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ijustliketoreadstuff · 2 years ago

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Why Marinette couldn’t be just a normal girl anymore.

Marinette had long considered herself to be a normal girl with a normal life. Sadly, throughout the seasons, her views of what it means to be a normal girl, had begun to change.

In the beginning of the series, as the opening song is played, we hear Marinette describing herself as someone who goes about her day living a normal life just like anyone else, however, what no one knew about her was that aside from living a normal life, she also had a very exciting and adventurous life as the hero known simply as Ladybug. When we hear her say these words, and as the series progressed, Marinette expressed herself as someone who gradually learned to accept and appreciate her new found role and abilities to help save Paris and its citizens in anyway she could, regardless of them never knowing who she really was.

(Ladybugs new suit symbolized she had accepted her role as a hero )

Throughout the beginning of the series, we see her and Cat Noir spend their day to day performing heroic acts, then very quickly shift to their civilian lives as if nothing had happened during their absence. However, the longer Marinette remained as Ladybug, the more she began to see first hand how her incorrect choices could not only affect the people of Paris, but bring about the end of the world and the destruction of lives( such as in cat Blanc). Marinette grew to understand that no matter what she was doing and no matter who she was close to, her duty as Ladybug would always need to come first. Of course, being left with a constant dilemma between deciding her life as Marinette or her responsibilities as Ladybug, had naturally affected her normal life, leading to severe draw backs.

Days when she could just enjoy a movie from beginning to end were cut short, relationships she wanted to hold close, needed to be ended in order to no longer endanger her secret identity as well as the other miraculous (such as in “Gang of secrets”), and every moment of peace she had to herself now had to be devoted to planning in order to be one step ahead of the villains who were not only a constant threat to her and everyone else, but who were also actively attempting to find out who she was and where she lived. Days when she could just be normal, were no longer an average part of her life, it had become a rare luxury no one understood how much she missed, but it also became something she could not easily hold onto, let alone talk about to others who were willing to give her a shoulder to cry on.

(In "Gang of Secrets" Marinette describes herself as someone who is truly alone, unable to confide in Cat Noir or those closest to her as she feels she will only run the risk of revealing her identity and endangering everyone, as well as the miraculous)

Even when Marinette did finally confide her secret identity to Alya, she alone could not understand what Marinette was going through, not because she didn’t want to try, but because even with sharing the hero life as Rena Rouge, Alya could not yet fully understand the burden Marinette had to carry as both Ladybug and the guardian of the miraculous, that is of course, until she used the ladybug earrings herself.

In “Hack-san”, when Alya was temporarily entrusted with wielding the ladybug earrings, for the first time, Alya had a glimpse of what it means to be Ladybug, and to no surprise, it wasn’t a simple duty to uphold. The constant worry about someone being akumatized, the fear of weather or not she was suited for the task at hand , and the struggles of never knowing what the villain could do next if she wasn’t careful and stayed one step ahead. Alya understood very quickly that being the ladybug holder was a much more serious duty than being Rena Rouge, but it wasn’t until “Deflegration”, when Alya became the permanent(but still temporary) holder of the ladybug earrings, did she get a better glimpse of the kind of life Marinette had to live with.

In "Transmission", Alya accepted the responsibility of being the new ladybug miraculous holder to give Marinette the chance to finally have a normal life again and live out her love story with Adrien in peace, however, not long after did the full weight of her choice finally set in. Alya helped Marinette recover the happiness of her normal life, but it came at the cost of her own. Alya's life would now need to be consumed with lies and secrets, meaning she had to do whatever it takes to protect her secret identity as Scarabella, including coming to terms with the fact that she really did need to purposely lie to Nino on a regular bases, possibly for months or even years to come.

Now, although Alya didn’t have to hold onto that burden for long after Monarch discovered her identity and pursued her in “Deflagration”, it was clear that for Marinette, and for anyone else who got a chance to live her life, finding a balance between the two worlds she lived in was as much of a difficult task to find as finding Monarch himself.

Back in "Jubilation", Marinette expressed a sense of frustration as her principle assumed she was jealous of those who actively are or are trying to be superheroes, but looking back at everything that's happened to her, its only natural she would feel frustrated. After having realized just how grueling the life of a hero really is, and after having experienced time and time again of the burden it had placed over her day to day life, Marinette could only look at others who wanted to live her life as a superhero and wonder why anyone would ever want to live it themselves, rather than realize just how good their normal lives really are without the weight of her responsibilities constantly hanging over them.

Marinette did not have the privilege to make the simple choice of dressing up as a superhero like Soqueline and Mr. Damocles, or to just go out and about doing whatever good deed she could whenever she had the time, because for Marinette, that hero life was no longer about having fun and bringing a sense of aid to the world, this wasn’t a hobby, and it wasn’t something she could partake in whenever she wanted to or could if she had the time, it was her job. So to see others run the risk of endangering themselves to be superhero's, Marinette could no longer view their actions through their innocent eyes and partake with them over how exciting their heroic acts were, because now, through her experienced eyes, people like Soqueline and Mr. Damocles were simply placing themselves into dangerous situations which would inevitably fall onto Ladybug(her) to take responsibility and fix.

Ladybug encourages everyone to be heroes without purposely endangering themselves. Even her former team understood that if they wanted to help Ladybug and Cat Noir fight Monarch in the resistance, then they would need to come up with plans where they would not endanger their lives. Despite this, Marinette was still fearful of how Monarch could hurt them if he got the chance and how the responsibility of protecting them would still fall onto her.

Marinette had accomplished many victories alongside her hero team, and yet, despite all this, her responsibilities as Ladybug and guardian made every failure hit ten fold, outweighing any victory she accomplished, why did it hurt so much? Because it wasn’t just herself who would suffer the consequences of her mistakes, it was the entire population of Paris. No matter how Marinette tried to make things work, simply doing what she wanted and pursuing something as simple as her own love life, would nearly always lead to severe consequences, but despite those failures, Marinette continued to try and find some way to make things work, but evidently, the full weight of it all took its tole on her time and time again.

In “Transmission”, Adrien expressed to Marinette how he understood her struggle of being someone no one could truly understand as he to had lived much of his life being viewed as nothing more than an image of perfection on a magazine. Even though Adrien wanted the two of them to take a chance and understand each other when no one else could, Marinette couldn't allow it, not because she didn't want to, but because she was afraid of simply allowing herself to be guided by the one emotion she now considered to be a petty weakness which resulted in disaster after disaster, that weakness being of course, love.

Things with Luka didn't work out as her secrets quickly placed a strain on their relationship and got him akumatized. She felt hopeful a relationship with Adrien could work if she alone knew of his identity as Flairmidable(who was really Felix) in "Strikeback", but none the less failed to ever start and instead led to complications which resulted in her loosing all the miraculous. When she did finally realize her love for Cat Noir, she was content with never knowing who he was under the mask in order to accomplish a romance with him without endangering their secret identities and figuring out some way to prevent the return of Cat Blanc, but failed as Cat Noir himself was conflicted of being with Marinette when she would never know who he was. As Marinette realized she had no choice but to give up on her love for Cat Noir, after her feelings for him nearly got her akumatized, it was as if every single mistake she faced and was reassured of in previous seasons, came back to flood her mind all at once.

After having failed in accomplishing that balance between her two worlds to live out the love story she wanted, and after seeing so much devastation caused by her choices alone, Marinette now saw herself as an ordinary girl who was no where near as great as others claim she is if she was still making the same mistake over and over again out of love. Tikki knew Marinette was an amazing Ladybug, but the reality of Marinette's situation was one Tikki could not bring herself to accept until Plagg accepted it himself. No matter how hard Marinette tried, the one thing that continued to limit her and restrain her from giving herself a second chance with Adrien, was the miraculous.

It's just as Tikki and Plagg said, love was what gave Ladybug and Cat Noir their strength to work together and overcome every obstacle which came their way, but knowing now that it was impossible for them to actually allow themselves to learn they could love each other without the burden of their hero lives constantly holding them back, the only solution to the problem was for the kwamis themselves to take away that burden, it was the kwamis choice to take the miraculous and put an end to their holders hero lives.

(Not knowing what more to do, Marinette and Adrien abide by their kwamis choice as they understood long ago that the power of the miraculous was never their right to keep, let alone a burden they alone needed to carry, it could go to someone else just as capable)

Sure enough, after the miraculous were removed from the equation, a weight was lifted, without the burden of the miraculous, Marinette gave herself another chance to love Adrien without fear of what her choices could inflict onto everyone and the miraculous, meanwhile, Adrien gave himself another chance to confront Marinette and properly express his feelings to ensure if she truly didn't love him anymore. Within just a short time away from her role as Ladybug and guardian, Marinette was able to allow herself to reconcile with Adrien and confirm how she still loved him and wanted to spend more time with him .

And so, when she had come to terms with the fact that she and Cat Noir would need to return to their hero lives near the end of "Deflagration", Marinette understood that 1. the resistance was much more capable of protecting themselves within their limits, and without her, as she saw them face Monarch in "Deflagration" to help her retrieve the ladybug and cat miraculous.

2. Knowing now that her teamwork with Cat Noir was the only one thus far which could ensure Monarch wouldn't find some way to easily obtain the ladybug and cat miraculous, Marinette had decided her relationship with Cat Noir would be just as Alya said it should be back in “Reunion”, a professional relationship where they would keep their love lives separate in order to avoid further complications.

And 3. despite having planned so many aspects of her life with Adrien, Marinette had yet to know what her future with him would hold as she continued to uphold her duties as Ladybug, but it didn't matter, because for now, what she was sure of was that she was willing to give herself a chance to once again be a normal girl, with a normal life, and try to live out a normal love story with Adrien, without thinking about how her heroic life and responsibilities could affect them. For her own sake, Marinette had to try and be willing to look past her mistakes, set aside her concerns and not feel afraid to let herself be happy. Now, how this will all play out as Marinette and Adrien transition into a civilian couple who have yet to know their hero identities, is something we will need to wait and see as the show progresses.

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