ari

she/her 20 eminath’s pr manager

[sashasparrow]

not doomed by the narrative but saved by the narrative. yeah i know you'd rather die than keep suffering but the story doesn't actually care what you want. you have to keep going, even when it hurts. even being erased from existence won't stop you from being salvaged from the wreckage of un-being. get up. keep pushing. keep bleeding. keep living.

[asukiess]

btw really really really love the detail of the “you’ve reached the end” bump. like she tried scrolling past the end. it never changes, how many videos there are, but sometimes your memory goes and you wonder against the impossible again if there’s anything you missed. she’s probably read and reread every text and analyzed every call log and tallied them up and gone through all the pictures but she’s not exactly like gabriel, who ordered these videos destroyed, and not quite like him that he prefers seeing her still in her portrait, ageless, suspended in time. nathalie’s so taken with seeing her in motion.

[avenyura]

We don’t talk about Mayura

A miraculous rant

Is anyone else getting the feeling that Mayura is being completely ignored in favour of redeeming Nathalie? Don’t get me wrong I’m ALL for Nathalie redemption, she is my favourite character after all. But it confuses me why nobody ever addresses the issue of Mayura, especially when she played such a fundamental role to the story.

To be honest, this problem has been there since her introduction. In Mayura Heroes Day part 2, Ladybug figures out that Hawkmoth has help from the wearer of the peacock miraculous. Yet, nobody conducts any sort of investigation into who this could be (but granted they also don’t investigate who Hawkmoth is apart from in The Collector).

But the problem properly begins in the later seasons.

For a quick summary of the things that Mayura has done and the heroes KNOW she’s done: be an accomplice for a criminal, become a criminal when she attacks civilians with Reflektdoll and the lollipop monster, revives an ancient sentimonster which leads to the revival of a temple that was destroyed hundreds of years ago (and is important narrative wise), steals a miraculous (and loses it), is the only villain to NOT have Ladybug and Chat noir turn up to stop her in the New York special (and interestingly, she recalls the amok rather than letting her senti cause more destruction), kills the Ladybug senti and steals the grimoire translation from Master Fu (again, a massively significant thing)

My girl has the most Ws on the villain team, and two of them actually have positive consequences. Yet how many of her actions are addressed in the show? NONE. It’s all “Hakwmoth/Shadowmoth/Monarch bad” but never “Mayura bad”. And yes, the public DO know about her. In the episode “Ladybug” she addresses a public broadcast as Mayura (“I am Mayura, and I am going to annihilate Ladybug”). I get that she hardly ever directly terrorised people and wasn’t really present to the public, but certainly to the heroes, she was present ENOUGH for concern.

When Gabriel started being “Shadowmoth”, why did nobody question what happened to Mayura? That’s a pretty valid question you know. Did they stop working together? If so, that means there’s a woman out there who could betray his identity. Did something happen to her? If so, what? We never get to see anyone question about Mayura, even though season 4 continues to acknowledge her as existing. In “Gabriel Agreste” we see Felix watching a video on the Ladyblog, which features a selfie of the two villains. When was this taken? When Mayura was still ill? Or did she and Hawkmoth have an offscreen public appearance after he became Shadowmoth? There’s no way the picture was taken in Miracle Queen, seeing as Alya was under Chloe’s influence, and Shadowmoth existed as soon as the peacock miraculous was fixed in Truth. So.. when was this? And the video actually mentions Shadowmoth rather than Hawkmoth and Mayura. (Although I do think the selfie was for funsies rather than of any plot significance, and Im glad we have it cause I love the Hawkyura selfie)

However, the Shadowmoth transition certainly isn’t the worst case of Mayura’s existence being outright ignored. I give them credit for Nathalie’s dying confession, and for the fact that she is willing to turn herself in. But, can we just acknowledge the fact that the only person who addresses the issue of Mayura is Mayura herself? I bet if Nathalie had never confessed to being Mayura, nobody would know. Why did nobody question what happened to Monarch’s accomplice after he died? Everyone knew he had an accomplice. It’s ok for the public not to question I guess, but the other heroes? They ABSOLUTELY should be questioning, ESPECIALLY Chat noir and Rena rouge. In fact, the ex Mayura should be the prime suspect for being the current holder of the butterfly miraculous. This should give them MORE motivation to track down Monarch’s ex partner.

And this would give us a fantastic character arc for Nathalie, and develop her in a really unique way. Shes trying to move on from villainy, and she’s trying her best to support her now son Adrien, but she keeps getting haunted by the idea that someone could find out that she was Mayura. Everyone is suspecting Mayura, and because she no longer has the peacock miraculous, she has no way of clearing her name. This would lead her to internally crash just like Marinette, and would create a pretty neat parallel of how the lie is affecting them (I HATE the lie plot, but I do think this would fit nicely with it). It’d also make sense why Nathalie reacts the way she does in Mister Agreste. Because if she’s currently being bombarded with articles theorising the old Mayura is responsible for these new akumas, and people maybe even theorising she has some involvement with Gabriel Agreste, she had every right to genuinely freak out at the idea of her identity being known and I wanna see that. I do like her redemption, and that she’s finally able to be mother Nathalie, BUT, I feel like her redemption will never truly be complete until Mayura is addressed in some way other than making Nathalie sick. Granted we get that tiny snippet in the London special, but it isn’t enough. We never explore her guilt about the whole thing and we never see her struggle with others suspicions that they SHOULD DEFINITELY HAVE.

But no.

She’s a good guy now so we can’t address the bad stuff she’s done.

Seems to be a pattern with peacock miraculous holders, don’t you think?

[noblechaton]

it is funny how Adrien Agreste, costar of a French cartoon show made for 7 year olds, is one of the most lied to guys to ever exist

[noblechaton]

I don't think a single person he knows has ever told him the full truth about anything ever. he has no idea that he lives inside of a pressure cooker

[eightofpents]

The thing about Nathalie losing Gabriel, is she's also losing Emilie again (how many times, now?). Gabriel dying means Emilie is really for reals Dead dead, finally. And she has to deal with both of them at the same time.

[crownlina]

Magical artifacts hunter, supervillain, and businesswoman coats the table, herself, her (recipe-)laptop, and the entire kitchen in flour to make three half-burned madeleines for her son.

[thetardisisnotourdivision]

One of my favourite things about series six is (predictably) about how Nathalie (wow, nobody saw that coming) now now the single (debatable) parent of a quiet, well-mannered young boy she's known his whole life, and who is quite similar to her in terms of personality...

And she also seems to be partially responsible for Marinette, ADHD incarnate, who will do things like crash family gatherings (whether you ask her to or not) and give you a full recap of everything your ex-situationship did while doing impressions of pretty much everyone involved, despite the fact that You Were Very Much There.

Can you imagine the whiplash.

[sufferingbooknerd]

The gods in S3 realizing that Annabeth Chase, who Poseidon’s son admitted that he’d “burn it all (Olympus) down” for, is missing and presumed dead

[loverblaze]

you're never getting away from the ship you got attached to at thirteen years old no matter how hard you try.

[subsequentibis]

not an apologizer but a contextualizer. yes the character did that but please understand the Circumstance. yes they had other options but they had to make this choice in a sea of available bad choices. and also it made the narrative more interesting. won't anybody think about the narrative!!!!!

[capri-kid]

i dont care if shes paris' most wanted criminal i want HER so bad

[thelittledaily-deactivated20260]

REBLOG THIS TO GIVE THE PERSON YOU REBLOGGED THIS FROM A GOLD STAR BECAUSE THEY’VE BEEN STELLAR TODAY AND THEY DESERVE IT ⭐️

[nicodemoon]

Nathalie Sancoeur

[asukiess]

in the same vein as like. the wife knowing her husband is having an affair, a la let’s say carmela soprano, but turning a blind eye as long as it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind:

it’s not the same with sangreste, obviously, but it isn’t artifacts like condoms or birth control that would incite a broken trust.

it’s gabenath coming back home and they stay longer this time, and don’t talk about future plans in front of emilie. but errors are bound to happen, hopping back and forth between lives/selves: nathalie’s field notebook pops out of her briefcase. internet history shows flight bookings to new cities. emilie waking up in a coughing fit and knowing that the empty space in the bed is owed to them planning downstairs to leave. atelier lights on at midnight.

all these things that she hates to see and feel more disrespectful than knowing they’re bed sharing.

[bluesnightshade]

there is one thing about the album that i have to admit and it’s that father figure reminds me so much of tony stark and i think that’s the only reason it’s a listenable song for me.

[bluesnightshade]

i think one of the reasons i generally disliked this album (except for maybe 3 songs) is how much it seems for the male gaze and male centered in the sense of calling women bitches repeatedly throughout the album, romanticizing motherhood and then make the promotion of this album entirely about your fiancé and how he has changed your personality

[bluesnightshade]

A woman singing about her happiness, her sexuality, and how much she likes getting dicked down isn't her centering the male gaze. You're just fucking stupid.

you’re right about that, except i’m not saying that those specific things are for the male gaze.

(this post is long because as i was writing it it lowkey became a lyrical analysis so forgive me for that)

in multiple songs she refers to other women as bitches and she shades her fiancé’s ex (“and the bitch was telling me to back off / ‘cause her man had looked at me wrong” in the song honey). this lyric pisses me off because she’s doing the very thing she has been very vocally against her whole life: pitting women against each other for a male-centered conflict (the man’s gaze). she CAN make happy love songs without being misogynistic because she has done it before (aotgylb, you are in love, daylight…)

as much as i love the first song, it is about a man saving her. moreover, in shakespeare’s hamlet (which was the base for the song) not only it was the men who drove ophelia insane, but she didn’t drown herself just because she was sad that her relationship with hamlet hadn’t worked out, it feels like the song reduces ophelia’s character to some depressed lady driven mad by heartbreak.

on a similar note, eldest daughter disappointed me so much. it’s not at all what i imagined it would be, it seems to me that it follows a classical trope of “a woman is suffering and lacks identity -> the man enters her life -> his love acts as a magic cure that gives her a purpose and heals her”.

a woman wanting to marry, settle down and start a family is not inherently tradwife propaganda or conservative. however, in wi$h li$t she distances herself, through the use of the pronoun “they”, from the desires of other artists and common people (oscars, yatch life, freedom…), things she thought she wanted until this man came into her life. after a series of failures (“i thought i had it right once, twice, but i did not”), the domestic life is the correct outcome for her. the fact that the act of bossing up is settling down (“boss up, settle down, got a wish list”) feels like she’s making choosing this man the pinnacle of her success. so again, she’s contrasting a “before her man” (she had ambitions but was broken) vs “after her man” (a domestic life with him is her salvation). (this one being taylor’s favorite says a lot to me but i’d rather not get into that now.)

there is evidence that she can write songs about her sexuality that don’t make the man the subject. songs like false god, guilty as sin, so it goes…, dress, wildest dreams… they’re inherently sexual songs that are centered around her feelings, her desire, her mind; while songs in this album, such as wood, are centered around the man and him being her savior.

i’ll take guilty as sin as an example and compare it to wood. the former is very clearly about sexuality too and it does involve a man as well (she talks about a “he” throughout the song), but the lyrics are focused on her sensations and emotions, she is the active subject. sex is a sacred act, but what makes it sacred is not the physical act itself, but the tenderness and intimacy of it, it’s a desire for connection (“what if the way you hold me is actually what’s holy?”).

on the other hand, the latter portrays the female subject as a passive recipient; she was sad and broken, her sexuality was locked until this man came with his “magic wand”, lifted this “curse” from her and got sexually involved with her (“the curse on me was broken by your magic wand” / “he dickmatized me and opened my eyes” / “his love was the key that opened my thighs”). the line “girls, i don’t need to catch the bouquet to know a hard rock is on the way” gives me the ick, it feels like an “i win” statement and a sense of superiority to other girls because she has a man secured while other women partake in different superstitious rituals and traditions.

lastly, you can make your point without insulting.