I Can't Say For Other People, But For Me, It's Hard To Be All, "Oh! They Are Queer!" I Was Mildly Surprised

I can't say for other people, but for me, it's hard to be all, "Oh! They are queer!" I was mildly surprised to learn Ms. Bustier had a girlfriend, like, "Oh, okay. So she has a girlfriend." Not much to think about, just a nice tidbit into her life—which is one of the only glimpses we got, other than, "She's a nice teacher."

ZOÉ THO.

I was actually pissed. Not because she was LGBTQ, but because it felt like another excuse to make another person in love with Marinette. We already have Adrien, Luka (Nathaniel & Nino, albeit formerly), even that damn sculptor! And now Zoé is part of the bandwagon!

Like, BLEGH! I already get it, Marinette is so treasured and lovable and she should be worshipped by everyone in the show, and anyone who says otherwise—*cough* Chloé *cough*—should be razed and burned.

Also, maybe show more attention to the other possible/maybe confirmed (no idea) pairings, and show their growing romance (PDAs are possible, just not crazy ones).

I'm not gonna lie, while I do think Miss. Bustier and her girlfriend Giselle (from Collusion) are cute, I still have problems with it for two reasons:

1. It feels like a mega slap in the face to those who wanted LGBTQ rep in the show for the longest time with other characters such as Marc or Rose, only to have them either water down or give out subtle but barely any hints if they were queer or not.

2. Why Bustier of all people? Okay, she’s a nice teacher. So? Nice doesn't mean shit. Hell, being gay/trans/queer doesn't mean shit either if you aren't gonna do shit about it. So why did they make Bustier of all people Sapphic? Hell, why did they make both Bustier and Zoe Sapphic of all characters? So the audience can root or side with them when Chloe shits on them? Is that it? No hun, it doesn't work that way.

In conclusion, while it's great to finally see some sapphic/queer rep from the show as well as some interracial same sex relationships rep, I hate how it was only done to Bustier/Zoe because once again:

Chloe = Irredeemable

To be honest, I never got the whole "Ms. Bustier and Zoe are both gay to make Chloe look worse" argument.

Yes, the revelation of their respective sexualities helps expand on their characters, but whenever Chloe attacks them, it's never based on their sexuality. We don't get any homophobic comments from Chloe like when she was racist to Marinette's uncle in "Kung Food", and the show never makes her out to be discriminatory towards the LGBT community.

I'm not saying this is a positive trait Chloe should be commended for, but unlike with her racism in "Kung Food", there's no evidence from canon to back up the idea of her being homophobic, much less use this as an excuse to villify her even further for bullying characters who happen to be gay.

I actually kind of disagree. For me, I thought it was wrong for Marinette to just decide on "giving Cat Noir a break" without even speaking to him (I don't even know how she thought Cat Noir would think anything other than he was being replaced or that she could even predict that he won't show up, but that's a whole 'nother argument altogether).

Not to say that what Marinette did wasn't considerate, and it could've just been a case of a misunderstanding. Happens all the time. You do something to be nice, but don't realize how it might look or how the recipient might take it.

But the thing that gets me is the ending.

Ladybug didn't even apologize or even acknowledge that what she did hurt Cat Noir. HE is the one who apologized, and all she did was make excuses and give the worst consolation I'd ever heard: "Just because I don't need you all the time doesn't mean I don't need you at all."

Just sounds like deflecting blame to me.

What did you think if the episode kuro neko? For me it was peak „Lady//noir toxicity“, how LB yells at CN and then CN abandoning his position as one of the two most important heroes of the city only to later gaslight LB into thinking he‘s a completely different person. Even if they talked it out at the end, it was just… idk, that episode was really the nail in the coffin for the ship imo

I actually think Ladybug was pretty reasonable in Kuro Neko. She only yells at Chat Noir when he's running down her timer by keeping her from her Guardian duties even though he just missed an akuma fight, making her have to call in a whole slew of heros and defend his absence on the news. It's like the writers wanted her to look good even though she's supposed to be the source of season four's conflict, I think? Idk, the writing is just a mess.

I've talked about how the communication issues in that episode and it lead up drive me up a wall, but I don't think I've talked about how messed up it was for Adrien to come back like that. It was a dick move for sure. However, I mostly lay the blame on Plagg and Tikki's shoulders because Plagg is the one who came up with this idea and Tikki let him go through with it. They're supposed to be the mentors here and they are failing their Chosen hard in this episode and season four in general. Just terrible writing no matter how you look at it. I have no idea what the writers were aiming for in this episode. It was like a tiny preview of how much they were going to mess up with Kwami's Choice in season five.

When a hero quits, you're supposed to show the audience that no one can take their place because of who the hero is. Instead we get told that Catwalker was perfectly fine, but Ladybug can't handle competence without falling in love? And Kwami's Choice basically said that Adrien and Marinette could be easily replaced if it weren't for the Aliance rings. I just... this is a classic, beginner-level trope. How do you mess it up this badly?

THIS. The whole thing you said about the lack of substance in Marinette and Tikki's dynamic is the VERY reason why I prefer Adrien and Plagg.

With Plagg and Adrien, their relationship seems more alive, with their disagreements and heartfelt moments. It just seemed more substantial compared to Marinette and Tikki.

Not like disagreements are necessary, but every time Tikki pops up to speak, it seems like she's there just to say her piece or play the "voice of reason" just to get the story to move. She just seems more like an extension of Marinette, instead of a friend and foil to Marinette's clumsiness and forgetfulness.

Hi! Been loving reading through all your Miraculous reblogs and the meta you've written - you have some really great stuff on this blog! I was curious if you've ever written/reblogged anything talking about how, from the very start of the show, Miraculous uses Tikki as Marinette's absolver? Marinette "makes mistakes" and "owns up to them" according to Astruc's tweets, but I find myself feeling that the "accountability" she takes is rarely related to what she did wrong in the first place, even when the show tries to tell us otherwise, and it's usually Tikki or a different yes-man, like Alya or Adrien, absolving her of her mistakes, whether the situation had anything to do with them or not. Ikari Gozen is an episode that always comes to mind for this - Marinette is absolutely terrible to Kagami, sabotaging her, badmouthing her, and going through her phone. Marinette never expresses remorse to anyone but Tikki, but Tikki absolved her so the narrative never addresses the issue again. Tikki tells her "it's never too late to make things right" and Marinette invites Kagami out for juice without ever taking accountability for her previous actions. And Kagami just GOES with it, even stating that SHE was wrong about Marinette and that she understand why Adrien values her. I I will admit, I don't really like Marinette as a character, because I find her consistent self-absorption, and the narrative's endorsement of it, to be really maddening, but I'm pretty new to the fandom, and the subreddit isn't a great place to find thoughtful analysis, so I'm looking for perspectives here! Thank you for your time!

Hey, thank you so much for your kind words! <3 sorry for taking so long. I've had my ask box deactivated for several years now and i completely forgot about me already having started replying in my drafts. 😭👏

__

No, I don't think I've ever written or reblogged something about Marinette's dynamic with Tikki, but I do have thought about it. For me, their dynamic is just lacking much... idk, substance? I remember reading from Marinette stans that they think Marinette and Tikki have a much deeper bond than Adrien and Plagg which is something I simply cant understand at all. Plagg is the only person Adrien actually truly HAS in all the neglect and bad treatment he's stuck in from all sides. Plagg takes on so many roles for his kid and has grown so much because Adrien needed it.

The thing is, Tikki and Marinette's dynamic is very different so I'm just not able to properly read them because I personally would need a Plagg in my life and that's perfectly fine. That's why I dont talk about them.

But about your point now:

I definitely agree that Tikki is one of the main indicators about what is wrong about the way Marinette is written as protagonist, especially since the retooling in season 4. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Tikki also used to have a bigger presence in the how which was by now mostly made redundant by Alya always being with Marinette and in season 4 Marinette (unnecessarily and dangerously) keeping all the Kwamis outside the box all times so they too stole screen time from Tikki.

So Tikki lost alot of her personality. I believe to remember her also being more energetic and excited in the earlier seasons, showing off more to her character, which would by now make her yet another character the show sucked alot of their life out of so they aren't in the way for Marinette. Tikki seems alot more down these days, that I definitely noticed.

Marinette has Alya now, if that makes Tikki sad because she isn't relying on her the way she did before then Tikki has to deal with it quietly and not bother Marinette (seriously, Tikki reminds me ALOT of Adrien and they're both treated badly in the narrative for Marinette’s sake :/)

And this reduced characterization makes it by now very noticeable imo that Tikki herself as a Kwami often doesn't really know what is going on because she lacks experience with alot of things. I wholeheartedly agree that Tikki is one of Marinette's strongest and most damaging enablers because Tikki is because of it not actually allowed to be challenged in her dynamic with Marinette the way Plagg is with Adrien. Where Plagg is allowed to grow, Tikki is kept the same because Marinette is not allowed to be really pushed back on.

The show has to my memory always been quite open about Tikki not being familiar with alot of things so Marinette can explain things to her. The problem comes, as you say, from the show then weirdly still acting like Tikki saying some random vaguely positive thing about whatever Marinette just did.. suddenly meaning it doesn't need to be taken care of anymore?

It's the same thing as the show has Adrichat, Alya or Luka do. Most of what the narrative and Marinette as the main character want to hear at this point is being told positive things whenever something went wrong. If that positive thing actually holds any water the way it was executed is beyond irrelevant which reflects incredibly badly especially on Marinette because she is the main beneficiary.

Again, remember Cat Charming in "Kuro Neko". From Marinette's perspective he should have no valid opinion on the Ladynoir conflict AT ALL because he just arrived half an hour ago and never even met Chat Noir in her eyes. But still, Marinette made him the deciding voice of the Ladynoir conflict, absolving her of all blame to entirely put it on Chat Noir, because Cat Charming validated her and said positive things about her mistakes so she doesn't have to really think about them as mistakes anymore if she wishes to not have been in the wrong.

Which for the show somehow equals that she isn't and they aren't real mistakes anymore she should genuinely work on (and therefore still hasn't really beyond surface level)?

Who tf cares if this is literally not how it works and how badly it reflects on Marinette as a character that any random dipshit can walk up to her, validate her, and she'll just... GO with it (making Marinette ironically the most endangered person regarding Cerise now because that girl has plenty of identities and Marinette doesn't give a damn who's validating her as long as she's validated by a person not explicitly telling her they're evil)

Where was I? Ah, Tikki!

Tikki is at the end of the day yet another character who's kindness is kinda weaponized by now by Marinette's narrative.

We've reached a point where one kinda has to say that Marinette shouldn't be told optimistically positive things anymore because not rarely will these words just be used to sweep Marinette's biggest flaws under the rug when it really wouldn't have hurt anyone to simply cover the damn conflict at hand.

As you said, there are writing rules, but I think they were "Marinette has to make a mistake every episode" and "Marinette has to learn something every episode". And as you correctly said, these two things often don't necessarily go hand in hand. To the point where the thing she learns is making the initial mistake even worse (I wanted to look for a more precise example, but at this point it's literally all of Ladynoir)

Which of course absolves her of having to properly take her blame or accountability in ot of cases, too. If I were to approach it in bad faith, I would say that this is exactly the reason why the writing rules don't specify that the lesson learned needs to be about the mistake she made... and that's exactly what I'm saying. Bad faith sounds rather realistic to me.

I remember someone having had made a post where they explained that Marinette as protagonist is written like a villain or antagonist, and the more I look at all the aspects of this show the more does that take check out.

__

(damn, I am out of PRACTICE in responding to asks! I hope I didn't talk right past the point you wanted to hear in my response. If I did, please clarity with another ask, I'm not sensitive to that)

I get it.

But if Ephemeral was supposed to be the starting point for the strife in Kuro Neko, it was done badly. In Kuro Neko, it doesn't sound like Cat Noir just slowly began withdrawing. Rather, it implies that Ladybug brings out so many heroes that he sees it as pointless to show up.

Hell, the thing Ladybug tells him at the end of the day, "Just because I don't need you all the time doesn't mean I don't need you at all", just further implies that he was nudged out of the circle.

I don't know if Ephemeral and Kuro Neko are [meant to be] connected, but if they are, TA did a bad job at it, because finding the end of yarn in the middle of the skein is easier than this (and I'd already done that multiple times).

What did you think if the episode kuro neko? For me it was peak „Lady//noir toxicity“, how LB yells at CN and then CN abandoning his position as one of the two most important heroes of the city only to later gaslight LB into thinking he‘s a completely different person. Even if they talked it out at the end, it was just… idk, that episode was really the nail in the coffin for the ship imo

I actually think Ladybug was pretty reasonable in Kuro Neko. She only yells at Chat Noir when he's running down her timer by keeping her from her Guardian duties even though he just missed an akuma fight, making her have to call in a whole slew of heros and defend his absence on the news. It's like the writers wanted her to look good even though she's supposed to be the source of season four's conflict, I think? Idk, the writing is just a mess.

I've talked about how the communication issues in that episode and it lead up drive me up a wall, but I don't think I've talked about how messed up it was for Adrien to come back like that. It was a dick move for sure. However, I mostly lay the blame on Plagg and Tikki's shoulders because Plagg is the one who came up with this idea and Tikki let him go through with it. They're supposed to be the mentors here and they are failing their Chosen hard in this episode and season four in general. Just terrible writing no matter how you look at it. I have no idea what the writers were aiming for in this episode. It was like a tiny preview of how much they were going to mess up with Kwami's Choice in season five.

When a hero quits, you're supposed to show the audience that no one can take their place because of who the hero is. Instead we get told that Catwalker was perfectly fine, but Ladybug can't handle competence without falling in love? And Kwami's Choice basically said that Adrien and Marinette could be easily replaced if it weren't for the Aliance rings. I just... this is a classic, beginner-level trope. How do you mess it up this badly?

Funnily enough, with a quick google search, one could easily find out how mayoral elections happen in Paris. One, you don't get to vote the mayor. You vote the city council, who in turn will vote the mayor.

So for Ms. Bustier to become mayor, she'd have to have been on the city council (which is a public election) and then compete with André on said city council to become mayor. Makes one wonder how TA butchered Parisian mayoral elections when one google search will get you all you need to know.

Saw the Mrs. Bustier ask- and even more unbelievable than her winning is them getting an election together so quickly. You're talking months, campaigns, organizing et al. THAT all has to happen even before she can BEGIN to make her changes(if we just assume she has the powers of a dictator like Andre did and not an actual elected official) The time frame is beyond compact to just plain silly. Not even fun silly, just 'you aren't even trying'.

Don't forget how Ms. Bustier did most of this after giving birth to her baby.

Now, I'm not a woman myself, but I'm pretty sure after carrying another human being in my body for almost a year, going into politics isn't something new mothers are supposed to do.

The problem with Marinette is that claiming her as "the best Ladybug ever" or "the best leader" gets moot when there's no measure. We hear nothing about other Ladybugs in the past, so there's no one to compare to as "the best Ladybug ever". And as "the best leader", there's also no one to compare her to. Of course she'd be the best leader—you can call yourself that however you want because there's no competition!

And as a "leader", she gets next to no challenge taking on a leadership role. She's just good at it. The point of writing a character, especially a main character like Marinette, is to challenge them. Give them struggle. Marinette doesn't struggle as a leader. She either makes a coincidentally-good choice with no backing from the story whatsoever (which is 90% of the time) or she fucks up and is told it's not her fault.

Every time Marinette forms a "team", everyone is magically amazing and is 100% obedient to Ladybug. If they weren't obedient (like Kagami) it gets resolved in the episode and then they're 100% cooperative like the rest. There's a difference between being a leader and just plain being the boss. Being the boss means you get the final say in choices and people do what you say. A leader inspires, leads, and is a big responsibility that should be treated as such, because your choices strongly impact the lives of the people that trust you.

I 100% agree on the five-man band. The "temporary heroes" concept feels just like a cheap excuse to make more costumes, but a single consistent team with their own dynamics—not just as heroes but also people—would help not only challenge Marinette's abilities, but to actually enrich the story and introduce more arcs that could help us become invested in what the show tries to preach.

Any fanfic I write always uses the original five-member team, because they didn't need to go away. It didn't need to change. And frankly, giving so many people different miraculouses for no other reason than "Marinette thinks they deserve it" actually devalues the importance of the miraculouses, since apparently anybody will do.

I like ML because it has a formula that I've never seen in superhero genre before, a girl as a leader whos also the brain of the team who's also one that have little to no emphaty paired with a boy who's the heart of the team that also a team mom yet the brawl at the same time. That premise is so good because usually it's the girl who is the heart of the team so this formula is good... In concept.

The problem is that the leader, aside from lacking in emphaty departemen is also very avoidant and self centered. Way too self centered to even notice the problem in her team and that's a very dangerous line to walk on. Of course usually this problem would be fixed when the heart of the team try to talk to the leader, that's how it's usually goes, right? Except the leader either keep dismissed him or outright ignore him which makes the conflict prolonged. The writers seems to be saying that she could do everything, even comforting her own teammate which she failed spectacularly.

Even now as s5 ended, I haven't seen Marinette as the leader, try to talk to Adrien about the problem. There's just no growth on her part. In fact, she double down in her secrets. At this point they're basically just keep the false peace.

In Timetagger Bunnyx said Ladybug is the best team leader, but with current dynamic and her lack of growth as of current, I feel like that assessment is as false as Fu's saying Marinette as the strongest Ladybug. Considering he only know ONE Ladybug holder. There's no base in those praise, just pure bias.

Yeah, like there's no growth going on for Marinette but that's probably because all the traits we see in her, being self centered and lacking in empathy, the writers didn't intend it. That's why there isn't an arc planned to resolve it. And it makes people claiming she's the best Ladybug ever when she doesn't have much to show for it under her belt.

But she ain't special.

I'd be ranting all day if I had to list every character that has a trait (good or bad) we all see but I doubt the writers saw it too, like Adrien being Marinette's equal or Chloe coming off as more sympathetic than intended in the early seasons. But then, when they do notice a character flaw a notable chunk of the fandom complains about... you get bullshit like Derision (to address Marinette being a "stalker"). Honestly, I'm more afraid of what they'd do to rectify this.