River

Marinette is the bad guy here. She's a narrative tool and she is the one causing the moral problems in the conflict and ongoing plot, I don't have to pretend otherwise. Her justification story while ranting falls apart and contradicts itself from her previous lies in several ways when you actually look into ANYTHING, she's lying, twisting people's words, and using people left and right while making herself out to be a poor victim who needs to be taken care of and supported as Adrien's saintly girlfriend, so no one can or should stop her.

She literally can't be spoken to or properly confronted because she just shuts everything down and makes herself out to be a martyr who just needs this ONE "tiny" favour of you to disregard your moralities and agency for her cause and feelings

Alya literally TRIED confronting her about how Marinette making her speak the biggest lie (as illusion Ladybug) to Adrien about Gabriel's last moments made her feel and Marinette just went went "im sorry 🥺👉👈😔" without a fraction of willingness to in anyway acknowledge that she isn't justified in doing this to Alya, so Alya takes pity on her and tells her she isn't upset anymore. But Marinette will do it again in a heartbeat because Marinette is written to only beg and fish for validations and justifications for why she shouldn't be asked to behave any different.

Alya does not get to make an informed decision about the lies she's being used for to tell. The harm Alya will cause with this. Marinette just doesn't give a damn about anyone's boundaries and dignity the second she's uncomfortable. She's literally written to feel entitled to do this to people as long as she can keep them enough in the dark about what she's doing to them and play enough of a blameless poor little victim so her victims turn around and take care of her and her feelings instead.

I feel so unbelievably bad for Alya here. That girl is being used, manipulated, and straight up guilt tripped. 'Revelator Alya' officially made the wrong decision in putting her faith in Marinette to do the right thing and she gets said faith thrown back in her face by getting even more shamelessly used. Marinette doesn't even have the basic decency to put on her big girl pants and lie to Adrien as Ladybug herself. She literally manipulates and guilt trips the heck out of Alya to do it FOR HER:

Marinette to Alya on phone: "It's simple, Adrien can't grasp the idea that Gabriel, the mean father he knew, and Gabriel the hero are the same person. And I get it, cause it was a total surprise to us all, right? So all you have to do is tell him stuff that'll help him believe it! And feel better about it all!"

Alya: "But I don't know what happened exactly, YOU were there"

Marinette: "That doesn't matter, just come up with something nice, that's all!"

Alya: "What?? You want me to LIE? Are you out of your mind??"

Marinette: "I'm begging you, please, please, please, PLEASE, just ONE tini-tiny story to make my boyfriend finally happy, so your BFF is also happy 🥺🥹 besides, you won't be lying. Your Ladybug illusion will be!"

Alya: "*sighs* come ON! Why can't I make an illusion of Marinette instead and you go as Ladybug yourself? If you wanna feed him fibs, don't you think you should be the one taking responsibility?"

Marinette: "No! What if he feels so moved that at some point he tries to kiss the Marinette illusion? Poof! It'll all go up in smoke and my secret identity along with it! No, no, no! It HAS to be an illusion of Ladybug!"

Alya: "*groans* Girl!"

Marinette: "besides, Ladybug was unconscious when Gabriel defeated Monarque anyway! So I don't know the whole story either!"

Alya: "*sighs* fine... I'll make your illusion, just give me some time to get there..."

Like, Marinette stans will go on and on about how Gabriel not having taken Marinette's emptiest hand in cartoon history when he was already dying in the s5 finale and instead took the Miraculous from Marinette to make his wish to save Nathalie (which btw was never acknowledged in this episode, only Marinette's lie of having been half dead on the ground. Because of course that's all Marinette's writing acknowledges in the long run), and then having asked Marinette to help Adrien remember him for the times he tried to be a good father, is the greatest and most despicable display of manipulation in all of fiction

But this episode is 25 minutes of Marinette being straight up a liar, manipulator, gaslighter, and guilt tripper while using Adrien as excuse to serve her own cause and feelings above all else while refusing to take actual accountability for anything because she's begging for validation, excuses, free passes, and prioritisation instead.

Tomoe TRIED calling her out for being complicit in the villain's lies and Ladybug full-blown deflects any responsibility bc Marinette doesn't wanna hear it and she refuses to have anyone so much as remind her of the reality of her actions and role in this. It's never her fault and she will change her story and lies as many times as needed to get her result and prioritisation.

Yes, I fucking KNOW Marinette has feelings. You're not some secret genius for noticing that. Marinette is not some groundbreakingly complex character.

Nothing Marinette deals with makes her in any way unique from other main characters in fiction, much less kids media. She isn't just handling this badly because she's "uwu struggling, poor little real babygirl", she's a narrative tool and characterized and written as the problem and becoming more and more the bad guy. I'm holding her to basic standards of story-telling regarding the show's own plot, themes, and genre

hellooo sorry I haven't been on tumblr in a min 💛 gonna update what I've been workin on... lotta lestonathan ideas lately

& a playlist for them:

Random bystander: um, are they okay? Or do we need to separate them?

Nancy: oh. No, unfortunately, thats just how they flirt. They’re married, actually.

Bystander: and her?

Nancy, looking to see Robin is no longer standing next to her, and has moved to trail after Steve and Jon, shouting FIGHT! FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! Encouragingly.

Nancy:

Jonathan who has a very homoerotically charged friendship with an actor in one of his films. Yes they fuck a couple of times.

Steve who learns of this and becomes very offended that Jonathan decided to experiment with his sexuality and didn’t choose Steve.

Cue Steve desperately trying to woo Jonathan. Robin and Nancy watch this from the sidelines extremely amused.

Will and el are Jonathan’s

They share custody of Mike, Steve has him on the weekends

Somewhere between the winter of 87 and spring of 89: an Event occurs that leads to Steve calling Robin at 3am in a complete panic and Robin ends up having to talk him through bisexuality

January 1, 1989: Robin receives a panicked call from Nancy who just kissed a girl for the first time. Robin once again walks someone through bisexuality while silently screaming

Spring 1990: Robin visits the Byers Boys in NYC for spring break to take Will out to a gay bar. Jonathan insists on coming. Robin immediately clocks him

She obviously shares these secrets with no one because she's a real one.

Steve: "Just let me fight him Jon! He deserves to get his lights punched in for everything he did to you, Will, and Joyce!"

Jonathan: "Babe, you've literally never won a fight..."

like them reconnecting; steve reaching out to jonathan cuz he wants to right his past wrongs or he just sees jonathan struggling and tries to help

like the angst guys just imagine the angst. jonathan taking ages to feel comfortable around steve because he has a hard time trusting people, steve knowing this but trying his hardest anyway??? and then the denial of feelings that comes with this??? guys do you understand how peak this is?