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It's my 3 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

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Why Marinette Dupain-Cheng is an inconsistent character

The reason is that Marinette is written in two different ways, depending on what scene she's in. She's sometimes written like an actual character, and sometimes written like a cliche main character.

Despite all the clumsiness stuff, she's actually a pretty popular girl in school. She's class president, almost everyone likes her, and she's had more people crushing on her than any other character. And her being popular isn't a problem, not every teenage superhero needs to be Peter Parker. The issue is that some episodes act like she is Peter Parker. Like "Sublimation" saying she's this socially awkward weirdo who doesn't know how to make friends.

Also from "Sublimation" is Alya saying she won't change her mind once she's made it up. This is a common trait of protagonists, but it's not how Marinette has been previously characterized. She's been shown to put a lot of faith in the opinions of others, even in cases where they're totally wrong, like with Adrien in "Chameleon."

There's also episodes like "Penalteam" that claim she has a flaw of trying to do everything herself. That's also a common lesson main characters need to learn, but wasn't the whole rest of season 4 about Cat Noir being upset about her recruiting other heroes? How is that compatible with not trusting others to get the job done?

It honestly feels like plenty of the writers of this show only half-watched the rest of it, and therefore have an extremely shallow understanding of Marinette's character. And this problem of being written two ways isn't limited to Marinette, but it is most prevalent with her.

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Why "El Toro de Piedra" fails on all fronts

The Letter

The inciting incident of Marinette's side of this episode is that she finds a letter that Gabriel wrote some time before his death, where he confesses to Adrien that he's Monarch. This causes Marinette to question if lying to Adrien is right. In other words, finding this letter causes her to question the thing she's already questioned multiple times. And at the end of the episode, she decides to keep lying to Adrien. So Marinette's entire story this episode is her making the same decision she already made. They keep rehashing this plotline without changing or progressing everything. This is the definition of running in place.

Also, why did reading this letter make Marinette reconsider her decision? Was it because it made her reinterpret what Gabriel's last words meant? Probably not, since it's not like Gabriel wrote this letter immediately before he died, it was clearly written a while before. Honestly, it feels like the only reason the writers added this letter is because they thought Marinette (and the audience) needed to be reminded of the decision she made. Even though she's already talked about it in previous episodes. What a joke.

Villainous Fathers

This episode reveals that Ivan's father is a supervillain who wants Ivan to follow in his footsteps, and Ivan is keeping this a secret because he feels ashamed. This is clearly meant to draw a thematic parallel between Ivan and Adrien. Except, their situations aren't similar at all. Ivan knows what kind of man his father is. It's not like he's in denial about it or anything. Ivan was the one keeping it a secret from others, due to the fact he was ashamed. How is that related to Adrien? Adrien isn't the one keeping a secret, and he isn't ashamed of something. There's also the stuff about Ivan choosing not to be like his father, which is something that could have been relevant to Adrien, but it's not, because Adrien doesn't know who his father really was. So this theme doesn't work at all.

To add insult to injury, this episode once again has a terrible parent be immediately forgiven. Given how often this happens in this show, I'm convinced that if Gabriel hadn't died, the show would have let him get away with everything he did.

The Concert

The whole concert part of the episode felt so disconnected and tacked on to the episode. In fact, the only real connection it has is the fact that Juleka's song mentions her father, connecting to the attempt at a theme. Other than that, this subplot could have been part of any episode.

How come Juleka needed to perform alone? Ivan and Luka may have been absent, but Rose and Adrien were still there (until Adrien had to leave too). Both of them can play the keyboard, why didn't either of them back Juleka up?

Finally, in Juleka's song, she puts more importance in her deadbeat dad, rather than her loving single mother. You might argue, "Well, it's because she's a musician like her father." I'd like to remind anyone who claims this that Juleka's mother is also a musician. Ever since season 4, the show has put more importance on Jagged Stone as parent to Luka and Juleka, rather than their mother. But this is the first time that focusing on the deadbeat has been the character's decision. So, I feel like I can say that Juleka Couffaine has been character assassinated.

The Council

Finally, this episode also sets up the idea that Gabriel and Tomoe's alliance wasn't just the two of them, there are also a bunch of other mysterious figures that knew he was Monarch and are working behind the scenes. And one of these people is Nathalie's father. There's not much to talk about here, it's just something that briefly appears at the end. It's just to tease that something interesting might happen in the future. But considering this show's track record of following through on its setups, I have zero faith that anything good will come from this.

Conclusion

I don't think a single thing that this episode tried to do was well executed, and it showed that not even a minor character like Juleka is safe from being ruined. Still not as bad as "Werepapas" though!

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GABRIEL AND EMILIE AGRESTE

For your first point, there is a quote from MusketAnna on Twitter than comes to mind about this topic.

"[Game of Thrones] was on TV for a decade and had a stranglehold on popular culture and it ended so poorly that literally the moment it ended its cultural influence dissolved. It's amazing. It was like, overnight and it's baffling to think that something that was so everpresent for eight years simply ceased to exist because we all collectively decided it wasn't worth it. Eight years of memes, references, a presence you could not get away even if you tried and didn't care and all of this, ALL OF IT, undone to such a point that I can't even remember the last time I saw [Game of Thrones] referenced or talked about."

I agree, canon has done an absolute garbage job at establishing the limits of these powers. But SL did not "capitalize" on anything, considering the result is (in my opinion) garbage.

Gabriel being an idiot in canon is simply due to the writers not being good enough to write an actual good villain. I think intentionally writing a terrible villain is even worse.

"And the reason why Emilie is brought back... so Adrien will stay in Paris" And what is it called when a writer writes a terrible plot point just to justify something else they want to happen? It's called bad writing. "And this also lets us get to know Emilie" "Get to know" on the same level as all the other anti-characters in this story.

You're right, Emilie isn't a character in canon. But she also isn't one in SL, she is just another strawman punching bag.

TONE

Romcom and magical girl are not incompatible genres, I don't know where you get this idea. And you know, there are a lot of moments in your response where you just kind of say stuff without providing examples or backing it up in any way.

"it does feature moments that are not played for laughs" Like two moments across countless pages? And something being "light-hearted" isn't really an excuse. Kids movies still contain enough power to make the audience feel things. Something being all light-hearted all the time isn't entertaining.

CHARACTERS

"they're teenagers, and that should be rather a default" I was once a teenager too, and I can tell you that my classmates had different personalities. "Sarcastic smartass" was not the default, especially not for the girls.

"I personally never came across a take where being sarcastic is considered being generic, usually, it is about being nice" Have you heard any discourse surrounding superhero movies in the last couple years? This characters archetype is like a cancer throughout Hollywood.

"All characters in Scarlet Lady have in fact their own personality that are hardly the same" Well, not really. I expect every character to react to any situation in the same way, with a sarcastic and smartass quip. Sure, the characters aren't totally identical, but that individuality gets lost when their exteriors are basically the same.

CHLOÉ

Justifying why characters interacting is boring doesn't make it not boring. If there was nothing interesting that could be done with Scarlet Lady and Chat Noir after the first two interactions, then the author should have found a way to cut out those interactions entirely.

Everything you said about the public liking Scarlet Lady is stuff I already knew and acknowledged in my original post. So to restate my point, getting rid of a dangerous individual that very nearly caused the heroes their defeat is more important than their PR. This is a BS excuse the author uses to justify keeping Scar around for longer than she logically should.

In your paragraph about Chloé's consequences, you use a lot of words like "almost" and "maybe". That doesn't feel like real consequences to me, and I don't believe Chloé has actually learned anything.

MARINETTE

Yes, Marinette can occasionally be a little snarky. But my point is that her characters always had an underlying sincerity to her that SL!Marinette absolutely does not have, because Zoe is allergic to sincerity.

SL does a whole lot of "tell, don't show" with Marinette's character. And even if she does help people, I still don't like her simply because of how outwardly unpleasant she is in her interactions.

"Marinette nowadays is not exactly popular and well-liked :/" You know, even with the abhorrent character Marinette has become in season 6, she's still at least a character.

ADRIEN

As I said in the original, I don't like canon Adrien. And I don't think he got any real development, but at least he had the potential to get some, which is more than I can say in SL.

"No-personality where?" You just listed a bunch of traits, that's not what a personality is. I could also list a bunch of traits for canon Adrien.

"So it's already established at first that while Adrien is fighting for his freedom the second he's in, he didn't have it immediately in him." You just described a bunch of BS that happened offscreen. I wouldn't be surprised if he was physically dragged back kicking and screaming.

"allowed Adrien to grow" No. That's my entire point. He is the exact same character sarcastic smartass at the end of the comic as he was at the start.

"He genuinely broke down at Master Fu's place over his dad being a villain, because he did love him and all this hurt came from a broken heart" You mean that moment that, like everything else, was undermined by a joke? Right...

As for all the Chloé and Adrien stuff, tell me, what is the difference between ending a friendship, and threating to end a friendship and then not treating someone like a friend a single time for the entire rest of the time you knew them? Chloé and Adrien were never friends in SL. And you know, canon Adrien giving Chloé all those chances to learn her lesson is more character work than every character sarcastic smartass in SL combined. And I don't even think it was good.

"And Adrien objectively is a victim" Agree to disagree for canon, but in SL he is absolutely not a victim by any metric.

"Adrien apparently also never had a birthday party in his life while Emilie was still around" Oh hey, I made a post about this exact thing awhile while ago.

"So Emilie still has 13 years of being around Adrien's 13 years of sad backstory, so excuse Zoe for deciding to make her not so innocent because of this as this would be a moral failing on her part regardless" Adrien does not have 13 years of sad backstory in canon, he had one year of sad backstory. His fans just make this up to make him a perpetual victim because that's the only way they can contextualize his character.

As for everything you say about Adrien's "growth" in SL, well I think that's fundamentally disproven by the fact that literally the first thing we seem him do is curse out his father. He has no growth.

"Scarlet Lady does him justice" By turning him into an anti-character? Sure...

"Oh, and Adrien absolutely has a reaction to his mom coming back; he's too stunned to speak and confused on H O W and what to think of it. God forbid the guy to be confused" If God had rules for writing stories, he probably would forbid this. Again, this potentially powerful and emotional moment is undermined by a cheap gag that tells us nothing about the characters sarcastic smartasses.

THE MALE CAST

"no other women are being kept out from entering" Did you see other women at the party?

"instead of repeating every word canon has to offer" Bad excuse. "The author didn't want to just repeat the words of canon, so she had Nino say something different that completely recontextualizes the scene."

"Arguably SL did boys better by showing how guilty they are with their entire plan" In canon, Nino did express regret to Marinette about what he did. Except in canon, Nino did what he did because he thought it was the only way to spend this time with Adrien, not because he's a misogynist.

"And it's absolutely fair that Adrien is not held accountable because he literally never planned for this to happen and genuinely was upset and questioned why they couldn't invite the girls" It was perfectly within Adrien's power to say "no", yet he didn't and just went along with Operation Sexism. He's just as culpable as the others.

"This isn't even about sexism but it's worse when you know you could invite any guy to the party and none of the girls which is also what Canon did by bringing almost every male character to the party." In canon, this is played as a funny turn of events. In SL, Nino explicitly said to keep girls out of the house. That's the difference.

NATHALIE

This will be quick. You claim that Nathalie has all these flaws, so tell me, when in the narrative is she called out for them or punished? Oh, she isn't? Mary Sue, end of story.

"especially when in the show if Alya was able to see through Grimoire (not necessarily decode but understand how it actually works as rather an archive for the discoveries)" That's not even remotely the same thing. That's like saying "This Russian child was able to understand this book written in Russian, so it stands to reason that this grown man should also be able to understand it, even though he doesn't speak Russian."

ZOÉ

"The canon never gave you ANY reason for how Zoé came to be" Like I said, it's self-explanatory. "Her father is mentioned once and never again" Twice actually, and referenced a few other times. Point is, he exists, unlike in SL. "She didn't fumble her name the first time we met her" Do you remember how this scene went? The butler introduced Zoé by name 2 second earlier. The only way Audrey could get it wrong is if she has dementia.

"The comic isn't a complete standalone story and never intended to be as even the very first chapters rely on the audience knowing how things went as Zoe admitted herself" I'm saying that there's several parts of SL!Zoé that contradict canon, so the explanation doesn't make any sense here.

"canon never said him and Chloe were never as close" I never said that it did. I'm saying that SL implied that they weren't close, and that's the reason Adrien didn't know about Zoé.

"Chloe would never pay attention to ever bringing a subject of having a half-sister unless said half-sister would appear in a flesh" Okay, that just loops back to my other question. Why are they only meeting now for the first time, when they are teenagers? SL gives no justification for this.

"Well Scarlet Lady indirectly answers this question by embracing Zoé into the family and never rejecting her based on being a bastard child, and that's good because it shows that even those kids who never asked to be born into such a situation still deserve to have a normal life and be treated like you know, people, and not mistakes" No, that's what canon does. In SL, Zoé just appeared out of hammerspace, so it has nothing to say on this subject matter. And again, Chloé and Zoé were kept apart for years. For no established reason!

"Zoé does not refer to Andre as her actual dad or parent" She does. She refers to Audrey and Andre as "our parents".

"In therapy scenes, they ARE one family, even if Zoé arrived recently" I'm referring to the fact that the therapist says something like Andre spoiled the girls, even though the first time we see Zoé with Andre was a couple weeks before this, tops.

"in canon her personality is informed and not showcased immediately after her debut episode" She taunted Queen Banana so well that plenty of real people thought she was being serious. And she tricked Chloé into accepting the charm. And she tricked the butler into not going to the party. She demonstrates her personality, unlike in SL.

"it's just that you downplay everyone else's fury because the author did decide to end it on a more comedic note" It's simply. Comedy weakens emotion. The fact that Zoé hating Gabriel is made comedic means I don't really buy it as real. So I don't buy Zoé's love for Chloé at all.

"Another thing is that Vesperia didn't do anything other than what Queen Bee did during Heroes Day and her not getting to achieve much is also because she's both a newbie and because Queen Bee failed during Heroes Day to do anything interesting." So since one character failed in this season finale, that means this other character accomplishing nothing in her singular appearance is okay? No, it's not. You could have cut out Vesperia and nothing of value would have been lost. But the reason that value is lost is because we were teased with something potentially cool that amounted to absolutely nothing.

BECAUSE CANON DID IT TOO

So you seemed to misunderstand the point of this section in your first paragraph. I'm not criticizing SL for relying on canon for context, it is fanfiction after all, I'm criticizing SL for sticking to some things from canon even though it damages the story of SL.

You're basically saying "All the Miraculouses were included because Zoe got greedy and wanted to use every idea and design she thought of." That's not a defense at all.

"It's worth noting that Zoe did release recently for the anniversary of her comic an "extended scene" of all the heroes beating down Hawk Moth and each of them contributing to the battle as no, Chat Noir didn't solo Hawk Moth" Don't you think that the fact that this is "extended" it inherently means it's unnecessary? Characters doing something in a fight doesn't justify their inclusion on its own. For example, if Hawk Moth had a series of minions they had to fight through to get to him, and everyone's unique skills were necessary, then that would have justified their inclusion. Chat Noir did basically take care of it himself, because his contribution was the only one that was narratively meaningful.

"but it's nice to know that all miraculouses were included" Ah yes, "Destroying the stakes is okay because it means we got to see all the Miraculouses in action."

In "Cat Blanc", Bunnix is slowly disappearing as a result of the timeline changing. Like I said, there aren't really any alternate timelines, changes to the timeline simply overwrite the old one. So again, no, the fact that Zoe treats SL's timelines like it's the MCU means that SL is completely incompatible with canon, and how it established alternate universes work.

"he's a superhero getting himself in very scary and risky situations and Marinette could end up as a casualty due to her lack of superpowers" Being in a relationship doesn't mean she needs to fight villains without superpowers.

"Marinette is not indestructible" Remember when she casually tripped Timebreaker? Yeah...

"said episode is a rip-off of the Marichat fanfic genre" I'm sorry, what? This is the show that that fanfic genre is based on. How exactly can it be a rip-off?

"And the comment 'sometimes it's better to diverge things' while on a post that is bashing said divergences comes off as a bit hypocritical." No it isn't. "These changes are bad" is not incompatible with "Keeping these things from canon damages this story."

In canon, Ladybug and Cat Noir reflected on the Sentibug situation after it happened. In SL, Sentiwasp was forgotten the second she was gone. There is zero substance in SL.

"Reflekdoll is a low-stakes mini-story, so that makes it okay to forgo logic and just do the Miraculous swap without even trying to justify it." That's really not a counterargument at all. "Sure you can like the canon version of Reflekdoll" I never even said it was good, I simply said it met the bare minimum requirement of making sense.

ZOE AND THOMAS ASTRUC ARE ON THE SAME WAVELENGTH

So you seem to again have misunderstood the point of a section. I never said that these two are equals morally or anything. It's simply about them having similar ideas. However... "Zoe doesn't GLOAT herself as a great writer" Yes, yes she absolutely does.

Okay, I guess I was wrong when I wrote that SL!Chloé went to a different country. But I stand by everything else I said. Chloé is a strawman punching bag, so I have no confidence that she will actually change at all or anything will turn out fine for her.

"Also, sidenote Marinette calling him out is not wrong as Adrien also called out Hawk Moth while gaining his power up, and Marinette also deserves a right to defend her boyfriend, especially since Adrien always had to deal with Gabriel alone" This is actually really funny, because you can literally copy-paste this exact quote to defend Adrien's role in the canon season 5 finale. Just replace "Hawk Moth while gaining a power up" with "his father during the Nightormenter fight". Like I said, on the same wavelength.

CONCLUSION

I'm not saying these emotions aren't valid, I'm saying it's bad to act on them and let them bleed into your work. To be clear, I hated how canon season 5 ending. And yet, as much as I hate to admit it, it was still better than SL's ending. It felt like Marinette faced an actual challenge, and there were actual characters making actual decisions. Low bar, I know.

I actually think partaking in Saltfics just feeds those bad emotions.

But she didn't do justice to any of the characters, and I think I've broken down why. She made every single on of them worse.

"Zoe herself pointed out how Marinette has plenty of flaws, especially within her story (like her clumsiness, her temper, her jealousy, and her tendency to overthink and complicate stuff)" I can't remember any of that stuff causing any actual problems. So they're not real flaws, they're something an an amateur writer slaps onto their character because they heard people say that characters need flaws. And I was mostly talking about Adrien in this section.

I'm specifically talking about the fact that the only reason anybody like Adrien and Marinette in SL is because they liked them in canon, despite the fact that in SL they have none of the traits people liked about these characters from canon. Fanfics can depend on context from canon, but not when they contradict that context.

"They didn't exist just to bash the story of someone else, but to serve justice to those characters so their happily ever after feels earned and satisfying." Canon somehow felt more earned and satisfying than SL ever could, simply because canon has actual characters and a story.

I was being mostly hyperbolic with how I ended the original. But the fact is, there are a lot of people on both Tumblr and Reddit that have absolutely no critical thought and just mindlessly consume what they see. Bad content can still have a fanbase.

To finish up and respond again to your defenses of the writing of characters like Gabriel and Chloé, I'm going to use one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite movie reviews.

"And here's the thing, it does not take any talent whatsoever to depict a character whose death would be cathartic to watch. [...] In the case of 'John Wick', it is very efficient. Man is bad because man kills puppy. No time is wasted showing us ten different scenes of man killing ten different puppies."

Canon is Better than Scarlet Lady

I while ago I read a post where someone said that they don't like fanfiction because "Why would you take someone else's story and butcher it?" When I read that, I thought "Isn't that harsh? Most fanfics are made out of people's love for the source material." Well, I think the Scarlet Lady AU by Zoe-Oneesama is exactly the kind of fic this person was imagining when they said that. "Scarlet Lady" is a Miraculous Ladybug fanfic/saltfic/fixfic that fundamentally misses the point of pretty much every character and major plot point in it. And since it recently ended, it's time for my comprehensive review of it.

Just a few things before we begin. I'm going to assume that everyone reading this has read "Scarlet Lady", so I'm not going to recap the story. I was originally planning to write this on the day of the last page, but the final page was honestly such a nothing burger that I thought it wasn't the final page initially.

Some people may have a problem with the very concept of this review, saying its not fair for me to criticize a non-professional fanfic with this much scrutiny. I think that's an opinion Zoe herself holds. First, I think nothing is above criticism, especially not something that is claiming to be better than the professional product. People didn't hold back against "Spiderman: Lotus", did they? Even within this fanbase, people had some pretty harsh words for "Karma of Lies". Second, I think any discussion of non-professionalism went out the window the moment Zoe stated her intention to sell hardcopies of "Scarlet Lady". This arguably is professional. Third, I wouldn't be making this review if I thought this was a fanfic made out of genuine love and passion, and simply missed the mark. No, "Scarlet Lady" is in fact created out of nothing but spite and contempt, and I feel that makes it pretty fair game for criticism. So, without further ado, let's begin.

Why is Canon Better than Scarlet Lady?

In "Scarlet Lady", Emilie Agreste was woken up with no consequences, no buildup, no emotion, and no meaningful consequences. In canon, Emilie's loss was accepted by the characters and she died. I'm pretty sure that automatically makes canon better than "Scarlet Lady", so you don't even need to read the rest of this review! In all seriousness, this is genuinely some of the worst writing I have ever seen, and it is what made me decide that "Scarlet Lady" was a bad story, so I decided to just mention it on its own.

To be clear, I think Miraculous Ladybug is a poorly written show. "Scarlet Lady" is just worse. And since I used to enjoy Miraculous Ladybug, I'm in a good position to compare the two. When I read the ending of Scarlet Lady, what I though about canon was

I think that writing the middle part of a story is relatively easy. The audience is already hooked from the beginning, and they are intrigued for what might happen, so they'll keep reading even if not everything is great. I think the beginning and ending is the hard part. "Scarlet Lady" didn't have to worry about the beginning and getting people interested because it's piggybacking off of an already successful show. And since the ending of "Scarlet Lady" was so awful, it's clear to me that it was always badly written.

I'll now be analyzing "Scarlet Lady" in terms of its tone, its various characters, and more.

Tone

Every single potentially powerful moment in "Scarlet Lady" is played off as a joke. This may be in part because of the format, with it being released 8 panels at a time, so the audience has to be given something to be entertained by in every page. The thing is, I don't think that's true. I have seen plenty of webcomics where a situation is spread across multiple pages, and the audience doesn't instantly lose interest when one page is for setup purposes.

The consequence of this unserious tone is that the entire story is an emotional flatline. There's no moments that make you sad, no moments that make you happy, nothing that makes you scared or invested. Nothing feels like anything, because everything is a joke.

The season 2 finale of canon is actually really good, it feels like a real challenge with both sides giving it their all. In SL however, the same battle feels about as challenging as a stroll through the park.

I've seen a lot of comedies, and most of them still have a strong emotional core that isn't made into a joke at every turn. So arguing that SL is a comedy doesn't really help.

The problems with this unserious tone run deep, and you will see that as I explore the various characters.

Characters

I don't even like most of the characters in ML, but I could see the absolute downgrade they are in SL.

In general, I just wanted to say this: almost every character in this story is a sarcastic smartass. This makes them rather monotonous and uninteresting. Also very generic considering how common this archetype is these days.

Wait a second. Every serious moment is undermined by a joke, and all the characters are sarcastic smartasses. Was Zoe secretly an MCU writer this entire time?!

Chloé

I figure we should start with the titular Scarlet Lady. I actually think that the idea of a superhero duo where one of them is extremely lazy and unhelpful, but still necessary, is an extremely interesting idea for a dynamic. The problem is, there is no dynamic. Scarlet Lady and Chat Noir have no relationship, they just talk at each other constantly. And the result of this is that basically every interaction is the same: Scar does something selfish, Chat gets mad, rinse and repeat. It could have been interesting to explore different scenarios and ideas with these two, but no they just do the same thing over and over.

There is a pretty big plot hole here once Marigold is introduced. Why don't the heroes just take the Ladybug Miraculous back? It would be rather easy. Well, the explanation is that since Scar is still popular with the public, its best to keep her around for public cooperation and morale. Okay, I can accept that. Except, only a few episodes after this explanation we get "Zombizou", an episode where Scar straight up attacks Marinette in the middle of a battle, which causes Chat to get infected and them to very nearly lose. After that, there is no excuse anymore. Scar is clearly too dangerous to keep around, take her Miraculous now. But no, they actually don't even talk about what happened at all.

One particular episode where I have a problem with how Chloé is treated by the writer is "Silencer". In this episode, Chloé helps Bob Roth and XY with their plagiarism scheme. In canon, she had nothing to do with that. Now, yes, this is a different story and the writer can do whatever she wants. And this also gets Chloé more involved in the story. However, doing this just gives me a feeling that Zoe is blaming Chloé for something she didn't do. I don't know, it's just a vibe.

Anyway, throughout the story Chloé gets worse and worse until it culminates in her working with Hawk Moth and betraying everyone. And what are her consequences for this?

I mean, except for her father making her apologize (offscreen). So ultimately this plot feels like such a letdown. Chloé is the titular character that this fic's whole concept was started by, and yet it ends with her character just fading away with a whimper. What a letdown.

Marinette

This one will be quick. Zoe says that Marinette is her favorite character in ML, but I don't think she understands her at all. Remember what I said about every character being a sarcastic smartass? Well that is most prevalent with Marinette, and that is just fundamentally not who she is as a character. Marinette is someone whose is unabashed in her kindness and compassion. That's why plenty of people like her. If Marinette was in canon like she was in SL, she would be an extremely generic protagonist with almost no fans at all. The only reason anyone likes her in SL is because they relate her to the canon version.

I will say, I do like the idea of her being such a hero at heart that she'll run into danger even without powers. But this is completely diminished by her basically being invincible and having plot armor in her civilian form.

Adrien

Adrien in canon is one of my least favorite characters of all time. And yet, Adrien in SL is even worse. I'd go as far to say he's an anti-character. He has no growth, no arc, and no real personality.

The reason people like Adrien in canon is because they perceive him as someone who is treated very badly by his father and by others, but is still a kind person regardless. Well, in SL it's hard to perceive any poor treatment considering how he's only ever seen disobeying his father. And he's really never done anything kind throughout the entire comic.

Do you know the only reason people like Adrien in SL? Because they see him as who they wanted canon Adrien to become. Someone who can stand up to his father, who is useful in battle, and who doesn't put up with Chloé. But since SL Adrien was that way the entire time, there is no growth at all. Again he piggybacks off of his canon counterpart. If canon Adrien didn't exist, nobody would give a single crap about SL Adrien. None of the traits people liked about him in canon are present, and there is nothing new added to replace it. He is nothing.

Speaking of Adrien and Chloé, isn't it kind of weird that Adrien ended his friendship with her twice? In "Despair Bear" he ends his friendship with her and this is played as a big moment, even though he already basically ended their friendship all the way back in the pilot. There is not a single moment in the entire comic where Adrien treats Chloé like a friend.

As I mentioned earlier, Adrien has no emotional reaction to his mother coming back. In fact, I think it's fair to say that Adrien never loved his parents. And the reason for this is because Zoe hates his parents and she just imposed her feelings onto him, just like most bad fanfic writers do.

In terms of Adrien having no arc, there is one moment I wanted to talk about. During the final battle, he gets a power upgrade when he's talking about how he doesn't understand Hawk Moth's perspective, and he doesn't want to because Hawk Moth is so awful. This moment is played as if it's character growth for Adrien, but I want to ask, in what way? Well, I guess it does make sense because Adrien always gave his father the benefit of the doubt, stuck by Chloé even though she's cruel, and defended Lila. All those things could be considered him trying to understand a bad person. Too bad that none of that happened in SL. Adrien always hated his father, he ended his friendship with Chloé day 1, and he never defended Lila. Zoe was so focused on removing all of Adrien's flaws that she left him with no starting point for this supposed arc. In general, flawed characters are more interesting than perfect ones. Again, the only reason people liked this scene was because they subconsciously associated SL Adrien with canon.

Also, Zoe adds in her headcanon that Emilie was a bad parent. This headcanon only exists because people are incapable of imagining Adrien being anything other than a victim. I call it my "Perpetual Victim Theory". Anyway Zoe just makes up a bunch of random crap that has no basis in canon just to make Adrien more of a victim.

Gabriel

At first, "Scarlet Lady" looks like a Chloé saltfic. Well, that's only partially true. It's actually mainly a Gabriel saltfic. It honestly seems like Zoe hates Gabriel so much that she can barely think when he's involved. Gabriel is always portrayed as a complete moron with absolutely no humanity at all. He honestly seems more like a caricature in a political cartoon rather than an actual character. I actually find it hard to believe that his motivation is to bring back his wife considering how devoid of human emotion he is. Because the main villain of the series is a buffoon who can't be taken seriously, there is never any actual threat or tension. People criticize canon Gabriel for all his bad decisions, which is absolutely fair, but there are at least a few moments where he is genuinely menacing, and some moments where he is human. But writing him that way would require Zoe to let go of her hatred for a few minutes, so that's clearly not an option.

Nathalie

To put it simply Nathalie is a Mary Sue. She's a "girlboss" that does a bunch of horrible things she's not punished for. She can create a sentimonster to solve all the show's problems, she can decode an ancient book without a reference (Some people have defended this by claiming that the book was decoded IRL. IRL it was written in Engish in a different alphabet. That's not true in-universe). She's so much smarter and cooler than everyone else. Mary Sue, plain and simple. Oh, and she hates Gabriel because of course she does. She's a character written by Zoe after all.

In canon, Nathalie has some complexities. She's not great, but she's certainly better than this.

The Male Classmates

I'm just going to say it. Almost every male classmate was character assassinated in "Party Crasher". In canon, Nino lists his female friends to Gorilla and tells him to not let them in the mansion. This is because he assumes that if they find out that they ditched tree planting, they'll stop the boys from hanging out with Adrien. Is it a jerk move to ditch their plans in order to spend time with Adrien and not tell the girls? Yes, but it's understandable and they have limited time with Adrien. In SL, Nino tells Gorilla to keep all girls out of the house, which instantly imposes a sense of underlying misogyny to the situation. Oh, and they let Marc in even though Marc is nonbinary in this story, which implies that the boys went full Royce Du Pont, which is unintentionally hilarious.

I have no idea what motivated Zoe to change the boys from regular flakers to misogynists, maybe she just misunderstood the original episode, but it's still bad. Also, the SL episode goes out of its way to say that Adrien isn't at fault. No, he was completely complicit in the blatant sexism as well. So yeah, pretty much all the boys are instantly made worse by this one episode.

Zoé

In these previous cases, I have been making comparisons to and defending canon characters that I don't even like anymore. But Zoé Lee is my absolute favorite character in Miraculous Ladybug, and I was not happy with how SL handled her.

So a pretty important question right off the bat, how does SL Zoé exist? Zoe said that since canon didn't explain Zoé's existence, neither will she. But the thing is, what is there to explain? Chloé's parents have been married 20 years. Chloé's mother lives in New York, away from her family in Paris. Chloé's mother also has a daughter in New York with another man, much younger than 20-years-old. I don't think it takes a genius to figure out what happened there. But I'll spell it out anyway: extramarital affair. In fact, I think the whole reason the writers of canon made Zoé Chloé's half-sister was to hint why she hadn't been mentioned before: because Audrey was ashamed of her, and Chloé didn't know about her.

On the other hand, "Scarlet Lady" never mentions Zoé's father, has her refer to Andre as her parent, says Zoé lived in New York, and never implies that Audrey is ashamed of her in any way. How does this make sense? Well, maybe Zoé is the older sibling in SL, and Audrey and Andre met and got married after Audrey was already pregnant, and Zoé's biological father isn't involved in her life. It still seems weird that Zoé was living in New York instead of Paris (why not live with her stepdad that she's close enough to call a parent, and how did they form such a strong relationship long distance?), but this does make most of the situation make sense. Except for one little detail: Why on Earth are Chloé and Zoé only now meeting for the first time? It makes absolutely no sense that their parents would not even tell these two about each other. How was Zoé so close to Andre to call him her parent, but didn't meet her sister until she was a teenager? None of this adds up. And honestly, it seems like after a certain period of time Zoe just straight up forgot that Zoé only arrived recently. In the therapy scenes, she acts like they were always one family. When canon gave Chloé a sister, they gave a reason why nobody knew about her until now. When SL gave Chloé a sister, she just suddenly has one who isn't explained and they act like she was always around. In fact, the only part where they acknowledge her showing up suddenly is when Adrien hasn't heard of her, but SL actually just implies that this is because he was never actually close with Chloé.

Putting all that aside, SL also sucks out everything interesting about Zoé. Gone is her cleverness or willingness to lie for the right reason. In fact, the defining characteristic that SL gives Zoé is that she has no personality. I've seen some people claim that SL had Chloé and Zoé having more of a sisterly bond, but I actually don't believe that Zoé actually loves Chloé. During the final battle, Hawk Moth has basically poisoned Chloé, and for all Zoé knows, it could be fatal. If I were in Zoé's shoes in this situation, I would be furious with Gabriel. But is she? No, she just has the same jokey, ironic disgust towards him that all the characters do. Yeah, this is one of the moments when the comic's insistence to turn everything into a joke hit critical mass. Doing that ends up damaging the characters.

One last thing. In canon, Zoé was pretty cool as Vesperia. She helped out a bunch of times, and she was one of the only heroes to demonstrate unique skills in how she taunted Queen Banana into anger. Not in SL though. Vesperia achieves nothing, she could have been cut out entirely and nothing would change. That actually transitions nicely into my next point.

Because Canon Did It Too

Zoe has said that she wants to keep the lore consistent with the show. Even though she didn't like the name "Venom" for that power, she kept it for consistency purposes. I can respect this idea, but there are multiple parts of this story that would have just been better if it diverged.

For one thing, having 19 Miraculouses and as many superpowered characters. I can understand why canon did this: because they clearly want the show to go on forever and they want as many characters as possible to fill that time. SL on the other hand was only planned to last a certain number of episodes, and yet Zoe crammed in as many heroes as the original did. This leads to a lot of time setting up these characters that leads to nothing, because they're all barely in the finale and contribute basically nothing. It would have been so much better to simply limit it to the 7 main Miraculouses, that's so much more manageable.

Another thing is the Rabbit Miraculous and time travel. Zoe acknowledged how OP it is and how it can instantly solve the conflict. She might not want to change its power because of her lore rule, but if she had just ignored its existence entirely, that would have been totally acceptable. But no, the final battle has Master Fu using the Rabbit Miraculous, which instantly makes the stakes even lower than they already were. It wasn't even necessary, Master Fu is shown to be faster than he looks, he could have just delivered the Miraculouses the normal way. Oh, and there's also the fact that Zoe looked at the insanely OP Rabbit Miraculous and said "That's not OP enough." She also gave it the power to teleport to other universes. To be clear, this completely contradicts canon. ML is not the MCU, alternate universes are not alternate timelines. Changes to the timeline just overwrite the old one, and you can use the Rooster Miraculous, not the Rabbit, to visit other universes. So yeah, despite Zoe saying she wants lore consistency, SL actually doesn't fit into the Miraculous multiverse that canon established.

Also, let's talk about the romance. Like canon, there's a love square that doesn't get together until way later. But it seems like Zoe forgot about an important rule of romance: if the characters aren't together yet, why not? In SL Marinette and Chat clearly like each other, and unlike canon's Ladrien, they talk quite a bit. So why don't they get together? Canon actually has a really great episode "Elation" where Adrien decides that he can't date a civilain as a superhero if she doesn't know his identity. But nothing even like this is remotely acknowledged in SL (Sidenote: The writing of "Elation" is better than the entirety of SL). Also, Adrien doesn't confess for most of SL, I assume because Marinette didn't confess in canon, but this is just so out of character for Adrien. He's not the kind of person to hold his feelings back. In canon, he confessed to Marinette only a few episodes after he started liking her. He claims that he doesn't want to date until Hawk Moth is defeated, but then he starts dating her before he's defeated, so this is a BS excuse.

When Chloé snaps away her sentimonster, Zoe copies the line "How could you?!" from "Ladybug" in canon. This is a completely soulless copy though, because that episode made it clear that Sentibug was sentient, and Chat Noir was genuinely angry in this moment. None of that same substance applies to SL, it's just a meaningless copy of a better scene.

In canon "Reflekdoll", Adrien and Marinette are modeling her designs, and they take their Miraculouses off in order to wear the earrings and ring she made. When Reflekdoll attacks, they try to get their Miraculouses back but end up switching them. In SL "Reflekdoll", Marinette and Adrien are wearing each other's Miraculouses during the photoshoot for no discernable reason. Both versions have a Miraculous swap, but the original earned it and SL absolutely did not.

Zoe and Thomas Astruc are on the Same Wavelength

Zoe has made it clear that she's not a fan of ML's creator, Thomas Astruc. And yet many of her ideas ended up being the same as his.

In both Canon and SL, Chloé publicly commits a bunch of serious crimes, but faces no legal consequences. Instead, she is taken to another country where she can resume her life as a rich brat because she's learned absolutely nothing. Yeah, Chloé's ending in both is basically the same.

In the season 5 finale of canon, there's this huge fight between the side characters and an evil army. This fight has absolutely nothing to do with the actual important fight between Bug Noire and Monarch, so the side characters are completely wasted. In the final battle of SL, the other superheroes contribute nothing and are completely wasted. Chat Noir basically took care of Hawk Moth all by himself. So both finales involve wasted side characters that should have just stayed home. Less time would have been wasted.

Zoe actually says that she added Marinette calling out Gabriel in response to the canon finale. This is absolutely hilarious considering it's still Marinette calling out Gabriel, which basically did happen in the canon finale. Adrien still just stood there and didn't say a word!

Conclusion

"Scarlet Lady" is absolutely worse than canon Miraculous Ladybug. And I think there are a lot of lessons to learn here.

First, don't be so angry and hateful. Zoe basically ruined any possibility of a decent ending simply because her hatred of Gabriel made it impossible to write him like an actual person or a good villain.

Second, any story written in bitterness or spite will be bad. That might not be totally true, I haven't read every story. But I feel that every fanfic I read where the author clearly hates a character has everyone behaving OOC and the story being meanspirited and bad.

Third, don't be arrogant. Just because you can recognize flaws in a story doesn't mean you can do better. Maybe just make some posts calling out those flaws.

Fourth, the way to fix a bad character is not to simply remove all their flaws. Acknowledge those flaws and do something with them.

Fifth, while fanfics do often build off of the original, they can't depend on elements from the original when they contradict those elements. Again, the only reason people like SL Marinette and Adrien is because they associate them with the originals, even though their personalities do no match up.

All in all, I think the world and characters of "Scarlet Lady" will be forgotten only a week after its over. There is no actual substance to them. The only purpose of this fic was to bash somebody else's story, and yet it ended up being so much worse than canon in almost every way.

[pythagoras180]

"Miraculous Ladybug" should have ended in season 5. Like, I still would have hated the finale, but I would have at least respected them for ending the series at its stopping point. Sure, Lila getting the Butterfly Miraculous was unresolved, but "Timetagger" showed that they are still fighting her well into adulthood, so they could have just left it open ended. Everything else in season 6 is a hollow rehash of stuff that has already happened. They are clearly out of new ideas, and they're making the previous seasons worse by undermining their events. Season 6 and beyond is nothing but an obvious cash grab with zero substance.

[pythagoras180]

I genuinely thought I was the only one who had a gripe with Adrien, specifically the way he's written. The writers would often write him in a way where we're supposed to feel bad for him, even when he's in the wrong.

For instance, there would be occasional sad music playing followed by a frown on Adrien's face every time he gets rejected by LB. The thing is, LB has told Chat multiple times that she doesn't like him romantically. She's not "mean" for having boundaries, and he's not a victim for getting rejected like how the show portrays him to be.

I know some people may say, "That was seasons ago, who cares.". Um, I do, because that's a terrible message to send to children. Women and girls are often portrayed as antagonistic or "b*tchy" for rejecting a guy, which is part of the reason a lot of men and boys can't handle rejection properly.

The problem with having a character make the same mistakes multiple times is that it's like the Boy Who Cried Wolf: it's impossible to believe that they actually have changed.

The writers probably believe that Adrien has grown past this behavior. But what evidence do we have for it? He didn't move on from Ladybug because she rejected him, he did it because he stopped having feelings for her. If Marinette's rejection of him in "Transmission" had stuck, would he have respected her wishes? Would he have treated her differently than he did Ladybug in the same situation? Honestly, I don't think so. And that's because he had the chance to learn his lesson in "Glaciator", "Frozer", or "Glaciator 2", and he didn't. Why should I believe he learned it now?

[pythagoras180]

I have a crack theory

[pythagoras180]

I've reached a conclusion.

Adrien stans are legitimately despicable people. They are fully incapable of comprehending that something is wrong unless they are directly told it is wrong, and are hypocritical in regards to morality. They are like attack dogs without the ability to make any kind of judgement call.

I hate the fact that people I interact with in real life might think this way. I've always known that bad people exist, but there just seem to be so many of them.

[pythagoras180]

Your bait game is weak

Can you be more specific? I don't bait, I only give my sincere thoughts, or I make obvious jokes.

[pythagoras180]

I don't know if it was virtue signaling or what, but it's clear that Adrien's fans never actually cared about him.

[pythagoras180]

I think the fan reaction to "Werepapas", specifically that scene with the broken rings, proves that Adrien's fans don't actually see him as a person, just an object or Marinette's accessory.

I don't like Adrien at all. I've made that very clear. But when I saw that scene, I was still overcome with sympathy for him. I found it so utterly disgusting that his romantic partner was willing to kill him to defeat an enemy. She didn't call for backup, she didn't try every other option first, and she wasn't even sure she could bring him back (see "Ladybug"), but she gambled with his life anyway. This scene made me feel so bad for Adrien that I temporarily forgot how much I dislike him, and I just wanted to see him get as far away from Marinette as possible.

Yet it seems like all the actual fans of the show, even of Adrien specifically, didn't feel that same way. They didn't think there was anything wrong with what Ladybug did. And maybe this is because some of them blindly accept whatever the show feeds them, and since the show doesn't portray what she did as wrong, they don't see it as wrong. But I also think the fact that they weren't disgusted on Adrien's behalf proves that they simply don't care about Adrien as a person, just as an accessory to Marinette.

[pythagoras180]

Since Gabriel was barely around during Adrien's childhood, that really disproves the claim that Adrien was conditioned from birth to be obedient. It really is just mind-control and nothing else.

[pythagoras180]

"Werepapas" is an episode about Adrien's grandparents fighting for custody over him, but honestly, you can easily swap out Adrien with them fighting over the mansion, or some expensive jewel that Gabriel and Emilie owned. And that's because even though on paper the episode is about Adrien, he has absolutely no agency in the matter. Which is the exact same thing that went on in season 5. Except now there's not even the excuse that Adrien was mind-controlled. These writers refuse to improve.

[pythagoras180]

To be fair, Cat Noir never decapitated a civilian and then said "It's okay, Ladybug will restore them later."

Watching Marinette get salted on for risking Adrien’s life in the new episode but when Adrien decided to risk citizens lives suddenly the fandom was being too “salty” and “its just a kids show”….

I… okay yeah sure

[pythagoras180]

Honestly, since the moment Marinette broke those rings, everything Adrienette related just feels disgusting to me.