In the kwami swap you mention that Adrien is a repressed artist, what hobbies do you think he picks up with Tikki’s help?
We know he has a piano in his room and that he sometimes joins Kitty Section but do you think he joins them on a more permanent manner? Maybe composes music or branches out to covers of pop music or maybe jazz?
Get into painting? Trying to get out everything he’s repressed over the years with colors and brush strokes, the loss of his mother, the slow loss of his father, his complicated feelings towards Natalie, his sheer joy after meeting Tikki and Marinette?
Maybe Chloe bullies her way into his room with Marinette and Sabrina in tow and they just repaint his entire room and make a absolute mess and despite that Gorilla won’t let Natalie intervene because this is the first time in a long time that he’s heard children laughing in this house. Hell Natalie can’t put up more than half an effort to either.
Does he enter his own designs into Gabriel’s contests anonymously? Maybe in a dim hope that this is how he gets his father’s attention and affections?
Honestly, this was a really hard answer for me. It took a lot of thinking and searching on what I really felt like Adrien was on the inside in this AU, and how that would express itself in artistic form.
I think Adrien legitimately is a good pianist, and he definitely joins kitty section for a bit, maybe even permanently if he can swing it, but his musical talent with the piano lacks any kind of fire or passion. He's technically amazing, and capable of playing high skill pieces, but he isn't excited about the piano. He might have had the potential to be, once, but his father forcing it on him basically killed his ability to express himself through it. Adrien's piano playing is perfect, machine like, poised and controlled. There is no room for passion in it, it's a part of his mask, not who he truly is.
I have a feeling Adrien goes through a couple different outlets for the creativity, pain, and anger that's all bubbling up and repressed inside of him. All being brought to the surface by his time as Mister Bug, and the careful coaching and encouragement of Tikki.
The first place it becomes obvious is actually probably Fencing. I feel like Adrien long ago hit the peak of what raw skill and work could take him too in fencing. He's good, and yes, he's one of the best fencers d'agencourt has, but the man always quietly weeps whenever he sees Adrien fence, because he could be better. If he had even half as much passion and emotion and need to win as he had skill and the forced dedication of a son desperate to earn a distant father's approval, he could be a champion. A prodigy. Like Kagami. She had every bit of mechanical, forced excellence and skill as Adrien, but some part of her actually wanted this. Needed this. And that makes all the difference.
Until the day Tikki, hiding in Adrien's helmet, whispered "imagine your father just missed your birthday again" and for a brief, frantic, powerful moment, his teacher saw the passion of a sun ignite in Adrien. All that repressed anger, just for a moment released as stabs that hit to hard and slashes that moved too fast.
It's actually one of the few times Adrien loses a fight he by all rights should have won, but it is also the moment D'agencort sees Adrien actually have true passion in a fight. It's D'agencourt that recommends that Adrien try a different combat sport, offers to even say whatever he needs to to his father to convince him to allow the switch. Because this passion and rage on someone of Adriens dedication and skill is breathtaking... but it's not helpful for fencing.
This is how Adrien ends up in a class for Savate, which is French kick boxing. Which is a lot more violent, and a lot more expressive, more movements and more room to actually let out his feelings.
This isn't his final stop on his journey of unleashing his creative mind or his pent up emotions, just the first one. Tikki eventually suggests that there's more than just beating people up to release his feelings into a physical medium, and helps guide him to some more patient, and much more traditionally creative, past times.
He starts with writing. Because it's easy to do when locked in his room, and he doesn't need to truly get his father's permission or help. Pen and paper, or a device with a word processor, are always available to him. I think, more than anything, Adrien writes poems. Some funny and nonsensical, some extremely deep and somber. He writes in a lot of older European styles mostly, sometimes getting closer to ballads an ancient bars might recite than something flowery or Shakespearean.
The thing that sticks the best, though, the one that feels so much like it's his that once he picks it up he'd swear he's been doing it his whole life, is sculpture. Specifically stone carving. Something about the slow and careful process, the intentional chipping away at a massive slab of stone until it becomes something sloping and fluid and graceful, is just so entrancing to him.
It's in the stone carving that Adrien finds himself aligned closest with Tikki. Not just how the creativity flowing through him feels of her in a primal way he can't explain, but also in helping him understand how she thinks, and how similar they are. Or at least, how similar they can be.
Her responsibility, her place as leader of the Kwami, the stress and weight that rests on her tiny shoulders, all simulated in every sharp crack of his chisel on stone. Just like life, every decision he makes with his art is permanent. Just like life, each choice permanently alters what it will ultimately become. It is a lot of responsibility and pressure, to be the one holding the hammer, making the decisions, chipping the stone. If you hit to hard and crack the piece in two, there's no one to blame but you. But when things line up, when you tap in just the right place with just enough pressure just the right number of times....well, that's when magic that has nothing to do with Miraculous happens. And just like the mistakes, these successes are yours as well. Wielding the hammer and chisel is a burden, but being the artist is still such a pleasure.
I hope that wasn't too artsy fartsy of me. Some things just only feel right explained with metaphor and heavy prose. It feels like being obvious and blunt just wouldn't properly get it across, you know.
Anyways. Hope that answers your question about Adrien's art and creative expression! He probably gets up to more stuff eventually, too. But this is what I've got so far.
