About the Ladynoir Conflict and Cat Blanc
Feb. 6th, 2022 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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allthemiraculousHi! First time poster here, trying to be a bit more active on Dreamwidth because man, I've recently been missing the way discussion happened on journals. So here's a piece I'd really like to hear other people's opinions on, because I feel like I'm seeing a different story than a lot of other people are. It started out as a reply to a mutual on tumblr after we had a brief exchange about the notable absence of a certain white cat in S4, and suffice it to say that it spiralled. The tl;dr of the below cut: I feel like the fandom has agreed on something happening would makes sense logically, but which has yet to come to pass on the show:
I can’t see how Marinette is pushing Cat Noir away in S4, and certainly not that it would have anything to do with Cat Blanc. If that is in fact the story being told, then I’m either reading the show too closely, or refusing to read it close enough. So, uh. Help?
The core of everything below is this: From what I can tell, Marinette treating Cat Noir exactly like she always did - but her relying more and more on the other heroes + running the guardian business with Alya as her secondant means that she’s relying less and less on him, and Adrien takes that a lot more personally than she’s capable of comprehending.
And if Marinette isn’t pushing Cat Noir away, then the “and it’s because of Cat Blanc” has no meaning, and then why would we be talking about him at all, when the show just isn’t marking him as something we should remember?
(I know that a lot of people read “Ephemeral” in that light, but I’m willing to cut the logic of that episode a LOT of slack because it they had to cut like half of the it. The catastrophe goes back to the fact that it never occurs to her to just explain the situation and ask Cat Noir to tell Su-Han herself, but instead she concocts this wild plan because “I can’t know, but I’m the only person he’ll ever tell, therefore he must tell me but I’ll have to forget it after”. Of course, THAT in turn goes back to the entire “someone knowing both our identities will mean that Shadowmoth getting that one person means he’ll be getting both the miraculouses he needs to take over the world” that she can explain to Luka but for some reason ha ha no way will this be a point in the finale or anything, neither Su-Han nor Adrien seem to comprehend.
At no point is Marinette being an an ass on purpose, and at no point does the episode frame her plan as a bad thing, or even a particularly bad idea. We the audience can moralise about the underhanded way she went about it and how she’s effectively depriving Cat Noir of the agency over his own identity, but remember “Simpleman”, guys! We’re not meant to think too hard about this show, after all, and I don’t think that Marinette’s shaky morals in “Ephemeral” were meant to be read as any more toxic than her climbing a trash can tower to spy on him and Lila doing homework. Which can only be interpreted as “toxic” if you really can’t read comedic tone. The issue, in the end, is that Adrien realised she’d had some kind of plan that involve his presence but someone else’s planning. And that, on its own, was probably a mirror of the “two-person plan that doesn’t involve you”)
So Rena Furtive - yes, a big deal! But also, as the show stresses, something that MUST be a secret. Rena Furtive’s business has nothing to do with what Cat Noir does in battle, and so the only reason HE should be privy to that information would be because he is Ladybug’s Very Special And Important Partner.
Which on the meta level he obviously IS, what with him being in the title and the logo and being the only central character at her side and unknowingly carrying the entire plot while she carries the action. And in-universe, he clearly is MEANT TO BE since their miraculous come as a pair. Moreover, the two are Shadowmoth’s prey in a way no-one else is.
But on the diegetic level, the show never brings that up. Except for how it can be assumed that Tikki and Plagg should for some reason be active as a duo (but this is never, not once, neither stated nor expanded upon), it seems like Marinette and Adrien could’ve been given any other miraculous because per Fu’s words, their partnership is about them as PERSONS, not their miraculous. And the fact that Hawkmoth is interested in the other miraculous only if they can help him reach Ladybug and Cat Noir? Is never in itself discussed explicitly, merely the plot of a couple of episodes. (it’s the plot of the entire show, actually, but their special status, the fact that Fu chose to bring those two miraculous out, their presumed partnership for something more than The Wish? Never commented upon, not once, except for his admonishing them to stay together in “Miracle Queen”)
And when the narrative itself never adresses this directly, can we assume that this is something Marinette spends a lot of time thinking about? No; when we never see it happen on-screen, it’s headcanon territory. The previous times MLB had evolving conflicts carrying over several episodes would be Marinette-Kagami and Chloé-Ladybug, and both of those would take care to remind the viewer on occasion that this was is happening, this exists, remember this, it’s gonna be relevant later. But Marinette having concerns about Cat Noir’s place in her life? Not once after the NYC special.
I really hope the “Shadowmoth doesn’t care about the others, just you and me” comes up in the finale, because it would settle so much of what’s been the topic this entire season: Marinette and Adrien are MEANT to stand together in battle, and I think they both need the reminder about what sets them apart from all the other heroes.
Adrien has a deep psychological need to be acknowledged and appreciated (thanks, dad!) and takes it personally when it becomes evident that he isn’t as important to Ladybug as she is to him. He has banked most of his self-image of being Ladybug’s Partner, and when Ladybug has a literal football team’s worth of partners… yeah, obviously he’s not needed. When he’s only allowed that close but never closer because Our Identities Must Remain A Secret, then what hope can he have of ever finding the belonging he so yearns for with Ladybug? When other people can know, but not him, then clearly she doesn’t care for him nearly as much as he does for her.
Marinette, ignorant about how desperately Cat Noir needs for someone to show him his value and purpose and that she has been that person ever since they met, has no idea that giving him more teammates is just rubbing it in that he’s not important to her. As she said in “Kuro Neko”: She’s just been giving him a break!
So yeah, I don’t have the impression that Marinette is “pushing Cat Noir away”. At most, she gave Alya a promotion that we were all expecting Cat Noir to get, and now all our fic about the two of them sharing the Guardian’s burden is AU.
WHICH BRINGS ME OVER TO THE THING THAT STARTED ALL THIS RUMINATION:
Even if Marinette were pushing Cat Noir away, I don’t see when it was ever suggested that that was because of Cat Blanc. I mean, we were all waiting for S4 to bring that up because yes??? Massive trauma, HUGE explanation for Marinette's cageyness about their identities, casts "Gang of Secrets" into an even more important light in that she does risk this.
With four episodes of the season remaining, it appears we were all clows. The show has been completely silent about him. No mentions, no quick glances at Cat Noir to see him flash in white for a second, no recurring nightmares, no second of genuine panic when The Identities are brought up (and oh boy, have they been brought up). The one time the show reminded us of his existence was when she was panicking about Trixx and Alya, in a sequence where he wasn't even the problem, just the weirder of the symptoms. By the way the scene frames him, he’s traumatised her as much as the Cesaire family having lunch.
Miraculous can on occasion be lazy about the writing, but that show loves its plays with the directing. And reading that scene as intentionally scary feels like its selling the directors severely short. If the people who gave us Detective Nino and Oblivio meant for the audience to find Marinette’s “Sentibubbler” nightmare to be genuinely frightening, that is not what it would have looked like, particularly not considering what a huge deal Cat Blanc logically should have been.
Obligatory note of the difference between how the audience is meant to read a scene contra what the characters themselves feel during it. Marinette is genuinely terrified of the nightmare, but Marinette probably didn’t secretly think the confession training with Cat Noir was the funniest thing to have happened all week, either. Moreover, both Tikki and Alya’s response eccho the directing: Wow, Marinette is sure having some ridiculous dreams. Calm yo tits, girl. 
One: I'm placing too much faith in the writing and particularly the directing, and am in fact meant to take Marinette's nightmare as seriously as she does herself even if both the writing and the directing severly underplays Cat Blanc's presence in it and in S4 in general. When he's not as much as alluded to before or after, even in episodes connecting to "Cat Blanc" in theme and content such as "Ephemeral" and "Kuro Neko", that's because the writers just banked on the target audience not caring about the background for Marinette's possibly altered mental state as long as there are cool battles, and on the people who do care to latch onto any little grain of evidence. If they don't need to make the effort, why do it at all?
Two: I'm demanding too much concrete information where I should be reading between the lines (as it is). Obviously Marinette would carry scars after an experience like "Cat Blanc" even if she's acting like she always has (or reacting to new situations in ways that follow the same patterns that she always did), and I shouldn't expect the show to bring up the existence of neither her trauma nor the source of her trauma all the time I know that the incident happened and can draw my own conclusions about its consequences.
The idea that Marinette withdraws from Cat Noir because of memories of "Cat Blanc" has been a fanfic staple since way before S4 started airing or Adrien's issues about being replaced started cropping up mid-season. I feel like a lot of the fandom is still just assuming that that is the reason for the current meltdown between them, even though the show itself is explaining it in a manner that is far more straightforward: Adrien is a bundle of carefully hidden insecurities who has banked his entire self-worth on Ladybug, and Marinette has no reason to believe that he'd take the presence of new teammates any different than she does.
I can’t see how Marinette is pushing Cat Noir away in S4, and certainly not that it would have anything to do with Cat Blanc. If that is in fact the story being told, then I’m either reading the show too closely, or refusing to read it close enough. So, uh. Help?
The core of everything below is this: From what I can tell, Marinette treating Cat Noir exactly like she always did - but her relying more and more on the other heroes + running the guardian business with Alya as her secondant means that she’s relying less and less on him, and Adrien takes that a lot more personally than she’s capable of comprehending.
And if Marinette isn’t pushing Cat Noir away, then the “and it’s because of Cat Blanc” has no meaning, and then why would we be talking about him at all, when the show just isn’t marking him as something we should remember?
As mentioned, I can’t see how Marinette treats Cat Noir any different than she did when she was doing Guardian business on Fu’s watch. As the Guardian, she’s responsible for things that neither involve him nor directly affect him. She didn’t tell him when it was Fu calling the shots, and then it is an honest question: Should she treat him any differently now that she is the Guardian? If things don’t concern him, is she obligated to tell him just because he’s the guy who was there before all the others? (we want her to, sure, but logically? Morally? Is she?)
Following the logic Marinette did when she ran Fu’s errands, Cat Noir doesn’t need to know that information, and he never had any complaints about not being consulted as she ran the Guardian business (be it on Fu’s behalf or her own). Before “Syren”, the only thing she knew and wasn’t telling Cat Noir was more or less that Fu existed and she knew where to find him. In S4, unless I’ve been forgetting things in the scrambled episode order, the only relevant thing she hasn’t been telling him is Rena Rouge’s activities.
Following the logic Marinette did when she ran Fu’s errands, Cat Noir doesn’t need to know that information, and he never had any complaints about not being consulted as she ran the Guardian business (be it on Fu’s behalf or her own). Before “Syren”, the only thing she knew and wasn’t telling Cat Noir was more or less that Fu existed and she knew where to find him. In S4, unless I’ve been forgetting things in the scrambled episode order, the only relevant thing she hasn’t been telling him is Rena Rouge’s activities.
(I know that a lot of people read “Ephemeral” in that light, but I’m willing to cut the logic of that episode a LOT of slack because it they had to cut like half of the it. The catastrophe goes back to the fact that it never occurs to her to just explain the situation and ask Cat Noir to tell Su-Han herself, but instead she concocts this wild plan because “I can’t know, but I’m the only person he’ll ever tell, therefore he must tell me but I’ll have to forget it after”. Of course, THAT in turn goes back to the entire “someone knowing both our identities will mean that Shadowmoth getting that one person means he’ll be getting both the miraculouses he needs to take over the world” that she can explain to Luka but for some reason ha ha no way will this be a point in the finale or anything, neither Su-Han nor Adrien seem to comprehend.
At no point is Marinette being an an ass on purpose, and at no point does the episode frame her plan as a bad thing, or even a particularly bad idea. We the audience can moralise about the underhanded way she went about it and how she’s effectively depriving Cat Noir of the agency over his own identity, but remember “Simpleman”, guys! We’re not meant to think too hard about this show, after all, and I don’t think that Marinette’s shaky morals in “Ephemeral” were meant to be read as any more toxic than her climbing a trash can tower to spy on him and Lila doing homework. Which can only be interpreted as “toxic” if you really can’t read comedic tone. The issue, in the end, is that Adrien realised she’d had some kind of plan that involve his presence but someone else’s planning. And that, on its own, was probably a mirror of the “two-person plan that doesn’t involve you”)
So Rena Furtive - yes, a big deal! But also, as the show stresses, something that MUST be a secret. Rena Furtive’s business has nothing to do with what Cat Noir does in battle, and so the only reason HE should be privy to that information would be because he is Ladybug’s Very Special And Important Partner.
Which on the meta level he obviously IS, what with him being in the title and the logo and being the only central character at her side and unknowingly carrying the entire plot while she carries the action. And in-universe, he clearly is MEANT TO BE since their miraculous come as a pair. Moreover, the two are Shadowmoth’s prey in a way no-one else is.
But on the diegetic level, the show never brings that up. Except for how it can be assumed that Tikki and Plagg should for some reason be active as a duo (but this is never, not once, neither stated nor expanded upon), it seems like Marinette and Adrien could’ve been given any other miraculous because per Fu’s words, their partnership is about them as PERSONS, not their miraculous. And the fact that Hawkmoth is interested in the other miraculous only if they can help him reach Ladybug and Cat Noir? Is never in itself discussed explicitly, merely the plot of a couple of episodes. (it’s the plot of the entire show, actually, but their special status, the fact that Fu chose to bring those two miraculous out, their presumed partnership for something more than The Wish? Never commented upon, not once, except for his admonishing them to stay together in “Miracle Queen”)
And when the narrative itself never adresses this directly, can we assume that this is something Marinette spends a lot of time thinking about? No; when we never see it happen on-screen, it’s headcanon territory. The previous times MLB had evolving conflicts carrying over several episodes would be Marinette-Kagami and Chloé-Ladybug, and both of those would take care to remind the viewer on occasion that this was is happening, this exists, remember this, it’s gonna be relevant later. But Marinette having concerns about Cat Noir’s place in her life? Not once after the NYC special.
I really hope the “Shadowmoth doesn’t care about the others, just you and me” comes up in the finale, because it would settle so much of what’s been the topic this entire season: Marinette and Adrien are MEANT to stand together in battle, and I think they both need the reminder about what sets them apart from all the other heroes.
Adrien has a deep psychological need to be acknowledged and appreciated (thanks, dad!) and takes it personally when it becomes evident that he isn’t as important to Ladybug as she is to him. He has banked most of his self-image of being Ladybug’s Partner, and when Ladybug has a literal football team’s worth of partners… yeah, obviously he’s not needed. When he’s only allowed that close but never closer because Our Identities Must Remain A Secret, then what hope can he have of ever finding the belonging he so yearns for with Ladybug? When other people can know, but not him, then clearly she doesn’t care for him nearly as much as he does for her.
Marinette, ignorant about how desperately Cat Noir needs for someone to show him his value and purpose and that she has been that person ever since they met, has no idea that giving him more teammates is just rubbing it in that he’s not important to her. As she said in “Kuro Neko”: She’s just been giving him a break!
So yeah, I don’t have the impression that Marinette is “pushing Cat Noir away”. At most, she gave Alya a promotion that we were all expecting Cat Noir to get, and now all our fic about the two of them sharing the Guardian’s burden is AU.
WHICH BRINGS ME OVER TO THE THING THAT STARTED ALL THIS RUMINATION:
Even if Marinette were pushing Cat Noir away, I don’t see when it was ever suggested that that was because of Cat Blanc. I mean, we were all waiting for S4 to bring that up because yes??? Massive trauma, HUGE explanation for Marinette's cageyness about their identities, casts "Gang of Secrets" into an even more important light in that she does risk this.
With four episodes of the season remaining, it appears we were all clows. The show has been completely silent about him. No mentions, no quick glances at Cat Noir to see him flash in white for a second, no recurring nightmares, no second of genuine panic when The Identities are brought up (and oh boy, have they been brought up). The one time the show reminded us of his existence was when she was panicking about Trixx and Alya, in a sequence where he wasn't even the problem, just the weirder of the symptoms. By the way the scene frames him, he’s traumatised her as much as the Cesaire family having lunch.
Miraculous can on occasion be lazy about the writing, but that show loves its plays with the directing. And reading that scene as intentionally scary feels like its selling the directors severely short. If the people who gave us Detective Nino and Oblivio meant for the audience to find Marinette’s “Sentibubbler” nightmare to be genuinely frightening, that is not what it would have looked like, particularly not considering what a huge deal Cat Blanc logically should have been.
Obligatory note of the difference between how the audience is meant to read a scene contra what the characters themselves feel during it. Marinette is genuinely terrified of the nightmare, but Marinette probably didn’t secretly think the confession training with Cat Noir was the funniest thing to have happened all week, either. Moreover, both Tikki and Alya’s response eccho the directing: Wow, Marinette is sure having some ridiculous dreams. Calm yo tits, girl.
[fig. 1: “and what rough beast, its hour come round at last”]
[fig. 2: “it was a graveyard smash”]
They could’ve had him go after her alone, they could have had him chase her out to the balcony to find Paris under water, they could have had him destroy the world like she witnessed him do. Instead they had him talk about getting hitched and do a goofy zombie walk next to Alya’s dad. To hammer in the point that this isn't real, the sequence eventually takes on a coloured filter blurred at the edges. To again point to the directing: We've seen at least two scenes of akumatised people nearly getting Ladybug's miraculous (as I recall on the top of my head), and they both look a lot more like each other than they do that sequence there. Unlike the battle in "Cat Blanc", the audience isn't MEANT to share Marinette's feelings in this scene; we're not meant to perceive neither Cat Blanc nor Otis Cesaire as a threat.
And what does she panic about when she wakes up? Yeah, it wasn’t the kitty, it was the safety of the Miracle Box and Trixx still being secret.
They could’ve had him go after her alone, they could have had him chase her out to the balcony to find Paris under water, they could have had him destroy the world like she witnessed him do. Instead they had him talk about getting hitched and do a goofy zombie walk next to Alya’s dad. To hammer in the point that this isn't real, the sequence eventually takes on a coloured filter blurred at the edges. To again point to the directing: We've seen at least two scenes of akumatised people nearly getting Ladybug's miraculous (as I recall on the top of my head), and they both look a lot more like each other than they do that sequence there. Unlike the battle in "Cat Blanc", the audience isn't MEANT to share Marinette's feelings in this scene; we're not meant to perceive neither Cat Blanc nor Otis Cesaire as a threat.
And what does she panic about when she wakes up? Yeah, it wasn’t the kitty, it was the safety of the Miracle Box and Trixx still being secret.
Then we get an episode where she's perfectly fine with Cat Noir knowing her identity without giving any thought to the way that went the last time he knew, which ends with him akumatised again. And then we get an episode where she genuinely believes that Cat Noir has been akumatised again and boy, you'd think that would trigger some memories.
If Cat Blanc really is a key element for understanding S4, then one of two things is happening here:
If Cat Blanc really is a key element for understanding S4, then one of two things is happening here:
One: I'm placing too much faith in the writing and particularly the directing, and am in fact meant to take Marinette's nightmare as seriously as she does herself even if both the writing and the directing severly underplays Cat Blanc's presence in it and in S4 in general. When he's not as much as alluded to before or after, even in episodes connecting to "Cat Blanc" in theme and content such as "Ephemeral" and "Kuro Neko", that's because the writers just banked on the target audience not caring about the background for Marinette's possibly altered mental state as long as there are cool battles, and on the people who do care to latch onto any little grain of evidence. If they don't need to make the effort, why do it at all?
Two: I'm demanding too much concrete information where I should be reading between the lines (as it is). Obviously Marinette would carry scars after an experience like "Cat Blanc" even if she's acting like she always has (or reacting to new situations in ways that follow the same patterns that she always did), and I shouldn't expect the show to bring up the existence of neither her trauma nor the source of her trauma all the time I know that the incident happened and can draw my own conclusions about its consequences.
The idea that Marinette withdraws from Cat Noir because of memories of "Cat Blanc" has been a fanfic staple since way before S4 started airing or Adrien's issues about being replaced started cropping up mid-season. I feel like a lot of the fandom is still just assuming that that is the reason for the current meltdown between them, even though the show itself is explaining it in a manner that is far more straightforward: Adrien is a bundle of carefully hidden insecurities who has banked his entire self-worth on Ladybug, and Marinette has no reason to believe that he'd take the presence of new teammates any different than she does.
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Date: 2022-02-06 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-06 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-06 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-06 09:06 pm (UTC)Yup, I fully agree. "Marinette is traumatised by Chat Blanc" is a popular fan theory that has absolutely no support in canon whatsoever. Of course that doesn't mean it can't come up; "regular Ladynoir patrols" were another thing most fans thought was canon that actually wasn't, until it suddenly was. With this show you never quite know which thing will suddenly turn out to have been canon all along.
But the fandom has clearly been putting too much weight on Chat Blanc ever since it aired. I understand why, because wow, the drama! But that doesn't match the reality of what we've seen. Even in the episode herself, Marinette doesn't ever give the impression that she's been traumatised. Her reaction is consistent with her thinking that the problem has been fixed, and she's glad that she's got her kitty back. I know the many head canons that say that actually, she might be traumatised. That is true. But the show hasn't shown us that yet.
And I also agree that nothing we've seen in season 4 makes it necessary to assume Chat Blanc is weighing on Marinette's mind. There isn't some big mystery about why Marinette does what she does that can only be filled with a white cat.
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Date: 2022-02-06 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-06 11:00 pm (UTC)A related thing I just thought of: Marinette being traumatized doesn’t really fit in with the general mood of the show. While this is an extreme example, she has plenty of experience fighting an akumatized Chat Noir. And not just him: In Lady WiFi, they made it very explicit: Tikki said it’s terrible that Marinette has to fight her best friend, but Marinete said no, she’s not fighting her best friend, she’s saving her. That’s the general attitude the show has always shown in situations like this, explicitly including Chat Noir.
The fandom view of the show is generally noticably darker than the show actually is. And I think that leads to warped interpretations. In context, Chat Noir is an interesting outlier, a what-if episode that has as much lasting impact as Oblivio. For fandom spaces, though, the drama is catnip (I had to work hard to not write chatnip) here, so they place outsized importance on it.
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Date: 2022-02-07 04:26 pm (UTC)I think that disonnance might be the answer to why the fandom of this show thrives so much. Because for all that the show is light-hearted and silly, and its creators have gone out to remind the fandom to stop taking this so seriously, it's for kids - the setup of the story is one that can only end in Adrien's heartbreak, and while we're waiting for it, we love telling each other the stories about it.