#scarlet lady critisism

[red-balloon12]

This was actually a good essay that made me understand why people liked Scarlet Lady.

Unfortunately, it’s still not for me and while this essay has given me a fresh take on it, I just don’t have any interest in Chloe being a stagnant character in re-writes. I think her character potential has grown beyond that stagnation and I appreciate stories that actually shows that potential rather than just hint to it at the very end. It seems almost cowardly to me.

Since you've mentioned Scarlet Lady in one of your posts, what's your opinion on it?

I've mentioned before that I'm a big Scarlet Lady fan, which is the only reason that I'm comfortable answering asks like this one. I don't publicly criticize the content of hobby creators. That's wildly inappropriate! Punch up, not down.

The linked post was a general discussion of the adaptation process and how @zoe-oneesama did a fantastic job, so for this one, I'm just going to do some general gushing because I do actually like praising and enjoying things!

Scarlet Lady's chosen format (comic) allows it to have this wonderful conversation with canon where it can rely on the framework of canon to tell it's own story while also using canon for jokes and meta commentary. This means that Scarlet Lady is about as close as fan content can get to a direct reboot because it's able to have moments like this one from the comic's first post:

[Image description: Adrien standing in his room after transforming into Chat Noir for the first time. He is beaming and his eyes are shining with excitement as he exclaims, "This is gonna be awesome!"]

A single picture that communicates everything we need to know about Adrien getting his miraculous. When I've done this same thing in fanfic, I had to write out the full scene because that's how novels work. You have to give the full picture. With a comic, you can just quickly acknowledge this thing that we all already know and then move on to the new stuff. A picture really is worth a thousand words! (Or, in my case, more like two thousand...)

This allows Zoe to keep the same akumas that we get in canon without her story feeling like a boring rehash because she can focus on what's different in her version. A novelization of the same content would have to show both the stuff that stays the same and the stuff that changes for it to be coherent. That's a lot less fun to read and write. It's why I basically never revisit canon akumas in my own stuff. It's just too derivative for the written word.

This is one of the big reasons that I loved Scarlet Lady. Because it was able to have that more directly conversation with canon, it was able to take canon and say, "hey, why don't we embrace the tone that you established in season one and retell the story with that vibe?" That's something that I desperately wanted to see, but that is totally unsuited to my chosen artistic form. It couldn't be a novel. It had to be a comic.

If you want to know what a true formula show version of Miraculous would look like, Scarlet Lady is it. It does everything that Miraculous should have done:

Sticks to a lighthearted tone where nothing is ever super serious

Keeps Gabriel entirely unsympathetic

Has slow character development and background hints at a bigger plot as the only serial elements, allowing the individual episodes to be their own story while never feeling incomplete or rushed

Allows characters other than Marinette to shine while keeping Marinette as the clear main character

Makes Adrien narratively important

MAKES THE LOVE SQUARE CUTE SO I CAN ACTUALLY SHIP IT

Understands that Lila and Chloe can't coexist as antagonists

Reverses the love square, which is the best way to tell their story. Yes, I will die on my "love diamond" hill. It's a good hill. Come join me. I'll bring cookies.

I could keep going, but you hopefully get my point. While Scarlet Lady is certainly not the only way to do a formula version of canon, it's proof that a formula version does work! You don't have to go the serious route for Miraculous to be successful.

I want to take some time to gush about the ending, but I don't want to spoil it, so I'll put that gushing under a "read more" in case anyone hasn't seen it. I'll finish out this less spoilerish section with this:

I feel like some people are surprised when they learn that I love Scarlet Lady because - as some of you have probably picked up - it is quite different from my ideal version of canon. I'm not sure why that would stop me from enjoying a thing, though. It's important to remember that our personal ideals are not the only way to tell a good story. There are lots of ways to take what canon gave us and make something wonderful! It's part of the reason that I enjoy being in a fandom.

If I only wanted to see my ideal take on canon, then I'd stick to writing/imagining my own stories. But I don't want that! I like seeing alternate takes, too. Scarlet Lady is one of my personal favorites. It's completely different from anything that I'd ever think to write and that's why I'm so glad that it exists! I like being entertained just as much as I like creating my own entertainment and I don't want to only read stories that look like something I'd write. That's boring!

Spoilers below:

I've mentioned before that there are many, many ways to properly handle Chloe's character and Zoe did such a good job with her take on that! Chloe isn't absolved of all the things she did wrong, but she's also treated as a young woman with the ability to change.

While the comic bares the name of Chloe's alter ego, she was the never the main character. She never went on a journey. The story kept her to her shallow season-one self: a petty brat who just wanted attention. It did this because that's who Chloe was in canon and who Chloe needed to be for the comic to work.

The first time we see any complexity from Chloe is in the comic's final few episodes, which was absolutely the right call for Zoe to make! In a recent post, I talked about how the end of a formula show is the only time when you can break the formula in catastrophic ways and that's what Zoe did. She kept Chloe static until it was time to end the story and that's when the formula breaks. That's when Chloe gets depth because, once she has depth, the formula doesn't work.

That depth is not used to redeem Chloe, but to show us that there's hope for Chloe. That this petty brat who we've been dealing with has some serious issues and needs help. Help that she's going to get far away from the people that she's hurt because her issues aren't an excuse for what she's done. They don't erase the harm that she caused. At the same time, understanding her issues makes us hope that she can be better now and Scarlet Lady took a moment to give us that hope. To show us the START of Chloe's true story.

That is the kind of ending that I have wanted to see in so many properties!!! It was so wonderful to finally get one that did this right. A story that understood that full redemption to the team and damnation to death/suffering are extremes on a scale of possibilities. You don't have to go to extremes! You can fall in the middle and the middle is a perfect, natural place for Chloe to land in this kind of story. Fully redeeming or even fully damning Chloe simply doesn't work in lighthearted formula content. It's too big a lift as canon has already demonstrated.

I also loved Zoe's take on Emilie. I've mentioned that I don't like evil Emilie in part because it makes her revival feel like the start of a new story. She's back and she'd bad, so we have to take her down now! But I don't want that. I want the story to end when Gabriel is stopped. Zoe does this by giving us an Emilie that is another perfect middle ground. She matches canon's uncomfortable implications without feeling like a true villain who is a threat to society.

[princess-of-the-corner]

How would you write a Scarlet Lady and Lila situation, ie the earrings ended up with someone who's the worst possible choice for them outside of them being with Hawkmoth (actively causing akumas in civilian form, hides till Miraculous cure is needed, jumps reporters for after battle interviews in which they take all the credit) (assume an oc ladybug) and Lila shows up claiming to be bffs or dating should they be her preferred gender and the lovesquare never formed getting them together quickly

I think the failed hero would get some sense knocked into them early on tbh.

Because there's no way everyone would be that delusional about a Hero who only shows up to fix things and get praise. So they'd probably be call them out on that and the Hero would try to actually earn that praise after a few rounds of it. Especially if one of the people critisizing said Hero is someone they care about outside the mask.

[evangelineartemiasamos]

10, 13, and 17 for rq?

10. Most disliked arc? Why?

Does Red Queen have arcs? Hmmmm. I don’t like that Aveyard didn’t show the relationship of Mare and Shade in Glass Sword more obviously now we have the problem that Eve and Tolly are considered the closer siblings in the fandom. >__

Wait. I don’t like that Cal doesn’t progress in his belief of equality during his whole characer arc, like the close contacts with Reds and Scarlet Guard members don’t influence him. At all. What little he says, he says for Mare or because he’s believed it for a while. But read about him ignoring the struggle of Reds right before his eyes? Eh

13. Unpopular opinion about XXX character?

Diana Farley is more important than Eve and deserves more respect.

17. Instead of XYZ happening, I would have made ABC happen…

See above, most disliked arcs. Mare and Shade care deeply about each other and protect one another all the time just as much as Eve and Ptolemus, but I wish there were more glimpses of the Barrow past and actual meaningful conversations. If Mare could talk to Cal and Kilorn, she could’ve talked to Shade as well.

Erase some plotholes in the first book. Leave out the shaming of Lady Blounos. More worldbuilding.

State Cameron a as canon LGBT+ character in King’s Cage. Give Daniel an artificial leg instead of a new “real” one. Mention the friendship of Farley and Ruth (this is important to me, blame me). More Kilorn in KC, more focus on Elane’s and Ptolemus’s feelings on the arranged marriage. Shift the timing of KC so there would be more scenes with Iris to make the much-critisized captivity part more exciting.