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The Lack of Adrien POV is a Problem

Storytelling, by its very nature, promotes an understanding of the protagonist. If not outright sympathy for their circumstances. Even in situations where they are very much at fault.

This can and does extend to any POV characters, whether they are antagonistic in the story or not. The result being that the more we, the audience, see things through a certain character's eyes the more we sympathize with them.

Meaning that the less we see of a character's, even a protagonist's, viewpoint the less the audience will understand said character. Let alone sympathize with them.

Let's take Puppeteer 2 as an example: We start off with Adrien having to do a tedious task that directly results from being a child celebrity. So with very little prompting he invites his friends to go with him in order to be less alone while doing it.

However, no one there prioritizes Adrien's loneliness. The very reason they were invited in the first place.

Instead the narrative focuses on Marinette's inability to accept Adrien's friendship in place of a romantic relationship. This in and of itself is not a bad plotline... Except that it completely subsumes Adrien's plotline about his friends prioritizing Marinette's romantic pursuits over, well, being his friends.

Marinette's embarrassment, resulting from her own actions, over the statue scene is resolved in the same episode.

But the fact that Adrien's friends left him alone is never addressed.

This prioritization of Marinette's POV actively alters the fandom's perception of Adrien.

As far back as Origins, Chloe allowed Adrien to take the fall for something she did. However, because Chloe and Adrien's relationship always takes a backseat to Chloe and Marinette's relationship, or just generally Chloe herself, the fandom takes years to acknowledge that Adrien is also one of her victims.

Adrien's friendship with Chloe is never given the spotlight. Even in episodes such as Despair Bear and Queen Banana the focus is on Chloe's relationship to everyone else.

This lack of priority that Adrien's character suffers from came to a head in Chameleon. While Lila's threat to Marinette was given due gravitas, Lila impersonating Adrien and attempting to ruin his friendships was treated as a joke.

Lila posses just as much of a threat to Adrien as she does to Marinette. If not more so! But because we only see glimpses of Adrien's thought process the fandom is less inclined to empathize with his own struggles against her.

Then there is Felix.

Throughout season four Adrien was isolated and sidelined. Not only in regards to the heroes' changing dynamics but also in regards to his own relationships. We do not see Adrien's reaction to his breakup with Kagami, indeed we barely see them interact at all. We do not see Adrien's reaction to Nino's intentionally hurtful words. When they finally interact there is no reference to it at all.

Even when Adrien's emotions DO take the spotlight the narrative minimizes his feelings in order to prioritize Ladybug. Something that, supposedly, was being built up as a character flaw he would grow out of.

The entire season was building on some grand catharsis for Adrien's character. Some great revelation... And instead the spotlight is almost exclusively on Felix. A character that only showed up for one episode before the two part finale. Giving Felix more focus in three episodes than Adrien had all season despite the buildup. In spite of the buildup. Ignoring the buildup.

And this isn't new. The narrative has basically always prioritized antagonist POVs over Adrien's. Therefore minimizing his impact on the story even when he is at the center of it. Even when it supposedly brings him into focus.

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)

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

I’m glad I wasn’t the only person who had issues with the powers of the peacock miraculous

First of

The power is kinda the same as the moth miraculous, heck, even the presentation is the same

“A random person is sad so send an random akuma or feather, corrupt the item the person has, evil monologue and then BOOM new villain”

And what a huge coincidence is that both miraculous that has to do something with emotions has to be found by the bad guy

But the question is….what does the concept of “Emotion” has to do with creating living creatures, in fact, the concept of emotion works much better with the moth miraculous, but transmission still works too

The moth works better because the akumatized villains are created by what are they feeling, in fact, is like the villains in their designs is like a way to let out all of the emotions they are feeling right now

So then….what about the peacock? Why do we need two miraculous who has to deal with the emotions of a person?

Like, at least one of them is mostly about let the person get release all of the emotions they are feeling and they transform

You may say that to create a sentimonster you need an item and it’s created by the persons emotions, like love, hate, happiness, etc

But that topic comes to another problem with this power…look how I say a lot to of times create before and right now

create

create

CREATE

What miraculous HAS not only that power BUT also that specific concept?

THE LADYBUG MIRACULOUS!!

Why the heck the peacock is allow to create living beings BUT no the ladybug?

Like, why the ladybug is only allow to create random items but no living beings, it’s literally the concept of creation but also LIFE, the ladybug miraculous should be the one with that power, it’s work and match a lot better than with the peacock, because again, what does emotion has something to do with create a creature?

Can someone explain that, did I miss something???

I know it would make the ladybug miraculous more overpower than already is but at least it would make more sense, like imagen it’s like a power up, that could work

Anyway, that’s kinda all I wanted to say about that issue

What power would you think could worked with the peacock miraculous

I say before I did have two ideas, one spying people around mirrors and the other one was to with the feathers if anyone looked directly to them, they would be blinded by them

So, what do you guys think, do you agree with me or not, let me know

The Fandom from Twitter scares me

Okay a really hate how Chloe being “racist” is enough for this people to say she is beyond redemption

Like how???

Yeah, be racist is a bad thing obviously but for character bad traits standards this is not the worst crime

At worst she is just ignorant

A lot of bully characters and even characters of her age the have done even worst than her were redeemed, if they can, so she

Also is hypocrite to say her age and trauma doesn’t excuse her but then you excuse Marinette and even Felix for their actions

And I would say it, I think Felix is even worst than Chloe

I’m sorry what???

Look me in the eyes and tell me, the Chloe from season 1 is the same as the 4 and 5 season

Like how???

She was a mean girl but not evil, just mean

And no, the writers didn’t fix her, Chloe suffered flanderization, her characterizations got over the place and acts way to out of character

How can this people say she doesn’t deserve a redemption when the show literally redeems an terrorist, a genocidal, a corrupt mayor and awful parents

If they can be redeem then a school bully also can

And if you still think just because a child is mean they are beyond redemption

Please, don’t have kids 💀