since this is a safe space to call out the show can fans please stop defending marinette stalking and her almost kissing adrien without his consent. If the show grappled this topic in a mature way thomas would actually have the respect he thinks he is owed also them not addrssing felix and what he did in that episode is something. like he could have been a great foe who could make marinette feel uneasy and throw her off of her game
...I don't remember if and where any of my old posts about this whole deal are, so might as well give everything another go.
I do agree that there is a problem in the show regarding the use of sexual assault/harassment for the purposes of either gags, drama, or in one particular case a hackneyed moral. Marinette tends to get the most of the focus when people bring this up, primarily because the instances with her are the most repetitive (though Chat Noir is a close second if not matched) but I would say Félix, Kagami, Lila and Chloé all have instances within the show where they exhibit behavior that isn't promptly addressed. The closest we get to such a thing are Glaciator 2 (with Chat Noir) and Félix's "don't kiss girls without their consent" dunking in his debut episode, and I think it's worth considering that both of them in this case are boys who have disregarded girls' (or, well, Maribug's) boundaries.
Despite this, it's.... ehhhhhh... complicated.
Marinette and Chat Noir's "bad behaviors" vs Episodic Trait Reinforcement
Chat's flirting and Marinette's stalking (and any similar behaviors towards their crushes) are not treated equally by the fandom, but at least when analyzing how the show uses them we should think of them as such. In early seasons, these were gags that served a very clear purpose: They helped establish and re-establish each episode who liked whom. Somewhere out there is a really good post that takes the example of Marinette knowing Adrien's schedule and says that, as far as the show's meta in concerned, this is the first and last time it happens, and I would be inclined to agree! Because the early seasons were meant to be so episodic, and thus watchable in any order, every single conversation or plot beat that matched up with the formula essentially had to be written to work in isolation. It's only after the show began to get ambitious and serialize itself a bit more that stuff like Chat's insistent flirting and Marinette's fangirl behavior (things that happened to reinforce that Chat is a flirt and Marinette is a fangirl) started to read more like a pattern of behavior they refused to grow out of. All that to say, I don't see it as purely character problems anymore, but symptoms of larger writing oversights.
It's also worth mentioning, if we analyze Marinette and Chat's behavior as gags, that the implicit punchlines are very different. Marinette is a fangirl who knows Adrien's schedule and makes gifts for all of his birthdays because she is meant to come off as a crazy, boy-obsessed teenage girl. Chat Noir is a flirt who keeps trying to earn Ladybug's affections because he's a guy and guys are pushy and don't know how to say no. Both of these punchlines are pretty fucking sexist, though based on how each of them are handled and Chat Noir getting a lot more grace in "having so much love in his heart", I think Marinette's is worse.
The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to consider Glaciator 2 and Derision as parallels in the way they try to explain away soured gags. Not only do I think the previous gags are all written to work in isolation, but I'd even go so far as to say that when the characters' respective gags are invoked, their motives or their reasons for loving the other don't actually matter. Chat's crush on Ladybug and Marinette's crush on Adrien are trivialized for the sake of the joke, really. Guess that could be another reason why I never got the hype...
So... why is it that people care, anyway?
I think trying to analyze additional reasons for why Marinette's "stalking problem" is so jarring to people (within the show itself, rather than asking fans or salters) is equally important in looking at this whole mess. I am not of the mind that anything Marinette does fangirl-wise is something we need to worry about little girls replicating, because of how obviously the instances are there to make you cringe at Marinette. Rather, what people are trying to voice with this complaint is that Marinette's behavior never gets challenged in-show, and I think one of the reasons people care so much about that is because Adrien is a celebrity.
Simply put, Adrinette is extremely underdeveloped, and Marinette's crush on him in early seasons comes off as extremely parasocial.
Marinette: (holding the magazine in front of her) Oh, he's such a—
Alya: Smartie, hottie, suavísimo, yummy-tastic spellbinder!
Marinette: All of the above. (bumps into Nino) Huh?
- Animan, S1E13
Just as a quick example, this is a pretty telling character moment and a setup to an eventual gag about Adrien coming across Marinette with the magazine. It all reads, to me at least, that the point of the joke is that Marinette is really silly for gushing with her friend about her celebrity crush only for him to be within earshot. We've got the comedic irony idea, and we've got the setup for that with Marinette thinking he's attractive, but...
Well, you know how Origins breaks from this idea so hard that Marinette barely even knows who Adrien is? And coincidentally the umbrella scene from Origins was such an impactful emotional moment that people still won't shut up about it to this day?
I'm starting to feel like the angling of Marinette's shallow, parasocial crush on her friend for the sake of making fun of her... doesn't translate very well into a developed romance. But now I'm getting off-track.
All this to say, my theory is that because Adrien's fame is an implicit notion in the show but not clearly defined, and Marinette's moments of liking Adrien beyond the persona set up for him are very rare, the audience is inclined to see her behavior as a parasocial infringing on Adrien's boundaries and thus takes it much more seriously despite it being arguably much more ridiculous and Looney Tunes than, say, the common occurrence of having a coworker who won't stop hitting on you. To say this is the only factor would be an obvious lie, I know. However, I might be running out of everyones' attentions spans soon and I need to talk about:
Félix's Whole Deal and the Actual Assault
Does anybody think that the idea that, in Puppeteer 2, since Marinette wouldn't have touched Adrien and tried to kiss him if she knew he wasn't a statue and Adrien also didn't inherently consent to Marinette doing any of that by staying still... neither of them consented in that moment? Hm. That'll be something to chew on, I guess. Such a bizarre fucking episode....
My official stance on Félix ignoring Marinette's boundaries in that moment was that it should never have been written at all. It was a blatant case of the writers trying to inject their episode with a progressive moral without caring to put any actual effort into it, and given the way the rest of the show invokes similar boundary-pushing instances as jokes it can even feel hypocritical of them to only draw the line when it's time for Maribug to turn to the camera for 5 seconds to say that no means no.
But it being a half-assed moral puts it on the level of Chloé's racism in Kung Food. They half-assed it because it was needed for shock value more than anything. Am I... obligated to legitimize their half-assed shock value as a genuine Aesop? Yes? No? Yes in the sense of it being a character trait but No in the sense of the show tackling the issue?
I don't think that Félix will ever be made to apologize for what he did, because—to bring it back to my old-ass point about the gags—so much of this show is written for the purpose of viewing episodes in isolation and furthermore the writers will just drop things they don't want to bother with anymore rather than resolve them. It probably is that deep, but it's also unfortunately a lost cause. It's similar to how everything Félix stood for as an antagonist and a unique personality in the ensemble lineup has been dropped and wanting it back is a lost cause. We're not the writers, and they obviously don't listen to us. Once we've made our own stances clear to each other, what else is there to do?
Fandomwank Playgrounds and Letting Characters Suck
I get the impression that you might have no idea who I am, Startraits. (I say this without any scorn, no offense xD.) One of my most popular works portrays Marinette as a fangirl and a stalker, and in addition to this that same work goes out of its way to portray just about every character in the worst light they possibly could be. The third most important work of mine divorced from any TWEoS-related adventures has Félix as a central character and he oversteps other peoples' boundaries pretty blatantly in that work itself—Everyone in there is also a deeply flawed individual. I prefer deeply flawed characters and also prefer to "yes and" the show's litany of writing mishaps whenever I find it possible.
I think you have a point that these topics could be fine if they were handled maturely, or handled if someone else was running the show. But I bring my own work up to say that it's all extremely tonally different from Miraculous, and just because I've found a way to make it work here does not mean I think the show itself is written well enough to make it work there. It is fun and I admit I don't think I would feel this encouraged to make what I do if these problems weren't part of the fabric of Miraculous, but I also think it's wrong to say that Miraculous could have ever handled these topics appropriately. I don't have that level of faith in them, and I'd be lying if I said I ever did.
...Does all of this make sense? Should I post a manifesto on Miracupessimism?
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