I think sometimes people try to write Alya as the logical, reasonable one in the group when that’s just not her. She makes plans and they only seem reasonable because you’re comparing them to Marinette, who is an outlier adn should not have been counted. This is the girl who got offended that she wasn’t a good enough ritual sacrifice. She would repeatedly run into battle to get a good scoop and stay up all night in order to write a decent article all for the love of her craft. Alya Césaire deserves recognition for everything she does for the show, yes, but she also deserves recognition as having one of the biggest prides in the show and acting on it all the time. We love her for that <3
Also if you think that Alya holds Ladybug on a pedestal then you’re so wrong. Alya tried to fight Chloé when she was actively convinced that Chloé was Ladybug. I genuinely think that Alya, pre-Gang of Secrets, wants to study Ladybug like a bug (no pun intended).
Wasn’t there a thing on instagram where Alya speculated that Ladybug is a space alien.
I want to know the story behind that. What led Alya to come to that conclusion. What superhero tropes did she string together to end up here?
Alya how does your brain
Alya Césaire is a force of chaos who is only the voice of reason because her best friend is chaos incarnate
you know what I’m gonna say it, Miraculous has one of the best set ups for fanfiction and it gives such a large variety of ideas from just the basic episode set up.
Like akumas are such an easy, canon plot device regardless of the genre. And no matter how ridiculous or terrifying the akuma might sound it’s never truly something far fetched for Hawkmoth as he’s created both. And the identity reveal scenarios are limitless too, for every character there’s a dozen different other characters to have a reveal with and a dozen ways to have those go down.
it’s absolutely wonderful.
I’ve got a moral imperative to signal boost this post.
Miraculous is the first fandom I’ve ever been actively involved in, and I think this is the reason why. It’s just so easy to be creative with ideas in this fandom. So many “what if?” situations to explore, more so than any other show I’ve watched. I love it.
There is a term that is consistently related to the idea of a set-up that makes it easier to create stories: the story engine. The story engine is a term often used to refer to the functions in a world or story that give it its energy to be in motion: aka, to generate stories. The setting of Miraculous Ladybug has a very powerful story engine where many elements are solely crafted for the sake of creating more stories.
The secret identities lead to mixup and reveal scarios easily.
The Miraculous are not bound to a specific character so they can change hands in an insane amount of combinations or be handed out to someone who’s never had a chance to use one.
The Miracle Box lore basically gives people permission to invent their own Miraculous sets.
The specials confirm that other types of superheroes than just Miraculous-empowered ones exist in the universe, which gives even more freedom to create OCs or crossovers.
The Miraculous concept itself can easily be injected into other universes for the sake of crossovers.
The characters’ personalities are transplantable, meaning they are not tied specifically to the history of the world of Miraculous Ladybug, making AUs easy to create with the characters still making sense in a number of new settings.
I love superheroes specifically because of how easy it is to reimagine any given superhero for any story. Miraculous Ladybug manages to be even more capable of transformation than what’s typical of the genre.
You know what I find so cool about the zodiac miraculous’ within the show? There are alot of explicit ways in which they are used appropriately to their Chinese numbers meaning. Let me give you a couple of examples without elaborating too deep with others and please remember that I’m not of any chinese/asian heriantage myself, so my knowledge is limited to the research I can make. As per usual, if I made any mistakes feel free to correct me:
(btw, in the original Miracle box layout the Zodiac miraculous were indeed in the right order, they were merely upside down. So 12 (Pig) was the first from the top and 1 (Mouse; I know normally it’s a Rat but the show calls it Mouse so that’s what I’m using too) was at the bottom. But that’s something for a completely different post in the future)
The real life zodiac order is:
Mouse, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig
So for example the Rabbit is animal number 4 and in Chinese 4 is the number of bad luck, like 13 in the western world, because it sounds so much like the word for “death” (四, pinyin: sì; Cantonese Yale: sei). So fitting to that, not only is the Rabbit narratively directly linked to Chat Blanc and DEATH, it is also color-coded with the color white (and blue, which often comes alongside black and green - CN and CB, you get it). Which, as many probably already know, was/is the color of mourning in Chinese culture.
Or the Goat! The Goat is animal number 8 and that’s the luckiest number in China! And therefore in the show the goats power is like a light version of the Lucky Charm and concealed in the only other miraculous jewelry that is a two-piece pair - like Ladybugs earrings!
Or the Rooster as well, animal number 10. As far as my research could get me chinese people don’t talk too much about the number 10 in these regards because of its “intense” nature. Basically 10 symbolizes having reached your full potential, being at your very peak, but that also means that from this peak onwards there is nowhere to go but downhill. Like the rooster miraculous within the show. The rooster has the unlimited power of CHOOSING his power himself and yet he is highly limited by not getting to use it to fulfill a desire.
His power has the potential to be boundless, the very peak of the miraculous powers, and yet from this very peak the way he can actually manifeste his powers will inevitably always be significantly beneath the high point he and his powers stand for.
Then we have the Snake, miraculous number 6 which sounds like the manderin word for “ “flowing, smooth, or frictionless” (溜, pinyin: liū) which culturally indicates a smooth process in life. Just like the Snakes powers, which benefit everyone but themselves since from an outsider perspective the Snake just uses his powers once and thats it, the situation is solved/where is it, while from the insider perspective we of course know that there is MUCH more effort involved than that.
6 stands for an easy flow in life, just like the Snakes powers look like for everyone on the outside and this interestingly also applies to Luka himself. He is very easy going on the outside and wants to make life easier for everyone through his patience and help and yet season 4 also showed that not only are there more complex emotions underneath, the way he uses his methods as Luka and Viperion don’t automatically lead to morally flawless solutions or even anywhere close to the best ones (“Wishmaker” and “Ephemeral”). Lifes situation is just where it is now and he and therefore everyone else is going with the flow he created because no one but him is any wiser of what happened within his power usage or what he himself feels regarding certain things.
And the Mouseisnumber 1, which isn’t too special of a number in China from what I can gather, but its meaning is culturally linked to being alone, but in first place and the winner. Just like the Mouse miraculous being portrayed as basically a lonely one person-army, for both its good and its bad implications:
Btw, 1 having the meaning of lonely also explains the DogMiraculous,the 11th zodiac animal:
11th of November is the Single’s day in Chinese culture, which is 1x4 (remember 4 being the unluckiest number?) and therefore connected directly to loneliness and bad luck especially in relationships. This perfectly corresponds with Sabrina and Félix using the Dog miraculous in their respective contexts.
Aaaaaaaand that’s it for now! I have wanted to point this and more out for a LONG while already, but I’m still waiting for a specific official confirmation in Canon that the s4 finale has now validated me in 100% that I’m right. I have much more to say in season 5 when we finally HAVE IT, but at this point I guess there is no need to not talk about a couple of things while we wait for s5.
Just a quick thought I didn’t mention in the post:
You know, the concept behind the Rooster/number 10, of being at ones highest peak but from there you can only go downhill, is REALLY making me nervous regarding season 5.
Because most of the episodes are named after the zodiac miraculous and wouldn’t you know it? The rooster is the last before leading into quite a few not-Kwami-named episodes right until the very last episode of the finale, which is Ladybug-named:
You know what I find so cool about the zodiac miraculous’ within the show? There are alot of explicit ways in which they are used appropriately to their Chinese numbers meaning. Let me give you a couple of examples without elaborating too deep with others and please remember that I’m not of any chinese/asian heriantage myself, so my knowledge is limited to the research I can make. As per usual, if I made any mistakes feel free to correct me:
(btw, in the original Miracle box layout the Zodiac miraculous were indeed in the right order, they were merely upside down. So 12 (Pig) was the first from the top and 1 (Mouse; I know normally it’s a Rat but the show calls it Mouse so that’s what I’m using too) was at the bottom. But that’s something for a completely different post in the future)
The real life zodiac order is:
Mouse, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig
So for example the Rabbit is animal number 4 and in Chinese 4 is the number of bad luck, like 13 in the western world, because it sounds so much like the word for “death” (四, pinyin: sì; Cantonese Yale: sei). So fitting to that, not only is the Rabbit narratively directly linked to Chat Blanc and DEATH, it is also color-coded with the color white (and blue, which often comes alongside black and green - CN and CB, you get it). Which, as many probably already know, was/is the color of mourning in Chinese culture.
Or the Goat! The Goat is animal number 8 and that’s the luckiest number in China! And therefore in the show the goats power is like a light version of the Lucky Charm and concealed in the only other miraculous jewelry that is a two-piece pair - like Ladybugs earrings!
Or the Rooster as well, animal number 10. As far as my research could get me chinese people don’t talk too much about the number 10 in these regards because of its “intense” nature. Basically 10 symbolizes having reached your full potential, being at your very peak, but that also means that from this peak onwards there is nowhere to go but downhill. Like the rooster miraculous within the show. The rooster has the unlimited power of CHOOSING his power himself and yet he is highly limited by not getting to use it to fulfill a desire.
His power has the potential to be boundless, the very peak of the miraculous powers, and yet from this very peak the way he can actually manifeste his powers will inevitably always be significantly beneath the high point he and his powers stand for.
Then we have the Snake, miraculous number 6 which sounds like the manderin word for “ “flowing, smooth, or frictionless” (溜, pinyin: liū) which culturally indicates a smooth process in life. Just like the Snakes powers, which benefit everyone but themselves since from an outsider perspective the Snake just uses his powers once and thats it, the situation is solved/where is it, while from the insider perspective we of course know that there is MUCH more effort involved than that.
6 stands for an easy flow in life, just like the Snakes powers look like for everyone on the outside and this interestingly also applies to Luka himself. He is very easy going on the outside and wants to make life easier for everyone through his patience and help and yet season 4 also showed that not only are there more complex emotions underneath, the way he uses his methods as Luka and Viperion don’t automatically lead to morally flawless solutions or even anywhere close to the best ones (“Wishmaker” and “Ephemeral”). Lifes situation is just where it is now and he and therefore everyone else is going with the flow he created because no one but him is any wiser of what happened within his power usage or what he himself feels regarding certain things.
And the Mouseisnumber 1, which isn’t too special of a number in China from what I can gather, but its meaning is culturally linked to being alone, but in first place and the winner. Just like the Mouse miraculous being portrayed as basically a lonely one person-army, for both its good and its bad implications:
Btw, 1 having the meaning of lonely also explains the DogMiraculous,the 11th zodiac animal:
11th of November is the Single’s day in Chinese culture, which is 1x4 (remember 4 being the unluckiest number?) and therefore connected directly to loneliness and bad luck especially in relationships. This perfectly corresponds with Sabrina and Félix using the Dog miraculous in their respective contexts.
Aaaaaaaand that’s it for now! I have wanted to point this and more out for a LONG while already, but I’m still waiting for a specific official confirmation in Canon that the s4 finale has now validated me in 100% that I’m right. I have much more to say in season 5 when we finally HAVE IT, but at this point I guess there is no need to not talk about a couple of things while we wait for s5.
