#explaining plots badly

[eleanoranimates]

A man quits his job to date a goth girl

[travelers-gaming]

My reread has reached the slaughterhouse 9 arc and. I forgot how lame most of the 9 is. Almost all of their horror movie schtick is an affectation. When manniquin turns his head 180 degrees hes doing that on purpose to be scary. Jack slash shaves patterns into his goatee.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

The fandom can't make up its mind on what's supposed to be a joke and what's supposed to be serious because the show can't either half the time. It's a tonally disjointed mess that wants to have absurd over-the-top humor as well as a plot and moments of drama, romance, and angst that demand you see the characters as people and feel for what they're going through. Except you can't do that without also treating the dumb bullshit in a somewhat grounded way. Like, you're still dealing with the same characters. You can't just go "Oh, that? Let's ignore that!" the moment it's no longer convenient to you. You've opened this can of worms and now you have to sleep in it. So, every character flip-flops between two different versions of themselves depending on what the writers need in any particular scene.

This is not to say surreal humor can't be used right alongside characters you're supposed to empathize with, Teen Titans (not Go) did that and it worked. It's just that the absurdity can only come from the setting (Mad Mod, Mother Mae-Eye, pretty much anything Control Freak is in) or from designated joke characters (Date With Destiny). Teen Titans never had the main characters acting in clearly absurd ways as the butt of a joke unless those characters were brainwashed somehow, because the writers knew that would ruin any of the more grounded moments they wanted to write. The writers of Miraculous missed the memo on that one.

I don't disagree. A perfect example is Derision where the show takes all of the bad jokes about Marinette's crush and decides to take them seriously as if you can possible take them seriously without making Marinette come across as unhinged and dangerous. You can't, which brings us to the topic at hand: how do you even begin to understand these characters when the show is constantly making character-breaking choices?

My approach - and the approach I recommend others take if they're going to keep watching the show - is to focus on the characters' cores and reject anything canon does to violate those cores. I don't argue for this stance because I love the characters so much that I only want the good things to count. I take this stance because, if you don't, then the characters fall apart. There is no way to make them work as fully realized characters while embracing every choice canon has made. Miraculous has massive characterization issues that go well beyond the humor.

For example, Adrien has multiple moments of terrible behavior that are played in a serious manner such as the moment in the episode Frozer where he tries to start a fight with Ladybug in the middle of an akuma attack because she wouldn't accept a rose from him earlier:

Setup

Ladybug: I can't accept this rose from you. I told you already. I'm in love with someone else. Cat Noir: I know, M'lady. But if he weren't here, would things be different between us? Ladybug: Well, you know, I can't even begin to imagine him not being here. I'm sorry, Cat Noir. I really gotta get going, and you better do the same. (Swings her yo-yo to head back home; Cat Noir is sad, looking downwards, with one petal of the rose falling.)

Payoff

Ladyice: Cat Noir. We need to set up a trap for whoever turned the city into a giant ice rink. (throws yo-yo) Icecat: (bitterly) My feline instincts prefer to track and observe before I attack. You go your way, I'll go mine. Ladyice: Please don't tell me you're mad at me about the rose. Icecat: There may be a certain chill now between us. Ladyice: I get it, but we should really focus on saving Paris right now. Icecat: We don't always have to do everything together, after all. It's not like we're a couple. (skates away)

There's no way to argue this off as a bad joke. While Adrien has every right to feel hurt, those feelings don't excuse him acting like a pouting child in the middle of an akuma fight. It doesn't excuse him acting like this at any point! Ladybug is not a villain for telling him no. She wasn't even mean about it!

I clearly fully agree that Adrien looks awful and selfish here, but I'd still argue that it's not something that should be used to define Adrien's character if your goal is to tell the "ideal" version of Miraculous. "Ideal" being the version that canon seems to be going for based on the overall picture we can sort of make out if we back way, way, way up and look at the extremely abstract picture canon is clumsily painting.

Unless canon is going to do something monumentally stupid, Adrien is Marinette's endgame romantic interest. It's also clear that there is no plan to cut him from the team. He's going to be Chat Noir for the rest of his life or at least well into his adulthood. This means that he is supposed to be a good hero who deserves his miraculous just like he's supposed to be a charming and cute romantic lead. These are the two things I keep in mind when trying to shift through canon to figure out what writing choices I should fully embrace and what writing choices I have to either ignore or treat as true flaws that get an actual character arc. In my book, either approach is fine because most of the characters are deeply flawed at this point and you can't give them all arcs without bloating the story to nonsense levels.

My goal with this approach is never to say, "oh, that moment shouldn't count in terms of how people feel about the character." It's more, "that moment goes so hard against who this character is very clearly supposed to be that I can't take it into account if I want to tell the kind of story that Miraculous is trying (and clearly failing) to tell."

As an example, let's list off Adrien's worst behaviors. The things that make him look terrible:

He sucks at communicating his needs and feelings, leading to multiple moments where he gets mad at Ladybug for things she's totally unaware of

He has quit or considered quitting without warning multiple times and only one of those was because of something he did "wrong" (NYC Special)

He puts his feelings before the safety of Paris on multiple occasions, even going so far to purposely miss akuma fights to see what happens

He is incredibly pushy about his crush, often ignoring Ladybug's feelings on the topic by continuing to bring it up even after she asked him to stop

There have been multiple instances where he almost cataclysmed multiple people in a fit of anger

His love for Ladynette isn't strong enough to let him break free of things like akumas and nightmare dust even when he's looking her in the eyes making him a pretty crappy romantic lead

People will argue that some of this behavior makes sense for his character because of the abuse that canon has technically introduced, but that the writers seem blissfully unaware of. I don't disagree with that argument, but that doesn't change the fact that none of this is acceptable behavior for a hero and Adrien is a hero who keeps doing these things. A sad backstory doesn't give you the right to behave poorly without consequences.

At the same time, if I fully embrace these elements of canon, what I get is an Adrien salt fic where he loses his miraculous for good while Marinette finds her real true love or even just a non-salty fic where Adrien leaves for his own meatal health and gets replaced by someone who can handle being a hero right now. Canon's not writing either of those, so the only way to engage with these flaws while enjoying canon or aiming for the same end goals as canon is to say, "I guess this doesn't count" or "I guess I need to tone this way down and work through it via a character arc" or even "I guess that was just a bad joke maybe?"

That is the essence of what I mean when I call myself a writing salt, character sugar blog. It comes from looking at canon and seeing that there's simply no way to embrace the worst moments and the best at the same time. We're not dealing with a coherent plot and/or complex characters. We're dealing with a nonsense plot that will warp the characters to bizarre shapes to make random ideas work even if those idea go wildly against canon's end goals.

As an example, Glaciator and Frozer should not exist in the same universe or, at the very least, something should explain why Chat Noir randomly changed his stance on Ladybug's crush from acceptance to pushiness. As is, the pieces don't fit together. The behavior is too contradictory. Remember, this is how Glaciator ends:

Perhaps Ladybug will love me someday. I mean, like, I love her. I have to believe. In the meantime, her friendship is the best gift of all.

Where did this version of Adrien go? Why did he regress in Frozer? There's no in-universe reason. It happened because the writers weren't ready to let the love square date or grow close, but they also wanted the love square to cause drama, so Adrien ends up looking terrible just like Marinette ends up looking terrible when it's her turn to cause love square drama. Her terribleness takes a different flavor so it can be hard to realize that this is a systemic issue, but that's what it is. It's deeply frustrating, but it also clearly stems from cheap writing and not quality characterization.

This is also why my stance is that canon as a whole only supports my Doyalistic core-character analysis style of approach. The writing is too poor quality to do Watsonian analysis where you embrace the full picture and try to put it all together. The closest I'll get to Watsonian analysis is pointing out how much the writing botches a Watsonian take by showing you all the way the writing contradicts itself, twisting into a nonsense pretzel of frustration where the payoffs never satisfy! (See the season four rant for an example or anything where I talked about Chloe's supposed damnation arc.)

There are even characters where canon is such a total mess that you can Doyalistically argue for two separate takes! Gabriel is a perfect example. He is all over the place and his ending was so poorly handled that you can make strong arguments for writing him as a cold-hearted villain or a sympathetic villain without the end result feeling like it spits in the face of canon because both takes maintain his one core element: villain.

That's the big thing I keep in mind when I look at the characters and the lore and the plots and try to come up with versions that the average fan would like. I don't think that there's one true version of any of these things, but I do feel comfortable saying that there are versions that will very clearly only appeal to people who are salty about a specific thing that canon did poorly. That's not who I want to appeal to in my adaptions, so while I'm not going to argue that those takes have no backing in canon, I will argue that those takes are not supported by canon as a whole. Embracing them requires you to take the worst parts of canon at face value while ignoring what canon is clearly trying to do with the overall story.

I get the appeal of that, but it's not fun for me because that approach feels like rolling around in the mud with the pigs. I don't want to sink to canon's level! I want to have fun! That's why I talk about how to make canon into its best self, not its worst self. If you want its worst self, just go watch the actual show. I will be shocked it if disappoints you.

[blackbookcover]

Thinking of that one Slovak classical book that consists of animal abuse, religious trauma and a love triangle on top.

There's also a book where the whole point of the book is that there's this guy and bad things happen to him. He doesn't do anything about it though, he just goes "it is what it is".

Oh and also a poem where an overpowered criminal gets defeated by peas.

That's enough of me explaining literature badly to you, I might do a part two later.

[spliqi]

higuchi thoughts of the day: as much as i love the idea of her having some devastatingly destructive ability… her having a healing/support ability would explain so much of her character. like. her high ranking in the mafia despite (as far as we know) not being extraordinarily strong. her assignment to akutagawa + his resentment of her + her being so overprotective of him. the irl author’s connection to mori and yosano. dw about it

[stenclastiel]

Conservative city terrorized by raging horny bisexual

[seasaltmemories]

hey sorry, your boyfriend of two weeks died in a mysterious traffic accident, yeah he's returned as a ghost, but he keeps wanting to possess anyone he can get his hands on and seems to regard you as his sacrifice he's slowly draining of life, sorry

[bloodyraremedium]

they should've made a bunch of different versions of the fnaf movie where in every one the back stories are a little different and the plot twist changes a bit and it ends slightly differently. Then they play a different one in every theater and let people argue

[mouseydate]

Explain A Film Plot Badly:

A dysfunctional family with a lesbian daughter, an autistic son, and a moron dog try to stop a literal phone from destroying humanity.

[bombkid69]

This is why punctuation is important. Does this mean

A.

A billionaire practices his parenting skills, to a kid, he found on youtube.

Or

B.

A billionaire practices his parenting skills to a kid, he found on youtube.

[rose-in-blue]

I was describing the "dream within a dream within a dream" bit of Inception to my boyfriend who's never seen it and he's like, "oh so like when you're scrolling on pinterest and you hit the back arrow and you realize that you're looing at something that's under a bunch of different posts instead of your fyp" and he has never been more right

[badly-explained-merlin-plots]

Gwaine - Bar fights are a valid way to recruit future knights of the realm

[zara-draws]

Heart is emotional soul not a literal heart

Light and dark is good and bad not metaphorically but they are literal forces

When a person loses their heart or its overcome by darkness then it turns into a heartless

The body that is left behind is a nobody

If you are strong willed enough your nobody turns into one that looks and talks like you and if both the heartless and nobody is destroyed the original person is made whole again (whole people somebodies)

Kingdom hearts 1

We start I destinies island

So we have three kids we care about on this island sora the plucky one riku the angsty oneand kairi tjr one with no personality what so ever

They decide to build a raft to explore more other than their islands and suddenly a portal opens a bunch of heartless come out

Sora is fighting wirh his wooden sword but then a key blade suddenly appears

Then riku goes thru the spooky portal, the islands explode sora goes flying and kairi kinda phases thru him

Okay so not in the islands Mickey mouse is like I'm out of here guys

Donald and goofey are like ur the king u can't just leave and Mickley tells them to find a key blade users

So after flying thru space for a while sora wakes up in a place called traverse town

He meets Donald and goofey

Meanwhile riku goes thru thr portal and meets with maleficent and she is like sora doesn't even care for u anymore he has other friends now and riku ig just trusts her?? Totally not a suspicious person haha

Sora Donald and goofy travel thru the Disney worlds to find their friends they are not rlly as relevant to the plot (unless u want to look at parallels for the relationships etc)

Eventually they end up in this castle called hollow bastion

Sora find riku but he just takes his key blade :( Donald and goofey kinda abandoned him yayy

https://youtu.be/lE5qzSrfdjI?si=5tj8-buKvbcJxCuR

So him and beast go on a trip until they discover this creepy room with a bunch of sleeping princesses and a giant keyhole and riku is there with the key blade

Then sora delivers a cool monologue about friendship and hearts and stuff and the key blade just goes back to him

We kinda discover this guy an sem is possessing riku and kinda pulling maleficent strings and kairi is just lying there on the ground snd they only notice her when beast points her out

Riku saids kairi is the last princess he needs for his evil plans

Kairis heart has been inside sora this whole time so he kills himself with his key blade

This frees kairis heart and revives her, also frees sora heart (heartless) but kairi somehow turns him back to normal??

An sem and sora fight in thr destroyed destiny islands an sem is like im gonna open the door to kingdom of hearts which is the source of all hearts and its all darkness in there, then it was light so

Sora tries to close rhe door and then riku and mickey(with no shirt on istg it will come up later) helps him close it from the inside, all broken worlds mended they go back to destiny islands

Sora is like I gotta save riku and Mickey and kairi just stands there

Chain of memories

So a bit later sora Donald and goofy are walking when a hooded figure mumbles smth about mysteries

They continue down the path and arrive at castle oblivion

They go thru the castle and encounter more hooded figures that take off their hoods

Lar xene,mar lu xia, axel,lexa eus, zexion, vexen ,- cult/group organisation XIII (13) sora defeats them all but axel survives

The further he moves into the caste the more sora loses his memories and they get replaced by fake memories

He starts remembering naminé (kinda looks like kairi) he meets naminé and has to sleep in a pod to restore his memories

Oh ye Donald and goofey also sleep in pods

Riku and mickey kinda just leave kingdom of hearts

Riku in castle oblivion also encounters organisation 13 and meets a clone of himself (replica riku)

Riku bumps into diz

358/2 days

When sora killed himself and became a heartless ,this created his nobody who wakes up in twilight town

Found by this guy called xem nas and basically introduces him to organisation 13 and we meet more if its members

Lexord, demyx, saix ,xaldin and xigbar

Takes place the same time as Chain of memories

He becomes friends with axel and they love eating ice cream

Go to castle oblivion

14th member xion

Replica of sora with naminé memories taken from sora created by xemnas in case roxas wouldn't put up with his crazy schemes

Thanks to naminé some of sora memories are in roxas too

Programmes xion to kill roxas (sora won't get memories back) roxas defeats her, morphs into roxas

Riku shows up even more emo looking and tells roxas to go back to sora and roxas has no idea who this is and riku sends him inside this computer simulation

Kingdom of hearts 2

Starts with not sora but roxas(in computer simulation of twilight town), lost most of his memories and doesn't know he is inside a computer (we are not supposed to as well kh2 released before)

Axel appears and is like roxas u are in a computer and I am ur friend and then naminé shows up telling him he is soras nobody. Runs info diz who tells him just to merge with sora

He goes out of thr computer and merges with sora who wakes up and gets his memories back(not Chain of memories tho) Donald and goofy wake up too

Mickey sends them to meet a wizard called yen sid

They visit more Disney worlds

They keep meeting maleficent joined by Pete and organisation 13 members

Battle with a shit ton of heartless goofy gets hit by a boulder and just flat out dieshttps://youtu.be/NjcPItRt1Zw?si=t6a7HauiiFdjkG1q

Somewhere in all of this mess we get an exposition dump

A while ago scientist an sem the wise studying hearts and light

Apprentice-xehannort, had heart consumed by darkness his heartless is called an sem(bad guy in kh1)

His nobody is xem nas

Kairi moved like 4 metres on destiny islands and is in a new outfit when axel kidnaps her, wants roxas back, sacrifices himself so Sora can jump thru a portal to the world that never was

Mysterious figure emerges it's riku but he looks like an sem for some reason

Sora goes on murdering spree

Diz reveals to be an sem the wise

He reveals the bad guys are trying ti make their own kingdom of hearts, his computer explodes which causes him to disappear and turns riku back to normal

Sora and riku fight xem nas

Back at destiny islands (namine is there too)

So the splitting of kairi and sora heart should of created 2 nobodies and 2 heartless(kairi princess of heart no darkness so no heartless)but kairis nobody has no body so its kairis heart but soras body

Goofey recovers from being dead ig

Letter washes up from the shore but before we open that envelope

Birth by sleep

10 years earlier

Aqua, terra and ventus, all trained by master eraqus to become keyblade masters , test mark of mastery also we are in the land of departure

Aqua passes

Meanwhile in radiant garden an sem the wise is researching and kairi (younger) is also there

Aqua and terra go thru a portal to destiny islands and they meet riku and sora (younger)

Ventus is somewhere and this guy on a motorcycle shows up like remember me? But ofc he doesn't bc he forgot a ton of important stuff

Before his master xehan nort

Trying to summon the darkness of his heart to summon the all powerful x blade(key blade)

Ventus doesn't want to so he gets the darkness out from him and creates vani tas

Meet in key blade graveyard

So long ago there was a war with a ton of key blade users fighting over the x blade but now there are just a bunch of key blades on the ground

Terra kills master eraqus

Go to graveyard for a big fight

Ventus vs venitas -they fuse it sort of

creates the x blade but then it explodes

Ventus goes asleep and his heart goes to live in sora

Terra vs xehan nort

Aqua vs this guy named braig

Aqua takes ventus blown up body to the land of departure and uses her keyblade to turn it into castle oblivion

Xehan nort possessing terra to create terra xehanort

They fight Aqua gets trapped in the realm of darkness and terranort gets amnesia

Calls himself xehan nort now is apprentice to an sem thr wise

Recoded

Jiminy cricket who has been documenting everything is with mickey

Chip and Dale digitize the journal and create a digital copy of sora-data sora to fight to bugs that have been corrupting the data

The journal turns into riku

Pete and maleficent are tjere

More Disney stuff

The journal is restored

Data namine and sora talk and the bugs are caused by her messing with soras memories and she is like ur a mess u have so many people inside of u

Data sora tells mickey this which causes him to write the letter

Dream drop distance

In order to become keyblade masters riku and sora must take the mark of mastery

To wake up the sleeping hearts of thr various worlds They have travelled thru

More Disney

Organisation 13-somebodies

X in names is recusant sigil used to track and it is on soras Clothes so they have been able to track him

Young xehannort shows up

Evil xe han nort is also here? (Old guy)

X blade exploded into 7 light and 14 dark pieces

Originally he wanted the 7 light pieces to come from princesses

But they could also be from the seven guardians of light

14 dark pieces-organisation 13

That's why he wanted young xexanort from the past

He formed the real organisation 13

He only has 12 members tho so he kidnaps sora but he gets saved by lea who is axels somebody

They go back to yen sid and riku passed by sora failed

Union cross

Long ago all of the worlds were connected and it was the age of fairytales

In this place called daybreak Town there was this guy called the master of masters

He wrote a book of prophecies with the help of his keyblade no name which can see into the future

6 apprentices he is like im gonna peace out u carry no name and bring it down thru the generations and a box that must not be opened , he game them a slightly different copy of the book of prophecies

They create their own little groups that learn to use keyblades

Fight in keyblade war x blade is shattered into 20 pieces

0.2 birth by sleep a fragmentary passage

Aqua after the events of birth by sleep

She wanders around some Disney worlds swallowed by darkness, fights her doppelganger phantom aqua and finds ventus and terra but they are not actually there

She eventually runs into riku and mickey

Aqua fends off darkness while riku and mickey close the door

Aqua is still trapped by darkness

Lea and kairi are keyblade wielders now

Yen sid tells sora to go to thr colloseum from hercules

Kingdom of hearts 3

Sora needs to relearn the power of waking

Go thru More Disney worlds

We are introduced to all of the members of the real organisations 13 but I'm too lazy to say who they are

He sets out to release roxas heart (but how I thought nobodies don't have hearts??)

Meanwhile riku and mickey are so bad at rescuing Aqua that she turns into anti aqua

Sora pops out of a portal and helps defeat Aqua with the help of the gay blade , she turns good again!

Aqua turns castle oblivion back into the land of departure

They find ventus sleeping, sora tries to use the power of waking and then vani tus shows up and fights aqua

Sora learns to actual power of waking

Ventus heart out of sora and back into his body

Back at yen sid place the seven guardians of light are finally assembled sora, riku, aqua, mickey, ventus, kairi, lea

Along wirh Donald and goofy they go to the graveyard and there are a bunch of heartless that sora defeats with a train

Terranort shows up and kills everybody

Sora wakes up dead in the final world and puts his soul back together, he brings everyone back to life

There a bunch of heartless again but they ride on a wave of keyblades

Yen sid tired of everyone's incompetence blasts a path thru thr heartless

Suddenly there is a maze and sora defeats some of the organisations members

He helps terranort turn back to terra

Replica riku defeats dark riku

Xion is also there and she is evil again

Meanwhile an sem the rise puts roxas digital heart inside a replica body and he enters the fight

Xion gets her heart back from sora and she is good again

Kairi is about to do smth but she gets kidnapped

Sora doesn't remember kairi xehanort kills her and in a frenzy he kills the last of thr members allowing xehanort to summon the keyblade

Mickey stops time and pulls sora aside and tells him that most of the members have travelled thru time and xehanort is the portal that allows them to do that

So they travel into xehanort and end up in scala ad caelum (the stairway to the sky)

for the ultimate showdown xehanort at one point turns into a goat

After he is defeated the ghost of eraqus appears (his soul was in terras hair)

Sora picks up the x blade and changes everything back to normal

Sora brings kairi back to life and fades away

Meanwhile Pete and maleficent find thr box they have been searching for

A hooded figures arrives and summon four of thr five foretellers

The hooded figure reveals themselves to be xigbar(luxu)

Sora wakes up in Tokyo and the game from verum rex is there(a video game from the toy story world)

Melody of memories

Fairy god mother, they go to final world find out Sora is in quadratum

Riku dreams, kairis memories

[konaizumi]

the plot makes me want to stop watching but his sparkling eyes bring me back each week

[munchy-k]

making my 6794838th attempt to read qjj because I refuse to accept that my pea brain cannot comprehend the plot