Is Marinette Problematic? ⎮A Miraculous Ladybug Season 4 Discussion

so if there's one thing i've noticed about miraculous over the past couple of months it's that marinette has slowly but surely turned into one of the most divisive and controversial characters within the fandom there are those that love and idolize her and then there are those that to test her with a ferocious passion from what i've been able to gather a lot of this dislike comes from the fact that to this portion of the fandom she comes across as problematic in a number of ways and so today i want to break down whether marinette is actually a problematic character and the reasons why that might be the case so obviously our first stop on the marinette hate train is her reputation as a bit of a stalker now i'm not going to waste my time trying to defend this aspect of the character the simple truth is the way she behaves when she's talking about or interacting with adrian is full-on crazy fan girl whether it's following him around knowing his schedule off by heart pretending to kiss what she thought was a wax sculpture or trying to sabotage his potential relationships with other girls she is a full-on psycho stalker these are all really negative traits that she has and they're obviously really problematic but i think if these traits were acknowledged in universe to be really gross and kind of creepy it would be fine for a lot of people they'd be able to move past it but it isn't acknowledged it's played off as a joke or cutesy it's meant to make you laugh and go oh that's silly old marinette what kind of crazy antics is she going to get up to next time like remember when she disguised herself to sneak into the lads gathering at adrian's house it just reeked of desperation and made her seem so pathetic as a character what's worse is that there's been a bit of a push in the last 10 years or so to try and denormalize these sort of behaviors in media we're told that it's not okay to be like this and that these kind of behaviors have consequences but she doesn't have consequences in the show beyond a quick oh you were right tiki i won't do that again i'll just be creepy in a different way it's problematic because she's meant to be a role model for young girls according to astric and yet she acts this way and the show pushes the narrative that it's just a quirky if a little awkward trait it's not quirky it's creepy and in my opinion really problematic and kind of damages her character as a whole and this leads into the second big reason i've seen as to why people think that marinette is a problematic character she's a bad person and i know that reason sounds really broad but it was the only word i could really think of to encapsulate the little minor reasons that make up the category we'll start off with a little common stat that people who dislike marinette come up with she's one of the biggest reasons for somebody being a kubernetes in the show rivaling chloe people like to throw this up and say see see she's so awful it's so problematic that the main character is the reason that so much drama happens but in my opinion that's only looking at the data at the surface level yes there are times where she legitimately makes mistakes and causes accumulations my most notable one being where she tears lylah a new one when she's a new student as ladybug when she could have been a lot more polite and handled in a better way but then some of the akumatizations are completely ridiculous like andre the ice cream man getting mad she didn't want any seriously jog on mate or chloe getting mad that she won't get a miraculous anymore even though giving it to her puts everybody at risk because hawkmoth already knows who she is even after ladybug politely lets her down or when she beats max fair and square to enter the video game competition or when she wants to hang out with her friends on her birthday and her nan throws a fit like a child i think it's unreasonable to just blame her for these kind of incidents because a reasonable person would not become so angry that they're able to be possessed by a super villain it's just tough luck for them compare this to chloe who bullies people relentlessly until they snap marinette is an angel by comparison for me i think we need to understand that the reason that she is the cause of so many accumulations is that she's the main character it makes sense that the drama of the story is going to revolve around her to give her added motives and stakes and try to fix things it's just normal narrative development and then the second element of her personality that rubs people the wrong way is the way she treats her partner in crime cat noir recently in the new york special one of the key plot points is that cat noir goes to new york city without telling ladybug and as a result paris has nobody to stop the supervillain that natalie creates obviously this rustles ladybug's jimmies a little bit and she calls him out on it now from what i've seen in my comment section and read it in twitter is that people really didn't appreciate her getting angry at him and blaming him considering he didn't get angry at her for the miracle queen incident but to me this feels like a false equivalency in miracle queen hawk moth and myura set this up as a trap for her to fall into yes she makes a mistake but she was essentially set up to fail but in the special cat noir has the opportunity to tell her he can't be in paris but he doesn't and paris gets wrecked as a result and they can't even fix it whereas you can compare this to miracle queen where for the most part they were able to fix the damage the context is just so different in miracle queen she makes a mistake in new york cat noir takes a gamble and it backfires spectacularly it's not unreasonable for her to get angry at him it could have ruined their reputation and people probably could have been killed plus fixing that kind of damage is expensive for the city and then we have to address the general dislike of how she seemingly brushes him off or shuts him down regularly treating him more like a nuisance than a partner but even this i don't really think this is problematic when we first see the meat in the origins episodes he's brash and kind of arrogant that's clearly not the type of guy she's into and then he progresses from that into constantly crossing personal boundaries trying to kiss her hug her touch her always flirting and being pushy it makes sense to me she would build up a tough outer shell to deal with this annoying guy that she literally can't get away from they have to work together she's stuck with him so really i find this to be the opposite of problematic it's refreshing to see a female character not put up with a romantically aggressive male character in this instance if anyone's problematic it's him so to sum up i think the question as to whether marinette is a terrible and problematic protagonist is a bit of a mixed bag in my view her personality in general is not problematic and i think the issues with accumulations and her attitude towards cat noir is really really overblown but on the other hand her stalkerish behavior is treated like a joke and normalizes being an overly possessive and obsessive person towards your romantic interests for a character that's meant to be a role model this is a trait that for me is impossible to look past it's probably on the top of my list of things that need to be changed about the show and if they do i don't think she'd be problematic anymore but as always that's my opinion and i'd like to hear yours what's your stance on this issue and what's your evidence i'm really curious to see what you guys come up with so let me know

Channel: Smarty Pants

Views: 69,725

Rating: 4.7534246 out of 5

Keywords: Marinette, Ladybug, Cat Noir, Chat Noir, Miraculous Ladybug Season 4, Miraculous Ladybug New York Special, Miraculous Ladybug Season 4 Trailer, Miraculous Ladybug Theory

Id: WIgTnUS7qWg

Length: 6min 12sec (372 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 05 2020