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sorry if this is a dumb question but uhmm is anyone else's boop-o-meter doing this???

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ML Plot Points: In ht original timeline, Alix was supposed to be the snake holder and Luka the rabbit. The gambit that passed down the pocket watch through Alix's family involved gaslight gatekeep girlbossing OG!Luka into trading miraculous with her, using OG!Fu from the past and present to effectively duplicate the rabbit miraculous, and tracking down her great grandfather while using Fluff and Barkk to make sure she doesn't grandfather paradox herself out of existence.

Honestly the fact that Alix had both snake and rabbit coding built into her

#ML plot points

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ML Plot Points: Duusu

The thing that must be understood fro this to make sense is that, while pretty much all the miraculi have been broken at some point or another, with the Order around to keep track of them they were always recovered and fixed in a timely manner (the longest any miraculous had been broken before was two months). Considering that kwamis are all around 3000 years old, this is the equivalent of going blackout drunk at a party and waking up with the worlds worst hangover the next day. It’s rough, but you can expect to get over it in a short amount of time and with no long term problems.

But that did not happen to Duusu.

When Duusu was broken, the order went down with her. She then spent the better part of the last 200 years broken, being used by and subsequently killing several holders. Not only that, but the last two centuries are the ones in human history where technology has advanced and changed the world the most (in the 1850s the telegram hadn’t been invented yet). To use the earlier analogy, this changes the experience from “blackout drunk for a night” to “blackout drunk and when you wake up being told you were comatose for two years but everything around you is Star Trek levels of advanced”.

On top of that, because when the Peacock is fixed, Duusu’s in the hands of a rich man with all the technology he could ask for, she gets to see the difference first hand.

How does Duusu cope with this particular existential crisis? She latches on to the first familiar thing she can find, Nooroo. 

After all, Nooroo is the nice guy of the Chinese miracle box. Sure, he can hold a grudge sometimes, but he’s overall the first one to offer a peaceful solution. Surely she can hang out with him until she gets a grip.

Except… Nooroo really resents the old guardian. Duusu can get that. He did break her miraculous and lose both of them, after all. But still… Duusu doesn’t really remember what happened while she was damaged, so she can only didn’t have the time to build a grudge and the last thing she remembers of him is a scared child who made a mistake. And he’s not even the one who they are fighting right now. He retired. Is this Emilie woman really worth tormenting an entire city? Is it worth fighting literal children?

So Duusu spends the entire season slowly realising that they are, in fact, the baddies. It culminates in Sentibubbler because “holy shit, he just threatened a child and her family because she might have information”. Nooroo is also upset at Gabriel about this, but he’s already condoned a lot of Gabriel’s other actions. He does not have the moral high ground.

Duusu would spend the rest of the season sassing Gabriel and resining the audience that Gabriel is, in fact, an asshole and doing little things to make his day worse. 

Then Felix steals her and she can immediately tell that he’s one of her creations. 

She can work with this.

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Oof to Duusu like that’s gotta be rough

#ML plot points

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ML Plot Points: The dog is the miraculous that gives the power of predation. The main power is still Fetch, but other powers include invisibility and tracking (both anything within a certain distance and things that she can picture clearly in her mind.

Sidenote, why do so many people give Juleka the invisibility powers? Her entire thing is wanting to be seen and noticed. Her akumatizations had this as their whole deal and her hero form was all about big flashy attacks.

If you want a character for whom powers of subtlety and keeping track of things from the background work thematically, Sabrina is right there. It would also make her another person who gets similar powers as an akuma and as a hero (there's only 6 in canon, 7 if you count Ryukomori, but that's still a decent amount).

So as someone who does go with the invisibility rather than the super-punch:

It's in a similar vein to her wanting to be noticed, but more about reclaiming her invisibility.

Because as much as she hates invisibility and wants to be noticed, she's still also very nervous when getting all of that attention and wants to hide.

Giving her the power of invisibility lets her do both and gives her control over the situation. Juleka is the one choosing if she is noticed or not. She's not ignored in the background, nor is she forced into the spotlight. She is choosing when and how people see her.

Sabrina can be in a similar boat, after all her first Akumatization did involve her being invisible. But where I think Juleka could get something positive out of reclaiming the thing that hurt her, with Sabrina I don't think letting her stay in the background is a good choice. She needs to find her own voice and she needs to learn to work for herself and be the one in charge rather than just following the lead of someone else.

#ML plot points

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ML Plot Points: The Agreste Family Part 2.

Nathalie is the one who I had to think about the longest, and the reason this took me so long. I wanted all three of the Agreste family adults to reflect another character by having the same issues, but different reactions to it, and I couldn’t choose a character to make her a reflection of. I wanted her to have issues taking responsibility and being the one who is in charge, as well as having confidence issues. I also wanted the character she’s linked to to be one of the teen Miraculous holders.

I quickly discarded Alya and Nino because they have no relation to the Agrestes. Same thing with Luka. I thought about making it Chloe, but I didn’t because I couldn’t come up with a way to link them that I really liked. I even thought about making it Sabrina due to their similarities (assistant to another character, fades into the background easily), but I didn’t like that option either. Then it hit me.

There is a character who’s also been in the background, but who took center stage for S5 due to Gabriel getting wounded by Felix. Another character who has issues with control and who is linked very thoroughly with the Agreste household. A character who, if I link Nathalie’s backstory with, gives me full leeway to make her childhood fucked. And less importantly but kind of amusingly, continues the trend of the adults being a different gender from teens they are linked with.

Felix.

I won’t go too into Nathalie’s backstory with her parents, but the long and short of it is that they were extremely abusive both physically and emotionally and that she grew up thinking that she was useless and that deserving of that treatment. At some point in her late teens, but before she went to college, her parents died.

Naturally, when she was in college, she was a complete nervous wreck. Gabriel somehow managed to befriend her through sheer introvert solidarity and through him, she met Emilie. Slowly, but surely, they got her to come out of her shell. Turns out, she’s actually a hardcore conspiracy theorist and is into occult stuff. She also loves travelling and seing different places.

After they finished college, she ended up staying with Gabriel and Emilie and lived in their house. Wanting her to come out of her shell more, they agreed to help her with her travels and accompanied her to places all around the world. She was just as surprised as them when it turned out one of her conspiracy theories was right. There was a weird temple in Tibet that disappeared for seemingly no reason 200-ish years ago. And there were two magical artifacts that were spared and which they could track down. After a few years of research, she successfully got her hands on one of the two brooches and gave it to the most important woman in her life. All was good. Professionally, she had become Gabriel’s assistant and lived a comfortable life. Personally, she spent almost all her time either with her girlfriend or her boyfriend. She is loved, she is cared for, and she works at keepin things neat and tidy for them while helping Emilie take care of their son. Life is good. 

Two years later, she tracked down another of the artifacts and gave it to the most important man in her life. Then it turned out the magical artifact she gave Emilie was killing her. They only found out about this thanks to Nooroo and after she made Amelie’s sentimonster child, so she’s already screwed.

Obviously, they panic a bit. They had all noticed Emilie was a bit more lethargic, but they didn’t think too much of it. So, they do everything they can to help her. They have Hawkmoth akumatise her to create the glass coffin that would keep her in stasis should her condition get beyond control. They keep three year old Adrien from noticing how sick she is because they can fix this. She can fix this.

After a decade of attempts and dead ends, she finally tracks down the guardian. Finally, someone who can actually, genuinely help them. They recognize that the prize for his help will probably be their brooches, but her life is more important, even if they’ll miss Nooroo and Duusu.

And then he betrayed them.

They have to force his hand.

They thought of trying to sell themselves as the heroes and the Guardian as some villain who just wants power, but for that they would have had to go public a long time ago to build up trust with the people. They never intended to be heroes, they just wanted to use their powers in peace. If they try now, it’s just going to raise doubts.

So instead, they sell themselves as supervillains. They lean into all the tropes to make people think they’re actually ruthless. It doesn’t matter. If they get their hands on the miraculi and heal Emilie, they will never appear publicly as Hawkmoth and Mayura again.

It will be worth it. 

It must be worth it.

She doesn’t know what she’ll do if it’s not.

I got kinda invested in that one, not sure why tbh. 

Like I mentioned at the beginning of the post, Nathalie as an adult is a reflection of Felix. They both spent their childhoods with parents that treated them awfully and grew up with problems about control. But whereas Nathalie is extremely unwilling to be the one in control, getting nervous and uncomfortable having to make decisions, Felix is violently opposed to giving anyone even the slightest control over him.

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 Oh I love that actually!

#ML plot points

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ML Plot Points: The Agreste family Part 1

Gabriel was born as Gabi Grassette to teen parents. One of his parents’ (which one isn’t relevant) family had a French Fry restaurant that Gabriel basically grew up in. His parents weren’t particularly good at dealing with children, so they left him either alone or with his grandparents. Unfortunately, since his grandparents were busy trying to pay for the expenses of two teen parents and a child, they were busy working and dealt with Gabriel by having him work at the restaurant (which wouldn’t have been that much of a problem on its own had it not continued).

 When he was 10 and his parents got their shit together a bit more, Gabriel got his first sibling, and was expected to help babysit them. Gabi took well to this task, so his parents started “letting” him take care of his sibling and the two other siblings that came after.  He was also responsible enough to babysit some of the neighbours’ kids, help with the restaurant and do odd jobs for people every now and then. He was smart and managed to get high grades, so it wasn’t a problem for him. Even if he didn’t really have a lot of time to interact with other kids his age, he was fine.

When Gabi turned 18, he changed his name and went no contact with his family. He never told them what happened to him. He never reached out. They don’t know what happened to him.

As an adult, Gabriel has a hard time empathizing with people around him, especially children. When he married Emilie, he didn’t really want kids, but Emilie convinced him. She said he was “just nervous” and that “he’d love their child as soon as they had him”. Gabriel always stayed in the background when raising Adrien, letting Emilie and Nathalie take charge of him. It wasn’t a problem. Some people just show their love in different ways.

Except Gabriel doesn’t love Adrien. He never really has. He doesn’t hate Adrien by any stretch of the imagination, but for his whole life, Adrien has been “Emilie’s child”. After Emilie’s “disappearance”, Gabriel basically ignored him because he has never been involved or invested. He’ll continue to take care of him, he’ll continue to go with Emilie’s intentions towards him, but he’s not parent material. Never really has been. 

Gabriel acts as a reflection of Marinette. A talented, smart, responsible child who is given a lot of responsibility by the adults around him and who has a hard time empathizing with others. The difference is that Marinette’s character arc led her to start relying on people, whereas Gabriel just burned all his bridges. Gabriel also has a lot of issues when handling children that were just ignored or steamrolled through by Emilie without being addressed. This is why he doesn’t interact with Adrien and treats him like an employee more than like his child. 

That said, of the three adults in Adrien’s life, he’s the most willing to give him his freedom though. When Adrien sneaked out of the house to go to school, Gabriel agreed to let him be enrolled. When Adrien started missing photoshoots and official events to be with his friends (fight akumas), and asked to be given more time, Gabriel was fine with it. Gabriel was never too involved with raising Adrien, but every time he gets involved in the story, he starts to realize he unknowingly put Adrien thought the same thing he hated, and he’s trying to both give him more freedom while simultaneously staying within the same things Emilie did, which isn’t compatible.

Emilie Agreste, née Graham de Vanily.

 Emilie was born to British aristocracy, with all the expectations that come from that. “Act this way”, “that activity is not the proper one for one of your station”, “these are the people you should be interacting with” … And Emilie hated it. Her parents had her whole life planned out and the worst part is that her sister didn’t mind it, so her parents always had someone to compare her to.

Emilie went to a French college to get away from her parents and met Gabriel at a party that Harry threw and that she went to specifically because “wasn’t proper”. They quickly hit it off and were a thing for basically their entire time at college.

As an adult, Emilie finally had the chance to take control of her life. She could have the husband and girlfriend she loved, cool magic powers that she could have fun with and the child she always wanted. She didn’t get to have control of her life for a very long time, so now she’s justified in getting what she wants. Gabriel will come around about Adrien, she’s sure of it. And he’s so cute too, so eager to please and pose in photos. He’s the best child she could have asked for. Life is great. 

And then she went into a coma.

Emilie acts as a reflection of Adrien. Like Adrien, she never really had control of her life and had every facet of her life chosen for her. Like Adrien, she used the first chance she got to have a fairytale magical romance with the two most important people in her life. It’s even literally magical thanks to Nathalie. The difference is that while Adrien’s character arc involved becoming more responsible and, while still using magic as escapism somewhat, knows when things were serious and how to act in those situations. Emilie never got a wakeup call and just continued acting like her actions were justified and without consequence. She’s basically saltfic Chat Noir, but more subtle about it.

+ Bonus: Amelie Fathom née Graham de Vanily

I mentioned in Emilie’s part that Amelie is less concerned about the way her parents act towards her. This caused some friction but nothing too terrible. The fact that Amelie helped her steal the twin rings for her wedding with Gabriel helped.

She married Colt because her parents told her to, but she didn’t necessarily have a problem with it. Colt works as the head of a weapons manufacturing company with deals in the US and is newer money than her. They treated their marriage as a professional transaction and Amelie went to a therapist to sort out her pre-existing issues about her parents.

 When Amelie found out she was infertile, Emilie came to her and told her about the magical peacock brooch she had, even demonstrating the power beforehand so Amelie knows she’s not kidding, and helped her get a child.

Felix wasn’t an easy child. He was skittish and slow to trust. He rarely let anyone other than her touch him and he was clearly uncomfortable around his father. The few times Felix told her about things he only told her that he had a bad feeling about Colt and that even he wasn’t sure why, so she just tried to act as a mediator between the two. She knows Colt is a bit weird around Felix because of his… unorthodox conception, but he’s their child, and she knows Colt does love him.

When she learned that the brooch was making her sister sick, Amelie did everything in her power to help them, be it with money or resources, but eventually, her sister was gone. She grieved, obviously, but she was content with her life. And while she had her suspicions about who this “Hawkmoth” figure in Paris was, she technically didn’t know anything. Gabriel never told her. There’s no reason for her to say anything that could put “undeserved attention” on her brother-in-law.

Then her son killed her husband, and she learned that Colt was an abusive bastard. This messed her up significantly more than everything to do with Emilie because she lived in that house with him for years and never even noticed something was up. She was guilt ridden. And she will do whatever is necessary to help Felix.

 Amelie is not a reflection of anyone, she just is, and she genuinely had no idea what Colt was doing to Felix. “How could she not notice”, you ask. Simple; Felix, as a sentimonster, has a healing factor that gets rid of any physical wounds, and since Colt had the amok, he could erase any memories of it so even Felix wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. Amelie tried to be a mediator, but realistically, without knowing what the issue really is, there’s precious little she could do. And Colt is a charming bastard to anyone other than Felix.

I’ll be sending another post with Nathalie’s whole deal.

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Good for Felix! But GOD everyone else

#ML plot points

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ML Plot Points: (This is four different things, but they're related so I'll put them as a four parter) During S2 and the first part of S3, Marinette would meet up with Fu. This would be for world building (explaining the powers of the miraculous and whatever tidbits of information I want mentioned that I couldn't put in the story organically), building up the relationship between Fu and Marinette (which is important for the Ladybug Replacement arc) and as a way to start conflict between Ladybug and Chat Noir. The secrets are still not something Marinette could tell him, but it would be a lot more blatant that she's hiding stuff from him. (1/4)

OOF

Miscommunication my beloathed.

#ML plot points

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ML Plot Points: During certain akumas of S2 and S3, Marinette will use two miraculous. Not by unifying, but by using the other miraculous as part of a plan, changing to the ladybug (by retransforming and retransforming immediately) and finishing the fight. This would be done to give all the kwamis some time to shine, expand on their personalities and establish what their powers are. There would be more than one occasion where their powers are not useful for the akuma, but they would still get some time to just be there. (2/4)

the Kwami are like the least developed characters in this show so GOOD

#ML plot points

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ML Plot Points: The "Tiers" of the miraculi do not mean anything about how powerful they are. The miraculi are objects for deities to contact the mortal world, some of them are more useful in more situations due to their nature, but they are all equally as powerful. The tiers are a system the Order put in place to represent how often each miraculous is used and deployed. Yes, the Ladybug and cat are the most deployed of that particular miracle Box. (3/4)

I mean yeah fair

#ML plot points

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ML Plot Points: The reason that Fu gave away the Ladybug and the Black cat to fight Hawkmoth is that the Order made them the most often deployed. He thinks "the Order did it this way, so it must be the correct way". What he missed and something that Marinette would pick up on but not confront him about is that they are very rarely deployed at the same time and the few times they were both active simultaneously, they are on opposite sides of the world. The few times that they ended up near one another, the Order always got involved in a more active way to try and retrieve one of them. The Order doesn't deploy them because they are partners, but because they want them away from each other. This goes against what Tikki keeps telling Marinette about her an Plagg being the best together, but Marinette doesn't confront her either. This cognitive dissonance contributes to her breakdown during the Ladybug Replacement Arc. (4/4)

Given the equal-opposite nature and what Tikki says, I'm taking bets on the Order being like 'we must keep these far away lest their users team up and take us the fuck out'.

#ML plot points

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ML Plot Point: The Rooster's power is the ability to be enhance one of the holder's traits or skills. Results are exponentially increased based on how good the holder is at that skill on their own.

Now there's a version I could vibe with.

#ML plot points

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“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

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I can. It's the alarm sound in MGS:

”?!” makes a sound in my head, but I can’t describe what it is.

#Youtube

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ML Plot Points: Felix and S4 Finale

I mentioned in the S4 that Felix had his debut in S3. The episode remains mostly the same with two big differences: the akuma is not a weird lazy combo of previous akumas, and Felix’s amok is not the ring. Felix getting the ring is mostly because of his mom wanting it. Also so he could get an idea of what Gabriel’s home defenses are like.

In early season 4, after the early season akumas, Felix arrives at the manor and basically tells the Agrestes that he’ going to be staying in Paris. Either Gabriel lets him in the manor or he gets an apartment nearby where it’s harder to keep track of him. Gabriel is not amused, but gives in.

It’s worth noting that Felix knows already that he’s a sentimonster and that Gabriel is Shadowmoth, so there is no “Oh my god! My uncle is a supervillain” moment. Though he is mildly perturbed by the body in the basement.

Sentimonster or not, Gabriel cares about his nephew and will not use the peacock to thanks snap him. He will use it as a threat though, which leads Felix to gather as much evidence and dirt on Gabriel as he can and puts it on a dead man’s switch. If he doesn’t update the password every two days, it’s all sent to Adrien and the heroes. This situation leads to a back and forth between the two where Felix tries to get the peacock and collects as much blackmail material as possible, and Gabriel tries to stop him, sometimes with akumas.

Their little back and forth culminates in the season finale. Nathalie has been using optigami to try spying on the heroes, with limited success. She has discovered some identities, but none of the permanent heroes. Still, they figured out that Ladybug is in Adrien’s school. So they make a plan. Nathalie sets up the trip to get Adrien out of the city and, as Mayura, creates a Sentinathalie to accompany so she can keep track of him while being nearby in case Gabe needs an emergency akuma. Gabriel akumatises Risk and lets him go nuts for a couple of days. Once everything is set up, Gabriel dismisses Risk and creates Strikeback.

Since Strikeback is a sentimonster created form the peacock holder, Strikeback is immensely powerful and practically impossible to control, thus, why they need Adrien out of the city. The attack works almost flawlessly. They cause a lot of property damage, Ladybug is forced to rely on new Temporary heroes and both Carapace’s and Rena Rouge’s identities have been compromised. Gabriel breaks Strikeback’s amok and calls it a day.

And then everything goes wrong.

See, Adrien is not the one on the trip, it’s Felix. Adrien, knowing that he couldn’t afford to leave Paris, convinced Felix to take his place. Ladybug, having just discovered that her usual Dog holder (and everyone else, for that matter) was compromised, goes to “Adrien” to have one temp holder not manipulated by Risk. The fight against Strikeback goes a little differently, but the summary is that most of the holders are about to run out of time and Ladybug has them go to different locations to get their miraculi separately without compromising anyone else. When she goes to find “Adrien”, she finds no one. And her yo-yo disappears.

It only takes her 6 seconds to get out of her surprise and retransform to eliminate her yo-yo, but that’s enough time for Felix to pull out a bunch of miraculi.

The thing that need to be understood about Felix is that, while he is genuinely smart, he is also an arrogant asshole. He thinks that, now that he has the raw might to win, he can finally drop the clandestine approach and just punch Gabriel to get the peacock. So he does the not very smart thing and unifies every miraculous in his possession:

-Miraculi that I want Felix to have: dog, ox, fox, turtle, tiger.

-Miraculi I wouldn’t mind giving him: pig, mouse and rooster.

That’s somewhere between five and eight miraculi simultaneously on the first day he has used a miraculous. If it wasn’t for his sentimonster regeneration, he would just die instantly, and he doesn’t even know about it beforehand.

Having swallowed his amok, with the Ox cutting him off from the peacock (making it impossible for him to get Thanos snapped) and the rest of his miraculi powering him up, the newly named Baskerville decides to just take the brooch from Gabriel.

It doesn’t go great.

Felix gets caught in a trap almost immediately and in the time it takes for him to escape, Gabriel has transformed, akumatised Nathalie into Domain and given her a sentimonster. Thus begins the most interesting fight I’ve foreshadowed in the posts about world building and powers.

Shadowmoth has all the same advantages he and Mayura had in the season 3 finale fight.

Domain has the ability to possess and alter the layout of the mansion, as long as she’s inside of the property.

The sentimonster (I haven’t thought of a name for it, suggestions are appreciated) has a space warping power that only works inside of the property. More specifically, it can change what doors lead to what room and the size of the rooms and hallways.

Baskerville has unlimited uses of the powers of all the previously mentioned miraculi.

During the fight, We finally get a look at how unhinged Felix trully is and why. He screams out about how awful it was growingg up with him. Being forced to obey every unreasonable expectation just for being alive, suffering every humiliating punishment for not reaching them, having his memories tampered with when he lashed out at him.

Using so many miraculi like that is putting him in excruciating pain, but it’ll be worth it if he finally gets to have control. It’ll be worth every lie, every scam, every underhanded bullshit trick he’s had to rely on to survive. He will not be controlled by anyone else again. He’s killed one rich jackass to get control of his life, he’ll do it again.

After some careful retrieval from team Moth (by which I mean they cut off his limbs), Felix is left with only the fox and the ox. In a last-ditch effort, he takes a punch to the face from Shadowmoth, losing the ox but getting the peacock. After that he immediately runs away.

In the meantime, the Hero Squad has caught on to the fight happening in the manor and is about to capture him. Gabriel is too injured to continue, so he hands all the miraculi to Nathalie so she can continue the job. The season ends with Nathalie using the Dog miraculous to get the crystal coffin out of the basement into an obscure warehouse one day the company and Gabriel surrounded by all the active heroes.

Things I didn’t elaborate on above:

-Marinette detransformed in front of Adrien because doing it quickly is more important than letting the miracle be stolen. Adrien promptly reveals his identity to her. This is how they find out Felix is a trick ass bitch.

-Felix is the only sentikid. There’s no SentiKagami, SentiChloe or SentiAdrien. It’s just him. He was made by Colt because him and Amelie were having trouble having children and is based on Adrien. Felix has… feelings about the person he’s a magical clone of.

-Felix’s amok is not the ring, it can be any random object, but it’s something that he carries with him almost religiously after he shows up in S4.

-Felix killed Colt. This would be implied subtly throughout the season and finally confirmed during the final fight. He poisoned his food to do it.

-Colt used the amok to mess with Felix’s memories rather often, so he’s not a reliable narrator about a lot of things. I really want to lean into the existential horror of not knowing how reliable his own memories really are.

-Felix suspects Adrien is Chat Noir but he is not completely certain.

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GOD this is so much more fascinating than Canon.

#ML plot points

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Funfact: Do you know that you accidentally made Bengala as female version of Shocker (Spiderman's villain)?

Both of them are bank robbers that have powerset centered on creating shockwaves, but Bengala is "Spanish woman that uses magical artefact", while Shocker is "German guy that uses tech (that he constructed himself)"

I actually did not know that. I never payed a whole lot of attention to comics and the few I did check out are mostly DC. Considering that Ladybug was inspired by Spider-Man I think it's kinda fitting.

#ML plot points

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ML Plot Points: Fun fact, I picked the name Irene for Bengala because I thought it was appropriate for ironic reasons (Zhe best reasons!). Irene comes from the greek word for peace, eirēnē. In greek myths, Eirene is the greek goddess of peace and the personification of wealth and harmony. It's mildly amusing to me.

Appropriate for ironic reasons. The best reasons!

#ML plot points

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ML Plot Points: Bengala

I said I might elaborate in another submission and immediately after that I thought of an entire plot, character arc, theme and conflict. Fuck it. 

The Tiger villain is a Spanish woman going by Bengala. Referencing both her animal (bengal tiger = tigre de bengala) and the flashy, bright nature of her powers (sparklers and flares are called “bengalas” in Spanish). She showed up two weeks after the S3 finale by robbing a bank. She knows how to power down her Clouts at will so she uses only the absolutely necessary amount of force and how to use the clout from any part of her body to propel herself. Judging by how she fights, she’s also an adult martial artist, both being able to use her powers more than once and knowing how to use them for maximum effect.

Personality-wise, Bengala is not just a lightning bruiser, she’s also smart. Whenever Ladybug uses Lucky Charm, Bengala figures out the plan she’s going to try and takes steps to ensure she cannot be taken down with it. The second she sees Viperion she makes sure to target him in unpredictable ways because with him she’s in trouble (she thinks the snake’s power is to see the future, but the point remains). She’s good at using psychological warfare to trip up the heroes to make them distracted and get in each other’s way to win a fight. 

Légalsatian and Pierre Pietrain both try to capture her and fail. The heroes try to capture her and fail. Shadowmoth throws akumas and sentimonsters at her and they fail. She seems unstoppable.

During her next episode, we learn more about her. She’s a second generation Spanish immigrant called Irene whose parents went to France for work. She has a job at the gym where Nora goes to as a personal trainer, but it doesn’t pay a whole lot. After their house burned down in an electrical fire last year, they’ve been having financial trouble because their insurance company screws them over. Then, because it wasn’t enough, her father got fired and scammed by some random prick who promised him to help sue his former workplace. Bengala and her parents are living in a crappy, tiny apartment with very few possessions. Her criminal activities are supposed to help with that.

Initially, her robberies are very quick and without spectacle. Go in, threaten the bank tellers, get a small but significant amount money, escape. The superpowers mean she doesn’t need to think very hard about it, only needing to make sure people cannot trace the money back to the banks, but she’s still careful and does as little damage as she can get away with. At least at first.

As time passes, as she defeats heroes and villains alike, she starts to get cocky and she starts to show off a lot more. It’s no longer about getting the money, but about proving she can do whatever she wants, whenever she wants. She starts attacking the heroes so she can get their miraculi, attacking the akumas to prove that she can, absolutely wipes the floor with the fighters the Order throw at her (I cannot bring myself to see the Order as competent or smart). It’s no longer about having enough, it’s about having more and beating the people who stand against her, both because of arrogance and because of the stress of having everyone. against her. In her civilian life, her parents notice the change and try to help her. At some point, she is handed an easy way out. A way to fix her financial problems and help her parents at very little cost, but she refuses because the solution isn’t one that she figured out. It isn’t enough. Her parents find out and are rightfully pissed.

In the mid-to-late season two parter, after she beats an akuma-sentimonster duo, the heroes decide to just throw every temporary holder at her, not at once, but spaced out. Every time she gets close to winning, another set of two to three heroes come in to fight her.  Beating them doesn’t work, distracting them doesn’t work, causing collateral damage on purpose to get them off her back doesn’t work. Eventually, she gets tired from fighting for so long and the transformation finally gives out. She is promptly arrested and even her parents think it’s the best outcome.

I originally picked the tiger miraculous for this because I wanted a miraculous that would be difficult to take from someone (a bracelet and four rings attached to each otters by chains are not easy to take from someone in the middle of a fight), but the more I thought about it the better it got.

Irene works as a foil to both Marinette and Gabriel.

To Marinette: 

Aesthetically, she contrasts in colour (red and black versus purple, gold and black), motifs (spots versus stripes) and size (small and lean vs big and bulky). Thematically, Marinette’s arc this season is about being a leader; knowing how and when to rely on people and knowing how to use their talents. Irene always works alone, breaks down her opponents to know how to beat them and is gradually pushing the few people who care about her aside.

To Gabriel:

Aesthetically, they are both large, imposing people who wear purple. Power-wise, Shadowmoth works from a distance relying on other people to do the dirty work whereas Bengala is a close range fighter who refuses to take help form other people. Backstory-wise, they are both trying to help their loved ones form a terrible situation and are willing to do whatever they have to. Bengala, however is more like canon S5 Gabriel in that her motives are not even remotely close to justyfing her actions. She’s a spiteful control freak who threw away a way to get what she wanted because she wanted to solve the problem herself. In the end, even the people she claimed to be doing this for think it’s better that she got taken down. Gabriel realises their similarities after the Sentibubbler incident (halfway through the season) and, seing where that path leads, refuses to sink that low again.

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I LOVE HER.

#ML plot points