I think the main difference between Star VS and MLB - and the reason why I do like Star vs and not the latter - is that SVSFOE feels really earnest???
Like it obviously fumbled its message and it’s execution was bad. But it was desperately trying to say smth and create a good story. Most of its flaws feel like the result of inexperience in the medium or lack of direction.
But MLB is plain mean spirited with a director who is more concerned with his own fetishes than any story he could create
Tragedy! You set out to read a negative review of a piece of media you dislike, only to find that the critic is being completely unfair to it and making a bunch of bad, unsupportable arguments.
Me:Â âDisney live action remakes are soulless cash grabs that deny the original writers and artists the credit they deserveâ Some fucking chud:Â âExactly! They never should have started wokeifying all their moviesâ Me:
Woah I absolutely love you analyses on MLB. What do you think of the female friendship in MLB?
Anonymous
This took way longer than originally planned.
Hereâs the thing
I donât think that MLB was that bad in season 1. And arguably, season 2 still has some leg to stand on.
And that carries on to friendships.
You see, we can break down friendships in this type of show into four.
This is one we see in most stories that DO NOT focus on team dynamics or getting to know a bunch of superheroes. Sakura Card Captor, for example, has the best one of these. Theyâre not meant to take center stage, but more like provide a sense of unity and calmness around the craziness thatâs going on.
And while I cite CardCaptor, Creamy Mami also has it. And Sailor Moon has it in the very first season. Tokyo Mew Mew has two characters that fall here too.
This is where I say most of the characters in MLB fall to. If things had stayed here, I do not see a problem. The lack of depth isnât a bug but a feature. While we can connect with them, their purpose, narrative wise, is to create fun scenarios and plot outside of the others superheroes.
But as things progressed they tried to make this sort of already bland group of characters into a cohesive united team. And it was never going to happen. Maybe if they had competent writers it could have worked, but itâs still unlikely a competent writer would have tried this.
The way you introduce characters is extremely important in the way that theyâre perceived by an audience. If they entered the scene as a Vague Friend Group, it would be so hard for them to change into anything else. This is also why redemption arcs are so hard. Itâs forcing your audience to accept a sudden change in the status quo. If thatâs what youâre trying to do - it works. But if youâre doing it just to sell more toysâŚwell it falls flat on their face. Not to mention, the classroom is not exactly filled with particularly interesting or cohesive characters. Their attitudes, relationships towards each other and Marinette change drastically from episode to episode. The only noteworthy rships are often time m/f, and the only f/f friendship we have thatâs any sort of consistent or interesting is Juleka and RoseâŚwho are dating.
Iâm not gonna be the first to shit on a wlw couple specially when itâs probably the most interesting thing in this series - but itâs kinda weird how the only type of decent rship that the writers can do are ROMANTIC ones. Friendship seems like a fucking joke to these people.
Also theyâre a LOT. Working with dynamics between characters is super hard, and the less characters you have to juggle with, youâre able to create better and closer relationships with each other. Having such a HUGE classroom be the center of superhero dynamic is plain lunacy. Unless this is the focus, and was intended as such since day 1, there was no way this was gonna work or be a natural transition from the 1:1 chat ladybug dynamic.
They work as a vague group of friends, but utterly fail as anything more. Both because of its size and lack of cohesion, or depth.
This one is the civilian friend. The one who supports the heroine but never truly knows the identity of their friend. Theyâre there to provide support before the rest of the cast comes into the picture.
This is the Molly in Sailor Moon and Hitomi from Madoka.
Theyâre not really meant to be besties with the MC, even if they are so in name. Itâs more of an extension of the aforementioned vague friend group. They mostly provide plot beats with a slightly more personal stake since this is someone the heroine has spent so much more time with.
THIS is where Ayla from Season 1 falls, and why I did not think she was too bad of a friend. Sheâs here really for providing comforting words when Marinette is down and a fun side story that doesnât feel too disconnected from the main story.
However. The reason why these two worked was, precisely, because the focus of the show was the LoveSquare and Chat and Ladybugâs dynamic.
Sakura can have a relatively bland side friends (although theyâre all fairly entertaining) because the main focus of the story ISNT them. Itâs her Card Journey and interpersonal relationships with Tomoyo, Syaoran and Yukito.
Likewise, Molly is allowed to be a not so great friend, because Usagi has other friends.
If you want these characters to be the bulk of your interpersonal rships, you have to adapt them. Kaito St. Tail had only one friend, who actually falls with the Civilian. However, she plays a huge part of her story by being the one to send her on the missions. While her biggest rship was with Astro Jr, Seira provided a huge amount of emotional support and was given enough dramatic weight to be able to earn herself a recognizable spot. In any promo art that features the characters, she appears! Because sheâs important!
But what they tried to do was expand upon these characters in aâŚless than ideal way.
First of all they tried to shift Alya from Friend (?), to Friend â˘âŚ
A Friend ⢠is the best friend. The gal pal. The one who is always there and even if itâs not outright stated - we know theyâre the first one the MC will turn to if something happens.
Think Winx Club and whoâs Bloomâs Best friend? Stella. Shugo Chara, whoâs Amuâs friend? Either Nadeshiko or Rima (depending the season). They are part of the friend super hero group so the MC Can whole heartedly confide in them. Any problem that arises is one they instantly tell their best friend and theyâre the mature one who help them get through.
And Ayla is not this.
Even as she transformed into superhero she did not know Marinetteâs identity, so all emotional support she could have provided in that front was essentially flushed down the toilet. If at the very beginning, Ayla had been made aware of it, there wouldnât have been an issue. After all, it would have cemented her as someone Marinette places a lot of trust into, perhaps even more than Chat, either bcs she was there when he wasnât or only the fact she knows the ârealâ her.
Anyways, since that did NOT happen, Ayla failed as a Best Friend â˘, narratively speaking. If they had let it die there, it would have been awkward but not terrible.
But then in season 4 Marinette confesses sheâs is Ladybug.
At this point, thereâs no real connection with Ayla. Chat is someone who deserves to know her identity more, and someone whoâs supported her for far longer in many more forms. It just doesnât make sense for her to confess.
Except, of course, trying to shoehorn the Best Friend ⢠too late into the series.
This is all entirely from a narrative perspective, and does not begin to touch the fact that Ayla isnât exactly the /best/ of friends.
Someone who trust Lila rather than her friend sheâs known all year, someone who jeopardizes her best friendâs identity over her fucking boyfriend, who in her darkest hours isnât there for Marinette, and that breeched her friends privacy to satiate her own curiosity over her secrets.
She has no leg to stand on to be the Best Friend â˘.
Yeah this was sort of what I talked abt in the big Magical Girl Essay. This is actually, what I would argue, the most important friend character there can be in a magical girl setting. Not only does it serve as playful banter but as a contrast to the main characterâs ideals and temper.
I tend to include any character that has a rivalrous rship with the MC, be it the villain or a fellow superhero. They donât have to be the best of friends or be on super friendly terms, the only condition is that when one is in trouble the other jumps in to help.
Again, Utau from Shugo Chara, Rei from Sailor Moon, Mint from Tokyo Mew Mew, Fate from Lyrical Nanoha, Meimei from Sakura, Rue from Princess Tutu, theyâre all good examples.
They bring balance. In some cases the MC already has a vanilla friend whoâll cheer them up by giving sweet advice. The Friendly Rival serves to knock some sense into our MC and give harsh but necessary advice.
This absolutely should have been Chloe, and itâs a role that I do believe is necessary in this show.
The way characters treat Marinette isâŚweird. In non-Lila episodes, in their eyes, Marinette can never do something wrong. Every decision she makes is the best she could have taken, itâs always correct. Only when Lila comes into the picture is she the one in the wrong to them - but not by the narrative. The narrative is always on her side, even when sheâs done stuff wrong. Truly, Lila only serves as emotional torture porn, which is its own Can of worms weâre not touching today.
This is strange because even in Sakura (the most wholesome Can do no wrong MC) has moments where she has to apologize, or is in the wrong. When she fights with Kero, for example, itâs very much portrayed as an unreasoned response from both parties. And while Kero is being portrayed by the narrative as the one blowing it out of proportion, in the end itâs Sakura who makes a compromise by gifting him new âroomâ.
Marinette does not have this which makes it very annoying that she keeps getting away with things that are creepy or straight up wrong. The narrative is never willing to portray anything she does as anything other than ideal or silly. This is where someone who doesnât coddle her, but rightfully calls out her actions from a place of love and care SHOULD come into play.
When Usagi doesnât want to study, Amy happily tells her sheâll help, but Rei is the one telling her angrily that she has to. When Usagi is about to give up, itâs always Rei that yells at her to snap out of it.
Chloe should absolutely be this character. Someone who will tell her sheâs wrong, especially in situations or arguments where Chat Noir canât be the voice of reason - aka who she loves or her secret identity.
The fact that no such character exists is already making the story too saccharine sweet towards her. Even Sakura had Mei Mei, when Syaoran or Kero couldnât be the ones to tell her to snap out of it (And also, Yue was particularly cold towards her but weâre focusing on girls rn shhh)
But because they ruined Chloeâs character we donât have this.
And I do believe it has to do with the sexism of Thomas. Unable to picture friendship between girls as anything but unconditional kindness. Iâm sorry but Iâve had extremely complex and fun friendship where we are both kinda mean towards each other. In fact, saccharine sweet friendships are the weird ones in my culture. It doesnât help that the shows tends to portray the world in good or bad, depending on a singular action. Youâre either a good girl or a mean girl. Any complexities are thrown out the window (although heâs more than willing to make adult men complex characters with good and bad in them so, yay, sexism!)
They tried briefly with Kagami tooâŚbut they fumbled it and it never gave anything. She was a love rival, they were friends, Adrien and her got together, they broke up, Marinette tried to help her and thenâŚI think she joined a cult? Iâm not sure Iâm not up to date with the series. But it gave us so little of their actual friendship that it almost slipped my mind this was what they were trying to do.
That leads me to the most atrocious example of female friendship.
This trope didnât have a place in Ladybug. None at all.
So, everyone knows the devoted lesbian. Itâs the extremely queer coded friend thatâs willing to do anything for the MC. Tomoyo from Sakura, Homura from Puella, to a degree Nanoha from Lyrical Nanoha, to a lesser degree Seiya from Sailor Moon Stars.
It serves a purpose to highlight the goodness of a MC, kind and nice to the point people fall in love with them. Sakura is the best example, but the devotion Homura has for Madoka also serves to highlight her status a goddess. In Nanoha, Nanohaâs obsession comes from the belief that Fate is a good person and deserves a better futures. And in Sailor Mook Stars Seiya offers an alternative to the loyal and devoted Usagi whoâs still waiting for Mamoru. (I have to say maybe Utena has this too OBVIOUSLY but tbh I havenât seen it yet so)
This is often a queer story. Even if Sakura and Usagi have heterosexual romances - Sakura isnât straight and neither is Usagi. The stories play with gender and sexuality, and itâs ultimately about the relationships people have that deviate from the perceived normality.
Yeah, Ladybug has neither.
And theyâre trying to introduce Zoe as this. Which is. Weird. Again, sheâs supposed to substitute the Rival Friendship Characters, why on Earth is she a devoted Lesbian?
The reason why I call her this, is because inside the narrative she very much is - even if the writers are sooooo bad at writing women that it doesnât come across as one to the audience.
If we still assume that Ayla is supposed to be the Best Friend â˘, and she still falls for Lilaâs tricks - only someone whoâs utterly devoted and believes wholeheartedly and unconditionally in Marinette can see through those lies. Itâs something as crazy as fighting off Akumatization.
You can either see this as the writers trying to make Zoe the new Best Friend â˘âŚbut thatâs somehow worse. Itâs changing dynamics that have been here for close to 5 seasons. And AGAIN because of the weird way the writers see female friendshipâŚI do believe itâs coming off as the devoted lesbian trope rather than the Best Friend â˘. Especially with how whatâs little left of the fandom, are all obsessed with shipping Zoe and Marinette. This does not happen with the Best Friend â˘. It almost never does. Because competent writers make it clear that theyâre just friends. You donât ship Madoka with Sayaka or Mami (well you can but itâs not the majority) you ship her with Homura. And you donât ship (I do but shhh) Usagi with Makoto or Mina, you ship her with Seiya.
Zoe is the Devoted Lesbian right now. The show absolutely does not need her. In fact I would say, it perishes what little hope there was for girl friendships in this series. It again hammers home that the only friends you can have are those who coddle you, adore you, or think you can do no wrong. And anyone who disagrees with you, even a little, is a terrible horrible monster (Lila), has the potential to be one (Kagami) or evil incarnate (Chloe)
I love girl friendships to death, and Iâm always down for a good wlw story. But these characters are neither complex enough to have friendships with each other in a way that feels genuine, nor do the authors know how the hell girl friends work. Much less queer ones.
They should have never given center stage to them, not only bcs that wasnât the focus of CHAT NOIR AND LABYBUG but also bcs they have no idea how to write compelling friendships.
To be honest, if they had been good enough to make this premise work, thatâs to say the Chat Ladybug dynamic, thereâs a high chance they could have created compelling friendships too.
Like, if they couldnât pull of a romantic m/f rship with an entire fandom backing them and hyping them up? They could have NEVER pulled off anything. Period. Itâs like failing Middle School Maths and trying to solve College level Calculus homework. The problem isnât the equation, itâs thatâs youâre bad it. And even if it were the equation, no one can tell because you filled the goddamn notebook with scribbles.
Gotta hand it to Part 5 cause it had successfully gaslighted me into seeing Rozemyne as a genuine goddess
But I re-read part 1 and this girl was a gremlin since day 1 and the attitude people have towards her is 80% of the time 100% guaranteed
[Image text: iâm playing through clearâs route for the first time since i initially played it back in 2014 and iâm at the smut scene and yet again i cannot take this shit seriously because clearâs last wish basically boils down to âiâm not dying unless i get my dick wetâ and i just-]
Anonymous
