The idea that teenagers need to "pay" for their mistakes boggles my mind.
Teenagers are basically primed to make mistakes. That's kinda the whole gig. Just old enough to do stuff on their own and still figuring out how to weave in and out of it. It’s worse when they start out as well intended mistakes. Imma be real here, i am a parent. I have a teenager. Sometimes she makes mistakes and learns something. Sometimes she just goes "maybe I didn't break the rules the right way."
So here is the thing. Marinette is 15. 15 is a special age. Later curfew, grown up feelings without grown up knowing, and the unfortunate urge to "handle it yourself".
She has also been handed the literal weight of the world. Which. No 15yo ever is ready for that, and she already had anxiety and imposter syndrome before that started. She is getting terrible advice but she is at this point someone who is suffering under lets call it "chronic trauma". Over and over over again the narrative has demanded that she and only she is responsible for everything that happens around her, to her and through her. She has once used nearly every Miraculous in very short order, and has now fused the cat and ladybug - which I have mentioned is likely incredibly dangerous.
How are people looking at her as some sort of evil villain? People lie about grief all the time. We try to make things gentler. We lie at funerals. Marinette feels both that she failed to save Gabriel and that she as good as killed him. (If she'd been a few seconds faster, he wouldn't have died. That's not rational or right. But it is what she is feeling.
She is a kid. Wrong choices - maybe? Good impulse. Sure. We can give her that. But as much trauma and pressure as she was under at the moment and is still under *now*? From the people she trusts? From the adults around her? Was it a choice that Marinette made or a situation where the window is broken and she's the one left holding the ball?
Learn from it? I have so much fucking compassion for this little girl that at this point I am just rooting for her to *survive* all of this. This is a lot of complex trauma for someone who is already carrying so much. She doesn't need a lesson. She needs a hug. And like yeah, pick your own fandom experience and all that. I have a big block list. But I was 13 when I first joined fandom spaces. And the prevailing attitudes in mlb fandom as a whole make it unsafe for teens and holding hard lines about responsibilities for trauma and trauma reactions.
Life is not a lesson. And trauma doesn't teach anything but an overly active stress responce. So for the teens in mlb fandom - I hope you feel like you can share the hurts you are carrying with a trusted person, I hope they make you feel safe and heard. I hope the only lesson that you learn is that people can be good. Not all of them. Not all of the time. But enough of them to matter. It doesn't matter if the hurts behind those lies are big, small or silly. You deserve to be heard and not to suffer in silence so you "learn."
THANK YOU FOR THIS!!! Like I understand why she chose to keep her mouth shut when London Special dropped and quite frankly, I’m exhausted that people seem to have no grasp or grace for a character making mistakes especially as a teen girl (Female main characters that are hated by majority of the fandom for behavior and mistakes while always giving grace to the other characters WORSE than her will always be my favorite and I will defend them)
