Is Marinette a Mary Sue? ⎮A Miraculous Ladybug Season 4 Discussion

Mary Sue it determined against thrown around a lot through fandoms of all types almost exclusively seen as a negative trait Mary Sue characters are held up by fans as proof that certain characters suck or the writing of a particular show is bad the miraculous fan is not immune to this and over the past year or so after season three ended I've been seeing more and more discussion about one character in particular being a shining example of Mary's pseudonym that character is of course Marinette this has got me thinking is she actually a Mary Sue or people just misinterpreting the character it's one of those big debates that rips the fandom into and wherever those discussions are had inevitably it turns into a flame war the main problem with the discussion is there's no universal checklist for what actually makes up a Mary Sue interpretations differ between different people as to what constitutes Mary Sue like characterization in the interest of figuring this out though I've pored over pages of discussion wiki articles to put together a list of the most common Mary Sue indicators now obviously there are other Mary Sue qualifiers but these four are the ones I've found most commonly cited when people argue about whether someone's a Mary Sue or not sorry let's see how these can be applied to Marinette and whether she can be considered a Mary Sue we'll start with indicator 1 they are essentially perfect all their endeavors succeed they're talented popular and beloved nice characters always love and adore them mean characters hate them with a burning passion of a thousand suns Marinette is essentially perfect she's popular at school with almost the entirety of her class liking her and she was voted class representative she's a hugely talented designer having designed Jagger stones album art and her fashion designs have been featured by prolific fashion mogul Gabriel agreste on top of that she's a video game prodigy and dominates max literally out of nowhere after no build-up or any sort of reference to this kind of skill she's also selected as a choice to play ladybug in another famous musicians music video she's an object for desire heaps of guys in their social sphere Nino originally had a crush on her Nathaniel had a crush on her it's implied that Adrian has some suppressed feelings for her whilst he's actually fallen in love with ladybug which is also her Luca the older brother of one of her close friends is also clearly interested she even manages to turn her rival for Adrien Kagame into a close friend on top of this out of everybody in Paris she is chosen to with the ladybug miraculous and she quickly masters it and not only that she becomes the most powerful miraculous Werder in history according to master foo and wields miraculous is at once than anybody has before as a teenager oh and did I mention her parents adore her and dote over her and also run one of the most successful bakeries in all of Paris and that she was able to reconcile her father and a strange grandfather and that she's seen as an extremely responsible person by many adults she even babysits the child of one of Paris's most prominent news reporters and what are all these extremely positive traits and skills offset by she's clumsy somewhat creepy in regards to Adrian and sometimes jumps to conclusions too quickly whilst I get that these are negative traits they're definitely not enough to even slightly offset all the positives so for indicator one I definitely have to say she checks the box for Mary Sue but never fear there's three more categories to go onto indicator - Mary Sue's are always right and make the correct decision if they do happen to make a mistake it doesn't matter because it's immediately rectified or it's shown that it was meant to happen like that anytime they could have a character-building mistake it's turned into a positive I'll just straight up say I don't think Marinette really fits this description very well I think a running theme of the show is that she struggles with making the right decisions and often she makes the wrong decision and that ends up with someone getting Okuma ties examples of this include the Christmas episode where she beats up Santa because she thought he'd kidnapped Adrian or what she destroys max in a fighting game and takes his spot on the team to get close to Adrian or when she hurts the feelings of the ice-cream guy in these instances they get Okuma ties she feels guilty and she learns a lesson yes she still makes mistakes but it does slowly shape her character but beyond that I think there's actually two bigger examples of of mistakes actually affecting the long-term storytelling one in Catalan she accidentally reveals that she's ladybug to Adrian this sets in motion a chain reaction of events that ends up killing everyone in Paris in an alternate timeline whilst that's all wiped away by the end of the episode it still creates consequences for the story going forward namely that she can't reveal who she is to Adrian and they can't be together until hawkmoth goes down an example - she accidentally leads hawkmoth to foo and loses all the miraculous this results in a huge battle all her hero friends having their identities revealed and foo losing his memories and leaving forever which leads her without a mentor going forward these mistakes actively shape the plot and don't just get waved away they have consequences to the story so if it indicated - I don't think she fits the bill for being a Mary Sue indicator 3 is that the character makes other characters look Terry in comparison or behave out of character to shape the narrative to suit the MarySue other characters suddenly becoming competent to show of how smart or strong the character is doesn't matter if it's a teammate or an enemy whenever a Mary Sue is around their abilities always fail and Mary Sue gets to shine now I don't think this is much of a problem for Marinette civilian identity as it is for her ladybug persona to put it simply ladybug is so overpowered that she actively makes her side characters and villains look like trash in comparison we'll start with the villains they always start off the episode with the advantage they are the obstacle that she has to overcome but then inevitably Marinette comes up with some genius plan to foil them and destroy the Akuma leaving hawkmoth angry crying in his hideout whenever one of the Akuma ties villains is about to get one of the miraculous is that always do something stupid instead which results in them abruptly losing when hawkmoth actually joins the fight with my aura suddenly she has a fainting spell and they have to conveniently run away you'd think that an adult who spends almost all his time plotting to get the miraculous will be able to come up with some good plans that could outwit teenagers but since the heroes have to win he's actively dumbed down to prevent them losing in essence she and even cat noir are covered head-to-toe in solid gold plot armor next up we have the hero characters and I'll include former heroes like Chloe into this category because ladybug is presented as this unstoppable warrior who kicks arse and destroys at coomer's left and right as well as the only character that can actually defeat the villains properly this always leaves the minor heroes living in a shadow since they can't actually finish the job they always need a look to Marin as their guiding light as their hero cat noir is pretty much the same while she does have the edge over the lesser heroes he still gets overshadowed quite a lot need a hero to get Akuma Thais hypnotized a mind control for ladybug to defeat cat and why's the man for the job need a hero to go missing for an episode or get defeated and held captive to be rescued cat noir is your guy to need somebody to save the day you'd better look for someone else so if it indicator 3 I'd say Marinette checks the box the final indicator is a tragic backstory that makes you feel sympathy for the MarySue and makes them look impressive for overcoming it and thankfully Marinette doesn't have that at all she actually has a refreshingly happy backstory in home life if anybody has typical MarySue backstory its Adrian without a doubt so of the four categories Marinette fits the bill for about two of them so on the bright side she is full-blown MarySue but there's still a big problem with checking off two of the categories she's halfway down the path to becoming a full-on MarySue which would pretty much destroy the character entirely because Mary Sue's never have character stakes and they warped the development of the story they appear in honestly at this point I think the best way to fix the character and prevent her from descending into the realm of Mary Sue is to make her more vulnerable make it seem like villains can actually win make it seem like she actually needs her teammates for more than a few seconds at a time but as always that's just my opinion what do you guys think is Marinette a full-blown Mary Sue is she not a Mary Sue at all maybe think she's half-and-half like I do or maybe an other characters are Mary Sue I'm excited to see what you guys think let me know

Channel: Smarty Pants

Views: 274,442

Rating: 4.9390068 out of 5

Keywords: Miraculous, Miraculous Ladybug, Ladybug, Marinette, Miraculous Ladybug season 4, Cat Noir, Mary Sue, Chloe, Queen Bee, Astruc, Zagtoon, Cartoon, Animation, Controversial, Theory, Ladybug Theory, Ladybug Discussion

Id: 9SaJRdFPER0

Length: 7min 22sec (442 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020