#MurderNoir

[fernsnouveau]

I actually disliked the direction where I'd recently seen a bunch of the more reasonable S5-critical ML fandom people going. Those discussions and analyses were spiraling increasingly towards demonising Marinette over time, as we were left hanging with the s5 ending for a long time, and the fandom had nothing new to talk about.

I actually liked her flaws.

But then the canon does... this...

And I do admit, it's an in-character way to push Marinette towards a villain arc. Like, if I had to construct a darkfic scenario where Marinette goes evil and try to keep it as close to her canon personality as possible, it would look something like this. Which, I guess, means that it's theoretically easier for me to accept than, for example, S5's occasional incidents of Edgy Murderboy Chat Noir (how is that the same character who had TWO guilt-based mental breakdowns about accidentally cataclysming someone completely out of his control, including the main villain??!). I'm sure there are in-character ways to turn Adrien (or anyone else) into a villain, but Murder-Noir was Not It.

Of course another reason why the writing of Murder-Noir gives me extra heebie jeebies, was how it felt like an abuse apologia excuse, validating Gabriel's accusations for Adrien to not "deserve" autonomy, nor to experience or express any negative, inconvenient emotions. Murder-Noir feels like it's a writing choice directed at child abuse victims in the audience, who related to Adrien. "See, your abuser was right, you're horrible and overly emotional and out of control, so you NEED to be rigidly controlled for your own and everyone else's good!

Anyway.

While I admit that Marinette taking up Gabriel's mantle this way is technically in character, I cannot claim to enjoy the writing choice at all. I liked Marinette's flaws. I wanted to explore them. I did not want her demonised to this extent. She could have been meaningfully flawed without becoming better at being Gabriel, than Gabriel himself was!

After this, the only justification for the lovesquare to stay together, would be as a wish-fulfillment or "reward" for Marinette, and that's not enough for me. When I think about, if there was a real-life abuse victim in Adrien's position (minus the supernatural elements), and then they were friends with, and/orstarted dating someone who repeatedly treated them the way Maribug has been doing (and "repeatedly" is important here, it demonstrates unwillingness to learn from mistakes and be sincere about apologies – S4 was brushed under a rug as soon as Chat Noir superficially forgave!), ESPECIALLY but not only siding with the abusive parent and lying to the victim that the abuse they experienced was "not really abuse" and For Their Own Good, and demonstrated this complete infantilisation and lack of respect for the abuse victim, wanting to see them only as a palatable, innocent fairytale being who's not allowed to be inconvenient, express negative emotions, make informed choices mor generally be a complete person...

Obviously the right thing to do, for the abuse victim, would be to get the hell away from that person.

It does NOT mean that the person is irredeemable. They're just... not owed the abuse victim's forgiveness and continued presence in their life.

And I can't ignore that anymore.

We failed to get an arc about Adrien surviving and escaping Gabriel and healing. He has now been put into a position where, in order to ever be okay, he would have to survive and escape Marinette in order to heal.

I don't like this. It feels very hopeless and bleak and unenjoyable. I don't even think the story is gonna go there and free/heal Adrien (Astruc made it clear that Adrien isn't supposed to be his own character or have agency, he's supposed to be Marinette's accessory and that's never gonna change).

But as far as I'm concerned, any excuse for the lovesquare relationship to get back together after this, would have the unpalatable aftertaste of propaganda to make victims return to their abusers.

I don't like this trajectory!!!

[fernsnouveau]

Canon is feeding the bad-faith Adrien salters so well these days.

[fernsnouveau]

What if I just pretend we're still in the post-Elation hiatus before the Ladynoir Ghosting and before the confirmation that Edgy Murder-Noir is supposed to be his consistent characterization now, and there was still a sense of potential for the story?

[fernsnouveau]

I can't really comment on the Evil Marinette stuff, but the Evil Adrien trajectory unfortunately makes sense within the type of abuse apologia that the show devolved into during season 5.

The idea the showrunners are pushing, towards the end of s5, is that child abuse victims are irrational and volatile, and their emotions, if left unchecked, are inconvenient at best, and extremely dangerous at worst. This is why they need a big rational abuser to keep them under control.

Adrien and Chloé are the two sides of this coin. Chloé went out of control, became an evil dictator, and was ultimately "justly" punished by having her abusive mother drag her away and take complete control of her life. Adrien struggled with his potential to go out of control, realised that he's volatile and dangerous and Not Good Enough to deserve agency, so he "virtuously" handed away his role in his own story, became the completely passive Perfect Victim who only exists as an object to be convenient for other people or to pull their heartstrings or to suffer virtuously, and this is how he averted the disaster that TA insists would have happened if he had been allowed to play an active role in his own life. Adrien was then rewarded for his submission to PerfectVictimhood by getting a romantic partner who is controlling and objectifying very much like his abusive father was, except nicer about it on a shallow surface level. Marinette inherits Gabriel's mantle as Adrien's controller/owner/superior, because according to this ideology, he needs to have one.

(I guess the writers thought that they could make this extremely conservative scenario """progressive""" by simply gender-flipping it, instead of having to actually disassemble the problematics and develop something healthier. I don't... actually think this is a very healthy message to convey with Adrien, who is one of the most audience-relatable and especially abuse-victim-relatable characters in an allegedly uplifting show aimed at young girls...)

Anyway, since the showrunners have began to systematically push this rather horrifying ideology where child abuse victims inherently need to be controlled and restricted and emotionally manipulated into becoming compulsively convenient, or else their inner volatile bad nature gets out and ruins everything,

it makes perfect sense that they would write a world where Adrien not being abused by his father would result in Adrien turning into a violently dangerous supervillain.

...I wonder if the child psychology professional who was allegedly consulted for season 5 was an ABA supporter. It would explain a lot.

None of this explains why Badrien looks like he's been forced to dress Business Casual against his will even though he really wanted to be goth/punk, though. That would have only made sense if alt!Gabriel was still a horribly controlling parent.

https://www.tumblr.com/onlyvinegar/730713750547660800

YEAH NO BASICALLY???

The Alt!Adrien stuff doesn't make sense because it's /Adrien/. Canon!Adrien was able to move on from his mom's death in a mostly-healthy manner despite having the biggest cheesewheel of DICK for a dad. How was Alt!Adrien not able to do so despite having a Good Dad who would have been there for him and helped him move on?? Why is an Adrien who would have been taught good morals by his Heroic dad down to kill anyone who gets in his way??

The Alt!Mari stuff doesn't make sense either because of most of the things that Derision doesn't make sense for. And even with the retcons, Marinette /had friends/ and the Ladybug confidence boost shut down her fear of Chloé so why would Shadybug still have cared once she got her powers? Just gonna go 'this one person was mean to me so i get to commit mass murder'???

Not to mention bigger questions like

Why did Shadybug and Claw Noir get their Miraculous? In Canon LB and CN were chosen to fight Hawkmoth. Is Fu also evil in this universe and he just went 'you know what let's let some teenagers murder half the population instead of going to therapy!'? Even if he intended for them to be Heroes and they went rogue, why did he give them the Miraculous if there wasn't a villain??

Why are they going after the Butterfly Miraculous? Sure, it has some power. But Shadybug already has plenty of power to do whatever the hell she wants to get her revenge, and clearly the Butterfly can't help Claw Noir get his mom back or else Canon!Gabe would've used it to fix Emilie before the whole show even started!! At best it would make more sense for them to either not go after the Butterfly at all and have just Hesperia happens to be the Hero fighting them, or they should be focused on taking out each other while Hesperia is doing damage control.

"Marinette never met Alya"??? Despite Alt!Alya being in the special and a major player character and presumably dating Alt!Nino, she never met her???

Even if that WAS the case, Marinette meeting Alya and Mari getting her Miraculous happened the same damn day, so what happened in like a few hours to make Alt!Mari decide 'you know what? GOing full evil villain is a great idea actually!'.

How are we once again saying that the kids that commit murders are more redeemable than the kid who was just mean???? Like granted the kids are still more redeemable than Canon!Gabe but FUCK man????

And like. Re: the reasons for Shadynoir being evil: I am trying my best to not do the victim blame-y 'but these two handled it well so why can't you?' because I hate that shit. But when I am comparing them to themfuckingselves where they had VERY little changes between their worlds, and the changes that are bigger would be less likely to add to their mentality!!

[fernsnouveau]

I'm increasingly convinced that the implication is that since emoverse!Gabriel is not a supervillain and a horrible parent, he didn't keep Adrien's bad emotions under control the way canon Gabriel did by abusing Adrien into becoming compulsively convenient and passive.

So, the lack of excessive abusive control allowed Badrien's volatile emotions to get the better of him, resulting in him becoming a dangerously violent supervillain.

These implications, while horrifying, align pretty well with the unfortunate s5 message that Adrien is just too emotionally volatile and immature to deserve things like autonomy or full human rights or informed choices or an active role in his own life-narrative. He can only be Good Enough by giving away his capacity for agency and succumbing to the completely passive Perfect Victimhood; an object, not a subject in the story. S5 presents us with a scenario where Adrien needs to have a more rational abuser/owner/controller keeping him swaddled in psychological bubble wrap and out of the loop and ensuring that he remains compulsively convenient and doesn't start getting uppity, like standing up for himself or thinking he deserves to be treated as an equal, or thinking that his feelings matter (his feelings are bad and inconvenient and dangerous, remember?)

This way, Gabriel's and Nathalie's treatment of Adrien was supposedly """justified""" all along and Not Real Abuse, and also, it's okay for Marinette and the others in-the-know to keep treating Adrien in a very Gabrielcore way after Gabriel died and passed the mantle of Adrien's owner-controller-gaslighter to them (Marinette in particular).

...yeah, the showrunners really ran with the implications that some kids just need to be abused in order for them to stay Good and Virtuous.

Is that Ml Paris special thing is legit a leak or just someone fanfiction being branded as a leak? Because Adrien can't move on from his mother death sounds like BS. Canon Adrien can do that, movie!Adrien, who's lost his mother from even younger age, can do that so why this one, with good father can't? Seriously though, if it's movie!Adrien who take this route I can perfectly see it because Gabriel is neglecting him and he's already pretty jaded there. But an Adrien who supposedly have good father, can't move on? It feels like the math isn't mathing. Although it would be different matter if this Adrien think his father is the reason why his mother dead, then yeah, maybe it's a little bit more make senses.

It's 100% legit. It's not even a leak, it's just a bunch of spoilers from the novelization of the special that released on October 4th.

And I agree about Adrien being unable to move on from his mother's death being BS. Like, I understand that people process grief differently and not everyone can move on so quickly, but like, this is Adrien. Our Adrien moved on while being stuck with an abusive parent, why didn't the same Adrien move on when Gabe is like, supposedly a good parent? Movie Adrien was a good exploration of this, but he was a different version of Adrien entirely with a different characterization. Shadrien is supposed to be the same guy but in a different world with different circumstances but the same character. And I know that circumstances can shape your personality, but that's all the more reason for why this makes no sense lol. By all logic, Shadrien should be faring better than our Adrien considering that he had a stable upbringing and a father who would help him through his grief. It doesn't add up.

Thank you for your ask!

[fernsnouveau]

It's so bizarre that the show canon has repeatedly, consistently demonstrated for 100+ episodes that Adrien has pretty much been surviving and staying a mostly decent human being because of his frankly remarkable psychological resilience, despite the constant emotional abuse, isolation, increasingly severe clinical depression, various hardships... he's basically been going through a standard villain arc the whole time but, thanks to his extraordinary resilience, without actually becoming a villain (fair enough, it was kinda nice while it lasted to see mental illness just make someone be garden-variety annoying and off-putting instead of a demonized "evil psycho" stereotype),

...and then, season 5 comes along and tries to convince the audience that, actually, Adrien is really negatively reactive and emotionally immature and volatile, and he just can't be allowed to face any negative truths or difficult experiences because he's uniquely un-resilient and incapable of dealing with them, so he needs to be swaddled in psychological bubble wrap and denied agency and informed choices forever.

Like... if the showrunners wanted that to be the case, then why did they spend the first 80+% of this story arc blatantly demonstrating the exact opposite?!!

Movie!Adrien didn't fully move past his mother's death, and he presumably had years compared to show verses' one, but he didn't become a mass murderer. I don't want to compare trauma, but they are the same person!

Is this to push the narrative that Adrien isn't emotionally mature enough to handle any hardship even though he dealt with his mother's death/disappearance already?

You know that's probably it.

[fernsnouveau]

@agentofcalamity thank you for the recs, but the romance or action genre thing wasn't important to me, also it doesn't matter to me what the character looks like. I was thinking more about the psychological side, mental health issues (but not catastrophized or harmful stereotypes), the social masking, compulsive people-pleaser tendencies, high compassion mixed with low socialization experience, alienation? Low/conditional self-worth? Character flaws that aren't about explosive anger/violence? Argh I'm bad at explaining this, sorry.

[Edit – also, the tag rant is general observations and frustrations, not directed at you.]

Anyway does anyone have recs for fiction with characters similar to Adrien but they don't devolve into edgy murderboys?