#Marinette is actually kind of ableist

[madamefeu]

Two episodes into season 6 of Miraculous, and I’m actually starting to hate Marinette. I was indifferent to her before, I neither liked or disliked her, but her behaviour in Sublimation was actually terrible. I’m so tired of her having so little faith in Adrien that she continues to stalk him even now that they’re an official couple. Her constantly wishing harm upon Sublime so that she’d have an excuse to jump in and play saviour was disgusting behaviour from someone who claims to want to be her friend. Oh, and as if THAT wasn’t bad enough, she has the nerve to break Sublime’s prostheses mid-run, just because she’s insecure. Marinette is actually a terrible, selfish person who’s not mature enough for a relationship. Adrien needs to break up with her ASAP.

[ilikekidsshows]

did you see the spoilers for ml season 6 where there’s a new girl with a prosthetic leg and that leg ends up broken and marinette’s involved somehow? honestly i’m gonna give marinette the benefit of the doubt for now and just assume this is either a huge misunderstanding/accident or extremely misleading spoiler just because this is a serious thing, like I was super disappointed with how her character’s written in season 4 and 5 but I just don’t want to believe the writers would come up with something like this when this would easily be one of the worst things she’s ever done (if she’s actually responsible). I saw the spoiler on TikTok and there’s several explanations I’ve seen in the comments:

the new girl (idr her name) is lila/cerise in disguise and she wants to ruin marinette’s reputation (iirc the writers said she’s nice and not a villain but maybe they just don’t want to spoil the plot for obvious reasons)

marinette didn’t have bad intentions/it was an accident/misunderstanding/spoilers are too misleading/not enough information yet

and my least favorite explanation…the new girl was trying to get with adrien (some fans are saying this to say this is all part of her scheme to get adrien to break up with marinette and date her instead but some are saying this to justify marinette if she was actually at fault for this)

I think my main concern is how the writers are going to address this. What if they try to justify it if marinette really was at fault? Or what if it’s all a misunderstanding but then they put the new girl to the side to focus on how sad this is for marinette? Are they going to be able to address this in a way that doesn’t come across as ableist while also not making their protagonist look like a bad person? What do you think?

---

I just saw the leak, but at first I couldn't find it, so I’d already written a response before that, so here's me describing the possible nightmare scenarios before the writers proved me right about their priorities:

Like, hot take, but it doesn’t matter what the new girl is doing, messing with her mobility aid would still be absolutely unforgivable. Even if it’s Lila in disguise, Marinette has already exhibited so much ableism in trying to prove her disabilities aren’t real that I would just say that the writers shouldn’t be allowed to as much as mention any disability ever again. “A person claiming they’re disabled could be lying to get special considerations, so make sure to check any claims of disability, no matter how awful you come across for doing it,” is not a lesson that has any place in a children’s cartoon, even accidentally. And that’s exactly what any scenario with a girl faking a disability / using their disability to get closer to Adrien would entail as well, the idea that we should be suspicious of disabled people trying to “cheat” their way to things that “belong” to us.

But, like, even if it actually is going to be aiming to be an actual lesson in disabilities where it’s all a misunderstanding/mistake, the thing is that, lately, I’ve been looking back at the “lessons” in this show, even in the earlier seasons, and I just don’t have faith in these writers’ ability to deliver any kind of moral to kids in a consistent way, unless they’re going to have a character directly talk to the screen to explain what the moral is.

Let’s use ‘The Mime’ as an example. The scenario in this episode is that Marinette, through her clumsiness, deletes the most important video Alya had filmed so far, and then spends the rest of the episode trying to recreate the video in order to cover up for her mistake. In the end, it turns out there was no problem because Alya had already saved a copy of the video because she expected something like Marinette deleting it to happen, so she was never even mad or disappointed, but Marinette still sets up Alya to get a one-on-one interview with Ladybug. What did Marinette learn in this episode exactly?

The most good faith interpretation of the episode is that the point is that you own up and make up for your mistakes, hence Marinette setting Alya up to get an interview with Ladybug. But this message is muddled up by the fact that, even before the retool, the writers didn’t want Marinette suffering any real consequences for messing up, or to show her messing up in a way that couldn’t be “fixed”, so the video was actually safe and no irreparable damage was done. Alya had foreseen that Marinette would mess up and planned accordingly. This takes the wind out of the sails of the lesson because of course Marinette would do something nice for Alya, who’s such a considerate friend who never gets mad at her and plans around Marinette’s flaws. It’s a pretty different thing to go out of your way to apologise or make things up to someone who is actually mad at you for a good reason, and it requires a lot more courage. The situation in ‘The Mime’ is the easiest version of this situation imaginable for Marinette, but completely unrealistic for anyone facing this kind of situation in real life.

So, with this kind of previous showing back when I still had faith in this show, how would I expect them to deal with Marinette accidentally messing with someone’s mobility aid post-retool? I’d expect a lot of focus on how upsette Marinette is, because that’s the show’s number one priority outside of the love quest, with the show going out of it’s way to make it very clear that Marinette didn’t mean to, she feels really bad about it and she’s scared of how the new girl will react. At the end of the episode she would gather her courage and face the music, and it turns out the new girl was actually getting a new mobility aid that very same day and she wouldn’t have needed the old one any longer anyway. And then Marinette will maybe make some gesture of friendship that the new girl gladly accepts, no hard feelings. Any normal person would still be pissed about their expensive mobility aid being messed with, but the writers of this show never have characters react normally when the normal thing to do is not instantly forgive Marinette. So this scenario would be making things easy for Marinette, but completely unrealistic for the viewing audience.

Simply put, I really, really really hope the sneak preview is purposefully misleading, as they tend to be, and the crew doesn’t try to tackle the topic of physical disabilities with their tendency to favor the perspective of their coddled, able-bodied protagonist.

—

After seeing the leak:

So, like, fucking hell, way to further sully the idea that Marinette ever took her job as Ladybug seriously. Just to make herself look like the victim when she’s caught stalking someone (something she insisted last season she’d stopped doing), she goes so far as faking being Akumatized, transforming into Ladybug and jumping right in the middle of the field, of this girl's path, to scream about an Akuma attack. Like, the reveal that Sublime knew there was actually no Akuma and that Tomoe apparently made the leg less sturdy on purpose doesn’t make it better when Marinette got Sublime slippery and then startled her enough to make her slip. People break perfectly fine legs from slipping, it's why anti-skid devices sell so well in winter. All of this being an accident doesn’t make it okay, and Marinette sure as hell didn’t have anything close to those “good intentions” her stans love to attribute to her.

But, of course, her victim is going to be a perfect flawless angel who wasn't even upset about the stalking, instead defending Marinette to Ladybug, just in case saying: “this girl I know pretended to be Akumatized because she was caught stalking me” might make Marinette look bad to the audience. She also instantly reassures Ladybug, the one who actually caused her to slip, who hasn't done anything more than stare at her slack-jawed, because god forbid anyone ever say anything about Marinette that isn't validation or praise while she's too busy freaking out about herself.

Like, Marinette causes Sublime to break her leg, and we instantly see the victim in this situation go: “I’m okay, I’m not hurt”, while Marinette just stands there having her personal little panic attack. Like, a girl lost her leg, and the writers still try to sell Marinette as the injured party by having the victim insist she's okay while Marinette is having another one of her manipulative, please-feel-sorry-for-me-audience emotional breakdowns. The writers seriously made Marinette’s victim prioritize reassuring her over anything else.

I knew the writers were going to have Marinette be instantly forgiven, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so instant that she didn’t even get to finish processing her fuck-up. Or to go so out of their way to make Marinette seem less at fault because, like, Tomoe messing with the leg on purpose isn't a villain scheme, it was just to make Marinette look better in comparison.

The writers have this ability where, when I write down what I think would be a very likely way for one of their stories to go very badly, they do just that while still managing to make it worse.

[familyagrestefanblog]

Huh, this is an excellent point. I'm also noticing more and more how ableist Marinette is consistently written to be. I kinda kept from looking further into it cause it's one of those things I can't come back from in how I view Marinette once I saw it, but honestly, that barrier was already crossed once I rewatched Chameleon and Revelation. I might as well just do it properly.

Ngl, I'm bumped to realize that "Guilt trip" ties into this, but you are correct, the message of Rose's "my disability doesnt stop me from living my life to the fullest or change anything about how I live" really gets a nasty undertone when you realize that this means Rose is a "good" disabled person who doesnt NEED anything and is only here so others get virtue points for being well-meaning people (interesting how it was Adrien specifically who handled Rose's situation the best).

It's the narrative opposite to Lila in "Chameleon". Rose is a GOOD disabled person for not asking for any help or accommodations and instead explicitly ask her friends to not do anything whatsoever to possibly make even the tiniest accommodation for her disability in their dynamic with her. Unlike the awful LILA who's actions said that making accommodations for disabled people is normal and kind, but the show's message is that this is taking advantage of people and every claim should by default be questioned and tested.

Besides, of course, for Maribug. She's the only character who is portrayed as unconditionally entitled to support and accommodations and its outright abuse of the worst kind to npt always put her feelings, comfort and benefit first. Whereas Adrichat, Chloe and Lila/Cerise are primarily used to get the message across that thinking others could need it too is offensive and wrong. So again, only Marinette gets to have it.

And it really sucks that Rose is now part of this message too because while her friends were too overprotective in "Guilt trip", it's not like they had fundamentally bad instincts. Especially when you put the bathroom scene into perspective. The day prior her friends found out that Rose didnt just go to the school nurse, she straight up ended up in HOSPITAL. Their instinct to keep track of the time Rose took in the bathroom is not at all bad in my opinion, it just needed better guidance. The episode even has Max explicitly bring up that they waited until the average time people spend in the bathroom was over and then Kim added that he was 5 seconds away from breaking down the door.

For the love of God, Rose was in the HOSPITAL one day ago and not for no reason. It feels pretty awful now that the episode had Max and Kim say those two things in particular just to have the message be "dont do that for your chronically ill friends". In my opinion, the only things wrong about that instinct was that everyone got involved and Rose didnt got a saying in how long her friends are supposed to wait before checking on her in the bathroom. Cause this is the kind of stuff that goes well 200 times until it doesnt and then you wished someone would be checking on you.

That's actually a pretty dangerous message to send to kids. And I hate that it is very obviously always in service of pushing the narrative that ONLY Marinette should be given support, care, and accommodations for whatever she wants and needs next. Everyone else just needs to get over themselves and stop being selfish so people instead have the time and energy to devote themselves to Marinette.

I'm being harsh on this now because I have no faith in this Rose situation not ending up in a disaster in Ladybug's full-time team now in the new arc. You cannot tell me it's in any way out of character for Marinette to mid-battle completely forget about how serious Rose's illness can get and her then demanding of Pigella to push herself too far despite Rose trying to tell her that she needs a break. I have NO faith that Marinette will handle that well and I wouldnt be surprised if Marinette afterwards awkwardly attempts to safe face by asking Pigella "why she didnt tell her about her serious illness, then she would have taken it into consideration for the mission" to which Rose will then have to take the blame and be thankful that Ladybug still views her as worthy of being in her team despite her illness that can get in the way.

Call me a hater however you want, this is perfectly in line with Marinette's writing. I would be surprised if the show doesnt have exactly THIS happening once Rose's illness is an inconvenience to Ladybug's leadership. No way in hell is Marinette gonna remember shit about the dizzy spells, but at least it's by now very plausible to expect ADRICHAT to then be the one to take perfect care of the whole disaster to make up for Maribug's lack of consideration.

New challenge. Watch Guilt Trip Of ML Season 4.

I did?? Like a while ago?? Did you not read the disclaimer orrrr

Also. In all seriousness. Guilt Trip also isn't done very well in terms of dealing with a character having a disability, with it being like "yeah, she doesn't NEED all this help even though she has a disability cause disabled people aren't fragile and helpless" which is a good message but it's not done well. And it also just makes Marinette look like more of an ass in retrospect because she was only willing to accommodate rose cause they're ~friends~ and rose is good so she can't be lying about her disability! Unlike that super liar Lila who is definitely lying >:( because she's evil >:( (and yes she was lying and the only reason why is so Marinette can have an excuse for her horrible behavior)

Also juleka tells rose's secret without her consent to the entire class (not cool) and rose is also a common archetype of a character who "has a disability but that won't stop me from living life to the fullest!" Except it's only brought up in this episode and never acknowledged again because MLB doesn't know how to write characters with disabilities.

Oh and also they do that stupid thing where they only really focus on how sad their poor loved one must be, having to worry about them all the time :( /s which is a very common and quite ignorant thing that always happens when writing disabled characters.

It's not a good episode. Like. At all. The only thing it does is make Marinette look like the worst type of ableist person and prove that the writers should not be allowed to touch this topic ever again.

I'll be honest I don't think it's marinette or juleka's fault that they do such fucked up things because it's obvious that the writers are trying to frame their actions in the right and act like what they're doing isn't fucked up.

The problem is the writing not the characters themselves. Their personalities get pushed and pulled in the direction that the plot needs to move forward. I know I sound like I think Marinette sucks but it's not her it's her writing. Does that make sense

Edit: Juleka actually only told Marinette and Adrien about rose, so she didn't tell the whole class, it was Marinette who had notified everyone of rose's condition, contrary to what i remembered. Apologies on my part

[mlwritingprompts]

Submitted prompt: Outside Perspective

I remember back in the day where class salt was really popular there were plenty of fics off someone from outside the show joining Mrs. Bustier's class and shredding Lila's lies. Painting everyone else as idiots for ever falling for in the first place.

Usually it was Felix are one of the Annoying DC guys but. How about something kind of like this that's just a lot more considerate of Lila's skills and The Class.

So a new kid moves to Paris and Starts attending Mrs. Bustiers class. And this new kid meets Lila, and hears about the things she falsely claims she did. And to them, it sounds like the most ridiculous b******* they can possibly think of.

So they try their best to confront those lies. They do their best to poke holes at all her stories, do their very best to show everyone how wild, out of proportions, and illogical these stories seem. But they can't convince anyone in class (except Adrian, Marinette, and Alya)

And the new kid finds themselves surprised at how logical The Class' fefutes are. Nothing their classmates have said in return to their arguments had any visible flaw. The class is making pretty much perfect sense.

They say that it's too big that not only Lila met Jagged stone but he wrote a song about her? "We've all met Jagged Stone. In fact, Juleka is his faughter!"

The new student struggles to believe that, but the entirety of the rest of the class says they were there when Jagged Stone visited them.

They say it's weird that there were no articles about a child saving a celebrity's crocodile and getting injured? "Good. Celebrity newspapers are the worst. Lila probably wouldn't want articles about her anyways."

They say Jagged Stone has a pet crocodile and not a cat? This statement inspired many raised eyebrows, and a deadpan reseponse of, "People can have more than one pet. People can change pets."

(I mostly use this lie because it's the most memorable one. You should do that about other lies too.)

Everything the new student (and the salty part of the fandom saying the class are such idiots) can think of to refute Lila is perfectly refuted by the class without issue.

They almost started to believe Lila themselves. They started to think they were going mad. But eventually, they talk about it with Alya and Marinette.

And they tell him they know that Lila is Lying. They both agree that Lila is lying about some of what she said. How do they know that? They can't say. They can't provide any solid evidence.

Also, they don't exactly agree on what she lied about. Marinette seems to think that Lila says nothing but lies, and even her name isn't real, but Alya doesn't agree. She knows Lila lies about a lot of things, but she does believes Lila about some things, mainly that her mother is a diplomat, and that she has several disabilities.

They fight over it a lot. Marinette says that if Lila lied about being best friends with Ladybug, then Lila probably lies about everything.

Alya says she can't believe that Lila lies about her disabilities because she can't believe anyone will do that. They can't be allowed to doubt the credibility of someone's disability claim just because they lied about other things or, in Marinette's case, because they don't like them.

(Obviously it's very important to paint Marinette in the wrong here for saying Lila is lying about being disabled. And no, you cannot have Lila be lying about being disabled, that's an ableist myth that just stops actual disabled people in real life from getting the help we need. Lila has tinitus and tourettes and whatever else she says. )

Other events start to come up, and the conversation gets a lot more stormy. The new kid has no idea what they're talking about any more.

Eventually the new kid coughs loudly to interrupt, and Alya and Marinette stop fighting about that and remember the new kid is still there.

The new kid asks "H can they just believe her like that? What she's saying is so outlandish!".

And Alya replies "Their suspension of Disbelief is on the floor. We literally have a magical super villain here. And even before that no one here had a normal life. There's nothing that is too weird for them to believe."

They also tell him about how Adrien knows that Lila is lying. And they go confront him. He says some weird annoying stuff about "taking the high road" and "turning the other cheek" and the new student has gained quite a disdain for him.

And yeah that's all I have.

[rjalker]

Stop writing fics about Lila pretending to be disabled. It's literally just ableism.

[Plain text: "Stop writing fics about Lila pretending to be disabled. It's literally just ableism." End plain text.]

Copying an pasting this section from the original post because I'm so tired of this fandom's ableism.

It doesn’t matter if the show was ableist first. You have the personal responsibility to not be ableist. You have the personal responsibility to correct what the show does wrong.

Do not demonize the class for accommodating a disabled student.

Do not perpetuate the myth that “bad evil” people are out there pretending to be disabled to get attention.

Do not pretend like Marinette liking Lila has any bearing on whether or not Lila is disabled.

You want to fix this mess? Then either rewrite it so Lila never said she had hearing problems, or have her actually be disabled, with the moral being that not liking someone doesn’t magically mean they’re lying about being disabled, and that insisting that someone is lying about their disability just because you don’t like them makes you ableist and an asshole!

I’m sick of this! I’m sick of the show and the fandom demonizing disabled people! I’m sick of it! 

Stop being ableist and stop spreading ableist bullshit!

By fucking continuing to write about Lila pretending to be disabled because she's a Bad Person Who Wants Attention™ you are literally being ableist.

You are literally perpetuating the myth that disabled people are just faking it for attention. That is literally what you are fucking doing when you keep rehashing "oh Lila pretended to be disabled because she's an evil liar!!" bullshit.

I don't fucking care.

It is literally fucking ableist to accuse people of faking their disabilities to get attention.

It is fucking ableist to accuse people of getting accommodations "to get attention" or "to get special priveleges".

Stop fucking writing shit where Lila pretends to be disabled and Marinette calls her out on it. It's literally just fucking ableism. Straight up, no fucking ifs, ands, or buts.

Accusing people of faking their disability is ableist.

Accusing people of wanting accomodations in order to "Get ahead" or "Get attention" is fucking ableist.

The show was ableist as shit by having Lila do this. The show was ableist as shit for wanting us to be on Marientte's side when she makes a scene in front of the whole class accusing Lila of faking a disability.

But just because she show did the fucking ableist shit first does not make it okay for you to fucking repeat it or make it even fucking worse.

No, it is not okay for you to write fics about Lila pretending to be disabled and getting all these wonderful benefits from doing so that make her life so much fucking easier and let her have unfair advantages over the class in general and Marinette in particular.

THAT IS LITERALLY JUST ABLEISM.

[Plain text: "That is literally just ableism." End plain text.]

No, it is not fucking okay for you or anyone else to perpetuate the myth that disabled people are faking it for attention or unfair advantages.

That's literally all you, the show, and anyone whose who writes this kind of shit is doing.

Yes, even if you've made it an AU where Marinette is disabled. And no, saying that Marinetter has a "real" disability and "Being hard of hearing isn't really a disability" does in fact just make it more ableist, not less. Why does this even need to be said. If you write a fic pitting disabled people against eachother, saying that only one of them deserves accomodations when there's nothing stopping both of them from having their needs met, you are just being ableist and you are encouraging your audience to be ableist.

Tinittus is a real fucking thing that actually exists. So many people in this fandom were literally pretending it's made up and fake just because Lila's the one who said it. Being hard of hearing makes you disabled. Yes, "really" disabled. There's no such fucking thing as faking being disabled or not being "disabled enough to deserve accomodations".

Stop writing fics where Lila pretends to be disabled. The show was ableist to do it in the first place, and you are not making the active choice to continue that ableism.

It is your personal responsibility not to be ableist. That means that when it comes to Lila, either throw the entire fucking thing of her pretending to be disabled into the fucking dumpster, or writer her as being disabled, and the moral is that Marinette is in fucking fact in the wrong for accusing her of faking it just because she doesn't like her.

Because I've been accused of lying about being disabled plenty of fucking times, and you know why? Because the person doing the accusing didn't like me, and decided that meant I had to be lying.

Do not fucking portray Marinette or any other character as in the right when they accuse someone of faking a disability for attention or an advantage. You are literally just being ableist and encouraging your audience to be ableist, and the show doing it first does not excuse your actions. It is your personal responsibility to not be ableist, it is your personal responsibility to call out the bigotry in this show, not reinforce it.

[Plain text: "Do not fucking portray Marinette or any other character as in the right when they accuse someone of faking a disability for attention or an advantage. You are literally just being ableist, and encouraging your audience to be ableist, and the show doing it first does not excuse your actions. It is your personal responsibility to not be ableist, it is your personal responsibility to call out the bigotry in this show, not reinforce it." End plain text.]

[secretagentspydetectiveninja]

Apologies ahead of time, I didn’t mean to ramble on for nearly this long when I stared typing. Sorry! Also fandom salt warning. If you’re feeling down, some of this might be a bit too negative

This isn’t really aro hc stuff, but I’ve been reading a lot of ml posts lately, and something I’ve noticed is that pretty much everyone loves Alix, which is valid because she’s the best, but despite positive Alix content, I can’t help but get a weird feeling off of it because of how it compares to how people talk about other characters on her level of plot relevance.

I feel like the fandom is divided into two parts, the majority (typical ml fan) which is here exclusively/mostly for the main cast, and the smaller part that stans the supporting cast as well and views small subplots as equal to the love square and agreste lore and all that. I’m mostly talking about the former here.

I’ve noticed that when typical ml fans give opinions on side characters, they tend to hold their flaws over their heads a lot. If anyone does anything wrong ever, they won’t forget it. “Yeah Max is alright, but that napkin scene…” “I can’t accept a Sabrina redemption arc. She’s just so complacent with Chloe and doesn’t think for herself.” “Alya takes initiative too much when it’s not her business.” Even when the thing they criticize isn’t actually bad, which usually comes off as kinda ableist. “Rose’s childish behavior is so annoying.” “Mylene’s coping mechanisms are embarrassing.”

But I don’t think I’ve EVER heard this kind of thing about Alix. When people make AUs starring only main characters, a lot of them throw her in there as well. When salters say, “I hate every character in this show except […]” she’s usually on that list. Part of it is because the conventionally attractive, skinny, white-passing characters tend to be elevated while the rest are brushed off, which always makes me mad, but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation.

These types of posts and fan works made me realize that Alix really lacks flaws and bad moments in canon. Sure, sometimes she does dorky things that are usually overlooked in fanon, but it’s so heavily outweighed by her being badass and snarky and logical all the time.

Here’s where the aro part comes in. A lot of the characters’ fuck-ups happen in romantic situations. Not all, but a lot. ML relies heavily on the “love makes people do stupid things” idea. There’s Marinette’s common screw-ups of varying severity as soon as she hears Adrien’s name, Adrien getting clingy over LB and being emo about her not returning his love, Nino making mountains out of molehills and revealing his and Rena’s identities in Rocketear, Kim trying to suck up to Chloe in the early seasons, Nath being a dick in Reverser. Mylene and Ivan’s relationship is used as a vessel to portray their respective flaws and struggles. Luka took his first big L besides being corny in season 4 after not being able to get over Marinette.

As much as we like the “being aspec makes us immune from simp-induced idiocy” thing, could they be overdoing it here? Maybe something will happen later in s5, but Alix never makes mistakes. She doesn’t have interpersonal issues with anyone because everyone loves her. She doesn’t openly get stressed out or bothered by things, and laughs a lot off. She’s always chill, tough, and she’s almost always right. She’s never done anything embarrassing or needed support from anyone else.

She’s the only one like this. Kagami plays a role kind of like this now, but she has problems socializing, and was very much hated in earlier seasons. Felix is widely regarded as having OP intelligence, and some people love him for it, but some people hate him for, y’know, being a huge dipshit. Zoe hasn’t had much of a chance to do anything, but an overwhelming number of people hate her just for existing. The closest one is Marc, but even then, he has obvious flaws. He’s pretty emotional in a way that people just find endearing, but he still gets some criticism for writing fiction about real heroes and villains (even though that’s implied to be completely normal in this world) and his arc kind of reminds me of Meena from Sing.

Anyways, I want to see Alix fuck up. I want to see her make a huge mistake, and get scared, and make a mess of things. Show me her being afraid of asking for help, biting off way more than she can chew, and trying to deal with something she just can’t handle all on her own. Give me Alix finding herself being the one in need of saving or comforting for once. Show me her hiding things to keep up her cool reputation or bottling up her feelings to look tough. Let her get angry over something irrational. Make her say something a little too sarcastic that hurts someone’s feelings or make a teasing joke in poor taste at the wrong time. Make her shit on her brother a little too much or come off as rude when calling the girls’ romance talk dumb or ignore Nath while hanging out with other people. Let her struggle with being aro as much as censorship will allow, or, from a more meta perspective, being the only aro character in a show about and chock full of romance. Show me Alix who goes with the flow without thinking, doesn’t give af about consequences, then gets hit in the face by them. Let constant time travel screw her up a little. Let her resent Ladybug a bit, deep down, for giving her this super stressful job, even though she consciously understands. Let the team put all their faith in Bunnyx to save the day, only for her to totally blow it. Show me Alix who would never get emotional in front of anyone, except maybe a select few people, who finds it impossible to show vulnerability and fears showing weakness.

I want to see the Alix that has struggles and makes bad decisions like the rest of the cast, not the Alix that is interpreted as overwhelmingly badass and perfect in people’s ooc grim dark AU fan fiction. Maybe the time just hasn’t come yet, but this is what canon is currently missing to me.

Don't worry about the length of this ask, your meta is always interesting to read and it actually made me super happy to see a long ask about Alix sitting in my inbox! (And I'm sure this reply is going to get long as well, haha.)

You absolutely have a point, I've seen it too -- salters or people who don't like the show still tend to like Alix as a character, even if they don't like other minor characters. There doesn't seem to be anything to dislike when her main personality is basically just being a badass. The only time in canon I can think of where she really "screws up" was way back in Timebreaker, where she supposedly should have taken better care of the pocket watch and apologises for it at the end. But that always seemed silly to me because she didn't do anything wrong! She knew it would be dangerous if she kept it with her during the race, so it made sense that she gave it to her friends for safekeeping, and if they were careless and broke it then that wasn't anything to do with her! But the narrative portrays it as her not being responsible enough. (Lol it's been years but I'm still a little sore about it.)

So yeah, even the one time she really "did something wrong" it's clear to see that she really didn't, and so people don't have a flaw to pick at. I remember back in season 1 I used to wonder if she was a loner like Nath, because she didn't really talk to the rest of the classmates back then (like in the class election in Darkblade she says she doesn't care about running for class rep and seems just generally apathetic) but season 2 onwards made it clear that she's very friendly and everyone in-show loves her. Which on the one hand is awesome, but on the other hand it would have been interesting to explore a more aloof side of her -- like you were saying about maybe having her feel unable to show emotional vulnerability in front of people. At the current moment she seems like the perfect friend to all her classmates and as awesome as that is, it does seem kind of shallow when everyone else is shown to have flaws and depth!

"Simp-induced idiocy" is an amazing phrase omg that's going into my lexicon now. But yeah, you're right, the nonsense behaviour in the show usually stems from teenage awkwardness around romance, and Alix clearly doesn't have that. But aro characters deserve to have the same depth to them as allo characters, just as aro people irl are obviously just as deep and rounded as allos. All of the scenarios you suggested would be so fun to explore!

I especially think the burden of being the hero of time would be a direction the show could go in, since (s5 spoilers alert!!) she's now stuck in the burrow for what will probably be years, not being able to see her family or grow up with her classmates, all on very short-notice, and that's obviously going to be a lot to deal with. Managing the timeline in general must be a difficult, stressful job -- just imagine all the apocalypses she has to see! And if she does her job right then no one else will know about those, so no one will know quite how much of a burden it truly is! Chat Blanc x1000. And all she really has is Fluff and herself. Will she get lonely? It would be so interesting to see a loneliness arc solved with something other than romance.

I remember having a few ideas about how the show could try and make it obvious that she's aro in spite of censorship -- like having a reverse Dark Cupid-style villain who shoots arrows of love at people and it doesn't work on Alix, or having her be akumatised into a Dark Cupid-style villain herself when she gets too sick of her classmates' romantic shenanigans, and the theme could be about having a balance where she cares about her friends' happiness, but they also don't overwhelm her with romantic talk. Just the show having magic in general could show that she's aro in some kind of metaphor way. I doubt it could ever be explicitly stated (just look how lowkey Julerose and Marcnath have to be!) but more hints like her sarcasm in Gigantitan would always be welcome! I think Alix being aro in the actual show itself is still more likely than them finding a way to make Max outright ace in the show though, for obvious reasons.

Anyway thank you for this ask, I'm always happy to hear about and talk about Arolix! I think it's surprising that there's not more discussions of her aromanticism in the fandom, considering that she's a pretty popular character, but then again it was only revealed in a tweet so not everyone knows she's aro. And fandoms are not the most aro-friendly of places on a good day. (I've been yelled at for headcanoning characters as aro before, including Alix back in the days before it was canon... Ah well, I've stopped caring what people think now.) I hope in the future more facets of her personality will be explored, not just "she's cool and snarky"!

[marinetteplztakeabreak]

Some of you guys need to learn that it’s possible to hate L*la without being an ableist clown about it

L*la seems to get joy out of making others miserable. She actively threatens Adrien and Marinette and tries to get Ladybug killed several times. She’s essentially gaslighting Adrien and possibly several other classmates so that they distrust themselves and feel the need to help her to make up for it. She takes advantage of Adrien’s kind nature to hurt people which could have a devastating effect on him if she’s not stopped. She manipulates Marinette into having anxiety attacks seemingly for the fun of it. And she makes Marinette feel isolated and tricks her into thinking that she can’t trust her friends and family. And on top of so many other absolutely awful things, she’s also working with a literal terrorist for funsies.

THOSE are appropriate things to be mad at her for. She is a terrible person who has done terrible things that have caused so much deep suffering.

The majority of the fandom, however, is looking almost exclusively at Chameleon for justification to hate L*la. And they dumb the story down into “oh, she’s faking disabilities, so she’s bad.”

I cannot overstate how off-target this attack is. Especially when it’s used to attack the class for “being fooled by L*la.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever interacted with someone with a chronic disability, but they’re unpredictable. Diagnosis change all the time as doctors change, conditions tend to be “buy one get 15 free,” and symptoms can rapidly change for no apparent reason.

All the class has to go off at this point is that L*la seems to have too many random convenient disabilities, and they’re reacting the RIGHT WAY. They treat L*la like a person and do their best to make life easy on her without prying too deep into her personal info. They don’t know about anything else L*la has done — and attacking L*la solely because they think she’s faking a disability is literally just the “you have to prove your disability in order to justify yourself” mindset that has become a staple of ableism.

So attack L*la all you want, but stop attacking her classmates for NOT being ableist idiots. And while you’re at it, stop ignoring the actual bad things L*la has done in favor of perpetuating an ableist fable that hurts real people.

I understand that L*la makes people really emotional and that leads to a lot of yelling at her without thinking about the implications, and I’m not trying to start a fight with anyone who’s unknowingly added to this, but seriously, if we all could try a little harder to think rationally about the real-life people on here before posting angry rants about the characters we hate, it would help a lot in making this fandom a better place.

[adriensaltprompts]

Marinette dates Gabriel’s rival’s son who is in a wheelchair (no chance of recovery). she decides to focus on designs for disabled people. The rival company surpass Gabriel with her designs. Adrien founds out she is Ladybug and tries to “woo” her. He states when Marinette gets Tom to throw out of the bakery that marinette’s boyfriend would never be able to satisfy her in bed. Marinette’s reply she was asexual and thanks to him hates sex with a passion even more now. 💗part 1

They never sent in a part 2, so here's this.

Make sure if you write this you are respectful of disabled people and a-spec people. Do your research, read what people who are actually in wheelchairs and are actually asexual and sex repulsed have to say about it. Don't portray this kid being in a wheelchair as a tragedy. Don't portray Marinette as a hero for being in love with a disabled person.

Don't be ableist, and don't be aphobic.

Also, unless you are getting Adrian 100% insanely crazily berserker button upset, it would be comoletely out of character for him to say something that bad in a crowded public space if he's not transformed.

Remember, he acts the way he does as cat Noir specifically because nobody knows it's him, and he can get away with it. All you have to do is take off the mask and nobody is mad at him, because they don't know that it was him doing it.

If you want to make this work with his kid and behavior, you should have Adrian as cat Noir saying this kind of stuff to Marinette, while she is Ladybug. That way, Marinette has no reason to connect his behavior with him, because she doesn't know it's him.

Also just for the record, not everyone who is asexual is sex repulsed. That's not what asexuality is. A sexuality means you do not feel sexual attraction, or only very rarely and under specific circumstances. It doesn't necessarily mean that you hate sex and you hate the concept of sex and you never want to have sex.

I am sex repulsed. But that doesn't mean that every single other person who is asexual is too. It's 100% fine to write Marinette as being Ace and sex repulsed, but you need to bring up with in the thick at some point that there are in fact asexual people who enjoy and have sex.

It's not celibacy, it's not some Catholic Church style sex is bad and gross type thing. It's a sexual orientation pointed at nobody.

If you want to write about this, please do your research before and make sure you know what you're talking about about and you aren't stereotyping anybody or spreading harmful ideas.

Which I'm not saying the Anon is, but I don't want anybody to think that being asexual automatically means you're sex repulsed.

[flightfoot]

Ooooh, okay, you’re talking about SALTERS seeing the show purely from Marinette’s perspective, not the show itself portraying things from Marinette’s perspective.

I agree HARD with most of the salt stemming from taking Marinette’s perspective and not looking at anyone else’s. Bashing the class and Ms. Bustier for daring to believe Lila when she says that she’s disabled or injured and treating her accordingly is a particularly egregious example. I remember that passing around during season 3, and people subsequently slapping it down for being ableist, since the whole concept of “well if someone says that they have some disability that makes it hard to hear but doesn’t have the paperwork with them to prove it, then you shouldn’t even allow something as simple as a seat change to accommodate it, and preferably should mock them for trying to pull one over on you. And that it is in fact immoral to try and accommodate for a student’s stated disability if they don’t have a doctor’s note to prove that they have it, and they are a bad teacher for trying to do so.” is um. A really, REALLY bad philosophy when you think of someone actually taking that bit of rhetoric to heart and actually trying to apply it to the real world. 

And bashing the class for believing Lila when she says she’s injured and trying to help her, and acting like Marinette’s done something wrong when she tries to “disprove” Lila’s injury and seemingly aggravates it in the process? Yeah, that ain’t much better. Like you said, Guiltrip showed that the class is just really nice like this, wanting to help their classmates whenever they’re hurting. And salters didn’t seem to mind Guiltrip! (It likely helped that Marinette was just as involved in trying to “help” Rose as the rest of the class). It all comes down perceiving the class’s actions in a pro-Lila/anti-Marinette sort of dichotomy, without actually looking at the core principles and philosophy the kids are acting on. It solely comes down to the idea that the rest of the class should take Marinette’s side on everything no matter what, with no regard for what the situation looks like from their point of view. It’s a very “You’re either with me or against me” kind of philosophy.

The complete lack of care for other people’s perspectives, with only Marinette (who’s being used as the person’s self-insert in a lot of these cases) mattering... yeah I hate that. A lot. Guess what? To someone else, YOU are the one who’s the “other person”, and by that sort of philosophy, who’s thoughts, feelings, perspective, and operating principles don’t matter in the slightest, if you hurt them in any way. 

Oh geez, the whole ���Marinette is suffering from the weight of the world and is the only one who cares about helping people as a superhero” salt. Yeah I hate that. Like you said, during Multiplication, she was ALSO playing games with Chat Noir. It wasn’t like she alone remained vigilant, she started relaxing along with everyone else. But that doesn’t fit the “Marinette is the only one who cares and is competent” narrative, so it’s ignored. Yes, Marinette is the one we see freaking out the most about Monarch getting all the Miraculous, at least from what we see, but like you said, she’s also the one that most of the screentime revolves around. There’s not as much TIME for other people to be shown worrying about it.  

It does make sense for Marinette to be the one freaking out about Monarch getting the Miraculous the most, since the dominoes that led to him doing that were caused, in great part, by her decisions (not that she could’ve anticipated this outcome), AND because it was her responsibility to safeguard the Miraculous. Of course she’s gonna be angsting about it worse than say, Alya, who had little to do with the events that led to Monarch getting his hands on them. For her, the angst is mostly just a generic worry of “hey Monarch’s attacks might get worse” rather than a guilt-induced “my failures caused this to happen”. Except for, maybe, him getting his hands on the Fox Miraculous specifically. I’d really like to see her angsting about that, even if she couldn’t have anticipated this outcome when she insisted on Marinette taking it back.

And yeah, Alya’s acting as a steadying presence for Marinette in that sleepover scene. I would’ve loved for Alya to also be freaking out about Trixx being taken, personally, because I love Alya’s thoughts and feelings being centered, but I’m sure the salters would have bashed her for that as well, because she can’t do anything right with them. She does validate Marinette’s feelings while trying to tell her it’s not her fault, then helps her through the whole Adrienette situation. I’m guessing that the people salting on her for that also hate Adrien. Alya gets a lot of hate from the people who despise Adrien, since she does ship the two of them, so it’s just another reason for that group to say she’s an awful person for trying to push Marinette together with such a supposedly horrible guy. 

I swear, Alya can’t catch a break with these people.

You know, it just hit me that a good chunk of the salt going around is just salters reading the show as author's objective intent instead of a biased deep Marinette POV.

Like Marinette seeming to be blamed for a lot of things unfairly? It could just be Marinette blaming herself as it is canon that she catastrophises things out of proportions. Complaints about the narrative seeing Adrien as a perfect do-no-wrong Gary Stu and its refusal to acknowledge his flaws? Marinette has a rose tinted view of him thanks to her huge crush. No one criticizing Chat Noir's less than heroic acts and not being as useful as Ladybug? Marinette is forgiving and understanding and doesn't hold most of it against Chat Noir. Heck, maybe Marinette herself subconsciously underestimates him (there are a few dialogues, especially in early seasons, that indicate so), hence, his downplayed role. Alya being an enabler of her worst traits not being called out on? Marinette appreciates her constant support amd encouragement and both teens aren't aware of the more negative conotations of some of their actions (and its not like Alya doesn't draw the line at anything, but salters are just gonna salt on her whenever she does). Chloe's wasted redemption arc and Zoe subsequently getting shilled into her place when she doesnt deserve it? Marinette is not obligated to forgive Chloe nor does she have to keep working with her if she doesn't want to, especially when there's this shiny new person she would prefer to have on her team. Master Fu still being depicted as a good mentor while Master Su Han being nothing more than a straightman not allowed to be right? Between the two, at least Fu was kind and tried to help Marinette while Su Han did nothing but scold her. Despite having good points, Su Han didn't really help her at all while Fu did the bare minimum... Before foisting his responsibilities on her, but Marinette doesn't see it that way.

The actual writing has a lot of flaws in general and does rely on a lot of suspension of disbelief, which has been pushed too far for some, I am not defending that. There are narrative choices that I myself don't like. But thinking of the show as a heavily biased deep Marinette POV with a few breaks here and there makes sense to me as she is their intended protagonist. It helps me accept a lot of things about the show.

I mean, it kind of depends on the specifics of what's being talked about. Like, we see things from a third-person view, so we can see objectively the facts of what's happening.

But you're right about a lot of the framing being from Marinette's point of view, which isn't exactly unbiased. Like, Marinette thinking that no one listens to her, as Marinette, in Risk. It's true that people didn't really believe her in that case, since she was making a major claim about Adrien that didn't align with what other people saw, and was advocating for action that could potentially be harmful if she was wrong. But it's not a case of people never listening to Marinette, and just listening to Ladybug. People would listen to Ladybug because when it comes to things that are Miraculous-related, she IS an authority figure on that, more than anyone else they might interact with is. While with Marinette... well, her classmates do listen to her about most things, just not everything. Marinette's not an authority figure on other people's relationships or feelings the way that Ladybug is an authority on the Miraculous. So that was less of an objective statement by the narrative, and more something that was framed from Marinette's POV.

[ilikekidsshows]

With Adrien now having lost both his parents (and couldn't even bury them), lost his uncle (yes, that counts), and having gone through Emilie's, Gabriel's, and Nathalie's health going south in front of his eyes, I just... I lost a couple of family members in the last 2 years (two very recently) and our home situation was always very... complicated to say the least on top of our family having quite alot of health issues.

I don't know how sympathetic I can stay with Miraculous and Marinette when they will now clearly make light of being an abused and guilt ridden orphan because Marinette is gonna continue crying whenever she feels the slightest discomfort about everything that isn't about her.

If the show has Marinette now complain about her parents bc of some set up drama to Adrien and he'll be given shit for being "unsupportive" because he tells her that her parents aren't the worst and instead she should talk to them (which was her (awful) advice to him in Risk but it's correct here). I just don't know how I can watch that without going off. No way is Marinette gonna be respectful about Adrien being an orphan the second her parents aren't perfect. She probably won't even remember or simply be dismissive the way she always is when something opposes her opinion.

Marinette is never written to be truly respectful to any kind abuse in the show besides her own and bully victims. She's even written to be a solid bit ableist because once it's not Marinette's problem it ain't real and people "need to be put in place". Marinette not being a raging dick doesn't mean she's respectful. I noticed that her dialogue very rarely actually empathizes with the victims. She just tells them they can try again and change their feelings and situations to what she decided is the correct way to be and think. Marinette doesn't truly help people, she tells them how to best suit herself so they can then help her after they corrected their existence to her liking. That's literally all Marinette did to Shadybug omfg. I hate it here.

If Lila causes trouble in Marinette's family, no way will Marinette be tolerant of Adrien's situation. And I don't know if I can watch that.

And I don't think this is me being too sensitive at all. Just like there are abused children who are constantly getting shit on by Marinette's story, orphans very obviously exist. But Marinette isn't an orphan so now there is a new group of children who need to "learn their lesson" that their problems aren't real because Marinette is upsette.

Sorry for being pessimistic, but it makes me so unbelievably angry that Miraculous has turned into nothing but a kids show that's just for the pretty and privilege Girls who were bullied (or maybe not even that) and now want a power fantasy that validates all their worst emotional cravings of revenge on literally everyone else's expense because SOMETHING didn't went their way and now that's the worst thing ever.

I hate that Miraculous became a show that I don't want children to watch because of how awful the Marinette centric morality is. Every bad message possible is send to children as long as it validates Marinette and her kinnies and it's a prime example of the type of privileged western feminism that gives feminism such a bad name. So forgive me for not believing that Marinette will suddenly be written differently the moment Lila has her parents disagree with her about something (like wanting her to take over the bakery) and Marinette will inevitably be written to stomp her foot, scream, cry, and throw up about how abused, oppressed, and unprivileged she is until she entirely gets her way.

No I don't think Marinette will be understanding of Adrien in that case. She will start crying and pouting about not being validated and Adrien taking her parents side, and say that Adrien's experiences don't count and he just "doesn't get it" until he agrees that his way worse experience isn't worth anything (the way she always makes him as Cat Noir believe taht his feelings, perspective and experiences aren't real. He just "doesn't get" how correct and benevolent she is, until he gives in and accepts that he's irrelevant and worthy of abuse the way she likes it apparently. Or the class not being allowed to have their own opinions on Chloe because Marinette thinks their experiences of being bullied by Chloe aren't "valid" enough to make a judgement call whenever it doesn't validate her, only SHE can have the right opinion)

When has Marinette ever been written to actually respect other victims? The most she does is stop being a dick about it and instead "kindly" wait for the victims to understand taht they are wrong and she's right. They don't have real problems, only HER, so its HER who needs all the effort and support. The others just need to stop and get over it.

I've yet to see anything in Miraculous that gives me a real reason to believe Marinette is not gonna be a shit girlfriend now the moment she isn't getting whatever she wants and Adrien isn't 24/7 validating her. Marinette has become such a privileged character who walks over all kinds of victims but would never take accountability for it because "it's not her fault" and "her feelings are valid, everyone is just so awful and mean to her!"

I pitty every child growing up with Miraculous who doesn't have the privilege of being a Marinette. And now they are gonna drag orphans into that too...

---

They don’t even need to give Marinette family problems to make her be insensitive to Adrien, in my opinion. Her most minor grievances are the most important problem for her, no matter what anyone else has going on. Adrien could be going to his father's funeral and Marinette would stalk him there unless he invites her along like it’s a date and she would treat the situation like she was the one facing the hardship of Adrien not inviting her everywhere he goes.

Marinette has been treating Adrien’s worries as unimportant since day one. Adrien being locked up was only bad because he couldn’t come to the trick dates Marinette tried to set up. Adrien has a “perfect life” because he’s rich and famous, because nothing else about his life has worked out for him in any way. But Marinette will only acknowledge something is wrong when he’s being forced to hang out with girls who aren’t Marinette herself, meaning it’s once again about her and how her dream boy/boyfriend is being pushed off on other girls when he should be with her.

So, yeah, I totally don't see the writers allowing Adrien to grieve his parents for more than a second. I can just see it, Adrien with a photo of the family he no longer has, and we instantly cut to Marinette whining about how Adrien has been so distant with her and the fandom instantly cries: "How dare Adrien grieve his supervillain dad (that he doesn't know was a supervillain)! He should be with Marinette because she's upsette!"

[ilikekidsshows]

I just noticed that some (most?) senti defender mostly think people who hate the senti BS hate the plot because Adrien isn't ...human? Because I saw them comparing Adrien with Nobody, Grimwalker (I think, from Owl House?) and I saw them even quoting Mew Two about the circumstances of one birth doesn't matter and it just so wild for me because they seems to be missing the most important point about a sentimonster which is the fucking remote control!

ADrien being a magical being is the least of the problem here, the one hit kill isn't even close to being as being problematic as the fact that SENTIMONSTER IS A BEING WITH REMOTE CONTROL AND ANYONE WHO HAVE IT CAN FREELY CONTROL THEM AS THEY WISH! Them renamed it to Sentihuman doesn't even erase the fact that they still aren't human and still a magical being with a fucking remote control!!

"But it's good for angst for bodily autonomy!" I saw some people said it. And here I thought angst supposed to have a happy ending to balance it, but what kind of happy ending that a sentimonster can have, who's life is so ephemeral? Who's agency can be overwritten by anyone anytime? Unless Adrien can be like a Pinokio then sure... But at this point I don't think Adrien as sentimonster even matter in Marinette's eyes, until she feels the need to control him for whatever bulshit excuses and justification that she can muster that is. Ephemeral exist as a case of point after all.

---

The argument that people against the “Sentipeople” concept just don’t like nonhuman characters has been around since the start. It’s a purposeful way of misreading the very first argument for why it was a bad idea: “it would dehumanize Adrien.” The people in support of such a storyline decided that “dehumanize” means literally making him not human, and that was inherently bad, when, all along, “dehumanize” means “deprive of human qualities, personality and dignity” (Merriam-Webster). It’s not the act of making a fictional character not human, it’s the act of depicting a human being as someone undeserving of similar dignity and consideration as what are considered as normal people. Dehumanization can be, for example, ignoring the struggles and traumas of real people, in favor of focusing on a more favored group of people. Miraculous, by turning Adrien into a Sentimonster, turns the focus from his reactions to how he’s being victimized by his parents to why his parents decided to have a Sentimonster kid. And we find out they were unable to have a child, so tragic :’(

This approach to “Sentipeople” was foreseen, by several people, but the fandom supportive of the idea ignored all these explanations and just focused on the word “dehumanize”, because it was the easiest to misinterpret to serve their narrative, which was that the people opposed to the concept are the ones not treating Adrien as human, because they’re the ones saying turning an abuse victim into a literal monster makes him less sympathetic! The writers never said that so there’s no way that could be a real thing that could happen! The idea of “SentiAdrien has very ableist, abuse-enabling connotations” being a statement of fact is inconceivable.

Never mind how the canon has made it blatantly clear that the “Sentipeople” concept will never, ever be tackled from the perspective of our most prominent example of one. The arc with Adrien’s supervillain dad finally gets wrapped up and he doesn’t just sit it out, he’s left oblivious of anything that happened. It’s obvious Adrien being a Sentimonster isn’t actually relevant to Adrien. It was there because the writers desperately wanted more attention and to give Emilie a “sympathetic” reason to use Miraculous with the superpower of creating beings lesser to humans that exist to serve a single purpose and then die, the human equivalent of tissue paper. The most fucked up superpower ever to create the most nightmarish scenario to be born into, and it’s used to excuse why Adrien’s obviously abusive upbringing wasn’t actually his parents’ fault; Adrien was just born different and had to be kept away from normal people for his own good because he’s just so susceptible as a Sentimonster.

The fandom is once again doing the heavy lifting for this show’s writers by creating these imaginary versions of the show where a Sentipeople story totally gets told from Adrien’s perspective and respects Adrien’s agency and humanity, when the canon gives us the opposite. Similarly, the canon is still calling them “Sentimonsters” with the fandom insisting terms like “Sentipeople” and “Sentihumans” be used instead, or else it’s the fans disrespecting Adrien’s humanity.

The fandom just loves to blame critical fans for the show’s failings. The show treats Adrien like the Pearls in Steven Universe, but, if we point it out, we’re the ones stripping away Adrien’s humanity and reducing him into an object to be owned. The show writers did it first, we’re just pointing it out.

Other people are scared Marinette will go through Adrien's phone in the future of the show (again). I'm scared Adrien will give Marinette his Amok as a token of his love, giving her half of his literal being, possibly without knowing he's doing so, and Marinette will have to accept or she'll hurt his feelings by refusing to accept the symbol of his feelings for her, and the fandom will cheer over how romantic it is.

[ilikekidsshows]

Do you think that Adrien has low empathy?

---

I don't even need to know what this is referencing to guess it's Adrien salters being weird again. I always get very suspicious of “X has low empathy” statements, because it almost always feels like a misleading statement meant to make a character look bad because of common misconceptions about low empathy people. It's leaning on this idea of “purity of intent”, where people think that, unless you can literally feel another person's emotional pain, any attempt to help others is going to fail or be “manipulative” if it succeeds. In reality, your level of empathy has nothing to do with your level of compassion, aka your willingness to help others. The person who sits with you while you're upset about losing a job opportunity is committing an act of compassion even when they can't really relate to the emotion you're having, while the person who cries at home about how sad they are that you’re having a hard time isn't.

Word-for-word, saying Adrien has low empathy is saying that he simply lacks an aptitude (a natural inclination towards an ability), but what this implies is that Adrien is fundamentally a bad person for lacking this specific aptitude. It's ableist as fuck because many people manage to be kind, caring people despite not having the ability to empathize or having a hard time with it. It's extra disgusting to say this shit about Adrien especially because he's a trauma victim and trauma victims already respond to others’ emotions differently from nontraumatized people, so trying to grade trauma victims on their level of empathy is ableist.

What is far less ableist to discuss is how good I think a character is at empathy skills. "Empathy" as a general concept is made up of both the aptitude towards empathy and empathy skills. Empathy skills are different from level of empathy because they can be learnt, while your level of empathy is related to how your brain and emotions work. Having high empathy makes learning empathy skills easier and having low empathy makes them harder, yes, but your skills affect your ability to act far more than your aptitude. Empathy skills are basically the ability to relate to others through imagining yourself in their situation, which allows you to understand their state of mind, like what they want or need.

Now, do I think Adrien is good at this skill? Comparatively to whom? In the cast of Miraculous, there are few characters as in tune with other people’s emotions as Adrien. Adrien is the only character in the cast who seems to actually understand what Lila is after, for example, outside of Gabriel, who has supernatural help from Nooroo. He’s the one member in the cast with the highest count of times he’s gotten Marinette out of a mental breakdown after possibly Tikki. Adrien has incredibly good empathy skills. I have actually made this assessment earlier on the blog how Adrien is capable of both putting himself in someone else's shoes and making logical assumptions on how someone is feeling based on the clues he has, and using this information to help others. I don’t know if that means he has high empathy or not, but it sure does mean he’s kind and compassionate, which is what really matters.

[rjalker]

Made with speech to text forgive typos

I'm trying to find my posts on mobile and it's not working but I have made several post telling people to shut the fuck up with actually literally victim-blaming Adrien by saying that it's his fault that Lila is harassing him and telling people to stop fucking acting like him being abused by his father is a good thing, because some people don't know the difference between hitting a character, and being a complete fucking creep about it.

So, post that is somewhere on my blog but I can't find it on mobile summarized:

Marinette does not ever have to tell Adrian or Chloe no for their behavior to be sexual harassment. Adrian does not ever have to tell Lila or Chloe no for their behavior to be sexual harassment. You do not need to turn around and have a heart-to-heart with the person cat calling you for it to be sexual harassment. Not saying no is not the same thing as saying yes. Just because you haven't literally said no does not mean you are consenting and it does not mean that the person harassing you has any right to continue.

If you are going to flirt with someone, it is your responsibility to make sure that the person is happy about your flirting. They do not need to tell you no for it to be sexual harassment.

Any unwanted so-called flirting or requests for romantic or sexual gestures is sexual harassment if it is unwanted. It doesn't only become sexual harassment after the victim has said no either verbally or non-verbally.

Cashier smiling along with the person creeping on them because they are afraid and they are at work and they are afraid that if they cause a scene they will get fired are not consenting. If you don't put up a fight, if you don't say no, if you pretend to be happy with it, it doesn't mean you're consenting, and it's still sexual harassment, because you don't want it to be happening. It's sexual harassment.

Adrian does not need to tell Leila stop grabbing me for Lila to be sexually harassing and assaulting him. Marinette does not need to tell Adrien stop grabbing me Adrien to be sexually harassing and assaulting her.

You do not need to have a heart-to-heart with the person harassing you before it can be considered harassment.

Not saying no is not the same thing as saying yes.

Do people in this fandom victim-blaming Adrian? Yes they do. Is calling Adrian out on his own horrible Behavior victim-blaming? No it's not. Words have meaning, you can't just say that any criticism of Adrian is victim-blaming, because that's not even remotely what victim-blaming is.

Victim-blaming is saying that it is Adrian's fault that Lila is sexually harassing him. Victim-blaming is saying that it is marinette's fault that Adrian is sexually harassing her.

Calling out Adrian's abuse and harassment towards Marinette is not victim-blaming. Yes, Adrian is a victim of Gabriel's abuse, and guess what? Victims of abuse are not immune to abusing others, and they are just as responsible for their actions as everyone else. Arguing otherwise is literally just ableist shity Behavior.

If you argue that Adrian has no choice but to be a piece of shit towards Marinette because he's a victim of abuse, you are literally just demonizing victims of abuse and being a horrible person. If you argue that victims of abuse are inherently abusive and inherently cruel and inherently compassionless, I don't know how else to fucking tell you except that you're a terrible fucking you and being and you need to shut the fuck up.

I was abused. Bye Bye Mom, bye my brothers, by my stepdad. Being abused is not a get-out-of-jail-free card, it's not an excuse to abused other people, and it does not fucking mean that you are going to go on to abuse other people. Every single person on this planet has a choice about what kind of person they want to be. Just because you are abused does not mean that you are doomed to abused others and that you are doomed to be a horrible person and that you are incapable of being kind and compassionate.

If you want to argue otherwise, you just need to shut the fuk up and never interact with anyone, especially children in abusive situations, ever again. If you are in a fucking children's fandom and you are an adult and you are telling children in this fandom that victims of abuse have no choice but to abuse others, you are a terrible human being and you need to shut the fuck up. There is no second option. Just shut the fuck up.

[rjalker]

You seem really anti-alya salt (every post of yours I’ve seen is screaming about how it’s racist) which I understand to a certain extent but do you at least get why some would rather have Chloe (bully, piece of shit, general terrible person) be on Marinette’s side instead of Alya? Only one of these girls has betrayed Mari. Because only 1 of them had her trust in the first place. It’s easier to get something from nothing (Chloe) than putting the broken pieces of something back together (Alya)

And yet it’s still racist. Understanding the motivations doesn’t mean it’s not racist. Not intending for it to be racist doesn’t mean it’s not racist. 

Demonizing the characters of color who in canon are good people and upholding the white and light-skinned ones who in canon are cruel and villainous as saints is racist no matter what your so-called “reasons” for it are.

People aren’t redeeming Chloe. They’re pretending she’s been a good person the entire time, and pretending Alya has been a terrible person the entire time.

Chloe purposefully crashed a train full of people. There is literally no way it would be easier to be her friend than it would to be Alya’s.

And Alya has not betrayed Marinette. She has not taken Lila’s side. She has not sided against Marinette.

Literally all she’s done is ask her friend not to be ableist and told her friend that her inappropriate behavior is inappropriate. She has done nothing to deserve the hatred she gets.

The problem is not that people get upset about Alya for the things she’s actually done wrong (like posting that picture of Ladybug and Chat Noir kissing on her blog, despite Ladybug being very clearly upset about it).

The problem is that they’re turning her into a racist caricature and having her be horribly ooc and they’re saying they’re “salty” about things she literally has not done.

The problem is that people are upholding Chloe Bourgeoisie, bully! Thief! Liar! Blackmailer! Purposeful crasher of trains! As a better person than Alya, who’s only fucking crimes are not wanting her friend to be ableist and telling her friend her creepy and obsessive behavior is not okay! 

It is not easier to have Chloe be Marinette’s friend than it is for Alya to be Marinette’s friend. You’re just racist. 

Chloe is not a better person than Alya. You’re just racist.

Because here’s the thing! No one wants to hear it but it has to be said!

We live in a racist society!

We are all racist, whether we acknowledge that or not. Whether we want to be or not.

Why?

Because we live in a racist society. People of color (and especially Black people!) are consistently portrayed as violent, dangerous criminals.

They are consistently portrayed as freeloaders, good-for-nothings who scam the kind out of their money and take it away from the poor white people who need it more :( :( :( /s

People of color are consistently portrayed as being everything the Alya hate fics are writing her to be. They are turning her into a racist caricature, and they aren’t even being subtle about it.

And almost all of them are holding Chloe mother fucking Bourgeoisie as a better, more educated, more intelligent, better spoken, more kind, more compassionate, more caring person.

They are turning Alya into a racist caricature and then turning Chloe into the model fucking white person and a fucking saint. Because these fics are racist and the people writing them are racist too.

I don’t fucking care if you don’t intend for it to be racist. Your intentions don’t matter! The end result is the only thing that matters and the end result is that you have demonized a Black girl and turned the white billionaire liar, thief, blackmailer and purposeful crasher of trains into a pure uwu saint.

It would be absolutely fine if people were writing actual Alya salt about the things she has actually done wrong.

But they aren’t.

They are making up brand new fucking situations they can force her into so that they can hate her more. They are blowing her flaws way out of proportion and making up reasons to justify their hatred of her.

People literally fucking white shit where Alya suicide baits Marinette and they fucking act like this is her real characterization, and then then have the gall to have Chloe comforting Marinette and talking her down from hurting herself. I wish I were joking.

This is racism. This is antiblack racism. And it is rampant in this fandom.

It is not “easier” to get Chloe Bourgeoisie to be a better person and friend than Alya Cesaire. You’re just racist. 

The only reason anyone thinks Chloe is a better person than Alya, whether they want to fucking admit it or not, is because Chloe is white, and Alya is Black, and people with dark skin are constantly being portrayed as violent and rude and evil, and these people are perpetuating these racist stereotypes and not stopping for five seconds to ask themselves whether or not this is okay.

It is literally never okay to write Alya as a racist caricature. It is never okay to write anyone as a racist caricature. It is never okay to be racist.

I have no problem with Alya salt.

But this is not salt. It’s just piles of racist garbage. Show me a single actual salt fic that treats her character with respect and I’ll show you a million that turn her into a racist caricature beyond recognition.

[rjalker]

And yeah guys, I'm white. And I'm pointing out the racism in the Miraculous Ladybug fandom.

BUT GUESS WHAT!!! I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE POINTING IT OUT AND TALKING ABOUT IT!!!

and most of the other people I've seen pointing it out? Not white.

Me being white, yes, means I've never personally experienced racism.

It doesn't mean I can't recognize a racist caricature when I see them and it doesn't mean you get to pretend you're not being racist when you write Alya as a racist caricature.

Also! Being part of a minority group? Being oppressed? Does not stop you from doing harm to other minority groups.

Being Jewish does not mean you can't be racist.

Being mentally ill or gay or whatever fucking excuse you people are going to come up with next? Does not mean you can't be racist.

Even if you're a person of color, you can still be racist against other people of color, especially black people, and black characters, like Alya.

It's really funny how nobody sending me anonymoua asks saying it's not racist is ever talking about the racist caricature that's being written. They're just kind of conveniently ignoring that part. They're just insisting that if you changed all he has raced anyting and made her white people would still be treating her the same!

Except, you know, people, they wouldn't. Because Chloe is right there! And people can not fucking wait to say she's actually good person and she's awesome and she's so cool and she's such a good person and she's marinette's best friend!!!!!!

If Alya were white, people would be writing her as marinette's best friend ever who would never betray her who is just a victim of evil evil mentally ill Lila, because, you know, this fandom is not only racist but ableist as shit :)

[rjalker]

I love how stupid Adrian stans are :)

This is called sealioning, for those not aware. Someone pretending like they're just trying to have an honest conversation except they are really not. Notice how in the First Response it was nothing but hostile and condescending and ableist, not actually making a single argument against any of the evidence I had presented, just dismissing my entire argument by being ableist and saying that is not a big deal.

And then when their bullshit was met with laughter, they tried to say that they're just trying to "resolve an issue". "Trying to have an honest conversation" they say, "trying to have a mature conversation" they say, and these are just all of their responses in order.

Their first response was to my video of Adrian literally in Canon attempting to sexually assault Marinette when she is in the middle of saving her parents lives. Their first response is in response to me posting a literal video of proof pointing out exactly what is going on here for literally everyone to see. Everybody. This video was not altered in any way except to add subtitles. Is literally proof straight from the show.

But did they try to bring up any counter-evidence to argue against the literal proof that every single person who has watched the show has seen? Nope. They just tell me to go outside and touch the grass, and it's a kids show, so I shouldn't be upset that misogynistic in cells are indoctrinating children into thinking that sexual harassment and assault are funny and romantic.

So they come in swinging, being hostile ableist and condescending, and when I don't waste any time arguing with them, because they are clearly a fucking idiot, they immediately turn around and try to say that they're just trying to have a nice conversation. They're not doing anything wrong they're just trying to understand my point of view and blah blah blah blah blah.

You can literally see all of their responses in order up there, along with my response. Which was to laugh at them.

These are fantastic examples of how to tell when someone doesn't actually want to learn anything. They just want you to shut up. They don't care about the truth, they don't care about evidence, they don't even care about pretending to care about evidence.

Notice how they say they just wanted to have a mature conversation, and it's my loss for laughing at them, when the literal first thing they said was "lmao bye go touch some grass"

:)

This is the kind of shit Adrian stans say :)

making it its own post for posterity because it is literally too fucking funny.

@haley-talks-too-much said:

lmfao bye go touch some grass. if you’re pressed over a kids show then you’re priorities are really fucking off base. how about your focus your energy on bigger things like real world problems :/

screenshot for proof :)

[ID: A screenshot of the reply that is quoted above. End ID.]