Red and Blue make Purple

awkward, not shy

chassecroise

y’all it’s okay to portray characters however you want in fanfic, it’s fanfic and that’s your story

But can we please stop calling the canon interpretation of Marinette’s character shy? I see a lot of those comments in the reblog tags of some of my meta text posts and I’m honestly not seeing where it’s coming from.

The way she acts around Adrien is awkward, not shy. The two are not mutually exclusive, but they are not the same thing.

Homegirl is not shy by any stretch of the imagination!!

She laughs in Chloe’s face and tells her she has no taste after Chloe insults her uncle’s cooking.

In the design competition, she confidently stands up for her own design after Chloe steals it, and calmly points out how she can prove that she’s the real designer. No stuttering whatsoever, no nervousness.

She runs for class president, gives a hell of a speech, and she’s comfortable and poised in that position.

She leads a fucking expedition into the principal’s office for the express purposes of deleting a bad class photo and then after realizing it was a bad idea, uses her powers of persuasion to go right up to the photographer and cajole him into spending even more time with a bunch of teenagers for free after working the whole day, and he goes for it.

She’s obviously had people crush on her before because she’s totally comfortable with Nathanael’s crush and actually finds it sweet, not intimidating or overwhelming. She knows exactly how to handle it.

In fact, when it comes to things like flirting, she’s a pro. She flirts back hard every time Chat Noir flirts with her! Actually, she’s even better at it than him. In the Dark Cupid episode, she’s not nervous about having to kiss him on the lips, she knows exactly what to do, and tries to go in for the kiss at multiple angles. And when she finally gets the chance, she literally grabs his face and pulls it towards her. That is a pro-level kiss.

You could argue that being Ladybug gave her that confidence, but I disagree. Tikki gives her super strength and superpowers and amplifies her inherent personality traits, but she doesn’t change anything about her basic character. As Tikki says, Marinette is Ladybug with or without the mask. (Same goes for Chat Noir, but that’s a topic for another post)

So yeah, she’s not shy. Not shy at all.

But what about the weird way she acts around Adrien? Isn’t that shy?

Nope! No, it’s not. It’s simply her being awkward and silly. It’s her being a normal teenage girl who acts like a fool in front of her crush. Like a lot of us do, whether we are shy nor not. It doesn’t make her shy.

When Marinette is in front of Adrien, Marinette gets tongue-tied, she talks too much, she stammers, blabbers nonsense, or generally makes a fool of herself. She leaves embarrassing voicemails and makes ridiculous faces (because she’s very expressive)

Everything about Marinette’s interactions with Adrien involves outward expression and a very clear display of her feelings, even though Adrien’s totally oblivious about the whole thing. And it’s all because she’s got A LOT OF FEELINGS and DOESN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THEM. She’s excited and reactive. None of that reads to me as shy.

But you know who does actually read to me as shy? Adrien. He reflects, he waits. He daydreams and he writes poetry. He waits for the right moment to confess to Ladybug and when that gets all fucked up and she interrupts him to apologize for kissing him, he’s completely flustered and doesn’t even realize what she’s actually saying to him because he’s trying to confess and the moment is lost and his ears droop as Ladybug flies away into the horizon. But then he gets her poem, and hope springs anew!

And it’s so sweet, because he is so shy and hopeful and those earnest sentiments are the foundational undercurrent to his flirtatious overtones whenever he interacts with Ladybug.

So yeah. You couldn’t convince me in a million years that Marinette, as she is written in the show, is shy by any stretch of the imagination. Awkward af? Yes, absolutely. Obsessive to the point of seriously needing some chill? For sure, and I love it. But shy? Nahhhh.

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

awkward, not shy