#Made one friend cry over my complete takedown of Fourth Wing

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I was totally talking about the "no, this was good and I'm gonna make more of it because you're wrong and I'm right." type of spite in regards to the statue scene and Adrien saying that's when he fell in love with Marinette.

I feel the same way towards what they did with Bustier in Season 5, having her new akumatized form be this awesome revolutionary who wanted to dethrone the mayor, have her eventually become the mayor and showing how downright utopic Paris became after she took the job, revealing that she's a LGBT character by giving her a girlfriend and have them share a kiss oncreen while the other LGBT couples still get little to nothing, it just feels like like they saw how people were hating on her because of how she kept fumbling the bag in regards to Chloe, and this was their attempts at forcing the audience to like her.

(Post this ask is referring to)

Disclaimer

Before we get into the topic at hand, I want to give a quick disclaimer: when I write these posts explaining the writers' most likely point of view or industry standards, it's never to defend the writing. I clearly don't like the writing and want it to change, too! The reason I get real and explain what's probably going on and why things aren't going to change is to give my readers a bit of a reality check about realistic expectations.

In the past, I have been in the position of being deeply emotionally invested in a show only for the writers to destroy it. Or, at least, I thought it was destroyed. It took about two seasons for the general public to agree with me. I remember the desperation of "why would they do this to us?" and "Why didn't anyone stop them?" and "How does no one else see how terrible this is?"

That was a deeply unhealthy mindset for younger me, so I'm never going to feed others who seem to be going down that path as it feels irresponsible. Instead, I give the kind of answers I'd give my younger self. I try to validate your very real feelings that the writing is bad and then give my best guess as to how it's happening and why it's unlikely to change. I don't like those "truths", but it's important to remember them if you want to have a healthy relationship with media that you have no control over outside of choosing how you'll interact with it.

Queer Stuff

Until it's universally cool to be queer, Miraculous is never going to give us quality rep for a few reasons. The first one is that it can get the show banned in certain countries. Banned shows make less money and the goal is to make money so it's just not going to happen. At best, you will get throwaway lines that can be changed to be "acceptable" in other languages or minor scenes that are easily cut. That's the most likely reason why Bustier is the one confirmed to be in a sapphic relationship along with Knight Owl and Majestia. These characters are all minor enough to have their sexuality very subtly included in canon*. Rose and Juleka are way too prominent for the same treatment. The most likely reason for Bustier being with a woman is that the writers wanted to risk some rep and went with what they could get away with without rocking the boat. I doubt it was done to make fans like her more as that assumes that most fans care about the sexuality of a minor character. It also assumes most fans would find this a likeable trait as opposed to something neutral or negative.

There's also the issue of parental appeal. If a show becomes known for having queer rep, there are lots of parents who will steer clear of it and keep it from their kids. That means less toy sales and so on and that's not good for business. If you want solid queer rep, you need to look to less mainstream productions. It is highly unlikely to come from something associated with Disney.

*Do any of the sapphic couples even kiss? I don't think they do. It's like Zoé's confession to Marinette, clearly implied but never actually given voice. A young viewer could easily miss the implications if they've been sheltered from the idea that a girl could like a girl. I could see a kid being told/thinking that this was just Marinette being honored that Zoé trusted her with the truth:

Marinette: Oh? Who is it, then? (Zoé simply looks at Marinette and smiles, with no words needed to answer her question. With her reflection in Zoé's eyes, Marinette realizes that the person Zoé likes... is her.) Marinette: Oh... Oh! Oh. (Zoé keeps her tender, loving smile and gaze at Marinette as the two share an embrace moments after) I am truly, very honored. I mean it, Zoé. Zoé: Thanks, Marinette. (they let go of their embrace) You're right! It's such a relief to get these things off your chest. You should try it, too!

Listening to Criticism

This wasn't directly stated in this ask, so I'm going to pull in a quote from the original ask for context:

he saw how much people hated that scene but instead of addressing the criticisms he instead just point blank tries to force us to like the scene

This was said in context of criticisms about the statue scene. Anon is annoyed that the writers doubled down instead of fixing the writing issues. I fully understand why anon feels that way, but unfortunately, this isn't a simple issue of the writers needing to listen to what the fans are telling them. It's a lot more complicated than that.

There was actually a recent Tumblr poll asking people their thoughts on that scene. A thousand people responded. We have no idea if those people were a representative sample of the fandom, but that's a reasonably large sample size and the responses were diverse enough for me to think that the poll has value in this discussion as it shows us something interesting: people like the statue scene. It's not everyone. In fact, "I hate it" won! But about 35% of the people who voted were neutral to positive about the scene. Only 38% actually hated it outright.

A poll about the season five ending got over 1,700 replies and the end result was that there's a pretty even split between people liking it and hating it.

Based on these polls and the fact that some people clearly still like the show, I can easily assemble a committee to give critical feedback who would praise the things you and I hate just like I can easily assemble a team who generally shares the same opinions as us. That's the problem with blithely stating "listen to criticism" when what you really mean is, "listen to my criticism and ignore anyone who doesn't agree." What we see as fixes others would label as ruination!

Miraculous' Current Feedback Process

Miraculous isn't one man's fever dream. There is some level of critical feedback process in place. We know from the bible leaks that people at Disney and TF1 give some level of approval to the bibles before the more detailed writing can begin.

We also know that the writers have had scripts rejected before. Chat Blanc was supposed to be in season two, but was "was rejected by broadcasters [for being] too dark and too sad." There's even a rumor that Gabriel was killed because of a mandate that he couldn't go to jail to avoid upsetting Brazilian audiences (if anyone can confirm that, please let me know!) In other words, the writers do get push-back! They aren't allowed to write whatever they want! There is a feedback process!

None of this is meant to say that I think the show is good. I clearly think it's bad, too! I only bring all of this up because this is what you need to keep in mind when you're wondering what the hell canon is doing. We may not get it and view it as terrible, but there is a whole host of people who think it's good or, at the very least, good enough. Industry professionals are signing off on this shit. While I think they're all insane, the best takeaway from these facts is that the team working on this project has wildly different tastes from us and we should either stop watching or watch with the knowledge that we're probably going to hate the final product.

Counterexample

Let's pivot slightly to a relevant counterexample. Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite authors and a book podcast I follow read one of his books about a year ago. Two of the members weren't fans while the third loved it, leading to a really interesting disclaimer at the start of the episode. I'll post a link after this in case you want to hear the exact quote, but the general gist is that the show's host - Maria - was talking about ways the book could be improved with two fans of the book and, to her surprise, they were both adamant that the proposed changes would ruin the book for them.

I don't bring up this example to imply that Miraculous is secretly good and we just don't get it. I stand by pretty much every criticism I've ever made. I bring it up because this shows that even a story that I will defend isn't universally appealing. I generally agree with Maria and Will's thoughts on stories, I mostly disagree with them here. Is the book perfect? No, but most of their suggested changes aren't ones I'd make. At the same time, I understand why the story didn't click with them. Many of their issues are valid. I just think that most of those valid issues are subjective issues and not true flaws. It's also worth noting that the Mistborn series is wildly successful. The author is a multi-millionaire. People clearly like it as-is, which is why critical feedback is impossible to get "right."

Annoying Truth About Critical Feedback

There is no universally good version of a story. No one standard every work can strive to meet. There's not even such a thing as a universally right critic! You can think a person's feedback is good 95% of the time and still be totally fine rejecting the other 5%.

Part of the editing process is getting feedback and deciding if you agree with it or not. You don't have to make every suggested change which is good because, if you have more than one person giving feedback, then you'll probably get conflicting feedback! I can think of one story where beta reader A found a section confusing and beta reader B said it was perfectly clear. I had to talk to A to see what was confusing them and decide if I cared to rewrite that section to cater better to people like her knowing it could lead to the section being less clear for people who weren't like her. I can think of another story where a random commenter took the time to tell me they didn't like the way I wrote Adrien, leading several others to comment saying that I got him perfect.

This is why I'm so hesitant to blame Miraculous' writers for not "listening to criticism" because what does that even mean? Without an objective standard, who decides what criticism is good? What happens when there are dissenting opinions on a topic as there almost always are?

Anyone who wants to create has to decide whose opinions they value and ignore basically everyone else otherwise they'd never create anything. If the Miraculous writers have a team AND the team likes what the writers are creating AND there's an audience happy to consume what show in its current state? I don't know how you fix that. I don't even know if you can. Can anyone give a tried and true way to avoid creating an echo chamber while also ignoring unhelpful "haters"? It's an incredibly complicated topic and is why the trend I mentioned in the linked post exists.

For those who don't want to click back and read that post, there's a pretty common trend where a series gets popular, but then the writing starts to get "bad" or people start to realize that the series is never going to live up to the potential that they saw in it. Less forgiving fans begin to stop watching, but enough fans stick around that the money keeps coming in and so the writers have no reason to course correct. By the time the majority of fans have given up hope, the writing is so bad that there's no saving the property. You'll probably never reach a point where everyone hates the series, but you do reach a point where they're no longer able to make the property commercial successful. That or the series reaches its ending and it's so bad that people basically stop talking about the series or only remember how poorly it ended when it used to be a beloved, pop-culture zeitgeist. This trend is basically the media's version of enshittification. My partner and I talked about various series that came to mind for this trend and these are just a few of the properties that we were able to name: RWBY, Zack Snyder's DC Stuff, BBC's Sherlock, Game of Thrones, and How I Met Your Mother.

If the more critical fans are right and Miraculous is a mess that's just getting worse and worse, then this decaying process is Miraculous' most likely fate. More and more people will turn their backs on it until it fails or the writers run out of ideas and give a lackluster ending that is pretty universally hated. It will probably be slightly gratifying to people like us to see one of those things happen, but not gratifying enough to make the loss of a potentially good story worth it. Having gone through this cycle before, it really is a hollow victory and that sucks, but there's nothing you or I can do about it which is why I take the stances I do. It's fun to dunk on canon, but don't let canon's bad writing drag you down into dark places. That won't benefit anyone. It will just hurt you.

Final Thoughts

All of the above is why this blog isn't aimed at the writers. I don't expect them to fix anything. Canon is what it is and it will continue to be what it is because this is what the creative teams considers good. I don't agree, but I also highly doubt that I'd ever be able to change their minds. Even if they read my feedback, I doubt they'd agree with it even though I will stand by every point I've made and think canon has inexcusable issues.

This blog is aimed at sharing my thoughts on the writing with fellow former fans or somewhat-critical current fans. I want us to have fun thinking about writing and alternate takes on Miraculous for our own amusement. I will be a happy woman if this blog helps any of my followers improve in their own writing or critical analysis skills or even just gives them an outlet to flex those mental muscles.

It's the same reason I like the podcast I linked above. I enjoy listening to the three hosts and their occasional guests dig into the technical elements of writing and why a thing did or didn't work for them because I find discussion of those things interesting and useful for honing my own writing. It's not about fixing the source material. The books they talk about are finished products that are what they are. Chances of an edited edition being released are extremely low. It's not even about being right. I have no idea how you decide who is right in matters of taste! There are multiple extremely popular series that have me scratching my head at how people like them! There are also popular series that I greatly enjoy.

With this vast array of tastes and no true standard for anyone to meet, all you can do is state your opinions on a work logically and clearly and let whoever is listening decide for themselves if they agree with you or not. It can be frustrating when they don't, but it is something you just kind of learn to accept so you don't go mad. "Let people be wrong" is, unfortunately, the best way to protect your mental health, especially when it comes to something as unimportant as Miraculous.

I'll finish by imploring anyone reading this to never force your opinion on a fan! That's just rude. Let them have their fun! Just don't take recommendations from them. Whenever I meet someone who likes a thing I hate, I just say it wasn't for me and leave it at that unless they truly want to hear why I didn't like it. Most people don't. Most people just want to enjoy the things they enjoy which is completely fine and normal. Let people be wrong.