Fictional Fans

( spoilers within )

originally posted on Tumblr

#i don't even watch #steven universe #I've just seen #steven universe spoilers #and I'm annoyed about #miraculous ladybug #queerbaiting #and therefore #spiders georg #i know su is tv-pg but I'm reliably informed it's after the same y7 audience ml is

this is a gift, it comes with a price (4653 words) by AlexSeanchai
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Characters: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Miraculous Ladybug Ensemble
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, spoilers through S2 Mayura, Angst, Dissociation, Identity Issues, minor trans character
Summary:

"All right, kids," snarls Hawkmoth, "watch what a man who's got nothing to lose can do!"

He fights like it, Chat observes, reckless and risky, and Ladybug and Chat are lucky he hasn't come out personally before: they might have Cataclysm in reserve but they're exhausted and he's taken them down—

Carapace's flung shield knocks Hawkmoth off his feet. Queen Bee tangles her top around his ankle. Rena Rouge flashes past him, snatching the brooch from his throat. His transformation falls before he hits the platform.

Queen Bee shrieks, "Agreste?"

Chat blinks.

the illusion of safety (5679 words) by AlexSeanchai
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Alya Césaire/Nino Lahiffe, Adrien Agreste & Chloé Bourgeois, Adrien Agreste & Chloé Bourgeois & Alya Césaire & Marinette Dupain-Cheng & Nino Lahiffe
Characters: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Nino Lahiffe, Alya Césaire, Chloé Bourgeois, Caline Bustier
Additional Tags: spoilers through S3 Chameleon, Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Summary:

A confession from Ladybug leads to Chat Noir accidentally figuring out her identity. In the emotional turmoil that follows, other secrets are revealed—and into their midst flaps a dark purple butterfly.

And it's a damn shame, I've decided, to let my answer languish in a locked post.

Now, obviously that answer varies by who's being enchanted, but here goes:

I hesitate to say Miraculous Ladybug is a magical-girl anime. But it's obviously a spiritual descendant of Sailor Moon Classic. (Which I bet Adrien's seen the full run of, btw.) You've got the hero team—it's usually just the two title characters, Ladybug and Chat Noir (the full title of the English dub, which is p much all I've watched, is Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir). You've got the big bad, Hawkmoth, who sends out a lot of littler bads (the akumas) while personally staying out of the way. And you've got the physics-defying stunts the heroes and the akumas pull off in combat, and their magical abilities—including, it seems, magic to conceal the identities of the heroes and the big bad. All that's ML's take on magical-girl anime genre conventions.

Characters-wise, you have Marinette Dupain-Cheng (oh look, she's a WoC), who's in love with Adrien Agreste, who is Chat Noir, who's in love with Ladybug, who is Marinette. Neither of them know this—Chat Noir badly wants to know who Ladybug is behind the mask, but he trusts her more than he wants to unmask her, and she trusts him as thoroughly. And these are two of the most blatantly neurodivergent characters I have ever seen in my life. I think they're both autistic, probably both ADHD, and Marinette has anxiety; Adrien's coping with a history of isolation and emotional abuse, and I'm not sure what labels go on the diagnoses that surely accompany those.

You also have Marinette's parents (they're not good parents on the level of Morticia and Gomez Addams but they're close, and Marinette's mom is a WoC) and Adrien's father (—see previous paragraph); Adrien's mother is Lady Not Appearing In This Film. And Marinette's closest friend Alya (WoC) and Adrien's closest friends Chloé (—no comment) and Nino (MoC). Alya's whole family are recurring characters as well, and Marinette's maternal uncle features in an episode, and the (human) mentor figure is an elderly Chinese man.

And if you count up these kids' classmates, you find their class (fourteen in all) has two more MoC and possibly one more WoC (Alix Kubdel's ancestry is unclear), and the characters who exist only as background parts are fairly racially diverse as well. And all fourteen kids in that class—who have a variety of body types, btw, and every time someone's tried to shame a larger character for largeness, it's bit that someone—are absolutely badass when the situation calls for it, and in most of those cases it's without magical weapons and shields.

Did I mention Ladybug's weapon is a yo-yo? (Chat Noir's is a baton, which is a really cool toy but not, y'know, a toy.)

On the meta level, one message that ML is explicitly pushing is stay positive and don't let your fear or anger get the better of you. Because Hawkmoth can't corrupt positive emotions. But I also read ML as pushing the message negative emotions can be damaging but are not inherently wrong, because offhand I think every single akumatized person was experiencing emotions that the narrative presented as valid. And it's certainly pushing the message don't deliberately cause emotional pain, because no few characters have done that and immediately found themselves targeted by the akuma whom they had just provoked.

The canon needs more queer—they haven't quite confirmed as canon Rose/Juleka or Nathaniel/Marc, but you hardly even need slash-tinted lenses to see those coming—and idk about the French original but the English dub needs to lay off the ableist language. (Also, the bit in the first chronological episode where Fu fakes being disabled is...okay, it's a little funny, but it's still ableist as hell.) And it's apparently a conscious decision to air the episodes in different orders in different countries so that the chronology is a pain in the ass to sort out. But that's about all I've got negative to say.

And the show is bright and colorful and puntastic and optimistic and fun.

The English dub is available through mid-S2 on US Netflix. Most of the rest of S2 can be watched in English dub on YouTube—all that's missing at this point is the second half and maybe the first half of the season finale, and that first half of the finale is definitely up in fansub.

Want to geek out about Plagg's favorite cheese?

...slash be sad about it.