#like. nah. ur not actually progressive if the best you can do abt oppressive steuctures is to flip the occasional victim and perpetrator

[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!!