I already started seriously disliking Marinette since season 4 because of the Ladynoir conflict being handled and solved in season 4 in a way thats an abuse victim's nightmare (and Adrien's civilian treatment only made it worse) and it being called "empowering" and "what Adrien needed"
But funnily, the episodes that broke the camel's back for good were Illustrhater and Sublimation. Those showed me that there is no hope left for this show. Any bad message will be send to children to validate Marinette with a pitty party.
Now orphans need to learn to shut up about being hurt by their romantic partner's ditching them all the time and acting like they dont wanna be around them, because still all that matters is that Marinette has anxiety and how Adrien just hasn't given enough care and understanding to her yet. Fuck orphans and having been abused all your life, including in the ways the partner just instinctively displayed again, Marinette somehow has it worse because she felt discomfort due to her anxiety that she never works on and takes out on whoever is in front of her.
The episode's ending pretty much said that Adrien shares just as much blame for what happened in Illustrhater and that he too needs to learn to be in a relationship. But it also had Marinette write off Adrien's feelings as wrong and only caused by a "misunderstanding" the second she heard him voice them and then made it all about HER feelings again and what SHE needs to be given in this relationship. ONLY her. That's all the message cared about.
And FUCK disabled people, too, I guess? Marinette spends an entire episode taking her anxiety out on Sublime to "befriend her" because Marinette's anxiety otherwise would lash out as straight up jealousy and sabotaging again. She stalked the hell out of her and is so self-centered that she soaps up the floor around Sublime in an attempt to paint herself as the victim by pretending to be akumatized (idk what excuses people make that the soap shouldn't have resulted in such an accident, clearly that's what the episode went for) and then transforms and jumps infront of a running Sublime which leads to the accident.
And it's funny how even Marinette salters don't bring this up, but when Sublime crashes onto the ground infront of Ladybug, prosthetics shattered, Marinette is one of the few people NOT reacting to it. Marinette only reacts shocked and devastated by what happened when Sublime brought up the name Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Marinette realizes she caused this, which??
So Marinette only cared about the hurt disabled person in front of her when it reflected badly on HER? What a charming way to write your already too self-centered main character.
I don't care about excuses that Marinette "totally reacted in worry and concern, it was just cut for time!" Cause yall don't KNOW that and it wouldn't change that this is always how she's written. To only care when it affects HER.
And then of course the messages. The battle villainizes the mom as much as possible so the viewers will write off what she says about Ladybug. Cat Noir does overtime not caring about the hurt daughter because Ladybug is big sad that she's being held accountable and spoken to in anything else but compliments, and Marinette can only be written to accept that she was the bad guy after the universe magically proves that, actually, she's the best version of herself.
Then in the end, Marinette as herself doesn't take any real accountability when apologizing to Sublime (and had to be forced to as Ladybug). She only says "I'm sorry for being insecure, I hope you can forgive that and prove me wrong for fearing that you wouldn't wanna be my friend"
That's not an apology, nor is it accountability. That's Marinette still only making everything about her feelings and what she needs to be given which is also all the message cares about.
ADRIEN is the one who made sure Sublime has the needed context for Marinette to be given the friendship without actually needing to try, and SUBLIME is out here doing all the work to form their friendship, going so far as to say that they'll exclusively talk about anything MARINETTE likes to make her comfortable because poor broken little Marinette has anxiety and that's the worst fate ever :'(
If an able-bodied person takes their anxiety out on you and causes a bad accident through ableist inconsideration, then clearly that means THEY are the victim and you would be wrong and unfair to not take care of the poor able-bodied person feefees and do all the work in your bond so they don't have to.
Don't you monsters understand that having anxiety is worse than being severely disabled? Or being orphaned? Or being abused? Or depressed? Or being isolated in an abusive partnership and stuck as the leader's inhuman care taker and scapegoat, or else she rages and cries that she's owed for you to be that? Or being magically enslaved by your awful abusers all your life and now your gf thinks she's entitled to withhold that information from you which put your life in danger when you lost your life-holding objects, but she prioritized getting to keep her secrets so she risked killing you?
Yeah, nah, I'm not sorry anymore to say it. Fuck Miraculous. What an awful kids show that sends every bad message under the sun just so Marinette can get further and further validated for managing to reach the bar of... *checks notes*
Having human feelings, which somehow makes her unique?
The people defending Miraculous and Marinette are being way too nice to the writers when they say things like âMarinette totally would have shown concern and regret over the problem she caused this time, but it was cut for timeâ when the far more likely option, to me at least, is that the writers just didnât think she needed to spare as much as a single thought to the people sheâs harming. It's a direct side effect of the writers' blatant bias. Because, like, if the writers thought Marinette acting considerate was important, theyâd show her doing it every once in a while instead of expecting the audience to go: âshe did it off screen!â Like, we canât claim the show doing something in an alternative timeline is the same as it having done that in this one.
Itâs kinda like the take that because we know that Marinette is supposed to be a kind and selfless person, so thatâs how we should view her and all the writing that makes her the opposite is just unfortunate in how bad it is. Yes, it is bad writing, but ignoring how that alters the canon is just the same as ignoring how bad it is to me. I just really don't want to do that because itâs basically giving the writers credit for something they blatantly didnât do. Like, just because someone places a tray covered in mud in front of me doesnât mean Iâll eat it and thank them for the brownies.
Also, like, even if the soaping Sublime up and startling her hadnât been part of the same comedy of errors it doesnât mean the individual things Marinette did as part of her scheme would suddenly be okay, which is why complaining about the contrivance of the events in Marinetteâs defense is so pointless (and, like, itâs not like contrivance has ever bothered this fandom when itâs a Lucky Charm scheme that breaks physics). The whole defense just reads like: "Marinette doing something stupid and selfish having such negative consequences to someone else is so unfair to Marinette because it makes her look bad to the audience".
Even if Marinette's plan had gone exactly as she planned it, I still don't see any part of her plan as anything but selfish and inconsiderate. She thought it was a good idea to jump onto the race track screaming while Sublime was going for a competitive run time. She wasnât just casually jogging, she was going all out, trying to get a sponsorship, and Marinette came in to bother her because she wanted to make herself look better. In addition to that, if someone threw soap at me to convince me they were under mind control, Iâd still find that shit annoying even if nothing worse happened. Sublime had important things to do and someone came in and threw gunk at her. Like, even if nothing had gone wrong with Marinetteâs plan, even if it had gone down without a hitch, every step of it would still have been an annoying and self-centered thing to do.
And, like, Marinette is so manipulative in that ending scene with Sublime. She corners her alone and wobbles her lip while going on about how she doesnât think she deserves to be Sublimeâs friend, making Sublime do all the work of appeasing her. She even peeks out from between her fingers during the conversation when she makes sure Sublime isnât even slightly annoyed with her before uncovering her face. Like, I showed that scene to my brother, who said that was a Lila moment. Usually villainous, manipulative characters cry crocodile tears and steal peeks at their targets like that. The honestly strange way this scene is storyboarded makes it look like Marinette is manipulating Sublime on purpose instead of accidentally like she's done with Cat Noir in the past. There's no way the crew did that on purpose but they still did it. It's the same thing as me refusing to give the crew credit for things they didn't do, I have to point what they decided to do instead.
Combined with the girlsquad acting like Marinetteâs little bully posse, isolating a classmate just because they suspect Marinette didnât want them hanging out with her in âDaddycopâ, S6 Marinette looks like a queen bee bully, but weâre still expected to root for her. Like, what is with this writing? How do you slap this many villain tropes onto your hero protagonist whoâs meant to be the âmost sympatheticâ? The level of incompetence here is baffling.
And itâs not even just about the incompetence. Itâs, like you brought up, the genuinely harmful real-life toxic biases against disabled and abused people that the show is actively enforcing. Because, like, itâs actually uncomfortably common for real people in the real world to actively say the kinds of things about people that this showâs more insistent defenders are saying, that this showâs writing is implying. Like, I genuinely donât want to hear what the writers think about disabled people, child abuse or the concept of conservatorships, because this show is encouraging the standom to say things that are the exact same excuses we hear in real life for why mistreating people over these things is okay.
Miraculous has repeatedly failed to have characters with physical disabilities get any kinds of considerations or accommodations for their disabilities. Rose is praised by the characters and the narrative because her only request concerning her chronic illness is to not get any special consideration over it. Similarly, Sublime is âokayâ when her legs get shattered from underneath her, because sheâs such a wonderful person she needs no consideration even from the person who harmed her. Disabled people are âgood peopleâ when they ask for nothing and need no help ever, because inconveniencing able-bodied people would just be the worst.Â
Miraculous writers and the fandom praising them for this kind of writing support the idea that disabled people should just be able to do everything the expected way and not need any help or accommodations from the people around them. Then they can be âinspiringâ and âgoodâ and âniceâ. Otherwise theyâre being a burden to the people around them and burdening the people around you is the worst thing you could possibly do. It's ableism, pure and simple.
Similarly, the show and the writers flip flop on whether or not the audience should even consider Adrien an abuse victim. Before the retool, Astruc recommended an essay written by a fan about how well Adrien was written as an abuse victim, but, in the aftermath of season 5, heâs now insisting Adrien wasnât abused, because Gabriel didnât hit him and kept him fed, and ChloĂŠ had the perfect childhood because she got bought expensive gifts, because your parent neglecting you or abandoning you and calling you the wrong name constantly isnât abuse. And he insists on this because he decided that he wanted to vindicate the rich white men abusing these kids.
âChild neglect isnât real abuseâ is an actual thing abuse apologists say. âYou werenât abused because you were physically safeâ is an actual thing abuse apologists say. Neglect is a form of abuse. Emotional abuse is a form of abuse. Neglect and emotional abuse are abuse. This show is perpetuating actual abuse apologia.
Similarly, âAdrien canât be trusted to make his own decisionsâ or âAdrien canât handle the truthâ is supporting conservatorship. Itâs the idea that Adrien is just too traumatized, sensitive and incapable of making his own decisions, so Marinette has to make decisions for him and control his life for his own good. Conservatorships are a way of denying humans their human rights, of a group of outsiders deciding that someone is incapable of making decisions concerning their own finances and life so someone else should take full control of all of that. Conservatorships are also a form of both ableism and abuse.
That's why I have a hard time believing Marinette is canonically neurodivergent or has an anxiety disorder; the writers have so little sympathy towards disabilities I doubt they'd purposefully write their protagonist with a disability. Sure, it could just be the double standards benefiting Marinette alone, the writers considering her above the standards they set for others, but it could also just be an accident. As you said, the writers think Marinette just having emotions makes her supposedly worthy of being coddled by everyone in and out of universe while everyone else should just suck it up and deal with their issues constructively. The things that make Marinette appear neurodivergent or suffering from an anxiety disorder could also just be the writers drumming up sympathy for Marinette where her obliviousness and negative emotions get exaggerated to make her seem like a poor little meow meow who was born in a wet cardboard box all alone.
