#Especially everything regarding Nathalie!

[familyagrestefanblog]

Huh, I just realized that:

In “Protection” Adrien revealed (to both us AND his father) that Emilie herself told him under which circumstances she and Gabriel met years ago. Rewatching “Passion” today, I realized that this explains Adrien’s shocked expression after Nathalie told him about how falling in love in her youth was... difficult for her:

While Nathalie most likely came into Gabriel’s and Emilie’s lives after Adrien’s parents met for the first time, I see no reason why Emilie would have told Adrien about her and Gabriel having come from two different worlds but never EVER would have spoken a single word of the adventures they went on with Nathalie. At the very least as exciting tales to tell for when her sheltered and lonely 5 year old son came up to her and asked to hear a story about “Maman’s and Papa’s adventures!”

Anyway. Where I’m getting with this is that after the reveal in “Protection” that thanks to Emilie Adrien knows about certain important things of his parents past of which even GABRIEL wasnt aware that Adrien knew of it (maybe never WANTED him to know?)

And that leads to the conclusion that Emilie told him about their adventures too hence why Nathalie was being so casual about her having been a treasure huntress and fighting snakes, but only in “Passion” would Adrien have found out that Nathalie has been in love with his father for THIS long already:

That’s what shocked him.

What other domino effects take place from these two moments is as for now still up to everyone’s own interpretation, but I’m definitely looking forward to see the rest of the season play out to find out what other subtle reveals - but with MASSIVE implications for the Agreste’s - are yet to come x3

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Do you agree that Chloe only cared about Adrien cause of his social status ? Cause that's what Astruc has said on Twitter regarding how Chloe viewed her friendship with Adrien. Do you believe this intent of their relationship was portrayed correctly in the show ?

I think that this statement accurately describes the way that Chloe was written in season one. She never read as Adrien's close friend and we got scenes like these two from Dark Cupid where she wanted his autograph to show off for some reason:

Chloé: Hi Adrien, sign here please. Adrien: (sighs) Oh, come on, you know I hate signing autographs, Chloé. Chloé: Oh, that's not what this is. This is a petition against cruelty to hamsters. Have you seen some of the ugly sweaters they are forced to wear? It's appalling. (Adrien begrudgingly signs the poster. Chloé hugs the poster and Sabrina smiles before they notice Marinette who is digging through a trash can as she pulls out a sheet of paper.)

[Scene change]

Chloé: Keep dreaming all you want girls but the boy is mine. (Sabrina nods before unrolling the poster, the girls gasping) Aurore: "To Chloé, the most awesome girl in the world and the love of my life. Signed, Adrien." (All the girls begin to cry, then Chloé looks at one girl who tries not to burst out crying) Chloé: Uh, she's not crying enough.

However, much like Alya's obsession with Ladybug's secret identity and Adrien's ability to leave his house, this part of Chloe's character disappeared after season one, making it feel like something they tried and then decided to discard. While that's not a sign of great writing quality, it's also not a neon warning sign. It's not unusual for formula shows to have these kinds of growing pains. First seasons often have random things that contradict later seasons such as everything about Nathalie's season one writing.

So while season one backs this read, I don't think it's fair to say that Chloe read this way any time after season one and season one is full of things that got discarded, so it's not grasping at straws to say that season one Chloe wasn't fully formed. This is especially true because of the way the writers reintroduced her in both Origins and season two.

Origins introduced many new elements such as Adrien's social isolation and the wish that was driving Gabriel to terrorize Paris. In other words, it's the episode that lays the groundwork for the entire show. If a thing is in Origins, then it matters because the writers only had 40 minutes to establish every important element for how they want these character to be read. This is a problem because Origins didn't make Chloe a vapid mean girl who clung to new boy Adrien. Instead, Origins had Adrien walk into school, see Chloe, and call her by name, leading her to reply with a dorky childhood nickname:

Adrien: Hey, Chloé! Chloé: Adrikins! You came!

She's also the only person who knows that Adrien will be starting school this year because, for some reason, Origins made the choice to elevate Adrien and Chloe's relationship to close childhood friends. That is NOT the kind of move you make if you want Chloe to feel like someone who only cares about Adrien for his fame. While that may potentially happen in real life, this is a story. The writers have full control over the characters' backstories. Who in their right mind picks a childhood friends backstory to complicate things if they don't want Chloe to really care about Adrien as a person?

Despair Bear only further contradicts this "Chloe doesn't care" idea by having Chloe break down over the idea of Adrien ending their friendship:

Jean: Mademoiselle does not look very happy, today. (lifts up a plate of luxury chocolates and offers them to Chloé.) (Chloé grabs the chocolates all at once and eats them, concurrently, and then weeps) Chloé: Adrien says I have to be nice to everyone or he won't be my friend anymore! How can he do this to me, Jean-Michel? Jean: Uh, my name is... hm, never mind. Ah, perhaps Mademoiselle can see comfort with Mr. Cuddly? (Chloé is delighted and grabs Mr. Cuddly, her teddy bear, and hugs it)

[Image description: Chloe crying and eating chocolates because Adrien said they can't be friends anymore]

This is not the kind of reaction you give a character who doesn't care about Adrien on a personal level. She comes across as caring about him deeply. If she didn't care, then she'd probably just brush him off and say, "Your loss." But she doesn't. She reacts with the same sort of sorrow that we see when her parents are akumatized or when her mother refuses to acknowledge her.

We also see her go out of her way to try to appease Adrien by throwing a party and forcing herself to play nice so that he stays her friend. She only stops playing nice when he promises that they'll stay friends:

Adrien: That was a great idea of inviting Marinette's dad! Chloé: I know. This way, no one can be mad at me for calling the fire department. I'm really nice now, did you notice, Adrikins? Even Ladybug said so! Didn't she, Jean-Pascal? Adrien: I'm proud of you, Chloé. I think you've proven that you're capable of making an effort to be nicer to everyone. Chloé: Aww, Adrikins! So we'll always be best friends, forever? Pinky swear? Adrien: Pinky swear! Chloé: (Exhales and saunters off) (To Kim) So, those macarons are dreadfully ugly. (Kim sighs.) (To Mylène.) Those are so greasy, you can see yourself in them. (Mylène cries and faint.) (To Marinette.) Urgh. Too disgusting for comment. (To Rose.) Those look horrible. (Rose faints.)

That is more effort than Chloe has ever put into anything on screen and that's a problem because - once again - this is not how you write a vapid mean girl who doesn't care. This is how you write someone who actually cares about Adrien. They even chose to show us young Chloe and young Adrien being cute during Chloe's "flashback" to getting her teddy bear:

[Image description: Teen Chloe surrounded by drawings of important childhood memories with her teddy bear. We see her getting the bear from a faceless figure, holding the bear as her mother walks away, sleeping with the bear, holding the bear while she cries, and excitedly showing the bear to a young Adrien]

There's also the issue that, after season one, Chloe doesn't seem to actually care that much about social clout. At that start of this post, I used a scene from Dark Cupid specifically because it feels kind of out of character for her. In the later seasons, Chloe may flaunt her social status and think that it makes her better than others, but she doesn't do things like the poster thing because that requires her to care what random people think and that's just not how she reads. Chloe reads more like someone who doesn't care what most people think because she thinks that she's better than them (or, at least, she wants to think that. Chloe has the potential to be a fun little ball of self-hatred and doubt, but either way, she is acting like she doesn't care what other people think outside of a very select group.)

I think this really shows when we compare Chloe to Lila. Lila reads like someone who cares about social clout. Someone who is desperate to be seen in a certain way. Someone who sees dating Adrien as a status symbol and nothing more. Chloe reads like someone who sees Adrien as the only person of her caliber, so of course they'd get together. That's a subtle, but very important difference. It's the difference between someone who doesn't have social clout and needs Adrien to get it and someone who already has social clout and therefore doesn't need a popular boyfriend to prop her up. She just thinks dating an unpopular boy is beneath her.

I've mentioned before that Chloe reads SUPER aroace to me and this is actually why. To me, it comes across like she does actually care deeply about Adrien, but she has no true romantic or sexual feelings for him or even any clue what those feelings actually feel like. Given the way her parents' relationship is written, I also don't see Chloe having a healthy idea of what a romantic relationship looks like. I think she sees it as a way to show off how much better you are then the nobodies of the world because love is for fairytales. Marriage is about alliances of wealth and power and Adrien is both wealthy and her childhood friend, so of course they'd get married! They already know that they can at least tolerate each other. Why look for a different match?

In summary: the writers may have wanted Chloe to be a vapid mean girl who didn't care about Adrien as a person, but they completely failed to write her that way after season one, so she comes across as genuinely caring, but unable to express those feelings in a healthy way because of her own issues and poor childhood.

[tumblingxelian]

Chloe & Heroism

Chloe Bourgeois as a hero early on is a premise that often evokes either questions, like "How" and "Why". Or expectations that she is either already on a path to self improvement, or will be forced onto within a short timeframe.

These are not bad questions and the former definitely are necessary to consider for a story. However the expectations I tend to feel a bit murkier and while I have no issue with how some authors handle this topic.

I want to outline why I think you could do a good "Hero Chloe" story before she gets character development, but first, house cleaning!

1: I have not watched and largely ignore everything post season 3, so don't bother bringing up Derision. Remember, season 1 Kim was afraid of spiders.

2: In canon. Chloe only revealed her ID publicly because her abusive mother she is obsessed with pleasing (who killed her the day before) chose a girl other than her to take to New York & then tore her to shreds in front of everyone. 

With all that in mind let's examine where Chloe's values and understanding of the world comes from and how she perceives them! 

1 - Media/Social Media 

This would be a mixed bag, because on one hand they have Mighty Majesta comics that try to instill good values, but also shows built around lying to and humiliating people are evidently popular television and the internet seems similar in regards to pranking VS trying not to be terrible. So she's gonna get mixed signals at best. 

2 - Her family & Circle 

This is where 90% of the problems come from. Of the important adults in her life, her father, mother, Gabriel and Nathalie are all varying shades of corrupt, abusive, cruel and ruthless, while the lesser evils like Jean and Emilie are largely consigned to the role of enablers. 

Worse still, even if we ignore the emotional abuse, neglect and other elements that led to her both having trauma and her trauma response manifesting in aggression. We still have issues like Andre, during the brief periods he bothered to parent, explicitly teaching Chloe that, Stealing, extortion and threats are all appropriate ways to succeed in life.

IE, she isn't compromising her morality when she does these things, she is very much doing what she is taught was right at least consciously. This isn't helped by a 24/7 Audrey impression as Audrey deems being in her vicinity as reason enough to hurt people unless she deems them useful. 

Long story short, the values and people she was brought up around are all explicitly some shade of bad, or enabler, or outright teaching her to harm others. 

3 - Societies & Class 

However, we know from season 2 that Chloe is not entirely unaware that there are issues with this. Because while she spends much time boasting of how she's beloved and brilliant, when stripped of that and exposed to someone she trusts she is entirely willing to confess that she knows everyone hates her and that she feels she has no worth. She may not be able to articulate why or how this came about but she knows something is wrong. 

Despite this, school is not the best place to figure this out, especially for someone who obviously struggles with social cues and the like. The teachers run the gamut from indifferent and unpleasant, to extremely gentle and accommodating, to simply not wanting any form of drama and usually caving to whoever makes the most noise and none of them have the authority to do much outside of class hours. 

The class is not significantly better, because students like Kim and Alix can and do casually throw around snark or do pranks and at worst only get brief bursts of anger while Chloe's garner a more intense response. This is because her relationship with the class and motives are varying shades of different, but for someone with issues reading social cues, it's just going to seem like a confusing double standard. 

We can also see all this demonstrated in her relationship with Adrien, as Chloe clearly takes the lead in their relationship in Origins and outlines her logic behind the pranks, but is then surprised when Adrien seems to turn against her. What's more, it seems Chloe is aware that Adrien is more gentle/naive than her given she tried to educate him on these matters & turns to him for comfort and protection at times, while seeing no inherent contradiction between her expectations for their relationship and how she treats others.

Adrien does not help matters with seeming indifference to how she treats staff. 

Thus, while she knows 'something' is terribly wrong, actually being able to understand it and work through it is another matter. 

4 - Chloe's Conclusion 

So, what is the conclusion Chloe comes to in order to square all of these circles when she isn't just in full denial mode? The answer is quite simple and even demonstrated in the show itself, playing one's role. 

IE, Chloe the mayor and style queen's daughter is different to Chloe the hotel owner's daughter and we see this in her being able to stamp down on her usual instincts and slap on a customer service role when Jagged Stone enters the hotel and guide her father into doing the same. VS how she conducts herself during a class election, IE explicitly threatening and extorting people, to how she conducts herself day by day with her Audrey impersonation. 

A separate example and way she'd view this for others would be that Marinette the baker's daughter of course has to be nice and sweet and giving because that is how customer service roles work, while Marinette the aspiring fashion designer or would be class president is sneakier and will lay traps so people trying to steal from her are sabotaged. This isn't wrong, this is how she expects people to behave when in these circumstances and roles. 

Final Conclusion 

Which is why Chloe could easily play the role of a successful hero, because she would not be "Chloe Bourgeois, mayor's daughter, hotel heiress and Style Queen's daughter" as Queen Bee, she would just be Queen Bee, a superhero.

They have wonderfully defined roles that would be easy for her to pick up & follow through on: assure the public, save people from danger, protect allies, defeat monsters, all things Chloe was shown doing very well when chosen as a Miraculous Holder. 

I think that eventually the contrast in how she is received as Queen Bee VS Chloe Bourgeois would start grinding on each other and bleeding through both sides of the mask. 

But the infectious nature of empathy and a larger support network that don't have the worst impression of her would give Chloe the room she needs to explore and grow.

If she is too snippy as a hero, or shows a ruthless side, these won't be taken in the context of "Chloe that person I dislike" but "Queen Bee my ally" and can allow for more honest and even handed reactions that give her the necessary breathing room to grow and change. 

So yeah, I think season 1 Chloe could have, under the right circumstances, done a great job as a hero be it Queen Bee or another hero even before any outside circumstances or internal changes might have forced her to chart a new course in life.

Provided the role of Chloe and the role of hero do not intersect and become one almost immediately, because in that case it gets a lot harder for her. 

[emeliejeannie]

so I'm both excited and mad about the special and what this means for season 6. on one hand, I love a good conflict, an angsty plot point. I love that the characters have flaws in this show, especially a main character. and I also love that the special doesn't try to convince the audience that what Maribug did was a good thing, it let's you decide for yourself. I personally think it was a bad decision, but that's what I love about it.

and at the same time, I'm angry. because HOW is this show going to survive if the main character did something so awful? Marinette is COVERING UP FOR THE VILLAIN WHO'S ALSO HER BOYFRIEND'S ABUSER. she is covering everything up and turning it into a good thing in Adrien's eyes. she's twisting all the abuse into something good, making Gabriel seem like a hero he never was and never will be. and I honestly don't know how the writers are going to pull this off, like how can Adrien EVER forgive or trust her again? it's not realistic and not a good message to the YOUNG and impressionable audience. Marinette did something awful. She had good intentions, and the reason why she lied is because she didn't want to hurt Adrien, but it was awful regardless. she didn't consider what ADRIEN would want, she failed to consider his autonomy.

I don't understand how the lovesquare is supposed to keep sailing like this, in this weather. because right now, what Adrien would need is to get away from Marinette. for his own well-being. not because Marinette is being toxic on purpose or anything, but that it's just the way it is. because all the blame is on her at this point. sure, she had all this responsibility just dumped on her without regard for her mental health, how much of it she could take. everyone just expects her to solve everything without giving her any support at all. (Kagami, Felix, Su-Han) so I understand where she is mentally, it's not at all surprising that she made that decision to lie. but all her turmoil can't excuse it. (I actually think Nathalie should've stepped in and steered Maribug in the right direction, bc she is the only adult here. but alas)

so I'm genuinely scared for what's to come. I won't accept Adrien to be treated this way, and I wish for a healthy and acceptable resolution for this plot point.

if I had any say in what this would've looked like, it would be that Marinette crumbles at some point, choosing to tell Adrien the truth herself. she sits him down somewhere private and reveals her identity, so he could get all the context. she tells him about his conception, the reason why his mother passed away. how Gabriel was Hawkmoth, and his motives and how Nathalie was involved in it. about the final fight and the wish that was made. y'know, the whole truth.

and I want Adrien to be mad. I want him to be furious. that's his damn right. (maybe Chat Blanc 2.0?) and I want him to ask for space, so he could process and think things through. (no break up bc that would break me as well)

he'll probably be thinking for some time, maybe a few weeks, then he'll come to Marinette when he's ready to talk more and come to a conclusion and what to do next in their relationship (and also what to say to the public)

that would be my preferred outcome, I guess. Marinette having to slowly build back everything she'd ruined between them in some way. and then happily ever after blah blah blah

[princess-of-the-corner]

Was musing on that "Villain Marinette's mock Gabriel" thing and had a fun thought.

There's actually perfectly good in character reasons why a villainous Marinette would be more dangerous than Gabriel without making him look like a joke. I'll be using my Lady Glasswing as a basis for this:

Noroo:

Gabriel regards & treats Noroo like a blend of animal & tool; there's no respect or mutual communication, he does not engage with Noroo at all unless he as to.

Marinette's relationship with Noroo is more akin to "Oh my wonderful, life changing, power granting wish fairy who comforted me in my lowest moment & gave me a path to saving my parents, I love you!"

It'd take a long time for their relationship to sour & before that, & because Noroo as an empath gets too caught up in their handlers emotional state, the two talk and theorize and otherwise collaborate a lot. As a result she has a really intimate understanding of her powers and limits early on.

Though some of her experiments & ideas, and especially results do eventually get Noroo like:

Noroo did not know they could do that and would rather not have known thank you!

The other reasons would be fairly straight forward as well:

Lady Glasswing: I suppose its true what they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

Or in other words, Marinette's not living in a fortress manor, with someone else to take care of all her needs, able to just sit around at home all day and is vastly, vastly more limited by her youth.

This forced her to get creative right out the gate, especially as she knew she'd be going up against a fully trained Guardian.

In contrast, Gabriel's plan for 90% of Seasons 1 & 2 was basically "Eventually I'll hit on the right combo of smart, strong & special to win, why hurry?" He tried a few gambits like the tv stunt, spying on Lila, Audrey.

But overall, it wasn't until Heroes Day & then when Nathalie was dying that he really got experimental with it and we saw how quickly he started doing bonkers shit like fusing people together and & orchestrating Chloe's breakdown. He just didn't feel that pressed to do so before hand.

Nothing left to lose:

The above also ties into a big difference in their approaches. Gabriel, regardless of the nature of his care for his son, Nathalie, nominal friends or fashion empire. Is invested in them,. It could be possessive & toxic, or more nuanced, but he has things to lose.

Marientte?

Her parents are dead or comatose, her grandfather wants nothing to do with her & sucks, her grandmother dips out 90% of the time cos she can't handle grief. She can't even speak the same language as the other side of her family who are not in the same country & she feels isolated & alienated from her peers & humanity.

She's very much pinned everything on "Fix my parents through any means necessary & all will be right again" and if she dies trying? Well she doesn't really care about that does she?

So, even ignoring that this pushes her further faster, it also means she's more willing to get stuck into it. Often joining Akuma in battle or using Familiars, pulling go big or go home schemes are her standard. She really only retreated once there were too many heroes around for her presence to be anything but a detriment.

Meanwhile Gabriel even though he had tons of advantages over Ladybug & Chat Noir, especially early on avoids risking himself as much as possible, Only leaving his base when he thinks he's already won or has no choice and as a result simply has less experience or otherwise, zealous drive by comparison.

So yea, end results?

Communicating with one's Kwami is good for growth.

Limits can foster creativity while no limits can inadvertently stifle it.

A disregard for one's self and others, while especially noble, is a good teacher if you survive doing it long enough.

Notes:

Though I do still like Marinette making a jab at Gabriel-Moth.

Marinette: Limits foster creativity, I mean look at Gabriel's original work compared to the repetitive, sterile dreck he puts out now that he has nothing but time and money.

Gabriel (Seething) What a... Fascinating perspective.

GET HIS ASS

[tenebraevesper]

Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer, Issue #59: Urban Warfare (Part 3)

Finally, it’s here! You guys have no idea how much I had been looking forward to this Issue, and for a good reason, but let’s first admire the art by Nathalie Haines, which was actually drawn like a classical painting. It’s magnificent!

*clasps hands*

Anyways, Urban Warfare (Part 3); what is there to say about it? Holy Hell, what isn’t there to say about it? Honestly, I had been losing my mind the moment I read the summary for it, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But, before I start, a little recap since it has been a while.

Sonic and the Diamond Cutters (Tangle, Whisper and Lanolin) arrived at Eggperial City to figure out what is going on, and have found out that the city is expanding by itself. As they plan their next move, the Diamond Cutters end up in a different dimension due to one of Eggman’s portals featured in The Test Run Arc, while Sonic calls for reinforcements. Tails, Amy, Blaze and Silver show up and as they progress through the city, they run into Team Dark destroying Badniks left and right.

So, I’m not even one page into the story and I’m already picking up Sonadow energy from this moment. Trust me, I had a field day with this one.

Sonic is genuinely shocked to see Shadow... and only Shadow. I can’t blame him though, considering how their last encounter went.

Yeah, I’m not sure how many of you remember, but Shadow’s last appearance was in The Chao Races and Badnik Bases Arc, where he made some rather questionable decisions, but not as bad as what happened during The Crisis City Arc (aka the Zombot Fiasco), based on how SEGA wanted him to be written in the story. Fortunately, regarding the writing, we had actually gotten some good news in the weeks leading up to Team Dark’s, and especially Shadow’s, reintroduction to the comics.

To keep it short, all that talk about Shadow having a bunch of locks and chains placed on him to keep him in line with their vision... well, they started to break. From what I understood, SEGA gave more workable guidelines for him that allow for more liberties with writing his character - or in other words, Vegeta!Shadow is finally gone!!! As a matter of fact, while reading through the story, the improvement in his character was remarkable. Admittedly, it might not be for everyone, but goddamn, I’m loving it!

Not to mention, this is the first time since The Crisis City Arc that we see Team Dark working together once again. Also, Rouge, why are you calling everyone else kids when you’re only 18? (And yeah, I know SEGA removed the ages for all the characters, but let’s be honest, who pays attention to that?).

Sonic quips how he’s flattered that they’re here to rescue him, but they’re late to the party and... Silver, what the hell are you doing with Blaze?

*laughs* Even Tails and Amy have noticed that Silver is holding Blaze upside down, while he didn’t register any of it. I suppose Silver is too focused on Team Dark’s reappearance to realize what he’s doing.

Shadow just leaps off the scrapped Badniks, replying to Sonic how he has no idea what he’s talking about, nor does he care. Sonic, on the other hand, looks a little disappointed with that answer. I suppose he had been hoping for some banter.

Rouge then quickly brings him up to speed, explaining how she called in “her boys” (I see this as another win for everyone who say Team Dark are friends!) to see what they could do about Eggperial City - aka destroy everything in their path, foil Eggman’s plans and maybe steal some kind of treasure.

Sonic figures that makes sense, but I’m still convinced he’s disappointed they (or rather Shadow) weren’t here to help him out.

Cue Amy shoving Sonic away to talk to Rouge. I saw people saying how she’s just being overprotective of her crush, but I was questioning where Amy’s line of sight is. Amy notes how this is awfully altruistic of Rouge, but as I said above, she’s in because she wants to raid Eggman’s private vaults for a handsome reward.

Tails and Silver are hyped up to work with them to destroy the city though.

Omega notes how the conversation is irrelevant to their mission, and Rouge notes how Team Sonic would just slow Team Dark down and they’d be going off on their own, with Omega also promising to not hit anyone in the crossfire. Honestly, I think this is the nicest thing Omega could tell them.

Meanwhile, Sonic looks so done with everything. We don’t get annoyed Sonic often, so it’s neat to see him like that, and it makes sense, considering how in a (I assume) very short time-span (depending on when Scrapnik Island takes place), he had discovered Eggperial City and was chased by Metal Sonic while keeping Tails, Kit and Belle safe and having his leg injured, fought Surge at least three times, discovered what Starline had done to them, got separated from the Diamond Cutters and is now trying to foil another of Eggman’s plans while being on his territory and having to deal with Badniks.

That, and Rouge said they were slowing Team Dark down.

Never tell Sonic he’s slowing you down. Never.

Oh, and as the cherry on top, Eggman decides to make an announcement. But instead of talking about how he’s gonna blow up the moon, he decides to explain to everyone how the Eggperial City works. It is a self-replicating and self-repairing metropolis. Anything they destroy, dozens more will rise to take its place. Eggman also figures that this would be a nice time to rise the stakes a little, so he calls in for a little surprise.

IT’S THE SHADOW ANDROIDS!!!

To note, we haven’t seen these guys since Whisper’s backstory way back in the Tangle and Whisper Miniseries and before that, we haven’t seen them since Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog.

Going by Shadow’s reaction, he’s clearly shocked to see them again, and Eggman’s obviously going to use the Shadow Androids to their fullest potential.

Hell, Eggman has already the popcorn ready, all to happy to watch the carnage unfold. He calls it a stroke of genius in regards of building robots that mimic Shadow’s skills and holding onto them for the right moment (and that’s not even accounting for the mindscrew Shadow had to deal with when he encountered one for the first time).

Metal Sonic, though, is not happy about the Shadow Androids being dispatched. I’m certain that he wants to be the one on the battlefield.

While this is happening, the Diamond Cutters have infiltrated the control room, Lanolin and Whisper sneaking in, while Tangle just strolls inside like she owns the place, much to Lanolin’s chagrin, and points out how no one’s gonna spot them as she places her hand through Metal’s head. Lanolin just sighs, figuring this should make checking the room out easier, while Whisper stares in the screen in pure shock, realizing that the past is about to repeat itself.

She breaks down, and honestly, I really love the backgrounds in this page. We can see the darkness surrounding Whisper as she tells them how everyone’s going to die. However, the moment Tangle reaches for her and comforts her, the darkness slowly fades away, replaced by a ray of light. Tangle hugs Whisper, promising her how things will be fine, and even Lanolin joins in on comforting Whisper. While these three are still learning, they do make a great team.

Speaking of the Shadow Androids, we see Team Sonic fighting them, everyone being clearly in shock to what they are, with Tails being unable to get clear readings about them as they’re too fast. Even Blaze’s fire is not enough to keep them back and they’re strong enough to deal with Amy’s hammer.

Now, I’ll stop here to put a reminder. On the heroes side, no one but Shadow, Rouge, Omega, Whisper and Tangle here knows about the Shadow Androids. Whisper’s encounter with them is obvious, and Tangle saw footage of that, while Shadow, Rouge and Omega ran into them in Sonic Heroes, and Shadow had another (dubiously canonical) encounter with them in Shadow the Hedgehog.

Realizing just how dire the situation is, Sonic calls Silver for help so they can escape. Silver, being the awesome psychic he is, lifts the ground into a ramp and with Blaze frying the Shadow Androids that are after them, Sonic grabs everyone to get away from the robots in pursuit (also, nice Sonamy moment with that little blush).

Team Sonic finds Team Dark after the groups have been briefly separated, with Blaze grabbing Sonic and Amy’s hands and rushing over to help Team Dark. Yeah, there is an error in the panels, as both show Blaze grabbing hands with rings around them, suggesting she was grabbing only Amy’s hand. I suppose the artist forgot to erase the ring to make it clear she was also grabbing Sonic.

Back with Team Dark, Shadow assesses how Eggman’s trying to overwhelm them with sheer numbers and how there’s no strategy to their movements, meaning they can be easily manipulated. He figures that, once they move to a better position, they can take them out.

Cue Blaze throwing Sonic and Amy (another error, both are blue instead of being blue and pink) with Sonic spin-dashing and Amy smashing the Shadow Androids that were about to attack Shadow.

With a nose flick, Sonic is right back to quipping, asking Shadow whether he had some cousins he never told them about, while Shadow responds with “Please. These cheap copies don’t deserve to wear my place.”

Have I told you how much I love these two together? (≧◡≦)

As the battle continues, Shadow explains how the Shadow Androids are cheap copies created by Eggman, and how he’ll pay dearly for this insult. Unfortunately, Omega loses his footing and is being brought down by the Shadow Androids, but he keeps on fighting. Realizing how things are getting dire, Rouge asks Shadow to use his own powers against the Shadow Androids, but he responds how it is impossible without a Chaos Emerald (makes me wonder what happened to the Chaos Emerald Rouge stole in the Sonic Annual).

Tails rushes in, telling Shadow how the crystals are also generating Chaos Energy, with Shadow agreeing, but notes how the energy is distorted.

“Fake Emeralds... I hate to stoop to using such a pale substitute, but... it will do.”

Okay, can I say that this panel is absolutely amazing, and what’s about to happen is jaw-dropping!

I swear, this was my reaction to seeing this page:

Not only is the art absolutely gorgeous, but it finally shows Shadow as a pure badass who has the skills to support his title of The Ultimate Lifeform! Honestly, words cannot describe how much I love this! Bow your heads low, all hail Shadow!

And to add a cherry to the top of this moment of awesomeness:

Absolutely badass! It’s really great to see Shadow let loose from time to time. Hell, even Team Sonic is amazed!

Tails, Amy and Silver are starstruck, Rouge is proud of her boy, Blaze is... stunned, to say the least (I suppose she never saw what Shadow was truly capable of), while Sonic figures he should too give it a try.

And yeah, I saw the Dark Sonic jokes floating around. Are you guys forgetting that Sonic was the first to use a Fake Chaos Emerald for Chaos Control back in Sonic Adventure 2? He knows how to handle them.

Shadow then points out that they’re not done yet and goes for another Chaos Control, only for something to happen...

A giant crystal shoots out of the ground, throwing everyone off, while Rouge asks Shadow what’s happening. Shadow is crackling with Chaos Energy, warning her that it’s too much and...

Holy frigging Hell! Shadow unleashes a blast of Chaos Energy, nuking everything surrounding him. Everyone escapes, and when Rouge tries to get back to Shadow and Omega, she’s stopped by the crystals, which are now shooting out from everywhere.

Eggman quickly attempts to regain control of the situation, figuring Shadow would cause trouble. Tangle wonders what happened, with Whisper answering how it was Chaos Overload (how does she know that?). I suppose Shadow used to much of the surrounding Chaos Energy and it was too much for him to handle since the Fake Chaos Emeralds were spread out all over the city. He may be a Master of Chaos Control, but even this would overwhelm someone like him.

Eggman activates the emergency limiter, rebooting the system, noting how it’ll take more to take out his city.

Team Sonic and Rouge observe the destruction Shadow had caused, with Tails figuring it was some runaway feedback loop. Rouge is worried about Shadow and Omega, but Sonic, Silver and Blaze assure her that not only are the two tough, they also know what they’re up against and they can deal with Eggman. Rouge is cheered up, while Sonic looks forward to Shadow’s expression when he saves him.

Yeah, Sonic will never let Shadow live that down.

Back with Eggman, the power has returned, the system got rebooted... and Eggman lost Sonic and co. Lanolin points out how the power surge nearly crippled the entire city, so if they trigger another bigger one, this should destroy it. But in that moment, all three of them become suddenly visible, with Eggman spotting them.

In two magnificent panels, we get an Eggman obscured by shadows, really creeping me out, as he figures they ran into his spatial-displacement trap. He explains how they almost got out when the power dipped, but he has a way of dealing with them, summoning another model of the portal and telling them how this will scatter their atoms into oblivion.

Whisper takes the shot, and honestly, if she still hadn’t been trapped in that other dimension, she would’ve killed Eggman then and there. The blast went right through his chest. Like, this was probably the fourth time she attempted to kill someone in cold blood (first Mimic, followed by another attempt at Eggman’s life, then Surge and now Eggman again).

What’s even more chilling is how calm Eggman is, well aware what his trap had done. It then surrounds Whisper.

Tangle screams for her as Whisper is trapped inside the device, and then spots another one flying for her, only for Lanolin to ram her out of the way and tell her to tell everyone what happened and what to do before getting captured herself.

Tangle is cornered, but she suddenly phases through the window, falling out of the command tower. The story ends on a literal cliffhanger.

Holy Hell, I absolutely loved this Issue! It was beyond awesome for all the reasons I already talked above, but there is one specific thing I wanted to discuss in the ending of this analysis - Shadow’s portrayal.

Honestly, I had absolutely no complaint with how he was written in this Issue. People might not agree with me, but I think Urban Warfare really redeemed him, as rather than being prideful and arrogant, he was more business-like and focused on the mission, pragmatic and patient in explaining to everyone what is going on, as well as having his moments of banter with Sonic.

As for him being taken out of the battle, alongside Omega, I’m actually fine with it, as it’s the manner with how he was put out of commission.

Seriously, compare this:

To this:

It’s not about pride, it’s about saving everyone with his own power, and that’s what I had been missing from IDW!Shadow for so long.

I really hope we’ll see more of this in the future.

Links:

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#Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer (Masterlist)

[trainsinanime]

The ending: Movie versus Season 5

I still maintain that the best way to watch the movie and the end of season 5 is back to back, interrupted only by a short drive home from the cinema, so you can really compare them and get a full on knot in your brain.

Spoilers for both, I’ll reblog this on the 29th for the Netflix crowd, you know the drill.

Both endings have to deal with similar issues, but do them in very different ways. The problem is that while Miraculous Ladybug isn’t actually complicated, it has some complicated stuff in there that it doesn’t deal with on a day-to-day basis, and the end of the fight with Hawkmoth has to resolve them. The biggest point here is the relationship between Adrien and Gabriel.

Adrien loves his dad, and there is an argument to be made that Gabriel has some affection towards Adrien, maybe. Gabriel does everything for Adrien, at least ostensibly, but Adrien is dedicated to stopping him. Gabriel believes he’s a bad father and it isn’t worth even trying because he can resurrect Emilie and have her do the work of raising Adrien. Stopping Hawkmoth implies revealing the complicated nature of this relationship.

Do you redeem Gabriel? If so, does he die in the process? Does Adrien forgive him, or finally cut ties? Do you bring Emilie back or not? What about Nathalie? What about Sentimonsters? Oh, and isn’t this whole story actually supposed to be about Marinette?

The movie resolves this in the most simple, some might say most boring way imaginable. Gabriel sees that Adrien is Chat Noir, Adrien sees that Gabriel is Hawkmoth. Gabriel goes, „sorry“, Adrien goes, „I forgive you“. It’s as simple a resolution as can be.

It’s also deeply unsatisfying. Gabriel and Adrien had barely talked up to that point, and it did not seem like there was any actual affection there. Gabriel also drops his whole motivation almost immediately, and changes his entire outlook on life just because he’s seen Chat Noir. Granted, same. And yes, it does mean that he becomes the only one in the movie with a character arc. But it’s too short, too simple, and it feels hollow. Oh, and Marinette? She’s just there, ultimately not relevant to the main plot of her own movie at all.

The show, in contrast, has gone in a different direction. It has a much more complicated setup, with the whole sentimonster stuff and Kagami’s mom and what not - a lot of stuff to resolve, so it makes the bold decision to not even try.

Adrien finally makes a break with his father, in Representation, when he beats him up and tells him what a bad father he is, which is well deserved. It’s a bit drastic for a kid’s show, but it makes sense. Some fathers don’t deserve to be forgiven.

And then it just ignores Adrien and makes it all about Marinette. Huh.

The show certainly ends stuff, but it doesn’t actually resolve anything, to the point where there’s a fandom debate about what the wish actually did and didn’t change. It’s wild. It’s weird. Parts of it are absolutely glorious, especially the visuals, but I have no idea why they did it that way.

So we, as a fandom, have seen the end of the Hawkmoth arc twice, and we have the choice between two endings: A boring one, or a baffling one.

Personally, I am focusing on fun and fun visuals here, and in that regard, we did win twice, and ultimately that part is the most important for me. In story terms, I found both a bit unsatisfying, but at least the show has given us more to talk about. That’s why it’s my personal favourite here.

[greentrickster]

a_real_nowhere_man: All of this is great. I love the idea that Chloe is smugly manipulating her team into having healthy schedules. Nino probably helps, he might not know what he's helping with but he knows it helps the team so by gosh he's gonna enable the fuck out of it.

greentrickster: ^U^ Thanks! And yeah, if Claw's the medic, Hesperia's the leader, Nino's the heart, and Alya's the data expert, then Chloe's somehow gone and turned herself into the team secretary. She's got everyone's schedules in her planner and also at least halfway memorized for the reoccurring stuff, sometimes better than they themselves do. It's kind of funny, because she's the sort of person who tends to aim for leadership and authority and that sort of thing, but I think this role actually suits her really well - she gets to be up in everyone's business, have a thumb on events and organization, and - probably most importantly for her - it means she's rarely left out of the loop. For a kid whose parents ignore and placate her on a good day and who doesn't actually have much power on her own besides the ability to 'call Daddy,' I think she'd really enjoy that. Pollen helps her figure out good organization techniques (bees are very structured, after all), and is openly approving of Chloe's efforts to keep the team functioning healthily as a whole, excellent bee behaviour.

And yes, Nino absolutely helps her with this. In fact, all of them do. Not even out of faith in Chloe or to support her, but for the simple reason... she's being really helpful. Seriously, she's in the perfect position to just be so incredibly helpful and useful with all this, since she's the only person who both knows everyone's identities and has strong reasons to interact with them in both her civilian and resistance member activities. She's in the same class as Alya, Nino, and Marinette, so it's natural for her to interact with them on a daily basis and plausible for her to decide she wants to start spending time with them, since they know Marinette, Marinette's interning for Gabriel, and Gabriel is Chloe's new boss, with Marinette having already made friends with Nino and Alya and thus being a pre-established friend group for Chloe to join. Likewise, since she's Gabriel's new top model and the face of his brand, it makes sense that he'd want to interact and spend time with her to test new potential looks and get a sense for what she's good at and what needs work, and being at his house (since his main studio is there) means it's natural for her to run into Adrien (and also Marinette) and thus start interacting with both of them as well, especially since Adrien's mentoring her in her new modeling career. She even coordinates with Nathalie, since Nathalie's the one organizing photo shoots and fashion shows. Girl's landed in the perfect position to just coordinate everything with almost no effort and she's taking advantage of it.

And this doesn't just mean in regards to coordinating schedules for resistance meetings. Chloe's whole life has been one big (and sadly ineffective) lesson in how to get and hold peoples' attention... which is a surprisingly useful skill when it comes to creating a distraction to cover another resistance member needing to leave a situation quickly or cover for them for whatever reason. Marinette didn't get enough sleep and forgot her homework? Good thing that (as far as Mari knows) being coworkers means any embarrassment that falls on her would reflect poorly on Chloe, and also that Chloe's bought the line that Marinette's 120% devoted to the Gabriel brand and image 24/7! "Of course she didn't do her homework, Ms. Bustier, we have an enormous show coming up at Gabriel, naturally she has to devote the majority of her time to planning how to make me and M. Agreste look good, it's her job. Are you implying that a literature assignment is more important than an internship that's going to open doors her poor, commoner little heart could only dream of without it? Maybe I should tell Daddy that this school doesn't support students pursuing formal careers-!"

Adrien's going to need a block of time to get through a task Chat promised to do or get in some extra studying? Schedule him to come watch over her for an upcoming photo shoot, have him there until five minutes into the shoot, then claim she's feeling super confident thanks to his brilliant teaching skills, and "Adrikins won't you please let me do the rest on my own so I can show you how well I can do without you here, I want to make you proud! <3" and boom, Adrien's got a free afternoon to get his stuff done.

Gabriel's schedule for the next month is in Alya's hands without the two of them having to do a thing because Chloe just already had it, Nino's able to actually plan the occasional group hang-out session with the whole resistance for moral and team-building exercises to help facilitate better teamwork and mental health, somehow scheduling changes and conflicts are being passed along and communicated more efficiently than ever before, and no one's pegged the changes as being a result of Chloe because she's managed to transition from 'entitled brat' to 'efficient yet overbearing secretary' with a smoothness hitherto unseen by man.

By a few months in she's reflecting that she should have made her vigilante name 'Busy Bee' instead of 'Lady Bee,' and she's going to be so incredibly smug when someone else finally catches on to what she's doing (aka, she's dominating, but for good instead of evil).

[sweetcloverheart]

Clover Rants Miraculously - Not About You (So why are you there?)

I think I’ve realized what it is that upsets/bothers me about a lot of Adrien’s plotlines/focus episodes in the recent seasons - they aren’t about him.

Like, I mentioned it before in another post, but it just seems like anytime Adrien should be the main focus of a plotline (or at least the driving force), the writers shove him aside to make one of the other characters do everything he should be doing or do it for him. Despite being Ladybug’s partner and the secondary protag, Adrien’s often an afterthought in a lot of the storylines at best, and mostly ends up collateral damage for everyone else’s schemes regarding them with little focus on how he’s being affected.

His dead mother, who’s loss has had a heavy effect on his childhood and affected his homelife - all about his father and his assistant’s grief/obsession over her and their desperate need to bring her back. Adrien’s given maybe one or two scenes to get a little sad at the loss or recollect life before Emilie died (or disappeared - they really should get settled on that), but ultimately we don’t get to have a good look at how it’s affected him. And when we do, it’s immediately sideswiped by the B-plot of the episode and never brought back to focus. The only episode I feel ever properly covered it was the Christmas Special - yes, the holiday musical episode was the only episode I feel properly tackled how Adrien is processing his mother’s “death”. Make of that as you will.

His breakup with Kagami, which was caused by him constantly having to lie to her in order to keep his superhero identity and activities a secret - immediately turned into how this can help Adrienette finally sail as Kagami immediately becomes part of the shipping crew despite have had just broken up with the dude (and over how she doesn’t consider him trustworthy no less - so it’s totes fine he put her friend Marinette through the same thing!). There’s no reflection on how he regrets making Kagami come to distrust him, or lamenting on how his job as a hero has hurt a relationship he had been coming to appreciate, or even mild resentment towards Plagg and his role as Chat Noir as he’s forced to face a legitimate emotional demerit with his superheroing that isn’t “Ladybug won’t date me” and realizes the freedom he craved from his alter ego comes with such a steep price tag. You’d at least think Adrien would be allowed to mourn over the end of his first relationship, right? Nope, instead, he immediately jumps back to mooning over Ladybug, as if that chapter with Kagami never happened. Best we get of any “aftermath” is Kagami glaring at him for a few episodes before “Risk” has her give him that blunt peptalk and admitting in S5 that the way he treats Marinette (now that he’s in love with her) is how she wished he’d treated her in their relationship (Which...not gonna lie, is kind of a bad look for him - especially with the whole “Oh yeah, Kagami’s in love with Adrien again” thing).

His status as an artificial magically made being - all about how his cousin is so angry at how little control he has over himself and from the abuse he suffered for it, and projected that resentment onto Adrien and his friends (Which makes everything that happened in “Felix” and “Strikeback”...super messy when you consider the new context). You’d think “Emotion” would have Felix revealing his cousin’s true origins to him in an effort to get him on his side, or Adrien learning the truth as an unintended byproduct of the Red Moon disaster and grappling with that - but instead of any of that, we get nothing. Adrien doesn’t even know/seem to realize the deeper why of Felix going so far as erasing every person in Paris except for himself and Kagami, or understand how it involves him (and if bible spoilers are taken to heart, it seems like he never will...), and instead is made to forgive his cousin for again upheaving his life/hurting his friends over his own personal trauma. Meanwhile, Gabe and Nathalie are fighting over his amoks like a pair of toddlers forced to share the tv remote, making it all about how they have conflicting ideas on what’s best for Adrien and his life when it should be about, you know - Adrien finding out his parents (and now Nathalie) basically puppet him when he doesn’t play “perfect son” and how he might feel about that!

His father being the main villain - all about how Marienette (and Nathalie, and Felix, and Emilie, and the Kwami) must keep his secret and allow the magical terrorist who has been terrorizing France a full year (or few months - seriously, the show needs to shore up its timeline) to die a hero in the eyes of his son, who has been the main victim of his father’s criminal activities what with the constant gaslighting and emotional abuse and using unfair punishments on him so he could create Akumas from his friends or keep him out of the way of his schemes. And it’s not even being done for Adrien’s sake, even though the leak claims it’d “break his heart” to know - nah, this is all for Gabriel, who must be remembered not as the terrible awful villain who manipulated children and once turned up at a young girl’s house to threaten her, but the poor, downtrodden soul who was forced into being a cackling supervillain because he seriously couldn’t be bothered to have his kwami make an akuma with super healing powers or something. Gabriel must have whatever he wants as our “pitiful grey villain” as a reward for his “struggles”, and if what he wants is for Adrien to only remember the (nonexistent mind you) “good times” he shared with his son, then that’s what he’ll be given - no matter how infantilizing and downright despicable it is to Adrien’s character to have every major person in his life that he trusts unquestionably deceive him over something he has every right to know as the main wounded party, even if he isn’t privy as to why and how he counts yet.

And yeah, I know - “Marinette’s the main protagonist” “It’s a girl’s show” etc, etc. The problem for me isn’t “Why isn’t Adrien, a boy, the main character of this girl power tvshow?” - it’s “Why isn’t Adrien, the deuteragonist and the main focus of these storylines, not actually the main focus of them?”, it’s “Why is Adrien, one of the two main characters, in these storylines if you aren’t actually going to have him do anything significant/important to move them forward, let alone resolve them?”, it’s “Why is Adrien, who’s father is the main antagonist, not being allow to confront him or learn this, and having this be presented as good for the character who has been the biggest victim of Gabemoth’s BS since day one!?”

[trainsinanime]

I think OP is very wrong here. I want to start by saying that framing the whole debate in pseudo-scientific arguments like "engaging with the material but not the narrative" is not helpful.

Karven Traviss understands the narrative perfectly well. She doesn't agree with it, something that her books make very clear, and we can have long debates whether she is able to replace it with anything better (No, Legacy of the Force did not need a Boba Fett subplot. The guy isn't that cool. Let him die). But the idea that she fundamentally misunderstands what Star Wars and in particular the Prequels are about is nonsense. It almost seems like OP is the one misunderstanding what the Prequels are about here.

OP's argument in the first post seems to boil down to, "actually, the Jedi are good guys, Karen Traviss is treating them unfairly because she isn't engaging with Star Wars on the fantasy fairy tale level that it operates on". But the Star Wars prequels are actually a bit more complex than that. No, they don't actually have black/white morality! The Jedi in those movies are not the bad guys, and they're trying to be the good guys, but crucially, they are the tragic guys. The prequels are a tragedy. If we accept the authority of George Lucas quotes (which I wouldn't, but it fits with my view), he did say that the first (only) six movies together are the Tragedy of Darth Vader.

What this means is that everything in the prequels needs to be seen through the lens of the end of the republic. Everything in there is leading up to it, thematically. Every choice that anyone in power makes, makes it more likely to end up with the Empire. They don't know it, but we, the audience, absolutely do.

All of the choices leading to the end of the republic were the results of manipulations by Palpatine, who constantly shuffled things around to create situations where these choices seemed inevitable. So every one of these choices seems reasonable or at least understandable. But that does not mean they were the right choices, especially with the benefit of hindsight afforded to us, the audience.

The first two parts of the prequel trilogy are almost subtle: Both of them make it look like the Jedi won, because they did get a minor victory and came out alive at the other end. But remember that, as the opening crawl of episode one says, the Jedi are supposed to be the keepers of peace and justice in the galaxy. Well, each of these movies ends with a bigger war. The Jedi may have won locally, but they lost globally. That's the point of these movies.

Yes, the Jedi are very hesitant when they accept the role of generals over the clones… but in the end, they still do accept it, and thus help the war grow bigger and bigger. It seems inevitable, but it does not mean it was the right choice.

This becomes completely clear by the end of episode 3, when the Jedi get punished by the damn narrative for their role in the war! Remember Order 66? The Jedi accepted an army from who knows where, ordered by we don't know, trained and programmed by no clue. They think it's the only choice, and maybe it is in that moment. But it's a mistake, and the mystery army that they didn't order and didn't pay for turns out to not be theirs after all. They got killed, just like all our incredibly cheap Alexas will murder us in our sleep one day.

Yes, the Jedi in the prequels are ineffective, just like @hearts-of-iron said. They're at the height of their power in some regards, but that does not mean they are effective. They cannot even sense the Sith Lord that runs the galaxy in the building next door. And their attempts to keep peace in the galaxy in a time of crisis only leads the galaxy further into war.

It's no secret that the Prequels are deeply political, referencing feelings George Lucas had about things like the Vietnam war. The way Jar-Jar ends the republic by giving the Chancellor emergency powers is a clear example of that. When Nathalie Portman says, "This is how democracy ends. With thunderous applause", that is one of the key moments of the movie. The fall of the Jedi order goes hand in hand with the fall of the democracy. Outwardly, it seems like all is fine. But they can't actually do their job. They're not able to keep peace. It seems like winning the war is a good substitute for that, like the Babylon 5 opening narration, but it's not.

To bring this back to Karen Traviss: She has identified herself a niche in the universe, with the inhumane treatment of the clones, that was not in the movies. And then she wrote a thousand books about it, some of which were pretty decent. It's true that "the clones are humans and deserve to be treated as such, and it's wrong that the Jedi don't" is not a point that the movies ever make. But it does fit right into the narrative of the movies, where the Jedi are very explicitly flawed and wrong about how they deal with the war, even if they think they have no other choice.

The Jedi are wrong and ineffective, and they lose. Traviss identifies an area that the movies don't talk about, but she's not far from what the movies are saying.

An aside here: The Batman analogy is obviously inappropriate here, seeing how "the Jedi are wrong" is a big explicit part of the canon, not fridge logic like the destruction of Endor. But it's also not compelling at all, because its argument for "Batman isn't an insane weirdo" is just that most people don't think so. Okay, so what? That doesn't prove that the people who think he is a violent crazy vigilante are wrong.

The whole dichotomy between "narrative" and "material" here is trying to use big words to describe a simple concept: OP thinks Karen Traviss got the text right, but misunderstood the tone, which they claim is much more positive and heroic than Karen Traviss sees it. In my opinion that's wrong, the prequels have no heroes, that's the point.

But even if it were true, so what? It's not like having multiple interpretations, or looking at things through a darker or less dark lens, is actually wrong. Yes, Karen Traviss sees things darker than the prequels make them out to be, even if we do understand the prequels as they're meant, nobody (including her!) would deny that. But that doesn't mean she's wrong, it just means she has a different opinion about what the vibes of the story should be given the text.

When a Star Wars writer engages with the material but not the narrative.

I'm writing a long post about the Jedi and the clone troopers and there's a whole section that I had to remove because it was too long:

Karen Traviss' take on the Jedi and the clones.

I already wrote about why Karen Traviss' take on the Jedi and Yoda doesn't track with what George Lucas had established in his narrative of the Prequels. Since then, I've been able to do more research.

It's no secret that one of the reasons Traviss listed for criticizing the Jedi in the Expanded Universe books she wrote is their treatment of the clones (or at least what she understood it to be).

In 2008, she wrote a now-deleted blog post about it (it was really long, so I'm only including the part relevant to my point, if you want the full context you can look it up, this is old stuff).

So if you ask me, in the above quote, Traviss is essentially doing the equivalent of saying:

"Batman is a psycho elitist who beats up the mentally ill and indoctrinates kids, turning them into child soldiers for his unending crazy vigilante war on crime, and if you can't recognize that then you scare the living crap out of me."

Like... you can argue that, and a couple of comics have argued that.

But by and large, the general consensus is that Batman is a superhero, the Robins are his sons and daughter, and the "mentally ill" are in fact the Joker and Two-Face aka mass murderers.

So if you make that argument, that's you applying your real-life values and conclusions to a narrative that deliberately doesn't acknowledge those points, in-universe, in order to tell the story it wants to tell.

It's counting on your suspension of disbelief, defined as "the avoidance—often described as willing—of critical thinking and logic in understanding something that is unreal or impossible in reality, such as something in a work of speculative fiction, in order to believe it for the sake of enjoying its narrative."

The Jedi accepting the clones and the clones being slaves isn't a "delicate point". It's barely a point at all!

It's never addressed in the film (because of course it isn't, the Prequels are about Anakin and the Republic, not the clones).

It's only addressed once by Slick, an unreliable narrator, in The Clone Wars.

That's it. Hell, in 2008, when The Clone Wars writer Henry Gilroy was asked to comment on the relationship between clones and Jedi, he explicitly said he'd "rather not get into" that particular point.

I recently got Mythmaking: Behind the Scenes of 'Attack of the Clones' and nowhere is that detail touched on by Lucas at any point.

So while Traviss acknowledges the Jedi are fictional characters, she doesn't follow that thread through to the end by acknowledging that fictional characters don't have free will, they must abide by the story and the whim of the writer.

She's engaging with the material, but refusing to engage with the narrative. She's having her cake and eating it too.

My reason for saying all this is that in the book Star Wars on Trial, she elaborates on her thought process upon discovering this detail.

Shortly before to this, she acknowledges twice that she knew nothing about Star Wars, beside seeing the original films in her youth.

Another writer who saw the new films and saw Mace Windu argue against there being a war...

... the worry on his face at the prospect of the Jedi being thrown at the Separatists...

... and the sheer melancholy on Yoda's face upon announcing the Clone War had begun...

... might have instead wondered how the Jedi, so opposed to war, could've ended up being generals.

Because while we don't see the Jedi openly protest the use of the clones in the film... they're not exactly giddy about it, either. All they can do is watch powerlessly as it gets voted by the Senate.

"The Jedi are there. But the Jedi aren't really allowed to be involved in the political process. They're there, but they can't suddenly step up and say, "No, no. You can't do that." They have to let the political process go." - George Lucas, Attack of the Clones, Commentary #2, 2002

We also don't see them take on the role of generals, either.

We only see them begrudgingly lead troops on Geonosis, specifically.

But they're not referred to as "generals" yet.

Another writer might have imagined a scene where after Geonosis, Mace Windu talks to Palpatine thinking the Jedi will go back to their roles as diplomats, and that what we saw in Attack of the Clones was a one-time thing to save Obi-Wan, but Palpatine politely goes:

"Ha! No. Didn't you hear? The Senate was so impressed by your performance on Geonosis that they voted to make you all generals in the GAR. Now, get back to the front."

Another writer might've elected to write them having that "big moral debate" she mentions.

Instead, Traviss immediately jumps on the "Jedi are elitists" train.

Because her personal experience with the military makes her sympathize with the clones and her personal belief is that - while the story may frame the Jedi as "the good guys" - nobody is that good a guy, real life people aren't that pure and selfless.

That's her choosing to take that line of thought instead of one more in-line with the story, because she perceives it as unrealistic. But like... Star Wars isn't real life, it's a fairy tale.

That's like saying:

"The hunter in Little Red Riding Hood commits animal cruelty by cutting the Wolf open. He should've let nature take its course, the wolf earned that meal fair and square. If you think the hunter should've saved Red Riding Hood and her Grandma, then clearly you're the kind of monster who thinks one life is worth more than others."

... no?

The story's narrative clearly portrays the wolf as the villain of the tale and frames the Hunter saving Red Riding Hood as a good thing.

Disagreeing with that narrative is absolutely fine, but anybody who acknowledges the wolf is the bad guy in the story isn't automatically an animal hater and/or a bad person. Just because you say "the wolf is the villain" doesn't mean that you think that, in real life, killing wolves for shits and giggles is good.

Conversely, the narrative of the Prequels asks you to suspend your disbelief and not consider the implications that having a clone army entails. Because the use of clones doesn't have a direct impact on either Anakin or the Senate's stories.

[familyagrestefanblog]

If the woman at the pool really is Amilie then from S6 onwards we will have 2 orphans in the main narrative: Adrien and Lila

That fact that it's these two is honestly weirdly giving me hope

and yes, Adrien is an orphan. Just because he doesn't live alone and has legal guardian/s and a girlfriend doesn't it mean he isn't an orphan anymore. Marinette holding his hands and kissing him is not undoing the fact that Adrien's mother died harshly of illness almost 2 years ago and he thinks his father now died because Ladybug was partnerless and Gabriel as the only adult member of the Resistance and as Adrien's father - Adrien, who was thought to have been kidnapped - filled in Chat's place to defeat Monarque.

The amount of death surrounding Adrien's narrative right now - if the woman truly is Amilie - is beyond concerning.

Add Adrien blaming himself for Monarque having been cataclysmed in "Destruction" to the mix, plus depending on how Ladybug will go about Monarque's defeat she may use as a cover story towards the world in a panic reaction that Monarque crumbled to dust because of the cataclysm, which would indirectly but very directly include making Chat Noir responsible for Monarque's death in front of the whole world which in normal Miraculous fashion Marinette probably only accepts 20 episodes later to sweep it under the rug because *sighs; unfortunately insert random excuse for why she's blameless*

And let's not forget the fact that Adrien still had to wittness Nathalie having been sick like his mother (though Adrien never saw Nathalie in her worst state) and he also knows that Nathalie and his father were very close to the point where he has already given his blessing in season 3 and in s5 Nathalie has worn his mother's ring.

And now Adrien has every reason to blame himself for his father's death.

Take a damn guess if Nathalie being his legal guardian is enough for Adrien to not be or feel like an orphan anymore!

Then there is Amilie being around who looks like his dead mother and most likely can't stand either of his dead parents

Or Félix being around who gave ShadowMoth the 15 miraculous' which made Monarque as powerful and dangerous as he was (that's an objective fact) which for Adrien also would have lead into his father's death which is gonna be awful when Félix bad mouths Gabriel with Kagami, Marinette, Ladybug or in general.

Depending on what everyone else thinks and remembers, Adrien's friends may bad mouth Gabriel as Adrien's father too since that's what everything has lead up to by "Representation".

And let's not even get into Lila now.

The way Lila at this point would have such alarmingly easy game taking Adrien from Marinette and the rest of his friends and family, and also Chat Noir from Ladybug and her team that has barely ever been his anyway - especially now that there are 4 people in Ladybug's team who know her identity and he will continue not being allowed to be included in any of that, because I don't know how realistic it is to hold onto any hope regarding this - is ... insane. This is absolutely insane.

I know hoping that the new villain will latch onto everything bad and unfair is a shitty and biased thing to do, but Lila's villain narrative will be all about her being an orphan (right? That makes sense with the whole mothers thing and her extreme attention seeking behavior while not having a home. Just dialed up to the worst 11) and now Adrien is one too after.. all of THAT and how Adrinette and especially Ladynoir are at risk because of all the lies and secrets Lila is perfectly aware of.

For me there is a difference between wanting a new villain to latch onto the unfair treatment of a character because of one's own personal biase and just straight up refusing to get out of one's denial to acknowledge it when a new villain not only as an established character but story wise too has every reason in the book to do that now.

Do what you want, but I'm not putting my TRUST into LILA for her to not be as stupid as Gabriel because that's "mean to Marinette/Ladybug"

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I hope I'm not being rude, this ask also isn't intended as a call out for anyone. As much as I'll be happy if you'd willing to answer, if my ask somehow make you uncomfortable, please feel free to ignore it.

Here's my question :

I've been seeing many post saying that Adrien end up being Marinette' trophy boyfriend instead of proper boyfriend and at the end of the final, Marinette's fight against Gabriel isn't just simply good vs evil rather it's a fight of Adrien's "ownership" so to speak.

I want to ask your opinion about it, especially about the former. I'm personally conflicted about the trophy boyfriend thing because the urban dictionary define it as "A boyfriend that a girl is proud of being with." Which more like what Chloe did at s1, but at the same time it does feel fitting in a way since Marinette do get Adrrien as a trophy for "winning" against Gabriel. Either way it just feels like an objectification and it doesn't seems like something good to show in a show with kids as the target audience, yet I do feels like Marinette's love for Adrien is so shallow that her objectified him like that just make senses for her character.

So, what do you think?

You're not being rude at all! As long as an ask doesn't use names or otherwise make it easy to find the source of the question, I'm cool with it. I don't even mind if it's something uncomfortable, though I will do my best to state my expertise (or lack there of) on those. I think it's really important to be willing to acknowledge your ignorance. No one can know or even be informed on everything.

On to the question.

To start, let's actually define "trophy boyfriend" because the definition you gave - a boyfriend that a girl is proud of being with - is not the one that I would use. It's way too kind!

"Trophy boyfriend" is just a male variant of the term "trophy wife" or "trophy girlfriend." I'm gonna be a little lazy here and just have wikipedia define that one for me as their definition accurately reflects the way this terms is generally used:

A trophy wife is a wife who is regarded as a status symbol for the husband. The term is often used in a derogatory or disparaging way, implying that the wife in question has little personal merit besides her physical attractiveness, requires substantial expense for maintaining her appearance, is often unintelligent or unsophisticated, does very little of substance beyond remaining attractive, and is in some ways synonymous with the term gold digger.

When someone calls Adrien a "trophy boyfriend," they're saying that he's just there to be Marinette's pretty arm candy who supports her unconditionally while requiring nothing from her. A fully one way relationship that's all take and no give.

Unfortunately, canon does seem to be going this way.

Season five was the season which saw Gabriel's slow, agonizing death and final... defeat is too strong a word, so let's just go with reveal. It also saw the end of any hope for Emilie to be revived, assuming that wasn't her at the end, which does seem to be the case. We also saw Nathalie slowly wasting away, triggering all of Adrien's trauma from losing his mother. In other words, this season was all about Adrien losing or fearing the loss of every adult that he has ever loved, none of whom he even got to say "goodbye" to even though they all knew that they were dying.

So it makes perfect sense that Adrienette's big couple conflict was Marinette getting over her trauma and being able to tell Adrien that she loved him! She was absolutely the one who needed unconditional love and support this season and it was so nice to see Adrien giving that to her by laying his own needs to the side since he knew that she needed more support right now.

To be clear, that was sarcasm.

Marinette was an awful, selfish girlfriend this season. Yes, she doesn't know the full extent of what's going on until we get to the final, but in Passion (S5E6) we get this:

Adrien: Marinette? Marinette: Adri-mine! I mean, Adri-fine! No! I mean, you're not mine and you're not fine, I mean, you are fine. (gasps) Adrien, is something wrong? Adrien: No, no, everything's fine... no, everything's not fine. Not fine at all. Somebody I care about is sick and... there's nothing I can do. I feel completely hopeless.

Gabriel then akumatizes Nathalie, leading to a fight that ends with Marinette seeing just how sick Nathalie is. All this means that, by the end of Passion, Marinette is fully aware that Adrien is really struggling with Nathalie's condition and just how bad Nathalie's condition, so it makes perfect sense that the episode ends with Marinette and Alya talking about... how thirsty Marinette is for Chat Noir.

Marinette: You should've seen him! He was so... (growls like a cat) in his cute red suit with black spots. Can you believe it? I asked him out to the movies and I didn't even stammer! True, the timing was bad, but still, everything is so easy with Cat Noir, I can tell him everything I never had the courage to tell Adrien.

Marinette, sweetie, I know that you're going through some stuff, but you're better than this! You've always been shown to care about others! I just don't believe that you wouldn't at least comment on how sick Nathalie is, which really is all that this scene needs because I don't expect Marinette to have no wants or needs outside of supporting Adrien anymore than I expect the opposite.

Marinette can thirst all she wants, especially since she's not dating Adrien yet. Just let her acknowledge that this is who Adrien must have been talking about earlier! Instead, she says nothing, forgetting about Adrien's struggles and not informing his other friends of what's going on, leaving Adrien to basically suffer alone as the Nathalie issue will continue to come up on his end, but he never again reaches out for support from others.

Remember how the NYC special saw Marinette and co protesting Adrien not being allowed to go on a school field trip? And how The Bubbler saw Nino trying to organize a birthday party for his best bro? And how Reverser saw Marinette pairing up Marc and Nathaniel into the dream comic book team? You ever look back on all that and wonder what happened to these characters wanting to love and support each other, even if their attempts where sometimes a little misguided?

Ever since the start of season four, loving and supporting each other has gone out the window. If it's not about shipping Adrienette, then no one cares even though Adrienette was totally one sided for most of the show. First it was only on Marinette, then it was only on Adrien, and it only became mutual in the episode where they... got together? Kind of? Seriously, when did they actually start dating? The second half of Kwami's choice sees Marinette say this:

Alya: Then, how did we go from “I’m pathetic and I’ll never love again” to “Yay! I’m going out with Adrien”? Marinette: I’m not going out with Adrien…

But then the very next episode starts with Chat Noir talking about his girlfriend! When did that transition occur? For a season that's all about Adrienette getting together, it's kinda funny that we never technically see them get together. It's also kinda sad that them getting together was the result of Adrien once again not taking Marinette's "no" at face value... I know it's a romcom trope, but writers, please, can we not use it in stuff aimed at little kids? Plus haven't we mostly agreed that it's a bad, lazy, overused trope? Does anyone actually like it?

This is getting long, so I'll just give some final thoughts and call it a day.

A relationship starting off of shallow feelings is totally fine and normal. Outside of your family, that's how most relationships start. You meet someone with similar interest or whose vibes you like or who is taking the same class as you. You start talking and get to know each other, which can lead to a deeper relationship in the form of a friendship or a romance, which is basically a friendship with bonus features.

The issue with the love square is that the writers are absolutely botching the "deepening relationship" part of the equation. They're not letting Marinette support Adrien or learn about his struggles or even acknowledge the struggles that she does know about, which makes her come across as ridiculously selfish, a terrible lead in to a final where she now has knowledge that could destroy him. Most of the audience doesn't trust her to tell him about this knowledge because of course they don't!

As always, I lay the blame for this at the feet of the writers because so much of Marinette's bad behavior and issues make no sense when we look at her previous writing. She's never been the best at emotional intelligence, but she has always tried to help others, a thing that the show somehow acknowledges during her fight with Gabriel, leading to his win, but doesn't in acknowledge in Marinette's own romantic relationship. Of course, that would require the writers to see Marinette's season five behavior as a flaw and I don't think that they do, which is why I blame them and not her. I have no issue writing her - or reading things that write her - as better than this.

[charlietheepicwriter7]

Hey, Little Songbird

Chapter 24 - AO3

Adrien’s bodyguard stood outside Felix’s bedroom.

He wasn’t allowed to wander around the mansion; the bodyguard—who’s name Felix didn’t know despite the man working for the Agrestes for years—was there to make sure he didn’t escape.

Felix closed the door and paced up and down the length of the room.

What was he supposed to do now? So close to his goal, and yet so far. Gabriel wasn’t an idiot; after Felix robbed him the first time, he wouldn’t let his ring disappear the same way. It was probably hidden in a safe somewhere, but how was he supposed to find it when there was a guard with him the entire time? Could Felix wait until tomorrow, when the bodyguard had to take Adrien to school?

No, Nathalie would likely lock the door on him. Every lock in the mansion could be controlled remotely, as part of his uncle’s desperate need to control everything. He would have to wait to know for certain, but the door would likely be locked at night as well, giving the bodyguard a break.

Felix paused. So why was the bodyguard there right now? They could just lock him in his room and be done with him until dinner, not… whatever this is.

Did Gabriel expect something from him?

Well, Felix thought, sitting primely on his bed. Now he wasn’t going to do anything.

Felix wasted time until dinner on his phone. M. Henry had finally gotten back to him regarding the translation, asking Felix if he was alright in the email, which Felix understood once he read the diary. It was… a little disturbing, reading Rossi’s analysis of their classmates and theorizing lies that would specifically cater to their flaws. Rossi’s M.O. seemed to be lying about one little thing they wanted to get them hooked, then build up with promises—that she’d introduce them to someone, that she’d help them make it big, that she’d teach them to be like rockstars and celebrities. She wanted them dependent on her, protective of her so they’d one day get their investment back.

And then there was her lies about Ladybug and Marinette. Felix grouped the two together because Rossi did—in some passages it was like Rossi mistook one for the other. The hatred Rossi had for them disgusted Felix, it truly did. Felix didn’t really know Ladybug, but she seemed… alright, for someone who punched him in the face. To be far, he’d expected it, considering how he was trying to ruin Adrien’s reputation at the time. But the hero was perceptive and a generally good person by all accounts… if you didn’t count Rossi’s.

If you believed Rossi’s words, Ladybug was just a jealous showoff with a crush on Adrien, and Marinette was no better.

Felix closed the PDF before he got too angry, then forwarded the email to Cesaire. Hopefully she hadn’t blocked him yet, and was still willing to take down Rossi, even after he’d framed her. He hadn’t heard anything from Cesaire, which could be good and bad. But at least she hadn’t leaked his phone number to their classmates, so he didn’t have to deal with cyber harassment on top of everything else.

After a quick text to Marinette, informing her that he was okay, Nathalie fetched him for a family dinner. Gabriel seemed excessively angry at Felix, glaring and playing with his cravat, which Felix understood. He did punch his uncle’s cash cow in the face, after all. Dinner passed in stony silence, and when Felix was returned to his room, the locks clicked in place behind him.

With the knowledge that there was no one in the hall to check if he was still in his room, Felix turned to the windows. Despite Uncle’s numerous security measures, windows were his weak spot, as Felix and Adrien learned when they were children.

Gabriel would regret keeping Felix in his mansion, especially since Felix learned the position of all Gabriel’s security cameras years ago. Tonight, he’d find the safe. Lay low for a few days. And on the last night… Gabriel wouldn’t know what hit him.

Taglist: @graduatedmelon @novicevoice @dur55 @kris-pines04 @18-fandoms-unite-08 @moonlightstar64 @bee-a-garbage-shipper @sol-o-shade @kittyotakunoir666 @tinyterror333 @allieoftheenemy @marichat00 @xgxmxtx @two-faced-biatch @feliciakainzofspades @evil-cricket @emilytopaz @spicybelladonna @chocolateherringtacofan @user00000003 @wannajointhecrabcult @happymonster-pants @duquesapincarrasca  @throneoffirebreathingbitchqueen  @sxltinette @kittydemon9000 @thetrashypanda423 @unoriginalmess @toodaloo-kangaroo

[lilacerull0]

So. I've been thinking about how often we talk about how young Rory and Jess were, as a... I don't know, plea for compassion and understanding of their mistakes, I guess, but I seem to struggle with offering the same patience to Dean, even though he's literally the same age. Why do you think that is, I wonder? Is it just because I don't like him and I don't WANT to? Am I just being unfairly judgemental and maintaining a double standard? Or are there actual reasons? It's funny, because I actually used to like Dean, when the first couple Seasons aired and I was young. But then I grew gradually more and more frustrated with him until I "disowned" him, I guess. Haha! Maybe part of why I'm so hard on him is because the narrative NEVER is? (For all people talk about Rory being "coddled," she actually gets blamed for a lot of things on the show). I don't know, and you're one of the only people I'd trust to be able to be impartial about this topic. 😆 Overanalyze this with me!

THANK! YOU! FOR! THIS! ASK!

So far @trashfordair has been the only person I've met around here that likes Dean and she even wrote me a beautiful fic that features his reflections on Rory/Jess which you can read here. Everybody say: Thank you, Nathalie.

More under the cut because things got out of hand:

As for my feelings about Dean? I don't feel like I'm allowed to hate him. Based on the source material, I don't think I'm even allowed to like him. See, this doesn't apply to the things that he does. And that is really how I function when it comes to him. He does something bad? I disapprove. He does something genuinely nice? I approve. He DID read Rory's favourite books! He is shown to be hardworking! He understood how important family was to Rory and he honoured that! (I do think Lorelai's opinions on Dean are a cause for discussion and are to be corrected even though I get where she comes from, but the truth is Dean truly was of help to the Gilmores and the little things he did for them regarding the household can surely be viewed as minor, but he didn't have to do any of that) He has just moved from his hometown at the beginning of the show! He's fifteen/sixteen at that point. His girlfriend is falling for someone else and he can see it happen, right in front of him. Those aren't exactly pleasent things to experience, not ever but especially not at that age. Was he wrong to break up with Rory publicly? Absolutely. Do I think that he would do it like that under different circumstances? No. I don't think his primary goal was to hurt her (Not excluding him wanting to cause her some kind of pain which is a very real possibility. Again! Not okay, but too many people act like they're above so many emotions, characteristically human emotions. It's okay to feel it as long as you don't actively and consciously act on it.) I just think that he was lashing out and suddenly feeling everything he tried to suppress for a very long time. I don't know about you, but in my experience, public spaces can intensify every unpleasant feeling you've ever felt. (Yes I know Dean has a habit of lashing out, but that's exactly my point. Dean didn't purposely want to embarrass Rory in front of everyone, he would have had the same reaction regardless of circumstance.) This is not unfamiliar reaction for a teenager. Note: I am NOT coming up with excuses, just humanising him. I think that's worth something and should be worth something to everybody who's made a mistake at least once. For my thoughts on s4 finale see this.

I find Dean's temper issues very, well not interesting because I don't have much to work with here, but definitely view them as something with potential. I think this could have been developed without opposing the Gilmore logic (in a way that is, as we known, shown with Jess) because it could have served as a nice counterpart to different shapes Jess and Rory's impulsivity takes. Dean is underwritten. And that is my main problem with him. You have to admit that, if you like Jess for more than just his good looks (Stella, I know you do, but I always take on this teaching tone when I ramble dhsjjddk), you probably wouldn't have liked him as much or understood him as profoundly (based on information canon offers us) as you do if 1) his relationship with Luke didn't exist or wasn't treated with that much heart and care 2) this might be just for me personally, but if it wasn't for season 4. Because if s3 ended and Jess didn't show up before 6x08, I would have characterised his development as fan service for sure. And THAT is what Dean needed. A little scene in which he talks about something other than Rory would do wonders. And so would all those nuances and layers Jess was able to showcase in a very few scenes he appeared in over the course of 22 episodes in season 4. Now, that wouldn't automatically make me like nor hate Dean. But it would help me get there. He has those scenes with Lindsay in s4, but they are also "tainted by" Dean's feelings for Rory and only make me angry on Lindsay's behalf and make me frustrated with society. I have to make a disclaimer though: I am so incredibly annoyed with this whole thing where the fanbase massively hates on the "nice guy" (which is such an unsatisfying and one-dimensional term to use for describing characters, but you get my point) and maybe I'm shying away from actively disliking Dean because of that. (can't wait for somebody to hold this over my head, but I had to bring it up to keep my conscience clear)

AND YES! RORY DOES GET BLAMED FOR A LOT OF THINGS ON THE SHOW!!!!!

[bugaboo-and-kittynoir]

Mega Leech: Adrien isn’t a sentimonster.

The Adrien is a sentimonster theory is not a secret—the creators are well aware of it. I’m thinking this clip in Mega Leech is either an intentional mislead on the creators part, or an unfortunate consequence of the episodes airing out of order. Either way, I theorize that the creators are letting us see Gabriel’s perspective here: and it looks like he believes Adrien is a sentimonster.

While Adrien being a real sentimonster is an intriguing theory (that i am not opposed to), there are too many holes in the story for him to be a full-fledged sentimonster (and now that we have this blatant “foreshadowing”, i’m even less convinced that this theory is true tbh).

As for the aforementioned holes…

If Adrien is a sentimonster, then why can’t Nathalie sense it?

This would mean Nathalie is aware that Adrien is a sentimonster. Okay, makes sense. She’s in on everything else Gabriel has done, why wouldn’t she know this too? After all, she is the Peacock Miraculous holder. But, um, issue:

If Adrien is a sentimonster, why can’t Nathalie sense that Chat Noir is too? Wouldn’t she put two and two together and realize Adrien and Chat are the same person? Or at least use this to her advantage?

The answer is yes yes she would. Nathalie can sense any and all sentimonsters, even dormant ones (Feast). Don’t you think Hawkie and Mayura would use the fact that one of their enemies is a fucking SENTIMONSTER to their advantage? The answer is yes yes they would.

Maybe Gabriel told Nathalie that Adrien is a “sentimonster”, but Nathalie knows the truth: he’s not. She’s emphasized her care for Adrien so many times, and it’s clear that she would defend him at any costs, even against Gabriel. I think it’s possible that Nathalie would protect Adrien like this.

How do Emilie and the Graham de Vanilys fit into this?

Regardless of what the audience should think, it is clear that Gabriel knows some significance regarding the Graham de Vanily rings. To me, the rings being twins clearly indicates Felix in this mess as well (who tf knows with that though, i can’t even theorize about it at this point it’s so messy. Who knows, maybe if Adrien’s not a sentimonster, Felix is. No I will not expand because I simply cannot).

Maybe this will be apart of Emilie’s redemption/hero arc. If Adrien isn’t a sentimonster, but Gabriel thinks he is, wouldn’t it have to be Emilie who was protecting Adrien all this time? Who else would’ve convinced Gabriel that Adrien was a sentimonster?

Issues

What would Emilie’s motivation be for lying about Adrien being a sentimonster? I can see this question getting answered though.

I am a pretty strong believer in Gabriel redemption (not that I want it or that he deserves, I just think it’s likely) and I find it hard to see a path to redemption for someone trying to literally control their son.

This is a children’s show and this seems like a lot of messy, but I wouldn’t put it past them tbh. Especially this season, which is being specifically geared towards older audiences.

Alternatively, maybe Gabe thinks Adrien (and Felix) are sentimonsters, but the true sentimonsters are actually Emilie and Amelie (see this post by @thesquipproject for more wonderful thoughts)

And finally, i present you with this thought:

Mega Leech is the episode right after the oh-so-anticipated Episode 9, Gabriel Agreste.

[imthepunchlord]

You’re really great at this stuff, y’know? Like, all the stuff with sentimonsters being animated puppets that play a role but aren't truly alive and don’t want to be unless their being misused, that’s a level of tweaking my canon-wired brain can still accept because it STILL MAKES SENSE WITH WHAT’S SHOWN IN CANON barring any glaring retcons which don’t make logical sense anyway and therefore don’t register in my head the same way. I know you don’t really regard canon in the same way that I do as well, so thank you for working with the powers shown anyway in a believable setup per the ask, really good job. I will admit, though this is more a personal thing, that the drawback of Peacock’s canon power being the loss of the partnership and friendship between two heroes doesn’t bother me at all considering EVERYTHING that’s happened so far between Marinette and every person she’s tried to trust and confide in, not limited to but obviously focusing on Adrien. I’m all for the both of them focusing more on building themselves as people, which is what children their age should be consciously learning to do anyways, and having a quality-over-quantity approach to friendships, which is something EVERYONE should do in my opinion, both in-show and in general. On that note, which friends do you think canon!Peacock!Marinette and canon!Horse!Adrien would make in school given their new dispositions and kwami’s influence (not limited to Miss Bustier’s class, ergo Marc, Aurore, Mireille, etc. can be considered)?

I always try to.

If I have to stick with Peafowl's canon power, then yeah I'd really rather they're just animated puppets, and this "want to live their own life and get their item", it's just a response to being made with evil purposes which goes against the nature of their miraculous which made them. Otherwise you have a power to just casually make life and that raises so many ethical questions. And if they are "truly alive" as Thomas says they are, technically Gabriel and Nathalie are child murderers as they made sentimonsters based on children. And mass murders as they terminate other sentimonsters.

And it raises the question of what of good Peafowl users? They made a living being according to Thomas, what do they do about it? Do they just let it live? Can it live ok in this current world? And what of sentimonsters that are made based on real people?

That canon power just raises so many questions and concerns and this is why I really hate it. But animated puppets contently serving out a role when made for good? That wipes away all ethical issues, cause they're not truly alive and they don't care or really want to be. They were made to do something and that's all they care about.

So yeah this is a take I'd definitely rather and I'm glad it's preferred.

And yeah, over all, at this rate, given canon, Marinette is better off not having a partnership with Adrien especially when she has the Peafowl. She's pretty set to be happy and safe with this power. You could even go full solo Peafowl Marinette and she just makes a little team of superheroes and all she has to do is supervise and be ready to make a replacement if they're ever terminated.

As for friendships, as canon wouldn't change too much when them getting Peafowl and Horse, it'd largely be the same.

On Adrien's end, Kaalki would initially vote that Adrien stay friends with Chloe but would swiftly change her mind and tell Adrien to cut her out of her life. Nino she wouldn't be approving of, unless he does really well as an upcoming director so he's a maybe. And as we don't know all the classmates background, at most she would vote Adrien befriend Alix as her father is a museum curator. That's impressive. And they, they both like to parkour so that's something. And when Max makes Markov, Kaalki would also recommend him.

As for Marinette, she and Alya would still be tight, but Duusu would have some issues with how Alya treats Marinette and tell her to that sometimes she needs to put down boundaries. And being very empathetic, Duusu would turn Marinette's gaze to classmates who may need a boost, like Juleka and Ivan. Duusu may also try to have Marinette assist Sabrina as that really hurts Duusu to see, but it kinda blows up in their faces.

But over all, I don't see too much changing for friendship with these swaps.