Are there Adrien Salt takes that you disagree with?
I haven't really watched Miraculous recently and I only watched a few episodes of Season 4 so I don't think I can talk about salt takes from episodes I haven't watched, but from what I've seen of the show and the salt takes online, there really isn't much I disagree with.
The difference between Marinette and Adrien is that one of them experiences consequences for their actions (and the actions of other people) and 'learns' as much as the status quo can allow, while the other one is 'perfect' and 'isn't at fault.'
There are moments where Adrien seems like a good person but they're utterly ruined by the way the writers seem to want to pamper the rich, white male. If Adrien actually matured and grew as a character (which he can do based on Kuro Neko, but actively chooses not to) then I would like him. But as of right now, most of the salt takes I've seen about Adrien are valid.
Sure, there are moments in canon which are exaggerated in salt fanfics, but if you don't like that then stop reading salt. Character bashing and salt focuses on the low points of particular characters, and as a result they're going to be very negative towards their subject, but these are typically based on what happens in canon. I would defend the character if the incident people bash was only one moment, but Adrien salt takes are from all of canon.
Once is a chance, Twice is a coincidence and Thrice is a pattern. And Adrien has done far more than that. That's not to ay I fully support canon Marinette. There are Marinette salt takes I agree with as well, but unlike Adrien, the writers blame her for all of her mistakes and the mistakes of others even if she had nothing to do with them. This allowed her character to change and develop in canon.
In Season 1, Bubbler, Marinette stopped the slow dance at the party between Chloe and Adrien because she was jealous.
If the writers make a situation which forces a character to act out of character in order to move the plot along and push a certain shipping agenda, you can tell they know that what they did wouldn't have happened naturally. But what would happen naturally wouldn't be 'interesting' (and it would end the show) so of course they couldn't have that.
Oh and it comes with the added benefit of 'Adrien being perfect' and 'Marinette making a mistake, which she then learns from,' which Ast*c says is a rule of his show.
They want her to trust Chat more?
Her mistake in the finale was trusting people.
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Do you really think all of ML's problems would be fixed if Adrien never existed?
Good heavens, no.
Adrien isn't the problem. He's just a symptom of a much larger issue. That issue being laziness and poor writing that comes in the form of "tell, don't show", plot threads that go nowhere, and lack of character development or plot progression that leads to a setup of "Status Quo Is God". Removing Adrien wouldn't fix all of that. Heck, it wouldn't fix any of that.
I can't fault the writers for replacing Felix with Adrien. Even if I and others could write out a plot with Felix, that's not to say everyone could or that the writers could. It could very well be that Felix as he was in the PV simply didn't work for the setup they had in mind.
...the issue here is that the setup they had in mind seems to require stagnancy. Where Hawk Moth attacks without winning and the heroes fight off the akumas without really trying to track him as the source and the two leads chase each other around in circles without anyone making any headway in either of these battles. Marinette wants to date Adrien. Chat wants to date Ladybug. It's why all her plans to ask him out fail while his attempts to express his feelings aren't taken seriously. And there is no forward movement, whether in their arc or in the fight against Hawk Moth. There wasn't even build or lead up to the two falling in love. They just started out episode one with crushes on each other and remained having crushes on each other until arguably season 5.
But no good story is stagnant. In this setup, characters need to do things and there needs to be a feeling of forward momentum.
Break it down this way: What is Adrien's problem? What is his goal? What is the obstacle to his goal?
Yes, we could say Adrien's dad being a supervillain and a neglectful jerk is Adrien's main problem, but it's not the problem Adrien is actually focused on in the show. Instead, if we could say Adrien has a problem, it would be that he wants to date Ladybug. And his goal is to date Ladybug. And the source of the problem and obstacle to his goal is...Ladybug.
So his problem, his goal, and the obstacle are all the same thing. This ultimately seems to make his problems Ladybug’s fault then because the problem would be solved if she gives in to his wants rather than by any real effort on his part.
Adrien as he is in the show doesn't do anything. And he doesn't need to do anything because he is at his base a character that things are done for. He doesn't have a goal or direction or drive. He just comes out to deal with akumas as needed, flirt with Ladybug when he can, and then be sad because his life is so hard when he doesn't get what he wants. We don't see him doing anything else. We don't see him making friends. We don't see him engaging in school. We don't even really see how he interacts with the classmates he only recently met. Things happen around him, but he is not a driving force in anything in the show.
But Felix in the PV is a very driving character. He had a problem: he's cursed. What does he need to break the curse? A kiss from Ladybug. What are the obstacles to his goal: Ladybug refusing to kiss him and Hawk Moth trying to kill her. How does he get that kiss? By flirting with her and trying to earn her affections while protecting her and making sure she doesn't DIE against an akuma before he gets that special curse-breaking kiss.
It's the start of Felix's journey. His goal and the various obstacles to that goal that make his story interesting and his growth possible. As such, I see him as a character who would progress in his attempts to obtain his goal as well as one who would progress the storyline...which is also accurate of 3D Felix since that's kind of what he's done more in his relatively few appearances than the series has in 5 seasons.
Adrien didn't have to have Felix's personality. He didn't have to have the same goals or level of drive. But he could still have had things where he grows and helps to push the plot forward.
Adrien...
...just started school. He has no friends, knows no one, and is trying to learn the ins and outs of public education. How is he doing in the different setting with teachers instead of tutors? How is he trying to get along with his classmates? Does he experience bullying? Does anyone NOT like him? What is he going through as a new student who had been homeschooled all his life?
...is friends with Chloe. What's it like learning his "only friend" is a bully? How do people respond to this? Does anyone (besides Marinette) fear him or avoid him because if he's friends with Chloe, he must be just like her?
...is a superhero. He could have been spending time learning the history of the ring and trying to develop his powers. Trying to get stronger? Trying to get to know Plagg? What is he experiencing as a highly known model who is also a superhero and having to juggle those dual identities?
...has a dead mom who died of a "mysterious illness". Given that this loss supposedly occurred about a year prior, he could still be mourning her. Maybe trying to learn what happened to her.
...has a neglectful father. How is he trying to interact with his dad? How does he feel about his dad not being around? What is he doing to try to resolve this?
...has a supervillain father. Like, I cannot stress this enough! His dad is a SUPERVILLAIN! His dad is THE SUPERVILLAIN THEY ARE FIGHTING! People were predicting him finding out and joining Gabriel to try and revive his mom! People were living for the eventual heartbreak of when Adrien finds out the truth! Entire AUs, fan arts, and fanfics were born of this very idea! Going into the drama and struggle Adrien would be experiencing being caught between the "right thing" and the girl he loves and his duty vs his father and his mother and his family. HOW CAN THEY JUST IGNORE THIS?!
But we don't get any of that. Instead, we get Adrien...
...just acclimated with no issues in school and automatically friends with everyone. Good for him, I guess. Wish it was that easy for the rest of us.
...doing little besides occasional comments to Chloe as she is completely horrible for five seasons including Chloe stealing from classmates, getting the entire school punished for something she did, stealing a Miraculous, trying to crash a train, and betraying the city to Hawk Moth. But it takes him learning about something she did to Marinette a year ago for him to finally decide enough is enough and drop her as a friend.
...only goes out to deal with akumas as they come but does nothing to try and figure out his powers and history, get stronger, or try to track Hawk Moth.
...just moves on from dead mom. No relevance here aside from wanting to see a movie she was in or making a passing comment about how she got sick. No attempt to find out what happened to her. No questioning what she may have wanted for him.
...is just sad about his neglectful father neglecting him but seems to get over it rather quickly.
...never learns his father is a supervillain. Okay, I take it back. He learns twice and those timelines are erased with no real repercussions other than trauma for Marinette, so it really doesn't feel like they count. The pieces are all there, though! He knows his dad has the grimoire but never questions him about it! Never asks his dad what the deal was with Tibet! No question about how mom died or what is going on with Nathalie or what he's doing with a hidden mechanism in mom's portrait.
Adrien has potential. He has plot threads and aspects that could be used and goals he could have. But the writing does nothing with him, so while he has a number of things he COULD do to move forward and progress as a character or for the plot, nothing comes of it.
And that all boils down to a problem with the writing.
Adrien was chosen over Felix as an "easier" option to keep the story at a standstill so they could drag it out for as long as needed. That doesn't mean it should have been. There were so many paths that could have been taken, but Adrien was given the personality of a wet noodle, so he acts on none of them because that was what the writers wanted out of his character.
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Something I've noticed is that the show goes out of its way to portray Adrien's trauma as romantic.
In Kuro Neko, Adrien is exhibiting a trauma response wherein he invalidates his own feelings and tries to be whoever the other person wants him to be, and Catwalker is explicitly based on the mask Adrien puts on to please his abuser, which is also the persona Ladybug develops an instant crush on. What the show tells us, however, is that Adrien as Catwalker telling Ladybug that it's his own fault for being sensitive because he was hurt by her actions and following that up by promising to take care of her is romantic and wonderful.
In Strikeback, Adrien is once again downplaying his feelings and hurt in order to come to Ladybug's support because she needs him. He is once again invalidating his own hurt and absolving her of all blame. What the show tells us is that it's so romantic that Adrien was willing to push away his hurt feelings and come to her aid like a loyal partner even though she never apologized to him or promised to change her behavior.
In Protection, Adrien's tendency to want to be perfect for everybody and cater to their needs is depicted on screen, with him assuming the full blame for Marinette's confidence issues. He has a whole conversation with Kagami about how he needs to change himself for her. What the show tells us is that Adrien is so romantic and so sweet for essentially assuming blame for Marinette's inability to tell him her feelings and saying that he has to be the one to change and cater to her needs.
In Collusion, Adrien's reacting to his father sending him to London by saying "Marinette and I will last forever," is him clinging to the very little good that is going on in his life. It is him once again centering his identity around this girl and his relationship with her because he has never been allowed to be his own person. What the show tells us is that "Adrien loves Marinette so much uwu."
In Confrontation, Adrien writing "All I know is that I love Marinette Dupain Cheng," is him once more centering his whole life around his girlfriend because he has been conditioned into defining himself around other people because he has never been allowed to an individual in his own right. What the show tells us again is that Adrien loves Marinette so, so much, you guyz.
In Conformation (credit to this post by @youremarvelous), Adrien telling Plagg he's angry at himself for falling short of Marinette's love is also him downplaying his own feelings and placing more importance on her, and him believing that he has fallen short of her love stems from him belief that he has to earn love. He's just shifted from defining himself based on Gabriel's wishes to defining himself based on Marinette's wishes. What the show tells us is that Adrien is such a good boyfriend for wanting to be perfect for Marinette.
The discrepancy between what has been portrayed and what the show wants us to think is concerning, to say the least.
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I'm not sure if people still remember but I have always been in the camp that Chloé was a jerk who got what she deserved in the season three finale of Miraculous, a failed hero. When season four first started airing, I also believed that her character regressing in season four could be a reasonable reaction to what she went through in said finale, because she did not have a good time and her lashing out in hurt made sense.
Then season five had the characters talk at length about how Chloé's trauma doesn't excuse her behavior (with Mylène parroting stuff Astruc has said to Chloé fans on twitter if the true source and targets of this part of the episode aren't obvious), in the same season where Chloé traumatizing Marinette is used to excuse Marinette's less likeable behavior. Chloé is made responsible for Marinette's character flaws while also being 100% responsible for her own character flaws when both of their character flaws are stated in-show to be caused by trauma caused by another person. The double standard is obvious.
If I'm going to look at 'Rocketear' and call it out on its character assassination of Nino, I need to look at what the writers did to Chloé and call it out on being the exact same thing. It's not often you see a villain character get character assassinated, but it sure happened here. Chloé might have been a jerk, but she was never whatever seasons 4/5 turned her into.
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