I Miss Him. Do I Unblock Him? Now I Think About It We Had More Good Times Than Bad... Hey Baby... Forgive

my toxic relationship with miraculous ladybug. i will try to be brief (1/435)

im gonna finish my ml google doc rewrite because now that adrien is confirmed a senti i finally have closure on what to do with it. its gonna be all the changes + the outline and im gonna pin it to this blog like martin luther and that damn church door. so far i have 5 seasons planned and i have no intention of 14 so we're automatically winning.

i really do need miraculous to timeskip 20 years in the future idgaf about adrienette rn but i do care about their toxic marriage so badly. but i don't want to write it myself. i think it'd be like a psychological horror on both ends. like marinette loving adrien but over the course of years and years isn't sure where the love ends and the guilt begins. it's too late to come clean now. etc. is she with him because she truly cares about him or is it because she can't bring herself to harm him in anyway? is there a difference? on the other end if adrien ever found out he was a senti and marinette knew and didn't inform him for years, there's some insane psychological horror of knowing ur s/o was fully capable of giving you orders in some way without you knowing and there's no way to prove she did or did not. nothing but trust which has immediately been broken because she lied for 20 yrs or whatever. (stares off into the distance) they should be the main characters in a victorian short story they make freshman read and annotate in English class . and instead it's ml

the ONE advantage the sentimonster adrien thing has, storytelling-wise, the one thing it has going for itself, is that it makes emilie tremendously interesting, even more than we expected. not only are both her husband and son obsessed with her, not only do they have goddamn STATUES of her in their home, but she also created her son in her image. with the same exact looks, the same delicate beauty and cat-like green eyes, the same sensitive and turbulent and emotional personality... it's deranged and narcissistic and plain weird. there is SO much that could be done here if the show plays its cards right. alas, since it's the agrestes, we'll get nothing as usual. ✌️

felt the urge to watch ml s6 while doing HW in a similar way i felt the urge to watch ml during ceramics. I will resist. I will resist. I will resi

the sensory deprivation chamber is still crazy btw. adrien is actually meant to be in a victorian novel where they bring him out to the countryside for "fresh air" and a "rest cure." ah that agreste boy and his fits of emotion... alas maybe we shall keep him in bed and see if it fixes itself by the morrow

At a certain point, ppl really have to understand that you can't really judge anything normally in ML bc the writing is just that bad. It reminds me of the discourse over Marinette killing the sentis Gabriel sent after them. Stop looking at it as "Marinette is a murderer for killing sentis" and look it as "the writing is so inconsistent that they can't decide which sentis count as real people", and it's the same for this bc the senti logic is one of the worst parts of the lore. These characters are not real and do not operate on any internal logic bc there is none. That should be what the focus is. You're not gonna find any real answers looking at things from a Watsonian perspective anymore unless you're doing it as a fun thought experiment and absolutely nothing else

Precisely

You can’t follow the show’s logic and arrive to a conclusion that hasn’t already contradicted itself

That’s why I (and so many others) choose to focus on on critiquing the meta aspects instead of wasting time on a fool’s errand

I don’t get why it’s so difficult for some people to understand that

like im not saying anyone has to remember everything that gabriel has done but keep in mind he's done things like threaten nuclear annihilation to the entire North American continent, drowned the entirety of paris, and marinette is also aware he akumatized chat noir into literally destroying the entire world. so keeping this in mind, one might think to themselves "maybe the people of the world would like some sort of real closure and justice for these crimes against humanity." of course, if one only thinks about adriens wellbeing, it may seem like telling the world about it to be detrimental to him. but it's also important to keep in mind gabriel also did things such as: threaten to blow up the north american continent while adrien was on that continent. and keep adrien in the white cage. and the multitude of other things akumas have done targeting adrien personally - gorizilla? riposte? one might think even adrien would want some sort of closure or justice for how he's personally been treated by hawkmoth. of course, this may be terrible to find out that it's your father who didn't care about your personal or physical wellbeing, but at least a person can come to terms with how they were treated if they know all the facts.

of course marinette is a 14 year old girl who has a lot on her plate and having to navigate very hard decisions. and sometimes it seems safe to simply do nothing at all. especially with secrets like this - because you can't reverse telling people the truth, but you can always reverse a lie by coming clean later. but i do generally expect like most people with morality of any kind to think to themselves "wow. i think keeping this secret is detrimental to a lot of people and their personal growth and their capability of making autonomous informed decisions." at least one tiktoker could say "hey maybe adrien should know he's a sentimonster if nothing else so he can be aware he can be remote controlled so that he can better protect his autonomy" alas this show is for 7 year olds so no. marinette is always right. and so the shitty moral lessons of ml win yet again. i need tequila.

i can't go on tiktok and read comments. revelator has done something insane because i have seen so many comments saying what marinette is doing when it comes to lying about gabriel being hawkmoth is 100 percent correct and alya being upset about her lying is wrong. am i fucking crazy? am i out of my mind right now? or do tiktok comment sections live in an entirely different universe than me? because what do you mean it's the correct option to lie to the entire world about how the person who has terrorized them for years is actually a hero and not even tell his son that his father was a criminal. omfg does no one understand the concept of justice or closure or autonomy. even if telling the world gabriel agreste was hawkmoth might result in adriens life becoming harder, why not tell adrien and let him make ab informed decision about any of it? or do people hate letting other people other than marinette make decisions. this is actually driving me insane like i can't actually deal with reading people saying marinette is morally correct. what are we teaching people right now

i honestly think the writers really shot themselves in the foot (as they like to do) with the miraculous timer not existing specifically for adults instead of that just being a skill that has to be trained. The training montage in the beginning of Revelator was cool (in theory bc why is this only a two minute scene) but the fandom‘s main concern seemed to be about how fucked up it actually is bc this is basically forcing kids to grow up too soon. And I see where they‘re coming from, but also the lore for the timer is so unclear overall.

I fully agree. Calling the timer upgrade an "adult" power then giving it to the teen heroes is just weird. Just say that it has to do with experience or emotional maturity or something like that (not that Gabriel was ever emotionally mature, but let's ignore that issue for now). Everyone was anticipating this upgrade being a thing that happened when the characters turned 16 or 18. Having it just randomly show up while most of them are still 14 (15?) raises all kinds of questions and makes people give the upgrade undo weight.

I had another ask about this recently and in that one I talked about how lackluster this upgrade was. The characters don't actually mature, they just kind of will themselves into "adulthood" which is one of my main issues with the complaint you mentioned. A complaint that I have also seen a few times from different sources which is why I feel comfortable addressing it:

the fandom‘s main concern seemed to be about how fucked up it actually is bc this is basically forcing kids to grow up too soon.

It's hard to view the characters' "adult" status as "forcing kids to grow up too soon" when this upgrade is the least serious thing that has happened to most of these characters. Forcing Marinette to try to navigate the complex mess that Gabriel dumped on her lap is "forcing kids to grow up too soon." Luka being banished to Brazil because a terrorist wanted to capture him and force him to betray his friends is "forcing kids to grow up too soon." Adrien having to navigate being an orphan with no forewarning that his father was dying is "forcing kids to grow up too soon." The list goes on.

However, none of those things are why the characters are "adults" now. They're "adults" because of a rather generic pep talk. It's also worth noting that the scenes where the characters becomes "adults" are framed as moments of empowerment. That means that, narratively speaking, this is not supposed to be seen as a bad or concerning thing.

This show's messaging has always been wacky, but I'm pretty sure that this is less a commentary on how messed up these teenagers lives are and more the writers just wanting to show that the characters are growing up because we're six season in and growing up is not some great evil. It's just a normal part of life. That's why my criticism of this upgrade is not "upgrade bad" or "upgrade depressing" it's that this should have been part of a character arc where the characters actually grew up a little!

Also, complaining that the teen characters are "growing up too" soon feels too much in line with people who complain about shows like Miraculous "glorifying child soldiers." It's an action show aimed at young kids. The lead characters are going to be kids and teens because those are the kinds of characters young kids relate to. If you don't like seeing kids and teens being given responsibilities that they shouldn't have in the real world, then don't watch these kinds of shows. To enjoy them, you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief about the age issue and treat the responsibilities these characters have as fine in their world. Or, at least, not concerning because of their age. It's less "this is bad for a 14-year-old" and more "this is a terrible thing for anyone to deal with."

This is why you'll see me do things like treating Nathalie, Felix, Kagami, and Amelie as equally responsible for keeping Adrien in the dark in season five even though Felix and Kagami are "just teens". It's also why I don't really talk about Marinette being "just a 14-year-old girl." I get that defense, but I don't think it fits this genre because, if you're going to use that defense, then why is she responsible for anything? She's too young for everything she's doing! All the teen characters are, but is anyone arguing that they should all quit and be replaced by adults? I don't think so. If we put this stuff in adult hands then we would have a wildly different show.

I do think that the teen characters' age has validity in certain discussion - for example, I think it's perfectly reasonable for them to have teenage struggles because they are teenagers - but generally speaking, I'd avoid using age arguments when it comes to the characters' responsibilities and authority in shows like Miraculous. Characters in these shows are not supposed to be treated like normal teens by the audience. That just doesn't make for a good story.

Along similar lines, I don't like the "this character is only 14" or "it's only been a year in canon" arguments to defend things like the lack of character growth. That's just not a good defense for a fictional story like Miraculous. It's an action-adventure romcom, not literary fiction. It's not supposed to be hyper realistic. It's supposed to be a fun and engaging story. It doesn't matter how old the characters are or how long it's been in canon. What matters is that we're six seasons in and that season five saw the end of the show's first major story arc. By that point, it's perfectly reasonable to look for character growth and satisfying plot progression.