#taichi is mentioned but doesn't appear in the story

[denimbex1986]

'If you're reading this through a haze of tears, you're not alone. Even mentioning All of Us Strangers is enough to make a person sob as if they’re watching Andrew Haigh's masterpiece again for the very first time. And that's rather fitting given the curious way this film plays with chronology. Whether it's the grief or queer trauma or a heady mix of the two that resonates with you most, All of Us Strangers is a story that will always be on your mind in some way, the kind that shifts how you perceive the world. But how you even perceive the film itself can also shift depending on different factors.

One thing that can be agreed on is that this loose yet touching adaptation of Strangers, a Japanese novel by Taichi Yamada, is essentially two love stories in one. At the centre is Adam (Andrew Scott), a forty-something gay scriptwriter who lives alone in an — almost — empty high-rise building in London. Haunted by the past, Adam revisits his childhood home only to discover the past has somehow come to life when his parents (played by Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) return exactly as they were before they died when Adam was just twelve years old.

As he reunites with these time-displaced figures, filling them in on decades lost, Adam also forms a new connection with a younger man named Harry (Paul Mescal). This intergenerational romance helps Adam heal after years of shame and worry. But then, in one gut-wrenching twist, it turns out that this second love story is a ghost story too, much like the first. Yet a great deal is still left unexplained.

What happens in All Of Us Strangers?

Adam lives alone in a largely deserted London tower block, until one evening, after a fire drill, a drunken Harry knocks upon his door. Terrified of intimacy, Adam rejects Harry the first time they meet, but everything changes once Adam starts visiting his long deceased parents in their old Sussex home. As his reality changes to accept the possibility of their return, Adam also changes his outlook on life, opening up to Harry's advances. The pair have sex, although Adam keeps the younger man at a distance still to start with.

In his next ghostly visit, Adam decides to come out to his mother, something he never had the chance to do before her death. She accepts him, although it's not easy for her because she's still part of the era where AIDS and queerness were inextricably linked in shameful, hateful ways. Upon returning home, Adam learns that Harry also feels distant from his family, an experience that unfortunately connects queer people even now across generations. Adam confronts this feeling head-on when he talks to his father next, who tearfully apologises for not stepping in and helping Adam deal with the bullying he faced for being gay at school.

Intimacy doesn't come easily for Adam, but through Harry's love and his parents' acceptance, happiness begins to take hold. That is, until everything unravels after Adam suffers a ketamine meltdown in a club with Harry, screaming out for his parents. Upon blacking out, Adam wakes up in his childhood house at Christmas where he puts on his old pyjamas (which are far too small now) and gets into his parents’ bed. While his father sleeps beside them, Adam and his mother share memories of their earlier lives and what happened after the accident too, but they're soon interrupted by Harry, who strangely appears where Adam's father was lying just moments before. Time bends again after that when Adam wakes up on a train and chases Harry, who's running away just out of reach. And with that, Adam awakens yet again, this time at home, with Harry explaining that he took them both back after the ketamine trip went bad.

Unsettled by what's been happening, Adam tells Harry more details about the accident that took his parents, revealing that his father died instantly while his mother lingered on for several days. This leads to Adam admitting the truth about his parents' return, that they're back now in some strange, otherworldly capacity. A troubled Harry agrees to visit Adam’s childhood home with him to check this out for himself. Upon arriving, Harry catches a glimpse of the ghosts through a backdoor window — and they see him too. Harry denies it, though, and flees, which leads to one final meeting between Adam and his parents at a diner they used to frequent back when they were all still alive together. There, they explain that Adam needs to let them go in order to move on and be happy. In turn, Adam helps them move on by telling them that they both died instantly in the accident, reassuring them that the fears that worried them since returning have been unfounded. In their last moments on this plane of existence, Adam's parents reaffirm their love for their son and then they vanish into the hereafter.

As if that goodbye at the diner wasn't devastating enough, Adam heads to Harry's flat after where he discovers Harry's dead body beside the bottle of whiskey he was carrying that first night at Adam's door, when he wasn't allowed in. Harry reappears to Adam wearing the same pink jumper from their very first — and perhaps only — encounter (more on that shortly). Together, they head to Adam's room and cuddle each other on his bed. A light shines between them, growing brighter and brighter as they recede into the darkness where more stars twinkle. "The Power of Love" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood plays over the scene and through the credits like a literal "force from above" while the tears inevitably pour one last time.

What does that final shot mean?

When Harry realises he's dead, the film could have easily ended on a tragic note, especially when he came to realise that no one found his body for quite some time, including his parents. It is a heartbreaking scene, that much can't be denied.

But Harry was found, ultimately, and by someone who knows him better and loves him more than anyone else ever could, including his family. Adam and Harry are family now, and their connection in the film's final moments is palpable beyond just a physical sense. As darkness comes and the camera pans out, the light that grows between them becomes one in a constellation of many in the night sky, a cosmic force that joins other souls seeking comfort. There's no more fear. There's only peace now in each other's arms.

Harry is able to move on because of Adam's love, much like how Adam was able to move on emotionally from his own trauma thanks to Harry. The love they share is strong enough to bridge the gap between life and death. It strengthens them and protects them both against the void. Without connections like this, we're just left adrift in the darkness, strangers lost to pain and loneliness. And that's true whether Adam's relationship with Harry was physical or spiritual, real or imagined.

So, Harry was dead all along?

No, not exactly. But Harry was certainly dead after we first met him in Adam's doorway. Reeling from that rejection, Harry returned to his flat and lost his life that very same evening. "I was so scared that night. I just needed to not be alone," Harry's ghost recalls at the end, which seems to confirm that his death is specifically connected to that initial encounter. It's no coincidence that he's wearing the same pink sweatshirt in death that we saw on him outside Adam's flat. On top of that, the empty bottle of whiskey next to his corpse is the same one Harry offered to Adam that fateful night. Plus, it's clearly been a while since Harry died, if the body's decomposition is anything to go by.

Going back even further, there are also other clues to support this that only become apparent on a rewatch. Why did we never see Harry's flat until those final moments? Why could Harry see Adam's parents through that window, and even more importantly, how could they see him back? These elements only make sense once you know the story's outcome, something which Haigh had to keep in mind knowing that Harry was already dead from so early on.

Was Adam dead all along as well?

If every character we meet in All of Us Strangers is dead, is it possible that Adam himself might also be no longer with the living? The bizarrely empty apartment building he resides in — a seeming first for London — could easily be the physical manifestation of purgatory, which would make that final scene even more poignant as he and Harry ascend to the afterlife after finding love with each other. Of course, that begs the question of how Adam might have died. Given the script's preoccupation with shame and how it's held him back in life, internalised homophobia could have perhaps led to Adam dying by suicide, thereby connecting his demise to the suffering Harry endured in the end as well. That's particularly bleak though, and it's purely speculative for that matter too.

The closest we might get to a possible answer with this reading could be directly tied to the building itself. At the very start of the film, a fire alarm goes off, so it's been suggested that a fire may have actually killed Adam that same day, trapping his spirit in a kind of limbo along with Harry. It would certainly explain why the building is practically empty throughout, not to mention the strange, ethereal atmosphere of that location.

Are the ghosts even real?

All of Us Strangers is two ghost stories in one, yet it's also possible that these supernatural visits are actually just a product of Adam's imagination. The film establishes early on that he's writing a script about his parents, looking to bridge the past and the present, so what if everything we experience is just imagined as part of this project? We don't actually see Adam's parents until after he opens a new document and types the words "EXT. SUBURBAN HOUSE 1987," which leads to that first visit back to his childhood home. The ghostly version of Harry we meet after the lift scene is also introduced via a shot of Adam at his laptop, although the writing itself is kept hidden from view this time around. Yet this doesn't quite explain why Adam seems unable to tell that Harry is a ghost, even though he instinctively understood that this was true of his parents. Whether these spirits are ghosts or imaginary figures, the truth that connects either reading is that Adam willed them into being through his loneliness and desperate yearning for connection.

It's not like Adam is the most reliable narrator. The ketamine sequence in particular is a testament to that, so even his personal viewpoint isn't grounded in an objective, factual reality.

In short, the film is what you make of it. In that respect, the scene where Adam asks his mother if her return is real speaks more to the essence of Haigh's writing than even the ending does, despite all the discussion it has inspired. Her response, "Does it feel real?", is all that truly matters. Whatever you make of Haigh's mercurial grip on time and space, it's the emotions the film provokes that will resonate still in years to come. And by "emotions", we mean endless sobbing.

Why did Haigh choose "The Power of Love" to end the film?

Narratively speaking, it made sense for Harry to request "The Power of Love" at the end. It's this very song that blared from the TV (via an old Top Of The Pops performance) when he first knocked on Adam's door. Harry even quoted the lyrics before Adam turned him away, saying "There’s vampires outside my door". Those "vampires" are the demons that plague Harry, of course, the ones that drove him to drink and drugs until he died because of them. It's no coincidence that Frankie Goes to Hollywood, one of the only out gay acts in the 80s, were chosen to soundtrack this moment. Throughout All of Us Strangers, Adam has been trying to let go of the suffering he endured during that decade specifically, learning to finally accept the literal power of love without fear of pain or dying due to AIDS. It's a song that would have likely meant a great deal to Adam in the 80s, just as it did for Haigh.

So in this moment, the record takes on a new meaning for them both, healing the gay kids inside them that didn't feel worthy of that love when they were young.

What happens in Taichi Yamada's original novel?

In some ways, Haigh's All of Us Strangers is quite similar to the source material that inspired it, a novel named "Strangers" that Japanese author Taichi Yamada released back in 1987. The pair share a number of familiar beats and story conceits, including aspects of the film's biggest twist, yet they're explored in wildly different ways, as befitting of a dream-like narrative such as this one that plays with time and space so loosely.

The original narrator is also a scriptwriter in his mid-forties who lost his parents at the age of 12, but Hideo Harada is recently divorced, so already, his loneliness is very different to the one Adam's endured for so long in Haigh's "remake". One night, a woman who lives in the same building shows up at Hideo's Tokyo flat, and just like Harry, she too is turned away. Following this encounter, Hideo returns to his old neighbourhood where he meets a couple who look remarkably like the parents he lost right before they died. Time and time again, he meets these pseudo-parents who go on to treat him like family, comforting Hideo who's desperate to make up for lost time in his childhood.

Meanwhile, a relationship develops between Hideo and Kei, the female tenant who knocked on his door earlier. It's through this connection, and in particular Kei's observations, that we realise Hideo's life force is being sapped away each time he visits the couple who resemble his parents. Or is it something else new in his life that's ageing him so rapidly? A final twist concerning Kei shifts the film into horror, but Haigh wisely avoids that cliché, unlike Obayashi Nobuhiko's previous movie adaptation from 1988, titled The Discarnates. Instead, the new Kei, aka. Harry is revealed to have been dead all along, which speaks more to the queer romance and heartbreak that takes precedence over supernatural scares in All of Us Strangers, because that's the story which is more personal to Haigh.'

[ashxketchum]

Mimato Year ~ April Update ~

Chapter 8 of Truly, Madly, Deeply is now live. 

In this edition we see Mimi deal with Yamato’s absence with a little help from Sora and the kids. 

I’m not sure how often I’ve talked about this but I always see Taichi working as a cop before he joins politics so the scenes in the fic depict that hc, sorry if it’s a bit confusing.

Warning for those who are uncomfortable reading a loose description of a mild panic attack, you might want to skip this one. 

[emilycollins00]

hello! i've recently stumbled across your works and i really love your characterization and writing uwu if it's not too much, is it okay for me to request for a scenario where some actors accidentally found out that their director is actually good dancer? like maybe somebody was watching tv and 'hey doesn't that backup dancer look familiar?' ((you can decide on whoever finds out about it and you can also choose to use izumi's name or just write mc)) AAAA thank you very much! ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ♡

Thank you, dear! 💕 I feel so happy when I read I you guys like it. Sometimes it gets difficult to not fall into OOC!

I opted to choose Izumi, mainly because I don’t think I’ve written anything with her even though I love her so much! As for the actors, well, couldn’t decided wich one so everyone is making an appearance.

 Hope you like it!  💕

The dorm discovering Izumi’s dancing skills

“Tenma, hurryyyyy”

“Yeah, yeah... Uh? Hey, who didn’t wash their dishes this morning, it stinks!” the summer leader complained outloud, leaving the kitchen with Misumi with the last chopsticks and glasses to place on the lounge. 

Tsuzuru entered and looked at the sink, frowning. Indeed, it smelled awful. He walked towards the couches to get the culprit.

“Itaru-san, don’t ask me why, but I know whatever that was in that plate was yours. Please clean it right now”

“Oh shit, my shield fell” 

The man in question was laying next to Kazunari and Banri, all of them most likely playing a battle game, judging by the way they were staring intensely at their phones.

 “Itaru-san!”

“Yes, yes, one minute…”

“Dang, Itaroon! You can’t pull something like that to win, I don’t have any more resources!”

Omi put a hand on Tsuzuru’s shoulder when he saw the scriptwriter was about to start scolding them “It’s okay Tsuzuru, we have enough plates. Itaru-san can clean later so dinner doesn’t get cold”

At that moment Juza, Taichi, Muku and Sakuya arrived. 

“Ah, Omi-san! After Tenma-kun and Misumi-san finish the table will be set” the cheerily the spring leader informed approaching them.

“At least we get things done quickly, having so many people at Mankai” Tsuzuru smiled tired but gratefully at the four of them “…although it would be quicker if others offered to help from time to time” he looked at the gaming group and a certain pair watching TV.

“Tsuzuru, this program is too important to sip!”

“You mean to skip? Also, I truly don’t think so. That’s one old program you’re watching” he looked around resting his hands on his hips. No one had moved an inch “That indirect was also to the rest of you, you know”

“Noted” 

“Aha”

“So you want me to set the table instead of trying to come up for ideas with customes? Fine by me”

Misumi and Tenma entered before an argument could take place “Table’s set. Someone should call Masumi, Sakyo-san and the winter troupe. They were in the practice room with director, right?” 

As if by pure summoning, the last spring member arrived, taking off his headphones “…I’m here”

“We are here too!” Tsumugi waved as the rest of the winter troupe entered talking to each other. Their play schedule had been decided and they had had a run through while Izumi and Sakyo discussed the final details for the performance.

“Okay then everyone, time to dig in!”

                                         …………………………..

Everyone sat on their chairs and started moving plates around and refilling glasses with drinks. It wasn’t often, due to the difference in schedules, but some nights the whole dorm got together and opted to eat at the same time. It was a bit of a mess but in the end, everyone had fun.

Citron was still watching silently the TV when he paused it, concerned. Getting up, he headed to the dinner table as everyone ate and talked “Director?”

Izumi looked up, stopping  herself from grabbing the delicious tonkatsu in front of her “You called, Citron? Ah, leave the TV and sit, come on. Omi’s food will get cold!” she motioned the chair that was empty.

He did as told, but kept his eyes locked on her “Director I must ask you an important question”

“Uh… ok?”

He nodded as his chopsticks grabbed some rice “Are you maybe a twist?”

Everyone turned to him, confused, but not surprised. The young woman found herself blinking in confusion too “…Twist?”

Masumi nodded in agreement “You can twist my heart anytime you want”

No one even tried to contradict the young boy, still trying to decipher Citron’s meaning.

“I don’t think Citron means twist”

“…Twix”

“Yeah Hyodo sure, Citron meant Twix. I swear your brain is a fucking sugar cube”

“You are sweet like a twix to me, director”

“Ugh, someone tell the Psycho Stalker off”

“Y-yuki-kun!”

“Citron, I don’t think your phrasing is right” Tsumugi laughed as he saw everyone starting to debate. 

The foreigner crossed his arms, deep his thought “Mmm… this word is meant to be a clone… of another person! Is it close enough, Tsumugi?”

“C-clone?!” Taichi looked up from his seat, eyes wide open “Director has a clone?!”

“Guys, come on...”

“Mhm… I might be wrong, but maybe Citron meant if our dear director has a twin?”

Citron gasped “Twin, yes! Azuma’s wisdom is as always precise!”

The winter member received the compliment from the blond with a soft laugh as the rest frowned. Sakuya raised his hand from the other side of the table “U-Um! Why do you say that, Citron-san?”

“You have sisters?” Tasuku raised his eyebrows at Izumi.

“Of course not! I’m an only child”

“But that cannot be. I saw you with my two very eyes!”

“Me?”

He nodded seriously, getting up from the chair and turning on the TV again “I will demonstrate now, the director’s clone!”

Izumi sighed. Why couldn’t they have a normal night? Just for once. It was weekday for christ’s sake. The sudden gasps and exclamations brought her back to reality.

“It really looks like Izumi-san!”

“She looks younger though, is it really her?”

“Waaah, director you are moving so beautifully!”

“Wait, seriously?”

Izumi got up and approached the TV screen, concerned for the amount of attention it was getting “Come on, how can I-“

“That is you, isn’t it?” Sakyo pointed the TV with his head.

As everyone came to the realization that it was indeed Izumi. the woman in question stood there, watching her younger self.

“Oh, you meant that!” she sat on the arm of the couch, forgetting dinner and the fact that everybody was still trying to make sense of it. Their director? In TV? “It’s not been that long but... ” she laughed “Might be the one and only time I made it for a play in a performance, come to think of it!”

Kazunari, who was at that point recording the whole situation, turned his phone towards her in awe “I am beyond SHOCK, director! What play? How come we didn’t know you danced so well? Any declarations?”

She pushed the phone away from her, laughing “I did my studies and entered in the dancing club from my university for a change of peace”

“But this amazing choreography? The moves? Not to mention you are totes on TV!”

She looked  back at the TV and a smiled appeared. Competing in friendly dancing competitions had been nice at the time “That program shows musicals, right? My university dancing club just happened to want to enter the competition and we decided to do a mute dancing play trying to tell a story without speaking. Forgot it had been recorded then”

Everyone stopped talking and looked at each other.

“…Oh”

“That’s right”

“Director had another life before Mankai…”

“Feels weird to think about it”

Izumi blinked confused. Of course, she had tried to make a life outside of acting! It had been rough, but she had had to come to terms with herself that she had to move on, at the time.

“Ey, ey, director let’s dance too!” Misumi grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to the courtyard. She found herself stumbling to keep up.

“W-whoah, Misumi-kun, we haven’t finished eating!”

He laughed releasing her as he tried to copy what they all had watched “That looked fun! What other dances did you do?”

Izumi laughed at his excitment.

“Well, there was nothing specific…?” she listed a few songs on the top of her head. The rest of the dorm gathered around the frames of the courtyard, watching curiously. 

“I also want to see director’s dancing!”

“Anyone has a phone?”

“On it~”

“Enough! Why are you…” Sakyo came out too, ready to start scolding when one of the songs mentioned before started playing and saw Izumi’s bright face.

It was as if some kind of adrenaline had been injected into her, enough to make her body start moving along the music, not a single movement being wasted.

It had been a while.

                                       ………………………………

“Oh my, such a stunning view… the turning of grand jetes! If this moment was to be engraved…”

Hisoka frowned next to him “Arisu… you’re too loud. Can’t enjoy it” 

“Director… is really good!” Sakuya was practically beaming as he watched Izumi moving around “She looks like a fairy!”

No one there disagreed. Her movements flowed, taking away the breath of every person in that familiar audience. Izumi had never been able to act well, but somehow her dancing expressed more than she could in a play.

Omi smiled at the view and crossed his arms “A pity I left the camera in my room” he looked at his left and saw how Sakyo looked at her.

The blond’s eyes followed her figure entranced, not moving an inch.

A few minutes later, Izumi stopped, breathing heavily after song. She looked up, greeted by a big amount of applause. Were those claps for her? Her cheeks grew hot. She didn’t remember last time she got an applause and smiled bashfully.

“Fufu that was wonderful, Izumi-san”

“Epic. I think I just fell in love all over again, director! Gonna need to post the clip on my instablam!”

“Not bad. I guess currian has another thing she’s good at, uh”

“Well, if we ever have a dancing play, now we know who to ask for notes, isn’t that right, Tsuzuru?” 

Taichi gasped in excitement looking at the scriptwriter “Oh man, I definitely want to do a dancing play now, girls would love it!”

Of course, as theatre fanatics as they were, the conversation headed into their future performances.

“Maybe like a musical?”

“But dancing as you act is…”

“I want to do a triangle dance in our play!”

Izumi laughed, gaining everyone’s attention “Okay, okay, this is enough. Let’s go back and finish dinner. Can’t believe you all tricked me to dance in front of you, geez” she still felt her breath uneven from the workout.

“But you did look beautiful out there, director” Tsumugi smiled as he pushed a complaining Taichi and entranced Masumi inside.

Tasuku sighed as he watched everyone returning to their normal behaviors “Well, I guess we must thank you are more an acting addict than a dancer” he sent a small smile to Izumi, placing a hand on her shoulder and going inside to help the adults tame the youngest.

Izumi was about to follow when she heard Sakyo’s voice from behind “You danced well”

“Ah, Sakyo-san, thanks”

He dropped his eyes momentarily before looking at everyone going back to finish dinner inside “…Think you will miss it? Dancing like that”

Izumi lifted her head up and closed her eyes, enjoying the night’s breeze. She had set it aside for so long she hadn’t really been able to think about it.

Dancing to her was like turning back the clock, returning to a previous life that might have been good. However, she had always felt something was missing. 

She smiled tenderly. Just thinking about everyone at the dorm made her heart go warm. 

“It’s become a good memory to keep”

She tore her gaze away from the night sky to smile at him, assuring him that she was being honest to those words just said.

True. She had loved dancing, but theatre? Ah.

That was her life.

_________________________________________________________

I enjoyed it a lot, hopefully, you guys did too. Have a wonderful day!  💕

[dramatic-squirrel]

I posted 522 times in 2021

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#and why do you sell two types of breakfast teas if you're not going to even make sure that you give the right tea

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Most of the time I don't get super invested in a ship because I either have no doubt that the two will end up together in canon or I don't really care if they do or don't.

That being said, if Chihaya doesn't end up with Taichi by the end I'm going to riot. I think it's the objectively better pairing, particularly for Chihaya. And Taichi has spent so many years loving Chihaya that I just want his happiness.

42 notes • Posted 2021-06-20 18:22:40 GMT

#4

I wish Alec had at least punch Shawdowmoth at least once while he was in the bathroom with him. Like, here’s the guy whose been terrorizing Paris all this time, right in front of you. He didn’t even try ::>_<:: Imagine if Alec had tried and he just K.O’ ed Shadowmoth and saved the day. Imagine if he took the miraculouses and became the new Hawkmoth instead of Lila.

46 notes • Posted 2021-05-31 03:43:30 GMT

#3

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this but I want to rant so, rant I shall.

I hate these Miraculous Ladybug charms that they added in Season 4. Absolutely. Hate. Them. I don't care if they wanted to create a reason as to why certain people won't ever be akumatized anymore (although I have a thing against that as well). But the charm thing feels wholly unearned. It's such a deus ex machina that it hurts to see. Why did Marinette get the ability to do this? Was it something she researched and found the ability to make? Was it something she trained in order to do? No, she thought of it and it happened.

Which by the way, is the worst way to create a magic system. As a fantasy writer you operate under the knowledge that nothing prevents you from using magic to solve any problem that appears in the story. But you don't do that because unless the magic is obtained through a struggle or has some fatal weakness, then no reason exists why some BS spell can't solve the problem from the very beginning thus negating the need for the story.

For instance, Marinette's new power being her limitless creativity (unless I'm understanding this wrong) does not prevent her from making a device, with magic, that can track down lost miraculouses. It does not prevent her from making a magnet that attracts miraculouses. It is stupid and overpowered on a heroine that is already overpowered!

Which is the other problem I have, the inequality between the Cat and Ladybug miraculouses. You could argue that we don't see the more powerful affects of the cat miraculous because it's a kids show and the power of destruction would be too much for a kids show. But that did not prevent the creators from literally destroying the world and almost the universe with that miraculous. As it stands, between two miraculouses said to be equals, one clearly has more abilities and powers than the other. And the Ladybug's ability to make whatever she wants doesn't exactly have the opposite. The opposite would be Cat's ability to destroy a whatever he wants, except wait... he already has that ability. The one ability he's had this entire time. The only ability he can use, cataclysm.

If the wanted to make it so other people can't be re-akumatized then that's fine. But the charm isn't the answer. At the very least, if Marinette had to struggle to gain that ability rather than Alya being like "girl, you have the miraculous if creation. As long as you want to create it, you can make it" I would be more fine with this. But that's not what they did and I hate it.

48 notes • Posted 2021-05-31 20:38:37 GMT

#2

I feel like one of the biggest missed opportunities in Miraculous Ladybug is the rabbit miraculous. As someone born in the year of the rabbit, I feel upset by how they handle the miraculous and the fact that they made the rabbit a time travel power. Because

Time travel is stupid. It’s a power that always brings in more complications than solutions and is generally just annoying. It’s a literally Deus Ex Machina but also invalidates every single thing that happens in an episode.

It would have made the perfect healing miraculous. In Chinese Mythology there is the story of the Jade Rabbit, who makes immortality elixirs on the moon using a mortar and pestle. Which makes it more inclined towards a healing power than time travel. 

They made the most obvious connection between Xuppu and Sun Wukong, why couldn’t they have done that with other Chinese stories/ legends when presented with the opportunity? Having the rabbit miraculous associated draws more parallels with Western stories, i.e. Alice in Wonderland, and the way Fluff acts also makes the connection more obvious.

I get that the power of healing kind of seems to overlap with the Ladybug’s power of Miraculous cure but, honestly, if they had planned the rabbit miraculous from the beginning then it could have corrected a few faults of the show. One of them being that the Ladybug miraculous is too powerful. Marinette has like, 3 separate powers with her miraculous already while every other miraculous has one. Being one of the more powerful miraculous, I could let it slide, if only we saw more powers from the Cat miraculous as well. But, if we gave the miraculous cure to the rabbit miraculous, it balances out the power dynamic of the Ladybug miraculous and gets rid of the stupid time travel thing. 

As for the argument that there wouldn’t be anyone to use the rabbit miraculous in the beginning, thus fixing everything, I would argue that Fu would uses the rabbit miraculous after every fight. He would still mostly wear Wayzz though, because I really liked the Fu-Wayzz dynamic, and because defense is more important than healing when your trying to hide. 

And then the citizens of Paris could wonder what happens after every fight that restores the town. They would attribute it too Ladybug, assuming that because she’s the hero and she has magic powers it must be her, thus there could still be this associate, false though it may be, that Ladybug fixes everything. Because let’s be clear here, the Ladybug miraculous may have the power of creation but the original intent with both the Ladybug and Cat miraculous were good luck and bad luck. The power of creation isn’t even negated if the miraculous cure power is given to the rabbit miraculous instead, she creates a lucky charm, it’s still creation.

99 notes • Posted 2021-06-24 18:45:57 GMT

#1

Marinette's type: rich kid with green/blue eyes, mommy issues and emotional trauma.

Damian's type: Black hair, blue eyes and smile that rivals the sun. Bonus points if they can kick his ass in a fight.

Obviously a match made in heaven.

117 notes • Posted 2021-05-29 20:27:59 GMT

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