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glitterpensupremacy · 6 months ago

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Now that Adrien’s done (and my brain is ready), it’s time to do the precious bug girl:

Marinette MTS

Like Adrien, she has four categories. They are as follows:

1. General Info

2. Personality

3. Key Relationships

4. Character Growth

1. General Info

Unlike Adrien, whose appearance doesn’t really change, Marinette MTS has a different look from her OG counterpart. She’s a bit shorter and more muscular. As a civilian her eyes are grey and her hair is dark brown. As Ladybug her eyes are still blue (heroes’ eye colors change to match their Kwami) and her hair is black at the roots, blue at the tips (that’s who my profile picture is, btw).

In addition to Marinette no longer being the sole protagonist and the side characters receiving more of a focus, she also won’t become the Guardian in MTS. For those who aren’t aware, the Miraculous will get scattered around the midpoint of Season 2, making the traditional role of guardian… kinda pointless. (There’s also the issue that making LB the Guardian and CN just a holder undermines the duality and balance essential to their relationship in Miraculous: The Series.)

2. Personality

Marinette is a creative, compassionate, energetic, and cheerful young girl. She has big dreams of becoming a fashion designer, but often struggles with prioritizing her ambitions. Regardless, she rarely backs down from a problem, and is willing to go all out when people need her help on both sides of the mask.

Unfortunately, her selfless nature is equally a vice and a virtue, and she will often try to help others even when it’s exhausting her. She hates saying no to people and letting them down. She might also accidentally shut people out when she’s overloaded, missing several things being said to her.

She’s extremely expressive. Whether she’s happy (a joyful person by default, though she’ll sometimes try to seem more okay than she really is to keep people from worrying), anxious (she often stumbles over her words and is less coordinated than normal), sad (she can be a pretty sensitive person, especially when concerned about her friends), or grouchy (just because she wants to help others doesn’t always mean she has to like it—I like to call her mannerisms when like this the “bug grumble >:(”, it’s one of my favorite moods of hers), you can usually tell how she feels just by looking at her.

3. Key Relationships

Chloe: The MTS MariChloe dynamic is drastically different from the original show. Instead of being Marinette’s childhood bully, she’s actually one of her oldest friends; the two have known each other since they began attending the same school. However, Chloe and Marinette’s relationship is still full of problems. Marinette is constantly pressured to help her with various things, along with having to do damage control whenever Chloe acts out toward others. Chloe does care about Marinette, but doesn’t listen to her or support her needs when she should. Eventually, maintaining this friendship becomes too much for Marinette, and she cuts Chloe off. For a while after that, the two have various spats (usually instigated by Chloe) before coming to an uneasy truce once Chloe starts to improve herself as a person. Things are never quite the same between them, as Marinette isn’t ready to renter a friendship with her.

Adrien: She is initially introduced to Adrien by Chloe, and doesn’t really see the appeal. She’s always been more interested in the fashion designers than the models. As she gets to know him, her opinion slowly shifts. Even though Chloe and her have their friendship break up, Adrien still wants to be her friend, and will even call out Chloe when she’s trying to mess with Marinette. His desire to handle things himself, rather than wanting her to help him all the time like many others, also makes her like him more. When she finally falls in love with Adrien, he gives her his umbrella, only it isn’t a perfect picturesque moment where he gracefully extends his umbrella to her. He gives her it, then proceeds to run out in to the rain, slipping on wet pavement multiple times while loudly yelling that “he’s okay”! Even though she fell in love with the flawed human side of Adrien, she’s still worried that he’ll think she’s just another fan girl fawning over him (spoiler alert: he doesn’t), so she’s extra careful not to overstep any boundaries.

Chat Noir: As I mentioned on the Adrien MTS post, they don’t exactly start on the best terms. Due to his rebellious attitude and more abrasive nature, she assumes that he’s similar to Chloe, only worrying about enjoying himself and carelessly ignoring the needs of everyone else. After the two begin working together as a proper team, she learns small pieces of information that help her realize that there’s more going on to him than she thought. Not only does he seem to live a much more restricted life under the mask, but he is actually capable of being extremely empathetic to others (this will be most especially shown in how he helps her through a particularly difficult moment as Ladybug, along with one of the akuma they encounter). She will inevitably friendzone him when he finally confesses, but that does not change the fact that he’s her partner and easily her most trusted ally.

Alya: Like Chat Noir, strangely enough, Ladybug and Alya Césaire do not exactly “click” like they’re supposed to. Alya is much more skeptical of these new heroes in MTS (I’ll elaborate further in her own post, but we decided to explore a pretty different direction for her character) and wants the public to know their identities. As a result, Marinette is pretty cautious around her, so they don’t become friends right away. That being said, Alya comes to be more understanding of the heroes once she’s put in a similar position to them, while Marinette is able to see Alya’s positive qualities (that being her integrity, honesty, and determination to keep the city safe). They finally become friends at the end of season 2. From there the two are able to learn more about maintaining a healthy friendship from each other.

Lila: The other reason Alya and Marinette don’t become friends right away. After ending things with Chloe, Marinette is somewhat fragile, and doesn’t have a lot of friends (there’s Kim and Adrien, also technically Chat Noir, but he knows Ladybug better than Marinette), with most of the class being wary of her due to her previous connection to Chloe (they don’t realize just how much Marinette actually kept Chloe from being worse yet). Lila, being a master manipulator in this version, instantly takes advantage of this vulnerability to befriend her. Their new friendship seems strong, even if Lila occasionally gives strange advice on how to get closer to her goals (though she’s quick to play it off as a joke if Marinette gets concerned). Slowly, cracks in Lila’s facade become more visible, and Marinette is forced to come to the horrifying realization that her new bestie is actually the supervillain Volpina. (Needless to say that this messes her up for a while.)

Other key dynamics include her parents (important to her but doesn’t affect the plot as much), Kim (another long story), Luka, Gabriel, Hawk Moth, Zoe, and Kagami (I might make them their own post tbh).

4. Character Growth

Marinette principally has two major character arcs (though there’s also a little something else done with her confidence as Ladybug in the final season, but that kinda leads into the finale so I’ll probably discuss it at another time).

Her season one arc is (as you might have guessed) learning to set limits with other people. Much like Chat Noir’s prime ability Wildcat is slowly damaging his mind, Ladybug’s prime ability, the Miraculous Ladybug (or the Miracle Cure if you prefer), is slowly consuming her energy. The fact that people are constantly asking her for favors as Marinette and she has to save the day as Ladybug is pushing her to her limit. Eventually, she can’t take anymore, and has to renounce the Miraculous Ladybug ability (this essentially restores her energy, but undoes all of the fixed damage from fights; we probably won’t tackle the concept of people dying from akuma attacks because we want to keep this as a kid-friendly show). Marinette then to cope with the guilt from all the damage she won’t fix (the fact that this Tikki is pretty self-righteous, and is constantly berating her for not doing so doesn’t help matters). After coming to terms with this, she’s learns to let others solve the problem sometimes (as the heroes try to limit damage from battles and the city rebuilds on its own), accept support from the people who care about her (notably Chat Noir and her parents), and accept the fact that she shouldn’t be responsible for everyone else’s problems (stops being Chloe’s friend due to her tendency to unfairly rely on Marinette).

Marinette’s long term arc largely revolves around her struggles with friendship and trust. I’ve already mentioned the Chloe and Lila problems, but these two different toxic friendships have two pretty different effects on her. The Chloe friendship she manages to process, and be okay with Chloe’s attempts to improve herself even if Marinette isn’t ready to rebuild that bond. Getting to know Sabrina and watch her and Chloe become friends is also a large part of this growth, especially since Marinette unlocks her new ability, Amulets that ward off akumas, at the end of season 2 after Sabrina’s second akumatization as Miraculer. The Lila friendship however… like I said, it hurts her pretty bad. Having two consecutive “friendship screw ups” makes her doubt herself and others. Since she was friends with Kim, Adrien, and Chat Noir before the Lila mess, those friendships remain stable: as does her friendship with Alya due to her getting to know her during the whole ordeal, but she does have a rough time making new friends. Zoe, a young girl who seems to have good intentions, but is quite dishonest (much like Lila) is the first example of this issue, and the two aren’t able to become friends until Zoe proves that she’s willing to be honest with others. Marinette and Kagami also have a rough start (due to Marinette not being sure what to make of this mysterious, intense girl). Fortunately, they still become good friends and Marinette is finally able to start moving past this fear (basically, the episode where Tomoe gets akumatized is gonna be the equivalent to Sandboy for MTS Adrien in terms of MTS Marinette’s development). (There’s also her slowly befriending most of the class, but those plots are much more self contained.) Either way, Marinette ends the show with a stable group of friends who want support her just as much as she wants to support them.

Conclusion:

That pretty much wraps up my notes on Marinette’s character. If there’s anything about her you’d like to know more about, feel free to send me an ask! (Also @dumblr-account, if there’s something you think I should have included, let me know.)

After this I’ll probably post a poll asking people about what (of three ideas I’m planning on talking about first) they’d like to see next, so stay tuned (if you want to, at least)!

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous reboot #miraculous: the series #miraculous rewrite #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug #ml ladybug #she’s the super cool bug who saves the day 🐞

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