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into-september · 6 months

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"Destruction" is the worst episode of Miraculous Ladybug

Oh hey guys, remember way back in April or something when I said I was doing this? Well, the one year anniversary of its premiere is a suitable time to post this, particularly since yesterday saw the airing of the last piece of canon to come out in a while, which happened to be set immediately after these events.

With the always obligatory reminder in place that I generally think that “Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir” is in fact a good TV show whose appeal potentially reaches beyond its merchandise-mandated target group, it has an unflattering pattern of introducing the juiciest story threads and then just… do nothing about them.

The topic of today’s sermon isn't in isolation the worst offender. But it is thanks to this that the worst offender happens at all, so I'm not gonna be nice about it.

Scroll past to skip the negativity.

So, “Destruction”, possibly the most eagerly awaited episodes of out S5 if you don’t count all the false advertisement that was “Revelation”. I remember finding this episode uncharacteristically charmless for this show when I first watched it. They've been onto heavy topics before, but those episodes still had that je ne sais quoi that gives this show such heart. But re-watching "Destruction" I found it lacking already from the first scene, and felt it only in glimpses. It's just not fun.

The episode is also poorly paced, no way around it. It is inexplicably a flashback to two episodes ago which is not evident from the start. More than half the runtime technically consists of Marinette and Alya having a sleepover. The battle and its game-changing outcome is over at 12 minutes into the episode, which is barely past the halfway point. After that, we spend five minutes - a quarter of the episode's full runtime - on a flashback re-playing the same battle but now with verbal exposition explaining Marinette's clever plan. Mind that the confrontation between Marinette and Gabriel lasts for all of seven minutes, meaning that the flashback is nearing the length of the battle itself.

To top it of, it's bogged down with lengthy exchange between Gabriel and the kwamis just to make clear that the haters on the twitter were totally wrong when they bitched about Orikko being OP because actually its powers were something else than we established last season. Here's a bonus plot hole which has nothing to do with everything else I'm going to nag about: Orikko allegedly can't give out the powers of time-travel because no kwami can replicate another kwami's powers. Except for Nooroo and Duusu, I guess, who have done so on several occasions. One of the more remarkable being the episode which first heralded the event that "Destruction" set in motion: "Timetagger".

And who can forget that this was the second time in three episodes where Ladybug and Cat Noir had Monarch at their mercy but spent so much time giving triumphant speeches that he gets away.

Or that that in fact was the second time on the same night.

But while those things certainly make the episode poor, they are not what makes it the worst.

What makes this episode the worst isn't its technical failures, but about the way it leaves its feces all over the themes and the character arcs it seemed like the show had been building up until this point. Moreover: in the role it plays in S5 and the Agreste storyline, and how the show's refusal to touch it again creates a black hole in the season at large, and arguably in the show as a whole.

I. THE INESCAPABLE CONTEXT OF WHAT CAME BEFORE IT

The art of telling a story is the art of highlighting what matters and leaving out what doesn’t. In a well-crafted story, no matter the medium, no detail is insignificant. Every word is carefully chosen, every line or hue made with intention. The curtains aren’t blue just because, and Miraculous Ladybug has made too many meta jokes to hide behind the claim that it’s just a silly rom-com for kids. It has trained its older audience into looking for context and connections; after “Mr. Pigeon 72”, you can’t insist that nothing that happened earlier in this show matters for what happens later. Titles matter a lot in a show where episodes are titled after the villain-of-the-week who usually is the thematic mirror to what our heroes are going through.

“Destruction” is the fourth episode somehow named after Adrien, and the third somehow named after Plagg. You bet this matters.

As some might know, "Kuro Neko" is not my favourite episode. That's not to say I don't like it! It's cute! It's playing a really interesting scenario! We get Plagg hanging out at chez Marinette! But to enjoy it, I have to willfully ignore the storytelling incompetence it flagrantly displays. Because the moment you peek beneath the surface of the events happening to consider theme, motifs, and narrative parallels, it's just

"Kuro Neko" is the second episode that is named after Cat Noir. The first one was "Cat Blanc". There is a thematic connection between the two; not a very clear one and probably not an intentional one, but all the same: both episodes are about an alternative to Cat Noir. One is the result of his father's violence; the other is Adrien's own attempt to become more like the person he presents around his father. They also both show us Plagg and Adrien negotiation Adrien's relationship to Ladybug, and how Ladybug and Cat Noir negotiate that same thing.

"Cat Blanc", for all its apocalyptic visions, starts and ends with hope. It starts with Marinette’s hope at confessing to Adrien, to Adrien’s hope in finally knowing Ladybug’s identity and knowing her like he’s yearned for for three seasons. Those hopes lead to disaster, but the episode ends with Ladybug finding Cat Noir on the Montparnasse Tower, where he is singing his lullaby about the kitty being "all alone without his Lady". As is fitting, Marinette breaks the pattern: after having just witnessed a world turned to destruction because the two of them loved each other, she leans her head on his shoulder in perhaps the most romantic gesture she's ever given him.

"Kuro Neko", in contrast, starts with Adrien resigning the job when he realises that Ladybug no longer needs him and that makes him feel bad. It ends with him coming back and verbally accepting that Ladybug doesn't owe him any exclusive treatment; he isn't her unique partner, just one of many. Where the final scene of "Cat Blanc" seemed to confirm that Ladybug is indeed the answer to Adrien's solitude, the final scene of "Kuro Neko" and its continuation in the first scene in "Risk" both make clear that the opposite is now status: Adrien has to accept the painful fact that as much as Ladybug might be the most important person in his life, Cat Noir does not hold a similar space in Ladybug's.

(The end of “Strike Back” of course claims to remedy this, but those words don’t ring very true when to Marinette’s knowledge, nothing of what went wrong today had anything to do with her keeping secrets from Cat Noir. More damning: Marinette never follows up on her purported regret. In all of S5, she never once sits down to share all those secrets with Cat Noir. Status from "Kuro Neko" still stands, and Adrien is fine with that now. This has nothing to do with the many problems “Destruction” creates, but talking about “Kuro Neko” by necessity means talking about how it wasn’t fixed even if they put the words in Marinette’s mouth. And now back to our scheduled programming)

"Cat Blanc" and "Kuro Neko" by their very existence bring up a thorny topic: That Adrien being Cat Noir isn't wholly unproblematic, and that both Adrien as an individual and Ladybug as the Guardian might have legitimate reasons to question that choice. This has always been obvious to the viewer who knows Hawkmoth’s identity, but the show itself eventually starts calling attention to that from an entirely different angle - namely that of his powers.

Lest we forget: The first episode of S4 that aired wasn't the first episode chronologically: It was "Furious Fu", wherein we learn that The Order of the Guardians has it out for Plagg specifically, and where Ladybug's status as The Guardian is almost revoked on the grounds that she's letting him run around unsupervised. This question of Plagg's whereabouts comes up again in the only episode that is named after Adrien sans Plagg: "Ephemeral", a re-play of “Cat Blanc” except not good. This whole subplot is quickly forgotten, though it being the only one of Su-Han's complaints that weren't about him being a boomer, it's also worth remember that "Destruction" technically happens a couple of hours after he made his last appearance. One might expect that his one consistent lesson would be important enough to echo a bit in the episode where it’s proven to be justified.

"Destruction", as not only one very early episode of the season promising to finally bring about some significant and not the least permanent changes to their lives, but indeed an episode happening on the same night as Ladybug's declaration of regret and Cat Noir's renewed declaration to be her partner, would by its title and its topic seem like the obvious place to finally resolve what "Cat Blanc" and "Kuro Neko" both asked us to question: The existential terror of Plagg's powers, why it is that Adrien is uniquely chosen to temper them at Ladybug’s side, and how Adrien feels about being the one to carry that responsibility.

Yeah. Well.

II. ADRIEN'S PRESENCE IN "DESTRUCTION"

Where "Kuro Neko" and "Cat Blanc" place significant focus on Adrien Agreste in his civillian life, in "Destruction" he appears on screen for a total of 25 seconds - most of which are another flashback to a previous episode, and whose purpose is to highlight Gabriel's hurt from the cataclysm, not Adrien's thoughts about what is happening.

Cat Noir's presence is also marginal. Three minutes of screentime pass from his first appearance until the battle is over. Said battle is the turning point in the war between the heroes and Monarch, thanks to neither Ladybug's powers nor Monarch and all the kwamis, but Monarch using Cat Noir's powers for an impulsive act of self-mutilation. Cat Noir is distraught over this, turning desperate when Monarch first start toying with the idea and being near tears after he carries it out.

I'll get back to the impact of this event, but for now I'll point out that the aftermath is brief: After Monarch escapes, our heroes have this exchange:

LB: We had him, we almost had him! The kwamis were safe, they were right here! CN: I cataclysmed him! I can't believe this, I just cataclysmed someone! Granted it was Monarch, but - there was a real person behind that mask, and it must have hurt him terribly! Milady, you gotta fix this! LB: Cat Noir, Monarch just ran away with my lucky charm! Without it, I can't fix anything. I can't call on my powers and undo the effect of the cataclysm. There's nothing I can do...

We then cut to the slumber party, where Marinette tells Alya that she and Cat Noir "split up" immediately after, and Alya comforts her. From this point in the episode, Cat Noir and Adrien only appear in flashbacks. First a fifty-second flashback wherein Marinette sets up her convoluted plans, then a few seconds of him moving his statue in the wax museum before Monarch appears.

In the episode that more than anything should thematise Adrien, Plagg's powers, and his relationship to his father, Adrien is on screen for a whooping four minutes and twenty seconds.

And because I am that devoted to proving my point, I went and timed all of Alya's on-and-off appearances, which clocked in at a total of five minutes and six seconds.

Alya is of course core to the slumber party which frames the setting of the entire episodes. Moreover, it is with Alya that the emotional arc of the episode ends: it starts with Marinette tormenting hersef watching a Ladyblog report about Monarch's recent win, for which Alya chastises her. The last scene (before Gabriel pulverises the miraculous) has Alya reassure Marinette that she will get the kwamis back. When she regrets her lack of superpowers, Marinette in turn reassures her that Alyas true superpower is being her friend. The journey of the episode was for Marinette to stop blaming herself for messing up, and learning to rely on Alya's support in the new turn the war has taken.

...

IN THE EPISODE WHERE ADRIEN KILLS HIS FATHER.

III. SIR NOT-APPEARING-IN-THIS-FILM

In the episode where Gabriel commits suicide on his son's miraculous, here are some things that got more screentime than the son forced into using his only source of liberation to kill his father:

Flashbacks to past events (four minutes and fourty-five seconds)

Alya (five minutes six seconds)

The kwamis (six minutes and nine seconds)

Bet you can't guess which one is the only kwami who doesn't appear in this episode!

...okay, and Duusu, but you get the point. In the episode detonating the nuke that is the gruesome potential of Plagg's powers, and the potential damage Adrien might deal with them, Plagg never appears on screen.

In the episode highlighting the presence of the kwamis and their importance to their holders, the kwami whose presence is the most thematically tied to his holder's character arc is completely absent.

In the episode irreparably going into the only kwami whose powers is straight up murder, the kwami who The Guardians have singled out specifically as particularly dangerous, the kwami whose irresponsible nature has previously caused problems both to Adrien privately and Cat Noir professionally, said kwami is never even mentioned.

It's almost as if we're not supposed to remember that it is because of his presence that this whole tragedy was possible.

IV. THE EXISTENCE-DEFINING HORROR OF A CATACLYSM GONE WRONG

And ain’t that a funny one, when the gruesome potential in Plagg’s powers was the driving factor in Adrien’s first true crisis as a hero?

Marinette faced her moment in "Origins", where she gave up on her miraculous after the first disastrous attempt. She knows that she is the only one who can do something about the situation, but refuses out of her own lacking courage. She only becomes Ladybug of her own choice when she realises that she can save Alya's life. After this, Marinette never again questioned her place. She would grieve the burden on occasion, but she never once thought anyone else could do better.

Adrien, as we all know, was the polar opposite: he jumped right into it without reading the manual, had to have Ladybug pick up the pieces after a rash cataclysm, and never doubted his calling again until he realised what Plagg’s powers could do when used on a living being.

The NYC special has Adrien quit for reasons that had nothing to do with being unsatisfied with Ladybug's HR policies. It is in part because he effed up his duty as Paris' substitute guardian, but it's certainly also because of the recent horror he just witnessed: his hand forced by someone else nearly killed Ladybug, and killed Uncanny Valley instead as she stepped between them. Adrien just saw a mother weeping over her daughter's corpse, and how only the lucky presence of Ladybug's powers could undo the damage caused by his, unintentional thought it might have been. Adrien would of course never kill anyone on purpose, but Uncanny Valley’s temporary malfunction was a brutal display of what would happen if he stumbled the wrong direction with the gun loaded. Ladybug might have the duty to protect Paris, but Cat Noir has the duty to not to disintegrate people on touch.

The show never before discussed the weight of this burden in Adrien’s presence. “Cat Blanc” did it from Marinette’s side, but this never was a consistent story thread, only briefly brought up as her remembering why his knowing her identity is a bad idea. The sabbatical in “Kuro Neko” has nothing to do with Plagg or with Adrien’s sense of duty, and where you’d think this would be where Marinette finally brings up the issue bridging the NYC special and “Cat Blanc”, neither of the two are as much as alluded to. That Adrien has the power of murder has yet to be explicitly discussed in the show proper, but in combination with his personal relationship to Hawkmoth being a ticking irony bomb, the question of can he even bear it is inevitable.

That Adrien’s post as Cat Noir wasn’t as given as Marinette’s as Ladybug is echoed in the amount of times that Adrien has either quit or at least contemplated doing so (“Syren”, NYC special, “Wishmaker”, “Kuro Neko”). He likes being Cat Noir more than Marinette likes being Ladybug, but he lacks her iron certainty in the role. It is notable, then, that THE ONE TIME where Marinette questions her part, it is after Cat Noir has quit. She says this, out loud, in words. When Cat Noir’s powers become too heavy for Adrien to carry, then Ladybug, too, disappears.

So surely "Destruction" must be the point where this is finally comes together - where Adrien's history of quitting meets his ultimate crisis, where his powers abused on a human being of flesh and blood forces him into confronting the potential cost of being this particular hero, which will foreshadow the ultimate choice he’ll have to take: between being Cat Noir and being his father’s son. And where his choice, in turn, will define whether Ladybug can exist.

Or not.

Maybe we'll never again have Adrien think about how he probably murdered a man. Maybe we'll just - oh I don't know.

Have him start trying to cataclysm people?

Repeatedly?

While showing none of the horror at himself which he clearly had in the aftermath of accidentally cataclysming the villain responsible for his later victims’ possession?

And in the end, after never calling attention to Adrien’s new and trigger happy ways, we’ll have him give in to his fear, claim that he isn’t strong enough to responsibly use Plagg’s powers, and send his miraculous away for Ladybug to use alone, because it turns out that “Kuro Neko” was right and the NYC special was wrong: she can be Ladybug without him.

Growth, amirite.

V. IN THIS HOUSE WE DON’T TALK ABOUT PATRICIDE

Dramatic irony was the main engine driving "Miraculous Ladybug" from the start, and it was Adrien who bore the brunt of it. Not only did he spend four and a half seasons in unrequited love with a girl who rejected him for himself; he spent five seasons doing weekly battle against his own father.

The superpower war between father and son isn't just a source of story tension, however: it is inextricably mirrored in their relationship as family, where the father is openly abusive and the son is magically incapable of protesting. The show repeatedly makes A Point about how the freedom Adrien so wants, is one that he only gets through being Cat Noir, and the only way Adrien is capable of fighting his father - albeit ignorant of it - is with Plagg's powers.

Cat Noir defeating Hawkmoth was necessary not just for his story as a superhero, but as his character arc as a normal boy.

And in "Destruction", this is exactly what happens. Thanks to Plagg's powers, the path to Adrien's freedom is finally paved, in the most gruesome and unwanted manner possible. Adrien might not get the big cathartic show-down with his evil father, but technically he was the one to bring him down.

But we don't talk about that. Except for his one (1) line after Monarch escapes with Ladybug's lucky charm, Adrien never again brings up the fact that his being careless with a cataclysm certainly maimed a man, by precedent (Aeon) possibly killed him. Rather than a story arc about Adrien being afraid of his own powers, it’s only now that he starts aiming it at people when he’s under emotional duress. This could of course have been one hell of a story point if it was intentional, but by all accounts, it wasn’t. When Adrien never again reflects on his having probably murdered a man, or reasons that Monarch is probably fine since he’s clearly still around so maybe a cataclysm isn’t so bad, and he never dwells on his nearly murdering two of his friends, there can’t have been any connection intended here. Moreover: when Adrien is scared of his miraculous towards the end, it’s not about its capacity for normal murder when he’s having a bad day, but its capacity of ending the world if he happens to be akumatised.

Gabriel is likewise disinterested in the cause of his impending disintegration. You’d think the man would feel some kind of special resentment towards Cat Noir and his powers, you could think this was where he’d get to re-thinking his relationship to the two people who are sitting on the keys to solving all his problems. Maybe he’d start doubting himself now, bearing the ultimate testament to his magical hubris. But no. The cataclysm wound is there and it’s a problem, but the reason it happened is completely irrelevant to the man who did this to himself and unknowingly, to his son.

That is almost as mind-blowing as the fact that they really had a straight up patricide happen on screen. Sure, death was never the intention of either of the two parties, and Adrien certainly holds no blame for what happened. But Gabriel must have at least known what he was risking, and even if the soft-hearted Adrien would somehow reason away the gravity, Plagg would certainly now. By its very nature, this one cataclysm drags out and distils a plethora of questions about both Adrien’s role as Cat Noir, about Gabriel’s vision of himself and his goals, and about their relationship not as father and son, but as villain and hero. The gruesome narrative irony looming over all this is in that regard just the icing on the cake.

There is certainly an Oedipal layer to the drama of Gabriel and Adrien, though the often more scandalous incestuous angle is considerably downplayed here. Even so: By the denouement of S5, Adrien has successfully killed his father and set up a home with his mother. That really happened, but we’re sure not going to investigate how this influenced the relationship between two nemesis, between father and son, between Adrien and his kwami.

The cataclysm in “Destruction” turned Adrien from anguished shoujo love interest to the hero of a greek tragedy, but the show is dead set on pretending that it didn’t.

VI. SO THEN WHAT WAS THE POINT

In isolation, "Destruction" comes across as weird more than anything. It's named after Adrien's kwami, it spends an inordinate amount of screentime on Adrien's father, it reaches back to Adrien's perhaps most defining moment as Cat Noir as it fundamentally changes the game between our heroes and our villains as one of them is finally dealt a damaging blow - which in turn sets Adrien's life down a path towards tragedy that must be interfered with for him to have a happy ending by the end of the season.

And yet, Adrien is a peripheral presence in it. Marinette and Gabriel dominate the screentime, Alya and the kwamis are consistently present as the thematic chorus at their respective sides throughout, the episode plays its events twice in order to make it clear that Ladybug is too clever for Monarch's miraculous, the emotional arcs that are followed are the follow-up on where Marinette and Alya stand after the disaster in "Strike Back" as well as Gabriel's renewed vigour. Adrien's only contribution to the episode is to follow Ladybug's instructions and to make clear that his relationship with his father is still awkward. The episode depicts probably THE most important event of the show, but this event is treated almost as an afterthought, and the horrors of it are confined to one (1) line of dialogue from Cat Noir.

The only thing in “Destruction” that is brought up in later episodes is that Gabriel is now actively dying. If they wanted for Gabriel to live on a countdown for his date with the grim reaper, there were countless other ways about it: Have it be his use of too many miraculous which backfires, have him having used the peacock before it was fixed, have it be too much evil on the hands of Nooroo, have him get a serious call from his doctor, have him screw up Tomoe's machinery, have him develop a drug problem. This is a fictional narrative; its twists and turns are absolutely in the hands of the writers, teenage girls being irredeemable or not. It was never vital that this happened by cataclysm specifically.

So what was the point, then? Did we truly turn our magical girl show into a Greek tragedy for the shocked pikachu faces only?

The one thing I somehow haven't seen people bring up, is that "Destruction" makes it impossible for Adrien to learn Monarch's identity. According to the writers themselves, the reason lies in two of the other episodes named after him: "Cat Blanc" and "Ephemeral", wherein he learns his father's identity and is promptly akumatised. This is of course bullshit: both these cases relied not on Adrien learning his father's identity, but on Gabriel specifically scheming to traumatise Adrien with both the Hawkmoth reveal AND the fact that he's been living in the same house as his mother's dead body for the last year or two (timeline here is spectacularly contradictory). There was anothing inevitable about this. You're the writers. You could've set up a scenario where Adrien didn't learn about his father's crimes as an act of psychological warfare, and where he'd have the time to absorb it, to grieve and to find support by the time he'd confront him with it. Having every person close to Adrien keep life-defining secrets from him “for his own good” is, by god, not a good look on anyone involved here. Still it’s understanable, at least for those who aren't either adults or gods of destruction.

"Destruction", however, serves as an explanation for the gaping plot hole in the epilogue: Marinette tells Alya, she tells Su-Han. The one she doesn't tell, though?

The partner who was at her side before Alya or Su-Han ever appeared, and stood by her in far worse storms. Because telling Cat Noir the truth would mean telling Cat Noir that he dealt Gabriel Agreste the killing blow, and ain't that a nifty way to ensure that Marinette won't. Because if Adrien does learn Monarch's identity and the truth about his fall in future seasons, Emilie better hide those garment pins.

The truly damning part of "Destruction" isn't so much what the episode itself does. It's what it doesn't do. It's the storylines it cuts short and leaves behind, and it is the storyline it by its very existence introduces, but which the show refuses to touch.

Per title and content both, "Destruction" should be the culmination of thematic storylines from "Cat Blanc", the NYC special and "Kuro Neko". It’s not; it’s not even about Adrien, and Plagg isn’t even present in it. Moreover: its lacking presence on future episodes make it painfully evident that ambitions, there were none. Those storylines were either aborted like Adrien picking up Felix's spyglass in the S4 finale, or the show never did mean for there to be such a thing as "layers" to this story about a boy who becomes a hero to unknowingly break free from his superhero father.

The real reason why "Destruction" is the worst episode of Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir is that it obliterates the most cohesive character arc this show had going for it, and that this was done on purpose.

#miraculous ladybug #ml criticism #mlb meta #blah #adrien agreste #gabriel agreste #storytelling #mira

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froldgapp · 7 months

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We Need a Hero. Ladybug Ain't It

In a July 2023 interview for the Guardian, creator of the Bechdel test, Alison Bechdel, bemoaned the toothless response from big media properties to demands for more complex female leads:

Is it dismaying that so many films continue to fail the test?

What’s really dismaying now is the way so many movies cynically try to take shortcuts and feature strong female characters – but they just have a veneer of strength and they’re still not fully developed characters.

I won't argue that Marinette/Ladybug isn't developed, but rather, that in Astruc's pursuit of a Strong Female Lead, we have a character whose strength, agency, wit, grief and elation, is most often at the expense of the cast around her.

We see this most clearly in her relationship with Adrien/Chat Noir. Here is a boy who is controlled, neglected, (arguably) abused, lied to, used, and weaponised by his sole guardian; his father. This has resulted in a sheltered and naive character who canonically has a desperately conditional understanding of love and loyalty. Most if not all of the displays of love Gabriel shows Adrien rest not on Adrien the person, but on Adrien the asset. His life is not his own, and as is revealed in very literal terms in Season 5, nor is his body.

The Gabriel and Adrien dynamic echoes through the Marinette and Adrien relationship. We are shown, explicitly in canon, that Marinette doesn't really know Adrien. He's a heartthrob and she understandably has a crush on him. But while in later seasons she casts aspersions at his army of adoring fans who go to any length to be close to him, she herself is clearly no better. Evidence says she's much worse actually. She takes astounding liberties with his day to day life, she lies to get closer to him, she polices his relationships with specifically other female characters, she delights in his sadness as seen in Glaciator 2:

Marinette: Oh, Adrien! Fancy seeing you here! And you look so sad, that's good!

Marinette as hero even abuses her position as Ladybug to break into his room, rifle around his things and even sniff his pillow. The show seems to make some attempt to explain away her behaviour in Derision by telling us that, in fact, Marinette does all this because she is the wounded party. Even if we accept for the moment that Derision wasn't a lazy retro-justification in service of Marinette's poor behaviour, her trauma does not trump Adrien's right to privacy.

Except, in-show, anything Marinette wants or needs trumps anything anyone else wants or needs, including Adrien–her ostensible partner. Adrien feels left out? Actually, this is more stress for Ladybug. Adrien dates Kagami? Actually this is competition for Marinette. Adrien is locked in a near-sensory deprivation chamber by his super villain father and feels forced to relinquish his miraculous? Actually this is bad news for Marinette.

If she's a hero, then she's one that comes with a price–one far beyond what I'm willing to accept as audience. I want a flawed hero. I don't want perfection. But equally, I don't want to be force fed the notion that this girl's dominant flaw is being a clutz. We get a few brief glimpses into the cost of her controlling behaviours but generally we suffer almost the entire cast telling us she is the Most Wonderful and Supreme Being That Has Ever Existed, all this while she consistently excels within the narrative through the diminishment of others. Need we remember her acing the gamer competition having never displayed a previous interest? How she surpasses even Joan of Arc in all matters miraculous?

Marinette the knight and Adrien the supposed Princess in the Tower: on paper the concept is a little tired but interesting, worth exploring. The role reversal that Astruc aimed for fell short though, and what we have instead is a role amplification. As I write, I struggle to think of a piece of media where the romantic interest has been quite so violated, lied to, limited and enfeebled.

Why did Bechdel's quote ring so true with how Marinette/Ladybug is drawn? That I feel cheated. That the potential for greatness was there, but instead we have a character who from a slightly different angle looks like a hero from wow-heroes-are-jerks juggernaut, The Boys.

I hope Season 6 interrogates Marinette's issues of control and denying agency more. I hope we see consequences beyond what is now a tedious series of panic attacks from Marinette when she's caught short. I hope real contrition and growth are modelled and that real, impactful, damaging character flaws aren't swept away by a cloud of narrative magical ladybugs.

#mlb salt #ladybug salt #chat noir #ml salt #mlb meta #adrien agreste #ladybug #marinette

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manikas-whims · 2 years

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I find it very interesting that in the actual French Dub Adrien as Chat Noir uses “Princess” to address Marinette?

Like what was going through his head? Why did he use that term of all? He could've easily said the usual words he uses for other Parisians like “citizen” “mister/miss”, etc.. He just skipped to Princess.

With Ladybug, its always “milady”, a term that is used towards someone you respect. A term for a person who has earned that title due to her etiquette and actions. A term he uses because he admires her as an ideal partner to fight side by side with, to serve and support..

But with Mari, its “Princess”, another respectful title but also one that's kinda used in an endearing tone? Traditionally a title that provides a person the privilege to be protected, cared for and kinda..pampered?

And it just ties in so well with the “Weredad” Episode...

Cuz for Chat, Mari is like a princess. She's locked up by a scary, big monster (Mr Dupain as weredad) and Chat Noir is the knight in shining leather, trying to save her.

He literally says “I will always be here to save Marinette.”

And we all know Adrien is the most honest version of himself when he's Chat Noir, so its pretty obvious he genuinely cares for Mari, finds her endearing and wants to protect her like some princess 🥺

idk what this is..just another thought dump i guess..

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storybook-with-a-hug · 1 year

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Looking for help...

Does anyone happen to be from Martinique or know someone from there? I’m looking to find a brain to pick in order to help me flesh out Alya’s backstory a bit more. Nothing super detailed, I don’t think, but just like... a general overview of what her childhood would have been like growing up in the Caribbean. Like, what are some common things for kids there to spend their time doing? I tried looking up activities for kids there, but all I got were tourist destinations and not the sort of things local children do for fun.

Like, I looked up the zoo in Martinique and it’s placed in around what looks like small little towns on google maps. So would she have grown up with that small-town vibe where packs of kids of multiple ages go out on their bikes together all over the place and no one cares because everyone knows everyone else? Would she and her friends have spent their time sailing? Or surfing? Or running wild in the mountains? Would it be realistic to believe Alya knows enough CPR to save a person who was drowning (think, like in the Syren episode)? That she’d have been swimming since she was in diapers?

How much time do kids there spend inside vs outside? What are some popular childrens shows she may have been into? Who are the popular bands she might have grown up listening to? Just... general stuff so that there’s more to her character than just what she fangirls about in the show (superheroes and Marinette’s lovelife).

#miraculous ladybug #alya cesaire #i need heeeeelp #martinique #mlb meta #my wriring

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misspermitted · 11 months

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I think one of the reasons I liked mlb is that Thomas Astruc, completely accidentally, made Marinette the perfect depiction of someone with social anxiety.

Like in ‘Origins’: Saving the world? Fine. Life or death situations? Cool as a cucumber. But introducing herself to her partner? Panic. Standing up for herself in class? Panic. Low self esteem? Check. Relatively socially isolated due to said anxiety (before Alya)? Check.

Would’ve loved if Astruc continued this theme into later seasons and still had her struggling with that anxiety instead of only applying it to Adrien and making it the butt of jokes but hey.

He accidentally made some nice character progression in the beginning seasons as Alya and being Ladybug encourages Mari’s self esteem. If only he was a competent writer it would be even better and maybe encourage the children watching that having anxiety is okay but whatever.

#mlb #mlb salt #mlb spoilers #marinette #mlb meta #as a writer I try not to be super mean to tv show writers #as the strike has drawn attention to most writers have their ideas scrapped by producers #or work on ridiculously tight deadlines #most of the time it’s not their fault #this said #he is outright hateful and mean to the fanbase #of people who love his show! like a huge fanbase!#if I had this many people making this much content for something I made which was certainly not the best thing l #and I was just making it for children #I would be ecstatic and roll with it #but whatever anyway #he’s uncalled for mean and rude to us #so I feel like it’s fair #you get the respect you give buddy

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pedro-pascal · 7 months

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Ayo Edebiri throws First Pitch at Fenway Park before a game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees back on September 14, 2023 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA

#ayo edebiri #baseball #mlb #fenway park #boston red sox #red sox #baseballedit #ayoedebiriedit #mlbedit #aedebiriedit #tuserdee #useraurore #useryusi #wifesource #femaledaily #userladiesofcinema #*#in the bear they trash the red sox and root for the white sox but she threw the 1st pitch for the red sox lol. i love meta stuff like this

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theerurishipper · 7 months

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"Oh ClAw NOir's dEsiGn Is sO uGly" well that's your opinion. He's not ugly he's cringe fail and he's proud. And I think he deserves it. Just look at his evil lil' smirk. He's in his element, he's in the zone. He's the manwhore to his goth gf's girlboss. He's tired and he just wants to go apeshit. He just wants to go fucking feral. He's unhinged and he's a fucking loser. He's all dressed up in his little jacket and his little spiked bell and his purple eyes and his black lipstick and his double heads of sewer green hair and I think he's slay. Go off king, do your crimes. I support catboys' wrongs.

#MLB #Miraculous Ladybug #Adrien Agreste #Chat Noir #Claw Noir #Griffe Noire #Miraculous World #ML Paris Special #My meta #Yeah I still don't like the wannabe mullet #But he does and that's all that matters

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116t98 · 11 months

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I remember reading an analysis post a long time ago (which I can’t find for the life of me 😩) that described how Lila’s design, particularly her hair, fits her character. The OP essentially said that when you look at Lila from the front, you think that she’s wearing her hair down, which can be used to visually represent how open/free a character is, but it’s not until you see her from behind that you realize her hair’s been tied up the entire time; she appears to be open and friendly, but in actuality, she’s keeping her true self closed off/kept away until she chooses to reveal herself to someone

Additionally, her full bangs, which covered her entire forehead and eyebrows, helped to demonstrate how closed-off she really is

She’s much more in control of herself than she lets on, as she’s only letting you see what she wants you to see

But now, she’s traded her long hair for a pixie cut with short bangs that show off her eyebrows. Whether it’s a recent change or if her hair’s always been short, I couldn’t tell you, but seeing her new look in these two episodes reminded me of that post

Up until this point, she had a façade that she relied on to hide her true intentions in plain sight, but now that’s gone (maybe it was never really there to begin with, assuming her hair’s always been short); she’s no longer putting up a front of friendly innocence to trick people into buying her lies

Why would she bother now that everyone who matters knows she’s the bad guy? Why would she bother when she’s got Chloé to act as her puppet and do all the publicly despicable stuff for her? Why would she bother now that she’s finally winning?

She’s always embraced her role as the villain, but now she’s doing so openly, with no façade to hide behind

This is who Lila really is, has always been, and she’s not hiding it from anyone anymore

#i hope this makes sense #lila rossi #ml #mlb #miraculous ladybug #ml spoilers #mlb spoilers #miraculous ladybug spoilers #collusion spoilers #confrontation spoilers #mine #ml meta #100

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tasberry · 1 year

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Marichat, for me at least, was never sinful.

I like them together because it's based around the trope of falling in love with your best friend. Where you get to know a person with all these quirks, all these flaws and complications, and go "Yeah, I love all of those too."

Where someone can annoy or upset you, but you talk it out and still choose each other. You love them at their best, you wanna lift each other up, but there isn't a pedestal because you climbed up together.

Chat Noir isn't Adrien's "true self" he just compartmentalizes. He breaks himself into little peices that he thinks people will like depending on the situation he's in.

When he's transformed he doesn't need to worry about looking foolish or getting chewed out by his father for inappropriate behaviour. It's still him, Chat Noir just gives him the ability to explore how he presents himself in the world.

The same can be said for Marinette as well. In fact, I'd say Marinette is a clearer example on how the true selves idea is painfully missing the point?

Marinette doesn't have the awful family life Adrien has. If she messes up, there isn't any of the disgusting, manipulative, abuse that we see from Gabriel Agreste awaiting her at home. She has a supportive family that encouraged her to be herself even before she got the earrings.

She was much more passive, but Chat Noir and Alya inspired her. They helped her be a better Ladybug, and grow into a more confident Marinette. There's more...persona bleed with Maribug. She doesn't refer to Ladybug as a different person the way Adrichat did. She knows one persona has more social power and she'll utilize it if she feels like she needs to. It's not an identity issue with her the way it was with Adrien.

Up until Adrien started to realize that Chat and Adrien are just..both aspects of him as a person thank you Plagg ily, Chat Noir was more of a character he got to play around with. This is what he thought he was doing anyway. I don't think his actions as Chat are disingenuous in anyway. He just didn't feel safe or accepted enough to let those two parts of himself stop being sectioned off until recently.

TLDR;

This episode was adorable

Marichat and the true selves thing is BS

These two fictional children are going to murder me with these adorable, heartbreaking shenanigans

SEND HELP IM USED TO LONGER ML HIATUSES WHAT IS THIS

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trainsinanime · 2 years

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The love square in Miraculous Ladybug seems so simple (“hey, that Superman-Lois-Clark thing? What if it went both ways?”), but I am in awe of how finely tuned and balanced it is. Both to make it plausible, and to make it interesting.

The show goes to great lengths to show that all sides (and in particular the two main ones) are absolutely realistic options if it weren’t for the rest. Adrien always liked Marinette and has been positively smitten with her since about season 2. Ladybug was always fond of Chat Noir and this has only increased. The one major time where Ladybug officially rejected Chat Noir, in Glaciator, was also one of the softest and genuinely most romantic moments between the two.

And at the same time, they didn’t make it too simple. The love square is not symmetric when you look at the details. Marinette’s feelings for Adrien and Chat Noir mirror his for Ladybug and Marinette to some extent at a very high level, but if you look down at the details, they’re all developing differently, at different paces, for different reasons, all the time. Chat Noir is the big romantic flirt. Marinette is head over heels and thwarted by anxiety. Both like grand gestures, but for Marinette it’s gifts, for Chat Noir it’s big events.

The show looks so simple, and I guess parts of it are. But the way our heroes interact in the love square is anything but, and that’s what makes it so much fun to watch.

#miraculous ladybug #mlb meta

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uptoolateart · 1 year

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Analysis of Adrien - S5 up to Ep 9

I am loving Season 5 so far, and having caught up with all the latest episodes aired in France, I’m more excited than ever.

So, let’s talk about Cat’s behaviour in ‘Elation’. If you’re like me, you were near-screaming at the Marichat kiss - even more so when Cat broke it off, then Mari was akumatised, and then there was more kissy-kissy-meow-meow (my new favourite phrase in life). Their kiss was right out of ‘Amelie’, by the way – adorable. And against a backdrop of a Statue of Liberty, as if reminding us that they’re not yet free.

More than just teasing the audience, Cat’s response was so in character. As Adrien, in ‘Determination’ he told Kagami that he’d started seeing Marinette differently in ‘Puppeteer 2.0′. We can go back even further, to ‘Troublemaker’, where Marinette had her chance to confess her feelings but chickened out and claimed to be just a fan. In fact, every time Adrien says she’s ‘just a friend’, we can substitute this with ‘just a fan’. He’s not oblivious - he’s careful.

Because of Marinette’s explanation for the photos on her wall, Adrien didn’t take her feelings seriously (and, I mean, how surreal must it be to have a friend with a fangirl crush on you?). This is evidenced in ‘Puppeteer 2.0′ when they’re in the car on the way to the museum and he tells Manon that they’re just friends. But it’s clear that his feelings are all mixed up, because he then worries deeply about Marinette possibly not liking him. Then he poses as a statue and she kisses him - and he jumps away.

At the time, we weren’t told why he reacted this way. We never got to see his thoughts when he lay in bed that night, no doubt running it over in his mind again. But we did see a future timestream in ‘Cat Blanc’ where the moment Adrien learned Marinette loved him, he was deliriously happy and told her he’d always felt there was something more than just friendship between them and now he finally knew why. We also saw him stare at her with her hair down and call her beautiful, in ‘Heart Hunter’. Then Kagami pushed herself on him and Mari was suddenly with Luka, and Adrien had no time to sort out his feelings. When Kagami kissed him, he was confused and said he wasn’t ready. He then took a step back from the girls while he tried to sort through his Ladybug problems, which shifted in ‘Glaciator 2.0′ - and the moment he began to evolve for the better was when he listened to Marinette’s love confession for Adrien. It was clear on his face that he was seeing her with new eyes.

By the time we reach ‘Determination’, his admission to Kagami tells us he has loved Marinette a long time but been waiting for her to give some indication that she feels the same, so he can clarify those feelings in his heart. I’ve said before: he’s a celebrity, used to being chased down by fans and receiving declarations of love from plenty of people who don’t know him. As long as he thought Mari was ‘just a fan’, he couldn’t allow himself to open his heart to it being more. But it’s all reached a point where he can’t hide it anymore.

As an aside, I loved the line Kagami gave him about needing to look in a mirror and figure himself out...because ‘kagami’ is Japanese for ‘mirror’.

I also loved the parallel of ‘Determination’ with ‘Frozer’, with Luka and Kagami there again, now pushing a different relationship.

Getting back to Adrien: I think that kiss in ‘Puppeteer 2.0′ was nearly what he needed to see Marinette as a love interest - but she dodged it again. It was almost the permission he needed to think of her as more than ‘just a fan’. He pushed her away because he liked it but needed to sort out his feelings...and, more importantly, because he knew he was tricking her and felt he was taking advantage of her.

Let’s jump back to ‘Elation’, when Cat kisses Marinette and then pulls away, yet again. His reasoning is that he’s behind a mask - he knows who she is but she doesn’t know who he is, and he doesn’t want to take advantage of her. He wants to kiss her but doesn’t want to steal that kiss. It has to be fair, honest and open. She just told him she no longer loves Adrien, so he has to be thinking if she knew it was him, she might not want him kissing her. He did the right thing.

When he says she doesn’t know who he is, again this is all about the idea of fandom. From his perspective, she’s just told him over and over and over again, ‘I’m a super, super fan.’ It’s no accident that earlier in the episode, Adrien was shown running from crowds of fans both as himself and as Cat, and getting infuriated by it. In both guises, he’s a celebrity. He wants someone to love him for him, and Marinette once again made herself ‘just a fan’ in his eyes. Of course he can’t pursue that.

The painful irony is that he has no way of knowing that the whole reason she now loves him as Cat Noir is exactly because she’s finally seeing him for who he truly is. She knows him better than he realises. But how to reveal that without sharing her identity? Alya was right - this stuff can’t work unless they can be wholly honest with each other. I maintain that Ladybug needs to tell Cat about Cat Blanc, if they’re ever going to move forward.

His face, though, when Andre just flat out told him Marinette had been in love with Adrien all that time.... All these years waiting for her to get those words out, and they were finally dropped so simply. This house got LOUD, over that one! You just know Adrien spent the whole night looking back over every single crazy exchange with her, reframing all of it and thinking, ‘Oh my god, is that what was going on!?’ And Marinette doesn’t even know this is in his mind. Now we have Adrien knowing things about her that she doesn’t know he knows, just like she knows about Cat Blanc. Like...what can I even say??

Amazing.

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into-september · 9 months

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Probably the most important thing that got lost somewhere in the MLB film trying to adress some three or four different themes and somehow not getting any of them across:

"Who saves a life, saves the world" is the one that is literally spelled out on screen in the scene where Marinette becomes Ladybug, immediately after she without hesitation risked her life to save Master Fu.

So she becomes Ladybug and spends the entirity of the first battle being literally dragged along when Cat Noir gets into trouble. Her only active part in the battle is at the very end, when she finally gets her yo-yo under control and saves Cat Noir from being hit by the train.

The film doesn't make much of a point out of it, but take note: this battle doesn't end by Ladybug and Cat Noir winning, but by the akuma leaving its victim seconds before lives are lost. It's not made clear why this happened; possibly this Gabriel, who has the ability to feel empathy, called it back last moment, but the only shot we get is of him passed out and de-transformed. An equally plausible explanation is that without his active will, the akuma simply left.

I think one change that'd help this story a lot would've been to make that reason explicit, because this un-won battle isn't important just because it introduces our two heroes and sets the love square in motion. The whole sorry story - from Cat Noir going solo and failing, to the battle ending not by the heroes' victory but by the akuma leaving its victim - is exactly what happens in the film's climax. Whether Gabriel's conscience made him hesitate at the beginning or if it finally won out only in the end, it'd strengthen his character to have that conflict made explicit, which would serve as a badly needed reminder to the audience that the first battle is significant for other reasons than Ladybug and Cat Noir's first meeting.

Because there is another thing that happens in both these battles, in fact the only thing Marintte contributes to both of them:

She saves Cat Noir's life.

It is absurdly underplayed and disappears beneath the memetic saxophone solo the first time it happens, but fact is: it happened, and it happened again when the story ended. And in the final battle, her saving him - however fleeting it was - gave Gabriel the chance to discover that it was his own son he nearly killed. Without Ladybug, Marinette couldn't do much, but she could save Cat Noir again. And by doing so, she stopped Hawk Moth. Not by being a kick-ass heroine, but by being just a normal girl who is extraordinarily brave even without superpowers, and who let him see the truth, and to make his hown choice to stop the madness.

In fact, this is the fulfillment of what I think was supposed to be Marinette's character arc: to realise that Ladybug was her all along; that it wasn't the earrings that made her stop being clumsy and get the confidence to talk back to Chloé, but that she had those powers all along. The first time, she only masters her powers when Cat Noir is in danger; the second time, she has to face her fears without the powers - and that is how she passes the test, and (probably) finds her true powers, and can fix all the things Gabriel destroyed.

Except for some reason Mr. Zagtoons didn't think to emphasise those things happening at all and so both Marinette's character arc and the film's climax come across as hella anticlimatic because it's not at all obvious that oh, yeah, those things were in fact established at the very beginning.

#mira #miraculous ladybug #ml awakening #miraculous ladybug movie #miraculous movie spoilers #blah #mlb meta #storytelling

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froldgapp · 7 months

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Adrien Agreste is basically Samwise Gamgee trapped in Legolas's body.

#adrien agreste #chat noir #mlb #miraculous ladybug #mlb meta #hes a good boi #faithful lad #honest crumpet

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ninadove · 11 months

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*Inhales*

Listen

Did Felix constantly push Adrien under the bus in order to secure his own safety and freedom throughout S3 and S4? Yes.

Did he do all of this with the understanding that this short-term damage wouldn’t matter in the long run, because he always planned on coming back for him? Also yes.

A lot of the criticism I’m seeing against his arc recently seems to spark from people not sharing the same experiences he had, of being abused and isolated from his sibling cousin. And while that’s absolutely fine (good for you, that should be the norm), his story actually makes a lot of sense to a lot of people. It’s different from the abuse narratives we’re used to seeing onscreen, with victim profiles that are closer to Adrien and Kagami — people we’re supposed to be rooting for since the very beginning — but it is SO well done and realistic and nuanced I’m actually surprised to be getting this from Miraculous of all shows.

It’s not that Felix’s characterisation changed after Emotion. It’s that we’re finally starting to see the full picture.

#miraculous ladybug #felix graham de vanily #adrien agreste #senticousins #mlb spoilers #mlb emotion #mlb pretention #kagami tsurugi #colt fathom #meta #This is a Colt Fathom hate zone #FUCK COLT FATHOM ALL MY HOMIES HATE COLT FATHOM #Some of y’all need a periodic reminder that Sometimes Things Are Complicated #I’m willing to be that periodic reminder

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confusedandghostly · 1 year

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Entirely self indulgent dp x dc x mlb prompt

—

-Danny & Adrien know each other, maybe via Magic Stuff, maybe it’s the classic “event in a convenient spot”, doesn’t really matter. Point is they’re hero friends who both know each other’s secret identities and keep in touch.

-At some point, Danny is forced to relocate from Amity park because of a reveal gone horribly wrong. He bolts and keeps going until he can’t anymore. He’s picked up by a stranger.

-(Generally he doesn’t drop his transformations by accident anymore but thank the ancients he did this time because he would’ve had one hell of a time explaining to this stranger why his blood was bright neon green. As it stands, the biggest question is what the hell happened to him.)

-Nightwing is just vibing, doing his nightly patrols in Bludhaven, when he finds this kid half unconscious in an alleyway, bleeding out. They more or less beg not to be taken to a hospital when Dick suggests it, so instead he takes them to one of his safe houses and patches him up there (This kid is 16? Maybe? Why’s there an open autopsy incision-)

-Danny is not in any shape to be going anywhere and on top of that, his accelerated healing is working at a third of the speed it should be because of the materials that were used to hurt him being anti ghost, so Dick manages to convince him to stay in his misc safehouses - he doesn’t need to stay in just one, he’s allowed to move between them, just please don’t leave entirely.

-Danny explicitly requests that as few people as possible get involved in this, and yes that means the rest of the bats. If he can leave once he’s healed without anyone but Nightwing ever knowing he was there then that’s for the best.

-Except, as it often goes, Danny gets attached to Dick and Dick gets attached to Danny and the Reveal happens, etc.

-While he’s still healing and can’t do much of anything, a story runs on the news. Dick doesn’t think too much of it at first, but Danny gets really concerned when he sees it.

-“-Paris’ supervillain Hawkmoth has finally been taken down. Secretly the popular fashion designer Gabriel Agreste, many people who have heard the news are devastated. His home is currently being searched….”

-Danny goes “oh shit!!! I know that guy!!!” and immediately calls up Adrien and asks if he’s alright, what he’s doing, etc and the resounding answer is no, Adrien’s having an existential crisis, and he’s staying with friends while he figures out what to do with himself.

-Danny explains his own situation, specifically that he was displaced but found a safe (and at this point he really doesn’t want to leave anymore) home with another hero, and Dick, who’s only heard half of the conversation but understands that someone Danny knows and trusts with his own identity needs a place to stay, and offers Adrien a place here.

-Adrien decides to take him up on that offer. He’s being harassed, moreso than he ever was simply for being Adrien the model, because now he’s Adrien, the supervillain’s son, and since Hawkmoth was pretty localized he’s hoping that it won’t be near as bad in a different country.

-Now Dick has two kids in his care and he’s feeling more and more like Bruce by the day because he’s just gone from living alone save for whatever times he visits the manor to having two kids in his house, relying on him for safety and emotional support in the span of like. Two weeks.

-Reveal x2 with Adrien, all that Bonding Stuff™️

-Adrien and Danny get to talking and they’re both experiencing some cabin fever and so they decide “yk what?? We could help Nightwing with his hero work!! The area already has a metric fuckton of heroes, what’s two more?”

-It’s actually rather easy for Adrien to convince Nightwing because he gets why Adrien wants to be back out on the field. Danny, on the other hand, is finding it way harder, because Dick is already worried about Danny’s injuries.

-They both manage it though, under two conditions.

-1. They can’t be Phantom and Cat Noir. Not only is it going to be incredibly obvious if/when they make any public appearances as civilians, but also it’s going to raise questions and unwanted attention.

-2. Minimal magic and ghostly powers. This ties back to the previous stipulation, technically. Cataclysm is too recognizable as a miraculous thing, and it could be detrimental in a fight where Adrien can’t get away to recharge. If Danny used too many of his ghostly powers, he could give himself away as a ghost and become a target for hunters.

-Cue a montage of Dick hiding his two new protégés from the rest of the bats because he wants it to be a surprise and also he wants their debut to be on their terms for safety and damage control reasons while trying to set them up with the appropriate training and gear (moreso Danny who needs a whole new suit than Adrien who can just redesign his magic suit)

-The other bats are absolutely certain something is up with Nightwing and they’re proven right when two new players make their debut.

#dp x dc #dc x mlb #dp x mlb #dp x dc x mlb #OKAY SO #Adrien’s hero name is Salem but I can’t think of one for Danny :(#I might come back to it later though because I have Ideas for Adrien’s costume #Adrien still keeps in contact with the miraculous team ofc but they all decided they were gonna take a goddamn vacation #they deserve it after the time they’ve had #also imagining how this goes down is great #Batman: you know the rules about metas. it’s dangerous #Nightwing: those are your rules for Gotham. Bludhaven doesn’t have anything of the sort and they’re based with me not with you #B gets pissed off about it less because of their abilities (because he’s mostly sure they’ll be safe with Dick)#and more because Dick actively kept it from him #Nightwing being protective of his kids #the other bat siblings ABSOLUTELY make jokes about Dick taking after Bruce’s adoption habits #Danny and Adrien are also making jokes about it #miraculous ladybug #Danny phantom #dc comics #nightwing

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