#desi.txt

[flowerchildasriel]

I love Lila and Bingo 🥺 Lila’s such a sweet name too I love to hear it

[flowerchildasriel]

Hozier talking about how it feels to be young and being blamed for things that we don’t have any control over 😭😭😭 I think he’s done something similar in jackie and Wilson

[flowerchildasriel]

one thing that drives me bonkers about miraculous ladybug is that they just… don’t even seem to bother making Marinette even enjoy being a superhero. Like hear me out

If it was a badly written show where Marinette is eternally happy go lucky despite the whole universe having it out for her, that would be expected. Like in every other show in the world, she would face obstacle after obstacle and be sabotaged and give up personal goals and dreams and be chased after in her civilian identity and her superhero persona constantly with no rest all because she just loves being a superhero so much!!! Being flirted with constantly would make her happy and she’d probably even flirt back! Because she’s a character in a story and if the writers want to, they’ll just MAKE her do it.

But that’s not what happens in Miraculous Ladybug. No. Marinette is anxious every single day. She scrambles and crams and struggles and has a literal panic attack on screen. She’s breaking down and not enjoying a single moment of being a superhero, of being a guardian. She rebuffs the flirting, every single time, and she hates it. Visibly hates it, canonically asks him to stop, and when she’s not perfect in these horrible circumstances, she gets punished by the narrative. Marinette is abandoned frequently by her friends and partner, who leaves her to fight alone in what could explicitly mean the literal death of every person in Paris. She takes the sabotage of Lila personally, she feels the hurt everytime something goes wrong and uses it to make her feel even worse. Marinette is fighting so hard against the narrative and to nearly no results except her own pain.

And the writers let her do that.

I just want to know what the hell that means. Because it sounds like Marinette has agency, like she’s actively resisting the narrative choices. But she doesn’t… because she’s literally a character. THEY write her, they write her every action. If they are writing a cheery girly cute superhero story, why do they torment her and make her act like this? If they are writing a serious superhero drama show, why do they pretend that none of it matters at all and it’s just so much fun, when they make her act like this?

It’s honestly a little fascinating to me that she’s the lead character in this story, but the writers act like she’s their main enemy and she seems to fight tooth and nail against their writing decisions, when in reality she’s literally a creation at their whim. This whole problem that they’ve created? Is entirely of their own doing.

But then, we wouldn’t have our Best Girl Marinette and all her complexities.

[flowerchildasriel]

something I love to see is like. How fandoms treat villains differently and I think you can really see it in miraculous ladybug and the villains of Lila vs Hawkmoth

(cw HP) like it’s analogous to Harry Potter and how the fandom treats the villains of Umbridge and Voldemort. I’ve seen others say that Voldemort is such a far away and cartoony evil that it’s hard to relate to and feel threatened by… but Umbridge? She is every single teacher that hurt us, the uncaring and actively malicious authority figure in our school or work life, and the bigotry in the education system and legal system given a face. So she represents a much more close evil than the end of book villain, which is why fandom fixates on her and projects everything on here

And that’s what I think is happening with Lila in salt fics. Why she’s so demonized in comparison to Hawkmoth in those fics. (This is not to relate it to the canon because the canon isn’t supposed to be projection fuel) but really, most of us aren’t haunted by a distant evil man in a tower, we’re just not going to relate to that part. But most people have had that middle school bully who seemed to have it out for us. We’ve had friends with lying sides who made rumors about us or hurt us with fake sweet words, and Lila is just a stand in for everyone that did those things. We can project all of our anger and hurt on her, making her a demon because that’s how we felt about our bullies. And genuinely, no one really got justice or closure. Zero tolerance policy hurt the bullied kids just as much as the bullies, if not more in how it never really put a stop to bullying.

Maybe that’s why Lila can be so over the top in fics, her comeuppance so grand, and Marinette so willing and able to cut ties with toxic friendships. It’s wish fulfillment. We wish our bullies got what was coming to them, we wish we were able to walk away from things that we once loved but now was hurting us.

Idk, I just love it.

[flowerchildasriel]

I really wish we could have seen Ember enjoy playing with glass more than we did! I mean, she fixes the front display window easily and makes the glass vivisteria flower with even more ease.

I wish we could have seen her fix the display window room with just a little bit more flair to show how she isn’t just good at doing it but likes it more than anything else in the shop. I would have loved to see her room!!! Maybe seeing some of her own glass designs decorating her shelves. Seeing her trace designs in glass idly, smiling, or pause in her deliveries to admire glass sculptures or other windows, or try to make stained glass for the shop windows only be scolded about using her time and energy for better uses.

[flowerchildasriel]

definitely noticing a pro-Wendy lean to season three episodes. I’m guessing they saw some Wendy and Judo dislike hanging about… so she’s not just a poor next door neighbor in their shenanigans

wow, this was the episode I was actually watching and thought about writing this

[flowerchildasriel]

perhaps I read too much salt fic. perhaps it warps my perception of the characters and storylines. perhaps I should actually watch the show at some point

should i

you should

definitely not

did you accidentally hit the button for the poll and not know how to turn it off

Voting ended onMar 7, 2023

Referring to that other post I made… Am I being dramatic to say that Marinette has perhaps never enjoyed being a hero? I don’t know.As a character, she’s very complex. She’s a very responsible girl. I can you that at fourteen I certainly wasn’t anything close to her level of maturity, trying to be a fashion designer and helping in a storefront, while doing class president things and also being the 110% friend… all while dealing with interpersonal issues like bullying and harassment. And then the superhero things on top of that.

Marinette is also a girl defined by her obligations. She is obligated to help her parents as a dutiful and caring daughter. She is obligated to help her friends as someone who seems to not have had many before, she seems to think she has to be everything to keep them. As class president, she feels obligated to be the complete opposite of Chloe’s neglectful dictator style. She is also obligated to save Paris because it’s life or death on the line here, the miraculous has chosen her and no one else.

The only thing that Marinette has chosen is to be a fashion designer. That’s like the only thing that is hers alone. I mean, for the most part. Until someone asks her to make things for them, and then that becomes another obligation.

Considering how streamlined/simple her superhero outfit is, perhaps it’s something that she’s neglected in favor of everything else, on purpose or subconsciously? Maybe it’s that she doesn’t want to mix something she loves with something she has no choice in doing. You can see her outfits getting more detailed or expanded on with the merging of miraculouses, though, which may just be the bare minimum she can do at the moment.

Anyway! Back to my original point. I think salt fics are a fantastic way to interpret canon. Because it’s very honest and biting in that honesty. Oftentimes, canon events seem to happen quickly or some parts of it are implicit in meaning , or have to be connected with past episode plots to get a sense of what is going on. And when you work directly with canon, things kinda blend into each other and you get a sense of what is normal and expected in the canon framework and you kinda get numb to it. I love saltfic because it tears you away from that numbness and lays out the events in very simple and outraged words. In an episode, Marinette is told to do something and fails, and is punished by the narrative. In another, Marinette is told to do something, does so, and is punished by the narrative. You get used to that formula in episodes and only when you rear back do you think that’s not right. Marinette is trying her best, and is beset by contradictory instructions and punished no matter what! That isn’t fair. That outsider perspective helps too, that you don’t get bogged down by background characters that only matter for a single episode or a single scene, or dialogue that is way too “teenagers being written by adult men”. You only get the things that matter, the key notes of the timeline. You’re able to connect the dots a lot quicker about things that just don’t add up or things that don’t make sense anymore.

Same with characters. I know people aren’t always big fans of bashing but I think it’s also a great way to learn about characters’ traits or what people see in them that are then taken to the logical extreme. Example: Ms Bustier! A teacher who lets kids get away with just that too much and expects a lot more out of the others. Taken to the logical extreme, a neglectful lily-livered teacher who lets the bullies run her class into the ground and asks her ‘gifted’ students to lift it back up instead of taking a firm stance herself. I was going to give Alya as an example but her specific salt character is too divided. Maybe just a general overview. Alya is determined: she works hard to find out the superheroes’ identities, working on her blog, making her ships sail. In salt, taken to the extreme, she’s pushy or bossy, and doesn’t hear the word no or listen to advising against her actions, bullheaded. That’s just the salt fics I’ve read at least.

Anyway! Sorry to word blab all over your timeline again. I like thinking about salt fics and how they characterize and shape their narrative. It’s such a breath of fresh air compared to canon because it’s straight to the point, honest, and cathartic too. I even love bashing! Because it’s just like making what is implied become explicit. Like caricature! What defines this character? Oh, they’re placid and helpful to their friends? They’re a doormat. Oh, they’re happy go lucky and sweet? They’re an oblivious sunshine child. Oh, they’re short tempered? They’re a ticking time bomb for sure.

Isn’t fandom just so great? To see everyone with their own take on the same characters…

[flowerchildasriel]

Important hyphen dash distinction here:

In Hozier’s new song, Swan Upon Leda, is the line:

Where the god-child soldier Setenta stood dead

or is it

Where the god child-soldier Setenta stood dead

Because I love the imagery of a god-child, the forever child cursed with too much power and responsibility. A little sweet boy burdened , and butchered as Hozier put it, being turned into a soldier too early, forced into that life.