#Gabriel and Emilie love story

[anna-scribbles]

if i finish thirteen and then start talking about writing a prequel to my prequel from the perspective of young emilie i need you guys to shake me by the shoulders and tell me i’ve lost the plot

[notannascribbles]

i truly am so baffled sometimes like. were we not all rooting for adrien & marinette’s relationship to be a good thing? a healthy and beautiful and satisfying ending for both characters?? how are so many people excited about adrinette: lies and deception edition😭

[lostuntothisworld]

If the first 5 seasons of ML is a 15 year time loop crack-prediction summary:

Universe 1

Mio Dupain Cheng is the First Ladybug. He is a walking disaster, and some of his hobbies include video games, and dumpster diving. His Black Cat counterpart is Celeste Agreste.

The pair are an unstoppable duo, but there is one problem: Mio is in love with Celeste's icy civilian identity, and Celeste is in love with the fact that Mio's kiss can sever him from the Bad Luck Curse of the Black Cat. Whose idea was it to make these stupid jewels impossible to take off???

Anyway, Mio does end up falling for Celeste's fiery hero identity, and Celeste ends up actually falling in love, too. Feelings he never was able to express properly because of the guilt he harbored from lying to Mio about his motivations for his romantic displays.

The pair's journey comes to an abrupt end when Mio, as Ladybug finally declares his feelings for Celeste's Black Cat form, just before the pair discover where the still anonymous Monarque's lair is located.

Distraught, Celeste admits to the other boy the truth that he was just using him, but then developed actual feelings along the way. Celeste explains the Curse of the Black Cat. Mio is upset, but agrees to one kiss, before they separate for good.

Celeste is conflicted, but the Curse of the Black Cat is too great for him to bear. The pair kiss, Mio sees his partner's secret identity of a famous model and heir to the Agreste Empire. Celeste removes the ring, and Mio promises to pass it on to someone worthy, along with explaining the Curse. They tearfully separate forever.

Mio decides alone that nobody should have to carry the Black Cat's curse ever again, and puts on the ring. He combines the Ladybug and Cat and confronts Monarque alone.

It more or less goes about the same as the finale fight except that Monarque threatens to snap Celeste if Mio doesn't give up his Miraculous. Because Mio is wearing both, he can freely take off both. So he does.

Mio begs Monarque to not snap Celeste, but he does anyway. What's the point of complying if he was just going to Wish a new universe?

He makes his Wish, and within the confines of such a complicated Wish, Mio loses his humanity. Celeste is split into two: Adrien and Felix (This is the first split of one person)

Universe 2 (Possibly Universe 3 instead.)

Shone Bianca is the Second Ladybug. She is an Olympic level figure skater and cross trains in ballet. She is serious and steadfast, always going in a straight line towards the most streamlined solution. Her Black Cat counterpart is Adrien Agreste.

Reverse love square: Shone is in love with her Chat Noir. Adrien is comphet "in love" with Shone...

Shone loses her humanity in Monarque's next Wish, and Monarque is split into two: Gabriel Agreste and Colt Fathom. (This universe, be it Shone's or Marina's is the second split of one person)

Universe 3 (Possibly Universe 2 instead)

Marina Verdi is the Third Ladybug. She is extremely smart, and cunning. She is passionate about computer science. She has tendency to overcomplicate things, and her plans always involve a multitude of steps. Her Black Cat counterpart is Adrien Agreste.

The Hate Square: MarinaBug hates Adrien, and AdriChat hates this Universe's Ladybug.

Marina loses her humanity in Monarque's next Wish, and Emilie is split into two: Emilie and Amelie. (This universe, be it Marina's or Shone's is the third split of one person)

Universe 4 (Must be number 4, because of the connotations, along with other reasons)

Marinette Dupain Cheng is the Fourth Ladybug. She is very much like the Original Flavor of Mio, but from trial and error via Shone and Marina, has been perfected. She will bring about the New World.

Season 1-5 happen as in the show. The only difference is stuff that happen off screen. With the Wish, Gabe trades Emilie's and his life for Nathalie and Colt. Marinette loses her Humanity for Colt's.

In season 6+ the audience unravels the fact that there were 3 previous Ladybugs and that Lilamoth has been systematically stealing the identities of and taking their places in every Universe. Who would miss sentimonster kids anyway?

Mio is now a homeless orphan, and Shone and Marina are in a group home (The same group home Luka and Juleka were in when they were young, a completely separate, but related story).

Mio, Shone, and Marina are given locking bracelets which were once part of the Native American Miraculous Box, but crafted into something new via Tomoe and Colt. Those are their amoks.

Marina: Coyote

Shone: Falcon

Mio: Raccoon

Mio is confused because he (and only he) remembers the last two Universes in flashes, and he had the Coyote, and was the leader. Tomoe insists that it is now time to let go of tradition and embrace the new. The trio become Lilamoth's lackeys.

Season 6-8 ends up with Lilamoth as the main villain with her lackeys and various akumas. We find out that Mr. Lee is a pseudonym of Colt Fathom's and Zoe is the half sister of Felix. She is not a sentimonster. Yet.

We find out later on that Lila moth knows of a secret Universe 0, and ships the male Ladybug and the female black cat there. She wants to take the place of the Black Cat and have Adrien as her Ladybug, as it should be, in her eyes. (More on Universe Zero below)

Lilamoth has been pulling the strings from the very beginning, when she was originally the first holder of the Fox Miraculous.

She has plans for 2 more lives to steal before she makes her own Wish.

Zoe Lee and Marc Anciel are in line to be the Next Ladybugs...

The audience uncovers later on that Felix remembers his past as Celeste the Black Cat and how he betrayed Mio, and him trying to make things right. This explain his motivations in previous seasons, and future ones.

We also find out that Adrien is his own twin sister. Adrienne didn't "snap out of existence" as much as her sentimonster embryo merged with Adrien's in the next Universe. Felix does not have her DNA, only Adrien does, and thus why Adrien has the twin rings as his amoks. This will give narrative weight to Adrien wielding both Cat and Ladybug Miraculous in the final battle of the Supreme (the Final Big Bad of seasons 9-12).

Marinette still has her arc of confessing to her Princess and saving her from the Evil Queen: it's Dragon Princess Kagami and the Evil Queen Tomoe.

We also find out that Kagami’s creation was what broke the Peacock Miraculous (She was the first “perfect” sentimonster created in Universe 4). She along with Mio were grown in womb-like versions of Emilie’s coffin instead of gestating like regular babies. This is how Mio can be Marinette’s twin brother without most people knowing… until the big reveal of course.

(Marigami, Lukadrien, and Felix/Mio are endgame)

Secret Universe 0

Celeste Agreste is Ladybug (his name I'm still workshopping), His twin sister Adrienne is the Black Cat Peursephone. (French for Fear + Persephone which means Destruction)

The Alliance rings are a thing, but instead they are called Horizon rings and marketed as the Perfect Horizon, a play on Celeste and Adrienne, the two avatars' names.

Adrienne was too impulsive and ended up getting Celeste snapped before they could confront Monarque together. Luka saw his beloved Celeste snapped out of existence and is too distraught to fight off akumitization, and succumbs. With the new villain name of Hades, Luka hand delivers the Ladybug earrings to Monarque.

Monarque tells Adrienne that she is his favorite child and much too valuable to snap out of existence. Monarque makes his extremely complicated wish and Adrienne is sacrificed for it. This sets off a course of events in the next Universes that cause a multitude of other Wishes.

Adrienne vows that her father cannot kill her in a way that matters.

[[[[Will edit more later for clarity but PLEASE for the love of god does any of this make sense????]]]]]]

[margarita-life]

Emily & Gabriel | PARIS FANTASY (Their Story) | Emily in Paris S4

link: https://youtu.be/_dPfvQrxsdU

"...Everyone likes watching a story about two people trying to fight off their natural attraction to each other..."

#EmilyinParis #EmilyandGabriel #theirstory

[macrolit]

The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.

As voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers — with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review.

NYT Article.

*************

Q: How many of the 100 have you read? Q: Which ones did you love/hate? Q: What's missing?

Here's the full list.

100. Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson 99. How to Be Both, Ali Smith 98. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett 97. Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward 96. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman 95. Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel 94. On Beauty, Zadie Smith 93. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel 92. The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante 91. The Human Stain, Philip Roth 90. The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen 89. The Return, Hisham Matar 88. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis 87. Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters 86. Frederick Douglass, David W. Blight 85. Pastoralia, George Saunders 84. The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee 83. When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamin Labutat 82. Hurricane Season, Fernanda Melchor 81. Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan 80. The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante 79. A Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin 78. Septology, Jon Fosse 77. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones 76. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin 75. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid 74. Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout 73. The Passage of Power, Robert Caro 72. Secondhand Time, Svetlana Alexievich 71. The Copenhagen Trilogy, Tove Ditlevsen 70. All Aunt Hagar's Children, Edward P. Jones 69. The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander 68. The Friend, Sigrid Nunez 67. Far From the Tree, Andrew Solomon 66. We the Animals, Justin Torres 65. The Plot Against America, Philip Roth 64. The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai 63. Veronica, Mary Gaitskill 62. 10:04, Ben Lerner 61. Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver 60. Heavy, Kiese Laymon 59. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides 58. Stay True, Hua Hsu 57. Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich 56. The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner 55. The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright 54. Tenth of December, George Saunders 53. Runaway, Alice Munro 52. Train Dreams, Denis Johnson 51. Life After Life, Kate Atkinson 50. Trust, Hernan Diaz 49. The Vegetarian, Han Kang 48. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi 47. A Mercy, Toni Morrison 46. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt 45. The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson 44. The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin 43. Postwar, Tony Judt 42. A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James 41. Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan 40. H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald 39. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan 38. The Savage Detectives, Roberto Balano 37. The Years, Annie Ernaux 36. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates 35. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel 34. Citizen, Claudia Rankine 33. Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward 32. The Lines of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst 31. White Teeth, Zadie Smith 30. Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward 29. The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt 28. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell 27. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 26. Atonement, Ian McEwan 25. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc 24. The Overstory, Richard Powers 23. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro 22. Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo 21. Evicted, Matthew Desmond 20. Erasure, Percival Everett 19. Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe 18. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders 17. The Sellout, Paul Beatty 16. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon 15. Pachinko, Min Jin Lee 14. Outline, Rachel Cusk 13. The Road, Cormac McCarthy 12. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion 11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz 10. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson 9. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro 8. Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald 7. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead 6. 2666, Roberto Bolano 5. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen 4. The Known World, Edward P. Jones 3. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel 2. The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson 1. My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

This is probably small in the grand scheme of things, but how did Emilie being noble play any impact in the story at all?

I mean, I'd get it if it was just a small detail to help deepen Emilie's character, but why nobility of all things? I don't know, from what I'm seeing so far, the whole "Emilie renounced her noble title" shtick just feels worthless if it's not going to impact the story or add depth to Emilie's character (like maybe upbringing or personal values?).

I don't know. Like everything else, the noble part just feels shallow and means nothing to the story, especially for a character like Emilie, who is the plot device for the whole show. Any detail about her, like her personality and life story, is supposed to influence the story and characters one way or another, namely Hawkmoth since she's his driving force.

So what was the point?

For context, this ask is about Félix's play which says that Emilie gave up her title to be with Gabriel. I'm gonna give a slightly larger section of the transcript of the play for full context, but the relevant but is at the end of the last paragraph:

Félix: The king and queen's twins grew up, each day as different in heart as they were similar in body. The firstborn, curious and brazen, despised life at court and escaped at every opportunity. The younger daughter, well-behaved and respectful, did everything she could to please her parents, and stayed quietly in the castle. Félix: (as Mr. Graham de Vanily) Oh, my queen. Did we entrust our legacy to the right princess? Kagami: (as Mrs. Graham de Vanily) She will fall in line, eventually. Félix: Confident that she would settle down as she matured, the king and queen allowed the curious princess to leave to study beyond the sea in another kingdom. There, she immediately found true love in a humble tailor. Félix: The tailor was making clothes so magnificent that they revealed the beauty of the soul of anyone who wore them. Although it made her parents furious, the curious princess gave up her rank, her wealth and her kingdom to live a bohemian life with the tailor.

Story wise, I have no idea why any of this was added since it adds nothing to canon. It's not like this finally explains why Gabriel and Emilie are poor while Amelie is wealthy. Along similar lines, it's not like Amelie's title has ever mattered. Prior to this play, I don't think that we even knew that she had a title or that she was the younger sister. The play is all about explaining things that we never had reasons to question in the first place.

My best guess as to why the writers wrote this pointless backstory is that they wanted to make Emilie seem even more pure and perfect so they went with the tired old trope of a rich girl giving up material things for the sake of love and art because good pure women don't care about material things! Only nasty, shallow women care about money. (Way to play into sexist tropes, guys.)

There may also be cultural elements at play here given that France doesn't have the greatest history with nobility, so giving up a noble title may be seen as good and pure to a French writer, but I don't know enough about French culture to say that with any certainty. If anyone who reads this blog is French and would like to chime in, then feel free!

While we're on the topic of the play, I wanted to point out that the above quoted passage is why I say that the Graham de Vanily parents can be as kind or as abusive as you'd like to make them. It's incredibly vague and you can read into it whatever you want to read into it. Were they good loving parents who were just upset about their daughter living in poverty or were they miserable controlling classist who Emilie fled England to get away from? It's up to you because you can get both reads from this. The play commits to almost nothing of value. Politicians could take lessons from this impressive level of noncommittal writing.

A better version of the play would have focused on things that actually matter to canon like the details of finding the miraculous and/or Emilie learning she's sick, but you could only have those details if they were coming from Nathalie or Gabriel. Félix is a terrible choice for a character to tell us the show's backstory because he knows so little of it, thus the play focusing on his largely pointless backstory.

[buggachat]

Honestly I think my take on the "Chat Noir was not there in the final battle" comes down to the fact that I kind of just don't think a satisfying final battle between Chat Noir and Monarch was actually possible.

I read a lot of fic, for example, and I've read the scenario play out a lot of times in a ton of ways and I've never been fully convinced of it tbh (and not because they weren't great fic!!). It seems just completely traumatic for Adrien in a way that the scenario inherently cannot properly focus on, because it's all happening in the middle of an action scene and Adrien is too busy being Mid-Battle to properly have a cathartic breakdown about it all. I mean, Chat Blanc already showed us what would happen if he did have a breakdown mid-battle (and why wouldn't he?). And though it'd be fun to have a big triumphant moment of him defeating his abusive father, Adrien simply isn't a character who would find that scenario triumphant, or cathartic, or anything other than viscerally traumatic.

Also, I agree that it's unfair that Chat Noir was not present— like it was unfairly tilted in Ladybug's favor— but I don't think it'd be fair if he was present, either. Because Marinette is, in fact, the main character. The main character whose character arc is primarily focused on her finding her footing as a hero and discovering all the responsibilities that come with that power (as opposed to Adrien, whose character arc is moreso about freedom and identity). And let's face it, in a fight between Ladybug and Chat Noir and Monarch, nobody would be focused on Ladybug at all. It's not about her. It's not her fight. She'd just be there as moral support and an extra set of hands, which really doesn't work for her character arc at all and is completely unfair to her!

Basically, it would just be Chat Noir temporarily acting as the main character and having the worst time of his life in the most un-cathartic battle for him possible left completely traumatized with Ladybug in the background awkwardly trying to comfort him after the fact? And then the season ends? And then the next season presumably goes back to Ladybug being the main character? After a time-skip to the new school year? It's just an ending that I feel like is a lot better in theory than actually on paper. And you can probably make an argument for ways that it could be made to work, where it would enhance Ladybug's story in a meaningful way where she still feels like the main character, and would somehow be triumphant for Chat Noir despite it probably being the worst moment of his life, and somehow not make the rest of the series following feel like bonus content as opposed to a continuation of the story...... but, I dunno. I think it's a lot easier said than done.

The fact of the matter is, I've always been waaayyyy more interested in how the aftermath of Gabriel's defeat affects Adrien than the battle itself. Post-Hawkmoth defeat is one of my favorite types of fic for a reason, and it's because the aftermath can be so juicy, especially for Adrien as a character. I think whether or not Adrien is actually there in the battle itself has always been kind of irrelevant to me, because no matter how Gabriel is defeated, his defeat will have immense repercussions on Adrien's life going forward. And the way they did it, Marinette is now a part of it in a more active way, too. Which is good for her character!

( Also, if he was there to triumphantly defeat Gabriel, would that mean he would just.... watch his father die? of cataclysm? a-and.... nathalie would just.... die, too? so he'd have three dead parents after all that? who he watched all die (or, in emilie's case, saw her corpse)? or is this a scenario where MONARCH BEATS CHAT NOIR and still makes the wish? is that cathartic? for Adrien to lose to Gabriel? Frankly, I loved seeing Gimmi and The Wish, it's been teased for so long that I was expecting it, and I loved the fact that Nathalie got to live as her narrative reward for coming to her senses and trying to murder Gabriel with a crossbow. I like that we got to watch a full season of Gabriel painfully dying to a cataclysm— poetically inflicted on him by Adrien, but of Gabriel's own doing. I like that Nathalie has presumably adopted Adrien after having an arc of her trying to be a parent to him once she realized nobody else would, that's so much more interesting than any other alternative. I just don't see how all of these things, some of my favorite things that season 5 gave, can still all exist at once with Chat Noir present in the final battle in any way that's satisfying. )

[sillysiluriforme]

I love how your Adrien in la terreur is so gnc/nonbinary coded, like even amongst the rest of the sentimonsters he's somehow even more of a creature than them. I'll see your drawings of him with a shaved head and then him with luscious long locks of beautiful hair like Rapunzel and I'm like "Emilie and Gabriel just wanted the perfect child huh. They just didn't specify gender in whatever way." He's like a creature roaming in the forests stealing everyone's gender, or lack there of. He gives off Puck/Peter Pan vibes as well with the forever engrained Pinocchio life he shall live.

If someone’s gender’s been stolen it’s his like im sorry he’s not non binary he’s castrated 😭

No hate though ! ​you definitely picked up on the link between his androgyny (and consequent neoteny) and his lack of personhood.

He doesn’t get to have secondary sexual characteristics because that’d mean puberty, ergo adulthood, ergo autonomy. Growing up being gnc is never a choice for him so he grows to resent it. His story would be very different if he had been a girl.

I fear I may soon have to drop the adrien misogyny comic…

[gatotricolor]

them but it's an alternative universe

more under the cut

for context I didn't watch the last 2 seasons completely, I watched half of the fourth and read what happened in the fifth, so if some stuffs had certain explanation in those seasons and it's explained differently here, it's because of that (but also this is a completely different story, I don't want it to look like the og).

adrien is disabled.

marinette isn't a stalker here, she still very anxious tho.

every teen chara is around 17-19 (except felix he is 21) because pre-teens fighting against a 40-something year old makes my skin crawl, this isn't percy jackson they're not demi-gods.

kwamis can have different appearances, the ones shown are just one way they can look.

adrien and felix are brothers here, felix is the oldest.

emilie wasn't from the UK royal family anymore bc wtf she is moroccan-french now.

master fu is replaced by an oc here.

the miraculous (or called miracles here too) have a chosen holder, if someone who isn't chosen uses it can have both physical and mental consequences in the person who's using it.

with that said, gabriel isn't a chosen holder, emilie wasn't too.

both emilie and adrien have DMAT (Distal onset myopathy in the tibialis anterior muscle).

adrien is a huge nerd that loves magical girl shows.

ladybug's name is changed to scaralady just bc I wanted, the au is informally called scaralady au.

mari has a little sister who looks up to her and she is basically raising so yeah she is that girl.

[soracities]

whats your all time favorite book? you may give me other recs too if you'd likee! 💗

I don't have an all time favourite because different books have made me lose my mind in different ways <3 but I CAN give you a breakdown based on some of my own personal categories:

Books I Would Take Into a Bunker For 9 Months (aka Absolutely No One Talk to Me)

The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky

Ich und Du, Martin Buber

The Waves, Virginia Woolf

The Snake, Stig Dagerman

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, Albert Camus

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy

An Inventory of Losses, Judith Schalansky

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

We, Yevgeny Zamyatin

Books That Did That™️

Secondhand-Time, Svetlana Alexievich

We Love Glenda So Much & Other Tales, Julio Cortázar

The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa

At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien

Deaf Republic, Ilya Kaminsky

Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Mattawa

The Chaos Walking Trilogy, Patrick Ness

Ways of Seeing, John Berger

German Autumn, Stig Dagerman

A Lover's Discourse: Fragments, Roland Barthes

A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing, Eimear McBride

Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence

Bluets, Maggie Nelson

Antigone, Jean Anouilh

They: A Sequence of Unease, Kay Dick

A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen

The Condemned, Stig Dagerman

Books That If I Could Erase My Memory and Read Again for the First Time I Would 100% Erase My Memory and Read Again for the First Time

The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

Água Viva, Clarice Lispector

The Bloody Chamber & Other Stories, Angela Carter

A Moth to a Flame, Stig Dagerman

Paris, When It's Naked, Etel Adnan

Without an Alphabet, Without a Face, Saadi Youssef

A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Marquez

View with a Grain of Sand, Wislawa Szymborska

Possession, A.S. Byatt

Four Bare Legs in a Bed: Stories, Helen Simpson

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

Not to Read: Essays, Alejandro Zambra

The Princess Bride, William Goldman

[copdog1234]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[certifiedducky]

mlb is the master of giving me a storyline and then sending it in two completely opposite directions that depend entirely on the story they want to tell in a given episode.

is gabriel tragic or evil? is nathalie there because she loves gabe or because of her promise to emilie? is ladybug chat noir’s equal or is she better than him in every way? is chloe supposed to be sympathetic or not? is adrien the deuteragonist or simply marinette’s damsel in distress?

none of the ideas presented in miraculous are bad on their own. the issues arise when we start getting conflicting character motivations and personality traits. and it’s SO ANNOYINGGGGGG. i will never get over how frustrating the season 5 finale is, especially after rewatching season 1. it’s like watching a completely new cast, and not in a “good character development” way.

[fernsnouveau]

Tags by @erisluna35 :

#yeah the ship cracked not cause we dont believe in teen love #but because s5 messed up their dynamic #this whole thing messed up adriens arc not because of adrienette #but because he kept getting locked out of his own narrative #which is not satisfying regardless of adrienette #reducing all these complaints to just the salters belittling teen love #the sugar side really dont get it

Tags by @generalluxun :

#as a writer I feel this #writing the LS is hard now I need to ensure there is a clear break from canon to even contemplate it #why did they turn it so toxic?

“You don’t ship the love square because you’re an adult who doesn’t believe teenage love is legitimate”

I’m going to stop you there. Yes, I am an adult person who is aware teenage romance doesn’t have a great track record of being lasting in real life. But Miraculous Ladybug: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir is FICTIONAL.

If the writers decide on a convincing arc for Maribug and Adricat being “made for each other”, then yes, I will ship them. I considered them an OTP for years, actually.

UNFORTUNATELY there was a multi-season storyline of Ladybug keeping important secrets from Chat Noir that was not fully addressed and pushed aside.

UNFORTUNATELY as of the season 5 finale, we have Maribug lying to Adricat about his very existence as a son of Monarque and his status of being a Sentimonster.

So no. I don’t ship it anymore. And I’m actually kind of bummed this fictional relationship I invested in for years is dead to me.

[margarita-life]

Emily & Alfie | THEIR STORY (Emily in Paris S4)

link: https://youtu.be/bHJJZKJq2e4

"...The last thing I ever wanted was for you to get hurt..."

[uptoolateart]

Okay, so what I was saying in my long Gabriel analysis rings true. (Ha ha...rings....) He changed to be accepted by Emilie's parents.

Deep down, Gabriel probably relates to Marinette. In the story Feligami tell...Marinette could easily be the poor tailor, while Adrien is the heir to the empire, ready to throw it all away for her.

At some point, Gabriel got twisted and sold out his values. It was probably a gradual process, which explains why Emilie initially fell in love with him and then stuck with him despite her unhappiness with him later.

In one of her videos for Nathalie, she said Gabriel got stuck on things. He was good enough for her but not for himself.

When he looks at Marinette, he sees a little of what he used to be. When he gives her that speech about being naive in the fashion world...he's talking about himself, once upon a time. I think he once had a dream like hers, and he let it go, focusing instead on the wealth and status he needed to be good enough for his in-laws.

Now, he envies Marinette, even if he's unaware of it. That's the only reason a grown man would be fixated on her in that way. He's treating her the way Emilie's parents treated him. He has to break her and get her out of his son's life because if he doesn't - if she achieves her dreams of marrying Adrien and becoming a designer without selling out her principles - it means he could have done this too. It will force him to reflect and take accountability for his bad decisions...and he just can't cope with that.

Similarly, when he hurls abuse at Cat Noir about what an ill-mannered child he is, and when he goes to such lengths to control Adrien...I really think he's seeing a reflection of his younger self there too.

Underneath the pancakes and bad dancing and total insanity, the man is nothing but a writhing heap of regrets and won't see that he had so many chances to do things another way.

[nobodyfamousposts]

What if Chloe had lost her memories of her old life after making the wish in Chloe's Lament? If so, would she remotely be nicer given not being rich means her father has less reason to spoil her? Or would she still be mean anyway even with her memories gone, implying she may just be born evil?

Yes but also no? It's a bit complicated so please let me explain:

If Chloe's Lament didn't happen and Chloe was the Chloe of the reality in question, things would pretty much be the same way they are for her in the Lament. The difference would be how Chloe herself handles it since she's fully aware of her position in this life going in without any memories from an alternate self getting in the way.

Andre is still Andre. He is a pushover and loves his little girl. He WANTS to give her whatever she wants, so it's not that he has less reason to spoil her and more that he simply CAN'T, at least not to the extent she wants. Think to the setup in canon where he was able to buy Chloe a golden bracelet and a diamond-filled phone case, fire Roger when he upset Chloe, arrange the closure of an ice rink to build a gym for her, and shut down Clara's music video on her demand...but ended up in an outright panic when he told Chloe that he couldn't banish Marinette and her family from the city, something he legitimately could not do. Not for lack of wanting to. Just that he can't.

That's pretty much the position he'll be in here. He loves Chloe and he WANTS to give her her every desire, but he's not rich or powerful this go around and he has no weight to throw, no money to spend, no influence to use, and no status or backing to protect himself or Chloe from the repercussions of her antics.

But this ask isn't about him, I know. I'm just trying to give perspective here.

Andre would still spoil her...at least as much as he could. And you have to bear in mind that he is trying to make up Chloe's lack of a present mother while also running a functional and decently well off but not outstanding business. He would deny her things she wants because he can't give her everything she wants.

But the Chloe of this world would know that. And since she never had the wealth and power that Canon Chloe has, she wouldn't expect all the things that Canon Chloe did when waking up in her position.

This is actually what makes the primary difference. I have said before that it is fully possible for the characters who make the Wish to end up happy in their Lament, and while I'm sure many of you doubt me or think I only apply that to Marinette, I meant it for everyone.

See, the main thing that makes this a Lament isn't the position of the Chloe in this world but in how Chloe HANDLES it. Canon Chloe is going to try and handle it like Canon Chloe handles anything, and it's going to fail because her expectations are based in a setup that she cannot understand no longer applies and her go-to methods require resources and protections that she doesn't have here.

THIS Chloe is going to handle it differently. Her expectations are already more down to earth than Canon Chloe to begin with. And by the time the events of the story start, she's going in with the knowledge that she is on thin ice and some change needs to occur if she doesn't want to lose everything she has left.

Chloe by this point is the bastard child of "Style Queen Audrey" and is just as acknowledged by her as she was in canon if not less, so she's still dealing with abandonment issues while trying to endear herself to her mother however limitedly she can. She still has Adrien as a friend but knows that's hanging on by a thread as well (her friendship with him was mostly through Andre's friendship with Emilie and she's gone now, and Gabriel himself is not that impressed with her). She has Bustier's support and is still able to go to the school, but she's on probation with the administration watching her. And her father is working desperately to get her out of consequences for her previous behaviors. So if she messes up again, she's going to lose all of that.

So yes, in that sense, this Chloe is going to be "nicer". She has to be. She is trying to change her behavior in order to avoid a bad situation. To try being "kind" and "helpful" when she's still very much a selfish and angsty teenager who doesn't get why she should. "Nice" and "Good" are two different things, after all. Though that's not to say that she'll be very good at either.

This change in behavior is difficult for her. Change usually is. But practice makes perfect, right? So that's why Chloe starts trying to do things she normally wouldn't. Like helping her father in the bakery. Planning a box of goodies for her classmates to try and make peace for the next school year.

And yes, help out an old man on the street.

However, there's another aspect to consider here.

After all, in this universe, Chloe and Adrien are childhood friends. And Adrien and Marinette are childhood friends, too.

So wouldn't it stand to reason that Chloe and Marinette were also childhood friends as well?

...

...

IF I wrote this setup as its own story sans the Wish and Lament, we'd be dealing with a story of Chloe growing out of a negative mindset, addressing her inner fears that drive her actions, and improving her life and her relationships. All while dealing with the stress and responsibility of being a hero. And just the clash overall of the difference between who she is as Chloe vs who she is as the Ladybug Hero.

As Marinette in Canon pointed out, "Ladybug has made me a better Marinette. So, perhaps being Queen Bee will make her a better Chloé, too!"

That's what happens here.

Chloe KNOWS she's not a good person. She'd even convinced that a mistake was made when she was chosen. But being a hero lets her do good more easily under a mask where no one has preconceived feelings or expectations of her. It would be freeing in a way. And give her the positive reinforcement she needs.

But the biggest issue would be dealing with her toxic mindset and how it led to her situation and strained relationships. Which would be what the course of the story is meant to address. Chloe in this world doesn't understand what "healthy" or "healthy relationships" are anymore than Canon Chloe does. But she's getting a crash course in the matter while also receiving guidance courtesy of Tikki.

Ultimately, this Chloe would have more of a chance than Canon Chloe.

She wouldn't go into this looking to take advantage and cause harm the way that Canon Chloe did.

She would be a selfish teenager learning to be a little less self centered and a little more aware of her impact on others.