God damnit! I knew Monarque’s facial expressions looked familiar!
Even the eyebrows are the same!
It’s actually quite remarkable that the show manages to let Adrien/ Chat Noir and Gabriel/ Hawkmoth (as civilians or whatever miraculous forms) have such individual designs - not even resembling each other too much at all - and yet through the facial expressions, the way they talk and their body language they naturally share one can still consistently recognize them - at least on some subconscious level - as father and son.
Come to think of it. This entire scene of Monarque being fake-kind to Chloé to use her was in general top notch in this regard:
I mean, YEAH. This is absolutely Adrien’s / Chat Noir’s evil and manipulative father.
And the only way to show and convey kindness/ politness this man would acknowledge to be “worthy” of himself to use in a situation like this is either the way his own “perfect” son behaves, or at the very least Gabriel knows exactly what type of kind and polite behavior HE is demanding from Adrien.
I dont have a gif of Adrien moving in the subtle ways like Gabriel copies in the upper one but it’s definitely closer to Adrien’s body language than Gabriel’s own (though by instinct it 300% reminds me of CatWalker
but maybe that's influenced by Monarque being a miraculous identity and so was CatWalker who - as we know - is the perfect [and desperate and completely submissive] prince Adrien was raised to be so my point still stands).
And the second gif is 100% the move we long know from Adrien and also one we know comes from the way Gabriel teached Adrien to express himself for formal politness towards a woman:
When Adrien ripped the Miraculous de la Coccinelle from Monarque’s ears and passed them to Bikerbug, and Monarque looked back and saw it was his own son who’d defeated him. When Ladybug returned in her full glory.
This is what I wanted from ladrien. This is beautiful.
The betrayal in Monarque’s eyes as all his abuse comes back to bite him, his son in Ladybug’s corner. The trust and unity Ladybug and Adrien have built in every side of the love square helping them utterly overwhelm their enemies.
The real reason why Adrien wasn’t physically there when Ladybug confronted Gabriel is because the second he gets a glimpse of Bugnoire, he’s gonna beg her to marry him AND Marinette
my contribution to the “All that glitters is gold zine” - le monarque💜✨ this was so much fun to work on! go check out the hashtag and all the other entries!#Destiny2ATGIG ✨
Luka your father is an internationally extremely well-known Rockstar and celebrity.
It doesn't matter where on earth you hide with him, even if he renounced being a star, Monarque can easily keep track of you through JAGGED!
Jagged is literally the ONE person Luka shouldn't be hiding with and that's what we are going with! Gabriel, I'm kinda hoping you'll make good of your threat and actually go after Luka and somehow make him sing. Even if we only get the pay off in season 6, I don't care. This is just Luka putting a giant target on his back while isolating himself from the environment he's familiar with and the people who can keep him save. Call me mean but this deserves to go wrong.
You can actually tell that Monarque is getting a bit desperate for villain names at this point, like the guy actually calls one of his villains, who supposedly reveals the truth, "Infox", which is the French word for fake news (a mix between "infos" = short for "informations" = news and "intox" = short for "intoxication")... And yet her power is strong enough that nobody who's under her spell thinks : "hang on"