#When it comes to reading redos I'm super open to alternate takes

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

So, controversial topic. taking in count that in a month, the webcomic "scarlet lady" is gonna end ¿what are your feelings about it?

I know that there's people out there that don't like it for the chloe salt, but i have to admit that the damnation that chloe went through, at least for me, gave her more agency than canon, for the fact that it wasn't manipulated by outside forces like canon did, it gave her the right to choose to be better or worse.

Another great element is that it does what canon refused to do: five back Adrian his agency by letting him vent his frustrations AND let him realize that his father is a bastard.

If you don't agree, that's more than excellent, i want to know your take in this topic, that being positive or negative 😄👍

My friend, you are talking to a big Scarlet Lady fan, so I'm happy to give my thoughts! Get ready for some gushing and in-depth discussion of the adaptation process. That's really what all fanfiction is, but Scarlet Lady is more of an adaptation than most since it's a true canon rewrite that often requires you to know canon to fully appreciate its jokes and meta commentary.

Before we get into it, I want to give a link to the comic for those who haven't read it. The artist/writer is @zoe-oneesama and this is page one of the comic. I'd follow the comic link if you haven't read it as the comic is nearing its end, so going straight to Zoe's page will spoil you on elements of ending.

General Thoughts on Adaptation

Adaptation is an art, not a science. There are things that are objective elements of a story. Things you really cannot change if you want people to feel like you're telling an adaptation of a given tale. But there are also plenty of elements that are more subjective. Things some people might consider vital, but that aren't truly necessary to stay true to the story's core. (Yes, the character core thing applies to stories too!)

For example, to be a Cinderella adaptation, you need to have some sort of big reveal moment where "the prince" finds Cinderella, but that moment doesn't need to involve a slipper and the prince doesn't need to be an actual prince. My favorite modern Cinderella adaptation is A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song and it twists both of those elements while keeping the major story beats in place, making it fully deserving of the Cinderella label while also being its own unique story that isn't a straight retelling, it's an adaptation.

I bring all this up because, as readers of this blog may have already guessed, Scarlet Lady does a lot of things that I personally would not do when adapting Miraculous. A big one being that I prefer a more complex take on Gabriel, but that's simply a matter of preference. A complex Gabriel is not a requirement for adapting Miraculous. Complex Gabriel vs comedic villain Gabriel is just a choice you have to make when it comes to adapting canon because canon is such a mess that both options have straight up backing in the source text. Even if they didn't, Gabriel's core role - villain - is one that leaves you a lot of room for interpretation based on other factors that we'll talk about in a second.

I'll close off this section with this: having read all of Scarlet Lady, I'll be so bold as to say that Zoe and I almost perfectly align when it comes to identifying the flaws in Miraculous because I've agreed with pretty much every change she's made. She did a fantastic job staying true to the core of canon while also telling the story she wanted to tell. It's not the way I'd redo canon, but it doesn't need to be for me to call it a fantastic story. Plus a lot of the different choices I'd make come down to narrative style and tone.

Narrative Style and Tone

I'm a novelist at heart, which means that I favor serialized storytelling. For those who don't know that word, it means stories that are one coherent whole just broken into chunks. Stories where the order matters. You can't start watching at a random episode, you have to start at the beginning. And skipping an episode usually means that you'll have no idea what's going on.

Miraculous is not a serialized show. It's primarily an episodic show, a word that means that episode order doesn't matter. Every installment stands alone.

Obviously Miraculous isn't completely episodic, but that's fine. Purely episodic narratives are rare these days. Most stories have at least minor serialized elements even if those elements are often ignored for multiple episodes at a time. This is where both Miraculous and Scarlet Lady fall. They're mostly episodic stories with serialized elements popping up every now and then.

Miraculous does this element poorly because it acts like it's a purely episodic show and then takes that to an absurd extreme. Rules, characters, and lore can never be counted on to stay the same from episode to episode even though that's not actually how episodic stories work. Scarlet Lady doesn't make this mistake. It understands that episodic narratives should have STORIES that stand alone, but that the WORLD the stories take place in must stay consistent.

Now that we've gone over the basic format stuff, let's talk about tone.

Generally speaking, tone is the vibe of your story. It can be serious, silly, dramatic, and so on. One of Miraculous' biggest flaws is that its tone is all over the place. It's a silly romcom that brings in serious topics in serious ways and then handles them with all the grace of a hippo performing ballet in a china shop because of course it does! Those topics are horribly suited to the show's overall tone so it has no way to properly address them.

This is one of the many things I love about Scarlet Lady. It takes the show's absurdist tone and honors it. That's why Zoe's version of Gabriel works so well! He's a silly cartoony villain in a silly cartoony comic as he should be. It's also why my versions of Gabriel tend to be more complex. More serious serialized narratives are where more serious complex villains thrive. Neither option is better than the other, it all comes down to how you're adapting the original work. Zoe's choices are perfect for her version's style and tone. If mine are even close to that good for my preferred style and tone, then I'll be a happy author.

Narrative Weight & The Chloe Thing

This is getting long, so I'll end with a note on Chloe since you brought her up as it's another great example of the fact that there are very few choices that are inherently right or wrong when it comes to adaptation.

I don't know if I'd say that I'm a Chloe fan, but I certainly don't hate her. I also love what Zoe did with the character! It's a prime example of a thing that I've talked about before: the issue with Chloe is not a lack of redemption. The issue is that Chloe was given too much narrative weight to be what canon made her.

Quick definition: narrative weight is the importance a narrative places on a person, event, thing, etc. The more time you dedicate to an element of your narrative, the more weight that element has in the eyes of your audience. The more they expect the element to matter. The way that you develop the element will also shape audience expectations.

In the context of canon, Chloe has more development than almost any other side character. We know more about her family, her childhood, her personality, and so on. This was an absurd choice for canon to make because Chloe is not actually important to the story they told. You could pull her out of canon and almost nothing would change. Gabriel can make akumas do whatever he wants so, lore wise, he didn't need Miracle Queen. In fact, he arguably shouldn't have made Miracle Queen. He could have just taken the miracle box and jumped right into the plot of season five. Similarly, Chloe being mayor was an absurd one-note moment that's easily replaced with something more logical.

Because of this, there are a lot of things you can do when adapting Chloe. Everything from turning her back into a one-dimensional mean girl to redeeming her to what Zoe did: take Chloe's narrative weight and petty brat behavior and lean into both to make Chloe a main antagonist while also acknowledging the fact that Chloe is a messed up teenage girl who needs some serious help. I'm super excited to see the end of Chloe's arc in Scarlet Lady as I think it's going to be one of my favorites in the fandom. That is admittedly not a high bar as I'm very picky when it comes to Chloe content. I think most of it falls flat because most of it fails to let Chloe hit some sort of rock bottom when she absolutely needs to if you want to do anything interesting with her. She's not the kind of person who will easily change or see the error of her ways.

Conclusion

Scarlet Lady is a fantastic adaption of Miraculous and Zoe is a fantastic and funny adapter. The comic might not be to your tastes - and that's fine, nothing has universal appeal - but it's still a great example of how to honor source material while doing your own thing with it, which is a true skill. One of the problems with many modern retellings and reboots is that the people running the show don't understand how to adapt a narrative. They take far too much creative freedom and end up with something that doesn't feel anything like the source.

If I found out that Zoe somehow got hired to adapt something I love, then I wouldn't have any concerns. I'd have no idea what she'd do with it, but I'd be confident that it wouldn't spit in the face of the thing I love. I'd personally read a hundred Miraculous re-imaginings with her at the helm.