Lady Virulent! An akuma design for Marinette that I'm finally content with! I've gone through so many different versions for her but none of them really felt like an akuma design until now
I think i've gone through so many that I'll just make a video of all the different versions I went through until I got one to my liking. And even with this design, I think I'm going to change it from a skirt to a pair of FLOOFY mushroom pants since I think that'll work a bit better
i'm gonna do another drawing of her at some point where her pose will show off more of the design and i'll incorporate da pants then
Under the cut I'll have some reasons for why I picked certain elements
In the fic where I do a different take on ml (It's not super necessary for u to know the details on that wip I got going on for this) I'm having it so that she gets akumatized ltr on and her whole theme is poisoning, causing poison infecting others etc etc
so.. MUSHROOMS and toxic gas
She don't actually got hair it is just the gas that surrounds her head all fun like. The mushroom on her head is meant to look like a beret. There are mushrooms that go up her legs and neck since I thought it would be a neat design choice from seeing dying trees with mushrooms growing up the trunk.
She don't got no normal feet since I couldn't figure out how to make the Toxic Gas shoes look like mushrooms when her feet aren't. Pointed.
Her powers (so far since this is wip) allow her to force other people into living out the worst damage they've caused other people. Whatever their worst tormenting strategy was and what damage it did to the person. The power ignores if the person has apologized or made up with the person they hurt.
She can pull off the mushrooms that grow around her waist and through them at people like bombs that'll explode into more of the toxic gas that initiates her power.
Where's the akuma?
Her earrings :)
The spots in the design are meant to, obviously, make the outfit look like mushrooms, but also to call back to her ladybug (ladybelle in my thing) form! They also serve to give a sickness look to her skin, and I think it'd be neat if the spots never stuck to one place in her design, always moving around
This was a first try for trying to animate how they move that I'll likely redo at some point. This animation isn't exact to how I think her spots would move around but, I'll throw it at you to give an idea
Or, "Local Chinese Underworld Liker, creating the LMK! Difu she wanted to see instead of what she got."
-Previously on JotG: the Kings of Ghosts used to be led by the Lord of Mt. Tai a.k.a. Huang Feihu alone, after the War of Investiture was over.
-Then, at some point in the Northern-Southern Dynasties, Ksitigarbha came alone, started releasing damned souls from samsara left and right, and threatened the existing power structure, which led to a huge struggle within the Underworld itself.
-One that left scant records, because the Celestial Host couldn't care less about some dead people fistfighting in the dingy basement of the pantheon.
-However, when all was said and done: Huang Feihu was no longer the highest authority in the Underworld, only nine Kings of Ghosts remained, and were subsequently made the heads of the new Ten Courts.
-An accord was formed between Ksitigarbha and the Ten Kings, who recognized the Bodhisattva as their spiritual leader, with the power of supervision over their judgements and sentencings, yet kept their control over the judicial processes.
-This new Underworld bureaucracy would keep working that way for the next thousand years. Much like their celestial counterpart, they were plagued by the inertia and corruption common to all big bureaucracies, but also paradoxically less resistent to reforms and changes——mostly out of practicality.
-Like, they may not have internet or digitalized paperwork systems, but have adopted a lot of procedures used by modern customs offices, public transport systems, and police/prison systems because of the sheer number of dead people they had to squeeze through the transfer stations of samsara on a daily basis.
-Outside the customs office + courthouse + prison/torture chamber pipeline, the Underworld also had an ever-expanding civilian district, where dead people just carried on their un-life as usual.
-Most residents were still awaiting their judgement at the First Court——some of which had waited for hundreds and thousands of years in mortal realm time.
-Just like the time lag between the Celestial Realm and the Lower Realms, one day in the mortal realm is a year in the Underworld.
-The passage of time is more of a technicality, however, without day and night cycles or the need to sleep, and only marked by the occasional crowing of dead roosters.
-The biggest of these civilian districts become cities in their own rights, like Youdu and Fengdu; the former is where the Ten Courts headquarters are, while the latter sits at the foot of the Mountain of Darkness, next to the Verdant Cloud Palace of Ksitigarbha and the main entrances of the Eighteen Hells.
-If the Celestial Bureaus and the heavenly armies are like special forces + military, the Underworld forces are like police + prison guards.
-They aren't gonna stand a chance against the former, even though they can put up a good fight inside their home turfs. And despite being very bitter about their pushover status, most would just complain like the miserable dead bureaucrats they were and go no further than that.
-The greatest threat the Underworld posed to any immortals isn't their ghostly soldiers, but the environment itself. Like, the entire realm is saturated with Yin energy, to the point where it will give magical altitude sickness to living beings and insufficently strong cultivators via Qi osmosis——basically, the Yang-aligned Qi inside their bodies is drained over time until they, too, join the rank of the dead.
-Some Yaksha and Raksha clans have the ability to traverse between the realms of Yin and Yang. They have a stronger resistance to the ambience Yin energy, but will still start to feel sick if they ventured too deep into the Underworld.
-They'll feel right at home on the Yellow Spring Road or near the Ghost Gate, and will be mostly okay in the city of Youdu, but not the caverns inside the Mountain of Darkness or the Eighteen Hells.
-Like whales, they must also periodically return to the mortal realm to replenish their Yang-aligned Qi. As the only living residents of the Underworld, they tend to be either specialists who were only summoned for niche missions, or cheap contract workers doing their part-time jobs in exchange for a place to stay.
-The Ten Courts are also responsible for sending one of the Three Calamities against demons and illicit cultivators: the Flames of Yin.
-It's basically the little blue ghostfires that function as the natural lighting of the Underworld, but in extremely high concentration and channeled through a narrow portal like a laser beam. It burns exclusively on Yang-aligned Qi, and is able to reduce its target to ashes from the inside out like a humanoid lantern.
-Speaking of less gruesome lanterns: you can see a lot of these floating above Youdu and Fengdu. They were called Soul Lamps, used to periodically suck up the souls of simple creatures like a magical vaccum cleaner, so the streets of the Underworld didn't get overrun by ten million dead livestocks and wild animals.
-SEM's Shadow Lantern is a modified variant of that: SWK grabbed one while he was bashing his way out of the Underworld, to prove to his buddies that it wasn't all just a dream. And also because it looks real neat.
Notable Divisions of the Ten Courts
Black & White Guards: ghost cops. Work closely with local Tudis and Chenghuangs to fetch newly dead souls into the Underworld, but also go after unruly and malicious ghosts causing disturbances in the living realm. Led by General Xie Bi'an and Fan Wujiu.
Ox-Heads and Horse-Faces: ghost prison guards and torturers. Unlike most Underworld officials, they seem to be something souls reincarnate as, and just spontaneously pop into existence at predictable intervals. Most cannot speak human languages, but are able to communicate among themselves perfectly via moos and whinnies. Pumpkins seem to be a status symbol in their culture.
Underworld Judges: exactly like it sounds. The high-ranking ones assist the Ten Kings like a jury, the middle-ranking ones keep records of the cases, the parties involved, and the sentencings, the low-ranking ones are just your run-of-the-mill desk clerks. Zhong Kui is technically a judge…in the sense that Judge Dredd is a judge.
Ghost Gate Guardians: Shenshu and Yulei, Underworld's oldest doormen, whose very souls are bound to the Gate itself. Their subordinates are much less impressive, and mostly just a mix of Ox-Heads & Horse-Faces, Black & White Guards, Yakshas and Rakshas doing their part-time jobs, and the bureaucrats of Dead People Customs Office.
Ksitigarbha: prison chaplain + couselor. Probably the only one in the Underworld pantheon who understands the meaning of "restorative justice". Spends most of his time in the Eighteen Hells giving therapy to dead criminals, alongside Guan Yin in her Path of Hell manifestation.
His steed, Di Ting, looks and acts the emotional support doggo, but has the personality of a blunt, snarky secretary. You'd be a cynical old dog too if you can hear what's on everyone's mind and the truth of reality at the moment, every time you press your ears against the ground.
Terrace of Forgetfulness: giant amnesia soup kitchen. Mengpo's attendants help her collect the raw ingredients and make sure people drink the soup, but she is the only one who can put the finishing touch on the final product.
Even though no one will remember how bad her cooking tastes, she's aware of that and trying to make improvements, despite the hurdles of collecting customer feedback for literal amnesia soup. If the Underworld had a cable network, she'd be a huge fan of Chang'e's show.
City of Wrongful Death: Underworld's undercity, located deep beneath Youdu proper and administrated by the Second Court. Mostly a giant storehouse for ghosts who died of suicide, whose sentence is sitting it out in there until they are cleared for reincarnation.
However, victims of various crimes, who will not go over the Naihe Bridge until they have seen their victimizers judged and punished, are also welcome. In times of war, famine and natural disasters, it often functions as a dead people refugee camp.
At last, the LMK characters you are looking forward to
-The 2nd-9th Courts in this AU is arranged according to ascending order of the crime's severity. Whereas simple manslaughter may only land you in the Second Court's Minor Hells, being a serial killer will get you a nice, toasty spot in the Ninth Court's Avici Hells.
-SEM would have been sent to the Seventh Court and judged by the King of Mt. Tai, if he didn't try to subject an Underworld official to a fate worse than simple obliteration and badly injure him while resisting arrest. As a result, he landed straight inside a Major Ice Hell of the Ninth Court.
-Ivory Lady the Ghostly immortal (who was once Su Daji the girl in the overarching JotG AU) revived him by exploiting the "Grand Yin Reforge" technique.
-In the old days, some Human Immortals whose bodies are too old or completely unfit for cultivation would sign a contract with the Underworld Courts on their deathbeds, and become a ghostly official to accumulate more merits.
-Once enough merits are gathered, they are allowed to reforge a more suitable body through a ritual: as long as their skeletal remains are stil intact, their flesh and blood will magically grow back.
-Ivory Lady bypasses the merit requirement by transferring hers under SEM's name, gathered while she was still working as a regional guardian and had not been thoroughly disillusioned by her experiences as a Ghostly immortal.
More doodles + a little more information about how Marinette and Adrien were chosen! I gotta remind myself that no one’s gonna be interested in my rewritten AU if I don’t SHARE any of the changes before I start writing and posting it.
-Marinette in the beginning doesn’t like Adrien very much and it takes a season for her to warm up to him and get a crush on him
-The ladybug and cat miraculous usually have their owner chosen by the Kwami’s themselves, since they are the best judge of people who fit their values. But because of the way their miraculous are programmed, when one kwami chooses their holder, the other only has a set amount of time to find their holder.
-This is to prevent large gaps of time between chosen holders. (theres also a rule that the age gap can’t be very large to prevent absurd age gaps where the partners can’t connect to each other)
Plagg rushes to get Adrien because he wants to break this goodie two shoes that could be a GREAT cat. Also because he senses something mysterious and eerie from the mansion that he can’t quite place. That leaves Tikki to find the closest 15 year old that fits her criteria for a good Ladybug.
Plagg and TIkki both judge the heck out of each other’s chosen holder in the first season. I’ll be drawing this out eventually. If you have any questions about my rewrite, feel free to leave them in the comments and if I deem them not really spoilery, I’ll answer!
