#also Twitter sucks and I really think Astruc would do so much better if he wasn't on it like it makes me feel bad for him honestly

[literaphobe]

I see that many here believe that Gabriel was selfish and wicked even when making a wish, but Astruc on Twitter reposted an analysis that actually says his final wish was a sincere intention to fix everything and make Adrien happy. There was nothing sinister except for Venum, and it seems he just thought she would refuse to give him the Miraculouses. He even mentioned several times in the show that Adrien would understand him if he told him what he was doing and assumed Adrien would do the same in his place, only to later tell Marinette that he didn't talk about the villain he was, as if implying he realized Adrien might hate him for it.

Finale analysis, which was reposted by him: https://twitter.com/MLBFrances/status/1677393499426004993

i don’t think gabriel was Overtly trying to be mean or cruel or evil. not in making the wish, for the most part not even in his intentions for making the wish. in his mind, he just wanted his wife back. he thought it was cruel and unfair that she had to be sacrificed for their child to exist. those are valid reasons to want what he did. but he’s also very much an ends justify the means kind of person. and the truth is, whether you think you are doing it all for the good of the world, the benefit of others, or the happiness of your loved ones, when the means are very cruel and painful, they never Ever justify the ends

that’s why adrichat yells and screams and cries in 5x24. that’s why he tells him he fucking sucks and is a shit father (however he said it). even if gabe explained it to adrien, when coupled with what ladybug’s told him, how he himself has learned that making a wish is Dangerous, he would ultimately realize trying to wish his mom back is wrong. at the end of the episode, when marinette shows gabe that video, he realizes that even SHE doesn’t want to come back. he makes the wish to bring natalie back so that someone is left to raise adrien. in his eyes, that’s the best thing he could do in this situation. a final ditch attempt to somewhat right his wrongs. but that doesn’t mean making a wish isn’t Still Dangerous and the characters in the world might start facing its consequences (the lies, lila and the electricity scene at the end)

and so yeah. gabe clearly doesn’t want adrien to remember him as an evil villain. but lies can only get you so far. the truth of how his dad treated him will never go away. and that’s the thing about villains that don’t deserve to be redeemed. there are people in our life that don’t deserve that either, but the odd thing about love is that we try and redeem them anyway. we want to be wrong about them anyway. we wish for them to be better than we thought we were. and that’s why i can say gabriel is awful and abusive and shitty but also adrien is going to miss him and mourn him and hate that he’s gone and want to think his father was better than how he treated him

so yeah. gabriel is a long list of bad things that you just can’t come back from at this point. not because he used venom on marinette when she let her guard down and trusted him. not because he made the wish. but it all adds up. and whether he thinks he’s doing the right thing or not, deciding to sacrifice himself deus ex machina style instead of facing real life consequences—sucks. him asking a girl to lie to his son and the world and keep his ugly secrets. sucks!!! regardless of intention

so yeah… gabe can have the right intentions and want to make everything right and decide that he shouldn’t force his desires on the people he loves at the end… it doesn’t mean he’s a good guy now lol. also doesn’t make it bad writing. unless they fuck it up majorly next season. but im really just here for the ride

tl;dr i don’t really know what ur trying to drive home here so im just giving my thoughts in general about gabriel + how good intentions don’t mean good person? lol i hope this makes sense. i think that redeeming gabriel doesn’t play into whether a piece of media is good. not every villain needs to be redeemed etc etc

[twin-books]

👀Canon ML Felix

Firstly, thank you, anon, for the ask. I very much appreciate it. <3 Alright, now... Boy, do I have opinions on this gremlin. Let's just make one thing clear here... I love him. Now that, that's out of the way, let's talk about him for reals; I actually quite enjoyed his introduction (besides the sexual assault thing which I am still very mad about). I thought he was pretty fun. Then when season 4 hit... this kid is literally the only character I care about now. I wish I was exaggerating. He's got more nuance than Gabriel, more intrigue than Adrien, and is way more fun to watch than Marinette. I'm sorry, that's my opinion. But the thing is, I don't trust the ml team for a second. Especially with Astruc's very high and mighty tweet about canon Felix where he's all like, "So... do we like Felix now?" Why don't I trust them? Oh simple, really. Astruc relentlessly teased and bullied PV fans for the "crime" of liking the concepts and for daring to like "the worst protagonist to never exist", Felix. Then proceeded to add Felix to the canon show but purposely make him suck to "prove" how bad he was and then goes and suddenly turns that around for no real reason. So I got a theory... You know what happened with Chloe? That's going to happen with Felix. I'm betting you. Maybe faster, maybe slower, but I refuse to let go of this belief. I refuse to be surprisingly crushed yet again by these people who think it's funny to make fun of PV fans. He also clearly still doesn't like Felix if you saw his recent tweet where he retweeted clear PV fanart but acted like the Felix in it was the canon Felix and said "Kick him where it hurts, Marinette!". (Btw, what a freaking jerk move. I am trying to be nicer to this man but this tweet really ticked me off, especially since I follow the artist of that image and they're a sweetheart). Guess what happens to characters Astruc very clearly doesn't like? Miracle Queen. Miracle Queen happens. It also doesn't help that his whole "Do we like Felix now" thing sounds eerily similar to him riding on the hopes and dreams of Chloe lovers while still subtly bullying them until Miracle Queen came around and all subtly was thrown out the window. I don't care if he won't be involved as much anymore. I don't trust that for a second. But regardless, when that does happen (and I will be pleasantly surprised if this somehow doesn't happen), I will try to still love the gremlin because he's got more personality than the two leads combined. You have no idea how refreshing it is to not have a character who is obsessed with someone romantically. Literally every main character has someone they are obsessed with (Chloe no longer counts since she is no longer important) besides, sort of, Alya. Like yeah, she loves Nino but she isn't obsessive. Unlike her best friend and her boyfriend and his best friend and his best friend's dad and his best friend's teacher/guardian/assistant. But she's still all about romance (clearly with how she won't stop helping Marinette with Adrien). Felix just wants to screw Gabe over and steal jewelry. That is so freaking refreshing. I am so tired of this show's awful romance. Like, please Felix, screw things up. Just don't fall in love or you'll be like the rest of them. Also, he's cool. This boy has had more badass moments in his only 3 episodes than most every miraculous hero that isn't Ladybug, Rena Rouge, and Chat Noir. He's so fun to watch because he's completely unpredictable (like I mean, his motives are, kind of, and the writing but not what he's going to do exactly). Man, it's so nice to have something that isn't so freaking predictable. Let's not forget that this boy has done more to change the status quo than the two freaking leads. It's still not a lot but ain't it freaking sad he's only had 3 episodes so far and somehow he's contributed more progress to the plot than Ladynoir? I am also convinced he meant his apology in the episode, Felix, and I'm convinced he does care for Adrien at least a little bit. And even if the show proves me wrong I won't care because I rejected canon years ago, okay?

Make no mistake, I know Strike Back will be awful and will probably do it's best to make Felix suck... but I'm watching it anyway purely for Felix. I also kind of fell in love with Dog!Felix's design and I just love him. I love him a lot. Also, even if ya hate canon Felix at least we can all agree that him screwing Gabe over constantly is endlessly entertaining. Like, I could watch that nonstop. To sum it up; I love him but I don't trust the writers with him at all considering what they did to every character I had the nerve to like. But I'm looking forward to seeing more of my gremlin. 10/10 for Adrien's equivalent to Shadow the Hedgehog. Thanks again for the lovely ask and I hope you're having a wonderful day, afternoon, evening, night, or whatever time it is where you are, anon. <3 Send Me a Miraculous Character

[arlakos]

Why Season 3 was a Rollercoaster of a mess. (Spoilers!)

 Oh boy

Oooooooh boy where do I even begin

Lets start from the beginning i Suppose

When Miraculous Ladybug first came out i fell in love with the series. I thought the premise was nice, the characters ok and the story interesting. Well, to be fair I didnt expect much of the story due to being in its first season, but I loved it. The finale was meh (the last episode, not the mid-series Origins story, I watched it on Netflix). I liked the series. I loved the fandom. And i Couldn’t wait for season 2 at the time.

Then season 2 came out

As i started watching the first ep of season 2, it started out strong, answered a question i already knew, but then... it didn't go any further. See, when I expected season 2, I expected the story to be taken up a notch, the plot to become stronger, new and interesting characters to be introduced, and for someone to replace Hawkmoth as the antagonist (bc in my mind, he always felt like a season 1 antagonist to be replaced one season later by the actual main antagonist, and the mayura leaks did not help). 

But it never came. The story remained simple and eventually started to become bland. All episodes were all single-story eps with no correlation to each other other than the characters in them. Every single character in the show that wasnt Marinette had any sort of character growth, and I could take any one of the episodes out other than the first and last two and it wouldn't have any impact. Maybe not all of them, but some.

(This was the same time I learned that all episodes in the series were meant to always be single episode storylines. It was the same time I learned the the shows creator was also an ASS-truc, but thats a story for another day)

So for season 2, I ended up starting to find the show boring and lackluster. Most of the episodes were boring and unentertaining, and aside from a select few, such as the finale, the new hero eps and a few others, the entire season was boring to heck. 

Worse still, Marinette went from an ok nice girl (who was at times a bit of an arse) to a stalker asshole who was at times worse than Chloe. 

(Then again, the first episode of the entire series literally had Marinette have a planner used to track Adrien's every move, so what the hell do i know)

The fandom, however, was still amazing at the time, so I stuck around. The fanfics were amazing at the time and the fandom was still so kind-hearted

Luckily for me, Season 3 would manage to have some much better episodes.

But at what cost.

WHAT. COST.

See, while Season 3 was undoubtedly better that season 2 overall in episode quality, this season was probably also the worst of all 3 at the same time. This season was not only the worst in overall season quality but the one that entirely ruined the fandom for me. The plot was again non-existent and there was still no character development, but they manage to make this season better by making a plotline that required all characters to be an idiot ball, then ditch it at the end just so Thomas could again insult people on twitter.

Lets start with the first episode of Season 3: Chameleon

Sometime before the production of season 2 and 3, Asstruc learned how to write someone as a martyr people would feel pity for that character and want to protect (read: stan) them.

So naturally, Ass-truc would abuse this a lot.

In the first ep of season 3, Astruc would create the worst episode ever made. 

The premise of the episode is that Lila has returned to school and has been telling lies, which makes Marinette mad. None of the class believes her due to everyone being written as an idiot (seriously the someone gotta has google on their smartphones everyone has), so of course, Naturally Mari confronts Lila, who swears to ruin her life before and after an akuma battle which doesnt really matter for this episode, aside from the fact that Lila fully works with hawkmoth because being a bad kid means that working with a terrorist is perfectly reasonable if you can get revenge on the good guys.

So, including the fact Ass-truc reintroduced Lila back into the show as a Chloe 2.0 to making everyone an idiot ball so that the writing could even work, this will be the episode that I will hate the most. And not just for the episode itself. We’ll come to that later. But the point is, this is how most of the season would go:

-Lila: *exists*

-Marinette: *cries* im suffering so much, my life is ruined!

-Fans: stan to the point of insanity

-Me sipping my salt flavored tea: b*tch calm the f*ck down.

Speaking of Marinette, the Miraculous team had already been hellbent on making Marinette more of an asshole, stalkery and creepy and passing it off as cute in season 2, so they decided to fix that by dialing all that shit up to 11. Episodes like Weredad and Oni-chan really showed this, with the former having Marinette Literally manipulating Chat Noir to be stuck in a bad situation just for her own sake, and latter literally having her try to break into Adriens house because Lila is there. All for the excuse that Lila is a Liar and totally not because she is with Adrien, Marinette cant be jealous because Marinetteisperfectandamazingand-

Yeah, she really sucks as the main character. TBH I'm waiting for the spinoff show where Alix and Kim dare each other to do stupid stuff each episode like its MTV’s Jackass, it's gonna be fun.

Now onto the Other episodes!

While I will admit that compared to season 2, there were a lot of good episodes. Gamer 2.0, Feast, Ikari Gozen, Party Crasher, and of course the heart-wrenching Oblivio come to mind. These episodes are amazing and show how good the episodes are when you make sure the garden gnome is locked in a closet somewhere during episode development.

So out of the 26 episodes, 5 of them were really good.

The rest were either kinda ok or complete shit. That's not to say they were all bad, but there were just some parts... at best there was either a part of it I found cringeworthy too much for me to consider it as one of the good ones, such as Pupetteer 2 with its Adrien Statue scene, or at worst all of it was just written so badly, such as the entirety of Stormy Weather not actually being an episode and acutally being just and episode recap.

Now for the plot. Oh, wait, what plot?

First of all, Miraculous never had one. At best it was just a bunch of single-episode stories that Ass-truc wants you to think are connected somehow and somehow all work together as a cohesive story. A lot of the characters in Miraculous Ladybug

You mean the overarching storyline where Marinette becomes a Guardian just because she can pick a hero? Yeah, just ignore the episode where Fu said he had to spend an entire childhood learning how to even be an apprentice Guardian, or ignore the fact that picking a person to be a hero doesn't make Marinette qualified to be Guardian in a slightest!

(If someone literally has to ask me this, ask yourself if a pharmacist is fit to be a doctor just because they hand out your meds.)

What about the storylines about other certain characters in the show like Lila, who the show has been building up to be a villain while casually destroying characters' intelligence to be able to do so? The story about Chloe accepting that she can’t really be a hero anymore and moving on?

Ruined by the Finale.

Oh yeah, the finale.

This season Finale was probably the worst finale out of all the seasons and half the stuff done in the last two episodes did not make sense. I dont want to talk about it much because I want to do a blog post about it later on, but for the sake of the finale, they ruined a bunch of characters, martyred Marinette for the 100th time, and created some stupid plot ideas for the sake of coolness. And by coolness i mean stanning Marinette again and making her extra special. Doesnt matter if it makes a contradiction or makes no sense. Stupidity has won this episode!

To be fair though, all the reasons above aren’t the reasons I hate this season. 

No.

The reason for season 3 being the worst for me is how it had ruined the fandom.

Ever since the first episode of season 3, the fandom has become a cesspool of salt and anger. Character bashing because the class didn't straight up agree with Marinette instantly, Over the top Marinette stanning, fanfics that go over the top crazy, it has gone insane. On ao3 most fanfics of ML that i have seen have been about ‘Chameleon Fix-Its’ where Lila is metaphorically shot with a GAT, ‘Marinette protection Squads’ which basically involve her moving schools because Lila exists, and the Maribat ship that has made my head dent my desk (seriously where the fuck did it come from?!). Worst still, as a result of Season 3, the Adrien hate has started to go crazy as a result of the Chameleon episode and similar eps resulting in Marinette being shipped with Luka (aka the better Adrien as stated by Marinette stans), Felix before the Felix episode dropped, and even Damien Wayne in the Notorious Maribat ship (no seriously where did it come from i want answers!). To put it simple, thanks to Ass-truc all of ao3 is filled with salt fics and no more original and interesting stories.

BTW while i have your attention and am talking about good Miraculous stories on ao3, go read Miraculous Tales by JED1 on AO3 its soo damn good.

To be fair, I myself am angry at the episode, but only because everyone was written to be an idiot ball for the episode to work, and because of the fact Astruc used the episode to rile up the fandom to be almost as toxic as him.

If anything, its the number one reasons why i hate seasons 3 and the reason why it has ruined the fandom for me.

And that, overall, is why i think Season 3 was a Rollercoaster of a mess.