Marinette Not Being Able To Process Chat Noir As Adrien And Vice Versa Makes Sense.

Marinette not being able to process Chat noir as Adrien and Vice Versa makes sense.

Marinette has her initial impressions of both of them and kept it separate because she knew Chat noir had feelings for Her (as Ladybug) so now she had to process and try to understand if Chat noir (the person she thought she wasnt in love with) might be the true face of Adrien (The person she believed she loved) So now she was questioning if she truly knew him.

But thanks to Luka, helping her see this as a chance to see this more of an expansion on who Adrien is and not a divergence. She started to see that they were both one in the same. Chat noir was adrien and Adrien was chat noir. One was not the other, they were both him.

So her finally accepting that allowed her to show her true-self to him.

Adrien didnt need to do this. Because his view is simple. Ladybug is the woman he loved, whoever was under the mask would still be the person he fell in love with. Finding out it was Marinette was Like hitting the lottery. One of the people he considered a close friend was someone he was in love with? JACKPOT!

He never had that moment where he had to disassociate Marinette from Ladybug. (Heck he figured it out several times before hand).

I think this whole situation was great for Marinette as a character, because she got to finally see Adrien, All of him. And she realized how much deeper her feelings were for him.

welp, looks like the cat is out of the bag. i guess we're retconning 'gorizilla' and 'chat blanc' now.

The boy is ✨ I N L O V E ✨

Honestly, Gabriel’s horrible behavior makes so much sense now that we know that his wish being granted means reality gets rewritten entirely.

Think about it. If Gabriel knows that reality will be rewritten when his wish is granted, then he also knows that nothing he does really matters because his wish is going to wipe the slate clean and erase all of it so that it never happened in the first place. Whatever he does, good or bad, is going to be completely wiped out the moment his wish is granted and reality is rewritten. As a result:

— His treatment of Adrien—of this Adrien—doesn’t matter, because when reality is rewritten, this Adrien will cease to exist. Instead, the Adrien that will exist will be the Adrien that would have existed had Emilie never fallen comatose. The Adrien that will exist is one that won’t have been neglected or emotionally abused. The Adrien that will exist is one that won’t have been akumatized into Chat Blanc or Ephemeral. Sure, Gabriel is doing horrible things to this Adrien, but this Adrien is only temporary, so it’s okay. The Adrien that will exist after reality is rewritten—the one that, in Gabriel’s mind, will stick around as the real Adrien—will be much happier, and that’s what matters most. (Side note that this might also be why Gabriel is so distant; he knows that reality will be rewritten and this Adrien will disappear, so why bother to bond or have a close relationship? All of that will be undone, so there’s no point in doing it in the first place.)

— His affair with Nathalie doesn’t matter, because when reality is rewritten, it’ll never have happened. He won’t have cheated on Emilie because in the reality that comes about as a result of his wish, that affair never happened. Hell, Nathalie might not even be his assistant anymore. Bonus, she’ll be restored to full health because she’ll have never used the broken Peacock Miraculous. So her being bedridden doesn’t really matter, either.

— His akumatizations of children, toddlers, and literal babies doesn’t matter, because again, none of that will have ever happened once reality is rewritten. Yes, he’s making them suffer now, but he’s going to create a new reality and wipe this one from existence, so ultimately, they won’t have suffered at all in the end.

— And likewise, his throwing a fourteen-year-old girl bodily across a movie theater, slamming her into walls, and ripping earrings out of her ears doesn’t matter, because in a few seconds he’s going to rewrite reality and that will have never happened. Her pain isn’t real to him, because in a few seconds it won’t be. He doesn’t feel guilty because he’s about to undo it. He’s about to undo her. In the new reality there will be a Marinette Dupain-Cheng, but it won’t be this Marinette Dupain-Cheng. And he thinks that’s for the better.

It’s so easy to understand how Gabriel manages to do truly heinous things and then continue about his day like he hasn’t done anything wrong now that we know he has this rationalization in his mind. There are people who, if they knew they had 24 hours to do things with no consequences because those things would be undone at the end of the 24 hours, would do heinous things. Not everyone, of course—but some. There are people who would, who would do so with the rationalization that, “Well, it’s not real, it’ll all be undone in the end, so why not?” Of course, Gabriel isn’t able to reset things in 24 hours. He can’t reset things until he gets the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculouses. But perhaps that’s why he gets more desperate, violent, and depraved as time goes on: because he’s having to rationalize more and more, and the only way he can continue to rationalize it is if he thinks, “okay, but if I do this heinous thing and it works, then I can just undo it anyway.” Knowing that Gabriel won’t just be magically healing Emilie, but that he will be rewriting reality itself, makes it so much easier to understand why he can do deplorable things and still go to sleep at night. Because yes, maybe he’s being a complete monster in this reality. But in the new reality he won’t have done any of these things, so in that reality, he won’t be.

Or so he tells himself, anyway.

No, but seriously, that doesn't make any sense.

Sentimonsters don't have free will when someone is holding their amok. They can't resist or talk back or disobey the way Adrien has been doing since the literal canonical start of the series.

Hell, the first time Adrien tried to run away to school Gabriel explicitly told him not to do that again. And what did Adrien do? He disobeyed.

The only other sentimonster that even attempted to resist was Feast and it could only do that because it's amok was in it's stomach. Touching the damn thing wouldn't make a sentimonster more obedient when you're already holding their "free will" in the palm of your hand. Gabriel fiddles with the ring because it's a physical representation of his obsession with Emilie.

Why wouldn't Adrien follow Gabriel when called? He's Adrien's father sperm donor and this is probably the most Gabriel has talked to him since Glaciator 2.

And Adrien being a sentimonster is literally contradicted by Chat Blanc not listening to Gabriel when he ordered Adrien to ash Ladybug.

Also, I won't be acknowledging tweets from creators that have trolled the fandom for literal years.

(No, I will not be taking constructive criticism at this time.)

You know, I really love how together Chat Blanc and Ephemeral show the how Marinette and Adrien compliment each other.

Like, we know that Adrien is the heart of the duo. Not to say that he doesn’t use his mind, but he makes decisions using his heart. That’s why he was able to reconcile the reveal right away in Chat Blanc. But at the same time, he didn’t think it all the way through, and it had some consequences.

And Marinette is the brain of the operation. Once again, not that she doesn’t have a lot of love to give, but what her heart says often gets overshadowed by her complicated logic. That’s why it took her a little more time to realize that yes, she loves this boy with all her heart for all that he is.

I think once we have a simultaneous, mutual reveal (and have the heart and the mind working together during the fallout), that’s when they’ll get to know forever. That’s when it will stick. They need each other the whole way.

Both sides have their downfalls. Both sides have their strengths. Honestly, it’s truly beautiful. This is why I fell in love with the lovesquare. This is why I’m here.