Needing More Screentime To Flesh Out Supporting Characters And Their Arcs And Not Getting It, While Claiming

Needing more screentime to flesh out supporting characters and their arcs and not getting it, while claiming it happened—Chloe *cough* "damnation arc" *cough*—seems to be a common theme in this show.....

*Lucille Bluth voice* I don care for Zoe.

Look, I'm that dumb salty fan that simply can't get over her fave character being sacked. But is sooo anoying that not only the bee hero was replaced, also the cute girl, the creative girl, the gay girl, the actress girl, the rich girl, the shy girl, the etc girl... all by the same character. And Thomas was all like omg you cant wait to meet her shes so like the coolest omg you see her already? Didnt told ya she was thE cooLest?? OMG

Zoe is not the swiss knife that TA thinks she is, otherwise she would have her own show, but that would be starting from zero and I guess is easier having long lost sisters out of the blue or whatever.

I'm sorry for the vent Mr. Iota. What do I know anyway, I'm not the creator of the show that is more famous than pokemon.

At the very least, Zoe should have been introduced earlier to better establish her as a character so she isn't just seen as Queen Bee's replacement. A lot of the traits the show gives her could work in the right context, but she doesn't get enough screentime to really flesh out things like her past with bullying or her growing feelings for Marinette.

Oof, I didn't even think about that. But now that it's been put out there, one realizes just how messed up the whole sentimonster thing is.

It also brings up questions about what a sentimonster is, what it can do, and how the Peacock Miraculous holder influences it.

Most sentimonsters present in the show aren't capable of free will, like the Banana Gorilla and the Reflekdoll—and the one that did gain it was the Sentibug, who just got poofed anyway by Mayura in the end.

However, Adrien never had that "break-out" moment, and if he did have one, we never saw it. So, the question really does put in a dark turn to the whole Adrien being a sentimonster.

One can argue that Adrien rebelling against his father is a sign of free will, but you have to wonder how much of that is Adrien's personality that he cultured himself and not some pre-programmed behavioral traits that Emilie wanted in a son.

The same goes for Félix. How much of his personality is his, brought about his father's abuse... or are they behavioral traits his father programmed in him or lingering emotions Colt was expressing himself before he died.

Then there's also the twin rings, and how Félix stole one of them that had his amok in it, so he could gain control back. Doesn't that imply that if you gain a sentimonster's amok, you could control it, even if you aren't the Peacock Miraculous holder?

I don't think Thomas Astruc thought this whole sentimonster thing through, because you've basically got several cans of worms that put darker twists into this whole Miraculous Ladybug stuff that can't just be ignored.

However, I highly doubt that he'll do anything about it. It kind of makes me wonder if he even realized exactly what he was doing by making sentient sentimonsters.

I think one of the worse things about Adrien being made a Senti is that now, I got to question how genuine he is and what is potentially influenced by Gabriel subconsciously.

Like, Adrien's stance on Chloe and Lila, both of whom help Gabriel with his agenda, it could be through Gabriel's influence that Adrien sides with them/discourages Marinette from challenging them. If they are stopped, Gabriel wouldn't have them to help him.

And then there's the matter of his romantic feelings and how he works off Ladybug. Gabriel wants to know who she is under the mask, and Adrien is often pushing for a reveal. Gabriel has a spiteful obsession over Ladybug, to the point he skipped out over his easy win with the Rabbit, and you got Adrien unable to divert away from Ladybug even when he starts dating another.

Is it possible that Adrien is just echoing Gabriel's agenda and intentions and is mistaking that for romantic love?

Given that whoever holds the item can fully control the senti, supposedly, yeah I now got to wonder what's truly Adrien and what's Gabriel's influence.

It goes even further than that. Whoever has the amok seems to be able to control literally every facet of your personality and those commands seem to hang around until someone overwrites them, so is anything about Adrien real? We know that Emilie was wearing one of the rings in her coffin, implying that she entered her magical coma while wearing it, so it's quite reasonable to assume that she actively used it pre-coma. In that case, what commands of hers are still controlling Adrien? What command of Gabriel's and Nathalie's were never undone? Who even is Adrien?

Like is his lack of strong negative feelings about his mother's death real or just the result of her telling him to not mourn her like she told Gabriel to not mourn her? Is he into piano because of natural interest or because his mom wanted him to like piano? Is his lack of career goals because no one bothered to program them in? Is he even capable of developing his own wants? Is his interest in Ladybug real or is it because she's kind of similar to Kagami and Kagami was the one he was supposed to fall in love with, so he just imprinted on the wrong girl? That last one is not helped by Kagami falling for Adrien's clone at the drop of a hat.

All of this is yet another reason why the sentistuff repulses me on a fundamental level. It just completely undermines everything about Adrien's character. This is not the sort of plot you pick for a rom-com and I'm here for the rom-com.

That, and the fighting was BS. It felt so clunky and awkward, and I didn't really see how "Mirakung-Fu" was giving Ladybug and Cat Noir a run for their money.

I literally saw this thing where Su Han got up on one foot, folded the other foot underneath him, bent his upper body parallel to the ground, and then started punching one of them in the torso with both fists. It looks exactly how it sounds, and it's weird. He's completely unbalanced, most of his strength would be in his legs and abdomen to keep himself up, and how would that pose be better than ANY other style of fighting?

And while we're at it, wtf were Ladybug and Cat Noir doing fighting melee style? Ladybug's yoyo in a range weapon, and Cat Noir's staff can lengthen to as long as it wants! So why bother even getting close?

The thing that bugs me about Mirakung-Fu (aside from the abysmal name) is that the spiritual aspect of it is completely ignored in favor of "Haha monks punch hero."

It says a lot when a movie where Jack Black voices a panda did a better job representing the ideology of kung-fu than this show did.

I didn't get into the details in my other post because I wanted to focus on the Luka stuff and because I didn't want to come across as making a definitive statement on something I'm not an expert on, but the spiritual thing is a big part of why I said that mirakungfu feels disrespectful to me. The way it's presented makes me feel like they didn't put any thought into what it meant to give an ancient order of monks a special martial art or really any beliefs and, if you're not going to put in that kind of effort, then why associate the monks with another culture? Su-Han and Fu could just as easily be European for all that their heritage matters to the show. The whole thing has this "Oriental mysticism" vibe to it that makes me uncomfortable.

To end on a positive note, the Kung Fu Panda movies are a great example of honoring the source culture while still using comedy! They prove that you don't have to be serious and deep about this stuff. You just have to be respectful.

One thing I actually dabbled in (in thought, not on writing) is Lila not really being fourteen but an adult mage who was either a scorned member of The Order of Guardians or someone who wanted the miraculouses (of course, sans "flirting with Adrien").

I figured it would make sense, because besides having time for the evil intentions to marinate in her personality, but her ability to miraculously fool people could have an explanation.

On the topic of Lila, her character made a lot more sense when all we knew about her was that she was the daughter of foreign diplomats. Judging by the fact that they brought her to France, it's safe to assume that her parents probably cart her around everywhere. Now, an ambassador serves on average for about three years. A kid who's moving to a different country every few years can't keep friends around and has to start from scratch everywhere they go. Lila was naturally going to end up being very lonely. So, what makes the most sense to me is she started lying to seem more interesting, and became addicted to the effortless popularity and clout she got by doing it, to the point where all her other motivations fell away. The fact that she was always moving also had the effect of insulating her from consequences—by the time anyone could figure her out, she was long gone.

I strongly agree with everything you said. The more we learn about Lila, the less anything about her makes sense. She went from a pretty logical, but poorly executed character to a massive question mark! Nothing about her makes sense! How did a fourteen-year-old convince all these people that she was their missing kid? How did Lila even identify people with missing kids? I'm so confused.

A part of me really wants to know the answers to these questions because it's such a weird twist, but then I think about all of Lila's other lies and I lose most of my interest. I just don't trust the writers who came up with the oh-so-brilliant lie of, "Jagged Stone wrote a song about me!" to be able to tell a convincing story about maternity fraud.

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

It's so offensive how they missed the chance to call him, "First Lord".

Instead, what we got was, "First Gentleman".

SMH 😔