hey! so, genuinely curious, what pushed you to enjoy ladrien more as a side of the lovesquare? asking here cause ladrien’s never clicked with me, but I really want to see what I’m missing and understand/appreciate it more~
Hello! sorry, these have been in my inbox for a while but i knew it would be a long answer lol (i love ladrien a lot) so i was waiting until i could give it the proper attention. but now i would love to tell you why i absolutely love ladrien 😌 (i apologize that this has zero structure or coherency it’s literally just me babbling about ladrien for a VERY LONG TIME im sorry, i couldn’t stop,,,)
first of all, ladrien represents the dynamic that is one of the most powerful and delicious ones out there: mutual pining. as much as you might love a good friends/enemies-to-lovers slowburn, mutual pining is always where you want to end up and it is the thing that drives you absolutely BONKERS!! knowing that they Love Each Other so deeply, that they Long for each other, but they don’t know if the other person feels the same, and there’s something in the way, whatever it may be, which just makes the longing more intense? PLEASE im about to hyperventilate that is……...the Good Kush. periodt
and ladrien’s brand of mutual pining is so Pure 😭 they are both such good kids with the BIGGEST hearts and their love is literally going to save the world. if you enjoy the romantic half of ladynoir and adrienette, that’s ladrien. chat noir’s utter devotion to his lady and marinette’s pure but powerful adoration for adrien...combine those and you get the ultra-romantic, heartwarming yet semi-tragic COSMIC FORCE that is ladrien. the way that both of them continually sacrifice for each other, the way they put the other’s happiness before their own, the way they keep trying to love each other despite so many setbacks and failures, the way that at the end of the day they will always be there for the one they love, as a friend if they can’t be more, because they want to give the other person what they need…...it’s ladrien baby
im always blown away by the sheer POWER of ladrien but also by it’s beautiful, beautiful intricacies and subtleties. because of the secret identities, we are able to have mutual pining AND a slowburn at the same time. and honestly that is one of my favorite things about the ladrien dynamic!!!
I second all this so hard!!
I feel like I didn’t appreciate Ladrien enough in the beginning of my jumping into this fandoms either, but the more I write the more Ladrien has become my favorite dynamic to explore!
This was beautiful, Carpi! Thank you for the essay!! I nodded so hard the whole way through!