In regards to Gabriel Agreste after Gorizilla:
Love and abuse are not mutually exclusive
Love and abuse are not mutually exclusive
Love and abuse are not mutually exclusive
Gabriel can love his son and still be an abusive shit to him.
Gabriel can be an abusive shit to his son and still love him.
That’s what makes abuse such a complicated subject. If Gabriel did not love his son, this would make his abuse less believable and would also make him one-dimensional as a character. It would be boring and unrealistic.
The majority of abusive relationships get as far as they do because there are reasons to stick around. You like that person because of one reason or another, so you attempt to look past all the bad for the good. Many victims end up blinded by this and their hope that it’ll get better or that it’ll go back to how good it was before. There are things Adrien likes about Gabriel and there are things Gabriel likes about Adrien. They care about each other. That’s what makes this hard on them and adds to the depth of their relationship.
Is that care and love of a good quality? No. Absolutely not. Adrien gives everything and Gabriel gives very little. Adrien seems absolutely delighted to have even an ounce of Gabriel’s positive attention or approval. Gabriel deprives him of the emotional bond they really need as father and son. They especially need that bond more than ever after the loss of Emilie. Gabriel, however, decides to keep himself preoccupied too much with business and his evil plans to show Adrien the attention he needs. Adrien, in turn, has gotten to the point he’s afraid to even bring up things he wants because he expects a negative response.
Such as with the movie. Gabriel apparently had the only DVD of it and Adrien had never seen it. He tells Adrien all he had to do was ask but gave him no real opportunity to. Adrien, on the other hand, assumed that he wouldn’t be allowed to watch it, but with what context? Apparently, it would have been okay.
The victim begins to assume the worst and comes to conclusions about things involving their abuser’s response that may not even make sense. If Gabriel would have let him see it (and did), then Adrien likely assumed an answer based on some behavior he’d seen in the past. The core of this kind of problem is not the victim’s fault, but it is something a victim can often end up doing. You become too afraid to bring up even the simplest of things because you start to assume you won’t be allowed anything and even if it makes no sense to be denied, you make up connections in your mind to come up with elaborate reasons why you shouldn’t do anything.
Basically, their communication is completely screwed up to the point even Adrien subconsciously comes up with reasons he shouldn’t due to behavior from Gabriel in the past. This isn’t good at all, because we’re slowly losing communication on both sides.
The points we’ve seen any real communication between them is when extremes come into play. Adrien runs away to go to school, Gabriel finally talks to him about it with some form of consideration. Gabriel almost dies from an akuma attack (entirely his own fault, too), he finally shows some emotion and goes to hug his son. Adrien runs away and they can’t find him for a good while, Gabriel finally talks with Adrien about how he doesn’t want to lose him. Gabriel’s book gets stolen by Adrien, Gabriel finally talks with him but its primarily to manipulate him and scold him in order to eventually take suspicion off of him. Adrien almost dies by akuma attack (also Gabriel’s own fault, btw), Gabriel finally sits down and simply watches a movie with Adrien that any good parent would have already watched with their child.
It takes extremes to get Gabriel to remember that he cares about Adrien and that will lead to Adrien going to more extremes since its the extremes that get his father’s attention. This is dangerous.
Gabriel also doesn’t consider the full extent of his actions or how horribly they could go wrong until they’ve already started to go horribly wrong. He akumatizes a girl that may target his son and only realizes he needs to direct her toward Ladybug once his son’s life is in danger. He akumatizes his son’s bodyguard and has him go find him with this elaborate plan in order to try and figure out his identity and it almost ends in his son’s death. He deliberately avoids proper communication and simple plans because he seems to think he’s too clever for that when really he’s proving that he thinks too highly of himself and he makes stupid decisions.
If he’d had proper communication with Adrien from the get go, Adrien likely would have just told him who he is, let’s be real. If they were functional enough to talk freely and Gabriel wasn’t as strict, Adrien would seek his approval enough to be like ‘look what I can achieve, father!’
Gabriel is his own downfall and he’ll take Adrien down with him if neither of them see it. Adrien is starting to grow some independence, but after so long of not having any, you can bet that he’s not gonna be the most functional human being himself for a very, very long time, especially without an intervention. Gabriel thinks he’s functional when he isn’t. He’s successful by society’s standards so he doesn’t see his faults in what’s important. He thinks he’s doing enough when he isn’t and he only sees any crack of a fault when something terrible happens.
He loves his son, but he doesn’t know how to actually act on that love and he also doesn’t make any real attempt to improve in that regard. Adrien loves his father despite the treatment he receives to the point he will take any inkling of love and care he receives and celebrate it enough to keep being looped back in to the relationship. He starts to doubt his love but then receives some of it and then the cycle starts all over again.
Basically, I’ve been seeing some responses to this episode that oversimplifies all of this. Some people suddenly believe he is a good dad cuz he showed he loves his son in a desperate time. No, he is not a good dad just because he loves his son. Parenting, just like any long term relationship, takes more than just love to be healthy.
I’ve also seen people freak out over those who bring up that Gabriel loves Adrien, assuming that anyone who points this out or says he’s not as bad as they thought seem to think he’s not a bad parent. A good portion of the fandom had started to think he’d kill Adrien for the goal, so saying he’s not as bad as they thought isn’t exactly high praise or erasing how bad he is. It just means 'oh okay, so you don’t want your son dead, that’s a relief’.
I’ve also seen people who seem to think he only saved his son because of that fan theory that he’s just keeping him around to sacrifice him and I’m just… Did you watch the same thing I did? Cuz wtf. That wasn’t a villain freaking out over losing his pawn, that was a father freaking out over losing his son. The former is far from how Gabriel actually acted. You are watching through 'Gabriel is the worst and has no qualities that make him human’ goggles, I’m sorry. I’m so happy to see a relationship that comes close to realistic abuse and you still want to turn it into this one -dimensional villian bullshit. Come on! Why would you encourage making this show simpler and more stereotypical? That’s exactly what you should want to avoid! Guhhhhhh
Basically, Gabriel is abusive but still cares, however, that care isn’t enough to erase that he’s abusive. Vice versa, him being abusive doesn’t mean he is willing to kill his son, but that doesn’t mean his behavior won’t put his son at risk.
Anyway, this got long cuz I get worked up about this subject, sorry. So I’ll just end with this:
Stop ignoring aspects of Gabriel’s character in favor of being able to think in black and white about complicated issues like abuse. Plzkthx.
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