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immaturityofthomasastruc · 8 months

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IOTA Reviews: Emotion

Hey, remember Felix? You know, that minor character who is the entire reason Gabriel has all of Ladybug's other Miraculous? The writers remembered he existed more than halfway through the season.

Let's get into the eighteenth episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fifth season: Emotion

We start off with Marinette and Adrien getting ice cream, and just like last episode, right when they're about to kiss, Adrien stops at the last second. While we don't see it, it's heavily implied that Gabriel is behind this. It turns out that Adrien has to get ready for some dance for rich people. While it has a name and I think it was mentioned in a few earlier episodes this season, it's really just some dance for rich people, so I don't care enough to remember it. Of course, all of the rich characters we know are invited, like Kagami, Chloe, Zoe, and Prince Ali. Lila, on the other hand, wasn't invited. This might sound important, but nothing happens with her until the end.

Zoe isn't going because of the “character development” she's gotten, so she offers to let Marinette wear her dress to the dance, which just so happens to be a masquerade ball. Tikki asks why Marinette even wants to go to this party she wasn't invited to, but all Marinette says is that it's so she can tell Adrien that she didn't have to keep the dance a secret from her. Why didn't Marinette just call Adrien? Because then we wouldn't have a story.

At the ball, Adrien and Kagami are the king and queen or whatever because their parents are really determined to make their ship sail even though the two show no real interest in each other (insert your own joke about the writers here), but they're interrupted by Amelie, Emilie's twin sister and Felix's mom. She's worried because her son has been missing for weeks, but Gabriel couldn't care less about the little twerp.

At the party, we get a somewhat amusing joke where Chloe fails to recognize Marinette under her mask, where Marinette not only says her name is Zoe, but her “underling” is named Chloe too. But speaking of...

Chloe: How rich are your parents? Rich? Very rich? Immensely rich? Of course, otherwise you wouldn't be here! It's too bad we can't bring out underlings with us. I'm sure these tin cans can serve properly but we can't make fun of them! (grabs a drink from a butler robot before kicking it) So lame!

Okay, did the writers just stop caring about writing convincing dialogue for Chloe? This is a problem I've noticed a lot this season. Yeah, Chloe was bad in the last four seasons, but here, she constantly talks about how Sabrina is her “underling” (Passion), or how she finds Marinete's suffering to be amusing (Derision). It's not really out of character, but it's weird how she's so much more blunt when it comes to boasting about how full of herself she is. It feels like a lot of her lines this season were meant to be placeholders for stuff the writers thought they'd change later, but then they decided to keep it in anyway. And of course to show how stuck up the other rich kids saying the same kind of stuff Chloe normally says, which is somehow less subtle social commentary than Hop Pop shouting “EAT THE RICH!”.

Adrien and Kagami talk about how they're expected to follow orders, while pretty much saying that Kagami is a Sentimonster since the camera really wants to show off her ring.

Oh wow. what does this mean? Wow, this is such a compelling mystery with so many twists and turns. I am so very invested right now.

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However, as the two talk, it's clear that Adrien isn't himself, literally.

“Adrien”: Let's leave, I dare you.

Kagami: Are you insane? We can't do that.

“Adrien”: Of course, we can. I can.

Kagami: (gasps) You'd do that?

“Adrien”: Wanna bet?

Kagami: No, we can't.

“Adrien”: See? You're not as free as you claim. Don't you think we should be able to decide our future?

I'll get back to this later.

Marinette tells “Adrien” that she loves her, but Chloe figures out that Marinette crashed a party she wasn't invited to. Of course, because this is Chloe, we're supposed to ignore how unnecessary this plan was for Marinette. Seriously, Marinette crashing the party in “Gabriel Agreste”, as illogical as it was, made sense, because they needed to stop Chloe from showing Gabriel incriminating footage of Marinette. Here, Marinette had no real reason to crash this party when all she had to do was call Adrien, and Chloe, like her or hate her, makes a good point in that she wasn't invited. But again, since this is Season 5 Chloe, she could say she opposes human trafficking, and the writers would still find a way to make her look like the bad guy.

Chloe tells the other rich kids to help her expose Marinette, but because they're so stuck up and entitled, they refuse to touch her. I'll give you all a moment to groan from that unfunny joke. Then we get this conversation between Marinette and “Adrien”.

“Adrien”: All eyes are on you.

Marinette: They're looking at me like I'm a monster.

“Adrien”: Look closer, Marinette. (whispers into her ear) They're the monsters.

I officially take back everything bad I ever said about the Canto Bight scenes from The Last Jedi.

While I get what the episode's going for, we really haven't seen a lot of the 1% doing things that would actually warrant this level of scorn from the audience. Yeah, most of them were egotistical snobs, especially Chloe, but you can't really see this as a shot at the elite when it's aimed at their children instead of their parents. All we've seen in this episode is the rich kids being jerks (and even then, it's played for laughs), Chloe rightfully trying to get Marinette thrown out of a party she had no reason to crash, and Gabriel and Tomoe trying to pair their children together. If you want to show the audience how bad rich people are, you need to show them actually abusing their power and mistreating others. As bad as the aforementioned Canto Bight scenes were, they still worked because it managed to back up the point it was trying to make.

Compare this to characters like the Ferengi from Star Trek or the World Nobles from One Piece. These are allegories for the 1% that work because they do a better job at exaggerating aspects of them that can translate to how we see the elite in our world. With the Ferengi, they represent everything wrong with cutthroat businessmen who base their entire society over financial gains, and with the World Nobles, they represent the disconnect with the common people by being so arrogant, they wear helmets that prevent them from breathing the same air as the commoners. If you wanted to show how bad the rich were, especially considering what's going to happen in a few minutes, you needed to do more to make the audience not like them so we'd be more happy to see them get their comeuppance.

Marinette figures out that Felix impersonated Adrien once again (it honestly stops being impressive when he's done it during literally every episode he appears in), and he decides to transform using the Peacock Miraculous in public for some reason, calling himself Argos.

Argos' design is okay. The suit and coattails look pretty nice, and the coloring on his face works a lot better than Gabriel's. The only problem I have is the way the hood looks. It looks too goofy to go with the rest of the suit. It kind of reminds me of that salmon suit Squidward wore in that one episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.

Before anyone else at the party can do anything, Argos reveals a Sentimonster he created, Red Moon.

Red Moon is... a red moon. It's just a red moon that floats above the city, and it gives Argos the ability to make anyone bathed in its light disappear with a snap of his fingers. If anything, this shows how overpowered the Peacock Miraculous is, and that Gabriel was a real idiot for not trying anything like this while he was Shadowmoth.

Anyway, after making everyone think his cousin is a supervillain as part of his brilliant plan, Argos decides to tell everyone in the room about what his Sentimonster can do. He demonstrates this by, of course, choosing to snap away Chloe before targeting Gabriel and Tomoe. You really have your priorities straight, buddy. Argos then carries Marinette outside before throwing her in a dumpster, because if he snapped her away, than Ladybug couldn't fight him.

But then Argos decides to go to the streets, and decides to snap away a bunch of innocent civilians... while singing a jazz song. To anyone curious as to what it sounds like, I must warn you, it isn't for the feint of heart.

I take back everything bad I ever said about the Hawkmoth rap.

First off, I'm just going to say it, Bryce Papenbrook cannot sing. Argos is clearly trying to sound like a suave and confident villain like Doctor Facilier from The Princess and the Frog, but his delivery is terrible. It either ranges from flat monotone to trying to shout while dealing with a sore throat. The point I'm trying to make is that there was a good reason someone else did the singing voice for Adrien in the recent movie.

Second, this doesn't do anything to make us root for Argos as a character, because there's no reason for him to be doing this. I can understand why he'd use his power to get rid of Gabriel and Tomoe (even Chloe, given we know how much she's done), but why is he suddenly going nuts snapping a bunch of random people who haven't even met him before? The episode tries to make him a character who only does bad things because he has no choice to, so him doing this to a bunch of innocent civilians makes no sense.

Finally, WHY THE HELL IS THIS SCENE A MUSICAL NUMBER?! It's hard enough to see Argos callously wipe out a bunch of bystanders, essentially committing genocide, but the tone of the song is all upbeat and cheery, while the lyrics are about how Argos should get whatever he wants. What is the purpose of adding a song here? Are we supposed to find this funny? Is it meant to establish Felix as a wild card? Is the song supposed to make us like him more because of how catchy it is? What was the writers' endgame here? Like I mentioned earlier, this flies in the face of the characterization the episode is trying to establish for him.

Marinette transforms into Ladybug and arrives on the scene, confronting Argos over what he did last season.

Ladybug: You're the reason why I lost the other Miraculous in the first place! And why he took them! You gave them to him without any regard for the consequences it might have with the people of Paris!

Argos: True, except I work for no one. I only helped Monarch cause it served my plans! I needed the Peacock Miraculous and today I need yours and Cat Noir's so I can make my wish!

Ladybug: Your wish?! What do you want?! What are you trying to do?! You're destroying the world and we don't even know why!

Argos: When I merge your Miraculous together, I'll make a wish to create a better world! A free world, where no one will be under anyone's control anymore, where no one will be excluded like I was! A world without people like you to decide what's right or wrong! Who gets powers and who doesn't!

Dude, you're literally playing God right now by snapping away people who did nothing wrong, while singing a song at that. You have no right to lecture Ladybug on how to use power responsibly. And once again, even though we just saw him happily snapping people out of existence like the kid from that one Twilight Zone episode, the episode is going back to portraying him as someone who's only doing this because he has nothing to lose.

Ladybug tries to use her Lucky Charm, but gets nothing in response. This is because her plan is to get Argos to give up, but even in episodes where her plan was to get Akumas to give up, she still got her Lucky Charm (Rocketear, Qilin, Penalteam, Reunion, Perfection, Intuition), so this doesn't really make any sense. Ladybug calls Argos' bluff, so he wipes out everyone from existence. After running into Kagami and snapping Adrien back into existence, Argos is surprised that they aren't thanking him for wiping out all of humanity, and in fact, see him as a complete psychopath.

We then learn Felix's true plan. Earlier that day, Argos capitalized on a opening he had been hoping he would get for weeks, and then created Red Moon. Right after Adrien's date with Marinette, Argos ambushed Adrien, and snapped him out of existence with Red Moon's power. He then decided to impersonate Adrien so he could infiltrate the dance and snap Gabriel, Tomoe, and everyone else out of existence.

I think my feelings on this plan can be perfectly summarized by Tony Stark.

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First off, why did he need to sneak into the dance? All Felix had to do was transform into Argos, and nobody would know who he really was.

Second, why did he need to impersonate Adrien? Felix claims he's doing this for him, yet all he did was steal his girlfriend and ruin his public reputation. As a matter of fact, why did he even snap Adrien away? You're already wiping out all of humanity, so I don't think temporarily doing the same to Adrien will earn you any goodwill.

Third, why did he waste so much time screwing around with Marinette and Kagami? I sort of get why he would try to get in Kagami's good graces (keyword being “try”) by trying to convince her to rebel against her mother more, but why did he dance around with Marinette while pretending to be Adrien? Felix later says he wanted to spare Marinette for Adrien's sake, but he barely knows her, and whether she finds out Felix impersonated her boyfriend or not, she's going to be pissed at either you or Adrien because of your galavanting. In fact, I don't think he ever told Adrien that he danced with Marinette while at the dance in the first place.

Finally, he really needed to wait for this for weeks? If your goal was to get rid of Gabriel and Tomoe, why didn't you just ambush them yourself instead of waiting for a public function? This isn't like has last few appearances where he needed to rely on his intellect. He has superpowers now. All he has to do is create another Sentibug or some kind of assassin Sentimonster and he can be rid of them easily. Instead, he waited weeks for a chance to steal his cousin's identity, dance with his girlfriend, talk trash about Kagami for listening to her mother when he's supposed to be helping her and Adrien, blow his cover in a crowded area by transforming, and use his killer moon to erase all of humanity from existence while singing. Remember, this is the show that usually makes jokes about Marinette's obsession with unnecessarily complicated plans.

Anyway, Argos tries to use his powers to bring Marinette back, but for some reason, they won't work. My best guess is that it's because Marinette transformed into Ladybug, but that shouldn't chance the fact that Argos snapped her with Red Moon's power. After trying to justify his genocide by saying he never wanted to hurt Adrien and Kagami, Argos remembers how his powers work and brings everyone back. After Ladybug lets him go scot-free, Argos goes to a private place realizes that he may have made a few mistakes for almost wiping out all of humanity, tearfully snapping Red Moon out of existence, calling it “his sister”. Because I guess we were supposed to emotionally connect to the giant moon that showed little to no signs of sentience this entire episode? Argos transforms back to Felix, and we learn that Amelie knew where he was the whole time, and she was apparently testing Gabriel for some reason.

After Adrien explains to Marinette that his father ordered him to not tell her about the dance, Adrien goes to talk to Gabriel about it. Gabriel, being Gabriel uses his control over Adrien to force him to never talk about Marinette again. Gabriel then gets a call from Lila, and even though she's been nothing but helpful to him since Season 3, he's apparently tired with her. Why is he suddenly rejecting the help of his most competent (by comparison) ally?

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Also, the episode ends with the revelation that Lila somehow knows Gabriel is Monarch. Why? How? I DON'T CARE, BECAUSE THIS EPISODE SUCKS!

Oh my God, this episode was just terrible! “Derision” and “Adoration” definitely got to me with the way their stories were handled, but this was the first episode in a while to really piss me off. The plot was contrived as hell, basically being a repeat of “Gabriel Agreste”, and you all know how I wasn't exactly a fan of that episode. Think about it: Marinette sneaks into a party, Felix tries to scheme against Gabriel, and Marinette and Adrien end up getting caught in one of his schemes.

The social commentary about how bad the rich were just felt more pretensions than anything else. I get that it's meant to teach children a lesson about the real world, but the episode feels so confident in what its trying to say when it's not that deep, even by kids' show standards. Rich people are bad? Yeah, I think someone like me who lives in the same country as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg knows that. Will you actually teach kids about the financial conditions that allow the wealthy to abuse their power or the cutthroat methods they'll resort to in order to turn a profit? No? You're just going to tell kids that rich people are jerks without giving any actual evidence in the same episode you're using to try and to teach them? Man, these writers just keep hitting it out of the park here!

This whole “Rich people suck” message also falls flat because Felix is the one pushing it. You know, someone who already comes from a rich family? It's not like Bruce Wayne where he uses his money to help the people of Gotham, as Batman or not. Felix just whines about how “tHeY'rE tHe MoNsTeRs.” when he's just as well-off as they are. The episode tries to do a subtle discrimination message as evidenced by his rant as Argos earlier, but it doesn't work because we have never seen anyone discriminate against Felix for who he is. Yeah, the episode once again tries to hint at him being a Sentimonster, but because the show hasn't just pulled the trigger and confirmed it, it's hard to really sympathize with him being “excluded” when we've never seen him being treated differently by others in earlier episodes, and even if he was a Sentimonster, nobody would know or be able to discriminate against him in the first place.

I don't know why the show keeps trying to excuse Felix's actions when once again, he pretty much committed fucking genocide yet the episode still wanted us to feel bad for him realizing his actions had consequences. If he actually wanted to own up to his mistakes, he'd either hand over the Peacock Miraculous to Ladybug or help Ladybug stop Monarch. For someone who claims he hates when people abuse power to make others suffer, he's no better, judging from how both times he's gotten to use a Miraculous, he's either screwed over Ladybug (Strikeback) or endangered a lot of innocent people. And if you're wondering why I didn't point out any double standards between the treatment of Felix compared to Chloe, that doesn't really matter. No matter how you feel about Chloe, whether you feel like she got screwed over or not, it doesn't really make how the writers are glorifying Felix any better or worse, as his potential “redemption arc” isn't off to a good start.

The plot was stupid, Felix was an idiot, and it felt like more effort was put into the musical number than the writing. In my opinion, this is easily the worst episode of the season so far.

Although at the very least, now that we have even more evidence that Adrien, Felix, and even Kagami are all Sentimonsters, I think I know what clip I can start using to describe my feelings on this plotline.

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THE BIGGEST IDIOT OF THE EPISODE IS... FELIX

For someone who managed to outsmart Gabriel on multiple occasions with no superpowers, Felix's intelligence really took a nosedive the second he got the Peacock Miraculous. He came up with a completely unnecessary plan that involved impersonating his cousin's identity and mocking his friend when he's supposed to try and win their favor, he danced with his cousin's girlfriend without his consent, transformed in public, smearing his reputation even further, and proceeded to gleefully wipe out humanity through a musical number, and needed other people to point out how immoral his actions were. Of course, Marinette gets second place thanks to her plan to break into the party and later letting Argos get away.

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maspers · 5 months

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Ranking the Miracucast by how good of a Doctor Who Companion they'd be.

Marinette: She'd be great at it, but she would also hate it and just want it to be over. She's tired and has no time for this shenaniganry. Please give her this chance to not be involved. 5/10

Alya: Would have SO MANY QUESTIONS. Could do very well, but I can see her veering dangerously close to Adam Mitchell territory. Careful there, Alya. 7/10

Adrien: Yes. 10/10

Nino: I think he'd be a decent TARDIS passenger, but he's the type that'd be part of an ensemble. Wouldn't work as well as a solo companion. 4/10

Chloe: Sorry Chloe fans, but no. The Doctor can pull a redemption arc out of anyone, but they also have no patience for bullcrap. It's just not happening no matter how much I want it to. 1/10

Sabrina: I think she would be great, but the fandom would not like her as a companion. 6/10

Mylene: Yeah, she would not like it. 0/10

Ivan: If Mylene isn't going, then neither is he. 0/10

Rose: Would be absolutely hilarious due to her name alone. Accompanying a Classic Doctor might be better for her. 7/10

Juleka: I don't care what you say she would be excellent and the fandom would love her. Ironically would probably fit better with a NuWho Doctor. 10/10

Kim: The Doctor does not want Kim in the TARDIS. Kim has been in the TARDIS at least once, and the Doctor has vowed that it will be the last time. They're wrong. 4/10

Max: The Doctor would ADORE Markov. Max would be Markov's plus one. 7/10 by proxy

Alix: Pretty sure she already is a companion. Like. In canon. We haven't seen it but it's definitely happened, fight me. Alix/10

Nathaniel: I want to say he'd be great but in my heart I know he would be Very Stressed. Definitely would not want to travel with the Doctor, but would keep getting dragged along by his friends. The fandom would love him though. 5/10

Lila: As she is now? Absolutely not. The Doctor would despise her. -10/10, BUUUUUUT if she was picked up before Volpina (or pre-Chameleon at the latest) I think she could be redeemed like in the Scarlet Lady AU. She would be hilarious. She gives me Turlough vibes. If the Doctor can deal with Turlough and Missy then he can deal with Lila. She has the potential to be unique and have an interesting character arc compared to other companions, and let's be honest NuWho needs something unique and interesting. 8/10

Luka: Like Nino, he works better as part of ensemble. Would be an excellent supporting character for Marinette or Juleka if they were companions, or maybe be a very cool Oneshot Companion like Wilf. 3/10

Kagami: The Doctor would have their work cut out for them, because Kagami is a "stab first ask questions later" person and the Doctor doesn't vibe with that normally. Neither The Doctor nor Kagami would be happy with this arrangement. So naturally Kagami's sole season would be one of the best in the entire show. 9/10

Marc: He would travel with either the Second or Thirteenth Doctors. He would do wonderfully, but his seasons would definitely be more focused on the Doctor than Marc himself. Sorry Marc. 7/10

Ondine: Is too busy keeping Kim out of trouble. And as stated previously, the Doctor does not want Kim in the TARDIS. 2/10

Felix: I just don't think it would work. Felix could definitely be a major recurring character, but somehow I can't really see him actually being a companion proper. He does get bonus points for being British. Perhaps instead of being a companion he spends his free time annoying Torchwood. 3/10

Zoe: She'd be great. But the universe would be Very Cruel to her. People will die, and she will not be happy about it. 8/10

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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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flightfoot · 2 months

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Marinette Completed Angst Fic Reclist

I know some people really like this genre, so I figured I'd make a list for it! These will obviously all be completed, and none of them will be bashing fics, and PLEASE don't rec any fics on this post that are bashing fics, I don't want to see them.

Some of these will have my own commentary about the fic attached to it, for if I've put them on a previous reclist where I had that commentary written out. But a lot of the older fics won't.

For a fic to count for this, the angst Marinette goes through can't just be her being upset about what someone else is going through, though the angst of the fic doesn't only need to be hers, so long as she has her own angst which is a decently prominent part of the fic.

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one does not love breathing by @wackus-bonkus-maximus

All of Paris watched as Hawkmoth murdered Chat Noir, taking the Black Cat Miraculous for himself. Ladybug swears revenge, but her enemy—and every miraculous in his possession—disappear without a trace.

Six years later, a new team of villains launches an attack for the last remaining Miraculous: Volpina, armed with new powers; Queen Bee, with questionable loyalty; Argos, the new holder of the Peacock Miraculous; and Cat Walker, who Ladybug hates the most.

Takes place after S4 - Strike Back.

This is a simply phenomenal fic. You get to explore a lot of different perspectives, like Felix, Kagami, Marinette, and Adrien’s, just to name a few, and see their different thought processes and plans and priorities, and how it can cause their plans to collide with each other, even when they all ultimately are aiming for a good outcome for everyone. The characters are pretty complex and can mess up at times, even when they’re doing things (or not doing things, looking at you Luka) with the best of intentions. It was a joy to read and a real nail-biter the whole time, I actually wrote a fic for it halfway through just to resolve some of the tension for myself, One Does Not Love Shadows.

It also features the version of Luka I’ve connected best with to date, as he feels like Luka, but also is a lot more fleshed out, and can make some major errors while simply trying to avoid missteps. It’s helped me get a better handle on a character who I’ve generally had a lot of problems with really understanding.

It is an M-rated fic, though I think Wackus is being overly cautious on that front. There’s no sexual content and I wouldn’t put the violence or gore above a T-rating, so I wouldn’t let the rating scare you off.

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you don’t even know me at all (but I was made for loving you) by @ladyofthenoodle

They didn’t remember each other. The hospital told them there’d been an accident—brain damage—but Alya had told them the truth, later. Who’d they’d been to each other. What they’d given up, and why. But even with their memories of each other gone, Adrien and Marinette are still inextricably tied together—by law, by their social circles, and by their hearts. And in the apartment they share, there’s only one bed.

Yep, it’s the “there was only one bed” trope XD! I especially love how it was used here, how Adrien and Marinette are strangers now but they had a whole life together, and they pine for each other even without remembering, and how Marinette just can’t believe how in love with her Adrien is even though he doesn’t remember her. I loved the emotional turmoil the two of them went through together in the fic, and the resolution, it’s great!

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fine line by @bbutterflies

“Catwalker?” Loveybug asks. “Hmm?” “Do you remember… what happened before us?” “What do you mean?” “Before we were heroes. Was there someone else?” Catwalker goes quiet for a moment. “I don’t know,” he finally says.

This is a surprisingly angsty take on the Loveybug AU. Here, since the Loveybug and Cat Walker transformations are so unnatural, they’re having negative side effects on Marinette and Adrien, causing them to be constantly exhausted and even to get amnesia the longer they continue using them.

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do you think I have forgotten about you? by @roseinaugust

Based on the song ‘About You’ by The 1975. Memory Loss. Told in alternating time lines, one leading up to and one dealing with the aftermath of Marinette relinquishing the Miracle Box and the guardianship. Marinette struggles with her life after losing her memory, though there is a persistent voice that calls to her that always seems just out of reach in her memory.

Beautiful memory loss fic here, with seeing Ladybug’s and Chat Noir’s relationship before she gave up the Miracle box, juxtaposed with the present day, when Adrien is only a stranger to her. I could really feel how Marinette was struggling with navigating these new circumstances, with her friends seeming to expect her to remember, to be who she was to them, to Adrien especially, before, and her just… not knowing whether she can do that. It’s got a happy ending though, for those who are concerned about that.

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Our Tales Are Endless (That’s Why I Tell Them) by @joonapeach

Marinette lives a simple life - one surrounded by pretty dresses, fresh macaroons, and the calming view of Paris. It’s a life she thinks she has always fit in. And yet sometimes, when a certain boy comes by her shop with a flower and a new adventurous story, she can’t help but wonder if there’s something else she’s missing.

This was a truly gorgeous story. It’s the classic “Marinette gives up the Miracle Box and loses her memories” storyline, exploring her life two years later. Even though she’s had time to heal and recover, she still feels like she’s missing something, something big. At least Adrien’s stopping by regularly to tell her stories about Ladybug and Chat Noir, even if she doesn’t understand why they resonate with her so well.

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I (Wish I) Knew You by @buggachat

University has been hard on Marinette. Making new friends and maintaining her grades is a lot easier said than done when she has to disappear at odd times to fight akumas. She's struggling, and with Alya away with family and Adrien painfully out of reach, she's never felt lonelier.

If only she could talk to someone who really understood her struggles... but it's not like Chat Noir would know anything about loneliness. Right?

Nice aged-up Ladynoir fic here! Marinette’s struggling with losing friends and lovers because of her flakiness due to her superhero activities, until at last she breaks down. Thankfully, Chat Noir’s there at least - and it soon turns out he’s got problems of his own that he’s been hiding.

There’s some fluff and angst, it’s mostly just the two of them navigating life, dealing with their feelings and talking things out.

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If I Let Myself Love You by @uptoolateart

It’s hard to be a normal girl with a normal life when your mother has terminal cancer. And when fashion model Adrien Agreste moves back to Paris and wants to be Marinette’s friend – or maybe even more – her life is turned upside down again.

How can she risk opening her heart to love when her whole world is falling apart? Especially when Adrien is hiding a dark secret of his own….

- COMPLETE FIC – updates on Sundays

*** No kwamis AU - 100% Adrinette. About half of it is fluffy and half heavy. Please read tags for trigger warnings. ***

This fic can be rough, definitely pay attention to the tags. There’s no villains in this story, it mostly centers around themes of dealing with illness - both being sick and having a loved one who’s terminally ill - and death, grieving someone who’s lost, and how difficult that can be. It can get pretty gut-wrenching at times, especially as you slowly discover more layers of what’s really going on, what both Adrien and Marinette are hiding, both from others and from themselves in order to help cope with their circumstances. But they still move forwards together, regardless.

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Between the Heavens and the Embers by @readersmoon

Everyone in Paris remembers the fateful night of January 16, when the city was attacked by the most powerful and destructive akuma ever created. The assault, which lasted for hours, resulted in the death of 439 people.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng was among the casualties.

Years later, Adrien hasn't been able to move on, haunted by the memories of her broken body. So, when the opportunity to leave Paris for a while presents itself, he doesn't hesitate. But this trip might end up giving him more than he ever dreamt of.

This is a fantastic fic, though a serious and a dark one - make sure to mind the tags, and it’s M-rated for a reason. Vee - or rather, Marinette - is going through a horror story here. Imagine finding out that your life is a lie, that everyone you thought you could trust was manipulating you, that you were just being continually gaslit for years.

As for Adrien, Alya, and Nino... well, none of them took Marinette’s “death” all that well, especially Adrien. Finding out that she’s been alive all this time, in these horrible circumstances, and they had no clue... it’s hard on them as well.

I love how this fic goes into how much trauma everyone has even after the immediate danger’s dealt with, you don’t just walk off this kind of experience, especially with how many years this lasted.

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in case you don’t know me tomorrow by @thelibraryloser:

“We live in a crazy world where pieces of our lives can be erased like they never even happened. I just wanted to memorize this moment so… so I could keep it, if that makes sense.”

Adrien’s heart gave a little flutter. She wanted to keep this moment, meeting him. She wanted to keep… him.

“I understand exactly what you mean.“

In a world that has created a way to selectively delete memories, no moment is truly safe. So how do you hold on to something when the memory of it is gone? And how do you keep fighting for someone when you’re the only one who remembers?

This is a SEVERELY underrated fic. It’s got some shades of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” in the world, though the plot is very different - the memory erasure ain’t willing.

Basically, the first few chapters are establishing Adrien’s and Marinette’s romance, and then the rest of the fic is dealing with Gabriel being an absolute DICK and using any means at his disposal to break them apart. It’s fantastic and I highly recommend reading it!

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hella enchanted by @xiueryn:

Years ago, Marinette’s father died and she was left with her awful stepmother. With magic forcing her to obey every command, she lived as a servant and gave up hope. When a man appears, searching for the very fairy that blessed her, Marinette decides to give life one more try. AU.

(a different ella enchanted au.)

Even though it’s a one-shot this one is pretty long, clocking in at over 30k words. Absolutely worth a shot, though. The first third is basically Marinette dealing with being pushed around because of her “blessing”, and the other two-thirds is just some adorable fluff of her and Adrien touring the country together.

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Echoes of You by kittinoir

In the day time, she's Marinette - a normal girl, with a normal life. A normal girl, with a normal life. A normal girl, with... Not Season 4 Compliant; please, no spoilers

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balancing act by fictionalinfinity

“Besides, being Ladybug always came first. It came before school, friends, and sometimes even family. Now it had to come before her health. Marinette had a duty to Paris. She wouldn’t let them down.” Or, being both Ladybug and the Guardian starts to take its toll on Marinette. - the epilepsy au literally no one asked for

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Some Days by @merrygreenie

Some days are worse, and others are a little better, little by little and day by day. Marinette Dupain-Chen is learning how to live her new normal after living in confinement and being tortured by Hawkmoth. She is thankful to have her friends and family to support her. And a very special Chat who loves her very much. *This story contains scenes of violence and torture this is a whump fic*

This fic has some great angst, but be warned, it's not kidding about the violence and torture. Honestly, it should probably be rated M instead of Teen, given that while the fic mostly takes place after Marinette escapes and while she's recovering, we do get a detailed flashback to her torture.

#miraculous ladybug #ml fanfic rec #marinette dupain cheng #angst

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lostuntothisworld · 1 month

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Okay so I think it's time for another spaghetti theory:

Lilamoth isn't collecting moms. She's collecting sisters (or siblings)

Let me explain my thought process here. So a big complaint the fandom has is that we don't have a proper rogue gallery for villains. It's just the butterfly, and nothing else. It worked for early seasons, but things might be getting stale for some folks.

Enter new characters connected to Lilamoth somehow.

So she has 3 moms so far (that we know about.) All but one have something in common: dark hair and blue eyes.

From left to right we have Mrs. Rossi (red), Mrs. Bianca (white), and her third mother who is deaf could possibly be Mrs. Verdi (green).

Then we have this fourth lady that we see Lilamoth watching on her phone in the season 5 finale. I would NOT be surprised if Odille is going to be her 4th mom. Dark hair and blue eyes, and she is also disabled, just like her third mom.

(And I would not be surprised if we find out her surname is Nero (black), or Viola (violet). More on that aspect of this crack theory in a bit...)

Anyway, back to the concept of a rogues gallery. In the finale we see Lila in a disguise that 's VERY reminiscent of one of her moms:

Certainly she can't expect to disguise herself as a woman in her 30's-40's, and especially not with glasses and bangs. But she can pass reasonably as a teenage girl with a dark bob and glasses. You know, a sister.

So we know a certain main character whose name is in the title and wears red with black polkadots has dark hair and blue eyes. We don't know Lilamoth's motivations and and end goal, but we can surmise that she wants to take the place of Marinette.

(And I KNOW I've seen at least one other person theorize this, and I cannot find the post(s) so if you can find it please let me know so I can link it here!)

The pictures we see is one of Marinette with her classmates on the Liberty where Zoe is accepted in the friend group, Marinette with her parents, 3 pictures of Marinette with Kagami, and one picture of Marinette with Luka.

It's interesting to note that there isn't a picture of Marinette and Adrien together shown to the audience. You'd think they'd emphasize that, but no, it's mostly Kagami. I know it's because it's because the episode focuses on Kagami, but still. Other than her, it's just Marinette's parents, Zoe and Luka (Luka! Marinette's ex!) showcased in the closeup screenshot.

I got sidetracked! Anyway, I think other than similar coloring (and color-themed surnames haha) Lilamoth is trying to find other teenagers who are willing to join forces with her. She probably will get her hands on some Miraculous for them, somehow. But I don't think the new jewels will be from the Chinese box.

Here's where things start REALLY going off the rails with this theory:

All of Lilamoth's rogue gallery of villains are her adopted sisters (or siblings) and they are all Luka's exes. He's got a type for Italians with dark hair and blue eyes...

Going back to the surnames, all the surnames have something in common: they share the colors of all of Adrien's various transformations over the course of the series so far:

Rossi: Mister Bug

Bianca: Chat Blanc

Verdi: Aspik

We're just missing Chat Noir (could possibly will be the surname Nero, as it's Italian)

and Ephemeral (it's interesting to note that the surname Lee in Chinese can mean plum, which of course, is purple)

So naturally, my crack theory circles back to Lukadrien is endgame.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

{{{{{{Edit as of April 3, 2024.}}}}}

I will NOT be surprised if this girl with black hair in an extremely recognizable style is a disguise of another sister.

Is Lilamoth collecting blackmail to manipulate them later? She's very obviously walking disguised in areas where there would be lots of cameras (The inside of the Agreste mansion, and the hotel).

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anxresi · 10 months

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Based on what I’ve seen and read, it would appear as though...

...Adrien is the SECOND most underused and underappreciated character in the show (after Chloe, of course).

How could someone, with SO much going for them in terms of relevance to the plot (his dad is the main baddie, him being the main love interest and co-superhero, his NAME being in the title for God sake) be so wilfully ignored?

Let’s just say, Fu’s words about Ladybug and Chat being ‘equals’ sounds awfully hollow when presented with the actual evidence in canon.

From what I understand, he even spent the big S5 finale locked up with Kagami ROBBING VIEWERS OF SEEING HIM CONFRONT HIS FATHER AND DISCOVERING THE TRUTH.

Inexcusable from a storytelling POV IMHO, but so is having your only apparent agency in the show being Marinette’s arm candy and messing up a LOT during superhero duty so Ladybug can look good by comparison.

What are his other interests, besides trying to make her happy in and out of costume? What are his other personality traits, apart from being a pliable doormat to her every whim? None, as far as I see.

‘Girl Power’ isn’t intentionally writing male characters to be subservient to their female counterparts, it’s about making them EQUAL in terms of importance & relevance. In as far as what I’ve learned about Adrien on the show of late, it looks like they failed miserably on both those counts.

Bring this up with Astruc, and naturally he’ll accuse you of being a ‘sexist’ or worst a ‘misogynist’ (talk about the pot calling the kettle black) and say something along the lines of ‘you just don’t want a GIRL in charge’.

Well considering about 99.9% of the people who bring this up with him ARE female, I fear he may have got his wires crossed on this one. EVERYONE wants a more equal partnership between the two title characters, and suggesting if you do you’re some kind of bigoted chauvinist is gaslighting of the highest order.

(Mind you, this coming from a guy who recently said Ladybug was Barbie and Chat Noir was KEN, so we can’t expect too much from him)

I must say, being an absolute Chloe stan (as if you didn’t know) I was a bit out of my comfort zone during this short rant, but I think it ties in nicely with my problems with the show’s formulaic and contradictory writing in general, so I thought I’d give it a go anyway. Hope I did okay!

(Don’t get me started on that ‘Marinette must learn a lesson in every episode’ bullshit, either)

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to get in touch. Oh, and one more bonus meme to add to the collection...

...Hopefully, you’re beginning to see my point. :p

#miraculous #miraculous ladybug #ladybug #chloe bourgeois #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #chat noir #ml salt #ml #zag #disney

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theerurishipper · 4 months

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Am I selfish for wishing Marinette wasn't the protagonist? She doesn't really connect to the plot besides her love arc and I don't find it that interesting. Like a lot of female protagonists like the cast of Totally Spies the girls force to work for Jerry, or Bloom finding she's a fairy and has the dragon flame or Iris from lolirock who finds out she's Princess of Ephedia. Like you have all these ladies who's arc isn't just connected to just love like it's part of it but romance isn't central to their character they have more to them.

Like it's so weird honestly because I never really knew of a protagonist who just didn't connect with the story instead the secondary character has. His father the villain, he has fans and many who crush on him, he's a model but he's secretly also the famed ChatNoir, he's an abused child who want their parent attention, rich, and a little behind when it comes to social cues. Like? Are we sure he's not the protagonist is that why the show gives him such little contributions and makes others take what he's deserves. Like the book from early on s2, felix finding out his mother in the basement, Kagami learning early on the whole agreste situation and doing a whole play in front of Ladybug with Felix to convey the situation.

She's in every episode most MC's aren't always there sometimes they leave for an episode or two or have someone take the spotlight but she is there 24/7. Like I kinda want to know another character for a chance because I already gauged enough of her character to know romance is all there is to her lol. I don't know can't we have an Adrien central episode, Alya, Kagami, hell even Luka?

No wonder I think the cast are so bland to me because they just appear we don't really know them personally besides if they get akumatized.

Marinette to me is like if we're seeing the blushing female girl and the entire show from a Hinata perspective in Naruto just there to pine for a boy who aren't even that close.

You're not selfish for that, anon. We all have our different tastes. Personally, I like Marinette as the protagonist, but we all have different likes and dislikes.

I will say that the writing for Marinette as a protagonist is pretty lacking though. She doesn't have any connection to the main plot on her own and can only have any relevance in the final battle of her show by taking the place of some other character. The show is literally allergic to taking the focus off her for more than five seconds. Plenty of shows that have a single character as their main lead also devote few episodes to the developing the side characters.

For example, a superhero show like Miraculous would usually have an episode where Ladybug is incapacitated, and Chat Noir has to do the saving. But Miraculous can't handle not having Marinette be the one to save the day at all times, so Chat Noir is just always reduced to being the sidekick or the one who gets caught and has to have Ladybug save him. Like, even in episodes where it seems like Chat Noir will have a larger role to play, the writers can't help but have it be Ladybug who saves the day in the end. Even in episodes that seem like they are going to focus on Adrien, Marinette will have some B plot shoehorned in that will take over the entire episode until it seems like Adrien's conflict is the actual B plot.

Like you said, it's not wrong for the protagonist to take a step back in a few episodes and let the supporting characters shine. Miraculous' habit of shoving Marinette into the resolution for every other conflict but her own is detrimental to both her own character and every other character. It's just bad writing, honestly.

Thank you for your ask!

#ML Salt #ML Writing Salt #ML Writers Salt #Marinette Salt #Asks #Meta #My meta

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kikigeh · 2 years

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I decided to write down the most striking information from the season 5 bible leak. DO NOT INTERACT if you want to go into the season blindly but do interact if you want to discuss it. Heavy spoilers under the cut.

A few things to note before we go on:

The document's final revision is from 2020, this means that THIS DOCUMENT IS NOT FINAL and the information might differ from what we will be seeing in the end product.

Also, a show's bible is meant to go over the key points of the story and characters, it's not necessarily a synopsis of everything that you'll see in the show so save yourself the immediate belief that the season is going to suck because character A or thing B are not mentioned in length here.

The bullet points go in order of appearance in the document, hence the jumps in subjects.

With that out of the way, let's start. FINAL WARNING, leave if you don't want to be spoiled.

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It is revealed that Marinette had a crush on Kim prior to the show starting. Confessing was a bad experience for her (thanks to Chloe) and that's the reason as to why she's so hesitant to confess to Adrien.

At the very end of the season, Ladybug and Chat Noir will finally be able to use their special powers without transforming back. They'll be able to use Lucky Charms/Cataclysms more than once.

Adrien will find the courage to tell Gabriel that he doesn't want to be a model.

Adrien realizes that he feels something special towards Marinette and, realizing that Ladybug will never love him back, he decides to pursue her instead.

Adrien and Marinette will have their first kiss on episode 23 "Collusion".

Gabriel, owing a favor to Tomoe Tsurugi, wants Adrien to be with Kagami.

Nathalie is described in the document as "eventually emerging as a surrogate mother to Adrien".

We will either see or hear what happens when Chat Noir uses his Cataclysm on a human being in the episode "Destruction"

Ladynoir's relationship will change; without Chat Noir's flirting and with Ladybug finally accepting that she needs him (no longer pushing him away), they become a perfect duo of platonic, supportive friends.

Lady Noire and Mister Bug make an appearance in Season 5 once more.

Ladybug will be merging the Ladybug and Black Cat miraculous herself becoming "BugNoire".

The merging of the Ladybug and Black Cat miraculous create a brand new Kwami whose ability is to grant a wish (Like Dragon Ball's Shenron). The magic formula is found within the Grimoire; Gabriel, however, does not know how to decipher it. This is why his goal is to find someone who does.

Ladybug/Marinette finds out Hawkmoth's identity. Chat Noir/Adrien, however, will NEVER learn about it.

Nathalie was introduced to the Agrestes by Mrs. Tsurugi. She was hired because she was a hunter of magical artifacts.

Nathalie is secretly in love with Gabriel and follows him blindly, however, she has a secret plan for herself and wishes to fuse the miraculous so that her own wish can be granted: Make Gabriel fall in love with her.

Monarch will akumatize people and then send out a miraculous their way this season.

At the end of the season, Gabriel will give up the butterfly miraculous and someone else will get a hold of it: Lila.

Lila has several identities and several families, somehow. She goes by Lila Rossi, Cerise and Iris Verdi for different scenarios.

Scarabella will make a comeback for the two episode special.

Chloe's butler's name is Armand; he's the only person who cares for Chloe. More about this will be brought up in the episode "Adoration".

Zoe has feelings for Marinette, but she doesn't dare to tell her. This will also come up in episode "Adoration".

Zoe will become the holder of the Black Cat miraculous during the two-part special.

Contrary to popular belief, there are no written implications about Juleka and Rose's relationship despite it being shown on-screen. Neither are there any implications about Marc and Nathaniel's.

Kim was ALSO in love with Marinette in 8th grade. He is said to be the root of Marinette's problems in the episode "Derision".

Kagami is described as having "powerful feelings" towards both Adrien and Marinette.

Luka will leave in Mid-Season 5 as to not compromise the identities of Ladybug and Chat Noir. He will leave with Jagged to Brazil, where he meets with Su-Han who will teach him Mirakung-fu. He'll go back to Paris in the finale.

Felix's new identity as the Peacock holder is called "Argos".

There will be several instances where we're reminded of Marinette's anxiety, mostly induced by her fears both as a civilian but also as Ladybug.

Marinette gives up on Adrien (or attempts to) and starts realizing that she may have feelings for Chat Noir, who has changed a lot since the end of S4.

Adrien asks Marinette out, which further complicates her feelings since she believes her crush on Adrien is detrimental.

Marinette is convincing herself that the one she loves is Chat Noir in order to forget about Adrien but he, who has given up on Ladybug, is intent on pursuing Marinette this time around.

There will be an apparent complete reversal of the lovesquare which may only culminate with Andre The Ice Maker's appearance to help them figure some things out.

Plagg and Tikki hurt from watching Marinette/Ladybug and Adrien/Chat Noir struggle with their feelings, which is why they opt for removing their miraculous and handing them out to other holders (Alya and Zoe).

Marinette thinks Zoe has a crush on Adrien. We know that that isn't quite the case and she is the object of Zoe's affection instead.

Lila and Chloe become the next class representatives. Lila is able to manipulate and control Chloe; because of their joint efforts, they become Monarch's strongest minions.

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I think the only three things I heavily dislike are:

1. The fact that Adrien will NEVER find out about his father 2. Lila is not a compelling character, so the show is definitely going to suffer with her as the lead villain. 3. Felix is not mentioned much, if at all. Seems like the sentimonster arc might take a backseat but then again, things could've changed during production from 2020 to 2022.

But other than that, I don't see why anyone would read the document and firmly believe that it's underwhelming. If anything, I find most of it extremely exciting compared to the other seasons. Only time will tell.... but anyway, until then, don't miss today's release of episode 1!

#miraculous ladybug #ml spoilers #ml bible #ml leak #ml season 5

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snitchesnsneeds · 3 months

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First Half of Miraculous Season 2 Done. Here's my thoughts:

The Collector: A pretty good start! They made the teens smart while still being dumb teens!

Despair Bear: Chloe needs a therapist, arguably moreso than a redemption arc and especially a downward villainous spiral. Also Dangit Grandpa

Prime Queen: Wow, this was a lot more chill than expected. Even Cat Noir was left aghast at what Nadja was doing, Nadja seemed to be pressuring Ladybug and Cat Noir more for views than anything else, and I'm not entirely sure Akuma personalities can be trusted.

Befana: Fun fact: This was the episode that got me into Miraculous in the first place because of how shocking it was. And then I discovered even more. In hindsight from watching the other episodes, it was relatively darker, but mostly because it's Marinette's friends and family that are getting G-rated killed instead of random civilians like every other episode.

Riposte: Kagami is here! I don't see too much chemistry with her and Adrien yet, but she's cool and I like her and feel like I could be friends in real life. Also this feels like a relatively uncommon trope, but I wish "X is blatantly a woman but no one notices" was spedran through by someone with brains.

Robustus: Pretty good, all things considered. From what I've heard about Miraculous lore, creating sapient or at the very least semi-sapient AI isn't that uncommon for weirdness hotspots, and I'm putting Max in the list of characters I think should have figured out Ladybug and Cat Noir's identity. (There's four now!)

Gigantitan: It turns out my favorite parts of Miraculous are the slice-of-life bits instead of the superhero bits the show is about! We got to see more of Marinette's friends! Alix! Mylene! Julie! The Eeby Deeby herself! Also it was really sweet to see Adrien's bodyguard calm down just by looking at the kid. Adrien's true daddy.

Dark Owl: No wonder these two aren't allowed to know eachothers' identities, considering how much of a loose tongue Marinette has!

Glaciator: Alright, it's finally time to talk about the sins of Marinette and Cat Noir, considering the fan content I osmosed before watching the series was heavy salt stuff, and I wanna see how much it holds up. So far Cat Noir has acted as if he's already dating Ladybug previously, and in this episode he got mad at Ladybug for not showing up at a date when she herself said she might not come due to having other plans. Isn't he supposed to be used to not-showing-up disappointment as Adrien due to his dad? Is it different because he's Cat Noir? Is this a breaking point? No matter, he eventually calms down and is ultimately the less bad member of the relationship. Marinette, meanwhile, doesn't have as many misdemeanors to her name but they're a lot worse. She stole Adrien's phone to get rid of an embarrassing message and got away with it too, what the hell, and also owns the schedule. Although I don't believe she stalked Adrien and made it herself due to how busy she is as both Marinette and Ladybug, that's just weird and wrong. I'm reluctant to call her a stalker, but her actions are still wrong. Ultimately, this relationship is going to need a lot of therapy and counseling to not crash and burn. What were we talking about again? Oh yeah. The ice cream episode. I think the ice cream guy can be wrong and he doesn't understand that.

Sapotis: Silly little fun episode, also it introduces the first new Miraculous holder! I'm honestly fine with it so far if it means more screentime for side characters. I honestly really like seeing Marinette's classmates. They're neat. Also I was this close to putting Alya on the list but she proves time and time again that she doesn't actually know Ladybug's identity.

Gorizilla: In this episode we are introduced to Adrien's deranged parasocial fanbase. I'm starting to understand some of his father's decisions at this point. This is what I was talking about with the schedule, by the way. These obsessive stalker creeps make Marinette look reasonable, and I wouldn't be surprised if the one guy who I'm pretty sure becomes Party Crasher discreetly stalked Adrien to get his schedule. Restraining orders need to be filed.

Captain Hardrock: One of the funniest episodes, up there with Dark Cupid. Also Luka is here! And he already has great chemistry with Marinette! And more Rosie and Julie content even if it's crumbs!

#miraculous ladybug #miraculoustalesofladybugandcatnoir #ml salt #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #gabriel agreste #nadja chamack #kagami tsurugi #max kante #alix kubdel #mylene haprele #juleka couffaine #rose lavillant #alya cesaire #luka couffaine #lukanette

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bittersweetresilience · 5 months

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adrien often being referred to in fanon as “sunshine” and the sun and something about Felix having Moon symbolism. is this anything sunny?

sentitwin sun moon symbolism is absolutely ridiculous. i have thought about it before but never gotten anywhere. this time i consulted @ninadove about it and rotated it in my mind for many hours and i am still not sure about my verdict. therefore i'm just going to ramble a bit and then pass it over to nina. birthday teamwork!

i started out agreeing with the assignment of adrien as the sun and félix as the moon.

their personalities seem to fit the vibes. moreover, it ties into yin and yang.

adrien's miraculous is placed on the yang half of the miracle box, and ladybug's on the yin. his hair is parted to the right, which is the direction of yang, while félix's and ladybug's are parted to the left, yin.

a brief tangent here: even though the placement in the miracle box and adrien and marinette's civilian selves with their white and black outer garments respectively seem to indicate yang and yin, when they become heroes, they swap entirely. ladybug wears red, yang, and chat noir wears black, yin. their powers of creation and destruction are also yang and yin. my theory is that not only are adrien and marinette meant to be halves of a whole as partners, but their hero selves are also meant to halves of a whole with their civilian selves. yin and yang symbolism all around.

back to adrien as sunshine. before félix was introduced, adrien was established as the character in the show with the disney princess golden hair and golden smile, so it's easy to see where this fanon came from.

marinette describes her love for him as three suns in her heart.

then if we want to pair the sentitwins, and we think adrien is the sun, it makes sense for félix to be the moon.

some final evidence in support of this is mirror imagery. the same way the moon reflects the light of the sun, félix reflects adrien. both in his creation as a reflection of adrien's and in his behavior in the show. félix dresses as adrien in over half of his episodes.

but this picture is complicated by several factors. there's a fair amount of evidence that the twins are actually associated the other way around, with adrien as the moon and félix as the sun.

gold and silver color symbolism. one could easily think of gold as the sun and silver as the moon, but in the show, félix and the graham de vanilys are associated with gold and adrien and the agrestes are associated with silver. the wedding rings, the colors of their homes, their camouflaged miraculous, the lighting... anarchist gang talked about this a few months ago and i think nina may want to expand on what we discovered, so i will leave this to her.

another brief tangent here: white and black color symbolism. i have not fleshed out my thoughts on it but i am leaving notes here for future reference. adrien's civilian outfit features white, but this likely reflects gabriel's influence on him. his hero selves wear black. meanwhile, félix is introduced dressed in black and haloed in white as he enters gabriel's sphere. in the play, it's the opposite. at the diamonds' dance, he and marinette wear white and kagami, like lune rouge, wears red. obfuscation? femininity? yin and yang again?

and a third brief tangent here: when chat noir is unhealthy, he becomes chat blanc, who is white, and patte de velours, who is accented with gold. colors of entanglement? of influence? of inauthenticity? are félix's best parts adrien's idea of a perfect self? i am contemplating.

there are more significant reasons for moon adrien and sun félix. in important moments of the show, adrien is frequently associated with the moon. glaciator, chat blanc, kuro neko, new york special... and on the other hand, where does the sun play an important part of the story? in réplique, with félix.

narratively, sentitwins seem to have moon and sun roles. adrien is the one from whom things are hidden, while félix is the one who shines light on the truth. adrien spends most of his time as support, while félix is an active agent. adrien reacts to things, while félix makes them happen, for better or for worse.

nina has an entire essay on félix and the development of his sun associations from lune rouge to the sunrise in représentation, so i'll leave that to her to discuss.

all right. sentitwins are either sun and moon or moon and sun. what does this mean for them?

it intrigues me that adrien is viewed by fanon as the sun when he could be better described as the moon. adrien agreste enjoyers, please get on this.

here is a starting point for your thoughts. if adrien is the moon, it makes sense why he destroyed the moon in chat blanc when he was trying to destroy himself.

and if félix is the sun, it further puts into perspective why he felt guilty about réplique's fate. they were a sacrifice for his goals. he may has well have literally killed them.

role reversal and false impressions are prominent in sentitwins and this complicated picture adds to that.

frequently bought together. do not separate.

in conclusion, yes, autumn, this is most certainly something. fuck if i know what it is, but i love losing my mind about it.

#I'M SORRY I HAVE NO IDEA HOW THIS ENDED UP THIS LONG #also i have recently discovered the joy of answering asks and i am eating you for this one. eating you whole #miraculous ladybug #felix fathom #felix graham de vanily #adrien agreste #🌃#🏮#good lord i hope you enjoy at least some of this nonsense HAHE #ml meta

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almadesarrollo · 1 month

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MLB SEASON 6 FELINETTE'S BIG TRACK IN JEREMY ZAG'S VIDEO (new Miraculous scenarios via Instagram) ANALYSIS AND FELINETTE CLUES FOR S6 PART 3 marinette's balcony : THE BALLS AND color symbology

PART 2 marinette's balcony : flowers and HYDRANSIAS.

2 BALL: the balls of light have undergone a color change, here you have a scheme AND their color palette and order.

Ok, we can see that the balls are not placed like that because yes, if not, there is a color pattern that repeats, both on one balcony and on the other, before analyzing the color pattern, which says a lot, we have to think about what it represents in Yes the balls on Marinette's balcony.

For me it is clear, they represent her self-love and her ability to shine.

Let's look at the two characteristics, 1 they are round and the circle or mole is the figure that represents Marinette, it is in everything, her aesthetics, her clothes, her design and of course in ladybug since this is a pattern typical of ladybugs. This speaks to us about her, her self-love and her way of being,

2 these give light, which tells us that Marinette is a soul of light, a pure soul, they shine in the night which tells us that even in the DARKEST moments of life Marinette is able to move forward and shine.

NOW LET'S GET TO THE MOST IMPORTANT THING, THE COLOR PATTERN.

1 PATTERN SEASONS 1-5

Well, each color represents a character and from there we get clues, right? That is why as we look at the order we have, white, yellow, hot pink, red, light green and start again. What does each one represent?

- white: kagami and tsuguri are in all their aesthetics, but it is also representative of marinette, which tells us that part of that development and self-love and billiards ability, it will be kagami who starts it and it doesn't take long considering what we have said above.

-yellow: represents Chloe and Queen Bee, yellow is a very characteristic color of hers but also, she combines a lot with white, Chloe resettles Kagami, which would confirm the first color for us, (remember that white was both Marinette and Kagami , one of the 2) that this pattern begins with Kagami, so Marinette's evolution will occur through her actions, realizing that Chloe is nicknamed queen just like Kagami who is nicknamed queen, there you have another confirmation.

-hot pink/fuchsia; Zoe, MARINETTE INVERSE, this color is a very particular color because we find it in a certain aesthetic, a colored wick, aha, you have this wick for Zoe and Marinette from the inverse miraculous so it represents both,

What does this mean? Well, it is confirmation that Marinette is going to become more characterful and evolve.

Zoe represents Marinette, but a more adult, more liberal, more confident Marinette, which is why they both have a similar aesthetic,

Now, if we remember especially MIRACULOUS INVERSE, bad Marinette also had it and also on the same side of her bangs, what do we know about that Marinette? that her life was a shit (to sum it up hahaha) so what happens to that Marinette will surely happen to ours, this is going to make her become cold and isolate herself from everything, but also make her very strong, she It will be "broken" to be "built" again due to several factors, because they are going to damage it from all sides and the causes will be kagami and lila, but above all kagami, but this will force her to mature and become strong Well, only in the darkness is where we can shine, right? and that is where we would have "zoe", a very sweet girl but also very self-confident and brave...

-red: kagami and ladybug, red is clearly the color of ladybug and kagami,

Now which of the two are you referring to, well clearly Ladybug, because Kagami was already represented before and remember, we come from that hot pink, what does this mean? Well, the fact that Marinette becomes stronger in herself will logically influence her form as a heroine, it's like this side is going to reinforce it more, but also she won't have as much of a complex type of "if she doesn't" "I'm nothing" she will understand that Ladybug is part of her and she is part of Ladybug, overcoming her insecurities", but that is if she had a bit of a bad time before, the inverse special gave clues.

-Neon green: chatnoir and adrien,

Yes, we could say that it is black but the truth is that neon green is the color that we see in many of their patterns, together we see it in their transformation, logo, print, etc... so it is a very characteristic color of theirs. , What does it mean? WELL, the relationship with both Chatnoir and Adrien is going to end, because, well, because of Kagami (and Lila's lies and Marinette herself) all that domino effect will also ruin the relationship between these two, and to confirm this , then the pattern is repeated again, leaving white, and again the same order, thus finishing one thing, and for that reason in this new season we have a new pattern of colors and balls.

2 PATTERN SEASONS 6,7....

Well, the order of this pattern is as follows, red, indigo blue, green, yellow and then this series repeats, red, indigo blue etc...ok? Well, knowing the order and what the colors and balls represent, let's do it.

-red: kagami and ladybug, represents both,

and it tells us 2 things:

1st: Kagami will be the one to ruin Marinette's life completely and the fact that she appears here means that S6 YOU WILL HAVE MORE THAN OBVIOUS CLUE THAT THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN, to summarize, Kagami is going to betray Marinette by revealing her identity to the world, this movement will be given by lila from the shadows with manipulation.

and this should no longer be a surprise, the Félix chapter already gave clues that SHE IS UNITED WITH CHLOE AND LILA.

esto ser aun batacazo doble para marinette porque uno se puede esperar traicion por parte de chloe y de lila, pero ¿de kagami? la serie va a ser como hermanas, así que imagínate.

[this friendship will be broken]

This is going to destroy Marinette, so she will be left alone and this was both in civilian life and as a heroine (not counting the whole mess with Adrien and the lies and what Lila is going to get into their relationship)

2nd after all this, Marinette will really focus on being Ladybug seriously, and she will take her place, by then, her life will be chaos and of course she will not be able to trust anyone (not even in chatnoir) so she will have to search to a new partner, IT COULD ALSO BE A CLUE THAT WITH THE MESS HE'S GOING TO BE IN, HE MAY EVEN HAVE TO CHANGE MIRACULOUS AND USE THE DRAGON,

THAT MIRACULOUS IS ALSO RED AND THAT'S WHY SHE APPEARS AT THE END OF LS3 WITH THAT MIRACULOUS (S3 IS KAGAMI'S SEASON, IN IT WE TELL US ABOUT EVERYTHING SHE WILL DO AND INVOLVE IN MARINETTE'S LIFE)

-índigo blue: Argos

THIS COLOR REPRESENTS ARGOS, Argos and Félix, will play a crucial role because in S6, as we already see with my previous posts, and with all the chaos, Marinette will have the only person who will take care of her and protect, it will be Felix,

Now, it should be noted that this color is Argos, not Félix, which would indicate that on the one hand, we will see in this S6 MUCH MORE OF ARGOS HIMSELF THAN FELIX, and that the help will be more on a heroic level than on a civilian level, Argos is going to Being Ladybug's right hand, the only one she will be able to trust, will lighten her burden as Ladybug and little will replace Chatnoir, this is because of all the loyalty, affection, care and understanding that he will show, that's why appears here, this confirms what we mentioned in many of our posts, that felinette and argonette will be real, what's more, since this is on Marinette's balcony, it is possible that we even have a scene where Argos visits her on her balcony (how romantic aww).

Now in fact that it appears after the red one, I think it is confirmation of the Argobug ship, both will be a great team AND THAT IS WHY IT APPEARS IN THAT ORDER.

-strong green: carapace,

This color represents carapace, and you will say, what about this one in all this? It is not in itself that he is going to play an important role, it is what both Carapace and Nino represent, both represent Argos and through him they give us a clue (like with Chloe with Kagami)

Here I leave you a more extended link where we analyze everything about wayzz, nino and carapace and their connection with Argos/Félix

HERE A SCHEMATIC SUMMARY

This tells us about HOW he is going to protect Marinette, and the reason why he will become her constant companion, above all she will have protection from him, this will surely be at the end when Marinette's life falls apart, and He will be in charge of protecting several things; his heart, his secret identity (when she loses everything) his freedom, his friendship etc… EVERYTHING.

AND THAT IS WHY THIS COLOR GOES AFTER THE INDIGO BLUE, BECAUSE THEY ARE SPECIFYING A LITTLE WHAT IT IS GOING TO BE, THAT THEY ARE A FUO is the only clue to this.

-yellow: Zoe

According to the INFO that we already revealed above, it could be Chloe, but this does not make sense because as we have said through her, they tell us about Kagami and her intentions and that was already clear at the beginning, from the sequence of colors, in this case it is just zoe,

Zoe appears because through her she tells us about Marinette, as we have said, her identity will be revealed, so she will have to change in every aspect, (she will probably get blonde hair and get highlights) the fact that she is here only confirms to us that the seeds for this and its flowering will be in S6, for some reason "the end of ladybug" was announced, because it will literally be its end and they are preparing the ground, only here they will be Clues SO OBVIOUS THAT THEY WILL NOT BE OVERLOOKED, until it is It is possible that she even changes her miraculous temporarily, this could be a clue that she uses the bee one.

AND THAT IS WHY THAT COLOR GOES AFTER GREEN, BECAUSE IT IMPLIES PROTECTION FROM ARGOS FOR MARINETTE WHICH IS HIDDEN AND WITH ANOTHER IDENTITY.

HERE THE SEQUENCE ENDS, WELL AGAIN IT BEGINS RED, INDIGO BLUE ETC…

THEN LET'S MAKE A SUMMARY: what does the ball change and all that mean for the S6? From now on, Kagami will betray Marinette's friendship, reveal her identity, all of this motivated by Lila, this will destroy her and cause a great catharsis in her that will force her to mature through pain, she will have to change her entire style of life. life, Félix and Argos will be his greatest support and protection, all this will make them come together quite as friends and then as something more.

WE WILL READ YOU IN THE NEXT PART (I WILL TRY TO MAKE IT SHORTER)

Reblog, like and follow me for more content of this type.

See you in the next post.

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immaturityofthomasastruc · 7 months

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IOTA Reviews: Revelation and Confrontation

Well, here we are. The final seven episodes of the season. For the most part, Season 5's episodes have been boring at worst and passable at best, with only about four episodes I'd consider to be outright bad. That pretty much disappears starting here. It's like the writers held back for most of the season, and just as the final arc was about to begin, right when most of the audience was led into a false sense of security, they were like:

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Let's get into the twentieth and twenty-first episodes of Miraculous Ladybug's fifth season: Revelation and Confrontation

So, for an episode titled “Revelation”, you'd assume it would focus on Marinette and Adrien finally learning the other's secret after all these years, right? Nope, it's a Lila episode, as in Lila is the character we follow. How does it open? By revealing that Lila has different moms she's conning into believing she's their daughter.

I believe Linkara best captures my reaction to this.

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YEP. Right out of the gate, we get arguably one of the dumbest plot twists in TV history. For an episode that's supposed to help us learn more about Lila's life, it's only raising more questions than it's answering, and it feels like it was there just for the sake of shocking the audience.

First off, why is she doing this? What does she possibly have to gain living with three random women who, as far as I can tell, have no political, social, or financial power whatsoever? Her entire motivation is lying to make herself look good so she can kiss up to famous people and ride the coattails of their success. Who the hell are these three people and why did Lila chose to pretend to be their daughter? In fact, are any of them even her biological mother?

Second, how did she even pull this off? I can somewhat buy her tricking her peers into believing her lies, but three grown women all believe this person is their daughter? Did she fake a DNA test or something? Did she frame some other kids for murder? Is one of them the kid in Omelas? Did the other moms adopt Lila? They must have, because I'm pretty sure any of them would know they were pregnant, but how did she fake being an orphan? How has she not been caught? The scene establishing this shows her ending a call with one of her mothers right as another one enters her room. You're telling me nobody has ever walked in on Lila talking with one of her mothers?

Third, just how long has she been doing this for? Has she been doing this her entire life? Did she frame her real mother for tax fraud at the age of five so she could explore the world? When the hell did she start doing this, and how did she even get the resources to do it? Does she have more than three moms?

Finally, what the hell does any of this tell us about Lila? We already know she's a liar and a villain, but what does learning she lies about who her mother is accomplish for the narrative. Outside of a single line to Sabine later on that heavily implies she wants to make her her next mother, this scene is entirely pointless. Sure, it shows how effective of a liar she is, but that's what the episode is already setting out to show us! We already know she's manipulative, so what's the point of any of this?!

Jesus Christ, we're only on the first scene, and I'm already pissed off. You see what I mean about these last seven episodes?

After lying some more, Lila learns an update to the Alliance rings has Kagami replace her as the female avatar. When she goes to ask Gabriel why he's cutting off ties with her, we learn just why Gabriel is such a tactical genius.

Gabriel: You were only the face of my brand in exchange for a mission: to monitor my son's relationships and keep him away from bad company. You failed. My son got close to this Marinette Dupain-Cheng who's been nothing but a terrible influence on him. But you did give me one excellent idea: to create a new media-friendly pairing for my son, which is why Kagami Tsurugi will be the new female face of the Gabriel brand. Perfection itself! All that remains to do is perpetuate this facade until it becomes truth in everyone's eyes. And until jealousy eats away at Marinette Dupain-Cheng...

Lila: But... What's to become of me?

Gabriel: You just remain what you are. Nothing.

Because it's not like Lila is easily your most competent ally (at least, by comparison), and is the only one who doesn't hate your guts, right? Seriously, Lila's biggest motivation other than fame is to ruin Marinette's life, and for the most part, as bad as the writing has been, she has been mostly effective in damaging her reputation (Chameleon, Ladybug, Adoration). For God's sake, if it wasn't for her, you would have been exposed as Monarch earlier this season in “Illusion”! Say what you will about Lila as a character and how stupid everyone acts when she's on-screen, but at least she's good at her job.

Lila walks off fuming, and Gabriel considers akumatizing her, but doesn't want to risk it because of how much she hates him... even though multiple Akumas over the course of the show were people who hated Gabriel or wanted revenge on him (The Bubbler, Simon Says, Style Queen, Heart Hunter, Passion, Action). It also doesn't stop him from akumatizing Lila later on in the episode, because her hatred is now directed at Marinette. And as we all know, it's physically impossible to hate more than one person at a time.

After a quick scene showing Marinette and Adrien's relationship is now public knowledge, we cut to class, where Ms. Bustier is handing back tests.

Also, despite being in the second trimester of her pregnancy (which hasn't been mentioned since the New York Special, over two years before this episode premiered), Ms. Bustier is wearing no maternity clothes to speak of, just her usual outfit with a noticeable baby bump.

I'm obviously not an expert, but I don't think that's good for the baby. If anyone reading this has experience with being pregnant, feel free to correct me.

Ms. Bustier points out that Sabrina put her name on both hers and Chloe's. Ms. Bustier naturally wants to know what the hell is going on.

Ms. Bustier: How long has this been going on?

Chloe: Oh, since we learned to write-- I mean, since Sabrina did.

Yep, after almost five seasons, the writers are now officially resorting to making dumb blonde jokes, the only kind of humor rivaled by fart jokes and racist jokes in terms of being overused and unfunny.

Ms. Bustier lets Sabrina off with a warning and decides to help Chloe make up for the lost work and salvage her academic career. For some reason, even though this is a reasonable response to discovering one of your students has been cheating for years, Marintte has a problem with this.

Marinette: Everybody knows that Chloe been cheating, taking advantage of Sabrina and not making any efforts compared to the others... for years! And the only consequence is that she's going to get help?! Of course, we need to support students who have problems, but not when they're the problem!

If you had a problem with Chloe mistreating Sabrina, THEN WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU TELL MS. BUSTIER YOURSELF? Even Lila points out that Marinette should have pointed this out to the teachers as class representative (I'm not sure if that's a thing in French schools, but let's assume it is for this episode's sake), but Marinette herself says she chose not to.

Marinette: Why would I have? She doesn't have difficulties! Only privileges! And if you need proof to see how the teachers will let her get away with anything!

What was it Alya said in “Origins”? Something about evil triumphing if good people do nothing? Eh, I'll think about it later.

Also, who's to say this isn't a punishment? Chloe is still going to have to make up her work, she'll need more attention from the faculty as a result, summer school is most likely on the table now, and who's to say her dad won't have problems with this? Yeah, we know he's a spineless coward, but let's assume he'll actually act like a parent for once, for the sake of argument.

Despite outright saying that she neglected her duties as class representative, Marinette is shocked Lila takes the chance to suggest she replace her for the job. Later at lunch, like what's happened in every other Lila episode, Marinette tries to tell Alya that Lila is a liar, Alya doesn't believe her for a second, and nothing changes. Oh wait, I forgot to mention that this time, Adrien and Nino are there too! That makes it different!

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Seriously, why are we still doing this? It's almost the end of Season 5, and even though Alya is one of Marinette's trusted confidants, the show still needs to have this drama with her not believing her. It honestly feels like a lot of the Lila episodes this season were originally written before Season 4 aired, but something changed, so they just threw them here when it makes no sense for Alya to still doubt Marinette after all this time. It's also why they randomly threw this line in to remind us that Alya knows.

Alya: You know, even Ladybug accepts help from Scarabella every once in a while.

Yeah, mind telling me what happened the last time Alya transformed into Scarabella?

OH RIGHT.

It's during this little conversation where we get the first hint of the episode's moral, and believe me, I'll get to that. Alya tries to reason with Marinette that maybe it's possible for Lila to help Chloe change for the better, which Marinette vehemently refuses to believe. We're clearly supposed to see Alya as being too naive and is oblivious to Lila's true nature, but neither of them know just how bad she really is. We, the audience, know that Lila has worked with Gabriel and Monarch willingly in the past (Heroes' Day, Chameleon, Miraculer, Illusion, Adoration) and that she's living under several fake identities. Yeah, we know Lila hates Marinette and tried to get her expelled in “Ladybug”, but nobody else knows just how bad she is. It doesn't help that Marinette's reasons for Lila only amount to “She's a liar!”, and not “She tried to get me expelled!”, intentionally making her come across as petty so it's easier for Alya to doubt her.

Another thing that makes the whole “Alya thinks Lila can help Chloe change” deal is that we already know Marinette has done nothing to really stop her behavior as class representative or as Ladybug, so it's hard to really act like Marinette contributes a lot to the job, especially when, once again, she willingly admitted to not even trying to reach out to the other teachers about Chloe's grades or how she's using Sabrina to get by in class. Even though Alya doesn't know about Lila's true nature, she's not wrong when it comes to believing someone else could bring something new to the position of class representative.

And this only gets worse, as we see Lila's latest plan to win over the class.

Lila: My dear classmates, I am convinced that even the worst person can change if you reach out to them. And to prove it to you, Chloe, will you be my deputy?

(The whole class gasps in shock)

Chloe: (sighs and walks to the front, putting on a fake smile)

Nino: Wow, is Chloe actually going to be a mere deputy?

Alya: That is so not Chloe!

Rose: Does this mean it's already working?

Mylene: Can Lila actually get her to change?

Marinette: (slams her fists on her table) This is so crazy! It's all lies!

Lila: Poor Marinette... couldn't succeed because she was too busy with her love life, as well as being reminded of her disdain for Chloe. But you know me. You know all about my humanitarian work. I'm used to going into conflict zones. I can do this. There are two weeks left. What do you have to lose? Help me, help Chloe change. Vote for me!

OH, YOU NO GOOD MOTHERFU---

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Sorry, sorry. Had a little... episode there. Where were we?

Okay, first off, wow. Are you trying to seriously piss off your fanbase? The whole argument of being able to appeal to the humanity in the worst person is one of the biggest arguments people in favor of Chloe redemption make, so you know damn well this scene was targeted towards them. What was the original draft for this? A still image of Thomas Astruc flipping off the audience?

Second, once again, Lila isn't wrong. As far as we know, Marinette did nothing to really help or stop Chloe over the school year other than foiling the occasional scheme. While we know it's a lie, can you really blame the rest of the class for believing Lila will actually make things better for them by finding a way to stop Chloe from bullying them? It doesn't help that the case Marinette makes for her class representative campaign is that she's giving up on helping Chloe, saying she sucks, and that she's going to help the rest of the class instead. Because we all know showing blatant bias against one of your classmates is a surefire way to win the favor of your peers, right?

As for the speech itself? Well...

Marinette: My dear friends, of course, you should always do everything in your power to help people. And we all hoped that Chloe would become a better person. Ladybug reached out to her. Ms. Bustier reached out to her. So did Adrien and so did I. You all reached out to her. This proves how big your hearts are. And yet, Chloe remained the same. Why? Because as far as she's concerned, having a big heart is a weakness to be exploited. Chloe already believes she's better than all of us. So... don't be fooled. I, for one, am done wasting my energy in vain. As class representative, I'd much rather help all of you because you deserve it a thousand times more.

So here's the main moral of the episode, kids: If you ever decide to be the bigger person and show kindness to someone who is mean to you, it's going to bite you in the ass sooner or later, so never try helping other people change. I just... what the fuck, Astruc?

Yeah, the show tries to point out that being kind to others is still important, but the context of the episode itself doesn't show any examples. You could have used Kim as an example of someone who has changed his ways, but “Derision” retconned him into not being a bully, and Felix isn't even in this episode, so he can't be used as an example. The episode never really provides an argument showing the difference between people who can change their ways and people who choose not to, which is why the lesson doesn't work. How exactly is a child watching this supposed to tell when they're being taken advantage of for their kindness? For a show with an opening that has the lyrics, “The power of love always so strong”, this episode really isn't doing a lot to encourage its audience to show compassion to others.

And we're not done yet. Lila makes up a sob story relating to getting fired, and tearfully says there's no hope for Chloe. Once again, the writers think by having a villain say stuff certain fans believe in, it's meant to automatically invalidate the argument. What are you going to have Lila say next? “Felix should face consequences for his actions”? “Gabriel is far worse than Chloe will ever be”? “Somehow, Chloe is worse than either of her terrible parents”? I'm all ears here.

The entire story was a gambit by Lila so she'd have a cover story, as she plans to attract an Akuma with her sheer hatred for Marinette. Like I said earlier, Monarch assumes that since Lila hates Marinette at the moment, it's impossible for her to harbor any negative feelings towards his civilian identity, choosing to akumatize her into Hoaxer.

Ignoring the fact that the name sounds like it belongs to an antidepressant, Hoaxer is an okay recolor of Volpina. There's not much else to say visually. Her powers involve brainwashing anyone who hears her lies through the Alliance rings... even though she was already able to manipulate others through lying, so this seems like a redundant power to give her. Sure, she can also teleport through the Alliance rings, but that's just something Lady Wifi could already do. Monarch also gives her the Fox Miraculous' Mirage to use so she can create fake footage to back up her lies... even though she already has the power to make everyone believe her lies. Yeah, this upgrade is kind of pointless, isn't it?

Hoaxer's first lie is to say that Marinette is really Monarch. With the exception of Adrien, Ivan, and Mylene (who don't wear Alliance rings), the entire class is brainwashed into hunting Marinette, believing they'll save Paris if they stop her. After Adrien points out how it wouldn't make sense for Marinette to be Monarch if she wants Lila to expose her secrets, he ducks out to transform into Cat Noir, soon meeting up with Ladybug.

Ladybug and Cat Noir steal an Alliance ring from Officer Roger to learn how this power works, only to learn the brainwashing is only effective as long as the victim is wearing an Alliance ring. Hoaxer senses that one of her victims lost their ring, so she turns the rest of Paris against the two heroes by saying that they're from the planet Saturn and fart bubbles that destroy the ozone layer. Believe me, I wish I was able to come up with a line that stupid.

Ladybug summons her Lucky Charm, and gets a sewing machine. She goes back to her house, only to be ambushed by Alya. Ladybug takes off the ring and detransforms, lending the Ladybug Miraculous to Alya so she can transform into Scarabella as part of her plan. Because even though Alya has already been exposed three times in the past two seasons, the animators paid for the Scarabella model, and goddamn it, they're going to get their money's worth out of it. While Cat Noir fends off some brainwashed civilians, Hoaxer uses her powers on Nathalie to get her to send all of Gabriel's private secrets to her. How Monarch doesn't sense this is anyone's guess. Marinette pretends to appeal to Lila's conscience as part of a plan involving her, Scarabella, and Cat Noir, but Lila then rejects the Akuma with ease.

The Akuma somehow de-evilizes itself, Scarabella makes her only contribution to the fight by using Miraculous Scarabella to fix the damage, Monarch still doesn't know Lila now has intel on his civilian identity when he should have a telepathic link with her, and instead blames Marinette for all of his problems.

Back at school, Adrien apologizes to Marinette for not telling her to act against Lila, something that should be huge. It's just that both of them make it about how bad he feels, not about Marinette.

Adrien: I'm sorry, Marinette. I was wrong. I shouldn't have told you to act against Lila. If you give the slightest opportunity to people like her, they'll grasp at it and cause disasters in no time. And now, you're the one who looks like a bad person.

Marinette: You thought you were doing the right thing. Just like with Chloe. That's another reason why I love you, Adrien. You always want to see the good in other people. But sometimes, the good we think we see in some people is just a reflection of our own, and we end up being fooled by our own kindness. But we'll find a way to expose Lila eventually.

Nevermind the fact that Lila's lies haven't done anything to negatively affect Adrien at school, only Marinette, so his little pity doesn't feel earned. There's a difference between feeling bad about something and making it all about you. Also, once again, the episode's moral still comes across less like “mean people can take advantage of your kindness” and more like “never trust anyone, as your attempts to show kindness can backfire horribly on you”.

Lila is elected class representative, and Alya still believes her over Marinette. How does Marinette respond?

Marinette: I decided to let her have her way so I can finally prove to you all who she really is.

Spoiler alert, next episode, someone other than Marinette does the heavy lifting to expose Lila, and I doubt it was ever part of Marinette's plan.

The episode ends with Lila learning all of Gabriel's secrets, which would have been a much better opportunity for her to learn he's Monarch instead of learning about it off-screen as far back as “Emotion”.

THE BIGGEST IDIOT OF THE EPISODE IS... MARINETTE

Once again, Gabriel was very close to earning the Biggest Idiot Award for the third time for ditching Lila for no reason and later giving her the tools needed to learn his deepest and darkest secrets, but Marinette edged him out here. Not only did Marinette outright admit to neglecting her responsibilities as class representative, blamed Ms. Bustier for not doing anything about Chloe when she hasn't done anything to stop her either, and made a very poor argument for her reelection campaign by saying that being nice is bad. But hey, maybe her genius plan next episode will make up for it.

“Confrontation” starts off with Adrien struggling to fill out an orientation form for what kind of school he wants to go to next year and what he'll study. I'm not really an expert in French schools, but I'll assume this is how things are done there. Either way, Adrien isn't willing to fill out the form because as we saw in “Pretension”, Gabriel is planning on sending him to a private school in London next year. Why Adrien wasn't excused from this assignment is beyond me.

Adrien: If Marinette finds out that my father's decided to send me to a private school in London next year, it will break her heart and mine, too.

Again, it's really funny how a huge portion of his screentime in Season 4 involved being angry at Ladybug for keeping secrets from him, yet now, Adrien sees nothing wrong with keeping secrets from Marinette, even when it's inevitable that she'll find out. Then again, Plagg's response isn't any better.

Plagg: I know how I would feel if I had to be separated from you, Adrien, and there is nothing funny about that at all.

Then why did you force Adrien to give up his Miraculous in “The Kwamis' Choice”?! I'm pretty sure that was all your idea, as was what happened afterwards with Monarch almost winning.

As Marinette worries about the career stuff, but through some flashbacks showing just how selfish and one-dimensional Chloe and Lila are, she's not exactly confident they have her best interests in mind. Also, remember how Marinette said she supposedly let Lila win at the end of the last episode in order to make progress on finding a way to stop her?

Marinette: I feel like I'm betraying our friends by entrusting their forms to such awful girls.

As we'll later learn, while she does come up with a plan to expose Lila, it was after this scene that it happened, so this doesn't really make it look like Marinette has any ideas to stop Lila after she won at the end of the last episode. After the rest of the class fills out their forms, Lila destroys them all so Sabrina can forge their handwriting. Of course, not before we get another “funny” scene where Chloe struggles to understand their own plan.

Lila: After you destroy the forms, you'll fill out new ones using your talent for forging student's handwriting. I'll tell you what to write.

Chloe: Not so fast! You're using too many words to explain your plan!

GET IT? DO YOU GET IT?! SHE'S RICH AND BLONDE, SO THAT MEANS SHE'S STUPID! WHY AREN'T YOU LAUGHING AT THIS COMEDY GOLD?!

Meanwhile, Nino calls for another meeting of the totally useful and not at all irrelevant Resistance, citing an issue. Because they're all planning to go to different schools next year, they're not sure how they can help Ladybug and Cat Noir... other than, oh, I don't know, meeting outside of school? It doesn't matter, because everyone unanimously volunteers to go to the same high school next year. Well, everyone except Nathaniel, but that's not important.

After Marinette gets a call from someone, Mylene suggests that the class go on strike against being forced to decide their careers so early in life. This would have made a lot more sense if you chose to do this before submitting your forms, but hey, whatever floats your boat. Adrien finally figures out what he wants to do, so he hands his form over to Lila. What did he write down?

Lila: (reading the letter) “I've been thinking a lot, and still not know what I would like to do later in life. The only thing I know for sure is that I love Marinette Dupain-Cheng. But I guess that doesn't really help you. I'm sorry. Adrien Agreste.”

Minimum wage at Wendy's it is. Good choice, Adrien.

Yeah, I think now's as good a time as any to talk about how flat Adrien's character has been this season. Even though Adrien has gotten more character focus thanks to not being hampered by loads of other side characters and temp heroes, he hasn't really had a lot of strong moments overall. Scenes that should feel like a big deal, like him accidentally Cataclysming Monarch or realizing he has feelings for Marinette are usually downplayed or brushed off so we can see how those events affect other characters. We don't get any scenes with Adrien feeling guild for possibly condemning a man to death because more focus is given to Gabriel dealing with his impending demise. We don't get any scenes that show how Adrien has come to see Marinette in a romantic light because more focus is given to Marinette struggling to deal with his sudden confession. And here's this scene. Rather than showing Adrien developing an interest in something he wants to do for a career, a huge sign of his growing independence, what do we get? Adrien saying he loves Marinette and admitting he has no goddamn idea what he wants to do with his life. Such a defining moment for one of the two main characters in the show. I'm just saying, if the last season made a big deal about Adrien wanting to be treated more importantly, why is he still getting shafted by the narrative?

And for the umpteenth time this season, because Chloe is the one saying that Adrien's form is “pathetic”, we're supposed to not agree with her, even though this is supposed to be a serious form that your teachers will see. Just what is this show's obsession with using strawmen to try and invalidate criticism? I've seen more nuanced takes from political cartoons.

Lila and Chloe present the forged forms to the teachers, assigning all kinds of inaccurate assignments for careers that the students don't want. Lila manages to get one student in particular held back, Marin—Juleka. Yeah, Juleka, Lila's most hated enemy is being forced to repeat a year. Why didn't Lila try to keep Marinette held back?

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To be fair, Lila's plan is to slander Marinette specifically, but screwing over the entire class feels like a bit of a reach. I don't even know if part of Lila's plan was to attract an Akuma or not. Speaking of, Monarch senses Juleka's negative emotions and sends a Megakuma her way. Because it's a day that ends with a “Y”, the Magical Charm does nothing, so for the sixth time in the series (not counting her brief appearance in “Ladybug”), Juleka is akumatized into Reflekta. I swear, at this point you could make a drinking game for every time an old character model is reused this season.

Reflekta's design is pretty alright. I like the idea of the shy and quiet Juleka getting a brightly colored form that's impossible to ignore, and her power to make everyone else look like her fits her character. Unlike other returning Akumas this season, Reflekta gets a noticeable upgrade to her powers, as now she can essentially create a hive mind with all of her victims on top of getting the Tiger Miraculous' Clout to do some extra damage. Wow, it's almost like the Miraculous powers should actually serve as upgrades to established powers instead of being the only thing that gives the Akuma their powers.

Reflekta goes to town assimilating more victims, Marinette does nothing to get the still pregnant Ms. Bustier to safety so she can dart off and transform into Ladybug. By the time Ladybug and Cat Noir meet up, the city is crawling with Reflektas.

Ladybug summons her Lucky Charm, getting a plastic tape dispenser. Using Cat Noir's staff and the tape, the two put up a fake brick wall poster in an alleyway. The two heroes split up and draw a Reflekta's attention respectively, pretending to be helpless once they reach a “dead end” at the fake brick wall. When the two Reflektas try to use Clout, Ladybug and Cat Noir duck out of the way, letting the two attacks collide.

Ladybug de-evilizes the Megakuma, uses Miraculous Ladybug to fix the damage, and gives Juleka yet another useless Magical Charm.

And while you'd think this is where the episode ends, unfortunately, we're only halfway done. Id anything, this entire fight was pointless, and it's going to lead to a lot of problems with the pacing later on.

Back at school, Lila takes the opportunity to pin the blame on Marinette, though when Marinette points out how good Sabrina is at forging handwriting, Sabrina admits to helping them out. While the blame is still on Marinette, Chloe and Lila follow Sabrina when she runs out of the classroom. In the bathroom, Sabrina is still upset about what she had to do, and when Chloe and Lila confront her and try to keep her in line, only for Sabrina to reveal it was a trap for Chloe and Lila to confess their plan in front of the rest of the class, and one that had been set up a few days ago by Sabrina and Marinette.

So after an episode that went out of its way to show how apologetically irredeemable Chloe and Lila are, Sabrina is the one to ultimately turn a new leaf and is the key player in stopping Chloe and Lila's tyranny. Let's go into all the reasons as to why this failed to be a triumphant moment.

First off, why is Sabrina the key player who helps finally expose Lila? Why not Adrien, or Alya, or anyone else in Marinette's class? Rather than work together with her friends to show she wasn't lying, Marinette only works with Sabrina, and they act like they're the close friends working together. What, you thought Adrien or maybe Alya would help Marinette expose Lila like the end of the last episode hinted at? HA! Of course not.

Second, Sabrina's redemption is forced as hell. I'm not saying Sabrina turning a new leaf is entirely impossible, but the show just expects us to forget all the times she's gone along with Chloe's bullying antics (Origins, Mr. Pigeon, Lady Wifi, Dark Cupid, Horrificator, Darkblade, Reflekta, Zombizou, Stormy Weather 2, Lies, Sole Crusher, Gabriel Agreste, Derision, Adoration), and even in this episode, she still helped forge the new forms for Chloe and Lila. Remember how “Derision” said Chloe's actions couldn't be excused by how poorly she was treated by her mother? Funny how Sabrina's actions can be excused by how poorly she was treated by Chloe. The redemption honestly could have worked if it was Marinette who reached out to Sabrina and saw the good in her, teaching the lesson that while some people refuse to change, that doesn't mean other people can't change either. But instead, Sabrina's just a good guy because the plot said so, a deus ex Sabrina if you will.

Third, this was Marinette's plan to stop Lila? Like I said, while the previous episode made it seem like Marinette had an idea on how to expose Lila, this episode showed that Marinette had absolutely no plans prior Sabrina's call, and she handed over the sheets to Chloe and Lila earlier. What was Marinette even going to do if Sabrina didn't call? This only makes Sabrina's redemption feel even more forced, because that was what led to Chloe and Lila being exposed.

And finally, we don't even get a lot of resolution with Marinette's classmates believing Lila over her once she's exposed.

Yes, there was a deleted scene where Alya and the others apologize to Marinette instead of just Ms. Bustier which was supposedly cut for time constraints, but why would you leave that out when Marinette's friends believing Lila over her has always been a sore spot among viewers? If only there was another scene that could have been cut out of the episode that added nothing to the plot over an important character moment showing how guilty Marinette's friends feel.

Chloe and Lila are expelled by Mr. Damocles, but then he gets a call from Andre ordering him to keep them in and do nothing to change the forged forms. Normally, this would be something to make Andre out to be a bad guy, but like Sabrina, because he's being belittled and ordered around by someone else (in this case, Audrey), we're meant to sympathize with him. Trust me, it gets even worse next episode.

Mr. Damocles is upset enough to attract another Megakuma from Monarch. You would think Marinette would transform into Ladybug and save him,but the episode does something different. Somehow, because of the other students telling him to believe in himself, all of their Magical Charms resonate with Mr. Damocles' Magical Charm. And then, his Magical Charm transforms into a shield which de-evilizes the Akuma as soon as it touches it?

I'm sorry, WHAT!?

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Yeah... that just happened. I'm happy the Magical Charm actually did something for once, but I don't get why this was the climax of the episode. Why did this episode spend more time focusing on Juleka, Sabrina, and Mr. Damocles instead of Marinette's final battle of wits with Lila? Forget it, it's almost over anyway.

Mr. Damocles sends in the correct forms for the students before he resigns as principal, and we then cut to Ms. Bustier realizing that Chloe is pure evil and needs to face consequences for her actions. What does Chloe say that causes her to come to this revelation?

Ms. Bustier: Where's Lila?

Chloe: How should I know? I'm not the betrayer's mother.

Yep. A somewhat rude answer to a question Chloe doesn't even know the answer to is the last straw for Ms. Bustier. Maybe it's the hormones? Ms. Bustier decides to give extra attention to Chloe going forward, and somehow, that's different from Ms. Bustier wanting to help Chloe make up her schoolwork at the beginning of the last episode. But what happened to Lila, you may ask?

Oh my God, she's cosplaying as T'pol from Star Trek: Enterprise! The fiend!

Yep, Lila abandoned her old school and moved onto one of her other lives, now calling herself Cerise. Okay, a few questions.

First, was she wearing makeup as Lila or something? I'm not sure if it's the lighting in this one scene, but I swear, her skin looks lighter than Cerise here.

Second, how is Lila going to blend in under her new identity when for a while, she was the face of the Gabriel brand? What, is she going to claim that “Lila” is her twin sister or something?

Third, if Lila's trying to blend in as Cerise, why did she throw her old wig in the trash, in broad daylight?

Fourth, why wasn't this scene the one used to establish Lila has multiple lives? It actually feels plot-relevant, unlike the revelation of her having three different mothers last episode.

Finally, we're really going to brush over Lila facing any setback to her vague goals? She got expelled, and we don't even get to see her face consequences for her actions after all these years? What a load...

THE BIGGEST IDIOT OF THE EPISODE IS...MARINETTE

Yep, Marinette got the award twice in the same two-parter, and this is her third one at that. Adrien was sort of close to winning it with his stupid application form and not doing anything to stop Lila himself, and even though Marinette's plan to expose Lila worked, I still had to give it to her. She willingly gave her and her friends application forms to Chloe and Lila without any plans in case they tried something bad, had absolutely no plan to stop Lila in general until Sabrina came alone, and didn't think to simply de-evilize a Megakuma targeting her principal when Lila was able to sneak out with no problem.

Anyway, these episodes SUCK. I know it might not seem as noticeable compared to my reviews last season, as I've been trying to not get too angry, but I still couldn't stand these episodes.

As always, Lila's lies are incredibly stupid and don't work under the suspension of disbelief, especially with what we learn about her here. What I don't get is that we still don't know why Lila does what she does. I still don't know why she is so obsessed with getting the better of Marinette and Gabriel outside of being petty, and given what happens by the end of the season, it makes her unclear motivation even less excusable. In a pair of episodes meant to give more focus to Lila as she tries to ruin Marinette's reputation right before the school year ends, we really needed more depth for her character.

Marinette wasn't any better. What should have been a standout moment for her this season, she spent most of these two episodes complaining about Chloe and Lila when she did nothing to really stop them, and only made progress when Sabrina had a change of heart out of nowhere. Hell, even then, Chloe and Lila barely faced any setbacks for their actions. Marinette honestly felt very underutilized in what should have been an important set of episodes for the season.

Adrien didn't fare any better. He barely got to do anything and unlike Marinette, he wasn't even involved with the final plan, despite the ending of “Revelation” hinting that he and Marinette were going to work together to stop Lila. And then there's the form he filled out where he pretty much confirmed that he has no goals in life and that the writers just have no idea what the hell they want to do with him now that he's Marinette's boyfriend.

But let's talk about what I think really killed these two episodes, specifically “Confrontation”: The unnecessary focus on side characters. I can understand why Ms. Bustier needed more focus in these episodes, considering it was focused on the school environment, but I can't give that kind of lenience to “Confrontation”. That episode decided rather than focusing on Marinette finally outsmarting Lila, we needed more focus on Sabrina, Juleka, and Mr. Damocles. Why did we need to give Sabrina a change of heart over Marinette's friends working together to help her expose Lila? Why did we need Juleka to be targeted by Lila and subsequently akumatized by Monarch in a gambit to slander Marinette when all Lila had to do was have it look like Marinette tampered with Chloe's form? Why did we need an extended sequence of Mr. Damocles fending off an Akuma with the help of his class when he had no real presence in this arc, and if anything, took Chloe and Lila's side more often than not (Ladybug, Derision)? I don't get why the writers chose the tail end of the season to actually develop some of its side characters at the expense of major players like Marinette, Adrien, and Lila.

Look, these episodes were just awful, okay? And somehow, things manage to get worse as we get closer and closer to the end of the season.

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