RMH
No title available
Jules of Nature
Kaledo Art
No title available
Peter Solarz
Claire Keane
@theartofmadeline
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
NASA
PR's Tumblrdome
Cosimo Galluzzi
Janaina Medeiros
oozey mess
will byers stan first human second
roma★
d e v o n
tannertan36
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
titsay
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Spain
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Hungary
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from Bulgaria
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from Pakistan
seen from Panama
seen from Serbia
seen from Ukraine
@onlyvinegar
I think that Miraculous Ladybug is a very good monster-of-the-week superhero show.
I also think the attempts at giving it A Plot are... not going so great.
This blog is for discussing spoilers and whining about the less-than-perfect parts of a show that otherwise is first rate at what it’s trying to be. Commentaries on leaks and spoilers are tagged #ml spoilers, #ml leaks and #ml bible leaks.
When it comes to the miraculous and their powers. Why is the ladybug miraculous the one with the purifying power? Like making lucky charms and restoring everything back to normal does fit with creation. But purification don't really fit. It actually fits more with the cat miraculous, as purification is just destroying the bad part of something and leaving the good part. So why didn't Chat noir get that power? He only gets the power to destroy. And apparently the power to erase memories now. (Season six gave him miraculous Chat noir that erased people's memories of finding out other's secrets thanks to the villain).
I would have loved if Chat noir got the purifying power with his cataclysm and Ladybug only had lucky charm and miraculous ladybug. That would balance out their powers more instead of just having Ladybug earn new powers every minute. But nope. Ladybug is the only true hero and Chat noir is just the sidekick.
One of my hills to die on is that Chat Noir should have the purification power (or purrification power if you want to be punny). It makes so much more sense for canon's lore! There isn't an official explanation for why canon dropped the ball on that one, but I can give you a well educated guess.
Every piece of audiovisual media goes through a development process where it's taken from an initial concept to a finished creation. How much that process changes the concept varies wildly. In some cases, the initial concept and the final product are near-perfect matches. In others, the concept undergoes massive changes to the point where the initial concept and final product don't even feel like they're in the same genre. Miraculous falls into that second category. There is no tell-all documentary on Miraculous' development, but shared concept art and various interviews have let fans piece together a high-level picture of the story.
The original pitch for Miraculous was a show for adults with Marinette as a solo hero. Somewhere along the line, the show switched its target audience and Marinette gained a team that included a black-cat themed hero named Felix. Based on the concept art for that setup and the fact that other concept art shows Marinette with an all-girl team, it seems like Felix was not her co-star at this point, but I could be wrong about that. When the team idea didn't sell, most of the cast was cut and the show became about a duo - Marinette and Felix - with the powers of good and bad luck.
In this version of the show, Chat Noir was Ladybug's co-star, but he wasn't her loyal partner. He was more of a morally gray character who had his own motivations and goals separate from being a hero. The creators decided they didn't like this setup for a number of reasons. One of the big ones was a concern that Felix wasn't a good lead for a children's show so they scrapped almost everything they'd developed for his character and created Adrien to take his place. When this change happened is unknown, but since Felix was being animated as late as August 2012, it was probably after that.
This is where I remind you that the show came out in September 2015 and animation timelines require scripts to be locked in at least a few months in advance. You also need to give the writers time to write and edit the scripts which means that the Felix-to-Adrien rebrand would not have had three years to cook even if it happened soon after the Felix animation was created. It probably only had months or even weeks depending on when Felix got scrapped and that's not even touching on all the other changes they had to make as part of this rewrite!
This timeline shows us that major elements of the story were relatively last minute additions/changes which brings us to my educated guess: the issues you brought up exist because they're artifacts from earlier concepts that weren't properly reworked when the concept massively changed. The creation and destruction powers are just rebranded good and bad luck powers instead of powers designed around the forces they're supposed to represent and Chat Noir doesn't feel like an equal to his supposed partner because, for most of the development process, he wasn't her partner.
This is also my best guess as to why Adrien's character is such a mess. The quick turn around means that he was probably more a concept than a character when the show started as the transition from Felix to Adrien seems to have been a bit of a mess. For example, there was a time when Adrien was supposed to be disabled. I think that was even the original logic for why he was kept home, but I couldn't find a source for that. I did confirm that - at that point - he wasn't a model. I would love to see Adrien's entry in the first show bible because I bet it was sparse!
*Note I believe that Felix's name was changed to Adrien before the personality switch was finalized, but the fandom and the creators all refer to the pre-rework version of the character as "Felix" since the personality differences make him a distinct character who has more in common with canon!Felix than canon!Adrien. I have adopted that naming convention in this summary.
The obligatory reminder about how arguably THE central element defining Adrien's character had not been cooked up by the initial draft of "Origins".
"The adults were afraid of her." Astruc out here acting like Chloé would send the authority figures to the cornfield if she didn't get her way, when the actual power and source of fear was her father and whenever she couldn't rely on him to solve her problems for her she usually just pouted and sulked off.
Meanwhile, the character who actually sent the whole city to the cornfield (Félix)...
Yeeep. The overreach is so bad I wouldn't be surprised if we saw him in a sling.
Queen of Dreadzone sucked
I already blew off steam and ranted plenty after watching it, and to summarise..
This is Derision levels of hypocrisy - being an abuse victim is no excuse for bullying, but stalking and obsessiveness are excused by trauma; refusing to let go and move one from your old enemies is petty and a sign of a weak, angry person, but the shows creator can dedicate at least one episode per shows season, to shit on his least favourite character and target a fanbase surrounding her FOR YEARS after her character assassination in canon
I liked Sabrina confronting her abuser and moving on, but it had to be ruined by Marinettes edgy aah laughter and corny zingers in response - you’re NOT taugh, lil bro😭✌️
You could physically see the writing quality taking a deep for this particular episode, which happens every time Thomas pushes his own agenda no matter what
This is JUST a season 5 Chloe ark rehash - this episode serves NO PURPOSE outside those few Lila and Noe involving scenes
Im not even that huge of a fan of Chloe, but this pettiness makes me want to be one with intensity out of pure spite. You’ll never make me hate her, Astruc - how about you touch some grass instead of arguing with your fanbase on Twitter 24/7
If the stuff about the universe being destroyed and recreated means that everyone alive is just a clone of the people who existed in the old universe, then under no circumstances should anyone use the wish. But if it is just the equivalent exchange thing, then you can probably create a bunch of moral wishes. It depends on how strict the equivalent exchange is, but Gabriel was literally hours away from death when he sacrificed himself to save Nathalie, and as such the rules seem to be very flexible. So here are some things that the heroes could probably wish for: 1. The butterfly miraculous. In order to gain possession of it, the current owner must lose possesion of it, but that it a feature, not a bug. 2. Adrien, Kagami and Felix stop being sentimonsters, and in exchange three random dogs become sentimonsters.
3. Marinette learns who owns the butterfly miraculous, and in exchange, Lila forgets that she owns the butterfly miraculous.
4. Adrien stops being a sentimonster, and in exchange Lila becomes a sentimonster. Then she can remotely order her to reveal herself (Gabriel was able to order Adrien not to kiss Marinette when he couldn't hear him) and hand over her miraculous. This is a bit morally dubious, I admit, but it would be more moral than covering up Nathalie and Tomoe's crimes, so it would probably be in character for Marinette.
The moment they tried to have rules for the wish they opened a pandora's box. They started out simply with 'a great cost' they waffled to exchange, they swapped to universal destruction, and they landed on user-benefit equivalent exchange.(An almost dead and disintegrating Gabriel resurrected and made perfectly healthy Nathalie)
There are millions of uses for a wish like that. *Not* using that power is a moral failing ala Spiderman's story.
Gonna start referring to Chat Blanc as the Good Ending if the fandom doesn't shut up about Marinette's feelings istg.
MLB: Eat the rich!
Also MLB: Leave the corrupt politician alone!
---
EAT THE RICH! But only this specific teenage girl!
Emotion and as an episode is fucked up for this. We have an entire ball centered around parents treating their children like prized objects, and yet it’s only Adrian and Kagami who we should pity? Commentary so awful it’s practically satire of said commentary.
ML went to Epstein Island and said 'These two kids only'.
Anyone want to make odds we get Chloé looking directly at the camera and saying 'You know, my daddy taught me right from wrong, I just ignored him.' in the new episode?
I really hate how the show going from "Yes they are the akuma victim, because HM preyed on their negative emotion and make them do bad things" to "Um... Maybe they're not a victim after all, they can break free if they don't want to be akumatized." because we're going from Pixelator where he got forced to submit to HM order to S4 where people not only break free from the akuma right and left, there's also Jalil who WANTS to be akumatized. So WHAT! ARE! THEY?! Marinette who's willing to get akumatized in order to get Cat Noir's identity, Nino who want to killed Cat Noir until he realized that Alya is only loves him, are they victim or an accomplice???
---
Yeah, like, making people able to resist Akumas was one of the worst mistakes the show ever did, specifically because it opens up the Pandora's Box for us to even have these kinds of conversations. Like, Lila used to be a standout because she was the only one who seemingly got Akumatized willingly. She seems to remember what happened and the Akuma retreating leaves her standing when everyone else was kneeling on the ground, brought low by their moment of weakness.
It's funny to me how you put these tags just as the newest episode revealed that Nathalie has been working for a secret organization this entire time and is taking commands from her dad who surprise surprise wants the ladybug and cat miraculouses
(Post in question for context)
[Image transcript: a series of tags reading "She is not a safe person and I HATE that she knows Marinette's identity Wtf is this show doing? Nathalie knowing Ladybug's identity should be a terrible thing that makes Marinette quit"]
Oh, so that's why Nathalie refused to turn herself in and convinced Ladybug to lie in the London special!
Nathalie: It's time to tell the truth. Bug Noire: If you do that, you'll go to jail. Nathalie: Isn't the truth worth it? Bug Noire: If you tell the truth, Adrien will have no one left. He'll have lost his mom, his dad, you. Nathalie: He will have you. Bug Noire: It's not' the same. He needs a mother. Nathalie: I'm not his mother. Bug Noire: You're the closest thing to a mother he's got. (Bunnyx runs over to the window as it continues playing)That's why Gabriel Agreste sacrificed himself, it's what finally made him a good father to Adrien and that's what Adrien should remember. Nathalie: Don't you want to tell Adrien that his father was Monarch? Bug Noire: The only thing I can fix is the way Adrien will remember his father. Nathalie: But that would be lying to him.
Oh, wait, no, my bad, that's the exact opposite of what happened in this dialogue! Why would you write the scene like this if Nathalie is still evil? And if Nathalie isn't evil anymore, then why is she keeping the evil organization a secret from Ladybug? This seems like something Ladybug should know about and this dialogue does not set Nathalie up as wanting to maintain secrets. Nothing in the special does!
[Image description: Fear from Pixar's Inside Out yelling "Boo! Pick a plotline!"]
I haven't seen El Toro De Piedra, so maybe there's something I'm missing, but doesn't this secret organization reveal basically destroy the popular argument that Nathalie is obeying Marinette's wishes re the lies because Nathalie no longer trusts herself to make good calls after all her years supporting Gabriel? If that was really the case, then Nathalie would have told Marinette about the secret organization and let Marinette decide what to do, but it sounds like that's not what happened. Nathalie feels totally comfortable making all the calls and controlling the information re the evil organization! She's only leaving Marinette to make the calls when it comes to Adrien's relationship with his father, a thing Marinette knows almost nothing about but that Nathalie actively watched deteriorate over the entire course of Adrien's life.
You can't have this both ways. Either Nathalie is a broken woman who is basically Marinette's puppet or Nathalie is a functional adult who is fully responsible for her own choices. Pick a lane.
I'm posting this now instead of waiting for the script because this is going to bother me until I get an answer. I legitimately want to know if the episode does anything to address any of these issues. Based on this ask, this is just adding fuel to my, "Nathalie should have been the liar" stance. Why is Marinette even involved in the lies if Nathalie is the one with all the actual secrets and information? It doesn't sound like the lies are doing anything interesting for Marinette's character or her relationship with Adrien. Can Adrien please get someone in his life who actually respects him? Can the writers please get rid of the asinine "Marinette must be wrong" rule when it makes no sense for the actual plot?
Gods, if Nathalie was actually written as still evil then this could have been amazing! The plot beats are all there, the writers just failed on every level. I'm still annoyed that her undoing Adrien's senticommands was presented as her being a good mom and not as her just using Adrien to fuck with Gabriel. Let my evil queen be an evil queen, gods damn it!
I think they are trying to make Nathalie some sort of double agent like Snape, the problem is that
1. It's terrible written, with absolutely to mention or foreshadowing to this situation even existing. I mean, you can count the Agreste-Tsuguri alliance but they never expanded much beyond that, and as far as we are concerned it was just the two of them.
2. Why hiding it from Maribug? A whole organization you've been part of for who knows how long wants the miraculous of a girl you see on the regular and who you helped defeating the Paris terrorist supervillain and hide the truth from everyone, and you decide to not tell her anything of this when it could very much put her and the secrets you share in danger?
I'm sorry, but it doesn't make sense. Nathalie, as always, is being a terribly written character.
I'm obviously biased toward evil Nathalie, but I'd be fine with good Nathalie too so long as it was well written. The problem is that it's not. As you so rightly pointed out, the issue isn't that it's uninteresting for Nathalie to be the daughter of a villain. The issue is that nothing about this reveal makes sense! Forget lying to Adrien about his father, these lies are now the most concerning lies in the series! The Adrien thing is just cruel on a personal level. Keeping this evil organization's existence a secret from the heroes is dangerous on a global scale! Maribug and the rest of the crew need to know about this so they can protect themselves and others.
Not telling the heroes about this is putting Nathalie in the same position that she was in season five: redeemed in name only. She's not actually being a good person, she's just making sure that the status quo doesn't change. It is the worst way you could possibly play her. She's so incredibly weak and boring now! I don't understand what her character is even supposed to be! Like Lila, they have failed to give her a clear motivation and it just ruins her because it's way too late in the game for this level of ambiguity. Nathalie isn't mysterious, she's nonsensical.
I mentioned in the first post that this was just adding fuel to my "Nathalie should be the liar" stance, but the more I think about it, the more I'm shifting toward this adding fuel to my "Emilie should have been revived and made the liar" stance.
Nathalie suddenly having a supervillain father feel forced because Nathalie has been here for five freaking season and this was never set up. Emilie, on the other hand, is a total unknown to the audience. We've barely even heard her voice! Giving her a supervillain father would feel like way less of a retcon both because she's new and because we already knew that she was the daughter of a wealthy and powerful family. We also knew that she and Gabriel somehow learned about and found two miraculous. That's a solid setup to reveal that she was involved with the miraculous before she met Gabriel. It's what I like to do with her, too! Just more benign than this.
Imagine if Werepapas had just been about Emilie's parents coming to see her and Emilie was the one who got akumatized over them trying to control her life again! You could also have her parents akumatized over her refusing to obey them. Either way, the episode would end without any kind of redemption. Instead, her parents would leave and her father would say something ominous, but cryptic. We'd then have this episode where it's revealed that Emilie is answering to her parents because she's afraid for Adrien's safety or that her parents will out Gabriel being the villain. Something like that. It just feels so much more natural than Nathalie being a supervillain's daughter out of freaking nowhere. This supervillain reveal makes more sense for Lila than Nathalie!
We're almost to the end of season six and, from what I've seen/heard, all of the above holds true. Marinette knowing everything and being the liar was a terrible idea. Emilie should have been revived as a morally grey Nathalie replacement and the lies should have come from her for many reasons. A big one is that Emilie was in a coma for the first five seasons so she doesn't have the full picture of just how awful Gabriel was. That adds some nice complexity to the lies where they're still awful, but the person who told them genuinely didn't know just how bad they were so it's easier to forgive her than it is to forgive a character like Marinette or Nathalie.
You could go the evil Emilie route, but I wouldn't. I'd play her the way they're playing Nathalie because it would actually work if Nathalie was a new character. The evil organization plot is a nice way to thread the needle on Emilie where she doesn't feel like a bigger, badder Gabriel thereby calling into question if he was evil or just the puppet of the real evil: his wife. Instead, Emilie could be a kind person who struggles to stand up for herself. We would learn that she relied on Nathalie and Gabriel to do that for her and now that they're gone, she's lost leading to a lovely arc where she grows a backbone for the sake of her son because Adrien deserves at least one parent who actually loves him and Emilie deserves to be an actual character instead of a perfect, flawless doll. Season six could be all about fixing that mother/son bond and could end on Emilie revealing the existence of the evil organization which would be the new villain moving forward. That's a solid plot for a bridge season (soft reboot's opening season which is supposed to feel like a season one so people can just start there and skip the early show).
The season six final would need to be truly spectacular to change my mind on any of that and, given the show's track record re: season finals, I'm not holding my breath.
it’s just that i don’t like this story anymore
like, the thing i loved most about this show (the lovesquare) is gone. it’s so far removed from the central plot that it feels almost inconsequential. in the earlier seasons, i saw so clearly the vision for this to be a story about what it means to love someone’s entire self. the lovesquare was ALWAYS the most unique and compelling aspect of miraculous ladybug—it’s the reason why this show ever became so popular. the central tension of the show was the romance, a tension which would be solved by the revealing of their identities. and maybe this was me getting ahead of myself, but when i became invested in this show at 15, it seemed so clear that this was a story set up to explore what it means to love all the messy, disjointed parts of someone else. by falling in love with both sides of each other, adrien and marinette would fully know and fully love each other. and then the identity reveal would be the final piece that made it all make sense. that type of story seemed so meaningful to me, and i was so excited to watch it play out.
the story of miraculous ladybug now makes me sort of sick to my stomach. it’s not really about romance anymore, or about the tension of secret identities. the story now is about….the moral ambiguity of lying to your boyfriend for the sake of his happiness? the ways that abuse can perpetuate beyond the abuser’s death? exploring the seemingly infinite number of ways that one character can be stripped of agency? i just. i’m not blaming marinette (worth mentioning that she isn’t actually a real person, and that every situation she is placed in is determined by the writers, who are real people) for making the choices she’s made, as it is an impossible situation, but. i also just like…don’t really want her and adrien together anymore. this whole situation makes me feel so icky inside, it feels unjust for his character for him to have to forgive and move on. because everything that everyone close to him is doing right now feels like such a huge violation. it’s not that i don’t find these choices believable for these characters, it’s just that i kind of hate that THIS is the story that the writers chose to tell.
like the question the writers of this show seem to be interested in is, “How badly could a kind and caring person hurt the one person they love most, while having the very best of intentions?” which is like, an interesting question i guess! under other circumstances i would find that sort of story very interesting! it just threw me for a loop when miraculous ladybug, my favorite secret-identity superhero romance story, refocused itself on that question. i don’t want to watch marinette hurt adrien with the best of intentions. and i really don’t want to watch him keep rolling over and taking it. that just seems like a really unhealthy relationship dynamic to me, and makes me not want them to be together. and that just makes me sad. i love adrien and marinette so much. i wish this was not their story
https://www.tumblr.com/generalluxun/815628220566208512/oh-and-this-is-just-another-thomas-lie-imbedded?source=share
So saw this somewhere and correct me if I'm wrong but didn't he also say it when she was leaving with her mom you know along the lines of so unprivileged she's leaving with her mother.
I can't remember that exact Tweet, but I do remember the Tweet OP of the link you sent is refering to.
And how he in general keeps claiming Chloe isn't abused, how she "has no issues", etc. and how she's "just priveleged and nothing else". Like, can this man be consistent for one minute...
I went to look up the Tweet, so I could get a full translation (also damn, this man Tweets a lot... and people call Viv "chronically online") and he legit claims "no one ever said otherwise"... DUDE, YOU ARE THE ONE WHO CONSTANTLY SAYS OTHERWISE!?!???
This person's Tweet about sums it up; https://x.com/Moonlightsdance/status/2050811339799425210
"Another theoretical path for Zoe would be to let Chloe redeem Zoe. We know that Zoe was a massive liar in the past."
If I understood your pov about a Chloe redemption and how Lilia neither has reason to be on the show: if you had to use a character for Chloe to redeem, and kinda serve both as a foil for her and a lesson for Adrien's character growth, it wouldn't be Zoe, but Lila?
*sighs* You bring so many good points on the characters' writing that I can't beleive how many "repeated" characters the show has! Would you consider Socqueline another innecessary character?
(Post this was in reference to for Zoe and for Lila)
It's not shocking that the show has "repeated" characters. It's a school drama with 21 teen heroes in the canon cast (24 if we count the special characters). It's damn near impossible to give that many characters a unique role in the story unless you're dealing with extremely complex plots a la Game of Thrones where it's less one large cast in a single story and more smaller casts in mini stories that all intermingle. If you look at something like GoT, you'll notice that, while the overall cast is massive, each mini story has a more normal sized cast and those smaller groups only come together after they're extremely well established. Miraculous could have done something like that with each member of the class getting a mini arc that focused on them, but it didn't, so the cast is basically a uniform blob.
Zoe, Chloe, & Lila
Before we talk about Socqueline, I wanted to quickly make some comments on Zoe and Lila. If I had to have Chloe redeem someone to show off her new skills post redemption, then I'd have it be Sabrina. If Sabrina is off the table, then I'd pick Zoe. If Zoe is off the table, only then would I look to Lila because why use Lila when you have Chloe's best friend and sister as options? That's far more compelling than some random girl no one knew before this year and who no one is connected to. Even the Zoe route is questionable since she's so underdeveloped right now. Both her and Lila would need major work to be fully functional characters and I personally have no interest in doing that work since I don't feel like it adds enough value to canon.
I will note that Lila and Zoe actually had potential to be an interesting contrast to each other since they're both liars. Redeeming one and damning the other works far better than doing the same narrative with Lila and Chloe since Lila and Zoe have the same core problem while Lila and Chloe have nothing in common to the point where canon has to retcon in Chloe having a Marinette obsession so that the Chloe and Lila team up made sense.
Similarly, if you damn Chloe, redeeming Zoe could have been interesting. You could even redeem her and then, though her, save Chloe since Zoe hasn't suffered from Chloe anywhere near as much as the rest of the cast. That and their sibling status makes Zoe a decent choice for the person who changes Chloe's heart just like the Zoe's backstory feels like a good contrast to Chloe's canon story.
Zoe is introduced right after Chloe supposedly proved she didn't want to change (for this post, we're pretending people actually tried to help Chloe and failed). That should mean that everyone is really freaking wary of the new girl who shows manipulative tendencies while also claiming that she wants to change. That could have led to an arc showing how you know when someone does want to change and how to navigate that.
I don't think Zoe is a great candidate for that since she's a total stranger who no one but Chloe has any reason to care about, but it would have done something to make the people in canon actually learn the supposed redemption lesson we're currently missing. As-is, Marinette just randomly believes in Zoe right from the start and Zoe is good basically right from the start, showing that Chloe's betrayal meant nothing to the cast and driving home that Marinette's first impressions of people are basically always right. Adrien seems to be the only exception.
Socqueline
Socqueline is a totally pointless character who I would never have included. It's not that she's bad in and of herself, it's that she once again adds nothing to the cast that wasn't already there. She is Origins Alya on steroids. She's here to protect Marinette from Chloe and inspire Marinette to be brave and that's about it. Why she needed to do that when Alya is supposed to have that role is anyone's guess.
If anything, Socqueline undermines Alya since we now know that Marinette had an amazing best friend before Alya came around! Socqueline was willing to fight Chloe even before Chloe randomly mellowed out into a nicer person because seasons one-to-three Chloe has nothing on Derision Chloe. Even seasons four and five Chloe aren't as bad as Derision Chloe. This show has no idea what it's doing.
Heck, if we needed a character who defends Marinette pre-Origins, Nino is right there. It gives way more depth to him as the wielder of the Miraculous of Protection, and draws a parallel between him and Alya.
Still not over the show choosing to use Chloe's "stupidity" (which wasn't even a trait of her's in previous seasons) as a reason for why she's not worthy of respect in the same ep they chose to canonize Juleka having been held back 2-3 grades bc of a learning disability
It kinda points back to the issue I have with tokenization. Yes, some rep is better than no rep and can help pave the way for further rep in the future, but if it's lacking in genuine respect then every character (and/or person reflected by said characters) takes the fall. Kind of like the issue with using physical traits as insults: 1) its irrelevant to whatever conversation is happening 99.999999% of the time and 2) it throws every other person that shares that physical trait under the bus regardless of their stance on whatever issue is being discussed.
If you claim to support people with any particular trait, then you can't condemn another for having that same trait
That's not representation or support, that's seeking brownie points without actually reflecting on internalized biases. Tokenism.
Regarding the great 4-part downfall (Revelation, Confrontation, Collusion, Revolution)
I try to see the best in an episode and see how it could’ve been better, and for the most part the writing is solid enough that fixing an episode isn’t too bad. This is not the case with Revelation, Collusion, and Revolution. All three of those episodes feel unsalvageable because they require a character to act in a way that belies the fact this character acted believably human at one point in the show. Yeah, sure she’s acted just as bad in other episodes, but they, for the most part, don’t feel like the script writers wrote out the first draft and just went with that. Chloe not even having any sort of embarrassed reaction to being caught cheating, and just out and blabbing the extent of it all just feels unnatural. “You’re using too many words to describe your plan”? When has this ever been an overt part of her character? It was hinted at in Deflagration and nowhere else.
The “We all tried to redeem her” bit from Marinette feels hallow as for the most part the class just avoids or derides Chloe with the exception of Maledictator and her sending a support video for Adrian in Felix, which implies communication and collaboration. Zombiezou is one episode and not any active support to make her stop misbehaving so saying Ms. Bustier did a lot is an exaggeration.
Marinette only reached out to Chloe as ladybug and she did nothing as class representative to hold her accountable in the 5 seasons she’s held that role. No one other than Sabrina hangs out with her, not even Adrain. He makes little to no effort on screen to be a friend to Chloe in spite of him sticking up for her against others in one episode. The entire basis for making an argument like this is that we saw them making an active effort to help her to be better and we just never see that beyond select singular episodes from seasons ago. Change is never immediate and that sort of improvement takes time.
The entire basis for Lila running for class representative is also suspect and deeply contrived. I get that Lila over the seasons has been known to cause idiot plots, but this is ridiculous. Her having Chloe as a deputy at all should be suspect, but I guess that’s the “hard to write” part the writers spoke of when talking about her spotty appearances throughout the Gabriel arc.
With Revolution the entire plot of her becoming mayor breaks what little logic the show had, as literally anyone could say “A child shouldn’t be mayor” and drag her out of office. Where’s the police? They don’t just stop existing because of the police robots.
I try to think about reworking them, but they can’t function without the caricature version of Chloe and the plots involving her. However, she’s a cardboard cut out in these episodes, and has no threat level in intelligence or power beyond what a “more threatening” antagonist like Lila can do. So acting like toppling her is satisfying is fooling no one but themselves.
it's kind of impressive how thoroughly seasons 5-6 have dismantled everything I loved about miraculous ladybug
Possible Master Stroke for Chrysalis
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.
Might I add that I'm still not clear on how she's explaining the presence of this bitch on her official team
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.
Very public.
