from her partnership with Chat Noir. LET THE SUPERHERO CHILDREN HAVE A MEANINGFUL AND UPLIFTING PARTNERSHIP FFS

Speaking of, LADYNOIR HANGING OUT

LADYNOIR PLAYFIGHTING

Ladybug liking Chat romantically maybe before the 5th fucking season? Making Chat’s first confession less cringey bc she actually really likes him back and totally wants to kiss him? Being internally conflicted ab it?

Marinette confessing right after she gently lets Chat down for the first time, literally perfect angst set up

Adrien BEING ABLE TO STAND UP TO HIS FATHER. Fuck Sentiadrien.

Gabriel being capable of feeling human emotions

Identity reveal

[clueblake74]

I watched the Miraculous Movie.

I’m not going to say I hated it. I watched it with my little sister, and there were some moments I loved. But they unfortunately didn’t outweigh the other things about it. Spoilers ahead. 

I feel like everything I have to say about the movie has been said before. The animation was pretty. The character interactions with Ladybug and Chat Noir were pretty awesome at times. *Ahem. THE WALL SLAM.* I also liked Marinette trying to reject the miraculous And the reason why they get the miraculouses makes a lot more sense to me. 

But then there were not so awesome moments like when Chat Noir pretended to be hurt to see if Ladybug liked him. Or the moment after the wall slam when Chat says “Don’t go 🥺.” Idk I couldn’t deal with that part. 

I couldn’t help but notice that they NERFED Luka in the movie. 

Okay, looking at them side by side, the movie Luka looks like a normal human boy. But where are the earrings? Where’s the flavor? 

Speaking of flavor. I am obsessed with Marinette’s dress. 

THE WINGS??!!! So cute. Made enduring all of the musical numbers almost worthwhile.

I know some people liked them, depending on which version they watched. I was tempted to watch the German version because I heard that was pretty decent. But I was watching with my sister and she doesn’t speak German so we stuck with the English dub. Which was... fine. No one sounded like their character except for Gabriel. But Keith Silverstein is in literally every anime and video game on the planet. So I can imagine he’s done some singing in character. 

Right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMhIwCLiBN8

Anyway. What was I talking about? 

Oh yeah. Gabriel. I loved Gabriel in this movie. I loved the long hair. His little character design was so cute. It made me really like Gabriel. And I want to repeat a point that my little sister made about him after the movie. 

She basically said “So the hero and main character of this movie is actually Gabriel?” And I think she was right in a way. Gabriel is the reason why any of this is happening in the first place. Gabriel is the reason why it ended. Gabriel is the one who gets all of this backstory and growth. 

I know they tried a “be true to yourself” arc for Marinette in the movie. But none of it feels earned or real. With Gabriel, you can feel he actually loves his family. In the movie at least he is going out of his way to protect Adrien. He immediately stops his destructive behavior as soon as he sees what it has done to his son. Which is a moment I think a lot of people were hoping for. 

But what about our main characters? What growth do they see? How do they change? Marinette grows out of her fearfulness. Cool. And Adrien, as per usual, doesn’t really get an arc. He is simply acted upon by is father and the plot. I think it’s fine that he accepted the miraculous no question. He’s silly like that. But he seems to have a total of two aspects to himself. Sadness about losing his mom and being in love with Ladybug. I know this might seem weird of me to say, but he feels like a woman written by a man. 

The reason why we don’t like women written as jaded people who eventually ‘get better’ through the power of love isn’t just because they’re women. It’s because it’s a terrible way to write a character. Any growth they have belongs to another character. Even when he realizes his father is the literal villain... there’s nothing about that? You couldn’t have scrapped one song to explore that? 

Maybe that’s why he wasn’t at the dance right away and Marinette finds him and they have a little chat about that? The plot of the movie felt very disjointed and unreal to me because of this. 

One last point I’d like to talk about is how it seems people are divided because they are a) excited and happy the movie is finally out, or b) disappointed because the movie doesn’t follow the show’s lore to a T. 

I frankly could care less about the movie following the lore. I liked the things they added, like their miraculouses glowing when they were calling for each other. If you’ve read my fanfiction, you know I’m fine with the lore being tossed up. But I don’t think the movie did that. In fact, it’s as if they expected you to already know what the backstory of the miraculous was, and hopefully not get too confused when they changed things or even just left stuff out. If they were going to change what the miraculouses did, I think it could have been explained better. 

That’s my two cents on the movie. That’s totally why I haven’t uploaded in *checks calendar*… almost four weeks. Whoops. 

Thanks for reading!

This post has been sponsored by VW. 

[clueblake74]

Chat in a ponytail <3

some ladybug sketches including an older chat

[clueblake74]

I am once again thinking about ✨️her✨️

I'm not sure how I feel about the mask, but I'm pretty happy with the rest of this Mayura redesign.

[clueblake74]

As an MLB fanfiction writer, I wanted to weigh in on this just a tiny bit. 

Yeah, my fanfiction is definitely a hobby, and I don’t put as much blood, sweat, and tears into it as I do with my OG work. But I still do outlining, beta reading, and a little bit of editing. It’s an outlet for me to be creative, and practice writing, without it being as much of ‘my baby’ as my OG work. 

That doesn’t mean I don’t work hard on making the story. Just the other day, I was thinking about Juleka, and what I wanted to do with her character in the future of the fanfiction. And I was like ‘Juleka is super trans-coded.’

Then I went down this whole rabbit hole of thinking about how perfect that would have been for the plot of Reflekta, and how much I wished I had made that more central to the plot and the conflict. (I’m sure there are so many trans-Juleka AUs out there, I don’t think this is an original idea on my part. If anyone wants to recommend some good fanfics regarding that, created by trans creators, let me know!! <3)

But I had already done my take on Reflekta. I obviously could go in and do a few small edits to make it the way I wish it was. But since it’s already published, I’m not sure if I should. 

I know in TV shows it’s fairly similar. Thomas might be thinking of ideas that might be better and regretting how he originally wrote them, and so on and so forth. So I get what he’s saying about people telling him about what they think he should do. 

But you know what? 

Despite me empathizing with his take on that.... I just don’t know why he keeps responding to and getting into these debates with people. 

I can get what Thomas is saying, but it’s just like the show. The message is supposed to be good and uplifting- he’s talking about preserving your mental health about things you can’t control, not comparing art that shouldn’t be compared, ect.

But just like the show, his message is presented in such a way that is frustrating. Because there are so many contradictions, holes, and logical fallacies. And his replies to people make his ‘quest’ for a better mental health space a bit disingenuous. Because if he really wanted to convince people he was above taking advice from fans he would not reply to them. He is letting them into his ‘circle’ so to speak, just by responding. 

Idk, I don’t want to reflect on Thomas too much. But, in terms of fanfiction, him trying to put constraints on who can write it, what way they should write it, ect. is the same as what he complains about with fans trying to tell him how to write his show. It makes me laugh a little. 

I might be reaching, but I also think there’s a whole conversation that could be had about him saying that, and having a Native American hero in his show. Being Métis, it makes me giggle pretty hard that the French guy wants to keep his French culture out of everybody else’s hands, but he thinks it’s acceptable for him to use Native Americans as much as he would like. 

In conclusion, we can’t tell him how to write the show, but he can tell us how to write our fanfiction lol. 

#23: “The Miraculous Ladybug Movie May Give You What You Want, but My Show Gives You What You Actually Need! You Don’t Work in Television, so You Wouldn’t Understand.”

I've been running this blog for almost three years at this point, and I've seen Astruc talk trash about various things while claiming his show is better, like Winx Club, Paw Patrol, Pokemon, and Pixar as a whole. I never thought I'd see Astruc act like his show was better than a movie based on his show though.

For those who don't know (and you'd be forgiven, seeing how Astruc has barely talked about it on his Twitter), there was recently a movie that hit theaters based on Miraculous Ladybug called Ladybug & Cat Noir: The Movie. Supposedly, it's meant to be a retelling of how Marinette and Adrien met as civilians and as heroes. While I haven't seen it, it seems to be getting good reception, with some saying it's better than the show it's based on.

Of course, Astruc had something to say about this.

Okay, I sort of get what he's trying to say here. It's hard to compare the experience of watching an hour and a half long movie and a TV show with five seasons under its belt, but at the same time, the way Astruc phrased it still made it seem like he was trying to say the show was the better option because it “gives you what you need”. Nobody was expecting the Love Square to be resolved in a few episodes. Most people at least wanted more stories about the two to be told that don't involve constant padding. Astruc also acts like the Love Square is the only draw for the series instead of, oh, I don't know, the superhero action? You're really telling me they couldn't have tried focusing more on that after resolving the Love Square? I'm just saying, if The Office can continue after Jim and Pam got together, you can at least try to actually write other stories after the Love Square becomes canon.

One user in particular had some things to say in response to Astruc's claims, and you can guess how well Astruc took that.

Again, nobody is saying that working in television is all sunshine and rainbows, Astruc, but just because someone isn't familiar with dealing with network constraints and test audiences, it doesn't mean that they're unable to provide any meaningful criticism.

Also, Astruc is once again using a psychology term, in this case, the Dunning-Kruger Effect, to act like he's smarter than the critics. This man took psychology as an elective in college, didn't he?

But then again, this is coming from someone who doesn't think constructive criticism is a real thing.

Funny how he once again acts like anything that isn't positive feedback of his show is delusional, isn't it?

Eventually, this devolved into Astruc posting a little tangent about how fandoms have only gotten more toxic, which would have been a decent point... it if didn't come after all the things he said about fans not being able to criticize his show.

Again, there's nothing wrong with what he's trying to say here, but it feels less like a critique of how fans have become more toxic with the advent of the internet, and more like he's complaining about how mean people have been to him lately.

And, of course, this led to the usual fare of people calling out Astruc for his close mindedness, and Astruc once again saying how people aren't allowed to criticize his show in any way that isn't blind praise.

And here's the thing. We're still not done yet. This little tangent only warranted more comments about how Astruc handles criticism, only this time, it's also about calling out the people who think they can do a better job handling the show.

First, do you mind giving us an example of what kind of constraints you have to deal with, Astruc? We all know that TV executives suck, but I think we'd have more of a reason to understand your struggles if you actually explained some things that needed to be changed because of executive meddling.

Second, nobody wants a beach episode, Astruc, especially after that one issue of the comic you're choosing to ignore. We just want a more consistent story that doesn't rely on endlessly padding out the Love Square.

And finally, did you just say you have to be French if you want to rewrite Miraculous Ladybug? What does being French have to do with any of this? I remember seeing a little tweet a few years ago suggesting you would be a good choice to write a Superman story, but last time I checked, you aren't American.

Let's review in case you got lost. Someone tweeted that they thought the Miraculous Ladybug movie did a better job at the story it set out to tell than the Miraculous Ladybug TV show, Astruc tried to explain how his show is still good in its own way while justifying how long it's been going on for, he ranted and raved at fans for daring to criticize his team's writing before going on a tangent about how the internet has made people more hostile over the years, and when people still weren't happy with him, he claimed that you could only criticize or rewrite the show if you're an experienced French TV writer like him.

So just keep that in mind, fanfic writers. Unless you're French and have experience writing for television, you don't have a chance in hell to successfully write your own version of Miraculous Ladybug.

[clueblake74]

My redesign of The Collector 💛 He collects people in the sketchbook in his chest, and he's made of scribbles.

It was nice to just practice with a sketchy design like this. Maybe I'll color it, idk. Don't look too hard at his hands.

[clueblake74]

I couldn't sleep because I kept thinking about mayura. Here's the start of my rough sketch of my redesign for her.

Idek know how to feel lmao

[clueblake74]

Marinette is finally fulfilling her dream of interning at Inachus Fashion, which means she will be shadowing the fantastic Nathalie Sancoeur. But she finds that being a fashion intern is even more time consuming than her school-work and superhero-work combined.

Still, she and Felix get to take time off from school as they travel to the four main Fashion Week cities: New York, London, Milan, and then back to Paris. Which means Paris will be left unprotected. They try to enlist the mysterious anti-hero Mayura, who promptly refuses. Which means they'll have to finds some new heroes to keep an eye on Paris.

[clueblake74]

To celebrate the ending of the second arc of A Little to the Left, here are some of my favorite comments my beta reader has made throughout the arc.

As you can see, the pigeon hat was the least popular character this arc, with being fifteen years old coming in at a close second.

Make sure to check out @m-aee's stuff too! Their art gives me so much life, and they are also great at writing!

This arc was fun, and I think the next arc will be even more fun. See you guys in a couple weeks!

[clueblake74]

I am indeed updating this fic again, every Friday until it’s finished.