On Ladybug salt forĀ ānot treating Chat rightā
You know, I wonderā¦ sometimes I see Marinette salted for not appreciating Chat enough and sometimes for belittling him (mostly on reddit. Tumblr and AO3 tend to go waaaaay far in the other direction). And she does sometimes tease him or throw a bit of banter his direction that I can see being interpreted that way. Though I donāt think he takes that to heart quite as much as some of Marinetteās salters do. (See the same thing happen when it comes to Alyaās salters salting her for ribbing Marinette. Marinette can dish it too, she just tends to do it more with Chat on-screen than with Alya.)
Chat definitely has some major insecurities, showcased especially prominently in Syren, when heās feeling like Ladybug doesnāt trust him and doesnāt need him, and that no one would know or care if he was gone. It also rears up a few other times a bit less prominently, like in Anansi when heās afraid that Ladybug will replace him with Carapace, Sandboy when itās revealed that one of his greatest fears is that Ladybug has never cared about him and would like to get rid of him, Reflekdoll with how after he struggles and fails to come up with a workable plan for the Lucky Charm himself he believes that he could never measure up to her, never do what she does, and in Desperada he believes that she doesnāt need him as Chat Noirā¦ admittedly because she told him as much.
I donāt think Marinette realizes how much these things actually affect Chat. Even in Glaciator, she didnāt realize that heād been serious about his feelings the whole time. She does try to comfort him in individual circumstances when she notices him feeling down - In Anansi she tells him that heās irreplaceable after he seems put out about Carapace, and in Desperada in a later timeline, she tells Viperion how important it is that Chat Noir is with them while heās in earshot. In Syren she noticed that Chat had been feeling like he was being shoved aside and being treated as lesser because he wasnāt permitted to know what was going on, and in Sandboy she asked him whether he really thought she was as evil as his nightmare of her was.
But she doesnāt seem to realize the full extent of how deep these feelings run. She throws out a line or two comforting him when she notices heās feeling down, but then he seems to perk back up and get back to business, so she thinks everythingās fine.Ā
Chat has a tendency to express his feelings more bluntly than Marinette does, but he also tends to cover them up more afterwards - or tries to at least. So she thinks that itās taken care of, for the most part. Even when there are some MAJOR red flags, like Chatās nightmare version of her hating him, having ALWAYS hated him, and wanting to destroy him. she doesnāt seem to understand what it really represents.
Ladybug: Cat Noir? You donāt really think Iām as evil as your nightmare, do you?
Cat Noir: āCourse I donāt. Youāre the lady of my dreams. (Ladybug smiles to the spot where Cat Noir had disappeared)
She sees him as thinking sheās evil, but thatās not the case. Heās insecure about whether she really cares about him, and whether deep down sheād rather have someone else as her partner, and merely tolerates him because heās there.Ā
But Marinette doesnāt GET that. And I think I can see why. Thatās a relatable, realistic insecurity, but not one that she can easily imagine him having becauseā¦ well, itās just not true. She KNOWS itās not true. Itās easier to think that he had a nightmare of her being evil because of how insanely absurd that thought is, and because that plays into her own insecurities of thinking sheās done things so terribly wrong that sheās come off that way.Ā
The more realistic, smaller-scale insecurities that Chat actually suffers from? Thatās harder for her to imagine. I think partly BECAUSE she suffers from her own, similar insecurities about not being good enough and messing up and having the people she care about hate herā¦ but she doesnāt react the way Chat does. When sheās deeply insecure about that and feeling very anxious, she comes up with wild scenarios that spiral out of control and verges on having anxiety attacks, and doesnāt calm down easily unless either some solution is presented or someone takes her by the shoulders and calmly, reassuringly tells her that sheās got this, theyāve got this, that things will work out, that sheās not alone. Her anxiety is more obvious and it takes more to (seemingly) calm her down from it.
Chatās anxiety is more subtle. It tends to manifest as seeming more slightly grumpy and put out, rather than the full-blown anxiety attacks that she suffers from, and he tends to direct his hurt outwards towards others (though pretty mildly, considering matters), while she directs her hurt inwards at herself, sending herself deeper into a spiral unless someoneās there to break her out of it.
Because they manifest so differently, she doesnāt recognize that theyāre similar sorts of hurt, and that Chat would benefit from more frequent and in-depth conversations and reassurances. She only really knows her own type of reaction to those feelings of inferiority and uselessness, so Chatās displays fly under her radar.
Honestly, this is part of why I like to emphasize just how YOUNG these children really are. They both have very limited frames of reference (Adrien especially), so they both can miss out on what others are thinking and feeling, especially when they react differently to similar thoughts and feelings. Combine that with neither of them having fully developed emotional control or coping mechanisms, and they can sometimes hurt each other without intending to. Theyāre kids, theyāre going to be inexperienced and immature at times.
But they love and care about each other, and if either of them realized the full pain (and the reason for that pain) that the other was going through, theyād try to help as best they could.Ā
