Thank You! Because This Was Screwing My Head Over, And Google Wasn't Helpful In The Slightest.

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"

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

Was doing the last of my work, middle of the night (12-5am) hand in pain, and was pretty much on the verge of an emotional breakdown.

AND THE ONE THING THAT KEPT ME FROM DOING THAT WAS:

"I have no time for this."

What's up with my mental? Did I just procrastinate on a mental breakdown?

Oof, I didn't even think about that. But now that it's been put out there, one realizes just how messed up the whole sentimonster thing is.

It also brings up questions about what a sentimonster is, what it can do, and how the Peacock Miraculous holder influences it.

Most sentimonsters present in the show aren't capable of free will, like the Banana Gorilla and the Reflekdoll—and the one that did gain it was the Sentibug, who just got poofed anyway by Mayura in the end.

However, Adrien never had that "break-out" moment, and if he did have one, we never saw it. So, the question really does put in a dark turn to the whole Adrien being a sentimonster.

One can argue that Adrien rebelling against his father is a sign of free will, but you have to wonder how much of that is Adrien's personality that he cultured himself and not some pre-programmed behavioral traits that Emilie wanted in a son.

The same goes for Félix. How much of his personality is his, brought about his father's abuse... or are they behavioral traits his father programmed in him or lingering emotions Colt was expressing himself before he died.

Then there's also the twin rings, and how Félix stole one of them that had his amok in it, so he could gain control back. Doesn't that imply that if you gain a sentimonster's amok, you could control it, even if you aren't the Peacock Miraculous holder?

I don't think Thomas Astruc thought this whole sentimonster thing through, because you've basically got several cans of worms that put darker twists into this whole Miraculous Ladybug stuff that can't just be ignored.

However, I highly doubt that he'll do anything about it. It kind of makes me wonder if he even realized exactly what he was doing by making sentient sentimonsters.

I think one of the worse things about Adrien being made a Senti is that now, I got to question how genuine he is and what is potentially influenced by Gabriel subconsciously.

Like, Adrien's stance on Chloe and Lila, both of whom help Gabriel with his agenda, it could be through Gabriel's influence that Adrien sides with them/discourages Marinette from challenging them. If they are stopped, Gabriel wouldn't have them to help him.

And then there's the matter of his romantic feelings and how he works off Ladybug. Gabriel wants to know who she is under the mask, and Adrien is often pushing for a reveal. Gabriel has a spiteful obsession over Ladybug, to the point he skipped out over his easy win with the Rabbit, and you got Adrien unable to divert away from Ladybug even when he starts dating another.

Is it possible that Adrien is just echoing Gabriel's agenda and intentions and is mistaking that for romantic love?

Given that whoever holds the item can fully control the senti, supposedly, yeah I now got to wonder what's truly Adrien and what's Gabriel's influence.

It goes even further than that. Whoever has the amok seems to be able to control literally every facet of your personality and those commands seem to hang around until someone overwrites them, so is anything about Adrien real? We know that Emilie was wearing one of the rings in her coffin, implying that she entered her magical coma while wearing it, so it's quite reasonable to assume that she actively used it pre-coma. In that case, what commands of hers are still controlling Adrien? What command of Gabriel's and Nathalie's were never undone? Who even is Adrien?

Like is his lack of strong negative feelings about his mother's death real or just the result of her telling him to not mourn her like she told Gabriel to not mourn her? Is he into piano because of natural interest or because his mom wanted him to like piano? Is his lack of career goals because no one bothered to program them in? Is he even capable of developing his own wants? Is his interest in Ladybug real or is it because she's kind of similar to Kagami and Kagami was the one he was supposed to fall in love with, so he just imprinted on the wrong girl? That last one is not helped by Kagami falling for Adrien's clone at the drop of a hat.

All of this is yet another reason why the sentistuff repulses me on a fundamental level. It just completely undermines everything about Adrien's character. This is not the sort of plot you pick for a rom-com and I'm here for the rom-com.

Honestly, I don't hate this take. It would've been another interesting aspect in MLB that could've added more substance to Gabriel's character and how his mind works. One could even evolve it into a situation where Gabriel doesn't realize his views were that similar to the views of people whom he condemned. It could even showcase a short-sightedness and a lack of self-awarness, which could've impacted his villain persona.

Basically, he had an ironic self-importance about himself because he pulled himself up by the bootstraps to get where he is, and without thinking, looked down on others for not doing what he could (basically ignoring that just because he could do it doesn't mean they can).

I would've loved to see that, a Gabriel that was so high-handed and arrogant without realizing it, but also had a heart that deeply loved his family and was devoted to it to the point of taking drastic measures to keep it together—like becoming Hawkmoth to fix what he now considered his broken family.

Unfortunately, in the grand scheme of things, your brilliant take won't work, and it's so frustrating because I haven't seen something like that yet. But MLB has this ridiculous consistency issue that pulls their personalities this way and that until all we get is this overstretched piece of taffy that's held together by silly string and a Hail Mary. It doesn't help either that Thomas Astruc wants us to think of Gabriel as a good father, and God forbid he was anything else than that.

This is probably small in the grand scheme of things, but how did Emilie being noble play any impact in the story at all?

I mean, I'd get it if it was just a small detail to help deepen Emilie's character, but why nobility of all things? I don't know, from what I'm seeing so far, the whole "Emilie renounced her noble title" shtick just feels worthless if it's not going to impact the story or add depth to Emilie's character (like maybe upbringing or personal values?).

I don't know. Like everything else, the noble part just feels shallow and means nothing to the story, especially for a character like Emilie, who is the plot device for the whole show. Any detail about her, like her personality and life story, is supposed to influence the story and characters one way or another, namely Hawkmoth since she's his driving force.

So what was the point?

For context, this ask is about Félix's play which says that Emilie gave up her title to be with Gabriel. I'm gonna give a slightly larger section of the transcript of the play for full context, but the relevant but is at the end of the last paragraph:

Félix: The king and queen's twins grew up, each day as different in heart as they were similar in body. The firstborn, curious and brazen, despised life at court and escaped at every opportunity. The younger daughter, well-behaved and respectful, did everything she could to please her parents, and stayed quietly in the castle. Félix: (as Mr. Graham de Vanily) Oh, my queen. Did we entrust our legacy to the right princess? Kagami: (as Mrs. Graham de Vanily) She will fall in line, eventually. Félix: Confident that she would settle down as she matured, the king and queen allowed the curious princess to leave to study beyond the sea in another kingdom. There, she immediately found true love in a humble tailor. Félix: The tailor was making clothes so magnificent that they revealed the beauty of the soul of anyone who wore them. Although it made her parents furious, the curious princess gave up her rank, her wealth and her kingdom to live a bohemian life with the tailor.

Story wise, I have no idea why any of this was added since it adds nothing to canon. It's not like this finally explains why Gabriel and Emilie are poor while Amelie is wealthy. Along similar lines, it's not like Amelie's title has ever mattered. Prior to this play, I don't think that we even knew that she had a title or that she was the younger sister. The play is all about explaining things that we never had reasons to question in the first place.

My best guess as to why the writers wrote this pointless backstory is that they wanted to make Emilie seem even more pure and perfect so they went with the tired old trope of a rich girl giving up material things for the sake of love and art because good pure women don't care about material things! Only nasty, shallow women care about money. (Way to play into sexist tropes, guys.)

There may also be cultural elements at play here given that France doesn't have the greatest history with nobility, so giving up a noble title may be seen as good and pure to a French writer, but I don't know enough about French culture to say that with any certainty. If anyone who reads this blog is French and would like to chime in, then feel free!

While we're on the topic of the play, I wanted to point out that the above quoted passage is why I say that the Graham de Vanily parents can be as kind or as abusive as you'd like to make them. It's incredibly vague and you can read into it whatever you want to read into it. Were they good loving parents who were just upset about their daughter living in poverty or were they miserable controlling classist who Emilie fled England to get away from? It's up to you because you can get both reads from this. The play commits to almost nothing of value. Politicians could take lessons from this impressive level of noncommittal writing.

A better version of the play would have focused on things that actually matter to canon like the details of finding the miraculous and/or Emilie learning she's sick, but you could only have those details if they were coming from Nathalie or Gabriel. Félix is a terrible choice for a character to tell us the show's backstory because he knows so little of it, thus the play focusing on his largely pointless backstory.