Still Trying To Figure Out Ladybug's Design, So Any Opinions Are Welcome ! But I'm More Inclined To Choose

Currently rewatching werepapas in french, and I noticed this detail about the lucky charms as well ! I think everything in this season is pointing out how Maribug is making bad decisions, and it's gonna turn against her at some point. Every episode that has been released until now is clearly showcasing this. Ngl all of this drama is making me fired up for this season ! I just hope they handle well the pay-off.

Ladybug's Lucky Charms in Werepapas

Let's talk about another detail that people kinda REALLY wanna ignore about Marinette's decision in the Werepapas akuma battle. It's the fact that she hand-waves away FIVE Lucky Charms until she finally goes with the sixth:

No, that is NOT irrelevant. Marinette is not supposed to disregard her Lucky Charms left and right because they're trying to tell her what she's supposed to do. That's Lucky Charm 101 in an akuma battle.

I'm not gonna pretend like I know for 100% certainty what they all tried to tell her, but

1) a couple of them can be easily interpreted in very relevant ways.

And 2) I don't NEED to know what exactly they all mean because it doesn't need to be PROVEN that Marinette isn't supposed to cherry-pick her Lucky Charms. We've known since s1 how this works and it's still done like this in s6. Thanks to not being limited anymore to 1 Lucky Charm, she gained the luxury of sometimes just getting to summon one for the purpose of whooping ass instead of solving the actual situation - which is still a lucky charm's REAL purpose - but that doesn't change the fact that you're supposed to listen to the Lucky Charm, not the Lucky Charm to you!

Under special circumstances like a final battle, sure, use additional ones to whoop ass. But you can't just switch out the problem solving Charm with a purely ass whooping one which is what Marinette did here in "Werepapas". It's fine when you do that in an extremely dire situation, but a normal akuma battle is no dire situation. Especially not when the only real stakes there are is being reckless with Adrien's amoks!

She's supposed to use whatever she gets and that'll lead her to the right solution. Not going through a whole line of Lucky Charms until she gets one where she finally likes the first thought she gets from it because of how little it challenges her self-preservation (makes you wonder if having unlimited Lucky Charms now isnt the worst thing that ever happened to her. Now she can just ignore whole Lucky Charms until she finally gets one that tells her something closer to what she wants to hear instead of listening to the CHARM)

Let's take a look at her 6 Lucky Charms:

From my recollection (so correct me if I'm wrong), while the teapot sometimes shows up here and there as filler Charms it was firmly established and used several times as a visual cue for Marinette to go to Master Fu.

Obviously, she can't do that anymore, but she has Alya as co-guardian, Luka who was trained by Su-Han, and even Su-Han himself as Celestial Guardian who now does whatever she wants.

In a situation where Adrien's amoks are the akuma object, it's a pretty logical thing to happen that her first Lucky Charm tells her to get Guaridan-related help. She has the option, all the needed support, and all the resources, but doesn't use it because it wouldn't be nice having to face the baggage that could come with it.

And even if you wanna say "She didn't get help because she didn't wanted the new Butterfly to possibly find out that Adrien is a Sentibeing!" Then that excuse still falls flat because obviously Adrien's LIFE is supposed to be more important than preventing that secret from coming out. The secret has no value if Adrien is DEAD.

Afterwards she gets a fan and this obviously could VERY likely mean that she's supposed to get Felix involved because he's the Miraculous holder of the Peacock. And by "VERY likely" I mean "I doubt there is a likely chance that it ISNT a hint to get Felix".

I won't even elaborate on this further. Her second Lucky Charm tried telling her to get Felix when Adrien's amoks were on the line and she ignored it. It is what it is.

For the third and fifth ones, I personally don't know what they could mean because I already struggle recognizing what exactly they are supposed to be. Though, they do have recognizable shapes. I bet other people could look at them and know where they've seen these objects before in the show.

Then right between these two, the fourth Charm Marinette summons is an unicycle (that for some reason isn't polkadotted, but screw it)

An unicycle like she summoned back in season 2 "Sabotis", the episode in which Alya became Rena Rouge for the first time. Meaning this one pointed to getting Rena's help.

For me, this is one of the most interesting ones regarding Marinette's feelings of not wanting to face the Lucky Charm's solution to instead protect all her secrets. But if anything, I would want to give it its own post and not half-ass it here. Cause there are a lot of layers to this one.

And, of course, the last one: the scarf. It's alongside the fan the one for which the fandom does casually acknowledge the symbolism of it being a call back to 1x01 "The Bubbler" where Marinette now infamously made the decision to let Adrien believe that it was his father who made the scarf for him - and not her - because of how happy it made Adrien that his father finally "cared":

I don't think I need to explain why it makes sense that this is the one s6 Marinette cherry-picks to finally work with. The poor scarf has been made into the symbol of Marinette wanting to keep pretty much everything about Adrien's family a secret from him. Including him being a Sentibeing. I miss the good old days when we dreamed of the scarf being set-up to become the catalyst for Adrien to write off his father as a useless deadbeat who isnt worth his time and love.

So, unfortunately, of course this is the one she goes with now. Even if it means taking the risk to kill Adrien. Anything to keep the secrets save and lies unnoticed. How tf did we GET here?

So real, I needed more of Adrien's inner monologue so badly that I'm doing it myself now 👩‍🦯 Adrien and his mess of a family are a current obsession of mine

I just feel like the writers don't understand that girl power doesn't mean making every male character of the show insignificant. Marinette still could've been the cool super OP protagonist without having Adrien be so robbed of screen time (like in Star vs the forces of evil, Star is the most important character of the show, but Marco gets his moments as well and is not deprived of his agency)

But don't get me wrong I still enjoy Miraculous, and I think the 6th season is actually pretty solid for now. I like it for what it is, but I also enjoy expanding on it !

A blank piece of paper

Adrien art inspired from Astruc's latest interview </3

Gabriel Agreste dares to ask the question: "what if I kill myself in front of you to forever change the trajectory of your life while simultaneously giving you so much trauma that I'll forever haunt the narrative."

I hate the guy but he is determined I'll give him that.

First, thank you very much for your response ! Also, I apologize for any mistakes, I'm not a native speaker, but I'll try to map out my thoughts as well as I can ! Also, for anyone reading, spoilers ahead for s6 (El Toro de Piedra).

On the Adrien = love thing, I see what you mean, I guess I just tend to ignore certain messages the show seems to push and interpret some things my own way (keeps me sane). s1-s5 already made me so skeptical about Adrien's parents, but s6 is just making them look worse to me, especially Gabriel. Him being involved with the cult they introduced in s6 (idk if you're caught up with that) makes me go "yeah no that guy was still weird even before his wife's death ? And she's maybe on it too ? They both wanted to reform the world ?" or maybe that was after Emilie's death who knoooows.

I guess a reasonable "fanon" interpretation of Emilie and Gabriel would be that while they DID love Adrien, they're still shitty, self-centered people and parents who always projected their own dreams/wants onto their kid, whom they wish to shape into the perfect little man. However, near her death, Emilie seemed to have semi gained some self awareness which is why, in her final moments, she tells Nathalie to change Gabriel's mind and to let Adrien choose who he wants to be. Idc if the show wants me to think that she was a good mom, but to me that seems to indicate that she only had a change of heart towards the end. So she was somewhat controlling at first, but finally understood that she could not mold Adrien into just who she wanted him to be. I guess making her a semi decent mom is a more interesting thing. It also makes her a more complex, realistic character.

So, maybe Adrien is made of multiple complex emotions : His parent's love, his mom's desire for freedom as you said, but also her desire for him to be a "better" version than her, destined for bigger, great things (to go with that theme of her projecting onto her kid). So I see him breaking free from Gabriel's control as a first step, which gets him some extra power, like shielding the ones he loves since he's so attached to his identity as a super hero ? Make him go like, marie-sue style and face off his dad in the finale ? Well, at least it has to be impactful to signify his emancipation from his father's control.

Felix being a copycat makes a lot of sense to me, I think he's naturally a genius (was made that way), which is why he is skilled at so many things. But him being a shape-shifter would add to his manipulator aspect a lot.

As for Kagami, truthfully I'd love for the show to release more information about her or her mom, since we don't even understand fully Tomoe's motivation, or even who actually made Kagami. Her father maybe, since he seems to be absent ?

Globally, Miraculous is a real mess to rewrite, because you have the sort out a looot of stuff. They have so many good ideas but they always execute them poorly or drop something right after being on the good track. I still think it's entertaining, and they seem to be fixing some stuff in s6 although it's a bit late lol.

Sentimonsters are beings made from a single emotion and Adrien's emotion is heavily implied to be love. Sentimonsters can also have any random power the writers decide to give them and have been established to sometimes get powers their creators didn't intend (see Feast). That is the ultimate setup to use the power of love to empower Adrien and yet the show gives us nothing.

(See power of love rant for more)

after he started dating marinette

inspired by this picture:

if y’all see this floating around: yes, it’s from me, and yes, you can find the original post on hoyolab under the same user <3

it's like the reverse special except it's @cookiedough77 ladybug and also mine because I like crossovers...

Low quality Chat Noir doodle to escape my responsibilities

This episode has done irreparable damage to my mind

thinking about the letter again...

@little-mari-on-a-roof 's tags on this post:

#his sacrifice in front of Marinette was already so fucked up #but knowing he had a backup plan is somehow even worse #and he definitely thought Nathalie had more time left than him (at least according to Intuition) #even in his letter he doesn't admit to all the wrong he did. he only says HE sacrified everything and that he was Monarque #he never talks about the pain he inflicted upon others #so even with his last words asking Marinette to not let him know about the villain he was #he doesn't actually write off Adrien finding and following the letter

This made me want to go check out Intuition again and... all this might be a stretch, but could this be the moment he decides to write this letter? Find a solution? And then he asks Adrien and he confirms that no, he doesn't have any adults that could replace his parents (a stupid thing to ask unless of course you don't know anything about your son)

I also added that dialogue from Recreation and I'm now convinced that it's only then that he remembers about the letter. The moment when Ladybug mentions "solution" for the second time and his face changes. And all the remorse about wasting his and Nathalie's life and fear of leaving Adrien alone, that I do believe was sincere at first (but like little-mari-on-a-roof said, no regrets about the villainy) is gone from his face. Ta-da!

Here is his solution. He promised Adrien that Nathalie would help him with his new task. So he heals her instead, since Gabriel himself keeps failing anyway. Nathalie was right and his use of Miraculous is condemning them. Fine! Perhaps Adrien will do a better job!

Also, well... Intuition is an episode that revolves around the power of Second Chance. Sooo.... makes sense if he found a backup plan right there. Adrien as his second chance...

Bonus points: in Recreation he knows Adrien would have to betray none other than Marinette to do that. Couldn't get rid of adrinette yourself? Lol just convince her to lie to him and him to betray her and let them do the rest! Another problem solved?

i'd like to introduce my daughter Nuance to tumblr