Miraculous Analysis: Marinette’s Gift-Giving Problem
It’s clear that Marinette is a helpful person who is generally happy to do things to help people. She tries her best for people and only seems to want to make them happy, even to the point of overworking herself as we see in Gamer 2.0. This highlights Marinette as being kind and that she wants to do things to make people happy.
But…am I the only one who has noticed this running theme where whenever Marinette makes anything for anyone or gives anything to anyone, it just goes wrong somehow?
Marinette made a scarf for Adrien’s birthday. Nathalie ends up stealing it and claiming it’s from his father.
Marinette made Adrien a hat for Christmas. He gave it away and it resulted in a misunderstanding that caused an akuma.
Marinette made a gift for Bustier’s birthday. Chloe vandalized it and Zombizou came about as a result, whom ended up causing a sort of zombie apocalypse-like setting and ultimately being one of the most stressful and dangerous akumas they’d faced.
The mere discovery of the existence of her stockpile of gifts to Adrien resulted in Chris Master.
Being involved in giving Fu’s letter to Marianne led to a mix-up that resulted in her becoming Backwarder.
Marinette gave Nathaniel the “Diary of Ladybug” work that Marc made in an attempt to help Marc, which set off the events of Reverser.
Adrien wore Marinette’s contest hat for the fashion show and ended up being turned into a gold statue. Sure, it could be argued that she made it back in Mr. Pigeon and nothing happened then except upsetting his allergy, but he didn’t officially wear it until Style Queen. When the presence of Marinette and her family being in the first row set off Audrey and got her akumatized per Gabriel’s plan.
Her very first day of school has Marinette trying to take a box of macarons to class to share with everyone, and they all get ruined before she even makes it to the school.
She tried to give Adrien a passionfruit macaron and it ended up being eaten by a guy who was allergic to it.
In the Felix episode, she was just one of all of the classmates who made videos letting Adrien know they cared. But hers was also a love confession and reassurance of being there for Adrien, which seemed to be what set Felix off as he then deleted all the videos and sent one back to the classmates while pretending to be Adrien.
Kitty Section! Marinette found out about the contest and made their costumes for their music video to enter. Then XY stole credit for it all. Her attempt to make him confess only resulted in her being threatened, which caused Luka to be akumatized into Silencer.
And when Marinette did successfully give Adrien a hat she made AND gets credit for doing so. IT RESULTS IN THE END OF THE WORLD!
It just seems to further emphasize this implication the show seems to have that Marinette isn’t allowed to be happy.
This is similar to the issue in canon where Marinette can’t make any progress in just telling Adrien about her feelings for him so he can either accept or reject them. In this case though, it’s like Marinette can’t do anything nice for anyone without something bad coming of it.
It makes sense from a narrative standpoint as Marinette’s gifts and her actions in giving them are often the catalyst the show uses to initiate the events of the episode, but how does this appear in the story to Marinette herself? Sure, things are made right in the end and can even be better for it all having happened, but still, why does this keep happening to her? It’s even more sad if you consider that acts of service and gift-giving seem to be Marinette’s love language and the show won’t let her do that without it turning into a problem.
Is there a single point in the series where Marinette has been able to give something to someone and NOT have it go wrong, even if only initially?
2087
stormborns
pixelskylines
yousharknotpass
titsay
snowghoul
dailybridgerton
kaledo-art
vaporwave
