I rewatched the Miraculous movie. I wanted to see how it's aged and if it still meets my standards.
I'm happy to report that it's still peak.
I did notice a couple animation errors though. At the beginning, before Adrien gets his Miraculous, you can still see it in wide shots of him. And this isn't just some other ring, in close up shots you can clearly see there isn't supposed to be a ring on his hand.
Lowkey I think the backstory of the female MC being unpopular and having no friends before the show started is so popular that people subconciously imprinted it onto Marinette as well.
I have seen so many people base their arguments on loosely related characteristics of tropes the characters resemble and it drives me insane š
Just bc a character fits one aspect of a trope it doesnāt mean they share all the characteristics that characters from other series that also share that trope have like pls Iām begging peeps to base arguments on things actually in canon, not just vague what-ifs
Why Marinette Dupain-Cheng is an inconsistent character
The reason is that Marinette is written in two different ways, depending on what scene she's in. She's sometimes written like an actual character, and sometimes written like a cliche main character.
Despite all the clumsiness stuff, she's actually a pretty popular girl in school. She's class president, almost everyone likes her, and she's had more people crushing on her than any other character. And her being popular isn't a problem, not every teenage superhero needs to be Peter Parker. The issue is that some episodes act like she is Peter Parker. Like "Sublimation" saying she's this socially awkward weirdo who doesn't know how to make friends.
Also from "Sublimation" is Alya saying she won't change her mind once she's made it up. This is a common trait of protagonists, but it's not how Marinette has been previously characterized. She's been shown to put a lot of faith in the opinions of others, even in cases where they're totally wrong, like with Adrien in "Chameleon."
There's also episodes like "Penalteam" that claim she has a flaw of trying to do everything herself. That's also a common lesson main characters need to learn, but wasn't the whole rest of season 4 about Cat Noir being upset about her recruiting other heroes? How is that compatible with not trusting others to get the job done?
It honestly feels like plenty of the writers of this show only half-watched the rest of it, and therefore have an extremely shallow understanding of Marinette's character. And this problem of being written two ways isn't limited to Marinette, but it is most prevalent with her.
The inciting incident of Marinette's side of this episode is that she finds a letter that Gabriel wrote some time before his death, where he confesses to Adrien that he's Monarch. This causes Marinette to question if lying to Adrien is right. In other words, finding this letter causes her to question the thing she's already questioned multiple times. And at the end of the episode, she decides to keep lying to Adrien. So Marinette's entire story this episode is her making the same decision she already made. They keep rehashing this plotline without changing or progressing everything. This is the definition of running in place.
Also, why did reading this letter make Marinette reconsider her decision? Was it because it made her reinterpret what Gabriel's last words meant? Probably not, since it's not like Gabriel wrote this letter immediately before he died, it was clearly written a while before. Honestly, it feels like the only reason the writers added this letter is because they thought Marinette (and the audience) needed to be reminded of the decision she made. Even though she's already talked about it in previous episodes. What a joke.
Villainous Fathers
This episode reveals that Ivan's father is a supervillain who wants Ivan to follow in his footsteps, and Ivan is keeping this a secret because he feels ashamed. This is clearly meant to draw a thematic parallel between Ivan and Adrien. Except, their situations aren't similar at all. Ivan knows what kind of man his father is. It's not like he's in denial about it or anything. Ivan was the one keeping it a secret from others, due to the fact he was ashamed. How is that related to Adrien? Adrien isn't the one keeping a secret, and he isn't ashamed of something. There's also the stuff about Ivan choosing not to be like his father, which is something that could have been relevant to Adrien, but it's not, because Adrien doesn't know who his father really was. So this theme doesn't work at all.
To add insult to injury, this episode once again has a terrible parent be immediately forgiven. Given how often this happens in this show, I'm convinced that if Gabriel hadn't died, the show would have let him get away with everything he did.
The Concert
The whole concert part of the episode felt so disconnected and tacked on to the episode. In fact, the only real connection it has is the fact that Juleka's song mentions her father, connecting to the attempt at a theme. Other than that, this subplot could have been part of any episode.
How come Juleka needed to perform alone? Ivan and Luka may have been absent, but Rose and Adrien were still there (until Adrien had to leave too). Both of them can play the keyboard, why didn't either of them back Juleka up?
Finally, in Juleka's song, she puts more importance in her deadbeat dad, rather than her loving single mother. You might argue, "Well, it's because she's a musician like her father." I'd like to remind anyone who claims this that Juleka's mother is also a musician. Ever since season 4, the show has put more importance on Jagged Stone as parent to Luka and Juleka, rather than their mother. But this is the first time that focusing on the deadbeat has been the character's decision. So, I feel like I can say that Juleka Couffaine has been character assassinated.
The Council
Finally, this episode also sets up the idea that Gabriel and Tomoe's alliance wasn't just the two of them, there are also a bunch of other mysterious figures that knew he was Monarch and are working behind the scenes. And one of these people is Nathalie's father. There's not much to talk about here, it's just something that briefly appears at the end. It's just to tease that something interesting might happen in the future. But considering this show's track record of following through on its setups, I have zero faith that anything good will come from this.
Conclusion
I don't think a single thing that this episode tried to do was well executed, and it showed that not even a minor character like Juleka is safe from being ruined. Still not as bad as "Werepapas" though!
I while ago I read a post where someone said that they don't like fanfiction because "Why would you take someone else's story and butcher it?" When I read that, I thought "Isn't that harsh? Most fanfics are made out of people's love for the source material." Well, I think the Scarlet Lady AU by Zoe-Oneesama is exactly the kind of fic this person was imagining when they said that. "Scarlet Lady" is a Miraculous Ladybug fanfic/saltfic/fixfic that fundamentally misses the point of pretty much every character and major plot point in it. And since it recently ended, it's time for my comprehensive review of it.
Just a few things before we begin. I'm going to assume that everyone reading this has read "Scarlet Lady", so I'm not going to recap the story. I was originally planning to write this on the day of the last page, but the final page was honestly such a nothing burger that I thought it wasn't the final page initially.
Some people may have a problem with the very concept of this review, saying its not fair for me to criticize a non-professional fanfic with this much scrutiny. I think that's an opinion Zoe herself holds. First, I think nothing is above criticism, especially not something that is claiming to be better than the professional product. People didn't hold back against "Spiderman: Lotus", did they? Even within this fanbase, people had some pretty harsh words for "Karma of Lies". Second, I think any discussion of non-professionalism went out the window the moment Zoe stated her intention to sell hardcopies of "Scarlet Lady". This arguably is professional. Third, I wouldn't be making this review if I thought this was a fanfic made out of genuine love and passion, and simply missed the mark. No, "Scarlet Lady" is in fact created out of nothing but spite and contempt, and I feel that makes it pretty fair game for criticism. So, without further ado, let's begin.
Why is Canon Better than Scarlet Lady?
In "Scarlet Lady", Emilie Agreste was woken up with no consequences, no buildup, no emotion, and no meaningful consequences. In canon, Emilie's loss was accepted by the characters and she died. I'm pretty sure that automatically makes canon better than "Scarlet Lady", so you don't even need to read the rest of this review! In all seriousness, this is genuinely some of the worst writing I have ever seen, and it is what made me decide that "Scarlet Lady" was a bad story, so I decided to just mention it on its own.
To be clear, I think Miraculous Ladybug is a poorly written show. "Scarlet Lady" is just worse. And since I used to enjoy Miraculous Ladybug, I'm in a good position to compare the two. When I read the ending of Scarlet Lady, what I though about canon was
I think that writing the middle part of a story is relatively easy. The audience is already hooked from the beginning, and they are intrigued for what might happen, so they'll keep reading even if not everything is great. I think the beginning and ending is the hard part. "Scarlet Lady" didn't have to worry about the beginning and getting people interested because it's piggybacking off of an already successful show. And since the ending of "Scarlet Lady" was so awful, it's clear to me that it was always badly written.
I'll now be analyzing "Scarlet Lady" in terms of its tone, its various characters, and more.
Tone
Every single potentially powerful moment in "Scarlet Lady" is played off as a joke. This may be in part because of the format, with it being released 8 panels at a time, so the audience has to be given something to be entertained by in every page. The thing is, I don't think that's true. I have seen plenty of webcomics where a situation is spread across multiple pages, and the audience doesn't instantly lose interest when one page is for setup purposes.
The consequence of this unserious tone is that the entire story is an emotional flatline. There's no moments that make you sad, no moments that make you happy, nothing that makes you scared or invested. Nothing feels like anything, because everything is a joke.
The season 2 finale of canon is actually really good, it feels like a real challenge with both sides giving it their all. In SL however, the same battle feels about as challenging as a stroll through the park.
I've seen a lot of comedies, and most of them still have a strong emotional core that isn't made into a joke at every turn. So arguing that SL is a comedy doesn't really help.
The problems with this unserious tone run deep, and you will see that as I explore the various characters.
Characters
I don't even like most of the characters in ML, but I could see the absolute downgrade they are in SL.
In general, I just wanted to say this: almost every character in this story is a sarcastic smartass. This makes them rather monotonous and uninteresting. Also very generic considering how common this archetype is these days.
Wait a second. Every serious moment is undermined by a joke, and all the characters are sarcastic smartasses. Was Zoe secretly an MCU writer this entire time?!
I figure we should start with the titular Scarlet Lady. I actually think that the idea of a superhero duo where one of them is extremely lazy and unhelpful, but still necessary, is an extremely interesting idea for a dynamic. The problem is, there is no dynamic. Scarlet Lady and Chat Noir have no relationship, they just talk at each other constantly. And the result of this is that basically every interaction is the same: Scar does something selfish, Chat gets mad, rinse and repeat. It could have been interesting to explore different scenarios and ideas with these two, but no they just do the same thing over and over.
There is a pretty big plot hole here once Marigold is introduced. Why don't the heroes just take the Ladybug Miraculous back? It would be rather easy. Well, the explanation is that since Scar is still popular with the public, its best to keep her around for public cooperation and morale. Okay, I can accept that. Except, only a few episodes after this explanation we get "Zombizou", an episode where Scar straight up attacks Marinette in the middle of a battle, which causes Chat to get infected and them to very nearly lose. After that, there is no excuse anymore. Scar is clearly too dangerous to keep around, take her Miraculous now. But no, they actually don't even talk about what happened at all.
This one will be quick. Zoe says that Marinette is her favorite character in ML, but I don't think she understands her at all. Remember what I said about every character being a sarcastic smartass? Well that is most prevalent with Marinette, and that is just fundamentally not who she is as a character. Marinette is someone whose is unabashed in her kindness and compassion. That's why plenty of people like her. If Marinette was in canon like she was in SL, she would be an extremely generic protagonist with almost no fans at all. The only reason anyone likes her in SL is because they relate her to the canon version.
I will say, I do like the idea of her being such a hero at heart that she'll run into danger even without powers. But this is completely diminished by her basically being invincible and having plot armor in her civilian form.
Adrien
Adrien in canon is one of my least favorite characters of all time. And yet, Adrien in SL is even worse. I'd go as far to say he's an anti-character. He has no growth, no arc, and no real personality.
The reason people like Adrien in canon is because they perceive him as someone who is treated very badly by his father and by others, but is still a kind person regardless. Well, in SL it's hard to perceive any poor treatment considering how he's only ever seen disobeying his father. And he's really never done anything kind throughout the entire comic.
As I mentioned earlier, Adrien has no emotional reaction to his mother coming back. In fact, I think it's fair to say that Adrien never loved his parents. And the reason for this is because Zoe hates his parents and she just imposed her feelings onto him, just like most bad fanfic writers do.
Also, Zoe adds in her headcanon that Emilie was a bad parent. This headcanon only exists because people are incapable of imagining Adrien being anything other than a victim. I call it my "Perpetual Victim Theory". Anyway Zoe just makes up a bunch of random crap that has no basis in canon just to make Adrien more of a victim.
To put it simply Nathalie is a Mary Sue. She's a "girlboss" that does a bunch of horrible things she's not punished for. She can create a sentimonster to solve all the show's problems, she can decode an ancient book without a reference (Some people have defended this by claiming that the book was decoded IRL. IRL it was written in Engish in a different alphabet. That's not true in-universe). She's so much smarter and cooler than everyone else. Mary Sue, plain and simple. Oh, and she hates Gabriel because of course she does. She's a character written by Zoe after all.
In canon, Nathalie has some complexities. She's not great, but she's certainly better than this.
The Male Classmates
I'm just going to say it. Almost every male classmate was character assassinated in "Party Crasher". In canon, Nino lists his female friends to Gorilla and tells him to not let them in the mansion. This is because he assumes that if they find out that they ditched tree planting, they'll stop the boys from hanging out with Adrien. Is it a jerk move to ditch their plans in order to spend time with Adrien and not tell the girls? Yes, but it's understandable and they have limited time with Adrien. In SL, Nino tells Gorilla to keep all girls out of the house, which instantly imposes a sense of underlying misogyny to the situation. Oh, and they let Marc in even though Marc is nonbinary in this story, which implies that the boys went full Royce Du Pont, which is unintentionally hilarious.
I have no idea what motivated Zoe to change the boys from regular flakers to misogynists, maybe she just misunderstood the original episode, but it's still bad. Also, the SL episode goes out of its way to say that Adrien isn't at fault. No, he was completely complicit in the blatant sexism as well. So yeah, pretty much all the boys are instantly made worse by this one episode.
Zoe has said that she wants to keep the lore consistent with the show. Even though she didn't like the name "Venom" for that power, she kept it for consistency purposes. I can respect this idea, but there are multiple parts of this story that would have just been better if it diverged.
For one thing, having 19 Miraculouses and as many superpowered characters. I can understand why canon did this: because they clearly want the show to go on forever and they want as many characters as possible to fill that time. SL on the other hand was only planned to last a certain number of episodes, and yet Zoe crammed in as many heroes as the original did. This leads to a lot of time setting up these characters that leads to nothing, because they're all barely in the finale and contribute basically nothing. It would have been so much better to simply limit it to the 7 main Miraculouses, that's so much more manageable.
Another thing is the Rabbit Miraculous and time travel. Zoe acknowledged how OP it is and how it can instantly solve the conflict. She might not want to change its power because of her lore rule, but if she had just ignored its existence entirely, that would have been totally acceptable. But no, the final battle has Master Fu using the Rabbit Miraculous, which instantly makes the stakes even lower than they already were. It wasn't even necessary, Master Fu is shown to be faster than he looks, he could have just delivered the Miraculouses the normal way. Oh, and there's also the fact that Zoe looked at the insanely OP Rabbit Miraculous and said "That's not OP enough." She also gave it the power to teleport to other universes. To be clear, this completely contradicts canon. ML is not the MCU, alternate universes are not alternate timelines. Changes to the timeline just overwrite the old one, and you can use the Rooster Miraculous, not the Rabbit, to visit other universes. So yeah, despite Zoe saying she wants lore consistency, SL actually doesn't fit into the Miraculous multiverse that canon established.
Also, let's talk about the romance. Like canon, there's a love square that doesn't get together until way later. But it seems like Zoe forgot about an important rule of romance: if the characters aren't together yet, why not? In SL Marinette and Chat clearly like each other, and unlike canon's Ladrien, they talk quite a bit. So why don't they get together? Canon actually has a really great episode "Elation" where Adrien decides that he can't date a civilain as a superhero if she doesn't know his identity. But nothing even like this is remotely acknowledged in SL (Sidenote: The writing of "Elation" is better than the entirety of SL). Also, Adrien doesn't confess for most of SL, I assume because Marinette didn't confess in canon, but this is just so out of character for Adrien. He's not the kind of person to hold his feelings back. In canon, he confessed to Marinette only a few episodes after he started liking her. He claims that he doesn't want to date until Hawk Moth is defeated, but then he starts dating her before he's defeated, so this is a BS excuse.
In canon "Reflekdoll", Adrien and Marinette are modeling her designs, and they take their Miraculouses off in order to wear the earrings and ring she made. When Reflekdoll attacks, they try to get their Miraculouses back but end up switching them. In SL "Reflekdoll", Marinette and Adrien are wearing each other's Miraculouses during the photoshoot for no discernable reason. Both versions have a Miraculous swap, but the original earned it and SL absolutely did not.
Zoe and Thomas Astruc are on the Same Wavelength
Zoe has made it clear that she's not a fan of ML's creator, Thomas Astruc. And yet many of her ideas ended up being the same as his.
In the season 5 finale of canon, there's this huge fight between the side characters and an evil army. This fight has absolutely nothing to do with the actual important fight between Bug Noire and Monarch, so the side characters are completely wasted. In the final battle of SL, the other superheroes contribute nothing and are completely wasted. Chat Noir basically took care of Hawk Moth all by himself. So both finales involve wasted side characters that should have just stayed home. Less time would have been wasted.
Zoe actually says that she added Marinette calling out Gabriel in response to the canon finale. This is absolutely hilarious considering it's still Marinette calling out Gabriel, which basically did happen in the canon finale. Adrien still just stood there and didn't say a word!
Conclusion
"Scarlet Lady" is absolutely worse than canon Miraculous Ladybug. And I think there are a lot of lessons to learn here.
First, don't be so angry and hateful. Zoe basically ruined any possibility of a decent ending simply because her hatred of Gabriel made it impossible to write him like an actual person or a good villain.
Second, any story written in bitterness or spite will be bad. That might not be totally true, I haven't read every story. But I feel that every fanfic I read where the author clearly hates a character has everyone behaving OOC and the story being meanspirited and bad.
Third, don't be arrogant. Just because you can recognize flaws in a story doesn't mean you can do better. Maybe just make some posts calling out those flaws.
Fourth, the way to fix a bad character is not to simply remove all their flaws. Acknowledge those flaws and do something with them.
Fifth, while fanfics do often build off of the original, they can't depend on elements from the original when they contradict those elements. Again, the only reason people like SL Marinette and Adrien is because they associate them with the originals, even though their personalities do no match up.
All in all, I think the world and characters of "Scarlet Lady" will be forgotten only a week after its over. There is no actual substance to them. The only purpose of this fic was to bash somebody else's story, and yet it ended up being so much worse than canon in almost every way.
So, under our agreement in DMs, I've decided to properly break down each of your arguments regarding whether Canon is better than Scarlet Lady. It's all done in good faith and for the fun of discussing and by no means will I try to attack you personally as we established to make it clear to everyone reading this as well, and I will take it more seriously rather than dismissing it with "it's a fanwork, it's not that serious" as you already made rather valid point on why it doesn't matter to this discussion. I came to love Scarlet Lady and view it better than Canon, and there are plenty of points here I disagree with, so let's get into it.
GABRIEL AND EMILIE AGRESTE
For starters, I'd like to establish that just because there are single instances within the story that can come off as weak, doesn't mean the story as a whole is weak. Yes, sometimes endings of the stories could make you reconsider the value of the entire thing, but all the same critics and enjoyers of a piece of media can acknowledge that even if one aspect of the story (like an ending) is weak, it doesn't mean the story as a whole is weak. GoT comes to mind with how it is known to have a very shitty ending but the majority of the story is considered a peak masterpiece. I don't think it's fair to judge something because one thing rubs you off the wrong way as no story is ever going to be perfect or flawless but focusing on singular instances of flaws rather than a continuous problem within the writing is not a valid criticism but rather nitpicking or grabbing at straws.
But now let's talk about the elephant in the room that kickstarted previous paragraph regarding ressurection of Emilie. Now, the canon of the show itself never established WHY couldn't butterfly and peacock miraculous be used to bring Emilie back. The movie did have Nooroo tell Gabriel right away that he doesn't have the power to bring back the dead, but movie continuity gave us more grace regarding this whole plot point, while canon only made us question further regarding it. Sure any viewer could come into conclusion that healing or permanent ressurection could be off the table for either peacock or butterfly, but in hindsight of over 100 episodes of ML showcasing us different crazy powers either sentimonsters or akumatized showcased, it made fans question "what is the limit". We have truly cracked villains like Stormy Weather for example who managed to push the Earth outside of its orbit, making her planetary scale level of threat, and of course it's all thanks to butterfly miraculous granting her such power. We had sentimonsters and akumatized villains alike that could mimic and even enhance the abilities present within miraculous holders like Copycat, Volpina, Miracle Queen, Manipula. We even had villains creating completely new settings like Pixelator and villains capable of ressurection like Pharaoh in his debut episode. So the question remains: could either akumatized villains or sentimonsters bring back Emilie.
The answer is not clear because the Canon of the show never entertained this idea. It never gave us either Gabriel or Nathalie even admit that at one point or the other they tried to use those two miraculouses they found to bring back Emilie. Miraculouses that in theory could grant them any power they need even without the restriction rooster miraculous has. The Canon of the show neglected to give the audience the idea that indeed Emilie's sickness cannot be cured by any typical superpowers but requires a complete rewrite of the reality to cure. And Zoe, the author of SL capitalised on that.
Bringing back Emilie was indeed to drive home how incompetent Gabriel is as a villain along with him being hypocritical. Both of those are objectively correct statements as indeed Gabriel was the incompetent idiot that was a hypocrite even before episode Evolution as he displayed numerously how he doesn't focus on short-term goals along with long-term goals unless the plot allows him to (how many times had he had Chat Noir wrapped around his finger and could've easily taken his miraculous when he was captured or brainwashed and didn't think of removing the ring right away and rather would use him as an additional villain that in the end still can't beat LB and only risks CN snapping out of his brainwashing; the times he had CN cornered and thought of removing the ring are Malediktator and Chameleon that come to mind, and I can't totally blame him as indeed it was the fault of akumatized villains refusing to remove the ring, but back in season 1 it was already established that Hawk Moth can cause his champions pain and even remove their powers in case they decided to disobey him, so why wouldn't he used it on Malediktator?) or even creates villains that are completely useless and counterproductive to him (Gigantitan was never a good idea, Mr Pigeon shouldn't have akumatized over 100 times, Reflekta is inherently stupid with how she removes the jewellery and didn't even control her victims originally and Goridzilla is too big to even remove tiny pieces of jewellery by himself) making it appear even in Canon like he hardly cares about victory. Canon Gabriel also showed more than once how he is absolutely willing to endanger his son in Akuma attacks and he even considered chaos caused by broken Reflekdoll to be beneficial, even if said Reflekdoll no longer listened to orders from anyone and Reflekta herself had no real means to fight Mr Bug and Lady Noire.
So about no, it's absolutely in character for Gabriel to not consider simple solutions, play actual long game, or achieve even small victories because 9 out of 10 times Gabriel would send an Akuma and hope for the best, with him making bigger plans rarely and more often not even on his own. Zoe's characterisation of Gabriel didn't come out of nowhere, what Zoe did was essentially remove the bait-and-switch game the writers of the show liked to call "nuance" (as no, Gabriel is too inconsistent in his behavior to be considered nuanced), which is the real goal behind this comic.
Originally Scarlet Lady was used to be a critic regarding the aspects of it in and outside of the universe, but more than anything, it was also to give characters of ML consistent characterisations. Gabriel and Chloe did not have consistent characterisations because depending on the episode they either were troubled but caring or they were absolute sociopathic idiots who didn't care at all. Zoe decided to remove such inconsistencies by indeed making them what the show initially tried to make them to be: the worst. The show itself is going back and forth regarding whether or not should Gabriel be remembered as a father who was trying or a villain who deserves to be condemned, even in season 6, but Zoe decided to not give him the grace of a "misguided husband and father" because Gabriel crossed too many lines within the show to truly be considered as such so Zoe decided to not even lie to her audience that Gabriel deep down cares because he hardly does, and even his level of care is as good as lack of it.
And Scarlet Lady as a story has a major theme of recognising and standing up to the abuse people are facing in real life, with Gabriel being the worst offender of it. Whereas the show more than often is willing to excuse abusers for their shitty treatment, Scarlet Lady properly calls them out on it and never lets it slide. Much like how Chloe at the end of the story is exposed as a fake hero who abused her powers for personal gain, the same happens to Gabriel who in this story functions as "what if Chloe never changed" thus condemning such possibility and letting Chloe at the end grew out of this, while teaching the audience the dangers of lack of self-awareness and entitlement.
But I got sidetracked on the Emilie plot point (so I edited the whole thing to be about both of them as sometimes you make things on the fly) and started ranting about Gabriel so back to Emilie: it is in character for Gabriel to be short-sighted enough to not question whether or not he could've done this all along, and even in canon he is also shown to be also petty and truly enjoying himself as a villain even if it always ends with him sulking and swearing revenge. And the reason why Emilie is brought back... so Adrien will stay in Paris. Realistically losing both of his parents would mean Adrien would have to reach out to his extended family first, who don't live in Paris, which would end with him moving away, something nobody wanted. Not to mention how the final battle in Scarlet Lady didn't happen in the basement so no one knew Gabriel kept her body there and leaving her there or bringing her to the surface feels a bit gruesome, so to avoid heartbreak and let the heroes enjoy their victory free from the abuse of Scarlet Lady and Hawk Moth, Emilie is brought back so Adrien can continue living in Paris. And this also lets us get to know Emilie.
Now even if Emilie was indeed very kind and loving as canon likes to play her, one must remember that she still enabled her husband's worst tactics and hardly did anything to improve Adrien's situation. We never learned whether or not was Emilie advocating for Adrien to have a normal life, but we know that supposedly Adrien never had a birthday party, had any friends other than Chloe, wasn't allowed to go outside, and was a child model with tons of obligations. Emilie agreeing to all of this indeed doesn't make her a stellar mother even if she appeared loving, but all of this stuff really just doesn't paint a good picture of Emilie. Not to mention that we don't even get to meet Emilie in the series, we always learn about her from someone else through their rose-tinted glasses. Emilie is a fridge woman of a crazy sociopath who was actively ruining his son's life while we never learn how SHE felt about this. And considering how Gabriel supposedly loves Emilie very much that whatever she would say, he would make happen (as he went as far as to make a senti-child - which isn't canon in SL but the level of devotion supposedly still is there) means that at most, she was ok with what was going on (as she would shut this whole thing down otherwise), so to also continue the theme of abusive figures the Scarlet Lady had to offer, Emilie fulfills the role as beloved smother under the guise of perfect mom she crafted for herself. And I do think it's brilliant because even if it is a happier ending for Adrien, it's still not without issues.
I'll say, if you don't like how this plot point got resolved, it's fine, but saying that the very existence of this plot point makes the entire story worse by default is lowkey absurd (no offense).
TONE
Now let's talk about the tone: Scarlet Lady at its very core was always supposed to be satirical saltfic that also is a whacky comedy. The show itself lives for whacky humor, so Zoe embracing this aspect of the show is not bad. Saltfics are acquired taste alright, but that's also the point. They're for those who need the salt, and when it comes to Miraculous fandom, a huge majority needed it so of course it's popular within the fan base. It's cathartic, and it continues to be as canon continues to disappoint.
It's worth noting that the show continues to flip-flop between two genres: romantic comedy and magical girl show. Both of these formats are just incompatible with one another because both of them have very different tones and sets of priorities, which makes the show feel lacking in the aspect of writing. Rather than trying to make Scarlet Lady both at the same time, Scarlet Lady becomes just a whacky comedy with elements of a magical girl show and romantic comedy (but neither are main genres), and at the end of the day, it's still supposed to be a light-hearted (though certainly more salty) comedy.
And let me tell you that in spite of comedy being front and center, it does feature moments that are not played for laughs
CHARACTERS
While I can see where you're coming from with how everyone acts to be a sarcastic smartass... they're teenagers, and that should be rather a default. Not only that but they're teenagers in a crappy situation, so of course the humor reflects this. And when not dealing with teenagers, it shows adults who also aren't pleased with whatever is going on because the whole situation is ridiculous. You have a magical terrorist taking advantage of people as they're losing their cool and transforming them into a bunch of crazy villains wreaking havoc. Anyone would feel done with this especially when all of this happens because someone felt a negative emotion and some supervillain decided to make things worse. This is in general ridiculous and anyone in this situation would know better and express it.
However, while it is common for characters to be annoyed, and sarcastic and for this to be played for comedy, it doesn't mean they have generic personalities. I personally never came across a take where being sarcastic is considered being generic, usually, it is about being nice (and this is a fairly popular sentiment among the fan base on how all characters are generically nice). I understand if the said tone is not your cup of tea, that's fair, but it doesn't mean it's bad writing, as all stories have their own tones, Scarlet Lady having its own is not a crime. All characters in Scarlet Lady have in fact their own personality that are hardly the same, each character has their own archetype but they still manage to be on the same page and find common interests between themselves, you know much like what happens in real life.
CHLOE
There is a dynamic between Scarlet Lady and Chat Noir. It's just stagnant because Chat Noir knows that reasoning with Scarlet is useless and Scarlet lacks the maturity to establish an actual connection with Chat. She doesn't care about him at all which is why she's taking advantage of him in the first place too. The dynamic is not intimate, it doesn't evolve because it would require Chloe to grow as a person but the whole point of the story is that she doesn't want to grow, she's not a hero, and she's not here to save the day. She's here to take all the credit and gain fame and glory, and it's not someone you would want to hang around so Chat doesn't even try to reason with her.
There is no plot hole in heroes not reclaiming Ladybug miraculous sooner. However, it is established ever since Adrien met Fu that they don't know who Scarlet Lady is and he was actively researching her as seen in Party Crasher. So yes, the heroes are considering taking the earrings all right, but there's also another significant problem. Scarlet is beloved by the public (all thanks to the miraculous cure) and the public for the longest believed Scarlet to be a great hero. Even if in Zombizou Scarlet proved to be dangerous, literally no one else but Marinette and Adrien know about it, meaning any potential confrontation could end up with Scarlet twisting the narrative in her favor as after all, she only comes out for attention and never for anything serious. She actively appeared late to the akumas almost missing them completely especially once Marigold was introduced. It serves the point that Scarlet is a glory hound and not someone heroes can casually reach without an audience. And Marinette and Adrien made up their minds about reclaiming the earrings before Zombizou even occurred and arguably Zombizou was not the first time Scarlet seriously jeopardized the mission. Attacking Marinette is a surprise to neither of them because they're used to Scarlet just straight up being messed up and sometimes doing heinous stuff just because, but for the longest Scarlet was "in the right".
It's not until Queen Wasp Chloe reveals her true identity and by that point, people already lost faith in Scar, but her secret identity being revealed plus Alya's expose finally settles it and the heroes are finally able to retrieve the earrings without worrying the public would brand them as new villains and try to arrest or assault them while they are trying to do their job.
Zoe is not blaming Chloe for something she didn't do, she's giving her prominence by making her something she would do. Chloe proved to Mr Pigeon that she was not above plagiarizing and even if she didn't plagiarize anything in canon, in canon Chloe was absent from Silencer, but while her absence could've been justified in season 5 as a build-up to how Scarlet was no longer truly relevant, Silencer is the episode that still had to give Scarlet some groundwork for being around and Zoe incorporated Chloe into episodes she wasn't originally in just so Chloe can fulfill her role as a recurring antagonist better. She may not be the main character like Marinette and Adrien despite stealing the earrings, but she still needs to be relevant and you can't do that with her not appearing in the story. In Animan Chloe is not present but she is present in Scarlet Lady specifically to spoil the date and serve as the secondary antagonist of that episode. Silencer is not different in that regard. I'm sorry if you feel like Zoe is blaming Chloe for something she didn't do but really, that's not the case, Zoe just decided to include Chloe in Silencer in the civilian plot supporting XY, who she canonically supports and I already made a point about Chloe having no issues stealing ideas. It even made a good joke about how Chloe "found her people".
I'm sorry but the results of Chloe siding up with Hawk Moth almost cost her her life. That doesn't seem to me like someone avoiding the consequences of their actions, especially when you remember Chloe was on board siding with Hawk Moth without much convincing, unlike Heart Hunter where Hawk Moth made an effort, here Chloe was ecstatic to join him and she coughed blood because of it and if Nathalie didn't feel like undoing it, she could've ended up terminally ill, and it's something Chloe DID realise and it shall haunt her for the rest of her life. Not only that but Bourgeois specifically had to move out of Paris after Chloe's betrayal before things would escalate, which was always in line with this family. They always get away with stuff because they have the money and status to do so. And yet, they couldn't stay around in Paris anymore as they were genuinely threatened by the possibility of a lawsuit coming their way. Heck, they might never be able to truly return to Paris because of this and there's no guarantee that they're free from legal issues in the future, they simply just didn't stick around to find out within Paris. So Chloe because of her actions effectively lost a chance of ever making up for her behavior with anyone within Paris (and losing her closest friends throughout the comic too) and had to leave her home and live somewhere else while having a memory of how Scarlet Lady led to her public image being ruined and Blue Blood almost killing her. I think that's more than enough and it was as Chloe swallowed her pride to apologize to Ladybug and she attempted to better herself by remembering her butler's name and was willing to clean up her stuff all by herself, which is a development for her showing how Chloe was not incapable of growth and learned her lesson at long last. Any further punishment for this would be kicking the lying on the floor.
Chloe's a titular character, but she was never the main character. Her being a titular character aside from helping distinguish the AU is also about her always stealing the spotlight and hogging all the attention. She still shaped the story in a specific way but not in a supportive role or as a lead that had to grow but much like in canon, as a recurring antagonist.
MARINETTE
Marinette in canon has shades of being a sarcastic smartass. I mean have you met Ladybug? She's always down for some witty quips and at times annoyed and sarcastic about how silly sometimes things are, especially it shines when she interacts with Chat Noir. This isn't a trait given by Zoe, it's a trait that she already has.
But this isn't her entire personality, on the contrary, the comic can't help but stress how lovely Marinette is as a person. Adrien falls in love with her for how sweet and considerate she is, which can be seen in Bubbler when he pretty much proposes to her silently as she gives him a coffee. She treated Pollen so well that she was genuinely upset at the thought that someday she would have to say goodbye to her queen. She even made custom gifts for all the kwamis in the box in Sandboy. The entire class is willing to protect her in Zombizou because of how much she means to them and in Heroes Day everyone gets to say how much they are grateful for Marinette helping them all across the comic. Marinette still is generous and kind with a heart of gold while also still having her temper and her intelligence which also means she's not afraid of calling out the BS of others, especially now that throughout the comic, she starts to gain more confidence as part of her growth.
I elaborate later on her so-called plot armor and Marinette nowadays is not exactly popular and well-liked :/
ADRIEN
It's pretty rich to say that Adrien has no character development on a post about how canon does things better because it should go without saying that canon refused over and over again to give Adrien any growth, any real development as a character, slowly but surely turning him into a trophy husband for Marinette that has no real agency whatsoever.
Adrien in Scarlet Lady has range: he can be sweet, optimistic, idealistic, righteous, and heroic, he can also be sarcastic, jaded, and petty, has a temper, he can be serious and responsible, and can be goofy and charming. He's expressive, he's rebellious, he's strong-willed, he can be an idiot sometimes. No-personality where?
In Scarlet Lady Adrien actively is fighting for his agency because he has no other choice. Adrien wouldn't need to fight if he didn't have a reason. Adrien is in a position where he can't be passive, he can't lack backbone, and he can no longer just let either Gabriel or Chloe do what they do because he IS the only one who has the power to stop them. Keep in mind that while we didn't see it in the comic, Origins up to Chloe stealing the earrings went exactly the same way, meaning Adrien sneaked out to go to school but ultimately complied and returned home with Nathalie despite how unfair it was and Gabriel still told him to not attend a school which made him run away to his room where he found Plagg. So it's already established at first that while Adrien is fighting for his freedom the second he's in, he didn't have it immediately in him.
However, Scarlet Lady changed this and allowed Adrien to grow. It allowed him to realise that if he doesn't stand up for himself he only will lose chances of his own happiness so he stands up to his dad, and throughout the comic, he has to do so constantly because Gabriel constantly tries to control him and restrict him. Adrien can't allow himself to back down, but he also doesn't always succeed like in Captain Hardrock when he initially failed to fight for his own freedom.
It doesn't however mean that Adrien hates his dad. In Captain Hardrock, it can be seen how he hugs his dad and is happy when he lets him go to the concert of his friends. He was genuinely happy when he thought his dad gave him a nice scarf for his birthday. He genuinely broke down at Master Fu's place over his dad being a villain, because he did love him and all this hurt came from a broken heart. Adrien didn't hate his dad until the finale, but as he points out in Goridzilla Gabriel never did anything that would make Adrien trust him.
And with Chloe: Adrien didn't end their friendship at the beginning of the story, he threatened to end it much like he did in Despair Bear (though was even more upset and vocal about it then in comparison making it even more genuine) and of course, him and Chloe don't hang out across the comic because Chloe is still at her shit, but Adrien still doesn't officially end it till Despair Bear as he's still giving her a chance to improve, but it depends on Chloe and Chloe alone. However, Chloe only proceeds to get worse, actively stalking him which Adrien does all out as something that is not ok with him and as he should. She's still bullying people around him and he does not like that. The comic actually gave us a very good reason why Chloe and Adrien are friends that never hang out, unlike canon that informed us only in the pilot episodes that served as the season 1 finale on how Adrien and Chloe are childhood friends, but the rest of season 1 treats it more like Chloe is obnoxious girl clinging to Adrien's hip while he doesn't say anything. Still, it is shown at the end of season 5 how Adrien is genuinely upset that Chloe is alone and hurting but still acknowledges that Chloe only has herself to blame. However, he did not like the fact that his former friend collapsed in front of him, making him hate Hawk Moth with a burning passion. So funnily enough, Scarlet Lady gave Adrien and Chloe's friendship more grace than canon because canon Adrien never hangs out with Chloe willingly, them being childhood friends only comes sparingly and only as an excuse on why Adrien won't tell Chloe to buzz off, Adrien's threat in Despair Bear ended up being pretty empty, Chloe herself ended the friendship in Queen Banana when Adrien brought up his threat from two seasons ago that was undone in the same episode it was introduced and then supposedly Adrien gives Chloe one last chance in season 5, even though at that point Chloe stopped giving a flying fuck about what Adrien thinks or feels, and it doesn't help that he only made his final declaration of ending the friendship when he learned how she traumatized Marinette IN THE PAST, while Chloe, in fact, bullying all of his other friends for 5 seasons straight while he was present to witness it.
And Adrien objectively is a victim. He was always established to be a victim, but Scarlet Lady in fact did allow him to be more than a victim through his growth across the story where he learns what true love is. Even if his mother wasn't necessarily bitch in sheep's clothing, she still put him in a messed-up situation by not allowing him to have any other friends than Chloe, experiencing the outside world, enabling Gabriel's negligence, allowing Gabriel to exploit Adrien as a model and make him learn and do various things Adrien might not even have any interest in in the first place (like one thing is Adrien playing piano because he likes playing piano and wanted to learn and the other thing is Gabriel making him play piano, as if it's some important life skill and not something that can be either a specific profession Adrien would take in the future or a funny hobby he would do for himself alone) and Adrien apparently also never had a birthday party in his life while Emilie was still around. Emilie's character is a fridged woman in canon but without even putting as much thought into her because she's treated like she passed years ago when it's only been 1, roughly 2 years. So Emilie still has 13 years of being around Adrien's 13 years of sad backstory, so excuse Zoe for deciding to make her not so innocent because of this as this would be a moral failing on her part regardless.
Adrien's growth in Scarlet Lady can be also very clear to see. He starts as his optimistic, naive self who quickly learns that he is in fact taken advantage of and not treated right by those around him, so he starts to fight, disobey, and most of all, release all the emotions he was feeling that were the result of all the years of having to suck it up. Then throughout the comic, we see how he also goes from this tired and jaded to regaining his joy again and trust in other people, becoming more relaxed, relying more on others and not just himself, building friendships and relationships with multiple people, and learning what true friendship is around and realising more and more every day how his situation is pretty grim but it can get better and it will get better as he no longer is alone and no longer has to fight alone too. He even lets to finally let go of not just his anger but even his sadness at the end of the comic. Sure you have a point that fans are extra satisfied because this Adrien is what we want him to be, but that's also the point. You want your characters to be likable, and to resonate with the audience, and Adrien's passiveness just no longer resonates with people because it has no real payoff.
Adrien is being kept in the dark about everything, he can never truly do things on his own unless the plot allows him to for as long as it needs until Ladybug can solve the entire problem by herself. Scarlet Lady does him justice and acknowledges him as a proper hero who is only perceived as a sidekick instead of a sidekick who is only perceived as a hero when clearly not (and this comes from a guy who used to defend Adrien's role's validity as LB's equal, but no there never was equality).
In Scarlet Lady, the reason he's silent while Gabriel is confronted is because he also has to process just how awful Gabriel is and it's not like he can reveal his identity wide in the open like that. Marinette dodged a bullet by Alya not being present for the beginning of LB's speech, otherwise, she would figure Marinette was Marigold and Ladybug. It doesn't mean he has no reaction, he's just suppressing it but he did let out a good cry at Fu's, and his dark eyes are a reaction in itself, just not the one of falling apart, but it's not like he also didn't slam Gabriel to the ground before that with Fox Trot despite it being unnecessary. And calling out Gabriel is not a turning point for him but the culmination of his growth. Oh, and Adrien absolutely has a reaction to his mom coming back; he's too stunned to speak and confused on H O W and what to think of it. God forbid the guy to be confused.
THE MALE CAST
It's worth noting that the only girls who want to get in are the ones who are supposed to be kept out, no other women are being kept out from entering, and Nino saying keep the girls out is about condensing the plot of the comic instead of repeating every word canon has to offer.
Arguably SL did boys better by showing how guilty they are with their entire plan, properly acknowledging how much of a dick move they're doing right now by ditching the girls despite promising to help them, while in canon they straight up just didn't care, just acknowledged it, but didn't care. Heck, it's even better when it appears to be a plan made on the fly and not something Nino planned beforehand including making up specific excuses to the guys knowing they wouldn't be able to lie, while in SL it's a comedic plot point on how Nino has lists of excuses that never got elaborated on, though you could justify it by Nino becoming Fox Trot and perhaps writing some excuses for himself if he needed to jump into action, but then again they're the same as canon, very specific so it's unclear but it's better if it's unclear instead of very clear on how Nino planned right from the start to lie to girls and ditch them.
And it's absolutely fair that Adrien is not held accountable because he literally never planned for this to happen and genuinely was upset and questioned why they couldn't invite the girls. Nino assuming girls wouldn't want Adrien and boys to have fun is wrong, they would only be upset because the boys ditched them to have fun with Adrien, which is a plot point in SL. However, since SL didn't neglect to let Adrien make proper friendships with his classmates, they know Adrien most likely didn't plan this, nor ditched them because he never made a promise to come help plant the trees in the first place. Why should Adrien take the blame for guys throwing a party inside his house when it was never his idea and was somewhat peer pressured into it? Everyone knows Adrien deserves such a party including Adrien, so of course people are not upset that Adrien got such a party, they're upset that guys made this party on the very day they promised to plant trees and left girls alone to do it. The canon still didn't hold them accountable while SL did because it remains the same in both versions that guys ditched girls and kept them out of fun while also lying to them. This isn't even about sexism but it's worse when you know you could invite any guy to the party and none of the girls which is also what Canon did by bringing almost every male character to the party.
NATHALIE
Mary Sue characters are not just competent women characters, Mary Sue is a female character that lacks flaws and weaknesses, but that's not the case for Nathalie. For starters, it has to be said that Nathalie is insanely apathetic, a passive enabler who also thrives and enjoys the chaos. She's by no virtue a good person, which is what usually Mary Sue is supposed to be. The comic certainly doesn't make Nathalie a good person, it just makes her a better villain than Gabriel and that also serves the purpose of being foils to both Scarlet Lady and Chat Noir, she is initially a Cha Noir to Gabriel's Scarlet Lady. That's why she succeeds in the end because much like Cha Noir, she's a hypercompetent sidekick held back by the incompetent fraud who has even worse morals than her and can't do the job properly.
It is informed in canon that Nathalie was a treasure hunter hired by Gabriel and Emilie to find miraculouses, so it stands in no reason for why Nathalie shouldn't be able to decipher the Grimoire, especially when in the show if Alya was able to see through Grimoire (not necessarily decode but understand how it actually works as rather an archive for the discoveries) on her first try, Nathalie should be even more capable to do so by being an adult with experience when comes to such stuff. It could even be argued that Nathalie in fact spent the entire series decoding the grimoire beforehand while doing it behind Gabriel's back so while he was fooling around, she was preparing an actual solution to the problem but didn't present it because he wouldn't listen to her.
But her flaw was not standing up to Gabriel. She absolutely should've done for the good of their mission alone but in the end, she didn't, and even showed to be quite a hypocrite because here she is annoyed that Gabriel is enjoying his villainy, but she as Jackal and Mayura proves to be not that much better. The difference is that Nathalie is at the end playing around (which is quite messed up) while Gabriel supposedly has a bigger goal in his mind, but unlike Nathalie, he can't get the job done even if he tries.
In canon, Nathalie can suffer from bad writing for how despite Emilie telling her to look after Adrien while she's gone, she still didn't start seriously doing it until season 5. Her feelings for Gabriel happen out of nowhere and the reason behind it is how she admires how he would do anything for his family, but any viewer of miraculous knows that Gabriel isn't the sharpest tool in the shed and actively ignores means for success even before season 5, so Nathalie who was initially introduced as cold and professional assistant should know better that even if Gabriel is capable of doing anything for his family, he still is very much a failure. And despite her supposedly being competent, she also pretty much ends up making quite big mistakes which also makes holes in her image making her inconsistent. So is she trying to do something or not? Can she do something or not?
In SL it is answered that "yes, she can, but she won't" because she's just apathetic. If Gabriel somehow wins, they win, if he doesn't then she can do what he can't. She doesn't care who gets hurt on the way, but she knows that there's no point in taking unnecessary casualties. Hence she heals Chloe when she feels the effect of the peacock, because her death is just unnecessary, and so are the deaths of other potential victims of the miraculous powers. Still, Nathalie is willing to release a sentimonster to the public just because she's bored.
Mary Sues are supposed to be always right, but Nathalie is not right, she simply just wasn't caught, and the reason she didn't get caught is because she's using her brain, which is good as villains should be competent otherwise where's fun in that?
ZOE
I'm sorry but this entire paragraph really feels incorrect for multiple of reasons.
Vesperia in the comic got to use space power-up as a bonus, but her not having Vesperia's strengths from Queen Banana is justified because what enraged Chloe about Vesperia is that she's the new holder of the bee miraculous. But Chloe in SL wouldn't hate Vesperia more than she already hates Marigold, Chloe in SL is not Queen Bee so she doesn't care who wears the hair comb. Arguably Chloe would be more pissed if Zoe wore a ladybug miraculous, but that didn't happen because the ladybug was always meant to be wielded by Marinette. Another thing is that Vesperia didn't do anything other than what Queen Bee did during Heroes Day and her not getting to achieve much is also because she's both a newbie and because Queen Bee failed during Heroes Day to do anything interesting.
I already sporadically mentioned how indeed Scarlet Lady requires you to watch a show beforehand and it can be an issue if you want to treat Scarlet Lady as its standalone story, but it never was a standalone story. It's an adaptation of an existing story that has meta-commentary within it establishing a relationship with canon, which is what makes Scarlet Lady its own unique thing. It still tells you its own story, but not down to every detail because Zoe changes only some aspects of the story, not all of them. She does change them fundamentally alright, but there are still things that remain unchanged because they didn't need to change.
Zoe originally DID NOT in fact plan to include the entire miracle box, the original idea was for Scarlet Lady to have 4 seasons ending with only 7 main miraculous being used with the zodiac only slowly being integrated more into the narrative of Scarlet Lady. Zoe included the rest of the zodiac because as she described it "she's weak" but really, she just enjoyed pitching costume ideas for other miraculouses and integrating them into her story. Zoe's an artist, of course, and she likes to draw, she would take the opportunity of drawing characters in various different aesthetics of different miraculouses and even include some meta-commentary regarding those miraculouses. At the end of the day Scarlet Lady comic was a fun project Zoe didn't do just for the fans, but for herself as well. Sure Zoe never intended to continue the story forever unlike the canon, but the canon also at times acts like some miraculouses and their holders just don't exist until it's convenient and Zoe still gave each miraculous a chance to shine and purpose to serve in the story, fulfilling the role it serves in both canon and Scarlet Lady: a gimmick. It's a nice gimmick to include more heroes with different powers that occasionally help the heroes. That's the point.
It's worth noting that Zoe did release recently for the anniversary of her comic an "extended scene" of all the heroes beating down Hawk Moth and each of them contributing to the battle as no, Chat Noir didn't solo Hawk Moth. It's worth noting that Ladybug and Chat Noir were losing battle to Hawk Moth on their own in both Scarlet Lady and even in canon, so while having 13 heroes giving Hawk Moth a smackdown seems extra, it makes sense knowing how none of the kids could defeat Hawk Moth on their own and it required a team effort to take him down, heck even bigger than 5 people alone too.
Sure Fu could've delivered miraculouses without the need of the rabbit, but it's nice to know that all miraculouses were included in the end and the rabbit certainly made it easier to collect all the miraculouses without revealing his face or having kwamis go on a very long journey all across the city. Zoe would have initially just not used rabbit at all but leaving one miraculous out just would feel like something that would bother every fan reading the story at night. Canonically the rabbit miraculous CAN in fact connect to alternate timelines. Chat Blanc was a timeline that didn't exist in Bunnyx's future as she exclaimed herself. In Chat Blanc she learned about the existence of Chat Blanc in the first place as it never happened before according to her. However, if Bunnyx could see this timeline existing, there's no reason to believe that she can't see other timelines existing. Scarlet Lady story pretty much started the same as canon (minus the sentichildren thing Zoe did not see coming and therefore didn't include) with Chloe's actions taking the timeline in a different direction. Granted it still served as a setback to Marinette receiving ladybug, and not a universe-altering timeline like Chat Blanc. So no, Zoe didn't make Rabbit more OP, just took advantage of the fact that Rabbit already had such capacity to view and travel into different timelines to include Bunnyx. Bunnyx as herself serves only for one reason: easter eggs, giving the audience nods to canonical stories that wouldn't be adapted into Scarlet Lady. And easter eggs are appreciated greatly.
Zoe did NOT in fact forget to include the reason why Marinette and Chat aren't together. It's established in seasons 1 and 2 how Marinette despite having a crush on both Adrien and Chat Noir didn't realise how deep her feelings go. She didn't realise she was in love with Chat until she sat down with Master Fu in Evillustrator. The same episode also included why Chat and Marinette can't be together: he's a superhero getting himself in very scary and risky situations and Marinette could end up as a casualty due to her lack of superpowers. Marinette doesn't possess her plot armor in SL, she can very much BE targeted by the villains, as seen with Befana succeeding in getting Marinette. Evillustrator also almost drowned both of them which is what made Chat freak out in the first place. Marinette is not indestructible, she's just under the protection of Chat, but he had to tell her that he can't risk her getting hurt and told her to stop involving herself with akumas, making Mari unable to see him as often meaning they simply wouldn't be able to establish a relationship like that as Chat Noir still has a duty and double-life. Season 3 onwards includes the love square of Marigold wanting to be with Chat Noir but not necessarily returning the same feelings as he loves Marinette and Adrien chasing Marinette but she doesn't love Adrien that way. Adrien knew he only had a chance as Chat Noir at the given moment and he was down bad enough to settle for this but Marinette had to establish that she couldn't be with Chat after making the promise to not engage herself with the akumas which is inevitable for Chat to engage himself so Hawk Moth also stood in the way of him having relationship along with the love square still existing in Scarlet Lady, just not being near AS dramatic and convoluted. Also, it's not like Adrien didn't make his crush very obvious, but he also didn't confess to Ladybug immediately and waited an entire season to do so, despite also not being subtle at all *cough cough*Animan*cough cough*.
Also, it's extra petty to say the writing of Elation is better than the entirety of Scarlet Lady when said episode is a rip-off of the Marichat fanfic genre that shouldn't exist the way it does after episodes like Glaciator 2 and Weredad. Like I get you may not enjoy the story, but as of now we have been talking about some aspects of Scarlet Lady (not all of them, like I did expect to see some points about Alya, Lila, Sabrina, Luka, and other characters along with some other decisions, but they did not appear here so I assume they don't bother you enough to be mentioned otherwise they would be here as you did bring some trivial points here in my opinion) so my point from first paragraphs stands that just because you dislike some aspects of the story doesn't mean the entire story is badly written, especially when those things are a matter of taste. So going as far as to say something badly written is better because you dislike something else for not meeting your expectations just... isn't right.
And the comment "sometimes it's better to diverge things" while on a post that is bashing said divergences comes off as a bit hypocritical. So do you want canon divergence or respect what canon is provided? Oh, wait, you want a completely different story. Valid but that's not what SL was supposed to be in the first place.
Ladybug episode was the first episode to entertain the idea of sentibeings being the same as any other living being by giving us the first known human sentimonster. However, all it took was CN and LB admitting how "perfect' she is and then LB deciding to not destroy her once she gave her the amok and then stating how amok is required to control sentimonster and anyone can do it without peacock's intentions. That isn't much different treatment with Sentiwasp as she also just got introduced and then once you got her amok she immediately switched sides much like Sentibug did. It's worth noting that for the majority of the chapter people weren't certain Sentiwasp was a sentimonster and some people thought it was just Chloe, so unlike with other sentimonsters, there never was "she's not real, she's a mindless creature", it's a shocker to learn that she's actually a magical construct but she still had a lot of her own personality and even looked conflicted when LB proposed her a second chance and when LB took the amok it even teased a promise that Sentiwasp could be something more. At the end of the day she wasn't made evil, she was just in the wrong hands and who knows, maybe if she lived, she could've been a hero. But then Chloe snaps her out of existence not giving her a chance, which isn't much different from what Mayura did or what happened in that episode as for the majority of it Sentibug was nothing but following orders and antagonizing LB and CN only to switch at the end, but she didn't get to do much and she died the same episode she was introduced in. The same also happened to Sentibubbler. It's hard to say that the Ladybug episode proved Sentibug to have sentience when for the majority of the episode she was strictly controlled by Mayura, Sentiwasp looking conflicted by a small margin actually does better by showing Sentiwasp questioning her programming, Sentibug never questioned it though.
Reflekdoll in Scarlet Lady is a low-stake mini-story as Mayura doesn't have any other agenda other than spiting Adrien for ruining her evening indirectly by causing havoc and Adrien and Marinette by that point already know each other's identities, so their swapping powers feel more like a fun experience than a necessity, unlike canon. Sure you can like the canon version of Reflekdoll but there's nothing inherently bad with low-stake power swap for the fun of it.
ZOE AND THOMAS ASTRUC ARE ON THE SAME WAVELENGTH
Literally, no. There's a difference between an artist establishing boundaries with its fan base and an artist being petty and having a large ego. I don't think I need to elaborate on the immaturity of Thomas Astruc, there already are plenty of blogs dedicated to this subject but I'm not one of them. Zoe doesn't GLOAT herself as a great writer, she simply is just having fun with the idea she had. She does however not let people walk all over her. And unlike Thomas, she didn't play the bait-and-switch game with the audience, she made her intentions clear from day one on how she wanted her story to go, and while fans of the show have every right to be upset by having empty promises made by the show for redemption of Chloe by how much the show invested in her and this arc only to assassinate it and not do anything good with Chloe afterward, but Zoe never even teased Chloe redemption, so for people to be upset Scarlet Lady is not a redemption story is on them, especially 5 seasons and 5 years in.
Chloe at the end of season 5 went to Versailles, that's still France and not THAT far away from Paris. And in SL they were specifically escaping potential legal charges they could face, while canon didn't even entertain the idea that Chloe should be legally charged for what she did but just had Andre banish her to suffer the abuse from her mother. Not the same ending as the entire Bourgeois family leaving together with the promise they will make things right within their family.
Also, sidenote Marinette calling him out is not wrong as Adrien also called out Hawk Moth while gaining his power up, and Marinette also deserves a right to defend her boyfriend, especially since Adrien always had to deal with Gabriel alone.
CONCLUSION
Anger and hatred are valid emotions and you should be allowed to dislike and even loathe things that upset you or know aren't right with you anger is also a natural human emotion and reaction. Saying never be angry and hateful at all is just a toxic positivity mindset to have that can be even harmful as not all human beings can always be positive all the time and it's unusual for people to not be angry or upset. The SL comic didn't ruin a good ending unless you wanted Gabriel to be redeemed. The guy would face justice regardless and hit karma hard for being a magical terrorist in the first place. People are allowed to hate him because he took advantage of everyone, including hatred and anger. Heck Zombizou itself teaches you that there's nothing wrong with being angry and you're not a bad person because you hate.
Not true at all, there are plenty of satirical stories, saltfics, and spite stories that are very enjoyable and well-written and can serve great lessons. It is an acquired taste alright, but it's not always badly written. Saltfics can help you deal with negative emotions you have as sometimes it's better to let it out by either writing or reading and saltfics can sometimes give you a new perspective on things too.
Zoe isn't even arrogant, she absolutely recognizes her own faults and shortcomings, she knows her story isn't flawless but she also knows that the writing of canon didn't do justice to the characters within it so she did it herself and people praised her for it. A lesson about arrogance really should apply to Thomas sorry not sorry.
Zoe did not remove characters' flaws, she simply didn't exaggerate them to the moon and back like in canon. Zoe herself pointed out how Marinette has plenty of flaws, especially within her story (like her clumsiness, her temper, her jealousy, and her tendency to overthink and complicate stuff), they all exist within the story and other characters also have their flaws and shortcomings.
Whenever Zoe contradicted elements from canon, she explicitly made a comic page about it. What she decided to not contradict was left unchanged. Simple as that.
To say the least, even a year ago Scarlet Lady is fondly remembered not only just on Tumblr but on Reddit as well. Even I decided to make a reply to your post because I cared about Scarlet Lady, and it wasn't made yesterday now is it? They didn't exist just to bash the story of someone else, but to serve justice to those characters so their happily ever after feels earned and satisfying.
So there's that. Excuse me if sometimes things aren't coherent but it's a very large essay I made here, feel free to correct me if something bothers you or if I missed something.
For your first point, there is a quote from MusketAnna on Twitter than comes to mind about this topic.
"[Game of Thrones] was on TV for a decade and had a stranglehold on popular culture and it ended so poorly that literally the moment it ended its cultural influence dissolved. It's amazing. It was like, overnight and it's baffling to think that something that was so everpresent for eight years simply ceased to exist because we all collectively decided it wasn't worth it. Eight years of memes, references, a presence you could not get away even if you tried and didn't care and all of this, ALL OF IT, undone to such a point that I can't even remember the last time I saw [Game of Thrones] referenced or talked about."
I agree, canon has done an absolute garbage job at establishing the limits of these powers. But SL did not "capitalize" on anything, considering the result is (in my opinion) garbage.
Gabriel being an idiot in canon is simply due to the writers not being good enough to write an actual good villain. I think intentionally writing a terrible villain is even worse.
"And the reason why Emilie is brought back... so Adrien will stay in Paris" And what is it called when a writer writes a terrible plot point just to justify something else they want to happen? It's called bad writing. "And this also lets us get to know Emilie" "Get to know" on the same level as all the other anti-characters in this story.
You're right, Emilie isn't a character in canon. But she also isn't one in SL, she is just another strawman punching bag.
TONE
Romcom and magical girl are not incompatible genres, I don't know where you get this idea. And you know, there are a lot of moments in your response where you just kind of say stuff without providing examples or backing it up in any way.
"it does feature moments that are not played for laughs" Like two moments across countless pages? And something being "light-hearted" isn't really an excuse. Kids movies still contain enough power to make the audience feel things. Something being all light-hearted all the time isn't entertaining.
CHARACTERS
"they're teenagers, and that should be rather a default" I was once a teenager too, and I can tell you that my classmates had different personalities. "Sarcastic smartass" was not the default, especially not for the girls.
"I personally never came across a take where being sarcastic is considered being generic, usually, it is about being nice" Have you heard any discourse surrounding superhero movies in the last couple years? This characters archetype is like a cancer throughout Hollywood.
"All characters in Scarlet Lady have in fact their own personality that are hardly the same" Well, not really. I expect every character to react to any situation in the same way, with a sarcastic and smartass quip. Sure, the characters aren't totally identical, but that individuality gets lost when their exteriors are basically the same.
CHLOĆ
Justifying why characters interacting is boring doesn't make it not boring. If there was nothing interesting that could be done with Scarlet Lady and Chat Noir after the first two interactions, then the author should have found a way to cut out those interactions entirely.
Everything you said about the public liking Scarlet Lady is stuff I already knew and acknowledged in my original post. So to restate my point, getting rid of a dangerous individual that very nearly caused the heroes their defeat is more important than their PR. This is a BS excuse the author uses to justify keeping Scar around for longer than she logically should.
Yes, Marinette can occasionally be a little snarky. But my point is that her characters always had an underlying sincerity to her that SL!Marinette absolutely does not have, because Zoe is allergic to sincerity.
SL does a whole lot of "tell, don't show" with Marinette's character. And even if she does help people, I still don't like her simply because of how outwardly unpleasant she is in her interactions.
"Marinette nowadays is not exactly popular and well-liked :/" You know, even with the abhorrent character Marinette has become in season 6, she's still at least a character.
ADRIEN
As I said in the original, I don't like canon Adrien. And I don't think he got any real development, but at least he had the potential to get some, which is more than I can say in SL.
"No-personality where?" You just listed a bunch of traits, that's not what a personality is. I could also list a bunch of traits for canon Adrien.
"So it's already established at first that while Adrien is fighting for his freedom the second he's in, he didn't have it immediately in him." You just described a bunch of BS that happened offscreen. I wouldn't be surprised if he was physically dragged back kicking and screaming.
"allowed Adrien to grow" No. That's my entire point. He is the exact same character sarcastic smartass at the end of the comic as he was at the start.
"He genuinely broke down at Master Fu's place over his dad being a villain, because he did love him and all this hurt came from a broken heart" You mean that moment that, like everything else, was undermined by a joke? Right...
"And Adrien objectively is a victim" Agree to disagree for canon, but in SL he is absolutely not a victim by any metric.
"Adrien apparently also never had a birthday party in his life while Emilie was still around" Oh hey, I made a post about this exact thing awhile while ago.
"So Emilie still has 13 years of being around Adrien's 13 years of sad backstory, so excuse Zoe for deciding to make her not so innocent because of this as this would be a moral failing on her part regardless" Adrien does not have 13 years of sad backstory in canon, he had one year of sad backstory. His fans just make this up to make him a perpetual victim because that's the only way they can contextualize his character.
As for everything you say about Adrien's "growth" in SL, well I think that's fundamentally disproven by the fact that literally the first thing we seem him do is curse out his father. He has no growth.
"Scarlet Lady does him justice" By turning him into an anti-character? Sure...
"Oh, and Adrien absolutely has a reaction to his mom coming back; he's too stunned to speak and confused on H O W and what to think of it. God forbid the guy to be confused" If God had rules for writing stories, he probably would forbid this. Again, this potentially powerful and emotional moment is undermined by a cheap gag that tells us nothing about the characters sarcastic smartasses.
THE MALE CAST
"no other women are being kept out from entering" Did you see other women at the party?
"instead of repeating every word canon has to offer" Bad excuse. "The author didn't want to just repeat the words of canon, so she had Nino say something different that completely recontextualizes the scene."
"Arguably SL did boys better by showing how guilty they are with their entire plan" In canon, Nino did express regret to Marinette about what he did. Except in canon, Nino did what he did because he thought it was the only way to spend this time with Adrien, not because he's a misogynist.
"And it's absolutely fair that Adrien is not held accountable because he literally never planned for this to happen and genuinely was upset and questioned why they couldn't invite the girls" It was perfectly within Adrien's power to say "no", yet he didn't and just went along with Operation Sexism. He's just as culpable as the others.
"This isn't even about sexism but it's worse when you know you could invite any guy to the party and none of the girls which is also what Canon did by bringing almost every male character to the party." In canon, this is played as a funny turn of events. In SL, Nino explicitly said to keep girls out of the house. That's the difference.
NATHALIE
This will be quick. You claim that Nathalie has all these flaws, so tell me, when in the narrative is she called out for them or punished? Oh, she isn't? Mary Sue, end of story.
"especially when in the show if Alya was able to see through Grimoire (not necessarily decode but understand how it actually works as rather an archive for the discoveries)" That's not even remotely the same thing. That's like saying "This Russian child was able to understand this book written in Russian, so it stands to reason that this grown man should also be able to understand it, even though he doesn't speak Russian."
"Chloe would never pay attention to ever bringing a subject of having a half-sister unless said half-sister would appear in a flesh" Okay, that just loops back to my other question. Why are they only meeting now for the first time, when they are teenagers? SL gives no justification for this.
"Another thing is that Vesperia didn't do anything other than what Queen Bee did during Heroes Day and her not getting to achieve much is also because she's both a newbie and because Queen Bee failed during Heroes Day to do anything interesting." So since one character failed in this season finale, that means this other character accomplishing nothing in her singular appearance is okay? No, it's not. You could have cut out Vesperia and nothing of value would have been lost. But the reason that value is lost is because we were teased with something potentially cool that amounted to absolutely nothing.
BECAUSE CANON DID IT TOO
So you seemed to misunderstand the point of this section in your first paragraph. I'm not criticizing SL for relying on canon for context, it is fanfiction after all, I'm criticizing SL for sticking to some things from canon even though it damages the story of SL.
You're basically saying "All the Miraculouses were included because Zoe got greedy and wanted to use every idea and design she thought of." That's not a defense at all.
"It's worth noting that Zoe did release recently for the anniversary of her comic an "extended scene" of all the heroes beating down Hawk Moth and each of them contributing to the battle as no, Chat Noir didn't solo Hawk Moth" Don't you think that the fact that this is "extended" it inherently means it's unnecessary? Characters doing something in a fight doesn't justify their inclusion on its own. For example, if Hawk Moth had a series of minions they had to fight through to get to him, and everyone's unique skills were necessary, then that would have justified their inclusion. Chat Noir did basically take care of it himself, because his contribution was the only one that was narratively meaningful.
"but it's nice to know that all miraculouses were included" Ah yes, "Destroying the stakes is okay because it means we got to see all the Miraculouses in action."
In "Cat Blanc", Bunnix is slowly disappearing as a result of the timeline changing. Like I said, there aren't really any alternate timelines, changes to the timeline simply overwrite the old one. So again, no, the fact that Zoe treats SL's timelines like it's the MCU means that SL is completely incompatible with canon, and how it established alternate universes work.
"he's a superhero getting himself in very scary and risky situations and Marinette could end up as a casualty due to her lack of superpowers" Being in a relationship doesn't mean she needs to fight villains without superpowers.
"Marinette is not indestructible" Remember when she casually tripped Timebreaker? Yeah...
"said episode is a rip-off of the Marichat fanfic genre" I'm sorry, what? This is the show that that fanfic genre is based on. How exactly can it be a rip-off?
"And the comment 'sometimes it's better to diverge things' while on a post that is bashing said divergences comes off as a bit hypocritical." No it isn't. "These changes are bad" is not incompatible with "Keeping these things from canon damages this story."
In canon, Ladybug and Cat Noir reflected on the Sentibug situation after it happened. In SL, Sentiwasp was forgotten the second she was gone. There is zero substance in SL.
"Reflekdoll is a low-stakes mini-story, so that makes it okay to forgo logic and just do the Miraculous swap without even trying to justify it." That's really not a counterargument at all. "Sure you can like the canon version of Reflekdoll" I never even said it was good, I simply said it met the bare minimum requirement of making sense.
ZOE AND THOMAS ASTRUC ARE ON THE SAME WAVELENGTH
So you seem to again have misunderstood the point of a section. I never said that these two are equals morally or anything. It's simply about them having similar ideas. However... "Zoe doesn't GLOAT herself as a great writer" Yes, yes she absolutely does.
"Also, sidenote Marinette calling him out is not wrong as Adrien also called out Hawk Moth while gaining his power up, and Marinette also deserves a right to defend her boyfriend, especially since Adrien always had to deal with Gabriel alone" This is actually really funny, because you can literally copy-paste this exact quote to defend Adrien's role in the canon season 5 finale. Just replace "Hawk Moth while gaining a power up" with "his father during the Nightormenter fight". Like I said, on the same wavelength.
CONCLUSION
I'm not saying these emotions aren't valid, I'm saying it's bad to act on them and let them bleed into your work. To be clear, I hated how canon season 5 ending. And yet, as much as I hate to admit it, it was still better than SL's ending. It felt like Marinette faced an actual challenge, and there were actual characters making actual decisions. Low bar, I know.
I actually think partaking in Saltfics just feeds those bad emotions.
But she didn't do justice to any of the characters, and I think I've broken down why. She made every single on of them worse.
"Zoe herself pointed out how Marinette has plenty of flaws, especially within her story (like her clumsiness, her temper, her jealousy, and her tendency to overthink and complicate stuff)" I can't remember any of that stuff causing any actual problems. So they're not real flaws, they're something an an amateur writer slaps onto their character because they heard people say that characters need flaws. And I was mostly talking about Adrien in this section.
I'm specifically talking about the fact that the only reason anybody like Adrien and Marinette in SL is because they liked them in canon, despite the fact that in SL they have none of the traits people liked about these characters from canon. Fanfics can depend on context from canon, but not when they contradict that context.
"They didn't exist just to bash the story of someone else, but to serve justice to those characters so their happily ever after feels earned and satisfying." Canon somehow felt more earned and satisfying than SL ever could, simply because canon has actual characters and a story.
I was being mostly hyperbolic with how I ended the original. But the fact is, there are a lot of people on both Tumblr and Reddit that have absolutely no critical thought and just mindlessly consume what they see. Bad content can still have a fanbase.
"And here's the thing, it does not take any talent whatsoever to depict a character whose death would be cathartic to watch. [...] In the case of 'John Wick', it is very efficient. Man is bad because man kills puppy. No time is wasted showing us ten different scenes of man killing ten different puppies."
"Miraculous Ladybug" should have ended in season 5. Like, I still would have hated the finale, but I would have at least respected them for ending the series at its stopping point. Sure, Lila getting the Butterfly Miraculous was unresolved, but "Timetagger" showed that they are still fighting her well into adulthood, so they could have just left it open ended. Everything else in season 6 is a hollow rehash of stuff that has already happened. They are clearly out of new ideas, and they're making the previous seasons worse by undermining their events. Season 6 and beyond is nothing but an obvious cash grab with zero substance.
I genuinely thought I was the only one who had a gripe with Adrien, specifically the way he's written. The writers would often write him in a way where we're supposed to feel bad for him, even when he's in the wrong.
For instance, there would be occasional sad music playing followed by a frown on Adrien's face every time he gets rejected by LB. The thing is, LB has told Chat multiple times that she doesn't like him romantically. She's not "mean" for having boundaries, and he's not a victim for getting rejected like how the show portrays him to be.
I know some people may say, "That was seasons ago, who cares.". Um, I do, because that's a terrible message to send to children. Women and girls are often portrayed as antagonistic or "b*tchy" for rejecting a guy, which is part of the reason a lot of men and boys can't handle rejection properly.
The problem with having a character make the same mistakes multiple times is that it's like the Boy Who Cried Wolf: it's impossible to believe that they actually have changed.
The writers probably believe that Adrien has grown past this behavior. But what evidence do we have for it? He didn't move on from Ladybug because she rejected him, he did it because he stopped having feelings for her. If Marinette's rejection of him in "Transmission" had stuck, would he have respected her wishes? Would he have treated her differently than he did Ladybug in the same situation? Honestly, I don't think so. And that's because he had the chance to learn his lesson in "Glaciator", "Frozer", or "Glaciator 2", and he didn't. Why should I believe he learned it now?
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