#Adrien will never be good enough

[yuttikkele]

one of these guys was advertised on an official Father’s Day post, can you guess who?

[voidfell]

Venn diagram with Francis Hunter and Adrien, Dani is between Francis and Adrien, Surge is between Francis and Hunter, Dudewhap is between Adrien and Hunter, and the RRB are in the middle, do you see my vision???

[ros3ybabes]

🎀 Workout Youtubers

I currently do exclusively pilates and yoga workouts from youtube. However, I've done other body weight workouts with various youtube videos and seen results in the past. Here is my list of workout youtubers that you could check out! I will put a * next to my personal favorites! I will include a short list of my current at home workout equipment at the end as well as some items I plan on buying soon!

With any workout program or routine, always be safe, check with your doctor if necessary, and if something doesn't feel good or right, don't do it! No matter what your goals are, it's always important to be safe and stay healthy. Please always take care of yourselves and know how beautiful, worthy and valuable you are no matter what! I love you all <333

🩷 Pilates

Move with Nicole * (also posts occasionally barre and yoga videos as well! I love her videos so so much)

Madeleine Abeid

IsaWelly

Pilatesbodyraven

Lidia Mera

Lottie Murphy

Amanda Blauer

Margaret Elizabeth

Jessica Valant Pilates

Bailey Brown

Dansique Fitness

Flow with Mira

Sivi (she's began posting some pilates inspired workouts and to my knowledge is currently getting certified as an instructor)

🩷 Yoga

Yoga with Adriene *

Yoga with Bird

Boho Beuatiful Yoga

🩷 Bodyweight Fitness/Strength/HIIT

Chloe Ting * (I don't like the click bait, but I like the workouts)

Blogilates

Pamela Reif *

Madfit *

Lilly Sabri * (Some of her videos are titled with pilates, but the older ones I used to do were not pilates, so I categorized her here)

Emi Wong

Shirlyn Kim

Vivian Yuan

April Han

growingannanas

growwithjo * (I love her walking workouts)

Hinafit

Mish Choi

Sami Clarke

Elenifit

Coach Kel (she posts what looks like more barre, ballet, pilates inspored/fusion workouts it seems)

Caroline Girvan

TRAIN WITH GAINSBYBRAINS

Daisy Keech

🎀 Current At Home Workout Equipment I Own

Thick Yoga Mat - since I do mainly yoga and pilates my thick yoga may (amazon brand) has served me well. Even tho I am a heavier woman at the moment, I've never had pain or any issues with this mat, and it came with a carry strap which I love! A good, thick workout mat is definitely necessary for working out at home for comfort, safety, etc. Make sure to disinfect it on occasion, especially if you sweat on it a lot!

Resistance Bands - I have about 3 or 4 at different resistance strengths, and they're incredibly useful for a variety of movements, especially lower body ones. They add some extra resistance and make the workouts a bit more challenging when you need something more advanced. I also got mine from Amazon/Walmart a while back. I prefer fabric over rubber because I like to wear workout shorts instead of workout leggings.

Pilates Ball - not a necessity, but useful with some pilates workouts and movements. I have seen sole videos using this, but am not advanced enough to try it on my own yet. Will use for sure once I'm more advanced.

3lb dumbbells - I thought these would be useful for the pilates workouts that had some upper body focus, and as someone who wants to develop a lean and toned upper body, they are perfect for low weight high rep, controlled movements. Again, not advanced enough to use as I want to master my form, but they're gonna come in handy for sure!

Foam Roller - so so good for stretching and muscle recovery on rest days. I love mine but want one that has the bump things on it to help my muscles more. I can imagine how good it'll feel on my legs during a recovery day when I begin wieght lifting again.

Massage Gun - my holy grail for the days I am sore and needing some recovery. my body feels like jelly after using this, and it's just so nice for the days my muscles feel extra tight and super sore.

🎀 Equipment I Want To Buy

Yoga Blocks - these will help me get deeper into the yoga poses once I get more advanced in my practice

Pilates Ring - this honestly looks so fun and challenging to use, I'd love to add it to my collection of useful workout equipment!

Jump Rope - I used to love this as a form of cardio and as long as I don't move into an upstairs apartment, I'm definitely buying one

Pilates Bar - still iffy on this one, it's supposed to mimic a reformer but I want to get better at mat pilates and see if I even end up ever needing or seriously wanting to buy it, its on my list tho

Ankle/Wrist weights - these are gonna be so useful for workouts where hand held dumbbells aren't useful. Want to buy some low weight ones just to help with resistance and extra strength during pilates workouts

Kettlebell weight - I think this would be useful for a workout at home type situation if and when I switch to not doing just pilates and yoga. I know these are useful in their own right, but not needed in my current fitness stage of life.

Core Sliders - these look fun and interesting. They're on my lost for sure, but not sure about the practicality of their use in my life just yet.

That's all that's currently on my at home workout equipment list! As someone who primarily works out at home, the things I currently own are most useful and most of what's on this list is for fun or extra challenge. Just not necessary yet.

hope you enjoyed this list! if you have any questions about my favorite youtuber workout instructors or favorite videos, please feel free to ask, I've tried so many and can give some guidance from my own experience and research.

til next time lovelies 🩷

[servicpop]

NOW STARRING : deliquent (almost) bf (Adrien) x good student reader

「ㅤNSFWㅤ」ㅤAdrien gets a bit lonely and pulls reader under the staircase during break!

✙ warnings — semi-public sex, masturbation, orgasm denial, reader isn't 100% submissive, dirty talk / like 2 sentences of degradation and praise / not actually dating / slight internalised homophobia / mentions of bisexual Adrien

notes ,, first smut, hope I did well -> part 1 | not proofread!

"Fuck— keep quiet alright?"

When Adrien left a cryptic text message saying to meet underneath the staircase, you at first thought you had done something wrong and he was going to beat you up for whatever you did. But, turns out — it was a really silly reason — that Adrien saw this couple making out underneath the tree they had and he wanted to experience something like that with you. Obviously because friends help friends right?

Underneath the staircase was quite dim and almost eerie. It wasn't as romantic as kissing underneath a cherry blossom tree but when have you two ever been the cheesy romantic type? When you arrived, he pulled you in close, wrapping his arms around you like he had been reunited with his long lost lover — which wasn't too far off since he truly believed that you two dated in a previous life. When he hugged you, you tried to act nonchalant, you tried to ignore the warmth that his chest gave off or how safe you felt in his stupdily built arms. Friends aren't supposed to feel like this to eachother, especially if both parties are men!

"Did you call me over just to hug?" You chuckled softly, fighting every bone in your body to not hug him back. You gotta be strong, you can't fall for a deliquent bad boy, it's too cliché.

"I called you over to fuck."

"Wait, what?"

You felt Adrien's hand grip the back of your head, pulling your hair hard enough to tilt your chin up but not hard enough to hurt (he can't be hurting his precious boy). His chapped lips met yours, it was obvious that he didn't take very good care of his lips but that didn't matter, you'd help him out later. The kiss was rough and almost experimental as if Adrien had never kissed another in his life — which was wrong seeing how he's had multiple girlfriends in the past — he seemed almost hesitant, unsure.

Fuck it. Just this once you'd give in to Adrien, but that doesn't mean you were dating him!

You wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him closer as you prod your tongue against his lips, you figured you would demonstrate how to kiss properly to him, he was a hands on learner after all. His eyes widened slightly and his hands dropped to your waist, supporting your balance as he hesitantly opened his mouth, letting your tongue explore. It was weird because usually he'd be the one always taking control but your occasional leading was a breath of fresh air.

After awhile he pulled away with a smirk, "I got it," he replied before picking you up and forcing you to rely on him for stability. A small squeak left your throat as you were hoisted up in the air and pressed against the wall, your legs instinctively wrapped around Adrien's waist. He kissed you again except this time he took dominance, roughly exploring your mouth, poking and prodding at anything he could find. He was so rough that you hadn't noticed his belt come off until the metal clinked on the ground, then you realised what was poking at your ass.

Shit, he was big. Not necessarily in length but girth and thickness, it was practically the perfect all-rounder.

"Wait— Adrien, condom?" You stuttered, the fear finally settling in now. Its not like you were a virgin, just that you've never had someone like... Adrien. His eyes met yours in slight disappointment but he didn't want to go too far on his first time with you, plus, he wasn't even dating you so why would he go so far? Shaking off his thoughts he nodded, rummaging in his pocket for one while keeping you pressed against the cold wall.

"Jerk me off first? The latex gets uncomfortable to put on," He put on a fake pout, letting you stand as he held his throbbing cock out for you to see. You huffed, he was definitely lying but you'd humour him. Just for today.

You reached down, your warm palm engulfing his tip and he let out a low grown in response. Your thumb rubbed against his slit and a smile cracked onto your face when you saw the pre-cum leaking out already. His forearms caged you in as his head hung low, you could see his eyebrows furrowing and the way his face contorted in pleasure. Adrien's hips grinded up into your fist, matching your rhythm as you stroked his cock, gripping tighter at the base before swirling your thumb on his tip. It was almost like you were massaging his climax out.

"S-shit how are you so good with your hands," He sucked in air between his teeth as he hissed, groans and low moans slipped out of his mouth like water. Eager hips bucked up into your fist, chasing his release. "Close, fuck��" He cursed under his breath, his hips almost slamming into your hand, his body trembed as he was so close. His eyes flew open as he looked down to see your thumb covering his urethral opening, denying him of an orgasm, "Wh–?"

"That's enough isn't it? It should slip on easily now," You grinned, taking the condom from his hand and ripping it open with your fingers, rolling the rubber over his now overly sensitive dick. He stared in disbelief, you just... denied him? Him? Oh you were getting it now.

"You little pervert," Adrien chuckled darkly as he whipped you around, pressing your chest against the wall and holding your arms behind your back. It wasn't the most comfortable position ever but your uncomfort was interrupted when he pulled your pants down with your boxers. It was embarassing to say the least, showing off your ass like this to another guy, you were glad you had to face the wall, otherwise you might’ve crumbled from embarrassment if you saw how hungry Adrien looked.

He was teasing you. Edging you. Slipping his cock along your entrance but never actually pushing in. You were dying of anticipation because from your position, it was hard to see anything other than the walls. A surprised and embarrassingly loud moan slipped out and you'd cover your mouth if it wasn't for Adrien's hand binding your wrists together. Adrien had slammed his hips into you, his cock buried deep inside you. No warning no nothing, he was truly cruel. One hand was gripping your hip while the other hand let go of your wrists, you were finally able to stabilise yourself against the wall but long fingers thrusted their way into your mouth. Well this was new.

You gagged slightly around his fingers as you tried to say something about it but your words were blocked by Adrien's middle and ring finger. His hips also began to pick up speed, pulling out almost fully before slamming back in. You were kind of thankful for his thick fingers blocking and muffling your moans or else people were sure to catch you two fucking like bunnies underneath the staircase.

He leaned down so that his chest was flush against your back and the hand that was gripping your hip turned into his arm linking around your waist as he held you close. Adrien's breath fanned your ear before he spoke, "You know those– puppy bandages you gave me yesterday?" His question was broken from panting and groans as he kept thrusting. "Where did you buy them? I– fuck– want them," Adrien chuckled.

You would answer if you didn't have two fingers stuffed in your throat. "You know... good boys don't gatekeep, you don't wanna be good for me?" Fuck. You were never the one for praise but that? That made you cum on the spot. Your knees gave out as your poor cock spurted out white but Adrien was already keeping you up right. He laughed, his gravelly laugh travelled straight through your ears and to your cock. He smiled against your shoulder, almost like he was hugging you from behind, he quickly came after you. Shame that it wasn't inside you but it would do for now.

You both panted, and he took this opportunity of vulnerability from you to sink his teeth into your skin, eliciting a small gasp from you, "What the fuck Adrien?" The bell rung, indicating that break was over and you whined, fixing your uniform before pulling your boxers and your pants up, wincing from the weird sticky feeling from not cleaning up. Adrien was already dressed and he waved you off, quickly running off to a spot where he could skip the next few classes with his friends. You'd have to fix yourself up in the bathroom later.

BONUS

"Did you seriously cum from my praise?

"No, it's just a normal reaction."

"Who's a good boy?"

"Fuck you..."

"Nope! Never letting you top."

"I didn't mean it like that!"

♡

notes ,, the smut wasn't as detailed as I wanted it to be but I get fics done in like a day so I didn't want it to be so long, anyways! That's adrien, I'll be working on a fic for my next oc "

[ninadove]

Felix being Adrien’s flawed copy is good and smart and beautiful and a fandom favourite but honestly. Honestly. We’re not making good enough use of the information canon gave us. Namely that:

Felix is the Graham de Vanily heir, while Adrien is the son of a nouveau riche (ergo a commoner) and a prodigal child: the ultimate sign of his family’s decadence is that he has to work (ew).

Felix was born out of jealousy towards his cousin: Colt would have designed (or at least, meant to design) his child to be superior in all aspects.

Felix wasn’t always this serious, ring-stealing, people-snapping antagonist we have grown to love and cherish: at heart, he’s a theatre kid and a magician. He’s associated with the sun and the colour white and golden tones, while Adrien is linked to the moon and black and silver accents.

For all his identity stealing shenanigans, Felix has a strong sense of self (see: Representation) while Adrien has no clue who he actually is and/or wants to be when he grows up (see: the entire series).

What I’m saying is: Adrien as Felix’s first draft. Adrien who grew up in the spotlight, but never shone as bright as his noble, curious, quick-witted cousin; Adrien who loved Felix’s stories and plays and magic tricks, and does not understand why his cousin grew quieter as the years went by; Adrien desperately trying to fill in the blanks with jokes and puns, only for them to fall flat, because he simply isn’t Felix.

Adrien as Felix’s first draft.

[pigeonentity]

au where gabriel uses the peacock instead of emilie, and she's the one left with two miraculous and a child

she inherits the gabriel brand. it's her brand now, ppl have to know it or it doesnt count, but changing name and logo isnt great for business-- people want to buy gabriel, not emilie, so the g is now for graham de vanily. she and adrien change their last names to match, and soon she is cleaning them from gabriel entirely, before his death can stain her as gabriel's emilie, rather than just emilie. she needs them to love her. she cared for gabriel, but she has no use for a husband who can't love anything anymore

she starts dating nathalie to finish cutting all ties with him. it isnt really fair on her, emilie just needs her to tell ppl she's moved on. but it's good to know she's beaten gabriel in one more bid for devotion

its funny. she never resented him much in life. in death, she notes he has more billboards than her up in the city. her billboards now, but theyre his. in death, she sees him over her shoulder in her mirror. she gets cast as a grieving widower in her next performance. she gets the hint. she seizes the hint and throws it out the window. she takes the role and pushes for more agency for her character. she cannot be truly loved without her agency

speaking of. adrien doesnt get to go to school. he follows her around most days, and he smiles when she asks. he never took to the stage, but he's an actor in his own right, in his own way. and he's hers.

and it's not enough. nathalie's love grows lazy as emilie breaks up to cause a scandal. they script it out themselves. nathalie watches adrien out the window. emilie kisses her to turn her gaze back. adrien is always in the garden. she tells him to come inside. she tells him to love her. it used to feel less hollow.

she wishes she could be sure it was all true

she wishes.

she wishes, and nathalie is warmer when they have a mission, so emilie know this is the right thing to do. they know what they have, and what they need, for a wish

emilie transforms, and makes a monster of someone's love

suddenly, the whole world is watching

two girls come out with the cat and ladybug. adrien is safe at home. two girls come out and they're heroes and they're here for her. for her!

nooroo loves her. nooroo says that, at least. she could care less, busy in the glory of her enemies' company, drunk on magic, having the time of her life with a purpose reborn. this is where she is meant to be-- centre stage, on every screen. they set their phones to notify them of her presence. it's always a surprise and they're always quick to know. the news loves to see what she makes. nathalie says she's straying from her goal, if she cares. the people say she's a monster. they just don't understand love

in the end-- in the end the heroes practically offer themselves up to her. there are more of them by then. she wasnt expecting it to be so soon, or she would have dressed for the occasion. would have made a spectacle of it. adrien had been dragged into their circle. they chose a bad miraculous for him. she shouldn't have let him stray from his mother

they're just tired of her. it's been a year and emilie graham de vanily is a recluse. butterfly attacks are constant and emilie barely exists anymore. it was beautiful, though. but they're tired of her. they're sick and they hurt and it's her fault, they say. they're breaking and it's her fault. that's love, isn't it? isn't it? it tastes beautiful. she built this all out of love, do they know that? the feelings just look so heavy and pretty and she's so good at making them hurt.

we're tired, they say, again

she takes their miraculous. she gets to her wish. what did she want to wish for again? love. she wanted love.

she sees gabriel again. it's been too long. she didn't like that love. when it left she had nothing. he was everywhere, and-- he was nowhere. she doesn't think about that often. but it hurt. she didn't like that love

does she want real love? she had a family and one's dead and one's a traitor and one's torn and one's in england and who the fuck knows what happened to the rest of them

the spotlights were good, though. she danced so well. the heroes are all still watching. they want to know what she wants. they're interested.

in her.

she wishes. she wishes for it to never end

so it never does.

[copdog1234]

Man, I was watching the movie and the entire time I was thinking "Wow. This would've been so much more satisfying in the show" because the show has earned it. The show's writing is far from perfect, it has many, many flaws, but my god is it far better than Miraculous Awakening will ever be. And I'll tell you why.

I will preface by saying, yes, an hour and a half movie has way less time than a TV show with several episodes to build up characters and relationships, so time constraints will make it so we may not get as much depth in the on-screen relationships.

You know what, though? The time they spent playing mediocre songs could've been used better to show us all the things the songs had to outright tell us. Cause that was the problem.

The movie sure liked telling us how the characters were feeling. It rarely showed it. Like could you tell me why movie Marinette liked Adrien? Because I couldn't. What did he do to earn her affection beside look pretty? Why did we only get a montage of them getting closer instead of actually seeing it? Or how we never really see much of Gabriel and Adrien's struggles with the loss of Emilie, we simply get glimpses. How am I supposed to feel anything when Gabriel stops being Hawk Moth when this movie showed us literally nothing of their strained relationship? And then there's Gabriel's claim that he did absolutely everything to get Emilie back. No he didn't. He did actually nothing. He freed a couple of criminals and then akumatized himself. That's it. That's all he did.

Could you tell me why Alya decided to befriend Marinette? Could you tell me why Adrien "who decided not to get close to anyone" was friends with Nino? Could you tell me why Chloe was so confident Adrien had any interest in her when they never actually interacted?

And then there wasnt enough explanation on how anything that we should've been told worked. Could anyone really tell me how these versions of the miraculous work? Or why Master Fu was in possession of them? Or why they really chose their holders? Could you tell me if the kwami had much personality and were necessary?

Like, I will say, there were funny moments, the animation was nice, and there were cool set pieces, but where was the substance?? It was nonexistent. If you don't watch the show, would you know or feel anything for what was going on in this movie?

Cause even for me, who does watch the show, I didn't.

Think about this. The show has even faked out multiple reveals to me and every time I was hyped and screaming, I have read fanfiction of these same to characters falling in love and confessing every which way and I've swooned, but we get reveals and love confessions that are real and permanent in this movie and I felt. Nothing.

It's okay if yall disagree with me, but I just needed to get this off my chest. I'm hard on this movie because I wanted it to be good because I love the characters and story from the show.

[ijustliketoreadstuff]

The life Lila wants

It's interesting when Lila drops her persona and shows true emotion. Her desire to be admired isn't just a need for attention, she is desperate to be seen as a treasure among society. Lila lies about having everything, but in reality, she has nothing. 

Lila has always been good at getting what she wants through lying and maintaining those lies, but all her adventurous travels and life of fame was still just that, a lie. However, by working for Gabriel, she was able to make a big part of her lie a reality by becoming a model for the Agreste brand, then later an avatar for the alliance rings, allowing her to be recognized by the world and finally obtain the fame she always spoke of, all in exchange for acting as Gabriel's spy into Adrien's life and committing to separating him from those Gabriel considered "bad influences", specifically Marinette.

Naturally, in "Emotion", the moment she discovered from Kagami that Gabriel saw her as a common stone, rather than a diamond worthy enough to go to the diamonds dance, an event where Gabriel invited the rich and powerful along with their heirs and heiresses, Lila felt wronged. Despite not being related to Gabriel, Lila had deemed herself someone who was entitled to be viewed on equal grounds as the prestige's people Gabriel invited, and since her agreement with Gabriel involved being brought into a world of high society, Lila had assumed she was now officially part of that world by becoming an image of the Agreste brand and had to be upheld in the same regard as Adrien, Kagami and Chloe.

The realization that Gabriel never viewed her as a treasure within his company, but rather someone who was no different than a common perfume bottle his company advertised, struck a big nerve with Lila. She detested being treated like someone who could be easily forgotten and discarded. However, it was her ongoing attempts to repeatedly contact Gabriel about going to the Diamonds dance that made her whole mysterious background even more questionable, as we have never seen her show such concern for not being included in something.

Lila's background continues to elude everyone, but her determination to ensure she is recognized as someone who is far more valuable than a perfume bottle or any normal person for that matter, feels like she is actively seeking out a means to escape her true life, whatever it may really be, and permanently become the girl she spoke of in her lies. We may not know much about Lila's true life, but the fact that she always refers to herself as someone who has accomplished so much and is recognized by so many, does leave the impression that Lila has a dislike for her true identity and what little her real life has provided for her.

Added note: No, Lila does not hate Marinette because she is jealous of her life. Lila hates Marinette because she is a threat. Marinette wants to expose Lila and refused to adhere to Lila’s demands to stay quiet and not get in her way, so now Lila aims to ruin her life.

[wisteriasymphony]

Adrien Agreste and Alya Cesaire had been neck-and-neck in grades ever since he'd spawned out of nowhere that first day of lycée. Given she was always trying to balance her excessive livejournal usage and expensive comics collecting with equal amount of parent-pleasing displays of "applying herself", Alya always had something to prove with her grades: Adrien, conversely, seemed like he only had something to maintain.

He was perfect, suspiciously perfect—Always raised his hand first, never spoke unless spoken to, and spent every lunch reading alone no matter who invited him to what table. It was that air of well-kept, polite mysteriousness (and a jawline that could cut glass) that apparently swept Alya's good friend Marinette head over heels. But Alya had never been someone to take a person at their word. Good journalism means more than just believing, it means proving.

And there was no proof in the world so far that Adrien's teflon shell was more than skin deep. Quite the contrary, actually.

It had been in their last French Literature class, on a dreary Tuesday morning still shaking off the rain from the night before. Nothing good ever happens on Tuesdays: They either surprise you on Monday to make up for the week beginning, or they show up on Wednesday to push you through the rest of it. The point was, Alya wasn't expecting to get much joy out of recent test results to begin with.

She studied the paper. Sixteen, Trés bien. One of the best possible marks in the class, which was standard fare. Seventeens and eighteens and even nineteens were ludicrous, and, as many teachers were pleased to put it, "a twenty is perfection, and none of you are God". Sixteen was great. Alya tapped the back of her pen on the paper, right beside the red ink sixteen, and looked over to where Marinette and Nino sat. They were talking with the others, Nathaniel and Juleka and such—Fourteens, Fifteens, Fourteen-point-twos and so on. Not as good as Alya, but still good enough. Her friends didn't need to chase after grades the way she did, so their platitudes about the numbers being trivial was refreshing.

Of course, then Adrien walked past. He had been sat in the back of the class for the entire year as if lording over the other students with a watchful eye. Every time he made his way up or down the steps, students would turn their head as if his mere presence was some grand procession. It wasn't just that he had gotten sixteen-point-three that angered Alya. (But sixteen point three was bad enough. Sixteen point three! Apparently there was some magically insightful commentary that Mme. Bustier thought was worth him beating Alya out by three points. Unbelievable.)

In a split second, Alya could swear Adrien glanced at Alya's paper and then to her, and—though nobody would ever believe her on it, not even for a second—she had heard the quietest, most imperceptible scoff.

"He's an asshole!' Alya had proclaimed to Marinette later that week, in between shoving Dupain-Cheng cookies in her mouth. "I swear it's all an act. I know what I heard."

"Alya," Marinette pouted. "This is Adrien we're talking about. The guy who can't even bring himself to squash spiders?" "Him bringing spiders outside doesn't necessarily mean anything," Alya retorted. "Assholes can still like spiders." "Well... Maybe it wasn't him that day. Maybe he has a secret evil twin or something, and it wasn't him there after all." Alya plucked another cookie from the plate Mme. Cheng had given them, taking a furious bite of it. "Now that's just unrealistic."

Marinette only shrugged. Alya continued to simmer while chewing on her cookie. She could practically imagine Adrien's words to his father now: "Alya got sixteen because that's all she could get. I got sixteen-point-three because that's all there was to get." Point three, point three, point three. He didn't need that extra point three. For what it was worth, he didn't need good grades at all! Adrien could just as easily continue modeling for the rest of his life.

"I need to catch him slipping up somehow," Alya muttered. "Show him I'm not falling for this 'Immaculate Mr. Perfect' charade of his."

"Well, if that's what you want to do." Marinette grabbed a cookie of her own, adding "But I don't know if you're going to get anywhere. He really is that perfect."

[binniesunderworld]

How Gabriel Agreste Destroyed Adrien's Life: A 3 a.m. Analysis

From: ‘I enrolled in a school without my father's permission, I ran away from home to attend the first day of school and although I don't want my father to be angry with me, I'm not afraid of a punishment either because I KNOW there won't be one’.

To: ‘My girlfriend is alone with my father, with no one to protect her, completely defenceless. I NEED TO SAVE HER’.

One knows that his father is a good person who, no matter how angry he is, would never hurt him. The other doesn't, it's the opposite, he is no longer sure of anything, he fears for the safety of those he loves and is so terrified that he is about to have a panic attack.

But how did we get from the first to the second?

How Gabriel Agreste's abuse managed to completely change his son in a matter of days

People don't remember this because it happened a long time ago and has not been repeated, but Adrien used to be a NORMAL person, not as perfect as he is now. While he has always been kind and polite, there were also times when he allowed himself to be a bit hostile and not as perfect as we are used to seeing him (as Adrien, not as Chat Noir). Usually that ‘good boy’ facade was only used in front of his father and Nathalie, but in front of his friends he behaved like a normal teenager, even becoming a bit teasing, self-centred and rebellious. "The Bubbler", "Animan", "Kung Food" and "Evillustrator" being the clearest examples of these behaviours, in particular towards Nino, Chloé and Marinette.

In S1 it becomes clear that the only conflict Adrien has with his father is the fact that he does not give him as much freedom as Adrien would like. Apart from this, Adrien has no other problems with him and considers him to be a good father. There are several of Adrien's behaviours that suggest that Gabriel's overprotectiveness towards him was the only thing wrong with him, but that otherwise Gabriel was excellent. It is time for us to look at that.

1. Origins

Adrien literally enrolled in a school without his father's permission and when his father refused to approve Adrien's attendance, he ran away from home and went running to school. When Nathalie tries to convince him to come back Adrien simply says ‘this is what I want’ and turns around to continue up the stairs, not caring if she has anything else to say. He hears that someone needs help and immediately goes to their aid, and as soon as he finishes doing that he turns to Nathalie and the bodyguard with a charming smile expecting to see their proud faces, and when instead he sees that they are still angry he is immediately horrified and gives up.

This tells us a lot about Adrien: he is a spoilt child who has never been punished in his life, and when things get difficult his first reaction is to be adorable or do a good deed to be forgiven. Adrien intended to leave Nathalie talking to herself, and he wasn't worried about the idea of being punished when he got home from school because he knew it wasn't likely to happen. He then helps someone to ingratiate himself with Nathalie and the bodyguard so that they will stop being angry, and when he realises that it didn't work he is surprised. He is used to people forgiving his disobedience just because he is cute. He immediately gives up and asks Nathalie not to tell Gabriel. While he didn't want his father to be angry with him, he also didn't fear punishment because he knew he wouldn't get it.

Later, at the mansion, Adrien realises that Nathalie did tell Gabriel and he feels betrayed, as if he didn't expect her to do that. Basically, he is not used to people disobeying him. Gabriel again forbids Adrien from going to school but it's nothing he hasn't said before: Gabriel reprimands Adrien's behaviour with words, never with punishment, and there comes a point when words are no longer enough and Adrien is no longer afraid of them, hence he becomes ‘rebellious’. The next day Adrien runs away again and, surprise surprise, he is not punished, in fact he is rewarded. Despite having disobeyed his father again, he is rewarded and allowed to go to school, even Nathalie (whom he treated very badly) offers to help him. This reward is without explanation, just because. I'm not saying Adrien deserved to be locked up for life at home, at the end of the day he's just a teenager who wants to socialise with more people, but it's clear he was a spoilt child whose behaviours both good and bad were praised, just like Chloé and Felix, so if you ever wondered why he was such good friends with them, here's your answer.

2. The Bubbler

Here we get confirmation of how Adrien is a good boy only in front of his father and Nathalie, and how he is himself in front of his friends. At the beginning of the episode he together with Nino makes fun of his father because he does not agree to throw him a birthday party. Then, when Nino is akumatized, he at first refuses to be part of the party because he cares about Nino and wants to save him. Even when he realises that all the adults are trapped in bubbles, he never cares about his father, Nathalie or his bodyguard, only about saving Nino. And then he also gives up on this idea after a little chat with Plagg and says: "Okay, you're right. This might be the first day in my life that I actually get to do what I want for once", and Adrien joins the party without any show of consideration for the adults he knows.

Although all these behaviours were forgotten by the fandom, they are important to understand Adrien's character and how he changed due to his father's abuse. This is the normal behaviour of a teenager with a bit of a grudge: he's not a psychopath who wants something bad to happen to his father, he's a kid who knows that in the end he and his superhero partner will fix everything and he allows himself to have fun in the meantime. But it's something the current Adrien would never do, and there's where the difference lies.

3. Volpina & The Collector

This is the last episode in which we see Adrien acting like a normal teenager. He overhears Gabriel talking on the phone and decides to spy on him, then discovers that he has a safe behind his mother's portrait and out of curiosity goes to investigate. Adrien discovers the book and takes it with him, when he is discovered he quickly makes up a lie. RIP pre-lobotomised Adrien, you will always be missed.

This is the key point in the change of behaviour of both Adrien and Gabriel.

Gabriel confronts Adrien and he immediately gives an explanation in a tone of voice intended to generate sympathy:

—I just wanted to know what you were hiding behind that portrait that was so important.

This doesn't work so he resorts to blaming Gabriel himself:

—You.. you never told me about those things.

And this doesn't work either, so he decides to admit what he did but also looks for a way to justify himself:

—I was intending to give it back to you, I swear. But then I lost it.

Gabriel tells Adrien that he no longer trusts him, and what is Adrien's reaction? He just looks jaded and apologises to Gabriel, in an attitude that makes it clear that he is used to apologising to make things right, that he is not genuinely sorry, and also offers to buy him a new copy, confident that this will be enough for Gabriel to forgive him. This confirms the previous point: Adrien is used to getting out of his punishments just because he looks cute or does a good deed, and this became so repetitive that Adrien already knew how to get out of a punishment, and was not afraid of his father but simply tired of scolding that went nowhere. Again, there is no fear of consequences.

Everything changes completely when Gabriel tells him that this book is unique in the world, that there is no other copy. Apologies didn't work and the other form of redemption, buying him a copy, wasn't possible. Then is when Adrien's face changes completely to horror: he has just understood the magnitude of his mistake. His father punishes him by forbidding him to go back to school and Adrien is heartbroken, but does not try to reason with his father (as he had done, and many times, in past episodes). This is the birth of the Adrien we know now: from a normal boy to a submissive puppet. He knows that there is no way to redeem himself and that is why he decides not to fight, he finally realises that his actions have consequences, serious ones, taking away what is most precious to him: his freedom.

From here on we see a completely changed Adrien, from a rebellious teenager to a perfect doll with no thoughts of his own. Before, he pretended to be perfect only in front of his father, Nathalie and his bodyguard. Now he pretends to be perfect in front of everyone, regardless of whether he knows them or not. The trauma can be clearly seen: Adrien adopts this neat behaviour because he is afraid that his freedom will be taken away if his father finds out that he made another mistake. Now Adrien knows that he CAN be punished. He doesn't even allow himself to breathe in peace because of all the stress and fear he carries. And so it is that Adrien becomes a puppet unable to stop pretending even in front of his own friends: we go from an Adrien who was not afraid to react strangely to Marinette's odd behaviour, who was not afraid to tease Nino about his crush and who was not afraid to put Chloé in her place when the situation warranted it, to an Adrien who could not even keep his back bent for fear that his father would consider it inappropriate.

Gabriel Agreste being a shitty father and exploiting his son's weaknesses to profit from them

Despite being strict with Adrien, there were times when Gabriel let him spend time with his friends and have fun with them. In fact, in S1 there are several of these, most of them to be found there (before all the drama).

In ‘Animan’ he is in the zoo helping Nino with his date with Marinette.

In ‘Gamer’ he is playing video games for the school championship at Marinette's house.

In ‘Kung Food’ he comes to Marinette's house to help her with her uncle and even takes them to the hotel and stays for dinner with them, he spends practically the whole day away from home.

In ‘Horrificator’ he spends many hours filming the movie for the school.

In ‘The puppeteer’ he is going somewhere alone and relaxed.

In ‘Timebreaker’ he is present during the race between Alix and Kim.

As you can see, despite being strict, Gabriel sometimes let his son spend time with his friends. When did this change? After the book incident. After forbidding Adrien to attend school, Gabriel noticed how heartbroken he was and realised that school and his friends were not a whim for Adrien, but something he truly cherished. And Gabriel used these feelings to manipulate Adrien. In S1, before the incident, Adrien is more ‘rebellious’ and still has enough freedom to be with his friends. In S2, after the incident, Adrien behaves much better than in S1 and still doesn't have half as much freedom as before, and when he finally gets his father's permission to be with his friends, something happens at the last minute (Heroes Day Part 2, for example). This is because his father has discovered his Achilles' heel and uses it to benefit himself and manipulate Adrien.

The clearest proof of this is in the difference between ‘Horrificator’, where Gabriel let Adrien spend hours in the school filming the movie, and ‘Queen Banana’, where Gabriel let Adrien go for only a few minutes to the filming and right after he finished his part he literally left in a cage hanging from a helicopter. It is clear the pleasure that man developed in making his son miserable.

And we could talk about ‘Chat Blac’ and ‘Ephemeral’, but I won't touch those topics as they are not part of our timeline. I'll just say that they made it clear how far Gabriel is willing to go (literally traumatise Adrien) in order to get what he wants. What I think, is sick.

Adrien's Stockholm Syndrome: normalisation, justification and romanticisation, and how it makes him vulnerable to unhealthy relationships

1. Gabriel

We have already made it clear that Adrien became an uncritical puppet, and as a result he developed a terrible Stockholm syndrome. Adrien normalised all the manipulation, and by accepting it as something usual this caused him to start justifying it as well. Needless to name the episodes, in many of them there is always someone (usually Nino, Marinette or Plagg) who points out his father's problematic behaviour and Adrien immediately tries to justify it with ‘he does it because he loves me’ or ‘he just wants to protect me’. This shows us a big difference from the Adrien of S1 who was aware of his father's behaviour and even made fun of it, the current Adrien would never do that, on the contrary, he seems to live to justify Gabriel's actions. That's how serious the brainwashing is.

With Gabriel's behaviours now normalised and justified, they in turn begin to be romanticised. Despite being a shitty person, there are moments when Gabriel treats Adrien well: like when he hugs him (something Adrien is not used to), his worried words to Chat Noir about losing Adrien, or when he watches his mother's movie with him. These are all details that if they weren't accompanied by manipulation, anyone could call ‘cute’. And this makes Adrien unaware of the manipulation at first: his own denial and the kind details his father had for him confused his brain. Adrien did not think that his father could be so kind to him if he was a bad person, and that is why Adrien refused to consider him as such. This is a method of self-defence against dangerous situations, the feelings developed by this are not only romantic but any kind of feelings that are enough to make the victim feel safe in dangerous environments.

2. Kagami and Marinette

Let's start with Adrigami. Adrien didn't show a strong interest in Kagami until the chapter ‘Oni-Chan’ where he even rejects Ladybug's fist to make sure Kagami is okay, but what led to this? The romanticisation of obsession and control.

Kagami is simply Adrien's friend, but when she sees a photo of him with another girl, she gets so jealous that she is akumatized and starts chasing this other girl to get her away from Adrien. This is behaviour that is bad as a girlfriend, but even worse as a friend. Adrien doesn't take this seriously and even spends the whole fight making jokes instead of worrying that one of her friends is a jealous girl who is willing to kill for him even if they don't have any kind of commitment. Then, when he sees that Kagami still has the rose he gave her, his behaviour immediately changes and you could say that this is when he starts to feel a real attraction to her, even rejecting Ladybug's fist, whom he had long been in love with.

Here we see how dangerous the romanticisation of problematic behaviour is: Adrien is willing to let go of all the chaos Kagami caused and all her toxic behaviour just because she showed that she really ‘loved him’. And he reciprocates her feelings because he finds it cute that someone is in love with him enough to go crazy. The romanticisation of Gabriel's actions eventually led Adrien to romanticise other people's actions, even going so far as to feel honoured by all the questionable actions these people committed under the justification of loving him.

Something quite similar happens with Adrinette. In S5 Adrien mentions that he started to accept his feelings for Marinette from what happened in ‘The Puppeteer 2’, and there's no way this isn't weird. He had feelings for Marinette long before that, but it was that event that led him to accept them. Marinette literally assaults a ‘statue’ just because it looks like Adrien, starts fantasizing about a life together, steals one of his hair and many other weird things, and what's Adrien's response? To say that he fell in love. He literally saw how far Marinette was capable of going because of her obsession with him, and as much as that behaviour was justified with ‘it was a joke’, instead of caring, what he does is fall in love with her... because of her obsessive and bizarre behaviour towards him.

It is honestly quite disappointing to see how Gabriel's manipulation damaged Adrien to the point of leaving him craving only unhealthy relationships because that was his perception of love.

Both victim and perpetrator

Adrien developed a split personality and a taste for taking advantage of people when he is in situations of power. Gabriel turned Adrien into a victim and a perpetrator, the role depending on the situation. When Adrien is the one at a disadvantage, he displays submissive and manageable behaviour. When he has all the power, he has no problem using it selfishly and taking advantage of others. This was taught by Gabriel, from prudence to ruthlessness, are things Adrien learned from him. And in a way that's how Adrien differs from Chat Noir: the power they possess.

Adrien is always at a disadvantage: his life is in the public eye, everything he does is always monitored by his father or his fans, and if he makes a mistake it is very easy for his father to find out and punish him. This is why Adrien, always powerless, forces himself to act submissively. He does not possess the power in such situations, so he can only act as he is expected to act.

As Chat Noir things are quite different, he always has the power. Chat Noir is a superhero, he watches over Paris but no one watches over him, he has freedom, destructive power, a city that depends on him and a partner who needs him to defeat the supervillains. He has the power. And he uses this power to his advantage.

A clear example of this is his tendency to threaten. Adrien has several times been willing to give up his miraculous and even verbally threaten (in a passive-aggressive way) Ladybug just because it bothers him that she has secrets. All of S2 was Adrien threatening to give up his miraculous if Ladybug didn't tell him her secrets, and this behaviour wasn't like ‘we can't keep hiding things from each other anymore, this isn't healthy for me and if we're not going to be honest it's best to just give up’, no, this behaviour was like ‘if you don't tell me what you're hiding, I'll give this up and you see if you can do it all by yourself or if you find me a replacement’. I understand that he was tired of the situation, but manipulation is never justifiable behaviour. Evidence of this is found in episodes such as ‘Syren’, where Adrien even threatens Plagg with give up his Miraculous if he doesn't tell him what Ladybug is hiding.

Another example is ‘Glaciator’, where he invites Ladybug to a dinner and she makes it clear that she already has plans and is unlikely to go. And yet Adrien is self-illusioned, and when his fantasies are shattered by something Ladybug had already warned him would happen, he simply accuses her of mocking him, throws a tantrum, refuses to help with the akuma, and when Ladybug comes up with a good plan to defeat the villain he guilts her by saying: ‘Sorry, Ladybug, it's not cool to play with people's feelings’ when Ladybug never played with his feelings and in fact realised these only minutes ago.

There are many other episodes like these, too many to list. I guess the most notorious ones are ‘NY Special’ (where he has no problem being unfaithful to Kagami) and ‘Lies’ (where he also has no problem being unfaithful, lying to her, trying to provoke akumatizations and so on). His problematic behaviours are not only as Chat Noir, but also as Adrien when he finds himself in relationships where he has the power. In his courtship with Kagami he knows that she is completely in love with him and uses this to his advantage and does truly horrible things like the ones mentioned above without regard for her feelings because he knows or believes that she won't leave him. Something similar happens with his friendship with Chloé, he knows how much Chloé appreciated him and so every time she committed a bad deed he threatened to end their friendship. It's not wrong to want your friend to stop being a shitty person, and it's okay to let him/her know that if he/she continues this stupid behaviour you'll have no choice but to walk away, but the problem with this is that we go from Adrien's genuine concern for Chloé to empty threats just because, in the end, Chloé wouldn't change her behaviour and he wouldn't leave either.

Conclusions

This is not as well written as I would like it to be. I procrastinated for weeks and when I finally decided to write it I no longer had the series so fresh in my memory. I am a teenager with no professional knowledge of psychology who wrote this at 3 a.m. while I was not so sober.

This post is not salt against Adrien/Chat Noir, in all of ‘Miraculous’ there are only two or three characters I hate and none of those are Adrien, so this post is not hate towards him. While I did describe some of his behaviour in a not so nice way, that was not a personal opinion but an analysis. Like when you go to a psychologist and he doesn't give you his personal opinion but a diagnosis, the main difference being that I am not a professional nor do I claim to be one. Anyways, this is a direct attack on Gabriel Agreste for being a shitty person.

As you may have noticed, most of this analysis is based on S1 to S3. While I did mention some episodes from S4 and S5 they were not as relevant, this is because the first 3 seasons are the ones I've seen the most and ergo the ones I remember the most, maybe later (I don't think so) I'll do a part two on S4 and S5.

Finally: my personal opinion on Adrien. He is an amazing character whose development and build goes unnoticed by the fandom, this is probably because it wasn't done on purpose (if this character build was planned it wouldn't be half as good as it is, the writers aren't that talented). Adrien is just a boy, a victim of an abusive home that ingrained several of his father's behaviours within him and he has no ‘true personality’ as this depends on the situation he finds himself in. He acts this way as a method of survival and although it is not right, it is a psychological response and it is not as if he can help it. I'm really happy that the poor boy is free from his abusive father and I hope that in S6 he can be happy and get therapy.

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

Miraculous Ladybug Season 5 - An Overview

Well... that certainly was... the fifth season of Miraculous Ladybug.

While I was overall mixed on Season 4 with how much it varied in quality, I think I have a more concrete opinion of Season 5.

Yeah, this season was a real pain to review, but not for the reason you'd think. Most of the episodes were either dull or average, so there wasn't a lot for me to really talk about. Of course, when things were bad, dear lord, were they bad. This analysis is somehow longer than my Season 4 one and the ranking post. Other than real life stuff getting in the way, there's a damn good reason why this took so long to finish. I basically wrote a college thesis on this season.

The Things I Liked About Season 5

Let's get all the good things about this season out of the way first.

For one thing, one of my biggest complaints about Season 4 was sort of rectified, the portrayal of Adrien. While I still have problems with him (which I'll get to in a later section), they're more about his impact on the story. As for his personality and attitude, it's a big step up. There's much less complaining, he's more active in the action, and is far more intelligent. Compared to Season 4, where Cat Noir was affected by an Akuma's powers or taken out of commission in order to raise the stakes eleven times (Lies, Mr. Pigeon 72, Mega Leech, Guiltrip, Optigami, Sentibubbler, Wishmaker, Simpleman, Ephemeral, Penalteam, Risk), here, funnily enough, it only really happened five times in Season 5 (Jubilation, Illusion, Derision, Emotion, The Final Day). It's honestly amazing. There were times where I thought he was going to be taken out or get portrayed as an idiot, but that almost never happened this season. Even some of the weaker episodes this season featured Adrien in a more active role, like “Passion”, “Reunion”, “Elation”, and “Deflagration”.

Also, as much of a problem that I have with Cat Noir trying to Cataclysm his enemies, I'm glad that the show at least tries to acknowledge this by showing his worst nightmare is a world where everyone is dead because of him. It's not handled well, and it's only done just to bench him for the finale, but I'll at least give the writers credit for putting in the effort to give him more nuance. It's a hell of a lot better than what they did with Gabriel, but I'll get to him later. By extension, his relationship with Ladybug is much more tolerable. The two work together well, talk about the conflict with Monarch more often, and for the most part, feel like actual partners. Yeah, that dynamic falls apart towards the end of the season, but again, I'll give the writers an A+ for effort.

Another thing I like is that this season tries to focus more on character pieces, with episodes focusing on characters like Nathalie (Passion), Kagami (Perfection), Luka (Migration), and Zoe (Adoration). They're not handled the best, but I'm glad the show is at least trying to give the supporting characters time in the spotlight, even though they don't have their Miraculous anymore.

Speaking of, I like the idea of the Alliance rings. It's really the only time Gabriel actually takes advantage of his status as one of the most influential people in Paris to push the use of something specifically designed to help give his Akumas more power. Given how prevelant the marketing for Alliance rings is, it's easy to see his plan working in the long term.

We also had a couple decent new Akuma designs, like Safari, Bugfighter, and... uh... Yeah, I got nothing else. This is pretty much the most praise this season is going to get from me. Sure, I'll go into some other aspects I like during later sections, but other than that, this is it. Hell, even the parts I listed earlier are only mentioned for the ideas they present, not the way they're executed.

The Final Season... Of Filler

We've finally made it to Season 5, the climax of the conflict with Monarch. This is going to be epic, with all kinds of compelling stories that can be used for episodes, leading to a final product that will go down as—my God, why is this season so boring?!

Like I said earlier, this season was a lot harder to review than Season 4 was, and this was one of the biggest reasons why. As bad as that season was, I at least had stuff to talk about. Here? Almost nothing. A good chunk of the episodes I reviewed just didn't leave an impact on me. Most of them were either forgettable, mediocre, or just okay. Some of the episodes had decent ideas and a handful of good scenes, but it wasn't really enough to reach the highs of earlier seasons, including Season 4.

It's strange, because at first, it seemed like the show was learning from its mistakes during the first three episodes of this season. “Evolution”, “Multiplication”, and “Destruction” were far from perfect, but you could at least tell the show was trying something different. There was tighter continuity, clever mind games on both sides, a rare instance of nonlinear storytelling, and major changes to the status quo. They explained why Monarch can't just beat up Ladybug and Cat Noir himself, why the Rabbit and Rooster Miraculous can't be used to end the story, and why the Alliance rings were created.

When Ladybug got the Rabbit Miraculous after failing to get the other fourteen back, you would think that this would lead to an arc where Ladybug and Cat Noir gradually reclaimed the Miraculous from Monarch until the final battle, but what did we get instead in terms of plot development?

For what was supposed to be the final season, it felt like almost nothing happened. Sure, as always, the show tried to trick us into thinking stuff was happening, but several plotlines introduced this season were either abandoned or rushed through after a few episodes. The Resistance? Only relevant for five episodes, and even then, they didn't do much (Illusion, Deflagration, Confrontation, Revolution, Representation). Trying to discover how Monarch is giving the Akumas Miraculous powers? Only relevant in a single episode (Illusion). Felix having the Peacock Miraculous and being a total wild card? Only relevant for three episodes (Emotion, Pretension, Representation). The reverse Love Square? Only relevant for four episodes before it petered out (Determination, Passion, Reunion, Elation). Lila manipulating Kagami for some reason? Only relevant for two, maybe three episodes if you count that one scene in “Emotion”, and that was dropped in favor of her learning Monarch's identity offscreen (Perfection, Protection).

You'd think for a season with stakes this high, there would be bigger stories or more character drama, but we got nothing. The only real ongoing story we got was the Love Square finally happening, and trust me, I'll get to that later. There were plenty of ideas for story arcs here, but the writers pretty much ignored all of them.

Retcons! Retcons Everywhere!

This one's shorter, because it's a problem with the show in general, and I'll go into more detail about specific examples of this later on.

Miraculous Ladybug is a show that has always struggled to be consistent with its lore, worldbuilding, characters, story, and... well, a lot of things. I've talked about how often the show retcons things in order to justify whatever story they need to tell, not just for individual episodes, but story arcs too. There were so many episodes with stories that contradicted previous events or changed the motivations of certain characters on a whim.

In case you didn't keep track, here's a little highlight reel of some of the retcons this season.

Evolution: After both him and Ladybug were able to use multiple unifications last season with no problem, Monarch can't use too many of his powers without collapsing in pain. It also goes against what was established in “Kwamibuster”, the idea of using multiple Miraculous being enough to damage your sanity, where here, Monarch's body is damaged.

Multiplication: Adrien's reason for falling for Marinette was due to all the times she helped him, when it was usually the other way around in earlier seasons.

Determination: Adrien reveals he's had feelings for Marinette since the events of “The Puppeteer 2”, even though it never influenced any of their interactions between that episode and this one. It also contrasts the previous episode, where it said that Adrien was just starting to fall for Marinette for different reasons.

Derision: Chloe's bullying of Marinette had severe psychological damage that explains why she acts the way she does around Adrien... but ignores the romantic feelings Marinette has had for Luka and Cat Noir, and didn't act the same way around them, to say nothing about how she acted around Nathaniel when he had a crush on her during “The Evillustrator ”.

Intuition: The Snake Miraculous somehow makes Gabriel's Cataclysm wound worse even though the form of time travel it uses is mental, not physical.

Protection: Gabriel and Tomoe want their children to be in a relationship, yet Adrien and Kagami kept it a secret while they were dating.

Adoration: Zoe suddenly has feelings for Marinette despite showing no signs of it beforehand.

Emotion: Felix reveals he's doing everything for Adrien's safety, even though in his previous few appearances, he's done nothing but screw his cousin over by smearing his public image.

Pretension: Felix is against using a Sentimonster to defend himself and Kagami due to not wanting to force an innocent creature to follow his orders, yet he had no problem using a Sentimonster in the very last episode and in his next appearance.

Revelation: Lila has multiple secret identities she uses while pretending to be the child of several women, which had never come up at all during the last four seasons.

Representation: Kagami apparently learned Marinette was Ladybug right before she was akumatized in “Perfection”, yet Monarch didn't learn this like he did with Luka.

Do you see the problem here? Hell, I didn't even list every single retcon, or else we'd be here all day.

I don't get how a show that wants to be serialized can keep changing details like this. It's not even a case of the show replacing its writers with new ones who don't know as much as the old ones. This is mostly the same writing team for almost four seasons at this point.

Sometimes, the show will retcon stuff in order to justify stories when it doesn't need to. Remember how at the beginning of the season, Marinette was feeling guilty about her failure at the end of Season 4, and that influences her hesitance to accept Adrien's advances? The writers sure didn't, as “Derision” exists to give Marinette a whole new reason to not be comfortable around Adrien. Why the hell would you give Marinette a perfectly valid reason to not want to pursue Adrien, only to write an episode that gives her a different reason to not want to pursue Adrien? There was literally no reason to do this, especially during the last season of your first major story arc!

This season is clearly trying to be the most serialized of the bunch, yet the writers keep changing details about the story like that one Wallace and Gromit meme.

Season 5: The Show's Greatest Hits Album

Something I've noticed about this season is just how repetitive it can be. I know that sounds weird given this is a show that literally gave us the Status Quo-Yo, but please hear me out.

So many major story arcs and focus episodes are just rehashed versions of older things in this show, and not just the reused Akumas. Not only does the first half of Season 5 restate how complicated things are for Marinette's love live and how she can't love Adrien after what she did (something she gets over rather anticlimactically once Adrien confesses). Then there are other times where even plotlines established this season will get reused, and more often than not, it's worse.

In “Perfection”, Kagami is akumatized thanks to Lila's lies, and manages to break free from Monarch's influence thanks to her friends showing that they care for her. And then four episodes later, Kagami is akumatized again thanks to Lila's lies, only this time, she isn't able to break free. What... what was the point of having that emotional scene in “Perfection” if you're just going to treat her like a run of the mill Akuma a few episodes later?

And it's not just that. Big moments that happened in earlier seasons are pretty much redone but with a few changes to make it seem like they're different. Did you like seeing Adrien give up being Cat Noir in “Kuro Neko”? Well how about seeing Adrien and Marinette give up being superheroes in “The Kwamis' Choice”? Did you like seeing Chloe break off her friendship with Adrien in “Queen Banana”? How does seeing Adrien break off his friendship with Chloe in “Derision” sound?

But the worst of this has to be in the last seven episodes of the season. So much of what is essentially the culmination of five seasons' worth of story is just recycled. Let's go over why. In “Confrontation”, Marinette (and by her, I mean Sabrina with help from Marinette) manages to outsmart Chloe and Lila and put an end to their tyranny in the classroom. What are the next two episodes about? Marinette needing to outsmart Chloe and Lila, only now, they have reign over the city. This feels like something that should have been one major story, not something split up into two two-parters. Hell, you can't even say it's original to see Chloe in control, because this is also something that was done back in Season 1's “Rogercop”, only with the titular and the police following his orders for no reason instead of Chloe and her bootleg Daleks.

But hey, if an army of robots capable of using Miraculous powers, at least we can expect something even more creative for Monarch's ultimate plan, right? Yeah, Project “Perfect Alliance” is just a combination of Chloe's murder boxes and the exact same plan in “Heroes' Day”. People are brainwashed like in “Heroes' Day” and they get Miraculous powers like the robots in “Revolution”. Seriously? Nobody took a look at this and thought “Didn't we do this already?”

What's the point of making these two different evil plans when they're essentially the same thing? Why not give Chloe's robots various weapons instead of Miraculous powers if you're going to have an army of villains who have the same Miraculous powers two episodes later? Why not make it so the Miraculized are really the robots designed to help Chloe, only here, they have the ability to turn anyone wearing an Alliance ring into one of them, sort of like the Borg from Star Trek?

It's clear that after four seasons, the writing on this show has gotten incredibly stagnant if the major plotlines are just reused from earlier seasons. At best, it comes across like blatant fanservice, and at worst, it's a symptom of the writers struggling to come up with new ideas for stories. Either way, this is one of many reasons why not a lot of people are looking forward to Season 6. How can you expect interesting stories in the future when the writers keep recycling their old ones?

Felix and the Struggle With Sentimonsters or: This Is Starting to Sound Like a Bad Comic Book Plot!

Before I get into the problems with Felix this season, consider this: With Chloe (who I'll get to later), she was an example of someone who wouldn't get a redemption arc. Felix? This is the writers intentionally trying write a redemption arc. How did that turn out?

The obvious problem with Felix is mostly due to, like a lot of things in this show, poor time management. He only had three focus episodes, and in that time, the writers needed to explain his motivations, establish him as a wild card, have him realize the error of his ways, develop his relationship with Kagami, and help out Marinette. They really wanted to do a lot with Felix, yet with how rushed his arc was, I have to wonder if there was some trouble behind the scenes that prevented him from getting more focus.

It doesn't help that what little we got was confusing as all hell. I've already gone into detail about the problems with Felix's motivations not explaining his actions, but here's a list of all the problems with Felix.

If Felix wanted to get the Peacock Miraculous from the start, why didn't he try stealing that in “Felix”?

If Felix cared about Adrien, why did he spend most of his appearances mocking him and ruining his reputation by impersonating him in “Felix”, “Gabriel Agreste”, “Risk”, “Emotion”, and “Representation”?

If Felix knew who Gabriel was, why did he come up with this elaborate plan to get the Peacock Miraculous in a trade with him instead of going to Ladybug for help in “Strikeback”?

If Felix realized Gabriel was dangerous and capable of wiping him out, why did he decide to give him fifteen Miraculous in exchange for a single Miraculous without doing anything to stop him in “Strikeback”?

If Felix could easily get rid of Gabriel with a single Sentimonster like he did in “Emotion”, why didn't he immediately do that as soon as he got the Peacock Miraculous in “Strikeback”?

If Felix wanted to stop Gabriel, why did he decide to wipe out all of humanity alongside him in “Emotion”?

If Felix cared about innocent lives, why did he decide to wipe out all of humanity without showing any remorse except for when he had to get rid of Red Moon in “Emotion”?

If Felix didn't want to create any Sentimonsters just to end their lives in “Pretention”, why did he do just that in “Representation”?

If Felix knew Marinette was Ladybug, why did he choose to tell her who Gabriel was in an unnecessarily complicated way instead of telling it straight to her face in “Representation”?

If Felix really hated his abusive father, why didn't he show any hatred for Gabriel (who gave Colt the damaged Peacock Miraculous and did nothing to stop the abuse) as well during his little play in “Representation”?

If Felix cared about stopping Gabriel, why did he only decide to go to Ladybug for help when Gabriel was getting in the way of his relationship with Kagami in “Representation”?

If Felix was willing to tell Marinette about Gabriel being Monarch in “Representation”, why didn't he do anything else to help her stop Monarch in “Comformation” and “Re-Creation”?

With how many flaws his plans have, I'm surprised Felix hasn't said anything along the lines of “My pwan is gweat!”

For someone who claims to be doing a lot of things for Adrien, Felix tends to either screw over his cousin as part of his plans or forget him entirely. I don't mean he screws over Cat Noir, as his identity is one of the few things he doesn't know, but rather, how little his plans actually benefit Adrien. Putting aside his previous appearances in Seasons 3 and 4, in the span of a single episode, Felix pretended to be his cousin and smeared his public image, used a Sentimonster to wipe out all of his friends and loved ones while needing to be told by Adrien that doing so wasn't cool, and after that, he pretty much abandoned caring about Adrien.

Yeah, starting with “Pretension”, the writers once again change gears so Felix's primary goal is to help Kagami, not Adrien. It's Kagami that really helps inspire Felix's true turn to good, it's Kagami who he chooses to visit when she and Adrien are taken to London, and it's Kagami that helps him decide to tell Marinette Monarch's identity. Even though he only has three major appearances, the writers still decided to shake up his character arc for some reason. How does a team of paid writers struggle to stay consistent with any story or character arc they've written?

The worst part is that for a redemption arc, Felix shows little to no remorse for his actions. Not once does he apologize to anyone he's personally wronged, like Adrien, Marinette, or Kagami. He doesn't see anything wrong with giving Monarch more power and depriving Ladybug of almost all of her allies, and he had to be told that wiping all of humanity from existence was a bad thing. Felix has done so many terrible things in his quest for freedom, which isn't a bad idea, as it could make for an interesting discussion about whether the ends justify the means, but the show doesn't go that route. Instead, despite doing almost nothing but making things worse for Ladybug and Cat Noir, we're supposed to see Felix as a great person who just wants to have friends. Sure, having good social skills is a big part of being able to manipulate others, but let's just ignore all the people he's tricked and assume he doesn't know how to properly socialize with someone without stalking them.

It doesn't help that of all the characters this season, Felix makes the most progress in stopping Monarch. Puting aside his little genocide attempt in “Emotion”, he actually made an attempt to take Gabriel out of the equation, and later on, passed on intel about his true identity to Marinette. Think about that for a second. Marinette, despite being a hero with the ability to deduce what to do from simple clues given to her, isn't the one to figure out Monarch's identity. Instead, she has to be told who Monarch is, and is able to beat him only because Felix told her what to do. The worst part is that Felix doesn't even take part in the final battle when he has no excuse to not get involved. Remember, he doesn't have to worry about getting snapped away by Gabriel, so even though he cares so much about Adrien and Kagami, he does nothing to save either of them from their glorified solitary confinement.

Felix isn't a character. He's a glorified plot device who only shows up to advance the story instead of letting any character make progress by themselves. While Marinette and Adrien are focusing more on their love lives this season, Felix is the one actually getting things done. Because God forbid the two characters the show is named after actually do anything to stop the villain this season, am I right?

And that's not even getting into the Sentimonster stuff. Yep, to our collective horror, not only is Felix a Sentimonster, but it's also hinted that Adrien and Kagami are Sentimonsters too. I'm not sure why the writers are so hesitant to flat out say the latter two are Sentimonsters after all the obvious hints, especially when this is a show that loves to overly explain every plot detail and character trait. I don't know. Maybe they're just hedging their bets in case things don't go over well with audiences, but I can't possibly see anything bad coming from this. After all, how can you think of any uncomfortable implications stemming from the three major victims of child abuse literally being inhuman monsters who are physically unable to resist their abusers' orders?

With the Sentimonster “reveal”, Adrien and Kagami, two characters who were previously doing their best to be independent from their parents as they could at their age, are now physically incapable of even having a single negative thought about them without being ordered around while showing no resistance. Like I've mentioned before, it's a blatant retcon because it's never explained why Gabriel and Tomoe didn't do this during Seasons 2 and 3. It also gives the writers the opportunity to remove any agency Adrien and Kagami have in the plot, even though one is one of the two main characters, and the other plays a crucial role in helping another character expose the main villain's identity.

We're supposed to see Gabriel and Tomoe as wrong for ignoring their children's protests and forcing them to do things they don't want to do, but it doesn't lead to an arc where Adrien and Kagami rebel against their parents and break free from their influences. As soon as either Gabriel and Tomoe touch their respective rings, Adrien and Kagami are completely helpless, and there's no way for them to resist because of how powerful the link with their Amoks is. There's no hint that they have the potential to break free from their Amoks' influence, and the only time we saw that happen, it was a complete accident that Felix didn't even cause (Representation). Adrien and Kagami are both reduced to damsels in distress thanks to being Sentimonsters, and even though the show is trying to say they're trapped in a terrible situation, there's never a way out.

The most Adrien and Kagami do is express frustration with their situation, but most of the progress made in escaping their bad relationships is done by their respective love interests, Marinette and Felix. Yes, support systems are important, but rather than help Adrien and Kagami earn their freedom, Marinette and Felix do pretty much all of the work to save them during the latter half of this season. Hell, they couldn't even get that completely done by the time of the finale! Gabriel dropped dead and Adrien thinks he's a hero and Kagami's still living with Tomoe, only now she has her Amok ring. We're supposed to see this as a happy ending when they're both still influenced by their abusive parents, even if they don't have any physical control over them. The whole idea behind making Adrien and Kagami Sentimonsters should have been something about them, but with Gabriel and Tomoe, the writers only see them as helpless victims who can't do anything to save themselves. Sure, both of them have fought supervillains before, but we can't have them actually showing agency, can we?

I'm going to get into other ways Adrien and Kagami's characters were butchered this season, but for now, let's get into all the uncomfortable things this plotline implies. Now before I go any further, just remember that I am far from an expert on abuse or child psychology, so please take what I say with a heavy grain of salt. If there is anyone reading this who is a victim of abuse or knows someone who was, please don't be afraid to speak your mind about my analysis or correct me if I get any details wrong.

I get that making Adrien, Kagami, and Felix Sentimonsters was probably done so it'd be a way to explain the concept of child abuse to younger audiences, specifically to show how helpless the situation can be for victims, but the problem is how the allegory is handled. It wants to show how cruel the idea of child abuse is, but it doesn't want to outright vilify abusers like Gabriel or Tomoe. They usually try to sugarcoat it by saying that the two have good reasons for doing what they do, but that's a common problem with abusers. Abusive parents almost always believe that they're doing the right thing while their children think that they're just being punished for their own good, and the season ultimately takes that stance by the end.

The show is clearly trying to use the Sentimonster concept to tell a story about abuse, but I have no idea what exactly it's trying to say about it. “Child abuse is bad”? Okay, then why aren't you going to condemn the abusive parents for being abusive parents? And no, brief mentions of abusive parents who we never actually see onscreen don't count (Derision, Pretension, Representation). “Help out abused children”? Big talk coming from the season that only has two people actually fight to help the victims of child abuse, while treating another victim of child abuse as getting her just desserts (Revolution). “Parents have good reasons to do what they do”? Yeah, that normally applies to stopping your kid from getting a tattoo, not forcing them to whatever they want against their will.

The thing about writing abuse is that you need to acknowledge just how unhealthy it is, and do whatever it takes to take them out of the toxic environment. Here, nobody ever tries to remove Adrien from the toxic environment or tell him that what his father is doing isn't right. Sure, Felix tries to take Kagami away from her abusive mother, but that was only for like an hour at most, and then he just let her go back to her mother. Adrien doesn't even get that luxury. Hell, he isn't even allowed to know just how terrible his father was because he's just a sensitive baby according to the show. Portraying abuse victims as too emotionally fragile to know the truth is a pretty bad idea because, like I mentioned before, a big problem that abuse victims go through is that they're conditioned to see their treatment as normal at best, or see it as their fault at worst.

Like so many other serious topics discussed in this show, the writers clearly want to tell a story about abuse, but they're too afraid to actually take a proper stance on it, so they kept trying to play it safe in an attempt to not get backlash from audiences. Of course, because of that, they ended up portraying victims of child abuse as soulless husks who have almost no free will of their own, while ending the season by having them still under the influence of their abusive parents, even the dead one. Real bang-up job, there, writers. It says a lot when a Spider-Man PSA from almost 35 years ago did a better job tackling child abuse than you did.

And finally, let's talk about how this season's treatment of Sentimonsters indirectly influences our perception of them across the past two seasons. Even though the Sentimonsters created have shown almost no individuality from Seasons 2 to 4, only now are we supposed to see them as sentient beings, with Felix himself even taking offense at the idea at being called a Sentimonster. Never mind the fact that Felix never actually comes up with a proper alternative, so he just comes across as whiny when we're supposed to see him as a champion of the Sentimonsters.

In regards to the narrative the show decided it now wants to tell about Sentimonsters, I have two questions.

First, why should I care about Sentimonsters if the previous two seasons have portrayed them as nothing but soulless killing machines? If you're going to write a plot twist that changes the way we see Sentimonsters, you need to explain why we were wrong to only assume they're dangerous, especially since Argos' first Sentimonster literally wiped out all of humanity. For comparison, Ultraman Z did a similar plotline by having the main character realize that several of the monsters he killed as the titular hero weren't intentionally trying to harm humanity, so it caused him to doubt himself as a hero before he vowed to start finding non-violent ways to stop monsters if he could, while viewing the act of killing monsters that couldn't be reasoned with as a necessary evil. This show has no such arc and just expects us to ignore all the damage the Sentimonsters have caused since the end of Season 2.

Second, what about the Sentimonsters whose lives have been snuffed out by Mayura, Shadowmoth, and even Ladybug? The writers want us to sympathize with Sentimonsters and believe they get a bad rap? That's fine, but even if we did, what about the ones who were already wiped out of existence? Are we just not going to talk about them? Why should we only value the lives of Felix, Adrien, and Kagami and not any of the other Sentimonsters created in previous episodes? What, because they're not main characters, their lives don't matter?

All in all, everything about the Sentimonster was either poorly thought out or too preachy to take seriously, and Felix is emblematic of those problems with how he and the Sentimonsters are written. Oh right, I forgot Felix had a sidekick too, Kimberly—I mean, Kagami.

Kagami Never Hesitates to Be a Complete Idiot

If you read my overview of Season 4, I sang high praises for how Alya was written. Season 4 managed to take a character I had previously disliked and turn her into one of my favorite characters in the show. Now, with that being said, I want you to imagine the opposite of that happening to a different character, and you have my feelings on Kagami this season.

It's weird how, after she had made it through the past three seasons with her character somewhat intact, the writers decided to give her even more prominence by involving her in two separate arcs this season... and only made her nothing more than a damsel in distress who constantly needed to be saved in both of them. I'm not saying that Kagami should be able to beat the crap out of Monarch with her bare hands, but my point is that Kagami just lost so much agency this season.

When she wasn't being manipulated by Lila (Perfection, Protection), she was playing second fiddle to Felix and acting like he didn't hand over almost every Miraculous in Ladybug's possession to Monarch (Pretension, Representation). It's really strange, considering a defining character trait of hers is her hating liars like Marinette does, since it's why she dumped Adrien, yet here, she gets tangled up in the schemes of two different liars, Lila and Felix. I can at least get Lila (as dumb as her episodes are), since she's supposed to be seen as this master manipulator, but she just brushes all of Felix's crimes aside because he “doesn't know how to express himself”. Because even though she's always been loyal to Ladybug, she has no problem working with one of the only two people to betray her trust. But she loves Felix, so that makes it all okay.

What made Alya's arc last season work was that even though she was primarily Marinette's confidant, we also got episodes showing her struggling to balance her own desires with what needed to be done for the greater good (Optigami, Sentibubbler, Hack-San, Rocketear). She had to step up and become more than just one of the many temp heroes Ladybug called on, someone trustworthy enough to temporarily use the Ladybug Miraculous. Yes, she made bad calls, but when things went south because of her bad decisions, she normally took responsibility for her actions and vowed to do better. With Kagami, we don't get any internal conflict like that at all. She just blindly goes along with whatever Lila and Felix say, and even when bad things happen as a result, she never even thinks to call out either of them other than rarely saying something along the lines of “Hey, not cool.” (Protection, Pretension).

Kagami just doesn't get to do anything on her own terms this season. Her entire arc revolves around following Lila and Felix around like a lost puppy. And just remember, we're seriously supposed to act like Kagami is trustworthy enough to see that her defending Felix from Ladybug is enough to prove that he's a good person deep down... when this same season showed her easily falling for Lila's lies and getting akumatized twice as a result. It's like believing Dr. Nick can perform a life-saving kidney transplant after seeing him botch an open-heart surgery.

Even Kagami figuring out Marinette is Ladybug, something that should be a big deal like with Alya and Luka learning last season, is something we learn through a flashback and is, you guessed it, is only relevant to one of Felix's plans. And yeah, reveal your friend's secret to someone who someone who betrayed her. What could possibly go wrong? Again, when Alya screwed up, she was at least able to admit it to Marinette's face. Kagami never tells Marinette that she knows, and never faces consequences for throwing her lot in with Felix. What's her excuse, that she has too much love in her heart for Felix?

Speaking of which, let's talk about the biggest problem I have with Kagami this season, the way her relationship with Felix is handled. Let me make one thing clear: my problem isn't with people who ship the two together. Much like with the Love Square, my problem is how the show handles this romance. The two had almost no episodes together, and from what little we saw of them interacting, Kagami didn't like him, and for obvious reasons. But then “Pretension” came. Not only did Felix develop feelings for Kagami offscreen, all it took for Kagami to fall for Felix was a single conversation where he showed basic human decency. Yeah, Marinette fell for Adrien for similar reasons, but at least she and him took a while to actually get together. These two shared a handful of conversations, and now they're just made for each other.

The problem with this is that the relationship basically reduces Kagami to Felix's girlfriend and sidekick. All of her major appearances post-“Emotion” were in relation to Felix. She only helps him because of their relationship, and their relationship was the whole reason why Kagami convinced Felix to do what he should have done from the start, tell Ladybug who Monarch was... even though Astruc said this kind of relationship was toxic when discussing Lukloe.

You see, the difference between Lukloe and Feligami is (MAKE UP EXPLANATION LATER AND DON'T ACCIDENTALLY LEAVE THIS SPOT BLANK). And that's why we shouldn't see this as blatant hypocrisy on Astruc's part.

While it's par for the course, given how almost every female character in this show is connected to a male character in some way, the way Kagami is written this season is still part of a bigger problem. Kagami is not everyone's favorite character and not one people fiercely discuss as much as Marinette, Adrien, or even Chloe, but it's still baffling that out of all the characters in this season, Kagami would arguably sustain the most damage out of the entire cast. Given that this is the same season as Nino becoming the braindead leader of the Resistance, Chloe's brief stint as a tyrannical mayor, Nathalie choosing to do nothing about Gabriel until she was about to die, the baffling reveal of who Lila supposedly is (again, more on these later), or... really, a lot of things with both Marinette and Adrien, this is actually saying a lot. If you want to look at it at a particular angle, Kagami's actually a direct victim of practically all of the biggest problems in this season and I've had to mention her a lot more in this analysis than I anticipated. Then again, I suppose that's me showing more care to Kagami as a character than the writers did.

The Story of The Resistance (In Name Only)

I've already gone on about how underdeveloped most of the temp heroes are, so you can imagine the season where they try to help Ladybug without superpowers doesn't really change my opinion of them.

Remember how in episodes like Season 1's “Antibug”, Season 2's “The Dark Owl”, and even this season's “Jubilation” made it clear that trying to be a superhero without a Miraculous or proper training was essentially suicide? You know, how it was better to leave things to the actual superheroes? Well the writers sure didn't, as now we get to see a bunch of idiots try to take on supervillains with paintball guns and whatever they can throw at them. I'm pretty sure the writers put more effort into all the codenames themed after condiments than actually coming up with creative ways to fight Akumas. Because we all know how hilarious (citation needed) the flower codename gag from “Gigantitan” was, so let's do something like that, but for multiple episodes this season.

I'm just going to be blunt here when I say the Resistance this season sucked. Putting aside the fact that the writers couldn't come up with a less generic name or a name that wasn't already taken by the Ox Miraculous' power, this subplot was just so pointless. You have a team of former heroes who want to find a way to help Ladybug and Cat Noir stop Monarch, and rather than do things like pass intel along or find ways to stop people from getting akumatized, they decide to try taking them on themselves with their most powerful weapons being paintball guns. Congratulations, you now have all the equipment you need to take on Bart Simpson in a fight. Sure, they try to pass on intel to Ladybug and Cat Noir in their first episode, “Illusion”, but Nino's plan was so stupid, they ended up helping Monarch in the long term by letting his civilian identity into their team. Oh, I'm sorry, did you forget how Gabriel and Lila were inducted into the Resistance at the end of “Illusion”? It's okay, the writers did too.

And the idea of them passing on intel could have worked, as it would give Marinette a support system to help solve problems she can't figure out on her own, following up on her character arc from Season 4 where she learns to put her trust in people, but like a lot of things this season, the writers got bored halfway through and decided to change up this plotline. Now, they're prepared to fight anyone who gets akumatized. How many Akumas did the Resistance manage to stop completely on their own? One, and it was offscreen (Deflagration).

Trying to make the Resistance seem competent and effective comes at the price of making the villains look like idiots who can't handle a few teenagers without superpowers. Monarbug, someone who managed to unify with the Ladybug Miraculous, lost it thanks to the Resistance dogpiling him. Then, later on, they managed to stop Nightormentor, an akumatized Gabriel, by just throwing stuff at him. Do you have any idea how lame this makes Monarch look? It's like that scene from Robocop 3 where that kid somehow managed to make ED-209 as loyal as a puppy in a matter of seconds. It's not cool to see it happen. It diminishes the threat the formerly menacing villain posed.

The show loves to play up the Resistance as this amazing underground organization Nino is so proud of, but it doesn't work because you can count the number of times they've actually helped out on one hand, and even then, that's being that word Chloe doesn't know the meaning of (Deflagration, Revolution, Representation). Even then, they still fall for Lila's lies which, like Kagami, doesn't help establish any of them as trustworthy. The whole Resistance subplot is basically an excuse to make it seem like the former temp heroes aren't just sitting around, which again, isn't a bad idea, but nothing comes of it. We don't get to see any of them worry that they can't do anything without their Miraculous, we don't see where or when Nino got the idea to form the Resistance, and we don't even get any scenes where the worry about the captured Kwamis. The show just has them all operate under the same goal and makes it seem like they're making a difference when they barely do anything. None of them really feel like characters, and it shows this season.

Nino, despite labeling himself as the brave leader of the Resistance, is anything but. He constantly brags about how effective he is, but not only does he let anyone into his top secret organization without even thinking if they can really be trusted, all of his genius plans amount to, you guessed it, throwing stuff at the brainwashed people with superpowers. He's also so confident that he was awesome as Carapace when all he did was occasionally help Ladybug out with his Shelter, and then whines about not being chosen by Tikki and Plagg when Scarabella and Kitty Noire temporarily take over (Illusion, Deflagration). He's also so poor at gathering intel that not only did he fall for Gabriel's ruse and act like he figured out how the Akumas have Miraculous powers, he didn't even know his best friend was going to London until he got on the plane (Representation). I wasn't kidding when I said Nino was such a terrible leader, he makes Zapp Brannigan look competent by comparison.

And remember when Alya was a major character? Neither does the show! Out of the entire season, she was really only relevant to the plot when she became Scarabella for a few days, and even then, she didn't think that maybe she should take off the Alliance ring that monitors her every move if she's going to be a full-time hero again (Transmission, Deflagration). There is absolutely no follow-up to anything that happened to her in Season 4. She doesn't regret blowing her cover, she doesn't worry over not being able to help Ladybug as Rena Rouge, she doesn't worry about the safety of Trixx, she doesn't even consider the fact that she's not used to going back to full-time hero work after half a season of being undercover as Rena Furtive. At best, the whole thing with Alya exposing her cover to Nino last season gets played off for the sake of a cheap joke (Illusion).

Then there's Zoe. Like Season 4, I can definitely say that out of all the supporting characters, she was certainly one of them. They clearly try to give her these big moments in an attempt to endear her to the audience, like her brief stint as Kitty Noire or her coming out to Marinette, but because of how nonexistent her character development has been, these don't feel earned. I can't buy her friendship with Marinette or anyone else because of how little she appears. Hell, she was specifically introduced to act as a good counterpart to Chloe, and she did nothing to really contribute to her ultimate downfall other than sharing a single conversation during “Revolution”. That's how little the writers care about her, they don't even have her interact with the character she was designed to replace. I take back what I said about her being a Mary Sue way back in my “Sole Crusher” review, because at least those types of characters get plenty of focus in the narrative. All I can really say about Zoe after two seasons is that at least she's more interesting than Socqueline, a character so boring, this is the only time I'm going to mention her in this entire analysis.

And that's it for the Resistance. Only three side characters are actually worth talking about this season. That is how pointless of a group they are.

Chloe’s Arc That, in Case You Forgot, Was Totally Planned From the Start

I really don't know what else to say here. Remember, this entire blog was started because of how upset I was by Astruc's response to criticism of the Season 3 finale, specifically how Chloe's “damnation arc” was claimed to have planned out from the start.

For the sake of argument, let's go over this arc and just what happened with this character over the past eight years. In Season 1, Chloe started out as a standard high school mean girl who used her father's influence to get whatever she wanted, but wasn't that much of a threat compared to Hawkmoth and the Akumas. In Season 2, we got to see a different side to her that started a character arc, showing she was capable of changing and becoming a hero in her own right. In Season 3, while it seemed like Chloe was changing for the better, the finale had her betray Ladybug and go back to being the same mean girl she was before. In Season 4, we were introduced to Chloe's never before seen half-sister, Zoe, who only existed to replace Chloe as the user of the Bee Miraculous, and even though the very same episode where Zoe first got the Bee Miraculous hinted that there was still a chance of Chloe changing, the rest of the season acts like she's always been a menace to society with no redeeming qualities. In Season 5, Chloe was portrayed as a heartless monster who is worse than the main villain of the entire show, is simultaneously smart and cunning enough to bully Marinette in a way that would leave lasting mental scars for a year and also too incompetent to take seriously, and even though the season has made a big deal about how terrible child abuse is, her being sent off to live with her verbally abusive mother is seen as a perfectly suitable punishment for her.

I don't know what's worse, the fact that none of the writers had second thoughts about this character's “arc”, or the fact that Astruc probably thinks he made an antagonist as complex as Lady Macbeth. I also love how, despite all this supposed planning, not once do we get any explanation as to just why Chloe hates Marinette so much other than the fact that one's a rich person and the other is the main character in a cartoon.

Chloe's character was already going in a downward spiral in Season 4, but with Season 5, it feels like the writers just abandoned all attempts to be subtle and were determined to stop people from liking her. Like, it's amazing just how much time was spent hammering the point home. She got more focus as a villain than Lila and even Gabriel. We had about eight episodes this season that featured her in a major antagonistic role: “Determination”, “Deflagration”, “Derision”, “Adoration”, “Revelation”, “Confrontation”, “Collusion”, and “Revolution”. Almost a third of this season is dedicated to showing how evil Chloe is, as if she's somehow worse than people like Gabriel or Tomoe. And that's not even counting episodes where she got a line or two to remind the audience of how bad she is, like “Multiplication”, “Passion”, and “Reunion”.

The weird thing is that even though this was supposed to be the season where Chloe was at her worst, it still seemed like the writers couldn't make up their minds on what they wanted to do with her. For example, let's take a look at her relationship with Monarch. In “Multiplication”, she believed that Ladybug and Cat Noir should just give Monarch what he wants, implying she's still on his side. Then, in “Determination”, she blamed not having the Bee Miraculous on why Monarch was able to win, implying she wants to stop Monarch. And then in “Deflagration”, it's hinted that she once again willingly accepted an Akuma out of a desire to get revenge, implying that she's still on good terms with Monarch. Finally, in “Revolution”, she initially wanted to arrest Monarch when he arrived in her office, and had to be convinced to work with him again. Seriously, this is almost two seasons after she started working with Monarch in the first place. How the hell are the writers not sure if she's working with the villain or not?!

Of course, that's the least of my problems with Chloe this season. One such problem that it seems like the writers specifically went out of their way to ruin the few positive relationships Chloe had just so her fans would have less ground to stand on. Her friendship with Adrien? He finally decided to write her off as irredeemable just as he learned just how miserable she made Marinette (and only Marinette) at the end of “Derision”. Her friendship with Sabrina, as one-sided as it is? She doesn't even see Sabrina as a friend anymore, specifically referring to her as an underling starting with “Adoration”, and then Sabrina turns against her after she finds one specific scheme to be going too far. The sympathy Ms. Bustier had for Chloe, even though it wasn't relevant to her character after “Zombizou”? Chloe basically ignores any attempt made to reach out to her, and we're supposed to act like her wanting to help Chloe get a decent education because it's her job as a teacher is the stupidest idea in the world. Chloe's relationship with her own father? This season decided to make Andre out to be a man mentally broken by the bad treatment he gets from his daughter and totally not a corrupt politician, and outright disowns her in favor of adopting someone who isn't even his biological daughter.

It already felt like Season 4 exaggerated Chloe's negative traits, but now, the show doesn't want anyone to like her in-universe, as if showing basic human decency to her in the first place was off the table. Remember, in “Revelation”, Marinette's speech to Adrien was basically copied and pasted from one of Astruc's tweets, as if this was meant to address anyone who still liked the idea of Chloe changing for the better.

And trust me, I'll get to the characters who actually got redeemed later.

For now, let's talk about the main issue I have with her portrayal: The writers want her to be seen as a threat... but they don't want her to actually be a threat. Almost all of Chloe's appearances this season had her acting as a pawn to either Gabriel or Lila. This season also started to use dumb blonde jokes in order to show how incompetent she is, like having her struggle to understand the concept of the word “generous”, making her out as an idiot. The whole point of the “irredeemable villain” archetype is that the character is usually so big of a threat, there is absolutely no way of talking them down, so they need to be stopped through the use of force. Chloe is far from a threat, which is why all this talk about her being a monster falls flat.

At the end of the day, Chloe is easily at the bottom of the hierarchy of the villains on this show. She has no Miraculous like Gabriel, she has no advanced technology like Tomoe, and she's nowhere near as cunning as Lila is. The problem is that the show wants the audience to see Chloe as if she's the worst of them all. Fine, she may have the most obnoxious personality and least amount of redeeming qualities by the writers' standards, but this is a superhero show. You don't just rank villains on how mean they are, but also by how much of a threat they are to the hero. The moments where we're supposed to take Chloe seriously, the show keeps reminding us that she's only getting as far as she has because she's being used by other villains. It makes the moments where the heroes triumph over her ring hollow.

I'm not even joking here when I say that out of the show's entire rogues' gallery, Chloe is literally the only one who actually gets punished. Sabrina was able to wash their hands of her association with the bully, Andre was more than happy to give up his position as mayor and kidnap Zoe, Tomoe was never even exposed, Lila only faced a minor setback when she was exposed, Nathalie was healed by the wish, and even though he died, Gabriel died a martyr who never actually answered to any of his crimes. But Chloe? As fucked up as it was, she was the only one who received some form of punishment for everything she did. Congratulations, Ladybug and Cat Noir! After five seasons, you finally managed to defeat the Ringo Starr of your rogue's gallery, and all it took was unlocking the full power of your Miraculous.

I was initially angry at the show for just throwing away a character arc and mocking anyone who was interested in it, but now, I'm angry at the show for a different reason. Even if we were to assume that everything about Chloe was planned from the start, that she was supposed to be a fallen hero turned enemy, the show did nothing with it. If you're going to make Chloe a full-blown villain, then go nuts with the idea! Have her dedicate her life to beating Ladybug out of hatred, maybe even through a suit of armor like Princess Morbucks. Instead, this is the writing equivalent of intentionally setting your house on fire, but deciding you don't need the insurance money.

I'm actually going to say something that might sound blasphemous, especially coming from someone who has spent a lot of time talking about Chloe's character assassination, but I'm just going to admit it: I think Chloe should have been the next Hawkmoth, not Lila.

Yes, that's probably what you're thinking, but I'm serious. Think about it. Between her and Lila, who has the closer connection to Marinette as an enemy? Who has a more fleshed out reason to hate Marinette? Who got more focus as a villain this season? Who has more resources at her disposal? Essentially, the show put so much effort into making Chloe out to be Marinette's most personal enemy, that it makes no sense for them to not just go all the way and make her the next big bad. The writers already go on and on about how irredeemable she is, so why not make her an actual threat for a change?

But no. Instead, let's just keep her as comic relief who somehow gets more screentime than almost every other villain this season. That's a good way to tell our story, right?

Now You See That Evil Will Always Triumph Because Good Is Dumb... And So Is Evil, Apparently

This section should be relatively easy for me to get through, since not much has really changed with the villains since Season 4. They're all still idiots even though the show wants us to see them as a threat to the equally idiotic heroes.

Let's start with our only newcomer to the show's rogues' gallery, and definitely the weakest, Tomoe. I'll give the show a lot of credit with the foreshadowing for Tomoe here. Unlike other plotlines where the show bashes you over the head with obvious hints like with the Sentimonster stuff, the hints leading to the reveal of Tomoe being in leagues with Gabriel are far more subtle. They spend a lot of time in Seasons 3 and 4 discussing things offscreen (probably about some version of the Alliance rings), and both of Tomoe's akumatizations happen offscreen as well (since their conversation would give away their alliance). It's handled pretty well... which is more than I can say for Tomoe as a villain.

Tomoe is just such a confusing character, both conceptually and the way she was used this season. She's meant to be Gabriel's new confidant after Nathalie decided to stop being a villain while still mooching off him, but she pretty much does the same things Nathalie does, including the constant nagging about how inefficient he is. She even serves the same role Nathalie served in earlier episodes as Gabriel's technical advisor. Tomoe is basically a second Nathalie, with the only differences being that she's blind and that she wants Kagami to be with Adrien. Of course, this makes no sense because, like I mentioned in the retcon section, Adrien and Kagami tried to keep their relationship secret before their breakup. How could Tomoe not notice this? What is she, blind—oh right...

There's also the issue I have with the way Tomoe's nationality and disability is portrayed here, and how it really highlights how terrible this show is with representation (not to be confused with the episode of the same name). Like with my Sentimonster section, if there's anyone reading this who is disabled or a person of color, and you'd like to say anything about this part or how this show's representation is handled, feel free to voice your opinion or correct me if I get anything wrong.

With Tomoe, it feels like the writers slapped on every Japanese stereotype you could think of and called it a day, because we've seen all of these before. She's dressed in very traditional Japanese attire, is named after a famous Japanese warrior, uses a kendo shinai as a cane instead of a walking stick, is a strict parent to her child who expects the best from her, makes references to Japanese culture like samurai (Pretension) and taiko drums (Protection), is a technological genius, forces her child into an arranged marriage, and uses Japanese honorifics while talking with Gabriel even when they're not speaking Japanese. I'm not saying Japanese people can't talk about their culture at all, but when you're writing a character who happens to be a person of color, you need to do more than make references to their heritage.

With Tomoe, almost everything she says is referencing her heritage, which makes it come across like the writers cared more about her being Japanese than anything else. Because somehow, the writers were worried kids wouldn't pick up on the fact that she's Japanese... when she's wearing something that makes her look like she just stepped off the set of an Akira Kurosawa movie.

But hey, at least they say Tomoe is Japanese. I don't think there's a single indication that she's blind. At most, they give her the stereotypical superpower every blind person in superhero media seems to have, enhanced hearing. Of course, while characters like Daredevil and Toph Beifong have in-universe explanations for how they're able to “see” without their eyes (Daredevil's enhanced senses came from the same chemicals that blinded him in the first place, while Toph learned an advanced Earthbending technique that gave her the ability to sense others through vibrations in the earth), Tomoe just has them because the writers thought it would be cool. I know it might seem strange to say this after I talked about how too much focus was given to Tomoe's Japanese heritage, but you'd think more would be done with her being blind, and how it would factor into her motivation to create a better world through technology or her ideology about self-discipline. Instead, she acts like every other character on this show, to the point where all three times she was akumatized, she got her sight back.

The main problem with Tomoe is how other than her heritage and disability, she has almost no personality other than being a strict mother to Kagami (something that is also a negative Asian stereotype) and her vague ideology about suppressing her emotions. She's basically a female Gabriel, and because she's a woman in this show, lacks any depth or redeeming qualities. There just wasn't enough time to really develop Tomoe as a character in the same season she was revealed to be a villain. Sure, they try to hint at her having history with Gabriel, but that never goes anywhere, and we never even learn just why she's working with him in the first place other than some vague desire to make the world more technologically advanced in spite of also being a traditionalist who loves honoring old beliefs. Just remember, Chloe got eight focus episodes as a villain this season, yet Tomoe only got one.

Now for Lila, the most competent of the villains... by comparison. The show clearly wants her to be seen as a master manipulator in the same vein as David Xanatos from Gargoyles, but how they show it is just poorly executed. Sure, sometimes she would get ahead in clever ways during episodes like “Illusion” and “Revelation”, but other than that, a good chunk of her plans rely on contrivances that we're supposed to see as part of her plan when she would have no idea if it would actually happen or not. In fact, let's go over all the things Lila did during her last five episodes of the season and see how her master plan played out.

Step 1: Revelation – Convince Ms. Bustier to hold another election for class representative, lie your ass off to get the position while making it seem like you rejected an Akuma, and win the election.

Step 2: Confrontation – Tamper with confidential school documents while hoping your enemy doesn't plan anything to stop you, and if your plan falls through, abandon your identity entirely and hope nobody ever tries to look for you.

Step 3: Collusion – Convince your pawn to record a conversation between the mayor and the man you somehow know is Monarch and then after the conversation leads to an Akuma forcing him out of office, tell your pawn to accept an offer from Monarch's civilian identity that you somehow knew he'd make, leading to your pawn becoming the new mayor by force who everyone is too stupid to even think of opposing.

Step 4: Revolution – Tell your pawn to take an offer from the same supervillain she's willingly worked with before, watch her go mad with power and assume that Ladybug and Cat Noir will defeat her, and then in the chaos from her defeat, assume that one of Monarch's associates will randomly leave her computer behind for you to use.

Step 5: Re-Creation – Develop an immunity to magical nightmare dust, hack into the heavily-guarded mansion you know where Monarch lives while the city is being swarmed with supersoldiers, hope you don't run into Monarch or any heroes trying to stop him on the way there, take the hole created by a Cataclysm you know would be there, assume that Monarch will lose, and seize his Miraculous from the ruins of his lair that you somehow know how to navigate after surviving all of reality being rebooted.

General Patton, eat your heart out. I think we all know who the real tactical genius is here.

Seriously, how the hell did she even know half of the stuff involving Gabriel and Tomoe would happen? Yeah, she had Tomoe's laptop after the events of “Revolution”, but she didn't see how their final fight would play out. You could also argue that we technically never saw her go into Monarch's lair during the final battle (all we got was a shot of her looking down into the hole Bug Noire created with her Cataclysm), but why didn't she go down if she disguised herself to infiltrate Monarch's lair? Was she just scoping out the area? Was her entire plan just to steal Monarch's Miraculous? There were so many ways this could have blown up in her face, so let's go over all of them, shall we?

What if Ms. Bustier didn't agree to hold a reelection for class representative?

What if Marinette won the reelection anyway?

What if Lila wasn't able to escape during the chaos caused by Monarch's Megakuma targeting Mr. Damocles?

What if the school managed to contact one of Lila's moms and tell her about what her “daughter” did?

What if Chloe wasn't able to record the full conversation between Gabriel and Andre?

What if Andre agreed to use the police robots without any manipulation?

What if Miss Sans-Culotte wasn't able to get Andre to resign?

What if Andre did resign, but managed to appoint a interim mayor until the next election?

What if Chloe didn't accept Gabriel's offer?

What if Chloe didn't accept Monarch's offer?

What if Chloe managed to arrest Monarch with her robots and got all of the Miraculous herself?

What if the French military was sent to stop Chloe's abuse of power?

What if Ladybug and Cat Noir weren't able to stop Chloe and lost their Miraculous to Monarch?

What if Chloe double-crossed both Lila and Monarch and managed to get Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous herself?

What if Tomoe didn't carelessly leave her laptop behind during the final battle with Chloe and her robots?

What if Tomoe realized she lost her laptop and sent someone to track it down?

What if Tomoe installed a kill switch on her laptop to make sure nobody would be able to do anything with it in the event it got stolen

What if Ladybug didn't learn Monarch's identity?

What if Lila fell victim to Nightormentor's nightmare dust?

What if Lila was attacked by some of the Miraculized before she could make it to the Agreste Mansion?

What if Gabriel caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?

What if Ladybug caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?

What if Nathalie caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?

What if the Gorilla caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?

What if some of the Miraculized caught Lila while she was attempting to sneak in?

What if Lila got caught in the crossfire during the final battle between Bug Noire and Monarch?

What if Bug Noire didn't Cataclysm the floor and beat Monarch at the entrance of the mansion?

What if Bug Noire wasn't able to defeat Monarch?

What if Ladybug managed to find the Butterfly Miraculous before she did?

What if Ladybug caught her while she was trying to find the Butterfly Miraculous?

Do you see why I only think Lila is the most competent villain by comparison? A good chunk of Lila's “plan” amounted to her waltzing over and reaping the benefits from every coincidence she's around to see. And she's supposed to be this criminal mastermind who thought this all out from the beginning?

Lila's planning makes about as much sense as her motivation. Why does she hate Marinette and Ladybug? They both called her out on her lies back in Season 1 and 3 respectively (Volpina, Chameleon). That's it. This is enough for Lila to want to become a supervillain and terrorize Paris. I get that the idea is to contrast with the more noble goal Gabriel had as a supervillain, but you need to give more of an explanation if you want the audience to care about Lila becoming the next Hawkmoth.

At the very least, if the writers wanted to build intrigue about Lila, have this be the season where she first appears. Build her up as this mysterious new girl who wins over Gabriel's trust, only she has an agenda of her own. By having most of her appearances be this season, it's more obvious that she has a bigger role to play, and would eventually become the next Hawkmoth. Instead, it seems like the writers put a bunch of names on a dartboard, Lila's name was the closest to the first dart they threw, and that's how they decided who Ladybug's next arch-enemy would be. And once again, Lila hasn't even touched a Miraculous in five seasons, yet we're supposed to believe that with the help of that vague glowing light she saw as soon as the first put on the Butterfly Miraculous, she'll be able to take on eighteen superheroes who have plenty of experience fighting Akumas?

Speaking of, let's get into the final main villain, Gabriel. Compared to the others, he had a pretty decent start. He felt a lot smarter than he usually did, like how he used his influence to market the Alliance rings in order to boost his Akumas' powers, or once again trick Ladybug and Cat Noir into thinking he isn't Monarch. He even managed to outsmart Scarabella and Kitty Noire by using the Alliance rings to learn their identities, and almost got their Miraculous as a result. For the most part, Gabriel was a pretty clever villain who capitalized on every screwup the heroes made, and actually came across as a threat... that is, until “Protection”.

Starting with “Protection”, Gabriel decided that even though he has only a few weeks to live at best, he needs to focus more on meddling in his son's love life instead of getting Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous in order to save his wife. It comes across like he cares more about stopping Marinette than he does stopping Ladybug in the latter half of the season. Hell, Gabriel doesn't even set up any plans for what would happen to Adrien if he died despite once again claiming to be doing everything for his family. Also, for some reason, he really wants Adrien and Kagami to stay together and become a couple for reasons that I can only assume is because of some kind of social commentary on the rich. Is Gabriel trying to start a eugenics program? Is this how Khan was born?

The abrupt detour Gabriel's motivations take is connected to one of the bigger problems with this season: How Gabriel's Cataclysm wound is handled. We're supposed to sympathize with Gabriel and how his days are numbered thanks to what happened, all while he's desperate to achieve his goal... when not only did Gabriel Cataclysm himself at the beginning of the season, he almost never brings up his wound until the writers want to add unnecessary drama to the story. At most, he'll either flinch in pain a little because of the wound (Elation, Perfection, Intuition, Protection, Emotion, Confrontation), or show his purple hand to show how serious it's gotten while saying he doesn't have much time left (Passion, Pretension, Revelation, Collusion, Conformation). At least, we're supposed to see it as serious, as the injury never really gets in the way of his plans.

Rather than a painful injury that's slowly killing him, the show treats Gabriel's injury with the seriousness of a sprained ankle. Yeah, it's painful, but nothing serious. Aside from one episode (Intuition), we don't see Gabriel struggle that much with his deteriorating health or how it gets in the way of his plans. Compare this to how Nathalie's condition has been portrayed. As Season 3 progressed, Nathalie got weaker to the point of forcing Gabriel to abort his second outing as Scarletmoth (Ladybug), she became so sick, she had to be benched as Mayura by the end of Season 3, and needed cybernetic crutches just to help her walk during Seasons 4 and 5. While I criticized her sudden wrinkled appearance by the events of “Representation”, the show still made it clear that Nathalie was struggling to go about her everyday life over the course of the last three seasons. As for Gabriel, whose condition is supposedly more serious to the point where not even the Ladybug Miraculous can heal it? At most, it's less something influencing his belief that he has nothing left to lose, and more a mild injury at best.

Another problem I have with Gabriel is the same one I have with Tomoe and Lila: The lack of a proper backstory. Yes, we know the basics of it (his wife is comatose and/or dead, so he became a supervillain to get Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous and save her), but we know nothing about his life before that. Thanks to “Revelation”, the most we get is that before he became a fashion designer who took an interest in discovering the Miraculous, he used to work in fast food like Skeet from Jimmy Neutron. Hell, the two even have similar haircuts.

Whether Gabriel knows the difference between salt and sodium chloride is still up for debate.

The show wants to say that Gabriel used to be different, but we don't get to see that side to him. If you want to say Gabriel used to be nicer, then give us a flashback to show how much Emilie's death affected him. That way, it would also give the scene in the finale where he breaks down have more weight to it, as it would show him letting down his emotional defenses.

Also, why was Gabriel so interested in the Miraculous in the first place if he found the Butterfly and Peacock Miraculous before Emilie got sick? The show establishes that Gabriel went exploring with Emilie and Nathalie, but why? What were they looking for? How did this lead to them getting into fashion? How did Gabriel and Emilie get so rich if Amelie inherited the Graham de Vanily fortune? This was the season that was supposed to wrap up the storyline regarding the Agreste family drama, yet we still know so little about them or how Gabriel and Emilie even met.

Finally, let's get to the Akumas. The season makes a huge deal about how dangerous Gabriel is now that he has almost every other Miraculous at his disposal, how hard the battle against him will become. How do the Akumas reflect that idea? Very poorly. Twelve of the season's Akumas were reused models (Ikari Gozen in “Multiplication”, Darker Owl in “Jubilation”, the Collector in “Illusion”, Glaciator in “Elation”, Sole Destroyer in “Deflagration”, Dark Humor in “Derision”, Riposte Prime in “Protection”, Vanisher in “Adoration”, Matagi Gozen in “Pretension”, Hoaxer in “Revelation”, Reflekta in “Confrontation”, and Nightormentor in “Representation”), and only ten of them were original (Manipula in “Determination”, Safari in Passion, Kikou in “Transmission”, Ryukomori in “Perfection”, Gold Record in “Migration”, Bugfighter in “Intuition”, Miss Sans-Culotte in “Collusion”, Queen Mayor in “Revolution”, King of Plastic in “Action”, and the Miraculized in “The Final Day”). I've also gone over this several times, but despite the main gimmick being that the Akumas have Miraculous powers now, the show never really explains why Monarch can't just give them those kind of powers himself, especially when he could easily recreate Miraculous powers as far back as Season 1 (Copycat, Antibug, Volpina).

Most of the Miraculous powers didn't actually feel like upgrades and just excuses to recycle Akumas on the basis of acting like they have new powers when it's almost always just giving them the same old powers. Either that, or with the new Akumas, they'll just make it so their only powers are related to their Miraculous powers, like Safari getting all of her gear thanks to the Goat Miraculous' Genesis, Kikou and Ryukomori's only abilities being related to their respective Miraculous powers, or Queen Mayor getting the power to control robots with multiple Miraculous powers. There were exceptions like Manipula getting the Ox Miraculous' Resistance as an added precaution, or Vanisher mixing her stealth with the Dog Miraculous' Fetch, but they were few and far between.

Overall, almost every villain this season was just so underwhelming. While the Akumas were once again mostly reused character models, we learned almost nothing about the villains other than the fact that they're idiots. Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot the fact that by the show's logic, almost all of the villains aren't really villains. Let's talk about how the show handles redemption arcs now.

The Redemption Misconception or: The Power of Love Always So Strong?

While younger readers might not understand this, there was once a time on the internet where one of the most debated shows was Steven Universe, and mainly for one reason: How it handled the topic of redemption. Pretty much every major antagonist had changed their ways by the end of the show, including Lapis Lazuli, Peridot, the Cluster, Bismuth, Spinel, Jasper, and even the Diamonds. While the quality of each of these redemption arcs varies from character to character, as is the moral status of each character, there's one thing I can say about how the show got the moral about redemption across: It was consistent. Aside from one or two characters like Eyeball or Aquamarine (who were more ignorant than anything else), there was never a case about someone being physically incapable of changing their ways, which tied into the overall theme of how important compassion is. With the way Miraculous Ladybug handles its redemption arcs, I unfortunately can't say it does it the same way Steven Universe does.

Pretty much every major villain, antagonist, or associate in the show gets a redemption of some kind. This includes Nathalie, Felix, Sabrina, Andre, and even Gabriel, while Chloe, Lila, and Tomoe are all viewed as beyond saving. The problem is rather than actually acknowledge the things any of them did as wrong before they start to change their ways, pretty much every “redemption” in this show amounts to downplaying their crimes. If the writers don't retcon the story so characters like Nathalie, Sabrina, and Andre were forced to help a greater threat instead of being willing accomplices, they'll retcon the story so characters like Felix and Gabriel were perfectly justified in their actions due to having a tragic backstory. Yes, while the point of a redemption arc is to have a former antagonist realize the error of their ways and turn a new leaf, it doesn't mean that the character who goes through this arc was never bad in the first place.

Like a lot of problems with this show, this is obviously contradicted by the way it handles Chloe. Any argument made on why every villain who was redeemed this season was stated to not apply to Chloe for some reason.

“Felix is a victim of child abuse and has a lot of emotional baggage!” Funny, because I remember in “Derision”, Mylene made a point about Chloe having a deadbeat parent not being enough to justify her actions, so by that logic, Felix shouldn't be getting away with anything.

“Sabrina and Andre were being forced to go along with Chloe's evil plans, so it's not their fault!” Chloe was also a pawn in Gabriel and Lila's schemes, yet we're still supposed to see her as evil. “But she still went along with Lila's plan!” By that logic, so did Sabrina and Andre, since they still listened to Chloe for a while instead of distancing themselves from her far earlier than they did.

“Gabriel and Nathalie are doing everything they can to help Adrien while they're both in poor health! Chloe didn't actually care about Adrien!” Sure, it's clear that (according to the retcons in Season 4), Chloe only cared about Adrien as a meal ticket, you can't say Gabriel and Nathalie care about Adrien either, since one is an abusive parent and the other did nothing to actually stop the abuse. Also, why should I feel bad for either of them when they routinely endanger lives and are only on death's door because of their own terrible choices?

I'm not saying that the show doesn't make decent points about why Chloe can't be redeemed. The issue is that these rules are never applied to anyone else who does get redeemed. The show tries to use characters like Chloe and Lila as a cautionary tale about how easy it is for your kindness to be taken advantage of, yet we never get any examples of compassion being a key factor in any major redemption this season.

Pretty much every villain who changes their ways only does so out of self-interest. Nathalie was fed up with Gabriel's constant failures and her own declining health, Felix only cared about doing things that would benefit himself like hooking up with Kagami, Andre was more than happy to resign even though he was forced to do so by an Akuma, Sabrina chose to stop helping Chloe after one particular plan goes too far (without actually apologizing for all the times she still went along with Chloe's schemes, no less), and Gabriel only stopped trying to hurt people once he got exactly what he wanted and died a martyr.

For a show with the lyrics “The power of love always so strong!”, why do we never actually see the power of love in action? And it's not just them. Whenever a character shows some form of compassion for an enemy, it's usually met with a dismissive attitude or fails miserably, and if it's not that, it's all lie to trick someone else.

In “Illusion”, Gabriel's plan to throw off suspicion that he's Monarch involves pretending to let Ladybug and Cat Noir get through to him.

In “Derision”, Rose pointed out Chloe's relationship with her mother as an excuse for why she's so mean, only for Mylene to argue against that despite being in a different boat than Chloe is.

In “Revelation”, Lila kept lying about having a caring attitude and believing that anyone can change, which was obviously meant to mock anyone who had that kind of viewpoint.

In “Collusion”, Ms. Bustier tries to reach out to Chloe after everything she's done, only to lose her job as a result.

In “Re-Creation”, the whole reason Bug Noire manages to beat Monarch was by putting him in a situation that would take advantage of his compassion for his wife, and later on, Gabriel manages to get the upper hand by taking advantage of Marinette's own compassion for him.

For a magical girl show, these writers are really terrible at teaching the lesson about showing kindness to your enemies, because more often than not, it's just violence that solves everything. Just ask the citizens of Paris in “Revolution”.

It doesn't help that the morality in this show isn't a complicated spectrum that weighs every action a character does and allows for other stances besides good or evil. Instead, it's like a light switch with two settings: “So good, you volunteer at the local children's hospital” and “So bad, you voluntarily send children to the hospital”. Characters in this show are either good or bad, and there's no room for in-between. Even when characters supposedly do change their ways, the show goes out of its way to claim that this is what they've always been like, which completely undermines the idea of what a redemption arc sets out to accomplish.

The thing is that I've actually seen examples of “Character X was only doing bad things as part of their plan!” and “Character X was only forced to do bad things for the villain!” done with one character, and it was a very recent example too. In the recently concluded Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger, one of the major villains was a tyrant named Racules, who took advantage of several monster attacks to secure more power for his kingdom, but later on, it's revealed he had a reason to do so. Long story short, Racules was the latest in a long line of rulers who was essentially blackmailed into carrying out a war by an immortal being from space named Dagded. However, Racules had a plan to secretly find a way to kill Dadged, and it involved playing along by pretending to be a heartless tyrant. By playing up his persona of a villain, not only did Racules drive his brother Gira (who was revealed to be an immortal creation of Dadged) to gain the weapons necessary to fight Dadged, Dagded trusted Racules so much, he decided to give him the power to kill an immortal. Guess who Racules chooses to kill as soon as he gets that ability.

While the reveal that Racules was good all along happened very late into the series, it worked far better than any redemption in this entire show for one reason: Racules isn't let off the hook for what he did. Everyone, Racules included, acknowledges that he did terrible things for years, and as soon as the situation is resolved, Racules is imprisoned for his crimes. Racules even admits to going mad with power at one point before he focused on his goal again, and he doesn't complain while he's in prison.

We never get any moments like this with the other redeemed characters. Nobody ever acknowledges that they went too far. They do one or two good things, and therefore, they're perfectly okay in Marinette's eyes.

Like a lot of topics it covers, this show wants to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to redemption. It wants to show characters changing their ways, but it doesn't want to actually hold those characters accountable for their actions. It wants to explain that not everyone can be redeemed, but it doesn't want to explain what causes people to want to redeem themselves. It wants to have an idealistic view of solving problems with compassion, yet it goes out of its way to mock those with that same ideology while claiming that violence is the only answer.

Maybe if Astruc spent less time arguing with people on Twitter over the concept of redemption, he and his team could have put more effort into fleshing out the all of the half-baked redemption arcs this season.

Adrienette Is Finally Canon! The Love Square? What’s That?

Well, it finally happened. After seven years, five months, fourteen days, 115 episodes and three specials since the show originally premiered in France on October 19th, 2015, Marinette and Adrien have finally gotten together for real. No cop-outs, no reset button, no misunderstandings, this is real. Credit where credit is due, the writers could have easily kept stalling and wait until the very end of the season for Marinette and Adrien to get together and called it a day, but they gave us over half a season of them in an actual relationship. Unfortunately, this also meant the writers had to rush the development of the relationship in order for Adrienette to become official in the first place.

Like a lot of stuff in the first half of this season, the writers pretty much speedran through the plotlines building up to Marinette and Adrien getting together. During the course of a mere eight episodes, we got a plotline about Marinette feeling guilty for letting her feelings for Adrien make her screw up, a plotline where Adrien realizes he has feelings for Marinette, a plotline where Marinette falls in love with Cat Noir, a plotline where Adrien stops having feelings for Ladybug, and finally, a plotline where Marinette stops having feelings for Cat Noir. These are all plotlines that we should have gotten over the course of the past four seasons, but instead, the writers are just cramming them all into less than a dozen episodes.

Considering how this was meant to be the final season originally, you can tell the writers realized they actually had to actually resolve the “Will they or won't they?” plotline instead of just padding things out like they normally do. But that's the problem. This was something fans, shippers, and general audiences were told to look forward to for years. Keep in mind, one of the biggest arguments you could make for just why the writers waited until Season 5 for Marinette and Adrien to officially get together was because they had something HUGE planned. This is a big deal for the show, something you can't take too lightly. If Astruc and the other writers were so intent on hyping up Adrienette for over four seasons to the point of showing two alternate timelines where they get together to tide viewers over, they needed to make sure they had a payoff so incredible, so satisfying, that their audiences would see it as more than worth the wait.

Just how was the big moment where Marinette and Adrien officially got together this season after so many years of buildup?

To be perfectly honest with you, I had absolutely no goddamn idea that the end of “Transmission” was meant to signify them finally starting a relationship. It just felt like the writers were doing the same thing about them being friends with a hint of something more on the horizon, but then the opening of “Deflagration” made it clear that here was major progress made in their relationship, though Marinette denied it due to her own anxiety, and by “Perfection”, it's confirmed that the two are dating. I just... really? This is how the two finally get together? It just... happens? No big dramatic confession? No romantic first date building up to this? Not even a kiss? The two talk for a few minutes, watch an Akuma fight, and now they're an item. Are you kidding me? Sure, most of the big moments in their relationship are saved for after they get together, but there's the problem: the writers half-ass the moment where Marinette and Adrien get together! It's more or less an afterthought in a two-parter involving a battle with Monarch where nothing was really accomplished.

You'd think for all the uncertainty Marinette felt over her feelings for Adrien this season, them getting together would be seen as a big moment, but it just doesn't for some reason. While you could argue it's a lesson in your fear of confessing being harder than the act itself, not much attention is given to Marinette growing closer with Adrien, because, for some reason, the writers decided to hold off the love confession and the first kiss for far later in the season (Pretension, Revolution). That's right, even after Marinette and Adrien finally get together, the show still needs to find a way to draw out the development of Adrienette.

I don't get it. Why couldn't the confession and kiss be what cements Adrienette, so more focus could be given to other plots? You can't say the “Will they or won't they?” stuff is the only draw to Adrienette, because there are plenty of plots you could write now that Marinette and Adrien are together. You could have an episode where Marinette invites Adrien over to breakfast with her parents in a follow-up to “Weredad”. You could have an episode where Marinette and Adrien try to go out on a perfect first date, only to struggle to balance their superhero lives getting in the way. You could have an episode where both Marinette and Adrien worry they're not good enough for each other, only for them to realize they love each other for who they really are. You could have an episode where Marinette and Adrien finally get closure on their former relationships with Luka and Kagami respectively. There were plenty of options for stories here, yet rather than do literally anything like that, not only did the writers drag out Marinette and Adrien's first kiss, they had the main villain take a break from trying to get the Miraculous to focus on breaking up the two.

As I mentioned earlier, we get a new arc all about Gabriel trying to break up Marinette and Adrien so Adrien can start dating Kagami again. Now I know what you're probably thinking: “IOTA, wasn't it implied that while Adrien and Kagami were dating, they were keeping their relationship a secret from their parents? Why are their parents suddenly obsessed with them getting together?” Well, you see, the answer to that is... that I have no answer because this makes no sense and is yet another excuse for a story arc that is somehow relevant to the overall plot. It's because of Gabriel's irrational hatred of Adrienette that Adrien is sent to London, and as a result, is absent from the final battle.

The sad thing is that I honestly thought Marinette and Adrien had some cute moments as a couple this season and had some believable chemistry. It's nothing groundbreaking, and there are plenty of flaws that I'll get to later, but for all intents and purposes, they still made a decent couple. It's just too bad that everyone else won't shut up about how amazing they are together. When their friends aren't trying to set up these cinematic scenarios for Marinette and Adrien that keep failing (Perfection, Protection,), they're gushing over how amazing of a couple the two are (Transmission, Deflagration, Revelation). At best, it comes across as the writers saying “How do you do, fellow shippers?”, and at worst, it comes across as the writers taking a victory lap while treating Adrienette as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Adrienette just dominated the latter half of this season, and it really got in the way of the overall story regarding the conflict with Monarch. What's that? You're saying I forgot something, like the other three sides of the Love Square. Ah, good eye, my friend.

SO DID THE FUCKING SHOW.

For the thing that got a lot of people interested in the show in the first place, the rest of the Love Square is criminally underutilized this season. Marinette randomly develops feelings for Cat Noir for a handful of episodes, Cat Noir randomly moves on from Ladybug, and I don't think we even got a single Ladrien scene this season. It really felt like the writers realized this was meant to be the last season, so not only did they have to get Marinette and Adrien together as quickly as they could, they also had to acknowledge the other sides of the Love Square. Of course, they did that without actually doing an identity reveal.

There are theories that the reveal was going to happen this season with how much Marinette and Adrien only talked about each other and not their superhero partners (implying they both knew who the other was), but the writers changed it at the last minute because they got renewed for more seasons. I suppose it makes in a meta sense, but what about the in-universe explanation? What's stopping Ladybug and Cat Noir from learning each other's identities when literally every other hero in Paris can get their Miraculous back, even the ones who had their identities discovered? Were the writers so uncertain if people would still watch the show if there wasn't any mystery in Marinette and Adrien's relationship? What exactly is there left to explore with the Love Square when Adrienette is canon, while Ladynoir, Marichat, and Ladrien are all dead in the water?

Like a lot of things this season, the handling of the Love Square started off strong and gradually petered out to the point where I just don't care anymore. I started this season assuming the reveal would actually happen, but of course, the writers just won't let this subplot die already.

Adrien Who?

While I don't really have a lot of bad things to say about Adrien compared to last season, this is unfortunately part of the bigger problem with how he was handled this season.

Like I said earlier, it seemed like the writers actually learned from their mistakes last seasons with how Adrien was written during the earlier episodes last season. He stopped whining about how he was totally important and started pulling his weight in battle. He was very active in fighting Akumas and actually felt like an equal to Ladybug. Yeah, Ladybug still called the shots, but the two stopped bickering over stupid things and had more conversations about other things. It didn't matter if they were more casual chats about their lives (Perfection) or discussions on the enemy's plans (Intuition, Revolution).

The problem, like a lot of things this season now that I think about it, comes in the second half. Remember how last season made a big deal about how wrong it was to leave Adrien out of the loop with so many secrets? Once again, the writers seemed to have forgotten this major story arc that they wrote themselves. Now, not only does Gabriel crack down on his horrific treatment of Adrien through his ring, not only does Adrien's character regress to being nothing more than Marinette's trophy boyfriend, by the end of the season, Adrien is literally reduced to a damsel in distress who needs to be saved, instead of, you know, A SUPERHERO. And remember, the writers were very proud of how this was planned for almost a decade, all because they got to supposedly subvert fairy tale tropes.

I feel like this whole “Save Adrien” plotline could have worked if Adrien wasn't already a superhero, and was just a civilian Marinette knew. Yeah, it would still be using an overdone trope, but at least if that happened, Adrien would have an excuse to not be able to fight back as opposed to the several he made during the finale. Instead, for the majority of the season's second half, Adrien takes a backseat to a major story arc revolving around his family and isn't even given proper closure by the end.

“But IOTA!” You might say. “The show's called Miraculous Ladybug, not Miraculous Cat Noir! Of course Ladybug has to save the day! She's the main character!” That may be true, voice in my head, but here's the thing: If Adrien wasn't going to be part of the final battle, why wasn't this about Marinette's family? Why not make Monarch Tom or Sabine trying to bring back their spouse? Marinette is the main character, yes, but so much of the backstory in this show is connected to Adrien's family. The show tries to connect Marinette to this through her relationship with Adrien, but with how often she and Gabriel fight over what's best for him, Adrien kind of just sits around, not protesting against his father in the slightest. I'm not saying Adrien should be the main character. I'm saying that Marinette should be tied more into the story if you were going to base a lot of the drama on her perspective during the final battle. It's almost like making it so Adrien physically can't rebel against his father was a stupid way to keep him out of the conflict.

Why the hell couldn't we have gotten a scene where Adrien's connection to Gabriel was broken? There were plenty of options the writers could have used. You could have had Nathalie steal the other ring back from Gabriel to give to Adrien, have Argos use the Peacock Miraculous' powers to override Gabriel's commands, or have Adrien unlock a new form of Cataclysm that severs the bond with his Amok. And that's not even getting into the excuses the show made for why he can't get involved, because God forbid one of the two main characters in the show's title get to take part in the final battle.

In fact, I'm pretty sure this is why Felix was introduced, to do the things Adrien should be doing. Felix is the one who has a vendetta against Gabriel, a deeper connection with Kagami, knowledge that he's a Sentimonster, and an overall influence in the plot. The writers are so obsessed with coddling Adrien that they created an entirely different character to fill in a role for him, and Felix wasn't even in the final battle. And just remember, Adrien was originally created to replace Felix in the story, so Felix taking over Adrien's role as the character who helps advance the plot makes even less sense.

Even if the final battle is meant to be over Adrien, it comes across less like Marinette and Gabriel are fighting over his freedom and more who gets to control him. Gabriel doesn't use his wish to free Adrien from the shackles of the rings. He just gives Marinette the rings and hopes she won't do the same kind of things he did with the rings. Nothing changed over Adrien's treatment except who gets the keys.

It'd be one thing if Adrien at least chose Marinette over his father, but Adrien isn't even allowed to know the full story on anything, not even the Sentimonster stuff. Okay, putting aside the fact that Adrien has lots of friends and family to help him cope with this, maybe I can buy not telling him about Gabriel. Not telling him he's a Sentimonster is something I can't excuse. This is like not wanting to tell someone they have diabetes and hoping they know how to use their own insulin while they're downing Pepsi after Pepsi. It's not just a matter of hurting Adrien's feelings. His fucking life depends on those rings. He should obviously know to keep them safe and not trade them for magic beans or something stupid like that.

But the biggest problem with Adrien this season is how it goes against everything the show has said about him and his relationship with Marinette/Ladybug the last four seasons, and especially Season 4.

For the past four seasons, the show has loved to say that no matter what happens, Ladybug and Cat Noir will always be here for the other, even against the world. Put aside how unlikable Adrien was last season, that was the ultimate lesson, about the two reaffirming their bond. And yet, here we are in the Season 5 finale, when literally the entire world is against Ladybug and Cat Noir, and Cat Noir is nowhere to be seen.

One of the main reasons why Adrien jumped at the chance to be a superhero was the freedom it gave him from his restrictive lifestyle, and how it led to him making more friends at school. And that very same story ends with Adrien admitting it's a good thing for him to stay inside and never acknowledge the fact that his father was kind of a dick. Remember, this was planned in advance for YEARS, and absolutely nobody thought it contradicted one of the most important aspects of Adrien's character: his desire for freedom. Now the same person who would demand to not be kept in the dark about so many things (Lady Wifi, Syren, Lies, Sentibubbler, Rocketear, Risk) is now sitting around like a coward while everyone else saves the world instead.

I still think Adrien was at his worst in Season 4, with how much of an whiny and insufferable idiot he could be, but Adrien in Season 5 is a close second. Yes, I wanted him to stop acting out and demanding that the world cater to his every whim, but I also wanted him to prove he was as valuable as he says. The first half of this season seemed to understand this kind of criticism and reminded the audience that Cat Noir was still useful, but when the actual story kicked in, the writers were so determined to keep the secret identity bullshit going, Adrien somehow got less focus as a hero than the Resistance, a group of temp heroes who actually lost their Miraculous. And consider the fact that this season wrapped up the drama with the Agreste family, so for all we know, Adrien will get even less screentime next season.

If Adrien is supposed to be an invaluable ally to Ladybug, then why doesn't the writing accurately reflect it?

The Problem With the Biggest Idiot of Season 5: Moronette, “Of Course I Know What I’m Doing!” Royal-Pain, AKA, Ladydumb

You know, it's funny. I kept defending Marinette when the writing kept making her out to be a terrible hero last season while Adrien got by without a single criticism, to the point where I considered Adrien to be the worst part of the entire season. Oh, how the tables have turned with dear old Marinette, as the season that chose not to criticize every single action she took is when she's arguably at her worst.

You have to wonder if the writers finally realized how much crap they put Marinette through over the last few seasons by having her always forcing her to learn some contrived lesson and were like, “Oh yeah, she's supposed to be someone the audience is supposed to root for.” Unfortunately, they went way too far in the other direction with how they handled Marinette.

The way Marinette was written this season felt eerily similar to what happened with Adrien last season. Suddenly, her personal drama is of the utmost importance (Determination, Passion, Reunion, Elation, The Kwamis' Choice, Perfection, Migration, Derision, Adoration, Pretension, Representation), she's making incredibly stupid decisions in battle (Evolution, Destruction, Determination, Pretension), she becomes the moral compass of the show who lectures others on what to do (Revelation, Confrontation, Collusion, Revolution), and she's never really called out for her actions by the other characters despite how often she makes things worse.

So much of the first half of this season is the exact same crap over and over again. Marinette complains about how hard things are for her and her conflicting feelings for Adrien. I wouldn't really mind something like this if it wasn't for two things.

First, there's no real arc involved with this. Marinette keeps complaining about her love life, and she never really learns anything from it. She doesn't even get to confess to Adrien and show her growing as a character. Adrien confesses to her, and bam, the two are a couple now. Glad to see all the discussions about Marinette's anxiety was completely pointless since she doesn't get to be the one to really confront her inner demons. Well, there was one time in “Derision”, and we all know how well that turned out, right?

Second, more often than not, it seems like Marinette is prioritizing her personal life over the situation with Monarch. You know, the guy who has access to fourteen different Miraculous? After you only managed to get one back? I'd understand if we got this kind of arc in the earlier seasons, but by doing this, you're undermining the current threat Monarch poses. She's even willing to give up being a superhero if it means being with Adrien. That is how important her love life is to her. She's willing to let Tikki force the responsibility onto someone else if it means she can be happy. Of course, this isn't too surprising, as Astruc once said that the show is supposed to focus primarily on romance, not superhero action.

THIS IS WHAT THOMAS ASTRUC ACTUALLY BELIEVES.

Just like with Adrien last season, the show seems to care more about Marinette's personal issues at the expense of other characters. Do you want to know how many episodes this season focused on Marinette's love life in some way? EIGHTEEN (Multiplication, Jubilation, Determination, Passion, Reunion, Elation, Transmission, Deflagration, Perfection, Derision, Protection, Adoration, Emotion, Pretension, Revolution, Representation, Conformation, Re-Creation). Literally two-thirds of the season includes Love Square drama. Even if you want to be generous and count both two-parters as single episodes, that's still more than half the season. This is yet another problem with waiting until what was originally supposed to be the last season to resolve your plot. You need to force all of this development through almost every episode until people get tired of it.

Because of this, Marinette basically took over the narrative of Season 5. Almost every major conflict revolved around her, even the stuff with Adrien. Rather than make a story about Marinette and Adrien working together to break free from Gabriel's influence, Marinette is the one who has to do the heavy lifting and save Adrien herself. I've already talked about this with Adrien, but it bears repeating, as this is same issue I had with Season 4. Just like how Adrien got more focus during a story arc that should have been about Marinette last season, Marinette is now getting more focus during a story arc that should have been about Adrien, to the point where Marinette gets to use Adrien's Miraculous during the final battle with Monarch.

I'd at least be somewhat forgiving towards the shift in focus if Marinette actually got to do anything to advance the plot herself. Because of how often the show focuses on Marinette's love life, very little time is dedicated to showing Ladybug making an effort to actually stop Monarch. The closest we got was in “Illusion”, and that was a plan spearheaded by Nino. Like I said earlier, Felix does more to advance the plot out of any character, even Marinette, THE ONE THE SHOW IS NAMED AFTER!

We have three separate episodes where Ladybug has Monarch at her mercy, but she decides to talk about how she's totally won and that Monarch can't get away at all, and then Monarch gets away in a matter of seconds. I just... this is “SHOOT THEM WITH THE DEHYDRATION GUN!” levels of stupid here! The only reason Monarch gets as far as he does is because Ladybug can't just grab any the Miraculous he has all over his body.

We're seriously supposed to see Marinette as an amazing hero when she keeps screwing up every opportunity she gets to stop Monarch. In the span of one season, Marinette went along with being forced to retire because she got a chance to date Adrien (The Kwamis' Choice), chose not to form a temporary alliance with an Akuma even if it meant possibly getting the Peacock Miraculous back and stopping a potential threat (Pretension), had absolutely no plan to stop Lila until someone else came forward with information on what she was doing (Confrontation), decided to let another Akuma force the mayor out of office (Collusion), and failed to stop Gabriel because she got tricked again and was completely helpless as the entire universe was recreated before she took credit for defeating Monarch afterwards in the new reality and then decided to honor the insane supervillain's wishes and keep her boyfriend completely in the dark about the truth even though she learned not to keep secrets from others (The Final Day) and MY GOD, I HATE THIS SEASON SO MUCH.

When Marinette isn't making terrible decisions, she's lecturing others on how to act around their enemies, and when I say “how to act”, I mean “refuse to give them even the slightest bit of respect after doing the bare minimum to help them try and change”. Marinette really lets her own personal biases toward Chloe and Lila get to her this season with how the latter half of the season had her tell others not to even consider trusting them because of how easy it is for them to take advantage of kindness. You know, something you'd hear someone like Superman or Spider-Man teach kids about.

In fact, here's a little game any aspiring writer can play when writing superhero characters: If you can't imagine someone as noble as Superman saying something like this...

Marinette: But sometimes, the good we think we see in some people is just a reflection of our own, and we end up being fooled by our own kindness.

Unless your intent is for them to be flawed or in the wrong instead of a complete paragon of virtue, you need to go through your drafts.

And just like Adrien, even though Marinette keeps screwing up, she's never held accountable for her actions. She's never allowed to be wrong, and is almost always the one who gets to lecture people, mainly towards the end of the season. A good example of how poorly written Marinette is this season is when she whines about Ms Bustier not punishing Chloe enough when not only does she fail to understand that Chloe is still being punished, but she did absolutely nothing to bring Chloe's cheating to her teacher's attention when as class representative, it's her job. I don't care how stupid that idea sounds, that's what the show goes with, and it makes Marinette's inaction come across as very irresponsible.

But then again, neglecting her duties at school is nothing compared to acting like Marinette didn't fail to save all of reality while not showing the least bit of remorse for it. I'm just saying, when even Ben 10: Omniverse of all shows does this kind of story better, you know you've screwed up. Again, we're supposed to see it like Marinette won because the universe is in one piece, when, once again, SHE FAILED! Like I said, she failed at pretty much everything she set out to do this season and didn't stop Monarch outside of warding off his Akumas. This is seriously how the show was supposed to end, with Marinette failing to save the universe and the audience just needing to accept it. Well, in case it wasn't obvious on my front, I don't. Hell, forget Ben 10: Omniverse. Even Star vs. the Forces of Evil had the main character save the day, even if it meant potentially screwing over countless lives by destroying all magic in the world. Marinette? “Well, everyone I know and love is technically dead and the madman I spent five seasons trying to stop gets to die a martyr, but everything looks like I saved the day, so that technically means I didsave the day! Man, I'm a great hero. Good thing the other characters basically exist to remind the audience of how amazing I am.”

If there's one thing to take away from everything that's happened, it's that this was the season where Marinette has arguably become one of the biggest examples of a show failing to make the audience like their main character. There was much time dedicated to rationalizing and trying to justify the worst possible decisions she could've made and acting like she's still an amazing hero. Stuff like this only serves to further validate the criticisms people have had for her as a character ever since Season 5. And remember, this is coming from someone who went out of their way to defend Marinette last season. In an attempt to show her at her most heroic and virtuous, Season 5 pretty much cemented Marinette as a terrible main character, a terrible superhero, and a terrible role model for children.

Eight Years for This?

I'm going to be perfectly honest with you guys. This season just broke me, and there was a good reason why this analysis took so long to write.

While there were a number of outside factors that made it hard for me to get the time to write (work, the holidays, family gatherings, etc), there were still times where I either didn't have a lot of material to work with, or I just couldn't find the motivation to work on the reviews. I guess throughout all these years, I figured that after all this buildup between the Love Square and Adrien's relationship with his father, there would at least be something I could find this season that would allow me to say this was worth the wait. Unfortunately, it was just disappointment after disappointment this season, with a universally hated finale to boot.

To me, this was the season that burned away the remaining goodwill I had for the show, because there's just no salvaging it at this point. The writers pretty much butchered every single character in some way, excused the main villain's actions for a sorry excuse for a heroic sacrifice, and literally reset the universe so all of the characters we've come to know for almost a decade technically don't exist anymore. Even the cliffhanger for Season 6 really excites me, because why should I care about a character we still know nothing about becoming the main villain? Why should I care at all when the writers have made it clear they don't care either? They don't care about writing character development, they don't care about writing consistent lore for their world, they don't care about approaching serious subjects with the delicacy they deserve and they certainly don't care about telling a consistent story.

Season 5 of Miraculous Ladybug was a failure in every conceivable definition of the word. It failed to deliver a satisfying conclusion to any of the stories that had been set up for years, and if this was how the main story ended, I don't really have a lot to look forward to when Season 6 premieres.

[ilikekidsshows]

did you see the spoilers for ml season 6 where there’s a new girl with a prosthetic leg and that leg ends up broken and marinette’s involved somehow? honestly i’m gonna give marinette the benefit of the doubt for now and just assume this is either a huge misunderstanding/accident or extremely misleading spoiler just because this is a serious thing, like I was super disappointed with how her character’s written in season 4 and 5 but I just don’t want to believe the writers would come up with something like this when this would easily be one of the worst things she’s ever done (if she’s actually responsible). I saw the spoiler on TikTok and there’s several explanations I’ve seen in the comments:

the new girl (idr her name) is lila/cerise in disguise and she wants to ruin marinette’s reputation (iirc the writers said she’s nice and not a villain but maybe they just don’t want to spoil the plot for obvious reasons)

marinette didn’t have bad intentions/it was an accident/misunderstanding/spoilers are too misleading/not enough information yet

and my least favorite explanation…the new girl was trying to get with adrien (some fans are saying this to say this is all part of her scheme to get adrien to break up with marinette and date her instead but some are saying this to justify marinette if she was actually at fault for this)

I think my main concern is how the writers are going to address this. What if they try to justify it if marinette really was at fault? Or what if it’s all a misunderstanding but then they put the new girl to the side to focus on how sad this is for marinette? Are they going to be able to address this in a way that doesn’t come across as ableist while also not making their protagonist look like a bad person? What do you think?

---

I just saw the leak, but at first I couldn't find it, so I’d already written a response before that, so here's me describing the possible nightmare scenarios before the writers proved me right about their priorities:

Like, hot take, but it doesn’t matter what the new girl is doing, messing with her mobility aid would still be absolutely unforgivable. Even if it’s Lila in disguise, Marinette has already exhibited so much ableism in trying to prove her disabilities aren’t real that I would just say that the writers shouldn’t be allowed to as much as mention any disability ever again. “A person claiming they’re disabled could be lying to get special considerations, so make sure to check any claims of disability, no matter how awful you come across for doing it,” is not a lesson that has any place in a children’s cartoon, even accidentally. And that’s exactly what any scenario with a girl faking a disability / using their disability to get closer to Adrien would entail as well, the idea that we should be suspicious of disabled people trying to “cheat” their way to things that “belong” to us.

But, like, even if it actually is going to be aiming to be an actual lesson in disabilities where it’s all a misunderstanding/mistake, the thing is that, lately, I’ve been looking back at the “lessons” in this show, even in the earlier seasons, and I just don’t have faith in these writers’ ability to deliver any kind of moral to kids in a consistent way, unless they’re going to have a character directly talk to the screen to explain what the moral is.

Let’s use ‘The Mime’ as an example. The scenario in this episode is that Marinette, through her clumsiness, deletes the most important video Alya had filmed so far, and then spends the rest of the episode trying to recreate the video in order to cover up for her mistake. In the end, it turns out there was no problem because Alya had already saved a copy of the video because she expected something like Marinette deleting it to happen, so she was never even mad or disappointed, but Marinette still sets up Alya to get a one-on-one interview with Ladybug. What did Marinette learn in this episode exactly?

The most good faith interpretation of the episode is that the point is that you own up and make up for your mistakes, hence Marinette setting Alya up to get an interview with Ladybug. But this message is muddled up by the fact that, even before the retool, the writers didn’t want Marinette suffering any real consequences for messing up, or to show her messing up in a way that couldn’t be “fixed”, so the video was actually safe and no irreparable damage was done. Alya had foreseen that Marinette would mess up and planned accordingly. This takes the wind out of the sails of the lesson because of course Marinette would do something nice for Alya, who’s such a considerate friend who never gets mad at her and plans around Marinette’s flaws. It’s a pretty different thing to go out of your way to apologise or make things up to someone who is actually mad at you for a good reason, and it requires a lot more courage. The situation in ‘The Mime’ is the easiest version of this situation imaginable for Marinette, but completely unrealistic for anyone facing this kind of situation in real life.

So, with this kind of previous showing back when I still had faith in this show, how would I expect them to deal with Marinette accidentally messing with someone’s mobility aid post-retool? I’d expect a lot of focus on how upsette Marinette is, because that’s the show’s number one priority outside of the love quest, with the show going out of it’s way to make it very clear that Marinette didn’t mean to, she feels really bad about it and she’s scared of how the new girl will react. At the end of the episode she would gather her courage and face the music, and it turns out the new girl was actually getting a new mobility aid that very same day and she wouldn’t have needed the old one any longer anyway. And then Marinette will maybe make some gesture of friendship that the new girl gladly accepts, no hard feelings. Any normal person would still be pissed about their expensive mobility aid being messed with, but the writers of this show never have characters react normally when the normal thing to do is not instantly forgive Marinette. So this scenario would be making things easy for Marinette, but completely unrealistic for the viewing audience.

Simply put, I really, really really hope the sneak preview is purposefully misleading, as they tend to be, and the crew doesn’t try to tackle the topic of physical disabilities with their tendency to favor the perspective of their coddled, able-bodied protagonist.

—

After seeing the leak:

So, like, fucking hell, way to further sully the idea that Marinette ever took her job as Ladybug seriously. Just to make herself look like the victim when she’s caught stalking someone (something she insisted last season she’d stopped doing), she goes so far as faking being Akumatized, transforming into Ladybug and jumping right in the middle of the field, of this girl's path, to scream about an Akuma attack. Like, the reveal that Sublime knew there was actually no Akuma and that Tomoe apparently made the leg less sturdy on purpose doesn’t make it better when Marinette got Sublime slippery and then startled her enough to make her slip. People break perfectly fine legs from slipping, it's why anti-skid devices sell so well in winter. All of this being an accident doesn’t make it okay, and Marinette sure as hell didn’t have anything close to those “good intentions” her stans love to attribute to her.

But, of course, her victim is going to be a perfect flawless angel who wasn't even upset about the stalking, instead defending Marinette to Ladybug, just in case saying: “this girl I know pretended to be Akumatized because she was caught stalking me” might make Marinette look bad to the audience. She also instantly reassures Ladybug, the one who actually caused her to slip, who hasn't done anything more than stare at her slack-jawed, because god forbid anyone ever say anything about Marinette that isn't validation or praise while she's too busy freaking out about herself.

Like, Marinette causes Sublime to break her leg, and we instantly see the victim in this situation go: “I’m okay, I’m not hurt”, while Marinette just stands there having her personal little panic attack. Like, a girl lost her leg, and the writers still try to sell Marinette as the injured party by having the victim insist she's okay while Marinette is having another one of her manipulative, please-feel-sorry-for-me-audience emotional breakdowns. The writers seriously made Marinette’s victim prioritize reassuring her over anything else.

I knew the writers were going to have Marinette be instantly forgiven, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so instant that she didn’t even get to finish processing her fuck-up. Or to go so out of their way to make Marinette seem less at fault because, like, Tomoe messing with the leg on purpose isn't a villain scheme, it was just to make Marinette look better in comparison.

The writers have this ability where, when I write down what I think would be a very likely way for one of their stories to go very badly, they do just that while still managing to make it worse.

[tumblingxelian]

Chloe Knows:

Apparently game Chloe knows Marinette is Ladybug, so I wrote this:

Summary: Chloé Bourgeois is perhaps the last person Marinette expected to see on her roof after having lost the Miraculous to Felix.

Chloé Bourgeois is also probably the person Marinette least wants to see on her roof.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Chloe knows more than she's ever let on and that complicates things, but it just might end up helping too.

Chloe Knows:

The last thing Marinette expected to deal with right now was Chloe hanging out on her roof, arms folded and tapping her yellow jacket impatiently.

It was also the last thing Marinette wanted to deal with, save maybe finding Hawk Moth waiting for her. & that thought just sent her gut into a tailspin, so Marinette forced open her ceiling hatch and stalked onto the roof.

Chloe zeroed in on her instantly, hissing, "You kept me waiting!"

Marinette barely resisted the urge to grab and shake the blonde, because she had only just finished re-tethering herself after the disaster of losing the Miracle Box.

Still, she had just enough restraint to only force her way into Chloe's space, grounding out, "How did you trick my parents into letting you up here, Chloe?"

The blonde blinked confusedly, "I climbed?" She motioned to a discarded pair of gloves sitting in the rooftop bin. "Why would I talk to your parents about that anyway? This is our business."

Marinette tried very hard to parse that question but she was still trying to process Chloe having scaled her walls!?

"Because they-, I-" No she as not dealing with that right now. "Chloe we don't have business!" Marinette settled on, arms flailing.

"Normally we wouldn't, you made sure of that-"

"Oh I made sure of it?"

"Yes you," Chloe huffed, somehow the one affronted, "When you got me to be terrible for my mother, then made it impossible for me to be good as Queen Bee by taking Pollen. Now you go and lose her & the others? I thought you were at least cunning to pull that scheme off Dupain-Cheng, or are you just lucky!?"

Marinette technically 'heard' what Chloe said, but she didn't have the wherewithal to react to it. Not right now as her whole world felt like it was suddenly unreal and empty and yet crushingly full all at once.

"Hah, haha, what are you t- talking about? Me, take a pollen? I don't know what that is? I don't even like wasps!"

Chloe dragged her hands down her face, screaming into her palms, "You cannot be this thick, no one can, for the- I know you're Ladybug, I've known your Ladybug for ages. Now tell me how you lost the Miraculous!"

"I could never be-"

Chloe stepped forward, counting off on her fingers.

"Rena is Alya, Nino is Carapace, Sabrina the Hound, Max is Pegasus, Kim is monkey guy and Zoe is Vespera, very petty of you, kudos really. Need I list more?"

"I"

"I've seen your Kwami, do I need to grab your damned earrings!?"

Marinette's hands flew to them, and she flung herself back, then started to giggle, maniacally.

"Hahaha, of- of course, this is a nightmare! All a nightmare! I didn't fail, Chloe doesn't know anything, I didn't get tricked by Felix and doom Paris! Hahaha- OW!"

Chloe pulled her hand back and out of pinching distance.

"You're awake Dupain-Cheng & finally answered my question to boot. Felix, ugh!! What, did he pull that stupid 'I'm Adrien' stunt and you just tripped over yourself?"

"Actually-" Tikki cut in gently, drifting out of her bag. "There was no tripping that I recall, & he'd had help this time, as Adrien wished to stay in Paris so it was more believable."

Marinette felt like her throat was closing up as she rasped, "Tikki, why!?"

The Kwami turned to her, big eyes doleful, "I am sorry Marinette, but it was obvious she knew and has evidently known for sometime. I felt you continuing to try and cover this up would only make things worse not better."

"Good thing too, I was about to tackle her and shake you out of that bag-ah!"

Marinette grabbed Chloe, spun her around and trapped her against the nearest wall. Eyes wild and frantic, the command phrase to transform dancing on her lips.

"Where's Hawk Moth? What's your game Chloe!?"

"If this was a game I'd be having fun, also," Chloe brought her hands up, and sharply but lightly 'chopped' her way out of Marinette's grip with the sudden pressure on her elbows and then shot out of grabbing range.

"Uhu, you had your chance to straddle me and passed it up."

Marinette's overtaxed brain wanted to 'scream' at that particular mental image. But Ladybug Brain was taking over and she snapped.

"How long have you known? It can't be that long or Hawk Moth would have found out already. After Penal-Team, no after-"

"Are you kidding? I've known way longer than that," Chloe boasted.

"Then why doesn't Hawk Moth know? Why didn't you just Akumatize and bring him the Miraculous!?" Marinette hissed.

"Because I don't want him to win, obviously!"

"You say you want him to win all the time!"

"I say stupid stuff when I'm angry, sue me!"

"Marinette!" Her parents called, and she could hear them racing up the ladder and nearly tripping over one another in a bid to make it to the rood.

Tikki vanished back into her purse and Marinette stood stock still frozen as her parents clambered out. Her mother hugging her close and her dad stepping between her and Chloe.

"How did you get up here?" Her father groused.

"Marinette, are you OK?" Sabine asked, fretfully.

A million and one excuses flew through Marinette's exhausted brain. Class project, Chat Noir dumped Chloe on her roof, she was Ladybug & Chloe had come to yell at her- No wait, that was the truth!

"What business is it of yours?" Chloe snapped back, evidently not intimidated by her father.

"Because this is our home, and our daughter and you are trespassing." Tom rumbled.

Chloe leaned to the side and looked at Marinette, still in her mothers arms, and then pointedly looked 'past' them.

"That doesn't answer my question, Marinette and I's business is none of yours."

Her mother frowned, "You've never had business with our daughter, just sharp words at best. You have no right to her or anything here."

"Ch- Chloe was just checking up on me, after Monarch's announcement." Marinette rambled, trying to piece the pieces together into something workable that wouldn't send Chloe into a fit.

Both her parents looked stunned and also like they wanted to ask if she was concussed.

Fortunately, Chloe managed to pick up where she'd left off.

"Exactly, we certainly aren't friends, but I felt obliged to check up on someone else I knew Ladybug wouldn't check on."

"What?" Her mothers hug tightened, and her voice actually quivered.

Her father looked between the two sides, seemingly lost for what to do with himself.

The pieces fell into place and Marinette came to the truth, in a sense.

"I was Multi-Mouse, when my science teacher god Akumatized, Ladybug needed someone who was good at multitasking."

"Marinette," Her father rushed forward and pulled her into a hug that knocked the air out of her lungs.

"I... I helped her, I did OK I think."

"You got the Miraculous back so you did your job," Chloe cut in, neither warm nor scathing.

Her mother evidently didn't agree, "It shouldn't have been her job, either of your jobs. You're children!"

"Mum, dad, it's fine, really it's fine!"

Her mother ran a hand through her hair, "I feel like there's something you aren't saying sweetheart."

She glanced at Chloe who was watching the exchange with an inscrutable expression. Some strange mix of confusion and almost starvation like hunger that was honestly painful to perceive.

Marinette licked her lips and pressed on.

"Chloe was right that Ladybug might not check up on me. At least not in a way I could see."

"She's usually such a good hero?" Her father said, sounding despondent.

"It's because I asked her too! I... When I was Multi-Mouse, I used the other Miraculous. A lot. I shouldn't have, but nothing bad happened!" she hastily added, at her parents near frantic looks of worry.

"Ladybug warned me, but I misunderstood and she said even though I was OK this time I shouldn't use magic again for a long time. I was upset, I wanted to help her, I-"

Why was she crying?

"I wanted to be a good hero, but I just screwed up and now," she was sobbing. Gods she was sobbing in her mothers arms.

"There there, my treasure, I am sure you were brilliant, let it out," her mother stroked her hair while her father hovered protectively, one large hand rubbing circles on her back.

Fortunately, Marinette had already cried her heart out once tonight and was too tired for a truly spectacular breakdown.

She managed to half slip her mothers grip, wiping at her eyes. "Thanks, both of you," she glanced at Chloe who was back to not quite staring at them. Her face was a mask of forced, haughty neutrality that looked like it was being kept in place with wires buried beneath her skin.

"Thanks for checking up on me Chloe, and for somehow not telling Hawkmoth our, my, anyone's identities when he had you Akumatized all those times." Because she still needed an answer to that, only the fact Tikki hadn't seemed panicked was keeping her grounded.

Chloe swallowed, hands clenching and unclenching before she spoke.

"Yes, well, I might not be Queen Bee or a hero anymore, but ridiculous circumstances demand ridiculous actions. So for tonight I'm a hero and it's the duty of a hero to look out for people. Even one's they hate."

OK, ow.

Chloe pressed on, "As to identities," She shrugged. "If that idiot Hawkmoth, Shadowmoth or whatever he's calling himself had that kind of control he wouldn't have to wait for people to break before getting them under his thumb. Even when I let him in the last few times, I never let him dig deep and I'd just kick him out if he tried to paw at any of my secrets."

Marinette felt like her heart was going to collapse in on itself because, "Even knowing everything you do, you just- I can't- I don't understand you at all Chloe!"

That actually seemed to draw the blonde up short, "That's a surprise, I thought you knew me better than anyone. You're certainly good at," Chloe looked at her parents ten back to Marinette, "Hitting my weak spots when we come to blows."

It felt like there was a lot to unpack there and for the first time in a long time, Marinette knew she'd actually have to spare no small amount of time and thought on Chloe's inner workings.

For now though.

"Even if you 'can' just kick him out."

"You know I can!" Chloe stomped her foot. "You saw me do it when I was Penal-Team!"

"That's my point! Isn't that like willingly helping him!? Other people have to be tricked!"

Chloe scoffed, "Tricked she says, don't over-sell it, it's being angry or sad, or whatever and taking a deal. Besides, does it look like I'm helping? I played soccer for an hour then quit."

"You had a bunch of people trapped in deadly orbs Chloe!"

"So what!? People try to kill me all the time! Ivan tried to smear me on the pavement! Nathanial tried to chop my legs off! Mommy murdered me and no one cared! No one!"

There was a choked edge in that but Chloe pressed on. "Because it's not a big deal, and anyone trying to make it a big deal is just looking for sympathy points, so there." 

She huffed and unfolded her arms, "Anyway you've clearly got people to tend to and I got what I came for. See you at school, Multi-Mouse."

With that she marched across the rooftop to her sky-box. "I'm not climbing the walls again if I don't have to so I'll just leave out the front and avoid the stray dog."

Before she reached the door, Marinette was surprised to see her mother reach out and gently grasp Chloe's shoulder.

"Chloe," She said firmly, as the blonde practically froze up, looking half ready to bolt, or shout. "Thank you for checking up on our daughter, that was a good thing and for whatever it's worth. People should have cared, I'm sorry those who should don't."

There was a moment where Marinette honestly expected Chloe to start crying, to fling herself at her mother and howl and sob. She was sure she saw something glisten in her eyes before Chloe wiped it away, and swallowed.

Her voice was rough as she said, "It's... Thanks, or whatever, doesn't matter. I don't need anyone's help."

"Everyone needs someone, so if your feelings change, don't be afraid to ask, people can surprise you. Especially if you don't break into their house." Her mother said the last part with a sort of forced, hopeful smile.

Chloe nodded, like taking an instruction, a rasped something escaping her lips before she achingly pulled away and climbed down the ladder.

A million and one feelings, questions and terrors still swirled in Marinette's mind but as her father and mother gently guided her down the ladder, intent on hot coco and comfort talk. She knew they'd have to wait. Could wait, until she was rested and ready.

Even still, a part of her would linger on the question of Chloe. What to think, to feel, to do, certainly. But also on the quieter, more uncomfortable thoughts.

Like who someone who felt they had no one would turn to if they were desperate and at the end of their rope.

'& it's not just Chloe either, who does Chat Noir have besides me?'

It was an uncomfortable thought, but one buoyed by a new revelation. No matter how omnipotent Hawk Moth seemed, no matter how all knowing he claimed to be; he was clearly far less than that.

It wasn't much to build on, but it was something, a foot hold from which she could dig in her heels and drag him down from his perch.

Golden hair flashed in her mind again and another thought echoed in her head.

'One good foot hold may be enough to bring down Hawkmoth. So what could it do for someone else?'

Because no matter what she said or had done, Chloe made a choice tonight, and had been making choices for longer than Marinette realized. Not having fallen down the slope but merely standing on the brink.

'But she took a step back tonight, to somewhere I can reach.'

& maybe all Marinette needed was one good foothold to pull Chloe all the way back, perhaps Farther than she'd ever been, or Marinette even realized was possible. 

It was a tender little hope, strange and unsure, but somehow, in Marinette's mind, it felt like solid gold. 

NOTES:

Wrote this is one sitting, then edited it, I hope it reads well XD

I have no plans to continue this, though if someone else wants to take it and run with it please feel free. I kind of envision Marinette re-inviting Chloe to the class group chat as a sort of olive branch and them slowly working through their respective issues.

Also Chloe turning up at Felix's with a tazer and the same martial arts skills that let her fight Mayura to a stand still and possibly, violently reclaiming Doosoo, cos you can pry Jock!Chloe from my cold dead hands!

[servicpop]

How about ur ocs with a sensitive crybaby reader? In a way that reader is a cutie who would sniffle 'nd shiver if they did as much as brush against their perky nipples ໒꒰՞ ܸ. .ܸ՞꒱ა The type who would sob when they're teased 4 far too long, 'nd probably would be crying during foreplay too !! Already so overwhelmed before the main course even starts :<

I luv ur ocs and ur writing so much. 'm giggling while kicking my feet while writing this, mwah mwah ૮꒰ ˶• ༝ •˶꒱ა ♡

— ♡

nonnie i luv the way u write its so cute >< anyway !

Adrien loves teasing , he could do foreplay for hours n hours. When you're busy , maybe making some dinner for him while parents are out , he'll slide his fingers underneath your shirt , up your tummy and circling your pink buds. He loves playing with your skin , he holds you so close when he starts to feel you shivering , trying to squirm out of his grasp but he keeps you pressed firmly against him so you can't escape. The tears admittedly make him feel a bit guilty but he knows thats just a way of you showing how much you like it ! He kisses the corners of your eyes to try and stop those tears but he keeps playing with your sensitive body so it never works in the end. After a few more tears he gives in , his heart can't take your crying face for too long. "You're pretty when you cry, did you know that?" He's definitely got a few polaroids of your crying face stuffed in his drawer.

Vallen doesn't let up. The moment he sees those tears he smiles a sickeningly sweet smile. With just the tip of his finger — a feather light touch — he continues to circle it along the head of your cock. It's already weeping with pre just like your pretty eyes. He doesn't wipe them away , he watches as they roll down your rosy cheeks and blurs up your vision. You're whining and it falls to deaf ears , he'll continue to tickle you with just his finger , pushing your hips back down everytime you try and push up against it. "You'll run out of tears if you keep crying baby," he'll coo , bringing his other hand up to gently caress your chest , rubbing along your perky nipples.

Cole feels bad immediately TT The moment he even sees tears bubble at your eyes he stops and cradles you in his arms. Apologies will spill out his mouth and he'll desperately wipe your tears away. Even if you tell him you just cry because it feels good , he can't bring himself to continue. "Sorry honey, please don't cry, y'know my heart can't take it" he just holds you , afraid to touch you incase you start crying again but after some reassurance he'll continue. He keeps your face pressed against his shoulder as he lets you sniffle , he's nuzzling your cheek at the same time while his fingers press deep inside of you. He's slow with his movements , pausing whenever he heard a louder sniffle.

Callahan does not care ( or at least he claims he doesn't ) He'd scold you for crying so easily when he's barely even touched you , telling you off when you sniffle and grab at his shoulders to ground yourself. "What happened to your tough guy personality two seconds ago?" He'd mutter , just loud enough so you can hear. He's rough , all the time. Fistfuls of your hair , he drowns out your sobbing into the pillow. Its practically stained with your tears by now. But when he's done and its time to clean up , he feels a pang of guilt shoot through his heart seeing your teary face. He bathes you , dresses you , brings you water and food afterwards. He holds you close , his hand pressed against the back of your head as he cards his fingers through your hair. He waits till you're asleep before apologising.

[nobodyfamousposts]

Missing Sneak Peak (SUBJECT TO CHANGE)

The truth is out about Marinette's predicament, and to everyone's surprise, Chloe calls Ladybug:

"I need a favor."

It was a standoff.

Ladybug had faced down akumas, false heroes, monsters of man and magic, and even Hawk Moth himself. And not once had she ever backed down or given up.

But Chloe Bourgeois was nothing if not stubborn. She was long used to getting what she wanted.

And she wasn't going to let something as simple as facing an opponent with a mask and superpowers deter her.

“Look, I worked with you before. That has to mean something, right? I helped you before! Against my Dad and against Hawk Moth on Heroes Day! You…you owe me.”

Ladybug looked unimpressed. “The Miraculous do not entitle you to anything, Chloe.”

“No, hear met out!” Chloe insisted. “You trusted me to help you. And I did! I put my life on the line as your teammate. So…so that warrants something, doesn’t it? I deserve something! A wish. An ask. Just one request.”

The hero frowned. But Chloe was undeterred.

“So look, just…bring her back already. Bring back Marinette Dupain-Cheng and every stupidly good and positive thing she brings with her, and I’ll…I don’t know. I’ll find some way to return the favor.”

Ladybug simply stared at her. Blank. Unfeeling.

“I can pay you! Even superheroes need money, right?”

“Chloe….”

“I’ll be better! No more akumas, I promise!”

“Chloe.”

“I’ll be nicer! I’ll stop bugging my Dad for things and stop causing problems!”

“That's not—h”

“I'll donate my wardrobe to charity!”

“I can't just—"

“I’ll stop making comments to my classmates! I’ll just shut up completely! I’ll get voice surgery if I have to!”

“Chloe, that’s not how it works—”

“NO! It HAS to work!” She shouted, cutting her off. Because she refused—she refused to accept any other answer. “You’re Ladybug! You always make it work! So you can just make this work, too!”

Silence.

“Please.” Chloe begged. “This is the one good thing I have. I don’t want to—I can’t give it up!”

Ladybug simply looked at her, almost pityingly.

“Please." Chloe repeated. "Just this one thing. That's all.”

Ladybug simply shook her head, leaving Chloe feeling hollow.

And without even a word, Ladybug turned away.

Chloe just stared after her in shock.

Because Ladybug was Ladybug. A hero. THE hero. Always there. Always helpful. Always caring.

So why…?

Why didn’t she care now?

Then…

…it hit her.

And Chloe laughed.

How could she not?

“Of course.“ She laughed mournfully. “Of course she had gotten to you too.”

Because of course even Ladybug would be different.

Because of course if anyone could have helped make a Ladybug into the great hero she was today, it would be Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

----------------------------------------

“Chloe?" Adrien called out as he entered her room, worried and unsure. "Is everything okay? You were crying on the phone and…”

He froze, seeing Chloe curled up next to her Bee signal.

“Chloe?”

She didn’t move or answer immediately. He was worried she didn’t even realize he was there, given how blankly she seemed to be staring into nothing.

“Chloe?” He asked as he approached.

Silence.

Unsure of what else to do, he sat next to her and waited.

Chloe had gotten like this before. A long, long time ago.

She would have these times where she'd get quiet and small. And he would sit next to her, just barely touching. Close enough that she'd know he was there and could decide from there if she wanted to lean on him or push away. He always left it up to her. Always waited. Because Chloe never pushed him away. And with enough time, she would voice her feelings, just loud enough that he could hear.

...and sure enough...

“My Mom forgot my name today.” She whispered.

Adrien paused.

He knew how much that had to hurt her. Chloe’s Mother was everything to her. Everything she idolized and admired. Everything she wanted and wanted to be. He’d never seen her happier than when her Mom settled back in Paris and returned to her life.

It had meant everything to her. And to lose it again…

“I’m sorry, Chloe.” He said, leaning closer to her. “I thought things were better.”

“They were.” She sniffed, trying to hold back the hurt. “They were better. And do you know why?”

She laughed, startling him with how bitter it sounded.

“Chloe?”

“It was because of Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Because of course it was!" She started off lowly, but her tone grew angrier the more she spoke. "Because of course she is! Because of. Freaking. COURSE if ANYONE was to get my Mom to do better and treat me like I’m actually family and just be a mom, it would be stupid perfect Marinette!”

She curled in on herself with a sob.

“Not…not me.”

Despite her efforts, the tears began to flow.

“And…and now—”

She hiccuped, forcing herself to speak.

“I heard it, you know. They're saying that Marinette got hit by that akuma and now not only did she disappear, but everything—everything connected to her is disappearing, too. Like…how? How does that even work? How does one person affect that much? She was just…just a little nobody! She didn’t matter!” Chloe lowered her head. “At least, she didn’t use to.”

Adrien frowned, wanting to argue, but forced himself to not speak.

Chloe filled the silence instead.

“And it was scary learning she was fading, because that could happen to you or me or anyone, but it was like no big deal, right? Because  yeah, she’s done some things and helped some people but it's not like she did that much, right? So her being gone wouldn't matter that much. Surely she didn’t impact me.” Her eyes clenched shut. “But she did, and now it’s hitting me in the face just how much of what I had was because of her and…and…”

She tried to wipe at her eye, only for more tears to trail.

“And now just like that! It’s all gone! Just back to how it was before. Like—like it never happened! Mom caring about me? Loving me? Yeah right! When did that ever happen? It wasn't me being awesome or a good daughter or following in her footsteps that got my Mom's attention!" She smiled falsely, tears falling from her eyes in a sad show of her true feelings.

"Nope! It wasn't anything about me! It wasn't even about Mom realizing she loves me! Everything we got to have was all only because of Marinette Dupain-Cheng!” She exclaimed with a wild waving of her hands. "Isn't that lovely? Isn't that awesome? Isn't it great how she just fixed everything and brought us together into the happy little family I'd been wanting for years?"

“Chloe…”

She shook her head, showing a bitter smile.

“And now because of stupid akumas and stupid magic, Marinette isn’t here. And because she isn’t here, she wasn’t there. And because she wasn’t there, it didn’t happen. And because it didn’t happen, everything’s just…poof! Gone! Just like that! Just like magic!”

She clenched her fists, her smile falling. “And now I know it never would have happened on its own. Not with just me. Not without her. It was only because of her that I had my Mom back at all. And now that she’s gone, I’m gonna lose that too and…and…”

She sobbed.

“It’s not fair.”

It wasn’t, he agreed internally because what could he actually say?

He understood her feelings about her Mom. It was hold he felt with his own Dad. Never feeling enough. And to have someone else come in and fix that…he wasn’t sure whether he would be grateful or hurt. He was even less sure how he would respond.

…he would feel sad. He knew that much.

“And the worst part? Ladybug is just the same. Harsh sometimes, but not like that. Never like that.”

Silence.

A breath.

“What does that say?” Chloe asked. “When her being gone makes that big of a difference? With my hero AND with my Mom. Not me. Not anyone. No. It's because of Her.”

Adrien stared in surprise. He'd known Ladybug was off, but even Chloe had noticed a difference? It was jarring.

“Ladybug is?”

Chloe wiped her tears. “She's different. You've noticed, haven't you?” She paused, before shrugging. “Though maybe you haven't been around her enough to. But she's different, too. Everyone is different without her. Ladybug. My Mom...I get why. I remember what happened to start it, but still...”

He had as Chat, but he couldn't tell her that.

“And I hate it!” She suddenly exclaimed, anger rushing through her. “I hate it because it means it was nothing about me that made it even happen or made me worth it in the first place but it was everything about her and I hate that but I’m so selfish because—yeah okay, I hate it but I’ll still take it if it means I get to have this and it’s still better than not having Mom at all even if I only got it this way but now I can’t even have that much anymore and soon I never will have had it at all and it'll be like it never happened and it’s not fair!” She ended up shouting, slamming her fist into the ground.

“Chloe!”

“I’m not good, but it’s not fair!”

He hesitated for a moment.

But it was only a moment before he drew her into his arms and let her cry.

He wanted to speak and reassure her. Insist that she was wrong and she was more than enough. It was the right thing to say. The kind thing.

But he was still learning and growing and still so very scared of saying the wrong thing.

Nino had helped him. Listened to him. Helping him without even saying a thing.

Because it was what he needed…because sometimes people needed to make their voices heard more than they needed kind words.

And Adrien could do that much.

So he sat by her, waiting in solidarity and support. The friend and listener she needed as she cried.

[asukiess]

i just wanna say thank you for filling the eminath tag. you're a blessing 😭😭😭

do you have any eminath or ml fic recs?

!!!!!!! thank you, that means so much 🩵 glad you and others have enjoyed!! it’s been really nice to see more traction in the tag.

always open to hearing more from people about eminath, or the women separately, too. 🫶💞 love talking about them 🥰

as for fic recs, let’s start with the Emilie ones…

thirteen by okayanna (anna-scribbles)

truly the quintessential thesis on the relationship between Emilie and Adrien and the ramifications of his childhood, as well as a truly thought provoking fleshing out of the ghost of a presence we know.

would that I could, I’d bookbind this fic, annotate it, and have it on my shelf. literally when am I not talking about thirteen.

Orbital Departure, Lose it in the Morning, Watership Down, all by bittersweetResilience

Three fics that play with unique concepts such as Adrien having twin telepathy and a soul bond with Félix, a trait shared once with Amélie and Emilie, and the family dynamics between these pairs of twins.

Could never say enough about the attention and detail Sunny brought to these characters at the time. I think about Orbital Departure all the time.

(just check out Sunny’s Emilie tag, is what I’m saying.)

What Real Human Beings Do by nemali

Amélie is the main character here, but boy 👏 do 👏 we 👏 see 👏 the beautiful scars Emilie has left on her sister. and how better to understand a character than their twin?

and for the eminath section…

in the mouth of the sun by telmes (archekoeln)

I remember reading this and being in awe. it was like reaching into the past (2020!) and finding someone who saw the same beauty in the ship and feeling so understood. love love LOVE their writing style (just READ that summary!! UGH!!!), and I need to do a dive into their other nathalie-centric fics.

On the same note, I just found their fic “you push me down” in my bookmarks too and literally teared up remembering it.

she doesn't need me, not like I need her by azalera

i love a good, sentimental story. it may seem simple, but there’s something about it that I just think about often.

I’ve been meaning to read their fic, “hello, emilie” as well!

bread and oranges by peachcitt

need to do a proper reread of this because I feel like I read it in a trance. 🫶 getting emotional all over again. AUGH

As for me—I have a Nathalie character analysis fic that I’m proud of, and quite like the eminath poetry I did. Maybe you’ll like “for the hope of it all”, too 🥰