Theory: The Black Cat miraculous was made to counter the Peacock

So a while back I reblogged this post (which was deleted by op so idk if they want me to tag but I can remove the link if they want)

But in that post, they talked about how it was possible each miraculous had a counter, in case the holder became evil. So like, the Ladybug is the counter to the Butterfly and probably has its own counter as well.

But that got me thinking, as I mentioned before in that post, that the counter for the Peacock could very well be the Black Cat, but the heroes might not even know it.

Since the evil Peacock is meant to create puppets, the Black Cat could have a special power up to literally cut the strings that tie a senti to its holder.

Meaning the Black Cat would literally be the perfect miraculous for Adrien. It fits with why he wasn't as good as the others when he tries to be Mister Bug or Aspik, because he was made for the Black Cat, unlike how Alya and Marinette were both shown to wield other miraculouses successfully.

It could be the narrative's way of showing us that for Adrien, he can only be one, he can only be the Black Cat.

Because the Black Cat is what will ultimately sever his ties to the Peacock, and grant his freedom once and fur all.

ohhh 👀 also, if the Ladybug and the Black Cat counter the two stolen Miraculouses, that is a good reason why would Master Fu give them out, even if as @into-september mentioned it's rather risky to take the Miraculouses your enemy is after into battle

Oops, I used the wrong word here! I meant a special ability, like "Miraculous Ladybug" to purify

Something like "Miraculous Chat Noir" 🥺🥺🥺

On the topic of sentimonster Adrien, it always kind of bothers me when people compare him too heavily with other sentimonsters, and I think it’s why people have such a hard time grasping what him being a sentimonster means. I get why people compare them, because it’s kind of the obvious first thing to do when trying to understand it, but comparing them can only take you so far.

“Sentimonster” is a term equally as broad as the word “animal”. Humans are animals. Sharks are animals. Comparing the natural behavior and ability to express thoughts/emotions between a shark and a human is clearly a bogus comparison, and we have to take that into account when comparing Adrien to any other sentimonsters. It’s simply useless to compare him to any sentimonsters other than the human ones: Sentigabriel, Sentibubbler, Sentialec, Sentinino, and Bugette/Sentibug. and Felix but we’ll get to him

But even then. I don’t think they’re very comparable.

Aside from Bugette/Sentibug, we haven’t seen any of these sentimonsters act on pure free will. They were born, they were controlled, and then they were disposed of within half an hour of their birth. To say “well, sentibubbler didn’t seem to have any strong opinions, so he may as well have been a husk!” is a… strange statement to make about some guy who was born 20 minutes ago and was forced to do what he was told. Of course he doesn’t have any strong opinions!

Bugette is really the closest sentimonster that can really be fairly compared, but she still was only alive for like… I don’t know? 15 minutes? Again, pointing out the lack of a developed personality in her is pointless. It doesn’t matter if you’re a sentimonster, or if you’re a perfectly biological human grown in a tube who just stepped out of your chamber at the ripe old age of 14— you’re probably not going to have any strong opinions or personality quirks. That doesn’t make you not human, that just means you haven’t been given a chance to live yet.

But Adrien? Adrien (and Felix) is the oldest human sentimonster we know. He’s been alive for fourteen years, from Wishmaker we know that he was actually born as a baby. He has lived life. He has had time to form his own personality and opinions. 

He’s basically just a human, he’s lived his whole life as one, and comparing him to some guy who lived for 5 minutes and then immediately died and determining that Adrien’s personality/emotions must be fake because you didn’t think sentialec had a personality? …. I just think it’s a strange take.

That being said, I also need to point out that many of the human sentimonsters, despite all of this, did seem to have some personality to them. It’s difficult to tell exactly where the “just following orders and performing exactly how shadowmoth wants me to act” begins and the “natural personality showing through” ends, but the fact of the matter is that we don’t know. We don’t. 

You cannot definitively point at scenes like these and say that these weren’t at least semi-genuine reactions from the sentimonsters. You can speculate, sure, but that speculation isn’t strong enough to discredit Adrien’s entire personality (especially because, I repeat, even if it was all artificial they’ve been alive for 5 minutes):

sentialec taunting Style Queen and then running away laughing (sentialec’s entire purpose was to get Style Queen akumatized. Why would shadowmoth instruct him to laugh? his mission was complete! he didn’t have to do anything! and the real Alec is kind of a coward, so it’s not like he’s giving a convincing performance of the real Alec):

sentinino getting startled by Ladybug (why would shadowmoth tell him to pretend to be nervous about Ladybug? serious question. I honestly believe sentinino was genuinely nervous about being forced to do an undercover mission.):

shadowmoth talking to sentibubbler, and sentibubbler giving a kind of nervous/panicked response (seriously, rewatch this scene if you have to. in both french and english you can hear the nervousness in sentibubbler’s voice, and this is him talking TO shadowmoth, NOT parroting what he’s telling him to say):

In all of the above screenshots, the sentimonsters were being actively controlled by Shadowmoth. Their object was being held, yet they seemingly still had a bit of a mind on their own. Again, you can argue to the ends of the earth that these are simply emotionless husks that are pretending to be human, but at that point there’s really nothing that can convince you otherwise. 

Saying “shadowmoth’s sentimonsters are emotionless, therefore Adrien is emotionless” is such a strange take because: A) shadowmoth’s sentimonsters never lived for longer than half an hour B) shadowmoth’s sentimonsters do show hints of personality/emotion C) the peacock is… literally the miraculous of Emotion… I didn’t mention that until now but honestly that alone should make this pretty clear. D) Adrien has lived a completely different life from them. They’re just not comparable.

The only other sentimonster that really can be completely fairly compared to Adrien is Felix. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s Felix’s point. He’s Adrien’s foil. He’s there to show how different two different sentimonsters made under similar circumstances can be! Because they’re two people. They’re people, so they’re different from each other. They’re people, so their personalities differ. 

I understand why sentimonster Adrien theory feels like Adrien’s entire humanity has been a lie, but that’s just simply not the case. Adrien has humanity. He always has, and the circumstances of his birth don’t change that fact. I fully believe that if Adrien was born as a human or as a sentimonster, he’d still be the same exact character (except maybe with some extra trauma for being a sentimonster). 

And this is all just going into the sentimonsters that people usually bring up as a point against Adrien. Obviously if I delved into the Ladybug episode, whose entire thesis was “sentimonsters are just like humans” and delved more into Bugette, then this point would be even clearer. But I often see people use the other sentihumans as counterpoints, and I wanted to point out that they really aren’t the counter-examples that people think they are.

We need to stop using the term "sentimonsters"

The gist of this post is that words are powerful, but names are mightier than all else. So I want to explain why I think we, as a fandom, might want to consider not using the word sentimonster when we refer to them, especially as the sentiadrien, sentifelix, etc theories gain more traction and evidence.

One of the arguments I’ve seen people talk about why they dislike the theory is that it seems to make Adrien a character who isn’t human, who is considered other. I understand why this is a concern; it makes us feel uncomfortable and worried. Him not being human is worrying, because the term “sentimonster” makes us wonder, is he a monster?

To me, using the word "monster" contributes to the ostracization and sense of otherness that makes certain fans jump straight to the idea of invalidation and even some fear/anxiety. If we call something a monster, it instantly makes us less likely to root for them and actually prejudiced against them. It makes us, the third party bystander here, think there is something inherently wrong with them. As a result it makes it harder for us to sympathize with them, it makes us less likely to care. This is especially hard when we love Adrien so much.

Putting this under a read more, because the rest of the post is heavy and long. Trigger warnings for non-specific mention of homophobia and racism.

Just gonna go ahead and plug this cause we really gotta start with just not using the term "sentimonster"

so i guess adrien's officially and undeniably a sentimeownster, huh

Okay so here is a weird take.

I hate the whole "Sentimonsters that are human are exactly like humans but more fragile"

No, I want Sentimonsters to be nearly immortal. if Adrien is a sentimonster, and felix is one too. Make them super human

COULD YOU IMAGINE IF ADRIEN WASNT SAVED DURING GORIZILLA? He just smacks into the ground, leaving a crater. No blood, no broken bones. He just gets up, shakes it off and is just very confused.

You are telling me that Emilie didnt want to ensure their son was protected?

Yeah, this would make sense to me. Also I’d want being a sentimonster to have SOME relevance beyond just being able to be controlled and killed more easily.

My personal take on this until Canon says otherwise is that Adriens creation was what broke the peacock miraculous and it happened because Emilie loved him so much already that she wished for him to be human so strongly that it actually DID turn him into a normal human and he straight up can't be killed like this anymore. There has to be a reason why the miraculous broke even though creating Sentimonsters of any kind is literally its JOB. So Adriens creation broke the natural limitations of the peacock miraculous powers which fucked it up HARD.

Now he can't be killed out of existence anymore by the peacock miraculous holder and neither would breaking his control rings or even purifying his feather take him out of existence. The later two would only accomplish that the control magic is being taken from Adrien, but Adrien himself is already fully human because of the love of a mother so strong it fucked up a whole ass miraculous.

(also I just really like the idea that the creation of the Miraculous holder of Destruction broke the natural limitations of the peacock miraculous he was brought into this world with so fucking hard he just straight up became human)

We need to stop using the term "sentimonsters"

The gist of this post is that words are powerful, but names are mightier than all else. So I want to explain why I think we, as a fandom, might want to consider not using the word sentimonster when we refer to them, especially as the sentiadrien, sentifelix, etc theories gain more traction and evidence.

One of the arguments I’ve seen people talk about why they dislike the theory is that it seems to make Adrien a character who isn’t human, who is considered other. I understand why this is a concern; it makes us feel uncomfortable and worried. Him not being human is worrying, because the term “sentimonster” makes us wonder, is he a monster?

To me, using the word "monster" contributes to the ostracization and sense of otherness that makes certain fans jump straight to the idea of invalidation and even some fear/anxiety. If we call something a monster, it instantly makes us less likely to root for them and actually prejudiced against them. It makes us, the third party bystander here, think there is something inherently wrong with them. As a result it makes it harder for us to sympathize with them, it makes us less likely to care. This is especially hard when we love Adrien so much.

Putting this under a read more, because the rest of the post is heavy and long. Trigger warnings for non-specific mention of homophobia and racism.

duusu is lucinda i’m not accepting criticism at this time

stop I was literally JUST thinking abt an Ella Enchanted AU with Adrien as Ella and Marinette as the prince (based on the movie tho)

especially the scene where Ella was ordered to kill the prince when he proposed to her... not wanting to kill his Lady being the thing that drives Adrien to breaking his own curse... only for Marinette to think Adrien had just tried to assassinate her... hoowee

i’m 100% a book girl all the way and will die on that hill, but YES at the moment where she breaks free and says no to save him!!! that scene kills me every time and i want adrien to have that moment!!!

you can't have daddy issues if you don't have a dad

If it turns out that Adrien isn’t a sentimonster, we’ve still reached the point where sentiAdrien will live on as the greatest meme of the fandom

I can't believe the Agrestes actually seem to be part of a CULT of influential rich people all around the world!

"Feast", "Felix" and the two specials had me already assuming it before but HOLY DAMN "Gabriel Agreste" basically confirmed that shit! What the HELL are these rich people grooming there children for for the last 15 years??

What was Gabriel talking about in the Shanghai special when he said that whatever plan they started 15 years ago (so literally Adriens age) he wanted to fulfill with the Prodigious? And why does almost every child of the rich adults (besides Chloe and Zoé) have some kind of connection to a ring?

What are these influential people grooming their kids for?? What is the purpose of the cult? Why did Gabriel say that alot of people would love to get their hands on the twin rings? And what do the Bourgeois' have to do with this???

Audrey was the person who made Gabriel the name he is today. The New York special took place in the location where Audrey has her greatest influence and with all of those weird superheroes who possess these bracelets with superpowers that seemed like false Miraculous created to replicate the original ones after they all were lost to the world when the Guardian temple burned down and Feast ate them, I don't trust this at all.

"Gabriel Agreste" took care to remind us that Gabriel himself feels like he needs to submit to her to some extent as if he still relies on her for something he doesn't want to risk

And of course the fact that out of all children it was CHLOÉ who was allowed to be Adriens only friend before he attended school roughly a year ago. But Zoé doesn't seem to have the same place in all of this as Chloé seems to have since Chloé was able to convince Audrey that Zoé doesn't need to be at the party the way SHE does

Miraculous Ladybug, you son of a bitch, you always had my attention but now we are TALKING!

I just fucking remembered that the symbol on Kagamis ring is straight up the japanese symbol for "girl". Just... "girl"!

I remember people saying that this is kinda odd back when "Riposte" came out but now this suddenly is put in a

Different light after "Gabriel Agreste" when you remember that Bob Roth has a ring as well, is on the damn end card and his suspicious son's name is fucking XY. Like the freaking male chromosome!

What does this MEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAANNNNNN?????

Wait a minute.

If Felíx knows about sentimonsters, and he was angry at Adrien for missing his father's funeral.

It would make almost zero sense for Felíx to take things out on Adrien if he thought/knew Adrien was a sentimonster like him.

Now it could be that he was emotional and felt like taking things out on Adrien for being controlled like he was.

OR it makes more sense (as Felíx is more Reasonable despite his chaotic nature) that he believes or knows adrien isnt a sentimonster. And therefore being pissed that Adrien, would not have the will to come to his father's funeral.

I am tabling at a convention rn but I laughed at this so hard last night that it couldn’t wait until I got home, so here’s an old fashioned sketchbook comic

being the topic du jour and all

The problem with the Adrien-is-a-sentimonster thing isn’t the no-man-of-woman-born whatever, since they’ve bent over backwards to insist that a sentihuman is completely 100% physically for all intents and purposes a human being like anyone else. Yeah, someone on this show is a sentimonster or at the very least there’s going to be a plotline about someone thinking that they are one.

The problem is that in the case of Adrien specifically, “posessing his own amok” could never be anything else than a tangible allegory for breaking free of his father’s abuse. And the problem with that is that they’ve already discarded the option through the very framework of how sentimonsters work. ~Controlling the amok~ has long since been tested and proven false. 

In “Feast”, Nathalie blackmails the sentimonster with a threat of removing the amok, and Feast clearly, physically reacts to her powers. In “Ladybug”, Marinette gives Sentibug the amok and Nathalie promptly wipes her out of existence. 

Posessing the amok will never be enough. 

In order for any sentimonster on this show to be truly emancipated, it needs to posess not only the amok, but the peacock miraculous. And with that, the amount of provisions for the allegory has sunk any elegance to it, turning it from an apt narrative device to a matter of plot mechanics. If Adrien has to carry two pieces of jewelry in order to be a free man, then the show has also set up a clear precedent of miraculouses and other magical jewelry falling into the hands of relatives with sticky fingers. 

That’s why I’m still not convinced - because this setup would amount to some MASSIVELY CLUMSY STORYTELLING. If Adrien is a sentimonster, then the only tidy way out of it is if The Wish ends up being used to turn him into a Real Boy or something to equal effect, and then what was the point except just adding another item to the list of Adrien Agreste’s life is despair. 

(again: Those Rings clearly have some kind of magical abilities beyond any possible amoks, because this entire Felix-Gabriel feud can not be over a family heirloom. If that’s truly all they are, then Gabe’s redemption is going to be his using The Wish to set Adrien free once Felix completes the set and I’ll probably sit here pulling my hair) 

This is a very reasonable perspective on it, and I’m not saying it’s wrong, nor am I saying that I believe the SentiAdrien theory. I don’t. But.

In this tweet, Thomas Astruc says that when a sentimonster is akumatized, its link with its amok is broken.

Now, he also says that they go berserk. I’m not pretending that isn’t there. (Sometimes I pretend that isn’t there, late at night when I’m trying to fall asleep /j)

But I am saying that there’s a canon way to break the sentimonster’s link to the amok. That we haven’t seen a sentimonster get its amok pulled after being cataclysmed, and that this tweet indicates that it’s impossible to do that.

I’m not saying this is true. The detail of sentimonsters going berserk is a very real thing that puts doubt on this, though I will say that a human sentimonster with built-in intelligence may make “berserk” look a little different than Banana Boom Boom.

What I’m saying is that currently, Adrien is the only person who can break the connection between a sentimonster and an amok. And that it would be pretty poetic for him to use that power to break himself free.

I agree, based on what we know from the show alone, Adrien could never be free from that in any sense except allegorical.

But based on that tweet? I’m not sure.

A possible interpretation would be that if a sentimonster is being directly controlled by whoever has the amok, then the cataclysm would break the connection between the controlling mind and the physical body, rendering the sentimonster, well - senseless. BUT if there is a sentimonster whose orders are “just live your life, man”, then said breaking could possibly happen with no consequences on normal operation. 

It still leaves open a few questions, since Adrien was cataclysmed already and all it left him with was some broken ribs, presumably because he was Cat Noir at the time. Since that clearly wasn’t enough to break the connection to any possible amok, then either he’ll need 

And if they do the latter and if they do it well, then you know what? I won’t complain. Because by god, my issue with sentiadrien isn’t the circumstances of his existence as such. It is the nails-on-chalkboard thematic dissonance of this being applied Adrien in particular within the limits of what we currently know about sentimonster lore. My main concern is storytelling quality, and from what we have at present, sentiadrien looks like a bucket of cheap and tasteless angst.

YES! THIS IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN SAYING!

The sentimonster thing has just shown how f***ed the whole situation is for them. It doesnt matter how “Like a human” they are. They are controlled just like the lollypops monsters, the giant reflekdoll, and giant moth monster. They are basically toys or puppets that act the way their creator made them to act, and they can be taken in or out of existence with a snap.

All of Adrien’s development means JACK S***! If he can easily be turned into an emotionless pawn that does nothing but obeys. So if he is one, he needs to find a way to make it so he can be human and truly free, OR , he needs to find a way where he can never be controlled or snapped out of existence.

to those of you who thought i was spiraling into angst before i'd like to apologize in advance but i have been THINKING about sailor moon parallels and tbh tuxedo mask ain't the character adrien has the most in common with

this girl right here is

hmm... at least adrien isnt a cyborg though? i know many people like the adrien!sentimonster theory but it's unlikely so...

@yueasuka i was hoping someone would bring this up to give me an excuse to keep talking.

BECAUSE

adrien may not be a cyborg (but who can say for sure, really) and maybe not even a sentimonster, but early concept art did include adrien with a cane

likewise, hotaru suffers from a mysterious chronic illness

...that is later revealed to be a result of her father's efforts to preserve her life after she almost died during the accident that killed her mother.

of course, the disabled adrien concept was scrapped, but... what if there's something else that remains from this story? maybe adrien himself isn't a sentimonster, but perhaps he has sentimonster "parts" the way a cyborg would have robot parts? or perhaps emilie or gabriel paid some other price to save him?

T-that Sentimonster/cyborg/robot parts makes me thinking (and sweating)...

What if the reason Emilie was in her current state is because she tried to make a perfect Sentimonster? All because Adrien was in danger because of an accident and need... Say, donor (heart/kidney/liver), perhaps. But the hospital can't find the organ transplant/donor fast enough. In the last resort Emilie use the peacock to create a Sentimonster so they can take the organ to give to Adrien. 👀💦💦

i’m so 👀 at this idea... i don’t think they’d even need to create a full sentimonster though, they could probably just make the organ. and the symbolism if it’s his heart... and they wouldn’t be able to control him like a full sentimonster, but the power of being able to stop his heart with the snap of their fingers?

...yikes

SO SENTIMONSTERS CAN WIELD MIRACULOUSES HUH

I am tabling at a convention rn but I laughed at this so hard last night that it couldn’t wait until I got home, so here’s an old fashioned sketchbook comic