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storybook-with-a-hug · 1 year

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Fix-It Miraculously: Analyzing Alya (Season 1 focus)

So, with the next chapter in my story being another of the OC chapters, it gives me a chance to explore the supporting cast more. Though over-all the chapter is going to be Adrien-centric, one of the things I’m doing in it is exploring his relationships with other people besides Marinette. Particularly, this chapter is going to focus rather heavily on the budding friendship between him and Alya on both sides of his mask. To do so, though, I figured I’d take the chance to expand a bit more on my take on Alya and who she is as a character in the start of the series.

So I don’t think anyone would call it a stretch to say Alya is a very passionate person. She’s the sort to throw herself head-long and completely into every new theory she comes up with an exuberance that is quite admirable. She is fiercely loyal and always wants to do the right thing, even if she doesn’t always go about it in the best way.

However, the problems of her character are so intrinsically linked to the best parts of her character that it’s more to say she takes her best qualities too far and hasn’t yet learned how to temper herself to an appropriate reaction. Which is not to say she’s strictly in the wrong or that she’s a bad character/friend/person, just that she’s a young teen (13 in my story, probably 14 in canon, but this is an analysis for my story specifically so I’m making her 13) who still has a lot to learn.

As such, Alya has three glaring problems that over the course of this story she will learn to address. Her primary problem, which isn’t even so much of a “her” thing as it is an age/experience thing, is that she tends to jump to conclusions too quickly and then once she’s latched on she has a lot of problems letting go. This was her big problem with the “Chloe is Ladybug” theory in Lady WiFi, she made a conclusion and then set out to make her proof match her theory and disregarded everything that countered her foregone conclusion instead of letting the facts prove of disprove the hypothesis. If she had taken the time to step back and examine her facts, or listen to the advice of those around her, she never would have gotten herself in that situation. And while getting getting suspended and proven thoroughly wrong was a bit of a nasty wake-up call for her, she hasn’t quite learned her lesson yet.

She jumped to conclusions again in Pharaoh, where she (rightfully) believed Ladybug was a student in her grade in her school and then (wrongfully) changed her mind to believe that Ladybug was an ancient Egyptian demi-goddess that’s thousands of years old. Now, beyond the fact that in the canon episode Alya apparently found the book, researched what schools used it and how many girls were in their school year, went all the way to Marinette’s house, and then all the way to the Louvre and spent all that time looking at the scroll without ever once even bothering to open the front cover of the book and see Marinette’s name written in it, the fact that she so easily believed this lie makes me think it has something to do with the quantum masking that protects their identities. That’s why in my rewrite of the episode I had Chat Noir start to fall for it before Ladybug reminded him of the facts and knocked him out of it. It’s also for this reason that I had Alya mistakenly believe that Chat Noir was the Fairy King of Cats after he started dropping names related to such.

So, while she hasn’t completely learned her lesson yet, the first steps have been taken. She still has a ways to go on this point, this problem won’t start really being fixed until season 3-4 where she starts settling down out of fangirl mode and actually taking her journaling more seriously. By that point, she’ll be 14-15, have been a hero on the front lines of this war herself, and had suffered a few more wake-up calls that each move her a little further in the direction of a mature young woman who is competent at her job.

Next real problem, which is also in great part due to her age, is Alya’s inability to get out of her own head. I don’t mean that in a mean way, but children are horrible at seeing the big picture and truly empathizing with those around them. They lack the experience and they lack the basic brain development that lets them get out of their own head and really understand other people and the consequences to their actions. Alya’s still very much in that place where she goes “well, I can do it with no problem, so you should be able to as well!” Especially where Marinette is concerned. She can talk to Adrien easily, so Marinette should also be fine doing so. She comes from a large supportive and loving family who like any family that has many siblings is full of teasing and banter and she’s fine with it, so Marinette should have no problem with her making fun of her either. She doesn’t know of any commitments to Marinette’s time, so therefore Marinette can’t possibly be busy and if she says she is it’s only with sleeping.

The problem is that, in my story especially, Marinette’s past is that of a bullied child. And just like how Alya can’t get out of her own head to realize her and Marinette’s situations are different, children have a hard time getting out of their own heads to realize the long-term damage they’re doing to their target by bullying them. And as such, otherwise nice children can be downright cruel and torturous towards their target when swept up in the mob mentality and given basically a green light to do whatever they want to someone. Marinette is a very strong girl to be able to pull through something like that with an intact sense of right and wrong and a disposition of STILL wanting to help people. It’s why she was chosen as Ladybug, a hero to save the whole world from a megalomaniac. But it also means she’s not equipped to take friendly teasing. She is desperate to keep that one friend that she’s gotten after being alone for so long, so she’s not going to stand up for herself and tell Alya off for saying hurtful things, but for a self-esteem as fragile as Marinette’s is at the start of the series that doesn’t mean those sorts of things aren’t still counterproductive.

Now, don’t get me wrong: in no way is Alya trying to be mean to Marinette or reaffirm the kinds of harsh words her bullies used. But Alya doesn’t strike me as someone who’s been the target of long-term bullying before, given how confident and brazen she is. She doesn’t have a frame of reference for understanding the sorts of things Marinette faced while she was growing up or how her words cold be misconstrued. To Alya, she’s just being playful and treating Marinette as part of her family. To Alya, Marinette is as good as another sister, with all the love and bickering that goes along with it. But Marinette is an only child and didn’t grow up with sibling banter, so being treated like that doesn’t hold the same emotions for her that it does for Alya. Not yet at least.

This is further proven by the fact that in season 1, Marinette doesn’t ever really sass Alya back. She complains about Alya a few times behind her back to various individuals, but she’s not yet comfortable enough with the friendship to be snarky or put Alya in her place when Alya throws out a few lines like that making fun of Marinette over something. At this point in their relationship, Marinette is just taking it like a victim, and Alya doesn’t have the knowhow to be able to recognize this behaviour and alter her own.

And this sort of leads into her third main flaw: disregarding others personal boundaries. Alya is almost notorious for not listening when people tell her “no” and pushing on anyway because she wants something. Be that to quell her insatiable curiosity about something or seeing her best friend achieve her happily ever after with the boy of her dreams. When Alya wants something, she is relentless and nothing anyone else has to say or think on the matter means anything to her.

Ladybug’s life could be in danger because her identity was publicly revealed? Don’t care, I wanna know the answer to the secret so let’s all get excited together about figuring it out! Marinette’s on the verge of a panic attack, freaking out and spiralling because she’s not ready to take that next step in her relationship with Adrien yet? Don’t care, I wanna see my ship sail because it’s fun to get swept up in the drama of it all just like a real-life romcom so I’m gonna force it anyway! An akuma’s attacking and going near it could endanger her life and make Ladybug and Chat Noir’s job all the harder because they’re having to protect the kid that keeps running on to the battle field? Don’t care, I wanna live my dream and enjoy the excitement of seeing real lives superheroes fighting a real life supervillain and get loads of views on my blog while doing so! Marinette is being extremely insistent about a prior engagement that she’s trying very hard to keep secret? Don’t care, I wanna see my ship sail and any prior engagement is either a flat out lie or I demand to know all the deets because my best friend isn’t allowed to have anything in her life that is personal and private and I’m not intimately part of!

Admittedly, most of these sorts of problems stem from an honest desire in Alya to help out and make a difference in the world, mixed with her black-and-white morality and inability to get out of her own head, as well as her boundless thirst for knowledge about everything and anything that interests her. And while all of it (save perhaps the morality bit, but again, she’s still a child and kids tend to have trouble seeing the shades of gray between) it can be problematic at the levels she takes it to.

Do people occasionally need a push to get them to take the actions they really and truly desire to make their lives better? Sometimes, yes. But those pushes have to be situational and you have to be willing to listen to the person you’re giving a push to in order to understand if they really need a push or if they just need time. When Marinette was having troubles getting up the guts to actually hand Adrien his birthday present? Yeah, giving Marinette a bit of a push to get her actually out there and talking to the boy was the right call. Perhaps going out with her and helping lead the conversation might have made it easier on Marinette and actually guaranteed he got the gift, but she believed Marinette could do it on her own. Encouraging Marinette to stand up to Chloe in the Origins episode? Definitely okay, as Marinette more just needed to be assured that she wouldn’t be abandoned completely for putting her foot down than actually be pushed to stand up for herself as Alya more let Marinette take the lead and just followed her cues and gave her unwavering support in taking her chair back. Pressing the call button on Marinette’s phone when the girl is insisting she’s not ready to ask Adrien out yet and can’t read aloud the script she wrote her without even giving her the chance to read it over and prepare at all? Not cool. Dragging Marinette away from an actual job she’s supposed to be doing (babysitting Manon) in order to go out and stalk Adrien at his place of work? Again, not cool.

But for Alya to start learning her lesson about how much is okay to push and when, people really have to start putting their foot down and refusing to budge and pointing out Alya’s bad behaviour for what it is. And unfortunately, Marinette really isn’t the sort of person who is able to do that short of being pushed too far and blowing up with her lashing out. Alya’s gonna need someone else to teach her what is and is not okay as far as pushing other people to get her way, and someone other than Alya is going to have to be the one to be there for Marinette to let her know it’s alright to tell Alya to back off sometimes when she’s getting too pushy about things. Thankfully there’s an entire girlsquad to choose from, but friendships between the squad have to develop a bit more before something like that can start really taking affect.

So, basically in conclusion, while Alya may be a wonderful person on her own and even a pretty good friend, I don’t really think she’s the best friend a girl like Marinette needs. At least, not so early in their respective character arcs. With a bit of growth on both ends, they could develop into something closer to what each of them requires. Or they could diverge into a state of merely being friends instead of best friends as they each find other things to fill their time and other relationships to complete themselves with.

So then what other things are there for Alya? Well, most blatantly for anyone who’s seen canon is her relationship with Nino. I don’t know about most of you, but I recall when my friends first started dating, that first relationship they had seemed to consume like 90% of their mental capacity. Their dates, what it was like to kiss, how fast should they be moving, that one funny thing he said last week that they just have to share, etc. Dating Nino would be a very easy and convenient way to distract Alya away from Marinette and give the other girl a chance to grow and develop.

Another, rather obvious option, is to expand her social circle to include their other friends. The girlsquad already exists. It is there and waiting for the opportunity to interact. Mixing Alya with the others so that Alya can learn boundaries and such with characters that have more self-esteem like Alix or Rose who aren’t afraid to speak their minds and feelings to Alya over how she’s behaving towards them would be a good way to start her on the process of personal growth without leaving everything on Marinette’s shoulders to initiate. It would also let Marinette see that just because you’re friends you can still speak up for yourself without ruining everything, and that real friends won’t hold it against you or abandon you for doing so. It would let her see and know that such things are okay and she could then follow their examples to start building up some boundaries of her own that are then respected.

Alternately, there’s also fulfilling parts of Alya’s desires in order to keep her distracted somewhat form other parts which is sort of what I start doing in this upcoming chapter using AdriChat. While Adrien Agreste (TM) had to grow up dealing with everything that was involved in being Adrien Agreste (TM) (*cough*Gabriel*cough*), he also grew up with having Chloe as his one and only friend. He’s shown as Chat Noir that he knows how to throw down in a verbal spar, and being poster boy for the Gabriel Brand I’d be very surprised if he was also not coached on how to talk to reporters and give an endless non-answers to any number of inane questions. So as Chat Noir, having successfully pulled the wool over Alya’s eyes and making her believe he was King of the Cat Fairies, he approaches her again for assistance in his investigations into the identity of Papillon. Now Alya, being Alya, as soon as she decided that Chat Noir was a character from Celtic Mythology, of course then went and looked up everything there was to know about dealing with fairies. Including rules of conduct and warnings about behaviour.

So when Chat Noir hands her all his combined data that he’s collected so far, requesting her to help him compile it all and to store it safely, but on the condition that she not tell anyone, she is both excited enough for the opportunity as well as scared enough about not offending him that she doesn’t dare refuse. I mean, gifts from fae are never what they seem and the rules of the contract are to be followed to the letter or else horrible consequences can occur. As much as she wants this, she can’t go blabbing and spreading the information around, it’s also filled with people’s personal experiences at their lowest moments and as much as she’s nosy, she does still seem like she WANTS to be respectful of others and be a good person. So now she’s his junior detective/sidekick and ripe for a friendship to blossom between the two. After all, they have so much in common, it’s shocking they’re not shown more in the show as being friends. They’re both huge geeks about superheroes, both huge Ladybug fans, both brand new students at the school, etc.