Marikim

Marikim is the het ship between Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Lê Chiến Kim from the Miraculous Ladybug fandom.

Canon
Kim and Marinette are students at Collège Françoise Dupont in Miss Bustier's 9th grade class. They have known each other for some time, and likely have been attending the same school since at least the sixth grade. In "Reflekta" he is seen giving Marinette bunny ears in two separate photographs. On Marinette's birthday, Kim joins in with his classmates on throwing her a party. When the villain Befana crashes the party, Kim tries to defend Marinette. When Marinette runs for the position of class representative, Kim votes for her.

Kim is given the miraculous of the Monkey by Master Fu, after he notices that Kim has a natural inclination towards helping people. Kim takes up the role of King Monkey, and joins Marinette (as Ladybug), Cat Noir, Carapace, Viperion, and Pegasus to defeat the akumatized villain. Despite not choosing him herself, Marinette seems to trust Kim as a miraculous holder. Despite the fact that his identity is revealed to Hawk Moth in "Miracle Queen", Marinette continues to give Kim the miraculous of the monkey to fight alongside her. He is seen doing so in numerous episodes, until the miraculous is stolen by Monarch at the end of season 4.

Kim is shown on multiple occasions to be supportive of Marinette's crush on Adrien. In "Transmission", he even joins the committee to try and help get Adrien and Marinette together. Kim is also shown to be supportive of Ladybug, joining the Resistance to help fight against Monarch. Even without the power of his miraculous, Kim has been shown fighting against Monarch, such as attacking him with the assistance of Rose and Ivan in "Deflagration". In season 5, it is revealed that Marinette had a crush on Kim prior to being given her miraculous. She decides to approach him and ask him to the pool, and Kim agrees. Chloé Bourgeois, however, witnesses the whole thing and decides to sabotage their moment. She convinces Kim to pull a "prank" on Marinette, telling her that she'll find it really funny. Kim naively agrees. Later that day, Kim and Marinette are seen having a good time together at the pool. While sitting on the diving platform, Marinette decides to confess her feelings to Kim. Kim gets down on one knee and professes his own feelings for Marinette, before offering her a small box. She says she loves him before opening the box, which contains live spiders that crawl out onto her. Marinette panics and Kim, not understanding the gravity of the situation, laughs. Marinette falls backwards off the diving platform and into the pool. Kim goes to find her at the change rooms after, wanting to laugh with Marinette about the hilarious "prank", but is shooed away by Soqueline.

Ondine and Adrien are shocked to hear this story, but Kim brushes it off as "just a prank". At the end of the episode, however, he apologizes to Marinette for hurting her and declares that he'll try to be a better person. Marinette accepts his apology.

Fanon
Marikim was originally a rarepair in the fandom, with very little canon interactions occurring between the two. Still, fans found the potential of these two to be cute, perhaps based on the class photos seen in "Reflekta". The ship becoming semi-canon in the fifth season of Miraculous actually saw a downtick in the ship's popularity. As the show portrayed Kim as being cruel and heartless to Marinette in the past, and causing her to have panic attacks in the present, many now saw Marikim as a toxic ship. Even longtime fans of the pair decided to stop shipping them, or at least only continue to ship them in Alternate Universes where Kim did not traumatize Marinette.

Many fans, however, have pointed out that "Derision", the episode that reveals Kim and Marinette's past, is full of retcons and character assassination of Kim. Others have said it was used as an excuse by the writers to make Chloé Bourgeois even more irredeemable than she already appeared. While most fans were quick to defend Kim and attempt to redeem him, this ship was still soured because of it.

There are currently over 45 works on AO3 for this ship, with less than 5 having been published after the release of "Derision". This ship is currently more common as a platonic pairing, with just under 100 works on AO3.

Fandom

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