Honestly, I Don't Hate This Take. It Would've Been Another Interesting Aspect In MLB That Could've Added

Honestly, I don't hate this take. It would've been another interesting aspect in MLB that could've added more substance to Gabriel's character and how his mind works. One could even evolve it into a situation where Gabriel doesn't realize his views were that similar to the views of people whom he condemned. It could even showcase a short-sightedness and a lack of self-awarness, which could've impacted his villain persona.

Basically, he had an ironic self-importance about himself because he pulled himself up by the bootstraps to get where he is, and without thinking, looked down on others for not doing what he could (basically ignoring that just because he could do it doesn't mean they can).

I would've loved to see that, a Gabriel that was so high-handed and arrogant without realizing it, but also had a heart that deeply loved his family and was devoted to it to the point of taking drastic measures to keep it together—like becoming Hawkmoth to fix what he now considered his broken family.

Unfortunately, in the grand scheme of things, your brilliant take won't work, and it's so frustrating because I haven't seen something like that yet. But MLB has this ridiculous consistency issue that pulls their personalities this way and that until all we get is this overstretched piece of taffy that's held together by silly string and a Hail Mary. It doesn't help either that Thomas Astruc wants us to think of Gabriel as a good father, and God forbid he was anything else than that.

This is probably small in the grand scheme of things, but how did Emilie being noble play any impact in the story at all?

I mean, I'd get it if it was just a small detail to help deepen Emilie's character, but why nobility of all things? I don't know, from what I'm seeing so far, the whole "Emilie renounced her noble title" shtick just feels worthless if it's not going to impact the story or add depth to Emilie's character (like maybe upbringing or personal values?).

I don't know. Like everything else, the noble part just feels shallow and means nothing to the story, especially for a character like Emilie, who is the plot device for the whole show. Any detail about her, like her personality and life story, is supposed to influence the story and characters one way or another, namely Hawkmoth since she's his driving force.

So what was the point?

For context, this ask is about Félix's play which says that Emilie gave up her title to be with Gabriel. I'm gonna give a slightly larger section of the transcript of the play for full context, but the relevant but is at the end of the last paragraph:

Félix: The king and queen's twins grew up, each day as different in heart as they were similar in body. The firstborn, curious and brazen, despised life at court and escaped at every opportunity. The younger daughter, well-behaved and respectful, did everything she could to please her parents, and stayed quietly in the castle. Félix: (as Mr. Graham de Vanily) Oh, my queen. Did we entrust our legacy to the right princess? Kagami: (as Mrs. Graham de Vanily) She will fall in line, eventually. Félix: Confident that she would settle down as she matured, the king and queen allowed the curious princess to leave to study beyond the sea in another kingdom. There, she immediately found true love in a humble tailor. Félix: The tailor was making clothes so magnificent that they revealed the beauty of the soul of anyone who wore them. Although it made her parents furious, the curious princess gave up her rank, her wealth and her kingdom to live a bohemian life with the tailor.

Story wise, I have no idea why any of this was added since it adds nothing to canon. It's not like this finally explains why Gabriel and Emilie are poor while Amelie is wealthy. Along similar lines, it's not like Amelie's title has ever mattered. Prior to this play, I don't think that we even knew that she had a title or that she was the younger sister. The play is all about explaining things that we never had reasons to question in the first place.

My best guess as to why the writers wrote this pointless backstory is that they wanted to make Emilie seem even more pure and perfect so they went with the tired old trope of a rich girl giving up material things for the sake of love and art because good pure women don't care about material things! Only nasty, shallow women care about money. (Way to play into sexist tropes, guys.)

There may also be cultural elements at play here given that France doesn't have the greatest history with nobility, so giving up a noble title may be seen as good and pure to a French writer, but I don't know enough about French culture to say that with any certainty. If anyone who reads this blog is French and would like to chime in, then feel free!

While we're on the topic of the play, I wanted to point out that the above quoted passage is why I say that the Graham de Vanily parents can be as kind or as abusive as you'd like to make them. It's incredibly vague and you can read into it whatever you want to read into it. Were they good loving parents who were just upset about their daughter living in poverty or were they miserable controlling classist who Emilie fled England to get away from? It's up to you because you can get both reads from this. The play commits to almost nothing of value. Politicians could take lessons from this impressive level of noncommittal writing.

A better version of the play would have focused on things that actually matter to canon like the details of finding the miraculous and/or Emilie learning she's sick, but you could only have those details if they were coming from Nathalie or Gabriel. Félix is a terrible choice for a character to tell us the show's backstory because he knows so little of it, thus the play focusing on his largely pointless backstory.

Imma make these one day

not a dream

you know those vases with crocheted flowers in them?

i just think they're sooooooooooo neat

I'm only in my early twenties, but God I felt 105 when I saw this 😭

I was telling my niece about flash games and she asked what's flash oh god

I mean, Adrien didn't always fuck around. In Season 1 (the best season in my opinion) he still got the job done. The most goofing he did was making cat puns and joking about the situation, but he was always dependable and still helped save the day.

It's just that later on, they decimated his personality more and more until he's more comic relief than an actual hero who's meant to learn and grow.

You probably know better about the show making it seem like he's doing Ladybug a favor by screwimg up so she could focus; I had always thought Adrien's character just got degraded to a shadow of is former self. But if that's true, that they're trying to sell a narrative that Adrien being so unserious and a complete goofball in serious moments somehow helps Marinette, well.... I guess the show is more messed-up than I thought in trying to sell narratives.

And unfortunately, they can't just write him off like that. I don't want Adrien to get written off, but at this point, it's hard to believe the show will even improve him at all. After all, it's Thomas Astruc, and he's basically admitted that Adrien is a prize made for Marinette.

The show itself seems to impliy that Adrien's only useful if his repress his personality. Like they really wanted to kill the true selves theory, but honestly i think I prefer that over this.

I really don’t know what they were thinking making it so Adrien is consistently coddled out of making any changes that would improve his performance as a hero

I’m sorry but I’m just not buying into the idea that letting him fuck around to his heart’s content is in any way better than expecting him to control himself a little and do a better job

Because, iirc, they’ve showed us on at least two occasions that he can be focused and efficient if he wanted to, he just repeatedly chooses not to. Not only that, they also try to make it seem like he’s doing maribug a favor by regularly messing up fights bc otherwise she’d be too busy swooning to focus herself.

Get for fucking real

If he’s not gonna shape up, he should ship out

Write him off and replace him with someone that cares

It just really makes me mad, seeing how Chloé and Adrien's relationship devolved. The idea that one of the protagonists was childhood friends with one of the antagonists—note, antagonist, not villain—was such an interesting one, because I'd never seen something like that before.

In most TV shows, the petty bully character was just someone to stir the pot and to oppose the main cast, and any friends they did have were just patsies. But knowing that Adrien and Chloé had that established relationship was something I wanted to see.

If only they'd explored their relationship more. Besides learning more about their pasts, it also would've given us a look-see into how their upbringings impacted them and how their relationship came to be. I would've loved to see them have things about their friendship that made it unique, like shared secrets between them.

Plus, from a Chloé-damnation arc perspective, it would've also put some more emphasis on her downfall, because the show would've shown us the difference between the Chloé Adrien knew and the Chloé that hit the ground face-first. I also feel like it would've been a good gut-wrenching moment to really hit home just how low Chloé fell, because we would've seen her go from the friend Adrien knew to a seething hateful villain.

If Thomas Astruc really wanted that damnation arc, then he could've weaponized hers and Adrien's childhood relationship to deliver a truly painful emotional downfall, because then Adrien would've had to face the reality that the person he knew was well and truly gone.

Wasted potential aside, I never really understood the Derision episode in Season 5, where Adrien confronts Chloé for "traumatizing" Marinette and demands an apology. Chloé broke off their friendship in Banana Queen—SHE told Adrien they weren't friends anymore. So what was even the point of having Adrien tell Chloé "You're awful, you traumatized my girlfriend, apologize to her"? So Adrien can have the last word or something? You'd think he'd know better than to believe she'd actually apologize just because he said so.

When it comes to people being against Chloe getting a redemption arc one of their excuses is that Marinette/ladybug helping Chloe is bad because "it teaches kids that they should help their bullies regardless". But when was it ever said that Marinette had to be the one to help Chloe. Adrien is right there! Have him be the one to help Chloe. It'd even be a perfect excuse to give him more screentime too!

It's weird because the earlier episodes that set up the idea of Chloe turning a new leaf showed Adrien taking the most pity on her and pretty much told Marinette and Ladybug that they should trust her more (Antibug, Malediktator).

The show even set up the idea of Adrien and Chloe's friendship being tested through Adrien actually calling her out, but after a single episode ended with him giving up on actively trying to help her change, it pretty much stopped (Despair Bear). the show did nothing with their friendship in Season 3, retconned it so Chloe only saw Adrien as arm candy in Season 4, and finally had him end their friendship in Season 5 after her bullying indirectly affected him thanks to his girlfriend being traumatized by her.

In short, the show was seemingly going in the direction you suggested, anon, but then stopped halfway through Season 2 for no real reason.

The only one I can think of about Adrien having a good memory of his mom is just this one freaking photo of her head on Adrien's—and that's a stretch for me. He also has her on his computer, but I don't think it counts.

She's nothing but a plot device. Plain and simple. And that's sad.

I think it‘s also kind of weird that, if I remember correctly, that we never had a flashback of Emilie interacting with Adrien? We get something how Emilie was with Gabe, Nath, Audrey and Andre when they did their archeology trips (we see that in s5 I think) but nothing with Adrien.

Just seems like their relationship… really doesn‘t matter all that much?

Their relationship really doesn’t matter beyond her use as pity fodder for Adrien

Adrien’s mourning of her feels so superficial and impersonal and while it’s almost definitely just the writing being Bad, I can’t help but think they really didn’t have much good going on as a result