Why Is This How It Always Goes

"The fire in his veins cooled under her rain, and stillness settled over him. Something soft fell into his lap. He held it up and breathed in its scent, sweet and flowery. Marinette.

"He buried his face in the fabric and held it close, imagining he was holding her instead. It hurt to be together. It hurt to be apart. But the hurt felt like a promise, and when she was in his arms he always felt that he was exactly where he was meant to be (the cosmic phenomenon, the whole that made sense). He couldn’t touch her, but she touched everything around him.

"(She was the rain, and she was everywhere.)

"The last chord rang though the room and then faded into silence. There was a rustling sound on the recording, and then he heard his own voice whisper into the microphone: 'I love you, Marinette.'

"The recording stopped. Adrien sat motionless, still hugging her hoodie."

-@carpisuns, "tell me something i don't know'

I don't know why this scene hit me so hard—the entire story is full of scenes that both make me want to sob and smile for the rest of my life, after all. But this one . . . I just had to draw it. It feels almost immoral to illustrate a scene from this story so imperfectly, but I can't do perfect art, so I tried to do emotional art instead. (No it's not raining in Adrien's room, I was just trying to illustrate the metaphor that Marinette is rain, I'm sorry this is so bad Mar, I love this story so much)

You. Yes, you. The person reading this right now.

You need to go watch this Miraculous animatic by @izzyjdraws right now.

Your life will get better. The beautiful, clean art will heal you. The clever storytelling will improve your grades, the smooth animation will make you more graceful, the adorable art style will turn you into a supermodel.

All of her animatics are masterpieces. Please go watch them, her work is so amazing and she needs love!

Alright, here's a survey question for my fellow Plance shippers. Which plot thread do you prefer:

Lance starts flirting with Pidge as he slowly realizes his feelings for her, and she finds it extraordinarily confusing

or

Lance never flirts with Pidge, because he sees her as a friend instead of just a girl, which highlights how unique their relationship is to him

I love @bigfatbreak's Feralnette because she looks like she's getting just as little sleep as I am

On second thought, I like yours better.

Pidge: Well, looks like the world is in trouble again.

Lance: Ah, yet again. What a tragedy that our evening is booked. *shoots Pidge a meaningful glare*.

Pidge: *grabs her super suit* Lance... 

Lance: I know, I know, world first. *pulls on his super suit* But I’m still going to complain anyway. I mean, it took me two months to get you to agree to something romantic! Two months! I feel like the supervillains could wait a couple more hours to unleash hell on us, right?

Pidge: If supervillains planned their evil schemes around your convenience, they’d never get anything done. That’s why they don’t do it. I’m sure they’ve considered it, of course, it just didn’t fit in with their schedule.

(they run off into the distance, still bickering and bantering, their voices fading as they get further away)

Lance: Well, duh, but I think one friendly exception isn’t much to ask.

Pidge: From a supervillain?

Lance: Fair, but I’m still bitter. Two months of begging!

Pidge: Begging and blackmailing. Don’t forget blackmailing.

Lance: Of course! What’s love without a little blackmail?

I saw this, and . . .

I feel like we can all agree that Pidge would be the one trying to find her paladin armour for something, and Lance would be the one standing in the background whining "but you promised you'd have dinner with me! I had candles and music planned and everything! How could you do this to me?"

Huh.

Huh.

I can't decide whether or not Optygami lived up to my hopes.

On the one hand, we definitely saw the negative consequences of the Miracle Queen reveal. Optygami was the closest Ladybug has come to being found out, and it was a tense and frustrating episode. There were definitely at least moderately disastrous consequences.

But on the other hand, none of those disastrous consequences were permanent. Ladybug and Chat Noir were not outed, no one lost a miraculous, no one was hurt or injured. Causing lasting harm to plot or character is difficult with a show as episodic as ML, but we have seen lasting damage done in one specific area: relationships. Friendships, and romantic ships, have been injured in this show before--when you get down to it, those are our stakes. And no relationships were damaged irreparably in Optygami.

So the writers probably upped the sense of stakes with this episode. But they also gave Alya her miraculous, permanently. I'm overjoyed at this in terms of Alya and Mari's friendship, as well as both of their character arcs, but it seems like a . . . questionable decision narratively.

I don't know. We'll see. In conclusion, my thoughts on Optygami are as ambiguous as the episode was. It definitely showed some negative consequences of reveals, but showed a lot more positives and took the Alyanette reveal arc even further into risky territory.

Hopes for Optygami

Miraculous Ladybug set up a good stakes system in the first three seasons with this simple rule: identities must not be revealed. If they are, there will be dire consequences. Hence, while we don't really believe that our main characters are ever at risk of dying, we can accept that they might someday lose their masks, and that that would be bad. It's a risk that adds real weight to the action and plot. It also justifies the endless identity dance between Marinette and Adrien. But then Miracle Queen happened, and all the heroes except for our main two were outed. We saw no consequences in that episode. We saw no consequences in the NY special, and we've seen no consequences in season four yet, either. This makes the entire narrative feel far less convincing and lowers the tension immensely. Not to mention that it almost completely invalidates how Adrien and Marinette continue to hide their identities from each other. (It doesn't invalidate their secrets completely because we're not going to forget Chat Blanc any time soon, but it still lowers the stakes considerably.) Not only are almost all the superheroes out, but Alya still sometimes runs around as Rena Rouge, despite her identity being publicized. And she knows Ladybug's identity, which we've been told is dangerous, but we haven't seen anything that convinces us it's dangerous. The thing is, we have seen negative consequences of identity reveals. Chloe being akumatized is one instance, and another is Chat Blanc. But the show has done nothing with the biggest large-scale identity reveal so far (the one at the end of season three), which makes the "we must keep our identites a secret" spiel very hard to swallow, and makes the entire plot feel almost risk-free. I hope that Optygami shows us the negative consequences of this large-scale identity reveal, and returns strength to the narrative by doing so. TL;DR: With a few rare exceptions, we haven't seen much to back up the story's constant claim that identity reveals are dangerous. I hope that Optygami will finally show us some of the disastrous consequences of identity reveals, thus adding more weight and stakes to the narrative and justifying Marinette and Adrien's continued secrecy.

Steris, my queen

Pidge: Why did I never enjoy things like the rain, or sunsets, before I met you? I didn’t even notice them.

Lance: I think that’s the point. We make each other better. For example, I never thought things through before I met you.

Pidge: I’m pretty sure you did.

Lance: Well, what can I say? I’ve always been perfect.

Pidge: *laughs* Pff, I’m sure.

Pidge: Lance?

Lance: Yeah?

Pidge: I love you.

Lance: I love you too.

I know I'm supposed to hate him, and I do hate his actions, but I also can't help but relate to him too. In other words, I reserve the right to try and work out my complicated thoughts about Simon Laurent through art.

When Adrien gets out from under Gabriel's thumb, I imagine he's going to wear a bunch of disgustingly unstylish clothes. I don't mean he'll start wearing styles that Gabriel objects to; I mean he'll start wearing styles that everyone objects to.

If you think this looks bad . . . thank you, that's the point