#also the way he's internalised some Gabriel-survival mechanisms and projects them and his abandonment issues | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fernsnouveau · 2 years ago

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@agentofcalamity thank you for the recs, but the romance or action genre thing wasn't important to me, also it doesn't matter to me what the character looks like. I was thinking more about the psychological side, mental health issues (but not catastrophized or harmful stereotypes), the social masking, compulsive people-pleaser tendencies, high compassion mixed with low socialization experience, alienation? Low/conditional self-worth? Character flaws that aren't about explosive anger/violence? Argh I'm bad at explaining this, sorry.

[Edit – also, the tag rant is general observations and frustrations, not directed at you.]

Anyway does anyone have recs for fiction with characters similar to Adrien but they don't devolve into edgy murderboys?

#like... Adrien's character flaws and problems and negative emotional responses until Murder-Noir were very different #Chat Noir definitely had a bunch of problems being 'annoying and pushy' as Marinette would put it #but it wasn't framed like he was DANGEROUS.#the thing with Adrien's flaky sense of boundaries was interesting because it was definitely an actual problem #and it tied to his upbringing and it was easy to figure out where it came from #because Adrien himself hasn't been allowed to maintain healthy boundaries #you see this in how his fans treat him #and he's clearly uncomfortable with it but also seems to need to act on brand and try to be fine with it #as if his discomfort is his problem and he's in the wrong for feeling it.#but it eas still an actual problem and a flaw he had that he needed to unlearn #also the way he's internalised some Gabriel-survival mechanisms and projects them and his abandonment issues #onto his interactions with other people such as LB. it's understandable why. but it's still unfair to those people.#also his negative emotional responses were originally established to default way more to fawn/freeze.#and I swear there used to be the implication that he'd be more likely to default to self-destruction before hurting anyone else #(which should be an Actual Problem too.)#and the way his negative mental health spiram in s4 resulted in some behavior that was legitimately off-putting #but generally not DANGEROUS other than like a couple of very brief Murder-Noir foreshadowing moments #which at this point apparently must be accepted as a feature not a bug.#also if anyone wants to tell me 'but but some mentally ill people are dangerous!!!' please consider that it's NOT underrepresented.#it's a WAY over-emphasized stereotype. a stereotype with a body count by the way. it doesn't desperately need more examples.#ml salt #derision spoilers #adrien #MurderNoir #when they give 'violent dangerous anger' as a late-stage character flaw it tends to sideline all the earlier character flaws #that I actually already cared about.#also it's just no fun for me if previously 'safe' blorbos have red flags about being unpredictably dangerous #they're fictional yes but it makes the blorbo stressful to have on brain

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