#sentimonster discourse

[ilikekidsshows]

One of the biggest ProSenti arguments that really grinds my gears is the effort/age value, the idea that it took so much effort to make Adrien / he's been alive so long he's now human, mostly because it's been treated as fact for a year now and I'm pretty sure it's still under the same status of "totally made up" it was a year ago.

Like, what is the name of the episode where we are told either of these things? Describe the scene and how it delivers this information. Hell, I doubt the people claiming this nonsense could even produce a tweet/x post from one of the showrunners that confirms this theory (which would in turn imply that they had considered this, but this important piece of worldbuilding didn't make it into the show proper because trying to make Chloé look as unlikeable as possible was a bigger priority).

Also, I'll be needing a scale of at what point a Sentimonster has enough effort put into it/experience points accumulated to be considered fully human. Unless this kind of value is usable for further analysis, it's pointless.

Making Sentibug exhausted Mayura, but she also collapsed after making the giant butterfly both times. On all these three occasions, Gabriel had to carry Nathalie to relocate her. The Senti Supporters love dehumanizing the nonhumanoid Sentimonsters, so I doubt they consider the unnamed butterfly Sentimonster to be among "Sentibeings", but, by the effort measure, the butterfly is just as human as Sentibug.

As for the time of existence value, Optigami was spying on the known Miraculous holders for weeks, yet no one mourned it when it died, when it should be more human than Sentibug, who existed for half a day.

I hate this stupid plotline so much.

[ck2k18]

hey guys. how about we don't call sentimonsters slaves and refer to their plight as slavery. how about we don't do that. because here's the thing. you can argue that according to the actual definition of slavery, this is true! sentimonsters are controlled by something and therefore are 'slaves' to their 'master'. but slave doesn't mean just that anymore.

there's a lot of context behind words, behind the meanings of words. I'm talking about chattel slavery in America. about how Black people were stolen, tortured, beaten, turned into furniture and clothing, experimented on, bred, raped, bought, sold, dehumanized, and forced to work in terrible conditions with no pay for the profit of their masters. the aftereffects of which still affect people to this day.

and then there's slavery that occurs right now. the people of the Congo, for example. men women and young children forced to work in cobalt mines without protective gear, who are subject to sexual violence, who are suffering to this day, so the west can profit.

and if you feel compelled to argue that I shouldn't minimize the plight of sentimonsters just because there are worse forms of slavery out there, then I am compelled to remind you that sentimonsters are not real. I'll say it again: sentimonsters are not real. let's not take a serious issue and language and apply it to a children's TV show for the sake of discourse that, at the end of the day, means nothing. because the problem isn't offhanded comments that sentimonsters are basically slaves or anything; it's that people are using words like slave and slavery to add a sort of gravity or seriousness to the situation that does not need to be there. it's unnecessary. its insensitive. let's remember where we are and what we are talking about. thank you

[princess-of-the-corner]

"OHOHO?"

Never quite know what the question mark refers to with these XD

But the rebuilt Peacock was part of the big discourse we hadon the issues of he Butterfly. Where we sort of worked out a version that can make Akuma, or create Familiars, IE Sentimonster. Butterfly - Emotion & Transmission

Which was followed by trying to figure out something else for the Peacock to do.

In this chase, transforming the chemical compounds of a target. IE streetlamp of steel turned to streetlamp of gold; along with being able to evoke aspects aspects of a target.

Peacock - Evocation & Transmutation

So a person targeted could have their full potential so to speak evoked, and let them run at 110% of their capacity, or they could enter their flop era. Similarly, a steel bar could become the best steel bar it can be or the most rickety thing ever.

I ended up using it for more my now 15 Kwami + Mei-Shi World Building stuff: https://www.tumblr.com/tumblingxelian/761858041694027776/revised-kwami-renlings?source=share

Ya know what that makes sense.

[generalluxun]

Yeah, I believe what you are seeing is blowback on the narrative choices that may not always be properly articulated. With *waves in general at sentistuff* being handled sometimes haphazardly (we're redeeming Nathalie who as of the new senti-logic, murdered sentibug) some people are just 'cashing out' their emotional involvement. They feel manipulated and the response is to drastically cut ties.

My preference is for pinpoint critique and discussion rather than wholesale rejection. If we love a thing, we should discuss the ways we wish it vould improve, not simply burn it down when it stumbles.

The 'no complaints allowed' crowd can make this exhausting at times, so I can see why some might just go for a scorched earth policy.

I would still not recommend it.

I suppose I can understand some of the sentimonster critiques, but the one that I really can’t grasp is when people say Adrien (and Kagami and Felix) are no longer human to them and they can’t sympathize with them anymore. Like I’ve seen people say Adrien is just an “it” now and all of Gabriel’s abuse is validated because he was never human to begin with. I’ve seen people say that Marinette will probably reject him now. To me, that just makes these fans sound… heartless? Like if they can’t conceive of Adrien still being aware, sympathetic and deserving of human treatment, it sounds more like a personal problem. Maybe I am missing something here. How does Adrien being a senti justify Gabriel’s treatment of him? Doesn’t it … kind of make it even worse? I could understand if Adrien were a legitimate robot with no inner feelings or freewill or desires, but that isn’t the case? And the ring doesn’t wave off Gabriel’s abuse considering all the other abuse tactics he’s put on display throughout the show including emotional blackmail, intimidation , hot and cold behavior, gaslighting, etc… I just can’t compute how Adrien’s senti status makes Gabriel’s actions better or Adrien less sympathetic. Or how you can give up on Adrien as a character just based on that. Like these are the opinions that drove Felix to Red Moon. I didn’t realize actual fans would have these super villainous close minded opinions. Mind blown.

Okay so, my understanding of this viewpoint is that Adrien being a senti gives another reason why Gabriel might not view Adrien as a full human being who's deserving of rights, since he was magically created and is innately tied to an object which can be used to mind control him as part of his fundamental nature, which cheapens the abuse storyline compared to having it all be just, well, regular abuse.

As far as giving up on Adrien as a character goes, from what I've seen, it seems to be less being upset at Adrien, and more at how the story treats him, with him being easily able to be mind-controlled or snapped out of existence being taken as him having little agency or control in general, and the story just putting him through a lot of crap with no end in sight and little hope of a satisfying payoff afterwards, since him being a senti means that, unless something major happens, he's always in danger of someone mind-controlling him at any point, taking away his free will.

I don't agree with this viewpoint, but I at least sort of see where it's coming from, I think?

[mmikmmik2]

Black comedy fanfiction idea

Félix randomly finds some jewelry containing an amok in the Agreste mansion or in the Grand Paris. Who the fuck is that?? From research and interrogating Nathalie and Duusu, Kagami and Félix narrow it down to Chloé or Zoé.

Félix and Kagami being forced to ask bizarre and intrusive questions and make themselves look even weirder than usual while trying to figure out which of them it could be, without crossing an ethical line by using their amok. What if it's both girls and there's still a lost amok floating around somewhere??

Félix, believing it is wrong to hold on to another person's amok forever even if he would just be keeping it safe and not using it, coming up with absurd and melodramatic schemes to give Chloé (presumably hates him and Kagami, currently lives on a different continent) or Zoé (not close to either of them and has no reason to trust them afaik) a random piece of jewelry and convince them to keep it safe forever and never ever ever lose it or damage it or let anyone else touch it, without having to answer any followup questions, possibly while in disguise

Félix, grasping at straws, keeps suggesting murdering Audrey and Kagami is like "you cannot start a relationship with unsolicited parent murder, we have been over this"

Zoé finding out she's a sentibeing would be so funny because like. She is a relatively normal person and she already had So Much family drama and now this is happening to her. Can she get a break.

I think Chloé finding out about sentibeings would not give a shit about what Félix and Kagami want and would start yelling about it to whoever she wants. I think her and Adrien should both be like "we're sentimonsters" together in a kinda-reclaiming it way and kinda-beating themselves up way and have terrible sentibeing terminology discourse with Félix

Everyone wants to know why tf Audrey has a sentibeing kid and an until-further-notice mundane kid and is coming up with elaborate theories. It turns out she was asking tons of invasive questions about the Graham de Vanily twins' fertility, Gabriel and Emilie (who didn't want her to suspect they personally own multiple powerful magical artifacts because she sucks) panicked and basically claimed they Know A Guy for magic kids, and Audrey accidentally came away with the impression that senti-kids are exclusive and trendy. Like purse dogs.

[gale-gentlepenguin]

It seems to me that Astruc made a comparison with Barbie and Ken, because that user asked him that Adrien is not treated as a protagonist and he again thought that this was a "Adrien is not the main character" discourse. Especially since there is another answer that hints at it

Well I can see what you mean, but based on my understanding, I think the person wanted to have Adrien have some more writing considering the situation he was in, and Thomas was dismissive.

The comparison doesn’t make it better. Twitter is a written medium and I understand that misunderstandings can happen, and maybe that is what happened. That being said, it still shows how little Adrien is thought of by his own creator as anything more than an prop, which considering the sentimonster business… just adds a new level of dehumanization

As for the other answer I don’t think I’ve seen it, so if there is a correction or clarification, I am willing to see it but for the time being this is how I feel about the issue currently.

[jacquesthepigeon]

It's pretty weird that the magical feather is called an amok, as in running amok. That is inherently negative, like the name sentimonster being a portmanteau of Sentiment and Monster. Which from a lore standpoint makes no sense, why would you call these objects sentimonster, like how the butterflies are called akumas. So when you make living human children from these, it implies that something is wrong with them or that they're less than human.

[insert is sentimonster a slur discourse]

[lunatic-fandom-space]

First off, obviously the implications of Markov are fucking insane, that robot is sentient enough to get akumatized and like, I already know that we're going to get all these big philosophical questions about what it means to be human and what it means to be alive and sentient and whatnot once the senti-adrien and sentigami reveals happen and the writers are just going to completely forget about that little guy because. idk dude, I think ive mentioned how little faith I have in these writers often enough

The reason Im bringing him up is actually because of the senti-adrien theory thats not a theory anymore I guess, its just canon fact now. yay. So, I stopped watching MLB after season 3 but its always been a fandom that I liked to check in on every now and then (mostly through the salt and crit tags lmao) and it continued to be that even after I stopped keeping up with the show. So I saw some of the discourse around this theory and mostly just thought it was stupid and Adrien being a sentimonster wouldnt add anything narratively and then I check back in a few months later only to find out that its canon now and everyone is upset, its a pretty funny way to experience fandom tbh

How do Markov and Senti-Adrien connect?, you may be asking. Well, I fully believe that everyone who was big on senti-Adrien before it was canon wouldve been writing robot-Adrien theories if Markov looked human instead of being a little ball with an arm and I mean that in the most derogatory way possible, I hate the idea of senti-adrien so much and I think its sooo stupid you guys have no idea

[chaos-has-theories]

hey siri how do i explain sentimonster adrien discourse in two sentences or less

[into-september]

Speaking for myself, I keep running into this problem with Miraculous Ladybug where I deep down rate it on the same curve as you: it's cute and it's funny and it's absolutely bonkers, and it's good at those things. The problem is: I'm a part of the fandom which doesn't rate it on that curve and which has always been torn between two camps:

The first: the people who insist that the show is genius, that everything Thomas Astruc touches is gold, that there are genuine and important messages to the events in this story, everything will be explained next season, trust the writers

The second: the heterogenous but universally exasperating crowd of salters who have their hateboners for Marinette or Adrien but almost always the Love Square, who insists on taking everything and anything happening in the worst possible meaning, who think that mangling Astruc's name is the epitome of intellect

My problem is that neither of the two camps are right, and both of them operate on opposit modi of willful denial. While the show is delightful, it is also deeply flawed on all story levels going beyond the singular episode, and the commentaries made by the writers are making it pretty clear that a lot of the "genius" is either accidental or exists only in fandom meta, not in the canon text. And so I run into this problem where I love the show for being dumb fun, but the moment the show asks me to treat it as something serious, its shortcomings are impossible to overlook (and make no mistake, with the patricide, the political commentaries, the philosophical quagmire that is the human sentimonster storyline, S5 demands that I take it seriously)

Yeah, I didn't enjoy much of S5 after "Passion", and there is a certain bitterness in that because I love so much of what happened before that.

Will I watch S6? I genuinely don't know. Most of the things that fascinated me no longer exist: Adrien won't ever get to confront his father. The Love Square was resolved in a manner more unsatisfying than I could've ever imagined. It's made amply clear that Ladybug and Cat Noir's partnership never did have any vital part in neither their respective character arcs nor the story as a whole. Future seasons will see attention spread across some twelve or thirteen characters I have no particular interest in watching, because they never had even a fraction of the personality and chemistry that Adrien and Marinette do. One of the two or three secondary characters who had something intersting going on was written out of the show in a manner so mean-spirited that I struggle to believe it was written by professional adults writing for children. The same writers have demonstrated time and again that they're not above ham-fisted messages on topics which they only have the shallowest of understanding of, or using their text for getting into petty discourse with the haters on twitter.

The irony is, most of this is a fandom thing, not a show-for-itself thing. I'm sure S6 will be as cute and as funny and as wacky as the previous seasons were, but I don't know how capable I am of watching the show without the analysis glasses on any longer, and I don't want to be That Person making acidic comments about sure, watch them introduce another storyline they'll never resolve. At the end of the day, Miraculous Ladybug is harmless fun that was conceived to be nothing more than that, and it deserves better than cranky millenials complaining about how it's not anything more than it ever tried to be.

(...though I reserve the right to be sore about Adrien's story arc, because really)

Everybody is posting their opinions about the interview about the Miraculous Ladybug season 5 finale, and I feel like I should as well, but I'm not sure I have much to say. There's just a few things that stick out to me:

First of, it's just very funny to me that the team started out with Bug Noire, and worked backwards from that, and that's why Adrien ended up in the isolation chamber. One of the most controversial things about the entire finale happened because Marinette wearing both Miraculous would be cool. That's just plain funny to me.

Second, I have not yet seen a better option for the finale. They did kind of write themselves into a corner there. The story is all about Marinette, but Adrien is the one to whom all the plot points attach. What do you do with that? Compare and contrast the movie, which I saw on the same day as the finale: It's all Marinette's story, until the big finale, where she just lays there and watches as Adrien and Gabriel resolve the main story by themselves. That option sucks, too. It's not terrible, but it's disappointing. I think all the arguments of Adrien can't be there because of Chat Blanc or Ephemeral are nonsense, even if they come from the show's head writers. But it's true that Adrien can't be there, because if he is, the story becomes about him instead of Marinette. If you know a fanfic that found a good way to resolve that, let me know!

As an aside: I know there are people who are disappointed that we didn't learn more about Emilie and the past of the adults, but I think that was never going to happen. I know I made a post about this years ago but I can't find it, but basically: Emilie was an interesting mystery for fans, but she was never relevant to the plot, least of all Marinette. This is the same kind of stuff as with the Marauders back in the days of the Harry Potter fandom, where a certain subset of fans went wild over all the hints. But those were never promises, they were just flavour, telling us the world is bigger and adventures have been going on since forever.

My final and most important point here is something quite different: I am grading Miraculous Ladybug on one hell of a curve. Have been doing that since the first episode I watched. I am willing to forgive most any jank in the storytelling if I get some cool and cute moments, and the show is full of those. So in that regard, the season 5 finale was no problem for me whatsoever. Yes, there is a lot of jank, but also a lot of cool stuff, and that makes me happy. There's a kung-fu crocodile! What more needs to be said?

(Aside: I know there are people who hate the kung-fu crocodile, and that the Couffaine boys are now mystical monks out of nowhere, with no explanation. I assume these people either hate fun or are arguing out of bad faith. If there's one thing in the finale that was obviously objectively 100% a good thing, it's that the crocodile knows Kung-Fu.)

Now, I'm not saying that you should grade the show on a curve, I'm just saying that I do. Yes, it's not entirely rational. Yes, there are plenty of shows out there, including shows aimed at similar age ranges, that don't require this. But if I didn't grade Miraculous Ladybug on a curve, if I didn't rate cute and fun and exciting over great interesting story, if I didn't separate the potential for fanfics from the actual way the stories are told, then I wouldn't be in the fandom to begin with. This is explicitly not a defence or apologia, it's just an explanation for why I have no trouble disregarding the janky parts. I know others disagree, or agree in principle but then some of the janky parts were just too bad for them and broke the spell, and that's valid.

But personally, I have no major problem with the season 5 finale. Yeah it was weird and quite a few decisions were stupid and didn't help any overall story. But I had fun, I'm looking forward to season 6 and I am going to write more fanfic. That's what matters to me.

[yourfavisasentimonster]

Birds from real life are sentimonsters

[Image ID: A picture of a pigeon centered in a Sentimonster Pride Flag. End ID.]

All of the birds died in 1986 due to Gabriel Agreste killing them and replacing them with sentimonsters that are now watching us. The birds work for the bourgeoisie.

[sunfoxfic]

What if ep 9 confirms that Adrien is a sentimonster and all of this discourse could have been avoided

[seekinghelp-adhd]

Ya know what the best part of this whole thing is? All of that evidence I just posted up there isn't even what convinced me. All of that stuff had me questioning, sure, but there was one final straw that broke the camels back for me. I've seen a lot of people recently suggesting that the sentimonsters (or at least those characters theorized to be sentimonsters) are the show's autism representation. While I can see where they're coming from, I respectfully disagree.

Keep in mind that I'm not autistic myself, so there are other people far more qualified to talk about this than I am, but I simply think that to simply say "sentimonster = autism representation" is both an insufficient and borderline insulting method of representation - shoving all of the autism representation into a small group of characters that aren't even fully human - and an oversimplification of what should be an important revelation for the characters involved.

This discourse did get me thinking about similarities between these characters though (Adrien, Felix, Kagami if Emotion is anything to go off of), and I came to my own conclusion that I think fits better with Felix's motives, Adrien and Kagami's relationships with their parents, and Gabriel's role as the primary antagonist. In my opinion, the sentimonsters are a far better representation of abuse.

Gabriel is a literal supervillain who is absent and controlling at best and an emotionally abusive manipulator at worst. Tomoe is similarly controlling over Kagami and seems to be just as emotionally manipulative, but even if you think I'm reading too far into things she still knows about Gabriel being Monarch and has played an active role in helping him. There's no way that household is healthy. While Amelie does seem to genuinely care about Felix and be an active and present part in his life, she coddles, protects, and enables him, treating him like a perfect, blameless child who could do no wrong - even going so far as to hide him from "those mean old superheroes" after he literally just committed identity theft, trespassing, multiple accounts of larceny, and willingly aided and abetted a domestic terrorist for his own personal gain essentially making him an accessory to his further crimes. Sure she's not starving him or treating him like trash, but she's not a good parent by any definition. There's an argument to be made that her mistakes are their own kind of neglect.

When it comes down to it, each of these characters have been mistreated and used against their will in their own ways. Why are they all very socially awkward to varying degrees? Because they were all raised in isolation, completely separated from anything even close to resembling a normal human relationship, platonic or otherwise. Why is Felix so hell bent on getting the peacock that he'd willingly give a terrorist an arsenal of magical weaponry? Because he knows what he is, he knows what his friends and family are, and he is willing to do anything to protect their lives and get them out of their abusive situation. Why can Adrien not stand up to his father to save his own life? Because, whether he is a sentimonster or not, that kind of repeated abuse going on for that long can make you feel trapped and helpless.

I believe Adrien is a sentimonster, yes, but I also believe that he's a child of neglect and abuse doing his best to cope with a bad situation. Gabriel is a domestic terrorist and magical supervillain, but he's also the neglectful father who let his grief drive him toward abusive behaviors. Just like Chat Noir will need his team to stop Monarch, Adrien is going to need a supportive family member trying his best in spite of his own issues and a group of friends who love and support him to break him out of this mindset and his current home situation. I think Monarch will probably end up dying because of Chat Noir's cataclysm after he brought it onto himself. In the same way, I hope it's Adrien that deals the final blow as Gabriel is left completely alone, realizing he was the one that pushed away the only family he had left.

Adrien being a sentimonster isn't a satisfying conclusion to his character. It is, in my opinion, the only satisfying conclusion for his character.

Alright. I've been convinced.

No spoilers for anything past Multiplication here because I haven't seen anything past Kwami's Choice part 1 and don't want to ruin it for anyone else. Tagged as spoilers just in case.

If you had asked me just, like, a month or two ago, I would have told you there was no way that Adrien was a sentimonster. I would have said that was an unsatisfying conclusion for his character. I would have said it was too dark for a show targeted toward younger audiences. I would have said the evidence for that theory was all either circumstantial or filtered through confirmation bias.

If you were to tell me right now, after I've seen Risk, Strikeback, Evolution, and Multiplication, that Adrien is NOT a sentimonster, I would say that you're in denial. I would remind you of how Gabriel flinched, looking almost scared, when Felix stood up to him while he wasn't wearing his ring, as if for the first time in his life he didn't have control. I would remind you that ever since Nathalie's been given that ring, Gabriel has stopped commanding Adrien and has instead started manipulating Adrien, as if for the first time in his life just giving him a direct order isn't going to work. I would remind you that in this show there are three separate high-class families with strong connections to each other and unrestricted access to the peacock miraculous with single parents raising their only children - children who are each socially awkward in their own ways and have similar struggles comprehending the people around them - because their significant other is simply not there. I would remind you that in a future that has since been erased, Adrien fought alongside his father and handed over his miraculous after trying so desperately to resist his father's commands that it seemed to be causing physical pain, only to slip into an exhausted, nearly emotionless version of himself who did whatever his father asked of him without question before he was ever akumatized into Ephemeral.

I could write that off as a high stress moment and some weird animation. I could write off Gabriel's constant twisting of his ring as just a nervous tick. I could write off Felix's strange obsession with two very plain silver rings and his willingness to trade literally every miraculous ever for just one of them as just a wacky villain plot. However, taking all of these things into account with the changes in Gabriel we've seen this season after he stopped wearing the ring, I can no longer entertain the thought that Adrien is just a normal boy like everyone else. This kid is a sentimonster 100%.

[gentil-minou]

I've been seeing this sort of argument about how Adrien needs to be turned into a human or needs LB to help him and I am just going to come out and say it.

Adrien doesn't need to be a "real boy". He just needs to be Adrien.

He's done amazing things with who he is and honestly I think he can continue being a senti and continue being his own self without the needs of Ladybug or his father or anyone else to dictate who he should be.

Honestly, that sort of rhetoric screams ableism and queer-phobia in general in that it implies there is only one specified way of existing and that in order for Adrien to exist and live a proper life he has to act and conform to a certain standard that other's hold him to.

The reality is that, if he is a sentibeing, he always has been and thus all of his bravery and kindness and pure Adrien self that captured our hearts. I actually think making him a "real boy" would be a disservice to his character.

What I want him and LB to figure out is how to give him back complete and utter control, using their combined wit, creativity, and knowledge to break the tether that binds Adrien to those rings and to his dad.

My theory for Adrien's Cataclysm power-up is that it will break the link between a miraculous holder and the creature they control, essentially the ability to destroy chains and binds.

The best scenario that I want most is for Adrien to, after defeating his dad and breaking those chains, hold the twin rings in his hand and turn them into dust himself showing that he is and will be his own person, even if the definition is not the one we would normally associate with it.

[haaam-guuuurl]

So I just watched Ephemeral

[kasienda]

This is how I feel about it. And why I don’t care whether he is or not. I love him.

I understand the senti Adrien theory is a delicate one in this fandom but I feel it’s important to say that whether or not Adrien is or isn’t a senti-monster, his experiences we’ve seen in his story are very real. 

This isn’t a post to theorize if Adrien is a senti-monster or to disprove it. I just wanted to bring attention to the most important aspect in all this. 

Adrien is someone who has his own wants and desires.  

someone who has his own thoughts and opinions

someone who can feel love,

happiness, 

anger, 

jealousy,

and pain 

Not to mention Adrien can feel physical pain, suffer from allergies, get sick, is able to age etc. 

If Adrien were a senti-monster that doesn’t make him any less human. Being human is having conscious thought, the ability to make make decisions, to feel things and to react to them. Everything that he feels is real and it shouldn’t matter if he is or isn’t a senti-monster because at the end of the day that shouldn’t and doesn’t invalidate his experiences. The show is teaching us that advance senti-monsters as so alike to humans that they deserve freewill and be able to control their own paths. 

This possibility wouldn’t erase Adrien’s personality, feelings, and his actions. The fact that the fandom is discussing if Adrien could be a senti-monster kinda proves the point the show is telling us, that senti-monsters are just like humans and there is no difference between them except for the creation of the person.  

Again, this isn’t a post to prove how he could be a senit-monster or not, but a post about how nothing should invalidate Adrien’s very real experiences and his very real emotions. Adrien is real period.