#pretension

i'll never abandon you 🤝 i love this girl

parallels we love to see

I used to believe that "Pretension" had a nice moment that established that Marinette had grown as a character since "Cat Blanc". In both episodes, Gabriel talks to Marinette after finding out she's dating Adrien, and he tries to get her to break up with him. In "Cat Blanc", Marinette concedes. In "Pretension", she refuses. This seems like character growth.

The problem is that these two situations aren't comparable at all. In "Cat Blanc", Gabriel holds nothing back, and immediately threatens to take Adrien out of school and isolate him from everyone else if Marinette doesn't break up with him. But in "Pretension", for some reason, Gabriel doesn't go nearly that far. He only gives minor warnings that he'll find a way to separate them even if Marinette doesn't comply, and his main tactic is actually to try to bribe Marinette with a promise of success in the fashion industry. So of course Marinette would respond differently to these situations, this doesn't provide evidence of any kind of growth at all.

If Gabriel had tried to bribe Marinette in "Cat Blanc", would she have accepted? Of course not. And if Gabriel had threatened Adrien in "Pretension", would Marinette have conceded? Honestly, I think so.

  but there is a something of a heat of mind, or an irritation     ₁ a something of more than common interest, of even awful in the very sound of “The West”     ₂ and that a something of deception     ₃ which every cowboy pretends to, and a something of logic     ₄     to go out and be somebody, to become “a something of something”     ₅ gave a something of reality to their pretensions, which softened if it could not altogether remove the ridicule     ₆   Next you’ll be making it out as we’re nought but a something of nothing     ₇ while superstitions are fast becoming a something of the past. But enough of these absurdities;   How we raised the wind     ₈

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sources, their respective details at the more’s aside — italics not in sources

1 A Digest of the Evidence in the Second Report of the Select Committee on the State of Ireland (London, 1825) / more 2 Mark Bancroft, “Mark Lee’s Narrative” in Atkinson’s Casket (Philadelphia; July 1834) / more 3 “Observations on the Modern Drama” in The Literary Magnet (London, 1824) / more 4 “News and Comments,” in The Classical Review (London; March 1909) / more 5 Craig T. Cocher, “Living a Life of Consequence : How Not to Chase a Fake Rabbit,” in Scott T. Allison, Craig T. Kocher, and George R. Goethals, eds., Frontiers in Spiritual Leadership : Discovering the Better Angels of Our Nature (2017) / more 6 Frances Trollope. A Romance of Vienna (London, 1838) / more 7 W. Edwards Tirebuck, Meg of the Scarlet Foot : A Novel (New York, 1898) / more 8 “Matrimonial Superstitions” (and title of following piece), in Tit-bits (Manchester, April 21, 1883) / more

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