Fed up with constantly being under his father's thumb, Adrien gives Gabriel an ultimatum: let Adrien live his life, or evidence of Gabriel breaking child labor laws goes public. Now Adrien wants to see how far he can push the envelope with his new freedom.
Teenage Rebellion
is a Miraculous Ladybug by UnmaskedAgain (who also wrote Archenemies to Superfriends).
Teenage Rebellion includes examples of:
- Adaptational Secrecy Downgrade: Marinette and Adrien know each other's secret identity.
- Adaptational Sexuality: Adrien is stated that, at the very least, he prefers men to women, hinting that he's either bisexual/pansexual with a strong lean towards men or gay.
- All for Nothing: Sabrina suggests that this is likely the main reason why Alya continues defending Lila even after her mother publicly exposed her. Not only did she ruin her friendship with Marinette by trusting Lila over her former bestie, she broke up with Nino, destroyed her relationships with most of their classmates, and lost any regard Ladybug once held for her.
- And There Was Much Rejoicing: When Adrien shows up at school with a new all-punk wardrobe, Nino immediately assumes that his father died and makes plans to throw a party ending with "a conga line over the SOB's grave."
- Blunt "No": How Adrien responds to Gabriel telling him he's taking Lila as his date to the gala.
- Caught on Tape: Adrien has plenty of proof of Gabriel's Control Freak ways, both video and audio recordings, and has plenty of contingencies set up to ensure their release.
- Crossover Relatives: Nino is revealed to have a cousin in the form of Simon Lewis; through him, Nino manages to find the perfect guy (Jace) to accompany Adrien to the gala.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: Nino gets a friend of his cousin to be Adrien's date for an upcoming gala. Said friend is seventeen, tattooed, drives a motorcycle, and has been to jail; sure enough, when Gabriel sees them together, he chokes and faints.
- Entitled to Have You: Lila sees Adrien as her Meal Ticket, and refuses to accept that he's standing up for himself against her and his father.
- Grew a Spine: Adrien learns about the concept of "child labor laws", realizes that his father has been flagrantly violating them, and decides enough is enough.
- I Reject Your Reality: Even after Lila's mother reveals the extent of her daughter's deception to the whole class, Alya continues to insist that Lila couldn't possibily have lied about anything. After all, she's Ladybug's best friend...! Never mind the fact that Ladybug had already disavowed the Ladyblog for posting so much "false information" and repeatedly asked her to remove Lila's stories, or that she'd been replaced by a new Fox heroine...
- Liar Revealed: After Adrien rejects Lila as his gala date, she gets akumatized three times. After the fourth, Adrien got her mother involved and truths were revealed.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Played for Laughs; while Marinette helps Adrien with his makeover, she's not entirely thrilled with his decision to go with a punk rock vibe, and has a minor Heroic BSoD after seeing the results the next day.
- Nonconformist Dyed Hair:
- Adrien dyes his hair bright blue.
- His gala date Jace has pink hair.
- Point of Divergence: Most of the class actually sided with Marinette here; the only ones who chose to believe Lila's Malicious Slander of her were Alya, Sabrina, Kim, Mylène and Ivan.
- Title Drop: While telling Lila that they definitely won't be going to the gala together, Adrien declares that she can "Call it teenage rebellion or whatever. But it's my life. Get over it."
- Villain Respect: After Gabriel and Nathalie take Adrien's phone and laptop, he immediately has Marinette and Nino post a video of his father threatening to remove him from school as punishment for not executing a photoshoot perfectly on the first try. When he declares that he'll see his father's image burned to ashes before he gives in to their abuse, Nathalie softly admits that "Your mother would have done the same."
