#scope of ML

[cybtekk]

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[generalluxun]

Gift Giving- An Aro Alix Kubdel Ficlet

Second Pride Month ficlet. This one taking pace in what is very clearly an early divergence AU so, the specific time doesn't matter much. 😁 This one was longer than the 750 limit, but I didn't want to shave any off so, oh well, 978 words it is.

“Should I get her chocolate? Chicks dig chocolate, right?”

“Alix, you’re a ‘chick’ too, you know.”

“Ehn, still up in the air.”

Marinette leaned around the display to peer at her friend. Alix was setting down a small gold-wrapped and expensive looking box. Caught, she snatched her hand back quickly, sticking her chin out and tilting her head up at the same time.

“What?” She challenged.

Marinette blinked, “What what? You literally pulled me here after school.” She rubbed one wrist as she looked around the gift shop and mumbled, “How do you do that on wheels.”

Alix shuffled over to some cards. “You were just going to go moon over some new pictures of Adrien anyway.” 

Marinette adjusted her backpack, which completely coincidentally happened to contain the latest issue of La Verve Paris and a 10 page spread on Adrien. The scrapbooking tools already laid out on her desk at home could be for anything.

“Why me though?” She deflected.

Alix was frowning at a card she’d picked up. She opened it, made a face, and put it back down again. Her hand moved back to it, but became a fist. She let out a frustrated growl.

“Because you and Alya are like, best friends. You’ll know what she would like.”

Marinette beamed at the thought of being helpful. “Okay, you got it! So what’s the occasion?”

Alix shuffled to a shelf with some figurines on it and poked one despondently. “Three month anniversary.”

“So cool! The three month anniversary is very important. You have to-” Marinette’s brain caught up with her mouth, “Wait, whaaat?”

She grabbed Alix by the shoulders, looking her in the eyes, “Anniversary? Dating? You and Alya? How do I not know about this?”

Alix squirmed free, “I don’t know. It’s not like… a thing.”

Marinette took a deep breath, calming herself. She was fine, it wasn’t a thing, no big deal…

“When did you start dating?” She yelped.

Alix shrugged, siddling to another shelf. “Iunno. It just kinda happened. She’s cool, right?”

Marinette followed, “Cool, right, very cool. You know that, I know that, but…” she pleaded with her eyes for more.

Alix sighed and gestured vaguely. “Well, she was always running off after Ladybug -Did you know she can do some wicked Parkour?- and getting herself in trouble. I just… followed her a couple times, my wheels made it easy. I pulled her fat out of the fire, but she would keep at it. She always wanted those pictures, and the latest scoop. Nothing slowed her down. Eventually I had her give me the camera. Wheels, right? I can get in and get out. She’d want info though after an akuma so she’d spend all night grilling me. Her mom makes awesome food by the way. Since we already hung out a lot, and she’s a hottie, when she asked I said yeah.”

Alix shrugged again.

“It’s no big deal.”

It was a lot to take in, but it made Marinette smile, “That sounds so cute! A match made in danger!”

Alix grimaced.

Marinette scooted back in, taking a porcelain elephant out of Alix’s hands and swapping it with a half kilo bag of fine ground coffee and a mug that read, ‘I’ll sleep when I’m published.’ The mug had a stuffed bear stitched to look like it was sleeping tucked inside.

Alix examined the offerings, “This is good for an anniversary?”

Marinette nodded, “You see the bear is a classic and coffee she likes but it also says ‘I want to stay awake and spend more time with you’ and-”

“Ouch!” Alix had looked at the price tags while Marinette rambled.

Marinette wilted a little, “Too much? I can pick out something cheaper…”

Alix glared at the numbers a moment longer as if she might intimidate them into vanishing. “It doesn’t matter, I can kiss new bearings for my skates goodbye for a while, no matter what.”

Her expression shifted from anger to resignation, and even timid.

She asked, “She’ll like them though?”

Marinette nodded, but also tried gently to take the mug from Alix. “You know, Alya’s not like that. If it’s a problem right now, I’m sure you don’t need to get her anything.”

Alix pulled it back quickly, snapping, “Yes I do. You don’t understand.”

Marinette held up her hands, “Seriously, Alya won’t think you love her less, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Ugh!” Alix threw down the gifts.

Marinette saved the mug by a quick dive. She blinked at Alix’s back as the other girl stalked away. In five steps though she’d turned around and trudged back. She crouched and helped Marinette up.

“Sorry,” She grated, brushing Marinette off. “You don’t get it though.”

Marinette held onto the gifts, “Tell me?”

Alix pulled her cap off and ran a hand through her hair. She gave the bag in Marinette’s hand a desultory swat with her hat. “I hate this stuff. Well, not hate, I just think it’s lame. it’s all schmoopsy junk to me. Alya likes it though, and she deserves it. It’s just not easy for me. Some people know when you are just supposed to. I don’t, but I can remember dates and times. One month, three months, six months, birthdays, holidays, you get the idea.”

Alix replaced her cap and took the gifts.

“That way, she gets what she deserves, even if I don’t understand it.”

Marinette thought about that long enough for Alix to start shuffling her feet awkwardly. Finally Marinette plucked the coffee from Alix’s hands and replaced it with a card. “Write what you just told me, in here. This’ll cost you half as much and she’ll like it ten times more.”

Alix fumbled the card uneasily, opening it to the blank interior. Her features set slowly and she glanced hopefully up at Marinette, “You really think so?”

[ladyofthenoodle]

i know a lot of people have settled on it being amelie in the finale because gabriel exchanged his life for nathalie’s but consider that we could just NOT know who else he sacrificed for emilie’s life yet. did you see tom and sabine in the ending sequence. i didn’t

[maggiecheungs]

so I’ve got the empress of ayodhaya (with mai davika) and scarlet heart thailand (with tu tontawan) to look forward to….. icb i’m finally getting some big budget female-led historical thai dramas about political power struggles 😭😭 i have waited so long for this

[plumsaffron]

This plaguedom is stupid still as always.

What a surprise. Poor fandom, never witnessed people naturally good at things despite the flux or prodigies in the show or remember kiddos in their childhood naturally good at things or news of talented kiddo prodigies. LOL

Now desperation strikes again cause Lila is above their fathomable curve so she must be a senti or witch (and or worse) apparently cause fandom's madness must be justified so they want her to be fake (and always something deadly wrong with her) is a thirst despite stupid fandom forgetting the human senti aren't all what they are cut out to be. They ain't even going to have eternal youth, they will have to remove waste, can get sick (F for Adrien having pigeon allegeries despite supposed to be the symbol of Gabriel's perfection.) See this senti bs achieves nothing.

And then what next if she's a witch. You'll just whine some more, nimrod. You basically are asking to change shirts. Magic world. Human Dan has magic hot dogs in NY Special. So... Looks to me, seeking desperate excruciating explanations are delusional stupid smoke screen screen desired to hide a dweebs mind from deciding to be never found.

[flightfoot]

Honestly, overall, I think most of the criticism towards Marinette for her lies and secrets surrounding Gabriel's identity and Sentidrien have at least been relatively on-target. I think some of them have been overly pessimistic towards her, but it hasn't been insane, and it's at least been about things she actually did.

Like, try comparing it to the reaction with Chameleon salt, especially towards Alya. (Yes I'm still bitter about that. I might have stopped being bitter IF IT WASN'T STILL A SUPER POPULAR FREAKING GENRE UNTO ITSELF).

Most of the saltfic scenarios and criticism towards Alya for her actions in Chameleon have been based on "what-ifs" such as "what if she fell for Lila's lies so thoroughly that she believed any nasty thing Lila claimed about Marinette, and then responded by being verbally abusive towards Marinette and even outright violent towards her, outright bullying her even." Making this gigantic leap from "She can't clock Lila's lies" to "she will be more horrible towards Marinette as a consequence of those nasty things she says than we've seen her be towards her worst enemies." And then also writing or fantasizing about her being punished by like, losing her ability to get a job in the future, being disowned by all her friends, having grown celebrities say nasty things about her, etc.

Most of the Marinette salt I've seen has been more limited in scope, with most of it being about actual things she did in the show, though sometimes ascribing nastier, more malicious intentions than the narrative does, like having her treat Chat Noir like a tool or being interested in her own comfort at other's expense. But it's still using actual examples of things that happened in the show for it.

Like... the closest equivalent of the Alya bashing fic tsunami that resulted from Chameleon would be, when applied to the stuff Marinette's being salted for currently (well, some of it. The Alya bashing fic stuff is SO out of proportion I don't know that it's possible to do this in a totally proportional way) would be for Marinette to take the fact that she was given Adrien's Amoks and that he doesn't know about them, for her to mind-control him into being her boyfriend, using them to force him to have sex with her and drain all of his bank accounts for her, and then having his friends realizing what she's doing to him, beat her up, ruin her for life, and for Adrien to leave and find a better girlfriend.

Like with Alya bashing fics, it's following off of a "what if?", in this case, "what if Marinette kept the rings and was a way more awful person than she's ever been shown to be in the show." Similarly, Alya bashing fics tend to use the "what if" of "what if Lila told far worse lies about Marinette than we've seen, and Alya was a way worse person than she's ever demonstrated to be?" And yeah, in the Marinette scenario here, we actually see her giving Adrien back his Amoks. But given that he doesn't know what they are, she could feasibly ask for them back without him knowing how important it is that he keeps them. Also Alya has demonstrated that she won't believe particularly nasty lies that Lila tells about Marinette, even with evidence (we see that in Ladybug), but that hasn't stopped the saltfic industry from flourishing in the half a DECADE since that episode aired.

The fact that I'm not continuously seeing 15% or so of Miraculous fics making Marinette out to be mind-controlling abusive rapist in order to have Adrien and his friends take revenge on her shows how much more sane and reasonable the current wave of Marinette salt is from the STILL ONGOING Chameleon saltdom tsunami.

...I'm still just very bitter about this. I still see people asking for these kinds of fics like they're just normal things, and even with filtering them out and muting people, I still run into fics regularly that do this sort of crap to Alya (and a lot of the other ML characters to be fair, but Alya gets it the worst.) And it just makes me laugh whenever I see people complaining about how unfairly hostile the ML fandom is being towards Marinette because it's STILL, even now, six years after Chameleon aired, less than the shit towards Alya, and I feel like I'm yelling into the void to an extent here because it's been normalized to the extent that it's just priced into the Miraculous fandom it sometimes feels like. When it's so far outside the bound of any realm of normality or sanity relative to the shit thrown at most of the other characters, that it becomes comical when you actually try to put them into proportion with each other.

I still just can't stop feeling this festering bitterness about the unfairness of it all.

[wisteriasymphony]

I feel like. The fundamental opposite of a lot of ML fans. Like yes I care about the LS but a HUGE part of the show that has been consistently lacking is it's worldbuilding!! Both the side characters and the actual lore! It took way too long to get to it.

This is finally starting to feel like a real full-fledged comic book universe to me- and that was Astruc's intention when he created Ladybug in the first place. Don't forget that the original idea was a teenage girl inheriting a mysterious pair of earrings! Inspired to take up the name Ladybug and fight crime and investigate secret evils lurking in the city after her father is suddenly murdered and she demands justice! And then the networks wouldn't greenlight the show unless he turned it into a kids' romcom. But even the rejected concept bibles had these overarching themes woven in- and comics thrive on very elaborate worldbuilding.

So I'm digging that we're getting to see this coming through now. Do I miss lovesquare shenanigans? Yeah, a little, but I wouldn't trade it. Nodding along like YES here are my classic Batman and Spider-Man vibes.

I do feel bad for those fans who bought into this thinking we were gonna get a kids' romcom the full way through, to be honest. I do love what's going on, and I think for a lot of people who were never super enthralled by the lovesquare and were always in it for the lore, this is a change they don't really mind!

But it does almost feel like a bait-and-switch, doesn't it? If everything about the show used to be so heavily centered around the lovesquare in all its fluffy, saccharine glory?

I do wonder what it would've been like if we had just gotten to jump into the comic book stuff to begin with, though. Whether the show would have gotten as far as it has without the romance, etc. At the very least the willingness to introduce more villains and more lore makes the prospect of 14 seasons a little more bearable, since the scope will seemingly keep increasing.

Still, even though I do feel for my mutuals mourning the lovesquare souring a little post s5 finale, I am also one of those world-first fans, so it is nice that the show is delivering on that front now.

[i-am-church-the-cat]

Just, imagine for a second

You’re an Australian ex-rugby player living in London circa 2016.

You’re married, just had or are about to have a son, doing some personal training work with motorsport athletes.

You go into your gym one day and see this skinny little blond kid, pushing himself to the max, trying desperately to bulk up a little, but all alone. Your newly honed Dad Instincts are telling you something’s up.

So you go over, ask to spot him, start learning about his life. You’re surprised to hear the squick of a distinctly non-British accent. You suddenly have a tiny American teenage boy with big, eager eyes on your hands and you do the one thing you think will work: you ask him about sports.

That’s not the last time you’ll meet him, in fact you’ll continue to meet him regularly over the course of a year.

You talk about American sports, to start with. NFL, NBA, MLB, MLS. You’re almost surprised by the scope of the kid’s knowledge so you talk about Premier league teams and cricket and Aussie football. He meets you every step of the way.

Finally, you just ask him, what are you doing here all alone, kid?

He’s a racecar driver, he says. Just won the karting junior world championship, trying to make the jump up to formula cars. He’s been living in England for about a year now but he’s lived in Europe since he was 11, been on his own besides from karting coaches, driving coaches, and teaches since he was 12. He says, I’m gonna drive in Formula 1.

And damn. You remember how hard it was for you moving from Australia to the UK, and you were a full grown adult. This kid’s in an entirely new country, working his butt off for something most people can only dream of, and he’s doing it almost entirely on his own.

And you think about your son, so small, still reliant every day on his mom and dad. And you think you can help this kid, and not just guiding him on workouts or diets. You can be a mentor, a role model, a teacher and a friend. You can be a helping hand on this kid’s way of achieving everything he ever dreamed of.

Your professional days are behind you. You’re more than happy to sit back and help the younger generation help.

And now you’re watching, 7 years later, as that little boy in the gym who turned into an older brother for your kids, a helping hand for your wife, a friend for you- you’re watching him become everything he ever wanted to be.

That little boy you found all those years ago has turned into one of the strongest men you know.

[chaaistained]

omg ml. my luminous, incomprehensible, light-refracted-through-a-dying-god’s-eyeball soul. it was your birthday and i MISSED IT??? i should be exiled. i should be put in stocks and pelted with rotten fruit by the townspeople. but instead i’m here, belated but bursting, to say:

you are. you just are. like a celestial event. you are the perfect intersection of deranged and divine. a girl who could dismantle an empire in the morning and bake the best cookies of your life in the evening (and make it look like both took equal effort). you are so right about everything it physically pains me.

how do you do it?? how do you move through the world with this much magnetism, this much amazing-ness. i feel like if someone took a polaroid of you it would self-destruct because it simply cannot capture the scope of you. you are a concept. a motif. the reason art exists.

happy (late) birthday, my seismic event of a friend. hope it was worthy of you.

my darling, my gorgeous rose scented star child, my beloved friend — IT IS OKAY THERE IS NO NEED TO FEEL SORRY (or be exiled while you’re at it)

bcs I LOVE YOU SO MUCH THANK YOU FOR THIS MESSAGE IT MEANS SO MUCH TO ME

truth be told i was busy on my actual birthday with other things so my family properly celebrated today and it truly felt like a birthday experience TODAY so, you’re not late for wishing me today, it was (unknowingly) perfectly aligned with the vibe of my day !!

just said goodbye to my cousins and we had a ton of fun, a lot of loud conversations and i’ve laughed so hard that my throat is hoarse but i feel full of light and happiness :(

and then to come online and see YOU and THIS HEART WARMING ASK?? i’m so forever indebted to you and your motivation for helping me to create this blog and make all of these friendships, particularly ours

thank you thank you thank you

from the bottom of my heart

to the stars and back

i immensely adore you, my darling emma

thank you so much 🫂

[ilikekidsshows]

Marinette and Adrienette discourse aside, what I find very off-putting about Miraculous since season 3 is the inability to differentiate between secundary characters and background characters. It’s very contradictory because none of the Miracuclass aside from Alya, Chloé and Nino are compelling enough to warrant any meaningful interest. I distinctly remember people giving Nathaniel a bigger role during season 1, putting him in situations and even shipping him with Chloé, but that doesn’t really contradict my statement because it showed people’s willingness to latch onto a narrow scope of characters and expanding on them. Realistically no one is interested in a wide set of characters that account to what, fifteen people? I didn’t even count them all because I can’t remember them. Are the miraculous all interesting to watch? Yeah. But why give them to every single person who ever breathed in the same room as Marinette? There is a reason why the cool stuff happens to the MC and their crew. People don’t have the time to invest in a dozen different characters who aren’t even flashed out properly past one or two quirks (if we’re lucky). 

I remember when Ladybug started giving away the miraculous like they were candies, some people said you don’t have to give a character a miraculous to flash them out. I agree, but this isn’t even about that. I think you don’t need to flash them all out, period. At least not all of them. Also because the flash out part in question boils down to “Oh no my partner/sibling/friend is in danger and for some reason two perfectly capable superheroes need my help.” I’m like, why. Who cares about Kim or Max or Mylène getting a power-up. Genuinely, I’ve never seen a single fanart of them dressed up as superheroes. I’m sure some of them exist, but the fandom at large does not care.

If you want to compare ML to MHA, while MHA is not perfect, there are undoubtedly some characters that are more important than the rest of the class and the story focuses on them. But the thing is, it is *required* that they all be the heroes because that’s the plot. It’s a school designed for that purpose, the very best in fact. But Miraculous? Just let this class be normal. Let us see Marinette hang out with her girlfriends and Adrien play with the Kitty Section and Adrien and Nino actually being bffs (remember when Nino was still worth something?) and have Adrien and Chloé’s supposed friendship actually hold value (whether or not you like her it’s up to you, but to show had Adrien keep insisting she was his only friend growing up only for that to go absolutely nowhere). 

Also they could’ve just showed the powers by having Marinette and Adrien use them. Hell even the Alya-Nino-Chloé trio. We actually have that! But then we also have… ten different heroes. For whatever reason. 

---

Another scorching hot take: giving a character a Miraculous isn't even fleshing them out. Almost any one of these episodes could be written without the side character being focused on getting a Miraculous. All the tertiary heroes do in any episode after transforming is blindly follow Ladybug’s orders without question. They jump when she tells them to jump and use their special power when she tells them to. They're merely extensions of Marinette's plan to make her look smarter and not characters in their own right. The same effect could be gotten with Marinette or Adrien (but let's not kid ourselves, Marinette will only ever share power with her partner once to appease him after treating him like crap for weeks) used the Miraculous instead. It really shows how bad the writers are at long term planning when they had Unification have no actual setbacks in practice.

I actually think Miraculous' wide and varied cast used to be more of a strength. The world feels so much more real when our protagonists’ classmates all have their own things going on, even if it's just one or two things per character. It makes sure a wide variety of interests kids might be into can be included in the stories. The Kitty Section episode, ‘Silencer’, worked the best for this, tackling topics to do with the entertainment industry while Marinette was along for the ride because she was helping them out. Similarly, we have two episodes where the cast is filming a movie, although I only like the first one, ‘Horrificator’, because the latter is just Chloé being annoying. But it's a fun excuse to get the large cast together for an episode.

In an ideal show with Miraculous’s format, the classmates would be the vehicles to introduce Marinette and/or Adrien to the Problem of the Episode, which will have our heroes there when the conflict causes an Akuma to pop up, giving them an understanding of what’s going on, and making them able to have some dialogue at the end about what just went down, the “what did we learn today?” discussion or some other self-reflection moment. Like, with Kim you could tackle competition topics, sore losers, cheating and even throwing a contest for some reason. With Nathaniel you could tackle worries about not being original or eye-catching enough, of wanting to chase trends in order to get noticed and how to deal with the frustration of putting so much effort into your craft and not being appreciated. The fact that we have actually gotten a few episodes like that makes it so annoying when the writers insist on their lazy options of “Chloé is a jerk” and “Marinette concocts a crazy scheme around Adrien, casualties ensue” for most of the series.

The issue, I feel, is that the writers are constantly failing to utilize their large cast for storytelling, mostly due to their laziness and lack of ambition. As of the retool, we almost never see the characters taking part in their established hobbies, instead obsessing over the main couple even more than Marinette does. It’s just like how the hero selves exist merely as tools to be used for Marinette’s schemes, their civilian selves exist merely to tell the audience that Marinette and Adrien are meant to be. They’re pure utility with no character, and the utility is the same for every single character.

That last bit is how this relates to what you said; how Miraculous doesn’t differentiate between secondary characters and background characters, because the writers refuse to elevate any character to secondary status and actually keep them there / commit to it. The best any character not named Marinette can hope for is being a recurring supportive character, and those are barely distinct from background characters. There are some bits that make us think Alya in the retool or Adrien in the earlier seasons are supposed to be secondary characters, but they just don’t get the focus necessary to make them pop from the rest of the cast. These characters have gone through some big life changes, but we barely know how they feel about any of that. Despite their plot importance they have the emotional depth of a spilled glass of water. It’s annoying.

The main reason that Miraculous’ cast feels bloated is that the writers can’t use a variety of characters imaginatively to justify needing a cast that big, and they have no concept of a character tier list or how to signal character importance to the audience. Giving all the classmates Miraculouses makes them seem equally important, or just more important than Recurring Akuma Victim Number 72, when they just blatantly aren’t. Freaking Mr. Pigeon has more emotional depth than Minotaurox. Freaking Rooster Bold is nothing more than a punny reference to an actually entertaining superhero.

[cybtekk]

Software developers with AI & ML skills have a wide range of career opportunities which gives a promising growth too. With the evolution of technology, the demand for professionals in this field will remain strong.

[miracotar]

I, the naive little optimist that I am, hope that Gabriel’s last wish was for Adrien’s happiness. If Marinette was able to convince Gabriel to “be a good father” (juxtaposing, I know), even for that moment, then I can wholeheartedly see this being what’s best for Adrien, rather than his abuser’s ideal reality.

That’s why Natalie was saved. Because she is his maternal figure, and she means so much to him.

Adrien has already grieved Emilie, and after the padded room, I’m sure wants little to nothing to do with Gabriel, which made him a fitting sacrifice for the wish.

He should be grieving and struggling and learning to cope with the Hell he had to endure, but I cannot realistically expect that kind of writing. Not after Marinette acknowledging Chat Blanc once, post-incident.

Marinette did technically use the amok on Adrien during the finale but given what she says while doing it I think it's supposed to be taken as a good thing

Marinette: You don't need to be like him. Just be yourself. Adrien, you're the only one who can decide what you make of your life.

So like. Here's the thing on that.

Firstly, in /theory/ this is a good thing. She's trying to Ella Enchanted her way out of this and tell him he doesn't need to listen to everyone else, just himself. However we've already seen through Nathalie trying this that it won't work. As soon as someone else uses the Amok, that order is canceled.

Secondly

You can manipulate someone without a Magic remote control. Marinette is already choosing things for Adrien, and will likely continue to do so, and his past trauma means that he's likely to comply with her wants (even if she's not intentionally manipulating him) because he's scared of doing something 'wrong' and losing her affection.

[imthepunchlord]

I read your recent post about how ML should have stuck with 7 heroes and the polls for the Zodiac heroes. If the Zodiac needed to be used like in canon, how would you write it to work? Would it be similar to your idea of the Zodiac heroes, or would it be something else?

Well, for one thing, I would definitely set up that Fu doesn't have the Chinese Zodiac at the start. Not only does it back Fu choosing Ladybug and Cat and thinking they're best to send out, as Fox, Turtle, and Bee could be more limited in mass helping the city, and LB and Cat have the edge over Butterfly (should anyway), but Fu having the Zodiac this whole time just points to how much of an idiot he is.

Especially if doing the canon powers they have.

By the canon powers they have, Fu essentially wins as soon as Gabriel started up the Butterfly and alerted Wayzz of his intentions.

Fu has the time traveling Rabbit. Even if he's not allowed to change the past, he can go and look at the timeline. He can see who has Butterfly and who is misusing. Gabriel now starting this game of cat and mouse is now obsolete cause Fu knows who he is. He just needs to go get it, or pick ideal adults, tell them who has it, it's done.

Now, if going the route that Rabbit is with the Kudbels, there are still others that give Fu a huge edge to just win.

With Dragon, Fu can become literal air. He can go anywhere. And as we don't have clear definitions on Dragon's limitations, we can make assumptions on what can be done. As far as we know, he can spread himself out and scope out all of Paris. He could locate HM, blindside him with a sudden wind in his secret lair, and blow the Butterfly off Gabriel and carry all the way back home. It's done and over with.

Horse's Voyage, Fu can open up multiple portals and peek through them to see if he can find HM that way. Someone can clear this up for me as I'm not sure, but I do know that Kaalki did use Voyage to go see Chat Noir as Adrien, which could mean Voyage could be used to open up a way to go to another Miraculous holder. If this is so, Fu could use Voyage to blindside Gabriel while he's seeking victims.

Goat could be used to make a Miraculous finding item OR Rooster could be used to have a Miraculous finding power since the limitations of it are still not clear (like Gabriel literally gave himself au hopping powers in the Paris Special).

Dog's Fetch, I don't know if you need to see what you want, but potentially, Fetch could be used to just fetch a Miraculous and bring it back to you.

The inclusion of the Zodiac and the reveal that Fu had them this whole time, it just makes him look like an idiot. Plus the question of why send out the very two Gabriel needs when Fu has so many options to work with Ladybug and keep Cat safe from Gabriel.

I would make use of the Shanghai Special, have that be the intro and reveal of the Zodiac. Could've been Marinette's test for Guardianship. And then to be used by the heroes, I would vote they'd be spread out amongst the 7 with Marinette keeping the most as Guardian and leader, and to occasionally allow the occasional temporary hero as it is fun having a classmate join, but I don't think the entire class need to join and have a singular assigned Miraculous.

Alternatively, if doing a team of 7 heroes, and keeping that there's a clash between Miraculous, have the Zodiac be the next villains. Plus, having a big group of 12 villains could really validate doing a decent size group of 7 heroes.

Or maybe do like Xiaolin Showdown where the Zodiac are lost and scattered and there are rogue users who are unpredictable in use, and there's two groups are competing against each other for the Miraculous. And it could allow the occasional swapping as they win or lose. Like one ep Marinette could win the found Miraculous! One ep Marinette could lose that found Miraculous! One ep, Lila steals the Ladybug from Marinette! One finale, all the heroes could lose their Miraculous to the villains, and what do they do about it now that they're more limited?

So how Zodiacs could be done and made to work, one of these options is what I would pick.

Which, until there's a good alternative villainous force outside Miraculous misuse to face, I would probably vote scattered Zodiac to race and gather or villainous Zodiac team.

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

I know this is a very watered down version of what you talk about portraying things in media, but nowadays even reading a random trashy romance manga for fun (or any media... yeah sometimes I feel like reading them, kinda like when you crave junk food idk), can be exhausting, because the comment sections and communities are now full of people complaining about the "correct" portrayal of relationships, and how much they hate the FL or the ML, because "they should just see a therapist" or whatever, and I'm just sitting thinking that if I wanted to read about the perfect portrayal of a relationship, I'd be reading a psychology book, I don't know maybe it's just me.

All love and light but I think that’s a different topic altogether. As a dark fiction enjoyer, I do generally share the dissatisfaction with how much focus there is on moral correctness in fiction, but specifically here I’m talking about how people are so uncomfortable with real, often gendered, violence that they prefer to act like it doesn’t exist— and that the people who’ve experienced it also don’t exist, because they’ve been tarred by that same distasteful brush

I’m vague because the umbrella is frankly broad, and that’s part of my point. Plenty has been said about the concept of the perfect victim, and how difficult it is to meet those standards. That very much includes what kind of trauma we’re talking about. The scope of acknowledgement (not even acceptability, that doesn’t really exist) is so narrow that it’s really easy to fall beyond it to just straight up not being taken seriously. People stop pretending at any sort of gravity because they don’t think these are things that actually happen!

And if the assumption is that “unrealistic” trauma doesn’t exist at all, then the conversation surrounding it in fiction turns into “Why are you being needlessly gross?” when faced with it. Or on top of that, there might be accusations of misogyny, because you have to hate women if you acknowledge that gendered violence happens and portray it beyond whatever is an individual person’s metric for tastefulness

This circles back around to edging out victims, because… guess who’s the most likely to be talking about trauma. And beyond the usual explanations of using fiction to cope— which is fine, to be clear! Though I do dislike how that’s marched out as a justification, as if one is necessary— I think it’s also just a matter of relatability? Like it’s common and value neutral to identify with and be interested in narratives that are relevant to your experiences lmao

[generalluxun]

What do you dislike about salters?

Firstly- there are different definitions of salter. Some people call anyone who dares critique their favorite media a 'salter'. I think that's a disingenuous method to shut down discussion, and do not consider that a fair definition.

I think 'Salter' really is at it's core about bad faith takes, and I don't like anything done in bad faith.

Howling 'Marinette is a stalker!' and writing some hyperbolic screed/fic about her doing nothing but stalking? What's the point? Her 'stalking' is used for farce, it's not 'who she is' -With the exception of Derision which is its own pile of disaster- If you want to critique the use of stalker tropes for humor, *that* is a fair point of discussion.

People howling about how Alya is a bad friend for believing Lila, same thing. Alya is *required* by plot to believe Lila... Everyone is. Lila's 14 mothers and 93 identities are some next level magic whatever nonsense... You can critique that plot thread, or the laziness of the lies, but don't bad faith rip into a character.

Then there's the types who fetishize 'punishing' characters (they like to say 'get consequences') it's disproportionate to the point of torture porn though. It's way outside genre, themes, or scope of the media. They're projecting and hey... If they need to, fine for them, but I don't like it.

And the end of the day though Salters are largely about sitting around feeling superior rather than seeking solutions or presenting healthy alternatives to what they dislike. You just don't need people like that in your life.

Silver lining- a lot of the ML fandom is young, hopefully they grow out of it.