#bee talks to people

[badacts]

thinking about tfc instead of studying and i shall jumble down my thoughts on the new book and why i probs won't read it:

a) my entry into fandom as one of the first to write fic (there were less than 50 tfc fics on ao3 when i wrote touchstone which is buck wild) was triggered by 50% enjoyment of the characters and 50% the thought I could do better. whether or not this was true when i was 23 doesn't matter and is in retrospect pretty funny but still.

b) i was a fucked up 23 year old and my involvement in the fandom back then was tied up in my mental health being a total dumpster fire to the point where the two main features of 2016 and 2017 for me were aftg and being super depressed. and i just don't wanna go back there tbh. it's very tangled up in my head and i don't love it.

c) totally undeveloped characters from ten+ years ago that have been widely explored by fandom including me are always going to be weird to read canon stuff about after this much time. i didn't like the extra content for that reason (and also that the author was needlessly into increasingly violent untagged stuff that kept popping up on my dash despite my best goddamned efforts) and i feel the same way about a new book.

anyway this is my very public diary and opinion and y'all can do what you want ofc but i will probs continue to live in peace and judiciously blacklist the tags

[windkonig]

when people say "ok but x bug has no benefit to nature" I bet they can't even name 5 facts about the bug they're shitting on. so how could they Possibly know what its function is in the environment and if it's "useless" or not

wasps being the perfect example, I still get people saying "oh bees are cute and pollinate :) yay. but WASPS ARE EVIL and they don't contribute ANYTHING!!!" and it's like buddy. wasps pollinate too. they also control spider populations. they do a lot of great valuable things. but even if they didn't, they're still worthy of being here. I see SO much hatred toward wasps and I wish people would try to learn a little more about them.

I'm mainly talking about paper wasps here because these are common ones we run into in daily life and most commonly deemed "aggressive". but wasps have body language. and if you learn to read this language and learn how to properly act around them, things will go a lot better for you! wasps can be curious creatures and they may come up to observe you, especially if you're wearing something brightly colored. this can be startling for sure, but my best advice is to just be still, DO NOT SWAT or wave your arms. try to just back away or sidestep so it loses interest and leaves. swatting is just gonna make them feel as if they are being attacked and increase your chances of being stung.

many stings happen due to unfortunate but accidental circumstances. unknowingly getting too close to a nest, stepping on a wasp on accident, one getting stuck in clothing, etc. I got stung once while gardening, went to pull a weed and the wasp was on it, so I grabbed her without knowing and she stung me because she was scared. this doesn't mean "oh wasps are AGGRESSIVE and EVIL" it means you stumbled into an unfortunate situation where the wasps felt threatened and defensive. instead of being like "FUCK all wasps" go forward trying to learn about common nesting areas, be wary of holes in the ground, wear gloves while gardening, and if you do have to be around a nest, try not to make a lot of noise. if the nest absolutely needs removed, call a professional.

[thebusylilbee]

martin scorsese not only acknowledging the bit but also playing along with it is the most satisfying ending this whole Goncharov madness could have gotten. im gonna remember these last few days of blogging with a lot of fondness

[beebeedibapbeediboop]

This might be a dumb question, but why do you blog in English instead of French? I know Americans have a bad habit of assuming the whole world speaks English, but Ive always wondered about the non-anglophone Internet

That's just to reach a wider audience with my art :)

Since I don't assume that everyone speaks French, I speak english for my english AND for my non native english speakers. English is a language that's so vastly known, I can hope to be understood or to communicate with anyone that only have english in common with me.

Also, Tumblr is not well known outside the US or Anglophone countries, so actually few people speak french here. I only like to joke in french to mess with my english followers just to see where my french speakers followers are at haha

But to promote my art, english is my go-to language, as a lot of Americans seem to avoid any non-english content (from experience)

[peak-dumbass]

I know I just got done with ranting about tfp/rid2015 starscream’s character but, if you couldn’t tell by my other rid2015 posts, I’m obsessed with rid2015 bumblebee and when I tell you I love this scene of bumblebee making fun of starscream I’m not exaggerating it’s so cathartic to me

“But bumblebee is a good/hero character, why is he being so mean—” did you forget how much starscream hurt bumblebee in tfp?

He killed cliffjumper who, while probably not as close to bee as he was to arcee, was still close friends with bee

He stole the omega keys from the autobots’ base and handed them over to megatron, practically dooming Cybertron at the time to be remade in megatron’s image — of course the autobots get them back last minute, but that doesn’t change how much that loss effected all of them (evidence: optimus shouting in anger for the first and to my memory only time in the series) — including bumblebee

And his greatest offense towards bumblebee in my opinion—

DESTROYING BUMBLEBEE’S T-COG

“But it was silas and M.E.C.H. that took it in the first place—” HE DIDN’T NEED TO HELP SILAS USE IT AFTERWARDS “but Ratchet was able to fix it—” THAT DOESN’T GET RID OF THE TRAUMA THAT WHOLE EXPERIENCE CAUSED HIM

It’s also incredibly fucked once you think about it more because the t-cog is literally a cybertronian organ — while silas is at least mostly detached from how screwed this is since it’s more like taking parts from a robot than surgery to humans, starscream shouldn’t be since he’s also a cybertronian

Instead of being freaked out and recognizing how messed up silas’ actions are like any rational bot would, he helps silas make his fake-bot-that’s-using-another-bot’s-stolen-organ work by providing him with energon (the [at the time] incredibly scarce resource that helps all bots survive) and — after that plan falls through because of bumblebee finding them — he destroys the bot’s organ for no reason other than he wanted to escape and thought that was a good way to distract him

I just—I’m sorry?? I feel like bumblebee is incredibly justified for clowning on this cringefailure of a bot for what he’s done to him

And this isn’t even mentioning what he’s done against the autobots as a whole (both on and off screen) that has probably hurt bumblebee by proxy

I feel like it’d be justified if bee also killed starscream — he already got to kill the bot that destroyed his voice box, I think bee deserves another murder as a treat <3

/joking but also what if—*gets shot by tfp/rid2015 starscream fans*

[themosttenderestofbees]

had a dream that wayneradiotv released a new spamton toy commercial advertising a toy that was like. a spamton puppet made of felt and clothing hangers that you had to bend if you wanted to move him. every time the toys limbs were bent it would make the sound of wayne groaning in pain. there was a segment in the commercial that involved the spamton puppet slowly walking across the screen in dead silence broken only by his moans of agony that lasted like a full 2 minutes

[mostly-natm]

Let’s hear it for the oldest surviving Soong brother!

[tubbytarchia]

Just saw this Jimmy skin for the first time from back when he could still experience joy and whimsy and uh yeah I can't blame anyone for having any parental instincts towards him (looks at myself and my moots and Doc)

[theminecraftbee]

Grian comes to again, flat on his back, and groans. Distantly, he hears Scar yelling an apology. It’s hard to tell if Scar had accidentally dropped sand, accidentally kicked one of the dragon eggs currently littering their bases (causing it to fall), or had missed concrete somewhere and caused that to drop, but the apology, this time, was at least sincere, so he’s fairly certain Scar didn’t intentionally knock Grian out. Doesn’t mean Grian hadn’t been knocked on his ass by, what, a pavlovian reaction to sand? But it means Scar hadn’t been intentionally exploiting it.

He’s rubbing his head when he hears them chittering distantly. He looks up, and then he Looks up, just to make sure he’s not imagining it, and… yep, they’re there. The Watchers. They’re busy happily chittering about the fact that Grian passes out when any block falls to the ground. Of course they are. He wonders if this is their fault. Probably not; Watchers may be annoying, but they can’t see the future, so it’s not like they’d have known about the egg thing ahead of time. No, they’re probably just amused at his suffering.

Joke’s on them. This is mostly just going to make cleaning up slower. And they’re going to have to deal with that too, on account of the fact Grian can’t do much else until it’s done.

He’s trying to hit another egg with a piston when he hears, distantly, “shoot, the beach!”, realizes what has happened, and then he’s waking up on the ground again. He stares at the sky for a moment.

“Trust Scar with sand, I thought. He terraforms all the time, I thought. He won’t keep messing me up with it, I thought.” He groans.

The chittering of the Watchers gets louder. He hears a lot of ‘Scar’ and ‘sand’ and ‘he can’t bear it’ and. Great. Grian’s pretty sure he knows what comment is coming next—

you’ve never left that desert.

“So this is your fault!” he says, accusingly. “Why! All it’s done is make my life more confusing!”

Indistinct noises. At one point, when Grian had been more one of them than he is now, he had been able to tell all of the voices apart easily. Now, the Watchers are somewhere between the wall of incomprehensible, horrible sound that they are to mortals and normal voices. He has to strain to pick out anything overly specific. He supposes if he chose to go all Watcher again he’d be able to tell what they’re saying, but frankly, they’re all annoying, so why would he bother? Better to stick to things as they are.

He messages Scar: If you drop sand one more time I am going to figure out how to add more dragon eggs to your base.

Scar messages back: its an accideet

Grian responds one more time: lol. accideet.

He takes a moment before standing up to check around himself. Scar does seem to have moved on from whatever he’d been doing with terraforming to keep dropping gravity blocks, so it’s probably safe to stand without passing out again. What had he been doing? Right. Eggs. Piston.

you never left that desert, Grian hears again from the wall of noise.

“Right. That’s me. Never left,” Grian says. Honestly.

can’t stand the sight of scar and sand.

“You know you guys are reaching, right?” Grian says.

never left—

“I would if you’d let me!” snaps Grian.

Indistinct chittering. Deep breaths. He’s fine. He's apparently developed sand-based epilepsy or something, and is trying to find the solution to that, but. Fine. He’s fine. It’s not like arguing with Watchers is ever actually worth it. They never change their mind. The thing is that they tend to think they know exactly how he works, and no matter how much he tries to refute their baseless assumptions, they still have a picture in their head, and they still keep working off of it.

A strange shudder runs down his back.

you never left that desert.

“Look, it’s not that I’m not over it,” Grian says. “I’m actually pretty over it. I’ve been over it since Last Life, really, even if none of you believe me.” He puts another egg in his inventory. “Scar’s my friend and he’s a weird guy and I like him, but it’s not like I’m not over that stupid game. Wouldn’t keep playing it if I weren’t over it, would I?”

Indistinct chittering about tragedy and deserts and dramatic final suicides and, look, Grian is good at telling stories. That’s the whole point. That’s why these guys won’t leave him alone. But sometimes, he swears…

“So you know, I would have left the desert by now. It’s just that you all haven’t. So guess who’s still stuck here? Believe me, it’s not me who’s not over it. If you wanted me out of the desert, you could let me leave any time you’d l—”

He has a second’s warning before he’s on the ground, dizzy, hoping he hasn’t gotten a concussion. He glances down at his communicator.

Mumbo says: that was me this time my bad

Shakily, Grian types: you have 10 seconds. start running.

The chittering gets more distant. Grian gets up. He checks to make sure his wings are on. He goes to light a rocket, but not before shouting: “Scar, if you do anything with gravity blocks while I am actively flying I will kill you dead!”

“Have fun buddy!” Scar shouts back. Grian’s not sure Scar actually heard a word he said. Well, hopefully there will be no sand falling from his hands while he goes to murder Mumbo, then. If there is, Grian’s—well, Grian’s going to have a broken bone at that rate, but he’s recovered from far worse falls. Some of those have even been Scar’s fault, by some measure or another.

He Looks back up at the mass he knows are the Watchers. “If this is you all’s fault because you never seem to have gotten over the whole desert thing, I’ll find a way to, I don’t know. Inconvenience you greatly. Not sure what I’ll do, but I’ll figure it out.”

The chittering gets way more fond, then. Pleased. They want him to do that. Can’t even threaten the assholes properly, they like it. Honestly, Grian doesn’t know why he bothers. It’s not like they’ll listen. No matter how many times he says he’s over it, it’s not like they’ll listen.

(Sometimes, he hates that he’s so good at stories.)

Right then. Time to wreak havoc on his friends for exploiting his very exploitable weakness, then. This sword’s got sharpness on it, right?

------

(originally written for @hermitcraftguesstheauthorevent, and posted on ao3 here; now that it's revealed, i figured i'd go ahead and post it here, since it really matches the cadence of one of my tumblr things more than an ao3-only fic. enjoy!)

[huellitaa]

the world is yours, literally 💭🎀🧁

so if you've been on this side of tumblr or any girly self improvement etc. side of social media, there's a high chance you've discovered the statement "you are the creator of your own reality" or "the world is yours" or something along those lines at some point. it sounds so far fetched when you first hear it, without any thought going into its true meaning, but the reason this is used so much is because it is true.

we are our lives. you are the world around you. everything in our lives is intrinsically entwined in ways we can't explain and the biggest connection out of all of them is us and life. it sounds obvious and self explanatory, sure, but when you think of it on a deeper level and dig into the complexity of the notion, like most things, you'll find it holds a lot stronger of a stance in your life.

have you ever noticed how so many metaphors for your life and bettering yourself reference and relate to nature and the world? "treat urself like garbage and the flies will come”, “water your own garden before anyone else’s”, “the darker the night, the brighter the stars”, “needing good roots to grow", they all relate to the sun and the sky and the sea and the world and the ground we stand on. they all relate to earth.

have you ever noticed how when people free themselves from bad situations, their reality and their world around them seems to get better too? how it seems to shift along with them?

because we are our world. every building we've built, every concept we've invented, every life we've created and every life we've lost, everything on this earth down to the last blade of grass was once nothing, but once we began to discover and create and flourish and bloom (see, the analogy still stands even there), the world grew along with us, and still is every day.

in truth, the world is in no set way, shape or form. it is not a singular entity. that's why your life can be remade and reshaped so easily within the blink of an eye (but that's for another time) because the world you know is solely your reality. that's the reason everybody has a different perception of you just as you do them, the reason why we have separate interests, conflicting outlooks, the list goes on.

the more we grow, so does our world, and our reality. you've seen how many people have changed and grown and gotten happier and healthier and only kept on going when they finally began to step up and better themselves, how their world changed along with them. because us and the world are one and the same.

the most important thing i'd like you to ask yourself is how do you treat the world? how do you view the world? and how do you treat and view yourself? are there any particular differences? similarities? anything that stands out? what is the world to you?

all my love... 💬🎀🫶🏻💗

[badacts]

completely understand ur latest post about tfc and feel free not to answer this! but i am just wondering if you’ll ever put switchblade back up? totally fine if you don’t, but it was one of my favourite fics and meant a lot to me and i still think about it whenever i think about tfc. i actually reread it a year ago haha and it was so good it still held up to all my memories of it. just wanted to let u know 🩷

that's really sweet but honestly i haven't really thought about it that much. it means a lot to me too but it's also been a source of some pretty bad fandom rage, and i still have a sour taste in my mouth over it that i haven't lost just yet so idk

also i never realised it was such a thing to message authors if one of their fics is taken down? i had more messages since hiding it than i had in the previous like 2 years preceding it, including from a lot of people who don't even follow me, and somehow i feel weird about that too. not you specifically anon (clearly you follow me to see my thrilling posts), just the general collection of messages and asks.

a reminder also that there is a full podfic of switchblade that's still available (it is user locked fyi)

[apnourry]

it was hot at work, i was hot at work, i forget the rest

[thebusylilbee]

Hatoful Boyfriend (2011) - Funny moments

[thatoneguyletoturnedintoafrog]

I think this speaks for itself tbh but I would like to add that I have absolutely no idea how to draw bees

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Sorry if this seems confrontational, but for the life of me I can’t get into your “Chloe has no growth” point when the show itself retracts growth from everyone and is inconsistent with everyone. You saying “The show just lays down basic character traits in Chloe” doesn’t make sense when her basic character traits are supposed to be her being selfish and spoiled.

S2 built off of that and despite what you say, had Chloe doing things that in S1 she wouldn’t have done. She apologized multiple times to the people she wronged, she willingly put herself in harm’s way to help the people she cares about and she was openly vulnerable to Ladybug in “Malidiktaor”. Something S1 Chloe wouldn’t have done. If there’s a distinct difference between a Chloe back in S1 and a Chloe in S2, then growth HAS taken place. But it doesn’t stay because of the formula (and the writers just don’t want her to keep that growth)

So what I’m asking is…what do you mean “Chloe doesn’t have growth”?

I can understand the “No arc” argument because an unfinished arc feels like there’s no arc at all (even though they are fundamentally not the same)

I wouldn't say that the show retracts growth from everyone. It's more that no one is ever supposed to grow. Every episode resets the cast. That's just how pure formula shows work and Miraculous is being sold as a pure formula show. The characters are meant to be static (one of the writers literally compared Miraculous to Dora the Explorer).

That static nature is why pure formula shows normally avoid giving their good-guy characters major flaws. It's the wrong medium for that type of thing specifically because the characters cannot change in meaningful ways throughout the show. They can learn little lessons that don't really change them and maybe have big change between seasons via a special or movie, but that's about it. Thus things like the season four conflict working so poorly. It's just a terrible choice for a formula show! The conflict is literally not allowed to develop properly because of the chosen format.

But sure, let's talk about Chloe and why I will die on the hill that she never demonstrated meaningful improvement even with the issue of the inconstant writing. In fact, seasons-one-to-three Chloe is one of the most consistent characters in the show. For this discussion to work, we need to start off by discussing character development and the two main forms it can take: character establishment and character growth.

Character Establishment

When the audience meets a character, they know nothing about said character. It's up to the writer to guide the introduction process. To choose when to reveal already existing elements of the character's personality, skills, and backstory. This is called character establishment. It is the writing telling you who the character is on a baseline level. Those reveals don't need to happen at the start of the story, though. They can be - and often are - held back for when the time is right.

When these reveals are delayed, it's important to remember that these elements were always part of the character. The reveal isn't changing who the character actually is. It's just changing how the audience views the character.

For example, we spend a good chunk of season one uncertain why Gabriel is doing what he does. Then, in Origins, we learn that it's all for Emilie. This is new information that adds depth to Gabriel's character, but it doesn't change him in any way. This is who he always was. We just know him better now and can recontextualize past events with our new understanding of his motivation.

Character Growth

Character growth is when writers take a character's personality or world view or even just their skills from point A to point B, allowing the audience to watch the character change and become a new better - or lesser - version of themself. This is usually part of a larger character arc where all the moments of growth add up, but it can take the form of small moments of growth that don't fit into a bigger picture, too. I'd probably still call that an arc, but we'll use the word "growth" a lot in this post, so let's just call it growth to be consistent.

Miraculous doesn't really have either arcs or growth because - once again - formula shows don't allow characters to meaningfully change, so I'm going to have to make up an example here. I'll use one that illustrates how character establishment and character growth can and do intertwine as that's an important thing to acknowledge to help guide this discussion.

Let's say that we have a character who lost their family at a young age. We'll call this character Mary. Mary's loss guides her character throughout the entire story, but the other characters and the audience are never told that this is what's going on. We just know that Mary acts in seemingly illogical ways at times and that she trusts no one.

Throughout the story, Mary learns to trust her costars, leading to a big, dramatic scene where she finally tells them - and the audience - about her past. This big dramatic scene is both the culmination of a character arc and a piece of baseline character establishment that allows us to understand Mary's character better no matter what part of the story we're reading.

Because these combo growth and establishment moments are so common in stories, it can feel like character growth when we learn new things about a character in a dramatic moment, but that's not always what's happening. Sometimes dramatic moments are just there to reveal what was always there by forcing a character to act differently than they usually do through the power of extenuating circumstances. These extenuating-circumstances moments are not character growth because, once the moment is over, the character resets to their normal self. The moment wasn't there to let them grow. It was there for the sake of the plot.

This is actually a really important thing that writers need to know how to do. Figuring out what circumstances will make a character say or do a thing they generally wouldn't say or do is part of how stories work. I have started stories with characters acting wildly "out of character" because I put them in the a situation where the behavior suddenly was in character!

Oh, you don't want to talk to this total stranger because you're an introvert with social anxiety who has yet to learn how to love yourself and open up to others? That's nice. Your leg is broken now and you're stuck in the middle of nowhere. What you gonna do sucker? Lie there in the dirt or talk to the nice lady who wants to help you? Your choice! (Spoiler: he talked to the nice lady. He even let her physically support him when he'd usually never let a stranger touch him!)

As soon as that scene was over, the character reverted because it wasn't growth. He didn't become a more open person. He just did something he normally wouldn't do because the situation demanded it. It was extenuating circumstances so that the freaking plot could start.

This is what happened with Chloe in season two. Everything that people call growth is really just extenuating circumstances that reset by the end of the episode or even by the end of the scene.

Let's Talk About Chloe

Chloe does not have a character arc, aborted or otherwise. She is never taken on a journey where we watch her change. All we get is delayed character establishment via extenuating circumstances, but it's given in ways that make some people feel like she was being given an arc. Let's talk about why that is.

Season one Chloe is a one dimensional mean girl. She has almost no depth. She's just here to be petty and cause akumas. She is not a fully realized character.

Season two takes those traits and keeps them, but also gives Chloe a lot more depth to round her out and make her feel like a real character. She's just as petty and mean as she always was, but we're finally allowed to see her in some moments that make her feel like a well of potential to become something more, which the writers basically had to do if they wanted to let her be a hero. The audience needed to feel like Chloe could be good in the right situation.

The feelings evoked by her newly discovered depth are why people go "oh, she had a character arc! My feelings about her changed in a big way!" But she didn't have an arc. You just got to know her better by seeing her in moments where she was forced to be vulnerable. That's not growth. Growth is meaningful, lasting change, not situational change. Everyone changes based on the situation! It's why the "True Selves" stuff is such nonsense. It implies that there's one set way that we're supposed to act in order to be authentic and anything else is some kind of lie which just isn't how the world works.

Let's look at some examples to drive home what I mean.

Season one established that Chloe idolized Ladybug. It's why we get things like this moment from Evil Illustrator:

Ladybug: Fine! You stay! Later! Cat Noir: What do you mean later? Ladybug: I mean, you're the one who wants to protect her, so you don't need me. So, later! (swings away) Chloé:(looks over balcony) Ahhh! Ladybug! Text me! OK!

And this confession from Antibug:

Ladybug: [Chloe] pretended she was me?! How often does that happen? Armand: She idolizes you.

So Chloe adores Ladybug and wants to impress her/be her best friend. Cool. Got it. That never goes anywhere in season one because season one doesn't see Chloe and Ladybug interact much. The most we get is Ladybug saving Chloe from akumas, which doesn't allow for deep conversations. I don't think that they're ever alone in a moment where they can actually talk.

That changes in season two. In season two, they get to interact a lot and it's often in moments where there's a big threat and no one else is around, letting us see a new side to Chloe. But that's not Chloe changing. It's just the writers revealing that Chloe has more to her than the mean girl stuff because of course she does! Pure mean girls don't exist. Everyone has depth. We simply never saw that depth before because Chloe was never put in a situation where she needed to be open. We can't say that season one Chloe wouldn't confess things to Ladybug or chose to sacrifice herself to let Ladybug win because she never had the chance to do those things!

In fact, I'd go so far as to argue that season one Chloe probably would have done the same things as season two Chloe because season two Chloe doesn't really contradict season one Chloe. Antibug showed us that Chloe was pretty desperate to be loved and welcomed the way that Ladybug is loved and welcomed:

Chloé: Jagged Stone! Jagged: (thinking she's the actual Ladybug) Ladybug! What are you doing here? Chloé: Um… when I find out you were here, I knew you'd wanna see me! I had to come say hello. (Sabrina waves at Jagged)

and Chloe has always been a stubborn girl who stands up for what she wants even if what she wants is something bad. Antibug also showed us that Chloe can be genuinely nice to the people she cares about. Her and Sabrina's relationship is shown to be complex with them often having a lot of fun together.

Similarly, Origins sees Chloe showing her father genuine affection after she's saved from Stoneheart:

[Image description: Chloe and Andre hugging and looking very happy to be together]

Origins is the baseline episode that tells us who the characters are on day one, so I never once doubted that Chloe loved Andre, but Andre didn't get akumatized because of Chloe's actions in season one. He didn't even get akumatized for something that Chloe had nothing to do with! His first akumatization is in season two, so it's not shocking that we don't get a Malidiktaor type scene until Malidiktaor.

Chloe was vulnerable with her personal hero when her beloved parent was in danger, but not before? Shocking! Who would have guessed?

Me. I would have guessed. I didn't even realize that people were reading it as some sort of character growth because it clearly wasn't. Malidiktaor didn't feel like something new for Chloe's character. It just felt like the writers were leaning into things that we'd always known about Chloe and using them to better establish her character as someone who genuinely cares about select people. She just doesn't show most of the time.

The same thing goes for Chloe's sacrifice and apology in Zombizou. Chloe only sacrifices herself when there's no one left but her and Ladybug. When the choice is to let the terrorist win or take the hit and let you personal hero save the day. Brave? Sure, but also not growth. Chloe is team Ladybug for all of seasons one, two, and three! She wants Ladybug to like her! Plus even a petty brat can have moments of goodness where they pick a hero over a literal terrorist.

This honestly would have been a damming moment if Chloe didn't sacrifice herself. She functionally had no other choice here. The entire episode builds itself to the self-sacrifice moment so that Chloe is forced to make that choice even though she's been her petty bratty self throughout the whole attack. It's genuinely solid writing.

Then, in the heightened emotions directly after the Zombizou win, we get this:

Miss Bustier: But I hurt a lot of people... Chloé: No... I did... I forgot your birthday, once again. And when I saw everyone had prepared a gift for you, I totally lost it. Because I, too, would've liked to offer you something. I'm sorry, Miss Bustier. Miss Bustier: Thank you, Chloé. Those words are the best possible gift you could ever give me. (hugs Chloé) (Chloé hugs her back, forgetting herself for a moment.) Chloé: Huh?... Uh, yeah. Okay then, we're all good.

A brief moment of vulnerability that quickly ends and does not stick around because Chloe's change was situational, not true growth. The next scene of that episode starts with Chloe being her usual self:

Chloé: Me? You want me to apologize to the entire class? Ridiculous! They should be thanking me for saving everybody.

And ends with the reveal of Chloe's gift to Miss Bustier, which was given in private via a note.

Once again, nothing new for Chloe's character. She acts as she always has, being mean to everyone while having moments of vulnerability when things get tense. Remember that hug between her and her father that we talked about earlier? Same concept. She had just almost died from an akuma attack and so she needed some emotional support, leading her to act more openly loving than she usually does when he's around. Once the moment is over, she reverts to the petty mean girl default.

Giving gifts to placate people is also something that we've seen before. A pretty similar thing happens at the end of Evil Illustrator, it's just played less sympathetic towards Chloe because the writers weren't giving her depth back then:

Sabrina: Too late. Chloé and I are doing the project together. Marinette: You mean, you're doing the project? Sabrina: Well, of course! After all she's been through... Marinette: Ughhh.... Nice new beret, by the way. Sabrina: I know, right! Chloé lent it to me. She really is my BFF! Chloé! Your geography homework's ready!

For any of this to be character growth, we need to see Chloe act differently over time. For her to be put in similar situations and get different outcomes, but we don't see that in part because Chloe didn't change and in part because season one didn't do much to develop Chloe's deeper side. We rarely see her alone or in moments of extreme vulnerability, but you need those moments to show her depth. That's why Despair Bear had Chloe crying alone after Adrien threatened to end her friendship and not before. Chloe is very reluctant to openly show depth. You have to force it out of her, which perfectly fits the character we met in season one.

Even her standing up to Hawkmoth and rejecting the akuma isn't character growth in my opinion. Chloe has always stood up to authority and demanded whatever she wants. She has wanted to be Ladybug's friend and be seen as a hero since season one, so it's not shocking that her extremely strong will would allow her to defy a terrorist. If there is anyone in this show who can stand up to a terrorist on shear "no!" power alone, it's little miss I-always-get-what-I-want. I could see a variation of this happening at any point in the show, just change Chloe's reason for defying Gabriel to match the situation. Rework these lines to be about a party that she wanted to go to and I'd still totally buy it:

Chloé: No, Hawk Moth! I am a superheroine! I am Queen Bee! Ladybug will come and get me when she needs me! I WILL NEVER JOIN YOU! (throws her photo onto the ground as the akuma exits it... and pants)

Chloe acted like a hero here because she wants all the perks of being a hero and can't believe that Ladybug would actually bench her. That's impossible! Ladybug wouldn't do that!

As soon as Chloe accepts that she won't be a hero again, Chloe stops acting heroic because acting heroic wasn't growth. It was her playing a part the same way she played a part in Despair Bear. She was doing what she needed to do to be Queen Bee again and not because it's the right thing to do. This would only be real growth if she rejected the akuma after accepting that she wouldn't be Queen Bee again, but that's not what happens. As soon as she accepts that she's out, she no longer has any reason to play nice. She never grew into a character who did what's right for the sake of doing the right thing. It's always been about getting what she wants or being seen how she wants to be seen. Until that changes, she hasn't changed.

So no, Chloe didn't have an aborted arc. They didn't start to redeem her and then change their minds. All they did was make Chloe one of the most complex characters in the show only to then not do anything with the character they wasted our time establishing, ignoring the complexity they gave her while also cranking her mean dial up to the point of absurdity where she's not even fun in her original role anymore.

I get why it feels like she had an aborted arc. The fact that the character establishment was delayed makes it feel like something shiny and new about Chloe. There's also the fact that the character establishment we get in season two is the kind of character establishment that you'd do if you were setting up for a redemption arc, but that doesn't change the fact that it was all establishment work. None of it was a true arc where we watched Chloe grow. We just saw her put in situations that revealed hidden depths.

Her showing depth is not her growing because when in the world does she show off this supposed growth? She only acts differently in the type of scenes that we've never seen her in before or around characters that we've never seen her truly interact with before. When she's around the established teen characters or in her usual scenes, then she acts the same way that she always has. We never see her be genuinely nice to Marinette or something like that. She's only nice to Ladybug and she's still rude to Chat Noir. That's not character growth! That's character establishment that can then be used to guide character growth!

Same thing goes for the stuff in Despair Bear. We learn that Adrien can push Chloe to be better, but he never does it again and she reverts as soon as he lets her off the hook, so it wasn't character growth! It was just Chloe establishing that she can play nice when she needs to. This means that she could grow if the story chose to take her down that path because we've established that she knows what being nice looks like. Fake it til you make it plot go, go, go! But the plot never went, went, went so meh?

Add in the fact that season one was a bit of a test season with lots of elements that got dropped and the fact that characterization in this show has always been wildly inconsistent from episode to episode and I'm really not seeing a strong argument for Chloe having an intentional arc that somehow got aborted. People just saw the potential for her to have one and argue that potential is the same as an aborted arc when it really, really isn't.

To give an analogy, Chloe's story is like walking into the kitchen and seeing grandma laying out the ingredients for her famous chocolate chip cookies. We get excited because, hey, cookies! Then we come back an hour later and there are no cookies. Nor is there some other sweet that uses the same ingredients. There's just ingredients, sitting unused in their original packaging, making us wonder what the heck grandma was up to. At the same time, she never really started making cookies. She just set out ingredients. They're still there, totally unused, waiting to be made into something, so we can't call them a failed cookie attempt. That implies a level of commitment that was never there. She didn't even say that she was making cookies! We just assumed she was because we, understandably, wanted cookies and wanted to believe that grandma had a purpose to her actions.

[renae-the-turtle]

Art for my fanfic, Charmy and the Dad Talk; I did the drawing and line art, and @alcadanon did the colours using alcohol markers!

Link to the fic here: