My thoughts go here 💖

"Marinette's motivations revolve around Adrien, the writers clearly prioritize him" ML is a romance. The female leads in those almost invariably have motivations connected to their love interests. That doesn't suddenly mean said female leads stop being main characters, or that the writers are centering their LI over them.

"Does Adrien deserve to hand out Miraculous" Handing out Miraculous shouldn't even be a thing, wtf are you on about? No team-based show allows characters to pick and choose their teammates.

"Marinette should take away this character's Miraculous" See above, with added 'Y'all have gotten too comfortable with Marinette having insane amounts of power over her teammates pretty much no other superhero is ever afforded.'

"You're getting mad that Adrien was kept out of the final fight and Marinette lying to him when you had no problem with Harry Osborn" Harry didn't have powers, so him not being in the final fight made sense. Also, the lie ended with Harry becoming a full-on supervillain, so unless you want to imply Adrien's going to become the next Hawk Moth, you're not making the comparison you think you're making.

"Marinette constantly embarrasses herself, the writers must hate her" If she was any other hero, yelling at a girl over petty romantic drama in the middle of a public park would end with a video of that outburst being all over the internet, Nadja running a news segment on why she's not qualified to have superpowers, and losing the spellbook just for good measure.

So many arguments that are some variation of "Marinette comes across badly while Adrien doesn't suffer the same issues" can be answered with "that's because she has more screen time and focus."

She makes more mistakes? That's because mistakes are the inciting incident in most episodes and requires the character to fix those mistakes by the end. That means at least one of the plots of the episode needs to be dedicated to that character and often it just serves as a focus episode to them. Now count the number of episode that focus on Marinette vs ones that focus on any other character, including Adrien.

She constantly embarrasses herself? That's the comedy part of the rom-com. Comedy protagonists are the most common punchline in their shows. This goes double when the protagonist does morally dubious things, because then making them the punchline makes them a likeable character rather than a grating one.

Her love quest attempts are portrayed as jokes while Adrichat's attempts are portrayed seriously? Adrichat's feelings are given a few focus episodes where they're treated seriously and are barely mentioned the rest. Marinette's feelings are mentioned almost every episode and are often used as the plot shenanigans. Those are the jokes. In the episodes where her feelings get focus rather than being part of the normal status quo of shenanigans, that's when they're treated seriously.

She makes serious bad decisions while Adrien is perfect? That's because she's given the agency to make decisions while Adrien isn't allowed to be much more than the passive princess. When would he even have the opportunity to make bad decisions with the same magnitude as Maribug's? Nevermind that when a main character makes a bad decision like this, it requires follow up exploration to see the consequence, which once again requires screen time.

Marinette is always blamed for things that aren't her fault? Because she's the one always in focus and so the one who always has to learn the lesson of the day. The writers fudge things so that the inciting incident and the lesson learned are vaguely in line with one another to keep the episode structure which results in Marinette often taking responsibility over things that weren't directly her fault but that she kinda made a mistake in that general vicinity.

I've even seen people pointing at Maribug facing any obstacles at all as proof that the writers want to humiliate her. Which is nonsense because facing obstacles is just a function of being a main character.

So many of those "proof that the writers hate Marinette" are actually the result of the writers liking her too much and never allowing anyone else in the spotlight. As a result she ends up having to fulfill so many competing narrative roles over almost all the episodes and so she gets everything. All the mistakes, all the glazing, all the embarrassment, all the character exploration, all the bad decisions, all the agency, all the obstacles and all the awesome moments.

"I have to tell Adrien the truth because the guilt is eating me alive"

"What if Adrien is overcome with emotions and he kisses me?"

"If I don't tell Adrien the truth I'll have to break up with him"

and never

"It would put Adrien in danger if no one tells him that he could die if his amoks end up in the wrong hands"

"Adrien needs closure and time to grieve after both his parents died"

"I don't care if I'm the villain, Adrien deserves to know the truth"

like. it's not hard. The bar isn't even there since this type of story arc isn't new and there's probably many, many articles/books/site pages that can tell you beat for beat how this plot should go. ML writers but the bar on the floor and then started to dig a hole big enough for them to stand around and congratulate themselves underneath it.

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Yeah, like, Marinette's motivations have been NOTHING but selfish throughout this entire plotline. It's all about how tough things are on HER, how SHE'S feeling about all this and what the consequences might be TO HER. Like, boohoo, cry me a river. AND she IS crying, constantly, in almost every episode, mascara smeared and tears on her face, ugly crying about how hard lying to Adrien is when SHE ALONE made the decision to do so, against everyone else's advice not to.

Me: Excuse me, I see you guys have these Wicked themed bags. Do you have any other Wicked merch by any chance? Funko Pops, pins, something?

Clerk: No. 😐

M: Oh. Okay, and do you know if you'll get them later?

C: I don't know. 😐

M: ...

C: ...

M: ...