#family drives me crazy

[sga-owns-my-soul]

ignore my rant but it’s fucking HILARIOUS to me that i spent me ENTIRE childhood being blame for all the issues in the family bc i’m ‘too sensitive and over emotional’ and when i said we should get family therapy bc we didn’t know how to talk to each other i was attacked for it and now my family barely talks to each other and when we do it’s a huge fight and every interaction is like pulling teeth bc they all have decades of unresolved issues with each other than everyone refuses to talk about and now i’m the one who gets to try to keep things together when i tried to fucking deal with this all 12 FUCKING YEARS AHO

[jialudraws]

Affliction is enamour'd of thy parts,

And thou art wedded to calamity.

[nonexistentirl]

Do you ever think about the contrast between Choi Han and Kim Roksoo in that Choi Han held onto his name as he struggled through his despair, chanting it to himself lest he forget it in the flow of time, as it was the only thing he could remember himself by in this foreign world, while Kim Roksoo, despite reiterating time and again how important a name is to an individual, dropped his at the drop of a hat the moment he had the chance to live by a new one. Because I do.

The names they got on being born in Korea, they weren't just names. They were bearers of memories, reminders of their life in that world. For Choi Han, his time in Korea was full of happiness. That's why amid all the hardships of the Forest of Darkness, he did his best to remember he is Choi Han. The boy from Korea who was in high school, had fun with friends and lived a normal life. For Kim Roksoo, his life in Korea was just filled to the brim with pain and suffering. That's why when he woke up inside a "novel" with a different identity, in spite of the hardships that awaited him according to the plot he wanted to give it a shot by living a different life, the first step to which was abandoning his old one.

I feel like I've talked about this before but I felt like doing it again because hnnnnggghhh Calenmnmnfghdfwg

[erinwantstowrite]

crazy how people will see bruce not wanting to kill because he knows he wouldn't stop and eventually would get out of control because he's severely mentally ill and they think "wow what a selfish asshole"

[neottia-orchids]

I want the world to know that Boimler calling Mariner "Mare-Bear" will live rent free in my mind forever.

[quillium]

things TeSTAR has canonically done that drives me nuts (spoilers!!)

Kim Raebin was accused of plagiarizing... himself.

Park Moondae arranged a concert with someone who kidnapped and attempted to murder him. UNPROMPTED.

Cha Eugene ran away from his hotel room in the middle of a massive problem that he caused with only a single note. He also didn't bring his cell phone OR wallet.

Seon Ahyeon tried to put Moondae in a psychiatric hospital (DESERVE)

Keun Sejin believed Moondae when he said he was a transmigrator with basically zero proof. Hello???

Ryu Chungwoo got into a serious car accident that destroyed his whole life and career and immediately was like. Haha what if I join this idol survival show. AND DEBUTED AS LEADER.

Park Moondae caused an entire company to dissolve

Bae Sejin: [started IdolCo with 0 basic skill] "I think the most important part of being an idol is basic skill"

Keun Sejin was the first person to surpass the System's potential limitation (!!!)

[cheeseproducts]

happy father's day

[phoebebuggers]

the de-loserification of mike wheeler in fanfiction needs to be studied

[hellonerf]

i was so distracted by goring ame on his birthday that i almost didnt notice ame being a cutiepie in the new chapter! i would pinch his cheeks... i want to crush his face. black triangle was so super cute here

[doctorwhommm]

dontcha think it’s kinda cute that i died right inside your arms tonight?

[astraystayyh]

if you had read the story of hind raghab, if you had seen the picture of the child hanging from a pole, its lower body shredded, if you had seen the boy carrying pieces of his brother in a body bag, if you had known the soul of my soul, the story of refaat, and the countless war crimes israel has committed just in 7 months then you wouldn’t stream the song skz is putting out with charlie puth, a zionist and overall bad human, and that israeli producer. you would send a clear message that zionism isnt welcome in any capacity in any medium and you wouldn’t want to fund people who support its hateful ideology. this isnt a matter of being a skz anti and im so fucking tired of people painting it as such. where do you draw the line for your morals?

[mariesbee]

been slowly rewatching smallville (no time to binge watch sighhh) and i can't help but see so many similarities between pre fallout clex and clois

lex and lois both are a lot! passionate, the type of people who pull all the attention to themselves when they enter a room, but not in a soft, almost glowing way like lana. like they're taking up space just by being nearby

they're not afraid to speak their minds though lex is intense in a whole different way than lois is, of course, but they're both intense—not to mention the countless times they got on clark's nerves one way or another

honestly, clark has a thing for strong, challenging people

[descendant-of-truth]

If I may throw my hat into the ring here, I think the source of a lot of problems in the writing of Miraculous can be boiled down to its confusion over its target demographic.

There are two very clear audiences the show is trying to cater to:

Grade school girls around 5-10

Teens/young adults around 15-20

And this results in some. unique conflicts in the show's internal logic.

Because it's a superhero show for little kids, it's full of fun, bright colors, wacky villain-of-the-week designs, and the characters are all very straightforward with exaggerated personality traits. The cheerful, clumsy, scatterbrained girl protagonist, her utterly charming and goofy (but slightly clueless) love interest, her cool best friend, her mean bully, etc.

This extends to the romance; the show is so comedic that Marinette's nervous crush and Cat Noir's flirting are played up for laughs. Their more "problematic" behaviors read as cartoon shenanigans first and foremost, which I do think was the intention - they're both shown as being more than a little ridiculous for acting this way, so they're not exactly trying to encourage people to emulate them. They're allowed to be genuinely wholesome, too, because it's nice to give the kids something to go "aww!" at, but it's not meant to be more complicated or deep than that.

And of course, it's gotta follow a sweet and simple episodic formula! A conflict in Marinette's civilian life, an inciting incident to get a side character upset enough for Hawk Moth to turn into a villain, Ladybug and Cat Noir show up, there's fun banter, Ladybug uses her Lucky Charm to figure out a wacky solution to the problem, and boom! The day is saved, Marinette and/or someone else learns a moral, and we get a cute little end screen showing all the key players of the episode.

The one aspect of the show's setup that's a little more serious is the fact that Adrien has a super controlling and distant father, but even this is something that doesn't necessarily break the kid-friendly tone for the first season or two. Superhero shows in particular like to put in some stuff that's a little more emotionally challenging for the viewers, even when they're mostly comedic, so it's not totally out of place here.

For example, while they tend to have more grounded tones overall, Spider-Man cartoons are aimed at kids and regularly keep the conflict between Harry Osborn and his father, Norman, intact; often including the plot point of Norman being the Green Goblin, a notorious villain. It's a similar deal with Adrien, and his dad secretly being Hawk Moth.

You can easily anticipate drama coming from this, but the show primes you to expect it to work out fine in the end because every other conflict so far has been wrapped up in a nice little bow once the episode's over. Though I will say, the choice to have Hawk Moth be Gabriel instead of his own, separate character is perhaps the first sign of the tone shift to come.

And, uh. it sure is a shift.

See, Miraculous does not start out with what you'd call a... plot. It vaguely alludes to there being more going on behind the scenes, but the only thing it really tries to get you invested in is the Love Square dynamic. Marinette and Adrien dancing around each other while fighting crime IS the plot, and it's clearly going to end with a cool final confrontation with Hawk Moth.

You expect it to end like... well, like the movie. Identities are revealed, Gabriel realizes the error of his ways when he finds out he's been fighting his son this whole time, and they may or may not make up but he almost definitely gets arrested. Marinette and Adrien kiss, roll credits.

This is not what happens, because the plot the writers actually had in mind is complex in a way that I would argue is meant for the same audience as YA novels. And with that plot comes a lot of darker, weightier traits to these otherwise silly characters.

Marinette isn't just scatterbrained and nervous, she has debilitating anxiety and an increasing need to be in control of everything due to the stress she's under. She has panic attacks on-screen. She's not just great at strategizing, she also knows how to manipulate people, and does so with increasing frequency - and to Cat Noir at times, no less. Her positive traits haven't gone anywhere, she's still loving and creative and sweet and doing her best to help everyone she can, she just. has all of that other stuff going on, now.

Adrien isn't just a charming, goofy, clueless love interest with a gazillion skills and a controlling father, he's like. actively being abused, and in some cases straight-up mind controlled. His tendency to heroically sacrifice himself so that Ladybug can do her Cool Protagonist Thing is gradually but unmistakably reframed as being a sign of suicidal inclinations. He has identity issues out the wazoo and he doesn't even know he's an artificially created human yet, because everyone in his life is keeping secrets from him and/or lying to his face about crucial information.

Information like, uh. how his dad died???

Yeah, so we're at a point in the story now where there was no satisfying conclusion to the Gabriel plot, no team-up, no moment where he realizes he's been fighting his son, none of that. He still has something akin to a change of heart, but he also still kind of gets what he wants - the Miraculous of the Ladybug and Black Cat, which he uses to rewrite the universe with a wish. It's just that instead of reviving his wife, he trades his life for Natalie's. Of course, he was already dying anyway, which was his own fault but he did force Cat Noir's Cataclysm onto himself, so, that's another thing poor Adrien is going to have to deal with at some point.

And because there's all these astronomically messed up things in Adrien's life, and Marinette's the one who got to learn about all of it before him, she decides that maybe it would be better if he just. didn't know about it. Which is understandable, if I was 14 and had all this information about my boyfriend's life that he didn't, I wouldn't know how to begin telling him about it, either.

But. can you see how we've maybe lost the plot, here?

Here's the thing: starting with a simple framework and gradually getting more complex and subverting the audience's expectations for how the main villain is going to be dealt with is not a bad thing. The fact that it gets darker over time is not an issue. I actually think that all these developments are, themselves, pretty cool! I'm a sucker for angst and complex character dynamics and the show is absolutely giving me those things.

The problem is that it didn't just start with a simple framework, it started with the framework for a different demographic entirely, and perhaps just as importantly, it never actually... stopped.

For as much complexity and intensity they're injecting this story with, they're still working under the logic of it being "for young kids." We still get goofy villain-of-the-week designs with equally goofy motivations, and the supporting cast is stuck remaining two-dimensional no matter their circumstances. Chloe is the most blatant example of this - she was made to be a simple bully first, so no matter what else they do with her, she has to remain straightforwardly evil.

This, I think, is the reason that Gabriel is a more nuanced and "sympathetic" antagonist than her, and why so much care goes into Adrien's character as a victim of abuse while Chloe is just a Problem Child despite suffering similar neglect; she wasn't made to be interesting, and so the show is resistant to changing that. Gabriel and Adrien, however, were already made with nuance in mind, and so they're allowed to develop as characters. And at the same time, it's a kid's show! We need to teach the kids what kind of behavior is acceptable, and Chloe's home life isn't an excuse to treat people badly, so--!

...Oh crap we're supposed to be teaching kids about acceptable behavior. Uh. Um. Quick, bring back the ice cream akuma who cares way too much about his ships so that Cat Noir can learn about consent! Uhh, but don't change his character too much afterwards, he's only marketable because of his silly flirting, and we can't lose that.

Yeah, remember when I said that the romance having problematic elements to it used to work well enough because it was clearly just exaggerated cartooniness? It wasn't free from criticism or anything, but you could see how it was intended to be endearing and silly, right? You were supposed to point and laugh at Marinette's convoluted plans to spend time with Adrien, at Cat Noir's dramatic flirting attempts that Ladybug herself fondly rolled her eyes at.

The tonal shift into deep character exploration kinda paints the previous stuff in a worse light, and to an extent, I think the writers know that. It's hard to laugh at Cat Noir being flirty all the time when he's also supposed to be taken completely seriously, and the more Ladybug rejects him, the more it turns into harassment, and it. kinda just stops being funny, even with the comedic framing.

It's also hard to laugh at Marinette's crush being so all-consuming when they try to tell us (in what I can only assume was an attempt to get people to stop complaining) that she's like this because it's fueled by an event in her past, one that made her so scared of loving the wrong person that she now needs to know Everything about them before asking them out. Her cartoon antics aren't funny under that light, it's just concerning, but they're dedicated to keeping it up anyway.

The show runs on straightforward cartoon logic where you're not supposed to think about it too hard just as much as it runs on grounded, closer-to-real-life logic where people are messy and complicated and actions have consequences. It's so divided that you can hand-pick parts of the story that are influenced by one or the other pretty easily, and depending on the episode you can find instances of both in the same 20-minute time span. Maybe even multiple times!

Neither thing they're trying to go for is bad, and neither is a better approach than the other, but forcing them into the same show makes both sides suffer.

It's not just hard to laugh at the parts I mentioned earlier, it's hard to take Gabriel seriously as a villain whenever you rewatch an episode and remember that he has a once-per-episode pun-based speech that he says so self-seriously that you can't help but laugh at. It's hard to take him seriously when you remember that he repeatedly akumatized a Literal Baby and practically threw a tantrum every time it didn't work, or when he randomly steals (and enthusiastically performs) his nephew's musical dance number, or something similar that you would only do for a cartoon villain aimed at five-year-olds.

And I can only imagine this whole show is a marketing nightmare, too. Hey, little girls, here's your cool role model! She's cute and smart and talented and powerful and can fix anything by shouting the title of the show! Hope you're having fun watching her tell her boyfriend that his newly-deceased father (who used deepfakes of him to sell merchandise that's built to enslave the population and then locked him in a solitary confinement chamber in another country) was actually a hero who sacrificed himself to stop the main villain instead of, y'know, being the main villain! Aren't you excited to watch her wrestle with the guilt of this lie for the next season or so? Doesn't it just make you want to buy her merchandise??

Like. what is even happening right now. what am I watching. how did we get here and why did we start where we did if this was what the story was going to be about

[homehauntsyou]

i'm going to be SICK. god they love each other SO much.

[runawaymarbles]

[holding 9-1-1 fandom gently by the face] i need you all to understand that Eddie saying Buck should get custody if Christopher if Eddie dies does not make Buck Chris's legal guardian. That requires a shitton of paperwork and lawyer hours and a court order of some kind and usually a hearing. You can't just do it without the guardian knowing about it.

[number-one-shadisper-shipper]

Charmy: What the sigma?

Vector: Language!

Charmy: What? It's not a swear word

Vector: We don't use the brainrot slang here! Ugh.

Charmy: *gets right up in Vector's face*

Charmy: Skibidi

Vector: *smacks him with a throw pillow* NO!