uwouldthink

[uwouldthink]

This may be a hot take, but insisting that the confrontation can be nothing but viscerally traumatizing for Adrien engages in the same infantilization that the show has for him.

Worse actually, because the show did let him confront Gabriel as Nighttormentor and tells him all the ways he sucks. In fact, Adrien sounded just about ready to cut Gabriel off. That wasn't traumatic for Adrien, the opposite. It was empowering for him. The only trauma he got from the encounter is the magical fear dust making him see visions of Chat Blanc despite never being told about it.

Hell, we can't even say that the confrontations in Chat Blanc and Ephemeral were traumatizing for Adrien, because we only saw his reaction the minute it was all dropped on him. That's not trauma, that's normal human emotion. Anyone would react this strongly to that kind of reveal blindsiding them. For all we know, if the world didn't end and instead Gabriel was defeated, Adrien could've been upset for some time while processing it, but he would process it and then go on with his life.

That's actually seems more in character for him than insisting he would completely break apart at confronting Gabriel even with someone to support him. By all indications, Adrien is actually a remarkably emotionally resillient person. He dealt with the loss of a parent with minimal-to-no support system and his other parent withdrawing from him and less than a year later he's running away to public school and showing a remarkably healthy outlook on his mother's passing (in contrast to his father's refusal to move on from her).

When faced with the loss of another parental figure while literally having in the palm of his hand the option to prevent it (an option that his father is terrorizing the city for), he rejects it because he's able to cope with the impending loss well enough to not take a morally bad option to prevent it.

And that's not even getting into how optimistic he is despite the general background bullshit of his life.

Would Adrien experience a lot of emotional turmoil from the reveal? Yes. But that's not trauma. And it's the interesting part we all come to stories for.

I keep seeing people hand-wringing about how it would be ~so traumatizing~ for Adrien to confront his father, but that reasoning always struck me as kind of pathetic.

First of all, Adrien is a superhero, last I checked? Gabriel has power over Adrien, yeah, but Hawk Moth and Cat Noir don't have that kind of power dynamic.

Second of all, do you realize why it would be traumatizing for Adrien to do this, right? Adrien lacks a real support system outside of Marinette, and especially a real parental figure he can trust and that can cushion the loss. Of course he's going to be extremely vulnerable to Gabriel's emotional manipulation every time they fight, Gabriel is the only family he has left. To say nothing of the fact that the reveal is always unceremoniously dropped on him.

Third, the fact that it hurts is exactly what makes it interesting. Adrien is the type of character who keeps giving second chances and tries to see the good in people who least deserve it. The Adrien vs. Gabe confrontation puts him into a position where he has to realize that, no, sometimes you have to cut a bitch both for your own good and that of everyone around you. Thematically, Adrien's character is all about destruction sometimes being necessary, even if it doesn't make you feel warm and fuzzy about yourself.

Fourth and most importantly, and I can't believe this even needs to be said, Adrien is not a real child. If this were a real-life situation I would advise caution, but like. This is a story. Narrative cohesion always takes precedence over realism.

[uwouldthink]

The worst part is that they could've been a really good addition in a better story.

Teenagers experiencing their first serious relationship is rarely going to end well, so let Lukanette and Adrigami experience those growing pains. Have Marinette and Adrien make all the mistakes here and explore their flaws as partners so that when the time for Adrienette comes, they'll get there as more mature versions of themselves who actually stand a good chance at making the relationship work.

Instead the relationships broke up because of completely external circumctances that aren't tied to the characters themselves and now we have Marinette being an even shittier girlfriend to Adrien than she ever was to Luka.

Don't know if this is a hot take or not but in the grand scheme of things Lukanette and Adrigami was a complete waste of time.

Yeah, that's pretty much my opinion as well. There was simply no need for either of these ships. Aside from the fact that they didn't add anything, they're also rendered completely redundant by the fact that Adrien and Marinette were already in love triangles with themselves. The whole love hexagon arc is a masterclass in missing the point of your own premise.

[uwouldthink]

Istg that Chameleon rotted people's brains in so many ways.

On the topic of Chameleon and Lila, it's always strange to see people go on about how Adrien wanted Marinette to not expose Lila because it doesn't affect him personally, because like. Between the two of them, only Adrien was actually victimized by Lila. She pressured him to help her with schoolwork, hung off of him constantly, and blew up at him the moment he even slightly criticized her. In Marinette's case, she was the one who kept picking fights and wondering why it doesn't work out for her.

Also, if giving questionable advice is all it takes to be a terrible person, Marinette has Queen Wasp to answer for. Just... Marinette fandom. Be careful where you point that finger.

---

Oh, yeah, like, before ‘Ladybug’, Lila didn’t really do jack shit to Marinette. She was always far meaner to Adrien. He’s the person whose face she first steals as ‘Chameleon’, which shows how mad she was at him, he’s the one she takes compromising pictures with to try to warn other girls off. As for Marinette? She told her in veiled terms that she was ruining her own reputation and Lila would enjoy watching it happen. Her grudge for Ladybug was also Marinette’s own creation by showing up to yell at her with little justification.

Marinette was not Lila’s biggest victim before ‘Ladybug’ aired and even then Lila was acting under Gabriel’s orders to make people question the most popular girl in school and cause a mass uncertainty he could capitalize. Like, it’s a plot important fact that Marinette has serious clout in school, so Lila just not letting her bully her does not make Marinette the underdog.

But, we have to validate Marinette, so shit that happened weeks after Marinette bullied Lila is now the reason Marinette was actually Lila’s victim all along and, if Adrien was a good love interest, he would have been threatening Lila to protect Marinette in ‘Chameleon’ and him not doing that means he doesn’t care at all! It’s all just retroactive justification after retroactive justification.

Marinette is the queen bee of the school bullying Lila in ‘Chameleon’. Full stop.

[uwouldthink]

You can make a case based on canon for all possible interpretations of Adrien's true self. Chat being his true self (if you focus on s1-s3 characterization), Adrien being his true self (if you focus on his s4-s6 characterization), both being his true self and neither being his true self.

Although the "Chat", "Both" and "Neither" are both the strongest interpretations and least depressing ones.

Chat being his real self is the simplest one and most common in fandom. It says that if there were no constraints on Adrien he would act the way he would as Chat Noir, and that any part of the Adrien persona that doesn't also exist in the Chat persona is a mask he puts on. Thematically it's the strongest and it lines up a line with his s1 characterization. Both in his establishing moment of breaking Gabriel's rule to do what he wants and in how he acts when he's alone with Nino in episodes like Animan.

Adrien being his real self is not an idea I saw anyone claiming, but there's enough in canon you can argue it and it's an interesting though experiment. In this case, Chat would be a persona he puts on because of the anonymity and the experience of being a superhero, but that his true nature is the one we see in the Adrien persona and he'll inevitably default back to it. The strongest evidence for it is how in later seasons, Chat Noir takes on more and more traits of the Adrien persona.

It's also the most depressing interpetation imo, especially with Adrien being a senti, because it implies Adrien can never be more than a passive people pleaser who'll mold himself to be perfect for other people (first Gabriel and then Marinette). It also lowkey seems to be the interpretation the show is going with with how hard they devalue Chat Noir and how the narrative never implies that Marinette needs to see Adrien for more than she currently sees him.

Both being his real self means that Adrien and Chat Noir are two sides of the same coin. They both reflect authentic, if different, parts of him and are so different mainly because of the circumctances. It's what the show claims is the truth in Kuro Neko. For this interpretation, Adrien is mostly an open and authentic person whose character growth lies mostly in learning to intergrate the two personas rather than in finding his true self or learning to express it properly.

Neither being his real self would mean that Adrien is a persona he puts on to please his father and Chat Noir is more of a reflection of of some other idea - how Adrien wants to be, everything Adrien isn't allowed to be, etc. - than a genuine expression of his personality traits. He's not necessarily lying so much as putting facades and acting according to scripts (whether social or ones he made up). The show claims this is the truth in Lies. For this interpretation, Adrien is mostly a closed off and inauthentic person. Possible character growth is him "finding" his true self, but I would argue the main obstacle is him learning to express his true self in the first place, and after he does that he'll naturally start to find it.

So I wouldn't say there's one definitive answer for who Adrien is. Imo you should go with the interpretation you most enjoy writing and fits the themes and character arcs you want to have.

curious of your guys' thought bcs i'm currently writing about this (because fck the show writers):

who is adrien agreste's true self?

always see how people say chat noir is his true self. though i believe as chat noir he is "free-er," i couldn't call him as his "true self" yet, because there were times chat noir acts out of the need of validations/fulfilling expectations from ladybug.

meanwhile, yeah adrien as his civilian self is controlled by his father, but that didn't mean all parts of adrien agreste the model, the golden boy, are masks.

so, i wanna hear your thoughts! might actually get some kind of enlightenment for my story <3

[uwouldthink]

iirc, we do see her doing some stuff to help the community in Simon Says. The flashback for her absences show her saving a cat from a tree and saving a malfanctioning helicopter. But that was back in s1, and even then it was mentioned as an aside in a completely different context rather than the focus.

For a show that's about a supervillain exploiting people who are feeling negative emotions, there isn't a lot of, well, emotion in the show. The superheroing is mainly focused on the action, rather than any sort of human connection the heroes may have with the citizens (blind adoration, mainly towards Ladybug, doesn't count).

You can even see it in how they treat akuma victims. Most of the time the victim is just left there confused while Ladybug and Chat Noir celebrate saving the day. When they aren't, it's usually Ladybug telling them the lesson of the day, which places her in a palce of authority over them, like a teacher gently scolding a misbahving kid, rather than any sort of actual attempt at empathy or solving their problem. I can think of one time it happened (Catwalker bringing the kid's kitty bad in Kuro Neko) but it's far from the rule.

The show barely connects with its own characters. For all that they want to go the psychology complex route, when was the last episode that did proper character exploration? That really delved into an aspect of the character and presented it so the audience could understand them better? The ones that really jump to my mind are the Chloe episodes from s2. Maybe Wishmaker but it's still very diluted.

For an episodic show with little to no plot, these kinds of episodes should be a staple! And yet we get so little of the character's inner world that a big chunk of the fandom gaslighted itself into thinking Marinette has trauma from Chat Blanc.

We sometimes get episodes that focus more on highlighting a character, but even those are not the kind of character exploration I'm talking about. What mlb usually does is introduce some kind of obstacle and then focus on the character's effort to overcome the obstacle. While it does teach about the character, it doesn't do a lot to tell us about who they are as people outside this specific conflict.

Take the side character focused episodes in s6. In each of them, the obstacle of the episode isn't something that highlights an aspect of the character, but rather the obstacle is the focus in and of itself.

We didn't get an episode about Ivan, we got an episode about Ivan's relationship with his dad. We didn't get an episode about Sabrina, we got an episode about Sabrina's social difficulties because of her past. We didn't get a Nathaniel episode, we got an episode about Nathaniel's dealing with his homophobic parents.

This goes to our main character as well. We never get about episodes about Marinette, only her difficulties.

Take s4 for example. Marinette is stressed to all hell because of her guardianship duties and that impacts her life and behaviour in various ways.

...Why?

We never get an answer for this, not on a practical level or a character level. As far as we're aware, all that guardian duty amounts to is "make sure the miraculous aren't stolen and pick new holders if need be". The first could be acomplished by burying the miraculous box in an unmarked location (and keeping the coordinates to yourself) and thd second she'd been doing for a few seasons now. So what's so stressful about this new responsibility?

There are a lot of answers one can come up with, and the fandom sure does. But we don't know what about this is actually stressing Marinette out.

Is it that she has no mentor now? Is it that she's nominally in charge? Is it because she got into her head that guardian responsibilities include a lot more than they actually do? Is it the consequences if she fails? Is it the fact that for the first time in her life she's fully responsible for something serious with no help or safety net?

Each of those answers means something different about Marinette, and so makes her slightly different as a person. The character who's nervous because she has no mentor should face different challanges and growth trajectories from the character who's nervous because because of the consequences if she fails.

Marinette as a character has no depth in canon. The only depth you'll find is by connecting dots yourself and providing whatever explanation you like most to create a coherent character with inner world. But all of that effort exists on the viewer's side, not in the text itself.

It would be one thing if Marinette was a loser protagonist on purpose, there are plenty of characters like that, but the writers are genuinely trying to sell Marinette as a strong female character who deserves her leadership position. The writers act like they've written Batman for teenage girls, but, if she was actually put next to any version of Batman or into similar situations, she'd look like a joke.

And, yet, Astruc treats this sad excuse of a superhero as not a joke, but some kind of gift he's granting to young girl viewers. Astruc is always ready with the "it's for little girls!" defense whenever someone complains about how Cat Noir is treated by the writing and the commentary couldn't shut up about how proud they were of Marinette's "growth" when she got a new powerup from Adrien's sidelining from his own narrative, only moments before she gives up on fighting the main villain and lets the world be destroyed.

Marinette is called the perfect version of herself and the Greatest Ladybug Ever in universe. Marinette is what peak performance from a superhero in the Miraculous universe looks like.

The people behind Miraculous, Astruc especially, seem to genuinely think that Marinette is a powerful character for little girls to look up to. The Miraculous writers really wrote their main lead to be a pathetic loser who fails at every goal she has and constantly whines about how hard she has it and went: "Yes, this is the kind or positive representation little girls deserve in a superhero catered to them."

That's why Marinette being so pathetic pisses me off so much. I love superheroes, and it's a genre that gets its strength from the idea of being cool. Weird physics, magic, moral conflicts and secret identities are all part of superheroes, but so is selflessness and willingness to help. When has Ladybug stopped to comfort bystanders because they were scared? Or to help a cat down from a tree? They're not the same spectacle of flashy superpowers, so the crew completely ignored that aspect of superheroes when they weren't actively mocking it.

It took us eight years, 5+ seasons and a new writer being added to see a Miraculous hero help someone in a way that didn't directly involve an Akuma attack and even then it was initiated by the tertiary heroes and Marinette only came to commandeer the operations because she was in one of her anxiety spirals again, not out of a genuine desire to help. We've only seen the tertiary heroes take the initiative in helping the community in a single episode. Such a basic concept of superheroes was completely unrepresented in this superhero show for so long, outside of a joke character the "real" superheroes mocked for not having powers. But, to me, The Owl feels more like a superhero helping his community than the main lead conspiring against her allies.

Frankly, I think it was the new writer Caroline Torelli, who started writing these superheroes acting like superheroes, because this new direction is there specifically in episodes they contributed to. It just shows how little the people behind this show's original conception actually understand superheroes. It's all about just the visual side of things, the costumes and flashy superpowers, none of the heart and sense of community. The Miraculers don't have civillian allies, like any other superhero would. There's recurring characters who are willing to take orders from Ladybug, but there's no actual connection, let alone community there. And I don't think Torelli alone is enough to fix all that to make Ladybug a cool hero after several seasons' worth of damage.

The Ladybug we see in the show is just so incredibly uncool and runs on empty drama that I feel sorry for the little girls being told that this is the superhero meant for them.

[uwouldthink]

Even if we ignore all the alien looking sentis, we still had senti-Nino and senti-Bubbler who are both human and who Ladybug killed.

So one of the comments in the Marinette Critique community mentioned that if we’re to take TA’s comments about intentions seriously for Werepapas, does that mean every other sentimonster that Ladybug killed was done 100% intentionally? Did he really just turn his 14-year-old protagonist, the supposed epitome of Goodness, into a cold-blooded murderer by mistake? 😭😭😭

---

Of course he did, but that doesn't matter because the person making Sentimonsters is now a good guy so Marinette never has to kill a Sentimonster on purpose again. He’s expecting the audience to be so stupid that we forget how willing she's been to kill and order around Sentimonsters before. He's always expected us to ignore the fact that he never established in show what makes human Sentimonsters different from the alien-looking ones outside of the “intentions” of who makes them.

He has to stop duct taping the Sentimonster lore together with “intent” as his go-to excuse. It's not as good as he thinks it is, it's just stupid. How does the freaking feather know the deepest reaches of somebody's mind to know what their true intentions are? In Miraculous lore, objects can't read thoughts, because otherwise why would the Butterfly or Peacock Miraculous allow themselves to be used with evil intentions? Or is Astruc claiming a feather has deeper powers than the fucking Miraculous that was used to make it?

[uwouldthink]

I think part of the issue with Gabriel's competentness as a villain is that it's hard to write characters who are much smarter than yourself.

Now, I don't know any of the writers personally so this isn't intended to be a diss on them, but there is a notable low bar for what's seen as intellegent or even brilliant on the part on the characters. Gabriel is the obvious example, but what jumps to my mind is that moment in Syren where Marinette is praised (by both Fu and Tikki) as uniquely brilliant for suggesting that perhaps this one ingridient Master Fu is looking at is meant to be taken literally and not metaphorically unlike all the rest. Which is an insight he could've gotten from anyone who could provide him with a fresh perspective, as it's a suggestion that would probably be most people's first thought.

Perhaps because it's a kid's show they didn't want to go with something that may be more challanging, but 1) it's presented more as a character moment for Marinette than a riddle the audience could try figuring out since she gives an answer immediately 2) plenty of other children shows provide decently clever puzzle/riddle design when they want to show off a character being smart.

That being said, they do manage to show off genuinely good divergent thinking with the way they write Lucky Charm. Ladybug's creativity is something they show off very well. Her strategizing skill on the other hand is, eh... well, they do a better job at least making it seem like she's good at it so long as nobody scrutinizes the actual plans we see (like that time she immobilized the giant baby akuma three times using three different heroes when any one of them could've gotten the job done. I think it was in Kuro Neko.)

I just read this post and was wondering: do you think Gabriel being a bad villian was meant to be intentional?

I talk about this topic in detail here, but the short version is no, I don't think Gabriel was meant to be a bad villain. I think Gabriel was meant to be smart and clever. That's why you get things like this exchange from Risk:

Gabriel: (slams his fist causing the chess pieces to fall over.) Ladybug never makes a mistake! Nathalie: Neither do you. Ladybug hasn't discovered who you are, she hasn't seized your Miraculous

Nathalie is supposed to be an intelligent character and yet she never tells Gabriel that he can't win. Instead, she praises him and says he never makes mistakes! Even when she "switches sides" in season five she continues to generally support his efforts.

The reason Gabriel comes across as incompetent is because reoccurring villains in formula shows basically have to be incompetent. They're not allowed to win, every episode has to standalone, and every episode has to have a fight. In other words, the basic setup is such that we had to see Gabriel fail over 100 times. It's hard to do that and make him feel competent.

This is why reoccurring villains in formula shows are almost always comedic villains, but the writers of Miraculous wanted a more serious villain and so we got the confusing mess that was Gabriel Agreste. He felt like a terrible, incompetent villain because of the format, but the characters never acted like he was terrible and incompetent so I don't think the incompetence was intentional. It was just another example of the show picking terrible plots and setups for its chosen format.

[uwouldthink]

With all due respect, It's the writer's job to figure out how to take all the disparate ideas they want to include and weave them into a narrative that's not only coherent but satisfying in regards to the set up and pay off that are already established.

Adrien needed to be in the final battle because that was the story they set up. There had to be a confrontation between him and Gabriel. He didn't need to have an entire character arc in the fight but he needed to have some measure of closure, even if he would still grapple with everything in s6. That the scene needed to be primarily action focused is no excuse as any good action scene should also explore character or themes, or else it's just empty spectacle.

Is it easy to do? No. But again, that's the writers' entire job.

OP is right that having Adrien there present a difficulty in the sense that he steals a lot of the spotlight from Marinette and that she can't be relegated to a side character either. However, it's far from impossible to write the finale in a way that fixes it.

They could've add two mini climaxes in the finale, something that's pretty common in season finale where you have several characters and plotlines that need resolution. The focus would be on Adrien confronting his father in the first half and then on Marinette confronting... whatever the stakes for her in the second half.

(That's a big part of the issue. The show didn't establish any proper stakes for Marinette or an investment in the conflict other than being Ladybug. It's hard to think of a fitting season-finale level opponent that could challenge her because it's hard to pin down what she should be challenged on. Challenging her on being Ladybug is what I would go for if we're going a more canon compliant route, but it's not really satisfying because she already showed plenty she's a good Ladybug so it would just be rehashing the plot of a regular episode. Challenging her on being the guardian would be my pick, as she showed actual struggles with it and that plotline ended on her losing, so her triumph here would feel like development. However, it would need more setup in the preceding season in order to be satisfying, so it's a more extensive re-write.)

One, more canon compliant, possibility is having the two of them confronting Gabriel in a fight. Adrien initially takes the center stage because of his reaction and to get closure. Then in the middle he gets incapacitated and taken out of the fighting, leaving only Marinette to fight Hawkmoth and finish everything.

The reason he gets incapacitated is dependent on what you want to emphasize. It could be used to show that Gabriel is too far gone with the way he takes Adrien out. It could emphasize the power of love with Adrien sacrificing himself so Marinette could finish Gabriel off. It could be used to emphasize Adrien's refusal to be controlled by Gabriel by having him take himself out (and so playing on him being the hero of destruction) when Gabriel tries to to use him against Ladybug by controlling him with his amok. There are a lot of ways you can take this.

Alternatively, they could separate the heroes by adding a more dangerous obstacle for Marinette to deal with, perhaps even of the world destroying/controlling variety. So they would have two plotlines running through the finale, the more personal and lower stakes story of Adrien confronting his father and an epic save the world plotline for Marinette.

The two heroes would go to try and stop the world destroying threat only for Hawkmoth to stand in their way to it. Chat Noir would keep him busy and allow Ladybug to run past him to handle the world destroying threat. Easy separation of the two with each getting a threat to deal with that serves as a proper culmination for their arc.

What would be the threat be? Take your pick. Mlb's lore is loose enough that you can insert any number of things without setting them up. A ritual to summon some ancient, powerful creature (that Ladybug could fight), for example. Or the villains using the alliance rings to suck people's life force to power this thing or that (the final boss here could be Tomoe, potentially in a mecha or a power suit, or maybe with some of the miraculous herself).

Those setups also allow to have Bug Noire. If Adrien is incapacitated, he could give Ladybug the ring himself or ask Plagg to give it to her (say he's too far away and we want to preserve the secret identities). If Ladybug is dealing with a world ending threat, have it do something that makes Adrien decide that Ladybug needs the ring more than him and let him try to talk Gabriel down. The heart of their conflict is in the personal drama anyway rather than the magical fight.

Would this give everything we got from the finale? Some setups could, if you finagle things enough. But sometimes you just need to kill your darlings, and mlb is a show with a lot of darlings that need to be assassinated.

That being said, there is actually a set up where you can get all the same outcomes of the finale AND have Adrien there confronting his father.

Just have Adrien be akumatized.

Do it in a situation where Gabriel doesn't know he's Chat Noir and so he manages to slip the ring off his finger and give it to Plagg before he's taken over, and you have a convenient reason for why Adrien wouldn't remember anything about the encounter. It would also allow him to explore the more repressed emotions about Gabriel.

Have him taken out in the middle of the finale to allow Marinette some solo screentime (as mentioned before) and you're set.

Writers are the gods of the story. They can arrange circumstances and invent whatever reasons are needed to tell the story they want. That I could come up with three different set ups that could work tells me those professional writers either didn't have the skill to pull off the story they told (in which case I have to question why they're being paid to do this job), or they simply didn't want to write the story they had set up and chose to ignore it in favor of the cool moments they did want to write.

Honestly I think my take on the "Chat Noir was not there in the final battle" comes down to the fact that I kind of just don't think a satisfying final battle between Chat Noir and Monarch was actually possible.

I read a lot of fic, for example, and I've read the scenario play out a lot of times in a ton of ways and I've never been fully convinced of it tbh (and not because they weren't great fic!!). It seems just completely traumatic for Adrien in a way that the scenario inherently cannot properly focus on, because it's all happening in the middle of an action scene and Adrien is too busy being Mid-Battle to properly have a cathartic breakdown about it all. I mean, Chat Blanc already showed us what would happen if he did have a breakdown mid-battle (and why wouldn't he?). And though it'd be fun to have a big triumphant moment of him defeating his abusive father, Adrien simply isn't a character who would find that scenario triumphant, or cathartic, or anything other than viscerally traumatic.

Also, I agree that it's unfair that Chat Noir was not present— like it was unfairly tilted in Ladybug's favor— but I don't think it'd be fair if he was present, either. Because Marinette is, in fact, the main character. The main character whose character arc is primarily focused on her finding her footing as a hero and discovering all the responsibilities that come with that power (as opposed to Adrien, whose character arc is moreso about freedom and identity). And let's face it, in a fight between Ladybug and Chat Noir and Monarch, nobody would be focused on Ladybug at all. It's not about her. It's not her fight. She'd just be there as moral support and an extra set of hands, which really doesn't work for her character arc at all and is completely unfair to her!

Basically, it would just be Chat Noir temporarily acting as the main character and having the worst time of his life in the most un-cathartic battle for him possible left completely traumatized with Ladybug in the background awkwardly trying to comfort him after the fact? And then the season ends? And then the next season presumably goes back to Ladybug being the main character? After a time-skip to the new school year? It's just an ending that I feel like is a lot better in theory than actually on paper. And you can probably make an argument for ways that it could be made to work, where it would enhance Ladybug's story in a meaningful way where she still feels like the main character, and would somehow be triumphant for Chat Noir despite it probably being the worst moment of his life, and somehow not make the rest of the series following feel like bonus content as opposed to a continuation of the story...... but, I dunno. I think it's a lot easier said than done.

The fact of the matter is, I've always been waaayyyy more interested in how the aftermath of Gabriel's defeat affects Adrien than the battle itself. Post-Hawkmoth defeat is one of my favorite types of fic for a reason, and it's because the aftermath can be so juicy, especially for Adrien as a character. I think whether or not Adrien is actually there in the battle itself has always been kind of irrelevant to me, because no matter how Gabriel is defeated, his defeat will have immense repercussions on Adrien's life going forward. And the way they did it, Marinette is now a part of it in a more active way, too. Which is good for her character!

( Also, if he was there to triumphantly defeat Gabriel, would that mean he would just.... watch his father die? of cataclysm? a-and.... nathalie would just.... die, too? so he'd have three dead parents after all that? who he watched all die (or, in emilie's case, saw her corpse)? or is this a scenario where MONARCH BEATS CHAT NOIR and still makes the wish? is that cathartic? for Adrien to lose to Gabriel? Frankly, I loved seeing Gimmi and The Wish, it's been teased for so long that I was expecting it, and I loved the fact that Nathalie got to live as her narrative reward for coming to her senses and trying to murder Gabriel with a crossbow. I like that we got to watch a full season of Gabriel painfully dying to a cataclysm— poetically inflicted on him by Adrien, but of Gabriel's own doing. I like that Nathalie has presumably adopted Adrien after having an arc of her trying to be a parent to him once she realized nobody else would, that's so much more interesting than any other alternative. I just don't see how all of these things, some of my favorite things that season 5 gave, can still all exist at once with Chat Noir present in the final battle in any way that's satisfying. )

[uwouldthink]

I do think that having overly coddling parents is a good enough explanation to explain most of the reasons why Marinette is Like That, and that's because of parental modeling.

You bring it up in your 4th option, but it doesn't even need to go as far as turning every situation into crisis in order to have a similar effect. Children are very impressionable and tend to learn the behaviour they see much more than the behaviour they're taught. Tom has big reactions to a lot of things, but especially anything that hurts Marinette or has her experiencing discomfort. So as a child, Marinette would've learned that pain, discomfort and negative emotions are something really bad that needs to be avoided at all costs, which is why her parents (especially her dad) borderline panic when they see her experiencing it and scramble to stop it (like we see them doing in Animestro when they allow her to be the waitress).

But Tom is not the only culprit here. Sabine is far better about it, but we also see her struggling to put boundaries in place when it might upset Marinette. Animestro is one example but also in Simon Says when both she and Tom hold each other like they did something really difficult when they grounded Marinette until she stopped with her absences (which is a perfectly normal and even trivial parental discipline).

So Marinette grew up learning that discomfort and negative emotions are BadTm and that even a small amount of it isn't tolerable. It makes sense that she would think even a small mistake could lead to catastrophic outcomes because even small discomfort is bad and needs to be avoided. Furthermore, because she was so coddled, she never developed coping mechanisms to deal with disappointments or build up a feeling of capability of dealing with her mistakes.

Combine this with how she has a tendency to project and a real difficulty understanding other perspective, and her tiptoeing around people is perfectly logical. After all, even small discomforts are bad, and she "knows" (based on her own experiences) that it's something that's hard to cope with and causes big reactions.

In a world where discomfort is the worst thing ever, going behind people's back to avoid confrontations and negative feelings makes perfect sense. And when even a small discomfort can be bad, being a control freak is just a way to ensure that nothing of that sort happens, since something that's inherent in that mindset is the implicit assumption that there's no ability to adapt or recover from mistakes, hence why every mistake is a world ending one.

You didn't bring it up, but her parents being overly coddling also explains why she's so dependent on external validation and crumbles without it. As mentioned before, she never got the chance to develop a feeling that she's capable of dealing with mistakes and setbacks. But more than that, her parents taught her that being overtly emotionally expressive gets her what she wants, both in terms of material outcomes but also in terms of emotional processing. Her wide network of people she can rely on to outsource her emotional coping helps reinforce it. Marinette never had to deal with difficult emotions alone without someone to comfort her and the one time she did she didn't last more than a few days before breaking and getting someone else involved she could rely on.

Something I don't see discussed very often is, why is Marinette like this? An anxiety problem like hers isn't born in a vacuum, and while Derision was an attempt to explain things, it ended up not actually explaining anything! I've said this before, but Marinette's tendency to babble around Adrien is clearly the result of her neuroticism, and that neuroticism affects all other areas of her life.

One theory I've seen is that Marinette is the child of overly coddling parents, but if being overly coddled was it, Marinette would not tiptoe around other people the way she does. She'd take it on faith that everyone is nice and understanding and mature and willing to compromise. Instead, she doesn't. She hates having tough conversations. She always tries to do everything herself, and even when she does let people help her, she can't handle not having 100% of the control. She believes she has to go behind people's backs instead of actually working things out with them. She overreacts constantly, and her mind always goes to the worst possible worst case scenario. She refuses to talk about her problems to the point of not being able to admit she loves Adrien to Master Fu of all people. To me, she reads more like someone who grew up in a chaotic household where everyone was one minor inconvenience away from snapping, because she treats everyone in her life as if they're one minor inconvenience away from snapping.

Marinette has to have internalized this mentality from somewhere, and there are basically four possibilities.

There were problems in the parents' relationship. I can't see Tom and Sabine having those, and if they do, they wouldn't share them with Marinette or let that affect her.

One or both parents use the child as an emotional crutch, mostly in conjunction with 1). While I can see Émilie doing this to Adrien, I can't see Tom and Sabine doing it to Marinette.

An ongoing crisis, like the family having financial problems, someone having a chronic illness, the like. In this situation, the family's resources have to be directed somewhere other than the child, and they grow up not wanting to add to everyone else's problems.

The parents are immature and have the tendency to overreact, turning every situation into a crisis.

To me, 3) and 4) make the most sense. It's perfectly plausible that Tom and Sabine struggled to get the bakery off the ground when Marinette was a little girl, and we know Tom does have the tendency to make a big deal out of everything.

[uwouldthink]

That's actually the route I go with when redesigning the rooster as well. This power lends itself mostly to out of combat uses, but there are plenty of skills generally useful in fighting akumas. Martial arts, deduction, observation, tracking, deception, persuasion, trap making. You just need to get a bit creative with it. It's a pretty good support power, of the "jack of all trades master of none" variety. You can have even more fun with it when taking into account the specific circumstances of an akuma.

Nerfing it so it gives mundane skills instead of superpowers is actually a pretty decent fix for the peacock as well. Creating autonomous magical constructs is a niche that isn't fulfilled by any of the other powers and it further differentiates it from the superpower giving butterfly. And it makes it a bit more consistent with Adrien being a senti since he doesn't have powers either.

Specifically in the show it also allows to create fun synergies between the butterfly and the peacock, since by all indications sentis can be akumatized. Synergies are always more fun than a simply expanded powerset since it requires some amount of thinking about the powers at play. And this way Shadow Moth feels like an actual upgrade for Hawkmoth since the combination of the two miraculous allows him to create perfectly obedient akumas who are purpose made to win against Ladybug and Chat Noir.

I feel that the simplest way to fix the rooster miraculous lore issue while keeping its power mostly in line with Canon would be to have it grant a skill (that any human could achieve) instead of a power (that could be anything, except for these last-minute lore-breaking caveats).

So instead of going "I can always score a goal" in Penalteam, Marc would go "I am a world-class striker" and become the best footballer on the field. I'm... struggling to think of other uses of the Rooster, but I'm pretty sure they could be substituted for something less supernatural.

Obviously this is far from a perfect fix, you've basically traded a lore issue for a cast speciation issue, but that's at least something that you can (theoretically) plot around.

What are your thoughts on this idea?

I actually really like that idea. It's clever and makes the rooster feel unique. Right now, it's just a variation on the butterfly and the peacock.

This is also more limiting, which is always a plus in my book. If the person just gets a skill, then the caster has to really think about the situation and what would help just like the lucky charm limits things by only giving you one item so you have to be clever about how you use it.

I'd still cut the rooster from the show because I think canon has too many miraculous in play, but if you have to keep it, this is a solid way to rework it without it feeling like an entirely different power. That's the route I try to take with redesigns. Something close enough to still have the same vibes, just more logical with clearer rules and limits. Only miraculous I completely redesign is the peacock and even there I try to keep the same vibe. I actually redesigned it to be something to do with Adrien back before the senti BS showed up. I genuinely thought they weren't going to link Emilie's use of the peacock to Adrien because sentiAdrien was such an obviously stupid idea given that sentimonsters were the canon fodder race there to keep the ratings low while still letting the heroes "kill" something.

[uwouldthink]

The rabbit hole of Adrien and Lila unintentionally having the best dynamic goes even further.

From the very beginning of the entire arc, Adrien had been (at the time, unknowingly) foiling Lila's plan because Marinette simply couldn't manage to overcome her due to her character flaws.

Like, I'll remind everyone that this is how the conversation in Chameleon went where Adrien stopped Marinette from confronting Lila:

Marinette: (standing at a distance) Right ear?! Did she say right ear?! This morning she said that the ringing was in her left ear! I've got her this time! (prepares to walk up to the group but is stopped by Adrien) Adrien: Are you going to tell everyone? Marinette: 'Course I am. Lila is— Adrien: (interrupting) A liar. Yes, I know. But do you really think exposing her will make things better? If you humiliate her, she'll just be hurt more. Making a bad guy suffer has never turned them into a good guy.

That's not Adrien stopping Marinette from going after Lila, this is Adrien stopping Marinette from continuing to dig her own grave and turning the entire class against her. It's incredibly easy to come up with something that would make the inconsistency not a big deal (Lila can just say she always confuses her right and left, which is something pretty common), so all that was going to happen was just Marinette looking like a bully to everyone else. Again.

He's absolutely right that Marinette's approach isn't going to get any good results with Lila. Even if she did managed to prove Lila was lying to everyone, we already saw on Volpina where it's going to lead with how Lila reacted to Ladybug humiliating her by calling her out this way. Lying isn't an expulsion worthy offense so even if Lila lost all social credit, all that they would be left with is a very vengeful Lila with nothing left to lose.

By convincing Marinette to stop, Adrien robbed Lila of a very easy opportunity to turn everyone against Marinette. Marinette was walking into a trap and he pulled her out of the way. So it's not only in in "Ladybug" where he saved Marinette from Lila.

You bring up how part of why Adrien was so effective against Lila is the use of actual power. What I find absolutely fascinating is that it actually wasn't the first time we were shown that Adrien knows how to wield it if he needs to. We see it in his conversation with Plagg in Syren too.

Cat Noir: This is so dumb! (stands up) Claws in. (detransforms) Plagg: (groans) What's taking her so long? (Adrien holds up his hands to Plagg, and starts to pull off his ring a little bit) Whoa, easy! W-What are you doing?! Adrien: (grimly) If you don't tell me what Ladybug is hiding from me, I'm done!

In "Ladybug" Adrien used the power the comes from him being Adrien AgresteTM, but in the situation in "Syren" that meant jack shit. Someone like Chloe would still try to use it and come off as entitled. But instead, Adrien had shown that even in a situation where his identity doesn't give him any particular advantage, he can find the single piece of leverage he has and use it in an effective manner.

All of which to say, that boy can very much navigate social power plays and can very much stand on the same playing field as Lila in a way Marinette didn't show the capacity to do.

And the fun dynamic between him and Lila doesn't end there. There's also the fact that the two of them are foils!

Back when Lila was still a character rather than a plot device, we saw that she also had a neglectful parent who was barely involved in her life, similar to Gabriel.

But even with the more current version of the character, Adrien still has very juicy parallels with Lila due to the fact that he also puts on a persona to the point where Adrien Agreste and Chat Noir seem like completely different characters a lot of the time.

There's just so much juicy potential in exploring the way the two of them parallel each other in themes of lies and identity. And the absolute cherry on top is that the dynamic brings out sides in Adrien that we don't really get to see anywhere else in canon.

i know everyone talks about the toxic relationship between marinette and lila when it comes to exposing lies, and the mental gymnastics they both do just to get a win or whatever, and as entertaining as that is.. have we ever considered the "make a better lie to get my friend out of trouble"/"why should I do that"/"we're friends aren't we?" from adrien and lila. like what the fuck was that all about. Like he was never about exposing her or her lies. dude just straight up was like, cool. doesn't matter if no one else knows the truth. just us.

not to drag lila + marinette content but i want to see more content of adrien being on the same level as lila and not as a pawn, or a victim of lila, etc etc etc. that boy can navigate social circles and I know it in my heart.

[uwouldthink]

Dude your most recent reblog response was so fire. Like geez dude great points

Listen, I have too many thought about Lila and Adrien and that moment in Ladybug but no one wants to talk about Lila and Adrien except in the context of bashing Adrien or whumping him and those are so boring.

I have even more thoughts about Lila and both how Adrien and how Marinette deal with her. Istg that Chamelon rotted the fandom's brain about Lila because her character has so much potential as an obstacle to force character development for the both of them.

Marinette lost against Lila. She lost terribly and never managed to get one over Lila. That's a feature, not a bug. Lila can take control of the conversation and manipulate people in a way Marinette can't do anything about so long as she continues to approach the situation with Lila with the same attitude of trying to bulldoze over the social aspects and simply convince people that she's right because she is right.

Like, I'll remind everyone that this is what Marinette was going to do before Adrien stopped her:

Marinette: (standing at a distance) Right ear?! Did she say right ear?! This morning she said that the ringing was in her left ear! I've got her this time! (prepares to walk up to the group but is stopped by Adrien)

That's not Adrien stopping Marinette from going after Lila, this is Adrien stopping Marinette from continuing to dig her own grave and turning the entire class against her. It's incredibly easy to come up with something that would make the inconsistency not a big deal (Lila can just say she always confuses her right and left, which is something pretty common), so all that was going to happen was just Marinette looking like a bully to everyone else. Again.

In a story that actually knows what its doing, Lila would be the antagonist Marinette simply can't defeat until she undergoes character development and confront her flaws, which now allow her to take a different attitude towards Lila and earn a victory over her (unlike canon in which she got handed the victory without doing anything to earn it).

Now if you'll notice, the example above actually shows us that from the very beginning Adrien was on the same playing field as Lila. By convincing Marinette to stop, he robbed Lila of a very easy opportunity to turn everyone against Marinette. Marinette was walking into a trap and he pulled her out of the way. And that's when he was still giving Lila the benefit of the doubt!

In "Ladybug" there's none of that left. Adrien is fully prepared to treat Lila as an enemy and show that as much as he he prefers to be soft, that doesn't mean he can't be hard. He shows that he can be ruthless and play the game if he needs to, and that he can play it well enough that Lila never goes after him in retaliation for it, unlike with anyone else who stood in her way or annoyed her.

That's actually not the first time he shows that he can be ruthless either. We see it in his conversation with Plagg in Syren too.

Cat Noir: This is so dumb! (stands up) Claws in. (detransforms) Plagg: (groans) What's taking her so long? (Adrien holds up his hands to Plagg, and starts to pull off his ring a little bit) Whoa, easy! W-What are you doing?! Adrien: (grimly) If you don't tell me what Ladybug is hiding from me, I'm done!

Back when the writers were still willing to allow him to be angry about being left in the dark, his first resort was to threaten and place an ultimatum in order to try to force answers out of Plagg. Plagg had to talk him down to get him to soften up.

All I'm saying is that Adrien is Gabriel's son, and having Lila be his antagonist gives so much potential to explore sides of him we barely get to see.

[uwouldthink]

I'm honestly in shock that there are no fanworks exploring that dynamic.

Because canonically? Adrien is the only one who managed to score a win against Lila on his own merit.

Marinette had her victory handed to her by Sabrina.

Gabriel could fire her, but then she stole all his secrets without him even realizing.

She pulled off a dozen more schemes and wasn't caught for any of them.

Marinette's victory over Lila didn't come from her own ability to overcome Lila, it came from Lila making a mistake and trusting the wrong person.

But that wasn't what happened in "Ladybug". There Lila's plan to expel Marinette went off perfectly. She made no mistakes and would've gotten away scott free. The only reason she failed is because Adrien put himself in her way and told her "No".

Adrien and Lila are foils in so many ways. Them being on the same level is just one more way the parallel one another.

i know everyone talks about the toxic relationship between marinette and lila when it comes to exposing lies, and the mental gymnastics they both do just to get a win or whatever, and as entertaining as that is.. have we ever considered the "make a better lie to get my friend out of trouble"/"why should I do that"/"we're friends aren't we?" from adrien and lila. like what the fuck was that all about. Like he was never about exposing her or her lies. dude just straight up was like, cool. doesn't matter if no one else knows the truth. just us.

not to drag lila + marinette content but i want to see more content of adrien being on the same level as lila and not as a pawn, or a victim of lila, etc etc etc. that boy can navigate social circles and I know it in my heart.

[uwouldthink]

i really do need miraculous to timeskip 20 years in the future idgaf about adrienette rn but i do care about their toxic marriage so badly. but i don't want to write it myself. i think it'd be like a psychological horror on both ends. like marinette loving adrien but over the course of years and years isn't sure where the love ends and the guilt begins. it's too late to come clean now. etc. is she with him because she truly cares about him or is it because she can't bring herself to harm him in anyway? is there a difference? on the other end if adrien ever found out he was a senti and marinette knew and didn't inform him for years, there's some insane psychological horror of knowing ur s/o was fully capable of giving you orders in some way without you knowing and there's no way to prove she did or did not. nothing but trust which has immediately been broken because she lied for 20 yrs or whatever. (stares off into the distance) they should be the main characters in a victorian short story they make freshman read and annotate in English class . and instead it's ml

[uwouldthink]

In terms of framing, structure and writer intention, it did.

In terms of audience reaction it didn't.

Anon asked whether Gabriel was redeemed by the *narrative*, and the version of of the discourse I saw going around was about whether the story redeemed Gabriel. So to that I would argue that the answer is a definite yes.

Whether the audience was convinced by said "redemption" is a different question, one that's more on the execution of the idea being piss poor.

So I want to ask do you think Gabriel was redeemed by the narrative because whether if he was or wasn't as we know is a debate in the fandom - Anyways if you think he was what are your reasons and if you think he wasn't what are also your reasons for thinking so.

According to the writers that was the intent.

According to actual narrative analysis, he was not. He died as he lived, trying to control as much as he could. That was what needed to change in order for him to be reformed. He needed to give up control.

[uwouldthink]

Well, if we're talking about the narrative, then they clearly went for a Death Equals Redemption type beat. Gabriel sacrificing himself to revive Nathalie rather than going for his original wish and saving Emelie (as well as himself and Nathalie). Hence why the enrie thing is framed as a happy ending rather than the loss it was.

Like you say, the story they told makes the "redemption" feels not only unearned but like the change wasn't that meaningful either. However, I don't think it can be argued that the narrative did try to redeem Gabriel.

So I want to ask do you think Gabriel was redeemed by the narrative because whether if he was or wasn't as we know is a debate in the fandom - Anyways if you think he was what are your reasons and if you think he wasn't what are also your reasons for thinking so.

According to the writers that was the intent.

According to actual narrative analysis, he was not. He died as he lived, trying to control as much as he could. That was what needed to change in order for him to be reformed. He needed to give up control.

[uwouldthink]

I can definitely see post Miracle Queen Chloe ending up as a villain via a corruption arc.

But there still needed to be an arc there. Something that takes Chloe as she was and drags her deeper into her worst instincts. They already made her sympathetic, taking that back is not so easy. It certainly doesn't work by flipping a switch and going "she's unsympathetic now". They could eventually transition into maling her unsympathetic again, but before that point her corruption arc still needed to contend and even lean into that sympathy. There are a dime a dozen villains whose descent into evil was sympathetic but they ended up irredeemable.

More than that, they needed to let her be an actually effective villain! Not just a joke you have fun punching down on. After giving her so much screentime in a serious, non-comedic arc, they needed to pay it off by making her an actually meaningful antagonist. Or else, what was even the point of doing anything with her character? It would've been better to just keep her as her s1 archetype with no change.

Something that really annoys me about the discourse around Chloe's character is that a lot of the points used to argue against her redemption are basically fanon.

"Chloe wasn't worthy of a miraculous" and "Marinette has no obligation to redeem her bully" are decent points in a vacuum, but they're utterly irrelevant when discussing canon because the show never puts them forward as Marinette's reasoning or even acknowledges the ideas in any way. On the contrary, it tries to claim Marinette did try to redeem Chloe!

No. The canonical reasons for why Chloe couldn't be Queen Bee anymore is because her identity was exposed and because Marinette was jealous of Kagami. Those are literally the only reasons the show presents.

Those arguments are the same as people claiming Marinette's actions in s4 was Chat Blanc trauma. They're headcanons papering over the holes in the writing to create a more logical and reasonable motivations so they can defend Marinette amd the show in general.

---

My hot take is that, even by the end of season 3, Chloé’s character arc could have gone either way. She could have eventually become a genuinely good person, because she showed potential for that as Queen Bee, but she could have also gone full villain because, while she wasn’t a villain yet, Ladybug had seriously wronged her in season 3. I didn’t see the season 3 finale as a definite ending for her arc.

The problem is that, as far as the writers were concerned, the season 3 finale might as well not have happened except for the part of Chloé finally losing the Bee Miraculous for keeps. Because, while she became more spiteful like one would expect after what happened, it wasn’t framed as a consequence of how Ladybug and Hawkmoth played with her emotions. The writers tried to insist that Chloé is just inherently evil and not someone who was raised wrong and then emotionally manipulated by two superpowered individuals in their fight against each other.

It’s the constant lack of consistency or commitment the writers have in anything they write that forces the fandom to constantly tape over characterization and plot holes with headcanons. It’s something that’s easy to start doing, you just think “well, this motivation makes sense with that established character trait,” but none of it is actually in the text. Some of it downright goes against what's established in the text, considering how season 4 repeatedly tore down any headcanons about Marinette actually giving a damn about Cat Noir.

Like, sometimes, it’s okay to leave character motivations up for interpretation, sometimes they’re obvious enough without spelling them out, but sometimes what characters do just makes no sense with what’s been established, and people jump from headcanons to downright fanon, stuff that has never even been as much as hinted at in canon but would explain something that happens. And when people see this fanon, they take it as canon and treat it as such.