#... Representation to the London Special and how it makes Marinette culpable for a mind-boggling amount of things.

[actually-factually-anonymous]

Indeed, people overly praising Marinette for giving Adrien his free will back are missing that not enslaving another person is hardly an exceptional feat of morality.

What, is Adrien not entitled to basic free will? If he is, then Marinette passing his rings back to him is the bare minimum for any character who isn't a villain.

Except...

There's actually reason why she shouldn't. As you point out: she hasn't told him about those rings, about what they mean to him. About how easily someone could use them against him to turn him into their puppet for life, or how those relatively fragile bits of metal could end his life instantly if they were broken somehow.

But choosing to give them to him without telling him what they are: Marinette has chosen the worst option between keeping them herself and giving Adrien he needs: giving him the rings without the knowledge of what makes them vital or why he needs to protect them. The only worse possible option here I can think of would be for her to go full Yandere and use them herself.

Like so many of Marinette's choices since S5, it's utterly indefensible. Giving Adrien he needs to know as well as the rings is understandable and ideal. Not giving Adrien any knowledge is questionable at best, but as long as Marinette is holding onto the rings for whatever reason (protection maybe)- it's not careless to the point of potential manslaughter.

But giving him them rings without the knowledge about what they are and why he needs to protect them is just... insanity. The only viable reason and defense I could find for it across the internet was that Marinette simply doesn't know what the rings are, and that she either failed to cotton on to the full details of Felix's bullshit play or that she doesn't know what Adrien's Amok is...

Though with Nathalie and Felix easily contactable for her now, even that excuse really fails to hold water unless we assume "find out where my 'beloved' boyfriend's vital two in one lifesupport and free will is" was never once a priority for her during those months between her getting the rings and... any after that really.

Marinette is praised for alot of unwarranted things, but to this day the thing that takes the cake for me is people praising Marinette into the heavens for giving Adrien his rings back after Gabriel's death

People act like that's Marinette acting on god-like benevolence and the purest heart ever, when, like, what is she even being praised for?

For not withholding Adrien's literal control remote from him? Not wearing it herself and right away enslaving him?

Praising Marinette into the heavens for giving the rings back implies that people think that it would have been fine if Marinette had cried over this "hard decision" for the next season. And that's just pathetic at this point.

Not to mention that she objectively did nothing in the final battle to save Adrien. It was Gabriel who used the wish for Adrien's good, Marinette instead said he has to face whatever consequences as orphan now that's coming his way. So Gabriel helped Adrien, Marinette was willing to have him pay every price cuz it aint her.

Then Marinette being so uninterested in the plot lead to Bug Noire almost killing Adrien because she didn't know that she would have destroyed Adrien's amok rings alongside the Miraculous rings on Gabriel's hand. So once again, Gabriel had to save Adrien from Marinette by keeping her from using Cataclysm.

Marinette also isn't the one to take the amok rings away from Gabriel before he dies. Gabriel himself had to give Adrien free and prevent that his amoks will vanish with him.

What the hell is Marinette being praised for in the s5 finale for being Adrien's White Knight? She didn't save him in anyway. She almost killed him, she was willing to sign him up to entirely for his family's sins as orphan because "it's the right thing to do", and she didn't take Adrien's ring from Gabriel

Gabriel did all the saving and protecting, Marinette is just as always taking all the credit.

So what's Marinette being glorified for? For not instantly enslaving her abused and now orphaned boyfriend? Cause that's all the saving of Adrien Marinette did in the end, I guess: saving him from her herself enslaving him for no fucking reason

And is that REALLY something Marinette needs to be praised and made out into a saint for? Cause that's beyond pathetic, even downside offensive at this point

---

At this point, I think the show could show Marinette successfully wiping her ass and the stans would praise her for how talented she is. Everything Marinette does has to be the most amazing show of skill or the most kindhearted thing anyone has ever done in the stans’ eyes because the pedestal they’ve built for Marinette has grown so insanely tall. At this point, there’s nothing she could do that would break that illusion of perfection, I think. Even if she had kept those rings, the stans would have defended her noble decision to keep Adrien safe from people who’d take advantage of him, like Marinette herself hasn’t been taking advantage of him for free therapy for as long as they’ve been dating, no remote controls needed.

And that’s the thing with Marinette not keeping Adrien’s remote control; she doesn’t need it for Adrien to do whatever she wants. Adrien is so dependent on her that his life’s goal is just to be with her. Marinette knows Adrien is completely devoted to her, it's why she was so willing to send Zoé to confess her love to Adrien, because she knew Adrien would refuse Zoé and stay with her instead. Marinette gave up nothing when she gave those rings to Adrien, her control over him is still absolute.

Meanwhile, the fandom is celebrating and romanticizing this shit. I have seen more than one person consider Marinette giving those rings to Adrien to be like a proposal/promise ring situation, where Marinette doing the bare minimum of giving the sapient mind control robot servant his remote control is treated as an ultimate gesture of love. Because truly Marinette must love Adrien if, instead of ordering him to please every single one of her whims and needs, she grants him the magnificent honor of choosing to do so instead, while already knowing he will. How loving, how caring, how selfless.

Please ignore the reality that this entire setup relies on Marinette keeping guard over Adrien and his amoks indefinitely, because Adrien lacks the knowledge to do so himself. Please ignore the reality that, if Adrien, Marinette or both ever fell out of love and ended the relationship, Adrien would be left incredibly vulnerable because he doesn’t know about the rings being amoks. Marinette is counting on Adrien staying with her for the rest of his life, because she’s taken conservatorship over him and his free will. She has made it her job to be her boyfriend’s keeper.