Until the start of the series, Adrien was a very quiet and polite child who always did what he was told and never raised a fuss. But when his mother died and his father withdrew, he became isolated. Practically as well as emotionally. He rarely saw anyone that wasn't an adult he had to deal with at work, or someone who worked for his father. He stopped even seeing his cousin or aunt all that often. And for someone as naturally inclined to be friendly as Adrien is, it was slowly killing him.
His father's yes you can no you can't back and forth over his going to school was behind a lot of his earliest rebellions. Especially once he had the taste for freedom and discovered that he liked having actual friends, that he liked earning people's friendship not just having awe granted to him due his fame. And that not every friend was like his cousin who could be manipulative and Chloé who was, well, Chloé.
Getting the Black Cat Miraculous and discovering a whole new kind of freedom opened a new world for him. Behind the mask no one fawned over Adrien Agreste. He didn't have to be polite and quiet and obedient. He became wild and reckless. He became the type to jump first and think later when he could, though when he had to think he could. But he got to play stupid at times where Adrien was always supposed to be smart and educated. He got to be silly and crack jokes. For all being a hero meant life and death situations he got to finally be a kid. And most important he found someone he could trust, utterly and entirely. Not because he was told to. But because she earned it. And with that person he could trust... he fell in love.
For a while after that change became gradual. He remained very trusting, but learned that some people could actually lose that trust. He started to see how horrible Chloé could actually be. He tried, he tried so hard to help her grow up, and it broke part of his heart when he realized that she wasn't actually going to change. He had break off that friendship, which was very hard for him. He also met Lila Rossi, and learned that some people really are not honest or worthy of trust, and that too had been hard for him to accept. He learned how to not just be angry, but to express it. That sometimes he should actually speak up even though his father raised him to keep his impolite thoughts to himself.
He learned to love his freedom and how to grow into an actual person rather than the puppet he had been becoming. With Marinette's help he gained the courage to to tell his father that he wanted to stop modeling.
The nightmare that the last Akuma put into his head hasn't fully left him now, even though Ladybug reset the power that made it stick. His father isolated him around then more than he had ever been isolated before. Between being constantly monitored so he couldn't talk to or feed Plagg, and his fear over using that power again, he gave up his Miraculous. He was well and truly alone to a degree he'd never been alone before. Trapped worse than ever, and dealing with the emotions from his nightmare and accepting that he was actually furious with his father.
And then to go from that to freedom but at the cost of his father's life... He's in a state of flux, trying to figure out who he is now without his parents, a super hero without a villian to fight. A teenager free to love whoever he wants, but with the knowledge that he was now an orphan. He got permission to stop working, but he knew he would have to start again, sooner rather than later, in order to support himself, Nathalie, his bodyguard. The house was what he had left of his parents, and he'd never lived anywhere else, not for long. And Nathalie and his bodyguard were all the family he had left, local at least. And he couldn't expect his aunt and cousin to move in and take over paying anymore than he could count on the money left to him to last forever. Sure there were Royalties and Residuals and contracts still in play, but even that had limits.
But it was summer vacation. And he had enough that he could wait until school started again to think about that at least. He could enjoy a summer where Ladybug and Chat Noir transformed just to spend time together, a summer where he could just be a teenager in love with his girlfriend, where he could just spend time with his friends.
So of course he woke up here...
More on interactions in addition to what was added above:
Nino was the first person to stand up for him against the adults other than Chloé and sometimes other adults. Nino got himself akumatized out of desperation to try and get Adrien to be allowed to have a birthday party. Through thick and thin Nino has been at his side. Nino let him in on the secret when he had become a Miraculous holder, which made Adrien feel guilty he couldn't reciprocate. Because he was following Ladybug's rules. But still through everything, Nino is with him, at his side, the best friend he could have ever had imagined. And Nino creating the resistance gave him ways he could help as Adrien as well as as Chat Noir, and ways to become closer with his other friends.
Marinette was the first chance he had to really see that Chloé was not the wonderful person he had thought. Both by showing how cruel Chloé could be, but also by being there as an example of how wonderful a person could be. At first she stood up and was firm, but then he watched her getting more and more awkward. At first he thought that it was endearing, but more recently he realized that all her flailing awkwardness had been her being in love with him, which he internalized as his having hurt her this whole time, which lead to a lot of guilt. It took him a while to fall in love with her, though he did eventually when she stood up to his father and he realized how strong and brave she'd been overall, standing up to Chloé, Standing up alone to Lila, and how hard she worked as student representative, and how much she did for her friends.
Chloé changed him wildly by being his first "Friend" and his first hard lesson that not all friendships survive. That someone could be kind to him, but cruel to others. And that not everyone who liked him would do what he asked of them. Which lesson was echoed later when his father started being kind to him for a brief time near the end but outwardly horrible to Marinette.
Lila taught him that his instinct to trust pretty much everyone is not always right. In the end he still offers trust from the first, but he is somewhat more wary.
Kagami was his second love (Ladybug being his first, I'll get to that in the Chat Noir section). Their parents wanted them together, and they tried it. He does still love her, but for all she was still in love with him after, his love became friendship. They have a bond because she's the only one from fencing class that he's really close to, as well as being one of the few who can take him down at the sport. She has trouble expressing her emotions fully, so he had to learn to be better at reading people.
Nathalie had an impact for sure, but it is hard to measure as much without going into headcanon territory, since we don't know her role in the family before Adrien's mother "vanished". So we can only guess how things changed. My guess is that she was like a somewhat distant aunt who happened to live with them and work for his parents, based on how she was close with the adults but didn't start the series close to Adrien at all. But after Émilie "vanished", Nathalie took on a mixed role of personal assistant to Gabriel and schedule keeper for Adrien. We found out much later that she had been asked by Émilie to watch over Adrien and be there for him, to be there for him like a mother. But she really doesn't start doing that until it is almost too late at the end of season five. By that point, though, she has begun to stand up for him to and even against his father, and even gives him advice contrary to his father's orders. At the end she goes from someone who is an extension of his father's control over Adrien into someone Adrien can turn to when he needs advice, when he needs an adult. She becomes the only adult (unless one counts Plagg) that he can really turn to. And we see a lot of that in how the way he treats her changes as well. For example putting aside his own concerns as soon as he sees she was upset to try to help her, as he would for any of his friends. (He does it for strangers as well, but there was more closeness in how he went to help her than in how he helped, say, Master Fu in StoneHeart.) But even more, in the same scene we see it in his terror when he asked if what happened to his mother was going to happen to her. By that point he has gotten close with her, though most of the evolution of that is subtle and/or off screen.
Gabriel.... Gabriel is complicated. I'll start by addressing the elephant in the room - A lot of people take the episode Representation as confirmation of the fan theory that Adrien and Felix are in fact sentimonsters created by their parents using the broken peacock Miraculous. This goes so far as to be in all the wikias. The thing is... the confirmation we get if this in canon comes from two characters, Felix and Kagami. And Kagami only knows about it because Felix told her. Which means it comes from Felix. And Felix has a history in the show of being perfectly willing to use deception, deceit, misrepresentation, and any other word for dishonesty you can think of to achieve his aims. There are some scenes that could either confirm that... or be a representation of Adrien's anxiety and fear around disobeying his father. So since another season is coming, leaning into that or leaning away from it will come down to intense OOC conversations with any castmates that it might matter for.
That out of the way, here is less controversial Gabriel stuff. We get more or less told that Gabriel only started being so strict after Émilie vanished, but that seems to be not fully the case given we know things like the fact that Adrien never went to school before the series started and that Adrien is so timid about going against his father from the start. For all he can be brave in other ways, Adrien spends most of the series afraid of standing up to or disappointing his father. It isn't until Gabriel pushes him past the braking point in season five that he can - with encouragement from Nino and Marinette (among others) try to speak for himself. That he can tell his father he doesn't want to model anymore, that he can tell his father how he feels about the Alliance rings, that he loves Marinette, that he isn't in love with Kagami.
Their relationship though isn't simple even looked through the lens of strict father obedient son who wants more. I am going to do my best to keep this succinct, just because I have RPed as Gabriel for YEARS now, and I could rant about his relationship with his son for hours.
Gabriel Agreste is a man terrified of losing more of his family, who very much believes in the means justifying the ends. He is sure that whatever damage he does to Adrien now can be fixed by the same wish that will bring Émilie back to them. His driving force is repairing his family - at any cost. At first he tries to keep a tight reign on Adrien, constantly. But not being able to tell his son why he's so absentee while demanding his son stay where he can be found and accessed at all times... it made Adrien increasingly bitter and resentful. Adrien felt in a lot of ways as though he lost both of his parents when he lost his mother. Gabriel's constant canceling of plans - even just to have a meal together - made Adrien lose hope, to the point where he stopped believing Nathalie when she made excuses for Gabriel. Nathalie was able to get through to Gabriel the first Christmas after Émilie was gone, but that was after Adrien had already lost hope for the day and ran away.
Adrien learned that his father could have a formidable temper, though the man rarely showed it publicly, and after Émilie was gone, Adrien started to feel like part of that public. His father was always busy and dismissive and seemed to be disinterested in his son.
Then season five came along.
Midway through season five Gabriel's abuse went from mostly unintentional abuse borne of a mix of neglect and the whole ends justify the means way of thinking into active gaslighting. Now personally I do believe that the change started at its roots somewhat legitimately. Unbeknownst to Adrien, Gabriel was aware that one way or another the status quo was coming to an end. He was dying. He was on a clock. And when it ran out either he would be dead, leaving Adrien alone - Nathalie was also dying - or he would have the Miraculous and be able to make his wish and everything would be better. Either way meant it was time to reconnect with his son. And I feel like he did genuinely try, at first. That the pancakes and talking to Adrien and struggling to hold his temper were genuine attempts to bridge the chasm that had grown between them. And I think Adrien, once he got past his shock, also saw his dad actually trying, though he did not know why. But quickly Gabriel saw - because he was now paying some actual freaking attention to his son - that his son was not behaving in the ways Gabriel expected him to. While he tried to be understanding at first that broke quickly, and once broken this new "closeness" became a form of gaslighting, and a new way to try to control Adrien. Carrot and stick. All the abuse was still emotional, he didn't hit his son... but he was breaking him down all the same.
By the end of series five, Adrien (and Kagami) were trapped in plain padded cells under the surveillance of cameras at all times. We did not see the bathroom, but can presume that Adrien at least presumed that there were cameras in there as well, given the lengths he went to to talk to Plagg rather than just going to the restroom to do so. He was suffering from the effects of the Akuma Gabriel had made himself, as was Kagami, but both were kept isolated, and Adrien was not given any form of comfort or love. Even Nathalie and his bodyguard were not allowed to be with him.
We see, just before that, when Adrien escaped London the first time as Chat Noir just how angry Adrien was at his father. Angry and hurt and lashing out. He knew the Akuma wouldn't remember anything once Ladybug freed him, so he vented as he fought his father one last time. He vented and raged and defeated the Akuma, saving the akuma (the corrupted butterfly in that second usage) in a glass jar for whenever LAdybug showed up to purify it.
Adrien was furious at his father and hurt when he was trapped back in his padded cell. He was also still suffering from the terrible PTSD nightmares his akumatized father cursed him with.
And while the transition happened off screen, essentially he went immediately from those emotions into being told that his father was dead, and had died a hero defeating Monarch.
I can't tell you how he reconciled all those conflicting emotions, because at his canon pull point he's just beginning to. This will give him a lot to deal with in game, especially as the AU of his father was apped at the same time and I found out was accepted. We (Tanks who plays AU Gabriel and I) are very much looking forward to the emotional mess to come out of this.
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ninetydegrees
Revisions
on 2024-01-06 09:24 am (UTC)Adrien:
Until the start of the series, Adrien was a very quiet and polite child who always did what he was told and never raised a fuss. But when his mother died and his father withdrew, he became isolated. Practically as well as emotionally. He rarely saw anyone that wasn't an adult he had to deal with at work, or someone who worked for his father. He stopped even seeing his cousin or aunt all that often. And for someone as naturally inclined to be friendly as Adrien is, it was slowly killing him.
His father's yes you can no you can't back and forth over his going to school was behind a lot of his earliest rebellions. Especially once he had the taste for freedom and discovered that he liked having actual friends, that he liked earning people's friendship not just having awe granted to him due his fame. And that not every friend was like his cousin who could be manipulative and Chloé who was, well, Chloé.
Getting the Black Cat Miraculous and discovering a whole new kind of freedom opened a new world for him. Behind the mask no one fawned over Adrien Agreste. He didn't have to be polite and quiet and obedient. He became wild and reckless. He became the type to jump first and think later when he could, though when he had to think he could. But he got to play stupid at times where Adrien was always supposed to be smart and educated. He got to be silly and crack jokes. For all being a hero meant life and death situations he got to finally be a kid. And most important he found someone he could trust, utterly and entirely. Not because he was told to. But because she earned it. And with that person he could trust... he fell in love.
For a while after that change became gradual. He remained very trusting, but learned that some people could actually lose that trust. He started to see how horrible Chloé could actually be. He tried, he tried so hard to help her grow up, and it broke part of his heart when he realized that she wasn't actually going to change. He had break off that friendship, which was very hard for him. He also met Lila Rossi, and learned that some people really are not honest or worthy of trust, and that too had been hard for him to accept. He learned how to not just be angry, but to express it. That sometimes he should actually speak up even though his father raised him to keep his impolite thoughts to himself.
He learned to love his freedom and how to grow into an actual person rather than the puppet he had been becoming. With Marinette's help he gained the courage to to tell his father that he wanted to stop modeling.
The nightmare that the last Akuma put into his head hasn't fully left him now, even though Ladybug reset the power that made it stick. His father isolated him around then more than he had ever been isolated before. Between being constantly monitored so he couldn't talk to or feed Plagg, and his fear over using that power again, he gave up his Miraculous. He was well and truly alone to a degree he'd never been alone before. Trapped worse than ever, and dealing with the emotions from his nightmare and accepting that he was actually furious with his father.
And then to go from that to freedom but at the cost of his father's life... He's in a state of flux, trying to figure out who he is now without his parents, a super hero without a villian to fight. A teenager free to love whoever he wants, but with the knowledge that he was now an orphan. He got permission to stop working, but he knew he would have to start again, sooner rather than later, in order to support himself, Nathalie, his bodyguard. The house was what he had left of his parents, and he'd never lived anywhere else, not for long. And Nathalie and his bodyguard were all the family he had left, local at least. And he couldn't expect his aunt and cousin to move in and take over paying anymore than he could count on the money left to him to last forever. Sure there were Royalties and Residuals and contracts still in play, but even that had limits.
But it was summer vacation. And he had enough that he could wait until school started again to think about that at least. He could enjoy a summer where Ladybug and Chat Noir transformed just to spend time together, a summer where he could just be a teenager in love with his girlfriend, where he could just spend time with his friends.
So of course he woke up here...
More on interactions in addition to what was added above:
Nino was the first person to stand up for him against the adults other than Chloé and sometimes other adults. Nino got himself akumatized out of desperation to try and get Adrien to be allowed to have a birthday party. Through thick and thin Nino has been at his side. Nino let him in on the secret when he had become a Miraculous holder, which made Adrien feel guilty he couldn't reciprocate. Because he was following Ladybug's rules. But still through everything, Nino is with him, at his side, the best friend he could have ever had imagined. And Nino creating the resistance gave him ways he could help as Adrien as well as as Chat Noir, and ways to become closer with his other friends.
Marinette was the first chance he had to really see that Chloé was not the wonderful person he had thought. Both by showing how cruel Chloé could be, but also by being there as an example of how wonderful a person could be. At first she stood up and was firm, but then he watched her getting more and more awkward. At first he thought that it was endearing, but more recently he realized that all her flailing awkwardness had been her being in love with him, which he internalized as his having hurt her this whole time, which lead to a lot of guilt. It took him a while to fall in love with her, though he did eventually when she stood up to his father and he realized how strong and brave she'd been overall, standing up to Chloé, Standing up alone to Lila, and how hard she worked as student representative, and how much she did for her friends.
Chloé changed him wildly by being his first "Friend" and his first hard lesson that not all friendships survive. That someone could be kind to him, but cruel to others. And that not everyone who liked him would do what he asked of them. Which lesson was echoed later when his father started being kind to him for a brief time near the end but outwardly horrible to Marinette.
Lila taught him that his instinct to trust pretty much everyone is not always right. In the end he still offers trust from the first, but he is somewhat more wary.
Kagami was his second love (Ladybug being his first, I'll get to that in the Chat Noir section). Their parents wanted them together, and they tried it. He does still love her, but for all she was still in love with him after, his love became friendship. They have a bond because she's the only one from fencing class that he's really close to, as well as being one of the few who can take him down at the sport. She has trouble expressing her emotions fully, so he had to learn to be better at reading people.
Nathalie had an impact for sure, but it is hard to measure as much without going into headcanon territory, since we don't know her role in the family before Adrien's mother "vanished". So we can only guess how things changed. My guess is that she was like a somewhat distant aunt who happened to live with them and work for his parents, based on how she was close with the adults but didn't start the series close to Adrien at all. But after Émilie "vanished", Nathalie took on a mixed role of personal assistant to Gabriel and schedule keeper for Adrien. We found out much later that she had been asked by Émilie to watch over Adrien and be there for him, to be there for him like a mother. But she really doesn't start doing that until it is almost too late at the end of season five. By that point, though, she has begun to stand up for him to and even against his father, and even gives him advice contrary to his father's orders. At the end she goes from someone who is an extension of his father's control over Adrien into someone Adrien can turn to when he needs advice, when he needs an adult. She becomes the only adult (unless one counts Plagg) that he can really turn to. And we see a lot of that in how the way he treats her changes as well. For example putting aside his own concerns as soon as he sees she was upset to try to help her, as he would for any of his friends. (He does it for strangers as well, but there was more closeness in how he went to help her than in how he helped, say, Master Fu in StoneHeart.) But even more, in the same scene we see it in his terror when he asked if what happened to his mother was going to happen to her. By that point he has gotten close with her, though most of the evolution of that is subtle and/or off screen.
Gabriel.... Gabriel is complicated. I'll start by addressing the elephant in the room - A lot of people take the episode Representation as confirmation of the fan theory that Adrien and Felix are in fact sentimonsters created by their parents using the broken peacock Miraculous. This goes so far as to be in all the wikias. The thing is... the confirmation we get if this in canon comes from two characters, Felix and Kagami. And Kagami only knows about it because Felix told her. Which means it comes from Felix. And Felix has a history in the show of being perfectly willing to use deception, deceit, misrepresentation, and any other word for dishonesty you can think of to achieve his aims. There are some scenes that could either confirm that... or be a representation of Adrien's anxiety and fear around disobeying his father. So since another season is coming, leaning into that or leaning away from it will come down to intense OOC conversations with any castmates that it might matter for.
That out of the way, here is less controversial Gabriel stuff. We get more or less told that Gabriel only started being so strict after Émilie vanished, but that seems to be not fully the case given we know things like the fact that Adrien never went to school before the series started and that Adrien is so timid about going against his father from the start. For all he can be brave in other ways, Adrien spends most of the series afraid of standing up to or disappointing his father. It isn't until Gabriel pushes him past the braking point in season five that he can - with encouragement from Nino and Marinette (among others) try to speak for himself. That he can tell his father he doesn't want to model anymore, that he can tell his father how he feels about the Alliance rings, that he loves Marinette, that he isn't in love with Kagami.
Their relationship though isn't simple even looked through the lens of strict father obedient son who wants more. I am going to do my best to keep this succinct, just because I have RPed as Gabriel for YEARS now, and I could rant about his relationship with his son for hours.
Gabriel Agreste is a man terrified of losing more of his family, who very much believes in the means justifying the ends. He is sure that whatever damage he does to Adrien now can be fixed by the same wish that will bring Émilie back to them. His driving force is repairing his family - at any cost. At first he tries to keep a tight reign on Adrien, constantly. But not being able to tell his son why he's so absentee while demanding his son stay where he can be found and accessed at all times... it made Adrien increasingly bitter and resentful. Adrien felt in a lot of ways as though he lost both of his parents when he lost his mother. Gabriel's constant canceling of plans - even just to have a meal together - made Adrien lose hope, to the point where he stopped believing Nathalie when she made excuses for Gabriel. Nathalie was able to get through to Gabriel the first Christmas after Émilie was gone, but that was after Adrien had already lost hope for the day and ran away.
Adrien learned that his father could have a formidable temper, though the man rarely showed it publicly, and after Émilie was gone, Adrien started to feel like part of that public. His father was always busy and dismissive and seemed to be disinterested in his son.
Then season five came along.
Midway through season five Gabriel's abuse went from mostly unintentional abuse borne of a mix of neglect and the whole ends justify the means way of thinking into active gaslighting. Now personally I do believe that the change started at its roots somewhat legitimately. Unbeknownst to Adrien, Gabriel was aware that one way or another the status quo was coming to an end. He was dying. He was on a clock. And when it ran out either he would be dead, leaving Adrien alone - Nathalie was also dying - or he would have the Miraculous and be able to make his wish and everything would be better. Either way meant it was time to reconnect with his son. And I feel like he did genuinely try, at first. That the pancakes and talking to Adrien and struggling to hold his temper were genuine attempts to bridge the chasm that had grown between them. And I think Adrien, once he got past his shock, also saw his dad actually trying, though he did not know why. But quickly Gabriel saw - because he was now paying some actual freaking attention to his son - that his son was not behaving in the ways Gabriel expected him to. While he tried to be understanding at first that broke quickly, and once broken this new "closeness" became a form of gaslighting, and a new way to try to control Adrien. Carrot and stick. All the abuse was still emotional, he didn't hit his son... but he was breaking him down all the same.
By the end of series five, Adrien (and Kagami) were trapped in plain padded cells under the surveillance of cameras at all times. We did not see the bathroom, but can presume that Adrien at least presumed that there were cameras in there as well, given the lengths he went to to talk to Plagg rather than just going to the restroom to do so. He was suffering from the effects of the Akuma Gabriel had made himself, as was Kagami, but both were kept isolated, and Adrien was not given any form of comfort or love. Even Nathalie and his bodyguard were not allowed to be with him.
We see, just before that, when Adrien escaped London the first time as Chat Noir just how angry Adrien was at his father. Angry and hurt and lashing out. He knew the Akuma wouldn't remember anything once Ladybug freed him, so he vented as he fought his father one last time. He vented and raged and defeated the Akuma, saving the akuma (the corrupted butterfly in that second usage) in a glass jar for whenever LAdybug showed up to purify it.
Adrien was furious at his father and hurt when he was trapped back in his padded cell. He was also still suffering from the terrible PTSD nightmares his akumatized father cursed him with.
And while the transition happened off screen, essentially he went immediately from those emotions into being told that his father was dead, and had died a hero defeating Monarch.
I can't tell you how he reconciled all those conflicting emotions, because at his canon pull point he's just beginning to. This will give him a lot to deal with in game, especially as the AU of his father was apped at the same time and I found out was accepted. We (Tanks who plays AU Gabriel and I) are very much looking forward to the emotional mess to come out of this.