#adrien says stuff

[april13th2009]

presented without comment

[inallofpeculiardom]

hi i am so TIRED of living paycheck to paycheck i just want to be comfortable and enjoy the things I enjoy and have the financial comfort to DO those things without having to be like OPE SHOULDNT HAVE SPENT THAT 30$ TWO WEEKS AGO like it would even fucking matter because im poor regardless and im just so tired of this and feeling like a burden and having to ask for help and it all just sucks and I hate that everything is centered around money

[cookiedough77]

im gonna be honest i hate the "adrien isnt a sentimonster he's half human and half sentimonster" IT MAKES NO SENSE

he's not half and half he's just a human sentimonster, thats it, a sentimonster meant to be human like i dont get whats not to understand you can't be half of a sentimonster you can't be half of an amok it just doesnt work

[chocostrwberry]

Adrien dressed by Nathalie, Marinette, and himself!! ☕️🌞🧦

[piromina]

ok but what if félix didnt get off on the wrong foot with adriens friends. what if they all rly liked him and didn't think of him as 'a cruel and inferior copy of the original'. what then. we would have so many good friendships there. félix + nino = gabriel agreste hate club. félix + marinette = gabriel agreste hate club. félix + alya = gabriel agreste hate club. félix + chloé = gabriel agreste hate club. guys do you see where im going with this. guys.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

How to Use Absurdist Humor

I will often excuse away the “worst” of Marinette’s behavior with a very dismissive, “It’s an obvious joke, so there’s no point taking this as a serious character beat. Let’s not waste our time here.”

While I stand by that statement, I can see why some people struggle with this approach. Miraculous has made the unfortunate choice to tie the humor to parts of the narrative that have actual meaning to the audience. This undercuts the power of the humor, making it hard for some people to separate the humor from the actual character beats, so let’s step back and look at a show that did this right to show what I mean.

That’s right, folks, it’s time for more gushing about Kim Possible!

For today’s case study, we'll start with episode 17 of season one: The Twin Factor. In this episode, Kim is stuck babysitting her little brothers while on a mission to stop her arch nemesis. You may be thinking that Kim's "flaw" in this episode is the fact that she brings two 10-year-olds on a dangerous mission.

You would be wrong.

This is the lead-in to Kim bringing the twins along:

Kim: Er, speaking of forgetting, I totally spaced on the baby-sitting. Mrs. Dr. Possible: Kimmy, you made a commitment. Kim: Two commitments, actually. I'm suppose to go on a mission today. Mr. Dr. Possible: You'll just have to take the boys. Kim: Mom, can you please tell Dad that's a bad idea? Mrs. Dr. Possible: Oh, Kimmy. I'm sure Jim and Tim would love to visit a secret lab with you.

This is how you do absurdist humor. Is this technically horrible parenting? Yes, but there is no way that anyone is taking this seriously. It’s just so over the top that anyone trying to criticize the Possible’s behavior comes across as completely missing the point.

The other important factor is that Kim’s parents are played as genuinely loving and supportive parents, just in a really absurd way. This is a very natural bit of loving family dialogue about a totally ridiculous version of a normal family conflict. None of these three characters show off flaws that we expect to see address here save for their complete lack of concern about Kim’s life-risking adventures.

If Kim’s parents were shown to be genuinely neglectful or if Kim’s adventures were played more seriously, then this humor wouldn’t work anywhere near as well as it does. It would still be an obvious joke, but it would stumble the landing if you knew that the episode would go on to see Jim and Tim die. (They don’t, btw. The absurdist humor carries on, I’m just giving an extreme example of a plot beat that would kill – or at least weaken – this humor.)

Another example of Kim Possible doing absurdist humor right comes from the next episode in season one: Animal Attraction. In this episode, Kim is up against Senior Senior Senior, an eccentric billionaire who pursues villainy as a hobby, leading to exchanges like this one between him and his son:

Jr.: Did we not leave Kim Possible on a conveyor belt to her doom? Sr.: Yes. A proper villain always leaves his foe when he's about to expire. Jr.: Why? Sr.: Well, it would be bad form just to lull about, waiting for it. Jr.: Why? Sr.: Tradition!

This episode has a lot of moments like this. Moments where Jr asks why they don't do the obvious, more easy/effective thing and his father blows him off because that's not how villains do things! It's totally illogical logic and it's great. I love it! Perfect example of absurdist villains and a great way to keep the show from getting too serious. The writers never wanted you to feel like Kim was in over her head.

If you look at these two examples and compare them to Miraculous, you'll notice a big difference. While Miraculous does occasionally pull off good absurdist humor, a lot of the absurdist humor is more questionable because it's tied to the show's central conflicts.

As an example, let's talk about Marinette's inability to confess to Adrien and all the nonsense tied to that. Her many failures and attempts to know him better are clearly jokes, but they have this serious edge because the show has not set up the love square as nothing more than a source of humor. This is our end game couple. The audience expects to see their romance developed. The longer the show goes on without doing that and the more absurd Marinette's attempts get, the less the comedy works.

Another good example is Lila's lies. There is a solid argument to be made that the writers are trying to be funny with Lila's extremely obvious lies, but it doesn't work because the lies are a source of serious conflict. Lila is working with the villain! She gets Marinette expelled! We want to see her outed! Every obvious lie she tells just grates on our nerves because this is not the time for jokes!

To be fair, you can use absurdist humor in more serious shows. Another of my personal favorites is The Good Place, which relies heavily on absurdist humor, but has a very serious and heartfelt overall plot. The humor works there because the show knew when to use the humor and when to be serious and also because The Good Place is not a formula show. It's a serialized show. One big story told in 20-minute chunks. This meant that the humor had more room to breath and could be more closely tied to serious conflicts. When every story has to stand alone and be finished in 20-minutes, that blending rarely ever works. You're trying to do too much.

Kim Possible's writers knew this, too. The two tie-in movies (Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time and So the Drama) are still comedies, but they both have far more serious tones because they had the time to do that. While the episodes run about 20 minutes, both movies run a little over and hour which meant they could be more serious than in a standard episode.

So why did I write all that up? Because I was watching Kim Possible and thinking about how much better the humor generally was and I suddenly realized how easy it would be to be confused by Miraculous' humor if you didn't have this kind of background. I've seen enough absurdist humor to identify it with ease and even I struggle with Miraculous at times. Like I'm still not sure if Lila's lies are supposed to be a joke or not.

If you're new to absurdist humor or struggle to interpret less overt humor? Then I can see how you'd take Miraculous way more seriously than the writers intended because a lot of the absurdist humor simply isn't absurd enough. That doesn't change the fact that it's humor and I'm still going to treat it as such, but I can see why it goes right over some people's heads and leads to complaints like, "Marinette has his schedule for the next three years!!!" That was a joke, but I get why you're missing it.

[thelastbatwings]

why are there still people in the year of our lord 2025 still calling aang a misogynist and even an abuser simply for not liking the extremely racist and effeminating caricature of him in the ember island players

why are there people in the year of our Lord 2025 calling adrien agreste an assaulter and an abuser for being a 14 year old with poor concepts of boundaries (which actually do get better)

[wickerfox]

So uh, Curtwen in Hatchetfield au?

This fully stemmed from one thought I had abt these two in a Nightmare Time-esque story and I haven't been able to stop thinking abt it. More lore and details under the cut

Curt is a detective who used to be the best in his field until a case in Hatchetfield led to the death of his partner. He did his best to leave everything behind but 4 years later, a new lead comes to him that drives him back to the town.

There's a horror movie franchise using Hatchetfield as it's filming location and the town is reacting exactly the way you'd expect

Owen is a semi known actor who plays the lead in the movie, his acting career was put on hold for a minute due to a major accident but since his recovery he's been networking and this is the first major role he's taken since his break

The case that's haunted Curt had to do with a serial killer he was never able to catch. While on the case something happened that resulted in his partner sustaining a fatal injury that he blamed himself for

The two of them meet when people working on the production start to receive mysterious threats and have to start working together

Owen's not going to let the threats slide and wants to get to the bottom of it, and Curt's not used to working alone and he's been out of the field for so long that he reluctantly agrees to work with Owen

It's buddy cop story. It's just a buddy cop story.

There are more lore ideas that I have as well as like, ideas for possible character interactions but yeah

[lunabug2004]

As someone whose Miraculous Ladybug hyperfixation is coming back full swing, whose favorite has always been Adrien, and who hasn't watched most of season 5 yet... I'm getting mixed signals from the media here recently, so,

Something to keep in mind: I'm not talking about the design of the character btw (I myself am not the biggest fan of his new design), more-so just the character in general.

Also, if this wasn't obvious, if you don't know how the GA feels, just answer it for yourself, please! Or even if you would just rather answer for yourself, go ahead, please! I'm just trying to get a gauge on it, y'know? ;)

[april13th2009]

Some sort of parallel here methinks. Default line of argument when your light player gf is spiralling towards something dangerous and you don't know what

[wazzuppy]

i love emo adrien's stupid fucking eye makeup

he looks like the sims 4 x mac collaboration 😭

[cookiedough77]

i know this has definitely been said in the miraculous fandom before but ladybug and chat noirs powers are definitely unbalanced, even though they have the most powerful miraculous, the black cat just seems like any other

ladybug gets a lucky charm, miraculous ladybug, and purify akumas

while chat noir just gets a cataclysm?

i propose that chat noir gets to purify akumas, like "destroying" the evil out of the butterflies, it makes the most sense

and this wouldnt even change much because if he sacrifices himself to an akuma miraculous ladybug will just make him appear again and he can purify the akuma then

im just saying it works better and is more balanced, and makes his miraculous more "powerful" in its own way

[kazz-brekker]

me to adrien brody after seeing the brutalist because i previously only knew him as "guy that gets killed in murder mysteries in order to kick off the plot"

[arcanemadman]

Netflixvania fans will hate Mariacard because one's 16 and the other's an adult after shipping and continuing to ship Trephacard, which has a teenager shipped with two adults

EDIT: Okay I know this isn't obvious but it needs to be said, Netflix Maria uses the design of 12 year old Maria, but she's actually 16. SOTN Maria is 17, which makes her a year older than Netflix Maria. If there was a 5 year time skip in the show, that would make Maria 21.

[themiraculouschatnoirblog]

Isn't it ironic that AdriChat is canonically the most dangerous akumatized villain (twice!), yet he's the one with the most valid reasons to get akumatized...? </3

[nixthelapin]

The ML writers were really telling us Kagami is a senti and her amok is in her family ring (and having her mom go nuclear on Gabriel for putting an akuma in it) as if her first episode back in season 2 didn’t have her be akumatized with that exact ring and she was completely fine when it was broken.