Managed To Watch The New Episode During My Lunch Break And I LOVED IT SO MUCH..... Huge Contender For

Lurking in the shadows

Another Adrien piece but with his s1-s5 design this time

I had in mind the moments where Gabriel suspected him of being Chat Noir, hence the choice of purple as a main color for the piece with a contrasting green 🐈‍⬛️

The issue with Ladynoir's Dynamic

While Ladynoir's og dynamic was okay for a formulaic show (which was what miraculous was going for originally), it definitely started to show its shortcomings in later seasons. They did try to adress it, but never really committed to it fully. Like many other ideas/plot points.

Like, S3 and S4 were supposed to say something about Chat Noir's being delegated to a sidekick and Ladybug not trusting him. But they didn't really do it well, sometimes LB just looks super bossy and CN kind of dumb and impulsive. You know when this dynamic should've changed ? The kwami swap episode. It's basically a body/role swap, which is a very popular trope in media, but they executed it so badly and no real lesson was learned. Felt like they just did it for shit and giggles without any real intention behind.

I'm not a fanfic writer, but I enjoy redesigning/rewriting some of the characters, so I'll definitely keep this in mind ! Ladynoir dynamic is different from s1 to s6 but I just feel like we didn't really get to see actually impactful moments of it changing.

Your analyses are very helpful since I don't have time to re-watch the show for the moment, it gives me a way to look back on the old eps and take away helpful info from them, but also connect current events to the later ones :)

Miraculous Rewatch Where I Overanalyze Everything: Mr. Pigeon

I like that we can see as early as this that Hawkmoth has different strategies for akumatizing people. In The Bubbler, Gabe deliberately takes the opportunity to piss Nino off so he can akumatize him. In Mr. Pigeon though, he is literally just waiting around in his lair to catch a whiff of bad feeling. Someone was going to get akumatized today, where that may not have been the case in The Bubbler. I definitely think any Butterfly user who isn't rich and famously reclusive is gonna have to rely a LOT more on strategy A than strategy B (I have not seen season 6, so IDK if Lila does this or not).

Continued under the cut:

Uuuuuugggghhh, Roger, why are you always the poster child for terrible cop behavior? This is like the first episode you appear in and I already hate you for being so mean to Mr. Ramier. No, he's not supposed to feed the pigeons here, but do you have to be such a *dick* about it?

And here we see the first in a long line of Akumas who drastically switch body types for no real reason. Tell me, do we think Mr. Pigeon is jacked because it's Mr. Ramier's fantasy, or do we think it's Gabriel's fantasy? Considering the general trend in akumas. . . I'll let ya'll make of that what you will.

Remember in the Bubbler when I said that Sabrina is just as much of a willing accomplice to Chloe as Nathalie is to Gabe? Case in point here. Look how proud of herself she looks to be pulling one over on Marinette! She's genuinely enjoying being sneaky and unethical here, and she says to Chloe "We're so awesome," when she's done the deed. I think she really does enjoy the superior feeling that comes with screwing someone over like this. She likes to feel like the smartest person in the room. I also wonder if she doesn't enjoy the sneaking around and breaking the rules aspect because her dad is a cop and she feels stifled by his adherence to following the rules.

Adrien is a sneaky kitty! This is an aspect that I think is actually fairly common with him that is criminally underutilized in fanfic! He does this stealth hello literally all the time! He's good at sneaking around! Let him use that skill!

I have no valuable analysis to add, you just all need to see Adrien being an absolute *dork* and dancing to himself while he's on guard. He literally tells Ladybug "I AM acting natural!" He's such a loser, I love him so much.

Once again, we can see that LB and CN have already settled into their dynamic of "Cat brawn, bug brain," which, while functional, isn't ideal. I don't think this is something they ever conciously worked on, and I definitely don't recall it smoothing over naturally in the show, but we'll see if I'm misremembering. If not, I would love to see this come up in fanfic where they have to work at filling each other's niche to have better synergy in scenarios like this.

Okay, props to this episode, those pigeons are TERRIFYING, I would have peed my pants.

Huh, I didn't realize LB was an in-universe nickname for Ladybug with anybody, but here we see Chat using it (and being adorably charming while he does so). Gonna have to see if that's a one-off fluke or if it comes up again.

Okay, I actually love that Marinette just misses the shot because of the wind. For as competent as she is, Marinette isn't actually a trained superhero, and it shows here! She's not perfectly physically capable in every way. It also goes back to that bug-brain, cat-brawn thing I was talking about. Adrien's a trained fencer and isn't extremely clumsy in his day-to-day life, and so is more physically capable and confident than Marinette, even with the Miraculous enhancing her abilities.

I actually need Juleka's steampunk derby hat in my closet yesterday. Marinette is very talented, and her embroidery especially definitely won her the competition, but *damn* if Juleka isn't insanely talented too.

And here we reach a point of fascination to me. It did not click for me that Adrien and Chloe were supposedly childhood friends the first time I watched season one until I got to origins and it was explicitly stated. Instances like these are a big part of why! Chloe isn't treating Gabe like someone she already knows. She feels the need to formally introduce herself *and* her father in this situation, but I seem to remember her being really informal with him in later episodes. To me, this just says the retcons go back further than we thought. Even as early as this there were major inconsistencies in the writing. If someone has a Watsonian theory as to why this is though, I would love to hear it!

Also, shoutout to @linartblogs who pointed out on my LAST analysis post that the foundation for Marinette's season 6 character flaws are laid as early as The Bubbler! Even way back then, it's clear she considers all adults as inherently loving towards her children and is already lying to Adrien about his father being a good person to spare his feelings. That doesn't come out of left field AT ALL for her.

I'll talk about it again when Audrey shows up, but Marinette absolutely has a bias towards believing that parents always want the best for their kids and that they should be listened to, which comes from HER great parents being her primary frame of reference. It

I took a peek at the tag after watching the new episode and I feel like some aren't getting what the theme this season seems to be, so I feel like wording this out

We haven't seen much but the theme is secrets, lies and truths.

(spoilers for revelator below)

While it has been a theme throughout the whole show, this season is making it even more prominent by having Marinette struggling with all of it and having Lila/Cerise/whatever her real name is as the main villain.

We know that Marinette hates liars and it is hard for her to continue to lie because it is weighing her down; she wants Adrien to know but it's hard and doesn't want him to be hurt by the truth. Lila, on the other hand, has no trouble with lying, in fact she states that she tells lies because it's what people want to hear, she seems to do it in order to gain power and so far she only wants to make a wish and that all her akumas are related to Marinette in any way, making it seem like she is the root of all her problems.

Now, Alya has a way lower tolerance for lies than Marinette has (which isn't a bad thing about her to have a tolerance to them, people are multifaceted and her being like that shows she's a well rounded and complex character) and she's rightfully angry because this is a HUGE lie, she did not only lie to all of Paris, but she lied to Adrien. The thing is that it is easy to be angry when you don't have the whole context, Alya doesn't know what happened, what went down at the mansion and only had one of the crucial bits of information but not the whole picture. Now her memory is erased because Chat got a power up (my boy grows!!!) yet we also got to see her saying that it was not her place on handling this secret and that it was Ladybug who should fix it right before that.

We see her later telling Marinette that whatever the secret is she's there for her whenever she's ready to tell it and then worrying if their friendship is okay. I think their friendship will be okay because i have hope for them and hope for Marinette finding the right way to tell Adrien (theories and headcanons aside because i want angst lol).

Truth finds a way and while people like to shit on this show's writing i actually love how they handle things and how consistent they are on the themes.

I've been theorizing a lot about who the members of the weird cult/council seen in the post-credit scene could be since this post I made.

I think everyone agrees on the fact that each symbol represents a sector that the person leads. For example, Gabriel is the diamond because he's in the fashion industry whole Tomoe is the engine because she has a tech company.

I'm also thinking that all the members could have sentikids just like Gabriel and Tomoe as I've already mentionned in a previous post.. And since we know for a fact that Gabriel was the diamond, it led me to think about the diamond ball a bit more.

I'm referring to that special event that Gabriel and Tomoe organized in "Emotion", where only children of the elite were invited.

Since the members of the weird cult all seem to involve rich people leading a specific sector, what if they were all there with their sentikids ?

Adrien and Kagami are possibly the first sentikids since Gabriel is the one who found the peacock miraculous. So them being the king and queen of the event would take a whole other meaning : Adrien and Kagami may be a representation the new Adam and Eve of this new idealized world these billionaires want to create.

One word...CHAOS. Daily chaos on the Agreste household.

In here, Adrien is a year younger than in the Werepapas flashback. This time I tried a more colourful approach.

Nothing like drawing some smiles to heal the heart... to then BREAK IT WITH MORE ANGST AND DRAMA (saved for the next comic)

he has the coolest entrances and then does fuckall the rest of the episode 😭😭😭

Feligami haters just don't get it fr man 😔

I want a Feligami episode for s6 PLEASE

fav feligami interaction?

Gosh, that’s like asking me to choose between my children! 🥺 Only I don’t have children. And if I did, I’d love them less than even the shortest Feligami scene.

These two had me at “Wanna bet?” and every interaction since has been pure bliss. The Diamonds’ Dance was insane. The fan breaking was insane. The sewer speech was insane. The heart on Kagami’s window was insane. The fact that she told Felix about Ladybug was insane. The queer-coded speech at the end of the play was insane. The sunrise kiss was insane. All of Representation, really, was insane. The crumbs we got at the end of Recreation, paralleling yet contrasting the Adrigami scene back in Lies, were insane.

But I think I have to hand it (HA!) to the very end of Pretension:

Because this is the entire essence of their relationship encapsulated in a few frames! The devotion, the rule-breaking, the unconditional trust. The willingness to do morally unsound things to protect each other. The craving for freedom, the starving for someone to touch you gently. The fact that, while Felix hasn’t been shy about grabbing Kagami’s hand before, this time he is careful to offer, not take; that Kagami’s first real choice in her entire life is to choose him. Him. The implications of gifting someone a ring. Dear Duusu.

Felix gave Kagami her soul back, so she lets him hold it.

This scene means everything to me. It simultaneously healed my inner child and raised my standards. I want what they have or nothing —

Nathaniel's transformation and suit are probably my favorite now omg

makes me sick

WOW

the parallels between adrien/ivan hit hard omg