ilikekidsshows

[ilikekidsshows]

[ilikekidsshows]

DannyMay day 9: Underground

[ilikekidsshows]

I see, this is the episode set where the found family and birth family come together. There was the beginning awkwardness and formality, but formality will have to give away for familiarity when living together for extended periods of time, especially when the parties living together value similar things.

The first episodes of this season also really lean into how the tables have turned, how the Plantars are now the ones stuck in a strange world they don’t understand, where running a simple errand becomes an epic quest due to that lack of understanding.

[ilikekidsshows]

Spindash, Polly! Spindash like your life depends on it! Cause it does

Polly has seen some shit, mostly the cat

Actually, now that I think about it, has anyone ever been this kind to the Plantars?

No.

"Especially not Mrs. Croaker!"

"Huh"

[ilikekidsshows]

A lot of animals don't like carriers but Domino looks downright haunted

*laugh*

Hey! Suspicion Island 2, 2 Sus

"The herons of this world are pathetic!"

"It's still a beast!"

[ilikekidsshows]

It thought this was gonna be based on some Plantar family values but no, it's about not being like the relative you don't like

"I read that in some cultures here, frogs are considered a delicacy"

"I was hoping you wouldn't find out about that"

How does Polly know what a burner phone is?

She's probably watched quite a few crime shows and films as soon as she found out they were a thing

[ilikekidsshows]

Amphibia: Adventures in Catsitting

*gasp*

Domino episode?

Domino

What a magnificent creature

Such a graceful animal

It's so agile

Yeah, because I'm pretty sure it's doing this on purpose

[ilikekidsshows]

Yeah, she didn't even call him by his name up until now

Yeah, that was kinda harsh, even Mrs. Croaker calls him Sprig and she doesn't liiiiike hiiiiim

Uh-huh, anyway they both learned something today

I was actually thinking that the two problems of the episode parallelled each other, but this guy figured it out too. At least he's somewhat self-aware

"I am already regretting adopting Pink Frog"

"Mrs. Croaker had the same reaction"

"Who's Mrs. Croaker?"

[ilikekidsshows]

"Your punishment is all about me. Instead of learning how my actions are hurting you, I'm gonna double down"

"Uuugh sweet mother of frog"

That's why he was parked in the same spot for weeks

He's a procrastinator who forgets to do everything

Oh, it was a Blue Shell

Nah, I think you need some time away from your TV, dude

[ilikekidsshows]

*laughter*

Look at that well-drawn cabbage

*more laughter*

"This restaurant is at a strategic position specifically to cater to people with chronic indecision"

The bootleg branding isn't helping things either

So, you think Sprig is gonna go Sylvia extermination mode on this guy?

It's been a while since Sprig has attempted to murder anybody

"Don't kill anybody today"

"No promises!"

[ilikekidsshows]

Amphibia: Thai Feud

Let's go, ilikekidsshows and The Bro watch a show about frogs!

Here comes the most ungraceful guest

Oh yeah, I can already tell what this episode is gonna be about

I can just hear what's going on in her head

I mean

Those are portals

Becoming genre savvy could be useful

Because it has the same name as him. Hop Pop, my man, you are adorable

He's making egg puns, of course he's adorable

[ilikekidsshows]

Miraculous' rating actually varies a bit depending on country, streaming service, season and what year it is. The earlier seasons were rated 4 (for ages four and up) in my country less than a year ago, but it's now been changed to 7 for the whole series because the streaming service it's on uses a single rating for whole shows, and they wanted to raise the rating for the new season. I feel a lot of families who started watching before that change will not pay it any mind specifically because of the discrepancy, but that's the streaming service's fault and not the show's. Of course, if the series bible says something different from the companies airing it, that is just further proof that the noncommittal writing Miraculous has always had is a purposeful marketing strategy.

I'm not saying they lied about what target audience they intended to have to sell the show to more networks and services, but it might not have been the most important information they were handing out to potential buyers. A lot of services decide their own rating based on what the sellers say is gonna be in the show anyway. It would explain why the merch department is making Ladybug costumes and toys for smaller kids too. I'm saying the bible may say something about it, but the marketing is as noncommittal as the show, and the parents deciding if their kids should watch it probably aren't aware there's a bible leak, so Miraculous is constantly getting a flow of new child viewers from parents looking for something to move their kid to after they lose interest in Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol. Any parent starting the show with their kid will see the harmless early seasons and think the show is safe for their kid to watch, because kids' shows usually show their hand by the second season and don't randomly change drastically after that.

I do agree that Miraculous, as a show, lacks the substance to effectively deconstruct anything, and that it's due to its structure. I mostly talked about how this is because the writing tends to be too consistently lacking in commitment to anything but its formula, because they want to create that mass appeal of "we might be doing something with his" to keep people tuning in, but that lack of commitment does go hand-in hand with the episodic structure you brought up. If every episode should be watchable by itself, it doesn't lend itself well to picking apart your characters, story or universe, such as they are, and it would lead to a way too big of a status quo change to do with the main characters anyway for a show this married to its formula.

I said in another post that, if story runners want to change their mind about the nature of their show, season two is the best time to do that, and that's way passed for Miraculous. You're also right that, for a lot of Miraculous fans who grew up on this show, they've spent ten years with his show being one thing. The show suddenly going "the show you watched was a lie!" now would be really weird in a very off-putting way. Even if the crew intended the new season to only be for those teenaged and adult fans, it would still make people upset to mess with their comfort show like that.

Your anecdote about the four years old kid is a case in point for why the show shouldn't have the conflict that it does.

Even if all the messed up morality and deconstructive elements were on purpose, they shouldn't be in a show for such a young demographic and especially not in the manner they're presented. Avatar is a perfect example of how you can tackle difficult subjects in a kid's show. Namely: the characters solve the overt aspects of the problem within the episode, and if they don't it's still acknowledged as a problem.

This "subtle deconstruction" has no place in a show with this demographic, for the same reason you would not let a five year old read dark romance.

And it's not even good dark romance! They don't lean in to the messed up elements nearly enough for the story to have the same appeal of dark romance and I'm saying this as someone who absolutely loves messed up characters and relationships. Marinette would need to be written as a villain protagonist in order to make this a satisfying storyline and we all know the writers don't have the balls to do that.

So all they end up with is a half assed trip to unfortunate implications land that isn't going to be fun for anyone and will make for some horrid messaging for the main demographic of impressionable kids.

---

Yeah, like, at this point Miraculous isn't suitable for children. Full stop. The lessons are rancid, the morality is in the pits, and even just the stories are difficult to follow and inconsistent.

Like, the writers can't commit to anything. Miraculous’ wide mass appeal was reached through not committing to any one idea but throwing enough things out that people could think they're seeing hints of a story they want to see. This is why the writers don't actually want to change anything about how the show works, because the formula is so perfectly non-committal. Because of this, I don't believe Miraculous is going to pull the rug from under us and reveal to us that it wasn't actually protagonist-centered morality, but a deconstruction of protagonist-centered morality.

Even so, if the writers decided to actually change course to save face and pretend they totally intended this to be a deconstruction all along, that has no place in a children's show. You need to understand what's being deconstructed to get the deconstruction at all, and small kids learning emotional regulation aren't that familiar with literary theory concepts or story tropes. They're still learning that stories have a beginning, middle and end, so expecting them to wait 20-60 episodes for the resolution that “hey, Marinette lying to her boyfriend about his dad and his human nature makes her a bad hero” is a tall order.

And yeah, I have seen some Miraculous stans try to defend Lovesquare by claiming it’s actually meant to be a dark romance, which, like, has no place in a kids’ show period. Kids don’t have enough experience to understand what they’re being shown or find it appealing for its own sake.

And exactly, I have enjoyed my fair share of dark romances and codependent relationships. I ate that stuff up while reading Gideon the Ninth this spring, and Miraculous' “dark romance” isn’t appealing to me at all. They pretend like the messed up parts of the romance are actually cute or just fodder to give Marinette something to be upsette about, how tragic that she abuses her boyfriend, that’s so sad for her. How sweet that Adrien has been abused into not having any wants or needs outside of pleasing Marinette. That’s not spicy. It’s as half-assed as everything about this show.

[ilikekidsshows]

The enabling groupchat

Every unhinged fic writer needs an equally unhinged friend who "yes ands" their ideas and encourages them to write all their most far fetched and insane stories.

[ilikekidsshows]

What’s happening on Twitter concerning the latest bit of Chloé discourse is quite funny.

People who don’t even like Chloé are coming to her defense to point out that she is, objectively, a victim of abuse. Neglect is abuse. As someone who doesn’t particularly care about Chloé as a character, I appreciate the honesty. You have plenty of reasons to dislike her or just not care about her. She is still a victim of abuse.

This is one of the rare times I see two opposite sides come together in agreement. Do you realize how bad your opinion must be for that to happen.

Apparently, TA also said this:

Why hasn’t that happened yet? Seriously, why is Chloé still here? After season 5 ended and she got shipped to NY, I’d just assumed we were getting rid of her. It’s obvious at this point that Chloé is so badly written that both her fans and her haters wish she could be written out of the show. I can’t actually speak for her fans, but from what I‘ve seen, many of them want her out of this mess. The thing is, if you keep her around, you’re never getting rid of the discourse. You wrote season 2 and 3, now you expect people to forget about them?

I have no patience for the “But Chloé is bad!” bullshit. I have no interest in her because the writing has been atrocious, as it’s the case with most of the cast, MC included. But I really don’t care that she’s “bad.” During the first couple of seasons, I liked Gabriel. I liked Lila when she was introduced as a manipulator.

“Zoé is better than Chloé because she’s nice and Chloé isn’t.”

Dude, we don’t give a shit. “Nice” is possibly the worst adjective you can give your characters. I don’t want fictional people to be nice; I want them to be compelling and consistent and bring substance to the show. If you can’t do that with Chloé, just drop her. Trust me, if Chloé fans and Chloé salters are coming together to defend her, it’s really bad. Why TA insists on keeping her around is beyond me. I guess it’s very convenient having a character you can blame every time you need something bad to happen but don’t know how to write it.

[ilikekidsshows]

Look, I just think, if there's gonna be a human version of Bill Cipher that's true to the spirit of the character or whatever, he should have the kind of face that, if he went to a masquerade ball and it was time to take the masks off and he said he wasn't wearing one, it would make people turn to each other to scream: "No mask? No mask!"

[ilikekidsshows]

Continuing the "mlb sucks as a complex grey morality story that some of the show's defenders claim is intentional and good storytelling" train of thought, mlb simply doesn't have the proper setup to pull this off. Not in terms of Marinette acting ooc (because she really isn't) but because if they wanted to go this direction with the story, they should've signaled it waaaay before the story reached this point.

Take Madoka as a classic example for a magical girl deconstruction. The show does string the audience along about it's true nature for a bit but it shows its hand by the end of episode 3. The show has 12 episodes so that's the 25% mark aka the point of no return aka the end of the first act. The audience now got a taste of exactly what's the tone the story is going for and so they head into the second and third act with proper expectations.

Or look at Steven Universe if we want to look at something more episodic. The first season was very episodic and lighthearted and most of the more complex and grey elements of the story were kept as implications (that would only be elaborated on in later seasons). Then came the finale and season 1 and seriously upped the stakes.

The first episode of season two had Steven react to the events of the finale in a rather realistic way and it's clear the events affected him heavily. This signals the audience that the direction the show is in the show magical adventures can and will have adverse psychological implications on its characters, so when the characters later make bad choices due to their respective damage that still keeps within the tone of the story.

If mlb wanted to pull off the tone switch then at the very LEAST the first episode of s5 should've reflected that this is the kind of story where the protagonist can lose to the main villain they fought for 5 seasons and then go on to enact his will. Obviously some earlier setup in s1 or s2 would've been better, but s5ep1 would've also worked to establish the change in tone for this season. A change of tone that would've felt pretty natural considering the BBEG just got a hella upgrade.

Instead what we get is the heroes trouncing the villain as usual despite all his newfound power, a supposed "wise old man" type character going on about how awesome Ladybug is and groveling for forgiveness for ever doubting it and in general same old akuma fights other than the akumas getting a new gimmick.

The beginning of s5 signals that despite the major loss they just had, everything is going to stay more or less the same tone wise. That's absolutely not the tone they should've gone with if they wanted the end of s5 to launch this complex and grey conflict.

---

Yeah, like, we can't forget that Miraculous has been on the air for eight years and hasn't been rebranded once. At this point, you can't make a smooth transition from straightforward, “don't think about it” type of morality to a complex story of deconstructing the moral values of your hero. Miraculous has a brand identity as a small kids’ show by now, the more actiony cartoon you upgrade to from Paw Patrol. There's a reason the crew behind Teen Titans Go started insisting their series was never meant to have anything to do with the original Teen Titans cartoon when fans got upset at the complete change in direction. You can't claim two completely different shows are actually the same, because that's a lie.

In addition, Miraculous doesn't have a set moral code to deconstruct. Its only value system is “how will this impact Marinette?” because that's the only thing the writers are interested in, and that isn't a morality system at all. Astruc loves to mock fans who criticise him that Miraculous is just too complex for them and to just go back to watching Paw Patrol but at least Paw Patrol has better morals and more consistent lore than Miraculous. Paw Patrol sticks to how things work in-universe and, when new characters get introduced, they dedicate themselves to actually using those characters, something Miraculous only started doing with SEASON 6.

I think season 2 is the sweet spot for most shows that want to break away from being episodic. The first season is the introduction, so viewers often even expect short and compact stories that introduce the characters, world and important lore concepts. The transition to season two is where most shows settle on what they wanna be and do. Steven Universe settled on its expanding universe at that point. Transformers Prime settled on what kinds of stories it wanted to tell at that point. Avatar the Last Airbender started properly focusing on recurring plot elements at that point. And what did Miraculous do that that point? It settled on "some elements from previous episodes might pop up again but nothing will actually change".

At this point, I’d say Paw Patrol is more complex than Miraculous. You could deconstruct Paw Patrol with the stuff they’ve given you. Miraculous doesn’t have anything to deconstruct because the show is that basic and formulaic, except for the writers’ pet protagonist. The only thing Miraculous could possibly deconstruct is its core value of “Marinette must always get the most sympathy” because this show has nothing else with any substance to it. It’s all just smoke and mirrors to make the audience think progress and important things are happening. That’s what all these villain powerup fakeouts are all about, they make you think something cool is going to happen, even as the heroes keep doing the same stuff as always. What whole Miraculous box at Gabriel’s command? It might as well not exist for all the importance it had. What evil cabal of mystery villains? It might as well not exist for all the importance it will surely have.