"omg i hate marinette so much i cant believed she lied alya is such a good person about telling the truth"
OR
"omg i hate alya so much she doenst even know what marinette is going through and marinette can do no wrong everyone protect her"
can. can we like both of them????? like marinette isnt doing a great thing yeah, but i can understand her reasoning and logic (again, even if its wrong) and alya is just telling her best friend to not lie to her or her boyfriend (or the whole world) ofc shes going to be hurt especially about something so big when they promised to not have secrets anymore
The mythical disabled person who is so disabled that everyone consistently supports and accommodates them without question is a straw man which only exists as a hypothetical for the political purpose of denying real disabled people care while still being able to argue that said care would be accessible to disabled people who "actually deserves it"
Imagine learning that the jerkass guy you’ve been trying to reach out to for at least a month who just killed himself was actually a repressed trans woman and now you have to listen to everyone misgender her because how are you supposed to bring that up in casual conversation
*whispers* Marinette is abandoning the only light of love and hope she has left and dragging herself further into isolation and darkness and she’s only gonna make herself suffer for it instead of staying in the love and light that Adrien literally and metaphorically is for her
….
Heyyyy, who said that?? *mutters* people creeping ‘round on my blog….
The lie is stated to be wrong in several episodes. I haven't really seen anyone deny that fact, but I'm sure there are some out there who do. The issue with the lie arc is conflicting messaging from the writers in a children's show.
Most of us on here are adults. We can understand that two things can simultaneously be true, but miraculous's target audience is 7-10 year olds. This is why the show's conflicting messaging is a problem.
The rest under the cut as this got way longer than intended
For example: we have Marinette say that people are allowed to keep their secrets as long as they aren't getting hurt. As adults, we know this message is about privacy - people are allowed privacy as long as no one is hurt. A child in the target age range for the show will not get that nuance - instead they will see Marinette lying about Gabriel and the show telling them "secrets are okay." This is why I said that particular message is dangerous when I got to that episode.
Marinette is not in a psychological thriller aimed at teens and adults. She is in a show for single digit children. The show stating clearly in two episodes (Revalator and Nemesis) that her lie is hurtful and wrong is not enough. WE know that the show is telling us she is wrong to lie, but taking one look at the fandom will show that the message isn't clear enough for even some teenagers - a young child will at best be left confused and at worst see Marinette as in the right due to her being the hero of the show.
Marinette has been criticized unfairly for years. I know a lot of ml critical people disagree with that, but I firmly believe it. Prior to around seasons 4 and 5, almost all of the complaints about her were either taken from the media miraculous is inspired by (anime), or were the lesson to be learned in the episode (bullying kagami). All her issues in season 4 (and Adrien's) can be put down to inconsistent, poor writing. All of this is to say that I understand the drive to defend her character.
The problem here is that Marinette's arc is currently looking like a fallen hero arc, which takes the type of delicate writing that a show for 7 year olds does not have the room to pull off. If the age range for miraculous were 10-12, that would give them the space for more nuance. As it is, every miraculous episode has to end with Marinette learning a lesson as that is how shows for under 10s are structured.
Due to this, we have spent five season being told 'Listen to Marinette's advice at the end of each episode,' and now the show is trying to switch that up. A little kid watching from the beginning of the show through to season 6 on disney+ is not going to get the idea that we should no longer see Marinette as a model for good behavior. Worse still, due to not increasing its rating, miraculous still ends the episodes with Marinette delivering a message alongside a protective charm. Children are simultaneously being told 'Listen to Marinette's lessons' and 'Marinette is doing something harmful without learning or changing that you shouldn't emulate.' The reason the lessons in miraculous worked previously was because children were shown 'this is a bad behavior' and then saw Marinette learning why her behavior was wrong. A lot of the reasons given made zero sense in the episode, but at least there was some structure of displaying bad behavior, showing an outcome of them, and her learning that she was wrong.
The lie arc doesn't have that structure, because the lie arc belongs in a more mature show. We harp on it so much as an abuse apologia arc because of who the target audience is (also because Thomas Astruc has said some horrific things about child abuse, and Marinette is his mouthpiece in the show. Nobody trusts this man to deliver a good message about abuse victims, nor should we). Children hearing Marinette say "it would hurt Adrien too much to know" while feeling guilty about lying aren't going to leave the scene thinking 'the lie itself is bad.' They leave it thinking 'lying hurts Marinette but its necessary to protect Adrien.' There's only two episodes that state otherwise in their dialogue.
This is also why you see less people piling on Nathalie, Felix, and Kagami. Nathalie and Felix were supervillains. The kids watching the show know they shouldn't emulate them because they've seen 5 seasons of them being awful. Kagami is probably the only character in on the lie who could do similar damage to children's perceptions of what is okay to keep secret and what isn't.
All of this boils down to a ratings issue. It sounds like I don't believe children can understand nuance, and I want to make it clear that that isn't my intention. I am not underestimating what children are able to understand, or saying that children's media cannot tackle complex themes. I am saying that miraculous has followed a formula for five seasons which paints Marinette as someone to look upto and emulate, and is now trying to simultaneously keep that structure while saying she is in the wrong. This arc only works for the way the show is structured if it lasts one, maybe two episodes before the message of "abuse victims deserve to know about their abuser, don't gaslight them" should be revealed. A season long lie arc isn't appropriate for this type of show. The reboot either needed to overhaul the style of the show and increase the age rating, or complete the lie arc in a timely manner.
I like how mlb has shifted away from its og plot so much that now whether LB and CN will reveal their secret identities to each other in the next season is the least one of our worries.
It’s ragatha! Y’all are so nice to me so I’ll post Jax next
Genuinely was getting harassed over on instagram because people wouldn’t read any of the comments or caption and I hadn’t finished drawing Jax yet, so I made them wait and drew side characters instead. But I won’t make y’all go through that 💖
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