ilikekidsshows

[ilikekidsshows]

he didn't see the real grass like in years

[ilikekidsshows]

Vlad Plasmius fake mock up Spin Off Comic Cover

[ilikekidsshows]

not wanting to be outdone by the benders in the gang, sokka invents the flamethrower, the supersoaker, the leaf blower, and the concept of throwing rocks at people

[ilikekidsshows]

This episode is, like the roadtrip episode, but with a fantasy isekai twist. We have two roadtrip elements for the price of one: the truck stop and the travelling theatre troupe, and both were delivered in imaginative ways. The truck stop is a setting more commonly seen in family movies, so, of course the story revolved around Polly dealing with the long trip away from home and the family coming together at the end.

The second half of the episode is a more adventurous take. While the theatre troupe with something to hide is a common trope, they introduced enough elements to make it unclear what exactly they were going for before the reveal twist. As I said during the liveblog, we had Hop Pop initially failing to get the lead part before he did get it, because him instantly getting it would have been suspicious. But, we also had the very small sub plot of Sprig trying to befriend the theatre kids, which easily could have become the main conflict of the episode before the robbery scheme was revealed.

The running gag of Anne trying to finish her puzzle was a delight. It made me remember when I was a kid trying to build a puzzle in the rental camper our family went on a trip on, and having to crawl under the installed furniture to look for fallen pieces.

[ilikekidsshows]

Oh, what moment is he gonna realize that this play parallels his current moral dilemma?

Should be any second now

Yeah, there it is

"Now that's dramatic irony"

[ilikekidsshows]

Again, bankrobbers?

You know, when everything seemed set up for Hop Pop to get the lead part, I thought they were scamming him, but when he didn't get it straight away, my suspicions were lessened

Only for your suspicions to come from around the corner and slap you in the face

"Renee is your Sasha, Hop Pop!"

"If you let them use you like this, you're gonna end up having a dramatic sword fight on top of a tower"

"Oh no! I'm bad at using a sword"

[ilikekidsshows]

"Why, Anne?"

"I despise theatre kids"

"It wasn't the theater kids that caused you to burn down the stage"

"It helps me cope with the trauma!"

"Neither are they hopping. They're neither popping nor hopping"

[ilikekidsshows]

Amphibia: A Caravan Named Desire

SANDWORMS?!

I fucking love sandworms. They're always the best part about Final Fantasy deserts

That's a pretty good sandworm design

Yeah, I love that it has two sets of teeth

So he's really abrasive towards his costars?

Only when he plays jerks. Which, given, is all the time

[ilikekidsshows]

"We're truckers in Amphibia, Polly. Only frogs who truly understand life's hardships can make it on the road"

Man, that coffee really helped his mental faculties

It's like Ramuh himself cast Judgement Bolt

You know what? I'm not surprised Amphibia's children's books are like this

I'm not surprised it's Jojo's part one

[ilikekidsshows]

*sympathetic sounds*

Baby… then again, her being a baby is the reason she might have been better off staying home!

Yeah

And he's planning to drink thirty more of those?

Really didn't think this through, didya?

That seems to be a thing in your family

[ilikekidsshows]

I wonder a truck in this world looks like

It's probably a pretty big bug

Jeez, you're right

"Or, how about you skip a day and get about thirty hours of sleep?"

Yup, they're big beetles

[ilikekidsshows]

Man, Hop Pop really needed that break from driving, huh?

Darn right, you whippersnapper! He's old!

Oh, it's even an extra stressful road

"How did the wind even take my binoculars?!"

[ilikekidsshows]

Amphibia: Truck Stop Polly

"Sure is Quiet Mound outside"

*sympathetic sounds*

Yeah, two of those books are not suitable for small children. Even the Fergus Frog one is suspect because of the sheer fucking page count!

[ilikekidsshows]

What is it with the s6 episodes so far generally having good ideas/set ups and even having scenes that genuinely make me believe I'm watching an actually good show for a moment... just for every episode to end on a bullshit conclusion?!

"Just be patient, we're only 5 episodes in! uvu"

Yeah, 5 episodes... INTO THE SIXTH SEASON!! (not to mention 26 episode long seasons, that's like 136 episodes + specials). The "be patient" excuse has run dry at least 2 seasons ago. So, excuse me for having literally zero faith to "just wait it out".

I already gave them a chance with s4 and 5 and we all know how that turned out... I'm not making the same mistake again.

[ilikekidsshows]

Oh god, I just had a horrible thought: if the writers didn’t actually intend to give Marinette anxiety as you said, what if this is just how they think normal teenage girls act like when they’re in love? 🤢 Bc Marinette’s “anxiety” has always been most prevalent when it comes to Adrien, or as a result of situations which could easily induce anxiety in NT folks as well.

---

I don't think I've discussed this before, but, that fear of yours is something I’ve been thinking about as well. It’s not like the writers are having every teenage girl in the show act like Marinette does, so clearly they grasp that different people react differently. But, we also have to consider that only Marinette is really treated as a fictional person by the narrative, the only character that feels real to the writers. Her emotions are the most important in any situation. What anyone else has going on is only important in how it’s going to affect Marinette. Marinette is fully justified in doing things that would get other characters shipped to another country by their abuser because she’s having feelings.

In a show with this many female characters in positions of power and with this much talk about how great girls are, we really shouldn’t be running into the Smurfette phenomenon, where one girl is representing girlkind as a whole, but it’s somehow still true a lot of the time. Like, Alya is the second most prominent character in the show, period, now, and yet we don’t know how she feels about getting manipulated into being the backup Guardian. Alya seems totally blasé about Marinette piling more and more responsibilities onto her. Compare this to when we practically got an entire season about how stressed out Marinette was with her responsibilities and how everyone should bend over to make things easier for her.

Bringing back that point about this show talking about how great girls are; it never actually delivers on that. Marinette is possibly one of the biggest losers I’ve ever seen as a superhero. The best she could manage against her nemesis, no matter what resources she had at her disposal, was an eternal stalemate, she surrendered to that same nemesis and got the world destroyed and finally she had the gall to lie to everyone about her failure so that she can be praised for stopping Hawkmoth when that’s not what she did in any shape or form. And the writers expect us to agree with the assessment of her being a super awesome superhero. I don’t think even the Watchmen would let her join their ranks and their entire thing is to be failures as heroes.

They constantly pay lip service to the idea that girls are amazing and talented and competent, but their actual results are pretty bad. Like, they made a big deal of how the girls always beat the boys at sports in ‘Penalteam’, but are we ever actually shown the girls being good at sports? Because I can’t recall a time that’s happened. The writers can talk the talk by having characters say things that sound empowering, but they can't walk the walk by actually committing to showing the girls doing cool things.

So, yeah, the writers may treat Marinette as the greatest superhero ever whose mistakes are just little oopsies that can be forgiven by her feeling really bad for a few minutes, but that doesn’t mean that she actually is depicted as strong and competent in any way. It’s ironically the same thing the writers are having Marinette do towards Adrien; woobification to the target’s detriment. Marinette’s coddling of Adrien is infantilizing to the degree she is actually dehumanizing him. Similarly, Marinette is presented so much as such a poor, precious baby that needs comfort and understanding that she gets infantilized to the degree where the part where she’s supposed to be a competent, powerful superhero is just another vehicle to woobify her when she's never managed to win in a season premiere or finale without Cat Noir there to give her a little pep talk first.

The need to treat Marinette as the primary target of audience sympathy turns her into a really sexist depiction of a teenage girl as someone who fails without a boy there to hold her hand, completely lacking in any kind of emotional regulation and too easily overwhelmed by her need for romance to bother with things like being considerate. This all is meant to make Marinette sympathetic, because she’s constantly suffering under her overwhelming emotions, but these are actual, real-life stereotypes about teenage girls.

Even the romance is actually really sexist. We get the whole "girls resent each other over guys" trope with Marinette instantly being suspicious of any girl she thinks is interested in Adrien. In addition, Marinette's feelings for Adrien are her primary motivation when her need for control isn't informing her actions, leaning into the sterotype that girls only care about romance.

[ilikekidsshows]

You know, I think Felix would be a lot more interesting if he was a sentimonster (and the only sentimonster in the cast) who was based on Adrien. It made his actions against Adrien in his introduction make more sense, since he would have resentment towards Adrien due to finding out that he’s essentially a copy of Adrien but with his autonomy and even life able to potentially stripped away at any moment. Plus he could be a character who is against hawk moth for self interested reasons.

---

I think I said at some point that I considered Félix being a Sentimonster more palatable than Adrien. At time I said it was because he’s a side character, so the existential horror of what he is wouldn’t be as in your face, but you’re absolutely correct that his role in the story can be enhanced by him being a Sentimonster, and his being a Sentimonster could be given more meaning due to his role in the story.

A resentful clone who’s unsure of how much freedom of choice they have is actually a pretty common superhero trope, and actually creates a lot of audience sympathy for these characters regardless of how morally good or villainous they are. Galatea and the Ultimen in Justice League Unlimited are tragic and make Cadmus look like absolute monsters for what they did to them. The Clone Saga from the Spider-Man comics is only poorly remembered because of how stretched out it got, lasting for two years of not only monthly mainline comics, but multiple tie-ins, spin-offs and additional one-shot stories. And the Clone Saga got so bloated because Marvel wanted to milk it because the initial story was very beloved and well-regarded and it sold like hotcakes.

The Miraculous writers have already shown us that they’re only willing to truly discuss any aspect of what it means to be a sapient Sentimonster through Félix, so Félix being the only sapient Sentimonster and therefore getting to carry the entire sapient Sentimonster plot alone could have made the ideas presented far more focused, concise and clear. It would even make Félix’s new “tortured bad boy” characterization more believable if he really had suffered through a uniquely horrible experience and was lashing out because of it, which would make me far more sympathetic towards everything he pulls.

Turning Adrien from a fellow victim under the actually worse circumstances into the representation of what Félix has suffered for (to be made into the “perfect son”) would make me sympathize with Félix instead of me hating him so much. In that case, he wouldn’t be victim-blaming someone in a worse situation than he is. Like, yes, he’d still be victim-blaming Adrien, but it would be far more understandable coming from someone in an even worse situation. It would actually serve to showcase how harmful abuse and manipulation are when they are parallelled with literal magical mind control, because Félix was compelled to obey his abuser through magic, so, to him, Adrien’s situation looks like he’s "letting" himself be controlled, but they're actually in very similar situations.

Of course, the writers would even fuck this up by most likely agreeing with Félix that being manipulated and abused into following Gabriel’s orders is Adrien’s own fault. After all, they managed to blame Adrien for being magically mind-controlled into it too. If only Miraculous had good writers and morals…