Hi, hello. I just wanted to say that your takes on Marinette are breath of fresh air. Yes, she is a victim too. She is a teen put in a supremely unfair and traumatic situations. She is allowed to NOT handle everything well. Does she has some questionable antics? Also true, but the fandom is dead set on putting everything she does in a bad light, I question if they even watch this show with any brainpower on. I've been seeing so many people treating her as the worst person ever, I occasionally just jump into your blog to cleanse my brain of that, because MLB fandom is ridiculously bad at dealing with characters that have even a tiniest amount of complexity in them
I remember someone pointing out that people brush Marinette's trauma because Gabriel is no longer alive, but that's like saying Adrien is no longer an abuse victim because his dad died
Both Adrien and Marinette are victims of Gabriel and while Adrien is going to therapy and figuring things out by himself (remember that is not Nathalie the one who appointed him to them, it's ALL ADRIEN), Marinette is not. Everytime she asked for help, the people she trusted ended up yelling at her face and saying "NO" instead of giving her a solution.
It's clear the parallels they are drawing between Marinette and Adrien, how Marinette is brushing the trauma under the rug because then it means she falied, she was hurt, and she can't fix things. She wishes to undo the wish but it means killing herself. Something she is considering to do still, mind you. Tbh if it wasn't for Félix and Kagami being grateful to her (because it was THEIR LIVES that were trusted to Marinette before she went to fight Gabriel) and Nathalie telling Mari to not kill herself during the London Special, she would be done for.
Meanwhile, yes, Adrien can enjoy the memories of his father but Gabriel by the end of his life wasn't that man anymore. And that didn't start with Ladybug and Chat Noir, not with Marinette, that went YEARS beforehand. And the only one who can figure that out is Adrien himself. Violently telling him "hey, your dad never loved you, nor did your mom, you are just a creature made to obey" is not the way. Adrien deserves to know about his dad being Hakwmoth? Of course! But first he needs to internalize all the other bullshit his parents never dared to talk him about, compared to Félix and Kagami. And that's ignoring the elephant in the room being The Council
It's so easy for everyone else to say "tell the truth, punish the villain" and you forget about the victims. Because that's why Alya fails in her argument: she just wants the truth out without thinking in the consequences for everybody else. Kagami losing her mom, Félix losing his freedom again, Adrien being shamed and his custody taken away. The victims are more important and now Marinette is part of them too.
If your plan to make someone bad pay for their wrongdoing doesn't include the victims and how they will be affected, your plan is foolish and leaning into doing more harm than good.
