#watching 'child soldier' discourse rise about battle shounen shows on tumblr is the most exhausting thing I've experienced in fandom

[ilikekidsshows]

Another explanation for Chloe fans: as the-grey-tribe recently wrote, since the feminist movement was primarily formed to combat male abusers, a lot of feminism is adamant on "never giving people who oppose us a valid reason" (since that reason could then become an excuse for abuse). But if being a mean girl/female abuser is wrong, that gives others a valid reason to punish women, which might become abuse. So Chloe fans can't let anyone, creator or fan, have good reason to punish a teenage girl.

Yeah, it probably is some over-the-top feminism to some, I still see some people use "boss babe" unironically, after all (look up some info on “multilevel marketing” to discover how this term is used to manipulate and take advantage of women). However, the Miraculous Saltdom just generally cries "misogyny" like the little kid who cried "wolf" in that one fairytale, so I take all of their sexism-based arguments as using hype words to shield themselves from criticism. "You can't get mad at me for being unreasonable, because I'm fighting for feminism!"

As such, I still don't think that most Chloé apologists are in it for some actual social justice clout. If there's an actual motive other than just wanting to manipulate media and using any rhetoric to do so, it would probably be an age thing. A lot of Chloé apologists can't shut up about how Chloé is "fourteen years old". In fact, just a few days ago I, once again, saw someone screeching how that was all the reason needed to give Chloé a redemption. Because the younger you are, the more your sense of self is in flux. That's how it works for a real person (if you ignore the fact that most serial criminals started as nasty kids).

But Chloé isn't a real person.

Miraculous characters are fictional characters. They're not real people. Chloé being 14 doesn't matter, because Marinette is 14 too. It's a kids' show, so the characters are kids. They have some #relatable #kidproblems, but the rest of the time their age isn't a factor. Why on earth would Fu give the Miraculous to 14-year-olds? Even if he was purposefully not picking adults who are more powerful with a Miraculous and therefore more difficult to stop if they went rogue, he could have chosen anything in the 14-17 bracket (or even higher depending how “adult” is determined here). You guys know I waste no chance to dunk on Fu and what a crap mentor he is, but I have never brought up him choosing 14-year-olds to protect Paris, because I don't think it matters.

Master Fu chose 14-year-olds because kid protagonists are relatable to the target audience. In Naruto you can be a ninja when you turn 12 not because the world is a crapsack world with child soldiers and every single ninja is a child soldier instead of just the very specific kids traumatized by their experiences, but because kids wanna see kids as the protagonists in their shows. The reason Marinette and Adrien's romance is being depicted as a Miracle Romance ala Sailor Moon, where they'll totally stay together forever once they get there, is because Miraculous is fiction. In real life, you're very much not likely to stick with your middle-school sweetheart, in fiction, the universe itself revolves around that relationship.

Even when someone analysing the show is talking about how realistically Miraculous often portrays the teenage struggle of figuring yourself out, I feel like it's missing a very important point. This point is that Miraculous is a fictional, fantastical, story. Some parts of it are purposefully designed to be relatable, but others are pure wish fulfilment or exist solely to move the story into a certain direction. Arguing that something is 100% acceptable because it's realistic for kids, and then simultaneously turning a blind eye to everything in the show that spits in the face of age-based realism is a biased way of looking at the show. Max programmed a fully sentient A.I. at fourteen, Adrien is the most popular celebrity in Paris, despite just being a barely-teen heartthrob. You can't just decide the line suddenly goes here, where a show about kid characters has a kid villain. If some of these things are okay because it's just fiction, then all the things about the characters should be okay because it's just fiction. Media analysis is specifically discussing a piece of media based on it being a piece of media, not a biography of the teen experience.

This is why I'm one of the people not in a hurry to get to the Ladynoir reveal or the Adrinette get together. I can accept that Miraculous, as a fictional story, is drawing out the big changes in its status quo because they haven't yet utilized the status quo in all the stories they want. I can see the clockwork gears and watch them move, I'm not staring at the clock face waiting for a specific time to come.

This is probably also why I'm so fine with Chloé and Lila being villains, and cartoony villains at that. Sure, it's maybe not realistic that they're so vile (as hinted before, serial killers weren't nice kids either so I still argue that even in the name of "realism" it checks out) or get away with stuff so easily, but it sure is consistent with their characterization and the fictional universe they live in. This piece of media is sticking with what has been established earlier in the series and that's good. That's how a piece of media is supposed to work, because it shows that the creators care enough to keep track of their characters and world building.