Late with iced coffee

Late with iced coffee

Some people are expecting commentary from me, but I’ve been super busy lately. When I’m like this, I like to only talk about things I haven’t seen other people saying.

So I liked Kuro Neko a lot. It was very solid imo and I appreciate the alternation between episodes where a ton of action happens (Ephemeral, Penalteam) vs episodes where the two dorks just kinda talk to each other and not much happens heroes-vs-villains-wise (Glaciator 2.0, Kuro Neko). Commentary speed run: Adrien pajamas hell yeah finally, wtf Nathalie out of bed? Good for her but ouch those braces. Rhythm (is that her real name?) was super cute and wholesome as a “villain”, and I love the senti. Lastly, Plagg is awesome at drawing?

But here’s what I wanted to talk the most about.

CT’s favorite thing: new heroes

The almost-last batch of my blorbos have arrived so clearly I stared at screenshots of all of them for 48 hours and noticed some stuff. I would like to point out that these 48 hours also let me go through what I call The Five Stages of New Hero Grief aka getting over the instant repulsion people feel upon seeing their designs for the first time and learning to love and accept them.

Between his ram-like original concept and the antelope-like final Caprikid, I don’t think Nathaniel actually knows what a goat is? My manga rec for him is one of those baby picture books about different types of animals. Now that I’ve gotten used to him, I actually like his suit. It reminds me of Mitsuru Kirijo from Persona 3. I feel like I’d like him waaaay more if his hair was different, though. It throws me off that it’s so similar to its usual style, even if it’s a little different, so any sort of more noticeable change would’ve made him look more natural. Idk why his paintbrush would have golden metal if everything on him is silver, but oh well.

Sabrina looks just about how I expected her to. I totally called it that she would have a hat. I’ll talk about her design more when I get to that image of her standing upright ‘cause this angle sucks, but I think the marble-designed ball on her chest could be her tool. If her power has to do with tracking, maybe she’ll be useful in tracking down the original, non-clone Penalty who has the actual akumatized object on her.

Minotaurox my beloved. Everyone’s saying that they see his suit as black, but I see it as navy blue? It’s a kinda desaturated color compared to most of the other suits, but he’s still all blue? (Trust me, I have perfect color vision). I like the way his mask is, it’s new and interesting. I also love the big cargo pockets. Practical. I think the puffy part around his shoulders is supposed to be like an ox yoke. His boots kinda confuse me ‘cause cloved hooves like that could never work irl but I guess it’s just part of the magic. I feel like his normal hair works well with his design because his suit is pretty reminiscent of Ivan’s usual clothes with the cargo pockets, boots, dark colors, and not a lot of details or flashiness. That’s why Nathaniel’s bothers me a little, since his clothes, on the other hand, looks so different from his usual self.

Marc looks fantastic. Glad to finally see an HD image because now we can see the gold trim which is awesome. I like his little scarf, I love his tail, and somewhat unpopular opinion but I love his hair. I’m mixed on the shoes. They make sense, and I always prefer designs being heavily influenced by the animal traits over “this looks good”, so I can’t complain, but how is he gonna kick a soccer ball without wrecking it? I guess it’s a magic ball idk. Super important detail that I haven’t seen anyone talk about: is it just me, or does he have earrings in his left (our right) ear? If you zoom in, it looks like he does. Bunnyx twins? In the picture below, I noticed that his feathers aren’t flat to his chest like I previously thought.

There are four heroes whose animals have hooves, yet zero of them have hoof prints on the bottom of their shoes. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

What I want everyone to look at is the glimpse we have of Ivan’s back. I think his tool’s on there, but what is it? It’s pretty big. Big hammer? Musical instrument? Idk

One thing I do appreciate is that they didn’t go pussy mode with the horns. If the character designers were cowards, they could’ve easily given us Minotaurox and Caprikid with tiny stubs, but they did not, and for that I am grateful.

First glimpse of Marc’s tool. They changed it from a fountain pen type thing to a quill, but they way he’s holding it makes it look kinda like a combat knife lol. Like in Hack-San, when most of the kids got brainwashed by Robustus, Marc is one again standing in the middle and a bit in front of all the other side characters, and he’s the one speaking for them. This is some consistent new development since it happened twice, and it makes me wonder how important he’s going to become because he was so irrelevant in previous seasons, but he’s changed a lot in s4. I think he’s probably the “beloved character with a big role coming up, like more than this character has ever spoken before” that Ezra Weisz talked about once in a tik tok.

Sabrina looks way cuter in this image than in the trailer imo. Her suit is similar to her normal clothes in that 70s-like aesthetic. Another important thing that nobody’s talking about: is it just me or does she have glasses in this shot? Zoom in on her mask. It looks like she has frameless oval glasses, but I can’t tell if they’re there or not in the trailer shot. If I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing, I like them a lot. They’re cute, and it’s nice to see a girl with glasses not lose them for “aesthetic reasons”. The white part on her chest/belly is a heart aww. Her boots look like those tall schoolgirl type socks, and that plus the shorts, beret, and glasses has a huge vintage prep vibe.

I bet Ladybug is drawing out a game plan in this scene, but everyone’s expressions are so funny. Every single character could be a different reaction meme.

Last thing: I’m trying to imagine how Ladybug is going to give out all of these miraculous. We know the class starts all together, so it’d be tough to separate them all to individually give them miraculous in different locations later. On top of that, there are four more heroes in three other locations, and they’re probably all supposed to be in class right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t explain how they get busted out of class, but in Kuro Neko we see how collecting the miraculous from even four temp heroes is stressful and time consuming for Ladybug. Maybe this is the episode where she’ll start considering making more people/all of them permanent at some point, and maybe even considering that everyone knowing each other’s identities would make things way easier.

That’s all for now. I have no time, but I’m sooo tempted to draw the four of them in fashion inspired by their hero forms waking down the street “late with iced coffee”. I can see the designs in my head already. I hope to see fan art of all four of them, and I really hope the show will develop all of them at least a little this episode.

So… trailer. I have tons of thoughts but rn I will only be talking about the ones that I don’t expect other people to talk about.

First: in the scene with Catwalker blasting off, we see a little kid wearing a black cat costume reuniting with a black cat. Could this be the villain behind Kuro Neko? It reminded me a lot of the frog kid from that other spoiler.

Could they be related in some way? Are they in an under-10 biker gang? Are they the lost boys from Peter Pan? I just find it odd that there are two new, small furry children getting involved in some allegedly serious episodes.

Next: NEW HEROES! Yay! My favorite thing!

I must say, whatever hairstyle or lack thereof I was expecting Minotaurox to have, I wasn’t expecting him to just be straight up Ivan. Usually the more minor characters have different looks that are good disguises while the more major character look similar to their normal selves, but Ivan is Ivan. Love to seem him doe. Ivan stans, our time is near.

Also. That’s Marc. Like three days ago I reblogged this post @theultracharmingladynoire started about the Gloob Alerta Miraculous from whenever ago that had him in it, and I recommend you guys read it, but

https://ct-multifandom.tumblr.com/post/671592073641721856/that-being-said

TL;DR although this is literally undeniably Marc, Nathaniel also uses the rooster miraculous at some point and someone (Marc) uses the goat miraculous.

Casual reminder that it’s confirmed that all four remaining superheroes will show up in the last four episodes of season four. Now to continue,

(Click on that silhouette image I’m too lazy to crop it) Rooster!Marc looks completely different from who I can only assume to be Rooster!Nath. The former has a skintight red/brown chest, a green coat tail like Rena, black skintight pants, and gold boots. The rooster from leaked concept art has a white chest, orange pants, and white boots. This concept art lines up with the rooster in the intro who has a fluffy chest and pants, which resembles the blurry shapes in the concept drawing.

The way this connects to my theory is that it confirms that the two roosters are two different superheroes, not one pretending to be the other. But why? Why did the miraculous change holders? Maybe Nathaniel broke some rules and got benched, or maybe Shadowmoth got to him first for whatever reason? Does he know/learn something he’s not supposed to? Idk. But I’d love to hear any ideas as to why this happens. I also wonder if it’s before or after when Marc uses the goat miraculous.

The last thing I’ll say is I actually kinda liked Pegasus/a horse user throwing the starman looking guy into the sun. We already knew they can do that, so it’d be weird if they didn’t. Coming up with stupidly convoluted solutions to problems that could be solved by exercising their OP powers gets a little bs-like after a while. I’m hoping to see future Pegasus eventually if not soon, but seeing a horse portal implies that there are other heroes besides the team we saw in the stuff pushed by Gloob. Since it’s the finale, you’d expect everyone to be there, so maybe they have different teams dealing with different threats at the same time, or there are just many different things happening at different times.

Edit:*squints*

1. When will there be time for Ivan and Sabrina? I mean I wouldn’t be surprised if Sabrina only gets her miraculous in the finale, but Ivan already has one by Strike Back. I hope we’ll get some kind of character development for those four ‘cause wtf. I mean, there could still be someone in Kuro Neko… but. Hrm.

2. Idk if this is confirmation that Rooster!Marc is the one named Coq Courage or if Winny is trying to be vague, but like, there’s no way they went through a late redesign or something. Will Penalteam have an Aspic situation where Ladybug figures she gave them miraculous that don’t fit them at first and then swaps them? The intro implies that when they do their transformations, it’s the opposite combination from what we see here.

The plot thickens. Help me out here

Omg wait we have a new love square,,, that means we need new arbitrary ship names! You guys were so quick with Julerose, Pigleka, Tigrose, and Tigrella (although I prefer Pigresse). Allow me to present the Myvan love square:

• Myvan
• Mousevan is my favorite option, but we can do Polyvan, or the funny version, Minivan
• Oxène is cute and sounds like oxen
• Polytaurox is clean and straightforward, and although Polymouse doesn’t have mini in her name, Minitaurox is a cute alternative

Minotaurox theory

So I’m sitting here, thinking about the heroes we haven’t seen yet in light of Gloob’s constant teasing, and the possible themes and inspirations for them. A lot of the heroes we’ve already seen have themes connected to or entirely based off various mythology, and I’ll make a post about as many of those references as I can think of after s4 is over. So I’m using this train of logic to try and figure out something about the rest of them. And I feel something familiar at the edge of my brain about Stompp…

I have a straight up brain blast. All the way back to good ol’ American public elementary school where they drilled this into us for some reason. The United States folktale of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. (The art below is by Angus McBride)

Paul Bunyan is a legendary lumberjack, superhuman in size and strength. His best friend is a blue ox named Babe that he rescued from a snowbank and raised on his own, growing from a sickly “babe” into a strong giant as well.

I always thought it was interesting that they chose to make Stompp blue, at first thinking that they and Roaar were just changed to unnatural bright colors to avoid having half the cast be boring shades of brown-ish and orange-ish since Kaalki, Xuppu, Orikko, and Barkk take up umber brown, yellow, orange, and sienna brown. I bet this is a part of it too, but the choice of blue specifically for the ox paired with Ivan and Stoneheart makes me think there’s more to it.

Stompp is easily one of THE cutest kwamis imo,,, Anyways, Stoneheart’s power is growing in size when he gets hit. I’ve seen people theorize that Minotaurox’s power will also have to do with growing in size. It would parallel the akuma as well as Polymouse’s power that allows her to shrink down and Horrificator’s power of growing and shrinking in response to others’ fear. Before, I stayed away from theories like this because I thought it was too similar to the akuma. Most of the hero powers are tangentially related to their respective akumas powers, but usually not in a way you could predict. But, when you take the parallels and the myth into account, it admittedly does make a lot of sense. If this is true, then I hope there’s more to it than just super size and strength, like how Polymouse can clone, not just shrink.

I made a half-joke in one of my previous theory-type posts that I hope one of the heroes has a giant axe. If anyone would have one, it would be Ivan since Paul Bunyan is a lumberjack. That being said, the good guys so far all have tools you can’t really do serious damage with, like toys, musical instruments, and defensive weapons. Also sometimes they’re really random. It’s near impossible to predict these correctly.

One last thing. The shapes around Minotaurox’s torso and arms in the silhouette remind me a bit of his Kitty Section stage costume. This isn’t anything serious, but I think it’d be neat if he took inspiration from Marinette’s design for his hero costume.

I can’t wait to see him appear in the show, and let me know which other new heroes you’d like to see a separate theory post about!

Edit: I just realized that I never mentioned my theory for his theme. My favorite one I’ve seen is fortification.