So, considering the show's current narrative, how would you portray Maribug in BTaL? Something like a deluded, immoral superhero with an unstable hero complex and an obsession with control (most particularly with her lover, Adrien)?
I consider BTaL to be a sequel series of a timeline that branched off an alternative S4. I don't even wanna deal with Zoe, Chloe won't be treated as a hate sink and best of all, S5 and the finale that started Marinette's downward spiral does not happen. I mean what I said in another post, the whole lie arch only works if you want Marinette to become a villain, but the premise of this au is Marinette grew into one of the best heroes like the show tries to hype her up to be.
Believe it or not, BTaL was NOT made as a result of salt or critique but out of what I genuinely thought the series was supposed to be about. It's piecing together what I liked about the show and putting it into a collage to make something new while aging them up a bit to better match the oc protags. They parallel in areas, make a lot of shout outs or homages to the OG, especially in the BTaL S1 era (even having that season end with Volpino the fake hero with a twist), but they ultimately go their own paths cause this is still a new cast of characters with their own dynamics - I even took special care to make the two heroes social circles NOT neatly slide into Marinette and Adrien's molds, like Blair having a twin brother she mostly hangs out with or Shizuke having two best friends instead of giving them one of each. Believe me, their interwoven dynamics play a huge role for setting this apart from canon as big arcs are centered around them like Volpino or Fuyubug storylines. Things start diverging from the og big time once S1 ends.
N2CaTs is probably the biggest branching off point for canon MLB lore cause at the time I thought this was as bad as it would get: Marinette scheming against Chat Noir so he can unknowingly reveal himself to Luka without his consent, luring him with a mutual reveal. This one ends in consequences with Blair and Adrien switching timelines, so Marinette has to carry on knowing Chat Noir is lost in time because of her trickery.
Marinette may have started off harsh and wary, but she'll gradually warm up to Blair, seeing the older girl as sympathetic the more she gets to know her, seeing her greatest fears experienced by the older girl... And then Blair finds out why she's stuck in the past, and what Marinette was trying to do. She does not take it well, at this point Blair has walked several miles in Adrien's shoes and was slowly exposed to how bad he has it (starting from learning how little Adrien is supposed to know to that scheme in Ephemeral). Just like that, their bond shattered and there's no clever solution that could fix it.
The worst part for Marinette is Blair remained professional, still helping her protect Paris and her miraculous from akumas albeit with less fangirling and more cold aloofness... There's nothing to fix cause Blair wasn't doing anything wrong. She's never getting back that older girl who believed in her as some great hero. Blair flat out says it to her face, something like, "You know, you're lucky your partner is so much nicer than me. He'd totally forgive you... Even if you don't deserve it."
Because I think Marinette deserves to have someone who kinda dislikes her and is justified for it unlike with Chloe. She deserves to have a relationship that remains irreparable cause canon kept going easy on her with Kagami or Sublime. She deserves to understand she can't just keep treating people the way she does and expect them to remain at her side.
I was treating this flaw as something like teenaged short sightedness, where they need to see a little further beyond themselves and understand how their actions can affect others. That she can be wrong about people. That all Marinette needed was to gain awareness.
Nowadays this Marinette in N2CaTs reads as ooc to me. Lmao she actually worried about Chat Noir stuck in the future with nothing to help him except for the allies she couldn't personally vet beyond the words of Blair, who resembled a certain liar. She is capable of showing defensiveness over Alya when she thought Blair was bullying her. This Marinette seems like she gives a damn about the people around her. It feels like a joke when I remember how S6 Marinette is like.
And this is why BTaL is completely divorced from canon. N2CATS exists and it just won't work with canon Marinette from S5+. She needs to be flawed but show a potential of actually listening to others so the consequences of her actions won't grow too dire. It needs to remain proportionate to reasonably achieve the kind of lore BTaL is built on with her growing up into a good hero.
I can't imagine canon Marinette would be affected by Blair's words and change for the better when the one I gleen on from canon S5+ would more likely double down instead of admitting she's wrong. Blair would be no different from a Chloe or a Lila in her eyes, someone who doesn't deserve her help. She'd escalate shit and keep giving Blair reason dislike her until Blair would just flat out despise her and feel Marinette's legacy was a complete scam rather than just growing coldly angry and being disappointed while accepting Marinette can grow into a better person.
Maybe S5+ Marinette gets a shout out as that one au where Marinette is a fallen hero and N2CaTs Bunnyx is steering clear of that one cause it's not her dimension, not her problem, dunno what the team of that universe is even cooking but it smells like it's burning.