#zagulous fandom

Titillation for the context of this analysis means “content with the intention to excite romantically or sexually”, basically it’s about “kinky” stuff. The purpose of talking about sexuality in relation to Miraculous is not to paint the writers as some kind of fiends, but to present the fact that many teenagers are curious about romance and sex and will think about sex unprompted. This means titillating content in cartoons doesn’t even need to be related to sex to be titillating. And Astruc has a history of putting titillating stuff in his work, with Totally Spies being a very notable example of how you can include non-sexual titillating content in a kids’ show.

It all comes down to expected audience reactions. Adrien is meant to be sexy. I don’t mean that in a “the writers think this is sexy” way, but a “the writers think the projected audience of straight teenage girls will think this is sexy” way. He gets put into bondage three times in ‘Copycat’, ‘Anti-Bug’ and ‘Reverser’ and all three times the camera seems to like to show him off. He is meant to be an object of attraction for the audience. The people criticizing this show have been pointing out how Ladybug's costume accentuates her butt for years, but this is not something that occurs with just Ladybug. When he isn't posing for the viewers, Cat Noir gets whacked around by Akuma’s a lot, but a lot of the time it ends with him in a prone position that is also titillating, in ‘Pixelator’ it goes as far as having his butt jut out. However, the idea that Cat Noir is the one who gets hit when an Akuma needs to show off how dangerous they are is also part of the power dynamic where Marinette or Ladybug gets to show off, so it’s not purely for titillation, which is why other examples, like ‘Stormy Weather’ are more comedic.

It’s likely that Adrien-as-Adrien doesn’t get to participate in the show’s slapstick much, since that aspect of the character is presented as the perfect beauty, a role usually reserved for female characters who only ever get a little bit flustered or banged up to make sure they keep looking attractive. Marinette screams "waack" and runs face first into a wall in the same episode where the silliest thing Adrien gets to do is sneeze (Mr Pigeon). Adrien is meant to be attractive, sexy, titillating, in different ways in his different forms. As Cat Noir he is more active and more sexy, as Adrien he’s more passive and pretty, much like how female love interests can fall into these categories. It’s the Betty and Veronica dichotomy; in the Archie franchise Betty and Veronica are shown as the wholesome and sexy romance options and the reason the writers go out of their way not to resolve the love triangle is to keep the appeal of these both options going. People’s tastes differ, so it would alienate some audiences to pick one over the other. With Miraculous they solved the problem by having the two romance options be the different identities of a single character.

Frankly, as of the season five finale, Adrien is approaching “sexy lamp” levels of replicating sexist ways of writing a female character but just changing the gender. What else do you call him lying on the floor in despair while his love interest gets his superpowers and uses them to beat up his abusive father, while somehow being perfectly fine and happily kissing Marinette later after said father is dead and gone? Adrien’s trauma is debilitating when it serves the writers’ purposes, but stops being a problem as soon as they need him to smile and look pretty. The main reason Adrien’s trauma is so inconsistent is so that he can act as Marinette’s trophy so that Marinette has somebody to kiss in the final shot. If Adrien was despairing about not being good enough for her, or grossly crying about being an orphan, Marinette wouldn’t have a fun time kissing him. And if Marinette isn’t having fun, the members of the audience projecting onto her aren’t having fun either.

Speaking of how Adrien’s depiction relates to Marinette, here comes the controversial part of this post: while Marinette is not depicted as a literal slave owner in-story, narratively, she is very much treated as Adrien's owner from a meta perspective. We, the viewers, are meant to see Adrien as Marinette's property, and the twist of Adrien being a part of a slave race in a dynamic where Marinette holds all the cards is meant to be a good thing. We have been primed to view everything about Adrien to actually be about Marinette, because Marinette is the center of the universe of Miraculous and Adrien belongs to her because he’s the main character’s love interest. Adrien being revealed to be a slave that Marinette could control but then chooses to “merely” manipulate is meant to be glorifying to Marinette and titillating to the viewer. I will elaborate.

Marinette has been incredibly possessive of Adrien since day one and she is only occasionally depicted as being in the wrong about this, when she goes too far by the show’s standards. She stalks Lila and Adrien whenever she sees them hanging out together and she’s unreasonably jealous of Kagami. The only time she is depicted as being in the wrong is not when she's sniffing Adrien's pillow after breaking into his room, but when she actually bullies Kagami out of jealousy, and even that is depicted as more of an unfortunate misunderstanding than Marinette actively doing something wrong. Marinette is more sympathetic towards Kagami when she finds out she and Adrien aren't as close as she thought, that Kagami’s pursuit of Adrien is more hopeless than hers. Basically, Marinette is only in the wrong because Kagami isn't a threat, not because she was doing anything wrong by bullying her to defend her “territory”.

This gets flipped near the end of the season, though. When Adrien and Kagami do start dating, it's depicted as this big tragedy even more so than Master Fu losing his memories. Master Fu going missing is an afterthought, while Adrien choosing someone else over Marinette is the big “darkest hour” moment of the season three mid-finale, the cliffhanger moment of her crying in Luka’s arms while all hope is lost. Marinette isn’t directly crying about this, she is crying from “all the pressure”, but Marinette breaking down happens immediately after a scene of Kagami leaning in to kiss Adrien that has a somber dirge playing in the background. The first part of the finale has everything going wrong at the end; Master Fu is missing, Chloé gets willingly Akumatized, Marinette breaks down, and Kagami leans in to kiss Adrien. These scenes being put closely together is telling us that these are all bad things to happen.

Adrien ending up with Marinette is a given, but it's also taken for granted. Every girl with an interest in Adrien is depicted as an antagonist, while Marinette can do whatever she wants in pursuit of Adrien and will still be morally correct. Chloé and Lila, even Kagami to a degree, are villainized for their attraction to Adrien in a way Nathaniel, Luka or Zoé are not with their attraction to Marinette. Chloé and Lila are full-blown villains while Luka and Zoé are some of the most selfless members of the cast. Kagami is aggressive and socially awkward in a way that is used to justify Marinette's initial distrust and dislike of her (in ‘Ikari Gozen’ Alya voices her pity towards Marinette for having to spend time with her) while Nathaniel is just the pitiful bullied loner who’s still a liked member of the class friend group. Girls who want Adrien are bad for trespassing on Marinette’s territory and trying to “steal” something that “belongs” to Marinette.

The writers thinking Adrien belongs to Marinette is also not just subtext. Later in season five, when Marinette and Adrien finally start dating, Marinette even outright states that Adrien “kinda does a little” belong to her when she’s scared that Zoé has a crush on him. The fumbling of the line means that the writers are aware of how toxic it is to consider your partner your property, but they want to include that sentiment anyway, because that’s how they view the situation. Marinette’s boyfriend is her property and other people can’t even look at her property. ‘Emotion’ continues on this increased possessiveness by having the entire Marinette plot happen because she can’t conceive Adrien keeping things from her, because he isn’t allowed privacy from her while Marinette lying to Adrien (or Cat Noir) is a show staple.

This same attitude of Adrien not being allowed to have romantic options outside of Marinette has also been in the fandom for years. Every time a new female character was introduced, there was a worry that she’d “try to steal Adrien from Marinette”. Marinette and Adrien are endgame, the writers know this and the fandom knows this. The characters don't know this, but it doesn't matter because Adrien was already seen as Marinette's (future) boyfriend even back in season one when he barely knew her. And this attitude the writers and audience have is extended to the characters more and more as the show goes on, as almost every single character becomes an Adrinette shipper in support of Marinette in season five, while no one thinks to ask Adrien what he thinks about this. Only once, in ‘Desperada’ did Alya suggest that Adrien could make his own choice on who to date, but it was implied the choice should be Marinette specifically (Marinette smiles at this, while Kagami frowns). The cast is lucky the writers have decided Adrien already is Marinette's, or he’d be really uncomfortable.

Season five episode ‘Pretension’ goes as far with this as having Marinette basically ask Gabriel for permission to be with Adrien, convinced that she and Adrien can be together with no problems if she can just get him to approve of her. And then Gabriel tells her he’s promised Adrien to Kagami. You know, like a piece of property women were treated as before women were allowed to live without a man to control them. The finale then ultimately does have Gabriel agree to hand Adrien over to Marinette by dying and leaving her in charge of Adrien. Just because she uses the privilege to do some things for Adrien’s benefit doesn’t make what happened any less of a patriarchal transaction. In fact, the writers wrote it that way on purpose, with the knight and princess parallels they set up between Marinette and Adrien earlier in the show being something they are prominently proud of (the “reverse fairytale” as they put it). Adrien is the princess the dashing hero Marinette gets to earn with her feats of bravery; he’s handed to her like a piece of property and Marinette is too happy with her acquisition to even be outraged on Adrien’s behalf. And Adrien wasn’t even allowed to know about any of this, instead it gets handled solely between Marinette and Gabriel, like his opinion on the matter didn’t even matter. And why would his opinion matter, since he already is ready to promise himself to Marinette, even as the writers deny him the agency to actually make such a promise.

The goal of making it obvious that Adrien is cool with being objectified like this is probably why they make Adrien so obsessed with Marinette in season five, constantly repeating her name to himself and saying stuff like: “I can’t stop thinking about you” in ‘Pretension’. They need to drive it home to the audience exactly how okay Adrien is with everyone forcing him to be with Marinette. After all, you can’t force the willing. As of ‘Confrontation’, Adrien’s official goals for the future are: “I love Marinette Dupain-Cheng.” I guess, from the perspective of the writers, the childhood dream of wanting to be what his parents wanted from ‘Wishmaker’ wasn’t sad because of Adrien’s lack of agency; it was sad because he wasn’t forsaking all of his personal pursuits for Marinette specifically. As far as the writers are concerned, Adrien should only care about Marinette and nothing else.

This same entitlement is also present in Ladybug and Cat Noir's relationship. Every time Cat Noir is upset with Ladybug, like in Frozer, Glaciator, Syren, The New York Special or even Kuro Neko, they never talk about what caused it. This is especially blatant in cases where Ladybug has wronged Cat Noir personally, like Kuro Neko or the NY Special, where she never has to face up to what she did wrong because Cat Noir comes back because she “needs him”.  Cat Noir will always come back to her without her having to do anything because she is the main character and she says she needs him. He exists for her and her needs. He exists for her; it’s just another way he’s hers.

Speaking of how Adrien is treated affects Marinette, even Adrien’s trauma actually belongs to her in the writing.  I pointed out earlier that Adrien’s trauma shows up when the writers need to put him out of commission, but disappears as soon as he needs to be Marinette’s trophy, but it goes further than just inconsistency. The early seasons spend several episodes on how Adrien is being locked up by his father and unable to hang out with his friends and, between him and Marinette, Marinette is the one shown to be more upset and hurt by this. They don’t do this in every episode, as ‘The Bubbler’ actually does a phenomenal job of making Adrien’s upset actually about him, but the big point in ‘Glaciator’ is that Marinette is so upset that she can’t see Adrien that she accidentally leaves Cat Noir on read so he’s upset about that. Adrien is only upset because he didn’t get attention from Marinette, while Adrien’s literal abuse at the hands of his father is only important because it makes Marinette upset. Even Adrien himself gets in on this action in ‘Conformation’ when the writers go as far as having Adrien chastise himself of not being more worthy of Marinette’s love when his dad is once again busy ruining his life. Even Adrien himself makes his abuse about Marinette; him being abused is bad because it’s inconveniencing Marinette and inconveniencing Marinette makes him less worthy of her.

‘Cat Blanc’ is possibly the worst offender of all, though. This episode should be all about how Adrien is abused by Gabriel, culminating with Gabriel turning him into a monster that destroys the world. And yet, what is the episode actually about? It’s about Marinette. The worst thing that could happen to Adrien is about Marinette. Only Marinette gets to remember or even know about the possibility of Cat Noir getting Akumatized and only Marinette is traumatized by it happening. After all that the writers later dare to use this event that didn’t actually happen anymore, that Adrien doesn’t know about, to justify him giving his powers to Marinette, because he’s “scared of getting Akumatized” when something like that has never happened as far as he knows. But the writers had him reason this way anyway, because apparently the culmination of Marinette’s character development in the show means taking Adrien’s power as her own and then failing to win even with that at her disposal.

Another note about ‘The Bubbler’ that has to be pointed out is that it’s also the first example of Marinette being presented as good for Adrien simply because she treats him better than Gabriel. The final scene of Marinette giving Adrien his best birthday present yet and letting him think it comes from Gabriel is done to show how selfless Marinette is by letting Adrien keep thinking good things about his abuser. This idea that Marinette is morally good simply because she’s better than pond scum Gabriel is also present in the season five finale, where Marinette manipulates, gaslights and keeps important information from her abused slave boyfriend. Marinette is presented as being in the right because at least she didn’t literally control him with a magical geas like Gabriel did and gave him the object with which to do so (while notably not telling him what it does). Marinette will do the bare minimum of not taking literal ownership of Adrien and we’re meant to see her as a paragon of goodness for it, while she still has no respect for Adrien’s autonomy and hasn’t had any since the show started.

The way the Sentimonster “reveal” is handled shows this utter lack of respect for Adrien’s autonomy that the writers, and Marinette by extension, have. The reveal is not for Adrien, but for Marinette, just like every other piece of Adrien has been made to be about Marinette. Marinette gets to know and she gets to decide if Adrien gets to know, and she decides “no”. She will manipulate him and lie to him to keep him happy for herself, she will keep important information about him to herself that he might never find out if anything happens to her, because Adrien is hers and no one else’s and she has the right to make that decision because the world revolves around her because the world of Miraculous was created to be her playground. “Adrien” is just a toy on that playground for Marinette to play with as the writers see fit.

Now we’re coming back to Adrien’s role as the sexy, titillating love interest character that I talked about at the start of this essay. If Marinette granting Adrien the bare minimum of freedoms as a slave while manipulating him “for his own good” is meant to be a good thing, why is Adrien even a slave? Well, outside of the writers wanting to add a plot twist that doesn’t come with any messy plot they’d have to write about characters other than Marinette, Adrien being a slave is also meant to be titillating. What really is magical super slavery than very, very off the wall bondage and power play stuff? The idea that Marinette could rob her love interest of his free will with ease but won’t because she cares about him so much is very empowering in two different ways. It gives Marinette all the power in the relationship and it makes her out to be such a good person that even having ultimate power over another person won’t corrupt her. Adding to that, we have Adrien’s people pleaser abuse victim personality, which makes him fawn over the people he loves. If Marinette ever wanted to have control over Adrien, Adrien would give it to her of his own volition, no need for magical super slavery or unbreakable geases.

As I stated earlier, Marinette is meant to be the point of view main character the audience of teen girls projects themselves onto. So, really, Adrien’s slavery and abuse responses are all about that fantasy of having a cute boy you have all the power over but not needing to use it because the boy is so nice and devoted to you anyway. Adrien really is “perfect”, the perfect object of attraction, a being who technically has free will but whose free will you never have to take into account because he’s been designed and trained to value other people’s wants and needs over his own.