#liar lila

[i-put-the-bi-in-hijabi]

I just spent hours trying to find @nobodyfamousposts’s Burn the Witch, having forgotten both the title and the writer and only remembering the plot. It was very worth it.

[plentyelegant]

According to my most frequent tags, the characters I've talked about the most on this blog are

Klaus

Ben (specifically my Benny Ben Ben Boy tag)

And

Lila

And thats very sexy of me

[rena-rain]

I’m probably just stating the obvious, but Lila doesn’t want Adrien. She wants Adrien’s status. She doesn’t care if he likes her as long as she’s in the spotlight.

[rena-rain]

Adrien’s advice makes sense...to him

A lot of us, myself included, have been on Adrien’s case for giving Marinette bad advice for dealing with Lila in Chameleon.

But if you think about it from his perspective, I completely understand why he said what he said.

Things we know that Adrien doesn’t:

Lila threatened Marinette

Lila’s eager to get akumatized for the superpowers and team up with Hawk Moth

Things he does know:

Lila lies pathologically

She got akumatized when Ladybug called her out and humiliated her in the process.

I suspect he recognizes Lila’s feelings of desperation for attention. I don’t know if he knows her mother is never around, but I think he empathizes with her about being lonely and wanting to be liked, and that’s why he wants to help her through being friendly and available. He is straightforward and clear with her, though. He’s not excusing her behavior, he just thinks kindness can solve what confrontation can’t.

(BTW I’m starting to think that, with more maturity and training, Adrien could be an excellent therapist someday.)

This line leads me to believe Adrien’s certain Lila’s lies will catch up with her. It’s optimistic, yes, but he genuinely believes she’s not as dangerous as she is and will inevitably face natural consequences if she doesn’t clean up her act.

He’s also been conditioned to be non-confrontational. Gabriel shuts him down if he misbehaves or makes a mistake, and does so even more forcefully if he talks back. He couldn’t even assert his wishes to see his mom’s film in Gorizilla, because when he (timidly) asked to talk to his dad, our dear old Gabe was like, “make an appointment.” Given Adrien’s isolation, this would have been a huge percentage of the total amount of treatment he received from people for years. He’s learned that being well-behaved and gentle is how you get results, not standing up to people.

As far as Adrien knows, Lila’s only done real damage as Volpina. Again, he does not know about the threats. So his existing belief about confrontation was strengthened when Ladybug humiliated her. She got akumatized and kept lying afterward, so it obviously did no good.

If you look at Marinette’s body language here, she’s obviously about to call out Lila none-too-nicely. That posture is distinctly aggressive. (Not that I blame her.) Marinette knows how dangerous and conniving Lila is, and her own experience taught her that assertiveness gets results - not gentleness like Adrien learned.

I suspect Adrien mentally drew a comparison between what Ladybug did and what Marinette looked ready to do and naturally guessed the situation would end with the same result. They have completely different backgrounds and, accordingly, differing views on the world. Marinette has empathy for innocents and victims while Adrien has empathy for everyone. Yet she trusts Adrien, so she took his advice despite Lila’s threats and her feelings about bullies.

And confronting Lila here would be humiliating. Look at all the other kids surrounding Lila in this scene. Either Lila would deftly avoid Marinette’s accusations again, or she’d get hurt and embarrassed and Adrien thinks that would perpetuate the cycle of mistreated => bad behavior. He has called her out, earlier in the episode, but he did it in private and with every ounce of respectful diplomacy in his body.

So yeah, Adrien has some issues that contributed to his passivity in the matter. But he also had a natural optimistic kindness and lack of knowledge that influenced his behavior. He’s not a complete pushover; later in the season, in Oni-Chan, he rebuffed Lila after she crossed one too many lines with him.

As I stated earlier, he was absolutely clear with her about his expectations. “Be honest with me.” Once he’d seen, with his own eyes, multiple counts of her lies actually harming people he put his foot down. Gently, but he still did. If he knew all that Lila was capable of (like Gabriel does) and how vicious she is (like Marinette knows) I’m certain he wouldn’t treat her behavior as innocuous like he did in Chameleon. 

Especially since Lila told Marinette she’d leave her with no friends - something Adrien is particularly sensitive about. This is a bit of a tangent, but in Weredad Chat Noir made a poignant argument about how isolating Marinette would hurt her more than anything. He fought tooth and nail to protect her from that. So, yeah. If he knew about the threats he would have taken a different view.

[rena-rain]

I think the thumbnail speaks for itself.