I'm Sorry, What Would The Obvious Reasons Be?

I'm sorry, what would the obvious reasons be?

Predictions: Ladybug is tasked with finding out who Chat Noir is, which is why Adrien reveals his identity. Ladybug won’t react very well, bumbling crush and all, which Chat also won’t interpret very well for obvious reasons. Adrien, now feeling isolated, will come across his dad’s shenanigans and not have as much mental resolve to fight off being akumatized, like he did in Chat Blanc.

I can't speak on this confidently, as we haven't seen the episode "Gabriel" yet, but I think Adrien's growing resentment towards Ladybug is meant to parallel Gabriel's pipeline into becoming Hawkmoth.

I have also come to the conclusion that Adrien's whole character arc is revolved around the duality of the power of destruction, which I get is obvious, but hear me out. While destruction can cause chaos and harm to others, it also plays a necessary part in tearing down oppressive forces.

Let's talk about this scene.

What this scene has communicated to us is, despite the two of them having seemingly opposite personalities, Adrien is indeed Gabriel's son. What I mean by this is that the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree; both have a tendency to get caught up on their projected fantasies involving the people they love.

The position Gabriel is in right now, being Hawkmoth and all, is a direct result of him being unable to process his grief. Much like Adrien and his fantasy of Ladybug, Gabriel clings onto the fantasy of a "better world" with Emilie to cope with his grief and reconcile his guilt. Consequently, Gabriel has now become Paris' biggest threat and he's dealing out collateral damage onto his family (i.e. Adrien and Nathalie).

Adrien is at risk of falling down the same path; Adrien's grief has led to him becoming emotionally dependent on his romantic fantasy involving Ladybug. Even after everything he went through in this episode, this poor boy is still clinging to this damn fantasy for dear life.

Right now, even after everything that happened in Glaciator 2.0, Adrien is still stuck on this cycle of hoping Ladybug will one day fall for him, Ladybug rejecting him and inevitably breaking his heart, him getting depressed and lashing out because of it, him and ladybug reconciling, and then Adrien slipping back into the fantasy again to rinse and repeat.

In order for Adrien to truly develop as a character, he needs to break the cycle. He needs to break the cycle of damage his father is doing to the environment (as demonstrated in Mega Leech), he needs to break the cycle of complacency in his life, and he needs to break the cycle of enabling his father's actions. In order to do that, he needs to stand up to his father and get him to break the same cycle within himself.

If Adrien can't break the cycle, he's going to succumb to it and end up just like his father... or worse.

omg I just noticed something

Alright so Glaciator 2.0 ended with Adrien like this

[The image shows Adrien saying “Maybe if I show her who I truly am, she would fall in love with me!”]

And in Ephemeral, this is gonna happen

[Image shows Chat Noir giving his umbrella to Ladybug]

That’s exactly what he’s doing! He’s being himself! And I think it’s gonna work! LB will either start catching feeling (after all that’s what made Marinette fall for Adrien in the first place) OR she will connect the dots!

Not people saying Adrien “lost all character development by the end of the episode” 💀 When are people going to realize losing their feelings for their original love interests is NOT character development and doesn’t resolve anything lmao. There’s nothing wrong with them being in love. This is a romance series ffs. Enough of that “reverse the lovesquare” bs

They need to learn how to HANDLE their feelings. They need to learn how to be themselves around their crushes. They need to be the ones to take initiative to overcome their personal barriers and show their crushes who they really are. That’s character development. 

Y’all, Adrien literally experienced THE most important character development in regards to the romance plot. Hearing Marinette’s confession about how she acts around her crush, and how she thought her crush was stuck up and pretentious before she realized how kind and genuine and sensitive he could be and fell for him, made Adrien finally realize what’s been holding him back. Adrien finally realized he needs to stop playing casanova and crossing Ladybug’s boundaries and just be himself - i.e. kind, genuine, and sensitive - to have a chance at Ladybug returning his feelings. This means Ladybug is finally going to be able to see ADRIEN shine through Chat Noir.

Recall Origins, where Marinette realized she was wrong in what she initially thought of Adrien after he opened up to her about how new he is to school and friendship, and she fell in love with him after seeing his kindness and vulnerability.

Now we’re moving towards that repeating with Ladynoir - and this time Ladybug will see Chat Noir’s vulnerabilities. We’re now closer than ever to not only having Ladybug realize her feelings for Chat Noir, but also to her eventually learning and coming to terms with his identity, which is something she hasn’t considered at all thus far, unlike how Adrien has already thought about Marinette being Ladybug. And given how it’s been foreshadowed all season, I’ve been betting on Ladybug learning Chat Noir’s identity by the end of this season — whether it happens this season or later, this is a big step in warming her up to seeing the resemblance before it happens.

Adrien realized he has to be genuine and vulnerable with Ladybug if he wants any chance of her truly loving him. THAT’S HUGE. That’s the realization he’s been needing to make for three and a half seasons. That’s the realization Kagami was trying to get him to make in the art room scene back in Lies -

That even when he’s being silly he’s still playing a character and not being genuine. He wears the mask of a perfect dutiful son as Adrien. He doesn’t stop wearing a mask as Chat Noir – he puts on a different one. One where he can ignore and hide all his vulnerabilities and loneliness and solely play the part of the charming, funny Cat-sanova with superpowers. Just because it’s a character he LIKES playing doesn’t make it any less of a character. He wasn’t ready to come that realization then, but he’s done it now.

And what did he do in the very next ep that comes after this one?

He was vulnerable and honest with her about his feelings. He opened up about how terrified he is of losing her, of being abandoned. It can’t have been easy given what we know about what happened with his mother, and you can see that it wasn’t easy for him – his voice wavers and he curls in on himself and looks away from her. But it worked, and it brought her closer to him – both literally with her hand on his, and emotionally, by softening her up to him more and helping her understand him a bit better and finally allowing her to give him heartfelt reassurance.

Chat Noir uses humour (flirting, puns: ie: ladynoir banter) to deflect from talking about sacrificing himself and i have a feeling that's only going to progress during the rest of the season.

since he does it in Guiltrip (EP 11) as well after his suicide attempt.

which, yes, was a suicide attempt.

It was already established for them that the bubbles could be destroyed with their weapons far before he got touched by any of them, so why on earth would he active his cataclysm to use on one bubble. all that'd do is set off his detransformation timer and they already knew the bubbles were regenerating through the walls. it'd just be frankly dumb of him to active his power to destroy even a handful of the bubbles.

but this is about the moment in Lies not Guiltrip skfndmsk

it averts the conversation and it's easier for him to put on his clown mask and make her laugh than talk about his frankly suicidal tendencies.

(It was just earlier this day the Truth confession happened, he knows she appreciates his humor and clowning around.)

he did it in Lies after sacrificing himself. She's distraught afterwards, and before anyone's like well the suit protects them he wasn't that hurt y'all are just overreacting,, it doesn't protect them against just plain fucking gravity ????. He scaled up this building

and then went up farther on his baton before free falling down. the moment he passed through the dome he was paralyzed like the others, meaning that there was literally nothing, not even his hands, to catch him.

He either died on impact or he was stuck lying there in excruciating pain from the broken bones he'd have from hitting the ground at that speed.

and she's rightfully upset, she's scared and distraught and mad.

and he makes a flirty comment and diverts the conversation like he always does.

and what's she going to do? yell at him? tell him not to divert the conversation? and then what? they both know there isn't anything they can do to prevent this from happening and they both know it'll happen in the future. Where it be intentional or not, Chat's the more expendable one, he doesn't have the cure. Sometimes it's either him or Ladybug, and they both know he'll never let it be Ladybug.

He's putting her first emotionally, he doesn't want to cause her more stress than she's already under, and telling her idk how much pain he was in while stuck there paralyzed isn't gonna help. arguing with her about this, something they both know can't change, is just going to make things tense and uncomfortable.

He doesn't want to argue with her during the rare moments they have together.

He's said it before, and I think this episode made it clear with the BTS moments of his daily life as Adrien, the time he's got with her is the most fun he has outside of school. The only fun he has outside of school/schoolmates.

And he barely sees her anymore, she regularly misses their scheduled patrols and while he doesn't blame her for it, he's understanding of her role as the guardian and the stress that's come with it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, it doesn't mean it isn't a harsh reminder of a constant thing he deals with, being alone. It doesn't mean that it doesn't suck that the one positive thing he'd been getting through the day for, through the interviews, photoshoots and everything, and she didn't show up.

and she's visibly struggling emotionally throughout the first three episodes, he knows that and tries to be there for her, but doesn't want their time together to be wasted talking about him and this issue. He doesn't want to be another thing that's stressing her out, beyond the inevitable sacrifice that they both know sometimes is unavoidable. (Gamer 2.0, Timebreaker, Dark Cupid, esc.)

And I don't take her smiling as a "aw the writers are dumb and gross men and don't know how to write characters and here's my two cents on the ooc dynamic i've talked myself into believing is canon"

I take it as her accepting that there isn't anything they can do rn, and at least he's okay. He's joking and flirting and he's alive. That's good enough right now.

I am so happy that in TYoOL 2021 I was able to find more people my age still into ML. I was on the hype train from the very beginning with some buddies but fell out of the fandom around s2 due to irl stuff. Due to someone I followed way back in the day starting to post again I recently rediscovered my love for the show and I have been scouring Tumblr for people to follow since.

Anyways guess what I'm saying is thanks for being cool and I love your art style! If you have any follow recommendations for the ML fandom I'd love to hear them~

Aw this makes me happy! And thank you so much for the kind words 🥺

Here are some great people in the ML fandom! I was gonna divide them out by artist/fic writer/gifer/meta writer/memer, etc., but most people wear many hats lol so here's just like a good starter pack (some of these blogs are multifandom but still post a lot of ML and some aren’t currently active but have a lot of great content you can look at!)

@aerequets

@alteanroyals

@amimons

@anna-scribbles

@art-the-f-up

@botherkupo

@bugaboo-n-bananoir

@buggachat

@crocojagged

@danismilek

@emsylcatac

@eona-art

@gabriel-agreste-has-no-rights

@hamsternamedmarinette

@hannahyonana

@janaikam

@jascurka

@jennagrinsoverml

@jjuuppiter

@kagamitsu

@kenna-nor

@ladybeug

@ladyblargh

@ladyofthenoodle

@landturtlealyce

@lc-holy

@leviaana

@lukalunar

@mari-monsta

@marikittynoir

@marinoodles

@matchalaatte

@miraculousladrien

@miraculouslylazybug

@ouiladybug

@picayunearts

@rosekasa

@sabertoothwalrus

@sariahsue

@sha-nwa

@sketchy-panda

@smellerbeee

@sweetgaleria

@sweetjupiterr

@syeko

@syrva

@thechatsmeow

@thewritewolf

@tizzymcwizzy

@trashcatontherooftop

@verooquieremimir

@yeet-noir

@yunyin

@zivazivc

ok i could go on and on but i'll stop there lol. i know this is a lot but i remember when i joined the fandom i just binge followed a bunch of ML blogs haha so i hope this helps to fill your dash with good ML content 😌 i also recommend follow @discoveringmiraculousartist and @discoveringmiraculouswriters