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Commission for @wolfwisp

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@buggachat as I was reading the latest chapters of drowning (in plain sight), when I got to this scene I had to stop reading it just to draw this

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oh, look now, there you go with hope again

Adrien Agreste was sitting alone in the cafeteria.

Again.

The sight made Marinette want to pull her own hair out. Hadn’t she publicly stated, as Ladybug, that Adrien Agreste was as much a victim of his father as anyone who had been akumatized? That in the end, he’d shown remorse and helped her? Hadn’t she urged the people of Paris to embrace him, to give him a second chance?

Sure, she hadn’t exactly practiced what she’d preached, but—she’d excused herself as the exception. After all, no one had been more hurt by Chat Noir than Ladybug herself. No one else had felt the sting of betrayal or the sharpness of his claws the way she had.

So she’d told herself it wasn’t her responsibility to extend an olive branch more than she already had. Surely, someone else—someone who didn’t have vivid memories of fighting against a boy meant to be her partner—would step up and be his hero. It wasn’t Marinette’s job.

Except, apparently, it was.

Because he was still eating alone.

If no one else was going to step up, then she had to.

The next day, she marched right up to his table in the cafeteria.

He looked up at her, wide-eyed and frightened.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know this table was taken. Please, let me move my things–just a few seconds, I promise.” 

He’d already started packing up by the time Marinette processed what he’d said—and the hunted look in his eyes as he said it.

“Stop!”

Adrien froze, instantly, then raised both hands in the air: the universal sign for ‘I’m unarmed.’

Marinette felt a pang of guilt. Snapping at him like she was apprehending a criminal was not the approach she was going for. So she tried again.

“I mean,” she kept her voice as soft as she could, the way one would approach an injured stray on the street, “you don’t need to move. The table isn’t taken by anyone except you.”

Adrien nodded, his hands lowered slightly, but clearly still on guard for whatever she’d say next. She hated that, but she couldn’t blame him for expecting the worst when a girl he’d never spoken to before arrived at the table.

Still, the idea of him being scared of her—plain-clothed Marinette—felt wrong. He’d never even been scared of Ladybug, though she’d had her fair share of nightmares about him.

“Can I join you?” she asked.

He nodded again, but unlike the relief she expected at her question, his posture remained guarded and tense.

Did he not want company? Is that why he still ate alone?

She found that hard to believe. Chat Noir, even at his worst, had always been gregarious—often trying to make conversation with her even as he attacked her. There’s no way this same boy could be satisfied eating alone every day, with no one to talk to. 

He must just not know what to do in this situation—it was common knowledge, after all, that he hadn’t been allowed to go to school before this, not even a fancy private school.

Luckily, Marinette had come prepared with the perfect icebreaker.

So after she took her seat next to him, she pulled it out of the bag: two croissants, baked fresh this morning, and better than any of the baked goods in the cafeteria menu. She put one on his tray.

Adrien eyed it warily.

“It’s for you,” Marinette explained.

“You want me to eat it?” he asked, which she thought was a bit rude, but she supposed Hawkmoth wouldn’t have taken much time to instill his son with proper manners, so she decided to let it slide.

“Yes, I brought it for you.”

He nodded, then picked up his knife and fork like he was preparing for battle. He closed his eyes, breathing in deep, as if he were bracing himself.

Marinette had a hard time pushing back her annoyance at that. Not thanking her was one thing, but acting like her parents’ baking was some kind of chore to eat?

“Just eat it!” She took a bite of her own, for emphasis. “It’s good.”

Adrien set his knife and fork down again, then gingerly picked up the croissant with his fingertips. 

Irrationally, Marinette felt her heart racing as he slowly inched it towards his mouth, like it was a design contest and she was watching the judges circle her piece. 

Which was stupid, because she wasn’t trying to impress him. She was just trying to be nice. It didn’t matter if he liked it or not.

But by the time his teeth sank into the croissant, she was on the edge of her seat.

He took a bite.

Chewed.

And swallowed.

Then looked at the croissant again, with wide-eyed wonder. Marinette couldn’t stop the smug, satisfied grin from spreading across her face.

Which quickly slid back down at his next words.

“It’s… just a croissant,” he said, and if he hadn’t said it with such awe and reverence, Marinette would’ve chewed him out.

Instead, she was just baffled.

“What else would it be?” 

“Nothing,” he said, too quickly. “Of course it’s a croissant, I just—there’s nothing else in it.”

Marinette frowned. “Were you expecting pain au chocolat? It’s a whole different shape.”

“No, of course not, I—” He stopped, then, and looked away, as if he was scared to say more.

And really, this whole exchange had been weird, from the beginning.

“Adrien,” she said slowly, “why were you afraid to eat the croissant?”

Because that’s what it had been, hadn’t it? Not ingratitude. Not snobbishness.

Fear.

He mumbled something into his lap in response. She couldn’t quite make out the full sentence, but what she did hear was chilling: “...last croissant had…. in it…”

Just a croissant. Because he’d expected her to put something in it.

She’d known her classmates avoided him. But she hadn’t realized how bad it was.

When Marinette was 10, their class had gone on a field trip to the zoo—not the one nearby, but the big one, on the outskirts of the city. She’d been so excited that she’d packed her bag filled with everything she could possibly need—snacks, sunscreen, her favorite magazines for the bus ride.

And then she’d been stupid enough to leave her bag unattended for a few minutes.

The memory of squeezing her bottle of sunscreen in the heat of the day and having a dollop of mayonnaise fall into her hand instead had never left her. It hadn’t been the worst prank Chloe had ever pulled, but the scent of mayonnaise that’d been sitting in the sun—sour and rancid—never left her. 

She still smelled every bottle she opened now, years later, even ones she knew no one else had touched.

She didn’t know what had been in the last croissant he had been given, but she knew exactly why he’d been wary—why he’d tried to go in with a fork and knife first.

What she didn’t understand was why he’d drop them and eat it with his hands anyway, if that’s what he expected.

“Why did you take a bite if you thought I’d put something in it?”

“Because you told me to,” he whispered.

Marinette blinked, disbelieving. He’d blindly taken a bite, expecting the worst, because she’d told him to? Even at the peak of her victimhood, before she’d learned to stand up and fight back, Marinette had done her best to avoid falling into any traps she could see coming.

“Why?!?” she all but shouted. “Why would you just let someone do that to you?”

His answering smile was brittle. “As long as I’m willing to play the victim, they don’t see me as a villain.”

Marinette’s stomach dropped in horror as he continued—as she realized the true extent of what she’d let Adrien Agreste go through for weeks, while she’d turned the other way and told herself it was someone else’s problem.

“When I first came to school, no one wanted me here. They didn’t feel safe, even though Ladybug assured everyone I was powerless now,” he was looking away, now, voice hollowed out like his insides had been scooped out, “For a while, I was scared they’d make me leave school. But then, they started playing pranks. And after they’d play one, they’d laugh at me, and it hurt at first—it still does, but—one day, I realized, when they laughed and taunted, they didn’t look scared of me anymore. So, I let them. If this is what it takes to stay, for them to feel safe and accept my presence here, I’ll eat whatever they serve me.”

Her insides churned at the thought of him—sitting on the ground, surrounded by the faceless peers laughing, and somehow deciding that was for the best.

“Why would you want to stay, when everyone treats you like that?”

Why would he want to stay, when no one had shown him even an ounce of kindness?

Adrien shrugged. “It’d be the same anywhere, probably. And…”

“And?” she prompted, reaching out to lay her hand on his white knuckles gripping the edge of the table.

He turned a wistful smile to her now. “I’ve always wanted to go to school. To be with other kids and make friends. My parents wouldn’t hear of it—they said it wasn’t safe, that the kids I’d meet at school weren’t worth knowing.”

Something in her heart—some wall that she’d built up after that second battle with Stoneheart—cracked.

“I can’t let him be right,” Adrien confessed, his own voice breaking with the weight of it.

She’d been wrong before, when she’d thought he’d sounded hollowed out. Maybe his father had hollowed him out before, to better fill Chat Noir with Gabriel Agreste’s own darkness, a croissant ruined by something unsavory shoved inside.

But this Adrien wasn’t hollowed out. 

He was carved into. And he’d submitted to it, willingly, just for a chance to stay.

Luckily for Adrien, Marinette did two things better than anyone else in Paris: proving Adrien’s father wrong and rebuilding what has been destroyed.

She squeezed his hand, in promise.

“He wasn’t right. We won’t let him be.”

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Animation~

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it's wild because a common (and completely wrong but whatever) critique of ladrien is that all they do is blush around each other and then when we get scenes that are devastating and great it doesn't count because it's not fitting a certain mold?

ladrien is such an interesting side because the whole idea that if they knew they loved each other every other secret unravels is right there. people say they don't have to work for it and that makes the side boring but ephemeral gave us a whole ladrien fic speedrun and the inevitable crash. chat blanc, in the exact same way, started off with ladrien which quickly unraveled everything else.

some of ladybug's lowest or ugliest moments are in front of adrien. and adrien has been unhinged on main in front of ladybug several times- leaping from a building, the 25,000 resets, etc.

furthermore each side does not exist independently of the other and at any point in time i would argue that every scene is a composite of what one or the other believes to be two sides of the square. every marichat scene is also an adrinette scene to adrien while every marichat scene is also a ladynoir scene to marinette.

which is important because all of these experiences combine to create a full picture of the other. it's what we literally see happen in ephemeral when marinette tries to fit together her ideas of adrien and her ideas of chat noir into one person.

so in ephemeral we get a ladynoir/ladrien reveal and then a ladrien/adrinette reveal as the love square crumbles. (although the love square technically dissolves the moment one or the other knows the identity of the other but i digress).

in strike back we see ladybug once again putting trust in adrien and then realizing it wasn't actually adrien and the complete unraveling of everything she worked for that season and adrien not only watches it happen and comforts her, but also helps her strategize through it.

writing off those scenes because they aren't a confession like in glaciator 2 or holding their hands in risk or chat telling her they'll get the miraculous back together in strike back is wild because it doesn't happen without these other pieces informing each other.

the reason we see scenes where marinette and chat noir are talking about their love for other people is because neither of them see the other in that light and it's giving them a glimpse into another side they wouldn't normally see. adrinette we see scenes of them building up that trust that exists already in ladynoir but we also see that reluctance to share that we also see in ladynoir despite the against-all-odds-we'll-get-through-this-partnership they have going on. and in ladrien we see them merging these identities- the romantic aspect, the friendship, the partnership, the trust - in this weird place where ladybug feels like she can be more vulnerable and open, adrien is less guarded than chat but more assertive than he is at school and so eager to please but also willing to call her out– it's like the ground zero for what is happening in the other dynamics.

anyways this is getting away from me blah blah blah all sides are the same side bc they're the same person but we shouldn't be looking for or seeing the same things in their interactions because each interaction serves a different purpose blah blah something something stan ladrien for healthy skin

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Hi, i started watching ML yesterday with the french dub because of your suggestion, and because cartoons in french make me nostalgic so I thought why not. Why do you recommend it so much, though?

Yesss I always love seeing more people watch the French dub! God where do I begin with all the reasons I love it?? I went in to it a bit in the ask where I was highlighting some script differences between the French and the English dubs. Note that I watch every episode in both dubs and think the English dub has a lot of good things as well (like that Chat Blanc performance hoowee). I push the French dub agenda a lot mainly because the English dub is so widely watched and a lot of more recent or casual fans don't even really know anything about the French dub, which is sad to me because it's honestly so charming. I also just think its good to watch media in its original language, especially if the story takes place in the country where that language is spoken. Going in to why I love it in detail:

It's more mature

A lot of the script choices in the French dub are more mature and make ML feel more like an animation that can be enjoyed by all ages (like the vibe I get from ATLA), whereas the English dub will often make you reaaaally aware that you're watching a show for 7 year olds ("TiMe To dE-eViLizE" my detested). Like, Hawkmoth/le Papillon sounds a lot more dramatic and menacing when he says "darken their heart" in the French dub, whereas when he says "evilize them" in the English dub, he sounds like a joke, like some kind of nonthreatening idiot villain from some low-budget Nick Jr. show for preschoolers where the heroes he fights are puppets.

I've found that they tone down the emotional weight of lines in English (as well as the romance, which I cover in its own point later) to the point where I find them less impactful. In Animan, for example, after Chat Noir thought Ladybug had gotten eaten by that T-Rex and pulled her in to a hug, he says "That was a wild ride," in English, versus "I thought I'd lost you..." in French. Another example: in the Eng dub of Copycat, Chat Noir says "his crush just got crushed! ... That makes two of us." In the French dub, he says "you just broke his heart, after all! ... Not just his, by the way." So, yeah, in both cases the English lines sound a lot more childish/less heavy and I really can't take them that seriously, but the French lines hit you like a punch to the solar plexus.

If you've ever tried to get a friend in to ML only to have them refuse because it's "too childish" or "cringy" etc., tell them to watch the French dub.

It's sweeter & more romantic, and the characterization of Ladybug and Chat Noir is more faithful to what was originally intended.

Let's be real, I'm here for the romance, as are a lot of us. Ladybug and Chat Noir are far more affectionate with each other in the French dub. In addition to the usual "my Lady" and "Buguinette", Chat Noir has called Ladybug "ma belle" or "beautiful"/"my beautiful" in Dark Cupid, "lady du mon cœur" or "Lady of my heart" in Frightningale, and "my Buguinette"/"my little bug" in Miracle Queen (as opposed to just "little bug" in the Eng dub.) Ladybug often calls him "mon Chaton" and "mon minou", or my kitten/my kitty/my kittycat, and she uses the possessive "my" fairly often (totally normal thing to call someone whom you insist you're Not Dating lmao /s). One lighthearted not really serious fanfiction pet-peeve I've had is when people write Ladybug calling him "Chat." She calls him "Cat" a few times in the English dub, which is what fic writers are undoubtedly going for, but "Chat" is French and pronounced completely differently (like "Sha"), and in the French dub she only calls him "Chat Noir" in full when she's not using a petname, never "Chat". However, I've always felt like she uses the affectionate "Chaton" even more often than she uses "Chat Noir" in the French dub or "kitty" in the English dub. Calling him "Chaton" all the time comes as easy to her as breathing. I think fic writers are missing out on the chance to have Ladybug just be stupidly affectionate in every other sentence she says to Chat Noir. Like, guys, replace "Chat" and overuse "Chaton" all you want, it's actually canon and in-character

In this same vein, I have a lot of annoyances with how their relationship is characterized in the English dub, especially Chat Noir. His characterization in the English script seems to go for a more “Cool Guy Ladies' Man” vibe (which, I'll be honest, is not my cup of tea) whereas the French dub goes for more "endearingly corny overly affectionate hopeless romantic who acts like he stepped out of an old cartoon", which is how he's supposed to be characterized. I mean, come on, roses, puns, hand kisses --- he may be a cool hero but he is not a Cool Guy by any means. I feel like this line from Stormy Weather highlights it best: after Ladybug helps Chat Noir up and teases him about cats landing on their feet, and right before the iconic hand kiss, he says "thanks, miladybug, but I had it covered" in English, whereas in French he says "it was on purpose, my Lady, for the pleasure of meeting you again." In a choice between the Chat Noir who tries to play it cool VS. the Chat Noir who uses it as an opportunity to cutely say he fell on purpose because he knew his Lady would be around to pick him back up, the second one is indisputably cuter and wins by a landslide.

I'm not a fan of how English dub Chat Noir sometimes feels like a different character, but more than that, that difference in characterization is what feeds the stupid false idea prevalent among some fans/hate-watchers that he's a Nice Guy(TM) who is harassing her. This is especially exacerbated by the small differences in the way they characterized Ladybug to play off of him in the English script. The most glaring offense that comes to mind is the attempted kiss in Prime Queen, where Ladybug stopped him with "not a chance, Kitty" in English, versus "now is not the time, my Chaton" in French. Just a few words completely change the tone of this line and the impression it gives of how Ladybug feels. Both the delivery and wording of the first one give the impression that Ladybug is irritated by Chat Noir asking for a kiss. In the French version, her tone of voice, the wording, and her use of "my Chaton" give you the impression that she's unamused but still patient and soft with Chat Noir, and her gentle chastising highlights what she's actually annoyed by -- not his flirtation, but his bad timing. They're flirty best friends. She enjoys their flirty banter. What she hates is when he gets distracted/tries to flirt during tense moments. Ladybug's affectionate exasperation with and soft spot for Chat Noir are far more apparent in the French dub.

The English dub characterization also feeds the bad alphahole romance novel-esque fanfics that characterize him as his uber confident alphamale sexual badboy for their bad smut but we're not getting in to that

The platonic affection is sometimes better shown in the French dub as well, like Chat Noir telling Ladybug "you're my best friend" in Glaciator, or Adrien telling Marinette "I'm happy to have you as my friend, you know" in the French dub of Troublemaker rather than the English line, "I'm glad to have you as one of my fans."

Overall, I just find the characters more likeable and the relationships between them more tender in the French dub. The English dub is fun, but the French dub is just undeniably sweeter.

The French voice castings, especially Adrien / Chat Noir's voice

I definitely prefer Tikki & Marinette's French voices, as well as the French voices of most of the secondary characters. One thing I hear often from people who watched the English dub first is that they don't like is Plagg's French voice but ... I actually love it lmaooo. I adore both of Plagg's voices for different reasons, Plagg's English voice sounds like "cute mischievous gremlin sprite who will cause problems on purpose but you love him anyway", and Plagg's French voice totally sounds like "millennia-old cat god who invited himself in to your home and demanded wet food only, and who pretends to be nonchalant when he's actually already adopted you as his son in his mind."

Now on to the boy, the myth, the legend, the best part of the French Dub: Adrien. Like I said earlier, I do think the English VA does a great job as well (especially Chat Blanc GOD), but his French voice sounds far more age-appropriate most of the time. He sounds like the sweetheart shy boy he's supposed to be. His voice is so unbearably soft and sweet and warm, especially during tender/romantic moments, that it will literally melt you.

Then there's his Chat Noir voice. Honestly, I think French dub Chat Noir is unmatched. Sorry to English dub enjoyers but honestly to me 90% of the time English Chat Noir sounds like Spongebob. Benjamin Bollen's voice as Chat Noir has this musical quality to it that's so fun to listen to and that no other dub pulls off, and it fits his cartoony, overly affectionate, hopeless romantic dork vibe so well. It's like he ends every sentence he says with heart emojis. There's also the stupidly cute pouty voice that he uses when he's being dramatic/teasing, which you can listen to here and here. Also, the way he says “wo-ow” gives me so much dopamine. (Also very important: his singing voice is Angelic.)

This got long af because I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the French dub, but TL;DR: The French dub is superb because it’s charming and sweet and romantic and emotional and stays true to the characters. People who are used to the English dub may have a hard time adjusting from the voices they've gotten used to but I guarantee if they stick with it a bit they'll get used to it and it's absolutely worth it.

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“If you can, maybe you should tell me what’s on your mind?”

A scene from A Blanc Christmas by @chattheblackcat

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love the concept of marinette threatening to call ladybug whenever cat noir gets into some tomfoolery

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i always have my mind blown when i see someone literally say "if you haven't watched miraculous you didn't have childhood" and i'm immediately like "what are you talking about, this shit started like 5 or 6 years ago" and then i remember some of y'all are like 14 or 15 or even younger and then things kinda click lmfao

anyways i need to get a better grip at reality

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I missed drawing him,,, 🐍

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miraculous but if Gabriel was allowed to say all the words running around in his soft-serve lookin skull  sinspo from @midnight-mermaid

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Sandboy is having a comeback ?

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Ya am done🚶‍♀️