oh my god okay back from the dead (lurking and neglecting to post) because i have some Thoughts about that episode! and some of you probably know that when i have thoughts there tends to be a lot of them so strap yourselves the hell in because i am still Coping with how mean that episode was and these thoughts are probably going to be half coherent at best. anyway thats not what i want to talk about! spoilers for heartfixer under the cut
okay so first off can we talk about how well (i personally think) she works as a design? she's definitely one of the simpler ones, but sometimes simplicity works best, you know? and besides, mari has had plenty of designs — some complicated and others not — with all the miraculous fusing and swapping and whatnot, so i think something simpler was in order. and i think the design does well in communicating some things that are going on with marinette at the moment.
firstly, she's shiny. her form is made of a reflective material; likely a metal. it's the first thing that really comes to mind. to me it's symbolic of a few things.
one: marinette is constantly trying to deflect questions surrounding her weird behaviour, including weird behaviour about the secret she's hiding from adrien. metal redirects light the same way marinette redirects everyone's concerns when she starts acting off.
two: there is a big, hard, shell of lies that marinette is building around herself. she's almost walling herself off from her friends, and so far, while the wall is proving strong, there are little cracks in it.
while yes, obviously marinette is broken hearted, believing that she and adrien are over, the cracks aren't actually in the heart on her chest as one may imagine given what the phrase implies. to me, it reads as though the things in marinette's heart are breaking down her walls; the secret is starting to slip. and she was thinking about telling adrien earlier in the episode, so we know she's struggling lots by now. additionally i'd like to point out that the heart and cracks are the same colour as her eyes. all she sees is the truth, what she's hiding, but the rest of the world only sees the little bits, they don't have the full truth yet.
next i want to point out her hair. while the style itself didn't change (except for the droopier bangs), there's barbed wires around her pigtails, and while it may sound silly, i think its at least a little bit meaningful.
i don't know about you guys, but when i think of marinette, my first thought is those pigtails. i can't think of many other teenage girl characters that have double pigtails of any style, and additionally, the twintails idea is a consistent choice in a LOT of marinette's hero designs (in fact, i don't think a single of marinette's s6 hero designs have NOT had pigtails, and twelve of the fifteen pre-s6 designs also had either two pigtails or two buns going on). but they've gone and covered heartfixer's in barbed wire. why? well, cause it's cool, probably, but i think its because she's losing parts of herself between all the stress she's undergoing, and sort of putting them away where no one can touch them; behind barbed wire. she used to be strong-willed enough to fight back against akumas, but now she's getting akumatised? she used to be more against lying, and now every waking day is just another lie and another lie and another lie in order to scrape by? she used to be able to talk freely to the people she loves, but now every conversation is a struggle to say the right thing and be the best person she can be? she's losing it guys.
last thing in terms of her design: this little heart on the little barbed wire string.
it's another metaphor about all the things she's hiding, keeping in her own heart for no one else to find out. the fact that it's wrapped in barbed wire to me says that again, marinette doesn't want people to find out what she's hiding. i mean, duh, would you want everyone to find out you lied about the most famous fashion designer in paris? along with all the other bullshit? probably not. but the fact that it's also a weapon really packs in the idea of "the truth hurts". marinette knows what's in her heart, what she's been hiding, and she knows it'll hurt when she tells adrien. and it's an active weapon too; the has to target adrien. it isn't something like creating an orb of chaos that targets anyone in it's way, it's direct. it was intended to hit adrien, just like the truth directly involves adrien.
i also want to touch on chat blanc, since i've skimmed a few posts that did so and i want to give my own two cents. because who says i cant.
the contrast between them is a little insane. i mean, where do i begin? first and foremost, chat blanc destroyed pretty much the whole world, and the moon, and also threatens to destroy the whole universe, whereas heartfixer destroys absolutely no one and nothing, and even asks chrysalis if what happens will hurt anyone. chat blanc didn't really have the option on this either, whereas technically heartfixer would have. it's unclear as to whether the power she had would have only worked on adrien (though i assume not), but she very well could have gone out and shot more people with it.
on that note, chat blanc had a very wide ranged power, obviously. the moon, the whole world, you get the idea. heartfixer's power however was shown to be limited only to the single shot fired.
in terms of colour scheme, white is quite a vulnerable one. it's the colour you tend to see at weddings — especially if you're the wife in the white wedding dress or if you have a big white wedding cake — and it's vulnerable to staining as well. chat blanc was created because of vulnerability; after all, you usually have to be vulnerable with someone to start dating. his mother was also a very vulnarable spot on his heart, so while obviously white is just the opposite of black, white makes sense to me for his colour scheme. on the other hand, purple is often paired with villains and royalty, both of which tend to be fairly secretive occupations. and i think we all know what there is to be said regarding marinette and secrets hmmmmmm...
the first two points sort of have heartfixer and chat blanc reflecting each other. marinette is at this point willing to sacrifice a WHOLE lot for adrien's happiness. maybe not the whole world, chat is one to exaggerate both akumatised and not akumatised, but she's willing to sacrifice a lot. adrien on the other hand is known to only sacrifice one person. himself. in terms of power, think of their regular miraculous. they both kept their power schemes — chat blanc was still destructive and heartfixer was still creating (or rather recreating) something (love) — but they swapped scales. chat noir's power as a baseline only destroys one thing that he touches, while ladybug's can create anything, and also fix everything. they get flipped when akumatised though; chat blanc clearly had the power to destroy everything, while heartfixer could only (re)create one thing: love.
i've seen mixed opinions on this episode, but all things considered, i think heartfixer works. i like the little symbolic things you can pull out of her design, and im sure there's probably at least one thing i missed or didn't consider. its late and im going a little crazy to be honest with you. but the episode was good, had fun crying in bed (not completely serious) about how mean they were to adrien, and now i have even more reason to want that evil gaggle of gays gone.
