...

Whenever I see a biracial character in fiction, they're usually of two shades: either "perfectly knows both of their cultures perfectly and natively," or "guy who always knew that he was Different (tm) and upon learning about the other half of his heritage takes to it like a duck in water and returns to his Rightful Place (tm)".

Which is cool and baller, to be clear; I'm sure there are plenty of people like this out there. But personally, all the biracial folks I know... aren't like that.

Marinette isn't like that either. She's way more in touch with her french side than her chinese side. She doesn't speak Mandarin. She only goes to Shanghai once (in the appropriately named Shanghai special.) But it would be a disservice to say her chinese roots never show up in the show; she's shown trying to learn basic mandarin when her family shows up, she has her mom's last name, and her mom is is still very much in touch with her culture.

Which is, overall, a pretty accurate depiction of the biracial people I know in real life. Which I find really cool and baller as well, because it's not one I see often (mostly because a lot of people are racists fucks who see biracial people as "basically white" without any regard for their actual lived experiences, but that's outside the scope of this post.) The only other media I can think of who actually tackle the topic of biracial folks in a way that is more nuanced than just the examples I presented at the beginning of this post is In Stars and Time, which is an entire game on the topic of culture so ofc it's gonna come up.