#Show!Adrien

[mlwritingprompts]

Submitted Prompt: A wish for Solitude

This is the accessible version of this prompt.

The special-text version can be found here.

- - -

Hi Rjalker, I'm kinda back! So after who knows how long since I wrote my prompt about Serrah, and the show's ending of the fifth season being a dumpster fire like always (actually, even worse than usual, I seriously miss the finales like the ones of the first and second seasons), I decided to write this because... something. I myself aren't sure, but I guess I will just write something different than cosmic entities trying to fix the universe (or doom it because their existence requires the universe's own oblivion) because I'm not planning to rewrite the entire plot of this idiotic show.

I will be honest and say that this is a completely new territory for me, so if you spot mistakes and see something that needs to be changed, please do so.

So, have fun?

Occurs after Strikeback (season 4 finale).

My try at an Akumanette prompt.

Pronouns: lon/lones/lones/loneself (same as she/her/hers/herself)

TW: mention of sexual harassment, and a character experiencing touch revulsion

-----

It was so hard.

It was so hard for her.

Marinette thought as time kept moving too fast, yet it felt like everything was crawling to a halt.

Everything was becoming too hard, too difficult, too unbearable.

It was so painful, dealing with it. Being Marinette. Being Ladybug. Being the Guardian.

"Marinette, how did you forget to go to our planned party?"

Because Ladybug's job is too important than Marinette.

"Marinette, is there something bothering you? I heard you've been skipping classes."

Forgive me mama, papa, I can't schedule for when an Akuma strikes. That's the sacrifice I must make.

"Marinette, cheer up! We will defeat Hawkmoth in the end!"

Yes, Tikki, in the end. And what about my life?

"Marinette, I know that Chloe is a bit too much but..."

I know, Ms. Bustier, I must forgive her, for I am Marinette and I am nice, forgiving, no matter how many times I and others get hurt by her.

"Meowch Bugaboo! You know that you always have me!"

Leave me alone. Don't call me by that. Don't come closer to me. Don't flirt with me. Don't touch me. Don't try to kiss me. Leave. Me. Alone!

"You still are in denial about Adrien, Marinette?"

I didn't want this, Alya. Your question isn't funny. I don't love this. I don't want these feelings. I hate them. I despise them. They were why I lost the other kwamies. Love only hurt me.

"You must be responsible, Marinette!"

It's difficult to be responsible. It hurts to be responsible. I don't like this. It's so painful. So suffocating. So tiring. So dark. So cruel. I don't want more even if I have to take more. I want to be alone. I want to be left alone. Alone. Only alone. No one to nag on me about something. No one to have me deal with their problems. No one to guilt trip me and shame me for not doing what they want.

I want to be alone, with only myself being the only company I need.

"Hello, Solitude. I am Hawkmoth. I will give you the power to be alone, free from responsibility, at the price of giving me the Ladybug and Black Cat miraculouses."

It was so wrong to accept. She knew it. It would be admitting defeat, admitting that evil had won in a way. But why bother? She was so tired. So exhausted of fighting, fighting when everything she tried to do backfired on her.

What's the worst to happen if the accepted? Surely, Alya and that harasser Chat Noir can deal with it. They seemed to never run into real problems or face truly permanant consequences.

Oh how jealous she was.

"Yes, Hawkmoth."

And Marinette ceased to be. ---- When lon opened lones eyes, Solitude felt it, the desire burning from lones being.

"I want to be alone. I don't want anyone else with me."

That was it. Simple, yet clear. To be alone on lones own. Lon only wanted to be alone with loneself. No one to bother lones with anything.

No responsibility, no demands, nothing but simple, and sweet solitude.

Yet it just wasn't so easy.

"What is this?" lones expression looked repulsed.

Something was wrong, something was feeling off.

Solitude's body felt something uncomfortable, disgusting, hateful.

Something that just felt like something was touching lones body. Something that just refused to leave lones alone.

What is this? Lones body feels heavy. Breathing and moving feels difficult.

Nothing was touching Solitude, yet the feeling only grew stronger, the repulsion and hate for this thing that was seemingly crawling all over lones, seemingly invading lones blood and skin only continued.

Solitude hated this. It felt so wrong, so awful, so utterly-

"Marinette!"

A voice screamed as lon saw... a girl closing towards lones. Rose? That was her name, right?

Immediately, lon jumped away, as if burned by her presence, almost screaming and attacking her and the others that came alongside her.

How dare they come so close? How dare they call lones Marinette? How dare they try to touch lones?

"Leave me alone!"

Solitude ignored their pleas to come, to wait for Ladybug to help her, to fix her, to heal her.

There's nothing to heal or fix. Nothing wrong with Solitude. Solitude isn't Marinette. There's no need for Ladybug to heal lones.

The awful feeling seemed to diminish, it wasn't as bad as before. So this sensation of pure disgust relates to lones presence with others? Or when others enter lones comfort zone without permission?

Solitude felt that this was the correct answer.

Then, Solitude might go to a place far away. ---- Lon was on the top of the Eiffel tower for nearly half an hour now.

It was a calm area, and there was no one around lones from what Solitude can feel.

Yet...

The sensation of something surrounding lones body still persisted.

Solitude couldn't comprehend it. Nor did lon like it one bit.

What's going on? Why doesn't this feeling leave lones alone?

Lon could feel it, something was seemingly demanding for lones to do something. Something that Solitude doesn't want to do, and it is getting almost physically painful to deal with.

What is this? Why is this happening? Solitude wanted to be alone. Is that really so much? What is causing this? Who? Why?

Lon would like it if they stop continuously touching and crawling all over lones bod-

"Hello, mademoiselle!"

A voice that feels extremely, horribly familiar resounds, and Solitude feels all sensations go overdrive.

Chat Noir was so close-

So close, too close, that repulsive smirk, that leering look, that uncaring posture, too dirty, too repulsive, too hateful.

Lon hates it. Hates him. Hates that person. He will touch me, he will ignore my boundaries, he will torment me, will not leave me alone.

For just a moment, Marinette's memories resurfaced, and nothing but pure rage and hatred consumed lon vision.

A blast of pure, unbridled energy of repulsion and exclusion consumed the part of the Eiffel tower they were in, practically erasing it from existence, and that hero harasser being thrown away, far away so he couldn't violate lones boundaries anymore.

Solitude's body shook from the sheer disgust lon felt, lones mind already making possible connections to why lon felt so much worse with that guy around.

"Is it because Marinette suffered the most due to him?" Solitude thought in rage.

Is that why? It made sense, right?

But before lon could fully calm down, the sensation returned once more.

Why? Why? Why don't they leave lones alone!?

"Good job, Solitude! You've lured Chat Noir! Now go and take away his miraculous and Ladybug's!"

Lones heart raced with pure rage as Solitude felt the connection linking lones with Hawkmoth.

It's this guy...

Lones eyes seemed to look somewhere, what Solitude felt to be Hawkmoth's direction.

This guy was who was crawling over lones body using that link...

Hate and energy, already twisted due to the corrupted magic, twisted even further as it followed Solitude's desires.

If only he didn't exist... if only he and Chat Noir didn't exist...

Then Solitude would be already happy, alone with nothing bothering lones...

Solitude must destroy them first... And make sure not even a shadow of them remains...

---

End?

Or at least until I might write a sequel.

Hope you liked it.

[livsmessydoodles]

im back in the fucking building again

[sillysiluriforme]

Utterly inconsolable about this weird little white boy

[bklily]

Holy shit I just made a brain blast connection.

It's Schrodinger's box.

It's literally that situation. Is the cat dead or alive. Is it dead AND alive?

You'll only know by opening the box. By opening the box you kill the cat. The cat is always dead and alive.

[bugstung]

Miraculous Ladybug redesign ft disabled Adrien and some thoughts

[wield-the-mighty-pen]

IM NOT CRYING YOU ARE FJKDSLJFAKSLFJKLA NOBODY LOOK AT ME DSAL;DKASL;DKASL

[madmaxmon-art]

some old ml doodles

[westywallowing]

Year of the Snake!! 🐍

[wisteriasymphony]

plot bunny: What if Lila/Iris was a random person who found Ladybug dead and decided to impersonate her so that the city could still have their hero.

[sillysiluriforme]

NINO MY SON COME BACK FROM THE WAR

[smilingsam]

Merry Christmas @ladyblorg

This is my take on the last scene of the London special for @mlsecretsanta

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Pick One: Magical Girl Show or Rom-com. You cannot be both.

Early in season four we get the episode Gang of Secrets. An episode that ends with Marinette outing her secret identity to Alya. A touching moment that sparked outrage across the fandom because it meant that Marinette had made the choice to reveal her identity to her best friend while keeping her hero partner in the dark.

This choice spat in the face of the exceptions that many fans had for the series. Thousands of pre-season-four fanfics feature moments where Ladybug and Chat Noir promise each other that they'll be the first to know each other's identities. After the Alya reveal, scores of fanfics were written to salt on Marinette's choice to tell the "wrong" person.

Most of these fics feature a betrayed Chat Noir quitting or otherwise punishing Ladybug for breaking their promise to be each other's first, thereby destroying his faith in their partnership. But that promise was never made on screen. It only existed in the realms of fanfic and, when Chat Noir finally found out in canon, his reaction was largely neutral. He never once blamed Ladybug for her choice or pushed for a reveal or even asked for the right to tell one of his friends.

So what happened here? Why did the fans have such wildly unrealistic expectations of canon? Were their expectations even unrealistic or did canon betray them? The answer to that is not as straight forward as you might think because it all comes back to one of Miraculous' many, many, many writing problems: Miraculous is trying to be both a Magical Girl Show and a romantic comedy, but those are not genres that mesh. You can only be one (or you can be a third thing that we'll get to at the end as it's the easiest way to fix this mess, but I want to mostly focus on where the anger is coming from and why the writing is to blame.)

To discuss this mismatch, we're going to do something that breaks my heart and talk about some of Origins flaws. While I love that episode and unironically refer to it as the best writing the show ever gave us, it's not perfect and its flaws are all focused around trying to set up both genres. Do note that I'm going to use a lot of gender binary language here as magical girl shows have a strong focus on gender segregation and rarely if ever acknowledge gender diversity.

Let's Talk Magical Girls

Magical girl shows are shows that center on young women and their friendships. While male love interests are often present in these shows, the boys tend to take a backseat and function primarily as arm candy while the girls save the day and carry the narrative.

A great example of this is the show Winx Club. This show features a large cast of teenage girls who save the magical universe from various threats with their magical powers. Each girl has a love interest, but the boys are usually off doing their own thing and only occasionally show up for a date or to give the girls a ride on their cool bikes or magical spaceship. I don't even think that we see the guys fight or, if we do, it's a rare thing. They are not there to save the day. They are there to be shipping fodder.

Like most magical girl shows, Winx Club starts with the main character making friends with one of the girls who will eventually become part of her magical girl squad. This brings us back to Miraculous.

Did you ever find it weird that Origins implies that Marinette has no friends? She doesn't even have a backbone until new girl Alya shows up to become Marinette's First Real Friend:

Marinette: I so wish I can handle Chloé the way you do. Alya: You mean the way Majestia does it. She says all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing. (pointing at Chloé) Well, that girl over there is evil, and we are the good people. We can't let her get away with it.

This is a bizarre opening because Miraculous is not about Marinette making friends or learning to stand up for herself. If you skipped Origins and just watched the rest of the show, then you'd have no clue that Marinette wasn't close with her classmates before this year. You also wouldn't know that Alya was new in town and you definitely wouldn't know that Marinette had never stood up to Chloé before this year. So why is this here? Why waste screen time setting up elements that aren't actually important to canon?

Miraculous did it for the same reason that Winx Club did it: magical girl shows traditionally start with the main character making friends with at least one of her eventual female teammates because Magical Girl shows are all about the girls and their relationships. The boys are just arm candy.

But Miraculous isn't a magical girl show. The writers have explicitly stated that it's a rom-com and romantic comedies aren't about female friendship. They might have female friendships in them, but that's not where the focus is. The focus of a rom-com is on the romance and Origins is very clearly all about the romance.

Origins as a Rom-com

Origins has a lot on its plate. It has to establish the villain's motivation for the first time, show us how the heroes got their miraculous, show us how the heroes first met on both sides of the mask, show us how they met their respective best friends, and show us how the heroes dealt with their first akuma. It would be perfectly understandable if this 40 minute two-parter didn't do anything with the romance. They have a full show to give us that!

In spite of this, Origins has some incredibly touching moments for both Ladynoir and Adrienette because romance is the heart of Miraculous. It is the main focus of the show. The driving motivation for both of our leads and the majority of the show's episodes. To tell the story of how their journey started without at least one of them falling in love would feel wrong. That's why we see both of them fall in love!

First we get Chat Noir giving his heart to his bold and brilliant lady, then we get Marinette's heart being stolen by the shy sweet boy who never once thought to blame her for her snap judgement of his character. We even get a touching moment where Chat Noir inspires his lady to accept her role and be Ladybug, leading her to boldly face their enemy and call him out:

Roger: I have a new plan, unlike you! Move aside and let the pros do their thing. You've already failed once! Ladybug: …He's right, you know. If I'd captured Stoneheart's akuma the first time around, none of this would have happened! I knew I wasn't the right one for this job… Cat Noir: No. He's wrong, because without you, she'd no longer be here. (they look at Chloe) And because without us, they won't make it, and we'll prove that to 'em. Trust me on this. Okay? Ladybug: Okay.

I love this moment, but it does lose a little of its power when you remember that we had an Alya-driven variation of this exact same thing five minutes prior:

Alya: HELP!! (Marinette suddenly gets filled with courage. She gets the case out of Alya's bag and puts on the Miraculous. Then, Tikki appears, happy to see Marinette again.) Tikki:(raising her arms) Mmmm! Marinette: I think I need Ladybug! Tikki: I knew you'd come around! Marinette: Well, I'm still not sure I'm up for this, but Alya's in danger. I can't sit back and do nothing.

This scene initially confused me because - if Miraculous is a rom-com - then why would you make Alya the reason that Marinette became Ladybug? Why wouldn't you have Chat Noir be the one in danger so that Marinette chose to fight because of her love interest and then encourage that bond with the later scene of him encouraging her? Why split the focus like this? Why give Alya so much attention?

In case you haven't figured it out, it's because Origins is trying to establish two different genres of show. Two genres that will continue to fight for the rest of the series (or at least the first five seasons).

Magical Girls Vs Rom-com

Why is Alya the one to shake off the nightmare dust and inspire the others during the season five finale? Why is Alya the one that Marinette trusts with all of her plans while Chat Noir is kept in the dark? Why does Alya and Marinette's friendship get so much more focus than Adrien and Nino's? Why was Alya the only temp hero who got upgraded to full time hero?

It's because Alya is Marinette's second in command in a magical girl show and magical girl shows focus on female friendships while the boys are just there to be cute and support the girls.

Why do most of Marinette's talks with Alya focus on Adrien? Why is Chat Noir the only other full time holder of a Miraculous for the first three seasons and then again for the final season? Why do Marinette's friends become more and more obsessed with Adrienentte as the show goes on? Why is the love square's identity reveal given so much more narrative weight than any other identity reveal?

It's because Miraculous is a rom-com and the love square is our end game couple, so of course the story focuses on their relationship above all else!

Are you starting to see the problem?

Circling back to our original question: no, it was not unreasonable for the fans to expect that the Alya reveal would have massive negative consequences for Ladynoir. That is what should happen in a rom-com and Miraculous is mainly written like a rom-com. But the writers are also trying to write a magical girl show and, in a magical girl show, Alya and Marinette's friendship should be the most important relationship in the show, so it makes perfect sense that the show treats the Alya reveal as perfectly fine because the Alya reveal was written from the magical girl show perspective.

When it comes to Miraculous, if you ever feel like a writing choice makes no sense for genre A, re-frame it as a thing from genre B and it suddenly makes perfect sense which is fascinatingly terrible writing! It's no wonder there are people who hate the Alya reveal and people who will defend it with their life. It all depends on which genre elements you've picked up on and clung to. Neither side is right, they've both been set up to have perfectly valid expectations. Whether those expectations are valid for a given episode is entirely up to the mercurial whims of the writers!

How Do We Fix This Mess

At this point, I don't think that we can, the show is too far gone, but if someone gave me the power to change one element of Miraculous, that element would be this: scrap both the magical girl stuff and the rom-com stuff and turn Miraculous into a team show where the friendships transcend gender.

At this point, I've written over a quarter of a million words of fanfic focused on these characters (the brain rot is real) and one thing I've discovered is that it is damn near impossible to keep Adrien and Alya from becoming friends. They're both new to their school while Marinette and Nino have gone to the same school for at least a few years. Alya and Adrien are both obsessed with Ladybug plus Adrien is a natural hype man who loves to support his friends and Alya loves to talk about her blog. Alya is dating Adrien's best friend. On top of that, Alya, Adrien, Nino, and Marinette are all in the same class, meaning that they pretty much have to be spending time together five days a week unless French school don't give kids a chance to socialize or do group projects. If so, then judging them for the first issue, but super jealous of the latter.

Given all of that, why in the world is does it feel like Alya is Marinette's close friend while Adrien is just some guy who goes to Alya's school? Along similar lines, while canon Marinette barely talks to Nino, I've found that Marinette and Nino tend to get along smashingly, especially if you embrace the fact that they have to have known each other for at least a few years.

If you embrace this wider friendship dynamic and scrap the girl squad, replacing it with Alya, Adrien, Marinette, and Nino, then the fight for narrative importance quickly goes away. It's no longer a question of is this episode trying to be a magical girl show or a rom-com? Instead, the question is: which element of the friend group is getting focused on today? The romance or the friendship?

A lot of hero shows do this and do it well. I think that one of the most well known examples is Teen Titans. That show has five main characters and the focus is usually on their friendships, but there is a very clear running romantic tension between the characters Robin and Starfire with several episodes giving a good deal of focus to their romance. I'd say that this element really starts in the show's the 19th episode - Date with Destiny - and it all culminates in the movie that capstones the series: Trouble in Tokyo. The character Beast Boy also gets a romance arc and, while it's more short lived, it's further evidence that you can have strong romances and strong friendships in the same show and even the same episode. You just have to own the fact that boys and girls can be friends with each other, a very logical thing to embrace when your show has decided to have a diverse cast of heroes instead of imposing arbitrary gender limitations on its magical powers.

I couldn't figure out a way to work this into the main essay, but it's relevant so I wanted to quickly point it out and give you more to think about re Origins. Have you ever found it weird how Origins gives both Adrien AND Marinette the "I've never had friends before" backstory and yet wider canon acts like Marinette has this strong amazing friend group while Adrien doesn't seem to care about making friends and instead focuses all his energy on romance? Why give both the protagonist and the supposed deuteragonist this kind of origin if it's not going to be a major element of the show? It makes so much more sense to only give one of them this backstory and then focus that person's character arc on learning about friendship.

[lea-panthera]

Okay, so remember this scene from Darkblade?

...and everyone was like 'adriennnn your cat noir's showing'?

Pay a little attention to Marinette in that last frame there.

That's a perfect 'goddammit cat noir' pose if I've ever seen one.

[miraclechatbug]

Totally not ruminating, fixating, obsessing, dwelling on how whenever Adrien is sad, upset, or afraid, he instinctively curls into himself—making his body small, hugging himself tightly as though trying to protect himself, like a wounded child who's carried the weight of too much pain for far too long. He’s always trying to self-soothe, and it h u r t s so much to watch him be in constant pain and barely receiving any comfort

[buggachat]

Sometimes I think about how Adrien, throughout the series, constantly grapples with his fear of abandonment. Gabriel conditioned him to believe that any love he receives is purely transactional, and that to earn affection he has to prove his utility. Adrien is constantly trying to prove his worth to his father for scraps of affection, and Chat Noir infamously crumbles on-screen any time he feels as though he is replaceable to Ladybug. It's a constant insecurity of his, like everyone will just dump him like a sack of potatoes the moment they find out how useless he is.

Meanwhile, all Marinette wants to is ensure that Adrien is happy. Because she loves him. She doesn't give two shits about how """useful""" he is. She holds him and tells him that she will never abandon him (both as Ladynoir and as Adrienette), and her fantasies are about saving him, not about him being "useful" to her. Throughout their relationship, Adrien is forced to disappoint Marinette constantly for reasons outside of his control (amok commands), and yet Marinette is still there for him.

At Adrien's lowest point, when he is forcibly torn away from everyone who had ever showed him genuine care, locked away in an all-white room and at his most "useless", right after disappointing Marinette and unable to even join the final battle or contribute in any way, she still saves him. She still loves him. Because he doesn't have to prove anything to her. Because he is loved and cherished for who he is, not for what he does, and that love is not conditional. Adrien's "happy ending" at the end of the first arc wasn't about him finally proving how useful he can be, because he never actually cared about being useful — he just saw it as the only means to feel loved and needed. Instead, in the end, he found out that he was loved and needed no matter what.

[westywallowing]

oh the accidental transformations,,,