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Cat Noir: What's the point?

I know this is a common criticism regarding later Miraculous seasons, but I ask this with absolute sincerity: why is Cat Noir here?

I get it in the first two seasons: it was just him and Ladybug, and he was the one who provided help for Ladybug. Sure, he was also kidnapped or brainwashed a couple times, but in one way or another, he always helped defeat the akuma.

Now? Marinette doesn't need him anymore. The world doesn't need him anymore. Since Season 3, he's slowly taken a backseat to more heroes, more people with superpowers, until now he's nothing more than the distraction, someone to be the human shield and nothing more. He doesn't get an on-screen transformation anymore, even Plagg feels minimized in terms of screentime.

When it comes to akumas, Marinette has more powerful and more capable heroes to help her. Minotaurox with his invulnerability, Viperion with Second Chance, Miss Hound with her fetch ability, you name it. All of them can do the job better than Cat Noir, and that's just the superheroics. Since Season 4, Alya's become Marinette's confidant in both civilian and hero life. So Cat Noir can't even be the confidant anymore.

At what point should Adrien accept he's no longer needed, hang up the ring, and be Marinette's full-time boyfriend? Merch sales might drop, but it's not like the writers care about him. It's not like Ladybug would care if he disappeared. He may as well be gone this season with how utterly useless he is.

It's just...this is what the Agreste Arc was leading to? Adrien's increased benching, his increased softening, until he's just a boyfriend and a human shield? For crying out loud, Tuxedo Mask does more to help Usagi in her civilian and hero life than he does. And for what? To what end is Adrien pushed aside?

Had it not been for me deleting my Twitter account, I'd personally ask Thomas Astruc myself. I would ask him straight away why Adrien is reduced to being a distraction, a token boyfriend.

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Others: “Why do you prefer a strong/power bottom over a soft bottom?”

Me: “Cause they can fight and being hot cute at the same time-”

Others: “Dang-”

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Dreaming of the Dokkaebi | 산가지는 도깨비의 꿈을 꾼다

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Since you’ve talked about the secret between Adrien and Mari and how Adrien has no agency, back when the s5 bible leaked, there was a part where it said that „Adrien will never find out about his father being Hawkmoth“ or something like that.

Do you think the writers will actually stick with that rule? Because I just can‘t see how this is supposed to be narratively satisfying…

I have no idea and that's not a compliment. It's a condemnation. Adrien should absolutely find out about his father. The story isn't satisfying if he doesn't. But Miraculous doesn't seem to care about being satisfying. It cares about being shocking and that's a terrible thing. To explain why, let's talk about the topic of predictability in narratives and why it's generally a good thing.

We'll start with a quote from a famous George R.R. Martin interview where he perfectly explains why you want your stories to make logical sense with the final line of the quote being the most important part:

Before the Internet, one reader could guess the ending you wanna do for your novel, but the other 10.000 wouldn’t know anything and they would be surprised. However, now, those 10.000 people use the Internet and read the right theories. They say: “Oh God, the butler did it!”, to use an example of a mystery novel. Then, you think: “I have to change the ending! The maiden would be the criminal!” To my mind that way is a disaster because if you are doing well you work, the books are full of clues that point to the butler doing it and help you to figure up the butler did it, but if you change the ending to point the maiden, the clues make no sense anymore; they are wrong or are lies, and I am not a liar.

This is a writing rule that I believe in my soul, but that the Miraculous writers don't seem to care about. Miraculous will introduce things that should be important to the story, but they end up meaning nothing.

A great - and relevant - example of this is the Chat Blanc stuff. Chat Blanc comes near the end of season three, early season four sees Marinette have a nightmare about Chat Blanc, and late season four is all about Chat Noir feeling left out as Marinette trusts Alya over him. Many viewers looked at these story beats and went, "Oh, okay, so Chat Blanc is causing Marinette to push Chat Noir away. Got it." because it honestly was the only thing that made any sense.

But that's not what was going on. The official word is that Marinette was just stressed over her new role as the guardian even though nothing in the text really explains why that would strain her relationship with Chat Noir. It actively improves her relationship with Alya! Why wouldn't it do the same with her long-term partner? As we've discussed several times, he was fine with the status quo at the start of the season and didn't even ask for more responsibility until Kuro Neko so it's not like he was doing anything to stress her out until he randomly quit on her.

This begs the question: if Chat Blanc isn't haunting Marinette and Chat Noir isn't stressing her, then why doesn't she share things with Chat Noir? Why go with Alya when Alya's identity was revealed to the villain requiring Alya to go into "hiding" as Rena Furtive? There's really nothing in the text to answer those incredibly important questions. Question that are only incredibly important because the writers actively chose to have multiple episodes dedicated to Chat Noir feeling left out. Why that happened really isn't clear so there's also no clear resolution. What needs to change? No clue! Did that thing change? Once again, no clue! It's all set up with no pay off!

Or, at least, we don't get the kind of pay off you'd expect to see. Aka the big dramatic moment where Ladybug finally confesses what happened to her. Instead, Chat Blanc's big pay off is Adrien missing the season five fight because he just magically knows that Chat Blanc happened:

During the scene that leads to Adrien wearing the Alliance ring after being reticent to it, [the writers] say that they had a conflict when writing it as they had to find a way for Adrien to not become his superhero self, cataclysm the walls and go help his lady in Paris. The end result is that Adrien is reminded of the devastating effect of his power by the nightmare and would therefore do anything to avoid hurting people, and so he wears the ring. Mélanie says that he "could become Chat Blanc" and the others add that even though he does not remember and has never lived it, Chat Blanc still has an influence on his actions.

So Chat Blanc doesn't matter to the person who actually met him, but it does matter to the person who was Chat Blanc an alternate timeline even though this show has never once showed another akuma victim to be haunted by their akumatization. Does that make any sense? No, it's frustrating and confusing, but it does tell us the way these writers think and that insight doesn't bode well for Adrien learning the truth about his father. It's not enough for me to say with certainty that it will never happen, but I would not assume that it will happen. The show has an active pattern of avoiding these kinds of payoffs:

Example 1: Multiple Lila appearances had her claiming to be Ladybug's BFF and she was even interviewed for the Ladyblog based on this lie, but as soon as Alya learns Ladybug's identity, the show conveniently forgets about this ongoing lie because then Alya would be against Lila and the writers didn't want that.

Example 2: Marinette gave Alya the Fox without telling Chat Noir that they had a new full-time teammate, but Chat Noir never learns about this development. The most he gets is that Ladybug revealed her identity to someone, which is nowhere near as important as the Rena thing in terms of the ongoing fight against Paris' resident supervillain. The fact that Rena Rouge is now Rena Furtive is literally never revealed to him. He learns that she's active in the final fight, but the name change and her status are forever a secret. Alya being Rena Furtive also leads to nothing useful for the heroes. You could remove that from season four and it would play almost exactly the same same for a few minor tweaks.

Example 3: Luka learns Ladybug and Chat Noir's identities in Wishmaker, but this reveal is just used as an excuse to write Luka off the show in season five. The episode that gets him written off shows Monarch realizing that Luka knows the identities because of some mental connection that happens during akumatization. This is damning because Kagami was akumatized twice in season five (Perfection and Protection) and we later learn that Kagami learned Marinette's secret identity during Perfection, the first of the two episodes. In fact, Kagami learned the secret mere minutes before getting akumatized and she was akumatized because Marinette wasn't talking to her so Marinette being Ladybug should have been on her mind and yet Monarch didn't get so much as a hint of any of this!!!!!

That's not even getting into the issue of the fact that nothing in Perfection so much as hints that Kagami knows even though the episode is all about her relationship with Marinette or the issue of Marinette keeping her secret identity safe even though she was almost akumatized the freaking times! SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!!! WHY IS IT WRITTEN LIKE THIS??? How is anyone supposed to follow such shitty lore? The audience can't text appropriately if they don't know what the stakes are.

So, yeah, I'd put a small amount of money on Adrien never learning because that would be way too satisfying and Miraculous hates being satisfying or logical. The times we do get big reveals are generally terrible like with freaking Andre the Ice Cream Man being the one to tell Adrien about Marinette's crush or Lila being outed because of a plan Sabrina and Marinette made up off screen or Adrien finding out about Chat Blanc because magic. Watch Andre the Ice Cream Man be the one to tell Adrien about his dad for some reason. Nothing would surprise me at this point.

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An introspection on MLB fandom salt vs canon.

You know, I remember seeing a bunch of salt stories where Marinette was being forcibly tied to Adrien by fate itself (usually symbolised by red string), usually created because Adrien said one time that they were "meant to be together" and took that as entitlement. Of course, these fics were Adrien salt as it were.

Now look at the show 6 seasons later.

Adrien is pretty much tied to Marinette at the hip. His girlfriend and foster mother keep the truth about his father's villainy hidden from him. Any friends Adrien makes suddenly now have to be Marinette's otherwise she will follow them till they either submit or stop being friends with Adrien. She even risks breaking Adrien's amok just to stop a villain. Worst of all, Marinette is a horrible girlfriend, literally running off on an event if everything doesn't go picture fucking perfect and leaving Adrien to pick up the pieces. Adrien is being treated like a cross between manequin and a porcalein doll, made to dress up and wow Marinette's life while being treated with lies and deception so that he doesn't "break".

The only difference between the show and the salt fics (aside from the target) is the method: salt fics have Adrien forcing himself on Marinette; canon has Marinette gaslight Adrien's entire life to pretend everything is fine, either because out of a misplace sense of love or because of the fact that it would ruin her own happy goddamn ending.

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he cooked him like a caesar salad

[meganekk-o]

Que o Isagi tem a ver com isso? O Nagi que ficou acomodado e sofreu as consequências. Só isso, você colhe o que planta.

every single chapter is just "oh no, another character who fell into the deep dark pits of agony and despair because of isagi" and i'm TIRED of it if chapter 300 isn't nagi confessing his undying love to reo and then an aggressive nagireo make out scene i'm going to lose it

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[meganekk-o]

Bro as someone who uses a walking aid (a cane) and is disabled seeing the new trailer for Miraculous Ladybug makes me absolutely furious. I have never felt so much hatred for a fictional character before and yet here we are. I didn't like Marinette before but like, this just. This hits way too close to home and I know Astruc is going to frame it in a way that makes Marinette the good guy. But NOTHING excuses touching a disability aid without permission, especially fooling around with it and sabotaging it. And the fact that a younger generation is going to see this, I absolutely can't. I feel so bad for disabled children who will see this scene on TV and have their feelings be in the wrong, shown that they are the bad guys for getting upset, or heavens forbid being disabled. Screw you Astruc.

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Every time I see someone say, "the narrative is being too harsh on Marinette", I'm like, bitch, since when? I've never seen a narrative go so easy on a protag anywhere else that isn't just a light hearted comedy. Everyone else feels like an extra, ready to be sacrificed to cushion her from boo-boos of life and confrontations. The only people who don't do this are pure evil or unimportant.

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Gavv ep 15

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another day of loving someone who puts up a wall. let's break it down

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“I want to take someone back to the cloud recesses… take him back and hide him.”

📖 Mdzs | Wangxian

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I’d like to think that On helps Cale with his hair when he’s too lazy to do it himself. And Cale, being the dad that he is, would do On’s hair cus he likes it even though he’s grumbling while doing it!🤭🥰

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The wall closes in, one letter at a time.

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what i learned in the 2.7 quest is that most of sundays feelings about his own actions are based on guilt and self hatred. he feels guilty about what he did and thinks he deserves failure and pain because he was proved wrong. so i think whats so cathartic about sunday saying goodbye to his past self, is that hes telling himself he wants rest. that he wants "departure". that he wants a new beginning despite all the guilt, failure, and pain hes experienced. that he needs failure and pain to be able to experience a new life. and trying your best to start over while struggling with guilt and failure is soooo human.

like robin said, people assume that bc of sundays strong demeanor he’s superhuman in a way. godlike perhaps? that he can get back up immediately. but that’s not the case. robin knows him to be more hesitant and contemplative with his decisions. sunday thinks he doesn’t deserve to get back up. robin knows him to be more human than people made him out to be. and sunday talking about “descending to the mortal realm” goes along with that. sunday isn’t superhuman. he’s mortal like everyone else and struggles like we all do.