Just someone you don't know

[lost-lisbonsister]

The vibes for this year

[promptcalender]

Imagine your OTP trying to get into the same hammock together but constantly losing their balance and falling out. No matter which way they try, it never really works out. And once it does, it is not very relaxing as they are both stiff and can't move a muscle without falling out.

By the end, they just stay on the ground underneath and use the hammock as shade.

[Prompt Calender: July 22nd, National Hammock Day]

[torchwood-99]

"I love you but you're doing wrong in a way I cannot condone" and "I hate you but you're being wronged in a way I cannot stomach" are top tier and I need more of them.

[some-kind-of-robot]

Favorite trope from real life experiences

[mercyseb]

one of my favorite tropes of media is fate and when it comes to their lessons on how you deal with them

[howhow326]

Oof, Marinette's not making it out of this alive.

Well, time to prepare for the coming deluge of Alys salt when this secret gets out and people accuse her of being a bad best friend because she holds Marinette accountable for her own actions.

[sunsetosirias]

Did anyone else get a gross, slimy feeling when watching the bathroom scene in Confrontation where Marinette and Sabrina revealed how the mirror was actually a two way mirror allowing anyone to see inside, or how there were microphones recording everything happening inside?

Or how Marinette admitted to making the usual bathroom "out-of-service" so she could tamper with the temporary bathroom? Granted, we never see inside the potentially vandalized bathroom, only her putting up the sign, though if the school needed to build the temporary bathroom, there's enough evidence in the episode to suggest Marinette caused serious damage in order to carry out her plan.

Out of morbid curiosity, I searched up the prison sentence for recording in a public bathroom and found this from "prisonguide.co.uk". Before anyone comments, I know the UK and Paris are different places with different laws, this is just to show how scummy the whole scheme was from my perspective.

Warning, slight mention of voyeurism ahead. Nothing major but I'll warn you just in case.

Typical Sentences for Voyeurism Offences

Generally, offenders may face up to two years in prison. However, sentences can be more severe if the offence is aggravated by factors such as the victim being a minor or if the act involved recording and distributing images or videos.

Reading this over, I don't understand why the writers made the Main Character of a show aimed at children commit a crime this serious and damaging, and ultimately be rewarded by the narrative. Remember, this is how she defeats Lila, with Chloe following a few episodes later.

It's appalling how this made it past the drawing board. I know the writers wanted Marinette to expose Lila to everyone in an "epic, you go queen, girlboss" way, but did they have to choose such a scummy method of doing so?

Also, isn't Sabrina the daughter of a Police Officer? Shouldn't she know recording someone in the bathroom -a place where privacy is expected - is a crime?

[sunsetosirias]

An argument from Maripologists I can't wrap my head around is how because she had "good intentions" and "didn't mean to break Sublime's prosthetics" means people are wrong for criticizing Marinette's actions which hurt Sublime. Good intentions go out the window the second someone's actions directly hurt the person they intended to help.

Actions outweigh intentions.

Maripologists will cry and scream about Marinette's intentions while ignoring her actions because it's far easier to lie about supposed intentions then the visible actions.

Marinette didn't have to follow Sublime to her tryout, didn't have to pretend to be akumatized and pour soap on the floor which affected Sublime's prosthetics, didn't have to become Ladybug and jump in the middle of the track while Sublime was sprinting which caused her prosthetics to break, but she still did. Marinette's actions hurt Sublime.

The miraculous ladybug powers fixed Sublime's prosthetics so Marinette wouldn't have to face the consequences of her actions. Remember, Sublime told Ladybug and her dad that Marinette pretended to be akumatized as Soapinator and that she "acts peculiar when she wants to be friends with someone". If the prosthetics stayed broken then Sublime's parents would've gone to Marinette's parents to demand compensation to fix or replace the prosthetics Marinette broke, which would've become widespread gossip leading to the death of Marinette's social life.

But the writers couldn't let their darling Marinette face her own actions so of course the miraculous powers fixed Sublime's prosthetics. Makes me wonder why the writers wrote Marinette breaking Sublime's prosthetics then excuse her because "oh she feels bad about it" if they wanted to keep Marinette as morally clean as possible.

I don't know how Maripologists can look at Marinette breaking an innocent girl's prosthetics after following her around all day then yell at others for not seeing Marinette as a perfect angel of a protagonist who can do no wrong, or if she does do something questionable then it's clearly every other character's fault and not their darling Marinette.

[sunsetosirias]

I'm most likely repeating what other people have said before but I found this post on Pinterest that I wanted to talk about for a bit; I censored the name because I don't want people going after them.

The part that my brain latched onto was "would people wanna know Gabriel was monarch?" If I were part of the Parisian Public who'd been emotionally tormented by a magical terrorist for roughly a year, had my body transfigured against my will who knows how many times, and whose only means of protection against anything becoming permanent were magically enhanced teens, I would want to know the identity of my tormentor, so I know they'd been properly dealt with and can't continue to hurt me anymore.

Marinette isn't protecting anyone with her plethora of lies, what she's doing is denying them closure. If people knew Gabriel was Monarch and Gabriel is now dead, they won't have to worry about him possibly returning to torment them or help someone else torment them.

"Oh, but they might blame Adrien because he's Gabriel's son, and they'd think they worked together. Marinette had to lie for Adrien." But Marinette as Ladybug could've easily explained that Adrien didn't know his father was Monarch as Gabriel hid everything from him instead of willingly choosing to lie that Gabriel was a hero because she was uncomfortable about a truth she had zero rights to cover from those that need to know.

The lies aren't protecting anyone because the longer the lies are upheld, the larger the metaphorical statue of Hero Gabriel will continue to grow, the harder the debris of the broken idol will crush all those who believed the lie under the weight of the inevitable truth.

All of the pain is due to Marinette barging in and deciding who is "worthy" of knowing what she as Ladybug deems is the truth, no matter who else gets severely burned as long as she's not close to the flames she not only started, but is actively feeding.

[bwaybby09]

As much as I’m kind of on the fence in regards to Marinette, there was something that irked me a little:

While I do hate that Marinette’s response to Adrien suggesting therapy in Wreckless Driver was:

“Why? You can talk to me about him, right?”

“I help him. I’m his girlfriend, you know.”

Something else that bothered me was in Elation where Ladybug was trying to woo Cat Noir and when he respectfully rejects her, she says:

“What’s up with you? You have a new girlfriend or something?”

(Which is part of the top ten list of things you CANNOT say when you get rejected. And the way she sounds so disrespectful and disgusted.)

(Also, please let me know if the same thing happened the other way around with Cat Noir because I don’t remember and there’s too many f***ing episodes)

[jennrypan]

..the audacity for Marinette to give Adrien this look.

When all three of them refuse to tell him just how important the rings are..despite it being relevant to him too..

Also Felixs done the same damn thing..which is why Adrien did it..cuz he thought he was bonding with his cousin.

But. No. We dont wanna tell Adrien anything cuz its better to coddle him than treat him normally..even though he has the same issues as Kagami and Felix..OKAY!

[kathrahender]

"Marinette/Ladybug is just 14!"

Oh, she's 14. But what about Adrien, Lila, Chloé, Alya and other characters? Because I only see the excuse "She's 14!" when Marinette does something bad. If anyone else does something bad? "They should have known better!" But Marinette doesn't need to know better??

[familyagrestefanblog]

Wh-what do you want me to say? What else CAN I say that isn't deliberately missing the forest for the trees?

Marinette is the bad guy here. She's a narrative tool and she is the one causing the moral problems in the conflict and ongoing plot, I don't have to pretend otherwise. Her justification story while ranting falls apart and contradicts itself from her previous lies in several ways when you actually look into ANYTHING, she's lying, twisting people's words, and using people left and right while making herself out to be a poor victim who needs to be taken care of and supported as Adrien's saintly girlfriend, so no one can or should stop her.

She literally can't be spoken to or properly confronted because she just shuts everything down and makes herself out to be a martyr who just needs this ONE "tiny" favour of you to disregard your moralities and agency for her cause and feelings

Alya literally TRIED confronting her about how Marinette making her speak the biggest lie (as illusion Ladybug) to Adrien about Gabriel's last moments made her feel and Marinette just went went "im sorry 🥺👉👈😔" without a fraction of willingness to in anyway acknowledge that she isn't justified in doing this to Alya, so Alya takes pity on her and tells her she isn't upset anymore. But Marinette will do it again in a heartbeat because Marinette is written to only beg and fish for validations and justifications for why she shouldn't be asked to behave any different.

Alya does not get to make an informed decision about the lies she's being used for to tell. The harm Alya will cause with this. Marinette just doesn't give a damn about anyone's boundaries and dignity the second she's uncomfortable. She's literally written to feel entitled to do this to people as long as she can keep them enough in the dark about what she's doing to them and play enough of a blameless poor little victim so her victims turn around and take care of her and her feelings instead.

I feel so unbelievably bad for Alya here. That girl is being used, manipulated, and straight up guilt tripped. 'Revelator Alya' officially made the wrong decision in putting her faith in Marinette to do the right thing and she gets said faith thrown back in her face by getting even more shamelessly used. Marinette doesn't even have the basic decency to put on her big girl pants and lie to Adrien as Ladybug herself. She literally manipulates and guilt trips the heck out of Alya to do it FOR HER:

Marinette to Alya on phone: "It's simple, Adrien can't grasp the idea that Gabriel, the mean father he knew, and Gabriel the hero are the same person. And I get it, cause it was a total surprise to us all, right? So all you have to do is tell him stuff that'll help him believe it! And feel better about it all!"

Alya: "But I don't know what happened exactly, YOU were there"

Marinette: "That doesn't matter, just come up with something nice, that's all!"

Alya: "What?? You want me to LIE? Are you out of your mind??"

Marinette: "I'm begging you, please, please, please, PLEASE, just ONE tini-tiny story to make my boyfriend finally happy, so your BFF is also happy 🥺🥹 besides, you won't be lying. Your Ladybug illusion will be!"

Alya: "*sighs* come ON! Why can't I make an illusion of Marinette instead and you go as Ladybug yourself? If you wanna feed him fibs, don't you think you should be the one taking responsibility?"

Marinette: "No! What if he feels so moved that at some point he tries to kiss the Marinette illusion? Poof! It'll all go up in smoke and my secret identity along with it! No, no, no! It HAS to be an illusion of Ladybug!"

Alya: "*groans* Girl!"

Marinette: "besides, Ladybug was unconscious when Gabriel defeated Monarque anyway! So I don't know the whole story either!"

Alya: "*sighs* fine... I'll make your illusion, just give me some time to get there..."

Like, Marinette stans will go on and on about how Gabriel not having taken Marinette's emptiest hand in cartoon history when he was already dying in the s5 finale and instead took the Miraculous from Marinette to make his wish to save Nathalie (which btw was never acknowledged in this episode, only Marinette's lie of having been half dead on the ground. Because of course that's all Marinette's writing acknowledges in the long run), and then having asked Marinette to help Adrien remember him for the times he tried to be a good father, is the greatest and most despicable display of manipulation in all of fiction

But this episode is 25 minutes of Marinette being straight up a liar, manipulator, gaslighter, and guilt tripper while using Adrien as excuse to serve her own cause and feelings above all else while refusing to take actual accountability for anything because she's begging for validation, excuses, free passes, and prioritisation instead.

Tomoe TRIED calling her out for being complicit in the villain's lies and Ladybug full-blown deflects any responsibility bc Marinette doesn't wanna hear it and she refuses to have anyone so much as remind her of the reality of her actions and role in this. It's never her fault and she will change her story and lies as many times as needed to get her result and prioritisation.

Yes, I fucking KNOW Marinette has feelings. You're not some secret genius for noticing that. Marinette is not some groundbreakingly complex character.

Nothing Marinette deals with makes her in any way unique from other main characters in fiction, much less kids media. She isn't just handling this badly because she's "uwu struggling, poor little real babygirl", she's a narrative tool and characterized and written as the problem and becoming more and more the bad guy. I'm holding her to basic standards of story-telling regarding the show's own plot, themes, and genre

I have been since s4 and you will never get me to stop standing my ground on this.

[consumerfly]

Can we talk about Chameleon for a second? The infamous episode that started the maribat/class salt/lila salt genre?

This episode is just bad in general, but it BAFFLES me how the general idea is that Marinette was just so horribly mistreated. Yes, it's easy to disprove Lila, but Marinette made herself look HORRIBLE.

Let's break it down. The episode starts with Marinette coming to class and assuming that Alya arranged for her to sit next to Adrien. This assumption is of course wrong and very thrown out there. The thing to keep in mind is that we as the audience know Lila is lying, but the other characters don't. To the outside eye, it looks like Marinette is just throwing a petty tantrum over not getting to sit next to Adrien for a period, when there literally was the WHOLE day to see him and breathe in his essence or whatever. Lila reinforces this even more by saying that she's causing problems and guiltripping the class. Honestly, Marinette sitting in the back after that was deserved.

Then the lunch scene. This whole thing could have been avoided if Marinette exposed Lila as LADYBUG. Go tell Alya she is not friends with the girl, it's not hard to guess from there the chance of her other tales being false. She then proceeds to throw a NAPKIN at a PERSON WITH AN ALLEGED WRIST INJURY. Lila hasn't even targeted Marinette in any way this far, Marinette makes herself look like a jealous brat. Why didn't she tell Alya and Nino Lila stole Adrien's book? That would immediately make them more wary of her.

Then in the bathroom, Marinette's the one who starts the threatening. WHY couldn't she just say something like "I'm not being friends with a deceiver. Why are you lying?" She's just making herself an enemy this whole episode. Lila's just fighting fire with fire if you ask me.

As for Adrien, i honestly don't understand what he did that was so wrong. From his perspective Lila was lying for attention, which is not the end of the world. He was willing to be her friend and help her. As soon as he saw that she was actually maliciously deceptive in Oni Chan he started avoiding her. It's thanks to him Marinette is still in school.

A lot of Marinette's and Lila's rivalry is honestly self caused by Marinette.

[kathrahender]

"People hate Marinette because she's a hero with a gray morality"

No, my problem doesn't come from the fact that she's not 100% good. My problem comes from the fact that people love to paint her as a perfect and morally pure good heroine when she isn't one, and my problem also comes from the fact that the show itself doesn't acknowledge how terrible are her stalking and her behavior in some situations/with some characters.

[stevecrafts2k]

So I'm saying this flat out: Marinette is abusive.

I don't use the term lightly. She is continuously gaslighting Adrien regarding Gabriel, even strongarming the people who knew Gabriel to be her accomplices. She had Alya lie in her place because she didn't want to do the dirty work.

She doesn't trust Adrien. Sublimation happened because she was afraid Adrien would replace her with Sublime, despite supposedly knowing him on a deep level. She shattered his rings in Werepapas, risking killing him in the process, because the previous lucky charms didn't give her the answers she wanted to hear, despite that not being how lucky charms worked. She admitted both in Mister Agreste and Heartfixer that she's more concerned with her guilt, her difficult emotions over Adrien's grief, to where in the former, she was going to uproot his life again to make herself feel better (Nathalie rightfully shut that down), and in the latter, she hides the letter from him. Oh, and she tried to talk him out of therapy.

She's his abuser now. Abuse isn't just physical wounds and scars. Ultimately, it's about control, even if you think it's for their own good. She is controlling him. I can't believe Astruc made his flagship romance an abusive romance, and I'm doubly baffled he wants the viewer to agree with her.

What was he thinking?

[sugarcubeandcamembert]

there’s something so compelling about the way Félix and Adrien contrast each other in Strikeback.

Félix pretending to be Adrien with the dog miraculous, effectively fooling Ladybug herself while the real Adrien stands to the side with the CAT MIRACULOUS.

it’s such good irony and really shows the juxtaposition between how Adrien presents himself as Chat Noir vs as Adrien Agreste, because yeah it does seem like Adrien Agreste would be the polite and friendly temporary holder of the dog miraculous.

Ladybug/Mari completely misunderstands him, and so does Félix, even as the one deceiving Ladybug.

And it’s so heartbreaking as the audience to watch Adrien watch this scene as it unfolds, to realize in real time that maybe Nino was right. Maybe Chat Noir is annoying, and maybe the more tame version of him is the more digestible, palatable version of himself.

The identity he created for himself, free from the influence of public expectations and his father, isn’t always polite and friendly. He gets angry and jealous, he’s annoying (affectionate) and silly, reckless and outlandish. Even his character designs shows the difference, particularly his hair—meticulously styled as a civilian, messy and wild as a superhero.

In this moment you get a sense of how utterly alone he is. No one sees him for who he is, who all of him is, and he’s trapped in this dichotomy of himself that no one can break past.

And a lot of times it seems like his friends fall for the version of him that’s easy to love rather than the version of him that’s more authentic.

That’s how I interpret the lack of silliness from Chat Noir in later episodes/seasons compared to previous seasons. He’s dialing it back to try to make himself easier to love.