Miraculous Ladybug Villains: Climatika
So, my first villain… Climatika in French, Stormy Weather in English. Climatika is of course a pun on the French word “climat” (climate) and “climatique” (climatic), with a -ka being added in the end to make it more aggressive (k), female (a) and maybe as a reference to Katrina, the dreadful hurricane.
Climatika is the archetypal “weather villain”. That is to say the villain that controls the weather. It dates back to the old mythologies, with the incarnations of the destructive forces of nature. Gods were using thunder and rain as a way to punish people, wipe out civilizations, and many cultures greatly feared the winds that brought with them coldness or storms. The north wind in Greek mythology, Boreas, was known to be a brutal and ruthless one. Zeus and Indra are both using thunder as a deadly weapon to punish people, and weren’t always depicted in myths as the kindest gods. The Japanese storm-god Susanoo was also a big troublemaker, going so far as to take part in murder, rapes and skinning ponies. And in the French folklore, both rain and frosts are often associated with witches and female demons, among other evil creatures.
The apparition of storms is also a common trope of evil. Whenever a bad action is done, you’re near a villain’s lair, a demon is released or any evil-doer is coming, dark clouds, rain, thunder, strong winds or a full storm will follow. The most famous horror-storms being, of course, the ones surrounding Dracula’s and doctor Frankenstein’s castle.
So anyway, it is no surprise to see villain’s control bad weather. They are after all one of the violent sides of nature. The wrath of the sky was always one of humanity’s greatest threat. You can fight someone who tries to attack you, you can flee from wild beasts, but what can you do against being struck by lightning?
However, what’s so unusual about Climatika is the amount of power she concentrates. Usually a villain’s controlling the weather controls only thunder/lighting or wind. Not both. And on top of that, you can add rain and hail. This makes her a truly powerful and impressive villain, with goddess-like powers.
Two small notes.
One, you can notice that she has a tendency to use ice and cold a lot. It is probably because she is the akumatized version of Aurore Beauréal whose name is a play on “aurore boréale” (aurora borealis), the beautiful “lights in the sky” that happens in the northern and cold countries, full of ice and snow.
Two, the fact that her akumatized item is an umbrella. It is for me strongly reminiscent of the Wicked Witch of the West, from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, because in the original book the Witch was always carrying with her an umbrella, and in some adaptations, it became her “magic item”. The Wizard of Oz, a story that involves a tornado/hurricane… See the link? And by the way, another interesting side note: in many European regions, the West Wind is seen as the bad one, not the North one, because the West wind brings all sorts of storms and rains.
Edit: Also, in May of this year (2018), some pictures of the Eiffel tower made the news, because during storms the tower was hit by lightning. You can go see them if you like.
Edit 2: The design of Climatika, especially the use of purple and its different shades may be a nod to Stormy, one of the Trix, a trio of evil witches in Winx Club (Stormy being, as her name indicates, a storm-controlling witch)
Edit 3: (Gosh, I’m sorry for the edits but I just have ideas that keep coming) I forgot to mention another typical example of weather-controlling villains. I don’t know their official name in English, so I’ll use the french word “les tempestaires”. A tempestaire is a kind of witch/wizard specialized in storm magic. They are part of the countryside European folklore, and they were one of the great fears of the old time, because they had the power to destroy all crops thanks to spells and curses that would create storms, hail, heavy rains or droughts, thus causing famines and misery. You can tell that they were considered as very dangerous and almost always as evil, often servants of the Devil.
