#Rjalker watches Miraculous: The Adventures of Ladybug and Chat Noir

[rjalker]

Note:

Everything Marinette does while under the influence of Risk is to help Adrien.

And everything Adrien does under the influence of Risk is......to help himself.

And everything gets blamed on Marinette, despite Adrien lying to her and allowing her to be lied to.

So pretty much the entire show condensed into in a single episode.

[rjalker]

Remember back when the show was new and everyone still assumed the writers were actually planning to tell an actual story, and everyone was like “Wow! I can’t wait until Adrien realizes he can have friends other than Chloe and starts learning to become a happier, healthier, better person!!!! I can’t wait until Adrien realizes that he has real friends now who care about him, so that he can stop sticking up for Chloe!!! I can’t wait until Adrien learns what healthy relationships look like so he can treat Marinette and the rest of his classmates with respect!!!!!!!”

and now it’s just “Wow, I sure hope Adrien doesn’t kill anyone this week.”

[rjalker]

So Adrien’s only punishment is being sent to his room? His room where he has a skatepark and a rock climbing wall and all the video game consoles known to man? The room he was literally going to anyways? The room we’ve seen him casually leave as Chat Noir whenever he wants? Lol.

Edit: this post is making fun of Gabriel, not Adrien. I assumed that was obvious but I guess not.

[rjalker]

“People don’t like Adrien because he acts like a kid!”

No we don’t like him because he sexually harasses people and endangers peoples lives and the writers portray this as a good thing.

Ash Ketchum starts out as a complete and utter brat and people still love him, and you know why? Because he learns and grows and the writers are not telling us that him being a brat is a good thing.

[rjalker]

people in the ML fandom who worship abusers will see a character who’s a genuinely nice person and immediately declare that they are boring and a mary sue who doesn’t have a personality and the worst thing to happen to the show

[rjalker]

Adrien stans have to convince themselves that reverse racism is real and that billionaire cis straight white boys are oppressed because otherwise they’d actually have to deal with the fact that their favorite fictional predatory cis straight white boy billionaire is, in fact, part of every single one of the ruling classes that oppresses our society and that the way he is written is literally propaganda for those ruling classes, and they can’t handle thinking anything negative about their favorite fictional predatory billionaire white boy, so they instead have to pretend that all of us who criticize him are racist against white people and are oppressing the rich.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How many Adrien stans have you seen that pretend the people who criticize him are being racist by calling him what he is: A spoiled, misogynisic, billionaire cis allo straight white boy?

Because at this point I’ve lost count.

[rjalker]

“You’re purposefully misinterpreting a children’s show!”

He literally admits on several occasions that the only reason he shows up to fights is so he can annoy her and pressure her to date him.

[rjalker]

If you think people criticizing bigotry is more offensive than the bigotry itself, you are, in fact, a bigot.

[rjalker]

If you’re an adult and you can’t spot or worse, refuse to acknowledge propaganda and bigotry even in children’s media, you need to stop acting like you’re an equal participant in this conversation.

Critical thinking skills are not optional if you’re going to try to join serious discussions of bigotry.

If you don’t care about anything and just want to turn your brain off? Then do that and leave the people who actually care and want to discuss things seriously to our fucking conversations.

[rjalker]

[ID: Three versions of a crude MS Paint drawing, showing a stick figure with an evil smile standing in front of a fire, holding up a bloody knife, with another person sitting on one side of their feet, and a curled up dog on the other.

The blood on the knife is labeled, "the blood of innocents".

The fire is labeled, "the just world burning"

The dog, which is curled up and trembling, looking afraid, is labeled, "a kicked puppy".

And the person, sitting with their hands over their face and their legs curled up in front of them, is labeled, "a victim of their abuse".

Each picture is surrounded by a black border, with a thicker black section beneath it, which has different white labels in each version.

The first reads, "Villain? Literally their whole job description.", with the word literally underlined.

The second reads, "Hero? Nope, you just have shit morals and we can tell."

The third reads, "narrator/protagonist? Literally fine as long as you actually have morals and aren't glorifying the horrible things they're doing or demonizing their victims. It is literally 100% possible to have a narrator who is a horrible person without condoning their actions. It is literally so easy. Literally all you have to do is not pretend they're a good person, even if the character seeds themselves as one."

End ID.]

IDGAF about the technical terms. As far as I am concerned there's a difference between the hero of the story and the protagonist or narrator.

here's a shorter version of this post.

You can write stories with narrators who are the worst fucking scum of the Earth imaginable. This doesn't equal making them the hero or glorifying or condoning their behavior. You can write a story about a serial killer from the point of view of the damn serial killer and still pull no fucking punches about how horrific and terrible they are, even if they think they're a good person. It is literally so easy to not glorify abuse and other horrific things.

You can write about your narrating characters doing horrific things without romanticizing or glorifying those horrific things.

This is where the Animorphs failed unbelievably. This is where Miraculous Ladybug fails.

This is what Torchwood does right.

It doesn't matter what horrible fucking shit your characters do. What the characters are doing is not what's important. The way you portray it is what matters. It doesn't fucking matter if your protagonist goes around kicking puppies as long as you don't fucking spend endless paragraphs defending and making excuses for their puppy-kicking and trying to get your audience to think it's actually not that big of a deal or "just a Totally Normal but Tragic reaction to the protagonist's Tragic Backstory, which is why we should pity them and forgive them instead of being upset by their actions!!!".

There's a difference between writing about abuse and other horrible things, and romanticizing or glorifying it.

If, at the end of the day, you are telling your audience that Objectively Bad Thing is good, actually, something they should look forward to and enjoy, you've fucking failed as both a person and a writer.

This is where Miraculous Ladybug fails utterly. It would be fine for Adrien to sexually harass Marinette if only the show were portraying it as the horrible, bad thing that it is. Instead, we're supposed to think it's funny and romantic and cute. We're supposed to cheer him on.

This is where the Animorphs fucking fails. The characters do horrible things like murdering the people they're supposed to be fighting to protect, and we're....not supposed to even notice that they're literally murdering the people they're supposed to save. We're not supposed to care about the slaves of the yeerks unless, of course, the yeerks enslave one of the protagonists, then, suddenly, miraculously, they're capable and willing to free them. And let's not forget that the writers also literally retroactively victim-blamed the most prominant enslaved person in the series and tried to make us think, retroactively, that he deserved to be enslaved for being a bad person. Literally tearing any semblance it had of nuance to bloody fucking shreds. Just jumping straight to "everyone we are fighting is entirely evil and they deserve to be enslaved and it's a good thing when we murder them".

This is where Torchwood shines. The characters are all horrible people who do horrible fucked up things. And the show doesn't want us to think otherwise. We are not supposed to side with Gwen when she fucking cheats on and then fucking retcons Rhys. The entire gods damned thing is supposed to be horrible and horrific. We are supposed to be on Rhys' side. He is literally the victim, and the show doesn't pretend otherwise, even though Gwen is the main gods damned character.

Fucking Worm! Worm, people! Fucking Taylor is the damn narrator and she thinks working with Nazis is a great idea and you are supposed to want to fucking kill her! You are supposed to side with Aisha and be flipping your shit that Taylor wants to work with the gods damned Nazis! You are supposed to be pissed at her! Even though she, the character, thinks Aisha's fucking overreacting and thinks it's a perfectly good idea!

There are literally so many more examples I could give but I'm not getting paid for this, and I have other things to do.

[rjalker]

Marinette enjoying and being good at video games isn’t feminist or progressive when she is punished for being good at video games and is forced to learn a “”lesson”” about how, even if you’re demonstratably more qualified and skilled, she should just sit back and stay out of the way and let men handle things -.-

Also, they literally only bring up the fact that she plays video games SO they can get points, and then literally within the same episode demonize her for it and punish her for it.

That’s not how this fucking works you misogynists!

[rjalker]

I love characters who are berserkers. Oh??? enemy???? time to go charging at them full speed to fight them for fun.

If Adrien were at least a fucking berserker it’d be fine. It’d be funny. But he’s not. He’s just completely and utterly useless.

[rjalker]

and they’re once again putting the blame on Marinette, why am I not shocked.

[rjalker]

AU where Marinette shuts Chloe up when she starts insulting Max by chucking her book at her face and breaks her nose and then grabs another book and just starts hitting her 

[rjalker]

@ adrien stans who say Adrien has no obligation to protect anyone as a superhero

[I.D.: a Picture of a scene from mean girls with Regina George and Cady. In the original scene, Regina is asking Cady "So you agree? You think you're really pretty?". but in this version, the caption says "So you agree that Adrien doesn't care about protecting people despite agreeing to be a miraculous holder literally so he could protect people and only shows up to fights because he thinks harrasing Marinette is fun?" /end I.D.]

(TY to @micho-p for the ID!)

[rjalker]

“It’s a childrens series!”

cool. Was it written by a child?

No?

It was written by an adult with their own biases and agendas and ideas they want to communicate???

It was written by an adult who is clearly bigoted and that bigotry is baked into the series??

wow it’s almost like fiction exists for a reason. It’s almost like fiction exists to communicate ideas and to convince people of things..... /s

If you think there’s no bigotry or propaganda in a children’s series you’re kidding yourself.