You would think that healing would be a power that fall under Creation's domain. We see that miraculous ladybug is a power that can outright fix all injuries and bring people from the dead.
But logically speaking, Creation can only heal some stuff. It would be great in repairing wounds or other physical damage, but most diseases would be beyond its power to fix. For those, you would want Destruction to purge the pathogen.
Although even then, it's not quite as clear cut seperation. Some diseases like scurvy (caused by a deficiency in vitamin C) would be healed by Creation, while some injuries like a bone that set wrong (which would need to be rebroken) would need help from Destruction.
It gets even more complicated when you learn how the body itself deals with those things.
Injury recovery is mainly a process of repairing the damaged tissue, unless inflammation gets involved and then the first priority is to destroy any invaders that come inside through the broken skin.
The first line of defense for our immune system are macrophages and neutrophils which work to destroy intruders. But there's also the complement system with is insane and also definitely falls under Creation's domain. Nevermind how long term immunity is the result of our body having an archive of antibodies for every possible disease ever.
All of which to say is that our body is complicated and magic gets so much more fun to think about when you get into the nitty gritty of our biology.
The canon logic is that the ladybug is able to revert something to a previous state as a part of creation. It 'creates' the whole/original/unaltered form. This is also how it purifies akumas.
As with most of the post-hoc WoG canon clarifications it only causes headaches and questions if you think too hard about it, but its what we have.
If we're going with that level of semantics you can have any miraculous do anything.
She can "create" a huge gaping hole in someone's body. She can "create" an absence of memories. She can "create" a past/present/future where whatever she wants happened.
This kind of vaguely sensible wordplay is not really fun unless a magic system is based explicitly on linguistics. Then the bullshit is a feature and not a bug.
It's funny because we both come at it from opposite directions and both dislike it. I *love* soft magic systems. I love the freedom to play around. See:LotR.
ML keeps trying to be hard magic without the thoughts required. Then they come up with soft magic patches, but try to pretend that they aren't.
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So I’m usually kinda critical when it comes to Marinette and stuff. And like how the show is now, it is kinda easy to blame Marinette for everything. I’ve been very critical of her character in the past and I don’t think that’s going to stop anytime soon.
With that being said, I feel like some people are getting TOO comfortable with blaming this 14-15 year old on the manipulative actions of a grown ass adult. Because yes, Gabriel DID groom/manipulate Marinette into having her lie to Adrien. He figured out how much Marinette cared about Adrien once he knew she was Ladybug and used that to have her agree to keep his secret. It’s as simple as that.
So when I see takes that imply that there needs to be these thorough evidence that supports Gabriel taking advantage of Marinette, I get kinda pissed. Because this isn’t the first time Gabriel took advantage of a teenage girl (ie Chloe and Lila…literally half of the akumatized villains he had were teenagers). So him doing the same to Marinette shouldn’t be this big topic of debate.
I'm against blaming Marinette for things she's not responsible for, and I do think some people don't give her enough slack about things that are typical for 14-15 (which unfortunately doesn't include a lot of her latest actions). However, saying Gabriel didn't manipulate Marinette isn't giving her undue criticism.
I don't think it's asking for too much ask people back up their claim of Gabriel manipulating Marinette with evidence. Because as is, the series didn't show any of that manipulation on-screen.
What we do have is 1) Gabriel trying to manipulate Marinette quite poorly in Pretension by making her an offer that might work in the industry but Marinette was never going to take. Marinette responded to that by telling him to fuck off. 2) Gabriel making a request in the finale that Marinette didn't even verbally agree to.
Gabriel: Marinette, make sure that Adrien never knows about the villain that I was, but instead, that he remembers the times I tried to be a good father.
This is all that he tells her. If you can point out the manipulation tactic here, I would be glad to hear it. As is, all I'm seeing is that his words are functional to make the request. They aren't emotionally charged, intended to evoke emotions or carry a specific framing in them. Making the request in and of itself isn't manipulative, as it seems to be a geniune desire of Gabriel.
Nor can we say Gabriel groomed Marinette. We see all their interactions on-screen - the amount of which can be counted on one hand - and their relationship is consistently negative. That's simply not what grooming looks like.
Just because Gabriel groomed other girls doesn't mean he did the same to Marinette. In fact, we can compare the relationships and see the differences. With both Lila and Chloe there was an active monitoring of their emotional state, an explicit attempt to manipulate them as well as an attempt to foster a positive relationship with them to make them more favorable to Hawkmoth. None of which exists in Gabriel's relationship with Marinette.
He figured out how much Marinette cared about Adrien once he knew she was Ladybug and used that to have her agree to keep his secret. It’s as simple as that.
How does knowing that Marinette is Ladybug gives Gabriel new information about how much Marinette cares for Adrien? Ladybug and Adrien barely interacted. He knows Marinette cares about Adrien because she's Adrien's girlfriend. Something he knew all season and failed to capitalize on or even take into consideration in his manipulation attempt in Pretension.
How did Gabriel use his knowledge that Marinette cares for Adrien in order to manipulate her? Where in his request is the emotional level he's operating to take advantage of that fact?
Merely making a request about Adrien to someone who cares about it is not enough to count as a manipulation attempt. He didn't even frame it as if it's for Adrien's well being. There's no implication that Adrien would be worse off if she doesn't listen to him.
Even if Gabriel is counting on Marinette listening to him because he knows she cares about Adrien, that's not enough to make it a manipulation. He needs to use some actual manipulation tactics in order to influence her. If he isn't doing anything to influence her in any way, then him knowing she would agree is just him getting a good read on her. It has no effect on Marinette's actions.
But maybe I'm missing something. Manipulation is often easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for. If you can explain to me, using examples from the show, how Gabriel manipulated Marinette, I would be willing to change my mind.
Alya: I was right earlier, wasn't I? Gabriel was Monarch.
Marinette: I never lied to you.
Alya: Technically, you didn't. You just kept the truth from me and manipulated me so you wouldn't have to answer my questions. Wow, thanks Marinette. So this is what being BFFs is like?
The show saved me the trouble of needing to argue that Marinette was manipulative in Nemesis by outright saying that she manipulated Alya to avoid answering her questions. Nice!
This means that I can skip the tedious part of making my case that Marinette isn't a perfect innocent angel and go straight to the fun part of breaking down exactly how she tried to manipulate Alya and why those tactics work.
Just to get this out of the way: no, I'm not accusing Marinette of being some heartless manipulative mastermind. Most manipulation is learned intuitively, by people noticing what works and what doesn't work in order to get them what they want.
Marinette knows those things can make Alya stop asking questions that she doesn't want to answer, so she does them. How much she actually understands what it is she's doing is debatable. She may be thinking "I can't let Alya know no matter what" and so is willing to resort to tactics she knows are manipulative, or she may be running purely on instinct without thinking too much about why those tactics work.
So lets get into it:
Alya: I know you have a secret, I know it's about Adrien and I know you don't want to tell me about it.
(...)
*Alya shows Marinette the mirage of Monarch detransforming into Gabriel Agreste*
Marinette: Why would I have done that? Why keep it a secret that Gabriel Agreste was Monarch?
Marinette's first reaction to being confronted with the accusation of lying is to double down and defend the lie by trying to poke holes in Alya's story.
This, by itself, isn't manipulation. However, it does show us where Marinette's head is at. She doesn't want Alya knowing about the lie, so she keeps trying to cover it up even after she got caught. She knows Alya isn't certain yet, that the guess she's making may be educated, but it's still a guess.
So she tries to exploit that uncertainty, sow even more doubt that this story is right. If Alya can't give a motivation or gives a wrong motivation, that would allow Marinette to point out how the story doesn't make sense and spin the entire thing as being wrong and illogical.
I would classify this as more of a debate tactic than a manipulation tactic. She's attacking the idea itself and trying to debunk it.
Unfortunately for Marinette, it doesn't work because Alya gets the motivation right.
Alya: To protect Adrien.
So Marinette switches to another tactic.
Marinette: You really think I could lie to my boyfriend like that? And to my BFF? And to the whole world?
She sounds and looks angry when she says that, which is an expression she didn't have when asking why she would've lied about Monarch. Obviously YMMV on the exact nuances of the tone (I would classify it as a mix of offended and indignant), but it's undeniably the tone of someone unjustly accused of something horrible.
And she is accused of something horrible. Alya's accusations are serious. Marinette is aware that lying about Gabriel being Monarch to Adrien, Alya and the entire world is a bad thing. So for Alya to imply such a thing about her best friend? To even consider that Marinette is such a horrible person who would be willing to do any of it?
Try to imagine for a moment accusing someone you're really close and love of being a pedophile. Not a fun experience, right? Leaving aside how half this site is so conflict avoidant that even telling someone a valid criticism to their face is something they can't do, accusing someone you love of something bad isn't easy for the accuser.
For one, there's the entire aspect of trying to reconcile the the person you love doing something horrible, which is complex and a big reason (although far from the only one) why it's unfortunately common for loved ones of abusers (who aren't being abused) to not believe victims.
But more importantly in our case, what if you're wrong? What does it say about you that you thought so lowly about the person that you were willing to consider that they could do something so horrible? Those are not the kind of things you're supposed to think about the people you care about. Many would consider it justified to reconsider whether you should actually be friends with someone who accuses you of something like that.
This is what Marinette is banking on. If Marinette was innocent, then Alya's accusations are an insulting. Alya knows Marinette, she's her best friend. Hell, she knows Marinette is a superhero! She should know better than to think that Marinette is capable of such a thing.
(If you doubt that this is the train of thought which is expected in such a situation, I recommend you go and check the reactions to Heartfixer. Quite a few people were pissed at Adrien for believing his girlfriend was cheating on him when he saw it with his own eyes. Most of their arguments boiled down to "Adrien knows Marinette and how much she loves him, he should've known better than to suspect she would be capable of such a thing.")
By acting indignant and offended, Marinette is implicitly making Alya to be the bad guy in this situation. Alya is the one doing something wrong here by thinking about Marinette so badly. She's shifting the blame, so that now Alya has to defend her actions (accusing Marinette) rather than Marinette having to defend her actions (gaslighting her boyfriend and lying to everyone).
And once Alya has to defend her action, she's implicitly accepting the premise that she's doing something wrong that needs defending in the first place. That would allow Marinette to keep pressing Alya about her being the bad guy for accusing Marinette, which would serve two purposes: 1) It derails the discussion away from Marinette's misdeed 2) If Alya is the bad guy for accusing Marinette, they could "resolve" the conflict by coming to a compromise where Marinette graciously forgives Alya for accusing her so long as Alya doesn't do it again.
This is a full-on manipulation tactic. Marinette isn't attacking the idea itself, she's exploiting human feelings and tendencies (such as the desire to not feel like the bad guy) in order to get Alya to drop the topic without Marinette ever needing to admit to anything. She's unfairly placing blame on Alya when all Alya did was try to hold her accountable. She isn't trying to defend herself, she's trying to make Alya feel bad enough that she stops asking questions.
This tactic ends up not working because instead of turning defensive, Alya is fully willing to own up to her opinion of Marinette.
Alya: Do I think Marinette Dupain-Cheng would do anything in order to protect other people even if it means ruining her own life?
Alya: Yes.
I'm going to ignore how even in this Alya is framing Marinette as someone selfless and heroic, because that has to do more with with the show's bonkers moral framing of the big lie (which is its own can of worms) rather than the actual dynamic of the conversation.
But despite the dubious way the writers went about it, this is still Alya justifying her opinion and owning up to it. She rejects Marinette's framing of Alya accusing her being a deplorable liar and instead gives her own framing which is more accurate to who Marinette is as a person but still supports Alya's accusations.
(Ignore that Marinette is a massive liar and that Alya's interpretation is far more charitable than many would agree with. As said, this is the show's weird morality at play. As far as the narrative is concerned, Marinette is a long suffering noble hero who's willing to do anything for the people she loves, even if it means getting her hands dirty. So Alya's framing is very in line with who the narrative claims Marinette is.)
We also get a zoom in on Alya's face and a sound cue to indicate to us that what Alya is saying is not trivial. This is a serious thing to admit. Yet Alya says this calmly and with conviction. There's nothing about this that Marinette can attack.
So once again she switches tactics.
Marinette: Don't you think my life is enough of a disaster as it is?
Alya: Why would you say that?
Marinette: Because clearly *starting to speak in more panicked/stressed tone, sounding on the verge of tears* everything is falling apart! I couldn't defeat Hawkmoth and get his miraculous back, so now there's this holder of the butterfly miraculous. A new Hawkmoth, who's more dangerous than ever! They even attacked me and my family!
Marinette: *starting to cry* I've never seen my parents so afraid. I'm scared too, Alya! We have to stop them, before I can't go on anymore. But we have nothing on them, we know nothing about this new butterfly miraculous holder! Whether they're a man, or a woman, or what their name is, or what they really want!
Those stresses Marinette is crying over are all very valid.
They're also utterly irrelevant to the conversation.
Like, just to put this in perspective, this is Alya asking Marinette "did you lie to me and gaslight your boyfriend?" and Marinette responding "my life is such a disaster" and starts crying.
None of the things Marinette speaks about have anything to do with the big lie. If the thing she was crying to Alya about was how hard making the decision to lie to Adrien was, or how stressful keeping it a secret had been or anything at all that's related to the big lie, I would be willing to read it as a genuine reaction that's only accidentally manipulative. That she burst under the pressure of Alya's questioning because of how stressed she is, and her tears are more an expression of her emotional turmoil rather than an attempt to fish for sympathy.
But that's not what happened.
Instead, the things she cried about was how much of a failure she is as Ladybug and how scary it was for the butterfly holder to target her personally.
Again, all things that she's genuinely very stressed about. But they're not things that the conversation reminded her of. Nor are they things that she was so preoccupied and bothered by that she was already on the verge of spilling them to anyone.
We saw her in the scene right before this conversation. The things she was preoccupied by and anxious about were the big lie and feeling like she's lying to everyone. She didn't bring up these topic even when she interacted with her parents (who were reassuring her of how supportive they were), where it would be the perfect opportunity to talk about it. If nothing else, her parents fully understand feeling scared because the new butterfly holder attacked them personally.
Marinette is choosing to bring those things up.
There are two possible reads here.
Either Marinette is just so stressed by the sheer act of Alya pressing her for answers about whether she lied or not, that she places it as equivalent to all those things she ranted about that make her life a total disaster. And so she starts crying because Alya is supposed to be her friend but here she is, adding even more stress to Marinette's life and helping ruin it.
Or she's bringing it all up with the intention of distracting Alya from pressing her about the big lie.
We don't actually have to wonder which read is correct because the show outright tells us.
Marinette: I never lied to you.
Alya: Technically, you didn't. You just kept the truth from me and manipulated me so you wouldn't have to answer my questions.
Alya is framed in this scene to be the one cutting through Marinette's bullshit and saying the truth as it is. We're supposed to see her words and actions as giving Marinette a reality check. Therefore, we're supposed to take her assessment here as a correct read of Marinette's motivations in the scene. This is further supported by how Marinette doesn't even try to deny this.
The manipulation Marinette pulls here is two fold. She hijacks the conversation with something very emotional, stuff that Alya can't simply brush aside and return to the original conversation without feeling like a jerk.
And she tries to get Alya on her side by fishing for sympathy. Can't Alya see how much her best friend is dealing with? How her life is a complete and utter disaster so she needs to be coddled and reassured to let her know she's not alone? How can Alya keep on criticizing Marinette and adding to her burdens when Marinette is already suffering so much, doesn't she have a heart?
This time, the manipulation works.
Alya may be angry at Marinette, but that's still her best friend. She cares for her. She can't stay unmoved when she sees how bad Marinette is feeling.
*Alya's expression turns sympathetic and she approaches Marinette, dispelling the mirage in the process, and lays a hand on Marinette's shoulder.*
Marinette: I've had this idea but it's very dangerous and I don't know if you'd wanna hear about it.
That's a very manipulative line. Marinette is implying that Alya wouldn't want to hear about Marinette's idea to stop the butterfly holder because Alya is angry at Marinette.
She's creating this false association where "being angry at Marinette" = "putting Paris in danger", and "helping save Paris" = "being on Marinette's side and not questioning her about the big lie".
If Alya continues pushing now, she would be doing it at the expanse of catching the butterfly holder.
Alya: If it can help save Paris, of course I wanna know.
But Marinette knows Alya would never do that. She's a hero, so she would pick helping Paris over questioning Marinette. That's the exact thing Marinette is counting on.
The entire thing is textbook DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender), which is a classic manipulation technique that often comes out in response to being held accountable.
Marinette started out by trying to deny this was possible. Then she attacked Alya by implicitly placing her as the bad guy for accusing Marinette of horrible things. Finally she hijacked the conversation by painting herself as the real victim in all of this because her life is just such a disaster, you see.
And it worked. She did manage to get Alya to drop the topic and instead go and comfort Marinette. She got exactly what she wanted out of all of this.
For the short term, at least. But Marinette tends to only think about solving the immediate problem in front of her without ever thinking about the consequences beyond that. See: Her being upset that the boyfriend she gaslighted the entire season to think positively about Gabriel now thinks positively about Gabriel.
This wasn't just predictable, this was the outcome she was actively working towards. Marinette just never stopped to consider what achieving this outcome would actually be like.
And she didn't stop to consider that just because she got Alya to drop the topic now doesn't mean she was going to drop it forever.
I want to add that I think Marinette bringing up how stressed and scared she is to try to get Alya to stop pressing is a learned response. It's worked before. Specifically, at the end of season 4. There, Chat learned that Ladybug had secretly recruited Rena Furtive and had had her helping out with battles without his knowledge, while deliberately keeping it secret from him. Which he wasn't happy about, but he set aside for the most part to deal with the akuma. And then Monarch stole all the Miraculous, Ladybug freaked out and broke down (understandably, that wasn't a manipulation tactic like it is during the Nemesis conversation), and he just comforted her, without ever getting mad at her, or even bringing up the fact that she kept an entire teammate secret from him. Like. Ever.
Of course Marinette would, consciously or subconsciously, try to repeat the same tactic. It worked perfectly last time.
Unfortunately for her, Alya is far less downtrodden than Adrien.
I would even go further and say this is something she learned far earlier than the finale of s4. Or at least that she learned the mindset earlier.
Marinette:(gasps) Me, me, me! I can totally help you out with that. (drops plates in excitement)
Tom:(catches plates) You mean, as a server?
Marinette: Yes. I'll hand the macarons out to Adrien. I mean... (drops plates and knocks over fruit bowl before managing to balance the bowl on top of the plates with a banana and two oranges.) ...to everybody, of course. Not just Adrien 'cause Adrien's not the only one who likes macarons.
Sabine:(teasingly) And the fact that Adrien is going to be there has nothing with it, of course.
Marinette: Not a thing. Like, not in the slightest. I just want to help out my wonderful sweet parents who I love so much.(drops the balanced bowl and the fruit)
(Tom and Sabine look at each other warily)
Marinette:(dejectedly) You guys don't trust me. Then again, I'm such a klutz. Even I wouldn't trust me. (picks up oranges)
Tom: Of course you're not a klutz, my darling. You're hired. We'll just—
Marinette: (hugs Tom) Oh, thank you! You're the best parents in the world! (dances out of the room while singing, and crashes into something)
Sabine: We'll just make twice the number of macarons. Just in case.
This is a conversation Marinette had with her parents in Animaestro (so beginning of s3). In it, Marinette sees that her parents are considering telling her no and so pulls out the guilt trip to convince them to say yes to what they know is a bad idea. In response, her parents fold like a wet paper towel.
Since this is the post for explaining the manipulation tactics she uses, let's break it down:
In this conversation, both Marinette and her parents are aware that 1) Marinette has ulterior motives for asking to be a server 2) she's objectively bad for the role and could cause some actual damage. Two things that make a pretty obvious "no" here.
But Marinette really wants that "no" to be a "yes", so she does something to convince her parents to change their minds.
Marinette:(dejectedly) You guys don't trust me. Then again, I'm such a klutz. Even I wouldn't trust me. (picks up oranges)
This conversation was never about trusting Marinette or not. While strictly speaking, it is a matter of trusting her as a server here, Marinette is speaking in far broader terms. She's claiming her parents don't trust her in general.
Good parents, loving parents, trust their children. But Marinette here is claiming that they don't trust her, which implicitly makes them the bad guys for thinking so badly about Marinette.
If this sounds familiar it's because should. The underlying mechanism of the manipulation here is the same as the manipulation she pulled on Alya, even if the execution is different.
Tom: Of course you're not a klutz, my darling. You're hired. We'll just—
Tom and Sabine very much want to be good parents, and they hate to see their daughter hurt or upset. Especially as a result of their own actions.
Where Alya would've managed to avoid this manipulation by going "do I not trust Marinette to be able to keep stable a large plate of macaroons while she's distracted by Adrien? No, I don't", Tom and Sabine fall right into the trap. They rush to soothe Marinette by "making up" for their sin of thinking so lowly of her by reassuring her that of course they trust her. Thereby giving Marinette exactly what she wants despite their better judgement.
Marinette: (hugs Tom) Oh, thank you! You're the best parents in the world!
Marinette then rewards her parents for giving her what she wants by forgiving them of their transgression and stating that they really are good parents. Not just good, but the best in the world!
Something which both soothes over any lingering discomfort from the guilt trip (so they come out of the interaction with a positive feeling about Marinette rather than a negative one) and incentivizes Tom and Sabine to act this way again.
But the really insidious part is this line:
Sabine: We'll just make twice the number of macarons. Just in case.
Tom and Sabine don't just fall for the guilt trip, they actively work to shield Marinette from the consequences of her actions.
Not only does she get what she wants despite it being a bad idea, she never gets to learn why it's a bad idea. There's a good reason why Tom and Sabine wanted to tell her no. What should happen is that she pushes to get what she wants and then gets a reality check that just because she wants something really badly doesn't mean that it's a good idea for her to get it. Someone can tell her no and be right to do so.
But that's not a lesson she learns, because her parents don't want her to experience the discomfort of her actions having consequences. So instead what she learns is that she can get whatever she wants with no downsides whatsoever. If someone thinks about telling her no, she can just guilt trip them to get them to change their minds.
#what i find interesting is that the time in animaestro is (i would argue) developmentally appropriate for a 14 year old#young teenagers do things like that all the time to get what they want#(think the stereotypical 'asking the parent who always says yes when they know the answer would be no if the parents were together' way of#getting what they want)#yes maribug manipulated her parents in animaestro but the stakes are much lower and#that episode is all about her stooping to low levels to get what she wants (such as teaming with chloe to bully kagami)#i would go as far as to say that scene was to parallel her to chloe who also always gets what she wants from her father#however the behavior goes unchecked as opposed to acting as a narrative device#in a living breathing teenager that manipulation tactic would not work at a certain point with their parents#and they would have to learn to accept a no at some point#i truly dont think a 14 year old trying to manipulate her parents is that worrying developmentally#as a narrative device comparing her to chloe it works even better as the whole episode shows her being underhanded and even#cruel due to her crush. the lesson she is supposed to learn is that anyone can become a bully if they justify the reasoning to themselves#through this framing the behavior should have stopped after this episode. she ends animaestro feeling bad about#teaming up with chloe to bully kagami. that guilt should have extended to manipulating her parents to let her see her crush @thetrashthatsmilesback
Agreed. Teenagers are quite self-centered and short-sighted. Them being little sociopaths sometimes doesn't necessarily means they'll remain that way or that there's something (too much) wrong with them.
Middle adolescence is also the time period where they try to establish an identity independent from their parents and more in line with their peers. Pushing boundaries and seeing what they can get away with is a normal part of that experience.
However, the key part in the boundary pushing that leads to a healthy development is the teenagers finding the limits of how much they can get away with. Sure, it's not fun because most of the process is basically "fuck around and find out", but that's a necessary part of growth. That's how people learn to function in a society. If the teenagers finds healthy boundaries that tells them what they can and can't do, they would learn to have healthy boundaries themselves.
That's why I find Tom and Sabine's part a lot more insidious and worrying than Marinette's. Because they don't give Marinette those healthy boundaries. They teach her that she can get away with whatever she wants so long as she's willing to play a little dirty. But it's all good if no one ever catches her or gets mad at her! So long as she's getting what she wants and not experiencing consequences, that's an acceptable state of affairs.
Which is a major and consistent pattern we see with Marinette from season 1. She always tries to get away with stuff in secret and only fesses up if she has to (the time she broke Alya's phone comes to mind). Back then it wasn't as worrying because it was all small stakes stuff and could still be put down to Marinette simply being a dumb teenager.
But over the seasons the stuff Marinette tried to get away with grew more serious and the means she was willing to use grew worse and more extreme. Her current actions are far beyond anything that resembles typical development for her age.
Ultimately, you can like or dislike any character for whatever arbitrary reason. It's neither activism nor a moral failing, don't let the internet convince you otherwise. On the other hand, if you consistently find yourself lacking any interest in the, e.g., female characters of the media you engage with that may be a sign of some unconscious biases you need to examine.
You say "be aware of your biases" once and all of a sudden your notes become filled with the most un-selfaware people on the whole website tripping over each other to justify themselves.
I think across the board, I'm seeing a lot of people agree with the take that Season 6 is mishandled. (Whether these people would self-identify as agreeing with each other is less certain, and I think that's largely down to the differing tones everybody takes when discussing things and the fact that we all vary in how well we can articulate ourselves, but I digress.) It's come up again and even stronger than ever before with Nemesis, so I might as well try to synthesize best I can:
The 'Lie Plot' of Season 6 and beyond centers itself on Marinette's inner turmoil to its own detriment.
We are supposed to understand Marinette is in the wrong for lying to Adrien about his father, but the way this is evidenced to us is through her own guilt or getting hurt by those who confront her. Furthermore, the framing of these confrontations and outside Word of God implies that we are meant to think of Marinette's actions as her making a difficult sacrifice, not actively doing something wrong. She is put through emotional turmoil as consequence for a necessary evil, and the necessity of this evil is meant to compound on the existing tragedy of the situation.
Of course, this rings hollow for many people given the lengths she's gone to preserve the status quo she's set up for herself (ex: Lady Chaos, Nemesis); Especially when the inner turmoil of characters such as Adrien are so quickly brushed over, as the relevance of their emotional is only in terms of how it impacts Marinette and said status quo (ex: Lady Chaos). He's not an active player in this, but merely a potential obstacle to be navigated around, even if the plot pretends to be working for his sake.
(The above explains Marinette's "switch-up" in Nemesis when Adrien discusses turning the Agreste manor into a Gabriel museum. He cannot meaningfully influence the status quo in either direction, pro- or anti-Gabriel, because the lie Marinette has constructed is for the sake of reining Adrien in.)
This isn't to say that some other characters aren't active players in this. Alya is by far the character whose reactions and emotions regarding the lie have been shown the most besides Marinette, now that she has both Revelator and Nemesis under her belt. Still, her reactions are incredibly mature and subdued for 14-15. Marinette is given considerable grace under the reasoning that she's a child making poor decisions when this poor decision making could just as easily apply to characters like Alya. It would be incredibly plausible for Alya to permanently break up her friendship with Marinette! It would be plausible for her to lash out! Despite this, she lets Marinette off easy and both episodes end with their friendship being strained at best. Why? Alya cannot meaningfully impact the status quo or plot progression either. Her utility in figuring out the lie is to serve as someone who repeatedly confronts Marinette with the gravity of her decisions, and thus generate angst.
(edit: The repetition seen in previous episodes regarding the lie and its effects on Marinette would be a lot less egregious if we got to see the way other characters implicated in the lie handle it, such as Felix/Kagami/Tomoe/Nathalie, but I feel like we haven't seen much of them for very similar reasons. As refreshing as it would be to see their perspectives, it opens them up to affecting the status quo and I guess we just can't have that.)
Breaking up Adrienette as part of the Season 6 finale is very "too little too late" in terms of addressing the impact of the Lie Plot. It is yet more angst. We're at a point where Adrien is, as many people are putting it, lobotomized and brainwashed into believing this new status quo of his father as a hero, and it's such an insulting representation of victims of child abuse.
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I think one of the funniest things about MLB fandom is that for months, this whole season basically, they cried about Adrienette break-up saying Adrien will end things with Marinette when he finds out the truth, like, this fandom genuinely expected someone as selfish self centered and abusive as Marinette to actually let Adrien have this one thing, finally make a decision for himself, prioritizing himself and standing up for himself lmaooo
That girl would never! Like the coward she is, she kept the lie and ran away because "I feel bad" (only her feelings matter) and basically punished Adrien for her own lies and didn't allow him any agency once again.
Adrien, run while you can, you don't know it yet but you dodged a bullet, they will put you back with this manipulative abuser, buddy
He already didn't have anyone even when he was dating her but... It's funny how Adrien talks about "I'm okay now, I have friends to comfort me", babygirl which friends exactly? You have this girlfriend and that's it. He and Nino never meaningfully interact on screen to suggest they are actually as close as they say, Alya and Adrien aren't close, Adrien never speaks two words with any of his classmates, they took Chloe from him, Kagami is taken and given to Marinette as a bestie, Luka is gone and a Marinette simp, Felix also barely cares about him and they aren't close (his own cousin closer to Marinette lmao) .
This show is like an obsessive possessive boyfriend the way it isolates Adrien, reduces him to Marinette's pretty toy, never allow him to exist on his own and interact with others and build meaningful connections. The thing is this would be 100% okay if we knew there's going to be a pay off, a story to tell there, an arc. But we learned our lessons in s6. Nothing that happens to Adrien is ever addressed properly and treated seriously and there's never any pay off, solution or conclusion. Adrien is mad at Ladybug? He learns to shut his mouth and follow her orders and be a good soldier and never question her. Adrien is abused by his father? Never gets to face him, instead his trauma becomes his gf's trauma, his gf then gaslights and manipulates him about it and then breaks his heart... So, yeah. Sad orphaned abused lonely child has no one and he will continue to have no one until his abusive gf decides to take him back and then we will be expected to go "aww" and clap our hands because she's just so good for abusing this poor boy and still wanting him.
One friend he made outside of Maribug send her to spiral. To the point of stalking a disabled girl and breaking her legs. She didn't stop until Sublime promise to be her friends and considering we rarely see Adrien with her even in background shit just didn't look good.
And yeah, I lost hope in Miraculous since Ephemeral & Kuro Neko which broadcast at same time in my local TV. But I'm back after S5 not because I give it a chance but more so so I could spreading critical post of this show in hope stopping adult and teenage fans spouting Abuse Apologia.
So I'm trying to figure out why does the frog motive keep appearing. First in Risk, which lead to Marinette losing all her miraculouses, and now it's papacorn in season 6.
Symbolism: (source: Google)
Wealth and abundance → the frog toy represents Gabriel
Wisdom
Good luck
Fertility??
More importantly: Trasformation, change, rebirth, renewal and stuff like that, embracing new beginnings and accepting change as a natural part of life, exploring your hidden emotions, trusting your intuition, embracing oppprtunities and trusting that they will manifest in some kind of prosperity or abundance (frogs live in environments rich with life) not necessarely finacially, could be in love
Okay that was very clamped up so I'll try to break it down a bit and connect it to miraculous stuff
Risk & Froggy
Made people take risks, which can be interpreted as trusting your intuition and not overthinking about it (tendency to overthing and overanalyze was mentioned somewhere)
Froggy also set into action a lot of changes. It sparked Marinette to say thing that made Adrien realise his love for her and also he decided to quit modeling. All the other miraculouses were stolen, so the other heroes would be unable to transform.
Frog vs Butterfly
Both are symbols of metamorphosis and transformation.
When a butterfly (akuma) appears, Ladybug and Chat Noir need to transform. The very appearance of a butterfly holder caused a need for some people to transform into heroes.
The frog isn't a miraculous, so it's appearance doesn't just signify superhero transformation (although last time it made a lot of the heroes unable to transform). It seems to cause character development (positive or negative) and change in personal life. Although that doesn't explain why the frog toy made Marinette reconsider telling the truth to Adrien.
The very boilable toy called papacorn
So Marinette knows she needs to tell Adrien the truth but the words just don't come out. She overthinks, she fears change. In El Toro de Piedra the frog makes her decide to not give Adrien the letter. In Sadnansi it makes her reconsider telling the truth. The frog is just reminding her of the comfort that Adrien gets from not knowing, but that comfort is the kind that isn't healthy and that they need to step out of.
But wouldn't it make more sense for the frog to remind her that change is okay, knowing the symbolism? Good question me, I'm not entirely sure why it doesn't work that way. I think it's because the toy is not a real frog. It has never gone through metamorphosis. Gabriel changed for the worse, but papacorn stays as a reminder of what he used to be. It's nostalgia. (Actually I like that, yeah, let's go with that)
For Adrien the frog appears when he wonders how his father could be both a hero and an abuser. He wonders how he used to be at least a bit kinder, kind enough to make papacorn, when in the last years of his life that kindness was gone.
While we're at it, let's talk about the boiling frog metaphor! So basically if you put a frog in boiling water, it jumps out. But if you put it there when the water is cool and then start slowly heating the water, it doesn't jump out. The metaphor is that we might not realise the gradually building risks and changes until it's too late. I'm interested to see if this shows up in the series, although I guess it appeared in Risk when they didn't even realise that Froggy was akumatized for a long time.
Also, the puzzle with the missing piece in Lady Chaos is a frog puzzle.
Update to this 'cause I just remembered the saying "a frog in my/your throat" which usually refers to a temporary difficulty in speaking due to a dry throat or something happening with your voice
So maybe s4 finale was the boiling frog thing and s6 froggy is a frog in Marinette's throat?
Also, "cat got your tongue" might relate to this (will Chat do something?? idk I guess we'll seeeee~)
"Marinette is such a bad person for not telling adrien, she's just controlling him like his father" ok but Why is no-one holding nathalie accountable???
Marinette wanted to tell adrien a bunch of times and Natalie, mind you, the only responsible adult who knows the full truth and current person who marinette goes for advice and support, constantly tells her it's a bad idea and actively stops her from telling adrien. Marinette knows that what she's doing is wrong, guilt eats through her, but she's at the mercy of adults who tell her revealing the truth will traumatise her boyfriend to oblivion and absolutely shatter him beyond repair, the only adult who knows better is stopping her from doing better!!!
Marinette decided to tell the lie in the London special, yes, yet she realized her mistake later in the season and wanted to make ammends but Natalie wouldn't let her, marinette haters blame her for everything and fail to see the cumbersome pressure that's on her shoulders and how not everything is her fault
She can't tell adrien the truth now even though she wants to because he could get akimatized, how is she supposed to fight her boyfriend? I don't think she could win with all the emotions clouding her vision, so she has to defeat the new butterfly holder first, which is ten times more difficult because she knows nothing about this person
She's a fourteen year old who was thrusted into a situation beyond her capacity, she doesn't know what to do and her crashout at alya at the start of nemesis shows how stressful this all is for her, she has no guidance, no support, no understanding, but yeah "she's the worst"
Adrien doesnt have Plaggs support the way Marinette has Tikkis. Cuz otherwise he would've told Adrien the truth.
His grandparents are effectively useless cuz they only came into his life because the rings. (Gabriels parents arent evil but..they also weren't exactly doing much for him his entire childhood either.) Natalie JUST decided to intervene with Gabriels plans but she STILL continues to lie to him.
Felix and Kagami, people who should be on his side continue to lie to him..MARINETTE is lying to him and hes not allowed to properly reflect on how Gabriel treated him. He cant confide in Nino cuz the secret identity nonsense that only applies to him for some reason. (Once again proving that hes lowkey a better holder cuz NO ONE knows his identity except Luka. Even though He cant even talk to that guy either so it reallt doesnt matter what he knows fr 🤷♀️)
Its just insane that we're suppose to be rooting for this couple but Marinette is a terrible friend and girlfriend and shes been consistently like this for several seasons and episodes now. There is no saving grace to this because her ONLY reason for lying at this point..is cuz shes scared Adrien will break up with her..which he should.
..MAN IM STILL PISSEDDDD THIS SHOW HAUNTS MY NARRATIVE!!
I think one of Miraculous' biggest problems is that it's terrible at creating compelling drama. Instead of letting conflict arise naturally from the characters, it relies on flimsy excuses, unnecessary lies, and secrets that exist purely for the sake of prolonging the plot. Unfortunately, that has ended up hurting the very thing the show is supposed to be built around: its central love story.
Adrien is constantly treated like an idiot. He's belittled, lied to, and kept in the dark by everyone around him. Whenever people criticize this, the fandom responds with, "But Nathalie cares," "Félix cares," or "Marinette loves him." But does that really matter? Marinette doing these things out of love doesn't automatically make them okay. Good intentions don't erase the fact that she's still taking away his agency.
He's controlling him in every possible way, both as Chat Noir and as Adrien, when he was supposed to be freer after Gabriel's death. Yet that freedom never came. And the show refuses to give him that freedom because it refuses to give him even five minutes of genuine focus. Five minutes where he can actually process everything that's happened to him, question who he is, figure out what he wants, rediscover his own interests, and build a life outside of both his relationship with Marinette and his role as Chat Noir. Instead, every aspect of his development is filtered through someone else. His family drama becomes someone else's story. His identity crisis gets ignored. His grief gets rushed past. His dreams, hobbies, and ambitions are barely acknowledged anymore. For a character whose biggest struggle has always been finding his own identity beyond the expectations placed on him, the story never actually lets him do it. It just takes him from Gabriel and give him to Marinette and say your new owner is kinder.
Nathalie's and Félix's care also feels very one-dimensional to me. We're told they care, but we rarely get to see that care expressed in ways that genuinely respect Adrien as a person. Even Plagg doesn't care because the show only allows him to seriously care about Adrien once every couple of seasons, usually for a five-minute scene before turning him back into comic relief. Their relationship never gets the emotional depth it deserves.
Adrien doesn't really have friends either. The show wants us to believe he and Nino are incredibly close, but we almost never actually see that friendship developed in a meaningful way.
As controversial as it sounds, I honestly think Adrienette has done a lot of damage to Adrien's character. He would almost be better off without the romance because now he's been reduced to Marinette's pet boyfriend first and his own character second.
None of Chat Noir's issues are ever truly resolved. His relationship with Ladybug is "fixed" only because he learns to stop questioning her, suppress his feelings, and simply do what she's asking. He's rarely allowed meaningful interactions with other characters. His existence increasingly revolves around her.
Even his own family drama somehow became Marinette's trauma instead of his. Adrien is manipulated into believing that his abuser was ultimately a good father, and his grief and confusion surrounding Gabriel's death are constantly sidelined or dismissed. His entire life is literally tied to a single object, yet Marinette, Félix, and Kagami continue keeping him in the dark about the rings while expecting him to react appropriately to situations he has absolutely no context for. Then they get frustrated with him for not understanding.
The part that bothers me the most is Chat Noir himself. Since day one, he's stood beside Ladybug. He's protected her, encouraged her, sacrificed for her, and endured being beaten, manipulated, traumatized, tortured, and even killed by Hawk Moth. Yet despite everything they've been through together, everything he suffered at the hands of the villain, Ladybug still decides that he doesn't deserve to know the truth. And it hurts more becuase that means Ladybug is willing to sacrifice Chat in every possible way for his relationship with Adrien and she doesn't respect him enough.
For a relationship that's supposed to represent trust, partnership, and unconditional love, that's a horrible way to write it.
1) breaking up with adrien instead of telling him the truth is punishing adrien for Marinette's bullshit
2) if the show expects me to take its portrayal of mental health issues seriously, they wouldn't have had chat noir try to kill himself in season 4 and then never approach it again. Having marinette say she's reaching a breaking point doesn't matter because they're portraying people with anxiety as liars who will manipulate and gaslight anyone who gets in the way of their lie, then cry 'mental health crisis' when called out. S6 mari is a disgusting display of mental illness rep, and if the show wants to pretend that any previous displays (s4 Adrien's depressive episode, mari's supposed pool spider ptsd idk) were good, then it can cut its therapy plotline. Its not mental health rep. It's fucking gross. Reminder that marinette doesn't exist, I'm not deriding a struggling child, I'm going after her old as shit writers who should know better. Make more crying models, I don't care. Your show is officially a danger to mental health awareness.
3) the hints that scarabella takes over are great, except now Alya is also lying by omission. This is stupid and goes against her character. What the fuck
4) adrien isn't playing dumb. They actually just made him like that. What. The. Fuck.
5) abuse apologia isn't cute, and no amount of crying will make me care about your mouthpiece. Marinette doesn't exist, but the grown ass adults who thought this plotline was okay do. The same adults who now have half the fandom parroting the "he would hurt too much" bullshit excuse that gets used against real abuse victims every day when attempting to learn about their abuser.
6) Marinette spends the whole episode trying to convince Alya to forgive her, when outside of what she did to her in Lasy Chaos, Alya isn't the one she needs forgiveness from
7) adrien was useless. Adrien was stupid. What the fuck is the point of having him in the opening credits. Yes I am still harping on it
8) I want to enjoy alya being an amazing team leader but I'm so hung up on how fucking stupid Adrien was written to be i am crashing out. This is how they see abuse survivors. What's the point? What's the fucking point in any of this? "The character that abuse victims relate to heavily is now blind to everything going on around him, accepts what his girlfriend says with no question, doesn't have any suspicions at all, and has come to accept that his gaslighters were right about his abuser." What. The. Fuck. What the fuck? What the actual fuck? This is the kid who speaks multiple languages and is top of the class? What, do the writers think abuse victims' brains turn to sludge the moment they think about their abuser or their partner? What the fuck???
9) thank god alya shot down mari's manipulations during the akuma fight. If only I cared, but since alya isnt fucking telling adrien, I don't. Great. She knows and it stuck this time. Did the writers just forget that alya is a journalist and maribug is lying to all of Paris? Of course they did, because they're so attached to their fuck ass abuse apologia lie plot that they didn't think past "what if Marinette excuses an abuser then cries fifty million times about it"
10) that didn't feel like a season finale lmao
11) one last "there's no fucking way adrien is actually being written to be this fucking dumb" because holy fuck. His dead eyed stare in lady chaos was supposed to be taken seriously. He's actually being written like this. Holy. Fuck. Toddlers connect dots better than this, and I would know. All my cousins have infants and toddlers.
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I think one of the funniest things about MLB fandom is that for months, this whole season basically, they cried about Adrienette break-up saying Adrien will end things with Marinette when he finds out the truth, like, this fandom genuinely expected someone as selfish self centered and abusive as Marinette to actually let Adrien have this one thing, finally make a decision for himself, prioritizing himself and standing up for himself lmaooo
That girl would never! Like the coward she is, she kept the lie and ran away because "I feel bad" (only her feelings matter) and basically punished Adrien for her own lies and didn't allow him any agency once again.
Adrien, run while you can, you don't know it yet but you dodged a bullet, they will put you back with this manipulative abuser, buddy
Allright, enough waiting time to see the dissapointment that'll be the S6 two-part finale.
Spoilers under the thingy, you know how it is
But before i do: Let me call my final shots.
Marinette spends the next two episodes learning that she just needs to be more supported. Passes the ladybug responsibility to Alya, and breaks up with adrien "because she just cant lie to her boyfriend... and that means he shouldnt be her boyfriend".
This is to set up S7 to be a season about getting herself the ladyballs required to tell him she's ladybug, (while not actually having to do any of the responsibility of the position, which Alya will assume instead). While maintaining her Sadnansi Resolution to never tell him the truth about Gabriel.
Then at the end of S7, they'll probably have her "pseudo-permanently" give up her Guardian Status... and trick Adrien into thinking that he was the one to erase her memory with Miraculous Chat Noir. (so he can nurture her back together while blaming himself for the damage that running away from the concequences of her gaslighting).
Meanwhile all Adrien gets to do is accept the lie, like a good little sheep. Thats my shot. Lets pray against all hope i miss.
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Oh we're doing a paranoia episode... except we're totally gonna venerate her paranoia and prove her right in the end. Because the one thing this season about Marinette controlling and manipulating everyone around her needed was proof that she's right to do so.
Meanwhile we put Chat back into the audience, because he's not a partner she trusts to plan with... just a subordinate who gets the plans sprung on her at the same time as everyone else.
---
Ok im sorry but are we trying to use the snowglobe to compare Marinette to Citizen Kane? Thats the obvious reference right?
Why are we using Alya to hype up how unrealistically amazing a 'suprise breakfast' is?
that is the blandest name-garland i've ever seen. Arial Bold? Was Times New Roman too spicy for you?
Ok so i'm mildly spoiled here because of my mod-status certain communities and know this is not realy Uncle... But that only begs the question of how Lila stopped the usual midnight message from happening.
why is uncle incerting X-es into Sabine's name? Its both a very on-the-nose stereotype of an accent, and feels like an attempt to retcon her name? Like "actually she goes by Sabine in the west, but her real name is Xao Binh wich hjust sounds like it" (I asusme that isnt actually a real name, i just wrote the sounds)
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Dramatic shot of the snowglobe on the floor... yup thats meant to be a reference to the snowglobe dropping on the floor in CK. (because Astruc wants to compare himself to the classics, and because Marinette much like Kane lost her innocence to the burden of greatness).
"I've ruined everything" its a cake, bitch. Stop making everything about your self-flagelation. You treat a fucking cake with the same weight as your season long gaslighting campaign. It really sells us how little difference you see between Adriens right to autonomy and a fucking cake.
---
Ah fuck off with the doublespeak, it doesnt make Marinette look smart for spotting it, it just makes Lila look like a dumbass.
Also you cant eat your cake and have it too here. If you want us to think marinette is paranoid, you need to make her look unreasonable. You're invoking Boy Who Cried Wolf here too much to sell it as paranoia.
ah no... are we really doing this. "Your grandmother was also a ladybug" (yes i know the things arent real, but that's what they're trying to seed here. That Lila went to Shanghai and found some picture that grandma did have earrings that looked like this... because otherwise Sabine would be able to spot the lie here. They're trying to mentally prepare the audience for a future "Actually your family are all super-specials/never were a normal girl at all"-thing. Just like how they retconned the Racism Powers to be a super-secret superhero-level martial art).
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Ok just asking for the keys is the only believable bit of trickery lila has ever pulled. That was genuinely smooth. Unfortunately its surrounded by everything else.
and now we have official confirmation: Alya is officially superior to Chat in chain of command now. (but also we cant respect Alya enough to do any of this herself... it has to be a secret protocol Marinette predicted needing weeks in advance. Alya cant be respected with the autonomy to cover for marinette's indisposion, she needs to be following specific orders laid out by Marinette).
Ok as someone who's been curious about the backlash on Alya "getting the pizzabox wrong"... i have to say im dissapointed in the Alyahaters here. Because its such a nothingburger. Not only is she less experienced then marinette, and not only has marinette been deliberately getting her charms wrong to the point of comitting actual homicide... lets be clear: the pizzabox is entirely worthless as an item: Alya already called Chat and Nino. The message was received after its instructions were already enacted. So even if she didnt know what it meant, her failure to interpret is itself entirely irrelevant. Any strategic failure later in the episode cannot be traced back to her failure to interpret a command that had already been enacted before it was given.
Oh and lets not ignore that Marinette's plan here involves once more lying to her teammates. She couldnt just tell alya to tell Nino and Noir that the real ladybug is indisposed and they're being backed by an illusion... that would require respecting their allies.
Now if I trusted this show to be willing to actually materially call out Marinette... I would be willing to believe Chat charging off on his own to be part of a larger plotline about him learning to distrust Liarbug's bullshit and grasping his own initiative in response... but we all know that aint happening. They just want to call him a rash idiot, while also emphasising how he's just too emotionally unstable to be levelheaded when poor precious special marinette is in danger.
"Thats what happens when you dont follow orders" no thats what happens when your commander tells you to trust in a rearline that doesnt actually exist. This aint Chat and Nino being incompetent, This is a failure of management.
also lets not pretend that this prison can genuinely hold either of them. If the doughball is consuming Chat, that means its on his hands. And the shield was used to Portalcut in its debut episode.
They really wanna play Chat as a rash, immature unthinking renegade here. But unfortunately he just looks like the only sane man responding to Ladybugs months of lies and BS.
Ok i'll admit the pinaple-shaped smokeclouds are a cool touch. But unfortunately, while well made, they just look lame and underwhelming.
---
Oh even in this scene that is going to make Adrien actually go semi-all-out for once, they had to include a reference to his opponent fighting in a weakened state ("I only need one hand") to remind us that Chat cant be too competent.
ok so resistance now just... turns off the power that gets in contact with you? (it didnt make him immune to smokeclouds, it just prevented the pineaple from making smoke in the first place). Fairly certain turning people's powers off is what the monkey was supposed to do.
Ok so here's the thing, most of this deakumatisation scene isnt really a plothole. (After all, we know from Gabriel that you can denounce a miraculous to akumatise yourself). But the telepathy mask feels like a plothole. Isnt that mask a method of visualising the communication between an akuma and a butterfly holder? If there is no wielder, there should not be a person to communicate with. (and also, her acting fails because she doesnt try to sell the notion that there is someone on the other side trying to prevent deakumatisation).
----
Congratulations: You just made this entire episode look so much worse. Because Lila hadn't even done anything to ensure Wang wouldnt call. Her entire plot worked only because her plotarmor ensured Wang remembered the timedifference. Once more Lila continues to work only as a russian nestling doll of plotholes and contrivance. This entire episode worked because of luck.
And the coddling begins. Because power doesnt come with responsibility, that'd be mean and unfair to marinette. Power comes with Croisants and privilige and extra headpats for the worlds greatest fourteen-year-old. And while you're eating your croissant you might get crumbs on your dress, do you need us to do your laundry too?
THE LAUNDRY WAS A JOKE. I was JOKING. But press play and suddenly Tom is asking if he needs to clean her outfit.
Only You and Alya do... and Felix, and Kagami, and Tomoe, And Lila, and Luka, and Markov, And Nathalie, And Fei from the Shanghai Special, And all 5 renlings, And Joan Of Arc, And Suhan, And Aeon, And Eagle, ANd Doorman, and this franchises equivalents of Batman, And Superman and every single power-ranger and Bill S Preston and Theodore Logan and Spock, the rock Doc Oc and Hulk Hogan all came out of... wait sorry what was i doing again?
"It was the right idea to tell your parents, Now you dont have to worry about that pesky double-life problem like all of the other teenage superheroes"
Tiki, that isnt what is happening stop lying. We're past Sadnansi. Marinette has already admitted to you and herself why she's really doing this. There is no need to backwalk that for the season finale: Marinette is doing this because she doesnt want to accept reality, her victims comfort has no place in her motivations.
"I think he really wants to talk to you" (dont you see how much of a burden adrien is on his gaslighter. Dont you see how much he is making her suffer about it? Dont you feel sympathetic yet)
but yeah, adrien is buying into the gaslighting full-on right now. Because this was never about his fight for autonomy, it was always about Alya's fight for truth. A sentimonster getting meaningfull autonomy? Why would that ever happen.
Cause he got between us, dont you understand Gabriels only real crime was inconveniencing marinette in her romantic pursuits THAT is the real crime.
"you told me only I got to decide" yeah, but you dont know that the I in that sentence refered to "I, your legal owner as of Werepapas where I beat all other claimants in a legal duel and earned the right to own and kill you".
Oh and once more we're using Alya's ignorance to state a non-cannon as if it were cannon. (just like when she guessed Marinette's "totally benevolent" motivations in Wreckless).
"Dont you think my life is enough of a disaster as it is"( dont you see that I am the real victim here.)
"MORE DANGEROUS THEN EVER" said about the person who aint gotten shite done. The anthropomorphic personification of vagueposting.
"THEY EVEN ATTACKED ME AND MY FAMILY..." because thats so much worse then Gabriel attacking Black Best Friend and Black Best Friends FAHMILEEEH. "Im scared too ALYEEAH, Dont you see that this is really about Mieeah".
"We know nothing about this new miraculousholder, wether they're a man or a woman or what their name is or what they ultimately "...
A Critical disection of the reasons the reboot just plain doesnt work, somehow makes its way into the script. This is some "Somehow Palpatine Returned" level dialogue right here.
----
Oh looks like Traitorcat gets to be involved again. "I agree with marinette' because of course you do. Cant stand up for your kitten can you.
"Since when is it possible" since never. Illusions do not feel emotions, and akumatisation requires an akuma to physically touch the person.
Im genuinely shocked at how many layers of plothole we're getting right here.
yeah the illusion wont vanish sure... it still isnt capable of feeling feelings, and the butterfly user finds their victim by sensing their feelings. The ilusion is the lesser plothole here by such a large margin.
.... And Sabrina by the end of the episode if this part of the plan is real (it probably isnt, but still). (cant give her earrings back without finding her identity),
Also yet another plan that relies on her lying to her allies... because the show ensured she never had to actually learn from her mistreatment and isolation of the catboy.
Also this plan doenst make a single lick of sense: Marinette knows from the literal previous episode that Chrysalis knows Marinette is Ladybug. So she should know that Lila knows that if Akumanette is fighting Ladybug something must be definitionally wrong. Lila should totally know this is a trap because she knows they cant both be real.
And also: Akuma's have phased through matter before, there is no reason to believe that a barrier around the illusion allows the butterfly to interact with the illusion, it could just fly through the illusion immaterially.
And also the barrier itself is not the illusion. So the akuma entering the barrier is not the same as it entering the illusion.
And making the illusion act like its feeling (without giving it the power of feeling) doesnt impart feelings to the barrier that the akuma is actually interacting with.
And thats just top-of-head.
THAT ISNT HOW THE EMPATHY POWERS WORK. You cant crocodile-tears this shit.
Wait alya can hear the telepathy through the illusion? Im sorry but that just makes zero sense.
Ok i will admit that there is a certain potential in having Alya vent her frustrations in a fight with Marinette through a puppet of Marinette... but that only works if Marinette secretly believes the notions that Alya is espousing (to justify the use of marinettes own face to say it) and the show has spent an entire season explicitly stating that she doesnt.
Suprisingly rare case of medusa powers being treated as genuinely near-instantaneous and effective. (so many versions that rely on both sides needing direct eyecontact. Where mythologically it was either a she sees you, or you see her thing. Rather then "both see eachother"). At least you got one of my pet peeves right.
"Real friends never abandon you" (dont you see audience, if Alya were to actually call marinette out on this shit like she did in Revelator, she wouldnt be a true friend. She'd be a fake friend, a traitor.)
----
Ryuko, the waterform made sense when you were in the fountain, but air would be more subtle here.
books are burning... as if the books ever mattered. Sorry are we supposed to care about the books? We as an audience dont know what was in there, and unless you're about to claim that Lila has an eidetic memory (thereby bypassing the need for books in the first place and opening another plothole) this is more of a setbeck to Lila then it is a dramatic twist to Marinette. (Also, if the books did matter, they're easily timeheistable. Go back to when Lila was playing Wang or something, dog-tag the books. pull them out of the fire in the present. Its very hard to sell the idea of permanent destruction in a franchise where, not only does the protagonist have the power to fix anything and everything but also fucks with time unilaterally)
"Best friends all make mistakes" (as if its alya that is being truly betrayed here, and as if an entire season of gaslighting and lying is a mere "mistake")
"Lets pretend to defeat her... so i can force my critic to roleplay forgiving me so she can feel how good it is to forgive me" has to be the most disgusting manipulation Marinette has performed all season. And thats saying something. This is genuinely impressive.
Seriously, if they spent even a fifth of the effort on Lila's manipulations as they do in marinette, Lila would be a genuinely intimidating antagonist.
Also all the critics complaining that Alya ignored the pizza in the previous episode, should shut be doubly critical of Marinette ignoring the caterpillar. Cause at least that one wasnt a plan already being in action.
---
Oh so thats why Marinette asked Alya to give a reason why she would do this earlier in the episode... so she could play along with Alya's presumption of her motive because she's too weak and cowardly to admit to being too weak and cowardly.
Oh so the entirety of the "alya is gonna tell" arc is just worthless now isnt it. Alya doesnt actually force marinette to tell the truth, she doesnt actually tell Adrien on her behalf. She doesnt actually do anything besides express a mild dissapointment.
"But how is she doing it?" "I dont know" actual discussion the writers were having accidentally makes it into the episode"
And the abuser gets the kiss of comfort from her victim because dont you see its she who needs to be supported through it.
Why are you titledropping a different episode? Thats not how titledrops work.
And now she dumps him off-screen (or at least resolves to do so in S7 because we cant actually have the S finale end with anything being made solid or explicit. Cant have anything that'd be a meaningfull constraint).
After eroding his independence and destroying his ability to trust his own lived experience she resolves to dump him at some point. And the writers dont even respect enough to let her break up with him on screen because that'd risk having to write him having a reaction to being broken up with.
---
God season six really was the worst... and thats impressive given it was competing against season 5.
Made the mistake of watching the new episodes instead of studying like I should.
But holy shit, the finale was even better than I expected. And by "better" I mean "they made Marinette into more of a manipulative asshole than I would've imagined".
The way she doubled down on the manipulations when Alya confronted her about the lies? That's salt fic levels of characterization. And nobody @ me about her not being manipulative there. I can list out the exact manipulation tactics she used and even the show had Alya explicitly saying that she was trying to manipulated her bff.
Marinette going "sorry I'm not reacting in the way you want me to" to Adrien with absolutely zero self awareness was amazing. There's no quicker way to make Marinette unlikeable than having her be angry that the boyfriend she spent the entire season gaslighting was successfully gaslit into parroting everything she tried to convince him of. They way they kept emphasizing how Marinette was the one who convinced him of all those things was simply peak.
Adrien's life is straight out psychological horror at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if they have Marinette ghosting him or breaking with him over text rather than doing it face to face. Maybe she would (have someone else) hand him a letter with a three pages speech about her emotions and then at the end she would mention she's breaking up with him. That seems like the most ic option for her to do lol.
Alya: I was right earlier, wasn't I? Gabriel was Monarch.
Marinette: I never lied to you.
Alya: Technically, you didn't. You just kept the truth from me and manipulated me so you wouldn't have to answer my questions. Wow, thanks Marinette. So this is what being BFFs is like?
The show saved me the trouble of needing to argue that Marinette was manipulative in Nemesis by outright saying that she manipulated Alya to avoid answering her questions. Nice!
This means that I can skip the tedious part of making my case that Marinette isn't a perfect innocent angel and go straight to the fun part of breaking down exactly how she tried to manipulate Alya and why those tactics work.
Just to get this out of the way: no, I'm not accusing Marinette of being some heartless manipulative mastermind. Most manipulation is learned intuitively, by people noticing what works and what doesn't work in order to get them what they want.
Marinette knows those things can make Alya stop asking questions that she doesn't want to answer, so she does them. How much she actually understands what it is she's doing is debatable. She may be thinking "I can't let Alya know no matter what" and so is willing to resort to tactics she knows are manipulative, or she may be running purely on instinct without thinking too much about why those tactics work.
So lets get into it:
Alya: I know you have a secret, I know it's about Adrien and I know you don't want to tell me about it.
(...)
*Alya shows Marinette the mirage of Monarch detransforming into Gabriel Agreste*
Marinette: Why would I have done that? Why keep it a secret that Gabriel Agreste was Monarch?
Marinette's first reaction to being confronted with the accusation of lying is to double down and defend the lie by trying to poke holes in Alya's story.
This, by itself, isn't manipulation. However, it does show us where Marinette's head is at. She doesn't want Alya knowing about the lie, so she keeps trying to cover it up even after she got caught. She knows Alya isn't certain yet, that the guess she's making may be educated, but it's still a guess.
So she tries to exploit that uncertainty, sow even more doubt that this story is right. If Alya can't give a motivation or gives a wrong motivation, that would allow Marinette to point out how the story doesn't make sense and spin the entire thing as being wrong and illogical.
I would classify this as more of a debate tactic than a manipulation tactic. She's attacking the idea itself and trying to debunk it.
Unfortunately for Marinette, it doesn't work because Alya gets the motivation right.
Alya: To protect Adrien.
So Marinette switches to another tactic.
Marinette: You really think I could lie to my boyfriend like that? And to my BFF? And to the whole world?
She sounds and looks angry when she says that, which is an expression she didn't have when asking why she would've lied about Monarch. Obviously YMMV on the exact nuances of the tone (I would classify it as a mix of offended and indignant), but it's undeniably the tone of someone unjustly accused of something horrible.
And she is accused of something horrible. Alya's accusations are serious. Marinette is aware that lying about Gabriel being Monarch to Adrien, Alya and the entire world is a bad thing. So for Alya to imply such a thing about her best friend? To even consider that Marinette is such a horrible person who would be willing to do any of it?
Try to imagine for a moment accusing someone you're really close and love of being a pedophile. Not a fun experience, right? Leaving aside how half this site is so conflict avoidant that even telling someone a valid criticism to their face is something they can't do, accusing someone you love of something bad isn't easy for the accuser.
For one, there's the entire aspect of trying to reconcile the the person you love doing something horrible, which is complex and a big reason (although far from the only one) why it's unfortunately common for loved ones of abusers (who aren't being abused) to not believe victims.
But more importantly in our case, what if you're wrong? What does it say about you that you thought so lowly about the person that you were willing to consider that they could do something so horrible? Those are not the kind of things you're supposed to think about the people you care about. Many would consider it justified to reconsider whether you should actually be friends with someone who accuses you of something like that.
This is what Marinette is banking on. If Marinette was innocent, then Alya's accusations are an insulting. Alya knows Marinette, she's her best friend. Hell, she knows Marinette is a superhero! She should know better than to think that Marinette is capable of such a thing.
(If you doubt that this is the train of thought which is expected in such a situation, I recommend you go and check the reactions to Heartfixer. Quite a few people were pissed at Adrien for believing his girlfriend was cheating on him when he saw it with his own eyes. Most of their arguments boiled down to "Adrien knows Marinette and how much she loves him, he should've known better than to suspect she would be capable of such a thing.")
By acting indignant and offended, Marinette is implicitly making Alya to be the bad guy in this situation. Alya is the one doing something wrong here by thinking about Marinette so badly. She's shifting the blame, so that now Alya has to defend her actions (accusing Marinette) rather than Marinette having to defend her actions (gaslighting her boyfriend and lying to everyone).
And once Alya has to defend her action, she's implicitly accepting the premise that she's doing something wrong that needs defending in the first place. That would allow Marinette to keep pressing Alya about her being the bad guy for accusing Marinette, which would serve two purposes: 1) It derails the discussion away from Marinette's misdeed 2) If Alya is the bad guy for accusing Marinette, they could "resolve" the conflict by coming to a compromise where Marinette graciously forgives Alya for accusing her so long as Alya doesn't do it again.
This is a full-on manipulation tactic. Marinette isn't attacking the idea itself, she's exploiting human feelings and tendencies (such as the desire to not feel like the bad guy) in order to get Alya to drop the topic without Marinette ever needing to admit to anything. She's unfairly placing blame on Alya when all Alya did was try to hold her accountable. She isn't trying to defend herself, she's trying to make Alya feel bad enough that she stops asking questions.
This tactic ends up not working because instead of turning defensive, Alya is fully willing to own up to her opinion of Marinette.
Alya: Do I think Marinette Dupain-Cheng would do anything in order to protect other people even if it means ruining her own life?
Alya: Yes.
I'm going to ignore how even in this Alya is framing Marinette as someone selfless and heroic, because that has to do more with with the show's bonkers moral framing of the big lie (which is its own can of worms) rather than the actual dynamic of the conversation.
But despite the dubious way the writers went about it, this is still Alya justifying her opinion and owning up to it. She rejects Marinette's framing of Alya accusing her being a deplorable liar and instead gives her own framing which is more accurate to who Marinette is as a person but still supports Alya's accusations.
(Ignore that Marinette is a massive liar and that Alya's interpretation is far more charitable than many would agree with. As said, this is the show's weird morality at play. As far as the narrative is concerned, Marinette is a long suffering noble hero who's willing to do anything for the people she loves, even if it means getting her hands dirty. So Alya's framing is very in line with who the narrative claims Marinette is.)
We also get a zoom in on Alya's face and a sound cue to indicate to us that what Alya is saying is not trivial. This is a serious thing to admit. Yet Alya says this calmly and with conviction. There's nothing about this that Marinette can attack.
So once again she switches tactics.
Marinette: Don't you think my life is enough of a disaster as it is?
Alya: Why would you say that?
Marinette: Because clearly *starting to speak in more panicked/stressed tone, sounding on the verge of tears* everything is falling apart! I couldn't defeat Hawkmoth and get his miraculous back, so now there's this holder of the butterfly miraculous. A new Hawkmoth, who's more dangerous than ever! They even attacked me and my family!
Marinette: *starting to cry* I've never seen my parents so afraid. I'm scared too, Alya! We have to stop them, before I can't go on anymore. But we have nothing on them, we know nothing about this new butterfly miraculous holder! Whether they're a man, or a woman, or what their name is, or what they really want!
Those stresses Marinette is crying over are all very valid.
They're also utterly irrelevant to the conversation.
Like, just to put this in perspective, this is Alya asking Marinette "did you lie to me and gaslight your boyfriend?" and Marinette responding "my life is such a disaster" and starts crying.
None of the things Marinette speaks about have anything to do with the big lie. If the thing she was crying to Alya about was how hard making the decision to lie to Adrien was, or how stressful keeping it a secret had been or anything at all that's related to the big lie, I would be willing to read it as a genuine reaction that's only accidentally manipulative. That she burst under the pressure of Alya's questioning because of how stressed she is, and her tears are more an expression of her emotional turmoil rather than an attempt to fish for sympathy.
But that's not what happened.
Instead, the things she cried about was how much of a failure she is as Ladybug and how scary it was for the butterfly holder to target her personally.
Again, all things that she's genuinely very stressed about. But they're not things that the conversation reminded her of. Nor are they things that she was so preoccupied and bothered by that she was already on the verge of spilling them to anyone.
We saw her in the scene right before this conversation. The things she was preoccupied by and anxious about were the big lie and feeling like she's lying to everyone. She didn't bring up these topic even when she interacted with her parents (who were reassuring her of how supportive they were), where it would be the perfect opportunity to talk about it. If nothing else, her parents fully understand feeling scared because the new butterfly holder attacked them personally.
Marinette is choosing to bring those things up.
There are two possible reads here.
Either Marinette is just so stressed by the sheer act of Alya pressing her for answers about whether she lied or not, that she places it as equivalent to all those things she ranted about that make her life a total disaster. And so she starts crying because Alya is supposed to be her friend but here she is, adding even more stress to Marinette's life and helping ruin it.
Or she's bringing it all up with the intention of distracting Alya from pressing her about the big lie.
We don't actually have to wonder which read is correct because the show outright tells us.
Marinette: I never lied to you.
Alya: Technically, you didn't. You just kept the truth from me and manipulated me so you wouldn't have to answer my questions.
Alya is framed in this scene to be the one cutting through Marinette's bullshit and saying the truth as it is. We're supposed to see her words and actions as giving Marinette a reality check. Therefore, we're supposed to take her assessment here as a correct read of Marinette's motivations in the scene. This is further supported by how Marinette doesn't even try to deny this.
The manipulation Marinette pulls here is two fold. She hijacks the conversation with something very emotional, stuff that Alya can't simply brush aside and return to the original conversation without feeling like a jerk.
And she tries to get Alya on her side by fishing for sympathy. Can't Alya see how much her best friend is dealing with? How her life is a complete and utter disaster so she needs to be coddled and reassured to let her know she's not alone? How can Alya keep on criticizing Marinette and adding to her burdens when Marinette is already suffering so much, doesn't she have a heart?
This time, the manipulation works.
Alya may be angry at Marinette, but that's still her best friend. She cares for her. She can't stay unmoved when she sees how bad Marinette is feeling.
*Alya's expression turns sympathetic and she approaches Marinette, dispelling the mirage in the process, and lays a hand on Marinette's shoulder.*
Marinette: I've had this idea but it's very dangerous and I don't know if you'd wanna hear about it.
That's a very manipulative line. Marinette is implying that Alya wouldn't want to hear about Marinette's idea to stop the butterfly holder because Alya is angry at Marinette.
She's creating this false association where "being angry at Marinette" = "putting Paris in danger", and "helping save Paris" = "being on Marinette's side and not questioning her about the big lie".
If Alya continues pushing now, she would be doing it at the expanse of catching the butterfly holder.
Alya: If it can help save Paris, of course I wanna know.
But Marinette knows Alya would never do that. She's a hero, so she would pick helping Paris over questioning Marinette. That's the exact thing Marinette is counting on.
The entire thing is textbook DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender), which is a classic manipulation technique that often comes out in response to being held accountable.
Marinette started out by trying to deny this was possible. Then she attacked Alya by implicitly placing her as the bad guy for accusing Marinette of horrible things. Finally she hijacked the conversation by painting herself as the real victim in all of this because her life is just such a disaster, you see.
And it worked. She did manage to get Alya to drop the topic and instead go and comfort Marinette. She got exactly what she wanted out of all of this.
For the short term, at least. But Marinette tends to only think about solving the immediate problem in front of her without ever thinking about the consequences beyond that. See: Her being upset that the boyfriend she gaslighted the entire season to think positively about Gabriel now thinks positively about Gabriel.
This wasn't just predictable, this was the outcome she was actively working towards. Marinette just never stopped to consider what achieving this outcome would actually be like.
And she didn't stop to consider that just because she got Alya to drop the topic now doesn't mean she was going to drop it forever.
I actually can't get over how they have alya frame the lie when in sadnansi, the episode nemesis is directly paying off, and heartfixer we are told explicitly by marinette that she can't handle adrien breaking up with her and that's why she's lying.
The reason alya gave is STILL BAD, but it looks like they're retconning the even worse reasoning they gave. Why can these writers Never. Own. Their. Shit??? You wrote that!! You wrote that she didn't want him to break up with her, and that that is why she doubled down on the lie after he told her it was hurting him. Just own it!! Don't rewrite history!! The episodes weren't that long ago (shocking considering this show's release schedule)!! I can double check your shit!! Own how you wrote your hero!!
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The real loss from this episode is that Alya is now officially complict in the Big Lie.
Sorry babe, I can't defend you on that one. Knowing and not telling Adrien a secret of this magnitude isn't morally neutral. Especially if she isn't doing anything to try and convince Marinette to come clean (which at this point she doesn't seem to).
She's not quite as bad as Felix, Kagami and Amelie in regards to the big lie, but that's only because she isn't aware of the senti secret.
I feel like Adrien is overcompensating with the whole museum thing because why was he ranting for so long and you even see him visibly shut down whenever Plagg or Marinette tried to dispute him —- and then there’s his room looking vastly empty as it did in the beginning and his wrinkled shirt
You've put more thought into it the the writers did anon lol
The scene isn't there because it makes sense for Adrien's character. The scene is there to show what a great sacrifice Marinette is making for the sake of Adrien's happiness.
The museum is the plot device they use to show that Adrien now genuinely admires and thinks positively of Gabriel. One that they can use to make all the references they need to remind the audience of Marinette's actions from the entire season that caused Adrien to be like this.
They really hammered home how it's all due to her. And they made a point that Adrien is happy to think of Gabriel this way and that he feels ready to move on now due to Marinette's actions, by making him outright say so.
At the same time, they made sure the audience sees the sheer emotional toll the big lie is taking on Marinette. To the point she couldn't hold it any longer and simply had to rant about how awful Gabriel is.
It's actually competent writing, at least as far as technical writing goes. It's a very efficient way to show the audience everything they need to know about the big lie in order to understand the stakes of the Alya and Marinette conflict.
It briefly recaps the important plot events. It establishes that the lie is there to maintain Adrien's happiness and that it's a massive sacrifice on Marinette's part. And it does it all in less than two minutes. That's genuinely skilled writing. Personally, I would deduct points for how on the nose the dialogue is, but since it's a kid's show that's actually the kind of dialogue they should be aiming for.
Of course, that skilled technical writing is used to convey some bonkers character, plot and thematic writing that brings it all down and treats Adrien as a reward and motivation for Marinette rather than his own character.
