A detail I noticed about Feast

Feast (S3E15) is a very important episode for many reasons: it gives us Fu's backstory and origins of the miracle box, it hammers home the element of emotions when creating sentibeings, it restores the Tibetan temple and causes a chain reaction that is relevant later in the series (namely with Su Han), Mayura is there... but I rewatched it recently and I noticed a detail near the end that I believe to be foreshadowing.

At the end of Feast, our heroes defeat the sentimonster by entering it and cataclysm-ing Fu's staff with the amuk in it. Once Ladybug casts her Miraculous Ladybug and returns the world to normal, the Guardian Temple reappears and we can see the news reporting on it:

As the news is reporting on the temple, a few people can be seen watching (or listening). Those would be Gabriel and Nathalie, Tomoe, Alya, and Audrey Bourgeois.

Gabriel and Nathalie makes sense. They are Hawkmoth and Mayura, after all-- and Gabriel used the peacock with Emilie to create Adrien. Tomoe again is understandable, as she is a close ally to Hawkmoth and possibly used the peacock miraculous to create Kagami (which is all but confirmed in canon at this point.) And Alya herself is the catalyst for this episode's events: she brings Marinette to the Louvre where the dormant sentimonster is, shows Marinette her findings about the guardian symbol, and publishes those findings on her Ladyblog which HM & Mayura then discover. She's also a Miraculous holder too.

Now, why is Audrey watching the news? From a meta standpoint there's no need to show her in this scene since she isn't of the same importance that the others are. Hell, Audrey wasn't even in this episode before then. Even if her daughter is a Miraculous holder, Audrey has no reason to be interested in the Temple...

...unless, of course, she has some connection to the Miraculous.

As an aside... I'm not sure exactly what this means. If Audrey used the peacock to create Chloe like many believe, surely Audrey or Andre would've fallen ill like predecessors Emilie and Colt did. You could argue that she used the peacock miraculous to create Zoe as we've never seen Zoe's dad and aren't sure he's even alive, but considering this was in season 3 before Zoe was even introduced to us I have my doubts to believe this was the intent. Or maybe there's some unseen third option that I don't know about.

Regardless, this seems like pretty obvious foreshadowing to me. Even if this ends up going nowhere it's interesting to recontextualize it knowing everything that we know now. I don't think we've seen the last of Chloe or of her family quite yet (even if the writers want us to think we have.)

i keep seeing people saying that those of us who are upset about the new episode are overreacting or are blowing things out of proportion and i rly dont think they understand exactly why we’re mad. 

we all know that ml has had some inconsistent writing since the beginning, however in the first season it was much more like build up, introducing the plot and characters, but it also did keep important things in mind. it was pretty consistent besides the fact that you could watch the episodes in any order. however throughout season 2, quite a bit of inconsistent plot points starting to come up. but they did give us a lot of background on the classmates, the side characters, as well as some of the main ones like alya, nino, and chloe (even tho i think her “redemption arc” wasnt much of anything)

season 3 we are promised by the staff that its going to be great. lila, a star antagonist, is back however everyone is completely out of character in order to accommodate how she is written. lila is a compulsive liar, we all know that, and she even lies so much its implied she believes her own lies that she tells. (i.e. when adrien told her to stop lying to him and she still insisted that ladybug was the traitor) even alya, an important character to the story, was out of character. alya is known for being a great friend and a journalist, she’s shown on many occasions to want to seek out the truth. however, when lila shows up, telling all these completely outrageous lies that could honestly be easily fact checked, it goes right under her nose. she doesnt believe her best friend when she is told that lila is lying, and even leaves her to sit in the back by herself. not like alya AT ALL. and then later in the episode she calls out marinette for not fact checking on lila, something she could easily do herself. its just lazy writing at this point

another thing is the fact that lila’s lies just can’t be backed up. if it were little white lies about her personal life that no one had any way of proving, say like the ear problem or her wrist hurting, that would be one thing. but she lies about being friends with ali, jagged stone, and ladybug and all three of these examples could be easily debunked. rose is canonoically friends with ali, she could be a good source of information when it comes to lila being his friend. marinette is an album designer for jagged stone, she could easily call him up and have him confirm any relation he has with lila. alya has interviewed ladybug more than once and runs an entire blog about her, she knows almost every little detail, so how come she believes lila about being friends with ladybug when theres no evidence to back it up??

what im upset about is the fact that the writers are being lazy. lila isnt even a believable antagonist if everyone’s character has to be bent to her will, and as a story writer it upsets me that theyre taking the short cut instead of taking the time to write an in depth antagonist, yet claim that each season is going to be better than the last. imo, season one is still the best. i know i cant speak too soon about s3 because only one episode is out, but its not a very good premier episode if theyre going to show us that they can just write each character however they see fit to the episodes plot. thats not how story building works, you build the story and plot around the characters, not the other way around. i dont care if the classmates arent “important” or not (which, ppl find comfort and love in characters no matter who they are but sure be on ur high horse about it) its simply just lazy writing to change a character thats already set in stone in their personality. dont promise me something great only to go and give me mediocre content

this kind of depends on whether u as a person believe there are things that you can get over/accept/move on from etc but like: chloe price. the girl hasn’t gotten over anything.

we meet her at a point in her life where a bunch of other shit is going on including dealing with literal superpowers/(super)natural disasters ((but also like, things like having feelings for ur childhood best friend, trying to find ur missing best friend, trying to work out what the fuck’s going on with the drugging and corruption in the local school lol, etc)) so. there are so many focuses. although a massive chunk of the story is largely centered around chloe, and max’s relationship with chloe, and the lengths max would go to for chloe-- chloe doesn’t have a massive character arc? she doesn’t? like, people wanna say things like, oh yeah she was Selfish at the start and then was willing to sacrifice herself for the sake of the town-- girl, she wants to die either way. she’s depressed and suicidal. her saying that she’s okay with max letting her die at the end isn’t some massive Character Development. maybe dontnod wanted it to be? but they suck so much that honestly their whole vision of what they wanted to portray is just messy garbage, unfortunately, so i can’t tell if they did or not. but anyways point is: they failed. regardless. they didn’t portray the message that chloe, as a character, had been fully developed and could be put to the side like ‘yes, this is a Complete character right here, we done good lads, we told her story’. they just Dint!!!! 

yes, chloe is one of the more developed and more consistent characters in the game, i do think they did a good job with a lot of her writing (except her fate, and how they didn’t want to give her a happy ending). but! g o d! one of the reasons why she’s so good is because she’s so rich and multidimensional? they give her this backstory (i don’t care if ppl say it’s clichéd like i just don’t care, i already give dontnod a ton of shit but i won’t give them shit for chloe’s backstory being tropey, her teen/childhood pain is too relatable for me to bash) that’s Painful and Show us this girl with so many issues and problems and... she’s just so wonderful and, playing as max, you’re meant to grow to just Care for her so much and you can SEE how much max cares for her so you. want to see her happy? you want her to be okay, and for issues to be resolved, and so on. but............. y’know... when you reach the ending..... they’re so. ignored. they’re just brushed to the side? and i really doubt dontnod have the capacity for it to just be symbolic of the message “sometimes you just have to push issues to the side and deal with One Big Important thing for the Greater Good”. they’re just....... well, they’re careless. they’re lazy too but like in this situation they literally ran out of money (like, literally) and couldn’t make ep 5 as long/developed as they wanted to. soooo.... all chloe’s shit got pushed to the side. and the only Chloe thing that matters at the end is her willingness to sacrifice herself for the town. which is sad. and just implies that in the sac bay ending, she would have a lot of personal issues to sort through in ADDITION to the fucking issues that arise from letting your girlfriend watch as a tornado destroys the town. ‘for you’. shit’s fucked up dude.

but ALSO. this Also implies. like, in the sort of happy everything’s fine AU that we all like to believe in where ep 5 just didn’t happen-- chloe’d still have a lot of shit to deal with? and i’m not just talking about her mental illness bc i talk about that all the time; i was actually thinking about william in particular before making this post. chloe is Fucked Up about william. and it’s been. 5 years. it’s her dad, of course she’d be fucked up for years, but like. it’s still affecting her A Lot. her breakdown in ep 3 was triggered by rachel cheating shit, fueled by her thinking everyone betrays her, and we’re meant to believe the Root of it is because of william (i know it might’ve seemed like it was just for plot purposes, and i guess it kinda was, but i’ll be nice and lenient for dontnod for once and believe ‘em). aaaand. then of course there’s the arbitrary episode 4 bullshit that’s completely unnecessary and mildly ableist and just for Shock Factor and so on- which. completely uses up a part of the game that could’ve been used for talking through her william stuff or. Anything. something. i don’t know. thing is, we come back from that universe and are thinking like, alright, william’s GOTTA be dead so we’ve accepted that but. chloe hasn’t? the only sort of indication that chloe has even thought about it since is her text that’s her apologizing for freaking out, and still, like. that does NOT imply she’s worked through it in any way, she’s just. calmed down. not breaking down anymore.

also back to main canon and not inc. happy au: we’re meant to get some kind of resolution/acceptance when we find rachel dead, like that’s just another one of chloe’s issues (and the story’s plot points) ‘completed’. chloe doesn’t even get the time to GRIEVE before she’s murdered herself. she’s resurrected in the next episode, then she briefly talks about rachel getting revenge, and max making things right for rachel or w/e, but it’s not enoughhhhhhh. it’s just not enoughhh. we play the whole game with this secondhand desire/mission/motivation to find rachel (for chloe!!!!) and then... nothin! nada! like 1/3 of chloe’s character is rachel-related and we don’t even get to see her Properly react or talk about it except for crying and then wanting to kill who did it (which... wow, yes. that was kinda powerful and telling for characterization, i’ll admit, but STILL probably the rushed-ness of it was unintentional on dontnod’s part and not actually to do with chloe’s quick harsh emotions and reactions. an accidental good thing). there was such a build up to... nothing. and i don’t think it was deliberate

and. she hasn’t gotten over max leaving her either :_) she.... she hasn’t. dont get me wrong i LOVE how she puts it to the side really quickly and forgives her Just Like That and still fucking falls in love with her (bc it’s so THEM, it’s so pricefield) but ... that’s. largely because chloe desperately needs max at this point in her life. and like literally every single fear of abandonment/betrayal chloe harbors has been influenced by max leaving like THE GIRL JUST AINT OVER IT even in the future their relationship is still gonna be a tiny tiny bit insecure for chloe bc she’s worried she’ll be left again or Not Good Enough or anything (like, duh she’ll figure out that max isn’t gonna leave again, and she really does love her, but still. those annoying feelings are real and STILL THERE). that’s Fucked her up good! she’s just a fucked up girl! whom i love.

chloe has soooo many !!!!!! Personal Issues that just aren’t fully explored in lis.... and it’s disappointing but .... not the worst, i guess, because she is the best character in the game and the rest of the stuff To Do With Her can maybe make up for it. and yeah, it would take years to work through some of this stuff so i know it’s impractical to expect it to all be ‘’solved’’ in the game or whatever but like.... some further acknowledgement of underlying issues and insecurities remaining after a while..... would be nice. lmao this post wasn’t even meant to be critical of lis/dontnod at first it was literally me just trying to say “chloe hasn’t gotten over shit” lol. like, she’s just Coped Unhealthily for years and years. ignored things, resorted to Bad Shit, gotten in nasty messes, and didn’t give a shit about it bc she didn’t give a shit about herself.lbr this fucked up Lass is more fucked up than she lets on