#SO MUCH SQUANDERED POTENTIAL AND FOR WHAT

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Keep hearing people say maribug keep asking adricat if he's ok and he keep saying he's ok instead of telling her his problem but I don't remember it happened more than once in s4 in Rockettear but even then the circumstances of that episode did warrant the "nothing" answer he gave her unless he want to tell her that "nino tell me you let nino and alya know each other identity" which will reveal adricat identity. So when else did she ask? about the thing in hack-san, I think another credit goes to alya since she's the one who bring the topic to maribug who seems to be blissfully unaware that her leaving without telling adeicat that she send subtitute would be a problem.

I didn't get into this side of things in my other post because it was long and I wanted to focus on why Chat Noir's behavior was so frustrating, but this ask brings up the other big reason why the season four conflict was such a frustrating and terribly written plot line. Specifically, the part of your ask where you point out that Maribug seems blissfully unaware that her actions are having a negative impact on Chat Noir until someone points it out to her.

Yes, she is presented as blissfully unaware of this and every other interpersonal conflict we're given in season four. Your ask treats this as a failing on Maribug's part as if she should have obviously realized that she was in the wrong, but that's the whole problem. Telling kids - telling anyone really - that they should just magically know what others need is a frankly terrible life lesson as that's just not how the world works. You cannot just assume that everyone will have the same view of the world as you do and instantly pick up on the same issues as you do. That is the path to easily avoidable frustration and conflict. It also teaches people to assume that their view of the world is inherently correct when that is rarely the case. We often don't know the whole story and the other person's point of view may end up being equally or even more valid. This issue is extremely present in season four as Marinette has legitimate reasons to behave the way she does, which I'll get into in a bit.

If Marinette were written as feeling guilty about how she was treating Chat Noir, then this would be a different story. She'd be way more in the wrong and would shoulder a much greater portion of the blame. But as is? She has no idea that she's doing anything wrong. And until someone takes the time to tell her that her actions are causing harm, she is going to continue causing harm because she has no idea that she's causing harm.

In fact, I'd argue that the Alya thing in Hack San is a point in Maribug's favor. Throughout the episode, we see Marinette sending Alya messages on ways to be a good partner to Chat Noir, proving that she does in fact care about him. And then, as soon as Alya says, "You need to talk to Chat Noir," what does Maribug do?

She goes and talks to Chat Noir, giving him a pretty good apology for the problem she now knows she caused. Because, shockingly, Maribug doesn't actually want to hurt her partner. She also clearly cares about his feelings, making me want to take the season four conflict and tear it into itty bitty pieces because what is the conflict even supposed to be when you write shit like this?

I want to briefly step away from Miraculous and talk about this issue in a broader context via this YouTube short:

This short is from a Vietnamese woman who moved to Germany. Her YouTube channel is about her experiences there, including things like the short above which goes into the differences between what it means to be a dinner guest in Vietnam and what it means to be a dinner guest in Germany. In Vietnam, it's apparently standard for the guests to cook dinner with you where as, in Germany, you're expected to have the meal ready when the guests arrive, making this a situation where it's super easy to come across as rude just by doing what you think is normal.

Society is relatively aware that these types of culture clashes are a thing, but you don't have to be from different cultures to have these types of situations. Every person has their own unique needs and ideas of what "normal" is. The culture they were raised in will affect this, but so will their family, their personal needs, and many other factors. Two people can be raised on the same street and wind up with wildly different world views even though they supposedly share a culture. This is extra true when you add in compounding factors like neurodiversity, which is why it's an exercise in futility to say, "But Maribug should have realized..."

Well, she clearly didn't. And you can't change that she didn't realize whatever you're mad about. All you can do is have someone tell her what she's doing wrong. If she then continues the behavior, go ahead and judge away. But if she immediately corrects it like she did in Hack San? Doesn't that just prove that she truly didn't know that Chat Noir was hurting and would have probably fixed all of his problems if someone just pointed them out to her?

This is only exacerbated by the fact that Marinette's behavior in season four is largely unchanged from her behavior in previous seasons. The only major change is that she revealed her identity to Alya, but as soon as that's pointed out as a problem, she course corrects with an apology. After that, she thinks that everything is okay because why wouldn't she? Chat Noir said it was fine and everything else has been business as usual.

Bringing temp heroes into help as needed? That's been going on since season two. Having these additional members has been vital in multiple battles and there have been plenty of times where Chat Noir took a background role to the temp hero of the day like in Sapotis, Rena Rouge's season two debut. So why would Maribug suddenly think that this dynamic is a problem when it's been working fine for so long? We even had a whole episode about how Chat Noir was still needed in spite of the new heroes back in season three! Or, at least, I think that was Desperada's message? This show is shockingly bad at giving clear lessons.

Keeping guardian knowledge from Chat Noir? That's also been going on since season two and was even treated as a conflict that supposedly got resolved in the episode Syren which was the episode that ended with Master Fu coming to the mansion to talk to Adrien after everything was over.

When I watched that episode, I assumed this meant that Chat Noir was going to be more involved in things like picking the temp heroes. I actually thought this was how we were going to get Queen Bee because I knew she was going to be a thing, but it made no sense for Marinette to pick Chloe for a miraculous. Of course, I was wrong. Nothing changed after Syren. Chat Noir remained nothing more than the comic relief while Ladybug got all the insider info.

To be clear, I think that was a terrible move writing wise, but it doesn't change the fact that this is what they went with. This is the established dynamic. I can't even say that Alya learning Marinette's secret led to something new. She's just taken Marinette's old role while Marinette has taken on Master Fu's old role. This show loves it's status quo and Chat Noir has been at least tolerant of that status quo since Syren, so it's not surprising that Maribug doesn't register that this is a thing that should change and no one bothers to point it out to her even though she has a mentor in Tikki (and Su Han, I guess?) and a confidant in Alya and a whole slew of Kwamis who could also provide insight if they were allowed to do that sort of thing. (Sass and Wayzz were robbed of mentor roles.) Additional blame goes to Plagg because he should absolutely have told Adrien to talk to Ladybug. What is the point of giving these characters mentors who never mentor? It's aggravating in the extreme.

To circle back to the first part of your ask, outside of Hack San and Rocketear, I don't think there are any times when Ladybug invites feedback from Chat Noir unless you want to give credit to the end of Kuro Neko:

Cat Noir: (lands next to her) I've been a really temperamental kitty, m'lady. I didn't realize how much trouble I'd make for you by giving back my Miraculous. Ladybug: (sits closer to him) Just because I don't need you all the time doesn't mean that I don't need you at all, Cat Noir. No one could ever replace you.

Which isn't Maribug inviting him to tell her what's up, but she is clearly willing to listen to him and reassure him, further backing up my point about this conflict being some of the worst writing I've ever had to suffer through. If Maribug always fixes the issue as soon as she learns about it, you are not writing a situation where she's clearly in the wrong. You are writing an easily solved communication issue where she gets blamed for something she clearly doesn't realize she's doing wrong and it is so frustrating!!! I feel so bad for her. The next episode is Penalteam, btw, which starts the battle with this gem:

Ladybug: (laughs) Nice scare tactics, but it's not gonna work. Cat Noir and I are the best at soccer! Cat Noir: (Whispers to Ladybug) I don't know a thing about soccer M'lady. Maybe it's time to call the real team?

And basically just spends the whole episode making Chat Noir seems like a worthless partner while Maribug tries her best to make him - and everyone else - feel special.

Oh, and the episode before Kuro Neko? Well, it's technically Ephemeral, but that got magically overwritten so let's go one further back and we get to Dearest Family, which ends with this:

Cat Noir: (grabs a golden paper crown on the coffee table) Since I'm the king, (wears the crown on his head) would you be my queen, Ladybug? Ladybug: With pleasure, kitty cat! Tradition is tradition!

Oh yes, these two are in such conflict and Maribug does nothing to validate Chat Noir. He's in pain every episode and she's just totally oblivious to it.

If that was what they wrote, then I'd probably agree that we needed more instances of her asking if Chat Noir was okay. But it's not what they wrote. If you look through the list of season four episodes, you'll find that less than half of them deal with the supposed conflict of the season (by my count, only 8 of the 24 episodes before the final actually showcase the conflict and they are not in a logical order in terms of escalation as I tried to demonstrate above). The rest of the episodes flat out ignore it or even straight up work against the conflict like when Ladybug says this to Chat Noir in Guilttrip: "I probably don't tell you this enough, but I couldn't do this without you. And it'd be a lot less fun too."

Seriously, what even is this season? What is the conflict supposed to be? Because it sure as shit isn't Maribug undervaluing Chat Noir, if memory servers, season four sees her validate him more times than any other season. And it isn't her guiltily hiding things from him like so many fanfics claim because we have multiple points of evidence that prove that she's completely oblivious that there even is a conflict. So what conflict are the writers actually trying to write?

What's even more baffling is that none of this logically leads to the loss at the end of the season:

Maribug's new secrets didn't lead to her downfall. The only reason she lost was because of the secret that's always been there - a fact that's never revealed to her - and a freaking evil twin! So why did it matter that Maribug was keeping secrets? This is made even worse by season five maintaining all of the secrets, once again begging the question of what lesson were we trying to teach here???

Chat Noir wasn't needed for the final fight of the season, Maribug only needed the powers of a few of the temp heroes to win, a baffling ending to a season whose focus was Chat Noir feeling unimportant. You could scrap that conflict entirely and the ending would not change. In fact....

Adrien quitting to be nothing more than a good little boy who obeys his father would have actually saved the world from eventually being rewritten. If you think about it, the season four final actually punishes Adrien for being defiant. So does season five as, if Chat Noir had quit, his father would still be alive. I thought this show was supposed to be a romcom, not a tragedy. Why is Adrien being punished for being a hero? Is this supposed to be karma for lying to Ladybug with the whole Catwalker thing?

This shit is why I say I'm a writing salt, character sugar blog. I can't get mad at the characters when they're in such a nonsense story where things never logically tie together. They all deserve so much better.

None of this is meant to imply that ignorance is a blanket excuse for hurting others. Nor is it meant to imply that you have to forgive someone who hurt you just because they didn't mean to. There's a ton of nuance around these topics. But season four acknowledges none of that nuance while creating a situation that desperately needed nuance because there was no clear right and wrong here. Should Maribug work to be more aware of others feelings? Sure, but that journey can only start after she's made aware of her faults and no one ever points them out to her. Does Chat Noir need to work on clearly communicating his needs? Desperately, but no one is teaching him that lesson so he remains a terrible communicator who suffers in silence. What impressively bad writing.

[fictional-characters-are-hot]

I wanna make an appreciation post for Fatgum's thighs/legs

No one seems to appreciate them like I appreciates them.

Theyre so fucking good looking.

His thighs are so thick theyre not classified as 'hams' those are entire HOGS!!

I want to worship his legs theyre so fucking good.

[spirit-meets-the-b0ne]

House of the Dragon was built to fail

Which the greatest shame of that is, I truly believe they got an incredible cast of talented actors, it's distressing to see them largely wasted. I've been an HBO fan (in a Stockholm kind of way) for the better part of two decades and even some of their usual pitfalls were accelerated here. While it's easy to just blame Ryan (5 spits for an enemy Condall) it still feels like there's more than just writing or directing so this post won't focus as much on the characterization follies but more on the story's infrastructure. While budgetary concerns with a show like this are obvious considering the dragons cost a great deal of time and money it is odd to me that this is a series rather than a mini-series. By that I mean, HBO for most of their big productions had seasons ranging from 10-15 episodes (Sopranos S1 13 episodes, True Blood S1 12 episodes, The Wire S1 13 episodes, etc) so this is exceptionally short of a season for House of the Dragon. Game of Thrones original run was largely a 10 episode format until the later seasons which were also notably shit.

This structure was never designed to give the characters or an audience time to breathe. While this is something that is continually brought up across the cinema/film community these days it seems especially important here. It also seems very easy for an audience to decide against investing time and energy into a series that only holds you for 8 weeks and then takes another 2-3 years of production. As most of the audience knows, it isn't like there is a shortage of materials for the show to incorporate. It's an active choice to not dive more into the lives and circumstances of these character and their relationships. Now, I'm not expecting Lost 2.0 where every character will get an episodic focal point and backstory. Still, you have plenty of non-dragon riding characters whom you could spend time with that don't require maxing out your VFX budget for. Because as of right now from the posts I've been seeing it's clear that most of the general audience at this point is more invested in the dragons than any human character in the show save for some Stans. I can't say I blame them. Most every character at this point is barely tolerable or straight up deeply unlikeable. That's a failure of the writers and directors explicitly. I think the actors are genuinely doing the best they could with the material they're given.

It's frustrating because while I was expecting this show to disappoint (both because of GoT's outcome and HBO's late game losing streak shout out to True Blood for getting so bad I never watched the final episodes) this production is hitting that wall way sooner than expected. If there was another 2-4 episodes to actually develop the characters and their relationships (even with piss poor writing) it might have helped tremendously but this structure is going to leave an audience wanting more and not in a good way. If there is a season 3 I can't imagine in 2 years that a lot of the current viewership would return. So even the "fix it" episode rewrites fans make don't seem like enough, to me you genuinely need more material, more for an audience to invest in or feel a part of. If this season was even 10 episodes there would have been so much room for improvement. The Last of Us was able to deliver a satisfying plot and character arcs with 9 episodes and there's a huge difference with the way that was received by audiences vs. HotD. The obvious difference is the amount of time they needed to tell that story vs. the amount of time you rightly needed to tell this one, which is case in point why HotD needed more time. So, while a short season can deliver satisfaction in some cases, I don’t believe as a rule it should all be common place to condense stories and characters. Especially considering HotD's compression is coming largely at the expense of the women in the show (Rhaena, Jeyne Arryn, Helaena, Nettles, Rhaenrya and Alicent's respective character assassination, etc). That's to say even if these character plots deviate from the canon they have the room to grow and develop a character completely to an audience. If you're going to change a character from the source material at least make them a well-developed different person.

[weldnas]

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[lizardinkart]

With the heavy caveat that I know people put their heart and soul into this show, having watched 6 seasons of this shit now, The Dragon Prince is just this to me

I root for this show as if it was my child’s little league team playing against the Dodgers. Like, they have the spirit, certainly. Can they actually hit a fastball going over 100mph? I think not.

[nordic-language-love]

My current job I work on average 5.5 hours a day and you know what? I think that's the perfect amount of time to work. I have plenty of time for my hobbies while also staying on top of the housework and I'd probably have time for a social life if I wanted one (I don't lmao I'm happy just chilling on tumblr), but having a job also gives me structure and a feeling of contributing to society. I think everyone should have a work week that looks like mine. 9-5 5 days a week/grind culture is bullshit and it's tragic that it's become the accepted standard pretty much worldwide.

[transslyblue]

Came across a video on an illegal rendition of Hamilton. Wow.. I don't think the church knew Hamilton was bi

[thehalfbloodfreak]

The Percy Jackson show has so. much. potential.

[ur-local-kiwi]

im not retyping this whole ass ramble but i at least wanted to give it its own post bc. WHAT is this man. come on.

tobi WHAT ARE YOU ON ABOUT RN. be fucking fr rn

[krawdad]

I get that they probably are trying to make the gigantic robot lizard as unscary as possible but who's idea was it to give the alligator fuzzy fleece skin

There isn't a closeup where it's still enough to be sure but that sure looks like puppet/mascot suit fleece to me.

Also since I'm here it looks cool without its skin

Imagineer for scale

[apollo-zero-one]

Man I can't believe I had the chance to go to a performing arts school up through middle school and I fuckin quit after 6 months just because I got bullied. BRO YOUR HOMEWORK WAS POETRY!! YOU HAD TO PRACTICE DANCING TO COTTON EYE JOE AS YOUR BIG UNIT TEST. GYM CLASS HAD A CIRCUS UNIT!! YOU HAD A WHOLE DAILY CLASS ON IMPROV!!! YOU FOOL!! YOU ABSOLUTE IMBICILE!! YOU COULD HAVE BEEN A YOUTUBER!!! YOU COULD HAVE BEEN ONE OF THOSE TWEENAGERS GETTING LOADED BY MAKING SHITTY YOUTUBE SHORTS IN 2008-14!! But noooOoooOOOoo little miss Noellie (who WANTED TO GO!! who worked SO HARD and sent in an application essay and did an INTERVIEW to get in!!) couldn't handle disruptive classmates or little scuffles and petty grudges and general Attitude of the other students and cried to mommy to put her back in public school. I am EATING MY HAIR over what Could Have Been. I COULD BE SOMEONE'S ANNOYING YOUTUBER!! I could be a DISGRACED DISNEY CHANNEL STAR!! I could be an America's Got Talent winner! A mild to moderately successful comedian! I could be making short films!! But no no no precious thin skinned baby me heard a few new cus words and watched a teacher get heckled and begged to give up The Dream in favor of?? Quiet math tests?? I am such a fucking quitter I quit everything the second it gets too hard I always take the out as soon as it's offered what's my fucking damage.....

[the-punforgiven]

Sometimes I am reminded that For Honor can be both the most fun shit in the world and also the most viscerally unfun thing to ever exist in the universe and it depends entirely on who you're fighting and how many of them there are

[hellspawndoodles]

I love classic creepypastas but Jeff the Killer makes me SO FUCKING MAD

Like we have this perfectly good setup for a tragic story about a kid who was beaten down until he snapped and took it out on the ones he loved but it was so HORRIBLY researched and executed that what we got was a disorganized mess that displayed a horrendous lack of understanding about the American legal system and how mental health works and also had the gall, the ABSOLUTE FUCKIN AUDACITY, to make the burn victim not look like an actual burn victim when a literal 5 minute Google search would dump PERFECTLY GOOD sources and visual references right in the author’s lap but I guess realistic injuries and deformities aren’t viscerally distressing enough and what we got looked like the hideous demon spawn lovechild of the Joker and a trout and S O M E H O W this ends up being a cult classic and people simp for the main character?????? 

WHAT

[scienceroach]

i should add my versions of team alien to the multi once i get to working on that

[bakuzen-xiv]

Enjoy the festival to the fullest, won't you?

[strawberry-miiiiiiiiiiiilk]

sitting in my room for a half hour thinking about how if we lived in a better world Ada Wong would be the Ilsa Faust of Resident Evil (primarily in how she's introduced in Rogue Nation), with a dynamic to leon not unlike Fujiko Mine's and Lupin's in which they are both extremely competent and in situations in which they may have to work against and occasionally with each other on a mission, but ultimately are forced to stay apart and while they may be apart and even have different love interests from each other, ultimately still care deeply for one another. They are compelled to go after each other in part because it's so difficult and they are so often in circumstances in which they can't be with each other. The thrill of the chase and all that.

Ada being only tangentially related to the other character's stories because the world is simply larger than them and she has her own concerns and problems to deal with, and to have that be given any care or weight in a story, let alone focus. That she can be cunning and even manipulative but because she needs to and will still choose not to when the chips are down because she is genuinely caring--which I know none of that is new ground for her but I wish it was done in a more interesting way and *without leon at all*. She chooses to show mercy in a key point not because she's in love with that other character.

And also that she has more personality. I dig the subdued nature of her in 4r and her subtle sarcasm but it's just crumbs. I want her to be silly on occasion and say dumb jokes because she's alone like in 2r. I want her to shed a bit of that seriousness when she's on the clock because she's confident in herself as a professional and again has no one to put up a façade to.

It's honestly kinda embarrassing reading this back as I realize most of what I'm writing is not only already present in the games but incredibly tropey in and of itself, and wouldn't improve the character much. Dear god I think too much of my view of the character has been marred by shallow fanworks depicting her. I think if anything it's a sign that:

I'm a shit writer and need to do way more than watch movies and gesture vaguely at them to come up w a decent story or character (that being said as much as I prefer Fallout as a film, I stand by my earlier statement of Ilsa Faust being the ideal spy woman as she's depicted in Rogue Nation as she has a distinct set of goals and needs that are complex and developed largely tangentially to the protagonist's, at least initially).

It's going to take a completely new approach to her character to get something remotely interesting and that takes advantage of her potential.

For as mired in tropes as she and every other character and story in Resident Evil is, Ada could be far more memorable and enjoyable if only there was more care and effort to giver at least some interests and goals (perhaps even...characterization) on her own other than being a sexy love interest and potentially traitorous (as so many femme fatales already are).