#ML Writing Salt

[m3nt4llyr4v3d]

an issue with miraculous is that the writers have certain characters that they want the audience to believe are redeemed/good people despite their actions, however make little to no effort to show any development in their character or even show that character making up for what they did. they expect the audience to take it completely at face value when they say “they’re good actually :)”

this is (mostly) about felix and andre

mostly andre

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Answer: he was physical present when Marinette needed enough people to fill out a football team

Funfact: I once thought about "How Ladybug & Chat Noir could defeat Penalteam if she ignored 'football theme' of the episode?"

Answer is... Four:

Ladybug

Black Cat

Monkey

Horse

If Ladybug unified into MonkeyBug & Chat Noir unified into Black Horse, then whole fight would end in less than minute.

(Post that spawned this ask)

Oh, 100%. The "problem" with that episode is that Ladybug and co decided to actually play soccer instead of going with the obvious plan: capture the clone squad, tie them up, then shoot goals until time runs out. You could also just use the horse to shoot infinite goals from a distance or use the horse to make portals under the various clones to send them away, thereby clearing the field. I would have loved it if they'd done that! Portal comedy never gets old and this episode could have been a gold mine!

In spite of that, I'd still say that the soccer game wasn't a flaw if the episode was about showing off the teamwork that the team had developed over the course of the series because that's a good thing to show off right before the final. That's not what the episode is about, though. It's the debut episode of four heroes and Chat Noir spends most of it in a bubble which is just lame! Every temp hero deserves their own intro and Chat Noir shouldn't be made fun of and left out in the teamwork episode, especially given the season's supposed themes.

You can tell that the episode only exists because they wanted every teen assigned to a miraculous before the miraculous were all taken away. That way every miraculous could have full-time assignment in the grand finale even if the assignment in question did nothing to earn it. Really sold Ivan, Sabrina, Marc, and Nathaniel short. They deserved better than a speed run intro where they each got about a minute of focus time.

I know this only happened because season four was written when season five was the grand finale so this fix wouldn't have worked, but in an ideal world, they would have saved some miraculous for season six and assigned them then. Like it's super weird how Sabrina has her lackluster redemption episodes after she's been given a miraculous. Daddy Cop should have seen her earn her place not whatever that episode was trying to do.

...I wonder if this is why those four have all gotten spotlight episodes in season six? Trying to make up for how bad Penelteam was as a hero intro?

[motherofplatypus]

Fans, seeing this: "Omg she's gonna use the snake to tell Adrien the truth about his father!"

Me, seeing this: "Yet another episode that will further emphasis why Adrichat cannot learn anything because he's too mentally unstable and is not allowed to be sad or have a role in his own story."

[sophieabigail2021]

OH SHUT UP!!!!!

So you're still willing to keep secrets from your boyfriend until one day you're like ".....um.......you know what? I'm in a good mood today, better tell my boyfriend that his father is a terrorist"

That's literally one the dumbest reason to do so, in fact it will make the situation worst like imagine if Adrien is in danger and Ladybug just casually tells him "Oh hey by the way you're not actually human and you have an object that controls your autonomy"

[lizmedi]

Welp guys there you have it, according to Thomas Astruc, apparently neglect isn’t abuse.

I guess by his logic, Gabriel never abused Adrien and Audrey, Andre, Gabriel, Colt, Tomoe and all the season 6 parents are all good parents.

What a great lesson to show 7 year olds you guys coming from the creator himself 😃 /Sarc !

[angelshizuka]

What's interesting to me is how I literally didn't even like Chloe (not even as a character) until her ruined redemption.

Which is why I find TA's hate boner for her so pathetically funny. If he wasn't so insecure about "making her worse" to "prove his point", I might not have even cared about her in the first place.

I like Chloe because of the potential of what her character could've been was dangled right in front of our faces, but I didn't realize until it was abruptly pulled away.

Not just that, we didn't even get pre-ruined redemption Chloe back, we got TA's creepy hate boner version instead (and even then I still like s4-5 Chloe better than the "redeemable and sympathetic" Gabriel he tries to shove down our throat).

[folkloristico]

year of our lord 2025 and thomas astruc is still beefing with children over a fictional character 😭😭😭 “you don’t understand chloé cannot be redeemed because she is privileged and also EVIL” bro you literally redeemed her father who is the white corrupted politician who enabled her behavior since the days she was born. i don’t know if you think your fanbase suffers from long-term memory loss but we actually remember the many times YOU wrote him as corrupted and willingly submitting to chloé’s ebery whim. “yes but that’s because she’s EVIL” and who taught her that? who enabled her? who failed to do their job? do tell us, we’re all ears!

[noone-can-kinda-draw]

lowkey obsessed with ur lilanette art at the moment esp the post break up one is SOOO GOOD the finer waving, the head placement with marinette and lila AHH get their dynamic down so well! Desperate for the lore(if their any if their not that totally fine too!) behind the art

AAAHHH TY IM FLATTERED ✨

AND OFC OFC LORE FOR EVERYONEEE (plus, art of the moment Mari realized she had a crush heheheh)

in a nutshell, im making a rewrite of miraculous, and this is part of it! The plot is mostly the same, and Lila comes in at the end of season 1 and gets akumatized, and that’s how her and Mari meet. Note that Lila still gets akumatized on purpose, but we don’t learn that until season 3 ish. Lila says she came here to escape her old school but in actuality, she came here for nefarious purposes, specifically because she’s figured out that ladybug and cat noir both live in this schools district, and hence go to this school. She wants their miraculous’s, as well as hawk moths, to overtake the role and remake it in her own image. She befriends Mari because she’s great friends with everyone, and by extensions Lila’s ticket to finding ladybug and cat noir. Eventually, Adrien starts dating Kagami, and Mari gets really depressed because she thinks she never going to be with him. She gets over it (as much as she can) and she develops a crush on Lila, and the two start dating. Lila defiantly likes Mari, but kinda in the way Bill cipher likes Stanford Pines form gravity falls. Lila sees Mari as someone relatable and as a cute trophy to have by her side after she takes over the world. Mari defiantly loves Lila more than Lila loves here though. I’ll talk about their breakup more in further posts, the fallout of the toxic yuri will be INSANE

ask some more questions too if yall want :)

[notmarimbles]

in preparation for s6 dropping soon where are my people. i.e. those who genuinely love ml and the characters and have not historically been salters but who are disappointed/frustrated with the current writing direction and are going sort of crazy about it. the ones who feel salty bc they can’t summon their usual sugar for a story they no longer recognize. the ones who gave all their benefits of the doubt until they ran out. The haters with the hearts of gold!!!! I need u babes 🙏 hold my hand pls

[m3nt4llyr4v3d]

I think it’s fascinating how both the narrative and the in-universe magic system punishes only the teenagers for acting terrible and never the adults.

The universe of Miraculous has an evil transformation, for one, and that transformation only starts killing the user if they’re not an adult. If you’re an adult, the universe itself doesn’t really care

And we all know how the narrative treats its teenage antagonists compared to adult antagonists (Chloe’s treatment compared to her father’s/Gabe’s)

I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it before

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Honestly, I feel every time the show and its creator attempt to explain away a plothole or issue it only makes things worse. The time Astruc tried to explain why Gabriel completely dropped going after all the exposed temps after Optigami.

According to him, Gabriel doesn't do the same plan twice, and when people brought up Mr. Pigeon, Astruc claimed that Gabriel came up with 72 unique plans involving that akuma... which like if he's able to come up with that many "unique" plans for mr pigeon of all things, then surely Gabriel could have come up with at least five different plans involving the exposed temps or hell attempt to rework the plans that he nearly succeeded with or the ones that only failed due to outside factors

That's one of my favorite quotes from the writers because it's just so absurd. Dude, don't try to justify it in universe! Just say, "It's an episodic kids show and we want to keep the plots interesting while also having them stand alone, so we don't repeat ideas even if the character would probably do that in the real world."

Like it or not, the show's format is a reasonable explanation for why the show works the way it does. There are times when it makes sense to prioritize story format over lore. That's especially true when it comes to episodic content as the overarching story isn't supposed to be the main draw in episodic content. It's supposed to be a bonus feature if it even exists! That's one of Miraculous' big problems as your ask shows.

Because the show keeps including these big dramatic ideas, a lot of people are here for the story first and not to have fun with the akuma of the week even though the show's format means that it's only going to be satisfying at the episodic level. The overarching plots the writers have chosen just don't work in this format which is why the fandom is dying off. People are realizing that they're never going to get a satisfying ending to this mess because the format won't allow it.

The temp hero reveal is a perfect example of this. That's too big a thing to just forget about! It's going to make people question the format in a way other almost-wins don't! Gabriel not repeating Scarlet Moth or Style Queen doesn't feel like an insane move because those akumas weren't anything all that special. They were just more epic versions of his usual akumas. On the other hand, Gabriel giving up on going after the temp heroes after one try seems insane because that's not his standard plan! It's something new with much higher stakes so it makes no sense for him to give up so easily. He keeps trying to get the ladybug and the black cat, why wouldn't he keep trying to use the temp heroes? That makes no sense for his character!

The reason he stops is because the show's format isn't suited to it. It's much harder to write standalone episodes that deal with the temp hero issue. It's too serialized and too complex. That's why it was dropped like it was your standard one-off akuma even though it's not your standard one-off akuma. It's also why Gabriel learning about Marichat was dropped and why the teachers forgot about Lila's lying disease and why the class collectively gained amnesia about Lila being Ladybug's bff when Alya learned Ladybug's identity. All of these things were introduced to make individual episodes epic, not because the writers could actually tell the kind of story that owned these epic moments.

All of this is why I'd actually agree that Gabriel "not repeating plans" is a genuine flaw even though it's an inherent part of how an episodic formula show works. Not repeating plans makes perfect sense for the show's format, but it doesn't make sense for the stakes and plot beats the show included. If the show hadn't chosen the plots it did, then I'd call this a nitpick. Because the show chose more serious plots, it's a flaw. The fix is to either change the show's format or to stop having plot points that require serialization. I don't think the show is going to do either of those things any time soon.

As a quick final note, sometime the best response to a criticism is to just own that the criticism is fair, but that addressing it would completely destroy the show's structure, so the person needs to either accept the flaw or watch a different show. If it weren't for Miraculous' chosen plot beats, then that would be my response to this criticism. I'm only going hard on this one because the show set itself up to fail. This is why you can't just throw cool shit into your story if you want to tell a good story. You have to think this stuff through, but Miraculous' writers don't seem interested in doing that.

[motherofplatypus]

The best part of the London Special was when Ladybug said "Its London time!" and spent 99% of the special being anywhere but London.

[pythagoras180]

I think the fan reaction to "Werepapas", specifically that scene with the broken rings, proves that Adrien's fans don't actually see him as a person, just an object or Marinette's accessory.

I don't like Adrien at all. I've made that very clear. But when I saw that scene, I was still overcome with sympathy for him. I found it so utterly disgusting that his romantic partner was willing to kill him to defeat an enemy. She didn't call for backup, she didn't try every other option first, and she wasn't even sure she could bring him back (see "Ladybug"), but she gambled with his life anyway. This scene made me feel so bad for Adrien that I temporarily forgot how much I dislike him, and I just wanted to see him get as far away from Marinette as possible.

Yet it seems like all the actual fans of the show, even of Adrien specifically, didn't feel that same way. They didn't think there was anything wrong with what Ladybug did. And maybe this is because some of them blindly accept whatever the show feeds them, and since the show doesn't portray what she did as wrong, they don't see it as wrong. But I also think the fact that they weren't disgusted on Adrien's behalf proves that they simply don't care about Adrien as a person, just as an accessory to Marinette.

[sophieabigail2021]

Why are we still keeping secrets from Adrien when his dad is doing THIS SHIT???? 🙃🙃🙃

[nobodyfamousposts]

Do you consider Sabrina a sympathetic character?

Could have been? Should have been? But the confounding point is that the show mostly treated her as a joke—both as a person and through her treatment.

Aside from one instance in Evilustrator that was treated like a one off and immediately restored to the status quo, we never see her taking issue with Chloe’s treatment of her. The show itself portrays Chloe’s treatment of her in a way that is overtly abusive and their relationship as toxic but from the narrative, we’re clearly supposed to see it as amusing. This was a running gag for five seasons—during which time we see Sabrina willingly and happily engaging in pretty horrible acts herself that make her come off just as bad as Chloe.

The problem is that we have been essentially told that we’re not supposed to see any issue with her treatment or her actions until it comes to Marinette as her previous victim not personally doing enough to make her feel better and protect her from the negative repercussions of her previous position as Chloe’s minion. THAT is when we are suddenly supposed to care about Sabrina and her feelings.

Not when Chloe got her dad fired. Or blamed her for stealing Marinette’s diary when she only did it on Chloe‘s order in the first place and got her hand caught in a trap for her trouble. Or when Chloe didn’t want to do a messy activity and instead chose to get the entire school in trouble—which by all counts included Sabrina. Or when Chloe had that fight with her and broke their friendship which resulting in her being turned into an akuma for DAYS with no one noticing or caring that she was missing. Or when Chloe used her as a human shield when she was the direct target of an akuma. Not during any of these multitude of instances when it would actually matter or involve her standing up to the person she actually needed to be strong against to try and change or break away from this cycle.

There were no hints, no indication all along that we were supposed to have been caring about Sabrina as a person until this point six seasons later when it could be used as yet another way to make the main character in the wrong and rely on Thomas’s go to episode formula. Instead, we got more instances of the narrative telling us we were supposed to feel for Chloe after she did horrible things than we were for Sabrina after she had horrible things done to her. But that seems to be the standard for the show’s writing, I guess?

I guess in that regard, I feel sympathetic to Sabrina for her treatment by the narrative but the problem is that she at least had some benefit from her position and shows little in the way of remorse for her past behavior other than how it ends up impacting her and making things difficult for her once she no longer has those benefits. That makes it hard to sympathize with her—especially when the narrative is suddenly turning around and making it her victims’ responsibility to make her feel happy and included than it is her own responsibility to help her former victims feel safe and respected.

[angelshizuka]

You don't have to like Chloe to acknowledge she's a victim of abuse with literal on-sceen proof. Acting like an abuse victim is only valid when they're "likeable" is a million levels of insulting.