Richter10's Writings

[trishacollins]

The idea that teenagers need to "pay" for their mistakes boggles my mind.

Teenagers are basically primed to make mistakes. That's kinda the whole gig. Just old enough to do stuff on their own and still figuring out how to weave in and out of it. It’s worse when they start out as well intended mistakes. Imma be real here, i am a parent. I have a teenager. Sometimes she makes mistakes and learns something. Sometimes she just goes "maybe I didn't break the rules the right way."

So here is the thing. Marinette is 15. 15 is a special age. Later curfew, grown up feelings without grown up knowing, and the unfortunate urge to "handle it yourself".

She has also been handed the literal weight of the world. Which. No 15yo ever is ready for that, and she already had anxiety and imposter syndrome before that started. She is getting terrible advice but she is at this point someone who is suffering under lets call it "chronic trauma". Over and over over again the narrative has demanded that she and only she is responsible for everything that happens around her, to her and through her. She has once used nearly every Miraculous in very short order, and has now fused the cat and ladybug - which I have mentioned is likely incredibly dangerous.

How are people looking at her as some sort of evil villain? People lie about grief all the time. We try to make things gentler. We lie at funerals. Marinette feels both that she failed to save Gabriel and that she as good as killed him. (If she'd been a few seconds faster, he wouldn't have died. That's not rational or right. But it is what she is feeling.

She is a kid. Wrong choices - maybe? Good impulse. Sure. We can give her that. But as much trauma and pressure as she was under at the moment and is still under *now*? From the people she trusts? From the adults around her? Was it a choice that Marinette made or a situation where the window is broken and she's the one left holding the ball?

Learn from it? I have so much fucking compassion for this little girl that at this point I am just rooting for her to *survive* all of this. This is a lot of complex trauma for someone who is already carrying so much. She doesn't need a lesson. She needs a hug. And like yeah, pick your own fandom experience and all that. I have a big block list. But I was 13 when I first joined fandom spaces. And the prevailing attitudes in mlb fandom as a whole make it unsafe for teens and holding hard lines about responsibilities for trauma and trauma reactions.

Life is not a lesson. And trauma doesn't teach anything but an overly active stress responce. So for the teens in mlb fandom - I hope you feel like you can share the hurts you are carrying with a trusted person, I hope they make you feel safe and heard. I hope the only lesson that you learn is that people can be good. Not all of them. Not all of the time. But enough of them to matter. It doesn't matter if the hurts behind those lies are big, small or silly. You deserve to be heard and not to suffer in silence so you "learn."

[wolflover2426]

THANK YOU FOR THIS!!! Like I understand why she chose to keep her mouth shut when London Special dropped and quite frankly, I’m exhausted that people seem to have no grasp or grace for a character making mistakes especially as a teen girl (Female main characters that are hated by majority of the fandom for behavior and mistakes while always giving grace to the other characters WORSE than her will always be my favorite and I will defend them)

[nobodyfamousposts]

It boggles my mind that the people who have been blasting Marinette for keeping secrets and “getting away with it” after she was manipulated by a supervillain are the same ones who have been vehemently defending Chloe and Lila as “poor abused teens manipulated by a supervillain” who actually HAVE gotten away with it.

There is intent. There is willful desire to cause harm vs a desire to protect oneself and others from harm. There is reveling in lies vs the burden of lies.

And through it all, regardless of the situation, the hate is going to the person who is actually TRYING.

Trying to protect.

Trying to help.

Trying to be good.

Trying to make up for her mistakes.

Trying to simply FUNCTION without accidentally causing the destruction of an entire city by accident with every choice she makes.

Doing all this while effectively being the ONLY responsible party and the one to apologize and be accountable in every situation that goes wrong.

And yet they insist that not only is she the bad guy but that she isn’t suffering enough.

Make it make sense.

[headspace-hotel]

thinking again about TvTropes and how it’s genuinely such an amazing resource for learning the mechanics of storytelling, honestly more so than a lot of formally taught literature classes

reasons for this:

basically TvTropes breaks down stories mechanically, using a perspective that’s not…ABOUT mechanics. Another way I like to put it, is that it’s an inductive, instead of deductive, approach to analyzing storytelling.

like in a literature or writing class you’re learning the elements that are part of the basic functioning of a story, so, character, plot, setting, et cetera. You’re learning the things that make a story a story, and why. Like, you learn what setting is, what defines it, and work from there to what makes it effective, and the range of ways it can be effective.

here’s the thing, though: everyone has some intuitive understanding of how stories work. if we didn’t, we couldn’t…understand stories.

TvTropes’s approach is bottom-up instead of top-down: instead of trying to exhaustively explore the broad, general elements of story, it identifies very small, specific elements, and explores the absolute shit out of how they fit, what they do, where they go, how they work.

Every TvTropes article is basically, “Here is a piece of a story that is part of many different stories. You have probably seen it before, but if not, here is a list of stories that use it, where it is, and what it’s doing in those stories. Here are some things it does. Here is why it is functionally different than other, similar story pieces. Here is some background on its origins and how audiences respond to it.”

all of this is BRILLIANT for a lot of reasons. one of the major ones is that the site has long lists of media that utilizes any given trope, ranging from classic literature to cartoons to video games to advertisements. the Iliad and Adventure Time ARE different things, but they are MADE OF the same stuff. And being able to study dozens of examples of a trope in action teaches you to see the common thread in what the trope does and why its specific characteristics let it do that

I love TvTropes because a great, renowned work of literature and a shitty, derivative YA novel will appear on the same list, because they’re Made Of The Same Stuff. And breaking down that mental barrier between them is good on its own for developing a mechanical understanding of storytelling.

But also? I think one of the biggest blessings of TvTropes’s commitment to cataloguing examples of tropes regardless of their “merit” or literary value or whatever…is that we get to see the full range of effectiveness or ineffectiveness of storytelling tools. Like, this is how you see what makes one book good and another book crappy. Tropes are Tools, and when you observe how a master craftsman uses a tool vs. a novice, you can break down not only what the tool is most effective for but how it is best used.

In fact? There are trope pages devoted to what happens when storytelling tools just unilaterally fail. e.g. Narm is when creators intend something to be frightening, but audiences find it hilarious instead.

On that note, TvTropes is also great in that its analysis of stories is very grounded in authors, audiences, and culture; it’s not solely focused on in-story elements. A lot of the trope pages are categories for audience responses to tropes, or for real-world occurrences that affected the storytelling, or just the human failings that creep into storytelling and affect it, like Early Installment Weirdness. There are categories for censorship-driven storytelling decisions. There are “lineages” of tropes that show how storytelling has changed over time, and how audience responses change as culture changes. Tropes like Draco in Leather Pants or Narm are catalogued because the audience reaction to a story is as much a part of that story—the story of that story?—as the “canon.”

like, storytelling is inextricable from context. it’s inextricable from how big the writers’ budget was, and how accepting of homophobia the audience was, and what was acceptable to be shown on film at the time. Tropes beget other tropes, one trope is exchanged for another, they are all linked. A Dead Horse Trope becomes an Undead Horse Trope, and sometimes it was a Dead Unicorn Trope all along. What was this work responding to? And all works are responding to something, whether they know it or not

[headspace-hotel]

An incomplete list of really useful or interesting reads from TvTropes.

please note that yes many of these are concepts that exist elsewhere and a few are even taught in fiction writing classes but TvTropes just does an amazing job at displaying the range of things that can be done with them

legitimately so much of the terminology I use to talk about storytelling, and even think about it in my own head, i learned about from TvTropes

Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Watsonian vs. Doylist

Trope Tropes, for all the ways tropes are used, deconstructed, subverted, and played with.

The Oldest Ones in the Book, which is basically my favorite thing on the entire Internet

Punk Punk, for -punk subgenres

Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness, Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism

The Weird Al Effect is a fun one

Chekhov’s Gun, Chekhov’s Boomerang, Chekhov’s Skill, and further variations

Law of Conservation of Detail

Law of Conservation of Normality

Anthropic Principle

Word of God, Death of the Author

Sliding Scale of Fourth Wall Hardness

Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness

Genre Savvy

Flashbacks and Chronology breaks down all the ways you can handle chronology in storytelling

Show, Don’t Tell is a very good breakdown of what is showing, what is telling, and how both can be used effectively.

Lampshade Hanging

Noodle Incident is just fun imo

Genre Title Grab Bag

Fridge Horror

Rule of Cool, and also Cool of Rule

The Smurfette Principle

The Hays Code - not a trope but a very good breakdown of how the Hays Code affected storytelling in film

this is just a really short list of examples I encourage people who write or otherwise create stories to browse around on this site it’s so useful

[thesaltofcarthage]

Informed Attribute is one of the ones I reference most often as an editor. 

[musicalhell]

Theory of Narrative Causality is one of my personal favorites, because it's kind of fun when a story acknowledges that things are happening in the story because that's what makes it a good story.

Also Applied Phlebotinum, because sometimes you don't need to know how something works, it just does, and that's all that matters for the purposes of the narrative.

[midwinterhunt]

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

[richter10]

Because this is the pattern I noticed:

Every time that a fanon or AU Marinette meets their Canon version - it is always to criticize and say how wrong her decisions were (and always assuming the most selfish motivations) - no matter the point in the timeline or her mental state was at the moment.... Meanwhile, in the Paris Special, Canon Marinette tried to empathize with and help Shadybug...

I just wish to read at last one AU/Canon meeting where the AU!Marinette is honest enough to admit that if she was in the same position than Canon Marinette... she would have done the same decision - or at last understand why the canon self did that choice and not assume the worst.

[richardsphere]

"Meanwhile, in the Paris Special, Canon Marinette tried to empathize with and help Shadybug…"

Didnt marinette literally lecture Alternette about how "Alternette hadnt really suffered as much as cannonette" and how alternette should understand how much stress cannonnette was under for having to deal with Chloe and Gabriel? About how Marinette's diary should've shown Alternette how cannonnette is the one who truly suffered amongst the two of them? I think @uwouldthink was the one who did a whole analysis of how much marinette spends her entire talk with Alternette speaking about her own struggles, and demanding that Alternette pity her about it while shaming her for reading the diary. About how she just kind of bragged about how much better Cannonette is for pulling herself up by her bootstraps for dealing with a cartoonishly inneffectual bully, which she insisted was totally worse then implied-dead-parents and a critically failing healthcondition and actively dystopian setting of the crossover.

Marinette: If you read my diary, then you'd know, it's not all that easy. Everything often hangs by a thread. I too was very angry, I too was hurt. I too was scared. And I still struggle with all of this everyday. You don't need any magic jewel. Powers didn't change my life. I changed the way I saw myself. I decided to love myself. To love the world around me. And I decided that I could fix what was wrong in it. I'm sure that if you changed the way you see yourself and your world, you'll be able to fix what's wrong with it too. Just like I do here, every time. You can fix it all.

Like yes, it ends on a note of "You can be better", but its not empathy or an understanding of Alternette's struggles that leads to that conclusion. Its "You're me, and I bootstrapped myself against Chloe who is so much worse, so you'd be a pussy if you couldnt bootstrap yourself too". Thats not empathy, its self agrandisation and bravado. Its a boast and a challenge, and it works because if there is one thing both Marinette's cant stand its feeling "lesser" then someone else. its alternette's pride and refusal to be "lesser" to cannonnette, not Marinette's empathy or understanding of Alternette's struggles, that changes her for the better.

[tallwriter]

Tell me, do you think Marinette was always that prideful, or only later on?

[richardsphere]

certainly grew with time. In that there was always at least a small degree to which she considered chloe more "insulting" then "scary".

But i do think the majority was a late-addition to the character.

[richter10]

Respectfully, I seriously question that take on the confrontation between Ladybug/Marinette and Shadybug - watching the scene, Maribug did not came as saying that her suffering was bigger, but she was saying that she passed through similar (not identical) experiences that Shadybug and that a different response was still possible for Shadybug. Marinette was using her own experiences, yes, but as a way to reach Shadybug - maybe there was better ways to frame or spell it? Yes, possibly.

But the empathy and the intent to reach out was still there.

It was seeing that a different response was actually possible - Marinette trying to reach her - that helped Shadybug to change for better.

[richter10]

Secrets, Master Fu and the Plagg Problem

One thing that Marinette have been criticized since the beginning of the show is that she "does not trust Chat Noir".

But this does not hold water: - her first main secret was her identity, except that *Tikki* told her to keep her identity secret from Chat Noir because: (1) to guarantee the security of the other partner, if one of them were akumatized and, (2) otherwise her Miraculous would be taken - this is a rule that the Guardian (how we later would discover to be Master Fu) enforces. - her second main secret was the very existence of the Guardian, Master Fu - who asked her to keep it secret. People argue that Marinette should have told it to Chat Noir anyway because "he deserved to know" (I would argue that it is Master Fu that have the responsability to reveal such information not Marinette).

The reasons why Marinette obeyed Fu's decision deserve a discussion in separate - since their discussion in the episode "Siren" implies that Marinette does not agree with the secrecy and was trying to convince Fu to talk to Chat Noir - or at last give her permission to reveal that the Guardian *existed* - again an information that she was forbidden to tell.

But how Marinette met the Guardian? It was only because Tikki decided that Marinette was ready to meet him, and forced the issue.

The question is: why in-universe Plagg - who does not care for rules or duty in the same extend of Tikki - just did not take Adrien to Master Fu and forced the issue?

I neven see this question being discussed - since a priori there is no reason for Plagg nor being able to do what Tikki did.

[pandaofsecrets]

Except that Syren happened after Marinette already showed up to Fu's alone, and neither she nor Fu brought up what Cat Noir should know until that very episode. They both just seemed to assume that he shouldn't know right up until he brought it up, and then they went "Oh shit!". Marinette not being allowed to tell Cat Noir because something something Fu forbid it is just a nice bit of retroactive justification on the part of the writers.

What actually happened is the writers wanted her to have access to all the secrets without having to share with Cat Noir. That's usually the logic behind most decisions the writers make with Marinette (the making a mistake and learning a lesson every episode thing, her "taking on other people's burdens", etc.). If they didn't do that then Marinette would have to share plot relevance, or even take a back seat sometimes, and the writers can't have that.

[richter10]

Except that Syren happened after Marinette already showed up to Fu's alone, and neither she nor Fu brought up what Cat Noir should know until that very episode.

That is more a consequence of the writers only raising a point when they are about to use it for drama than the characters themselves.

And even so, the way the scene played out gave the impression that Marinette did raise the point with Master Fu before the scene in Syren.

[richter10]

Venting a little... but the idea that the show would be better if Adrien was the protagonist (or Alya, or Felix, etc) instead of Marinette does not make sense for a reason:

The show would still be written by the same writers.

And the writers would use the same plot points for Protagonist!Adrien that they used for Marinette. Because the writers clearly want a very specific scenario, Adrien in this alternate version of the show would probably have the Ladybug, while Marinette have the Black Cat, and one of her parents would be Hawkmoth.

In the superhero plot, Adrien would be the one to keep secrets from Cat!Marinette about Master Fu and the identity of the other miraculers, he would be the one to commit a mistake that would led to Master Fu losing his memory and becoming Guardian, he would commit mistakes that lead to akumatizations, he would be the one stressing out due Guardianship thinking that he could not share it, he would be the one whose gift would lead to Chat Blanc, he would be the one to tell his identiy to someone other than NOT Cat!Marinette, he would be the one to lose all the Miraculous to Hawkmoth, he would be the one to face Hawkmoth (one of Marinette's parents) alone and keep his identity secret from the world and from Cat!Marinette and say that her dead parent was a hero, and prevent her to discover the truth. In the romance plot, Adrien would be the one unable to spit it out, the one that would be jealous of the boys talking with Marinette, he would be the one that would humilated the Lila-equivalent, would try sabotage the Kagami-equivalent, would have her agenda, and so on.

Because the writers want to use these specific plot points with the protagonist, whoever they are - and in this scenario, Adrien would be made to fit the plot points, and not the other around.

The problem is not Marinette - it is that the show clearly wants these plot points. Changing the protagonist would change some details - but the main story? It would be the same...

[brenni-murasaki]

[thowawayuntilfurthernotice]

Hang it in the Louvre.

[richter10]

It is funny that Lex considers Superman his enemy... while *Lois* is the one that clocks his lights out! XD

[fuckyeahcomicsbaby]

Different Stories Resonate with Different People

[lovingmyselfishard]

I will always reblog this.

[brightwanderer]

I once spent three hours scouring the internet to find this comic again, I will not let that be repeated.

[beardedmrbean]

[richter10]

I know that showing the protagonist and their antagonists as foils is a standard literary device but...

I just wish that the writers stop "showing" the supposed "similarities" between Marinette and her enemies (Chloe, Lila and Gabriel) and FINALLY start to show how ultimately different she is from them...

[the-big-mood]

I didn’t realize there were so many people getting destroyed by mattresses 😂

[theswordofdamntheseknees]

I love these so much.

[genjichu]

[varanusniloticus]

Pet dragon 🐲 [by Ryoko Kui]

[crustystherat]

Random thing for people to consider is that since Laika is the saint of one way trips should Felicette be known as the saint of safe landings since she did make it back to the ground safely

[somefishycat]

tu LANCES félicette ? tu lances son corps comme la fusée ? oh ! oh ! prison pour les scientifiques ! prison pour les scientifiques pendant Un Mille Ans !

[bug-yogurt]

You can understand the French perfectly fine with only context but the English translation I got still had me floored

[fangirlsovertoomanythings]

The way that most of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories’ most horrible villains are rich dudes that are abusive to women, in a time such as the 1880’s, compels me.

[gardnerhill]

There’s a whole subset of Sherlock Holmes stories that could be labeled Asshole Guys Try to Control Women’s Money.

[three--rings]

Yup, there’s a huge number of times where Sherlock Holmes is the ONLY person to take a young woman’s complaint or worry seriously and finds out someone is up to some serious evil.  Holmes also shows a lot of compassion and empathy with the victims over and over again.  (This is why I find “Secretly a woman” or “Trans” Holmes headcanons much more convincing than “sociopath” Holmes.)

[waterhobbit]

I am never going to shut up about how much I specifically love The Adventure of The Copper Beeches because it is literally Sherlock Holmes listening to a young lady he does not know except as a potential client, agreeing with her that a potential job she has interviewed for that she thinks is SUPER SKETCHY is, indeed, sketchy as fuck and when she says she’s probably gonna take the job anyways because the money is good and she needs it going “OKAY I GUESS but for the love of god please write to us so we know you’re okay we will literally drop everything and jump on a train if you want us to”.

The job turns out to indeed be sketchy as fuck, she writes to them, Holmes and Watson drop everything and jump on a train when she asks them to. I read this story for the first time when I was twelve and it made a HUGE impression.

[three--rings]

This is also the basis for a lot of speculation about Holmes’ family life.  The idea that he has been a victim of abuse, or his mother was abused (or even murdered by his father.)  There’s definitely SOMETHING that makes him very aware of how dangerous isolated families can be, and the dark things that can happen behind closed doors.  Plus, of course, the motivation to devote himself to stopping crime.  And yes, so much of it is of the personal type. 

[volkswagonblues]

dude see this is one aspect of the original books i NEVER understand why modern remakes (cough cough) don’t go all in on. Like, in the 21th c we HAVE all the dumb forensic shit that made Victorian Holmes stand out, but we STILL DON’T HAVE uh….you know, compassion for women and minorities, or the willingness to believe them, adequate community support for domestic violence or hate crimes, etc. etc. which you’d think is exactly where a renegade consulting detective would come in handy. A good modern day Sherlock Holmes remake, instead of trying to convince us that Holmes is some super genius for being better than fingerprint analysis or whatever, could have him just be…a good person who helps out people the police can’t and won’t help. There you go. That’s how to write a relevant modern Holmes.

[fahbee]

One thing that annoys me is how much the BBC version of Sherlock (and the fandom around it) focus on police cases or cold cases.  In the stories, Holmes’ bread and butter cases had fuck-all to do with the police and in a few stories, he actively works around/against them, or outright lies to them.  Of the many, many things I wish that show had done differently, this is one is particularly obnoxious since it’s such a gimme.

[tiger-in-the-flightdeck]

There were very few actual murder cases in the Canon, and Holmes handled them either one of two ways:

Option one: The murder victim was innocent while the killer was an abusive bastard, see Speckled Band. Conclusion, arrest and have the killer charged (Or in the case of Speckled Band, indirectly murder him yourself then shrug and go home)

Option two: The victim was murdered to protect someone that the victim was abusing, or for vengeance, see Boscombe Valley, Devil’s Foot, Abbey Grange. Conclusion, Oops, I don’t know who the killer is, I am suddenly incompetent, oh look a pheasant.

[faejilly]

#my favorite murder in holmes canon#is when they straight up witness a lady murder her blackmailer#do nothing except destroy his other blackmail material#and then straight up lie to lestrade about it#sherlock holmes#more of this in modern adaptations pls (via @cactusspatz )

[muffinworry]

Let’s not forget the time Holmes helps a young woman who’s being catfished by her own stepfather to steal her inheritance, and when the villain sneers that the law can’t touch him, Holmes grabs a horsewhip out of sheerest chivalry.

[richter10]

People criticize Marinette for her choice to lie about Gabriel.

OK... understandable. But in a post-Wish Universe?

I wonder if Gabriel actually have more control (or influence) over Marinette than we give "credit" for...

[richter10]

Looking to what people suggests that "should" happen in the show ("Miraculous Civil War", "Chat going Villian", "Ladybug going villains") can not really happen because two factor: - The show is Y7+: it means that it targets (from broadcasters perspective) kids from 7 years-old to 14, outside from it is bonus audience. So any plot will be written with that demographic in mind... and some of the suggested plots would work better for the *bonus* audience (14 and up) than the target one... - Not only the show is strongly episodic, but the episodes look like written so the episodes could be broadcast in any order (at last within the season)... and the suggested plots would require a stronger serialization to work....