Gio Of The Magical Variety

Okay so i've wanted to talk about this for a while now.

It's been said again and again how Chloe was robbed of a redemption arc: it seemed like season 2 was, at least on the surface, going to give her one, only for it to be scrapped entirely during miracle queen. However, as Sally (miraculous sins on YouTube) points out, her redeeming actions are almost never to a T: in zombizou, she apologised to bustier but not marinette, the one she truly wronged. In style queen, she regresses back at the end in order to emulate her mother's bratty behaviour. She has an "emotional" heart-to-heart with ladybug later where she confides that she feels purposeless, but all of her behaviour can be interpreted as manipulative: she posed herself a certain way so that she would get a selfish reward, in this case, the miraculous. And of course someone so young wouldn't do that maliciously, it's just how she was raised. Even in queen wasp, when she finally returns the miraculous, she's doing it while 1) she already lost and you could argue she was trying to earn good girl points with ladybug and 2) she was. Literally. Being filmed from every angle. How good is a redemption if it only exists when you are being monitored or when you have personal, egoistical stakes in it?

And at this point, naturally, the whole "Thomas hates Chloe" conversation begin. And don't get me wrong: I agree with most if not all their points: Thomas is taking it out on a fictional fourteen years old HE INVENTED, wasting her story potential. It's not like Chloe has no one who relates to her (children of divorce make some noise!!!), but all that potential is lost, especially since apparently we can forgive a terrorist who SA'd ladybug on screen and leave him with one of the most powerful miraculous because "he's just misundewstood rawr". We could have spared some of this sympathy for Chloe don't y'all think?

So like, when I hear people like utterly_chloe (YouTube) defend Chloe, I think to myself "this makes sense!". But then.

Then I watch the show.

The Chloe that exists, the one that we got, Does not want redemption. She's not irredeemable per say, but every time she is on screen she digs herself deeper into her own undoing. All akumatizations are tantrums to an extent, but Queen of the Dreadzone? Absolutely despicable. A desperate attempt of regaining control over the lives of those she toyed with for her own personal entertainment. And don't get me started on miracle queen, queen mayor and penalteam: she is shown to have absolutely no problem working with a literal Terrorist capital T, multiple times, over minor inconveniences. She is a horrible, horrible person who sees others only in the measure of how much they serve her, her objectives and her status. Again, she's not irredeemable, but people CONTINUOUSLY reach out to her (hey Sabrina hey girl) and she PISSES ON THEM. Also, this fandom and the writing love to portray marinette as the worst individual ever to ever exist in the history of forever and her finally standing up to Chloe might be part of the issue, although that's a whole ass separate post.

Don't talk about the abused child character. Don't look at the abused child character. Pretend the abused child character doesn't exist.

Also never in the post i have excused the abuse chloe RECEIVED, i was discussing the one she INFLICTED.

Also also: this is clearly advice for the AUDIENCE, not the in universe characters?????? Of course the people in chloe’s life should care about her????? When you say “there’s something very meta about that”, exactly what do you mean???

Also, about marinette starting the drama in zombizou, i understand that your logic is the following: Marinette, who has been abused the entirety of her school life by Chloe, made a snarky remark about her forgetfulness and her carelessness about others, which is not a smear and an objective observation. Therefore, Chloe is totally justified in 1) ruining the gift marinette custom made for bustier, and 2) admitting to us, the nondiegetic audience she feels bad, but not to marinette’s face. I’m not going to stand here and say that everyone in miraculous is always perfectly righteous but chloe, but chloe DEFINETLY did not do her part. Like, how am i bad for “excusing abuse” when you’re arguing that chloe’s actions have no ripercussions in the event someone remarks her flaws? Do you feel like you’re correctly representing chloe by giving her the bodily autonomy of a timed bomb?

My reply was prompted by your last line 'at this point we need to let her go.' I will elaborate what I mean.

I do want to quibble just slightly on the difference between bullying and abuse. Both are bad. This is not about degree just structure. Abuse involves an established power dynamic/expectation that can be, well, abused. A parent abuses, a spouse abuses, a boss abuses. A peer can bully. A peer can inflict violence, but a peer can't abuse outside of some very specific transference situations that turn it into a secondary echo of other abuses and that's all very complicated.

With this distinction. Chloé, a 14yr old girl, can bully Marinette another 14yr old girl. She cannot *abuse* her though. Andre Bourgeois *can* abuse Marinette by using his power as Mayor to trap her in a class with her bully.

Again- this is just a distinction for clarity. Bullying is wrong too. This is not the pain olympics, no one wins.

Okay. That done.

The 'Something meta' comes from how Thomas has spent half a decade now both via his tweets and increasingly obvious talk-to-the-camera episodes trying to tell the audience that Chloé is just a bad person, that she is not abused, and that she deserves what has/is happening to her.

Firstly: He's just lying. He very likely did not *intend* to portray her as abused. His own ignorance of child development and care left his views too narrow. (He seems to view only physical violence or deprivation of food as abuse) What he put on the screen was abuse. Chloé has been portrayed being abused and exhibiting many of the signs of abuse.

When i said “we need to let her go” i meant we, the audience. I of course would never infer that bullies are irredeemable and that we should just banish them from society. However, i will say that bullying IS abuse. For bullying to happen some check and balances need to fail: a teacher who dismisses it, a parent who doesnt believe their child could be a bully etc. I find this not dissimilar on how the other forms of abuse you’ve described show up: a spouse can be abused because our society is partiarchal (a failure of checks and balances), a boss can abuse you because of their power (a failure of checks and balances). At the end of the day, as you rightfully pointed out, abuse cannot exist without a power imbalance, which however is also found in traditional bullying. As a survivor of it i can ensure you, it does not feel like the system has your back no matter how many adults like to pose themselves to you as allies. Of course, chloe is not a fully developed human beign, so we cannot expect to bestow on her the full weight of her responsibilities, and of course this isnt the pain olympics, but my point originally was that the show actually never delivered consequences for her actions. I mean, just because of the final arc of season 5 she should be literally in jail.

On the other hand now that you’ve specified what you meant i totally agree about the something meta point: thomas astruc wrote her TERRIBLY. There is no moral to chloe, maybe you could stretch it into a cautionary tale but thats definetly not his intent. It’s clear thomas is parasocial about her. What i wanted to highlight in my original post is that we are doing a disservice to abuse survivors if we brush off the abuse other survivors can inflict.

Okay so i've wanted to talk about this for a while now.

It's been said again and again how Chloe was robbed of a redemption arc: it seemed like season 2 was, at least on the surface, going to give her one, only for it to be scrapped entirely during miracle queen. However, as Sally (miraculous sins on YouTube) points out, her redeeming actions are almost never to a T: in zombizou, she apologised to bustier but not marinette, the one she truly wronged. In style queen, she regresses back at the end in order to emulate her mother's bratty behaviour. She has an "emotional" heart-to-heart with ladybug later where she confides that she feels purposeless, but all of her behaviour can be interpreted as manipulative: she posed herself a certain way so that she would get a selfish reward, in this case, the miraculous. And of course someone so young wouldn't do that maliciously, it's just how she was raised. Even in queen wasp, when she finally returns the miraculous, she's doing it while 1) she already lost and you could argue she was trying to earn good girl points with ladybug and 2) she was. Literally. Being filmed from every angle. How good is a redemption if it only exists when you are being monitored or when you have personal, egoistical stakes in it?

And at this point, naturally, the whole "Thomas hates Chloe" conversation begin. And don't get me wrong: I agree with most if not all their points: Thomas is taking it out on a fictional fourteen years old HE INVENTED, wasting her story potential. It's not like Chloe has no one who relates to her (children of divorce make some noise!!!), but all that potential is lost, especially since apparently we can forgive a terrorist who SA'd ladybug on screen and leave him with one of the most powerful miraculous because "he's just misundewstood rawr". We could have spared some of this sympathy for Chloe don't y'all think?

So like, when I hear people like utterly_chloe (YouTube) defend Chloe, I think to myself "this makes sense!". But then.

Then I watch the show.

The Chloe that exists, the one that we got, Does not want redemption. She's not irredeemable per say, but every time she is on screen she digs herself deeper into her own undoing. All akumatizations are tantrums to an extent, but Queen of the Dreadzone? Absolutely despicable. A desperate attempt of regaining control over the lives of those she toyed with for her own personal entertainment. And don't get me started on miracle queen, queen mayor and penalteam: she is shown to have absolutely no problem working with a literal Terrorist capital T, multiple times, over minor inconveniences. She is a horrible, horrible person who sees others only in the measure of how much they serve her, her objectives and her status. Again, she's not irredeemable, but people CONTINUOUSLY reach out to her (hey Sabrina hey girl) and she PISSES ON THEM. Also, this fandom and the writing love to portray marinette as the worst individual ever to ever exist in the history of forever and her finally standing up to Chloe might be part of the issue, although that's a whole ass separate post.

Don't talk about the abused child character. Don't look at the abused child character. Pretend the abused child character doesn't exist.

Also never in the post i have excused the abuse chloe RECEIVED, i was discussing the one she INFLICTED.

Also also: this is clearly advice for the AUDIENCE, not the in universe characters?????? Of course the people in chloe’s life should care about her????? When you say “there’s something very meta about that”, exactly what do you mean???

Also, about marinette starting the drama in zombizou, i understand that your logic is the following: Marinette, who has been abused the entirety of her school life by Chloe, made a snarky remark about her forgetfulness and her carelessness about others, which is not a smear and an objective observation. Therefore, Chloe is totally justified in 1) ruining the gift marinette custom made for bustier, and 2) admitting to us, the nondiegetic audience she feels bad, but not to marinette’s face. I’m not going to stand here and say that everyone in miraculous is always perfectly righteous but chloe, but chloe DEFINETLY did not do her part. Like, how am i bad for “excusing abuse” when you’re arguing that chloe’s actions have no ripercussions in the event someone remarks her flaws? Do you feel like you’re correctly representing chloe by giving her the bodily autonomy of a timed bomb?

Okay so i've wanted to talk about this for a while now.

It's been said again and again how Chloe was robbed of a redemption arc: it seemed like season 2 was, at least on the surface, going to give her one, only for it to be scrapped entirely during miracle queen. However, as Sally (miraculous sins on YouTube) points out, her redeeming actions are almost never to a T: in zombizou, she apologised to bustier but not marinette, the one she truly wronged. In style queen, she regresses back at the end in order to emulate her mother's bratty behaviour. She has an "emotional" heart-to-heart with ladybug later where she confides that she feels purposeless, but all of her behaviour can be interpreted as manipulative: she posed herself a certain way so that she would get a selfish reward, in this case, the miraculous. And of course someone so young wouldn't do that maliciously, it's just how she was raised. Even in queen wasp, when she finally returns the miraculous, she's doing it while 1) she already lost and you could argue she was trying to earn good girl points with ladybug and 2) she was. Literally. Being filmed from every angle. How good is a redemption if it only exists when you are being monitored or when you have personal, egoistical stakes in it?

And at this point, naturally, the whole "Thomas hates Chloe" conversation begin. And don't get me wrong: I agree with most if not all their points: Thomas is taking it out on a fictional fourteen years old HE INVENTED, wasting her story potential. It's not like Chloe has no one who relates to her (children of divorce make some noise!!!), but all that potential is lost, especially since apparently we can forgive a terrorist who SA'd ladybug on screen and leave him with one of the most powerful miraculous because "he's just misundewstood rawr". We could have spared some of this sympathy for Chloe don't y'all think?

So like, when I hear people like utterly_chloe (YouTube) defend Chloe, I think to myself "this makes sense!". But then.

Then I watch the show.

The Chloe that exists, the one that we got, Does not want redemption. She's not irredeemable per say, but every time she is on screen she digs herself deeper into her own undoing. All akumatizations are tantrums to an extent, but Queen of the Dreadzone? Absolutely despicable. A desperate attempt of regaining control over the lives of those she toyed with for her own personal entertainment. And don't get me started on miracle queen, queen mayor and penalteam: she is shown to have absolutely no problem working with a literal Terrorist capital T, multiple times, over minor inconveniences. She is a horrible, horrible person who sees others only in the measure of how much they serve her, her objectives and her status. Again, she's not irredeemable, but people CONTINUOUSLY reach out to her (hey Sabrina hey girl) and she PISSES ON THEM. Also, this fandom and the writing love to portray marinette as the worst individual ever to ever exist in the history of forever and her finally standing up to Chloe might be part of the issue, although that's a whole ass separate post.

Don't talk about the abused child character. Don't look at the abused child character. Pretend the abused child character doesn't exist.

Also never in the post i have excused the abuse chloe RECEIVED, i was discussing the one she INFLICTED.

Also also: this is clearly advice for the AUDIENCE, not the in universe characters?????? Of course the people in chloe’s life should care about her????? When you say “there’s something very meta about that”, exactly what do you mean???

Also, about marinette starting the drama in zombizou, i understand that your logic is the following: Marinette, who has been abused the entirety of her school life by Chloe, made a snarky remark about her forgetfulness and her carelessness about others, which is not a smear and an objective observation. Therefore, Chloe is totally justified in 1) ruining the gift marinette custom made for bustier, and 2) admitting to us, the nondiegetic audience she feels bad, but not to marinette’s face. I’m not going to stand here and say that everyone in miraculous is always perfectly righteous but chloe, but chloe DEFINETLY did not do her part. Like, how am i bad for “excusing abuse” when you’re arguing that chloe’s actions have no ripercussions in the event someone remarks her flaws? Do you feel like you’re correctly representing chloe by giving her the bodily autonomy of a timed bomb?

The comic is a one-person passion project by @magicalgio (my main blog) where i yap about my fairies and post more art, this blog is meant to be the place where all issues are collected. Right now, three seasons/volumes are in the works. Since this page is more of a archive of all issues, please direct all your asks, messages and queries to my main blog (@magicalgio).