Fun With Fandom Essays

 Sooooooo, about that "positive turning point" I talked about last time..... 

Yeeeeeaaaaaaaaaah.

I don't know what it is, but I've just been avoiding my blog for a while now. I enjoy writing this. I like talking to you guys about what's been going on in my life and how that's been affecting my writing. I like promoting my own stories here, and promoting stories I read, and helping myself figure out writing issues that have been bogging me down. The more I talk here about what my issue is and why it's an issue, the more the problem unravels in my brain. 

I also enjoy having a time that's always dedicated to writing.

I truly do love having this blog, and I'm proud this one actually lasted for years on end (as opposed to my first 3 attempts to start up a blog that all crashed and burned within the first couple of months).

But, lately? I haven't been the biggest fan of waking up at a decent hour on my Tuesdays off so I have time to work on my blog in the morning, post by noon, and then have the next ten hours or so to do other things for my day off. Instead, I just want to lay in bed, snuggling the hubby until noon. Or, I get up by 8am, but then drag my feet and don't start actually working on this blog until closer to 10am. At that point, especially with my track record of taking 4 or 5 hours to write up my weekly post, edit it, and promote it, I wonder if it's worth starting my post. It won't publish until after noon, and I'm now cutting into the rest of my day off.

That might be the biggest thing: for whatever reason it takes me HOURS to write these weekly posts. I love writing them. I do. I promise you I do. I guess I'm just down on myself that they take SO. LONG. to write and post. Especially when I feel like I'm barely saying anything in them anymore. It's been rare, particularly this past year, to have any writing to talk about. 

Plus, we're creeping up on a year since we started socially distancing. We haven't seen most of our friends that whole time, and I haven't seen my side of the family since. Also, aside from the occasional quick talk with Hubby's work friends while at the store, or attempts to chat with my coworkers, or a short yell across the driveway to Dragnime the few times we catch him outside, or the one time Rozsavaria popped by to gift us our belated Christmas gifts, we haven't socialized with anyone in person since Christmas. I'm a social person, and I guess I'm having a rougher time with this than I originally thought (especially since we didn't socialize with ANYONE outside the times I popped by the grocery store for TWO MONTHS when our state went into lockdown last year, so this isn't as bad comparatively). Instead of working on my writing, or concentrating on these blog posts, or even trying to catch up on my reading, I've been spending a LOT of time lately just lurking on Facebook and Tumblr. Just CONSTANTLY refreshing and scrolling through my news feed and dash. Leaving comments EVERYWHERE in hopes of getting some sort of contact back: a reply, a reblog with added commentary, comments on my stories that I can respond to. Anything, really.

Which, I mean, both kind of baffles me with regards to missing last week's post, as well as explains it?

The baffling portion is that I had FINALLY finished publishing Perfect Doesn't Need to be Perfect. So you'd think I'd want to be here to rejoice that my Christmas-themed story was done.

On the flipside, I saw a post on Tumblr complaining about a plot point in one of the episodes. I thought I had a simple thought about why that was and why I wasn't annoyed by that writing choice. I had seen these two users in particular having more and more conversation threads within the fandom, with other members chiming in, and I craved the possibility of being included in these kind of discourses.

Plus, added bonus, if I could become more active in these kinds of discussions, I might be more recognized within the fandom, which could possibly bring my Tumblr blog more followers, which, in turn, could mean more readers for my stories. It was a way to network within the fandom community while also helping me with my lack-of-socializing problem.

Win-win, right?

Weeeellllllll. Apparently, I had more than just a few thoughts on why it made perfect sense for Marinette to reveal she was Multimouse in front of Chat Noir SPECIFICALLY so Ladybug would have a reason to not give Marinette the mouse miraculous again. I'll get into a bit more detail in a minute for those who don't know the show/episode, but my point is that, instead of working on this blog post last week, I spent my four or five hours working on this 4700-some word meta essay about the episode and series in general.

If you care enough to read my essay, you can do so here.

So, a few more details about the initial post. This does contain spoilers for the season 3 episodes "Ikkari Gozen" and "Kwamibuster", just an FYI.

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Okay, so in the episode "Kwamibuster", Adrien's and Marinette's science teacher spotted Plagg eating cheese she had set out, as well as Tikki trying to stop Plagg. She went on TV to announce her discovery, however, since technology can't register magic, the teacher wasn't able to get any recorded proof of the kwamis. Instead, she drew crude drawings of Plagg and Tikki.

Adrien and Marinette, recognizing the kwamis and knowing they were both spotted in their school, begin wondering if that means their partner is also one of their classmates. Adrien almost INSTANTLY figures out that Ladybug is Marinette, but Plagg brushes him off and reminds him he's not supposed to know. Meanwhile, Marinette is too focused on "Chat Noir could be a student here, and what if he tries to figure out who I am" (which is, to be fair, EXACTLY what's going on) to bother trying to figure out who Chat Noir is. Regardless, both heroes know they need to think of an explanation to throw their partner off their scent.

Chat Noir tells Ladybug he has no clue what his kwami was doing "at that elementary school" which was enough to throw Marinette off his trail. She believes that since Chat Noir doesn't know it's a high school he must not go to it. On the flipside, Marinette goes a more complicated route, as she usually does.

The teacher had been akumatized into Kwamibuster, and has the ability to vacuum up kwamis into her magical backpack. Yes, this is intentionally a nod to Ghostbusters. Anyway, this magical vacuum can even pull kwamis out of powered up miraculouses, instantly taking the hero's powers away and detransforming them. So Marinette, after Tikki was stolen, has to find a way to get from the battle to Master Fu to try to get some other miraculous. That way she has the power to get Tikki back, and can then cleanse the akuma from there. Marinette picks the mouse miraculous (or rat, if you're truly going by the Chinese zodiac). It has the power to split the user multiple times, but shrinking them each time they split. Marinette wears all of the available miraculous, splitting herself enough times for each piece of herself to go with a different kwami.

There's a bunch of strategy here about purposefully getting herself captured in order to get Tikki and Plagg back, but I won't get into that. It's not important. What is important is that, after the akuma is broken out of the object and Kwamibuster reverts to the science teacher, Marinette uses the many bits of herself to temporarily trap the akuma (instead of cleansing it), and then uses one of her clones to create an illusion. She does this by pairing the mouse and fox miraculouses together so she could still be split, but also use Trixx's Mirage power.

For this illusion, she creates Ladybug getting Tikki back, powering back up, cleansing the akuma, and restoring everything via her Miraculous Ladybug power. Now that it looks like the battle is fully won, as it always is, an illusion of a full-sized Multimouse - the name Marinette gave herself as the mouse superhero - walks up to Ladybug, and takes off her miraculous to give it back; revealing herself to be Marinette. Now Chat Noir has "seen" Ladybug and Marinette standing side-by-side; "proving" that Marinette isn't Ladybug. The Ladybug illusion then tells the Marinette illusion that her identity has been compromised, and so she can never be Multimouse again. This is clearly Marinette's way of explaining away why Ladybug and Multimouse could never work together again; preventing Chat Noir from ever suggesting it or wondering why Ladybug would pick a different mouse bearer in the future.

It really was quite clever. EXCEPT, instead of Illusion-Ladybug telling Illusion-Marinette that the science teacher now knows her identity, and so Marinette can never have the miraculous again, for her own safety, Illusion-Ladybug implies that Marinette can never be Multimouse again because CHAT NOIR now knows who she is.

Admittingly, that's poor writing on the creators' parts. The added sting, though, is that, in the episode "Ikkari Gozen" Ladybug tells Kagami that she could never be Ryuko again specifically because HAWK MOTH knows who the dragon-themed superhero is. Same reason why Ladybug can't give Chloe back the bee miraculous.

So, now this Tumblr user Infinitysgrace is all bent out of shape that Illusion-Ladybug stating Marinette can't be Multimouse again because Chat Noir knows who she is puts him on the same threat level as Hawk Moth. Another user came in again questioning the need for the secret identities between the heroes. That's when I wanted to step in to explain how the writers actually did set it up in-universe very nicely to explain Marinette's logic in not letting Chat Noir know.

OKAY! SPOILERS OVER NOW! YOU CAN START READING AGAIN IF YOU SKIPPED THE LAST PART!

Anyway, I put in a LOT of time - and paused to rewatch certain bits of the show to make sure I got my wording right - trying to write up this comprehensive essay explaining why Marinette implied what she did about trusting Chat Noir with the identities of the part-time heroes. I was pretty proud of my work. It was a bit lengthy for the kind of conversation the users typically had, so I wasn't sure I was going to be able to continue a discussion as I wanted, but still. 

What I did not expect was to get a response like this:

Let's just zero in here to the part that really surprised me:

They then went off about how the rules established within canon - within that very season - didn't line up with the "Chat Noir is the same threat level as Hawk Moth" outside of this one episode. Something I had addressed in my essay.

Then they stressed, "As for the fact that he often gets controlled by Akuma victims, that isn’t a good enough excuse." First of all, I know this person SUPER sympathizes with Adrien/Chat Noir, but... uh... yeah? Yeah it is? Regardless, I also addressed that in my essay. 

Then they finished with "But no. There just isn’t good justification for him not to know who the part-time heroes are that can’t be matched with not just things in the show that contradict why he can’t know but also better justifications for why he should know." Again, things I believe I had addressed in my essay. If there were things I had missed, and Infinity had pointed them out - "what about this scene, or that scene, and I think you misinterpreted this scene" etc - I would have been fine with that. It would be the discussion I was craving. A true back-and-forth analysis.

However, the fact that they claimed that they were tired and "can we please not?" as if my essay had irritated them something fierce, but then wrote back a comment that makes me wonder if they actually bothered READING my essay!?

And then this person also came in with something I HAD ADDRESSED IN MY ESSAY (like, I get it, it was LONG, but if you're going to comment on something, at least read it first????):

I just- I was-

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I'm still a bit salty about this. I've also avoided anything else involving Infinitysgrace because clearly you cannot change their opinions on how the shows writing is "clearly terrible." I mean, they love the show and the characters and are "anti-fandom-salt" but still just HATES on the writers for their poor writing. And, I mean, I get it. There are parts where I too am like "you lost the character there, writers. What are you doing?" but....

I dunno. Point is, clearly writing the essay instead of my blog post last week was time well spent.

Sooooo, how about what I WOULD have talked about last week? 

Yeah, let's go back to happy thoughts: I FINISHED MY CHRISTMAS STORY! Wooooo!

I had failed miserably with getting it done within the timeframe I had wanted, but I WAS able to edit, publish, and promote my story throughout Super Bowl Sunday (which was February 7th, for those who didn't know). It kept me darn-near twelve hours to post the last five chapters, but it was done!

I was then too exhausted to keep track of my stats for that week mark, but here's where we are now:

FFN: 1743 views, 7 faves, 12 followers, and 15 reviews
AO3: 321 hits, 21 kudos, 4 bookmarks, and 30 comments!
DA: 10,415 views!? 5 faves, but no comments

Total Results: 12,479 views, 33 faves, 16 followers, and 45 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 47 notes; 31 likes, 13 reblogs, and 3 comments

Reviews:
  Actually, most of the reviews are fairly lengthy, so you can just hit up FFN and AO3 to read them if you really want.

So. Hold up. Let's, uh... let's check out the actual breakdown of the individual DA chapter views, because over 10,000 hits on flippin' DEVIANT ART is blowing my mind.

1. "1k views" - which, side note, is, I think, the first time anything I've posted has hit the thousand-views mark???
2. 280 views (and 2 faves)
3. 139 views
4. 327 views
5. 777 views (and a fave)
6. 189 views
7. 1k views again (and 3 faves; one was a person who faved one of the earlier chapters as well)
8. "5k views"!!!!! Like... WHAT!? (no faves though)
9. 398 views
10. 348 views
11. 143 views
12. 814 views

THIS IS ON DEVIANT ART, MIND YOU! I feel like I can't stress that enough. Meanwhile, some of these chapters got more views than the entirety of the story over on AO3. Ya know, a place PEOPLE TYPICALLY GO TO READ FANFIC.

The bots must have really loved my story over on DA, huh?

Honestly, I'm not sure what I could have included in either the story, the notes, or the tags to have attracted the bots, but I'm pretty sure that's what happened there. The only hit counts I remotely trust are all of the ones under 400. Still, it's a nice little ego-boost to know my stories are even getting that much love over on a mostly visual-art site.

Another thing to note for those view counts is how I batch-published chapters. Day 1, I uploaded chapters 1 thru 3. Next were chapters 4 & 5. A few days later I published chapters 6 & 7, and then on a Sunday I published chapters 8 thru 12. 

Either way, if you're one of my DA viewers, please let me know in the comments. I've love to meet you.

And if you want to join the masses, but haven't yet, here's one last reminder of where you can find my story.

Perfect Doesn't Need to be Perfect

On FanFiction       On ArchiveOfOurOwn       On DeviantArt       On Tumblr

Honestly, I'm just happy that Taurus Pixie got so much joy out of the story. It was, in part, to help me get the story out of my head after re-reading Pixie's story had birthed the idea, but it was also largely a way of helping perk her up after a super rough year. So... yay! Glad I was able to help at least a little.

With that project done, I was planning on working on a fluff story for Valentine's Day, or at least finish off the final two prompts from last year's Love Square Fluff Week. Sadly, I have done neither. A year later and I STILL can't get the prompt "Your Voice" to form the way I want it to. What I had written up - Marinette and Adrien doing trust exercises in phys-ed by taking turns being blindfolded while the other walks them through an obstacle course through verbal instruction alone - is sweet, but also feels a bit... I dunno. I think it would work better as a form of visual media than prose. Plus, I don't really have an ending for it? Also, it was supposed to be a set-up scene for the core story of Ladybug and Chat Noir recognizing each other's voices after a day of paying extra attention to Marinette's and Adrien's voices respectively. But the obstacle course bit is already about 8 pages long! 

Soooooo, yeah. I still don't know what I'm doing for those last two prompts, and I never did get anything written for Valentine's Day.

I guess I'm still more burnt out than I gave credit. So, looks like I'm gonna put myself on another mini-hiatus. We'll see how a week of that goes.

Hopefully, I'll catch you guys next week.

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