#STOP MAKING UP REASONS TO HATE MARINETTE!!!! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mc-lukanette · 5 months ago

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"I'm the least-witch witch ever," Marinette groaned, burying her head in her arms on the table. A book titled History of Witch Fashion, thick but shockingly lacking in substance, laid open in front of her, turned all the way to the last page.

She understood it to some degree. Witches of the past had little need to change the way they looked due to their circumstances, as they tended to live far out in the woods where no one would see them anyway. It was a "waste" to worry about updating their look, and wearing all black tended to make camouflaging spells go more smoothly if they needed to go anywhere potentially dangerous at night.

Even in the modern day, there remained reasons to stick to tradition, such as to ensure that people knew what they were. Anyone who looked like a "genuine witch" was someone people could trust for potions or spells once magic became more socially acceptable.

But Marinette's problem was simple: she hated it. She couldn't pull off the all black look and found the generic pointy witch hats to, quite bluntly, look like traffic cones that just came back from a funeral.

"I don't even have a black cat!" she cried out in distress.

"Mrrah?"

She pushed herself up, turning to the white short-haired cat sitting nearby. "It's not your fault, Clawton! You're perfect just the way you are!"

The cat puffed out its chest with pride, a tiny gentlecat without a tuxedo.

Marinette smiled, feeling a little cheered up by it, but faltered when she looked at the book again. Centuries of witch fashion laid before her, yet there were only tiny, insignificant changes made over time. Even seasonal changes recommended temperature-related spells to show off instead of dressing for the weather like a normal person.

"It's fine!" she told herself, hitting the table with both hands. A surge of magic caused the book to float upwards, and Marinette ordered it into the garbage, deciding, "I'll just... have to take the witch fashion world by storm, all by myself!"

Clawton let out a concerned mew, but didn't protest.

—————

Step one of Marinette's lack of a plan was finding inspiration, and there were few better ways of doing that than walking around the town and taking in the sights. Clawton walked next to her, tiny pawsteps sounding beside her own footsteps as she scribbled anything that gave even remotely "witch-y" vibes. It was like making a mood board.

Nothing solid was forming in her head thus far, but it was better than nothing. While it wasn't likely to happen, she did hope for that special spark, that magical thing that'd make her go—

"Mrreow!"

Marinette stopped, surprised to hear her cat speak up when it was usually so quiet in public. Looking down, she called out worriedly, "Clawton?"

It didn't even glance at her, taking off like a shot down the street. She gasped, shocked but reacting quickly enough to chase after it.

"Hey, come back! Where are you going?"

She only hoped that her mood as of late hadn't been affecting it. Cats were sensitive to magical and emotional fluctuations in witches, making them solid pets but ones that could also take on or share a witch's stress if they chose to.

If that did end up being the case, she probably owed it a few treats.

Clawton turned on a dime to dart around a corner, Marinette not far behind. She heard someone yelp and fall over just as she turned that same corner, though slightly clumsier than her cat had been.

Sitting on the ground was a teenage boy, probably around her age, though she focused on little else when she saw Clawton purring in his lap. Horrified, she hurried to the two, plucking her cat from him and settling it in her arms.

She rambled off, "I'm so sorry! It's not usually like that, but now it knocked you over and—did it rip your clothes?! I swear I'll sew them up—I'll make it better even, I—!"

"They didn't scratch me."

Marinette paused mid-sentence, somehow managing to hear his soft voice over her panicking, and blinked at him. Taking in what she had assumed were "cat scratches," she realized that they were actually purposeful rips in the clothes. Even the knees of his pants had similar ones when she actually looked, and they more obviously weren't caused by a cat.

As the boy stood back up, entirely calm despite what had happened, Clawton hopped down from her arms to do figure eights around his legs. Marinette was still busy taking in his fashion, eyes scanning him up and down to fully capture it.

His pants and shoes were notably black, but not too much even with his black hair. He kept it interesting with the white and shades of blue he wore on his upper body, in addition to the blue highlights in his hair that were either natural or dyed. The rips she'd mistaken for cat scratches did still give off the same energy in a way, and if they were in another place, then maybe—

Marinette's eyes widened. Without another thought, she stepped forward, taking the boy's hands and clasping them together in her own. Looking him right in the eyes, she asked spontaneously, "Will you be my muse?!"

He blinked.

—————

The embarrassment took a few seconds to strike, after which came a slew of apologies and a promise to make up for the onslaught from both her and her cat. He insisted it was fine, but she insisted right back.

They eventually ended up sitting on a bench together at a public flower garden, complete with iced tea that Marinette had bought for them. Apparently, the boy often went there himself for his own inspiration - just as a musician rather than a fashion designer - so he smelled strongly of flowers that her cat adored, which explained why it had jumped him.

While Clawton rolled around and stretched amongst some thyme, the boy took a sip of his iced tea and wondered aloud, "So, changing witch fashion all on your own, huh?"

She whined, wishing she could hide behind her own cup. "I know. It sounds insane."

"No, I like the sound of that." He turned to her with a gentle smile. "I'm Luka, by the way."

She shot him a skeptical look. "Marinette. Are we exchanging names because you want a restraining order?"

He chuckled, shaking his head. "You're fine. Honestly, I want to help you if I can."

"Really?" She paused. "Clawton didn't hit your head, did he? I know I said when we were getting drinks that you'd get benefits if this took off, but..."

He leaned back against the bench and swung an arm over the top of it, shrugging with the arm holding his cup. "I think if anyone can do it, it's you. You have incredible energy, Marinette." He grinned. "Enough to ask a stranger to be your muse."

He somehow felt positive enough about the experience to joke about it. Marinette knew then that either she had overreacted, she had struck diamond in finding this boy, or both. Either way, giving him up would be the most foolish thing she could do.

It helped that he, now that she was truly looking at him and not just his clothes, was exactly her type. He dressed in a style that was clearly his own and carried himself as such, confident and comfortable in the clothes he wore without coming off arrogant. Better yet was that he still had cat fur on his pants from when Clawton had rubbed itself on him, yet he seemed totally unbothered.

Gods and goddesses above, he was perfect.

Of course, if he was going to be her muse for such an important task, then it would have to be strictly professional, so she tried not to think about it too hard. She'd been told before that she could be a bit much, so she would have to be all business about this.

"Can I add a condition?" Luka asked suddenly.

"Huh? Yeah—er, yes." She tried to say it formally, straightening her back in perfect posture even if the colorful cup of iced tea kind of ruined it. "What is it?"

The corner of his lips twitched into a brief smirk at the action, but he carried on, "Can you be my muse too?"

"Ah?" Her shoulders slumped, already ruining the poise she'd been trying to maintain. "Me? You mean Clawton?"

"You," he insisted. "I like your cat too, but I think you're interesting, Marinette. If we're going to get to know each other, shouldn't we do it the best way creative people like us do?"

The logic was hard to argue with, especially with the slew of emotions he'd just caused her: bafflement that he'd want her of all people as a muse, shyness at the look he'd given her when he'd said it, and all of that preceding sheer joy.

"S-so you'll really do it then?" she realized, bouncing up out of her seat and facing him. "You'll be my muse?!"

He nodded, reaching a hand up to her for a handshake. "We've got a deal."

"Yes! I could just kiss you!" she blurted out. A second later, she caught herself and quickly corrected, "Ah, not really—not now—unless you—ah, thanks!"

She put her own hand out to complete the handshake, the two positively beaming, and thus began the relationship between the two teenage business partners that just happened to be each other's muse.

#queuekanette #lukaneventte: No Context November #Flower Arrangement Shipping #Pro LukaMari #Lukanette #Witch Marinette Dupain Cheng

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flightfoot · 6 months ago

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How Alya's mistreated by the saltdom and the writers

I've written this for the @yall-hate-kids-tourney, but figured that I'd publish it on my own tumblr as well for an easy reference point for others who want to illustrate how badly Alya's been treated - mostly by the fandom, but she's been somewhat screwed over by the writing as well. I've written it so that even people who have never heard of Miraculous before can understand my problems with the way Alya's often depicted, and I will probably use this essay for that purpose repeatedly in the future. It's over 4500 words, so buckle up!

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The amount of hatred Alya gets in the fandom is absolutely insane. There are over 800 fics tagged with "Alya Cesaire Bashing", and that's just the ones that actually TAG it - many of them either use a a non-canonical tag or just take their demonization of her as canon. It's not just that a lot of fics bash her either, but that the fics that bash her are disproportionately popular. If you go through the "Miraculous Ladybug" tag on AO3 and sort by kudos, I'd say around a third of the top 500 most popular fics use this gross caricature of her in order to justify inflicting some sort of insane punishment on her, or at least replacing her with "better" friends and leaving her to wail in despair.

Basically, Alya is the best friend of the main character, Marinette. She's really into superheroes and aims to be a reporter someday, to the point that the first time a supervillain cropped up in the series, she immediately got out her bike and cycled after him so that she could be there when a superhero showed up to fight him (Lois Lane would be proud). She runs a blog called the "Ladyblog" which reports on what the superheroes are doing, and sometimes makes some fun videos, like about the most impressive feats of one of the superheroes.

More relevantly though, she acts as Marinette's support a lot of the time, often being the one to push her to confess her feelings to Adrien, to help her with plans she comes up with, to talk things out with if she's having trouble processing something, and trying to act as the voice of reason if Marinette's gotten to into her own head. It can sometimes head into Black Best Friend territory of having her mostly stick around to support her bestie, but she DOES get a decent amount of screentime and focus at least.

Then the first episode of season 3 aired, and the fandom went BALLISTIC.

This character, Lila, debuted back at the end of season 1 as being this attention-seeking liar who pretended that she knew a lot more famous people than she actually did, including being best friends with Ladybug. Alya, being a naive 14-year-old, believed her and put Lila's interview on her blog. Since Marinette IS Ladybug, she knew this was not true, though she was initially more freaked out about the possibility that Adrien (the boy she has a crush on) would find her supposedly amazing life to be entrancing and that Lila would steal Adrien away from her, to the point that she actively wanted to stop Lila and Adrien from spending time together to prevent Adrien from falling for her.

Fast-forward to Chameleon, the first episode of season 3, and Lila's back and lying some more, this time about having Tinnitus (which would mean that she needs to sit at the front of class, next to Adrien). The class has a whole seating rearrangement in order to accommodate the move, and because some of them just wanted to change seats. Since Marinette was late that day, she didn't get to give input, so she wound up sitting alone at the back of the class, instead of next to Alya like she usually did. She's upset by this, but can't prove that Lila doesn't actually have the disability (she doesn't even have evidence that Lila doesn't have hearing problems, it's just that her story of how she supposedly got the disability is suspect), so she puts up with it for the class period.

Then lunch time rolls around and Marinette tells Alya and Alya's boyfriend, Nino, that Lila's a lying liar who lies. Alya asks why Marinette hates her so much, since she barely knows Lila (this isn't the first time that Marinette's nitpicked at Lila's stories, but she's never actually managed to prove that Lila's lying, Lila's good at coming up with explanations for any hole Marinette exposes in her tales). Marinette tells her how, after Lila first arrived at school, she followed her and Adrien, eavesdropped on them, and then saw Ladybug show up and tear into Lila for not knowing her. (Presumably that's what she says, the episode skipped past her actual recounting of what she saw). Alya and Nino are more concerned with the fact that she stalked Lila and Adrien, with Alya also being skeptical that what she heard might have been out-of-context, given how common out-of-context eavesdropping is in fiction for causing issues, with Alya saying, "A good reporter always verifies her sources. Can you prove she doesn't actually know Ladybug?"

Since Marinette can't actually prove anything without revealing that she's Ladybug, she decides that the sane and reasonable thing to do is to throw a wadded up napkin at Lila while she's eating lunch, and when she catches it (Lila's pretending to have a sprained wrist), to loudly declare that she obviously doesn't have a sprained wrist. Lila quickly pretends that catching it did actually hurt, the classmates Lila was sitting with scold Marinette for hurting her, and then Marinette goes off to seethe in a bathroom, where Lila finds her and threatens to turn her friends against her if she continues trying to expose her lies.

Then at the end of the episode, Adrien goes to sit with Marinette at the back of the class to keep her company, the teacher thinks that Marinette ALSO has hearing issues so she's brought back to the front (and away from Adrien again), Lila pretends that her hearing has been fixed so she can sit at the back with Adrien, and Alya spots that Marinette looks miserable about sitting alone at the front, so she chooses to sit next to Marinette to keep her company and everyone ends up going back to their old places, except that Lila's sitting at the back of the class now.

And that's it. That is, for the most part, what kicked off the entire Alya hatred and demonization onslaught. While there ARE more things that happening in following episodes, they have a pretty small effect on the demonization Alya's put through, almost all of it is derived from Chameleon and hasn't changed much since then.

So for starters, in fanfics Alya is often made to ditch Marinette constantly to hang out with Lila instead. This never happens. She's often exasperated when Marinette starts talking about how Lila is awful and points out that she doesn't have proof of that, but she doesn't avoid Marinette, and the closest she ever comes to hanging out with Lila outside of class events is when she called Lila over to babysit hers and Nino's younger siblings when Marinette canceled at the last minute.

But most Alya-bashing fics don't just leave it there. Oh no. If you look through a bunch of the most popular Miraculous fics, you'll see Alya made out to be some sort of ringleader for the class in bullying Marinette, hitting her, pinching her, poisoning her, destroying her things, saying nasty, heinous things to her, the works, and inciting the rest of the class to do the same, sometimes to the point that even LILA is shocked at her cruelty. Usually in these cases, Chloe, who is canonically the class bully (and Marinette's bully in particular) is inexplicably Marinette's primary protector against the eeeeeevil Alya, becoming Marinette's best friend and support and basically taking on Alya's canon role and some of her personality traits, despite the fact that canonically, Chloe's as susceptible to Lila's lies as anyone else, and that in season 5 Chloe actually became Lila's partner in crime in trying to hurt Marinette in particular. (I don't like how Chloe's treated in canon, but that's a different story).

I've never even seen any justification given for why Alya's so frequently made to be outright violent or cruel towards Marinette, it's just widely accepted in fiction now, even with nothing pointing to her ever being malicious like that. There ARE other things Alya canonically does that I see her taken to task over though, but that fall apart when you examine them.

One of the biggest offenders is criticism towards Alya over how she handles babysitting. In Christmaster, Alya and Nino pick up Nino's little brother after Marinette babysits him for them while they're on a date, in Timetagger, Marinette's slated to babysit for them while they're on a date but cancels at the last minute, so they call Lila over instead, and then in Simple Man, Marinette books herself to babysit Alya's and Nino's younger siblings and the daughter of one's of her mom's friends, a little girl named Manon, all at the same time.

Alya receives heavy criticism for not paying Marinette for her babysitting, for having Marinette babysit for her secretly behind her parents' back without their knowledge, and for pressuring Marinette to babysit for her even though Marinette's so busy.

A few problems with this.

1. We see babysitting happen several times, sometimes with Alya helping Marinette with babysitting Manon and sometimes with Marinette just babysitting Manon without anyone else's involvement. At no point is payment brought up, and yet the absence of such a discussion is only ever used to demonize Alya.

2. There is no evidence that the babysitting Marinette does for Alya's sake is done behind her parents' back, the only thing pointing to that is a lack of Alya ever flat-out saying that she has her parents' permission to have Marinette babysit for her, but there's no evidence of sneaking around. MARINETTE, however, DOES canonically ditch her babysitting duties by having Alya babysit for her without the parent's knowledge. In Prime Queen, Marinette accidentally double books herself to do an interview as Ladybug at the same time that she's supposed to be babysitting Manon, so she calls Alya over to watch the interview with her, lies to her that she's just gonna go downstairs for a few minutes to talk with her parents and for Alya to please watch over Manon while she does that, and then leaves to do the interview while Alya watches over Manon the whole time. Nadja definitely didn't know that this happened, because she was surprised and worried when Alya and Manon called in during the interview with Marinette nowhere to be seen. In addition to this, in Simpleman, Marinette foists off all the children she's babysitting onto her grandpa against his will so that she can run off and help with Adrien's photoshoot after he calls her. The people demonizing Alya for supposedly having Marinette babysit for her secretly are not upset about the examples of Marinette canonically doing these things.

3. Of the three times that Marinette has, to date, been scheduled to babysit for Alya's sake (Christmaster, Timetagger, and Simpleman), for Christmaster she spent the next several hours after finishing with babysitting making Adrien's 50th birthday present (he's currently 14 years old), so I wouldn't say she was pressed for time, for Timetagger, she literally called Alya at the last minute to say she was too busy to babysit and Alya said it was no biggie and made other arrangements, and for Simpleman, Alya offered to cancel her date and take care of her younger siblings herself the instant she saw that Marinette was already babysitting Manon, and Marinette told her to go ahead and go on her date and that she'd look after her siblings.

So clearly, the people clutching their pearls about how horribly irresponsibly Alya is handling babysitting and how she's wronging Marinette in the process don't actually care about babysitting ethics here, because otherwise, Marinette would be getting the brunt of the hatred, not Alya. Despite this, I've seen a fair number of posts in the past tearing into Alya's babysitting for the reasons I already gave, and a bunch of fics that make it so that Alya pressures and guilt-trips Marinette into babysitting for her when she's struggling to keep up with all her work, only to have her parents find out and be horrified by how Alya's lied to them about who's been doing the babysitting and that Alya's been getting an increased allowance because of that, so they pay Marinette out of Alya's allowance and ground her, take away privileges, just have this be used as an excuse to punish Alya for supposedly wronging Marinette.

And then there's the subcategory of Alya demonization towards her for putting up Lila's interview on her blog without verifying that Lila was telling the truth. Admittedly, this was foolish, but she's 14. Retractions exist for a reason. And yet, fics frequently have her reputation be completely destroyed because she put up one interview that had a false statement by the interviewee in it, and sometimes even to be completely blacklisted from ever being a journalist in the future, things that are completely insane and would have even the most storied and well-respected of reporters be unable to ever get a job.

She also frequently gets demonized and bashed for "believing Lila over Marinette". My major issue with this: what she's specifically believing Lila over Marinette for is on the topic of "is Lila an awful person". I don't think it's unreasonable to have a higher standard of proof for believing that someone is an awful person than for believing that your friend might just have some biased interpretations. Alya thinks that Marinette doesn't like Lila mostly because Lila has hit on Adrien, Marinette's crush, before. This isn't unreasonable considering that Marinette's first reaction to Lila is to freak out about her stealing Adrien away, and that when this other girl, Kagami, started hanging out with Adrien, she freaked out about that too. Specifically, she called a meeting of all her female friends to try and stop Kagami and Adrien from going away together to London for the weekend in Backwarder, helped Chloe in trying to get Kagami covered in food at a fancy red carpet movie opening in order to drive her away and steal her seat next to Adrien for the movie, and when she and Kagami were paired up for a "friend-making game" where the goal was to locate where Adrien was in Paris and the prize was to spend time with him, she pretended to genuinely want to be Kagami's friend so she could sabotage both of them and prevent Kagami from spending time with Adrien. So it's not like the belief that Marinette might be unfairly biased against Lila because she's made moves on Adrien is an unfair assumption.

In addition to that, on the occasions when Lila HAS tried to frame Marinette for something, Alya hasn't believed it, or hasn't been shown to believe it at least. In Ladybug, Lila tries to frame Marinette for cheating on a test, for stealing a necklace from her, and for knocking her down the stairs. Despite the evidence Lila planted, Alya doesn't believe it and investigates to try and find out what really happened. She doesn't uncover any solid proof, but she still believes in Marinette. She doesn't believe that Marinette's assumption that Lila's behind this is necessarily correct, since Marinette's leaping to that without presenting proof, but she doesn't believe that Marinette's the culprit either. And in the two following cases when Marinette's framed, Alya never actually gets a chance to say what she believes after the accusation is made against Marinette.

Just... the amount of demonization towards Alya TO THIS DAY, often for things she NEVER EVEN FREAKING DID, is absolutely insane. Even over 5 years since Chameleon aired, fics with Alya being made into this malicious, awful bully so that Marinette can get some new friends to publicly denounce her, get her arrested, or otherwise be punished are frequently on the front page of the most recently updated fics on AO3, and are often some of the most popular ones. If you go to "Fandom-Specific plot" on Tvtropes, saltfics like these have multiple files going through all the common salt tropes. When looking through fics, I frequently search for Alya's name because she's often the first person to be unfairly demonized, so if she's safe, then everyone likely is.

I suspect that racism plays a major factor in this. It doesn't make sense that Alya's often painted as being a violent, malicious bully and leader in getting the rest of the class to physically hurt and terrorize Marinette, I haven't even seen analysis arguing that she'd do that... but it tracks with the "Black Brute" archetype. This becomes even more obvious with Chloe, who's white and canonically DOES do some of this stuff, taking on Alya's canon role and some of her personality traits in these sorts of stories.

Then there's the standard Alya's held to for how she handles her blog. It's way higher than anyone would hold real-world reporters to, much less 14-year-olds. But it makes sense if you factor racial bias into account, and how Alya, being Black, is going to be held to a higher standard than anyone else, and be punished more for failing to meet that standard.

For things like the babysitting double standard, it makes no sense if you're actually looking at the stated criticism, given that the same criticism isn't leveled at Marinette... but it makes perfect sense if you're going off the assumption that Alya, as Marinette's Black Best Friend, is supposed to solely function as her support and that she's simply fulfilling her duties by always being there for her when needed, including for babysitting, but that if Marinette ever attempts to repay in kind, then Alya's being unfair towards her because Alya's obligated to always support Marinette, but that relationship is supposed to be a one-way street. Alya is supposed to function as Marinette's support, never the other way around.

And as for the way Alya's demonized for asking for evidence before believing that Lila's lying, well... again, Alya's expected to act as Marinette's support, and her "failing" that in any way, even if it makes sense from her point of view, is viewed as a betrayal. She's supposed to be loyal to Marinette, and only to Marinette, not to think for herself or to have multiple other friends or values that she needs to weigh. And anything that she does to go against that "justifies" Marinette intentionally trying to hurt and punish her for failing to live up to her role.

In conclusion, the way Alya's treated by the salt side of the fandom is grossly unfair, often has little connection with anything she canonically did, and has some gross racist implications, and is likely at least partially spurred on by racism, especially with how common and popular it still is to this day.

Addendum: How Alya is screwed over by the writers.

While Alya is primarily screwed over by the fanbase, there are some aspects of the writing that exacerbate her ill treatment. In season 4, Marinette confesses her secret identity to Alya, letting her know that she is Ladybug. Despite now knowing why Marinette was so convinced that Lila wasn't friends with Ladybug, and that Lila's interview stating that she's best friends with Ladybug is a lie, the subject just... never comes up, even when Lila starts being important again. It's not that Alya's ignoring what Lila lying on those subjects means, it's more like the writers just completely forgot that Lila told those particular lies, since Marinette doesn't bring them up either. This creates an inconsistency with the fanbase, who really, really, REALLY haven't forgotten those lies.

There ARE ways to explain this - Lila lying about being friends with Ladybug in order to try to boost her reputation, especially when she's the new girl, isn't really all that heinous. Marinette lies a lot as well, even if you don't count lies told to protect her secret identity or other "necessary" lies, sometimes out of embarrassment, sometimes to to try and prevent someone's feelings from getting hurt, and sometimes because she thinks it's the fastest, easiest, or most certain way to get the outcome she wants. And yet, even though Marinette lies a lot, she's not ostracized for that since it's usually not for malicious reasons - foolish reasons at times, but rarely malicious. It would make sense that Lila too, wouldn't be thought too badly of for merely lying in an attempt to make friends.

None of that actually comes up though. Alya later, in Confrontation, states that, "Marinette, you know we'll always believe you. But every time you've accused Lila, there's been no evidence. And at worst, it was just a misunderstanding." Marinette doesn't say anything about the previous times Lila has been proven to lie, so it seems like either it was decided offscreen that the more understandable lies she's told don't matter, or that the writers just plain forgot about them.

There were other opportunities created by Alya knowing Marinette's identity that were ignored. Alya concludes that Adrien backing up Marinette's statement that Lila's bad news was just due to him wanting to defend his girlfriend. This is also a bit of a writing flaw, while wanting to back up his girlfriend's stance IS a decent reason for Adrien to be biased against Lila, this is Adrien we're talking about here. He's nice and understanding to a fault, and is known for giving people the benefit of the doubt and second chances. It makes far less sense to believe that he'd believe the worst of Lila, even if Marinette does, than it does for Marinette to be biased against Lila. That being said, Adrien wouldn't have been present for Lila's more indisputable threats and statements directed against Marinette, so he can't actually verify for sure whether or not there could've been some misunderstanding.

There WAS, however, someone who was always with Marinette, and who could actually back up Marinette's statements more definitively.

Tikki. She was present for every threat Lila made, for everything she ever claimed. While it's possible that both Tikki and Marinette may have misunderstood Lila in the same way, it's far less likely, especially since Tikki would have had different biases from Marinette. Tikki could be an important witness. Yet that never comes up, is never proposed, because that would end the plotline too quickly.

Alya was also screwed over in the immediate aftermath of Lila being exposed, though not by the writers per se? There was a short scene planned after Lila's exposed where Alya apologizes for not believing Marinette about Lila being a liar and generally an awful person, we've even got leaked footage of it, but it appears that it was cut somewhere between being written and voice acted, and the episode being aired.

All of this only really affects detailed arguments about how well (or poorly) Alya's story arc with Lila was handled, its affect on the actual fanfiction produced about Chameleon salt was minimal, I saw no change in its frequency, severity, or general handling of the characters with any season after season 3. I highly doubt that even the changes I suggested here would have done much to persuade the saltdom against Ron the Death Eatering Alya, especially since a lot of the hatred against her has so little to do with the show.

There IS some hatred thrown at Alya for non-Lila related reasons - well, reasons that aren't DIRECTLY Lila related, most of that hatred still stems from people hating her for Chameleon stuff and then retroactively justifying it by looking back at other things she did that irked them. The most common one (that actually has some sort of argument to it, not the "Alya's a horrible babysitter and is abusing her friendship with Marinette" nonsense I listed in the main essay) is that Alya's pushy about getting Marinette together with Adrien.

This is more a product of Alya's usual role in the story than anything. I mentioned in the main essay how Alya sometimes falls into "Black Best Friend" territory, and this is one of the biggest examples. One of her most common roles throughout the series is as the person who pushes Marinette to actually confess to Adrien, to hang out with him, to pursue her romantic desires even with her anxiety holding her back, and to be honest with herself during the times when she's trying to deny her feelings for him. She's Marinette's sounding board whenever she's having an anxiety spiral about... actually, just about anything, and acts as the voice of reason when Marinette gets in her own head too much.

Thus, Alya sets Marinette and Adrien to end up somewhere alone together, or tries to push her to talk to him, or to be honest during the times when she tries to "move on" from Adrien by denying that she still has feelings for him (which is blatantly untrue). She IS okay with Marinette dating someone else though, if she honestly seems to want to do that. She had no problem with her dating Luka, for instance. She DID protest Marinette's seemingly sudden interest in Chat Noir, but that was mostly because Marinette seemed to be grabbing at her new attraction as an attempt to run away from her feelings for Adrien, something that Tikki ALSO noted.

That's another thing - Alya's the character who's most frequently thrown into this role, but she's not the only one, nor even the most extreme one. A new character that was introduced for the Miraculous New York Special, Jess, observed how Adrien and Marinette acted around each other, and decided to try to get them to confess their love by faking a supervillain attack on them, with the supervillain kidnapping anyone that no one loves in order to compel Marinette to FINALLY confess to Adrien. (Alya thought it was stupid, but agreed to help since it might actually work). When Marinette, Adrien, Luka, and Kagami went out to the wax museum together, Luka intentionally locked Adrien and Marinette in a room together so that Marinette would stop running away and would be forced to talk to Adrien. Marinette is written in such a way that other characters are compelled to meddle in her lovelife, because otherwise she'll continue making her own extreme plans and pining away, but never actually confess her feelings.

So while Alya could be said to be "pushy" to an extent, it's mostly for Marinette's benefit. I would like if this was a less frequent role for Alya - I think it does her a disservice, since it locks her firmly into Marinette's orbit rather than emphasizing who Alya is as her own character. Most of the hatred towards Alya for this is tied up in "Die For Our Ship" being directed at Adrien though, with Adrien bashers hating that Alya's trying to set Marinette up with what they see as an inferior option. Ironically enough, while Alya's role in this situation is one of the primary examples in the show of her being treated by the writers as a "Black Best Friend" who exists to serve Marinette's character, it's actually one of the cases where I think racism is a pretty minor part of the hatred by the fanbase over it, since I think that's mostly motivated by hatred towards the Lovesquare.

In conclusion (again), there is an issue with the writers bending Alya's character in order to tell a particular story, particularly a Marinette-centered story, while ignoring how little sense that makes with what happened earlier on in the plotline, or how it centralizes Alya's role and character around Marinette in ways that exacerbate already existing writing patterns in media.

#alya cesaire #ml analysis #ml fandom salt #miraculous ladybug

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unforth · 8 months ago

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Alright not to like liveblog my breakdown on main but yesterday was a really bad day after a really bad, like, 4 months, and I've hit a bit of a breaking point and one of the only things in my life that can give is running @mdzsartreblogs , @tgcfartreblogs , @svsssartreblogs , @erhaartreblogs , @tykartreblogs , and @cnovelartreblogs , so that is what has to give. It's been a 99-out-of-100 days thankless job. A small number of people do say thank you and yall I appreciate you so much (HUGE shout-out to the artist I met at Flamecon who gifted me a zine when I said I ran these blogs, @bonesblubs you rock) but I have never done an act of fandom labor simultaneously this labor intensive yet this invisible before and, uh. It sucks. I spend an hour or more a day on this every day, if it's under 2k hours since I started the first of these in September 2020 I'd be shocked. And I do it because I love it but doing it means I don't have time or energy to do other things I love. And I really don't want to just quit, but I can't keep this up.

In a last-ditch effort to try not to just give up, I'm making the following changes:

1. Only watching one tag per fandom for the MXTX fandoms. I am going to check *only* #tgcf, #svsss, and #mdzs. Artwork posted to any other tag, I will not see unless a mutual reblogs it.

2. Reduced tagging (even more). I'm only going to tag characters and maybe overarching au type (eg, "modern au," "fantasy au"). I'll no longer tag creatures. I will continue to tag the same common trigger warnings I already tag.

3. If a work's appearance doesn't make it obvious what it is AND the tags aren't clear, I'm not going to reblog. I can't keep spending 5 minutes or more trying to figure out what I'm even looking at, scared that if I guess wrong the artist will get mad at me for mistagging their work. If I do reblog, I'll tag only the artist name and/or whatever else I can identify for sure.

4. I am no longer going to follow #link click. The fandom is just too big. I've started dreading checking it. If I was more into it and less busy I would make another spin off just for it but neither of those is true. (The art is so good, I hate to do this, but. If you love link click, highly recommend the main tag, lots of great stuff there.)

5. I will no longer tag any non-cnovel content in the art/post. Like, if someone draws, idek, Xie Lian and Marinette from Ladybug, I'm not gonna put any tags for Marinette, just for Xie Lian.

6. Basically if I run into something hard to tag or confusing or unclear, my new policy is I'm not gonna fricken bother.

I think those are everything but idefk, I cried for 3 hours last night and got 4 hours of sleep so I'm mostly fueled by exhaustion and desperation right now and my memory is even more fried than usual.

How artists can help. This is obviously all optional. You do you. But since some people might want to know what would make my life easier, I'm sharing. I'm not claiming I feel entitled to dictate how people fandom or anything like that.

1. Put the tags for the character(s) and ship(s) early in the tag list.

2. If you make art for a fandom that isn't one of the big ones (right now the only big danmei fandoms on tumblr as far as I can tell are the MXTX fandoms and maybe 2ha) I am begging you to use my tracked tag #cnovelartreblogs

3. Do mdzs art? Tag #mdzs. Do tgcf art? Tag #tgcf. Do svsss art? Tag #svsss.

4. Not only artists, but everyone, *please* stop tagging fandoms not discussed and/or depicted in your post. It's gotten to be stupid common for people to blanket the danmei fandom tags with posts only about one fandon (like, svsss-only works also being tagged mdzs and tgcf and 2ha for some damn reason). This isn't about just my sideblogs tbh this is just fandom etiquette that seems to have been forgotten or never learned by many. Tagging unrelated fandoms isn't "reach," it's annoying. People go into the #mdzs tag to see mdzs, not whatever not-mdzs stuff people have decided to tag for ~reach~, and seeing the same post in 8 tags, none of which it's related to, is so damn irritating, and makes scrolling the tags looking for content that IS relevant take that much longer. Knock it off.

Okay. I think that's as much as I'm prepared to meltdown where everyone can see. Thanks in advance everyone for your understanding, and apologies to everyone about to see this 8 times as I reblog it to each sideblog.

At least I'm not tagging it to everywhere. 🤣🤣🤣

#unforth rambles

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frickingnerd · 10 months ago

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i hate loving you as much as i do

pairing: luka couffaine x gn!reader

summary: left heartbroken by a missunderstanding, you end up getting akumatized. but luka seeks you out and clears up any missunderstandings by confessing his love to you!

tags: angst to fluff, missunderstandings, happy ending, mentions of marinette/lukanette, luka × reader endgame, wholesome fluff

everything would've been different, if luka had been by your side, like he promised. you never would've gotten akumatized if he had been there. luka would've been able to get through to you with his words and save you. but you were all by yourself when that akuma took over your body. and nobody could prevent what was about to happen…

luka couldn't believe his own eyes when he saw you on the ladyblog, as an akumatized villain. he was late to meet you, when he got an akuma alert and checked the news. and that's when he saw you.

without even thinking about it, luka rushed to the spot you were last seen, knowing he needed to talk to you. as much as he trusted chat noir and ladybug, he knew you better than they did. they'd only hurt you by trying to restrain you. but luka was convinced that if he was there, things would be different! but he was wrong…

“you are the worst thing that happened to me, luka. why would you think your words would do anything to convince me to stop this? i despise you! acting like you care about me, just to forget all about me when she wants to see you–!”

your words were cruel and your voice was different than what luka knew. it was much deeper, almost twisted. the akuma had done more than just change your appearance.

but while your words sounded too mean to truly belong to you, something caught luka's attention. that girl you mentioned, that made him forget about you…

“do you mean marinette…?”

“ha, so you do know what i'm talking about! did you grow tired of playing dumb? of course i mean her! you're always with her! and you can't even see how much you hurt me when you're with her…”

luka's heart sunk. he never knew you were this hurt by him spending time with marinette. but there was no reason to be jealous of marinette!

“marinette is just a friend! you're the one i love!”

for a short moment, your facade seemed to crack. that mean glare on your face vanished and you looked genuinely surprised. but quickly, you grew bitter again and a sad expression covered your face, that made luka's heart ache.

“stop giving me hope. it hurts so much more than if you'd just tell me the truth…”

“it's the truth!” luka sighed. “i've been spending a lot of time with marinette recently, but she was just helping me with a song i wrote for you! i wanted it to be perfect before you heard it and i knew she'd keep it a secret…”

“l-liar… y-you… you have to be… lying–!”

you shook your head, tears streaming down your cheeks. you couldn't even look at luka, as you heard hawkmoth's voice in your head, trying to convince you all he said was a lie. that luka merely was afraid of you and wanted to weaken you with his words. but was that really true?

“please, look at me…”

you hadn't even noticed that luka had closed the distance between the two of you, gently placing a hand on your cheeks. as your eyes inevitably darted towards him, luka surprised you with a sudden kiss. and as you gave into the kiss, hawkmoth's control over you weakened…

“if my words couldn't convince you, was this kiss able to do it?”

luka looked at you with such fondness. you had said terrible things to him, had accepted hawkmoth's villainous powers and yet he looked at you with such fondness. as if there was nothing you could say or do that would make him hate you.

“i thought you didn't care about me…”

as those words left your lips, you finally regained control over yourself again. hawkmoth lost all power over you and you detransformed back into yourself, as luka quickly wrapped his arms around you. almost as if he was worried you'd slip away again if he didn't hold you close.

“i'm sorry i couldn't show you just how important you are to me. i should've never kept secrets from you, not even to surprise you. i've hurt you so much… can you forgive me?”

you only began to tear up more at luka's words.

“of course i can forgive you! but i'm the one who should be asking for forgiveness instead…”

“don't.” luka brushed it off with a smile. “there's nothing you need to apologize for. what you said earlier, those weren't your words. i know that you were just trying to push me away, because you were hurt…”

“still!” you insisted. “i'm sorry for what i said. i could never hate you. in fact, i… i love you!”

luka's thumb gently stroked your cheek, as he smiled at you. he slowly closed the distance between you, whispering out four little words, before his lips finally met yours again:

“i love you too…”

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miraculouslbcnreactions · 22 days ago

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If you could cut out specific episodes/scenes to make our canon square healthier, which would you cut our? Like, if you wanted to convince someone that the canon love square was OK at least, which episodes would you avoid them watching?

I know Derision is an easy one, but I think s5 has a ton of other crap it tried to pull to give us some "tension" on adrienette getting together. The show already HAD reasons for them to struggle! (Waves at the whole reasons lukanette and adrigami broke up?? They could have had them wondering if those issues would mess with this new relationship??)

I haven't enjoyed the canon square since season three, though I think it still could have been salvaged after season four. I'm not sure if there's a way to make the square healthy while including any of season five. It was such a mess and that mess goes beyond the romance, making it so that I wouldn't want anyone to waste their time with canon. There are just better shows to watch so why bother.

However, I'll look through the episode list and list the ones that strike me as having done the most damage to the square in seasons one to four. I'm only including episodes that need major changes to work. Episodes that need minor tweaks aren't on the list (ex: Oblivio is 95% golden, you just need to remove Chat Noir's flirting getting them hit and replace it with standard bad luck which is a really minor change).

Animan - this is the one with Nino crushing on Marinette which was a terrible idea. It's awkward, undermines Alya and Nino's relationship, and makes it feel like Adrien sees no romantic potential with Marinette which is a questionable move in a romance

Gigantitan - this is the one with Marinette and her friends making that awkward rickshaw date plan (Operation Secret Garden). It makes Marinette look a little too pathetic for my tastes. Her failing to ask Adrien out only "works" when it's not a major focus of the episode. Stick to more minor failures like the gift in The Bubbler

Glaciator - while I like this episode in a vacuum, having Adrien confess was a terrible idea because it makes Chat Noir's flirting come across as pushy in later episodes. She said, "no" dude. Let her go. This episode only works if it's close to the characters getting together.

Syren - Chat Noir comes across as selfish and a poor communicator here, issues that are never addressed thereby undermining the square. Either address the issues or don't introduce them!

Troublemaker - this is a nitpick, but letting Adrien see Marinette's wall of Adrien and having it lead to nothing was disappointing. The wall of Adrien is also just a generally questionable addition as it makes Marinette's crush feel more like a celebrity crush by undermining Adrien and Marinette's friendship. You don't have a wall of Adrien if there's a chance that Adrien will come to your house.

Frozer - Chat Noir is a jerk here showing off why Glaciator was a bad call. Ladybug doesn't owe you a relationship, dude. She said no. Stop pushing.

Animaestro - Marinette is a jerk here. Adrien is allowed to date other girls. He's not even on a romantic date! He's just Kagami's escort for a movie premier. Sabotaging Kagami makes it feel like Marinette isn't ready to be with a celebrity because Adrien will likely be seen with other famous ladies.

Cat Blanc - don't let the male romantic lead knowingly kill the female romantic lead if you want them to feel meant to be

Mr. Pigeon 72 - same issue as Gigantitan. Marinette's crush is just taken a little too far for comfort if this is supposed to be a romance for the ages

Glaciator 2 - while I like the later half of this episode, the opening is painful. Ladybug hating the idea of being with Chat Noir is not a good look this late in the game if this is your end game couple. Chat Noir's pushiness is equally uncomfortable. Ladybug's disinterest needs to be played way softer, especially since this isn't that long before the crushes flip.

Ephemeral - Ladybug's plan is horrible and makes her look terrible. Plus we're rehashing the Cat Blanc issue: don't let the male romantic lead be unable to resist betraying the female romantic lead if you want them to feel meant to be

Kuro Neko - no one looks good here. Terrible addition to the show. Completely unsalvageable. Burn it with fire.

As for season five, I think the only episodes I'd keep are Evolution and maybe Kwami's Choice. That second one is terrible in a lot of ways, but the Adrienette bits are genuinely cute.

Reading through the episode list made me really appreciate something I've said before: for the first four seasons, it really was just a handful of episodes that killed these characters. While there are consistent issues, most of them are minor ones that really only pop because the bad episodes are so bad, making you judge the minor issues harsher than you would if the bad episodes went away. Many of the ones I picked could still work if you let the characters actually learn lessons and improve.

Reminder, this isn't meant to be an ultimate list or anything. It was just me reading through the list and noting any one that made my brain go, "oof, yeah, that one was dumb."

#ml writing critical #ml writing salt #anon ask

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arlakos · 10 months ago

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The High Road: A counterpoint to one of the most commonly used Salt Takes for Adrien.

This isn't really a salt fic idea, but since we are on the topic of salt on this blog, I'd like to take a moment to talk about a scene that has largely been used out of contex ever since Chameleon came out, and that is the infamous high road scene that has since been used to death for every Adrien salt story

For those who are unaware of this scene (or perhaps are unfamiliar with the canon version), in the episode Chameleon of Sesason 3, Marinette is about to go expose a plot hole in one of Lila's many fabrications, only for Adrien to stop her by stating that it won't change Lila for the better (Full Transcript Below). Keep this transcript in mind because I'll be referencing it a lot.

Now, this scene doesn't seem like something to be mad over, but the the whole episode of Chameleon has twisted a lot of people's perceptions of certain characters for the worse. This particular scene just happens to be one that changed people's pereceptions of Adrien.

However, I think its actually somewhat unjustified. I feel that in many ways, Chameleon as a whole has been misrepresented for what changes it has actually brought into the show, and I feel that it's easy to take a lot of moments in the episode out of context, especially when emotions come into play. The episode transcript actually happened to be leaked before it was supposed to be relased, so a lot of people already made up their minds about what this episode was about before it was released. It's easy to hate on this episode when you're friends in discord have watched it before you and have started to shout buzzwords such as "The class betrayed Marinette!" or "Adrien is a monster!", etc etc. I would know, since that was how I found out about the episode in the first place, and watching it for the first time didn't change my initial perceptions.

Today, I would like to take a moment to take the infamous high road scene and talk about what it meant for the salty portion of the fandom, before taking a metaphoically sledgehammer and slamming some misconceptions about Adrien from the perspective of salty people. Sure, they're other scenes that could be looked at, but since every salt fic tends to reuse this plot point, I feel it deserves its own deconstruction.

1. The High-Road scene is proof that Adrien is an asshole!

Now this statement is a bit of a buzzword since the actual reasons for people disliking this scene can vary, but to be fair, the reaction to this scene is also more nuanced as well.

In truth, a lot of people already had issues with Adrien/Chat Noir as a whole (for reasons that I won't elaborate here since it would be worth its own post), but this scene seemed to open the floodgates with hatred for our secondary protagonist out of his percieved inaction, since many people now had dislike for Adrien, while those who hated him prior were more than happy to provide fuel for the fire. After the episode was released, these ideas began to merge together, resulting in this belief that Adrien has always been an asshole, and that the Chameleon scene was simply the final straw, and that if the show was written by a good writer (read: anyone who hated the episode), Marinette would actually ditch his ass!

Now, its debatable on whether Adrien had writing issues prior to this point, but I feel that using this scene to justify hatred for him is outright slander for several reasons:

First of all, Adrien never suggested for Marinette to take the high road if we are being logistical about it. He only complimented her on that regard, telling her she did a good job for "taking the high road", and that was after he sat next to her to show he was by her side.

His actual message to Marinette was that it wasn't worth it to try expose Lila at that moment (and to be fair, it wouldn't have worked, more on that later though) because all it would do is make her double down on her behavior. Plus, trying to expose her in front of everyone would just hurt Lila more than help everyone else, which is, if anything, not untrue.

Overall, the advice Adrien gave to Marinette was not meant out of a desire to hurt anyone (least of all Marinette), but was out of a genuine desire to help resolve a situation and prevent Marinette from doing something that would not have helped the situation. Even if he does have other character flaws, this situation was by no means a reason to villainize him for it.

2. Adrien prefers Lila over Marinette, thats why he told the latter to take the high road!

Again, another idea that is found in fanfics, but is ultimately untrue in canon.

While Adrien doesn't believe Lila at all from the beginning of the episode, he isn't exactly just letting Lila's actions slide either; his stance comes from that of believing that Lila being decietful will do nothing to actually help her make friends. However, rather than confronting her angrily like Marinette does, Adrien instead tries to be friendly with her and try offer Lila some advice to try and change, albiet to no avail.

Now, some people might argue that Lila doesn't deserve kindness considering her threat to Marinette just moments ago, but it should be also stated that Adrien knows NOTHING about this: as far as he's aware, Lila is a transfer student looking to make friends, but has a wrong way of doing so (so in a way, she's not unlike him, from his POV at least), so he's just trying to help her, rather than attempt to force her out in the open.

(Quick tibit though, if Adrien knew what Lila did to Marinette, he would probably be more inclined to help her and protect his friends, given that he was willing to 'sacrifice' himself to get Marinette un-expelled in the Ladybug episode)

By the end of the episode Adrien is obviously dissapointed in Lila continuing to act the way that she is, but ultimately refuses to sink to Lila's level in order to teach her a lesson. As childish as it is (and it should be considering Adrien is a TEEN) Adrien believes that Lila's deceptions will ultimately come back to bite her (Adrien even tells her this himself, see below.), but trying to expose her in front of everyone else will do more harm to Lila than it will help others, hence his methods of speaking to her privately about it.

3. Adrien's reasoning is horrible and stupid! He deserves to pay for it!

This reasoning is the one I find the most dissapointing, partly because it inspired The Karma of Lies story (Written by CartoonAddict564), and also because while Adrien's reasoning can come off as naive, it is by no means stupid, nor should he have to suffer for having a different viewpoint for Marinette. But to understand, you need to think of Adrien in terms of his character.

Adrien is not just a celebrity, but also a child with a very controlling father, who pretty much controls and manages his day to day life with the help of his secretary. As a result of his popularity, Adrien has to be very careful with what he says or does, not only because it would reflect poorly onto his father's company, but it would also force his father to step in. As the Collector has shown, Adrien being able to even LEAVE the home is something that could easily be revoked at any time, and being Cat Noir has only loosened the bars on his cell, not remove them completely. Adrien has very little to gain by confronting Lila, but everything to lose, which is in direct contrast to Marinette having everything to lose by letting Lila walk by.

So in the face of all that, plus the situation he is in now, why would he not act passive and provide advice to try mitigate conflict rather than escalate it?

Now whether or not that should be seen as selfish is debatable, it's ultimately not out of character for Adrien to try and provide more passive options to deal with Lila rather than go for the most violent option. You could even argue that Adrien's actions are also out kindness to Marinette, since (in his eyes at least) it could get her in trouble with her own parents if they try and confront Lila violently.

At worst, Adrien's passiveness is a result of his controlled upbringing. At best? He was just trying to help without causing conflict.

4. Adrien shouldn't have stopped Marinette from confronting Lila!

.... im sorry to say this, but yes he absolutely should have.

Marinette was about to confront Lila over which ear her supposed tinnitus was in. Aside from the fact trying to expose her on this alone would not have worked, this would have just resulted in Marinette becoming more estranged from her classmates in this situation. If Marinette should have confronted Lila about her lying, this was DEFINTELY NOT the way to do it.

This isn't to say that Marinette could not have confronted Lila, but this moment simply was not it. There were better alternatives to Marinette that she could employ in the future had she thought of doing so (such as coming to Alya as Ladybug and revealing that her frienship with Lila is a lie), or carrying a voice recorder to record any threats made by Lila.

As uncathartic as the situation was, from a writing standpoint Adrien's inteference ultimately helped Marinette keep her friendships in the long run, while avoiding making a fool of herself with a battle she simply could not win.

5. It's Adrien's fault that Marinette didn't go after Lila! Marinette would have been better if she brushed him off!

This sounds crazy, but this is a genuine point that people seem to mention when it comes to their reasons for writing salt fics. Even if Adrien's attempts to dissaude Marinette were out of concern rather than malice, people still condemn Adrien for pushing Marinette off that path of going after Lila. In their eyes, Marinette didn't get her immediate revenge for what Lila did, and Lila herself was allowed to continue manipulating the class. All of this becomes Adrien's fault by virtue of being the one to deny this from happening, denying the fans their catharsis.

However, the question I ask it that for all the blame they give to Adrien in this situation ... how come nobody blames Marinette at all for the same thing?

See, despite people argue that Adrien manipulated Marinette into not going after Lila, Marinette isn't necassarily gullible or stupid. If Marinette really thought that Lila was a threat worth going after, she could and would have easily found a way to take Lila down and get her removed, with or without Adrien's support (given she made a similar plan in season 5 for when Gabriel tried to get the Kwamis to lead him to Marinette). She wouldn't even need a miraculous to do so given she can make plans without transforming, and most of Lila's lies aren't particularly smart, they just can't be immediately discredited without proof.

And it can't even be argued that Adrien took advantage of Marinette's love for him (whether intentionally or not). Marinette has shown that even though she does value her friends, she doesn't need to rely on the validation of others to do whatever she feels is right (given that she argued against Alya and others in Risk when it came to their belief that Adrien was fine, even though she was partly amped by an akuma at the time). And if Marinette did think that Adrien was wrong, she probably wouldn't have continued to crush on him anymore.

Also its kind of lowkey sexist? Like, Marinette can probably make her own decisions, she doesn't need someone to dictate her own actions given she's the leader of a superhero team?

Ultimately, Marinette made the choice not to go after Lila. Perhaps she thought that Lila wasn't worth it. Maybe she thought that taking down Lila wasn't worth the time and stress. Maybe she ended up agreeing with Adrien and thought that Lila would expose herself sooner rather than later with her own deceptions. Either way, Marinette can make her own decisions, and she ultimately thought that going after Lila was not a good idea, for whatever reason.

Now, some people might be upset about this idea that Marinette is to blame, but people can't just play the blame game and expect their target to lose. It would honestly be preferrable to say that both Adrien and Marinette made a decision that (for better or worse) thought was good at the time and that neither should be judged for it, but the fandom doesn't seem to care for that because that means their salt fics would be invalid.

Thus, since people want to blame Adrien for apparently "manipulating" Marinette, Marinette should get equal blame for allowing herself to be manipulated by Adrien. Sucks to hear it, but since nobody calls out Marinette on her shit, I might as well be the first. Sorry if it triggers you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

So ... what does this all mean?

It means that my boy Adrien is innocent.

He meant no harm by suggesting that Marinette not go after Lila, nor did he do it because he took Lila's side over Marinette's. At best, he was unaware of how evil Lila was and thought she was misunderstood, and at worse he defaulted to using the same ideas that he uses to protect what limited freedoms he had, and offered it to Marinette as geunine advice. Marinette isn't a pushover either, meaning that not only did she also think what Adrien said was a good idea, but the fandom is inadvertently being sexist by implying she can't be independent and can't make her own decisions, given that she's shown her own independence multiple times. At best, both characters made a dumb decision that they thought was good, but neither can be soley responsible.

Ultimately, Chameleon was an episode that gave Adrien (and whoever else was targeted) a bad rep due to the kneejerk reaction everyone had to the episode due to Lila's lies, myself included. In truth, nothing of what happened in the episode had any actual long term effects, since Marinette still kept her friends and Lila didn't end up playing any major role for nearly 2 seasons, at least until season 5 finally got rid of 'Lila' and set up 'Cerise' to be the new Butterfly villain.

It took me a long while to put this belief into words, and it may be 2 seasons too late, but at least I can upload it now knowing that this truth could possible be shared with the world. Maybe it will stop the excess of salt fics in the world, and allow for new salt free works to be made. Who knows?

Anyways, I hope you found this to be an interesting read as I had writing it!

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug salt #chameleon salt #miraculous chameleon salt #marinette salt #but only a pinch of it #adrien sugar #let mah boi adrien go he did nothing wrong #y'all act like he blew up the moon or something #“foreshadowing 2 seasons late”

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tumblingxelian · 1 year ago

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Commonality

One thing I hate to see neglected or outright ignored in ML fandom is how Adrien not only did genuinely like Chloe, but understood and sympathized with her a lot of the time and that this also reflects that he is every buit as out there as she is.

The most notable moment of this being how he handled Chloe intentionally using her newly gained super powers to temporarily disable a train driver to stage a run away train incident to stop. Her goal being to prove she could be a great hero and impress her abusive mother.

We can talk about how she had no reason to think she couldn't stop the train, showed no signs of giving up even when it seemed more likely to kill her than anyone, or how it made no sense how the train did stop.

ut the important part for this post, is that afterwards, after a full on battle with CHloe, Adrien's response was to put his hand on her shoulder and say: "I know that you did the things you did to impress your mother."

He was more bothered by Ladybug losing a Miraculous than this, because on some level he probably thinks/knows he might derail a train too if it would make his father love him. & yeah, I just wish that side of him and their relationship was acknowledged more.

Now for a jokey summation of this post:

Alya: Gosh that train thing! Nino: I can't believe she did something that crazy. Marinette: Really, who would risk lives, others and their own just to please a parent?

Adrien: Wouldn't you? Alya, Nino & Marinette: N- No!?!?!? Adrien: Weird. Kagami: How the other side lives.

Chloe (Runs in) Guess what!? My mother remembered my name for the third time in my entire life! I mean she was shouting at me, but she remembered it! Adrien: Congrats Chloe! Kagami: (Nod of respect)

Alya, Nino & Marinette: (OO)

#miraculous ladybug #Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir #adrien agreste #chloe bourgeois #They are both extremely fucked up your honor

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ilikekidsshows · 11 days ago

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Sorry, I gotta rant for a sec and I don't know where else to go to cause I don't want Mari stans to come for me.

I just hate it so much how Revelator had Marinette only be supportive of Cat Noir being more than her obedient and insignificant shadow that only breathes to make her look and feel good NOW that it served her selfishness.

Others already pointed out that Marinette said that she KNOWS Cat wouldn't agree with keeping this from Adrien and yet she's making him do it anyway just so she isn't faced with any consequence if her own actions, even when hardly any if this is bout her so people would move in from her rather quickly to instead help Adrien.

I also hate how manipulative it feels how she got Cat Noir to do it. He voiced actual concern if wiping out the memory is ethically right and she just deflects from his valid point and tells him that he's a good person while taking his hands and putting them on his heart, telling him to trust himself.

I hate that so much. I hate that Marinette always dials up the violence or affection whenever she wants Cat Noir to settle for something bad or lesser than he deserves or wants him to just do whatever she wants and not be questioned or called out for it. I hate how CONSISTENT that is and how weaponized her touch feels by now.

I hate that the show has me dreading any time Marinette touches Cat Noir now because no matter if its violent or affectionate, it's almost always done by her to get her way. It didn't use to be like this.

She doesn't talk or give actual arguments, explanations, compromises or whatever. She just dials up the violence or affection with a little line or two about what SHE needs or deserves, how right she is, or say something that makes the viewers think "oh wow, she's such a loving person, she should get her way 🥰" even though she's being selfish and dismissive of everything but her own will time and time again.

Alya at least gave Cat Noir an actual reason for why using his powers like this is good under these circumstances, but Marinette just immediately took the hands of the person she knows has feelings for her, has low self-esteem and always puts her first and went "your such a good person, Kitty. Believe in yourself, there is always room to grow 🥹"

Idc if they meant to write her like that, she's making all my alarm bells go off because of how manipulative this is in nature. Stop deflecting from the point he made and stop touching him while saying long overdue nice words you only ever say to get something out of it. It's disgusting. I wanna save Adrichat from that girl.

And i hate how the show just says that Marinette would have apparently never let Cat be more than her submissive Hype man to make herself look better if it hadn't been for her wanting to avoid facing such a big aftermatch in SEASON 6. Apparently, it had to go this far for her to finally not prioritize keeping Cat as small and controllable as possible.

How am I not supposed to hate that? It's written to be selfish to the core. Even if you wanna be generous and say that Marinette has been feeling bad all this time for how she's been keeping Cat small and thinking he's too stupid and incompetent to do anything else because she beat that into his head over and over again to get her way, then I'm sorry but no? I'm not gonna hate this any less cause she's still only NOW acting on her guilt from making him feel like her stupid pet who shouldn't even try to be anything because he would just be in the way and a bother.

Gabriel didn't do that. LADYBUG beat that into his head all season 4 and she is too much of a coward to make up for it because it would make him less beneficial and controllable for her so she just kept him thinking so lowly of himself as long as he does it quietly so she doesn't have to feel bad for not ever supporting him back.

Her only now acting on that guilt in Revelator is not the loving thing I've seen Marinette fans claim it is cause she's literally only doing it for her own sake, not for his. Idc if she's proud when he successfully evolved his powers, shes a selfish coward for only doing it NOW when encouraging him to try being more than the pet she tamed him into being is of more benefit to her than keeping him small.

That's not loving and caring. That's selfish and I want Maribug to be kept away from Cat Noir with a restraining order. Clearly she won't ever be written again to just show kindness and support because Cat Noir deserves it, she only does it so she can get something out of it or when the universe as good as forced her to do so.

---

Of course Marinette believes a good person can do no wrong because only having good intentions matters. That's how she justifies practically everything she does, especially everything she does to Cat Noir. She’ll lie to him, browbeat him to submission or push every emotional weak point she knows he has to get her way, but it's okay because she's a good person and she's only doing it for the greater good.

Also, like, this isn't even the first time Marinette manipulates someone in season 6. It's said something happening twice can still be a coincidence, but three times is a pattern, and we do have at least three examples of emotional manipulation from three different episodes of season 6 alone. And we only have a handful of episodes for the season out! Either we got some really weird luck with the episodes that have come out so far, or Marinette is doing a lot of this shit in season 6. We'll see.

In ‘Illustrhater’ Marinette only asks Alya to be the backup Guardian after Tikki has gone through the whole ceremony of gifting her a Kwagatama. Alya was cornered into accepting or she'd be offending both Tikki and Marinette by Marinette herself. In ‘Sublimation', Marinette wobbles her lip at Sublime and whines about her being scared of not being worthy of being her friend, basically fake crying until Sublime not only forgives her, but agrees to be her friend and cater to her comfort, because Marinette created a situation where anyone not willing to come across as a jerk would feel pressured to reassure her that she's worthy of friendship. And now, we have her practically love bombing Cat Noir until he stops refusing to do what she wants.

The writers are just too consistent about the ways Marinette mistreats the people around her for me to be comfortable with any of it.

#ml salt #ml critical #dats chats

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marinettesaltprompts · 7 months ago

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Here's an idea for a salt prompt:

When CatWalker replaces Chat Noir, Ladybug is initially ecstatic. He seems perfect. A total upgrade from Chat Noir.

The only problem is...

Well, she's on the other side of the unrequited love barrier now.

CatWalker is polite, but professional. He doesn't joke around. He doesn't make friends with anyone on the team. He does his job as efficiently and effectively as possible and goes home. He's not rude and he is an attentive partner workwise but he's not someone to do more than provide token comfort when needed or to hang out for the sake of it like Chat Noir once did.

Even when Ladybug carefully probes for the possibility Catwalker is quick to shut any possibility of a closer relationship down. Even Viperion can't get through the model-professional mask.

Meanwhile at school Adrien seems to be quietly withdrawing as well. In truth it took them a while to notice, but lately Adrien's always had a thing he had to do at home or for his Father when Nino asked. He hasn't even really been going to band with Luka and his group anymore either. There's no sign of sadness or stress though. Just that same model smile as always.

Finally the story goes to Adrien's perspective and the truth is revealed. The day that Plagg came back with the ring they had a hard conversation about why Adrien really gave it up: the disregard. The double standards about the identity rules that apparently on he had to follow. More importantly they discussed how the increasingly one-way affection and care in the relationship between him and Ladybug was hurting him. Once upon a time Ladybug had been his first friend outside of the house. Now he felt like her pet or worse.

He *knows* that whatever she called him to talk about before time was broken had been important. And he's pretty sure there was no good reason for Viperion to have been down there having *activated second chance* when he and Ladybug were supposed to have just been talking.

Plagg then spilled something that poisoned any chance of Adrien returning as Chat Noir. During the night that Ladybug had spent trying to figure out how to get a new Black Cat, Plagg had spoken with the other Kwamis and Sass let slip the truth about why Ladybug had called Chat Noir to the tower that night.

About her scummy plan. About how she'd chosen to manipulate him over trusting him in the slightest. About how in the end all Ladybug had to do was just yell at Su-Han to make him cave.

About how Viperion hadn't even said a word to try and convince her to stop but just when along with everything. Sure the other Kwamis aren't that bothered about it- human things aren't their specialty so it's not like they care that much when it's not a holder they like getting hurt- but the implications are clear.

And just like that something in Adrien finally breaks. The scales fall from his eyes and the desire for a bond between him and Ladybug withers away. The same for any idea of a friendship between him and Luka.

And from there so to do the other threads connecting him to others. Nino had *hated* Chat Noir. Sure a lot of it had been grief, but the contempt towards Chat Noir was real. Would they really still be friends if Nino knew who he really was?

Probably not.

Alya and him were only friends by association of Nino. And no one else in class was closer to him than that. Even the others in the band were people he'd gotten closer through Luka.

Marinette... well. He'd *thought* they were getting closer, but any time it seemed like they were making progress she'd act out and... well. He'd been trying to ignore it for a while but if he was honest he knew what a fangirl looked like. He just didn't want to admit what he saw in Marinette.

Even Chloe and Felix had fallen away in their own ways.

Maybe it was time to let them all go. It hurts to accept but less than he expected. It's kind of a sad relief. He'd dreamed of making friends and a life outside of the manor but much like being a superhero, things were harder in real life than in his fantasies.

But Plagg was different. Sure he wasn't perfect. He'd kept things from him, but they'd bonded. Adrien honestly couldn't say there was anyone closer to his heart than the little Kwami, not since Mom had "disappeared".

But he lose Plagg forever if he stopped being Ladybug's partner. And Plagg doesn't want to say goodbye to Adrien either- but he has responsibilities as well. He can't just stay with Adrien and ignore the fight in Paris- even if he didn't care much about humans he cared about poor Nooroo and Duusu!

So they concocted a way for them to stay together. Being Chat Noir had been freedom once, but it had been becoming more of an obligation to Ladybug anyway. Besides, he was decent at escaping now anyway and he could only really have fun with Plagg in the privacy of his room anyway. The relationship between him and Ladybug was a source of more pain and trouble than it was worth at this point, Adrien just couldn't be her emotional support anymore. So the new Cat would be strictly polite and distant with her to avoid even the possibility of that happening again. Chat Noir had been widely mocked and devalued for his approach, so his replacement would be a calm professional who never let his personal feelings touch his work.

And so Catwalker was born.

He's easy for Adrien to slip into. He's just the same model personality he practices every day after all, only now the distance between him and others is enforced. He's the perfect fighter. The perfect soldier. No one can fault him, and no one can say that he doesn't fit on the team even if he's not part of their friend group. Adrien's heart is protected, Ladybug the partner she wanted and Plagg gets to keep his favored holder.

Catwalker is perfect.

Too perfect really. He knows what a fangirl looks like after all, and the "subtle" looks Ladybug gives him when she thinks he won't notice tug at him with a mix of bitter longing and disappointment that she's infatuation by the same hollow mask as the rest of Paris. But Catwalker also doesn't owe Ladybug his shoulder like her 'friend' Chat Noir felt like he did when she's down, she has an entire team for that- when the job's done he can just go home instead.

And Adrien? It's all too easy to slip back into a comfortable loneliness. In hindsight, a lot of his relationships at school were shallower than he thought. Nino was nice enough guy, but they'd never been able to fully bond in the way he'd wanted- and Nino's priority had been Alya for nearly as long as they'd known each other anyway. Luka and the band were circumstantial friends and the others were less than that really.

But was comfortable. Familiar to be alone in a crowd. To put on a mask of friendliness and have nothing deeper than passing acquaintances. He'd been on sports teams growing up, fencing, basketball, Karate and yet he'd never been allowed to get close to anyone but Chloe and Felix. It was normal for him to be in solitude, it hurt less than he expected to let the others go.

But maybe that was because he still had a true friend now. A little, rambunctious Kwami who would deceive his own Guardian to stay with him. Someone who actually, fully accepted him in his entirely and who he could actually trust. The very kind of friendship he'd always dreamed of.

And that'd why he's able to live like this.

It wasn't the life he'd imagined or wanted as Chat Noir. But both Adrien and Catwalker found themselves content.

I love this Idea, but I also wanted to that it's perfectly ironic. Everyone in his class and life, from Marinette to Kagami, always did say that Adrien the Model is perfect, so he gives them exactly what they wanted. A flawless model that stands alone, away from them all.

Thank you for the prompt! New post should be coming soon!

#marinette salt #miraculous ladybug #marinette salt prompts #miraculous ladybug salt #adrien sugar #miraculous ladybug salt prompts #Honestly this is perfect #Technically Cat-Walker is what Ladybug wanted Chat Noir to be.#This is also what some fans of the show (as well as Adrien salters) wanted him to be #So he gives her exactly that #So that also means no more lovesquare.#Ladybug gets exactly what she wanted #Miraculous Ladybug

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thoughts-of-a-cypress · 8 days ago

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Cause my last post did so well (thank you haters and stans 🫶) I thought, why not make a post about their delusions and bs. So let's talk Felix (this is for the stans 😘):

• "Emotion": he commited terrorism, was happily spreading fear and ceased innocent people from existance cause they were human and he doesn't like humans, a crime based on pure hatred - basically magical genocide (for a lil comparison check Magneto and his view on humans/mutants)

• "Pretension": Felix stalks and kidnaps Kagami, thinking it's just fine. Starts being interested in her romantically cause she's senti. He never cared about her before, only after finding out did he start caring - this plus fact above confirms he's racist against humans. No, Colt's abuse against him doesn't justify anything. Recreate the scenario in your head if it was with black and white people. Oh and on top of this, Felix makes Kagami feel sorry for him so she gives him a chance, which in the end works. Basically little guilttripping. But she also gets together with him cause he looks like her ex, for whom she still has unresolved feelings for so all in all Feligami is not only underdeveloped (has no build-up) but in a way also disgusting

• "Felix": His introduction and we already get to know he never cared for Adrien, in fact bullied him since they were little. The small amount of time he's there he invades Adrien's privacy on his phone, sends a hate message to his friends, hoping to break up their friendship, further pretends to be him to mess with his cousin as much as he can, SAs Ladybug so, again he can mess with Adrien and make his crush hate him, and puts camembert under Adrien's pillow just because. And ofc also steals Gabriel's ring cause his mother wanted to have it (who already never cared for them and only visited to get the rings back). Definitely respectful towards Gabriel AND Adrien and if he cares for his cousin so much, shouldn't he know Adrien has a right to those rings too? (Literally his amoks) Oh and in the end, he pretends to feel sorry - he doesn't a little bit ofc. Lovely boy 🤪

• Multiple eps in s4: Snoops around the Agreste mansion just cause he can - he literally has no motive other than snoop around and maybe find some dirt cause why not? If it wasn't obvious already gonna say it again - disrespectful af move. Imagine if one of your relatives or friends decided to basically break into private sections of your house.

• Season 4 finale: Decides to pretend to be Adrien, NOT for his benefit but his own which in the end he exploits by betraying Ladybug's trust and dealing every miraculous for the peacock with the villain. For all the heroes and whole Paris knows, Monarch won. He will defeat the heroes and make his Wish and dominate the Earth. "Lucky" for them plot armour exists and that Gabriel "only" wanted to bring Emilie back otherwise it would've meant the end of the world. And Felix helped without any bother or remorse 😃 Gonna say it - s5 would look different if Felix didn't exchange every miraculous for one. Hell, there's a chance Gabriel might've not gone mad!

• "Representation": After everything he's done he has the nerve to go to Marinette, not even directly(!), and ask her to help defeat Monarch so that HE can have a happy ending with his girlfriend. His motive wasn't "Monarch needs to be stopped cause he's the villain and people need to be safe" but "Monarch needs to be stopped cause I want ME to be safe with MY girlfriend" - can you smell the selfishness here?

• He claims to care so much for his cousin but as mentioned, he bullied him since they were kids, but he's senti so now he cares oh and now that Kagami is his girlfriend, he had every reason to try breaking Adrien and Kagami out of their lockdown in London. He literally lives there. But he didn't.

• Guess what? The writers and the fans want to make him out to be a hero but he isn't and never was. In fact he never even AT LEAST apologized to Ladybug after everything he's done, for betraying her for example 😃

So on a final note - you can't excuse him. These are things he did. It's canon. You can't twist around anything. If you want to try and excuse him, ask yourself "are you REALLY a fan of the character if you can't accept their wrongdoings? Or do you just want your fav character to be a perfect angel?"

For everything he does he has selfish reasons. And that's his character, accept it.

Colt's abuse doesn't excuse anything. Like the saying goes "it's an explanation, NOT an excuse"

In fact, by the narrative's standard it definitely doesn't give you the right to behave like a jacka**, see Chloe who never got a redemption cause "she was too far gone" and this scene:

Rose: "Don't be mad at her. She's this way because her mother left her when she was young."

Mylène: "So did mine! And you don't see me having fun bullying Marinette."

And for sure it doesn't give anyone any right to wield a miraculous, quoting Astruc: "Mean people don't and will never deserve a Miraculous"

Another interesting fact Astruc once revealed was about why Felix was later switched to Adrien as the love interest for Marinette. With his words, "he's a weak character with cliché psychology" - can't believe it but I agree with Astruc. Felix definitely works on cliché psychology. Ofc it's hilarious cause they write him this way but oh well, their mistake and the fans' blind spot.

Apparently Felix was also too dark and too mean for Marinette but guess that doesn't apply to Kagami 🙃

Anyway, enjoy the food Felix stans 😉

#miraculous #miraculous ladybug #felix fathom #felix fathom salt #felix graham de vanily #can't wait to see the clash outs #this is gonna sting #stans are too hypocritical for their own good #I literally noted this as salt if you don't like it there's the door #salt but it's basic facts but apparently pointing them out is negative #mlb salt #miraculous salt

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yall-hate-kids-tourney · 3 months ago

Text

Carl Grimes (The Walking Dead) vs. Alya Cesaire (Miraculous Ladybug)

Y'all Hate Kids: Screwed By The Writers

Propaganda below the cut

Carl Grimes (The Walking Dead)

He’s literally blamed for doing stuff that any kid raised in the apocalypse would realistically do. He literally had to shoot his own mother and watch two of his friends get killed with a baseball bat. Fans call him “stupid” for killing specific people, but when he doesn’t kill other specific people, he’s blamed for that too. Fans also seem to hate his actor’s acting, even though Carl is meant to be emotionally-stunted due to the severe trauma he’s faced. It doesn’t help that the show runner himself seemed to hate Carl enough to [spoiler alert], and it derailed the entire show as a result. Carl literally is just trying to survive in a world he’s forced to grow up in. He’s lost so many adults in his life and can’t let himself just be a kid because it’ll prevent him from staying prepared.

Alya Cesaire (Miraculous Ladybug)

Cw: racism

"The amount of hatred Alya gets in the fandom is absolutely insane. There are over 800 fics tagged with ""Alya Cesaire Bashing"", and that's just the ones that actually TAG it - many of them either use a a non-canonical tag or just take their demonization of her as canon. It's not just that a lot of fics bash her either, but that the fics that bash her are disproportionately popular. If you go through the ""Miraculous Ladybug"" tag on AO3 and sort by kudos, I'd say around a third of the top 500 most popular fics use this gross caricature of her in order to justify inflicting some sort of insane punishment on her, or at least replacing her with ""better"" friends and leaving her to wail in despair.

Basically, Alya is the best friend of the main character, Marinette. She's really into superheroes and aims to be a reporter someday, to the point that the first time a supervillain cropped up in the series, she immediately got out her bike and cycled after him so that she could be there when a superhero showed up to fight him (Lois Lane would be proud). She runs a blog called the ""Ladyblog"" which reports on what the superheroes are doing, and sometimes makes some fun videos, like about the most impressive feats of one of the superheroes.

Then the first episode of season 3 aired, and the fandom went BALLISTIC.

Then lunch time rolls around and Marinette tells Alya and Alya's boyfriend, Nino, that Lila's a lying liar who lies. Alya asks why Marinette hates her so much, since she barely knows Lila (this isn't the first time that Marinette's nitpicked at Lila's stories, but she's never actually managed to prove that Lila's lying, Lila's good at coming up with explanations for any hole Marinette exposes in her tales). Marinette tells her how, after Lila first arrived at school, she followed her and Adrien, eavesdropped on them, and then saw Ladybug show up and tear into Lila for not knowing her. (Presumably that's what she says, the episode skipped past her actual recounting of what she saw). Alya and Nino are more concerned with the fact that she stalked Lila and Adrien, with Alya also being skeptical that what she heard might have been out-of-context, given how common out-of-context eavesdropping is in fiction for causing issues, with Alya saying, ""A good reporter always verifies her sources. Can you prove she doesn't actually know Ladybug?""

A few problems with this.

She also frequently gets demonized and bashed for ""believing Lila over Marinette"". My major issue with this: what she's specifically believing Lila over Marinette for is on the topic of ""is Lila an awful person"". I don't think it's unreasonable to have a higher standard of proof for believing that someone is an awful person than for believing that your friend might just have some biased interpretations. Alya thinks that Marinette doesn't like Lila mostly because Lila has hit on Adrien, Marinette's crush, before. This isn't unreasonable considering that Marinette's first reaction to Lila is to freak out about her stealing Adrien away, and that when this other girl, Kagami, started hanging out with Adrien, she freaked out about that too. Specifically, she called a meeting of all her female friends to try and stop Kagami and Adrien from going away together to London for the weekend in Backwarder, helped Chloe in trying to get Kagami covered in food at a fancy red carpet movie opening in order to drive her away and steal her seat next to Adrien for the movie, and when she and Kagami were paired up for a ""friend-making game"" where the goal was to locate where Adrien was in Paris and the prize was to spend time with him, she pretended to genuinely want to be Kagami's friend so she could sabotage both of them and prevent Kagami from spending time with Adrien. So it's not like the belief that Marinette might be unfairly biased against Lila because she's made moves on Adrien is an unfair assumption.

In addition to that, on the occasions when Lila HAS tried to frame Marinette for something, Alya hasn't believed it, or hasn't been shown to believe it at least. In Ladybug Lila tries to frame Marinette for cheating on a test, for stealing a necklace from her, and for knocking her down the stairs. Despite the evidence Lila planted, Alya doesn't believe it and investigates to try and find out what really happened. She doesn't uncover any solid proof, but she still believes in Marinette. She doesn't believe that Marinette's assumption that Lila's behind this is necessarily correct, since Marinette's leaping to that without presenting proof, but she doesn't believe that Marinette's the culprit either. And in the two following cases when Marinette's framed, Alya never actually gets a chance to say what she believes after the accusation is made against Marinette.

Just... the amount of demonization towards Alya TO THIS DAY, often for things she NEVER EVEN FREAKING DID, is absolutely insane. Even over 5 years since Chameleon aired, fics with Alya being made into this malicious, awful bully so that Marinette can get some new friends to publicly denounce her, get her arrested, or otherwise be punished are frequently on the front page of the most recently updated fics on AO3, and are often some of the most popular ones. If you go to ""Fandom-Specific plot"" on Tvtropes, saltfics like these have multiple files going through all the common salt tropes. When looking through fics, I frequently search for Alya's name because she's often the first person to be unfairly demonized, so if she's safe, then everyone likely is.

I suspect that racism plays a major factor in this. It doesn't make sense that Alya's often painted as being a violent, malicious bully and leader in getting the rest of the class to physically hurt and terrorize Marinette, I haven't even seen analysis arguing that she'd do that... but it tracks with the ""Black Brute"" archetype. This becomes even more obvious with Chloe, who's white and canonically DOES do some of this stuff, taking on Alya's canon role and some of her personality traits in these sorts of stories.

And as for the way Alya's demonized for asking for evidence before believing that Lila's lying, well... again, Alya's expected to act as Marinette's support, and her ""failing"" that in any way, even if it makes sense from her point of view, is viewed as a betrayal. She's supposed to be loyal to Marinette, and only to Marinette, not to think for herself or to have multiple other friends or values that she needs to weigh. And anything that she does to go against that ""justifies"" Marinette intentionally trying to hurt and punish her for failing to live up to her role.

"(Note: This is an addendum to my earlier essay about the fandom's mistreatment of Alya. Here, I'm focusing more on how the writers' treatment of her helped to exacerbate that, since I saw that this version of the tournament had more of a focus on that. Please add this on at the end of my previous essay).

There ARE ways to explain this - Lila lying about being friends with Ladybug in order to try to boost her reputation, especially when she's the new girl, isn't really all that heinous. Marinette lies a lot as well, even if you don't count lies told to protect her secret identity or other ""necessary"" lies, sometimes out of embarrassment, sometimes to to try and prevent someone's feelings from getting hurt, and sometimes because she thinks it's the fastest, easiest, or most certain way to get the outcome she wants. And yet, even though Marinette lies a lot, she's not ostracized for that since it's usually not for malicious reasons - foolish reasons at times, but rarely malicious. It would make sense that Lila too, wouldn't be thought too badly of for merely lying in an attempt to make friends.

None of that actually comes up though. Alya later, in Confrontation, states that, ""Marinette, you know we'll always believe you. But every time you've accused Lila, there's been no evidence. And at worst, it was just a misunderstanding."" Marinette doesn't say anything about the previous times Lila has been proven to lie, so it seems like either it was decided offscreen that the more understandable lies she's told don't matter, or that the writers just plain forgot about them.

There WAS, however, someone who was always with Marinette, and who could actually back up Marinette's statements more definitively.

There IS some hatred thrown at Alya for non-Lila related reasons - well, reasons that aren't DIRECTLY Lila related, most of that hatred still stems from people hating her for Chameleon stuff and then retroactively justifying it by looking back at other things she did that irked them. The most common one (that actually has some sort of argument to it, not the ""Alya's a horrible babysitter and is abusing her friendship with Marinette"" nonsense I listed in the main essay) is that Alya's pushy about getting Marinette together with Adrien.

This is more a product of Alya's usual role in the story than anything. I mentioned in the main essay how Alya sometimes falls into ""Black Best Friend"" territory, and this is one of the biggest examples. One of her most common roles throughout the series is as the person who pushes Marinette to actually confess to Adrien, to hang out with him, to pursue her romantic desires even with her anxiety holding her back, and to be honest with herself during the times when she's trying to deny her feelings for him. She's Marinette's sounding board whenever she's having an anxiety spiral about... actually, just about anything, and acts as the voice of reason when Marinette gets in her own head too much.

Thus, Alya sets Marinette and Adrien to end up somewhere alone together, or tries to push her to talk to him, or to be honest during the times when she tries to ""move on"" from Adrien by denying that she still has feelings for him (which is blatantly untrue). She IS okay with Marinette dating someone else though, if she honestly seems to want to do that. She had no problem with her dating Luka, for instance. She DID protest Marinette's seemingly sudden interest in Chat Noir, but that was mostly because Marinette seemed to be grabbing at her new attraction as an attempt to run away from her feelings for Adrien, something that Tikki ALSO noted.

So while Alya could be said to be ""pushy"" to an extent, it's mostly for Marinette's benefit. I would like if this was a less frequent role for Alya - I think it does her a disservice, since it locks her firmly into Marinette's orbit rather than emphasizing who Alya is as her own character. Most of the hatred towards Alya for this is tied up in ""Die For Our Ship"" being directed at Adrien though, with Adrien bashers hating that Alya's trying to set Marinette up with what they see as an inferior option. Ironically enough, while Alya's role in this situation is one of the primary examples in the show of her being treated by the writers as a ""Black Best Friend"" who exists to serve Marinette's character, it's actually one of the cases where I think racism is a pretty minor part of the hatred by the fanbase over it, since I think that's mostly motivated by hatred towards the Lovesquare.

#yall hate kids tourney #screwed by the writers #round 2 #miraculous ladybug #alya cesaire #carl grimes #twd #the walking dead

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flightfoot · 3 months ago

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hi there! i’m not entirely sure if you’re okay with people asking for fic recs, and if you’re not please feel free to ignore this!! but i really value your opinion on things and was wondering if you knew of any good fics of ml lovesquare domestic fluff lol. i would love to hear about what you personally enjoyed! :)

Oh yeah, sure! I don't know whether by "domestic fluff" you're talking about just fics that have Adrien and Marinette be married and aged-up, or whether you also just mean more generally Lovesquare fluff of them hanging out with each other. I'll see what I can do.

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48 Hours To Make You Love Me by @mysticraven20

“When did you stop?” “Stop what, M’Lady?” “Stop loving me?” When two heroes miss the minibus for their winter get away with the gang they have no other choice but to make their way to the resort by themselves. After avoiding their feelings for years, a freak snow storm makes them reconsider more than just whether to carry on driving. Luckily, they find a quaint little bed and breakfast where suddenly they’re thrown into a situation where their feelings can no longer be held back; but, is it too late? The interference of an elderly couple after an eavesdropping accident helps both Adrien and Marinette come to terms with their feelings and their actions. Through movies, hot chocolates and snuggling to keep warm, Marinette wonders if it’s possible to make Adrien love her again, and more so can she do it by the time they need to leave their little sanctuary?

This just has a lot of adorable Adrienette shenanigans, with a fun time travel twist that had me inwardly squealing XD. If you want some Lovesquare fluff, this is a good one.

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When Bunnyx Brings A Baby by DruWho

Marinette thought she was up to any challenge. She was Ladybug after all! But when Bunnyx arrives with a baby in her arms asking her to babysit, Marinette quickly learns that Akuma battles are easy compared to taking care of a baby. A baby that seems to know her and for some strange reason… Adrien?

An entry in the “Lovesquare has to babysit their future children” genre! This is just adorable.

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Patrolling with a friend for Christmas by @seas-of-silver

Adrien just wanted to gift his Lady some time off and hang out more with Marinette during the festive season - it didn't exactly go to plan, but somehow ended up… better?

This was adorable! Chat Noir tries to give Ladybug a break by recruiting Multimouse to replace her on patrols for a bit, and Ladybug returns the favor by recruiting Aspik to replace Chat. Yep, it’s Snekmouse!

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I know there's been pain this year (But it's time to let it go) by @ninadove

“What? Nooo! Adrien doesn’t hate Christmas.” “Are you absolutely certain? What was he like last year?” “Well, he —” Marinette furrowed her brow, scanning her own memories. Of course she was absolutely certain. At least, she thought she was. Okay — she could not ignore that Adrien had run away from home that night, wandering the snow-covered streets to escape the freezing cold of his own home. Nor could she brush away the disintegrated Morris column, cataclysmed for the crime of bearing his own face. Oh, and the shaky videos circulating on YouTube. That musical number was… Concerning, to say the least. Still, it was no smoking gun. Right? “Oh my god,” she squeaked, plopping down against the counter. “Adrien hates Christmas.”

I love Marinette and Felix doing their best to cheer Adrien up, it’s adorable. Especially Marinette’s attempt. It’s very Marinette, I laughed out loud XD. There’s a lot of senticousin bonding here, so if you like that, this is a good one to check out!

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Lost Little Kitten by soliea0death

Monarch hasn't been seen for a while, but that doesn't mean that Ladybug and Chat Noir aren't still needed as the heroes of Paris. Also, the new holder of the rabbit miraculous may need some more practice when dealing with time travel. One-shot Ladynoir ;);)

This is adorable. Ladybug and Chat Noir find a toddler wandering around and try to find her parents, to no avail, so they decide to take care of her (well Ladybug said she was gonna leave her with Marinette, but you know what that really means). Of course Bunnix had to come to collect her since she was displaced from time, but neglected to say who her parents were…

Anyway this was adorable, and I loved the explanation for how, exactly, the little girl ended up in the wrong time period.

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Miraculous Conception series by @ladynoirfanao3

First fic: The Power Of Creation

Everyone knows that Ladybug's cure fixes everything after the destruction wrought by Shadow Moth's akumatized villains. After an akuma with an unfortunate power leaves Ladybug and Adrien in an awkward position, Marinette has never been happier to simply forget. However, she soon discovers that her miraculous ladybugs have a limitation on their curing ability: a limitation that puts her in a situation she never expected to be in.

So basically, Ladybug and Adrien run into each other just as an akuma makes everyone in the vicinity extremely horny, and when they both start remembering things again, they’re in a pretty... compromising position. But it’s just an akuma so they put it out of their heads, until Marinette discovers she’s pregnant and has to decide what to do about it, whether to keep the pregnancy, tell Adrien she’s Ladybug and is having his baby, what to do with the earrings when she’s too pregnant to be Ladybug, etc.

I really enjoyed it! Just watching Ladybug and Adrien try and navigate the situation, especially with secret identities thrown into the mix.

The main fics in the series are basically the same story, it’s just that the first one is from Marinette’s perspective, while the second one is from Adrien’s. The Power of Creation is rated M while the Power of Destruction is rated E, but for both fics it’s just rated that for a single sex scene that occurs in the fic (with it being the same sex scene in both fics, just told from two different perspectives).

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Fate, Destiny... A Hamster by @mostmagical

After finally moving into his very first apartment per Ladybug’s suggestion, Adrien stumbles upon something no movie or TV show could have ever prepared him for: someone else's hamster. At least now there’s an excuse to talk to the new neighbor. (Adrinette Never Met AU)

Funnily enough, this is based on a true story. Specifically, the author’s own experience of having her hamster run out and be found by a neighbor.

Anyway, this is adorable! Marinette and Adrien become smitten with each other extremely quickly, with Marinette’s hamster keeping giving them reasons to talk. Very effective wing-hamster, that one XD.

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Villainous Matchmaking by @nedjsmlfavsmlfavs

When Paris’ favorite domestic terrorist realizes how Ladybug feels about his son, he comes up with his greatest plan yet: using Ladybug’s extremely obvious crush on Adrien Agreste to akumatize Chat Noir. A Ladrien/“platonic” Ladynoir fic

This is adorable and hilarious. Gabriel keeps on “accidentally” releasing things which makes it looks like Adrien and Ladybug are a couple in an effort to make Chat Noir jealous, while Adrien and Ladybug ae just over-the-moon about getting to spend time together and finding out that the other person loves them XD.

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Every Heartbeat by epcot97

Reeling from a brutally difficult day, Marinette finds her life becomes amazingly complicated after impulsively inviting Chat Noir to spend the evening with her. But when the suave feline begins to weave his way into her heart, she realizes rather quickly just how conflicted her feelings for her partner truly are. (part of MariChat May 2021)

Okay so I’m cheating on this one just a little. This story was originally uploaded in 2021, but was taken down and then reuploaded in 2023. I didn’t read it the first time around, and I really enjoyed it and this is my list, so screw it, I’m including it.

Really lovely Marichat fic here! Gabriel fires Marinette from her designer job for unfair reasons, so Chat goes to comfort her and help her set up her own fashion business, becoming closer and closer as they do so.

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Skinny Dipping in the Seine by sparksfly

When Marinette and Chat Noir cross paths one stormy night, an unexpected friendship blossoms, and between the two of them they’re both able to admit what they’ve been looking for the most — freedom. Vowing to tackle all of the things they’ve never tried before, they set out on a series of adventures to complete their bucket lists.

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From School Bells to Wedding Bells by @linnieluna

When the superhero duo takes on another exhausting fight against an akuma, Chat Noir does what he never hesitates to do and takes a hit for his partner. The problem being: neither of them knew what power the akuma possessed. That is… until he is transported into the future. More specifically, to his friend Marinette's wedding.

Ah I love time travel fics! Older!Marinette’s surprised, Younger!Adrien’s bewildered, and Older!Adrien is off knowing exactly what happened and giving his younger self some subtle heads-up.

It gives Adrien something to look forward to, to cling onto, through bad days in the future at least!

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The Power of Love by @nedjsmlfavs

In which Ladybug announces that she’s pregnant via her long term boyfriend and Chat Noir is a supportive partner. After all, he can hardly be upset when he’s been dating his Princess for years! A different take on the show’s tagline (“The Power of Love Always so Strong”) written for Valentine’s day 2023.

This is just a sweet, fluffy fic about Ladybug and Chat Noir finding out they’re having a baby, revealing to each other, getting married, and becoming parents. Gabriel actually tries to do better here, as he does actually care about getting to know his grandchild, and realizes that he can’t undo this timeline without undoing his granddaughter’s existence as well.

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Until I Found You by @linnieluna

Working their way up to a settled adulthood, Marinette and Adrien, now 23, gain a reason to believe that they are expecting—way earlier than they ever planned. Still unwed, it evokes a revelation on Adrien’s behalf. Was it time to take the next step forward?

I loved the emotions here, how Adrien and Marinette reacted to the results of the pregnancy test, how complicated their feelings about it were - and how it prompted Adrien to take action. It’s a really sweet fic!

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Valentine Surprise by choppa01

Adrien had the perfect plan for spending Valentine's Day with Marinette. Unfortunately Chat Noir has the worst luck when it comes to keeping to the plan. But it all works out in the end, right? Right?

This is adorable. Chat Noir keeps running into people who need help on Valentine's Day and sacrificing his own plans in order to help others. Luckily, all is not lost, even if everything he set up for his date is.

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The Course of True Love by @nedjsmlfavs

Dark Cupid haunts Marinette. Do the events of that fateful day mean that Adrien isn’t her True Love? With a little help from Chat Noir - who has absolutely no personal stakes in this matter - she’s sure to find out. She’ll also learn the unfortunate truth: the course of true love never did run smooth.

So this is adorable, there's some nice Ladrien dating in here! Though also some angst, Chat Blanc still takes place in this storyline, as does a Hawkmoth takedown, and all the angst and trauma that goes with those things. But with Marinette and Adrien together, the two of them can handle anything.

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Perfectly Platonic (Unless...) by @frostedpuffs

After accidentally revealing their identities in less than ideal circumstances, Adrien and Marinette must navigate their newfound relationship as both partners and friends. Becoming best friends was a quick process, but when romantic feelings begin to bleed into what's supposed to be a platonic connection, their friendship starts to change in more ways than one. Surely it can't be that hard to hide their feelings from their best friend? (A post-reveal, pre-relationship fic full of romantic crushes, best friend shenanigans, and a whole lot of dumbassery.)

If you just want a straight-up romance slowburn with these two just somehow being convinced their relationship is platonic (or that the other person wants it to be platonic at least), you'll find little better to scratch that itch than "Perfectly Platonic (Unless...)". It's a little smutty and definitely earns its M rating because of that. If you want mutual pining, there's a ton of that here!

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Season Of Giving by The_Rabbit42

As Christmas draws near, Adrien and Marinette want to find special presents to give their partner and... other partner. Combined with Adrien rediscovering what Christmas is without his parents, Marinette getting sick, and Alya and Adrien becoming closer friends, it's sure to be a memorable holiday.

I love this, it's a nice festive story, and I especially enjoyed Adrien and Alya getting to talk and bond and just... be friends with each other, rather than simply existing together in the same friend group! Oh, also, this takes place post-season 5, so Adrien's dealing with being an orphan now and all the complicated feelings that stirs up.

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After The Bell Rings by fettuccine(LFA)

After a failed stint as a freelance designer, Marinette takes a job as a design teacher at a middle school. It's a lot more difficult than she thinks it'll be, especially with popular creative writing teacher Adrien Agreste residing right next door. It's not him that's the problem. He's one of the only things making teaching semi-tolerable. Afternoon venting sessions and cups of tea in the teacher's lounge quickly lead to becoming best friends. So, no. It's not him. It's the students relentlessly shipping them that's the issue.

You ever wanted a teacher AU for the Lovesquare? You got it! They're adorable, even their students can see they belong together XD

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Mamma Mia! by @ladynoirfanao3

When Marinette discovers she is pregnant, she is distressed to realize any of the three men she slept with in the recent past could be the father; Chat Noir, Ladybug’s partner and ex with whom she had gone through a tearful breakup - the mysterious Cat Walker, Ladybug’s rebound - or Adrien Agreste, Marinette’s current boyfriend. Bit of a twist on the base concept of Mamma Mia, where she doesn't realize all three potential fathers are, in fact, the same man.

So this is a fun little fic. I loved seeing Adrien and Marinette independently wrestle with the situation - Adrien, with maybe being the father of his former girlfriend's children (but maybe not), and Marinette, with needing to tell her former and current boyfriends that they might or might not be the father, and having to deal with a potential change in their relationship because of that.

Oh yeah, this fic is rated M, but the sexual content is relatively mild. The foreplay is detailed, but the actual sex is just implied.

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Bend the World Around It by @kasienda

“Tell me it was real." She can’t look at him. She can barely stand the pain in his voice. She definitely can’t face it. “It wasn’t.” He shakes his head, and turns to her - his eyes swirling in their intensity. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. Tell me that you were there. We were there together, having the same dream.” She squeezes her eyes shut. She wants to lie to him. She needs to lie to him. But she can’t. Lying would be like it never happened. But it did happen. And if it’s all they get to have, she wants him to know it. “I think we were having the same dream,” she whispers, unable to meet his eyes.

So this is an adorable Jubilation aftermath fic, with Ladybug and Chat Noir both mourning the loss of what only they remember, of a dream that never was. And them deciding that screw it, it may not have been real to anyone else, but it was real to them. They remember those years together, and they want to live together, if only during the times when they can afford to be missing from home. They remember being happily married, and crave that life.

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Are You Kidding Me? by @11jj11

When Bunnyx appears, Marinette knows she has to be prepared for what may be her greatest challenge yet. Babysitting her future child wasn't exactly what she had in mind.

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Remember That Time When... by @mostlovedgirl-writes

Twenty-two-year-old Marinette Agreste was looking forward to the anniversary trip she would be taking with her husband Adrien that weekend. Those plans are derailed when she wakes up in her old bedroom… and she’s seventeen again.

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Pick-Up and Chase by SKayLanphear

After she accidentally trips into Adrien and apologizes about "falling for him," Marinette learns that he's no match for cheesy pick-up lines--whether they were unintended or not. And while she finds it flattering that he turns into a flustered mess with only a few words, Marinette comes to regret making him uncomfortable. That is, until she learns he's Chat Noir. At which point the phrase "just deserts" becomes a permanent fixture in her everyday plans. A story in which Adrien is flustered, Marinette is smooth as glass at dropping lines, and Chat Noir gets the romance he was always asking for--even if he doesn't quite know how to handle it.

#ask #miraculous ladybug #ml fanfic rec #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #adrienette #marichat #ladynoir #ladrien #lovesquare

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