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purrincess-chat · 5 years

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In your opinion, what are all the things that ML writers could do to fix the show and make it better?

Oh, Lord, how much time do you have?

I don’t even know how to begin gathering my thoughts for this, so if this ends up being a big incoherent brain dump then, uh, I’m sorry. XD

So, first and foremost I guess, they need to balance their main characters better. Why is all of the plot tied to Adrien? Why does Adrien have a more fleshed out backstory than Marinette? This is supposed to be a girl power show, and yet it revolves more around the boy’s life from the girl’s perspective basically. Marinette really doesn’t have a dog in that fight outside of the fact that she was asked.

Marinette needs some kind of tie into the plot that doesn’t revolve around her love interest which is basically all they are willing to give her in this show. Everything about her has to relate back to the boy somehow, and if girl power is their message, then they are kind of defeating the purpose. Sure, they have episodes that are supposed to depict that the girl doesn’t need the boy, but then when you pile on top of that dozens of other instances where she gets pushed aside in favor of the boy, including words coming out of the creator’s own mouth (or off of his two thumbs onto a screen) then it doesn’t exactly hold the same weight.

If your protagonist doesn’t have a tie into the plot, then why are they the protagonist? Take other shows, for instance: Avatar: the Last Airbender, Aang is the avatar and it’s his destiny to keep the balance in the world, She-ra, Adora was destined to become She-ra, it’s in her blood. But you have Marinette who is Ladybug because….the greater good? Some fairy sprite bug thing asked her to be?

The villain isn’t personal for her, there is no mark of destiny that deems that she must be a hero, she’s just kind of there. Even her family barely gets fleshed out in comparison to Adrien’s. I mean, her parents are just blindly supportive of her meanwhile Adrien’s mom is in a magical coma, his father is cold, distant, and neglectful, which for some reason turns his assistant on and makes her want to sacrifice her fucking health even though Gabriel looks like a dried up soft pretzel. They canceled the special where we were supposed to learn about Marinette’s family, and I think that about sums up my point.

Secondly, I think they need to abandon the idea that Adrien is perfect because it’s not doing his character any favors. Thomas is so far up his ass about Adrien being a perfect example to boys that he has actually looped back around and made Adrien a poor example to boys. He gets away with all of his bad behavior because Thomas just covers his eyes if you call it bad behavior, he refuses to take no for an answer from the girl he likes, he thinks standing up for yourself is being unkind to the other person regardless of how unkind they are being to you, he conveniently turns a blind eye to the abuse of his friends, but god help you if you try to assert yourself against your aggressor because “you should just be nice to them and eventually they’ll change” like um, and maybe they won’t, in the mean time, I don’t want to put up with their bullshit!

By insisting on this perfect image, they prevent Adrien from growing because you can’t improve perfect. I have said it before numerous times, but Adrien reeks of amateur fanfiction author’s self-insert OC. He’s described as being perfect, he’s good at a lot of activities just because, he’s wildly attractive, charming, smooth, can generally do no wrong, everything revolves around him, the narrative is constructed in a way that usually puts him above the everyone else. The fact that more people don’t realize that, especially the creator himself, is laughable.

“But Cat, Chat Noir gets mind-controlled and thrown around and is goofy and-” Okay, but when Chat throws a tantrum about Ladybug not returning his feelings, who apologizes sincerely? Who is painted as being wrong in that situation? When Chloe puts a train full of people in danger just to play hero for a day, who does he scold? And of the two, who does the fandom adore more? Bonus: who do the Chibi specials revolve around and pity?

Thirdly, they need to actually delve into shit more. It’s season 3, they’ve only been greenlit for 2 more seasons, and what plot do we have? Gabriel wants to bring his wife back from her magical coma, Master Fu messed up something in the past that led to two Miraculouses being lost as well as their temple to be destroyed where presumably everyone else but him died making him the last member of that magical society. That’s it. We don’t know how Emilie got to be the way she is. We have suspicions, but nothing explicit in canon yet. Same with Fu. We don’t know what his mistake was, only that he made one. We barely know any lore about the Miraculouses, the origins, how they were made, when they started working with humans, why they were created.

If you want my honest opinion, with how slowly they’re dragging out this Agreste plot, they could have accomplished it in two seasons if they actually made every episode count and mean something. We get like maybe 1-2 minutes of actual plot relevant information once every few episodes, if that, and sometimes that “plot relevant information” is just the villain learning that there’s a guardian. Hang onto your asses, guys, they’re really laying it on thick for us.

Seriously, they give us breadcrumbs of plot, and they don’t even go into any of the cool shit (like fucking Master Fu and his ancient magical fight club perhaps??) because obviously the villain’s assistant being in love with him despite the fact that he’s married, has a kid, and is doing all of this to resurrect his comatose wife whom he loves and devotes everything to is WAY more interesting and important than all that froufrou magical ass Chinese bullshit, right? Like, this show has all of this Chinese lore and a biracial lead, and they still somehow manage to make it all about white people. but ya know, the French are proud of themselves I guess

Fourth, chunk the status quoyo out the fucking window. I get that this decision may not have been the writing team’s, but in fact a higher up decision, but it’s still a stupid ass decision. For a show that is trying to introduce deeper plot, you cannot progress anything if you constantly have to set everything back to the way it was at the end of the episode, and that much is evident. The relationships are getting stale, characters aren’t developing, plot is moving at a snail’s pace, all because they are so bound by this idea that everything needs to be right in the end to maintain an episodic format. If they wanted to keep the series episodic, they shouldn’t have gone in for all of this lore and backstory that they say exists, but never tell us what it is because that just leaves a lot of people unsatisfied.

Fifth, for the love of god learn how to write dynamic characters. Not everyone needs to be dynamic, but your main cast should probably be. Adrien, I love him to bits, but he is static as all fuck. Which, again, see point number 2. One of the biggest complaints floating around about Stormy Weather 2 is that the characters haven’t changed. With the exception of Marinette, none of the other characters have really learned anything. Adrien hasn’t, Nathalie doesn’t have enough focus to learn shit, Nino and Alya really haven’t, Chloe sure as hell hasn’t, and Gabriel can’t decide if he’s an abusive piece of shit or a sympathetic, heart broken sad man, so I barely count him.

In fact, 3 of those characters’ “development” just revolves around being in love. Nathalie’s “change” is that she for some reason wants to fuck Gabriel (I guess the whole gray-ass pompadour, candy cane aesthetic really does it for her), and then Alya and Nino’s “change” is that they fuck love each other now which them being a couple has basically just become their entire character. They’re barely separate anymore, particularly in Nino’s case more than Alya’s. I’m sure that Chloe’s bit about having changed juxtaposed with flashbacks of her not being nice coupled with how she wasn’t nice in this episode was just for humor because they like to make the point that mean people will never change, but for some reason they still feel the need to teach the protagonist a lesson about being nice to mean people so that they can change, but they don’t do that, they just think that you should keep hoping. :) :) :)

I honestly think that the writers don’t know what “character development” means, and Stormy Weather 2 was just proof of that. All they did was show that the characters have been in a number of different situations, but none of them have really learned anything or grown from those situations, so it’s kind of a weak argument to say that they’ve changed when they’re all intrinsically the same. Except for Marinette because she is constantly the writing teams’ punching bag in all of these morals of the day cause can’t teach shit to perfect boy cause he’s perfect, but of course they don’t reflect on all of the lessons they forced her to learn, what are we, stupid? No, her only importance to the plot is the fact that she loves the boy that the plot really focuses on, so of course her only significant development of character is that she can talk to him sometimes without foaming at the mouth. Not a peep on how she has learned to overcome her jealousy and hotheaded nature, gained confidence in herself, and learned to maturely accept when someone doesn’t return her feelings, a lesson that a lot of us wish good old perfect boy would fucking learn, but he can’t because he’s perfect. :) :) :)

Another part of the problem with characterization in this show, is that often times characters behave in such a way to push the moral of the day rather than giving them established characters. It’s why Alya only questions Marinette’s sources in Chameleon while she just lets Lila claim a bunch of wild shit without batting an eye because she only cares about journalistic integrity when she can use it to beat down her friend so she can learn a lesson about turning the other cheek. :) :) :)

Sixth, pick up a fucking romance novel every once in a while cause hot damn is their relationship progression a heaping pile of hot garbage. Their love drama is so forced and there’s no real development because of the #status quoyo because they must drag this shit on until we’ve all basically lost interest. I’ve seen more people dropping off the love square in the last half season than I’ve ever seen in any other show. Part of that has to do with Adrien becoming a real “nice guy™” but a good chunk of it also has to do with the fact that they don’t really know how to write love drama or romantic tension in a way that makes you care. We all pretty much know that Adrien is never going to figure it out, even if someone grabs him by the shoulders and screams it in his face that Marinette is in love with him, so why should we care? We know that Chat Noir is never going to stop loving Ladybug, but Ladybug is never going to stop loving Adrien so why should we care? We know the show is never going to break the square because they’re endgame so why should we care about the love rivals?

Seriously, Captain Hardrock didn’t give me a reason to care about Luka or ship him with Marinette. I still stand by my opinion that their chemistry was incredibly forced and inorganic, and it still is, and as much as I love Kagami, I wasn’t convinced that she was interested in Adrien at the end of Riposte either. The only reason we know Luka likes Marinette is because Winny said he “fell in love with her at first sight” on Twitter (which the whole love at first sight trope is bullshit, but that’s a post for another day). Somehow in Frozer Kagami was randomly into Adrien all of a sudden, and no one likes to bat an eye about the fact that she told him to change targets because the girl he likes doesn’t like him back and then at the end of the episode when Adrien admits that he still likes the other girl over Kagami, Kagami is all “well, it’s fine. I’ll wait.” like bitch, again on characterization. A strong and confident character like her would know her worth and would show that boy the door. But of course she would contradict herself because they need her for #love drama later even though we all know it doesn’t matter.

I love the love square, and I live for soft moments between them, but I’m ready for them to turn up the heat and give me some actual drama and tension that doesn’t revolve around Chat being a pouty pissbaby or Marinette fucking up another love confession. Cause when you do that too many times, it stops being interesting. You have to throw us a bone somewhere or else we’re gonna stop caring, and lots of people already have.

Seventh, can we please stop pitting all of the girls against each other while the boys just get to be cool with each other? For a show that promotes itself as being a “girl power” show, there are a metric fuckton of misogynistic undertones to this show. See: why does the plot revolve around the boy even though the girl is the slated protagonist. See: why does the girl learn all the lessons while the boy gets to be right all the time. See: why two teenage girls are “the worst things I can think of” while an actual neglectful father gets to be sympathetic and “do anything for his family” uwu

Seriously, I think making Kagami and Marinette rivals while Luka and Adrien are just chill dudebros is so tired. Girls fighting over boys is tired, especially because we have it not once, not twice, but three fucking times in this show. Chloe and Marinette don’t often fight over Adrien, but in Despair Bear Chloe sure as hell didn’t want them dancing together. Marinette initially follows Lila because she’s hanging off of Adrien, and even at the end of Chameleon, Lila makes it known that she is still gonna try to steal Adrien. Kagami basically tells Marinette that she better stop hesitating or she is gonna steal Adrien away, and we have Backwarder where Marinette is basically plotting to cockblock them even though we had Frozer where she decided she wasn’t going to be jealous of them because Adrien liked her. Again, see: characters behaving in a way that is convenient for the plot of the episode. All of the drama is between girls. All of the women in this show are described as being terrible, the worst things they could think of, never going to stop being mean. Seriously. Chloe and Lila? Worst things Thomas can think of. Audrey is constantly shown intimidating her husband who is extremely corrupt himself, not that anyone bats an eye at that. Nathalie/Mayura was described by Jeremy as “making Hawkmoth look like a baby.” Any time they show a man being problematic, they have to bring in a female to be ten times worse, and the worst part is: they don’t even know they’re doing it. #girl power, am I right?

Eighth, speaking of making people bad, can we stop half-assing redemptions? Honestly, they’re so back and forth on whether or not they’re going to redeem Chloe. First it’s “mean people will never get a miraculous” then dingdong, who’s that? Queen Bee, motherfuckers. Then it’s talk about how they’re not going to redeem Chloe then bam bitch, “why don’t you love me?” But even after that they reset the status quoyo and have her go back to being mean. Even after they give her a second chance to be a hero and do good, she still goes right back to being her nasty self. I think they really highlighted in Stormy Weather 2 how much they haven’t changed her at all, and yet somehow she still gets to play the hero.

Additionally, now we have them trying to make Gabriel sympathetic? Boo fucking hoo my wife is in a coma so I terrorize the fucking city on a daily basis, pity me! Also I neglect my son, verbally abuse him from time to time, and I don’t even let him see his friends or feel any happiness, and even though my superpower revolves around feeling people’s negative emotions, I never seem to care about my own son’s unhappiness, but hey, I’m doing it for his mommy, so that makes me better than the 14 year old girl. :D

Shit or get off the pot, Zag. Either you’re going to redeem these characters, or you’re going to leave them the way they are. Make up your damn mind.

Ninth, be diverse in more than name only. For a show that prides itself on its biracial female lead and its ties to Chinese culture, uhh, they spend a lot of time focusing on not those things. I said it before, but they focus all of their plot attention on rich ass white people drama more than the vastly more interesting Chinese lore they have going on. Their black characters were paired together just cause, and their only real important quality now is that they love each other. Their ship is basically their character now, and we barely have a reason to root for them outside of the fact that they’re canon. They have such shallow relationship development that my feet wouldn’t get wet if I stood in a puddle of it. Can we have more on them, please?

This show is diverse only on the surface. They use diversity as decoration then fill everything else with less interesting shit, and even then they get a lot of shit wrong. It drives one of my Asian friends nuts that Sabine’s neckline is facing the wrong direction. (for those unaware of what I mean, it should look like a y. hers is backwards) They use diversity to pat themselves on the back and say they are diverse, but they have no intention of doing anything meaningful with it. It’s just a gold sticker they wanted to give themselves to draw in an eastern market. It’s cheap, and several of us see through that shit.

And last, but certainly not least: Shut the absolute fuck up on Twitter. Just shut the fuck up. Every time Thomas opens his mouth, he just pisses off more people or makes everything more convoluted. Shut the fuck up. Please.

Now, I know a host of you are going to be like “buhhh, it’s a kid’s show, go outside, hur dur, I’m so smart and mature,” but like, honestly that’s a weak argument. Yes, Thomas’s audience is young now and they may not be able to see all of this shit, but when they get older and decide to go back and watch one of their favorite childhood cartoons, all of that shit is gonna come out. They’re not gonna be so naive forever, especially if our generation is raising them, and just because they can’t see all of this shit now, doesn’t mean that it’s not still there just because they don’t notice? That doesn’t make it any less problematic. One thing I love about several shows I used to watch as a kid is that they aged well. When I go back and watch them now as an adult, I find things that I missed as a kid that I appreciate now as an adult. I can’t say that the same is going to happen with Miraculous, especially in this day and age.

Additionally, kids learn a lot through media. I never believed that I was any less than the boys growing up because I consumed a lot of media that taught me that, and going back and watching it over now, I still get that from those shows. Clearly, if you apply two ounces of logic to this show, it falls apart, and that’s not because it’s a kid’s show, it’s because it’s bad writing. I can always see what they are going for, but they always miss just a little bit. sometimes a lot

A lot of us complain because we are concerned with the message being spread to the next generation because those kids are going to grow up one day and be influenced by what they are consuming now. If we teach our girls that the perfect boy is going to chase after us no matter what we say to them and if we teach our boys that in order to be the perfect boy we have to continually chase after the girl until she says yes, how are those kids going to approach relationships? That mentality is actually something that we are trying to combat in the world. That mentality is why rape is so prevalent because we teach boys that they are entitled to a woman’s affection if they’re “nice” to them, and if she doesn’t give it to them, then she is wrong.

Media has an impact on kids, whether we like to admit it or not. Yes, parents can still teach them, but sometimes things get into your subconscious and it can determine how you see yourself and the world. Lots of kids engage in make-believe play where they put themselves in that character’s shoes and play pretend. I just think it’s important to give them the right things to look up to.

#ml salt #ml spoilers #meta #miraculous ladybug

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stark-park · 7 years

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OUAT, Episode 7x01 Thoughts

Ok so overall, I enjoyed it, I think? It's very different. It's the same, but different. @fezfanatic quite accurately compared it to the new Bake Off series: it's the same, but there's different people and only Paul survived. I'm very confused right now. I have many reservations over the new season, the main one being the dramatic change in cast, but I'm hoping the storyline(s) can keep me captivated and invested.

This is the first time I've, well, basically reviewed my opinions after watching something but here goes. Underneath I've listed likes, loves, dislikes, hates and a few general observations. All of this is my own opinion (with a lot of Fez agreement thrown in) so if you don't agree, that's fine. All opinions are welcomed and valid. Likes: - Lucy is with her real mum. That's nice. - I liked the idea that it wasn't Henry's story, but at the same time, I thought the idea was that Henry left Storybrooke to find his own story. I'm not sure about this yet, but I don't dislike it. - Dark Alice, she seems quite cool. Also her lair with the luminous mushrooms was awesome. I definitely wanna see more of her story! - Henry's keys with Emma's swan key ring on. The only reason this isn't in my love category is because it wasn't subtle enough. OUAT does a lot of nods and subtle references throughout the seasons and usually, they're really well done (for example, there's a lot of stuff in Rumple's pawn shop that isn't always blatantly spoken about, the doors in the Mad Hatter's Hat to the different realms and then there's a little picture of a pirate ship in Henry's apartment), but this one was so set up I'm not sure whether to love the fact Henry has the key ring, or hate the fact the camera focused on it for so long that it made me remember Emma is no longer the saviour. It also made me over-analyse it's significance. - Like father, like daughter. The check/plaid is strong in this family 😂 she is definitely Henry's daughter!

Loves: - Henry's leather jacket. It's nice to see that while he's being a responsible motorcycle rider with the leather, I bet he already owned the jacket knowing his mother and step-father 😂 I love it! HE FINALLY UPGRADED HIS COAT! No more black duffle coat for adult Henry. I also love the fact it's brown, it's probably just a good way to go from Jared in brown to Andrew in brown but I like the idea that it's nod to Graham's beautiful leather jacket because that was just 👌

- The portals. I mean, at the end of the day it's just a portal, but damn I like the style. It looks a lot cooler than the season 1-3 portals, in my opinion anyway. I dunno they just look cool okay.

- RUMPLE! He seems really cool but like, DAMN! I'm kinda terrified of him. That twist at the end where you find out he's actually a corrupt cop! (Well, that's what it seemed to imply anyway.) Dayuum man! I also love the fact he's called Weaver (or some other spelling of that, I apologise), like, he was Mr Gold, now he's Weaver. WILL HE EVER HAVE A CURSED FIRST NAME? At this point, I don't care because it's hilarious, the neglect of his first name 😂 I love it.

- Andrew J. West/Older Henry. I really like this guy, I think they did well on the casting here, like he has the same nose as Jared! How he played Henry as well made me actually stay focused on the episode. I also liked the tone of how he said a lot of things because it so reminded me of Emma's sarcasm and I like to think he got that from her.

- I said before I watched the episode, just randomly when talking to Fez, "I bet Henry is an amazing swordsman/knight! He's been practising since he was 11 with wooden swords, he's got his grandpa Charming having taught him and then Hook practising with him too." This guy is quite possibly an expert now and I'm so glad we got to see a scuffle where he pulled out his sword!

- I love Lady Tremaine's take on power. We've had a show dominated by magic and now she's saying that it's not everything is quite refreshing, for a villain anyway. I am intrigued as to how she handles magic in the rest of the season since she clearly has experience with it and I'd imagine we'll see some more magic.

- The new carefree Regina! Just casually sitting on the bar, you know how it is. I love her new hair too! 👌 I hope she's gonna be a lot more carefree throughout the season as she has been in this episode because I really enjoyed it. She's free, she's confident in herself and I like her. Oh and imagine if Henry ends up staying with her, like Emma stayed with Snow, and Roni having a few scenes where she's totally maternal towards Henry. That would be too cute, but it's not a must, just a small cute thought.

Dislikes: - What's going on with Lucy's wardrobe? It might be in fashion I don't know, I'm just not a fan. The longer shirt with the tiny sized jean jacket and then full length coat. I guess I just don't like her jean jacket. It's way too short.

HATES: - Now I know OUAT is not famed for it's amazing continuity, but COME ON! The first scene and Henry's jacket collar is up and down, up and down as if it's the aftermath of my granny chugging a glass of water! Seriously, it's the first scene and they can't even remember if his collar is turned up, or turned down! I might've been able to forgive them if it wasn't so blatantly obvious but it is. URGH! It just really bugged/bugs me.

- Right... my sigh is heavy as I write this one because in all honesty, it was soul crushing. I love OUAT and one of the things throughout the show has been a theme of family, and the fact that you can do anything when you're together. The fact that it was only Regina seeing Henry off into ANOTHER FRICKIN REALM kills me! Henry had clearly planned when he would depart, so why was the rest of his family not there? Maybe we'll find out during the rest of the season because it is only the first episode, there may be plot holes to be filled (however skeptical I am that they will be filled) in later episodes. But if there is no other mention of this scene, then by Once I will be angry! Henry has such a loving family matched only by the Fuller & Gibbler family, in my opinion. Snowing and Captain Swan would never have missed their boy riding off to ANOTHER FRICKIN REALM unless they were physically unable to, i.e. they were dead or already in another realm. It would also have been a lovely opportunity to have had a slightly older Neal and possibly slightly older Robin and Gideon too because episode 1 already told us that Rumple is looking out for his grandson, so it wouldn't have been a stretch to have them all together wishing Henry their best as he starts his new adventure. On his own. It just feels like the writers didn't truly think about this scene. Sigh. That rant is over.

General thoughts: - What's this power struggle between Cinderella and her step-mother over Lucy? We've been here with Henry, Emma and Regina so hopefully season 7 will give a slightly different take on child custody. I'm intrigued nonetheless. - Who's the sarcy police officer? 😂 I hope there's at least, a tiny story about who he is because he is bitter and I need to know why.

- The repeat curse, child believing in curse when everyone else doesn't: we've seen it. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad or good thing. The fact we've seen it will either bring nostalgia or annoyance, not exclusively of course. I think they could have done it differently, imagine if Henry had been the only one to actually remember? He is the Truest Believer after all. But maybe that title has passed on to his daughter now that he is known as The Author? It certainly would've been different to have an adult be the only one remember pre-curse happenings, but I guess we'll just have to see what happens. (Of course, Rumple and Regina did remember the Enchanted Forest during season 1 but they didn't actually try to change everyone else's beliefs, what I'm suggesting is they could've had an adult try to change other adult's beliefs.)

- Does Hook remember or not? There was clearly a baffled expression when he looked at Emma, does he recognise her or not??? My guess, he probably does but maybe doesn't understand or remember where from. And what's going on with his hand? He quite obviously uses it a few times (to hold the book and he adjusts his shirt too using it), so why the glove? Does he have scarring and the glove is a way to shield people's eyes from it? Was he not meant to actually move the hand and the glove hides a prosthetic? Who knows, but I'm excited to find out. "What's in the glove? WHAT'S IN THE GLOVE?" D'you see what I did there? 🤓

That's all I have right now, again, overall I generally enjoyed it. Of course I am a OUAT lover and fan, it is the first and pretty much only show that I have invested my writing skills in because I love it so much. And it's because of this I will continue to watch season 7, but it's also because of this that I hold my own certain skepticisms. I truly hope that all the people working on season 7 don't balls it up because that is the last thing I want to see. I guess, when it comes to season 7, if OUAT goes downhill I will decide whether I accept it as part of the series, or disown it like many other trilogies and shows have done to certain parts of their universe, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor being a prime example. I mean, what? There's a third Mummy film? No there isn't 👀

Here's hoping for good ou(a)tcomes for season 7.

#abc once upon a time #once upon a time #ouat #ouat spoilers #ouat speculation #once upon a time spoilers #once upon a time season 7 #ouat season 7 #spoilers #speculation #thoughts #ouat review #ouat thoughts #ouat reaction #ouat henry #ouat regina #ouat killian #hyperion heights #ouat Hyperion heights

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