I Mean, Adrien Didn't Always Fuck Around. In Season 1 (the Best Season In My Opinion) He Still Got The

I mean, Adrien didn't always fuck around. In Season 1 (the best season in my opinion) he still got the job done. The most goofing he did was making cat puns and joking about the situation, but he was always dependable and still helped save the day.

It's just that later on, they decimated his personality more and more until he's more comic relief than an actual hero who's meant to learn and grow.

You probably know better about the show making it seem like he's doing Ladybug a favor by screwimg up so she could focus; I had always thought Adrien's character just got degraded to a shadow of is former self. But if that's true, that they're trying to sell a narrative that Adrien being so unserious and a complete goofball in serious moments somehow helps Marinette, well.... I guess the show is more messed-up than I thought in trying to sell narratives.

And unfortunately, they can't just write him off like that. I don't want Adrien to get written off, but at this point, it's hard to believe the show will even improve him at all. After all, it's Thomas Astruc, and he's basically admitted that Adrien is a prize made for Marinette.

The show itself seems to impliy that Adrien's only useful if his repress his personality. Like they really wanted to kill the true selves theory, but honestly i think I prefer that over this.

I really don’t know what they were thinking making it so Adrien is consistently coddled out of making any changes that would improve his performance as a hero

I’m sorry but I’m just not buying into the idea that letting him fuck around to his heart’s content is in any way better than expecting him to control himself a little and do a better job

Because, iirc, they’ve showed us on at least two occasions that he can be focused and efficient if he wanted to, he just repeatedly chooses not to. Not only that, they also try to make it seem like he’s doing maribug a favor by regularly messing up fights bc otherwise she’d be too busy swooning to focus herself.

Get for fucking real

If he’s not gonna shape up, he should ship out

Write him off and replace him with someone that cares

My cousin had to write a text about her favourite food for her english homework. Her favourite food happens to be a (swiss) dish called Fotzelschnitte (sweet, fried bread similar to French Toast; Armer Ritter in standard German).

Now. When she put the word Fotzelschnitte into google translate, it turned out that google translate isn’t familiar with the word Fotzelschnitte (or the word Fötzel/Fotzel for that matter), and it simply translated the words it did know, resulting in the funniest sentence my cousin’s english teacher will probably read this year:

Now? Well, this is the current list of characters with a messed up home life: Kagami, Zoe, Chloe, Adrien, Felix, Luka, Juleka, and probably Lila. Add in Rose's serious illness, Mylene's mother abandoning her, and Marinette's traumatic past dealing with a straight up hate campaign on top of all the trauma introduced over the course of canon and I just don't care anymore. I am drained dry. They have introduced way too many serious elements without exploring any of them in depth and that is a massive writing faux pas.

Should really say something about Fairy Tail then. Natsu, Erza, Gray, Lucy, and so many other characters all had a tragic backstory one way or another, but one: they all varied in weight and depth; and two: they were all given their dues to be explored and to add substance to the characters, while also making sure it stays relevant throughout the story even if the arc is finished.

Natsu lost his only family when he was young, Igneel, and it added substance to his persistent philosophy of family; Gray lost his only mentor and pseudo-parent, Ur, and it's shown through how he uses his magic, and his tragic backstory is explored later on; Lucy lost her mother and later lived a neglected and miserable home life (sound familiar?) and while it's not shown in much of her life, her love for her mother is shown with how she literally writes letters to her and how she treats her spirits, and her family issues are also explored later on; and Erza, who was kidnapped and endured all sorts of horrific abuse in the Tower of Heaven before escaping, showed how that experience shaped her in her manner and her artificial eye, while also having her backstory also explored later on.

And there's so much more of them in Fairy Tail, in different guilds and different people that also vary in the stakes involved. Jellal, Oracion Seis, Loke, Mavis, Lyon, Ultear, and more. Their backstories are even mentioned in passing, even if it's not surrounding the trauma in general but memories related to said issues.

Goes to show that having multiple characters with different tragic backstories isn't inherently bad from a story perspective—if you do it right. The problem is that a majority of their "tragic backstories" are mentioned once and never talked about again. The Couffaine twins, Rose, Mylene, and Marinette all got a feature episode, and then go bye-bye afterwards. It never impacts their daily lives, or how it impacts their lives afterwards.

Others—like Kagami, Adrien, Felix, Chloe, and Zoe (iffy on this one)—might get the multiple-parter specials, but it's either mentioned in one episode, gets dropped for several more, and then mentioned in a later one as if they've been telling us about it the whole time; or it gets banged out in a row and never mentioned again. In the end, there's no build-up, no proper exploration, no lasting impressions; the "traumas" are just used for plot or excuse their behaviors (unless you're Chloe 'cause God forbid she ever had anything bad happen to her that she didn't deserve.)

I highly doubt any of these will ever be focused on in Season 6, because TA wants us to focus primarily on Marinette and her life; and to explore anybody else's trauma or tragic backstory, the camera needs to focus on them. But it likely won't, since anything that has to do with other characters has to do with how it impacts Marinette.

Do you think they should have made Colt a good father to Felix? Or are you fine with him being a bad father?

I don't think that Colt should have been anything. He died off screen before we even met Felix and Felix is a minor character. Why is he getting more backstory development than Kagami when Tomoe is alive and actively involved in the plot? Wouldn't it have been far more interesting if the play was her story?

But if we must include the mustachioed cowboy man, then I would make him a good father or, at the very least, a mediocre one. I'd do this for reasons that have nothing to do with me wanting Felix to have a happy childhood. I'm fine with him having a tragic past! The problem is that this is a story and, in terms of story telling, there is no reason to give him a tragic past. It adds nothing to the story. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that it detracts from the story, but we'll get to that in a minute. First let's go over why it's a pointless addition.

In his titular episode, Felix is a brat who tries to destroy Adrien's life. Those actions actually made more sense when we thought that Felix loved Colt and was acting out over Adrien not coming to Colt's funeral. Now that we know the full story, we're left asking, "Okay, so, why did Felix do any of that?" And don't say that it was to help him get the ring because it didn't help him get the ring. He got it from hugging his uncle and there were far simpler ways to get a hug.

And why did Felix even want the ring? That has yet to be explained because, in Strikeback, he was planning to go out of the country as "Adrien" without ever offering to exchange the ring. He simply stole the fake peacock and got out of dodge. He had no possible way to know that Ladybug would come to him for help, allowing him to offer up the miraculous and use the ring to sweeten the pot. I also don't believe for one second that he needed to sweeten the pot. He could have offered up the miraculous and nothing else and Gabriel would have gone for it. So once again, what was the plan with the ring, Felix? What was the plan?

While we're on the topic of Felix getting the peacock, Colt being abusive adds nothing to that plot either. Whoever has the peacock can snap any sentimonster out of existence. Felix could have the best damn childhood on the planet and it would still make perfect sense for him to want the peacock!

The only reason to make Colt abusive is if you want to explore that and use it to develop Felix's character, but I have absolutely no faith that they're going to do that. Colt is the Jagged Stone nonsense all over again. They're introducing a very serious issue that would dramatically affect the psyche of most people and then acting like it's no big deal. I think I saw someone say that Colt was only introduced to shut up the people calling Gabriel and Emilie abusive by showing us "real" child abuse as if abuse was an Olympic sport and you need to qualify for the team. I'd buy that theory, but I wouldn't bet money on it.

Even if I'm wrong and they are going to explore Felix's trauma, I still think it's a bad move. There's a thing called compassion fatigue. It's commonly experienced by health care workers who deal with traumatic cases day in and day out, resulting in thing like the inability to feel compassion for your patients because your compassion meter has been rung dry. You can experience a lesser form of this just from watching the news. Story after story of people in need to the point that you're desensitization to these events evoking horror or sorrow.

When you're telling a story, you need to keep this phenomena in mind and be very careful when introducing multiple sources of trauma. The more trauma you introduce and the quicker you introduce it, the less impactful that trauma will be for your readers. If you're a good writer, then it will also be less impactful for your characters. Allow me to explain with a quick example.

I had a brief Marvel phase and, while I never wrote anything for that fandom, I made up a few stories in my head. A lot of them revolved around my favorite character, Tony Stark (aka Iron Man). Tony becomes Iron Man after being kidnapped by terrorists and I love confessions of traumatic backstories, so I was working out how to do one for him and the Avengers to help bond the team. Then I realized that his teammates are all orphans and that the majority of them were raised in poverty. Most of them have also gone through scientific experimentation of some sort and not all of it was voluntary. In other words, in the world of the Avengers, Tony's trauma isn't really special. His team might sympathize with him, but they wouldn't be deeply impacted by his story the way I wanted them to be because most of them have gone through equal or worse trauma.

Circling back to Miraculous: they keep heaping trauma on these kids and it's a terrible move. When Adrien was the only character with a messed up home life, things were interesting.

Now? Well, this is the current list of characters with a messed up home life: Kagami, Zoe, Chloe, Adrien, Felix, Luka, Juleka, and probably Lila. Add in Rose's serious illness, Mylene's mother abandoning her, and Marinette's traumatic past dealing with a straight up hate campaign on top of all the trauma introduced over the course of canon and I just don't care anymore. I am drained dry. They have introduced way too many serious elements without exploring any of them in depth and that is a massive writing faux pas.

Generally speaking, when telling stories, you should default your characters to whatever a happy home life is in their universe unless you're going to do something with the non-happy home life. Non-happy home lives complicate stories and you don't want to introduce a complication if you're never going to explore it. This is why I think that Colt should have been at least a decent parent. It's also why you'll see me say that Emilie should be at least a semi decent parent even though canon has made that option impossible unless you ignore a lot of the unpleasant implications found in Adrien's backstory.

While I love evil villain couples, Emilie is in a coma, so she can't be Gabriel's co-conspirator and I personally have no interest in her waking up to start a new villain arc. When she wakes up (or finally dies), the Agreste's story is over and so she basically has to be nonthreatening for that ending to work. It also circles back to the issue of keeping the trauma tight and focused so that the trauma you do include really pops!

Reminder that the above is a discussion of story telling, not a commentary on what makes real people interesting or the commonality of home life issues. There's also nuance I didn't get into because this was already really long. Writing trauma well is a really fascinating and complex topic.

Thank you for answering! Putting this into one of many notes about Spanish 😄

Sorry about this question, since it might be a bit vague, but I just want to be informed.

There's something I came across, where "tengo qué" means "I have to". Why? Is "qué" a versatile word that has multiple meanings, depending on context?

Yes and no

qué "what" is considered different from que "that/which", and then sometimes has idiomatic uses with other verbs

tener que + infinitive is "to have to do something" [in Spain and in older Spanish you sometimes see haber de + infinitive]

That's considered a more idiomatic usage of it, but like tengo que hacer la tarea "I have to do the homework", or tengo que hacer unos deberes "I have a few chores to do" is considered an idiomatic expression of tener; and the que doesn't have any specific grammatical meaning

But it doesn't have an accent mark

-

If you see qué it's an unknown thing, a "what". Primarily it's questions, but it can just be an unknown noun

If I saw tengo qué I would interpret it as ¿tengo qué? "I have what?"

The que without the accent mark is often "that/which", a word that connects clauses [two or more subjects and verbs]

In other words, es un lugar que conozco "it's a place that I know"; the que separates es "it is" and conozco "I know", separate subjects and verbs

...

There are other uses of que as idiomatic, like in some commands or indirect commands; very different from what you were asking about so I don't want to confuse you

Is there a reason why hijas only means "daughters"? Or is it just one of those "it's just Spanish rules" things?

Another dumb question, if you don't mind!

I see it often that hijos means "children", but when I google if "hijas" mean the same thing, I'm getting mixed signals. One answer I got from my look-see is that somehow, if you say hijos, it means "sons/children", but if you say hijas, then it's exclusively "daughters".

Is this correct? If it is, why? Is it another one of those nuance questions, or is it a regional thing?

Yes, the default word for "children" is hijos which is also "sons"

But if someone asks ¿Tienes hijos? "Do you have children?" you might say Sí, tres hijas "Yes, three daughters"

hijas by itself only ever means "daughters"

Thank you! 🤗 Because this was screwing my head over, and Google wasn't helpful in the slightest.

Another dumb question, if you don't mind!

I see it often that hijos means "children", but when I google if "hijas" mean the same thing, I'm getting mixed signals. One answer I got from my look-see is that somehow, if you say hijos, it means "sons/children", but if you say hijas, then it's exclusively "daughters".

Is this correct? If it is, why? Is it another one of those nuance questions, or is it a regional thing?

Yes, the default word for "children" is hijos which is also "sons"

But if someone asks ¿Tienes hijos? "Do you have children?" you might say Sí, tres hijas "Yes, three daughters"

hijas by itself only ever means "daughters"