Edits & Stuff ♥︎

I am fully in the camp of ship what you want to ship and that there’s no requirement to like something just because it’s canon.  So by all means, I certainly don’t begrudge anyone who doesn’t like Starco.  That’s completely fine.

But at the same time, when I see people using certain arguments ‘against’ it, I can’t help but think… “But did you watch the show?”

The biggest one, of course, is when people say it was sudden/came out of nowhere.  Given that their changing relationship has been the focus of three seasons of the show, it’s hard for me to buy the idea that this ‘came out of nowhere’.  I could put together an argument about how Star and Marco’s relationship turned out to be more important to the show than the worldbuilding and the overall plot (note that when they had a limited amount of time to work toward the ending, one of the points that they absolutely prioritized was the resolution of Star and Marco’s relationship) but even if that wasn’t the case, there was plenty of build-up to it.

I think the trouble is that Star and Marco’s relationship is more genuinely presented than the way romance - especially the friends-to-lovers trope style of romance - usually is.  How many times do we have some kind of story set up where they basically tell us “these characters are friends” rather than actually showing it to us?  We have to take it on faith that the characters have an actual friendship before they careen directly into romance/jealousy/whatever.

That’s not the case with Star and Marco.  They spend most of two seasons showing us their friendship and how they grow closer over time before leading into the prospect of a romantic relationship between the two. We get to see their dynamic as friends and from that we have a good idea of what their dynamic in a romantic relationship would be.  As I said in an earlier rambling, you can’t remove the friendship from their romantic relationship.  That’s not how it works.  You don’t flip a switch and you go from this set of rules and behaviours called “friendship” over to a completely different set of rules and behaviours called “romantic partner”.  There’s still overlap.

But it’s not what people are used to seeing in this friends-to-lovers romance set up, so I feel it kind of leaves people surprised that they work so well as friends.

Which goes into the biggest pet peeve I have, which is the concept that the characters should stay friends because “it would ruin their friendship” to be in a romantic relationship.  Now, to be fair, Star and Marco also absolutely fear this.  It was a big motivator for them not taking steps forward in their relationship.  But their entire perception of relationships never included the kind of tight-knit friendship-slash-romantic combination because it’s not really… shown, very often.  It’s much easier to see a puppy love style crush or something very based on physical appearance/lust than to see the subtle difference when you have a friend that you’re really close to and just need to be that one step closer.

Whenever someone says “but their friendship!” all I can do is wonder why we’ve been led to believe that you shouldn’t be friends with the person you love most in the world?  I mean… isn’t that a good thing?  Isn’t it fulfilling to have a person you already love and trust with your life and do fun things with and then you can also hold and smooch them and be with them always?  

She doesn’t realize how much she actually cares about what Chat Noir thinks of her, until he’s all up in her business at home, curious about her projects, eyes sparkling, telling actually funny jokes because he’s not trying to impress her, he’s just being himself.

She knows chat noir worships Ladybug but she has always been sure he’d find her civillian self homely and boring. So when he KEEPS coming over and wants to hear all about her day, and does cuddly kitty things and stretches and acts way too cute for his own good, and he starts to have a eager sparkle in his eye which she’s seen when she’s Ladybug, Marinette is weirdly super flattered, and a little bashful sometimes. She takes his feelings for Ladybug a little more to heart. Maybe he COULD love all of me? His civillian self finds me interesting enough to give me all this attention?

She’s seeing him more as a person, just a boy underneath the mask, and it humanizes him, and somehow makes his courage on the battlefield so much more dreamy than she ever thought it could be. He starts to feel like a boyfriend, and she kind of wishes it could be that easy, but Adrien, Ugh, who has been giving her so much attention lately and it’s hard to ignore the idea that she has a chance.

Literally she has such a fun day almost flirting with Adrien, and then when he goes home to his prison, before she can daydream about their life together, Chat Noir shows up and steals her heart right back, and keeps filling in spaces in her heart she wished Adrien could fill. It’s absolute madness! Now when Chat Noir takes a hit in battle, it feels different. Feels like not just her partner but her crush, her comfort, her favorite person, her boyfriend. And that’s hard to deal with.

Does he feel this way about her? Of course, he doesn’t know she and Ladybug are the same person. So she wonders how he’s coping?

NACHO CHIP DATE TIME!!!

Yeah! It’s time for Starco Week!!! Yeah I know it’s late but might as well. Some Nacho Snack time as call back to their Late-Night-Friendship-Thursdays, except they can do, that. Well honestly this date is more awkward on Star’s part hah.

Also I added some Eclipsa and Globgor because I’m pretty sure these bbs ship them I mean c'mon they probably saw the similarities in the whole friends to lovers ordeal that they themselves experienced also just an excuse to add them because I am total trash,

Here’s a Bonus:

Picture a wave in the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through, and it’s there, and you can see it, you know what it is. It’s a wave. And then it crashes on the shore, and it’s gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be for a little while. That’s one conception of death for a Buddhist. The wave returns to the ocean, where it came from, and where it’s supposed to be.