Rant about the way people criticise Nathaniel Kurtzberg's story in Miraculous Ladybug!
Have a crude doodle before I get too far into it
Okay.
"they're overusing the bad parent trope" "I don't feel bad for Nathaniel atp" "I don't like him anyway because he's an arsehole"
Firstly, all the parents are different and they all exist. Good and bad. Now you wouldn't say there are too many good parents, would you? In the real world, it's not one rotten apple in a basket of good ones. It's a real mixed bag and it's a real ambiguous one too. Nathaniel's parents are very common but they hurt their kids so silently, so sneakily that it goes by unnoticed and the effects of it are passed off as the kid being rude, selfish or narcissistic. It's fucking hard to find this rep in media, and when it does happen, most people who don't understand parents like Shirel (and the no-help Mr Kurtzberg who is a kind of parent often paired with the strict and verbally aggressive kind) just see these characters how they would in real life, even when they witness the parent's treatment of the kid. I think it's because it's so easy to dismiss a bad attitude as something silly and fixable, because the cause and effect isn't as easy to grasp as a concept as families like Ivan and his dad where the problem is right there because crime and violence are so clear. It's easy to call Ivan someone with a heart of gold but reacts aggressively because of his father and because he doesn't know how else to react. It's not so easy to call someone like Nathaniel good when you see his flaws pole through, because it's all so suppressed. It's the bad stuff on the inside and good stuff on the outside, reflecting his home life. Except it's so hard not to seem fake and it's hard to seem all lovely when you're like him, cause all you can do is shut up and do as you're told. Being polite can be worn on the outside, but you can't have real "sweetness" just bubble up cause that comes from the inside, probably suffocated by every bit of anger, frustration and insecurity trapped beneath the layers and layers of perfectionism and conformity.
People don't understand how calculated the cruelty of parents like Shirel are, and how calculated their kids become to feel safe. It's so precise, just enough to keep themselves out of trouble. See, people can rightfully criticise you for physical abuse, abandonment, isolating the kid from the outside world, but not so much for forcing your kid to have a specific career path or not praising them when praise is due. Things like physical abuse and isolation are done just enough to still go unnoticed.
The result is a kid who feels the need to earn everything. Earn attention, earn praise, earn love. A kid like Nathaniel isn't the kind who would react poorly because they don't know what else to do, they calculate exactly what to do and how to do it. Exactly how to please people, as well as literally everything else. So when something doesn't go as planned, they snap! It can't be their fault, they worked so damn hard to make sure it was right, so it's someone else's fault. Hence why Nathaniel ripped Marc's book imo.
These kids don't feel loved and can't want to feel loved, cause who are they gonna get it from, mummy and daddy? Be so fucking serious. What they seek instead is approval. That's where a lot of writers get it wrong. They make the kids all sad but nice when they seek that approval, when in reality, these kids are really tough. They're on survival mode and they will fight for it and they'll do anything to prove they're right or become right. They have their eyes peeled but ignore their emotional needs, or y'know develop sociopathic traits.
I've seen people say that Marc deserves better, and okay sure, nobody is obligated to like or be nice to anyone, but I see Marc as someone who saw Nathaniel's flaws and chose to stick around, which is so so important and hard to do. Marc lets Nathaniel feel like he's enough, and feel loved. Only then can Nathaniel heal and break what is usually a cycle of abuse/generational trauma. Without kind people around him like Marc and Alix (though in my head canons, Alix is similar to Nath in some ways except it's not the same source of trauma so she outwardly expresses herself much more), he'd either be completely alone or be friends with people exactly like him with the same parents and it would be so competitive and toxic, or they collectively maintain their ways and suffer together.
And I'll be honest, people are tired of watching others deny their pain. Characters like Nathaniel let people who have parents like his do a bit of self reflection and realise their pain and articulate it better. Don't say you don't like how Nath and his story are written just because you don't get it. Stop looking at things so black and white, cause lord, that gets me going. If you haven't experienced a parent like Shirel or seen the utter numbness on a kid's face as their supposedly loving mama tears apart their self worth again, maybe sit and have a fuckin think. When school teaches you about the grant metanarratives, maybe it's not useless and not solely for writing an essay on a Shakespearean play.
thanks for reading this novel of a rant if you did! Sorry if I repeat things and whatnot, I didn't exactly write it on a document and edit it before posting
Edit: oh it might be worth mentioning, there are so many critics who don't like The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath or My Year of Rest and Relaxation because the main characters are unlikeable, insufferable, bad to people around them, etc. These books have their flaws but characterisation is not one. Surprise, depressed people aren't gonna act like a perfect, functioning human being with ethics/morals on the forefront of their minds.
