selenityshiroiml

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I just realized we can do a poll for this. I've been wondering this since the episode came out.

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"marinette should pay for what she's done" man she's 14 and was put in an impossible situation the only thing she should do is be at the club (highschool art club)

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I'm fascinated by how much of the salt for ML breaks down to Marinette has done bad things without malicious intent and deserves to be punished continuously or Chloe purposely did bad things with malicious intent but deserves a redemption arc.

I'm not entirely sure how often these two things are from the same people, but I wouldn't be surprised.

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reading everyone’s thoughts on the london special and marinette’s actions have given me a serious case of deja vu in relation to the s5 finale, here’s why

a very very VERY common reaction from the fandom i saw to the finale was “why are the writers letting gabriel get away with being a hero why isn’t he being held accountable horrible finale horrible writing i hate this show etc etc etc”

before i share my thoughts on this for like the thousandth time i just wanna mention i DID cry during the finale, partly because i was in shock and also because i HATED it. but now i genuinely believe it was one of if not the smartest things the ml writers have ever conjured up and i just. fucking love it. (point is: i understand disliking it. that was me at some point, until i began to consider the implications of the “ending”)

similarly, a reaction i’ve seen to the london special (mainly from ml salters) is “why would the writers let marinette lie to the world when it’s so clearly morally wrong she’s such a horrible person she needs to be held accountable blah blah blah”

something both the s5 finale and the london special share is that THE ACTIONS THAT TAKE PLACE IN BOTH. ARE NOT MEANT. TO SIT WELL WITH THE AUDIENCE

NO writer on ml is trying to convince a fan that “gabriel was actually a hero because he made one selfless decision (that wasn’t even that selfless?????)”. NO writer on ml is trying to convince a fan that “marinette is completely right for hiding the truth about gabriel from not only adrien but also the whole world!!!!!! no one should ever find out!!!”

the entire point of the finale and special is to make the viewer uncomfortable, as we watch marinette sit with her questionable choices, watch adrien refer to his father as a hero and watch their class throw a party. none of this is supposed to make us feel at peace with the way this arc has concluded.

what people seem to be missing is that even if the s1-s5 arc has ended, the s6 arc is just beginning, CENTERED AROUND THE CHOICES THAT HAVE MADE US AS THE AUDIENCE FEEL SO UNCOMFORTABLE!! you’re completely ignoring the way the plot is set up if you think the writers are going to neglect gabriel’s storyline, because it is far from over.

i think it’s also important to mention that neither marinette nor adrien are at peace with what’s happened (even if that was implied during the s5 finale—the london special has provided us with this new information on their emotional statuses). marinette is clearly being eaten alive by guilt, seeking confirmation throughout the entire special that protecting adrien from the truth was the morally correct decision. adrien was obviously affected by his father’s death (contrasting the idea that he just “threw a party” without any emotional backlash), and will undoubtedly learn to grapple with his conflicting feelings on gabriel’s character throughout s6 (he sacrificed himself??? but he abused me??? but he saved ladybug and nathalie????? but he apparently assisted monarch?????)

POINT IS

no one is meant to be satisfied with the way things are in the miraculous universe at the moment. you aren’t supposed to want the truth about what really went down during recreation to stay hidden. if you feel uncomfortable with the current situation our main characters are in, GOOD! please stop the discrediting the writers, because your discomfort means they have done their job well.

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Plagg:

Sometimes sappy is better

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"well... nathalie's hugs ARE pretty great"

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season 6 akuma wishlist

bonus:

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honestly what I love about miraculous and what I think a lot of people seem to hate about it is that the show is completely character-driven. it absolutely follows the rule of "would" rather than "should". episodes and plot lines and everything make so much sense and are so easy and engaging to follow when you understand that everything happening is because that's what the characters would do. things like: marinette would lie to protect someone's feelings, chloe would need more than just being queen bee to change her, adrien would forgive someone and try to see the best in someone who has shown him nothing but red flags. these aren't things they should do, it's just what they would. they don't change their behavior to tie up every loose end, they aren't vessels to give the audience moral lessons, their interpersonal conflicts are sometimes never addressed head-on and instead remain as a constant noise in the background of their relationship, they are all so stubborn and complicated. the plot bends to them, not the other way around. i see all the time people complaining about how the show is so bad/a failure but in the same breath say that they love the characters, as if the show's primarily goal is not to create and facilitate those same compelling characters that you love and let you watch as the story unfurls around them.

i mean, it's completely fine if you hate it. it's fine if you'd prefer every loose end to be tied, if you prefer the plot and story to take center stage, if you don't like it when a plotline seems to be forming but the characters decide against it, etc. it's a narrative choice, and not a "good" or a "bad" choice, just a choice. we all have our preferences. but your hatred of it is not any more "objective" than someone else's love for it. sometimes being a character-driven-story lover is difficult when online media criticism seems to always see it as a bug and not a feature.

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And she's also not 'gaslighting' Gabriel's abuse of Adrien by making Gabriel out to be a hero. Because she is absolutely unaware of the extent of Gabriel's abuse. Her lies will probably cause confusion and dissonance for Adrien but that is not Marinette's intent.

Guys, gaslighting isn't a synonym of lying.

It is gaslighting IF the victim is questioning their sanity or their own ability to reason. (Cinema Therapy made an excellent video about the 11 warning signs of Gaslighting using Mother Gothel as an exemple ).

If you don't have 15 minutes to watch it, basically the list of a Gaslighter is the following:

Blatant lies

Denying lying even if you have proof

Using what is near and dear to you as ammunition (i.e. attacking the person's worth).

They project

They wear you down over time

Their actions do not match their word

They use positive reinforcement to confuse you

They know confusion weakens people

They try to turn people against you

They tell you or others that you are crazy

They tell you everyone else is a liar

And you need several of those warning signs to make it a case of gaslighting.

Adrien has been lied to. Marinette lied about his father. She made up a story to cover the truth to Adrien and the entire city. There isn't a lot of people who saw what happened and who can give another version. The ones who know the truth are Marinette, Nathalie, Alix, Plagg, Tikki and the other kwamis who were captured. Those are the only ones who know the details.

Kagami knows a portion of it as well, but she doesn't have all the details of what actually happened during that battle. She wasn't a witness when Bug Noire was talking with Nathalie. She just knows why Marinette is doing this.

And there is also Cerise / Lila who also knows the truth about Gabriel's identity and has noted some details in her notebook that she will use to twist the "facts".

Anyway, Marinette as Bug Noire was an unreliable narrator about how the final battle against Monarch went. But lying alone isn't what makes someone a gaslighter. It just makes them a liar.

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So much salt directed at Marinette and implying that the series is glorifying her actions and that it's a poor example.

If you walked away from the special thinking that the series is trying to push that a) Marinette's actions were supposed to be a good thing and b) that Marinette herself thought she had done the right thing then you weren't paying attention.

Marinette is clearly unhappy about the lies she told. She questioned the choice multiple times. She asked multiple people's opinions on if she did the right thing and not ONE PERSON AGREED (although none of them stopped her, either). Everytime she made a choice to reinforce the decision the scene direction implied it was a torn decision (often with a half and half shot of her face as Ladybug/Marinette further emphasising that she has an internal conflict both as herself, as Ladybug and between herself and Ladybug). The scene direction and music was somber and played the choice off as a negative. She is unhappy about lying to Adrien and massively conflicted over it.

Nothing about that special was trying to show Marinette's choice positively. And this is not new. Marinette is OFTEN called out for poor decision making by the narrative or by her emotional state. When she hasn't trusted others things have gone wrong or she has gotten distressed and these situations resolve when she gets help. When she acted over the top with her crush on Adrien it always blew up in her face until she fixed what she had done and he, instead, reacted positively to her being more natural.

These things are not always resolved in the same episode. And, clearly, this season is setting up for a longer arc where Marinette will eventually have to face the consequences for these choices. Even before that it is likely that it will impact her relationship with Adrien as Marinette, her relationship with Chat Noir as Ladybug and, likely, her friendships with the team both in and out of costumes. She is probably going to make more difficult choices going forward to maintain the lie and it going to continue to be conflicted and unhappy about it, further causing her stress and anxiety.

And when it comes out it is not likely to be pretty. Adrien is going to be very understandably hurt and confused.

But Marinette is not doing any of this out of malice. She is a very upset 14 year old girl who just watched her boyfriend's father (who she may not have liked but was probably not aware of the extent of his abuse of Adrien) effectively commit suicide after revealing himself to be a terrorist. She is probably not processing any of that very well and, on top of that, she has the weight of the world on her shoulders with Paris relying on her in a way that no child should have to carry. That is not someone who is going to make an effective and rational decision on how to share that entire set of traumatic events with the person who will be most hurt by them. Especially when she loves him and doesn't want to cause him pain.

She fucked up. But she is not doing that with a goal of hurting Adrien. She is not doing that with a goal of controlling Adrien. She is not doing that with probably any clear goal or aim other than sparing Adrien the pain of knowing that his father was a terrorist.

But she is still going to cause him pain. Because when it comes out that she lied (either from discovery of Ladybug's lies or from realising that Marinette knew or both) it is going to hurt Adrien twice over. Because two people he trusts and cares about (Marinette and Ladybug) deceived him. And, regardless of their lack of malice, it's not going to be easy to accept.

Obviously they are going to eventually resolve things. But writing her actions off as irredeemable or as being portrayed as an example to emulate is ridiculous.

Protaganists are allowed to be wrong. Kids can tell when protaganists are making wrong decisions, even without being told, when the character is clearly not happy about it. People can make mistakes and be forgiven for them (and this is an important thing for kids to learn because otherwise they a) won't admit to their own mistakes and b) won't try to make positive changes if they get in trouble).

And, yes, it's also important for kids to know that forgiveness isn't always guaranteed. And my deepest wish is that, eventually, Adrien will NOT be required to forgive Gabriel for the things he did (although I'm not sure this will be the case). But Marinette is not likely to be (nor do I think she SHOULD be) an example of this concept. Because making a fucked up choice in a fucked up situation when you are clearly traumatised is NOT automatically unforgivable.

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Watched the London Special.

Whilst I love the set up of the character conflicts (which continues on from the obvious set up of the S5 finale of how keeping the truth from Adrien is going to have severe consequences) and the indication that Lila/Cerise is, indeed, going to be a challenge...

I did not like the plot. There was too much heavy handed recapping and there was too much contrivance. Hell, they even called it out with Bunnyx questioning how Marinette got the answer from seeing the Akuma write things down.

That being said, it did it's job.

I wish I could expect this to prove to people that Marinette lying is a deliberate choice on the writer's behalf and will have consequences and eventual payout...but instead I think people will just continue twisting their panties into knots and refusing to accept anything other than utter perfection in their protaganists.

Character conflicts are good. Characters making mistakes and working through them are good. Characters making flawed decisions are good. Because this all makes for a far more interesting story. And from a children's TV show perspective it also shows kids that sometimes you mess up and it doesn't make you bad, it makes you human. The important thing is how you react to it and how you resolve it.

Marinette has huge guilt. She is conflicted. She doesn't know what the right thing was to do and she's second guessing herself almost from moment one. Adrien is also feeling guilt but has no one to really explain the source of his guilt to (except Plagg...who knows the truth but probably couldn't expose it even if he wanted due to Kwami holder rules)

Bring on S6. I'm intrigued.

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I swear, no one can make more drama more quickly than the ML fandom.

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decided to subject you all to my mind. and my mind has a lot of feelings about adrien and plagg in real-cat!plagg au.

plagg adopted adrien, not the other way around

(sequel to this post)

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yet another successful day for Team Miraculous. let's wrap it up, gang. what would paris do without us

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I know people are mad about Adrien not being in the finale and not fighting against Monarch (since he is, you know, his dad).

But him not being there is very clearly DELIBERATE and not a 'well we don't feel the need to include him in this fight'.

The decision is not a 'Ladybug is the important one' or 'Chat Noir being sidelined' thing.

It is very obviously 'We do not want Adrien to know this piece of information, YET'.

He got a confrontation as Chat Noir against akumatised Gabriel SPECIFICALLY because he wouldn't be able to do so in the finale.

Everything else was carefully planned to not only make sure that he wasn't there but also that Marinette would not accidentally spill the beans.

They deliberately cut her off before she got a chance to leave a message for Chat Noir. It then escalated and happened so fast that she didn't get any chance to think about it. The fact that she hasn't told anyone the details yet, other than the lie to protect Adrien, will clearly have consequences. (There is also the potential that 'go along with the lie and make Gabriel come out looking okay' is a part of the wish and Marinette might be COMPELLED into it but there is no evidence for this, just a potential theory).

Any which way, this is not a shiny happy end. We aren't supposed to be happy that Gabriel looks like a hero. We aren't supposed to be happy that Adrien doesn't know. We aren't supposed to be happy that Chat Noir doesn't know.

But Adrien not being in the finale is the only way to carry the tension of this situation over into the next season. It's the only way, really, to keep his identity a secret from Ladybug (because no matter how good he is at keeping a secret, seeing his dad as Monarch would have 99% blown his cover) and carry the identity crisis over into the next season.

If anything, this means Adrien's will continue to have a strong story arc next season. His conflict over his father's public and private image (he is still the man who kidnapped him and made him cry), his conflict over not being involved in the take down of Monarch (even though he physically couldn't help at the time it will make him feel like he failed Ladybug), the senti plot line, the identity crisis, the secrets Marinette is keeping from him both in and out of the mask...

Adrien has a lot of story and conflicts to carry over...and almost all of them could only be expanded upon IF he wasn't in the season finale.

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that's one way to find out @halfahelix brought up imagine adrien with the peacock and I didn't get very far with the rest of that thought cause this was the first horror to enter my brain after

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