#plot so badly written

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girl found dead in a hidden room.

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[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.

[toast-in-a-cowboy-hat]

I like to think that Felix looks exactly like his dad did, there's just so much potential there, from current time on into the future like. Imagine you're a child, a young teen, your dad is your idol, the Most Important Person in the World to you, you meet some of his friends, relatives, and they look at you and they go "Oh, you look just like your dad did at your age!"

And you're thrilled, because of course you are, you look up to your dad so much, you wanna be exactly like him, and now people are telling you that you even look the same as he did, it's great!

Then he dies.

And now, you see those same friends and relatives and they look at you and there's pain there now and they say "You look just like your dad did when he was alive when he was your age."

And they're trying to be nice, and there is comfort to that, he's always with you in that way, but it also means you can never get away from it, no matter where you go, it's always there.

You try to go out with friends, to relax, to try to forget about everything for a little bit, and someone comes up and "Oh, you look just like your dad did."

You go away to college, you come back for holidays, "Oh, Felix, good to see you, its been a while! How are you enjoying school, god, you look just like your dad did back when he was in college..."

You move away, to an entirely different country, no one who knew your dad is here, there's no one to comment on the similarities. One day, you catch sight of someone and, for a few moments, you're very confused, because 'Huh? Why is your dad here? What's going o—Oh.'

That's you. It was just a reflection.

Turns out there is one person here who knew your dad.

Time goes on, one day you're back home for a visit, someone sees you and says "Hey, wow, you look so much like your dad did."

...

So much.

Only so much.

Because you don't look just like your dad did anymore.

You can't.

He never got to this age.

Now they say "You look so much like your dad did" and all you can do is wonder.

Would you have looked just like him?

Would it have still been exact? Would your dad have looked like this? Would his hair have gone grey at the same time, would he have gotten the same wrinkles in the same place at the same time, would he have had the same aches and pains, would he—

It doesn't matter.

He didn't.

He never will.

And you'll never look just like your dad again.

[sludgekludge]

can you elaborate on your feelings on vassago?

this blogs becoming what i use to kill time while i wait for my laundry to finish hi. first thing i did today was spill my entire water bottle on my bed. i think vassago is, at best, introduced too early, and at worst, shouldn't exist.

best case is that i think they gave him a poor introduction with functionally no personality outside of 'are you winning son' 'OMG STOLAS!' i genuinely don't get what people like about him. he doesn't do or say anything substantial. it's bc he's yaoi bait and that's it

worst case i think he's just a bad character for the plot. it seems like this dude has some history with stolas (if we ignore that stolas awkwardly does not acknowledge the weird fan behaviour whatsoever lmfaoooo) when stolas was like…established to be living this miserable lonely friendless life. no one likes stolas and he's not respected by his peers. he seems to have pretty bad people skills, and that's being generous. the one real light he has in his life aside from his affair partner (an affair of which should be motivated by that loneliness), allegedly his daughter…and fucking guy we've never heard of until now hiii vassago hi!!! i'll eat my words if i'm wrong but i can't really fathom how stolas having 1 guy who's been in his corner this whole time aids in his narrative, like, at all.

utterly baffling introduction. it's awkward and bizarre. it acts like we should already know who this guy is, almost. if he's going to be important later, fine, but he should've been introduced later then. mastermind was basically nothing. it's barely an introduction at all. equivalent of like, someone asking me to introduce myself, and all i say for 5 minutes is I UFUCKING LOVE THE COLOUR YELLOW, like ok. what else man

[kingsragesqueal]

stolas asking blitz "have u ever apologized to anyone?" is literally so fucking wild because yeah, yeah he has actually?? have *you* ever apologized to anyone? i can only think of two times u've apologized and both of them were to octavia, after you fucked up majorly and ignored her needs and made her feel unloved and alone. also did u ever apologize to blitz for *takes out comically long scroll*

coercing him into a sexual relationship (he admitted it was wrong, but never apologized)

using him as an object in more way than one, including putting out a cigarette on his horn (99% sure that imps have feeling/sensation in their horns. he didn't seem to be in any pain but tbf we know he's into some freaky shit....but STILL)

calling him an "impish little plaything," "itty bitty imp," "blitzy," etc

embarrassing him in public and dirty talking to him on the phone with your daughter in the same room

treating his entire race as a whole like complete and utter trash then denying it and basically saying "UM i don't see color (species) uwu~"

trying to make him feel guilty for not rescuing you when he was taking his daughter to get a very important shot that literally prevents her from dying which she is five years overdue for already, a daughter who is also terrified and needs his support (being a supportive dad? what's that lol)

so many other things i can't even think of rn

no? no. then shut the fuck up u ugly ass bird

[goemon-fan]

This was easily one of the best Lupin episodes

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

discussion question: are there are folkloric or supernatural figures not included (or done poorly) in canon that you think would have made for an amazing monster of the week episode of the x files?

bonus points if it's from your culture or area of the world!❤️👻🛸

[mortysmith]

Fuck you season five episode nine genuinely some of the worst shit they clobbered together

[lildoodlenoodle]

If one person likes this I will do a deep dive essay into spider noir Eyes Without A Face with my own insane takes/interpretations

[hellincarnation]

another day, another slow burn hating day

[theacemagpie]

Damn this shows so nice wow I sure hope nothing ruins- wait no conventionally attractive female side character no don't look at conventionally attractive male lead like that- no no no no no no NO you've known him for not even a full day do not go near hi- stop no don't reach forward like you're about to kis- NOOOOOOOOOOO

[lord-squiggletits]

IDW1 must take place on an alternate Earth where no one has ever heard of ACAB and everyone wears "thin blue line" merchandise because there's literally no other way that a single Autobot killing a USAmerican cop in self defense would be such worldwide news that even Mexican journalists would go "OMG???? You like, killed a cop?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?" and it wasn't even framed as like, "you killed a human," the phrasing every time any character talked about it was very specifically "he killed a cop".

The cop was also threatening to shoot a group of surrendering/not-attacking/injured Autobots btw which is just the icing on the cake honestly lmao

[ladyseidr]

okay! finally making this an official post: if you want my "new" discord, please either A. like this post, or B. DM me. either way, i'll DM you the name. it's not some secret or anything ( it's identical to my personal blog's url lmao ) but y'know. just not posting publicly this time

[the-brainrot-central]

Screaming crying throwing up peeing—

[novelconcepts]

I love when I select a movie because I think it’s a gay vampire comedy

And it turns out to be so aggressively heterosexual that one of the vampires gets the surprise pregnancy trope.

[icewindandboringhorror]

the struggle of just coincidentally disliking a piece of media that a lot of conservatives also dislike, but for completely different reasons, so sometimes you'll see youtube recommended videos like "here's why X was so bad" and you're initially like "oh yaayy, yeah I had a lot of criticisms of that too, I'm curious to finally see someone really break down why the plot didn't work! I love media analysis" and then the video is just "it's bad because there's WOMAN in it!!!" ..........ok....