What do you think about the handling of the LGTBQ+ representation in ML (assuming you're comfortable talking about this subject) ?

There's not much to discuss since Miraculous is doing that thing where all the rep is small moments and lines that are easy to cut/change when airing in countries that aren't queer friendly. The little we do get seems fine. I'm especially a fan of the two adult couples as it's nice to see loving families where the parents are clearly queer.

I will not give Miraculous any credit for rep that only comes from Twitter. "Max is ace and Alix is aro" or "Marc and Nathaniel are totally dating!" Then put it in the show, you cowards. Nothing grinds my gears more than this BS where creators try to claim rep they didn't actually give. It's just another form of queer baiting. "You're totally represented in this show! I know we didn't say it, but it's there. I promise! Please give us money, views, and love!"

If you don't want to include "meaningful" rep in your show so that you can make as much money as possible by having a product that's viable in all markets, that's fine. I get it. TV Shows are incredibly expensive to make, but it's 2024, not 2014 (the year of Korrasamai via hand holding). Ambiguous and background rep is no longer the best anyone can do in mainstream TV. If anything, it's become the standard. The token effort done to appear progressive and appease those who want it without turning away larger audiences by being too progressive.

That's not to say that the little rep we see isn't noteworthy, progress is progress! The fact that they can include any sort of explicit rep is great and I'm pleased that they put something in as it makes background rep more standard. I want it to be the standard. I just wouldn't put Miraculous on a list of "great shows for queer kids" since all of the rep is ambiguous at best or of the blink-if-you-miss-it variety, which is what I meant by the term "meaningful" up above. I don't think the given rep has no value, I just don't think it's going to make anyone feel seen in the way shows like The Owl House did.

If they really wanted to get full marks from me, they would have done something to acknowledge that Adrien is aspec since he reads super aspec. It would have been an easy thing to add to the Adrigami arc, too, since it was pretty clear that he didn't actually have feelings for Kagami. At least, that was my read of that whole mess, but I am ace so it's my default. I have to actively remember allos are a thing when writing or else everyone will read as some flavor of aspec.

Is Adrien even friends with anyone?

Is S1 Nino in the room with us right now?

Lila being the new Hawk Moth doesn't make any sense. It makes more sense for either Nathalie or Tomoe to become the new Hawk Moth. It even makes more sense for Chloe to be the new Hawk Moth than Lila.

I think it says a lot that I've never read a fanfic that even tried to pull off Lila becoming the butterfly and I've read a lot of Lila takedowns. Almost everything staring her is about her lies being outed, leading to her defeat. Even the rare fics that do try to make her the butterfly don't show her becoming the butterfly. She just has it somehow because her getting it was hard to picture. Even canon couldn't come up with a logical reason.

This tells you how the fandom views the character. She is not seen as a manipulative mastermind. She's seen as a petty child who would be relatively easily defeated. In other words, the writers have completely failed to set her up as a solid, terrifying threat. Instead, she's OP in an aggravating, unbelievable way that makes her new status as magical villain the source of a headache, not excitement. All her power comes from everyone else being stupid and is anyone looking forward to three seasons of that? (Miraculous has been confirmed to have 8 seasons planned and I'm assuming she'll be the lead for all of them given how long Gabriel was dragged out)

Tomoe or Nathalie being the new magical villain makes so much more sense and would have been so much more exciting than Lila, the girl who can say whatever she wants and everyone will believe it because plot. I'd even take Chloe over Lila. It would still be awkward to get the butterfly into her hands, but at least Chloe has character development and a clear motivation. We have no idea who Lila even is and, at this point, I really don't care. It's not like she's a new character. They literally had four seasons to make me care about her, how much more time do they need to setup a villain?

I’m always reminded of this one post about how s*s*k* as a character isn’t meant to be misogynistic but his writing is such that it comes across that way bc the author is hella sexist and it bleeds into the characters and how the same thing happened with Max in S1 le gamer with how he resented Marinette for beating his score in a fighting game while not giving Adrien a second thought for doing the same thing and how the narrative’s own bias regarding the morality of Marinette’s actions (bc she is a girl) became Max’s bias and basically turned him into your run of the mill butthurt gamer dudebro who can’t accept that a girl is better than him at anything

Even if Chloe needs to hit "rock bottom" to grow, then at least make sure it doesn't read like a Supervillain Origin Story. Chloe's basically been going through her Supervillain Origin Story multiple seasons ago.

I mean, It's hard to argue with 'Out of everyone who was akumatized I was the only one ever held accountable, everyone turned their backs on me, my father abandoned me with my abusive mother, and four distinct supervillains worked together to break me mentally' as an origin story.

If she comes back I hope they let her burn down some of Paris, as a treat.

Chloe was fine when she was just a mean girl who picked on everyone, but once they gave her a vendetta against Marinette? We did kinda need an explanation for wtf is going on here. Especially after Derision reconned the Chloe thing to an ongoing hate campaign out of nowhere. That was a massive escalation in her behavior that contradicted everything we'd seen prior to Derision. It especially contradicted her behavior in the first three seasons.

Correct me if I'm wrong but was it even mentioned why Chloe hates Marinette? I thought bc she (Mari) stood up to her (Chloe) but she hated her even before that. Or it's just

Chloe rich girl =bad

Marinette main heroine = good

Nope. After FIVE SEASONS, we never got a single explanation as to what Chloe's issue with Marinette is. For a show written by someone who prides himself on how Chloe's arc was planned from the beginning, it's funny how he forgot to do the basic thing and give her a motivation for her other than "She's rich, and therefore, evil".

Once again, this is another point in the movie's favor, as it actually showed how the Chloe in this continuity started to hate Marinette. But then again, I guess wanting a basic explanation for why one of the show's more important characters chooses to antagonize Marinette is just something we want, and don't actually need.

Saw some people compared Mari with Batman said they're similar... Idk I don't think they're similar. I mean yeah they both the brain of the team but Batman has more empathy and compassion than Mari ever! I don't think I remember the time when one of his comrade in distress and he just ignore them but Mari did ignore Cat Noir even when he's visibly in distressed heck even one of the problem in ladynoir conflict is because she doesn't want to communicate and worst no one called her out. Well Cat tried to but the universe said NOPE. Yeah no.

I don't know enough about batman to give great feedback on that. I've only seen some of the movies, I never got into the shows or the comics, though I did have a friend who was big into them, so I know a little bit. I will say that I can see the high-level comparison since Batman's main strength is his smarts, but beyond that, I don't see clear parallels. The characters are pretty different. I could just as easily compare him to Adrien. They have similar backstories that could have easily led to villainy, but instead they become heroes.

Any batman fans are welcome to chime in and give their two cents!

that some people respond to any well-foreshadowed reveal with “ugh that plot twist was so predictable” proves bad faith criticism has rotted their brains to the point they think it’s bad writing if they can correctly identify information the writers were intentionally giving them

The evil thing is so frickin annoying to me just from a lore perspective. Why is there an evil mode??? I hate that so much. I am firmly of the opinion that powers should be neutral and the good and evil thing should just be a matter of perspective. Powers should not work differently when someone is "evil." The only exception I'll give is outfits. Outfits reflecting your mental state is fine because that's not really a power.

Just realized something dumb about how the show deciding miraculous holders can just bullshit their way into getting power-ups or negating the whole time out sequence. They could basically make miraculous like the fox overpowered/broken by just going "fuck you that's no longer a weakness"

Like

Alya just removing the whole Illusions get dispelled by physical contact thing

Max being able to open multiple portals simultaneously instead of two connected ones

Lila be able to create multiple Akuma at once without them originally sharing an item, Catalyst/Puppeteer/Gamer2.0 being used to modify/help her or whatever Gabriel & Tomoe did with the Alliance rings

ect

I can't even tell what even happened that caused Marinette and Adrien to "grow up". They were at Chloe's mercy, they decided they didn't want to detransform, and boom! No more timer.

It's hard to tell what's dumber: The fact that simply "growing up" is enough for you to unlock the full power of your Miraculous, or the fact that every Miraculous has a different transformation phrase specifically designed for evil uses that also slowly kills you for some reason.

Do you think learning he was an artificial being would mess Adrien's mind up even if it hadn't caused anything traumatic to happen to him?

Would anyone react well to finding out that they had a remote control that could be used on them at any time without their consent or knowledge, even if the remote had supposedly never been used? How would they even verify that? Could they ever really trust the people who had the control for all those years?

Idk, I just can't see this going well no matter how happy his life was. There are a lot of story elements/tropes that play differently in different genres, but some things can only ever work in a specific genre and the sentimonster twist feels like one of those things. It should have stayed in the realms of horror or Adrien should have been given a way to turn truly human or otherwise break free.

I'd feel differently if Adrien was just an artificial creature like a robot or something purely magical, it's the whole free will override thing that makes it impossible for his senti status to be a minor thing.

Season 5 really killed my love for love square, especially with the way the choose Adrien, a kid with massive trauma and depression, as a therapist for his girlfriend. The whole "I want to be everything Marinette want" is bad for Adrien even more so because he doesn't get the same effort from Marinette.

The whole Adrienette is one sided and it remind me of a girl in one yt clip where she basically said she want a man who do everything she want while the man should already be grateful to be chosen as her boyfriend, which means she will do the bare minimum if nothing at all in that relationship.

Marinette isn't that kind of girl but the way the story goes it sure seems like that because Adrien doesn't allowed to bother her, he just continue to serve whatever she needs without her needing to do the same.

People saying that they'll break up and I agree, but also it will take a whole lot of character development for Adrien, something that the writers seems to hate it seems. Even if they argue or have a break up, I doubt it will be last for an episode before Adrien goes back to Marinette and say sorry. That's how Ladynoir conflict solved Kuro Neko after all, with Cat Noir be a bigger person while Ladybug do nothing at all.

Girl power is supposed to be a slogan to empower girls and Marinette supposed to be a role model for the young audience but at this point I don't even want my nieces and nephew to watch this show if what they teach them is that boy should do whatever the girls said and never bother with their girls with their feelings because man should "suck it up" while the girls can do whatever without minding about their man need.

I would actually be surprised if they broke up. Not because it's unearned, they arguably should breakup or at least get some sort of therapy, I just don't think that the writers have the guts to do that.

As you said, a breakup would only work if it led into character growth and they're allergic to doing that in this show in part because of the mandate that every episode must stand alone. That's a fine rule in a monster of the week show where all the drama is sitcom stuff that can be easily solved in 20 minutes, but a terrible rule in a show that's diving into the levels of complexity that Miraculous is trying to pull off. The show's current format is the worst of both worlds: complex plots that lack the complexity to really work and monster-of-the-week battles that feel rushed because they're being squeezed down to make room for the more complex stuff.

Prior to season four, my opinion of Miraculous was that it was a decent show for its indented audience, but there were a few plot points that required serious discussion to explain why they were wrong (for example: the "don't confront liars unless you're doing it for ideologically pure reasons" lesson from Lila's intro). As the show currently stands? I would not willingly introduce it to a young kid for a myriad of reasons. One of those reasons is the fact that the relationship drama we're currently dealing with is suited to a show for teenagers while still having the writing of a show for young children, leading the drama to feel weird and toothless. Yet another worst of both worlds.

All of this is quite sad because Miraculous has such a fantastic setup for being a cute, fun, healthy romance for all ages! It's why I started watching it and the choices made by the people running the show are truly baffling.

They picked a setup that allowed for all of the tension of a love triangle with none of the awkward fallout and then.... decided to introduce two love triangles.

They went with a duo setup to allow the male romantic lead to be mostly comic relief without feeling superfluous and then.... decided to introduce a larger team without establishing anything to make him feel like more than the comic relief.

They picked a setup that allowed for balanced support needs and then.... never let Adrien get any support.

That last one is the thing that really upsets me. When it comes to magical girl shows and their male-focused equivalents, it's somewhat standard for the main character (or main characters) to get all the struggles while the love interest (or love interests) are just there to give comfort and support, leading the love interest to have minimal character development. (Ex: Sailor Moon, Winx club, almost every shonen show ever made, the list goes on)

This isn't necessarily a flaw. You don't want to bloat a story with pointless side conflicts and you can still write a good romance under these conditions. After all, in real life, it's perfectly normal for relationships to go through phases where one person needs more support than the other. As long as it's implied that the love interest has more going on than just being a love interest, you're okay. Not amazing, but okay.

To put it in more concrete terms, if the Prince Dreamy Eyes is ruling the kingdom with his best friends at his side while Princess Sparkle Tutu is stopping the monsters, but the show mostly focuses on the prince supporting the princess and the princess fighting to save the day, that works. The prince is clearly not just arm candy. And maybe the viewers would really like a few one-off episodes about what Dream Eyes does while the Sparkle Tutu isn't around, but this IS a magical girl show so it makes sense that all the "filler" episodes go to the Sparkle Knights and not the Prince and the Dream Team.

This excuse obviously doesn't work for Miraculous because it didn't relegate Adrien to background love interest status. He is a key part of the team, but that's still something you can work around. In team-based shows with a large cast, it's not uncommon for some of the team to just kinda be there to round out the team while one or two main leads get the character growth and personal struggles. This isn't even a flaw as it's arguably better to have more focused drama. If everyone had a sob story, then no one does.

But that excuse doesn't work for Miraculous either because the show is driven by a conflict that's centered around Adrien. A beautifully simple yet powerful conflict that was perfectly tailored for making the relationship between the leads feel balanced.

On the hero side, Ladybug needs all the love and support because everything is riding on her. On the civilian side, Adrien needs all the love and support because he's a sheltered kid whose father is the villain. That allows for a setup where it doesn't feel like either character is nothing more than the love interest. You can make them both complex and flip around the support/supporter roles based on what part of the conflict the story is dealing with in a given moment. It will forever be a tragedy that such a wonderful premise was pulled off this terribly, which is why I say that I'm still a fanon shipper even though canon is dead to me. I love writing and reading takes on this premise that do it right. It's why I got into the fandom in the first place! I'm not really drama to cute romance. I'm drawn to interesting story ideas that feature romance, which is what Miraculous should have been.

I don't think there will be an apology coming from Félix for whatever bad deed he had done and that's always make me baffled in this show : the lack of apology on screen. This is more apparent in s4 onward. Even Ladybug didn't actually apologized to Chat Noir despite her rant in Strike Back and not to mention the lack of changed behavior after that. It's the same with Félix, he's good now the show said, it's as if we should assume there's an apology happened somewhere off screen. I know this show is like "Show, don't tell" but for a show for a little kid, I think they should shown an on screen apology because that would be a good example for them.

On the other topic,

How believable Félix's play is? Like, his whole character seems to be all about facade, charade, deception and lie and it make me skeptical to everything he said or do. How much he said is truth and how much is a lie, I couldn't tell. The retcon doesn't help either and at this point I feel want to dissect his brain to get to know just what's inside his mind lmao.

Canon is super weird about letting people apologize. We almost never see it happen even when we really should. For example, it will always low-key bother me that Marinette never apologized to Adrien for yelling at him over the gum incident. I do get why, it would have ruined the flow of the scene, but still...

A few other random apologies that I long to see:

Nino apologizing to Adrien for almost getting him pulled from school

Alya apologizing to Marinette for all the Lila BS

Alya acknowledging that trying to out Ladybug's secret identity was a bit of a dick move (not really salty about this one, I just think it would have been good character growth and that it kinda needed to happen before Alya was given a miraculous of her own)

Felix apologizing for everything he did to Ladybug

Nino apologizing to Alya for outing her secret identity and acknowledging that he'll never do that again since he now understands how important secret identities are

Before we get to your other question, I wanted to mention that show don't tell doesn't mean that characters should never say things! There are lots of things that can only be conveyed through words. The show don't tell rule primarily applies to exposition. Aka those scenes where a character or the narrator monologues about some event or bit of lore that the audience needs to know about.

Generally speaking, you want to avoid those moments whenever you can. However, exposition is sometimes the only way to get information across. It's not a major failing if your story has a bit of exposition somewhere along the way, you just want to use it sparingly! A lot of writers struggle with that, which is why there are so many writing guides that act like exposition is a bad thing. A stance that I will always fight against as I think it makes younger writers afraid to use a necessary and powerful tool.

How believable is Félix's play?

I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing ends up getting retconned, but I also I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing ends up being canon straight to the end. It could really go either way.

A play is a good way to give exposition as it's far more interesting that a monologue, so this may just be a case of the writers giving good exposition. On the other hand, having a known liar deliver information allows you to say something without fully committing to it, so this may be the writers giving us lore in a way that they can backtrack on without a true retcon. It's impossible to say. Only time will tell.

Exactly.

Given the show's track record with handling serious things like Jagged Stone abandoning his kids, I have no faith that Felix's backstory is going to be used to make him into a more complex and interesting character. If it was, then I'd be perfectly fine with it. Felix had a lot of potential to be a fantastic and interesting character, but I doubt we'll get anything like that from him. The show is allergic to addressing the serious things they introduce. They couldn't even handle letting Adrien confront his father after five seasons of buildup. Even more pathetic, their idea of a good way to reveal Marinette's crush to Adrien was to have the creepy ice cream guy do it. Crack fic style writing is somehow the standard in the actual show.

Some people think the reason they had Felix tell his story through that weird play was because the details were too graphic for younger kids, do you think that's a good excuse?

No because the details of Felix's abuse weren't narratively necessary. Felix suffering any abuse wasn't narratively necessary. I'd even say it was a bad thing to add because I doubt that the show is planning to deal with that issue by putting Felix into therapy or the like. It's going to be resolved by Kagami's love and was arguably only added to make Felix a sad little uwu who we can't blame for his actions.

All the play actually needed to do was:

Establish who the sentimonsters are (which it arguably failed at)

Establish that Gabriel is the butterfly holder (which the next episode does anyway)

Even outside of the abuse issue, most of what we see in the play was pointless. Giving us Emilie and Amelie's backstory would have only mattered if Emilie was brought back to life, which seems to not be the case? Even if she was brought back to life, what did we really learn about her? If we removed this play from the story, what would the narrative lose? Maybe season six will surprise me, but my guess is nothing.

You want to know why the play was really added? It's there so that Marinette wasn't able to defeat the akuma and free Chat Noir from his nightmare dust, making sure that there was no identity reveal and that he didn't show up for the final. That's it. That's the whole point.

I find it jarring for Felix, a supporting character, to have more active role than Adrien as deuteragonist. Actually even Alya has more active role since s4. It's as if Adrien's role is just to carry the ship and become eye candy, no more, no less.

Everything that should go to Adrien goes to Alya and Felix instead and it's weird.

Alya gets all the love interest moments (breaking free of an akuma due to her love for Marinette, overcoming the nightmare dust due to her love for Marinette, rallying the troops due to her love for Marinette, etc.) and Felix gets all the villain's son moments (playing spy in the mansion, leaning all of Gabriel's secrets, spilling those secrets to Ladybug). I know I've said that I wanted more team dynamics from this show and I still do, but I meant, like, training together and getting neat fighting styles, not... whatever this was supposed to be.

I am truly shocked that there are people who enjoyed season five. To me, it failed at every level. The same can somewhat be said for season four, but it did have a couple of good moments, so I can tell why people were willing to give it a pass.

Do you think Tomoe Tsurugi will keep being a main villain/antagonist in future seasons or will she fade into plot irrelevance like she was pre S5 ?

This show is such a mess that it's impossible to predict anything, but if I had to guess, I'd say she'll fade into irrelevance. I'm basing that guess off of her role in season five and the power she now has in the season five fallout.

It seems like she was only brought into season five's villain circle to justify Gabriel's access to high tech gadgets. Outside of that, she does nothing for the plot and she was left with no power.

Tomoe wasn't a driving force in the Anti-Adrienette agenda, it was all on Gabriel, so I don't think she's going to keep that conflict going. Nor do I think she even could because Kagami and Adrien are firmly in love with other people.

Tomoe can't do anything to control Kagami because Felix and Kagami pulled the ring switch gambit, making sure that Kagami was as free as a sentibeing can be. Plus Kagami has a miraculous full-time now, making it near impossible to lock her away.

As far as we know, Tomoe doesn't have a miraculous of her own nor does she have access to alternative sources of magic. She was just acting in a supporting role to Gabriel, so with him gone, she doesn't have the type of power she'd need to have in order to be a meaningful villain unless the show is going to make some serious changes to the types of conflicts it deals with.

All that being said, we have no idea what all Tomoe knows and no idea what her motivation is, so I could be totally wrong. It is incredibly... impressive that both she and Lila have been around for multiple seasons and yet we know almost nothing about either of them going into the season where they're our most likely main villains.

Top tier writing there, guys. Way to drive the hype!

In all seriousness, the season five ending would have made so much more sense if Tomoe was the one that ended up with the butterfly since Tomoe actually knows everything that's going on while Lila - who knows next to nothing about the miraculous as far as we know - only got a couple of pictures and somehow magically figured out everything she needed to know.

The show literally showed us Tomoe figuring out that Gabriel was dying while Lila would have no reason to think that he was in less than perfect health. Tomoe randomly showed up at the mansion to yell at Gabriel after Kagami's akumatization while Lila was never allowed inside the gates. Tomoe is a coconspirator and has apparently been one for years while the only reason Lila knows that Gabriel is the butterfly holder is because she read Nathalie's lips on the train at the end of season four. Even those stupid pictures only got into Lila's hands because the show decided to somewhat retcon the lore and have akumas be able to do things without the butterfly holder's knowledge, something we've never seen before. Not to mention that episode starts with the most awkward firing ever and Gabriel explicitly stating that it would be a bad idea to akumatize Lila:

Lila: You could've warned me! I don't believe this replacement was in our agreement. As the face of the Gabriel brand— 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. (opens his Alliance) Perfection itself! All that remains to do is perpetuate this façade 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. (The intercom camera retracts back in the wall. Lila, filled with betrayal, becomes livid.) Gabriel: Hmm... such intense hate! It's tempting. But entrusting a power to someone who hates me so much wouldn't be a good idea.

Seriously, why did he fire her? It make no sense whatsoever. The show had to do so many stupid things to make Lila getting the butterfly feel kinda sorta maybe earned even though it would have made so much more sense to give it to Tomoe or Nathalie. Gods, I would have been so happy if Nathalie got to be the butterfly. She was such a good villain. Instead, Nathalie has turned into the worst mother of the year and we get the worst liar on the planet as the villain. Yay.

So, I can take the plot with Adrien, Kagami, and Chloe in two directions with my own rewrite.

A. Their parents are bad, and they need to recognize that.

B. The sentikid theory.

Don't know what to do.

There's no right answer here. The best choice is going to depend heavily on what you want to do with your story. I can give you some things to think about, though!

In my opinion, the senti stuff is only a good fit if you really want to focus your story on that plot point. It's just too big a deal to be a minor subplot. If you want to do it right, then it will dominate the story or at least dominate an arc of the story. Things to keep in mind if you go this route:

The way you use the peacock pre-reveal will heavily influence how serious this plot point is. No dead sentimonsters? Serious, but not too serious. Lots of dead sentimonsters? Super serious. You're going to need to address that.

You probably want to establish clear rules for what a sentimonster even is. What does it mean to bring an emotion to life? Are their limits to what a sentimonster can be? How much control does the creator have over the creation?

Consider giving them superpowers. I cannot believe that we have 3 magical construct children and they're somehow just normal kids. That is the most boring way you could play this concept. At the very least, they should be near indestructible.

Figure out how you're going to handle the whole slave collar thing as that will effect the overall tone of the piece. If they're forever a slave, then the ending will always be at least a little bittersweet. If they can break free/become real, work to establish that very clearly even if it's just subtle hints.

If you go the normal sucky parents route, then you have a lot more room to work with. Realizing your parents kinda suck can be a subplot that's woven into the narrative without dominating the narrative or it can be a major focus. It's also something that doesn't need a clear resolution because there often isn't a resolution to parent-child conflicts. It can be as simple as these characters accepting that they had a messed up childhood or as complex as these characters confronting their parents/going through therapy/etc. The options are endless, but you probably want to pick a general path before you really dig into the narrative as it will effect how you let things play out.

Good luck with your writing and I hope that helped!

Chat Blanc Doesn’t Matter

(to the person who actually saw it)

You’ve probably seen this said already but I have to express how frustrating this is dear LORD

Lemme preface this by saying: I think it’s hilarious that the fans come up with better headcanons than the writers

I completely believed the idea that the reason Ladybug was growing distant from Chat was because of the whole Chat Blanc thing. Sure, it was really alluded to twice in the entirety of season 4, but it honestly wouldn’t have been the first time something important was brought up only a few times, so it was reasonably believable. It’s falls in line with Chat Blanc affecting Marinette in multiple ways, her wanting to distant herself from Chat to prevent that timeline, whether subconsciously or on purpose. Meanwhile, her distance from Chat and his feeling of inadequacy on the team could possibly lead to his akumatization anyways. It was poetic really

And then the writers turned to us and said “oh no, it’s not that! It’s just that she has a lot of responsibilities and… that’s it!”

Kuro Neko happened in this season.

The episode where Marinette, for a brief moment, thought that Chat was akumatized.

And she barely has a reaction.

Look, I’m aware that if that was actually Chat, he wouldn’t have the ring and would be a bit less of a threat… theoretically, I mean being akumatized can replicate his powers regardless but whatever. But I feel like this “revelation” should have a stronger reaction? She saw the world get completely destroyed the “last time” this happened, why isn’t she more affected by this??

And in Season 5, she “rebounded” her crush, so now she likes Chat because of the events of season 4… except that would be an issue because it never once occurs to her that a relationship with Chat would lead to that future?? Chat Blanc literally says their love destroyed the world, how else could she have interpreted that? And yet she constantly goes on about what she likes about him and tries to pursue a relationship with him in her civilian identity and she doesn’t think about the potential consequences once?? (I can’t believe the season 4 finale affected her in that regard and Chat Blanc didn’t)

And of course, like others have said, every single iteration of Chat in white doesn’t freak her out. I guess seeing Paris destroyed, flooded, and seeing herself DEAD and her own body DISINTEGRATE IN FRONT OF HER EYES didn’t really affect her at all, nah just a normal Tuesday

No, Chat Blanc doesn’t matter one single bit to Ladybug, because for some baffling reason they’re shoving that all onto Chat, who WASN’T THERE! They had to make him have a nightmare adjacent to it to even do this!

Which, by the way, Marinette couldn’t have told him about any of what she saw therefore making him scared of a potential future based on her words. That would mean that this potential future she saw would have any meaning to her whatsoever, which it clearly doesn’t

what are the writers smoking, genuinely