Life is but a dream

How Patia Por'co comes from the highest status and most privileged position among the player characters, who spent her life hoarding knowledge for no benefit except holding that same status until the world came crashing down, where wizardry itself is an ancient and noble art, and how Murray Mag'nesson worked her way up the ladder with schemes and gems, who works in a magic academy to spread knowledge to everyone who wants to work hard enough to learn it, where wizardry itself is new and exciting.

(Warning: I talk about season 6 but I don’t think this spoils the episode that much)

I genuinely think “Queen of the Dreadzone” perfectly exposes one of the biggest problems with how Miraculous has handled Chloé Bourgeois for years now: the show no longer treats her like a real character. She’s a caricature.

Not a person with motivations, contradictions, emotional damage, or even coherent villainy. Just a walking billboard screaming “THIS GIRL IS IRREDEEMABLE BTW.” And the episode repeats it over and over and over again like the writers are terrified the audience might still have sympathy for her.

What makes it frustrating is that the episode itself accidentally highlights why people *do* still care about Chloé. Because underneath all the exaggerated evil nonsense, the actual situation she’s in is deeply sad. Her mother and this weird new older brother figure are both adults who are blatantly exploiting this CHILD for attention, influence, and power. Audrey literally treats her own daughter like an object whose only value is finally being “useful.” Chloé is a child being emotionally manipulated by every adult around her, yet the framing of the episode expects us to hate her instead of recognizing how horrific that dynamic actually is.

The episode constantly pauses to remind viewers that Chloé is hated, unwanted, pathetic, stupid, irredeemable, alone. It’s excessive to the point where it becomes uncomfortable because it stops feeling organic. We already understood her downfall seasons ago. Why does the show keep insisting on humiliating her?

Especially because Miraculous already made its decision about Chloé back in season 5. They made her a political caricature, turned her into an absurd dictator figure, and completely burned down any realistic path toward redemption. Fine. That ship has sailed. But if the writers were going to commit to making her a villain permanently, why strip away every interesting part of her character in the process?

That’s the thing that bothers me most: Chloé is not allowed complexity anymore.

Early Chloé worked because she was cruel *and* insecure. Entitled *and* desperate for affection. She was emotionally stunted, deeply lonely, obsessed with validation, and constantly trying to imitate the toxic behavior modeled by Audrey. None of this excused her actions, but it made her understandable. Her dynamic with Ladybug, her desperate need to feel special, and her moments of genuine vulnerability gave the audience something compelling to latch onto. Even people who didn’t want a redemption arc could still acknowledge that there was an actual person there.

Now she’s written like a parody of herself.

Every scene in “Queen of the Dreadzone” goes out of its way to make her not just evil, but ridiculous. She can’t simply be manipulative or dangerous; she also has to be stupid, loud, incompetent, emotionally flat, and constantly mocked by the narrative itself. Compare that to someone like Lila, who the show treats with actual narrative respect. Lila gets to be calculating, composed, intimidating, and intelligent. Chloé, meanwhile, is reduced to comic relief evil. The writers seem determined to erase the possibility that she was ever nuanced in the first place.

And honestly? That’s a way less interesting direction.

A failed redemption arc could have been fascinating if the show had actually committed to exploring the complexity of that. Imagine if Chloé becoming someone genuinely dangerous and important to the overarching narrative after her failed redemption arc. That would have been tragic. That would have preserved the emotional themes tied to her character while still allowing her to become a villain.

Instead, the show treats her like a joke.

What makes it worse is how every adult in her life contributes to her destruction while escaping accountability themselves. Audrey emotionally abuses and humiliates her daughter for years. André consistently fails to parent her, enables her behavior, then eventually abandons her emotionally and publicly denounces her. And somehow he still gets framed as sympathetic because he redirects all his care and emotional stability toward Zoé, a child who essentially functions as a narrative replacement for the daughter he gave up on.

That dynamic is honestly one of the bleakest parts of Chloé’s storyline.

The show keeps insisting Chloé was “born bad,” but almost every aspect of her behavior can be traced back to neglect, emotional abandonment, toxic role models, and conditional love. Again, that doesn’t excuse what she’s done. But the series refusing to engage with that reality while simultaneously showcasing it onscreen creates this bizarre disconnect where the narrative wants us to condemn her without actually thinking critically about how she became this way.

And that’s why episodes like “Queen of the Dreadzone” feel so frustrating for a lot of fans. Not because people desperately need Chloé redeemed, but because the show itself refuses to treat her with narrative honesty anymore. She isn’t written like a human being allowed to fail. She’s written like a target.

Which is ironic, because the harder the show tries to convince the audience that Chloé is nothing more than an evil caricature, the more obvious it becomes that there was once a genuinely compelling character underneath all of this.

LOVING what they’re doing with the Whispered One arc. Making them an organization with a message and purpose is a really great move, it makes a lot of sense as a way to tie them in more and make them a bigger threat, as opposed to just shady cult guys with One Big Goal. VERY curious to see where Pike stands in regards to it all, after Zerxus nudged her that way last season, the fact that she was NOT holding the Everlight’s emblem in the Taryvan, and the shadow over her face in Zephrah just happened to form that same rectangular blindfold shape we see with the cultists. Also I love that they kept her being really unhappy after the time skip, even though Scanlan headed off on good terms this time around. It’s good character texture.

anyway i think people should never reveal their crushes, especially if they have crushes on a friend, because friends should be off-limits for consideration as romantic partners. do NOT give into those thoughts of ruining the friendship. it will ruin your life and you'll never be happy again.

ERIC: [Vampires killing humans] is very erotic, no matter if it's a man and a man, or a man and a woman, or whatever– I don't know how many– do we have women killing men [in the show]? Yeah we do. Yeah!

AUTUMN: I would hope so.

ERIC: It's a connection, you know. When my father was –this is going to blow your mind, what I'm about to say– my father was very old, he was in the nursing home, and he didn't even know who I was anymore, and I would visit him and I would cut his hair. And cutting somebody's hair allows you to touch them, and just to be touching his head –I don't know how to cut hair, I was doing the best I could– but when people touch each other, something passes through them. It's one of the reasons I have a hard time getting massages and stuff. People seem to love massages, I have real difficulty being that close to somebody else's aura– them touching me, because I can feel their vibe passing from them into me. Which can be good, or weird. Somehow that gets all kind of lost in this world we live in today, where it's so pornographic. So in the world of vampires where blood is going from one person into the other –and life: when you're sucking someone's blood, according to Anne Rice, you're seeing their whole life going by, you can see everything they ever did– I think that's a fantastic metaphor.

Because she's wanted the title/status of a noble basically forever, or at the very least to be treated like one (Do I look like I come from nobility?) But I think that second part (to be treated like one) is really the key to her character. Because what she really wanted growing up was love and respect from her father that he could never give. To be treated as an equal instead of judged by society. And because of the way her father lived his life, she came to see being noble as the only way to get there.

Except it's not. And her time with VM teaches her that. When Percy gives her that title, she doesn't fall for him because of the title itself or even the life it represents. It's because he respects her, values her—he thinks she is worth standing up for. That's something nobody but Vax has ever done (as she says) and something she's always sort of longed for.

And if you look at her relationship with Percy, it's never the wealth or the extravagance that makes her fall for him. That's not to say she doesn't find any fun in it, but it's the little moments camping in the woods, or protecting one another in battle, or having heart-to-hearts between fights. It's authenticity and trust and yes, mutual respect

But these things take time to unlearn, and I do think Vex needed to spend that time as a noble to learn what she actually values. Yes, the balls are fun. Yes, there is a part of her character (& more so in campaign I think) that is very attracted to wealth having grown up without it. But society isn't what she really wants because she's learned that wealth and high society are not the only pathway to love and respect.

Plus yeah, she's an adventurer. She's a Ranger and she belongs to the woods and she longs to be free, but she's also spent her life thinking she needs to give up that part of herself to be treated with care and to be valued. And because she always needed to be on the road, she never had the chance (until now) to consider that maybe she actually wanted to. She is very much herself in that life, and I think Percy taught her that that version of her — the one who runs through the woods with her bow and looks messy and gets in trouble — is just as deserving of adoration as the version who can dress up and look sophisticated etc.

I think if she'd really succumbed to the life of a noble her wedding would have been super opulent and over the top. I think season 1 Vex might have gone for that. But that's not who she is anymore.

like you know that overall she's talking about everyone but past all that, she's talking about HIM. How happy he supposedly is, how she feels like she's not needed in his life anymore

Scanlan Shorthalt haunts both the narrative AND Pike Trickfoot.

I have a folder of these on my phone... I'm not sure what that says about me!

If you are a socially anxious person, you have to socialize. Your panic/anxiety attacks will only get worse and trigger more frequently if you constantly avoid contact with The Public. Not saying that you need to be a social butterfly- but there is a genuine problem with not being able to order your own meal at a restaurant. And it cannot be solved by always having someone else do it for you.