#character core

[tvishaeuphoria16]

Zelast Core

Credit to @eternallyhisgoddess for the art shown on here, just thought I'd add it lol

Ofc, this is inspired by @loruleanheart and @lize-the-prophet, along with my fanfiction.

[muri4n]

Fame is a Gun is so Jorel Lagos.

[loopscereal]

Freddy y Fred

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What are your thoughts on Nathaniel as a character?

One piece of praise that I'll give Miraculous is that they did a good job with the minor side characters for the first three seasons. While none of the side characters have been super developed - which isn't a flaw, they're side characters - there's enough there for people to see genuine potential in them. That potential comes from the fact that all of the pre-season-four teens feel like unique individuals that add diversity to their world. None of them are interchangeable which is why almost every side character has at least a few fans who have latched onto that character and will defend them with their lives.

I have nothing against that. It makes perfect sense! If you've fallen in love with a minor side character and love to play with them then more power to you! However, this is a writing blog so we're going to talk about this from a writing perspective not a fan enjoyment perspective. Before we do that, I want to quickly define some rough levels of character importance. Note that there's some gray area here, but I need terms to work with for this discussion to make sense as "side character" is simply too broad a category for this discussion to make sense without some reasonably clear sub-categories.

Character "Levels" in Order of Importance

Main characters - the characters that the story revolves around. If you remove them, then the story falls apart because they're a foundational part of the narrative. Examples: Gabriel and Marinette

Main side characters - the reoccurring characters who aren't needed for the story to function, but who have a clear unique-and-narratively-important role in the story. Remove them and the story requires massive rewrites. Note that I said role, not character or even job. Examples: Alya who is Marinette's best friend and Nathalie who is Gabriel's confident, partner, and many other things

Minor side characters - reoccurring characters that have some level of character development such as having a clear personality, interest(s), and/or relationships. These characters may be given narrative importance in one-off episodes, but their important role will be episode-specific and not something key to the overall narrative. Examples: Kim, Rose, and most of the other teen characters

Background side characters - characters that show up in multiple episodes, but don't have an actual character. They're just there to fill out the world. Examples: Chloe's butler and the lollipop baby

One-off characters - characters that only appear in a single episode. Examples: characters who were only created to become akumas like Mylene's dad who became The Mime and the sculptor who became Copycat

Nathaniel's Place in the Narrative

If we look at the above list, then Nathaniel is a minor side character. He has clear personality traits, interests, and even some clear relationships, but he has no role in the overall narrative. He's not the a main character's best friend or rival. He's not a serious love interest. He's not a mentor or a villain. He's just one of Marinette's many friends which means that you could cut him from the show and the story would still work perfectly fine as the only friend who really matters to the narrative is Alya. That doesn't stop you from making a role for Nathaniel in a fanwork, but it's going to be something you made up not something you're pulling from canon even if it's based on things from canon.

That may sound odd to some since Nathaniel has a full-time miraculous so he's clearly a member of team miraculous, but that's the problem with team miraculous. Over half of the reoccurring cast is part of team miraculous! That means that being a part of team miraculous now holds the same narrative weight as a person being a part of Marinette's class. It's not a well-developed team with unique roles as you can see from the answer to a very simple question: how did Nathaniel earn his miraculous?

Answer: he was physical present when Marinette needed enough people to fill out a football team and Marinette decided to honor that one-off assignment when she handed out permanent miraculous.

That issue is not unique to Nathaniel. Most of team miraculous got their miraculous because Marinette knows them and not because they did anything to prove themselves worthy. Team miraculous is more Ladybug's pokémon than Ladybug's trusted team or even just her valued coworkers. That brings us to a good general rule that you can use to differentiate between main and minor side characters: can a person be told everything they need to know about this character in less than a minute? Let's do a quick exercise to show what I mean.

If Kagami is used in an episode, then any or all of the following may be relevant information: she's a sentimonster, she's Adrien's ex, she knows Ladybug's identity, she and Marinette used to be rivals, she's dating Felix who is Adrien's cousin, she's the holder of the dragon miraculous, she knows the truth about Gabriel, she's the daughter of Tomoe who is some sort of villain that used to work with Gabriel

If Nathaniel is used in an episode, then any or all of the following may be relevant information: he likes to draw superhero comics, he's dating Marc, he's the holder of the goat miraculous, and he used to have a crush on Marinette

As you can see from this list, there are things about Kagami that cannot be quickly communicated to the audience. You have to watch the whole show to understand her. That makes it hard to use her character in an episodic show.

Nathaniel doesn't have those issues. Someone can catch a random episode about his character and have no trouble following along as you can see if you look at these four episodes where Nathaniel gets focused attention: The Evillustrator, Reverser, Gabriel Agreste, and Penalteam. You can watch those in any order and get what's going on. Watch Kagami's episodes out of order and you'll be lost.

This means that Nathaniel is arguably a better addition to the cast because Miraculous is an episodic show. I'm not surprised that he already got a one-off episode in season six because that's why shows like Miraculous have large casts of narratively unimportant minor side characters. They're filler fodder that's there to allow the writers to tell lots of stories without making the show feel too serialized.

My Thoughts on Nathaniel

I'm not the kind of person who delights in developing stories around minor side characters. It feels too much like writing original fiction and I have plenty of original fiction to work on if I want to do that. When it comes to fanfiction, I want to focus on canon's big story elements, the main characters, and/or the main side characters. I'll happily elevate a minor side character to a bigger role if I feel like I need them for the story to work, but I don't force it even if I love the character. For example, my favorite minor side characters are Juleka and Rose, but I rarely ever use them because they're like Nathaniel. They have no clear narrative role that only they can fill so I'm not going to force them into a story when I don't need them. Kill your darlings is a golden rule for a reason!

Nathaniel doesn't make my favorites list, but I don't have any strong negative feelings for him either. I see why people like him, but nothing I've written or even just thought up has him acting as core member of the cast. In my opinion, the core cast is bloated as hell if you're trying to tell a serialized story so I look for people to cut not for ways to add in all of the larger cast. I cut basically every teen but Luka, Kagami, Chloe, Alya, Nino, Adrien, and Marinette. Even then, that list is often shortened to the main four or even the main two depending on the story. I only use all seven in a full rewrite scenario. All of the other teens are limited to minor cameos because they just aren't needed to tell a good canon-focused story and I'm only interested in stuff that focuses on the main elements of canon.

All that being said, I do have one minor way that I might use Nathaniel in the context of a canon rewrite. I like the idea of expanding his crush on Marinette to give Marinette a common teenage experience that feeds her anxiety and explains her crush issues. For this to make sense please note that I usually age the cast up to their first year of lycée. That way they're just a little bit older and it makes a little more sense for all these new kids to be showing up. Also note that this isn't meant to make Nathaniel look bad. No one looks bad in this setup. That's why I like it!

I like the idea that Nathaniel and Marinette were somewhat close in collège. Not best friends, but long-term classmates and mutual members of the art club who got along and spent a decent amount of time together. This led Nathaniel to develop a crush on Marinette. He kept quite about the crush for a long time, but when the end of collège loomed close, he bolstered his courage and asked her out. Marinette anxiety babbled an incredibly awkward, but not unkind rejection.

After that, Nathaniel started avoiding Marinette. Marinette freaked out and tried to fix things. After a few over-the-top fixing attempts that ended poorly, Nathaniel told her that there wasn't an easy fix to this. That it's okay that she rejected him, but it hurt and he needs some space to get over her. She asked how long and he said that he didn't know. The answer ended up being longer than the remaining school year. Collège ended and they went to different lycée so their relationship just kind of ended. No reconciliation but also no animosity. Life just moved on.

This experience fed Marinette's anxiety, leading her anxiety-brain to draw the conclusion that confessions are a bad thing. After all, Nathaniel had a crush on her for ages and everything was fine. The problems only came post-confession. This means that confessions should only happen when you're certain that both parties want to date. Because of this, Marinette will do everything in her power to avoid a romantic confession from a friend. She also refuses to confess her own feelings until she's certain that the feelings are mutual. She's not losing another friend to a crush!

As you can hopefully see, nothing about that paints Nathaniel as a bad guy. It just takes his one-sided crush and uses it to give Marinette issues around dating without those issues being serious trauma that needs professional intervention. Instead, it's just a normal and relatable teenage experience that she needs to work though. I use Nathaniel for this because he's the best fit for it. He canonically had a one-sided crush on Marinette, they're canonically in the art club together, and he's a minor character meaning that I don't need to give him and Marinette a reconciliation arc like I would if I used Nino instead. Plus I like pairing Nino and Alya and Nino is Adrien's best friend so giving Nino and Marinette a past just feels needlessly complex.

Since this may come up, I'll note that I also wouldn't use Luka for this because Luka and Nathaniel aren't interchangeable. While they're both artists of some kind, they're still wildly different characters with contrasting personalities. Luka is absurdly laid back. When Marinette rejected Luka, he was cool with it and their friendship could have continued unchanged if it weren't for Marinette not knowing how to handle things. Nathaniel would not act that way. He's a pretty passionate guy making him the kind of character who would need space. That's the kind of character I need for this idea to work.

[cherryleeeatspapaya]

Decided to make another version, CGI era James core

Sorry reupload cus idk why tumblr think this is a mature content when it's literally just my silly red pookie doing silly stuff

[cherryleeeatspapaya]

Feeling bored so I decided to make Model era James core video

He is so memorable in the classic model series I swear omg I love him so much

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The fandom can't make up its mind on what's supposed to be a joke and what's supposed to be serious because the show can't either half the time. It's a tonally disjointed mess that wants to have absurd over-the-top humor as well as a plot and moments of drama, romance, and angst that demand you see the characters as people and feel for what they're going through. Except you can't do that without also treating the dumb bullshit in a somewhat grounded way. Like, you're still dealing with the same characters. You can't just go "Oh, that? Let's ignore that!" the moment it's no longer convenient to you. You've opened this can of worms and now you have to sleep in it. So, every character flip-flops between two different versions of themselves depending on what the writers need in any particular scene.

This is not to say surreal humor can't be used right alongside characters you're supposed to empathize with, Teen Titans (not Go) did that and it worked. It's just that the absurdity can only come from the setting (Mad Mod, Mother Mae-Eye, pretty much anything Control Freak is in) or from designated joke characters (Date With Destiny). Teen Titans never had the main characters acting in clearly absurd ways as the butt of a joke unless those characters were brainwashed somehow, because the writers knew that would ruin any of the more grounded moments they wanted to write. The writers of Miraculous missed the memo on that one.

I don't disagree. A perfect example is Derision where the show takes all of the bad jokes about Marinette's crush and decides to take them seriously as if you can possible take them seriously without making Marinette come across as unhinged and dangerous. You can't, which brings us to the topic at hand: how do you even begin to understand these characters when the show is constantly making character-breaking choices?

My approach - and the approach I recommend others take if they're going to keep watching the show - is to focus on the characters' cores and reject anything canon does to violate those cores. I don't argue for this stance because I love the characters so much that I only want the good things to count. I take this stance because, if you don't, then the characters fall apart. There is no way to make them work as fully realized characters while embracing every choice canon has made. Miraculous has massive characterization issues that go well beyond the humor.

For example, Adrien has multiple moments of terrible behavior that are played in a serious manner such as the moment in the episode Frozer where he tries to start a fight with Ladybug in the middle of an akuma attack because she wouldn't accept a rose from him earlier:

Setup

Ladybug: I can't accept this rose from you. I told you already. I'm in love with someone else. Cat Noir: I know, M'lady. But if he weren't here, would things be different between us? Ladybug: Well, you know, I can't even begin to imagine him not being here. I'm sorry, Cat Noir. I really gotta get going, and you better do the same. (Swings her yo-yo to head back home; Cat Noir is sad, looking downwards, with one petal of the rose falling.)

Payoff

Ladyice: Cat Noir. We need to set up a trap for whoever turned the city into a giant ice rink. (throws yo-yo) Icecat: (bitterly) My feline instincts prefer to track and observe before I attack. You go your way, I'll go mine. Ladyice: Please don't tell me you're mad at me about the rose. Icecat: There may be a certain chill now between us. Ladyice: I get it, but we should really focus on saving Paris right now. Icecat: We don't always have to do everything together, after all. It's not like we're a couple. (skates away)

There's no way to argue this off as a bad joke. While Adrien has every right to feel hurt, those feelings don't excuse him acting like a pouting child in the middle of an akuma fight. It doesn't excuse him acting like this at any point! Ladybug is not a villain for telling him no. She wasn't even mean about it!

I clearly fully agree that Adrien looks awful and selfish here, but I'd still argue that it's not something that should be used to define Adrien's character if your goal is to tell the "ideal" version of Miraculous. "Ideal" being the version that canon seems to be going for based on the overall picture we can sort of make out if we back way, way, way up and look at the extremely abstract picture canon is clumsily painting.

Unless canon is going to do something monumentally stupid, Adrien is Marinette's endgame romantic interest. It's also clear that there is no plan to cut him from the team. He's going to be Chat Noir for the rest of his life or at least well into his adulthood. This means that he is supposed to be a good hero who deserves his miraculous just like he's supposed to be a charming and cute romantic lead. These are the two things I keep in mind when trying to shift through canon to figure out what writing choices I should fully embrace and what writing choices I have to either ignore or treat as true flaws that get an actual character arc. In my book, either approach is fine because most of the characters are deeply flawed at this point and you can't give them all arcs without bloating the story to nonsense levels.

My goal with this approach is never to say, "oh, that moment shouldn't count in terms of how people feel about the character." It's more, "that moment goes so hard against who this character is very clearly supposed to be that I can't take it into account if I want to tell the kind of story that Miraculous is trying (and clearly failing) to tell."

As an example, let's list off Adrien's worst behaviors. The things that make him look terrible:

He sucks at communicating his needs and feelings, leading to multiple moments where he gets mad at Ladybug for things she's totally unaware of

He has quit or considered quitting without warning multiple times and only one of those was because of something he did "wrong" (NYC Special)

He puts his feelings before the safety of Paris on multiple occasions, even going so far to purposely miss akuma fights to see what happens

He is incredibly pushy about his crush, often ignoring Ladybug's feelings on the topic by continuing to bring it up even after she asked him to stop

There have been multiple instances where he almost cataclysmed multiple people in a fit of anger

His love for Ladynette isn't strong enough to let him break free of things like akumas and nightmare dust even when he's looking her in the eyes making him a pretty crappy romantic lead

People will argue that some of this behavior makes sense for his character because of the abuse that canon has technically introduced, but that the writers seem blissfully unaware of. I don't disagree with that argument, but that doesn't change the fact that none of this is acceptable behavior for a hero and Adrien is a hero who keeps doing these things. A sad backstory doesn't give you the right to behave poorly without consequences.

At the same time, if I fully embrace these elements of canon, what I get is an Adrien salt fic where he loses his miraculous for good while Marinette finds her real true love or even just a non-salty fic where Adrien leaves for his own meatal health and gets replaced by someone who can handle being a hero right now. Canon's not writing either of those, so the only way to engage with these flaws while enjoying canon or aiming for the same end goals as canon is to say, "I guess this doesn't count" or "I guess I need to tone this way down and work through it via a character arc" or even "I guess that was just a bad joke maybe?"

That is the essence of what I mean when I call myself a writing salt, character sugar blog. It comes from looking at canon and seeing that there's simply no way to embrace the worst moments and the best at the same time. We're not dealing with a coherent plot and/or complex characters. We're dealing with a nonsense plot that will warp the characters to bizarre shapes to make random ideas work even if those idea go wildly against canon's end goals.

As an example, Glaciator and Frozer should not exist in the same universe or, at the very least, something should explain why Chat Noir randomly changed his stance on Ladybug's crush from acceptance to pushiness. As is, the pieces don't fit together. The behavior is too contradictory. Remember, this is how Glaciator ends:

Perhaps Ladybug will love me someday. I mean, like, I love her. I have to believe. In the meantime, her friendship is the best gift of all.

Where did this version of Adrien go? Why did he regress in Frozer? There's no in-universe reason. It happened because the writers weren't ready to let the love square date or grow close, but they also wanted the love square to cause drama, so Adrien ends up looking terrible just like Marinette ends up looking terrible when it's her turn to cause love square drama. Her terribleness takes a different flavor so it can be hard to realize that this is a systemic issue, but that's what it is. It's deeply frustrating, but it also clearly stems from cheap writing and not quality characterization.

This is also why my stance is that canon as a whole only supports my Doyalistic core-character analysis style of approach. The writing is too poor quality to do Watsonian analysis where you embrace the full picture and try to put it all together. The closest I'll get to Watsonian analysis is pointing out how much the writing botches a Watsonian take by showing you all the way the writing contradicts itself, twisting into a nonsense pretzel of frustration where the payoffs never satisfy! (See the season four rant for an example or anything where I talked about Chloe's supposed damnation arc.)

There are even characters where canon is such a total mess that you can Doyalistically argue for two separate takes! Gabriel is a perfect example. He is all over the place and his ending was so poorly handled that you can make strong arguments for writing him as a cold-hearted villain or a sympathetic villain without the end result feeling like it spits in the face of canon because both takes maintain his one core element: villain.

That's the big thing I keep in mind when I look at the characters and the lore and the plots and try to come up with versions that the average fan would like. I don't think that there's one true version of any of these things, but I do feel comfortable saying that there are versions that will very clearly only appeal to people who are salty about a specific thing that canon did poorly. That's not who I want to appeal to in my adaptions, so while I'm not going to argue that those takes have no backing in canon, I will argue that those takes are not supported by canon as a whole. Embracing them requires you to take the worst parts of canon at face value while ignoring what canon is clearly trying to do with the overall story.

I get the appeal of that, but it's not fun for me because that approach feels like rolling around in the mud with the pigs. I don't want to sink to canon's level! I want to have fun! That's why I talk about how to make canon into its best self, not its worst self. If you want its worst self, just go watch the actual show. I will be shocked it if disappoints you.

[escapefromtomorrow]

sometimes when I tilt my head, words fall out. I should probably do something about that.

it starts at first sight.. it starts when words fluttered like butterflies from your brilliant mind through your gorgeous mouth. they hit my ears like waves on the shore and travel through to my soul. You've permeated my core, into my lungs, pumped into my blood. You travel vast miles of veins and arteries, and into my heart.. body and mind interconnected by your existence. You've connected my dots and I make sense, all with one sight, your presence.