writerly ways

[cornerofmadness]

Let's talk a little about character development and how characters need to change even subtly over the story's arc. I'm going to use the lens of two kid's animations: The Owl House and the Miraculous Ladybug. I've been meaning to do this for months after talking to my best friend's daughter who is the target age for these shows.

To my surprise, she and I felt the same way for the same reason. We love the Owl House and can take or leave Ladybug and it all boils down to character development or the lack there of. In her words Marinette Dupain-Cheng doesn't change so she's boring. And she's right. Marinette never moves off her clumsy awkward can't talk to Adrian but I LOVE him so much schtick not once. There's been a handful of seasons now and while Ladybug and Cat Noir's powers have changed their personal growth has gone nowhere. My friend's daughter was only slightly invested in them as a result. Kids are not dumb, they notice stuff. They notice when characters don't grow.

On the flip side, not only does Luz grow after arriving at the titular Owl House every character around her does too (which makes it a lot easier for me to remember who they are vs Ladybug where I have to look up her friends every time) Willow goes from shy, hesistent and not so great at magic to finding what she is good at and goes for it. She doesn't let the popular girl who picked on her suddenly be her friend again. She has to build trust. Gus was immature but confident to growing up. King goes from wanting to rule the world to caring about the people around him.

People respond to growth. We expect it and if we don't get it, we might do what I did to Ladybug, quietly delete them from the DVR.

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Comments

[alexseanchai]

in ML's defense, it's not the creators' fault the networks wanted an airable in any order cartoon; the first two seasons don't even have official episode orders for that reason, and if you watch seasons 3 and 4 in production code order (ignoring any airing order anywhere), character development does actually start happening now that it's allowed to

[cornerofmadness]

I quit after S4 so I saw some but that does make sense. I'm still pretty annoyed it was probably outside pressures because The Owl House normalized queerness is the reason it got canned

[alexseanchai]

is very annoying yes

[cornerofmadness]

It's amazing how many shows get messed up by producers vs the creative side of the thing (don't even get me started on WB and Batgirl)

[ysilme]

Can't agree more on the character development question. I hadn't realised that this was what often makes the difference for me, as I hadn't analysed things I like or dislike/find uninteresting with that in mind before.

[cornerofmadness]

I hadn't either to be honest. I was enjoying Miraculous Ladybug up to a point until I realized a) I couldn't remember any of her friends names because for the most part they were mere props b) that I could predict almost every part of the episode because she never changes c) that I liked two of the two male characters far more than her as they DID have growth and d) this thing fails the bechdel test hard.

It was talking to at 13 year old that really slammed it home. This is why I was ultimately dissatisfied