ilikekidsshows

[ilikekidsshows]

I don't have much to say in terms of wrapup this time, but I did very much enjoy the first episode of this show. We got to know out protagonists, and the show even clearly showed us what the story is basically going to be about. There's the mystery of the box that brought Anne to Amphibia in the first place, finding her friends, who clearly ended up there with her, even though she doesn't know that's gonna be a goal yet, and, finally, we're going to be addressing how Anne has very clearly warped ideas about what friendship really entails.

I can see why Anne's counterpart is the incredibly naive Sprig. Any more experienced or savvy character would have instantly challenged Anne's ideas of friendship, and the second half of the first episode is way too early to do that. We've only just been introduced to the idea.

As a side note, the setup for this series reminds me of Fushigi Yugi, which also had teenage girl classmates fall into a fantasy world, only to end up in highly different situations with highly different experiences. Those experiences led the two to eventually becoming enemies.

[ilikekidsshows]

Uncle Vlad Uncle Vlad 🥺💕

[ilikekidsshows]

"And I think they wrote it in their own blood"

Is that the Midgar Zolom?

Man, where's a chocobo when you need one?

Don't worry, I'm sure there will be a home invasion episode where you get to beat up something that might be trying to eat you

You'll surely get to star in a Home Alone episode where you get to commit PG murder

Dundundun!

[ilikekidsshows]

"It's way too early in a series for a beach episode!"

You mean a real friend will help you get in trouble? Yeah, I'd believe that's how you think

A real friend will help you do law and break crimes

"Kids my age are the highest mortality rate to flying bug monsters"

"The second highest are young couples in love"

"I traumatized all my potential friends"

[ilikekidsshows]

Amphibia: Best Fronds

That's a Sega Dreamcast. Also a Sonic game

That's unrealistic! Those should be in an online shop worth thousands!

"Oh, don't take it personally"

I dunno, based on that flashback, they seem kinda like a bad crowd. After shoplifting, they might have taken you smoking, underage drinking or worse, loitering

[ilikekidsshows]

Yeah, that's what he wanted: for it to be somebody else's problem

They're gonna eat the thing. One of them mentioned cooking it with butter

In this world, it's eat or be eaten

"Those are mutually exclusive"

I wanna know how sunrises work in this world

Not gonna lie, for a basement, this seems pretty cosy

[ilikekidsshows]

"You're not one of those poisonous frogs, are you?"

"No, but once I mature, my mucus becomes a pretty strong hallucinogen"

Huh

It makes sense that they'd know how to deal with common predators of the area they've built a village in

It makes sense that creatures at the bottom of the food chain would know how to deceive predators

You need a better formation

[ilikekidsshows]

Mayor Toadstool?

Princess Peach: no relation

Now, you might think trying to protect the town from a monster is the responsible thing to do, but a kid going after a monster by himself is a very irresponsible thing to do

Mantis!

And it's only slightly larger than real life mantises!

[ilikekidsshows]

Amphibia: Anne or Beast?

You know, it's not a modern cartoon intro unless the characters are running away from something big and scary

I may be biased, but I enjoy how everything is covered in mysticaö, glowing mushrooms

It's nice to see a cartoon utilize the aesthetic

Yes

Love is so beautiful, yet fleeting, in frogland

That was one day?!

[ilikekidsshows]

I see what you're getting at, like, everything is nuanced, let's not generalize everyone who uses a specific approach to discussing stories, and so on, but, while I can't be sure of the anon's intentions, my intention with the post was to specifically talk about the refusal to engage with what is going on in the story, what has always been going on, and shutting down emotional reactions to it because they aren't analytical enough.

"Dismissing these kinds of fandom reactions only when they veer into the negative direction showcases the real motivation of the “it’s all just the writing” crowd. I need to dissociate from the show’s story in order to discuss why Marinette is still so beloved by the fandom, because I just can’t feel that way about her anymore. Similarly, the people dissociating from the story in order to explain why fans are disappointed and outraged by the story, can’t see anything worth getting upset about in the show."

I am talking about people who completely disengage from the idea that the show and its protagonist could be in the wrong. Of course there are people who still enjoy the show while feeling it needs some changes in its very makeup. But there are also people who refuse to see the problems as anything other "temporary bad writing", who think we just have to watch longer and the show will be good again.

I'm a writer myself. I have a master's degree in English literature. I know how to engage with writing in an analytical way, and have, in fact, done so over several of the things I also complain about. However, I'm also a member of the audience, and I watch and read stories to experience feelings. If a story fails to invoke specific feelings in me, it's failed as a story, same thing if I'd eaten food I didn't enjoy. I don't need to say "use this specific amount of these seasonings" to get that across, I can just say "there was too much ginger". Like, yeah, the former is more useful to the cook, but I'm not saying this stuff to the cook/writers, or even to the fans who say stuff like "Marinette is just a victim of bad writing and not wanting to see her own screen is wrong because of that". I'm saying this to the people reading my blog, who are also annoyed at seeing this stuff and want to vent.

Simply put, I am done with constantly excusing this show. New followers who are here only for my salt phase don't know this, but I used to defend this show so hard before the retool. I granted Marinette's character so much grace and good faith because I could see what the show was going for, only for the writers to increase those aspects of Marinette's character that I had to excuse in order to enjoy her on screen. This hasn't happened with any other character to this degree, except Chloé, who I was never that attached to, so I don't think it's hypocritical when I claim Marinette specifically has been made unenjoyable as a character, because I can't even watch past episodes with her, without seeing those character flaws that would later be glorified after the retool, because, as I said in the beginning, Marinette's character hasn't changed, the narrative around her character has.

Sure, I could write a hundred essays on how I think Miraculous' story could be more engaging, how it could more easily invoke the feelings I don't feel while watching it. But, at this point, what is the point? I don't feel like jumping through Marinette-shielding hoops again in order to engage in discussions with the fandom proper. I'm done with that. I feel like it doesn't matter how kindly or analytically anyone picks apart this show, because nothing is going to change. It's so hard to care about that kind of stuff anymore. I'm just tired, disappointed and angry and I'm dealing with it by ranting angrily. I'm pretty sure the same applies to my anons. There's a reason I call this blog a support group. It's tongue-in-cheek, but accurate. We're all just trying to cope in our own ways.

I get that alot of people go with the approach of "every Miraculous character is deeply screwed by the writers, so it's a writing problem" but at this point this feels like deflecting from the real problem

No shit stories and their characters are written by writers, but so many blogs I see now that go with that approach imo keep on dismissing the point of the problems people are pissed about because "well the characters aren't real, so I'm superior for saying it's the writers fault"

Guys, we KNOW they are fictional characters, you're not unique. But what is happening is that I get less and less out of the analysis posts from these blogs because they're beating around the damn bush especially when it comes to Marinette.

Yes, every character is screwed by the writing but Marinette has been retooled into the self-serving center of the universe who gets by though damn technicalities. This writing pattern is 2 disastrous seasons in, SHE IS THE PROBLEM.

You can try and sugarcoat that however you like by saying that Marinette is a fictional character so its the writers fault, but that doesn't change that Marinette's CHARACTER & WRITING is still the source of all the problems and that stories are being told to get emotional reactions. That's the entire purpose of a story.

No, I don't think people are doing it right by approaching all of Miraculous on a mere meta level. That's not how a story is supposed to be read. The meta level is an additional one on top of the emotional one, not the "rational way" to consume media.

And imo the analysis blogs I see around so much deliver less and less analysis posts I can do anything with. They are so caught up in explaining that the characters aren't to blame but the writers that they sideline why people are feeling the way they do.

There is this persistent dissonance in their posts about how apparently no amount of bad writing can change a character when that's just... objectively incorrect. Marinette for example is SUPPOSED to be compassionate and a thoughtful hero and partner/ leader to Cat Noir. Marinette in Canon though by this point is straight up NOT anymore.

But in their posts it's basically said that if people say that, then that makes them irrational because on a meta level the execution and effect of the writing is apparently irrelevant. Distant meta is king and the only rational way to engage with this story.

And I just don't see the point in that.

The outcome and the emotional effect of the writing is what actually matters. Not the intention behind it (no wonder people are using that excuse to defend Marinette's character. It's another variant of "but she MEANT well"). If Marinette is by now a toxic and even abusive partner and leader to be suck with, then that's the fucking damage the writing did. And said damage is DONE. That's her character NOW. Talk about the theory behind it however you like, the character CONCEPT is not Canon compliant anymore, and nothing is gonna change that besides facing the deeply rooted damage that has been done, analysing those on an EMOTIONAL level so you can then course correct the CANON character through the necessary development into becoming what the character was initially supposed to be.

Call me a dick, but just saying "the characters aren't real" is not a productive way of going about this dumpster fire anymore.

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Another thing to take into account about the “it’s just bad writing” approach is that, like, it’s not like the way Marinette herself is being written has changed that much. What changed is how the narrative and other characters react to her and her behavior. Marinette has always been self-important, self-serving and self-obsessed, but these used to be treated as character flaws, signs of her immaturity and naivete she’d need to grow out of. Now we’re being told she’s flawless, actually, and has never done anything wrong ever and none of her mistakes were her fault. 

Like, I’ve recently been familiarizing myself more with the “my dear diary” teen drama genre, and it really is more of a dramedy genre if anything. Most of these series will have a self-important, self-serving and self-obsessed protagonist and the entire narrative is filtered through their self-centered world-view, because we’re basically reading their diary where they vent about things that annoy or excite them. Now comes the kicker: the “comedy” of the dramedy comes from how comically over the top these protagonists are when they clearly and obviously misrepresent their lives and themselves to the audience. Miraculous is leaning very heavily into this downright selfish protagonist archetype, but actually wants you to agree with the protagonist when you can see, with your own eyes, because this is a different medium, that the world isn’t nearly as unfair to our protagonist as she claims.

Here’s another kicker: if you aren’t laughing at the joke or projecting yourself onto the protagonist, you’re most likely gonna hate the protagonist of most “my dear diary” books. They tend to be the most opinion-splitting characters in their own fandoms, with readers either loving them or outright despising them.

Dismissing these kinds of fandom reactions only when they veer into the negative direction showcases the real motivation of the “it’s all just the writing” crowd. I need to dissociate from the show’s story in order to discuss why Marinette is still so beloved by the fandom, because I just can’t feel that way about her anymore. Similarly, the people dissociating from the story in order to explain why fans are disappointed and outraged by the story, can’t see anything worth getting upset about in the show. They think it’s all okay. They’re not approaching the show purely logically, they are still emotionally invested, they still like the show. Of course the seemingly logical approach to fandom unrest seems to just be defending Marinette and the show, because it is.

It’s basically a way to retreat from the criticism. Like, the accusations of Marinette being a stalker used to be easily sidelined with “it’s just a joke you don’t like” until they made it a sign of canonical mental instability. It was a way to say: "this is a silly thing to be upset about". Now we’re sidelining the abuse apologia with “it’s just bad writing, that’s not what Marinette’s character is”. What these people are actually saying is: “she’s made up, so my made up version of Marinette in my head didn’t do that.” Like, when you have to deny canon exists, your analysis isn’t analysis anymore; it’s headcanons at the very least, completely made up at most.

[ilikekidsshows]

After Thomas confirmed that he sees spending too much money on the writing of the seasons as a waste of money (cause he said that the “American Way” of many drafts for a plot is a waste of money), which kind of implies the show uses their first or, maybe a second draft to write the seasons), the inconsistencies, retcons and wasted potential start to make sense…

Again, this is what I understood from his tweets. Maybe you guys will have a different opinion on what he said.

[ilikekidsshows]

What infuriates me the most about Season 4 is how utterly pointless it was. What was the point of making Marinette the Guardian in Season 3 if she was just going to lose all the Miraculous in Season 4? Say what you want about Miracle Queen as a finale; at least it felt like Hawk Moth earned that moment of triumph because he actually used his brain for a change. The writers could have had him gain all the Miraculous at the end of Season 3, then skip straight to Season 5 and nothing would change.

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I wasn’t yet a salt blog when season four concluded, but I made my lack of enthusiasm for the new season clear. Someone who was still optimistic about the show told me that we’d just have to “wait and see” if season four would contribute anything meaningful to Miraculous’ larger narrative, because everyone agreed, even people who liked it, that season four’s point was to set up season five, due to it itself not having much meat to it.

I said even back then that 25 episodes of setup is wasteful. In a season format show, you should have a theme or an arc or two that you set up, build up and conclude so that the audience will have something to chew on while they wait for the bigger plot movements. Of course, that was when a lot of people thought that the Ladynoir conflict arc was still ongoing because of how poorly ‘Kuro Neko’ served as a conclusion, that the season four finale of removing the tertiary heroes was going to lead to a new focus on Cat Noir’s role as Ladybug’s partner. Of course, season five then made it abundantly clear that the “arc” was well and done with, that season four wasn't the uninteresting half of season five, it was an uninteresting season by itself.

The Miraculous writers are wasting time to justify the show’s episode count. Even after the show’s viewing order started mattering due to small details (that still weren’t consistent even if you watched the episodes in the right order), most of the show’s runtime is spent on the characters faffing about with nothing being accomplished, because the characters don’t even attempt to accomplish anything. And this is true for the writing as well. The writers aren’t actually attempting much of anything, they’re randomly throwing ideas out, maybe revisiting them in about ten episodes if you're lucky or a season or two later and it’s so incredibly lacking in dedication. If you want to create ambitious storylines, you gotta dedicate some effort into making it work.

I just can’t see all that much effort in anything the show is doing anymore. The writing is lazy and the characters are lazy. Although, considering a new tweet from Astruc reveals that he thinks reworking a script is wasting money because editing a show is too expensive, it could be it's not that the writers are lazy, but cheap.

[ilikekidsshows]

Talking about Teen Titans Go and how the crew scammed the fans remind me of how I feel scammed by Miraculous.

The reason why Miraculous take my interest is because of Chat Noir, simply because he remind me of my favorite character, Ikuto from Shugo Chara, who not only they have same animal motif but also similar family problem. So I thought with how similar these two cat boys situation is, then their goal would be similar, gaining freedom. And considering his name on the title, I thought he'd be an important character which means he'll get more screen time more than Ikuto.

But boiiiiiiiiiii... I can't even imagine how wrong I was. That it turned out, the cat boy in Miraculous is nothing but part of marketing bait and only that. ...and Ikuto, despite not being the-so-called-deuteragonist have more agency, more important role than Chat Noir ever is and more screen time. I feel want to laugh at the irony.

All that anticipation, for nothing.

Instead of let Chat Noir do the leading in the plot and episode that revolve around his family, the show shoved me this girl who's hobby is stalking her crush and make it everything into her business, even when she has no relevance in the episode.

Chat Noir having traumatic scene? Nope! Here's the girl having a break down for a very trivial reason but you must feel her sadness because she is the protagonist and the only one you must care for!!!1!

For a show that tagline is Girl Power it sure has a Girl Loser as a protagonist.

Maybe... just maybe if Marinette is as capable as Amu or any other magical girl protagonist, I wouldn't hate her so much for being shoved into every episode. But what Marinette really good at is manipulating people by whining about how miserable her life is because her crush doesn't notice her boohoooo and throwing the cat to the enemy, aside from that I don't even know what's so likeable about her.

The fact that Marinette, being 14 but has less emotional intelligence than Amu who's 11 is bizarre.

I don't even know why she's still the hero when she doesn't seems to like the role? And I don't even know what the crew has in mind when they create her because she's not a good role model for young children who watch the show.

I really wish I could unsee the show because it's really not worth it, but I truly feel bad for the young boy who watch the show because of Chat Noir and hope to see him in cool action just for the show to tell them that girls is superior than boys and boys is only good for being emotional support for the girls.

(which remind me of my ex friend who said similarly with the addition "it's ok to be sexist towards man and disrespect them, men always do that to women anyway")

--

Yeah, there's a reason my cartoon blog also functioning as a support blog for people disappointed with Miraculous actually started off as a support blog for Adrien fans who didn't want SentiAdrien to happen. This blog is being run by an unrepentant Adrien stan for other people who like Adrien too much for this show’s writers’ comfort. I'm not gonna lie, of the “Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir”, I was more interested in the latter.

Like, I’ve had a tendency to go against anything that feels too close to writers telling me how I should feel about their characters. This is why I never bought into the “Ladybug is the coolest, strongest, bestest hero ever and so selfless and amazing” narrative. I always looked at what actually happened in the episodes and what I saw was a pretty weak protagonist who runs away from battles and needs her far more competent in a fight  partner to carry her weight in battles until she can come up with a winning strategy. I figured, yeah, Ladybug’s the smart one while Cat Noir is the strong one, kinda stereotypical but whatever. But no, apparently the girl who runs away and leaves her sidekick to fight alone is the best combatant ever and the sidekick able to hold the line by himself against superior odds is weak and useless.

Astruc really is proving his statement that Miraculous is cheap to write because they don't waste money on rewrites correct. They repeatedly show the opposite of what they intend to say, and, apparently, always have, since the beginning of the show.  Almost like puting down the money and effort to edit a story is a good idea.

Marinette stans like the version of Marinette that lives in their head. This Marinette hasn't done the things canon Marinette has or, if she has, she had far more sympathetic reasons for it or was in some other way more justified. Because, while Marinette was selfish, entitled, narrow-minded and weak-willed all along, her behavior has been escalating in stages so that the stans can ignore that this is a pattern and just think she's made only a couple of really bad mistakes. And if they can't ignore those mistakes, they'll try to paint Marinette's victims as being worse people morally based on basically nothing, so that they can imply these characters deserve to be treated like shit by the “morally superior” Marinette.

The fanworks made by people who still like Marinette prove this. Marinette acts either out of character, or her behavior is softened considerably from canon, or the people around her are making things more difficult and Marinette is just reacting to that. The people who like Miraculous have always had very different views on what even goes on in the show than the people who hate it, but now it’s also not matching the people who used to like the show but have since given up on it.

Hot take, but the “team member who just happens to be a different gender from the target audience” is possibly the best way to teach equality to kids. By, you know, showing equality. No reversing harmful gender stereotypes without any care over what that says, no pointing and screeching about how surprising it is that a girl is good at video games or making the boy the fanservice character.

Kids don't automatically know these stereotypes; they learn them. And it doesn't matter how much the adults around them try to teach them to not think this way, a lot of children's media still teaches these stereotypes even when it tries to subvert them. Like, Paw Patrol’s most prominent girl dog is color-coded pink, and somehow a lot of the little girls watching Paw Patrol decide pink is their favorite color, because it's a “girls' color”. It is to make marketing the toys easier, but it's still enforcing stereotypes, because stereotypes are easy to sell toys to.

[ilikekidsshows]

they’re a big happy hotel family 🥰

[ilikekidsshows]

Swappin Hotel chapter 18 is up! An amusement park backdrop for the lore.

[ilikekidsshows]

genuinely one of the worst things that’s happened to television in the last few years (exacerbated by streaming services) is death of Filler. going from 20 episodes to 8 because “we didn’t really need that episode where the main characters went to the beach right? it had no long lasting effect” but we DID!!! we needed to see how they act without the Big Bad Plot and to establish the dynamics between the characters and lay in the sun (do they forget sunscreen? how do they react to a thieving seagull? do they get buried in the sand or do they do the burying?). the plot isn’t everything. the action doesn’t hit as hard without the quiet moments. give us character development and our little scenes back

[ilikekidsshows]

they’re so Lilo and Stitch coded 😭