#lilademption

[flightfoot]

Genuinely want lila redemption fic at this point like I'd take anything over constant salt on characters who's greatest downfall was *checks notes* making basic human mistakes?

Honestly... yeah.

Like don’t get me wrong, Lila’s done some pretty bad stuff. I’ll happily salt on her for some things, there’s a REASON she’s an antagonist.

But as far as a driving need for her to get karma and comeuppance?

There was awhile when I sought those fics out, back during my first few months in the fandom. They were kinda fun and there were still those dangling plot threads from Chameleon to resolve.

But at THIS point?

Any revenge that could be gotten against her, HAS been a hundredfold, ESPECIALLY for her actions towards Marinette. There’s nothing new to see and any sort of desire for vengeance has long since been quenched.

I’ll still read and enjoy Lila-bashing fics, but that isn’t a selling point for me anymore. It’s been done. It’s been done a LOT. It’s been done to the point that there are whole GENRES, heck like, two whole mostly-separate FANDOMS dedicated to everything going on AROUND Chameleon and around Lila-bashing.

Lilademption at least hasn’t been done to death - at least not a Lilademption that isn’t focused on bashing other characters instead, because if the Lilademption fic is saying that say, Alya and most of the rest of the class are the REALLY heinous ones... well that’s worse.

I actually have a short little Lilademption-ish fic ready as my next entry in Divergent Points. Not so much because I have a burning desire to redeem her, but... I just don’t have a burning desire to destroy her either. I just want her to not be an issue anymore.

Oh yeah if you want a good Lilademption fic (well, sort of), I recommend Occam’s Razor by Flairina. I still remember how shocked the author was that the premise did not appear to actually have been done before, they expected it to be something that people had written a million times, but... nope. Anyway, highly recommend checking it out!

[flightfoot]

which one of these redemption that interest you most and why : chloe, gabriel, lila, alya, adrien

Alya and Adrien have done nothing bad enough that they need to ‘redeem’ themselves for it and thus, should not be on the list. If that’s the standard of ‘needing a redemption’ we’re at, then Marinette, Nino, Kagami, Plagg, Tikki - almost every other character in fact who’s had screentime and has done something that could conceivably be worthy of criticism, ought to be on the list as well.

(And no, that doesn’t mean I want to talk about redemption arcs for almost every named character in ML).

Onto the characters who do GENUINELY need redemptions:

Chloe: I generally like Chloedemptions so long as they aren’t combined with bashing other characters. She’s shown to be capable of compassion and to care a lot more than she lets on, especially with that message she left for Adrien in ‘Felix’ and her feelings about Ms. Bustier in Zombizou, along with breaking down in Malediktator and showing the audience that she WANTS to be useful but feels useless instead, that she DOES care about her father and feels terrible about helping to drive him to the point where he was vulnerable to akumatization, that she DOES care that her classmates hate her.

Chloé: It— it was me. I hurt my daddy's feelings. Because I want to leave Paris, forever.

Ladybug: Because of what happened in school? I'm sure Marinette probably didn't exactly mean what she said.

Chloé: Oh, it's not just her— actually, I don't even care about her— it's because I have no reason to be here: nobody likes me; I have no friends. I'm… useless.

Chloe is capable of compassion and caring, wants to have friends, but just... seems to have absolutely NO idea how to actually go about BEING a friend, and little idea what that really even means. Heck, she doesn’t even list SABRINA as a friend, which says something. 

Plus she’s a kid and... well. She’s screwed up BADLY and while I can see her taking the villain route, I’d far rather see her learn, even be taught, how to be a friend, what that even means, and how to get the sort of positive social relationships she’s craving. She doesn’t seem to understand HOW at this stage.

Lila: Don’t get me wrong, I don’t love Lila. Her very first appearance was her stroking her finger down Adrien’s chest while his eyes were as wide as saucers and he looked ready to bolt. But I’ve SEEN her punished a million times to some absurd extremes, and while she hasn’t shown much capacity for redemption so far - she needs a reason to WANT to improve first, to care about other people - I do want that for her. She is, ultimately, a kid, and I’d like to see her improve. Especially since I think vengeance has been meted out a lot already; it’s just been done to death.

Gabriel: SCREW GABRIEL. SCREW HIM SO HARD. The man’s a grown-ass ADULT, is responsible for every akumatization in the series, abuses and manipulates his son like W O W, even to the point where he willingly, KNOWINGLY BEATS HIM THROUGH THE ROOF OF THE CAVERN?! WITH A SMILE ON HIS FACE?! And uses him as a bargaining chip for manipulating Lila, even KNOWING how dangerous and awful she is, because he doesn’t give a CRAP about his son, just on how he can use people. SCREW. HIM.

I’ve seen a good redemption for Gabriel where he was at canonical levels of awful ONCE, with the “Butterflies and Bad Decisions” series, but he was put through the WRINGER first in that and fully realized and comprehended how terrible he truly was and became a genuinely much better person.

Aside from that? SCREW HIM HE CAN GO TO PRISON FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE.