#ml sublimation

No one has asked me for those episodes yet, I'll add them to the recommendations.

These episodes sure are something, aren't they? Sublimation has Marinette stalk Sublime in the hopes of getting an opportunity to "save" her and become her friend despite how Marinette has never had difficulty making friends before this episode and how she's only interested in Sublime because she's close to Adrien as his friend but not close to her. It's also where the writers decided it would be a good idea to make Marinette break Sublime's prosthetics, and they decide to "redeem" yet another shitty father in Werepapas.

In Sublimation, Maribug in no way informs Chat Noir of what she actually did and just says "it was an accident" when the akuma victim calls her out for having hurt her daughter. That was NOT an accident. That's like saying you "accidentally" made a 4 layer creme cake instead of pancakes. There were a lot of active and very specific choices being made here!

Chat Noir therefore proceeds to victim blame to akuma victim by taking Ladybug's side because "she just made a little mistake". And it's only AFTER the akuma battle that Ladybug actually pushes back on Chat's excuses for her by clarifying out of NECESSITY that she can't just do as he says and throw the Lucky Charm into the air to restore Sublimation's battle damage.

Cause Sublimation wasn't the villain in this who caused damage. It was Ladybug. Chat Noir was deliberately left clueless about the situation by Marinette so he takes her side so she can "get through it". Only that this manifested in him telling her that she's blameless and flawless and Marinette took that uninformed praise as nothing but the truth that she literally threw herself into the akuma to get hit because she "couldn't" take accountability without the universe proofing to her that she is, in fact, flawlessly flawed.

Her lucky charm had to put it's foot down to push back on her delusions to force her into accepting that, no, she's the bad guy here. Get over it.

Even in the end, Ladybug doesn't acknowledge that she jumped onto the racing track! She just vaguely says "if I hadn't shown up, you would have finished your race".

Girl, stop tiptoeing around it by making it sound like all you did was showing up SOMEWHERE in the arena and that distracted Sublime. You jumped in front of a runner. ACKNOWLEDGE that!

And of course in the end as Marinette, she "coincidentally" doesn't mention a single thing of the 500 ways she treated Sublime badly in this episode and only whimpers that her mistake was that she should have talked to her immediately, but poor little her was too afraid of not being perfect enough to be rewarded with friendship 🥺

Girl, take a fraction of actual accountability for once! What the hell it this?

Not to mention that Adrien too is just projecting his perspective of how Marinette treats HIM onto Sublime. Marinette has never had problems like this to make friends! The episode explains three times that Marinette's motivation is feeling THREATENED by Sublime because she's sooooo perfect that Marinette can't measure up. Marinette literally started the episode off having stalked Sublime (and Adrien) to hell and back. Marinette for once not going witching hunting now is not due to her having "learned" anything, Sublime was just too perfect so Marinette couldn't find dirt on her and that forced Marinette to go with the friendship angle to control Sublime's friendship with Adrien.

Remember when Ladybug was hit by Sublimation? Remember when it seemed to do nothing and felt like it was just gassing up Marinette in an episode where she was far from her best?

Well... Let's examine it again.

Ladybug lucky charms! She has no idea what to do with the lucky charm.

Ladybug is hit by Sublimation... Nothing *seems* to happen. Cat Noir is ready with a compliment, and she compliments him back.

We get the antikuma drop, then Sublimation is beat in short order.

Before resetting all the things done by the akima, Ladybug looks in the mirror and has her 'I was the villain!' realization.

Then we cut to the next scene etc etc.

There are two things at play here and they're both themes that have been running, seemingly ignored, for a long time. Season 6 is highlighting both in several episodes now, *clearly* so.

1)Cat Noir is a magical fae boy to Marinette. While she cares for him, he isn't real. You can go back through S4-5 especially and pick out spots. She's not cruel like some salters want to make you believe, she just doesn't think of him as a whole person. She has never *had* to. He self deprecates and deflects from his needs(because he's Adrien and yeah that's what he does) This is what leads to people grumbling about unfair treatment etc. It's continued in S6 as well. We'll call this the 'control group' aspect. It helps to anchor the second point.

2)Marinette avoids emotional vulnerability. I mean, who doesn't right? She takes it to another level though, *and* has responsibilities that require she engage with it now. Normal girl Marinette flopping around her crush to avoid embarrassment is completely relatable. Ladybug, the Guardian, neglecting to have the serious conversations with her partners, with victims, with the public; those are much more serious. Quick to blame herself vocally in a performative, she never really internalizes and acts on it. Instead we use the snake, destroy memories, or leave two felons(even if one is in theory reformed) in dangerous positions. We've had multiple instances where those she should trust have said so in so many words. It's the crux of the 'Big Lie' arc they have going on.

So, now look back at Sublimation:

1)Given a chance to, Ladybug immediately builds up Cat Noir. Not that she would tear him down normally, but she could easily have said nothing, or talked about some plan. She went out of her way to care about him. That's some 'best self' behavior.

2)*After* being hit, she looks at the mirror and... Admits the hard truth. She was terrible earlier in the episode. She owns it in that moment, something she couldn't do before. In the next scene she's back to equivocating about friendship and centering it on her own feelings again, but *that* was after using the miraculous Ladybugs. *That* was after the 'damage' from Sublimation was reversed.

While looking in the mirror for that moment, Marinette was her best self. She faced uncomfortable emotions and did not flinch from it.

I hope we get to see her again soon.

It would have been better with a middle-ground. An 'I forgive you, but-'

Let Sublime be understanding. Let her forgive Marinette. Let her also say 'but I can't have this sort of thing in my life right now, distracting me from my training.' have Sublime be a little savvy and ask Marinette point blank 'Is my being Adrien's friend going to be a problem for you?' and of course Marinette will have to sputter about how nono of course not.

Then, let that be where it is. Sublime isn't Marinette's friend. She's nice to her, but Marinette is not conducive to her life so they fon't hang out *and that's okay*.

Adrien gets to keep a friend that is 'his friend' and not just 'their friend'.

Sublime is still out here paying the price for Marinette's actions. I don't give a shit about your headcanons and excuses, the episode literally makes it clear that Sublime's prosthetics broke because of the double KO punch of Marinette soaping up the ground around her and then Ladybug jumping in front of her as she runs.

If that hadn't happened, Sublime's sponsor would have ended up being Bob Roth and not Tomoe who's a straight-up villain. And no, I don't give a SHIT about your excuse. Bob cares about results that make him money and that's what Sublime would have delivered consistently. He wouldn't have dropped her and Sublime's mom wouldn't have allowed for her daughter to end the sponsorship for AT LEAST quite a while which would have most likely been long enough to save her from whatever plan Tomoe is gonna use Sublime for now.

Even just a couple of months very realistically would have made the difference here.

But now, thanks to Marinette once again taking EVERYTHING out on a girl daring to befriend Adrien, Sublime ended up in Tomoe's hands.

Marinette's actions HAD consequences and Sublime is the one paying the price. It doesn't matter that "Marinette didnt mean to" and "Marinette couldn't have known that Tomoe would go after Sublime! She's not responding for Tomoe's actions!"

Marinette is the fucking protagonist and glorified main hero of this show. Her actions don't happen in a bubble. NEVER HAVE. She's causing all kinds of shit for the people around her and THEY are stuck with the consequences because she couldn't even be asked to NOT soap up the floor around a disabled person and then jump in front of them while they are running.

Sublimation is 20 minutes of Marinette being nothing but her worst because shes for the 500th time stuck in her own head and makes it everyone else's problem while being coddled and excused from all sides because people don't know the whole truth or project their sympathy onto her in good faith (like Adrien saying Marinette struggles with making friends. That's objectively incorrect. She just acts like that around HIM, so he falsely claims this to be normal for her. Which it's not and SUBLIME is paying the price for it).

Marinette is causing bad things in people's lives because of her inconsideration. She never thinks anything through beyond how things affect her. She only thinks of people when hurting them would negatively affect her afterwards or once hell broke loose.

And she has yet to make a fraction of improvement on that front.

So no, I'm not letting this go.

Not inherently to salt on the characters or anything. Just because I don't think theres really a set-in-stone "best version" of themselves that can be detected by Lila's power, its not the rabbit miraculous or anything to judge when they'll peak in life. And like the show itself says, theres always room to evolve, and both Marinette and Adrien are gonna improve from here on out, so theres really no reason for the show itself to say they peaked 3/7th (or 6/14th) through the show.

That, and I don't actually believe Sublimation's power fundamentally changes a person. Just their behaviour and determination to suit her own standards of what a person should be like in regards to their actions. For example, how the stadium employees got motivated to do their job, or how Sublime's dad began acting like her mother towards her, instead of

Like if Marinette got hit by one, she'd be more determined to go forward with the lie because thats what she was already doing, and Adrien, if he got hit, would be determined put up an even faker persona to show that hes fine, without the power considering anything other than the quality of these actions themselves, because thats what these two were already doing.

Because the stadium workers getting more enthusiastic didn't inherently make them a better version of themselves. Just more determined. If they were now "better", wouldn't they be made into being some sorts of prodigies? Instant masters of the arts? Elite politicians with tons of charisma? Instead, they were only made to be more enthusiastic about the job they were already saddled with.

Likewise, Ladybug and Chat Noir are, as stated, in the episode, by themselves to Bob Roth, volunteers. They don't have to do their job. Adrien could've, in theory, just listened to Plagg and went to the cafeteria to eat snacks. Just like Marinette could've just left to go to safety, or just never shown up as Ladybug. Hell, they didn't have to do any of this this in the first place.

They have no legal bindings, no contracts, nothing. They're already more than willing to do the job, enjoy it regularly (at least for Chat), already put an extensive amount of their time into, even during nights to patrol, and they have the world's best success rate. They're already enthusiastic about this and sublime at what they do. They don't even need a paycheck to do it.