#<- srsly go read it y’all it’s fantastic ❤️

[thecapturedafrique]

Something that's always bugged me about the whole "Is Alya a good friend to Marinette?" discourse, is that it's never asked the other way around, with "Is Marinette a good friend to Alya?" . And I don't mean in a "oh Marinette is so terrible to Alya" way, but well... there's definitely a double-standard among the saltdom, in what constitutes an unforgivable sin and being a toxic friend.

I still remember the discourse that was going around about how Alya totally, definitely, pressured Marinette into babysitting for Ella, Etta, and Chris while she and Nino went off on dates, without the knowledge of her parents and without paying Marinette. Became the premise of a few fanfics too, unsurprisingly. Despite that really not being held up in canon, with there only being two instances at the time of Marinette helping Alya or Nino with babysitting, with taking care of Chris while Alya and Nino went on a date in Chrismaster (and she very much was NOT busy that day, she spent the next few hours working on Adrien's 35th birthday present) and then being scheduled to babysit Ella, Etta, and Chris while DJWifi dated in Timetagger, only to cancel at the last minute because she was too busy, which Alya was totally cool with. And there's no evidence or much reason to believe this was done without parental permission at all.

It got frustrating when that line of Alya-bashing started to rear its ugly head again with the Simple Man preview, with Alya and Nino getting accused of taking advantage of Marinette once again. Thankfully that pretty much died out once the episode came out, since both Alya and Nino were very clear that they'd cancel their date and help Marinette with babysitting if she needed it, and Marinette ended up being the one to shove babysitting off on someone else in order to hang out with the person she loved anyway, but it was still frustrating to see again.

I actually ended up writing a Prime Queen canon divergence AU one-shot because of that discourse restarting, where Alya discovered that Marinette had lied about talking to parents and had called her over in order to trick Alya into babysitting for her, since dammit, I wanted to use something that actually HAD definitely happened in the show to have Alya be justifiably upset at Marinette, get to work through it, and set some boundaries. To just... really focus on Alya's thoughts and emotions and perspectives. I get why Marinette thought that tricking Alya into babysitting for her was the best option - she couldn't just tell everyone she double-booked herself since it involved her secret identity, and if everything went right with her plan, everyone would be happy and no one would be upset or disappointed with her - but I still thought it was a good opportunity to ALLOW Alya to be hurt and to feel that hurt, to see things from her perspective.

Just... I love putting myself in different characters' shoes, understanding what they're thinking and feeling to make them do what they do, even when it's not always the best decision. To think of them as being people who have their own perspectives, insecurities, emotions, and ways of seeing the world in general.

Which means that when a character's demonized and treated as deserving to be hurt or suffer for relatively minor grievances that no one would give a second thought to if a character they cared about, who they empathized with and related to did that thing, it hurts. A lot.

Just gonna leave this ask as is because hard same to all of the above 😔

(But also I read your fic and it was amazing and everyone else should read it too!)