I Think "actually Evil All Along" Emilie Would Make More Sense Than Lila Replacing Hawkmoth And The Former

I think "actually evil all along" Emilie would make more sense than Lila replacing hawkmoth and the former would still massively suck! So that's saying a lot.

It says a lot when the majority of the fandon isn't excited to see Lila take over as the main villain, and instead suggest ideas for other main villains who are actually old enough to drive.

Can someone explain to me why sometimes, it just feels like my heart stopped. I mean, it's still beating, but it's like I can't feel it, and there's no drive to do something, but at the same time, I want to do something.

Please, I want to know.

Even with the concept itself being overall problematic, it's so weird too when taking the characters into context. I can see why Colt Fathom would do this (he is a whole other can of worms here) but I don't understand why Emilie and Gabriel would do it.

With the little information we have of Emilie's character, she's supposed to be the kindest, most loving person anybody's ever known. I just don't understand how they're so desperate to have a child that turning to magic is their go-to. Is there no IVF? If not IVF, why not adoption? Based on how Emilie is painted to be, I'm sure she can still wholeheartedly love a child she didn't birth.

So why even make Adrien a sentimonster? What's the point?

And as for Félix... the idea that Colt, with or without his wife's permission, can basically make her pregnant with a sentimonster is kind of disturbing to say the least. And why would Emilie give him the Peacock Miraculous to get Amelie pregnant, knowing how he is, when she's basically been described to be a literal angel?

Tell me, do you think making human babies with the Peacock Miraculous is pretty f*cked up?

On both paper and in the deeper narrative - extremely so. You've basically created a living, breathing, growing creature you can control and delete on command once you get bored (and with a very fragile remote control depending on what gets used as a amok). The show says that they're no different from humans, but the way they present the entire thing sure doesn't match the claim (or at least for the non-human looking sentis).

And the controversies with it get worse when you consider that there's no actual permanent solution to the above - your only options as a Senti are basically "put your amok in a secure place no one can find and hope for the best" or "pray that the next Peacock holder isn't a complete psychopath who hates your kind/see you as fakes rather than real people."

Either that, or it's:

After this I'll write.

Okay, after this then.

After this then.

I'm so busy, after all this then.

Oh no, it's too late. Tomorrow then.

On repeat.

Me waking up: I want to write

Me eating breakfast: I want to write

Me getting ready for work: I want to write

Me at work: I want to write

Me eating lunch: I want to write

Me driving home: I want to write

Me at home, sitting in front of my laptop:

THIS. The whole thing you said about the lack of substance in Marinette and Tikki's dynamic is the VERY reason why I prefer Adrien and Plagg.

With Plagg and Adrien, their relationship seems more alive, with their disagreements and heartfelt moments. It just seemed more substantial compared to Marinette and Tikki.

Not like disagreements are necessary, but every time Tikki pops up to speak, it seems like she's there just to say her piece or play the "voice of reason" just to get the story to move. She just seems more like an extension of Marinette, instead of a friend and foil to Marinette's clumsiness and forgetfulness.

Hi! Been loving reading through all your Miraculous reblogs and the meta you've written - you have some really great stuff on this blog! I was curious if you've ever written/reblogged anything talking about how, from the very start of the show, Miraculous uses Tikki as Marinette's absolver? Marinette "makes mistakes" and "owns up to them" according to Astruc's tweets, but I find myself feeling that the "accountability" she takes is rarely related to what she did wrong in the first place, even when the show tries to tell us otherwise, and it's usually Tikki or a different yes-man, like Alya or Adrien, absolving her of her mistakes, whether the situation had anything to do with them or not. Ikari Gozen is an episode that always comes to mind for this - Marinette is absolutely terrible to Kagami, sabotaging her, badmouthing her, and going through her phone. Marinette never expresses remorse to anyone but Tikki, but Tikki absolved her so the narrative never addresses the issue again. Tikki tells her "it's never too late to make things right" and Marinette invites Kagami out for juice without ever taking accountability for her previous actions. And Kagami just GOES with it, even stating that SHE was wrong about Marinette and that she understand why Adrien values her. I I will admit, I don't really like Marinette as a character, because I find her consistent self-absorption, and the narrative's endorsement of it, to be really maddening, but I'm pretty new to the fandom, and the subreddit isn't a great place to find thoughtful analysis, so I'm looking for perspectives here! Thank you for your time!

Hey, thank you so much for your kind words! <3 sorry for taking so long. I've had my ask box deactivated for several years now and i completely forgot about me already having started replying in my drafts. 😭👏

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No, I don't think I've ever written or reblogged something about Marinette's dynamic with Tikki, but I do have thought about it. For me, their dynamic is just lacking much... idk, substance? I remember reading from Marinette stans that they think Marinette and Tikki have a much deeper bond than Adrien and Plagg which is something I simply cant understand at all. Plagg is the only person Adrien actually truly HAS in all the neglect and bad treatment he's stuck in from all sides. Plagg takes on so many roles for his kid and has grown so much because Adrien needed it.

The thing is, Tikki and Marinette's dynamic is very different so I'm just not able to properly read them because I personally would need a Plagg in my life and that's perfectly fine. That's why I dont talk about them.

But about your point now:

I definitely agree that Tikki is one of the main indicators about what is wrong about the way Marinette is written as protagonist, especially since the retooling in season 4. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Tikki also used to have a bigger presence in the how which was by now mostly made redundant by Alya always being with Marinette and in season 4 Marinette (unnecessarily and dangerously) keeping all the Kwamis outside the box all times so they too stole screen time from Tikki.

So Tikki lost alot of her personality. I believe to remember her also being more energetic and excited in the earlier seasons, showing off more to her character, which would by now make her yet another character the show sucked alot of their life out of so they aren't in the way for Marinette. Tikki seems alot more down these days, that I definitely noticed.

Marinette has Alya now, if that makes Tikki sad because she isn't relying on her the way she did before then Tikki has to deal with it quietly and not bother Marinette (seriously, Tikki reminds me ALOT of Adrien and they're both treated badly in the narrative for Marinette’s sake :/)

And this reduced characterization makes it by now very noticeable imo that Tikki herself as a Kwami often doesn't really know what is going on because she lacks experience with alot of things. I wholeheartedly agree that Tikki is one of Marinette's strongest and most damaging enablers because Tikki is because of it not actually allowed to be challenged in her dynamic with Marinette the way Plagg is with Adrien. Where Plagg is allowed to grow, Tikki is kept the same because Marinette is not allowed to be really pushed back on.

The show has to my memory always been quite open about Tikki not being familiar with alot of things so Marinette can explain things to her. The problem comes, as you say, from the show then weirdly still acting like Tikki saying some random vaguely positive thing about whatever Marinette just did.. suddenly meaning it doesn't need to be taken care of anymore?

It's the same thing as the show has Adrichat, Alya or Luka do. Most of what the narrative and Marinette as the main character want to hear at this point is being told positive things whenever something went wrong. If that positive thing actually holds any water the way it was executed is beyond irrelevant which reflects incredibly badly especially on Marinette because she is the main beneficiary.

Again, remember Cat Charming in "Kuro Neko". From Marinette's perspective he should have no valid opinion on the Ladynoir conflict AT ALL because he just arrived half an hour ago and never even met Chat Noir in her eyes. But still, Marinette made him the deciding voice of the Ladynoir conflict, absolving her of all blame to entirely put it on Chat Noir, because Cat Charming validated her and said positive things about her mistakes so she doesn't have to really think about them as mistakes anymore if she wishes to not have been in the wrong.

Which for the show somehow equals that she isn't and they aren't real mistakes anymore she should genuinely work on (and therefore still hasn't really beyond surface level)?

Who tf cares if this is literally not how it works and how badly it reflects on Marinette as a character that any random dipshit can walk up to her, validate her, and she'll just... GO with it (making Marinette ironically the most endangered person regarding Cerise now because that girl has plenty of identities and Marinette doesn't give a damn who's validating her as long as she's validated by a person not explicitly telling her they're evil)

Where was I? Ah, Tikki!

Tikki is at the end of the day yet another character who's kindness is kinda weaponized by now by Marinette's narrative.

We've reached a point where one kinda has to say that Marinette shouldn't be told optimistically positive things anymore because not rarely will these words just be used to sweep Marinette's biggest flaws under the rug when it really wouldn't have hurt anyone to simply cover the damn conflict at hand.

As you said, there are writing rules, but I think they were "Marinette has to make a mistake every episode" and "Marinette has to learn something every episode". And as you correctly said, these two things often don't necessarily go hand in hand. To the point where the thing she learns is making the initial mistake even worse (I wanted to look for a more precise example, but at this point it's literally all of Ladynoir)

Which of course absolves her of having to properly take her blame or accountability in ot of cases, too. If I were to approach it in bad faith, I would say that this is exactly the reason why the writing rules don't specify that the lesson learned needs to be about the mistake she made... and that's exactly what I'm saying. Bad faith sounds rather realistic to me.

I remember someone having had made a post where they explained that Marinette as protagonist is written like a villain or antagonist, and the more I look at all the aspects of this show the more does that take check out.

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(damn, I am out of PRACTICE in responding to asks! I hope I didn't talk right past the point you wanted to hear in my response. If I did, please clarity with another ask, I'm not sensitive to that)

And we know that if someone brings this up with Thomas Astruc, he'll just make up some BS about how they're pure evil anyway and chose to side with Hawkmoth (14-year-olds willfully choosing evil without outside influences, yeah right), therefore they're absolutely irredeemable.

Chloé was literally retconned into an evil hateful bitch with (apparently) no intelligence to speak of and is later shipped to an abusive mother, and Lila went from a girl desperate for an absent mother's attention to a grifting mastermind with several identities and three mothers whom she fooled brilliantly.

But no, Gabriel Agreste (who emotionally neglected his son, terrorized Paris for over a year, and falsely imprisoned his own child) is the sympathetic redeemable one, all because he has a good reason—which is debatable—to do it.

Yes. Logic.

It’s honestly disgusting how two teenagers, who’s downfalls were specifically orchestrated by Hawkmoth, who has targeted them, egged them on, preyed on their insecurities, and spied on them

Are worse than him somehow.

It’s weird how stans will get on Lila and Chloe’s case for “siding with Hawkmoth” (ignoring that this is an adult taking advantage of people’s negative emotions but okay), but willingly ignored Hawkmoth holding Chloe’s parents hostage, cornering her, and using her insecurities to get her to side with him, as well as him and Nathalie spying on Lila, purposefully trying to aggravate her with targeted messages and groom her into being an akuma victim.

Weird of the narrative (and the fandom by extension) to continuously hate these teenagers, ignoring all depth, background, and the adults surrounding them that may make them act the way they do, but will always show sympathy to the adult terrorist manipulating them because he has a dead wife.