Episode 8 - Miracon

It was hard to pick a song for this episode, especially as nothing Akuma-based really happens in it until the very end. I eventually picked a song from a band my brother used to listen to when we were kids; If It Don’t Fit by B*Witched. It kinda leaned into the cosplay angle, and also the fact that Aodh (pronounced like the letter ‘A’) didn’t really become a Miraculous for the proper reasons.

Convention

In the first draft, this episode and Dakukani were intended to be only one long, but I couldn’t get everything I wanted included in it. In the first draft, this was the shortest episode in the whole of Miraculous: Contingency, about 75% the length of a standard episode. Now, I’ve managed to flesh it out a lot more, and I really enjoy the fact that the majority of the episode is just character work for a lot of the cast. I had a rule that we’d have to see every member of the cast have a point-of-view moment somewhere.

I don’t remember where the idea of Ladybug and Chat Noir attending a convention came from, but it seemed plausible to me when I wrote it. It was difficult to justify bringing someone as dangerous as Bunnyx, but the entire reasoning I followed is included in the episode. I needed to have Alix come a little closer to the core story at this point.

Kagami, Adrien, and Marinette

This episode really introduces the differences between Tomoe from the show and from Miraculous: Contingency. We still don’t know exactly what she stood to gain from working with Gabriel in the show, but I wanted her to be turning away from that goal, because she’s disillusioned with him. One way to really explore that was by having her accept Kagami, Marinette, and Adrien being together. I can’t imagine it was easy for her, as she thinks in this episode it’s not what she grew up expecting, but she has learned to listen to Kagami.

I really like bits of this episode, because we get to see Adrien and Kagami together, and we get to see Kagami and Marinette together, revealing the slightly different dynamic on each side of the triangle. We’ve already seen a bit of Adrien and Marinette in the last couple of episodes. Another fascinating angle is the fact that Kagami is aware of both of their secret identities, but doesn’t realise that neither Marinette nor Adrien is.

Chloé, Zoé, Sabrina, & Maria

I’ve always kinda worked on the assumption that Sabrina is a bi character with an unhealthy, unrequited crush on Chloé. Given how toxic their relationship was in the show, I needed to show Chloé trying to make up for the problems she’d caused, but that has the unfortunate side effect of reopening Sabrina’s crush. I didn’t want to go too far down that route, because it’s not really a new story. Instead, I decided to quash it in this double episode. It takes an Akuma, Zoé as a referee, and a hard conversation, but Sabrina manages to put most of the past behind her now.

Chloé ‘started’ to date Maria quite rapidly after breaking up with Tangle, which has the dangerous risk of people linking the two. Luckily, Maria’s personality is quite different from when she’s transformed (similarly to how Adrien and Chat Noir have distinct personalities) and that distracts people long enough that they can’t instantly make the link. Over the end of Season 2 and the beginning of Season 3, Chloé will be trying to obscure that even further.

As I mentioned back in the commentary for Firesaur and Big Monkey, I originally didn’t have Zoé in Miraculous: Contingency at all. For the second draft, I’d included her in the New York episodes, just because it fit, but I wasn’t planning on having her make more appearances. It was about this point in the second draft that I fully decided to change that, and she is planned to become a supporting character in Season 3 and Season 4. At some point, I should probably work out some character flaws for her, because per the show, she’s a bit too good at the moment.

Aodh

Aodh is a slightly difficult character for me to write. I’ll go into more detail on the next episode, but he’s been tricky ever since I first worked out where he would fit into the story. I definitely need the character to round out the narrative, but sometimes he turns up where I don’t expect him. Having him be a cosplayer was a way to tie him in for this episode and having him related to the Rogue Miraculous was a useful trick to get him more closely involved.

The legend of the Japanese Heike crabs is a real thing, it’s quite a fascinating piece of history. Aodh picked a good name for his hero, although there’s a slight error which will come up next Season the first time Heikegana comes face-to-face with Kagami.