Since Miraculous Ladybug is becoming for more mature audiences it should split povs between Marinette and Adrien. Its upsetting how Adrien has such a main character backstory yet he's not apart of it or a major character in the show even though he feels like it. It feels like he should be Marinette's costar but he's treated as some guy most of the time. I get that Marinette's the main character but still Adrien feels so wasted on. Honestly he kinda reminds me of Steven Universe. Dead mom, complex with not being entirely human, well meaning but absent dad(Gabriel's hearts was in the right place but just went down hill). Like when Adrien finds out about the whole sentimonster thing imagine the identity crisis he's gonna have. I also wonder what they're gonna do with Emilie. She's not dead anymore and she was the driving force for why Gabriel did what he did. I wonder if she's gonna be a good mom or if the fan theories are right and she's just as bad if not worse then Gabriel. Rose haunted the narrative because she was so important if it wasn't for her and her actions we probably wouldn't even have Steven Universe or the many momswap aus. But after Gabriel got all the Miraculouses Emilie felt kinda of forgotten and last minute when she was talked about.
Are there any other shows that you sometimes compare Miraculous too?
I don't think that Miraculous is aiming at more mature audiences now unless there was some announcement that I missed? If anything, I'm expecting season six to tone things back down because I'm guessing that it's going to be a soft reboot. New main villain, new animation style, new school, the signs are all there.
Shows rarely ever change their target audience like that. It's just too risky a move. You have to redo the marketing and somehow convey to parents that the show is no longer safe for their child as it's aimed at teens now. But anyone who wants a more serious show for teens isn't going to want to sit through the first five seasons which were not written like a serious show for teens, so the audience for this would be the small subsection of viewers who want to watch their childhood favorite get more serious.
While that's certainly a demographic, it's not the massive one you get when you stick to anyone ages five-and-up. Since five-and-up is also where the toy sales are and Miraculous has a lot of tie-in toys, it would be pretty wild if they abandoned that demographic at this point. I dug up an old tweet that I remembered seeing to give my warning some extra backing. For full context, this was in reply to a tweet asking if the writers consider the teen audience when writing the show:
[Image description: a tweet from the show's head writer reading "they are not the primary audience. The main target is kids 5 to 12 max. It doesn't mean we don't consider older audiences. But it means that whatever we write must not leave the kids behind."]
This tweet is admittedly over two years old and anything is technically possible, but I would strongly caution you against having expectations for more serious content unless you know something that I don't. The show was originally sold as to investors, distributors, and so on as a kids show and, unless they were able to renegotiate those agreements, it's going to stay a kids show.
I'd also caution you against assuming that Emilie is alive. I thought that was where the show went, too, but statements from the writers have made it pretty clear that Emilie is well and truly dead, which further supports my soft reboot theory. Bringing her back means a stronger tie to the previous seasons and you don't want that for a soft reboot.
Please don't read this as me praising that writing choice! I think it was stupid as hell to magically bring back Nathalie while killing off Emilie. They were both dying and only one of them is a domestic terrorist who actively chose death by knowingly using the broken Miraculous. The other is a Good And Pure Soul Who Was Too Perfect For This Cruel World (or, at least, that's what the show seems to want us to think). Plus, if you're going to use the wish, do something big! Change the status quo! But that's not how formula shows work so they probably couldn't do that.
Quick side note: this is my best guess as to why the leaked scripts indicated that Emilie was going to come back when season five ended the show. Series finales are usually allowed include elements that would ruin the formula if the show continued because the show isn't continuing. Season finales are not allowed to do that because the next season needs to stick to the same formula. When season five went from end-of-show to a mere end-of-season, that probably signed Emilie's death warrant. Sorry Adrien, no happy ending for you! Hope you like being an orphan!
Moving on!
In my opinion, it feels like they only used the wish to let Gabriel die and get rid of Emilie without it being too traumatic for the indented audience, but it's still basically a murder suicide being treated as a happy ending which is wild! At least it was a pretty one where the murderer and his victim ascended into the light?
We admittedly might see larger impacts from the wish next season as we don't explicitly know what the wish was, but have they ever let a season finale lead to something interesting? Not really, so I don't see why that would change now. I'm not even sure if Adrien's sentistatus is going to come up again. It should, but it may also just fizzle out because the writers don't know how to deal with it. The sentimonster thing is not the kind of plot point that you can handle in 20 minutes, especially when you have to include some sort of akuma fight, too. Bringing up the sentistuff would also complicate a soft reboot so, yeah, I have no idea if they're ever going to touch it again.
As far as recs for shows like Miraculous go, I'm afraid that you'll have to be a little more specific about what you're looking for because Miraculous is trying and failing to be a lot of things. If you want a duo show with a lot of banter, a badass female lead, and a goofy-but-narratively-important male lead, then I'd point to Kim Possible. If you want a team show with romantic undertones, then Teen Titans is a good pick. If you want identity shenanigans, magic, and romance, then American Dragon Jake Long might be worth checking out in spite of the very dated slang, though fair warning that one is enemies to lovers. It's done in a very fun way, but it's not a partner show like Miraculous kind of is and the romance is also not the main focus.
Part of the reason I was drawn to Miraculous is that shows about superheroes don't tend to have a strong romance element to them, so there aren't a ton of options for me to give you when it come to shows that fill a similar niche. However, if you're willing to go into the realms of fanfic, then you've got a wealth of options. Pretty much any property with secret identities will have fics about identity shenanigan romances. Love squares are nothing new. I've been reading them for years! I basically watched Twelfth Night when I was about eight and never looked back. Identity shenanigans or bust!
People will even bring them into fandoms that don't have any secret identities because identity shenanigans are really fun to play with! They make for some of the best romances. I'm sure that you can also find them in novels, but it's not something I've seen a lot of, so I mostly stick to fanfic for my identity shenanigan needs. That's where almost all my recs are from.
Should I do a fanfic plug to demonstrate what I mean? Yeah, why not. This baby deserves more readers and, if you like Miraculous, then you'll probably love this. (Seriously, if you read it, feel free to come talk to me about it. It's so good and also proof that I really am drawn to very specific tropes. What can I say other than I know what I like?)
We Didn't Start The Fire by ohhgingersnaps
Ava is all burned out, literally— she’s an exhausted JojaCo employee by daylight, and pyrokinetic superhero The Phoenix by moonlight, until she accidentally starts a fire at work and has to blame it on her superpowered alter-ego to avoid being discovered. The Phoenix is forced into early retirement, and with nothing else to lose, Ava moves to her grandfather’s old farm for a new start. Between restoring the farm, resolutely bottling all of her feelings, and trying to keep her powers under wraps, Ava has a lot on her plate. She’ll figure it out. Eventually. She hopes.
Meanwhile, the hacker Memento, Phoenix’s good friend and confidant, is left to pick up the pieces alone after her sudden disappearance. He’s fully convinced that she didn’t start the fire, and he’s determined to discover the truth and clear her name... As long as he doesn’t fall for the pretty new farmer down the road, first.
Part superhero AU, part mental health recovery arc, and part rom-com, topped with a generous serving of secret identity love square shenanigans, hurt/comfort, shameless flirting and banter, and dramatic irony.
I've mentioned before that I don't like OC main characters. Video games are the one exception to that rule. I'm really not big on reader inserts (no judgement, just personal preference), so when I read fanfic for a video game with a self-insert type main character, I'm looking to read about people's fully developed OCs, but I also want a good deal of the focus to be on the game's characters as they're the only reason I'm looking for stuff to read. That's what this fic is and I love it!
I also wouldn't normally rec fanfic for properties outside of Miraculous since this is specifically a Miraculous blog, but this is Stardew Valley fanfic, which is why I picked it over fic from other, more complex properties. If you don't know that game, it's a farming sim whose cast is developed enough for you to get attached to them, but who don't have a ton of depth, so you can read this sucker without having touched the game because there's no deep lore here. The game dev is apparently pretty open about the fact that he kept lots of things about the characters ambiguous so you could read things like their relationships and ages in whatever way makes you happy. Only prep work I might recommend is reading the character summaries from the game's wiki and you'd only need to do that for the named characters.
As I said above, fics like this are where I get my more-serious-story-with-identity-shenanigan-included itch scratched and are what I'd recommend looking for in either fanfic or original fiction form if that's what you like as TV shows just don't seem to have this kind of content, probably because TV shows often draw plot lines out to maximize views while novel-style stories generally have a clear end goal, which is why it can be hard for TV romances to feel satisfying. However, there are certainly a ton of TV shows that I haven't watched, so if anyone has recs for anon, then feel free to drop a comment or give this a reblog with your rec list.
26 notes
·
View notes