ive been thinking about what kind of punishment that would fit for marinette after all the bulshit she has done, both as a guardian and also a holder. I mean after losing almost the whole box I think she should be fired as a guardian not to mention the abuse of power and her tyrant which endangered cat noir as one of the important member (or supposed to, marinette doesn't think that way tho) as a leader which would added the punishment that she would lose that position. But losing both guardian and ladybug miraculous would... Do nothing? This is a girl who always whine about how hard it is to live a double life but also swallow all credit and fame and power she has. That's what make me stuck whenever I want to give marinette the taste of the real world, a consequences, because losing both would do nothing to her and her losing guardianship and lost her memories isn't a punishment it's like let her be more free from her consequences. Going to jail? Since she's also an accomplice to monarch after the lie. Sorry for bad grammar.
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Maybe try to approach Marinette and consequences from the perspective of what would be the logical consequences for her actions and how to protect her victims from further harm, rather than trying to figure out how to make her feel "punished". Like, I think the absolute worst thing that could happen to Marinette is if her "most important person in the universe" privileges got revoked. Don't shield her from the consequences of her actions, let characters react like real people to the shit she tries to pull. That's actual justice.
Like, should Marinette lose her position as Ladybug and the Guardian? ABSOLUTELY. She's caused and IS ACTIVELY CAUSING so much harm due to the unchecked power and privilege these positions grant her. Protecting her victims means that she MUST be stripped of the opportunity to keep doing this stuff. Like, yes, she often whines about what big responsibilities she has, but, let's not kid ourselves. She likes how special being Ladybug makes her feel. How could she not when she has absolute power over an entire team of superheroes (who are actually her supposed real life friends)?
How should I put this? When the whole series is NOTHING but Marinette constantly whining about how hard she has it, how tough the decisions she makes 100% of her own volition are on her and how her charmed life is just such agony, I feel like Marinette being wiped of her memory so that we can FINALLY get a freaking BREAK from her constant whining is worth the cost of her "getting to walk free". Especially since this downfall would most logically come at the hands of her so-called friends, who, finally getting sick of her nonsense, strip her of her powers and prestige and replace her, only to discover that Ladybug the despot was secretly "sweet, unassuming" Marinette all along.
Like, imagine that scenario. Marinette has recently lost her memory of the last year, only to discover her bully is no longer in her class! Yay! But, wait...no one in her class is talking to her. How...strange.
To add to this: if you actually do want to penalize Marinette, there actually is a workaround.
After all, if Miraculous Chat Noir can selectively remove memories, then such a precise power is probably within an actual Guardian's powerset- so Su-han or another real guardian could do the same for Marinette's guardian training.
You can in fact have her remember what she did wrong, and strip her of her Guardian position. Or you could just get a Black Cat holder to do it, easy as pie.
So now Marinette has to live with her failures, and lose the Ladybug Miraculous.
But wait: there's more.
See, part of Marinette's ego and the story's power-fantasy is Marinette best 'the best Ladybug ever'. So what better way to destroy that then have her replaced with a better Ladybug?
It doesn't have to be Scarabella, just someone, anybody else who actually does more than the bare minimum. Someone who actually gets the Butterly Miraculous back by searching for their enemy and succeeds in their mission with a bit of basic effort because they already have so many magical and non-magical resources to call upon so why wouldn't they?
This I think is the real punishment. Marinette seeing the stark difference between what an actual good version of a Ladybug is and knowing just how much she wasn't makes the point better than anything else.
Maybe you can add in salt with Marinette still being on the team with a 'lesser' Miraculous and getting to learn what it's like to be a genuine subordinate and see what a competent Guardian looks like. But either way, this makes the point that she was the problem undeniable.
And for someone like Marinette: that's the hardest pill to swallow of all.
Why the writers of Miraculous Ladybug put the origin story slap bang in the middle of the season instead of the beginning or end, I don't know. Now that I'm thinking about it, season 1 is the only season without a 2 parter finale. It's been heroes' day and Mayura, Heart Hunter and Miracle Queen, Risk and Strike Back, then the season 5 2 parter finale. Must've been a decision they made later on.
Without further ado, let's review how Marinette and Adrien became Ladybug and Chat Noir in the universe of Miraculous Ladybug.
Ladybug & Chat Noir (Origins part 1) Season 1 - Miraculous Live Notes and Opinions.
Oh, I forgot that Nooroo tells Hawkmoth about the origins of the miracle box, gave me a small jumpscare.
Still holding the opinion that the only thing separating creation and destruction is the context in which they're presented- I've made a post about it before so I won't repeat myself here.
"According to legend, whoever controls both these jewels at the same time will achieve absolute power." So the wishing aspect hasn't been introduced yet. Also, way to go revealing Hawkmoth as Gabriel since he has a picture of Emilie.
Nooroo calls it the moth brooch, is this a mistranslation or are butterflies and moths treated as interchangeable words.
Why is the butterfly miraculous the miraculous of transmission when transformation is right there? It literally transforms people plus one of the most common symbolic images of someone transforming is a butterfly.
Why is Hawkmoth's first instinct with the butterfly to create supervillains to try getting other miraculous rather than creating a super being who can cure Emilie the plot device of her coma/death/whatever she has going on? Maybe a different idea could've been that S1-2 Hawkmoth is a teen at Dupont causing havoc for the thrill of it, then for S3-5 it's Gabriel as Hawkmoth as he descends into villainy trying to bring Emilie back while ignoring the family he has left. It could've given the heroes a win that mattered, upped the ante as Gabriel's Hawkmoth is far deadlier than the previous teen Hawkmoth, and avoided Gabriel becoming a stale joke who's an incompetent self sabotager, looking at you S5 evolution.
"The miraculous aren't used for evil purposes." This line makes me wish we saw other miraculous used by villains, not the S5 way but as actual holders.
Why did Gabriel have a butterfly room with a massive window overlooking Paris at the ready? Why does the butterfly miraculous need real butterflies to function when none of the other miraculous (save the peacock with objects) have this holdback? I'd've preferred it if the butterflies came into existence whenever the user transformed so they'd always have akuma fuel.
Hawkmoth says his name is "Hawk maw." Was the voice actor forbidden from having another attempt at the line?
Fu and Wayzz scene where Wayzz can "sense" that the moth miraculous has a negative aura. If Wayzz can sense the aura, why doesn't he fly to where he sensed it, take note of where it was, then fly back and tell Fu so they'd know where the miraculous is and can plan for how to retrieve it? Amazing how a single throwaway line can decimate narrative stakes by providing such an easy solution that's quickly ignored and never brought up again.
How has Fu lived to be 186? Was it ever explained? Is it a throwaway joke of "haha old man is old?"
Imagine if Fu only had a half full box with the other miraculous being found by various characters across the seasons all with their own motives and moralities, would've been interesting.
Marinette's house where Sabine let Marinette's alarm ring for 15 minutes before warning her that she'll be late for school.
Does Marinette have 2 pajama models? There's the T-shirt version here and the strappy sleeve version in Gorizilla.
Apparently this will be the 4th year in a row where Marinette and Chloe will share a class. I'll need to rewatch Reflekta to see if she's in Marinette's previous class photo to check. (She is)
Marinette designed the logo they use on bakery products.
The car doesn't even slow down when Fu's crossing the road for his "basic human decency" test that Marinette was conveniently there for.
Marinette does the bare fucking minimum that leads to Fu giving her the most powerful miraculous in the show's universe! Either Fu thinks a single act when first meeting them defines a person's entire character, or the universe wants to reward Marinette with immense power for basic human acts of decency that would've been ignored if any other character had done them.
Side note, they missed a character arc Fu could've gone through as he learns that people aren't defined by their worst mistakes, as both Ladybug and Chat Noir help him let go of the guilt of the temple's destruction he caused as a child; I came up with this solely by how simplistic the tests Fu gave Marinette and Adrien were.
Apparently, you can hear the school bell from just outside the bakery, they must be loud as all hell inside the school itself.
How the fuck is Marinette consistently late to school when it's a forty second walk at most! It takes Marinette, what, 7 seconds to run from the bakery to the school steps, I counted. It's probably how I hated the thought of being late to school when I was younger (I'd been scared of punishment and I was considered A Good Kid during school) and still hate the fear of being late to important appointments now, but it's understandable where I'm coming from, right?
Marinette treats Chloe with a "here we go again" mentality, further solidifying the fact that Derision is a shitty retcon with shitty writing.
"Who's Adrien?" Marinette doesn't know the son of the fashion designer she's a fan of nor knows of the multitude of adverts and fashion magazines he's in, apparently. The writers tried the whole "Marinette's not like his fangirls, she loves him for him," which doesn't work because of her behaviour in future episodes due to her obsessive crush that only sees him as Adrien the Brand, and because if she really was as big of a fan of Gabriel's work as she claims in Stone Heart, she'd've definitely seen Adrien since he's Gabriel's main model.
Ivan's missing his fringe when Alya confronts Chloe about the seats.
Is the Majestia quote Alya says based on something from superhero media? I'm asking because I think there are fics that salt on the quote but I don't know for certain.
There's an advert with Adrien's face right outside of the school! I refuse to believe she didn't know who he was before he entered Dupont, especially with how she acts later on in the show.
Adrien gives up the chance to go to school to help Fu get his cane back. In my opinion, Adrien actually gave something up he desperately wanted in his test to earn a miraculous while Marinette lost nothing. If anything, it would've been worse for her if she didn't help Fu because then she'd've been even later to school.
Look, I understand why people rag on Bustier for instantly sending Ivan to the principal's office, but class has already ended and Ivan was readying up to punch Kim. I'm not saying I agree with her immediately sending Ivan to the office, I'm just saying that I understand why she did.
Hawkmoth scene.
Stone Heart was probably Hawkmoth's way of luring out the guardian and the two miraculous he needs. This plan could've been thwarted if any other miraculous other than the two he needed were distributed. This line of thinking is making me despise how only Ladybug can purify akumas. If not all the miraculous, then at least let Chat Noir purify them too since they're supposed to be equal in power!
How does the library have CCTV footage for everyone to see? The library CCTV is never utilised again, nor CCTV in the school in general, so I guess it was for this plot and nothing else. Also, Marinette picks up that Stone Heart has Ivan's voice so the CCTV includes audio as well.
Alya goes to follow Stone Heart because she believes she'll see superheroes stop him.
The Adrien homeschool scene reveals Adrien's never been to school and doesn't have any friends. The shoe tries to paint Emilie as a loving mother who truly cared for Adrien but this scene reveals she'd been complicit in his isolation from the world.
News broadcast of Stone Heart. Does the rest of the world know about the akumas and miraculous or is the information magically contained in Paris?
How do Marinette's parents not hear her yelling? Maybe they're in the bakery?
Plagg confirms genies exist in the miraculous universe.
Do we ever learn what Fu's "I only got it wrong once" mistake was? If it was himself then that's a cop out.
Ladybug transformation sequence. The only way I could excuse this horrendous design is if it was to reflect how Marinette didn't think she'd stay as Ladybug or didn't want to, hence the offensively bland design. Then at the end of Stone Heart, she embraces being Ladybug and redesigns the suit into something that looks like actual effort was put into it. Also, if the whole "the suit reflects the holder" thing is true, then she's a bad fashion designer for thinking plain black polkadots everywhere on a plain, bright red spandex suit is a great design worth keeping around for so long.
Chat Noir transformation sequence.
Another thing about the Ladybug design, Marinette just slapped on a domino mask and did nothing else to hide her identity, she has the same hair style, eye colour, the lot. I hate the quantum masking excuse to explain how no one has figured out how Marinette is Ladybug. In my opinion, quantum masking should only stop people from figuring out identities in the moment, and can't do anything to stop people gathering clues to piece together identities that way.
The heroes meet for the first time.
Stone Heart demolishes an entire building.
Stone Heart reaches the stadium, Kim trips over nothing.
Should've mentioned this earlier but I really like Chat Noir's design. Am I biased because I like cats? Maybe.
Chat Noir fighting Stone Heart alone, saves Alya from a goalpost he threw.
Wonderbug is a cool name, I'll keep it in mind for an alternate universe ladybug holder OC, or just a different ladybug holder that's not Marinette.
Lucky Charm scene.
Ladybug throws Chat Noir into Stone Heart so he'll get caught without any warning.
Ivan transforms back without the akuma being purified.
Ivan questions how Ladybug knows his name.
Ladybug names herself after the miraculous she was given, real creative there, real creative.
News celebrating Ladybug and Chat Noir.
The unpurified akuma begins rapidly multiplying. Wonder why Hawkmoth didn't try to utilise this in a plan. For example, akumatize someone willing to help him, break the akumatized object and let the akuma fly away so it multiplies, let them loose to akumatize multiple people at once and overwhelm the heroes with numbers and how they don't know which is the original akuma.
Still hating the idea that only Ladybug can deal with akumas when the cat miraculous is supposed to be the embodiment of destruction! Now I'm thinking of an AU where Adrichat figures out how to purify akumas by practicing with his powers with Plagg helping him out because they care about each other.
Marinette has a pity party for herself as she puts the earrings inside a set of draws.
Hawkmoth scene where he goes on about absolute power.
It was an alright episode which set up some plot points for the second part to complete, really liked Chat Noir.
I don't think the writers had solidified Gabriel's motives yet since Hawkmoth goes on about obtaining absolute power here but later seasons say his motivation was to bring Emilie back so there's a bit of a disconnect between a magical girl or superhero villain who wants power for the sake of being powerful (which is fine) and a sympathetic villain who we're supposed to be sorry for. It's not balanced well and gets worse in later seasons since it comes across like he's using Emilie as an excuse to be a magical terrorist in hopes of obtaining power. It's more of an issue in later writing, especially S5 but the cracks were there from the beginning.
Overall it's an alright episode that introduces the basics of the magic system but it still confuses me as to why they didn't make this either the pilot episodes or the finale after Volpina. It's another episode of early miraculous Ladybug, it's fine.
Yeah, the rot starts early when you're looking for it.
-No explanation is ever given why Gabriel never tried using Nooroo to heal his wife. Ever.
And thanks to this opening heavily implying that this it he first time Nooroo's getting to know Gabriel, we can't assume in good faith that he tried it before this either. The man got a magical brooch that could provide any superpower he wanted and actually chose terrorism as his first solution.
-I think Wayzz is only supposed to get a general 'feeling', not a radar for Nooroo's Miraculous being used. Though with this show I wouldn't put it past it to reveal that he could've tracked Nooroo whenever he wanted and it just never came up.
-Yeah, Marinette is never disciplined by her parents in any substantial way. Her being endlessly yet avoidably late is only to be expected.
-Marinette 'not being like the other girls' about Adrien is hot nonsense (especially with how she acts in the future), and downright impossible with the ads around. The show could have made it work with Marinette not liking Adrien due to her own preconceptions about models (instead of the gum incident/being Chloe's friend), and being the one to explain things to newcomer Alya. But hey: implausible ignorance we go!
-The fact that Adrien was the one to actually make a significant sacrifice in Fu's test isn't brought up enough. It's a massive thing for Adrien at the time, but he gave it up to help up an old man he didn't know.
-I'm pretty sure we never explicitly find out what Fu was talking about when he "only got it wrong once". Maybe the french dialogue is different, but the English version sure as heck implies that he's talking about giving a Miraculous to a bad holder, not the whole "manslaughter of the Order" thing that comes up later.
-The fact that Ladybug just tosses Chat Noir into Stoneheart's hands isn't brought up enough either. First time on the job, he's certainly not agreed to it, she's not exactly tested if he can take that kind of pressure without popping a balloon. What does she do? grab him and toss him into enemy hands.
Whenever anyone accuses Chat Noir of being callous about loss of life in Miraculous, it should be remembered that the first life thrown away in the war was literally his and unilaterally by Ladybug on an impulse.
Even if we were to go full salt on him, between this and the countless lives Ladybug presumably casually crushes with her plans (how many times does she bring down the Eiffel Tower again?) and how often his own life is treated as expendable after that: I don't think he can be blamed if he does internalize a devaluation of human life.
-I was going to say that Chat Noir also doesn't have that much of a different appearance to Adrien... but then I remembered that he at least changes his hairstyle and acts very differently from Adrien. Marinette doesn't even swap out the pigtails.
-Yeah, Fu could have distributed a lot of different Miraculous, kept the Ladybug in reserve or with a hero whose only role was to hide and cast the Miraculous Cure from a random location. Heck, with the Specials and the overseas heroes being canon, there's no reason to expect any Miraculous needed to be activated to stop him.
If Majestia showed up his plan's cooked isn't it? Doubly so if The Guardian decided she was worthy of The Ox.
Gabriel would just be done then wouldn't he?
Still, at least Majestia and Co existing makes Alya look less like a lemming for running towards danger in hopes of seeing superheroes.
-Chat Noir saves Alya twice in origins. That's nice. Think it'll ever come up?
-Chat Noir going out risking his life against an army of Stonehearts when he presumably has no idea about the revival offered by the Miraculous Cure is also not brought up enough either. Especially by Alya who owes her life to him because he saved her at the expense of being captured, but like the rest of Paris only has eyes for Ladybug.
I been thinking about this but do you think the Miraculous do more harm then good overall?
Like given the whole fisaco of the Peacock Miraculous (The Sentihuman drama), The Butterfly Miraculous (Due to both Gabriel and Now Lila) and how being the Guardian ruined Fu and Marinette,
Do you think the Miraculous are more trouble then help like the One Ring form Lord of the Rings are?
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I mean, yeah, pretty much.
Because, like, the Miraculous are established to be kept under lock and key unless something specific (Miraculous-related) goes wrong. The Miraculous are only used to solve problems caused by the Miraculous.
The sad part is, the Miraculous in-universe are supposed by wondrous tools used for humanity's benefits, to aid them against mundane and magical dangers- at least according to poor, abused Nooroo.
But we essentially only see them when they're tied to some massive conflict that has either been caused by the Miraculous, or massively escalated by them (eg: Joan of Arc and her Black Cat, who were given their Miraculous without guidance and fought aginst each other for an undisclosed period of time, presumably causing massive damage their bestowed powers).
Now they fall firmly in the tropes of "Superheroes aren't worth it."
Because usually superheros in fiction do bring horror and harm with their very presence, not intentionally but it's a fact that if Superman lives in Metropolis, his villains will come to specifically combat him and the resulting fallout is terrifying for a civilian. There are complications that come with having a superpowered protector, challenges and drawbacks that exist because of their presence.
However, Superman isn't there just to punch villains. His first and main role is to be a superpowered First Responder. There are in-universe, hundreds of thousands of people who are only alive because he stepped in.
Moreover, there are threats that come to Earth that he stops that don't just come there as a complication of his presence. He stops problems that aren't caused by him, that could only be resolved so peacefully because he was there.
He helps far more than he hurts.
With the Miraculous though, everything we see on screen is thus far an objective net negative to the world. If the Miraculous were to be destroyed in their entirety, it would actually fix far, far more problems than it would cause- in fact, the Miraculous themselves are only a recent re-addition to the world thanks to Fu's little 'accident' and thus far on screen they've only been a massive problem with minor benefits.
Heck, they even have other superpowered heroes already, so it's not like they'd be leaving the world vulnerable to other dangers that the Miraculous could (theoretically) resolve.
I've been speaking to someone else on the site, and they mention that in their story- the entire conflict is (briefly) resolved when Adrien realizes just how much harm the Miraculous cause, and he actually does manage to essentially 'fix the world' by sacrificing himself (and the other Sentimonsters) by going back in time and throwing the Miracle Box at Feast during the rampage.
Marinette wakes up in the new timeline an actual girl like any other, and actually grows up like a normal person.
No more Miraculous powers. No more Order. No simple means for conceited rich to make custom heirs with a magic remote.
I have to admit, With the way her Character is written,
Would you consider Marinette a Dark Magical Girl or not? (Or even a Knight Templar in the making as well)
Marinette's unwillingness on the Magical Girl job as well as her Infamous Failures essentially makes her the last person you want wielding a Miraculous yet alone be a Hero/Magical Girl,
But would you say Marinette's Actions would classify her as a Dark Magical Girl or even a Knight Templar (Given the whole Fiasco with Chloe as well as how she's been acting with Adrien) cause with the way Marinette's going,
She's definitely Fallen Hero material for sure.
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Marinette is such a bad example of a magical girl that she really does come across as more of a dark magical girl archetype in the terms that she’s almost a deconstruction of a typical magical girl protagonist. 1) She’s the team leader, she’s super bad at it but she never gets any better, 2) she has the purification/healing powers, but she often causes a lot of the damage than has to be healed and doesn’t care about collateral in the way magical girls usually do, 3) she’s highly motivated by love but her love is obsessive and selfish. The thing is that the narrative doesn’t think any of this is happening. It thinks her leadership is good, that this disregard for collateral damage is normal and that Marinette’s love is super pure and selfless.
Even the Knight Templar trope reading has merit based on the content in the show. She literally asked a soldier what it takes to be a good Ladybug and got her approval. She’s doing more and more extreme things to keep Adrien “safe” and to maintain her control in any situation and she hasn’t even once stopped to consider if what she’s doing is right. She’s only stopped to consider what others might think of her if and when it comes to light. Marinette has lost sight of a core element of being a hero: what being a good person even means. But, like, the story insists that, because she is good, anything she does that’s bad can’t be that bad because true harm can only be caused by bad people. The story itself runs on Knight Templar morality, where everything the Good Characters do is justified or at least completely forgivable and understandable.
Marinette isn’t any of these things purposefully. It’s just an accident that comes from the writers never interrogating what they write their protagonist doing and if it still should count as heroic behavior. Frankly, if this was a purposeful narrative about Marinette turning to more extreme methods for what she considers good reasons with her eventually having to realize what kind of hero she’s become and wants to be, I’d be stoked. But we’re supposed to still see her as that wide-eyed sweetheart the writers pretend she is.
I completely agree with this for obvious reasons, but there's also another thing to consider:
There's more to the idea of a Dark Magical Girl than just her being a "failed" or "worse" version of a magical girl. Rather, a Dark Magical Girl is supposed to usually embody the opposite of a traditional Magical Girl's virtues of compassion and care. Ladybug for all her faults, appears to be a bright, compassionate and friendly heroine- it's just that most of it is skin deep like a red apple with a rotten core.
Marinette seems to espouse those Magical Girl virtues, but is either an utter failure or some anti-version of a Magical Girl whose actions more invalidate those virtues while still holding their trappings. She's an Anti-Hero, who the story insists is a hero- so in reality she's closer to a villain protagonist that unintentionally critiques and deconstructs the very idea of Magical Girl.
Marinette is not a Dark Magical Girl who eschews friendship and compassion for power, or a traditional Magical Girl whose strength lies in her compassion. She's something of an "Anti" Magical Girl whose love is immature, objectifying, and inspires the worst in her. Whose compassion appears sincere yet damages those she claims to care for. Who uses her powers of healing and purification to allow her to win any fight by any means she sees fit- and never thinks twice about the implications because she can fix everything anyway.
And while traditional magical girls rely on the power of friendship and inspire faith in those around them in the darkest of times, Marinette inspires a twisted version of these tropes. Where despite losing against her worst enemy almost every season finale, her charisma inspires toxic positivity in Paris and her friends, warping them all into a cult of personality that supports her even when they should be outraged and holding her to account.
But, there's another layer here:
it's as Ilikekidsshows says;
Marinette isn’t any of these things purposefully. It’s just an accident that comes from the writers never interrogating what they write their protagonist doing and if it still should count as heroic behavior..... we’re supposed to still see her as that wide-eyed sweetheart the writers pretend she is.
If Marinette was intentionally written as an "Anti Magical Girl", then there would have been consequences for her.
Specifically, Chat Noir would have broken away from her by now, either resigning permanently or actually getting a true "anti hero/villain arc". Because Chat Noir's role as her (theoretical) darker counterpart with "evil" powers puts and their (again, theoretical) close relationship puts him in the archetype of a Dark Magical girl, not Ladybug.
But how Ladybug and the narrative have treated him is the opposite of how Dark Magical Girls are usually treated.
Their archetype is simple: a rival/enemy of the main magical girl who has similar or greater levels of strength, but with powers that are more dangerous/lethal (or at least used more dangerously). Someone is emotionally distant and possess a moral code distorted by hardship and/or the cruelty of others. But because of the Magical Girl's own heartfelt empathy and moral example the Dark Magical Girl learns to open her heart to friendship and empathy, and is morally redeemed. All the while their powers, which often harm them even as they harm others, become more controllable or otherwise less dangerous to all involved in some metaphor for leaving behind anti social behavior that harms both the individual and those around them.
Instead, Chat Noir's character arc has been the opposite.
Chat Noir started as the empathetic and usually more moral of the two, with the earlier seasons having him check Ladybug's nonsense when she stepped too far out of line. He had his problems, but on the whole he was a kind hearted hero who easily controlled his incredibly dangerous powers, and seemed immune to the temptation to use them to just kill the villains- instead having complete faith in Ladybug and her ridiculously inefficient and insane plans that usually involved him being harmed or potentially harmed when he usually could have just ended the fight without any risk to himself.
But over the course of multiple seasons, his own feelings and empathy have punished and exploited to Ladybug's advantage. He's been conditioned to obey Ladybug and place her authority over any personal or ethical complaints he might have for her, as well as going along with her many plans that cause ridiculous amounts of collateral damage.
And, he's become less capable of restraining his power- to the point where he almost killed an Akuma victim over something that was ultimately very, very minor compared to the various actual crimes that he's witnessed without snapping.
And this is all without The Big Lie and the reveals about his family.
Either way, at this point: if Adrien was actually allowed to grow as a character, Ladybug would have effectively inverted the usual Dark Magical Girl redemption story. Because Chat Noir should have long since learned to disregard the concept of harming others for an easier fight- because Ladybug does that whenever she wants. He should be going straight for the kill the second he knows the enemy isn't a Sentimonster, because the harm he would do to them is irrelevant compared to the collateral of dropping the Eiffel Tower or another monument that Ladybug destroys on the regular.
He should have stopped trusting Ladybug. And if he were allowed to actually be aware of plot developments: he should have lost faith in the very concepts of love and friendship.
Not only because of Ladybug/Marinette only loving the same vapid product as the rest of Paris, not only because of how Marinette and all of his friends treated him as just her prize to be won or a minion to command (even sadly Nino and Plagg)- but because of just what 'love' drove Gabriel, Emilie and Nathalie to do.
Chat Noir at this point should be where other Dark Magical Girls (or boys in this case) start: an untrusting, emotionally cut off, ruthless renegade with inherently 'evil' powers that he uses purely according to his own interests and his personal morality.
And it would be fundamentally because Ladybug, having been consciously written as an "Anti Magical Girl", took the opposite actions that a regular Magical Girl would have and thus created a foe out of who was once her first supporter.
Speaking of memory loss Maribug, i find it funny that no one talks about how Fu was NEVER the official guardian of the miracle box.
The storyline went like this: Fu was an apprentice and told to keep an eye of the box before he's officialized, but the temple is destroyed and he ran away with the box. So there's never been any formal transfer of ownership from Su Han to Fu.
And even if let's say due to them all "dying", the ownership went to Fu. But after Feast defeated and the temple returned, the ownership should've returned back to Su Han when Fu still has his memory. So how come Fu transfer the ownership to Maribug?
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To give Marinette an unearned promotion. That's the only reason.
We assume Fu has the authority to decide who gets the box = it's rightfully Marinette's so Su Han is a jerk for trying to deny Marinette her right
Fu wipes his memory = Marinette is now the highest authority concerning the Miraculous and hero team in France
The fact that Fu is able to transfer possession of the box to Marinette is meant to prove he had the authority to do that, but it's that tyrannical "one person alone decides what's done" approach that's also in Marinette's leadership. The writers had a clear agenda and didn't out any thought into how it actually works.
Frankly, the fact that Fu himself didn't contact the Guardians immediately after 'Feast' makes him a coward, a scoundrel and a traitor to the Order, and the Order hasn't been discredited by the show, so that should be an in-universe fact too. He shouldn't have had the authority to make any calls about the Miraculous, regardless of what his position in the Order was.
I'd suggest that OP reconsider their choice of words here, not because it's wrong by any means. But because it drastically downplays Fu's culpability and turn his respective illegitimacy as Guardian:
The storyline went like this: Fu was an apprentice and told to keep an eye of the box before he's officialized, but the temple is destroyed and he ran away with the box. So there's never been any formal transfer of ownership from Su Han to Fu.
The wording here strongly implies that the Temple's destruction and Order's (apparent) extinction are incidental to Fu becoming the Mother Box's master, like he was just a bystander who made do with a bad situation. However Fu was the one who destroyed the Order- via the creation of his Sentimonster.
Out of incompetence rather than planned malice or ambition, and as a hungry child in a position no sane adult would leave him in granted, but he was still the one who caused the incident.
He wasn't just some survivor who escaped a disaster and obtained the box. He was explicitly an untrained, unqualified initiate who failed the very test he needed to progress, and gained his "authority" by manslaughter.
And again: yes, he was a child at the time. But the grace from that doesn't extend to justifying the idea that he should ever be considered a "master" in the Order, or that he had some right to the Box or the right to designate a successor.
Especially when one considers that he had over a century as an adult to try to use the Miraculous in the Box to restore the Order. Even if one were to make excuses for him; as of now, literally every major plot in Miraculous could have been easily avoided and resolved with even some basic effort and competence.
...
Actually, given the way things are going it makes complete sense that Marinette would be Fu's successor then after all.
Saw a Marinette leaning Love Square stans saying that it's okay that LS is toxic and people that hating it despite it a genderbend of typical booktok dark romance they usually eat up is misogyny and people couldn't handle a girl being crazy about her man like 💀.
There are difference between Unhealthy Romance written to entertain Young Adult that know this is unhealthy and a Romcom for Kids where the show hype toxic relationships as healthy and how they might influenced to think it is.
Hell, if mlb is a wacky cartoon for adult I wouldn't bat an eye. But alas it's a kid show throwing harmful messages to children.
That's why it's so annoying. It's like the people behind this show just can't hide how much they hate that they're working on a kid's show instead of something more serious.
The writing team isn't writing a glamorized toxic romance.
What they are writing is a simple romcom with superhero elements, and it's one made for children from 8 to 12.
But they have failed so severely that now the only way to accept it as sincerely 'good' is to assume that course that has been set was intentional. That the story was always meant to be a "toxic romance" or a "deconstruction of the teen superhero" or whatever else better fits a critical view of the execution of MLB's concept.
For a show to have completely botched their core concept that it better fits another one entirely is not a compliment. For its plot to better fit a "Romantasy" than a children's show is something else entirely.
There are many reasons why this happens, but I'll go step by step.
Generally, the first season of a show doesn't focus too much on character development; its main function is to introduce the characters and the world, to establish a solid foundation of how it works.
We get the introduction of the protagonist,their motivations, dreams, hobbies, we learn more about their personality, etc. Secondary characters are introduced to us. We also get to know the world around them—is it similar to the real world or not? Does it have rules? Does it have prohibitions? All of that is presented, at least gradually, in the first season.
If it's a series about superheroes, magic, or whatever, it's preferable that in that first season the characters learn to use their powers and improve.
Miraculous Ladybug does none of this.
1. We barely know Marinette's motivation, and they don't delve into it because her obsession with Adrien overshadows her love for fashion design. And come on, she isn't even a good dressmaker; she has terrible style. That could have been an interesting plot to analyze... oh, wait, it's Miraculous. Forget it.
Adrien has a more solid foundation; he wants to go out into the outside world, to gain autonomy and freedom.
2. We meet Hawk Moth, but he always felt like a ridiculous villain, when the protagonist's greatest nemesis is supposed to inspire fear, mystery, and interest. Gabriel was ALWAYS a stupid villain.
3. We don't know the world. We know that the Miraculous exist, but in the first season, it's never mentioned that there are more heroes in other parts of the world, and that's important.
4. Ladybug and Chat Noir know how to use their powers from the very beginning of the series. Yes, they still had more to explore, but that's precisely why it was necessary for them to show us how they learn to use them. Yet the second time Marinette uses the Miraculous, she's already an expert, even though the first time she was super clumsy.
And what bothers me the most is that at the end of the seasons, preferably the first one, something shocking or very important for the future of the series should happen.
Miraculous Ladybug is a generic series, with nothing remarkable and characters that aren't interesting in the slightest. Miraculous was a big gamble because, being a bad series, there was a HUGE chance it would be canceled, but the love square "saved" it.
And the fact that the last episode of the first season was "Volpina" was a very risky bet, because it's not only a bad episode, but it also isn't interesting in any way and doesn't generate interest for the viewer to wait for the second season.
I'm going to give examples of series with self-contained episodes that have impeccable first-season finales.
Teen Titans: After developing a whole rivalry between Slade and Robin, he becomes his apprentice and "betrays" his friends to protect them, so we get two whole episodes of Robin being Slade's apprentice. The first season ends with Robin returning to his friends, but it leaves you with the intrigue of whether Slade will return or not.
The Owl House: We meet Belos after hearing all the characters praise him; we know he is a cruel person who deceived Lilith, which led her to betray him. On the other hand, we have Luz who, while trying to cure Eda's curse, makes a big mistake and is captured, so Eda goes to find her. At the end of the season, we were given incredible battles, and Eda not only lost her powers, but Luz lost her only way to return home.
Gravity Falls: I don't even have to explain much. We spend a whole season getting to know the town and its characters; we know about the author's existence, and they give us an IMPECCABLE first-season closure where they reveal the author's identity.
Obviously I'm not asking for all the lore to be explored in season 1, but they give us almost no information that genuinely hooks the viewer. Shipping is the only reason this series wasn't cancelled after one season.
Miraculous Ladybug is a series that aspires to the highest heights without giving anything in return.
Agreed on most points, especially about the Love-Square being the foundation for this show's popularity. The target demographic being ripe for that kind of dynamic in their shows is probably the key to it's success aside the marketability of the "Magical Girl Spider Man" MC'.
But there's also the plot potential, and the periphery demographic that was formed during the creation of the cartoon.
For years before the first episode aired, Miraculous was a project in development. During that time a small but intense fanbase formed off of scraps of concepts, anime-esque vibes, and the PV, and helped the fandom of the cartoon proper form during the initial season.
None of this was reasonable. It was an older audience that saw more in the story's potential and themes than were ever there. But that potential inspired emotional investment, and a core enthusiasm that was likely vital to contributing enough attention to justify the PV and later 3D cartoon getting made in the first place.
And now, years later it's that potential that was so wasted that has formed the basis of the criticism towards Miraculous. The love square had been... realized in a sense. Not in any satisfying way, but it's resolved. But a decade in and many of the fans who were first invested in Marinette and Felix (PV, not GdV) have nothing to show for their emotional investment but the limp nonsense of the Season Five Finale, and the overblown cat fight that is the basis of the Lilamoth saga (and for all the show is trying to insist otherwise now, that's where this all started with Lila and Marinette: two girls fighting over a boy).
What a shame.
Really you have to wonder: since this was "all planned from the start" according to Astruc and his team, would Miraculous have really gotten to even season four if someone had leaked the planned ending in season 1?
Since I'm ignoring the intended episode and season order, I decided to watch Animaestro since I remembered the controversy this episode spawned upon release due to the meta commentary bashing the fandom, the creator's obvious self insert, and the reminder of what we could've had with the reused PV animation.
My notes on this episode are longer than my notes on both Chameleon and Volpina combined so you could say my thoughts on Animaestro are... Extensive.
Miraculous Ladybug Season 3 Animaestro - Live Notes and Opinions.
The beginning 2D section is cool, don't know how to feel about the narration - hold up, it's just from the PV trailer, maybe new animation comes later in the episode.
Oh yeah, this is the Thomas Astruc self insert episode.
Wow, Marinette didn't care to show up to the movie premiere about her alter ego until the news revealed Adrien would be there, she only offered to help her parents as a server after learning Adrien would be present. Why not have her helping her parents because she loves them and only learning Adrien would be there after he arrives? Not all her decisions should revolve around her crush cough cough obsession writers.
Ooo Sabine clocked her about Adrien immediately.
She just broke a bunch of plates and a bowl and they still let her help with serving at the premiere? Granted it was an accident but still.
"You guys don't trust me, then again, I'm such a klutz, even I wouldn't trust me." Did she just guilt trip her parents so she can see Adrien at the premiere? WTF?! Why couldn't the episode have started at the premiere to avoid Marinette guilting her parents to get closer to her obsessive crush?
She didn't even finish cleaning the mess she made after her parents agreed to let her help, she leaves it for Tom to sort, at least help him with the mess you made Marinette.
She just kept a "special macaroon" in a draw in her room for who knows how long? Won't it grow stale or begin to grow moldy? I get that it's packaged and I don't know if macaroons get moldy like bread and cheese can but it's my knee jerk concern, ok?
Why wouldn't Adrien like the other 800 possible macaroons and must get the passion fruit one specially made for him? Doesn't he hate being singled out to be the center of attention and treated like he's above everyone? Plus with the "ordinary" macaroons, she'd have more opportunities to talk with him rather than a single shot that the "special macaroon" supposedly gives her.
Oh, she bakes a new macaroon every Sunday according to Tikki, it's still going to go stale in a few days though. "He can't have a stale macaroon" it'll be stale by Tuesday.
There's a scene with Thomas's self insert explaining to the security guard how they didn't actually film the heroes IRL, meta jokes and commentary I don't care for tbh.
The maid outfit Marinette is in is a little basic and plain but I understand why others like it, I think it came back in Werepapas.
Scene with Jagged Stone "not getting" what a director does aka meta stuff, Marinette instantly being clumsy with macaroons in the background. Not even 5 minutes into the episode and I'm already on page 4 of an A5 book about the episode.
Marinette glaze by the other characters.
Adrien arrives, Sabine and Tom panic since they know how Marinette acts around him.
Marinette puts the "special macaroon" on top of the other macaroons, why not keep it in your pocket where you had it until you talk to Adrien and then give it to him so it doesn't get lost, broken, or eaten by someone else?
Case and point, she instantly drops it and it bounces into a horde of people, insert my sigh at the realisation the conflict could've been avoided if Marinette didn't bring the stupid macaroon.
Of course there's a scene with Chloe "not appreciating" Astruc - how am I only just now spotting the small gold pendant necklace she's wearing, can't tell if it's a heart or oval but it's cute either way.
Marinette crawling around everywhere to get the macaroon back is wince worthy, cut your losses and try to retain your dignity. Wait a minute, what would the crowd think of seeing the server the Dupain-Cheng's hired crawling around everywhere for a single packaged macaroon that's clearly different from all the other macaroons served, how would that reflect on the Dupain-Cheng bakery?
IDK the name of Kagami's attire but she looks so happy in it, she's so precious when she smiles - Tomoe's smiling too.
Oh, Marinette picked up the "special macaroon" off screen in time to complain about Kagami's arrival simultaneously with Chloe, what a coincidence.
Kagami trying to ignore Marinette and Chloe glaring at her to enjoy spending time with Adrien.
More proof that Derision was a sloppily written excuse masquerading as a retcon, Marinette needed 15 seconds of shallow convincing from Chloe before agreeing to work alongside her to bully Kagami.
Marinette hating Kagami for being close to Adrien.
Marinette goes through with what Chloe plans with little to no hesitance "for Adrien."
"It's for a good cause." You're targeting another girl for daring to talk to your crush, quit lying to yourself.
Marinette faked a fall to put gum on Kagami's shoe and give Adrien the "special macaroon", why are you talking - stop talking and just give him the fucking macaroon.
Adrien, just brush the macaroon crumbs off one of the chairs, they look like they're only sprinkled on but panic can screw with the tough process so I'm not holding it against him.
Oh, so he put the macaroon down ok.
Astruc scene, skip.
12 minutes in and he gets akumatized, the episodes are roughly 20 minutes when excluding the credits.
The 2D animation for the akuma is a nice change but imagine if everything was 2D animated during the akumatization.
"I'll never take Chloe's advice again." Marinette, what advice? It was all actions you willfully participated in because you deluded yourself into thinking it was "justified".
Animation error, she's in the maid outfit but is in her regular clothing when she enters the transformation sequence.
I still hate the Ladybug Costume, I don't care about any Watsonian reason why it's an atrocity of a superhero design, a purposefully bad and bland design is still a bad and bland design.
We don't see Chat Noir transform, gutted.
More meta commentary about the show.
The lucky charm being a camera to see the akuma needs to be watched by a live audience is a clever idea, I like it.
The voice for the one background character is so ill fitting it's goofy, probably intentional and still got a quick smile from me.
I do not like the unicorn design or the voice.
Ladybug smashed the news castor's camera, just ask him to turn the camera off or point it to the ground, they're already listening to everything you tell them to do.
So the butterfly wielder can detransform and the akumatized person stays akumatized? Sounds like a set-up clue for a big brain plan for a butterfly holder to remove themselves from an enemy's suspect list but I don't think the show ever used this.
Why doesn't anyone hear Gabriel yelling "no" as he's running through a crowded street to get closer to the akuma fight? If even one person opened their eyes Gabriel would've been exposed as Hawkmoth, or at least suspected to be Hawkmoth.
Dude's monologuing 3 feet away from Chat Noir and in an open street, at least wait until you're home to monologue in the safety of your lair, you won't risk getting caught that way.
Scene of Marinette gassing up Astruc.
Marinette gets rewarded by the narrative as she gets to sit next to Adrien to watch the movie which is what she wanted. What she did to Kagami is never brought up again. Marinette got away with bullying Kagami without any consequences while Chloe got kicked from the movie theatre for the exact same actions.
Kagami barely had a line of dialogue in the episode, poor girl.
Final thoughts, Animaestro is not an episode I'll find myself rewatching any time soon. I hate how the narrative twists itself to protect Marinette from the consequences of her own actions while punishing Chloe for the exact same thing, blatantly revealing how much of a Creator's Pet she is. I hate how Astruc portrays himself as a tortured artist while never explaining what a director does in a movie production. I despise the needless sniping at the fandom and the constant meta commentary I find lazily written and boring.
If there's any season 3 episode I'll rewatch for entertainment, it certainly won't be Animaestro.
Marinette gets rewarded by the narrative as she gets to sit next to Adrien to watch the movie which is what she wanted. What she did to Kagami is never brought up again. Marinette got away with bullying Kagami without any consequences while Chloe got kicked from the movie theatre for the exact same actions....
...I hate how the narrative twists itself to protect Marinette from the consequences of her own actions while punishing Chloe for the exact same thing, blatantly revealing how much of a Creator's Pet she is.
If there's one saving grace for "Animaestro", I'd actually say it's this.
Not because I've had a stroke, but because it so sharply frames a narrative through-line in Miraculous itself. There's a lot of episodes where Marinette pulls garbage, and ends up rewarded for it by the end of the episode. But it's usually done with some fig leaf to make it seem somehow acceptable, even if that fig leaf is nothing more substantial than "Marinette felt sooooo bad about it in this one scene", or if she apologized for something else that wasn't what she did wrong in the episode.
Because of that, it's easy for the viewer to be duped if they're not paying attention (or don't want to think past the surface-level vibes, since they like a certain idea of the character the show seems to present). But "Animaestro" forces it to the forefront, and makes it very easy to acknowledge, and once you've seen it, it's far easier to go back and realize that it's actually a very common thing, even from the start of Miraculous.
If you go through season 1 and 2, and analyze how often Marinette does something questionable or flat out utterly reprehensible, but ends up getting exactly what she wanted or more: it's downright disturbing. By all means, there's that fig leaf attached in those episodes, but Marinette almost always gets what she set out for unless it was to confess to Adrien, and even then she gets a consolation prize of some sort.
Contrast that with Adrien, who very much does not. Indeed, one of the very few episodes which focus on him as protagonist "Copycat" has him not only "learn a lesson", but does so in a way which explicitly has him publicly shamed, humiliated, and has him learn the hard way that Ladybug does not reciprocate his feelings.
This is the same episode which the fandom has been circulating as evidence for Adrien bashing for years at this point because he may have tried to direct the blame to Ladybug for Copycat's Akumatization instead of owning up to his mistake earlier in the episode, and not been held accountable for it by the narrative (I'd argue the line "If you'd been there this morning, you'd know what I was talking about" is at best ambiguous, if not entirely factual annoyance. Not Chat trying to blame Ladybug).
It is also the same episode where Marinette neglects her identity as Ladybug (Tikki asks "Isn't Ladybug supposed to be at the unveiling?", implying that she'd previously agreed to be there), to go break into Adrien's locker and steal his phone so she can delete her embarrassing voice message. She not only succeeds in this, and gets away without any consequences or embarrassment, but out of nowhere the episode ends with her getting to go to the movies with her crush and jumping for joy.
Contrasting these two episodes is an excellent way to demonstrate the bias of the writers, and the fandom as a whole in how they remember them. And for those reasons if nothing else; they're actually pretty interesting.
I saw a post on Twitter. Someone was asking a question about who would win on the battle field: miracululers vs my hero academia.
Then Thomas jumps in and says that miraculous heroes would definitely win
,,they are all receptacles of the powers of gods"
Then someone asked if raven in titans and scarlet witch from avengers would win and Thomas answer is that ,,Minotaurox alone would take them because he is immune to them and he could hammer them after"
Then others asked if X-man, Avengers, Goku or even Winx could bet them and Thomas said that ,,heroes have enhanced speed,power and agility." ,,Only Justice league could realistically beat them with the trinity in it"
This man cannot be fucking serious.
---
Deadass, Tomas Astruc tweeted that his little heroes can beat teams like:
Teen Titans
My Hero Academia
Avengers
Dragon Ball Z (even Goku)
Man straight up did the most Mary Sue OC reasons as to why: "well actually they are powered by gods and also much stronger than humans and also Minotaurax is immune to Raven's magic and such and also they are just strong like that"
---
Respectfully we might need to stop Astruc from ever tweeting again and the reason why I'm saying this is so apparently someone asked who will win btw the miraculers and class 1A from mha so now apparently a lot of mlb fans were saying the mlb fans would win and now since I've never watched mha so now can't say if that's true but then Astruc entered and then said that only JL with the trinty can win and when I saw this I was like is this guy alright at all cuz I'm pretty sure even teen titans would deal with them.
---
I'm lumping these all together because a lot of people wanted me to address this topic, but I don't have enough to say about it for three separate posts.
In Hero Academia most characters have pretty straightforward powers, so the Miraculers being able to defeat class 1-A makes sense, as long as we're not talking about peak power One-For-All, since that one is mystical and comes with an ability to punch air hard enough to clear out a storm. I don't care how fast, durable or strong the Miraculers are, All Might is more so. He literally fights a monster with an invulnerability Quirk manufactured to counter him and just goes “all invulnerability has a threshold” and punches the thing even harder and wins.
For most of this stuff, Clownboy is acting like an actual child going “invincible forcefield” in playground pretend fights. Super cringe for a grownass adult. He's also being hypocritical up the wazoo.
He's going “magic users don't count because that's cheating” and “telepaths don't count because that's cheating” when his answer to everything is “Minotaurox is immune to all powers” but that's somehow not cheating. He's power scaling Minotaurox so high he’s now immune to reality warping, which should make him immune to GIMMI, because that’s the kind of raw power the Scarlet Witch has, she’s Gimmi level. Man is breaking his own magic system to win imaginary OC fights on Twitter. Imagine being that insecure. Lame.
Also, he really talks like a man who's never actually read superhero comics and is just getting names and power lists on Wikipedia. I don't care if Ryuuko’s weather powers are “empowered by a god”, Thor and Storm ARE GODS. Actual God > empowered by a god. I don't care if Ryuuko can turn into a storm, Storm controls storms. Meanwhile Raven is the daughter of the DC universe's strongest demon to whom magical teleportation is just the most basic utility of her powers. Even if Minotaurox is "immune to her powers", she can avoid his hits with ease, he won't be able to "just hammer" her.
Never mind how the Marvel universe already has a Minotaurox character who is not as broken as Tommy the Clown claims. Juggernaut is basically the concept of being an UNSTOPPABLE FORCE. The X-Men are experts of functionally stopping something that can't literally be stopped. Anything that can beat Juggernaut can beat Minotaurox.
Also, the man is conveniently forgetting that these “empowered by gods” powers come from pieces of jewellery that have been established to be removable even when transformed and this information is public knowledge. Both Marvel and DC universes have speedsters that can hike up their speed so high that they can make time stand still for themselves. Both Quicksilver and The Flash can easily depower any Miraculous holder in less than a second. You can't “Minotaurox is immune to powers” your way out of a situation where the superpower in question only affects the guy coming at you faster than the eye can see.
Both Quicksilver and The Flash can easily depower any Miraculous holder in less than a second. You can't “Minotaurox is immune to powers” your way out of a situation where the superpower in question only affects the guy coming at you faster than the eye can see.
This is part of the reason why no Miraculous DC or Mravel crossover can ever work logically. Even leaving aside the obvious "Superman stays out of Gotham" trope that needs to be addressed, there's no way the Miraculous conflict would last more than a day once a speedster is involved, and no- for those might be thinking it- Zoe's demonstrated speed is nowhere near to what said speedsters can achieve.
Forget Batman, or the batboys and their detective skills resolving the situation, both Marvel and DC have hundreds of characters that would resolve the entire Miraculous plot if they so much as looked at it.
But just for Speedsters alone, the Flash could literally search the entire city of Paris the second an Akuma was spotted and find Hawkmoth in his office within an attosecond. And it would make Ladybug and Paris look like complete clowns, because it would reveal that the only reason the 'war' ever lasted more than a day is because despite the fact that Speedsters existed already, no one had the brains to just ask for help.
I rewatched Volpina the same day I tried to rewatch Chameleon and was split on whether to post these notes as well; since quite a lot of people enjoyed my Chameleon post I decided to share my Volpina thoughts too. I'm still watching some other episodes that catch my eye but my note taking turns a 20-25 minute episode into roughly an hour long process (I find the process enjoyable, don't worry) and I'm watching them hilariously out of order. I'll separate each episode into its own post and space out when I post to hopefully not overwhelm the tags.
If you'd like me to make a specific tag for my notes on MLB episodes so they're easier to find on my page please let me know and I'll edit my posts accordingly. Without further adieu, my rough notes on Volpina.
Miraculous Ladybug Volpina - live notes and opinions on the Season 1 finale.
The peacock seemed to be thought of after writing the episode since Plagg didn't recognise it as a miraculous, doesn't even look like he looked at it.
Adrien should've been the one to get the book to Fu since A, he found it first and B, his dad is Hawkmoth FFS.
Marinette seemed confused when Juleka, Rose, Sabrina, Chloe, Nino, Max and Kim mentioned Lila, her first time seeing Lila was with Adrien on the second floor when she just entered the school, she had that look of shock + horror at seeing her with Adrien. She has the whole "what if Adrien falls for her instead of me?" Spiel before seeing the full interview clip where Lila says Ladybug saved her. Marinette saw her as a threat to her love life before knowing anything about her. She even tells Alya that "they have to stop them" when Lila leads Adrien out of view. Marinette hated Lila due to jealousy, not because of lies.
Even Tikki questions if Marinette is jealous when she says "Has this Lila girl hypnotised everyone?" Girl, Lila's new, of course people are going to be interested in her for a few days while she settles into the school, because she's new.
When Lila mentions "doing our history homework" it seems like this is her second day at the school since the episode begins at the very start of the day before any classes and she already has homework, or maybe it's the end of the first day which makes me wonder why Marinette potentially skived nearly an entire school day without any explanation. Or maybe the MLB timeline is refusing to be consistent again, who can tell with this show.
Lila seemed fond of Ladybug at first but it could be an obvious way to get close to Adrien.
She offers to meet at the park after school so it is near the beginning of the school day.
Marinette gets enraged at Lila's offer and outs her hiding spot - wait no, she doesn't, she just sends the book cart into a wall while she hides under the table.
Lila takes the Grimoire that fell out of Adrien's bag. If she glanced under the table she would've spotted Marinette hiding under the table. Butterfly effect.
Marinette is more concerned that Adrien will talk to Lila at the park than with the book Tikki is actively concerned over and desperate to obtain.
Marinette only sees the Ladybug BFF lie after the library scene, after she's already convinced herself that Lila is evil incarnate for talking to Adrien.
Marinette stalks Lila to the park, sure at Tikki's suggestion, but fuck it's creepy.
Lila doesn't even claim to be a superhero, just descended from one.
Marinette transforms out in the wide open just to split Lila and Adrien, she's so happy and smiley about it too.
Marinette as Ladybug gets really close to physically intimate Lila while she yells at her, she's right up in her face about it. She drives Lila to tears.
"Miss show-off here was trying to impress you, and everyone around her." Marinette assuming mountains of shit because of a single lie, sure it's true but she didn't know that at the time!
Ladybug calls her a super liar all proud WTF you barely know this girl, you've never even met her. It's making me think she only said it because she thought she could get away with further humiliating Lila scot free.
Lila runs off crying, Adrien questions what Ladybug was doing and says she was too harsh. Ladybug hesitates before spouting bullshit about hating liars. "Especially when they're about me." Hypocritical as fuck considering past and future actions she'll take.
Lila only hates Ladybug because she humiliated her in front of her crush. Marinette created her own worst enemy and it's completely her fault.
Ladybug didn't think Volpina was an akuma when she started hating her before meeting her, she hated her because she "stopped the meteor" before she could.
Reused Hawkmoth model.
Ladybug hates Volpina for complimenting Chat Noir's outfit, girl hates any miraculous user she didn't hand pick and can't manipulate to be under her control.
Volpina has a game plan, "left, right, behind" which Ladybug instantly tries to alter because she wasn't the one giving the command.
Lila's most upset that she was called a liar.
From Lila's POV when de-akumatized, Ladybug only apologised because they were in private and she'd just been akumatized. She'd just jumped from sobbing in front of a Ladybug poster to being on top of the Eiffel Tower with only Chat Noir to witness Ladybug's apology for "overreacting".
The last we see of Lila is when she walks off screen on the Eiffel Tower. What? No one checked to see if she got home safely, especially since she still harboured some anger towards Ladybug's poor treatment towards her?
Lila never met Marinette!
Marinette never met Lila!
Final thoughts, I think I enjoyed the episode more when it first came out before season 2 released since it didn't have the miasma of future seasons polluting my judgement of everything MLB, it was still a fun show with boundless potential back in season 1 and the finale made me excited to see more of Lila as a potential reverse of Chloe who'd hate Ladybug but be close friends with Marinette.
Of course, Lila was shunted away until the season 2 finale to be a plot device instead of being allowed to be a present character but that's an issue present in later episodes. Actually, maybe Lila was meant to be a one off character due to how poorly written her lies were and dragged back out when the writers needed someone to be angry who could make everyone else angry for Heroes Day to happen.
The writing around Lila focused episodes suffered because the writers couldn't write a convincingly manipulative character so they had to hand all surrounding characters the idiot ball to make the plots happen. Of course they couldn't let the Perfect Marinette be fooled so "she's the only one who can see through Lila's deceit" when in the reality of Volpina, she's blinded by vitriolic jealousy over a new girl she'd never met before.
Indeed: "Volpina" and "Chameleon" really are some nasty outings for Marinette once you take the main-character-bias away.
But they're also excellent examples to demonstrate the sheer cognitive dissonance and selective memories of the fandom. From how the episodes are described, you'd think that Marinette/Ladybug had acted almost entirely reasonably, and that everyone else was an ungrateful monster who'd turned on her for no good reason.
But in reality, the character we see on screen is incredibly selfish and created most her own problems in both episodes (in fact, that's usually the case for most of Miraculous, but these episodes demonstrate it very nicely). What's more her actions throughout "Volpina" as Ladybug are... almost unforgivable.
Seriously: Marinette should have been put on notice for just that nonsense about surrendering her earrings over Adrien. I've gone over it before, but suffice it to say that there was no conceivable way that her choice there could have been justified, and Tikki/Fu should have put her on probation to even be a holder at that point.
But even before that when she presumably thought Volpina was another hero, as you pointed out she acts atrociously to the other 'hero'. Petty, spiteful, jealous, and uncooperative- and all towards someone who just 'saved Paris'.
This is something the fandom has just collectively memory holed. Leaving aside that this combined with her act of instant surrender (note- the only reason Marinette's time as Ladybug continues after "Volpina" is because Chat Noir stepped in to stop her pulling off her earrings.) But it's egregious because in the very next season, and indeed for the three: Chat Noir's jealousy and 'attitude' towards new teammates is held against him by the show and fandom alike- but he never comes remotely down to the level Ladybug achieved the first time a 'new teammate' appeared, outshone her, and was friendly to her 'partner'.
It's no wonder that the actual events of these two episodes are only selectively referenced in the fanon. Because it's impossible to present Marinette as some innocent, blameless victim when she's only upset at the seating arrangement because Lila's close to Adrien, and it's damn hard to pretend she's a perfect superhero when she's swinging between sulking over a new girl showing her up and throwing an Akuma her earrings over her crush.
But the proof is in the pudding, or in this case: the old episodes the fandom has collectively reinterpreted to near-irreconcilability.
An argument I've seen is that fics that salted Marinette were made long before the bashing tags were created so they don't have the "Marinette bashing" tag.
Anon sent a second ask linking a post since they didn't want the op potentially getting harassed for what they said, I have a screenshot of the post to clarify my points but please don't go after the op, no one deserves to be harassed over their opinions on MLB.
On Ao3, salt and bashing are considered synonymous so Lila Rossi salt becomes Lila Rossi Bashing when searching with the filters, this applies to every other character. I focused on Ao3 because I could get solid numbers and how the fandom generally feels about characters outside of Tumblr.
From memory, the bashing tags were made popular by Chameleon, the 1st episode of Season 3, especially the Lila, Adrien, and class bashing tags. At this point, Marinette was still liked by a majority of the fandom. It wasn't until Season 4-5 when Marinette's canon actions and how the show's narrative kept excusing every bad action by blaming other characters (the Derision Retcon comes to mind) made people begin to hate her; the Season 5 finale tipped some on the fence about her into hating her because of how she decided to side with her boyfriend's abusive father who she knew was abusive over her boyfriend.
Most, if not all, Marinette salt was written after Season 4 began so "the salt isn't tagged" reasoning falls apart. Some Marinette salt fics focus on actions in Seasons 1-2 but those were posted after season 3, and a lot of fics instead chose to focus on events after Chameleon, with a major one being The Big Lie season 6 focuses on.
What I'm saying is that Marinette salt has only picked up traction around season 5-6 while the bashing tags have been around since the very beginning of season 3. The "they're not tagged because the tag didn't exist" doesn't hold up because Marinette salt was made after the tags creation. Reminder: of all the Ao3 works with Marinette tagged as a character, less than half of a percent of those works are salt. Adrien still has over 3 times the amount of salt fics despite showing up in at least 5,000 fewer fics.
Marinette salt isn't hard to find because it's "not tagged properly" so people can't find it, it's because there's not many works about Marinette salt to begin with.
The idea that Marinette's salt/bashing fics are far more numerous than they appear because they are untagged as such is an interesting argument.
Because;
A: trying to counter it would mean manually reading through every Miraculous fic on AO3- which is functionally impossible, or relying on personal anecdotes which can be easily countered with someone's else's or dismissed entirely.
And, B: The same argument can just as easily be made for Adrien, Alya, and even Lila.
And if you'll deign to accept my own personal anecdote- that's very much the case. Demonizing Adrien and Alya is so common that it's not even mentioned half the time. That demonization is flat out accepted as an axiom of Maribat/Chameleon sub-genres to the point where the story doesn't tag otherwise then it should be expected as surely as the sky is blue.
And it's far from contained within those sub-genres. The sheer vicious glee that was taken in savaging these characters to prop up the idea that Marinette lived a life of hardship can hardly be overstated. Ron The Death Eater is very much in effect, and to the point where large swathes of the fandom take it as a given that Adrien and Alya are at best pathetic, naive, or just fundamentally lesser than Marinette. The same applies to the class as a whole, albeit to a lesser extent.
But Marinette?
Even from the start she had issues and traits that could be salted on, characteristics that the show insisted on glossing over, or presenting in a comical or softer light so that they'd be forgiven or dismissed. Things that were ripe for deconstruction and harsh critique if taken seriously. But if you were to search for stories published before 2020 you'll find scarcely any stories that punish her for her thieving tendencies, the behavior that causes so many Akumatizations in those around her, or just her objectification of Adrien.
And to go on a related tangent: let's just say that there's a very good reason why roleswap fics don't ever have Mister Bug hitting Lady Noire with his yo-yo the way Ladybug hits Chat Noir.
There is a clear double-standard in play here. One that is very much in favor of Marinette's character.
But let's go for a more measurable example.
One of the great staples of Adrien salt is the perennial stripping of his Miraculous. It's justified in many ways, but the ultimate point is that he is unworthy of it for one reason or another, usually based on his canonical actions. This can be due to his character, alleged incompetence, or culpability in allowing Hawkmoth or Mayura to escape and continue their reign of terror.
But what he has never done, and what Marinette has done twice, is lose the Miracle Box to the enemy. The second time can debated as to whether or not it is her fault, but the first time is undeniably solely on her and her petty jealousy- as are the consequences.
This alone is worse than anything Adrien has done in any identity. And it was far from her first offense of risking the Miraculous over petty reasons ("Volpina" for a single example). And yet she was rewarded for it with authority and free access to over a dozen Miraculous. And for all the show insists that it's a terrible burden and responsibility, it doesn't outweigh the fact that she was promoted for her failure.
A failure whose severity easily justifies the revocation of her Miraculous and any memories that she might have relating to it. At least if held to the same standard that Adrien, Alya, or any other character in that class the collective fandom holds them to.
But, if you were to search for stories written before the season five release date (October 8, 2022) that featured Marinette being stripped of her Miraculous for this action, or even being addressed in a way that was anything but sympathetic by the narrative, you'd be hard pressed to find more than a handful. In fact, I'd be greatly surprised if you could find even one which genuinely salted on her for it in the same way that Adrien and Alya were castigated for so much less.
Lila: ... Chloe stumbled on my lair beat me up and stole Nooroo.
Tomoe: ... I can't decide if you're lying to me or telling a truth that by all rights 'should' be so absurd I can't believe it.
Lila: True me it feels weird for me too, also painful.
Tomoe: I suppose there was a reason Gabriel so often used her as a weapon. I'll get my people on tracking her down. Meanwhile, see if you can pickpocket Felix for the Peacock in one of your disguises.
Lila: (Salutes) Done and done, (Reveals the Peacock) & I mean done.
RIP FELIX
Actually double rip to Felix because Tomoe's just gonna kill him now
I'm pretty sure they can just do it there and then. Literally, one fingersnap and Smug Boy's a white feather, and Kagami won't even be able to trace it back to Tomoe.
Which would be kind of hilarious. After all his hype, supposed brilliance, and endless evasion of consequences Felix gets taken out like a chump because someone else stole his jewelry without him even noticing until it was too late.
I had a realization the other day, Megumi Fushiguro, Potential Man himself, did more in the final battle against Sukuna than Adrien did against his dad. And all he did was trip him! That's how low the bar is!
---
Sometimes it feels like the writers are making a sport out of bringing the bar as low as possible. I mean, it works well for them because it makes the fans cry tears of joy and praise them to high heaven when they then manage to get someting super basic even halfway right.
Adrien was left in a box. His potential was wasted, and in the end he had no impact on the final battle. He was treated as a prize to be won was completely stripped of all agency.
Many of these things are true for Megumi as well. Except for impact.
Megumi had a massive impact on the final battle.
A negative impact. A horrible, nearly incomprehensibly awful impact. It is quite literally so awful that if Megumi could have committed suicide at any point after Sukuna switched bodies and before the 'trip', the world of JJK would have been an objectively better place for it.
There were multiple times when Sukuna could have been stopped that were wasted because Gojo, or someone else was trying to avoid killing Megumi. Megumi's powers provided a critical hard counter to Gojo's own abilities that forced him to barely use his strongest attacks lest Mahoraga adapt entirely to his techniques and render them useless. Megumi turned down a chance to fight against Sukuna from the inside, and thus got Yuta Go/jo'd.
Now, Megumi had also gotten mindbroken before all this via liquid evil, and there's other factors at play here so we can't just rag on him endlessly like we're on reddit.
But unless the day comes when:
1, Adrien gets used as a meatshield for the main villain.
2, Multiple characters throw away chances to easily beat said main villain to for a chance to save him and die permanently in the process,
3, Adrien's own Miraculous becomes some kind of hard counter to Ladybug's own powers and puts her and her team in genuine danger, thus proving game-changing assistance to the villain in a way that it never did for the heroes while in Adrien's hands, and....
4, Then Adrien gets a chance to try and end the madness from the inside but gives up instead, resulting in what should be the immediate death and/or maiming of a powerful ally.
I don't think we can compare these two. Adrien's been done dirty, there is no question about it. But Megumi's treatment is several orders of magnitude worse.
One potential route they could go with the pieces we have so far:
Fury is caught by the heroes and unmasked. The Public are outraged.
Ladybug vouches for her though, and second chances etc. 'You can trust me, I'm Ladybug!'
THEN Cerise drops the 'Ladybug lied' bombshell on the public.
So you'd have Cerise's 'soft' akumatizations(she's been very gentle about them, not domineering)
Ladybug covering for not one but TWO villains, one of whom was on her TEAM.
Cerise could work it to position herself as the 'hero' in the situation, trying use the butterfly she discovered to help right a wrong, but too scared to face up to BIG MEAN Ladybug directly.
I still don't understand how Felix is walking in public freely. Like, even if we assume the public in general have no idea it was him who used the Red Moon, the people in the dance SAW him transformed and snapped them all. Rich, petty people who sees everyone as lesser than them.
You can't convince me in any way shape or form that none of them, not a single one of them, reported to the police at bare minimum about that.
the obligatory reminder that as far as all those rich petty people were concerned, that was Adrien Agreste who transformed right in front of all of them
but regardless of presumed identity, Argos' revue act was, y'know.
I think it could pretty easily be explained to them that that was Felix in disguise. It's not as if the fact that Adrien has a look-alike would be unknown in these circles.
I think the easiest explanation (aside from sheer narrative laziness) is that everyone of influence there was already "in the know". Meaning that they were members of Not!Seelie or their (probably Senti) children.
So Gabriel probably just told them the truth, and they in turn backed off because they had no way to challenge Felix without risking fallout. Ie: Felix or his mother might be to spill the beans if they come after him legally, since it's unclear how much they know, and not only was he in hiding to avoid being found otherwise- he just proved how easily he could end their whole operation if they tried more... direct means of retribution.
As for the general public... well.
I've got nothing. Best I can do is say that maybe they think it's a Volpina situation where an Akuma victim used a similar power and appearance before the "real deal" showed up.
Ngl, every time someone tries to tell me that MLB heroes are so stressed and poor and thar MLB universe is so bad to live in, so you cannot criticize these teens for not doing their hero duties, i roll my eyes.
Okay, first off, if we were magically yoinked into MLB world, i think it wouldnt be as bad. Compare MLB to something like Ben 10 or Danny Phantom, the show is practically heaven.
Second, if they find it so difficult to be heroes... why not give away their miraculouses? They dont have some kind of genetic seal or soul-binding spell/curse, right? Anyone can wear any miraculous. They dont have genetic alterations or magical natural powers that would make normal living difficult. So if they have so many troubles being heroes, just... retire. Be a teen without duties and burden. Let your kwami fly away with their jewelry and find another holder. Problemo gone, bye 👋
But the issue is that these teens KEEP their jewelry. They KEEP the super power to save the world and their families with THEM. But im yet to see the squad actually take terrorist magician in a lair seriously. They dont try to find any leads, dont try to discuss where butterfly could be. We just kinda... vaguely told "well i searched for it [Butterfly brooch] and didnt find it, so i guess we just gonna sit there and wait until an akuma happens."
Its not like these teens cannot, ya know, be teens. They can rest and have fun, goof around. But Avatar gang also goofed around AND knew they were on a strict time limit to prepare Aang for the invasion or else everyone will burn. Meanwhile our Miraculous heroes are more pleased with themselves, keeping all the power to save the world to themselves, all while barely doing any hero duty. Why would they, ya know, actually be heroes when they can use their magic to fly in the sky and make out? Or maybe just sit idly until Ladybug calls them because Tomas forbid they use their braincells on their own
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Oooooh, the Miraculous kids live in such a crapsack world. They’re child soldiers who have no chance to enjoy their childhood. It’s so cruel, especially to Marinette who has to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Pfft. Yeah, right. The Miraculous kids have it so easy in comparison to literally any other teen hero squad. I’ll elaborate.
These kids live in Paris, the capital city of France and capital cities are consistently the most expensive to live in, they're fine financially.
The Paris in this show is a freaking utopia, always clean and brightly lit with good weather and nice people who show 100% approval towards the heroes.
The evil cabal is completely in the shadows and seems to hold little actual power to influence things.
There’s only one supervillain who can usually only attack with one brain-washed minion at a time.
They have more team members than they know what to do with, which is why most of them sit out most of the fights against the villain.
They have enough time on their hands to worry about their friends’ romantic relationship and treat that as a top priority.
The primary source of stress in this show for anyone is whatever crap Marinette is pulling and a trio of pathetic bullies.
If all else fails, they have the guardian of the timestream on speed dial.
These kids have all the time and resources to do whatever they want.
If all else fails, they have the guardian of the timestream on speed dial.
This last one is the most important I think.
I cannot emphasize enough just what a tension-killer Bunnix is. Ladybug has nigh-on-literally a hero whose entire superpower is to serve as a reload if Ladybug actually loses. With the rare exception of when she's apparently 'supposed' to lose.
And Bunnix has already saved Ladybug multiple times.
Marinette knows that if she really does fail, if she really does screw up to the point of losing to the butterfly villain (when she's not supposed to of course), Future Alix will step in to save her bacon at no cost to her or anyone else.
...
That's it. There's no tension for the audience or Marinette, or at least there shouldn't be. Even with Chat Noir being left out of the loop about Bunnix being the only reason Lilamoth didn't win on her first try, the second Ladybug has any stress whatsoever about her job he can just remind her that for all intents and purposes she has infinite redoes if she needs them.
So how on earth can her life be considered difficult?
It's pretty selfish of Marinette to withhold the information from Felix and Kagami that their amoks aren't as endangered as they think they are. Or at least that there is a solid but unexplored possibility of it.
Cause Felix and Kagami came to her in "Yaksi Gozen" explaining how they've wrecked their brains on how to possibly keep their amoks save, but couldn't come up with anything because they are going with the assumption that any damage to it will be their death. They are so convinced of it that they are now rather going with the risk of putting said amoks in Ladybug's yo-yo, even though Felix himself has already proven that that's not a foolproof place to keep things.
And don't get me wrong here, it is my interpretation that amok objects would still get destroyed in a case like them burying them somewhere and then construction work happens to break the objects.
But the key word here is MY interpretation.
I don't decide that and I (we) clearly don't have all the information, and that's what I'm taking issue with.
The fact that Marinette is listening to Felix and Kagami saying that they are so afraid for their lives (due to being Miraculous holders) that they DONT want the objects on them taht give them free will, and instead prefer the risk of putting them in a place of which Felix has already proven isn't as save as they need it to be
And she's just out here withholding the information that their lives are not as fragile as they fear to be. As long as someone doesn't WANT them dead, their amoks can literally be broken and they can still be brought back.
But no, Marinette is not written to prioritize soothing Feligami's fears and anxiety for their literal lives. Shes instead written to let them put their lives out of their hands into HERS because she cant risk them getting justifiedly upset at her for her absolute selfish disregard of Adrien's life.
Marinette will rather emphasise over and over how honoured she feels to be trusted with such a high-stakes duty than allow them to make an informed decision about trusting her in the first place.
We're constantly told to cut Marinette all the slack in the universe for her bad behaviour and actions on other people's expenses because of the responsibilities she has to bear. And yet, here is a responsibility she should absolutely NOT just take on and instead tell these two people of what she has done but also found out.
It doesn't matter how many times Marinette says she feels honoured to be trusted, this isn't about her ego, she should prioritize letting Feligami make an informed decision and telling them that their lives may not be as fragile as they fear them to be.
But even when you wanna ignore all of that, absolutely no argument can be made that could make me change my mind that Marinette here isn't an unbelievably short-sighted and self-centered guardian for not using any of her 5 billion guardian resources AND contacts to talk this case through.
Literally all she has to do is get in contact with the guardians and tell Suhan that her chosen Peacock holder wants more detailed information on his powers. That's it. That may have been all she needed to do.
Because, again, Marinette since s4 has utterly and completely declared herself above the guardian culture she is taking all her power, status, and privilege from. Suhan literally held an entire book in her face and she rejected it because she rather wanted to do whatever she pleases with no compromise or consideration for how anything works cause "she decides that". She didn't want help, less responsibility, alternatives, a superior she can hold responsible in case something goes wrong, nothing. Marinette was literally written to only want untouchable power, status, and privileges. That's it. ALYA is the one who took any interest in the guardian culture. Marinette has never done that.
So yeah, this whole amok case may as well already be long-explored by the guardians. Cause with how strict the guardians were, I can easily see it be the case that the show would say that they used to create Sentibeings just to test the limits of amoks (to, you know, claim that Marinette is a saint of a guardian in comparison, even if she isn't)
My point is that this amok situation is something she as the GUARDIAN should be solving by asking for help from the experienced guardian CULTURE she has pretty much rejected up til now just because she didn't like the thought of her every whim not being the start-all and end-all of leadership.
She HAS resources. She HAS people she can contact about this and she wouldn't even need to tell Suhan that Felix and Kagami are Sentibeings. She literally just needs to say that Felix is the new Peacock Miraculous holder and they have agreed they he (they) wants to know everything about Sentis and amoks as the Guardians know.
How hard is that? Why is Marinette still written to never improve on her not using her 5 billion resources and instead still makes every about how burdened but honoured she is?
All she needs to do is stop lying and keeping secrets and instead ask for the army of help and support she absolutely HAS. All she would need to do is make a compromise on her benefit and comfort and her being the one in full control of everything.
But that's the problem isn't it? Cause that's always at the core of why she isn't doing the things she should be doing.
Marinette upon being offered the rings: Actually this is entirely unnecessary.
Felix and Kagami: ?
Marinette: Yeah it turns out it doesn't matter what you do with an Amok as long as you're not trying to hurt the Sentipeep attached. You could probably toss them in a volcano and just be down some control switches.
Where was even just a fraction of that concern when it came to ADRIEN'S life, Marinette?
And what if Alya has to be Scarabella again and that way something happens to the rings? Are we gonna be pissed at her the same way Felix and Marinette wanted to go off on Adrien for being oblivious to the secret THEY ARE KEEPING FROM HIM?? (And heaven help Adrien if something dared happening while he's Mister Bug. When has Marinette ever shown mercy on Chat Noir or was fair to him regarding the secrets she keeps?)
At least Kagami was only a little harsh when she thought Adrien straight up hide away her ring, but didnt show any anger at all towards Adrien when he unknowingly gave Felix an order. Cause Kagami knows there was no deserved anger to be had here. SHE is the only fair one in this. The ex Adrien HURT is the only one displaying basic fucking decency and common sense.
But what else was to expect from the two people who combined stole, abused, and TRADED Adrien's amoks back to his abusive terrorist of a father:
Oh! And of course who BROKE THEM at the lowest-stakes akuma of the show just because saving her own face and reputation was more important:
Felix, Marinette, you are the last people who have any god damn right giving Adrien shit for having unintentionally been reckless with amok rings. You have done almost every awful thing to Adrien's rings possible and neither of you got even the tiniest backlash for it because you are too cowardly to ever owe up to anything bad you did and DO to him. But sure, keep pretending like you dont deserve 100 times the anger directed back at you. Projecting your blame onto Adrichat is all these two are ever written to do anyway.
Felix was upset at Adrien for being reckless with his ring?
How odd.
Doesn't he know that intent matters with this kind of thing, so Adrien could have dropped it in a crusher by accident and Felix would have been fine? After all, that has been well established hasn't it?
Oh well, maybe he's just being dramatic. He is prone to theatrics after all.
