Azula and Ozai always laughed when the possibility of the banished Prince Zuko staging a coup was raised. Zuko was popular in the military (both for his rumored defense of them and General Iroh’s perceived support) but he didn’t have the gumption to use it. The very idea was funny. Her weak brother would never act against them. That’s what Azula was laughing at. She thought that was what Ozai had been laughing at too.
Until the day the topic was raised without Azula in the room. She’d learned the strategic benefits of eavesdropping long ago and was engaged in it when a nervous general mentioned that there had been rumors that Zuko might try to strike an alliance with the Earth Kingdom in a play for the throne. Ozai laughed, but Azula wasn’t expecting what came next.
“My son will never risk the safety of my hostage by acting against me.” A hostage. Was their mother still alive after all? If so, they should leverage her. Zuko had skills and an excuse to travel the world. He would be a valuable agent if they directed him to gather information. “I’ve made it clear what will happen to his sister if he rebels.” Azula froze. She could suddenly hear her brother’s screaming and smell his burning flesh. But- but Father wouldn’t do that to her. She was perfect. She was strong and ruthless and loyal-
“I am your loyal son.”
Azula swallowed. As soon as she was able, she slipped away. She numbly made her way to her room, perfect facade in place. She closed her door and went to her desk.
She burned every letter from her brother without reading it. But one had arrived a few days before that she hadn’t disposed of yet. She melted the the wax seal away and unrolled it. Bland, banal words… boring. Things that wouldn’t attract attention. But underneath… He inquired after her health, asked about injuries, and her wellbeing.
Three times he showed that he was afraid for her.
She apparently had a standing invitation to study with his old swordsmaster. An invitation that he tried to make more enticing with vague challenges to master blades faster than he had. Just take a little time away from the palace. Azula lowered the scroll slowly.
She was a hostage. Her father was threatening her to control her brother.
The scroll, a desperate attempt to determine her wellbeing and get her to a safe place, caught fire.
The next time Azula heard the possibility of a coup, she still laughed. Her father’s tactics wouldn’t work on her. He had sent the only person who he could use as a hostage out of his own reach. A coup was brewing and there was nothing Fire Lord Ozai could do to stop it.
Fire Lord Ozai had made his daughter into many things. A complacent hostage was not one of them.
———————————————————————————————
@ljf613 Happy birthday! I only had one thing on hand that I thought would be a good birthday present for you. So I pulled it out and typed it up real quick. I hope you like it.
Humanity has finally reached the stars and found out why no one had contacted us. The universe is in a sad state. As such, Doctors without Borders, Red Cross, and many othe charities go intergalactic.
The thing the recruiters don’t tell you about space battles is that you die slowly.
Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks. Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that? In the computer core, or the communications hub? You just lose power. And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.
If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.
It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost. Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.
Most fleets give you something, of course. For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass. I looked at the vial.
“It’s too soon,” Traav said.
Kvala gestured negation, shakily. She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now. Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive. “You know we’re losing the war.”
They couldn’t deny that. “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”
“Doesn’t it? The Chreee have better technology. Better resources. And they have their warrior code. They don’t care if they die.”
“We can’t give up!” Traav protested. They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told. “Any heartbeat now—”
There was a clunk. Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.
“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.
Kvala exchanged glances with me. The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors. What was the point, after all?
The Aushkune did.
There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here. They were supposed to hide in nebulas.
But if there were—
If there were, we were too late. The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—
Footsteps.
Bipedal. The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.
And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it. My first thought was, robot? That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . . But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.
Who wore suits?
“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala. “Urgent treatment. Evacuation.”
“Who are you?” Kvala struggled upright.
Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners. “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain. Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.
“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?” Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.
“Not Chreee,” the sound system said. “You Man. Soil Starship Nichols.” The being hesitated. “Rescue Chreee as well. On ship. Will separate.”
“You what?” I said faintly. Who would do that?
“Oath,” the being explained.
“What kind of oath? To what deity?”
The shoulders of the being moved up and down. “Several different. Also none. For me, none. Just—oath.”
I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was. I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.
The being scanned me. “Have water,” it said. “Recommend.”
Raithari have fast metabolisms. I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.
“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”
“Raithari to Raithar. Chreee to Chreeeholm.”
“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.
The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad. Sometimes lie.”
We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?
“And you—what?” I asked. “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”
The being seemed to consider this. “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.
Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense. Did it worship soil? But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .
Madness.
On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it. So why not embrace madness and see what happened?
“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.
AU where people’s kill counts are displayed above their heads! this is inspired by this post and the short convo i had with @hamsternamedmarinette in the tags
thank you ao3 for being an archive and not an algorithm. thank you for letting me like things without consequences, thank you for being free with no ads, thank you for having lawyers to defend our freedom of speech. thank you tag wranglers. thank you to all authors and thank you ao3
A loooooot of people asked me to continue it, and while I usually dislike drawing things just because people ask, I did already have an idea for a part 3 in mind, plus I felt kinda bad leaving it off at a cliffhanger lol
so I had the idea that Marinette somehow finds out about Emilie and struggles with how to break the news to Adrien... this is set pre-reveal for maximum miscommunication
I need Clarisse to end up as a lawyer. It'll make no sense to anyone except those who really knows her. Because imagine with me. You're the opposing lawyer in the case. It's her first big case like this you're confident that you'll be able to prove the defendant guilty. Then you see the defense attorney and have a moment of absolute confusion.
A built, scarred, and TALL woman in an absolutely perfect suit holding a briefcase. Is...is this the defense attorney?!?!?! She looks like she should be a wrestler not a lawyer! And then she goes and absolutely slams your case making you feel like you just got out of law school. And when you go up and ask her for her information because holy moly she's gonna be a force to be reckoned with. You get her business card and..
"Clarisse La Rue
When the courts are a battlefield you'll need a good defense."
With a logo of a spear, shield, and the number 5? Yeah she's gonna go far, best keep out of her way.
I need like 30 chapters of a fanfic that's just the pov of some Mortal law partner she has who gets to meet the increasingly Weird Freaks(Demigods and the occasional God)™ that come by or she calls in for a favor.
They get some Ace Attorney-ass case about a killer whale and Clarisse is like "Good news, I know a guy who can help figure out what happened from the pov of the killer whale. Bad news, I have to figure out how to get his testimony in court."
And okay law partner meets the guy and. Sure he looks like a skater boy and they wanna say see ya later boy. Sure he keeps talking about 'The Orca said-" as if he could talk to the creature. Sure something in his eyes tells you that he could take your boss in a fight and probably has. But they just claim he's a marine biologist and hey they get through the case!
Then they land another case where it's the same thing but with a horse and Clarisse once again sighs like "I know a guy" and she brings in THE SAME FUCKING GUY.
Ugh my boss is super obsessed with the hero and defeating him by his own hand and idk I just worry that it's a bit... one-sided? Like I don't even think the hero lies awake at night dreaming about defeating Boss. I could be wrong though it's just a vibe.
Boss went to all the trouble of setting up a showdown in the Hills of Despair over the tomb of the hero's dead mother and the hero didn't even turn up.
I figured that'd be a turning point but no Boss is just like "no no he has a point this was moving too fast I should have set the dual up in front of the sacred temple instead" like damn man. Have some self-respect! You're an A-tier evil wizard!
There's that hot blond elf paladin who keeps coming by the purge the undead, that valiant warrior princess who has sworn to bring about the end of all evil magic, the bumbling dwarven minstrel with the lush beard who is actually really competent somehow...
"Maybe if I team up with him to defeat the King of Destruction he'll understand that only my dark powers are a match for his blade of light" sure Boss. Whatever happens me and the other hench goblins got your back, yeah?
Starting to think this hero must have lowkey hypnotic powers that just make people obsessed with him. World's most standard looking human dude with a magic sword and somehow he's got solid 10's schlepping his luggage and cooking his meals and bridal carrying him up to the King of Destruction's castle just so he can get the last stab in.
"You're right. It's storytelling. And this church, it's not medieval. We're in New York. It's neo-Gothic 19th century. It has more in common with Disneyland than Notre Dame. And the rites and rituals and costumes, all of it."
WAKE UP DEAD MAN (2025)
dir. Rian Johnson
I think the most hilarious place to put Post-Canon Sokka would have been the university at Ba Sing Se. I think he would have made a great unhinged professor. Also, in true Sokka fashion, he should have completely dodged fame. Momo is more famous than he is.
He wants to demonstrate to the class how this thing called electricity works, so he's going to be bringing in a Firebender, so everybody be cool, we're all friends here... and in walks Princess Azula of the Fire Nation. One-time conqueror of the city. One of the students is currently writing an essay on how her brief rule of the city affected fruit trade. She says she considers the class to still be her subjects as she doesn't acknowledge any pretenders to any of her thrones, but for now you're exempted from bowing and "Your Highness" will do. It's a really interesting lecture.
"Okay, guys - hey, listen up, everyone - I won't be here next week, me and Aang are going to-" yeah right, sure, Professor Sokka knows the Avatar. Except, of course, the Avatar walks in sheepishly and says that Appa might have gotten into Sokka's hybrid crops, and then you all have to sit there and watch your professor chase the Avatar around with a sword.
One postgrad student is specializing in Water Tribe Cultures. She's currently studying the massive cultural shift that happened in the Northern Water Tribe at the end of the war - oh, and Professor, I absolutely know that you're from the Southern Water Tribe, but it's just that the shift started with Master Katara, and of course I don't think that every person from the South knows one another haha it's just that I need to ask her some questions and I thought maybe you could help me write a letter or write a letter of introduction or...
Sokka looks at her blankly and goes "yeah, she's my sister. KATARA!" which is followed by a faint answering "fuck you!" from Somewhere and to the horror/elation of our postgrad, Master Katara bursts in and is promptly beaned in the head with a rock by Professor Sokka. Her brother. her hero and her professor are siblings and currently brawling on the floor.
Sokka does not teach or study history, but he does sometimes sit in on lectures about recent history. Whenever he does, several doctoral students flock in to sit near him (even if it's an intro course) so that they can eavesdrop on his grumbling. (No matter how they try, an "overheard utterance" is not a valid source according to their professors. No, we have no sources on the Avatar's bison taking part in combat - sky bison are not war animals and...)
He gets regular deliveries with the Beifong family crest on them, and he goes "sweet, Toph must have found some new minerals" and at this point nobody needs to ask which Toph. He seems to have friends everywhere, literally everywhere. Wang was headed out to this massive swamp to study if it's one big organism, and Sokka told him to find some guy named Hue and "don't mind the loincloth." One time the university gets shut down because the Earth King wants to visit. Oh, visit the University? What an honor- Of fucking course not, he wants to visit Professor Sokka, who yells at him and his royal guards for interrupting his day. The Earth King and his many, many royal guards then sheepishly say sorry and file out.
The last straw is when - not a week after he yelled at the Earth King - the assistant head of the Political Science dept walks in to the faculty lounge to find Sokka having tea with a nice normal man dressed in Earth greens for once, and can't resist a little joke. "Let me guess, you're having tea with the Fire Lord." And then she can instantly tell that she fucked up, because both of them go stock still.
So when the two men awkwardly stand up and proceed to introduce the Fire Lord whose portrait she has in her office because she is the assistant head of Political Science as Li, a server at the Jasmine Dragon, she just says "hello Li" and leaves to find a bottle of something strong.
Do you think that both Marinette and Adrien both have anxious attachment?
Both fit the criteria for an anxious-preoccupied attachment style, which is unsurprising. Adrien's family needs no explanation, and the clash between Tom and Sabine's coddling parenting and Marinette's experiences at school would leave any kid adrift and wondering what the hell they're supposed to do.
I've thought waaaay too much about Adrien and Marinette's attachment styles. Apologizes for the infodump ahead of time.
Panda is right that Adrien is a slam dunk for anxious-preoccupied attachment. There's really not much to debate there.
However, Marinette does not have that attachment. While she does show some of the behaviours associated with it, they don't cover a lot of her other behaviours in relationships.
There's also the problem of mismatched root cause. Anxious preoccupied attachment is caused by inconsistent care giving at early ages (as in, first couple of years). It can also develop from a caregiver who's overbearing, has poor boundaries and/or seeks physical and emotional closeness with the baby to fulfill their own emotional needs while neglecting the baby's own.
This cases the baby to develop a mental working model of relationship with a positive regard for others ("people are okay") and a negative regard for the self ("I'm not okay").
It's incredibly obvious to see how all that applies to Adrien.
Marinette is a lot harder to nail down in that regard. Her parents don't fit the description of inconsistent parenting (and school isn't relevant when talking about attachment in this context as it both comes too late in the timeline and attachment is formed with the main caretakers) unless there were some outstanding circumstances soon after Marinette was born the show didn't tell us about. Although even that would be pretty iffy since secure attachment can still form
Her mental model of relationship is also super tricky. The attachment mental models can be simplified to two assessments, is there a positive or negative regards to others ("are people okay/not okay") and is there a positive or negative regard to the self ("am I okay/not okay?"). It basically looks like this:
Marinette's self esteem fluctuates wildly based on the last thing she heard. If it was praise or reassurance it's rather high, but if it was a criticism or rejection (including ones she herself imagines) it can be very low. Ultimately I would classify it as negative because even the positives manifestations are very conditional on her seeing herself as flawless, since any perceived flaw would send her spiraling to low self esteem.
Her perception of others logically seems like it should be positive, considering she was raised by a loving family, but as I said in my character analysis of her, she has a strong underlying distrust towards others. She regularly thinks people are going to turn on her on a dime for the slightest mistake. Although, like with her self esteem, it's not really a stable distrust, but rather one that fluctuates wildly and changes by the hour.
The negative regard for both the self and others would logically land her in the disorganized-fearful attachment style.
Now, when I reached that conclusion I still didn't know that much about disorganized attachment, since it's the least talked about during basic psych classes. Most of the discussion I heard on the topic was about the organized attachments as they're easier to talk about, considering they're consistent patterns of behviours (hence them being organized vs the disorganized attachment).
So I did some reading and what I found out was very interesting.
Because it turns out that some of the common behaviours in disorganized attachment are: having an unstable sense of self, having an inconsistent view of others, inconsistent behaviour (both seeking intimacy and fearing it), difficulty regulating emotions, difficulty with boundaries, sensitivity to perceived rejection and difficulty with self reflection.
Sounds familiar?
The root cause is the caretaker being a source of fear, which leaves the baby with some very confused feelings. They want to avoid the source of fear to keep safe, but at that age keeping safe means going back to the safe haven of the caretaker, except the caretaker is the source of fear.
Initially that seemed very off to me, considering that a lot of sources say it's the result of abusive caretakers and the caretaker scaring the child. However, further reading revealed that's not the case. Not all abused children develop disorganized attachment and not all those with disorganized attachment were abused.
More importantly, the caretaker can be a source of fear not only if they're frightening but if they're frightened. If the parent brings their own distress into the relationship with the baby, that can cause it as well (for example, there's a study that shows a baby is more likely to develop disorganized attachment if the mother lost a previous child).
Children learn how they should feel and react to things by copying the behaviour that's modeled for them. So if, say, a parent is very stressed out and panics every time the baby cries or something small happens to them, acting like it's the worst thing ever and needs to be immediately repaired, that would teach the baby that they should be scared. And if they're already crying because someone frightened them and they want the safety of the caretaker, then the caretaker panicking would make their fear even worse.
Aka, we're back to Marinette's parents being anxious to protect her from everything, to the point where even discomfort registers as harm, being the source of everything wrong with her.
Disorganized attachment is the result of that push and pull between wanting the caretaker for safety but also wanting to get away from them because they're the source of fear.
When older, this leads to the person having a lot of contradictory intentions and behviours in regards to relationship. They want closeness and intimacy but they're scared of it, because they learned that others are both a source of comfort and a source of fear. This causes them to use both anxious and avoidant techniques (hence why it's easy to mistake Marinette for having anxious-preoccupied attachment, because she does behave like that sometimes, it's just not the entire picture.)
We see it with Marinette, who very much wants relationships and is scared of rejection, but who struggles being vulnerable with anyone unless it's fully on her own terms. Basically her entire relationship with Adrien, even before they were dating, was an attempt to get all the benefits of a relationship without ever risking true vulnerability.
But perhaps the most interesting thing I learned in my reading is that children with disorganized attachment commonly develop controlling behaviours, that start to show up around age 3 and are also seen during early school age, middle childhood and late teenage years.
They reverse the role of parent and child in ways that fall into three types: Controlling–punitive, where the child tries to control the adult through hostility, criticism or bossiness (which seems to actually describe well Chloe's relationship to her dad). Controlling-caregiver, where the child becomes overly concerned with their emotional state and trying to care or soothe for them. And Controlling-mixed, who uses strategies from both types.
Now, we don't see Marinette do it with her parents, mainly because of how hands off they are with her at this age, but the attachment a baby learned with their primary caregiver goes on to affect the way the form relationships with others in the future. Especially their romantic relationships.
And we definitely see this in Marinette's relationship with Adrien! The controlling-caregiver type is pretty obvious with the way she keeps making decisions about his life supposedly for his own benefit.
In fact, she outright states this in Mister Agreste:
Luka: Why did you [lie about Monarch]?!
Viperbug: Because I love Adrien more than anything, and he'd be in so much pain if he'd ever have found out! He could get akumatized by the new holder of the Butterfly Miraculous. And I'll never, ever, EVER let anyone hurt him! I have to keep this promise and hide the truth from him, even if it burns my lips and my heart every day until the end of time.
Her entire motivation for the Big Lie is her concern for Adrien's emotional state. She takes responsibility for his mental state in a way he never asked for, that's more akin to a parent than a romantic partner.
And just like her parents, she too tries to protect her charge from even the slightest discomfort because she's anxious over the idea that would be enough to hurt them.
This is very interesting! I'm not correcting or challenging, I'm just interested in your explanations regarding a few things. Don't worry, I'm not asking you to reply to all of that. I'm giving more examples so you can choose (if you want to reply at all, of course. Its fine if not, it was nice writing it all down)
You brought up Mister Agreste where Marinette says to Luka that she would never let anyone hurt Adrien, and yet in the flashback we see that Marinette told Luka that she will keep freshly orphaned Adrien at arm's length so Luka isn't hurt by seeing them together.
In Illustrhater and The Ruler, Marinette ignores Adrien with no communication on her side and also shows no signs of improving on that front. Not to mention, in the second one she thinks she physically hurt Adrien by rendering him deaf and yet does nothing to help. She just cries and presumably waits for him to punish her by leaving (cause I guess prioritizing getting medical help is punishing her, he would have to take care of her first)
In El Toro del Piedra, Marinette in the end SEES Adrien getting singled out by Ivan as person who couldn't possibly understand having conflicted feelings about their parents, she SEES how much that hurts him, and that he then isolated himself from the group support because he thinks he has no business being part of it, and then listens to Adrien blaming himself for not having reached out to Gabriel enough. She does absolutely nothing to spare Adrien from this victim blaming and gaslighting treatment and watches him put all the blame on himself.
She continues doing so in Mister Agreste where she literally openly takes Theo's side when he says that Adrien shouldn't talk badly about his father. She apparently has no idea why Adrien is upset when he leaves the room and then proceeds to not listen to Adrien when he tries telling her that he can't grasp how his father could be a hero, to which she pretty much forces Adrien into the role of the inconsiderate bad son by insisting that this this about Adrien needing to understand that his father loved him. Which Adrien didn't put into question but Marinette is taking Gabriel's side over Adrien, forcing Adrien to ask "does that make me a bad son?" Just so Marinette stops fighting him on his feelings and tells him something supportive for once.
In Werepapas Marinette put no effort whatsoever into finding an alternative to risking to kill Adrien by breaking his amok despite 5 lucky charms having told her to get other people involved. In my opinion, she didn't do so because getting help would require owing up to her secrets and the fact that she had a massive hand in leaving Adrien oblivious to the whole truth which set him up to end up in a situation like this where he would unknowingly endanger his own life by giving away his rings.
This is almost the highest form of hurting him because she was willing to risk killing him by her own hands since her priority was to save her own face.
So the Big Lie can't be for Adrien's sake. She officially declared his life less important than upholding the Big Lie.
And then we have Chat Noir whom Marinette consistently treats in a way where at most the barest minimum of consideration is given. Though most of the time, not even that. That boy barely exists in her mind when he isn't standing in front of her. And sometimes even then he doesn't. This reaches the point of Marinette in Kuro Neko not understanding that ShadowMoth having akumatized CIVILIAN Chat Noir means he knows Chat's CIVILIAN IDENTITY. And she tells Cat Walker that deakumatizing him will result in CHAT NOIR standing there.
Plus, in Elation, Marinette is willing to give Monarque Chat's secret identity willy-nilly so Chat dosnt deny her anymore to kiss her (she literally closed her eyes again when she saw him being uncomfortable with kissing her), and that AFTER Marinette did not react whatsoever in an appropriate way to Chat telling her that he thinks if people were to know who he is underneath the mask, they wouldn't like or care for Chat Noir anymore. That is depressing to all hell in how it SHOULD sound to her (that he thinks Chat Noir is all his worth), and yet she literally says that she doesn't care who he is underneath the mask. Like, she LITERALLY says that. Chat Noir is all he is in her eyes.
I don't see how that is in any way being concerned and overprotective. Maribug's treatment of Chat Noir 90% of the time is literally the opposite. And that means she's also not worried about him leaving her for anything SHE has done. She had a low at the end of the s4 finale, but even there she (in the French original) started her "accountability" by asking Chat Noir why he isn't abandoning her too (In French she feels abandoned by Alya which can ako be seen in her face when Alya doesn't take the Fox Miraculous back) and how her pushing him away hurt HER. Not him. HER. She is to 90% only talking about herself.
Marinette is at no point actually concerned with hurting Chat Noir, he will be put at any disadvantage and through whatever pain necessary to make herself comfortable. She just wants him to be okay with her treatment of him and that is consistently her priority. Him being in pain is normal for her, she just doesn't want him to view her negatively for that.
She also has no problem being violent, screaming, insulting, treating him like an object, and sacrificing or risking him pretty much whenever she feels like it. She took and still takes pretty much no accountability for this.
Marinette has for the most part little to no anxiety over hurting Chat Noir or loosing him that she actively acts on. In Ephemeral she literally tricks him into revealing his identity to two people without his consent by telling him he will finally be given the care for his civilian self he always wished for by her, only to plan on taking it away again in a heartbeat. So she can break his trust and leave him oblivious to the fact that now there are two people out there who know who he is which can fatally endanger him.
Marinette is alarmingly little bothered by that. She wanted him to stay the Black Cat, so she will break his trust and endangering him behind his back so he can't say no to her plan and Suhan won't take his Miraculous.
Very clearly, Marinette is not concerned that any of this would ever make Chat Noir leave on his own. That is a rejection she is not afraid of and in Kuro Neko, Marinette is perfectly fine believing random Cat Walker that Chat Noir is to blame for everything and she was flawless, so she gets to override Chat's renouncement because she says so, to then blame everything on him.
Rejection from Chat Noir is something Marinette barely acknowledges or tolerates being an option. She overrode his renouncement twice and threw a hiss fit in Elation when he told her "no". Chat Noir's rejections and "no" are instinctively optional for her and she look for whatever ways possible to override them.
When she then HAD TO take the "no", she immediately wanted to leave in the next episode even before Plagg started his plan. But even there Marinette first begged Chat Noir at the end of Elation over and over for validation for her feelings of wanting him. When she still isn't told yes, she ends the episode thinking Chat Noir has NEVER loved her. Cue Kwamis Choice where she intends on leaving first right of the gate.
And she is very clear on expecting that on a professional level he owes her to tolerate getting hurt by her actions and behaviour because it's a sacrifice that has to be made for the greater good. And she is not written to in a meaningful way improve on that, so she isn't worried about him leaving her for that either.
Sure, she would PREFER for him to not get hurt, but little to literally no effort is done on her part to prevent that. She gives hardly any emotional support that isn't just "i forgive you and im giving you another chance :), no resources, he remains fully isolated, his voice means very little, he does not get to ask her to help him as his guardian (hes the only one who DOESNT get to ask this of her), nothing. Chat Noir gets absolutely nothing. Whatever price he has to pay, she's fine with him paying it. She will only give pretty words that are backed up by basically nothing. In Penalteam, Chat Noir explicitly told her that he's not good at soccer and that she should get the REAL team. She has played soccer with him before and yet she gives him no support for his clearly low self-esteem and instead leaves him behind to be publicly humiliated and hurt by Marinette's bully Chloé, after which Chat Noir remained the only team mate she didn't help whatsoever despite knowing that he needs help the most. She has failed him in every possible way and she has yet to actually improve on that. The closest she got to giving him support was when Adrien had to literally hold her Miraculous hostage in Passion and then when he wore the Ladybug.
That's pretty much it though
All of this was settled by her in season 4 and she has not undone any of these terms she set and he's getting hurt by it in front of her eyes to this day.
Like in season 5 where Chat Noir is struggling with the morality of having used a cataclysm on someone several times in front of her and yet at no point does she react to it. Even though in Destruction he makes it VERY clear how much having cataclysmed Monarque is eating on him. At the end of the season, Chat doesn't make it to the final battle because Adrien is too afraid what his powers will do to the world when they get out of control due to his life being on fire at that moment.
AND, in Illustrhater we even have Marinette pretty much set Chat Noir up for an even worse repetition of Hack-San by making Alya/ Scarabella the new Ladybug and team leader/ guradian when something happened to her when she can't be guardian anymore, but withholding any and all information of that from Chat Noir, leaving him blindsided by everything when the day comes. Marinette isn't even written to bother taking care of the one concern Chat Noir insisted on at the end of Hack-San, that he's afraid of her at some point not being there anymore and he will have lost her for good out of his life.
Marinette isn't even written to concern herself with the thought of giving Chat Noir some way of finding her afterwards. He and his expressed fears and pain are completely forgotten about, she is not written to in any way be anxious over hurting him in that way. She's not worried over him being done with her and hating her over this, so even if her memory can be restored, he wouldn't wanna see her again. And she isn't worried about the harsh rejection she is dishing out with this. By all means, Chat will most likely have to watch Scarabella talk with a memory spirit Ladybug who HE can't see or interact with. She did not in any way consider him important enough for their connection to remain. For Marinette that person is Alya/ Scarabella and Chat Noir didn't even cross her mind apparently.
Marinette is not worried whatsoever what will come after she puts him through all that. Not him hating her, not him leaving, and not him getting akumatized. Marinette is not written to worry about ANYTHING.
How do these consistent aspects of Marinette's writing (in my opinion) work with you phenomenal analysis?
Don't worry, you're not being rude at all. Those are some excellent questions!
Marinette's disorganized attachment is just one piece of the puzzle of her psyche. One that specifically covers how she perceives herself and the other person in the relationship, as well as her common strategies to handle that perception. It describes her mindset more than anything, so what her behvaiour is like in practice is a completely different question.
The controlling-caregiving attachment is still a controlling pattern of behaviour. The child learned that the parent is too preoccupied by their own distress to function as a caretaker to them, so they try to maintain the parent's attention and ability to stay engaged with them by entertaining, organizing, directing or giving approval to the parent.
This is not done for the sake of the parent (the kid is 3-6, they are only just starting to grasp the idea that people separate from themselves exist), but rather as a strategy to make the caregiver more predictable and available.
So Marinette's concern and over-protectiveness are similar in nature to Gabriel's, in that they exist first and foremost to serve her own emotional needs.
At 14, things honestly didn't change that much for her. She has very poor emotional regulation and little to no strategies to self soothe and regulate herself when in distress, so she relies on caretakers to manage her distress. Except, she also gets distressed when seeing others in distress, and if the caretaker is the one distressed then that causes the same catch-22 of the caretaker supposing to be the source of comfort and yet they're the ones who are the source of the distress.
(If distress no longer seems like a real word, it's okay. It stopped being real to me three "distressed" ago.)
Adrien very much functions as a caretaker to Marinette, which we've seen in so many ways, especially in s5. So Marinette is scared of him being upset, because that would mean he wouldn't be able to function as a caretaker for her anymore. As such her priority is preventing him from becoming distressed to prevent that outcome.
A big element that's also involved here is Marinette's core, underlying belief that people (both others and herself) are fragile. Her parents (especially Tom) being so overprotective and over-reacting to even small hurts taught her that she should be afraid of them. To the point where discomfort registers to her as genuine harm that needs to be avoided.
Her lack of emotional regulation only reinforces it because it means she has a strong reaction to even small things, and because she can't manage it herself, she has to rely on a caretaker to manage it for her. And so the threat of a caretaker being unavailable because of their own distress becomes even greater, since distress is a Big Deal and the caretaker being distressed prevents the ability to get rid of it.
Which is where the controlling behaviours get into play. Marinette is highly motivated to prevent distress, both in general but especially for herself or for her caretaker (which is basically the same thing for her). However, this doesn't manifest as her looking for the best solution to handle the root cause of the problem and minimize distress in the long run. Rather, it manifest as her looking for the quickest way to minimize signs of visible distress where she has to see and acknowledge it.
You can see it in a lot of her behaviour. Marinette is a big fan of band-aid solutions that take care of the issue quickly, on a surface level and with the least amount of discomfort involved. She's completely fine with the underlying issue remaining so long as she doesn't have to see or think of it, although sometimes it's debateable whether she even understands there's an undelying issue and that her solution is only surface level. (Of the top of my head, some examples for this are: her plan in Ephemeral, her solution to Aglae's fears in Wreckless Driver, reconnecting Chloe with Audrey, humiliating Lila in front of Adrien in Volpina, and many more. To the point it's harder to think of one that isn't.)
This tendency is very detrimental to Marinette in a whole bunch of ways. The obvious way is that so many of those band-aid solutions end up coming back to bite her in the ass since the underlying issue is still there. But the more insidious way that really hampers her growth is that it stops her from doing any self reflection. Self reflection involves experiencing a lot of discomfort, raising issues to the surface rather than burying them away and it's a slow process that requires confronting unflattering things about yourself that aren't easy to fix. All of which are the opposite of the kind of solutions she's looking for.
Alongside her poor understanding of herself, she also has a poor theory of mind (which is the ability to understand that other people have their own rich inner worlds that may be different than your own.) She tends to project her own assumptions, feelings and reactions to people based on nothing at all and never once imagines that their experience could be different than her own.
The absolute cherry on top of it all is that on top of all of that, she rarely adjusts or course corrects when presented with new information. Marinette doesn't really react to the world that exists in front of her, she usually reacts to the idea of the world that exists in her head.
I've read a paper recently that talked about about states of mind and put them on a spectrum between broad and narrow.
To put things simply, in a broad state of mind you would be more attentive to what you're seeing/hearing/perceiving, you would look at the big picture, your thoughts would jump around more rather than getting stuck on a single thing, you would be more willing to try out new things and your mood would generally be more positive.
In a narrow state of mind you would be more attentive to your predictions of what you think you're supposed to see, you would be more focused on the details, your thoughts would get stuck on the same things over and over (ruminations), you would fall back on previous patterns of behaviour and your mood would generally be more negative.
The interesting thing the paper suggests is that those states of mind are a result of how much top-down (TD) vs bottom-up (BU) processing our brain does.
Bottom-up processing is the easiest to understand as it's the most intuitive. The pathway starts in our senses (eyes/ears/etc.), who then pass on to the brain information about the basic building block of the sense (a single "pixel" on the retina/a single note/etc.). The brain then takes the building blocks and slowly building them in a more complex way (for sight it first recognizes angles, then corners, then shapes and so on), until eventually it re-creates the full picture (or sound/taste/etc.).
For a long time we thought that was exactly how our senses worked, but it turns out that what we see (or experience in general) is very dependent on what we expect to see. Top-down processing starts in our memories, expectations and beliefs and goes "down" to the more basic sensory processing parts and affects how you actually see the thing.
(Think of how in Encanto, the first time you watch "we don't talk about Bruno" you don't notice Bruno grooving in the background of Dolores part, but once you do notice it it's hard to not see it. That's an example of top-down processing.)
All of this digression to say that Marinette relies heavily on top-down processing, and as a result is often in a narrow state of mind.
In addition to overly focusing on details (missing the forest for the trees), getting stuck on certain thoughts (especially anxious ones) and tends to fall back to familiar behaviours, Marinette almost never reacts to new information that's presented to her. That's because she barely processes it, instead she processes the world through her own expectations and beliefs of how the world should work.
And unfortunately she has a habit of sometimes just... randomly deciding things about how the world works and running with that based on nothing (or at least nothing that's grounded in reality).
That's a big part of her motivation for the Big Lie:
Bug Noire: The only thing I can fix is the way Adrien will remember his father.
Nathalie: But that would be lying to him.
Bug Noire: The truth would hurt him so much more, and for what? Nothing will repair what happened.
She decided that the way Adrien remembers his father is something broken that needs to be fixed, because it'll cause him distress. So she reached for a bandaid solution to prevent his distress.
I actually went and noted how those traits explain the examples you gave, but it's probably best to keep them under a readmore 😅
You brought up Mister Agreste where Marinette says to Luka that she would never let anyone hurt Adrien, and yet in the flashback we see that Marinette told Luka that she will keep freshly orphaned Adrien at arm's length so Luka isn't hurt by seeing them together.
This is a bandaid fix (stop the distress of Luka no longer being around) + her not thinking through consequences and poor theory of mind (doesn't think how it'll affect either Adrien or Luka).
In Illustrhater and The Ruler, Marinette ignores Adrien with no communication on her side and also shows no signs of improving on that front. Not to mention, in the second one she thinks she physically hurt Adrien by rendering him deaf and yet does nothing to help. She just cries and presumably waits for him to punish her by leaving (cause I guess prioritizing getting medical help is punishing her, he would have to take care of her first)
Poor emotional regulation and high avoidance of discomfort (the motivation behind the behaviours) + narrow view of the world (only focused on the details of her distress and can't think beyond) + poor theory of mind (doesn't realize how Adrien would interpret her actions).
In El Toro del Piedra, Marinette in the end SEES Adrien getting singled out by Ivan as person who couldn't possibly understand having conflicted feelings about their parents, she SEES how much that hurts him, and that he then isolated himself from the group support because he thinks he has no business being part of it, and then listens to Adrien blaming himself for not having reached out to Gabriel enough. She does absolutely nothing to spare Adrien from this victim blaming and gaslighting treatment and watches him put all the blame on himself.
She continues doing so in Mister Agreste where she literally openly takes Theo's side when he says that Adrien shouldn't talk badly about his father. She apparently has no idea why Adrien is upset when he leaves the room and then proceeds to not listen to Adrien when he tries telling her that he can't grasp how his father could be a hero, to which she pretty much forces Adrien into the role of the inconsiderate bad son by insisting that this this about Adrien needing to understand that his father loved him. Which Adrien didn't put into question but Marinette is taking Gabriel's side over Adrien, forcing Adrien to ask "does that make me a bad son?" Just so Marinette stops fighting him on his feelings and tells him something supportive for once.
Marinette decided that "Adrien thinking well of his father" is something good (in part because of her poor theory of mind as she doesn't understand child abuse) + top-down processing (she disregard the evidence she sees in favor of her own assumptions) + lack of self reflection (she's unwilling to challenge her own assumptions).
In Werepapas Marinette put no effort whatsoever into finding an alternative to risking to kill Adrien by breaking his amok despite 5 lucky charms having told her to get other people involved. In my opinion, she didn't do so because getting help would require owing up to her secrets and the fact that she had a massive hand in leaving Adrien oblivious to the whole truth which set him up to end up in a situation like this where he would unknowingly endanger his own life by giving away his rings.
I partially agree with the issue being that she didn't want to get people involved because that would require her to have some uncomfortable conversations.
However, I don't think was her conscious reasoning.
My read is that she automatically discounted the lucky charms telling her to go ask for help because of said unconscious reasoning, but that she didn't think that much about it. She simply took it as a given fact that she can't ask for help without interrogating the thought.
it's like how she discounted the option of getting the grandma to reject the akuma after barely making an attempt. She tried it, it failed and she didn't interrogate whether there was more she could do.
That's because her motivation to fix things is focused on fixing it quickly and with the least discomfort rather than finding the best solution involved. So she speedrun through the options she could think of to try and solve the situation as quickly as possible.
This is almost the highest form of hurting him because she was willing to risk killing him by her own hands since her priority was to save her own face. So the Big Lie can't be for Adrien's sake.
She officially declared his life less important than upholding the Big Lie.
Yeah, it's not for Adrien's sake. At least not as you and I would define it.
This goes back to her attachment style of managing the caregiver's emotional state so they would be more available to be a caregiver. She does it for the sake of managing Adrien's emotional state.
Consciously she would justify it because to her managing Adrien's emotional state seems the same as doing things for his sake, which she bases on her understanding of how "discomfort = harm" so being in distress is just about the worst thing that can happen to someone.
But unconsciously I would argue the main motivations is her wanting to avoid Adrien's distress as it 1) would distress her in return 2) distract him from acting as a caregiver to her to soothe the distress he caused by being distress. Which is exactly the issue that the controlling-caregiving strategy came to solve
And then we have Chat Noir whom Marinette consistently treats in a way where at most the barest minimum of consideration is given. Though most of the time, not even that. That boy barely exists in her mind when he isn't standing in front of her. And sometimes even then he doesn't. This reaches the point of Marinette in Kuro Neko not understanding that ShadowMoth having akumatized CIVILIAN Chat Noir means he knows Chat's CIVILIAN IDENTITY. And she tells Cat Walker that deakumatizing him will result in CHAT NOIR standing there.
Marinette's relationship to Adrien and her relationship to Chat Noir are separate things, and so shouldn't be examined as if they should be the same.
Which is to say, you're right on the money in regards to Marinette barely considering Chat Noir.
To mix in some some object relations in addition to attachment styles, a relationship requires a subject (the person observing) and an object (the one being observed). Chat doesn't register to Marinette as an object so much as part of the background. He's as much a law of nature as Hawkmoth and the akumas are.
That's why her attachment issues don't manifest in her relationship with him, because she doesn't see it as a relationship so much as her acting and him being part of the environment that reacts to her.
Apple Cider Snickerdoodle Cream Pies are soft, spiced cookies filled with a tangy apple cider cream cheese frosting. This fall-inspired sandwich cookie recipe features cozy cinnamon and nutmeg in every bite, along with a creamy filling that makes them completely irresistible.
