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The problem is that the writers (Maine Thomas) make WAY too many “stick it to the critics” episodes that it messes up characters in their attempts to flip us off. Like, think about it. Nearly all universally hated episodes were episodes that wanted to best us and had some sort of meta agenda.

Revelator is meant to be a critic callout episode, but it all rings so hollow. Because the critics are right. Marinette did control Adrien through lying to him. She did become just like Gabriel, lying to Adrien "for his own good". And it did ruin Adrienette. Saying "the critics are losers and everyone who believes them don't want the truth, they want sensationalism" is irrelevant, because you made her do this. You didn't need to, but you did, and you're doubling down.

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Alya isn’t a flawless character. None of them are. But the ratio between actual criticisms and bullshit takes that people pulled from their ass is crazy. When I criticize Marinette, I make sure it’s based on shit that actually happened. Not a dumb hypothetical.

the fact that simply criticizing marinette for actually doing something wrong causes people to act like you're saying she should die in a fire but alya being violently mischaracterized is met with mostly silence is deeply frustrating. there is a lot of people criticizing marinette for stupid reasons, but this isn't one of them.

Yeah. Like there's definitely some that feel like they're going too far, but the criticism towards her for lying to Adrien (and to everyone else, but given the particular things she's lying about, lying to Adrien is the most egregious.)

With Marinette there IS some criticism towards her for her lies that I think is uncharitable, but even the more extreme criticism isn't generally crazy, and is derived from actual reality. It's not the kind of violent mischaracterization which is inflicted on Alya. There's disagreement surrounding Marinette's motives for her actions and how much she should be held accountable or blamed for the negative side effects of them, but even most of the people I've seen who are really angry at her and have lost all faith in her as a character and at the writers, still are generally operating off of things she's factually done. That's an improvement over the "Alya will shun Marinette because Lila told her to" (didn't happen), "and will start hurling verbal abuse at her due to Lila's lies" (didn't happen) "and even become the ringleader of the class in physically punching, pinching, slapping, or otherwise hurting her and destroying her things" (DEFINITELY didn't happen) nonsense which is somehow still proliferating.

Some takes on Marinette's behavior are uncharitable, but the fandom as a whole is at least operating based on reality.

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Also Alya was a content creator in the past. She would know the mindset of one and the lengths people would go to get views.

This is literally the "Alya is right on this but we're going to ignore her anyway because fuck her" episode

Also I just hate how these two are giving this guy the benefit of a doubt when his lies caused the Dupain-Cheng's bakery to be vandalized because of it, and by their logic shouldn't Chloe and Lila's bullying be considered a "misunderstanding" too???

Also also, "No one can be this mean" she says as if Chloe, Lila, Gabriel didn't exist, and of course Adrien nods in approval because he's just as brainless as his girlfriend

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Literally saw a comment that says “I don’t need to know the context to know Alya is in the wrong.” (This is in regards to Alya finding out about Marinette’s secret with Gabriel.)

LITERALLY WHAT?? I have never seen this sentiment with Marinette or anyone else (except for maybe Lila)

Honestly, overall, I think most of the criticism towards Marinette for her lies and secrets surrounding Gabriel's identity and Sentidrien have at least been relatively on-target. I think some of them have been overly pessimistic towards her, but it hasn't been insane, and it's at least been about things she actually did.

Like, try comparing it to the reaction with Chameleon salt, especially towards Alya. (Yes I'm still bitter about that. I might have stopped being bitter IF IT WASN'T STILL A SUPER POPULAR FREAKING GENRE UNTO ITSELF).

Most of the saltfic scenarios and criticism towards Alya for her actions in Chameleon have been based on "what-ifs" such as "what if she fell for Lila's lies so thoroughly that she believed any nasty thing Lila claimed about Marinette, and then responded by being verbally abusive towards Marinette and even outright violent towards her, outright bullying her even." Making this gigantic leap from "She can't clock Lila's lies" to "she will be more horrible towards Marinette as a consequence of those nasty things she says than we've seen her be towards her worst enemies." And then also writing or fantasizing about her being punished by like, losing her ability to get a job in the future, being disowned by all her friends, having grown celebrities say nasty things about her, etc.

Most of the Marinette salt I've seen has been more limited in scope, with most of it being about actual things she did in the show, though sometimes ascribing nastier, more malicious intentions than the narrative does, like having her treat Chat Noir like a tool or being interested in her own comfort at other's expense. But it's still using actual examples of things that happened in the show for it.

Like... the closest equivalent of the Alya bashing fic tsunami that resulted from Chameleon would be, when applied to the stuff Marinette's being salted for currently (well, some of it. The Alya bashing fic stuff is SO out of proportion I don't know that it's possible to do this in a totally proportional way) would be for Marinette to take the fact that she was given Adrien's Amoks and that he doesn't know about them, for her to mind-control him into being her boyfriend, using them to force him to have sex with her and drain all of his bank accounts for her, and then having his friends realizing what she's doing to him, beat her up, ruin her for life, and for Adrien to leave and find a better girlfriend.

Like with Alya bashing fics, it's following off of a "what if?", in this case, "what if Marinette kept the rings and was a way more awful person than she's ever been shown to be in the show." Similarly, Alya bashing fics tend to use the "what if" of "what if Lila told far worse lies about Marinette than we've seen, and Alya was a way worse person than she's ever demonstrated to be?" And yeah, in the Marinette scenario here, we actually see her giving Adrien back his Amoks. But given that he doesn't know what they are, she could feasibly ask for them back without him knowing how important it is that he keeps them. Also Alya has demonstrated that she won't believe particularly nasty lies that Lila tells about Marinette, even with evidence (we see that in Ladybug), but that hasn't stopped the saltfic industry from flourishing in the half a DECADE since that episode aired.

The fact that I'm not continuously seeing 15% or so of Miraculous fics making Marinette out to be mind-controlling abusive rapist in order to have Adrien and his friends take revenge on her shows how much more sane and reasonable the current wave of Marinette salt is from the STILL ONGOING Chameleon saltdom tsunami.

...I'm still just very bitter about this. I still see people asking for these kinds of fics like they're just normal things, and even with filtering them out and muting people, I still run into fics regularly that do this sort of crap to Alya (and a lot of the other ML characters to be fair, but Alya gets it the worst.) And it just makes me laugh whenever I see people complaining about how unfairly hostile the ML fandom is being towards Marinette because it's STILL, even now, six years after Chameleon aired, less than the shit towards Alya, and I feel like I'm yelling into the void to an extent here because it's been normalized to the extent that it's just priced into the Miraculous fandom it sometimes feels like. When it's so far outside the bound of any realm of normality or sanity relative to the shit thrown at most of the other characters, that it becomes comical when you actually try to put them into proportion with each other.

I still just can't stop feeling this festering bitterness about the unfairness of it all.

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I honestly can’t tell if this is sarcastic. If this isn’t sarcastic then PREACH- (but I have so many run ins with sarcastic replies and I’m so scared of misinterpretation)

I like ML rewrite/redesign videos a lot. They usually agree with my problems with the show. And I like seeing what others would make different. But one if my BIGGEST red flags is them watering down Alya’s importance or getting rid of her completely. ESPECIALLY when they try to replace Alya with a redeemed Chloe. Even though I like the idea of Marinette and Chloe becoming friends, cutting out Alya to do it is VERY scummy and it’s extra scummy when you’re a black woman like me.

Idk about you guys but as soon as someone cuts Alya out I immediately close the video. And the reasons for this choice are 9/10 dumb as hell.

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I like ML rewrite/redesign videos a lot. They usually agree with my problems with the show. And I like seeing what others would make different. But one if my BIGGEST red flags is them watering down Alya’s importance or getting rid of her completely. ESPECIALLY when they try to replace Alya with a redeemed Chloe. Even though I like the idea of Marinette and Chloe becoming friends, cutting out Alya to do it is VERY scummy and it’s extra scummy when you’re a black woman like me.

Idk about you guys but as soon as someone cuts Alya out I immediately close the video. And the reasons for this choice are 9/10 dumb as hell.

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Pilots and concepts are meant to establish the ground work of a show. Stuff changes between the concept and the pilot and the actual first episode. That’s what concepts are for-

To see what works and what doesn’t-

"Chaggie was never meant to be canon, Vaggie was with Angel, they changed it last minute and Charlie was supposed to blah blah blah"

Okay, but did you consider that this just makes it even better?

Knowing that their love was so strong and present even when there were other plans for the both of them, it actually changed the story so they can be together?

True love if I've ever seen it.

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Phanmare Headcanons (SFW)

(Disclaimer: My version of these characters (and the other egos) are not automatically related unless specified.)

Natemare fell first, Phantom fell harder

Phantom knew about his crush long before he admitted it. But he didn’t start developing feelings until after the confession.

Phantom loves to use petnames (ie: Darling, Dearest, Sweetest Nightmare, Baby.)

Mare rarely uses petnames but he DOES uses Nick names (ie: Crimson, Red). However when he does call him pet names, it’s usually Baby or Babe.

At some point, Phantom taught Mare how to waltz and tango

Mare doesn’t like waltzing all that much but he does it for Phantom.

Mare is a yapper and Phantom is the one who listens. But on occasion, the reverse is true.

Their first date was most definitely a festival/carnival.

They waltz at a lot of inconvenient waltzing spaces.

Phantom tries to get Mare to listen to electric swing and Mare tries to get him to listen to punk rock. They both compromise by listening to Will Wood.

Phantom often kisses Mare’s hand and nose while Mare just kisses his nose.

Mare expresses love through time spent while Phantom does it through words of adoration and gift giving (He likes to spoil Mare sometimes)

And that’s all of my non-spicy headcanons I can think of. If I think of more, I’ll add to the list. Let me know if y’all want a spicy version.

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Really? Interesting. I thought it was because everyone flocked to the headcanon that they were brothers (which is very valid but I personally just…thought was boring-)

Btw I’m gonna post some more content. It’s prolly gonna be Phanmare headcanons so just a heads up.

For the longest time I thought I was h the only Phanmare shipper on earth. Of course around that time there was only one fanfic dedicated to them. But suddenly there were two and three.

That made me realize that I had to contribute if I’m ever gonna find my people and I did…so..thanks for making me feel like I’m not crazy for seeing potential in these two when the majority of the fandom…doesn’t. Or chooses to ignore it. I do have to ask…when did you start shipping them?

I’m pretty sure I’ve been shipping them since Phantom started to exist LMAO. I just didn’t really post my ego art at the time and most of my writing was more RPF inclined until recently when I’ve been writing more ego stuff.

Honestly I think people tend to lean more into non-shipping or x reader, which ofc I support, but I think that’s the reason there isn’t much Phanmare. Aside from the nwtb ego fandom being itty bitty.

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I’m proud to say that 3 of those 7 fics are by me-

i recently read your phanmare fic and like uuuggghhh i’m obsessed

especially because there are only 7 fics about them on AO3 lol

if you have more (both writing and art), desperately i’d love to see it i adore how you depict the two of them and their relationship

This is so sweet!! Just for you, have a Phanmare I drew during class

To actually answer your question, I have a sequel to that fic in specific I’ve been working on very slowly. Maybe I’ll lock in on it just for you.

I did hunt through my archives (secret discord server w just me in it) for any more Phanmare I have and unfortunately I came up empty. That being said, I’m always thinking about them so I’m sure I’ll come up with little snippets I’ll post here and there.

I also have some nsfw sketches of them I don’t really ever plan on posting publicly, but they exist!!

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Bro the way it took no time for me to start simping-

@htsan I heard you like Crossbones… hehee take my doodles that I did couple days ago

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Yet again, this is an example of people not caring about the difference between a character flaw and a writing flaw. Vaggie having this problem is a CHARACTER FLAW- A justifiable one at that. Vaggi being co dependent isn’t a bad thing to showcase in the show because it’s a FLAW-

"I wish Vaggie had hobbies or dreams outside of Charlie"

Do you? Do you really? It was stated before that Vaggie loves dancing, so what? Would you want an episode where she takes a break from her job and suddenly... Idk competes in a dance contest? Do you really think the show telling you Vaggie's hobbies outside the hotel(which is what the show's about btw) is something they should give time for? Would you like the show to tell you EVERY ONE's hobbies? Really now?

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Here’s the thing about Chalastor. It’s your run of the mill enemies to lovers trope ship. And I’m down for that stuff too. In fact I can see an alternative universe where I was a Chalastor shipper too. But it’s because of the HEAVY lesbiphobia and hostility towards Vaggie as well as the glazing of Alastor that I seriously couldn’t get into this ship. It’s not even the in canon manipulation part that makes me uneasy. I’ve shipped ships before that involves manipulative actions.

But the difference between Charlastor and let’s say…Billford. Ford was selfish and fell for Bill’s flattery because of his own ego. And at some point, Bill actually respected Ford. Even though Bill is pretty much a god, you could have considered them equals for a VERY short while. They have a LOT of negative things in common.

I have never felt that sense of equality with Charlastor. Alastor doesn’t respect Charlie in the slightest and is willing to take advantage of her at her lowest points to get what he wants. And Charlie might as well be considered mostly pure of heart save for a few notable flaws and moments of selfishness. It makes me incredibly uncomfortable knowing that Charlie is, for the most part, trusting Alastor blindly. Alastor doesn’t come off as this suave Casanova. He comes off as a damn creep. (A d ot doesn’t help that he arguably sees Charlie as a daughter and I can’t believe Charlastor shippers tried to use that as shipping fuel, saying that since Charlastor has daddy issues, Alastor can be her “daddy”……gross-)

The other part of my dislike for Charlastor is…CHARLIE IS FUCKING TAKEN!

Nearly all of my ships are ships where characters don’t have a canon love interest. And if I REALLY like a ship which this situation, I just poly ship so that it’s fair. I can’t say for life of me that I can ship Chaggastor romantically. Platonically (on Alastor’s end) I can vibe with it. But it’s just something about Alastor and Charlie specifically that makes me deeply upset. And it’s probably because I’m really protective of Vaggie and a pattern that I’ve seen is that a lot of Chalastor shippers disregard Vaggie and her relationship with Charlie, writing it off as boring and chemistry-less.

It’s disheartening to see a ship that is so different from other sapphic ships. One that doesn’t start off as toxic, one that is already established. It’s such a breath of fresh air for me and…it sucks that a lot of people see it as boring.

Chrlst0rs will act like they do right now about your post on twitter and act surprised that noone likes them outside their little cult lol.

Sorry you have to deal with it but I admit watching them have a breakdown about you stating facts and expressing your dislike of the ship in a respectful way with the shipname censored as well is kinda entertaining.

Lmao glad you think so! I mean, I don't typically like to start fights, god knows how many accounts ive blocked for posting Chaggie hate while explicitly tagging our ship. But if they're gonna come into MY post and throw tantrums I'm not opposed to making them writhe some more if i have the time

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Charlie is very often treated like Vaggie. So many people read into their character in the most bare bones one dimensional way when their characters are chock FULL of layers. Meanwhile on the other side of the spectrum you have people putting their whole ass soul into analyzing characters like Vox, whom we have NO Backround of-

But anyways, Vaggie is also a walking contradiction. She hates heaven (while the other angels probably love heaven) she’s the first of her kind to defy their regime. By the end of S1 she’s not a blood thirst killer (although according to herself she hasn’t stabbed anyone in a while…which is also a contradiction in itself)

Hey, I was reading one of you're post and you said that you love Charlie as a protagonist. Can you elaborate why that is?

I've just always loved sweet-hearted protagonists. Steven Universe, Aang, Luz Noceda, you name it. It might be a cliche, but I'll always be a sucker for the optimistic protag who kills with kindness. They may not be realistic in some ways, because it's so much easier to remember all the shitty people out there, but truly kind people do exist and they are so strong for choosing to be kind and I love to see protagonists who have the strength to stay kind and extend that kindness to others despite all the shit the plot throws at them.

I already mentioned in that previous ask the reason why I like Charlie in particular a lot:

"... I think Emily is too sweet for Vaggie in a way that even Charlie isn't. Like, obviously Charlie's got a kind heart, but her demonic nature and her general hard-headedness and explosive temper are all things that separate her from Emily and other typical non-Exorcist angels that I can see is what really pulls Vaggie to her"

Ok so let me just elaborate on this a bit.

There's a lot of surface level reasons why I love Charlie. Her design is adorbs. Her archetype (ray of sunshine with a sad family background) is one of my favorites. Her VA is someone I've liked in a previous project(Mean Girls The Musical) and her performance as Charlie whether she's speaking or singing is just impressive and incredibly charming.

If we wanna dig deeper, I like her for the same reason I like characters like Enid Sinclair from Netflix's Wednesday; she's an amalgamation of contradictions that somehow works.

So just a quick disclaimer: I still don't think the writing for this show is "smart" nor do I think I will ever feel this way. But I do have to say that what I do like about this show is that characters were written with a lot of love, and despite the majority of the fans' claims that the creator and writers somehow dont give a shit about their main character(*cough*PROJECTION*cough) I think a lot of care and thought was put into Charlie as a character. Not a lot of WISE decisions necessarily, but the thought was there.

So if you were to ask people to describe Charlie with a few words, words that would probably come up are stuff like Happy or Energetic or Determined or Righteous or Gay or whatever. I would think those too. But other words I'd use to describe her are Stubborn and Temperamental and Prideful and REBELLIOUS, that last one being the most I think about when it comes to her.

It comes back to me seeing her as a walking contradiction. Charlie's always one thing that defies what you'd think she's supposed to be. She's a demon but she's kind. She's patient but she's irritable. She's a pushover but she's stubborn. She's no good in a fight but she has a lot of raw power. There's more to her than meets the eye and one of my favorite things about her that a lot of people may overlook is that despite the fact that she's a sweetheart is that she's rebellious and isn't afraid of standing up against authority.

Nurture-wise, being royalty very likely helped cultivate her hard-headed rebellious phase. She had a snarky emo phase for goodness sake. That spoiled rich girl definitely gave the king and queen of hell a hard time during puberty. Fortunately, she grew up to use that hard-headedness for a good cause. She's not afraid to stare down a goddamn Seraphim and tell her off on her hypocrisy because she's probably done the same to Lucifer when she was still prepubescent.

Nature-wise, the rebel in her comes from her parents, of course. Lucifer was a troublemaker who constantly tried to break away from Heaven's rigid system, while Lilith was a Strong Independent Woman who would rather leave Paradise than be objectified by the husband she didn't even choose. Freewill is a huge thing for Lucifer and Lilith, and because of this Charlie is also strong-willed, determined to do what she wants to do, even if it means getting ridiculed and disrespected for it.

Also. Don't you just love when the sweet character has another side to them that awakens when people they care about is hurt or when injustice happens? Righteous anger paired with a super power just never fails to be super cool. If you wanna know more about my thoughts regarding Charlie's temper, you can read it here

So yeah. I love Charlie a whole lot. She's cute, she's hot, she's kind, and she's cool. The whole shebang. There's a lot about her to dissect and I'm sad that people dont see that and constantly write her off as JUST the naive optimist because she's so much more than that.

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At the end of the day, shipping is really about vibes and tropes and pushing characters together like dolls. (Though I’d be naive to say that bigotry and favoritism has nothing to do with the popularity of the ships)

Ngl.. I do find Ch@ggie boring and R@di0appl3 insufferable but I don’t go out of my way harassing shippers? Why can’t ppl leave you alone jfc.

And that's totally fair!

It's literally impossible for everyone to ship everything and people are allowed to have preferences, even if we can't always explain why we have them. The important thing is you don't use your distain for a ship to attack the shippers.

Like, I'm not gonna sit here and act like I don't have my fair share of NOTPs in this fandom (and in literally every other fandom) and unless I tell you directly, or you can figure it out based on which ones I never reblog (and even when I do reblog a ship I'm sometimes neutral on it, but just like the fanart), you probably wouldn't even know which ones those are.

There's also a huge difference between listing off reasons why you personally don't ship something (as long as those reasons don't come down to misogyny, homophobia, ect.) vs using those arguments to claim why no one else can ship it.

Also, I don't know about y'all, but though I definitely have my ship preferences, at the end of the day I don't choose my ships, they choose me.

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People when a song can have different meanings and reprises are a reflection of those different meanings:

Based on what I've seen, this is an extremely unpopular opinion, but I LOVE Charlie and Vaggie having a reprise of More Than Anything of their own.

Don't get me wrong, I wish they got their own song and/or the reprise was longer as much as anyone else, but I think it's a wholesome and beautiful moment between the two of them, and the use of a reprise of that song only enhances that even further.

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As someone who does like Catradora, my frustrations come from when people blame Adora has never hurt Catra. Which isn’t true. But saying that Adora has hurt Catra equally isn’t true either. It’s a messy situation when one has done more wrong than the other but the other has still done wrong.

Another misconception is the notion that Catradora (their actual love life) is toxic. Them finding eachother through a war and then having to come to terms with their own baggage wasn’t their actual love life. Their actual love life couldn’t exist before them settling their own problems. Their actual love life is much healthier than their “get together” story.

sometimes you can tell when somebody who likes a ship just likes one of the characters and is simply using the other half as a vaguely ooc vehicle to make content for their fave which is whatever. not against the law. until the other half theyre using as a vehicle is YOUR fave. and then you want to explode them with your mind