#lyni rambles

No, I don't believe this episode was a "if they know each others' identities it'll result in a bad timeline" thing. The actual thing that led to the bad timeline was Gabriel finding out Adrien is Chat Noir. Sure, it was a series of dominos knocking down which eventually led to that, but there's more to this.

We saw in Oblivio that even without their memories, Adrien and Marinette, or Chat Noir and Ladybug, would be both great crime-fighting partners and romantic partners. Their base personalities mesh well together. Here in Chat Blanc, we see that even with a one-sided reveal, they would *still* be happy as a couple, and there's also no indication that their crime-fighting shenanigans have gotten worse either. It's an absolute win in that way.

However... Gabriel found out that Adrien is Chat. If there was some way for Adrien and Marinette to reveal each others' secret identies to each other without risking anyone else knowing, I believe there's a way for the two of them to still be the endgame.

In fact, this felt like an instance where the reveal didn't go right which led to the bad timeline. Perhaps if Adrien didn't know Marinette is Ladybug before she knew that he's Cat Noir, things might have gone down a different path.

This means! The lovesquare reveal has to happen in one of the following ways:

Adrien finds out before Marinette, and tells her immediately that he knows while also revealing his own identity as Cat Noir

Marinette finds out before Adrien

They reveal their identities to each other at the same time

So yeah, all is not lost, lovesquare shippers!

Also no, I don't think the good-timeline Marinette knows that Adrien is Cat Noir. During one of her exchanges with Bunnyx, it seems that she thinks that because Adrien found out, he might have told someone who told someone else who told someone else and word eventually got to Cat Noir who Ladybug is.

This episode also really shows just how far Gabriel has gone. Perhaps at some point in the past he really did care more about his son. But in this episode, we saw, in the bad timeline, just how shitty he was with no regard for Adrien's wellbeing in order to achieve his own goals. In order:

He forced Marinette to break up with Adrien, not because they have a bad relationship but to use her negative feelings for his own villainous goals, nevermind Adrien's own feelings about any of this

He found out that Adrien is Cat Noir, and instead of being horrified at the notion that he's been fighting his son this whole time, he's *gleeful* at the prospect of using this information for his own purposes.

He emotionally destabilizes his son by revealing his own identity, but also, by *showing his son his comatose mother who everyone believed was dead*

He physically beat up his son... why?

He akumatized his son and forced his son to choose between his father or his partner

Anyways I don't know if it's just the bad timeline Gabriel that's that far gone, but I believe this is probably proof that there's little to no chance of redemption left for Gabriel.

Also shoutout to Rose for losing her shit over Marinette being so wishy-washy all the time lol

And to Alix/Bunnyx for being cool like, all the time

Also can I just say, I really loved the whole framing thing in the episode which showed Bunnyx looking through the timelines like they're VHS's, rewinding and skipping forward. I loved the back and forth as we see how certain parts of the timeline affects certain things, and Bunnys slowly piecing together how everything got to this point.

Plurality/Multiplicity and CDDs are communities that may have some overlap but at the end of the day are their own things with their own issues.

Demedicalizing CDDs is not going to actually solve the issues of plural folks facing stigma and backlash. Those of us with CDDs will still have issues with dissociation, identity confusion, memory loss, conflicting behaviors, trauma, flashbacks, and so on. Demedicalizing CDDs removes us access to these tools that can help us. Additionally, not everyone who has a CDD identifies as being “plural” or “multiple people in one body”, so to conflate CDDs with medical/disordered plurality is misguided/misinformed at best.

Similarly, attacking people who do not have medical/disordered plurality but still experience some form of plurality does nothing to actually help the CDD community. CDDs will still be stigmatized and misunderstood regardless if other forms of plurality do or do not exist. People who are ablest and sanist will find ways to be ablest and sanist towards others.

So what does need to happen, then? For both communities?

De-stigmatization of both experiences for people outside of and within these communities. The general population do not believe that it’s possible for people to truly feel like multiple people in one body. Similarly, the general population believe that people with CDDs are dangerous and lack control over their disorders.

Educating others the reality of our experiences and helping others understand that there’s nothing inherently wrong with viewing yourself as plural/multiple, or with having a CDD.

Understanding that while both communities often do have overlap with each other, they are still different communities with their own issues. You can view yourself as plural without a CDD, you can have a CDD and not see yourself as plural, you can have a CDD and also be plural. Any of these things can be true and it’ll vary from person to person, system to system.

Realize the “other side” is not inherently your enemy. You may not agree with every point someone makes, but if you shut down every avenue of communication, you will miss out on tools and resources and information that may otherwise be beneficial to you. If individuals in certain groups have harmed you, then you were harmed by those individuals, not the group itself. You can block and go as you choose for your own mental health, but engaging in debates over the minutiae of words and definitions does not help the wider population remove those stigmas surrounding us. You don’t have to work together with everyone, hell, you don’t even have to work with anyone in the other community if you don’t wish to. But pushing each other away and making our issues an “us vs them”, where the two sides are disordered vs non-disordered plurality, or traumagenic vs endogenic, or pro-endo vs anti-endo, or whichever discourse you’re engaged in, is missing the big picture.