#chloe redemption

[mattw83]

Miraculous Tales: Vinegar and Honey - Chapters

Sometimes a little sweetness goes a long way to temper the vinegar within.

Join the AU of Miraculous Ladybug, A tale of how Chloé’s many false starts in life were just the beginning to a real redemption of heart and hero; of a different path followed where Chloé struggles with the reality of her place in the world and her own internal battle of self discovery and change.

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 -   Chapter 10 Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14 - Chapter 15 - Chapter 16 - Chapter 17 - Chapter 18 - Chapter 19 - Chapter 20

[dumblr-account]

Chloe Bourgeois and the Lovable Jerk Archetype

So I just watched a video analysis about how to write a lovable jerk, y’know, as you do, and as the person broke down the different components of how this archetype is created, it grew more apparent to me how Astruc accidentally created this type of character in Chloe, and how the story decisions with her in seasons four and five actually only exacerbated this unintentional portrayal of her character (and maybe even potentially why many people find Marinette so difficult to like or even tolerate). Let me explain through the criteria given in this video!

credit to squampopulous for the analysis video

Step 1: Distance

The first step listed is the idea of creating distance between the character and the audience, pretty much the opposite of what you would do with an empathetic or relatable character. This often means the character moves so far from what the audience would expect from the real world, whether it be logic or morality, to make the jerkiness as absurd and over-the-top as possible that the audience ends up amused rather than disgusted. This is a large part how villains like Disney’s Hades or Dreamworks’ Big Jack Horner become so entertaining, or why audiences become so enthralled by Kuzco. This is something Chloe has done since her very first episode! The ways she bullies and hurts the characters in the show are so far removed from how actual bullies and privileged rich kids work that no one can (or at least, no one should) take her seriously!

In fact, on a side note, I can see this is how Marinette has become so unlikable for many people! Aside from the fact that she is intended to be a protagonist, which inherently closes at least some distance, she is also meant to be empathized with, which puts the audience in close proximity to her as a character! If you’re the type of person to relate to her struggles and insecurities, then this close proximity works perfectly, but if an audience member doesn’t have such a quality, it all falls apart! This is a major factor in why viewers might be harsher with her actions than characters like Chloe or Lila: because we have closer distance, we grow higher standards for her!

Another disadvantage Marinette has to Chloe in this category is when her actions reach familiarity. While most of Chloe’s actions feel far too absurd to ever occur in any real scenario, such as becoming a dictator mayor as a teenager, many of the actions of Marinette’s get uncomfortably close to immoralities we see in life, such as sabotaging your crush’s other love interests for the sole purpose of becoming that person’s only option. And to make matters worse, the recent seasons have continued to draw more attention to these actions rather than exaggerating them, as seen in episodes like Derision or Sublimation! By narrowing the distance between us and our protagonist’s actions in how familiar we are with such immoralities in the real world, it gives significantly less leeway for suspension of disbelief! So it’s not hypocrisy that leads to more permissible parameters for Chloe than Marinette, it’s just the basic rules of storytelling.

Step 2: Authenticity

The second step mentioned is this idea of the lovable jerk shamelessly owning up to their jerk actions and in fact pushing forward on their behaviors and actions! This was demonstrated in the video by comparing the storyboard version of Woody throwing Buzz out the window versus how Kuzco got the old man thrown out his window. While storyboard!Woody tried to deny his actions which in turn horrified the executives the scene was pitched to, Kuzco’s refusal to back down or deny his actions made his scene much more comedic to watch! This is yet another aspect Chloe nails perfectly! Even when she tries to pretend she already got Adrien a birthday present in the Bubbler, the fact that she used an annoyance for workers struggling to carry it adds a level of shameless jerkiness that turns into amusement rather than appall for the audience, not all that different from how the video described Kuzco’s sincerity about his insincerity when he lied to Pacha.

This is also another aspect that demonstrates how Marinette fails as a dubious protagonist! Because the characters and herself are so in denial of her having any potential to be a bad person, this makes any and every bad action she performs stick out like a sore thumb! So every time Astruc or a Maripologist spews another excuse or justification for this character, it only makes those who notice the corruptness of her actions more bitter and horrified!

Step 3: Time Limit

Technically, this step doesn’t really apply for Miraculous Ladybug, or at least it shouldn’t. The fact that this show is written to be pretty much never ending means that we shouldn’t really have expectations for any limited time with this show. Furthermore, considering how the first season or so of this show was written to be comedic and episodic, no time limit should be established. Take Candace from Phineas and Ferb as an example. Although she does get small moments of development throughout the show, and she does acknowledge the passage of time and repetition in the episodic formula, she never really moves beyond her role as the control freak sister who wants to bust her brothers, and the audience loves her for it!

So, if this show was indeed written to be an episodic cartoon with wacky hijinxes and silly kids lessons, then characters like Chloe or Marinette would not be characters we expect to develop beyond the roles they were placed in from the very first episode! Marinette would be the insecure yet well meaning protagonist who learns a life lesson each episode, and Chloe would be the jerk bully/rival who exists for the sole purpose of antagonizing our protagonist and getting in the way of her goals!

Unfortunately, this is not what the show decided to do! Because they made the mistake of having Chloe want to be a superhero and even idolize Ladybug. This was the aspect that ultimately determined whether she was perceived as a Jack Horner or a Kuzco. Let me explain. If they truly wanted us to believe Chloe was a villainous character with no capacity for good or heroism, the writers could have portrayed her as skewing her perception of Ladybug to align more with her predeterminate selfish and bratty ideals, or have her be motivated to be a hero for the sole purpose of fame or attention!

Instead, from the moment they introduce her being a fan of Ladybug, they make it clear that she admires Ladybug’s heroism! And because she is established as a sincere and shameless character, with the plot never giving sufficient evidence to the contrary, this intrigues the audience into believing there is more to her! Not to mention, in the two-parter of Queen’s Battle, instead of going the Jack Horner route of leaning further into Chloe’s jerkiness and literally any selfish motives she might have, the story instead portrayed Chloe’s primary motivation and driving force behind her actions as approval, whether it be from her mother or Ladybug! This was only made worse in Maledictator by conveying her genuine insecurity of being useless. And these qualities continued to persist throughout the rest of Season 2 and the entirety of Season 3 every time she brought Queen Bee up. By giving her a deeper and less jerk-like motivation, coupled by moments of sincere selflessness, this gave the audience the impression that she had a genuine capacity for change. So when the Miracle Queen finale and seasons after tried to back out and insist she is just evil, it’s far too late. The audience already saw her vulnerability and sincerity, and the writers didn’t take the proper steps to portray or reveal her as insincere for these moments!

Now let’s look at Marinette. Instead of preserving her initial role as the flawed yet well meaning protagonist, or portraying any growth into a righteous and upstanding hero, the episodes and plot progression shows her choosing her own self interests over others time and time again! How are we supposed to see Miracle Queen as a testament to Chloe’s irredeemability when the very thing that catalyzed this event was Marinette’s desire to get in between Adrien and Kagami’s romance, while Chloe was motivated by saving her parents? By repeatedly portraying Marinette in self serving ways that get rewarded, this leads to her jerkiness outweighing any likability she might have had in her first episode!

And that’s it for this analysis! I dunno if this is actually any good, and if you disagree with anything I said, that’s perfectly valid! You are not a terrible person if you do relate to Marinette, or you genuinely despise Chloe with every fiber of your being! This analysis was made with the sole purpose of examining fiction through the general parameters of storytelling that are used to influence the audience’s perception of said characters. But hey, if anything I referenced or talked about does interest you, you can watch the original video below! It most certainly explains these elements of a lovable jerk far better than I could ever attempt to! If you did in fact read through this longass post word for word, thank you so much for sparing me so much of your time in your average scrolling and skimming of posts, I appreciate it! Have a fantastic day!

[moonfly7]

Mr. Bug and Lady noire post 2 electric boogaloo:

Lila gets destroyed by two angry teenagers who normally hate each other

So I really didn't expect to have anything else to add to my Classic Kwami swap, but my style, idea.

But then at some point I remembered that Lila is a thing, more specifically a thing that I hate, and that by trying to go after Adrien in this AU she'd be putting herself directly into the line of fire with both Chloe and a Lady Noire Marinette. And my brain exploded with inspiration.

I had originally said that Mari and Chloe bond/form a loose truce and respect over their mutual hatred of Gabriel, and this is true, but I have now seen what actually makes them become friends. Lila. Lila makes them become friends.

And it isn't even Lila going after Adrien that does it, because these two are damn near experts at dealing with crazy fangirls at this point and at least at first Lila isn't anywhere close to the worst they've seen before. No, it's Lila going after Marinette that does it, in the end.

Because, as previously stated, Chloe has decided that Marinette is under her protection after the girl more or less forced her way into being in Chloe's friend group so she could do her job and keep Adrien safe. And at first this is just practical, she can't have Marinette being teased or looking bad if she's hanging around her, after all. Overtime though, it becomes just raw instinct to snap at anyone who has a bad word for Mari. And then sometime after that, the impulse worms its way into her own inner monologue, strangling even her own nasty comments about "Maritrash" before they can even form. Because at some point, Marinette went from an annoyance she had to let hang around to hers just like Sabrina and Adrien.

By the point that Lila actually shows up at school, Chloe basically exclusively wears Dupain-Cheng "brand" work. And she honestly hasn't even noticed.

It started with a scarf she got from the girl she used to bully on her birthday, because she'd made one for all of her friends so far, and it had honestly barely crossed her mind about who she was making the thing for. She'd just made it so that there wouldn't be a glaringly obvious insult when Chloe was the only person she hung out with who didn't have one.

Now, though? Now it's nearly everything. Some of it came as a trickle of gifts, some was bought and payed for by a girl who was slowly growing sick of being reminded of her mother with every outfit she owned, but who also refused to throw money at the company that exploited Adrien as some kind of messed up teenage sex symbol. At the end of the day, the result was the same: nearly everything Chloe owned that she actually wore was made stitch by stitch by Marinette.

They still traded glares in the hallways, and snapped insults back and forth at each other like they were playing tennis with hatred as the ball, but somewhere along the way respect and grudging comradery had worked its way into their strange little relationship. One stitch at a time.

So it is a very different, very delicate dynamic of bully and former victim, love rivals, enemies, joint self appointed protectors, and, though they'd never actually admit it: friends, that Lila comes into and subsequently stomps all over.

The moment Lila drops her first little lie about Marinette, trying to plant her seeds of doubt, Chloe is there ripping them up by the roots. Not with facts or logic or any kind of reasoning her classmates can't possibly dispute, but instead with cruelty, backhanded compliments, and mockery that's just toeing the line enough that you can't actually report her to a teacher.

Chloe Bourgeois is a master class bully, she managed to scare, manipulate, and brow beat every single student in her entire school into shunning or outright mocking Marinette for years for no reason other than Chloe wanted them too. She used fear, greed, and a desire to be popular to absolutely destroy a regular girl's entire life when absolutely nothing was wrong with her.

There wasn't even anything glaringly "wrong" with Marinette to go after, Chloe basically had to make stuff up or just target the fact that she wasn't terrifyingly rich like Chloe was. She was a little weird and a little quirky, but far from an easy target, not even the easiest in the class. And yet, Chloe turned her into a pariah.

So when a new girl comes to class who:

Is from another country

Makes outlandish claims of which at least 3 of which are easily provable as fake(or at least sound like they're fake when you say them in mocking tones while said girl is on the floor trying to pick up the stuff you "accidentally" knocked out of her hands)

And claims to/appears to have multiple disabilities

That's a bullies dream victim, someone who's different from everyone else, who has already done at least one memorable and potentially embarrassing thing, and who's body doesn't work right through no fault of their own.

If Chloe could turn this entire class against a sweet and kind girl they'd known their whole lives, you better believe she can get them to shun, or at least not stand up for, the new girl who is very different from them. Sadly, that's just how high schoolers are.

I'm not condoning any of that obviously, this exact thing happened to me for similar thing in school and I hated it, but realistically, it's sadly a very likely possibility.

And, less depressingly in our case here, it's the kind of thing you can't get out of with lies or sympathetic stories or even guilt. Because if guilt or sympathy worked Marinette wouldn't have suffered for as long as she did.

Luckily this time, being at least a little nicer now, Chloe only keeps it up long enough to hammer home that Dupain-Cheng is off limits.

Only to turn around and beat Lila's ass into the ground like that JoJo meme in tandem with Marinette the second she tries to drape her body over Adrien's arm.

Messing with Marinette gets you Chloe's social pressure. Messing with her best friend and Paris's resident savior gets you Queen Bees stinger where the sun don't shine while Lady Noire repeatedly knees you in the face.

Volpina goes very differently in this world is all I'm saying.

[scrivello-10]

is this a safe space to say that I don’t think Chloé was ever getting a redemption, and that the fans collectively agreed she would, and got mad that it didn’t happen

like her behavior is easily identifiable; her bullying stems from her wanting Audrey to notice and love her, and the good she did do came from admiration of Ladybug

she looked up to Ladybug, so its understandable that she would want to appear as good in her eyes

it even could’ve been chalked up to that she hated Hawk Moth more than she did everyone else

but she never really changed as a person outside of her hero work; she had her moments where her “bully-ness” seeped into her hero work, and moments where her hero-side seeped into her personal life

her losing her miraculous stemmed from her revealing her identity publicly, which was an attempt to gain admiration from the people she didn’t receive it from

I personally feel like Chloé’s rise and fall was well written; one of the few good things in her life was being Queen Bee, but due to circumstances she created, that was taken from her

when Hawk Moth then later approached her with the miraculous, she chose to accept it (like she’s 14, so her doing this is plausible imo; teens aren’t always making the best choices)

considering that Zoé’s transformation for Vesperia was storyboarded during S2, it wasn’t some random decision to take the miraculous away from Chloé; they most likely plotted Chloé’s arc and Zoé’s introduction prior to S2 even releasing

with that all being said, they HEAVILY butchered Chloé’s character in S4 and S5

I can understand where the upset surrounding Chloé comes from, but bottom line is that

1. it’s Astruc’s show. he wrote it intentionally, so Chloé not living up to the fandom’s expectations is the fandom’s problem, not Astruc or any of the other writers

2. there is always a possibility that Chloé does change in the future, but the more people complain about it, the less likely that’ll happen

[maddascanbe-blog]

So how are Chloe and Zoe in the Reborn Kwami AU? Does Chloe get a redemption arc? Do the two of them have a better relationship? or is it worse?

Their relationship is leaps and bounds better than in cannon thats for sure.

I mentioned is in this comic that after getting save by Asher, Luka takes a lot of time to try and push Chloe into being a better person. Because girls heart song is so lonely and he honestly can't stand it.

Chloe has a HUGE crush on Asher and is not exactly quiet about it. And actually listens when he essentially tells her that if she keeps painting a massive target on her head then a day might come than he wont be able to save her.

She chills out significantly so several of out Chloe charged Akuma like Dark Cupid, Reflecta, and Vanisher never happen. Though Chloe does eventually get akumatized after Asher lets her down easy and her mom shoots her down not so easy. Resulting in her akumatization. The working name is Trompeuse, but essentially she can take on the appearance and power of any miraculous user. She first attempts to use it to "save" her mother from a senti-monster that she herself controls. Then when that fails to impress, tries to get close to Asher using Rose Wing's form but the real thing shows up to shut that down.

Essentially Chloe was hoping by being like the heroes, she'd be someone worth loving.

AND THEN ZOE SHOWS UP!

Zoe and Chloe got in contact pretty soon after the school year started and both have mostly worked through the gut punch of the affair reveal. Zoe loves Chloe unconditionally, and while she doesn't defend her prior actions takes up the role of pushing Chloe to be better now that Asher feels its too cruel to stay close to her.

Zoe is very interested in the heroes and even learned a ton about them before coming to France. So she's much better prepared and is a low risk of akumatization. Good thing too- since our girl seems to know a little more than she's letting on.

[njtsuru]

Want some morning Chloenette? A Marinette already hopelessly in love and happy? A little bit of domestic fluff? The unsettling, persistent feeling that everything is going to end very badly very quickly?

Well, here's the most resent chapter of my fanfic "The Lonely Bugs of Paris" to cover all that!

I think from the outside it can be seen as a domestic one-shot. If you want context, or if you like it, you have 40 chapters of context to enjoy and suffer.

Here's the chapter on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58088797/chapters/175502831

[kohjooteshi]

Okay but does anyone remember when some ppl in the fandom believed that Chloe would have her redemption in s5 by noticing her reaction to Shadow Moth's victory at the end of s4? I also had this hope but the complete opposite happened, season 5 was where the writers wanted to say that Chloe was beyond redemption, that made me really sad, really, because I could still see potential in her character even if they say no so many times to her development.

[alwaysreading77]

Some Info on my Luka/Chloe fic

So, I should be posting chapter seven of Snake Venom in a few days, but before that, I feel like I should give a little overview of what exactly this fic is going to include in the future.

Snake Venom is a fanfic focusing on Chloe and Luka, where the two meet at the picnic in the final episode of season 2, in a universe where Chloe did not publicly reveal her identity as Queen Bee.

The two become friends, and over the course of the fic, maybe even more…

This fic also features:

Chloe’s redemption arc

Diving into both Chloe and Luka’s complicated relationships with their parents and their parents choices (specifically their relationships with Audrey and Jagged).

LOTS of Luka and Juleka moments

Background Ladynoir being cute

More shit parents aka, Gabriel Agreste

And eventually, a happy ending.

There’s gonna be angst. Theres gonna be yearning. Theres gonna be lots of random shenanigans.

You guys should join me ;)

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Oh, and this is the official summary I have on ao3 if anyone wants that.

Marinette clears her throat and manages to draw Chloe’s gaze away from the handsome, but poorly dressed new-arrival.

“Does anyone have a car I can borrow?” Chloe asks, already knowing the answer before everyone begins to shake their heads.

“You could borrow Alix’s roller blades,” someone suggests. Alix scoffs, letting a hand fall on her roller blades protectively.

“I could give you a ride.”

——

Luka takes Chloe home from the heroes day picnic.

Somehow, a simple act of kindness launches a fast friendship.

But is Chloe’s new friendship enough to keep her safe from Hawkmoth’s manipulation?

——

In other words, Chloe desereves a redemption arc, and Luka is too good of a character to only show up in three episodes a season. I couldn’t decide which I wanted to write about, so I wrote about both.