#quickanswers

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Are Marinette and Luka really the only ML characters you care about?

Well, it's a bit more complicated than that, but these days that's mostly true. Alya and Nino I actively dislike at this point and they're really the only ones that have had a significant amount of development.

I like the potential of some characters but they never seem to get used in the ways that would be interesting to me. I like the friendship between Nat & Alix, I like the idea of the art kids club kids hanging out and being friends. I like the idea of Kim and Marinette being childhood friends - which I think I actually saw in a fic somewhere first, but it makes so much more sense for her to be close to at least a couple people instead of always seeming like she's the new kid. Like, how are Max and Marinette both so into gaming but they don't know they're both into it until now?

I've explored some of these friendship relationships in my fics but a lot of times the things the show does with them just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. So, generally I'm not invested in the canon version of these characters and it's more like, the season 1 and 2 versions of those characters that I work with as a base? I think Juleka has a lot of super cool potential and she's conveniently accessible in Lukanette fics so I've probably done the most with her.

But, at point or another they all got used for the plot in a way that felt both inauthentic and mean just for the sake of plot convenience, so it's kind of hard to get invested when you know that character assassination is a possibility at any moment.

I do see that they're doing some more things with the side characters in Season 5 but I haven't really watched more than a few clips. Although one of those is Juleka singing about how she's her father's daughter which like...what? That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Writing music, herself, love! Performing on her own! Growth! Singing about being Jagged's daughter - record scratch. What is Anarka, chopped liver?

Sooo...yeah. On top of it I think it's hilarious that they had a great opportunity for Adrien to develop - I know I've said it before but I would have loved to see him, instead of sitting around and sulking, to go seek out Su Han for training and try to become someone ladybug can't replace. He could have gained some new skills, shown those toxic people-pleasing tendencies and fear of abandonment, while ultimately learning that it's not his skills that make him irreplaceable as LB's partner. Show some awareness that LB is struggling or if that doesn't feel right, discover through this process that LB is struggling and she's not as together as it looks and she needs some emotional AND heroic support. Joint guardianship responsibilities! Using the mirakungfu to protect her from akumas so she can breathe once in a while! Support other than "I know you can do this because you're Ladybug and Ladybug is perfect" when the entire problem is that if she is not perfect the city falls.

Instead, who do they send for that? Luka. 🤣🤣🤣 insane choice imo. Absolutely wild decision making. Not that Luka would do this but that Adrien wouldn't. But Jagged would! 🤪

Shows that have a lot of holes or are less than perfect are the most fun for fanfic imo, but compelling characters make the best story fodder, and it's frustrating that ML has so many characters without being able to make them consistently interesting in terms of their relationships with other characters.

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So, Lukanette.

What is your favorite aspect of them to write?

What is your favorite aspect of them to read?

Ooh I feel like you could ask me this question every day for a week at least and get a different answer every week.

I think my favorite Lukanette moment is the confession scene, not because of the confession itself or how it happened but because *omg they went there.* no seasons of mystery or wondering, no retconning, no memory erasing! Someone felt a thing and said it out loud! I immediately realized that was so much more intriguing to me than the does he-doesn't me that we've seen a thousand times already. I like to try and recapture that feeling in my writing - that moment where you think you know where the story is going because that's the usual way it happens, and then instead someone does the direct and adult thing, and you can actually move beyond the boring standard narrative.

The more I thought about it, as well, the more I dwelled on the fact that the standard narrative is super dependent on finding out exactly how someone feels about you before you take the risk of admitting to them that you like them, and that just made Luka's confession so much more meaningful. Not only was he direct and up front about his feelings, he did it not only without finding out how Marinette felt about him first, but he did it knowing that she liked Adrien. I just love the guts that took and how simply he went about it. I just really loved that.

There's a lot of other things I love - the fact that Luka really sees Marinette as someone special from the very beginning, as opposed to the way everyone overlooks her or discounts her. Many many other things.

As for reading, I just love seeing other people's perspectives and where they get inspiration, and all the different ways we can write the same character that are still IN character, though they're different. I still want to see all the things I enjoy writing, but I love reading something from someone else and going "omg, he/she totally would do that, I hadn't thought about that before."

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I hope I don't come across as too much of an unhinged fangirl, but you write kissing really, truly, incredibly well.

Somehow you can take a kiss and turn it into its own story, and it's magic to read.

In Hey Gorgeous Luka kisses Marinette and it's a lesson well learned and even better utilized. Crescendo, decrescendo is written across my memory.

Second Chance shifts from a protected heart barely daring to hope in hands that release and pull away before hope springs full and Marinette is pulled closer.

Killer Combo is trust. Red lipstick instead of black, painting a new story across each other's faces and lips. It's laughter and euphoria.

I just wanted you to know, your kisses are stories (so much more than lips and tongue and skin) and they are beautiful.

Thank you so much for this, it made my day so much better! 💜💜💜💜💜

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"I would really love to know what you are trying to prove or accomplish with these questions, since it seems like you don’t actually read the work of any of the authors you petition."

Just wondering how you or other authors would fix the show.

Well, that really depends on what you mean by "fix." I'm not sure how Luka and Adrien being friends would fix anything because they ARE friends in the show.

If you want a love square endgame, I think you have to go all the way back to Despair Bear, which is where the LS peaked IMO. Up until that point it seemed like Marinette and Adrien were inching closer to each other. I would've reversed the love square at that point, with Adrien becoming more interested in Marinette and Marinette being more torn between him and CN, preventing her from confessing while she tried to figure out her feelings.

With no hate to Kagami, it's her introduction and more importantly, Adrien's reaction to her, that really tanked any believability for the LS for me. When contemplating moving on from LB, he consistently chose Kagami without even a thought of Marinette as an option, and that was just completely it for me. It's not just that Adrien is interested in Ladybug, it's that he is totally *uninterested* in Marinette, and that's where all the "he's socially awkward"/"he doesn't understand his own feelings" completely fall apart for me. The show doesn't generally let us inside Adrien's head the way they do Marinette's, so if there was any internal conflict there, they completely failed to convey it. They could have had him think for some reason, possibly through Chloe or Lila's manipulation, that Marinette wasn't actually interested in him and so he pursued Kagami and Marinette then thinks she would have to give up on him, and go at the alternate love interests to keep the drama going, and there could have been some interesting ground to explore there. Imagine how Frozer would be with Adrien going, well, Marinette would have good advice and I know she's not interested in me so it can't hurt to ask her about Kagami instead of being blatantly oblivious.

I also have beef with the way Adrien handled the hero team becoming more prominent; given his background it is reasonable for him to be upset and think that he has to shine above the rest to get LB's attention, but instead of sulking around and not showing up in fights (which, up until this point, was an aspect of salt fics I thought was comedically far-fetched) I would have had him seek out Su Han for training, potentially giving him a mentor figure/someone to talk to about it his relationship with LB, AND give him something solid and specific to contribute to the battle and relieve the burden on LB. (Who did they end up having do this though? *Luka*. Who had every reason to legitimately consider himself out of the fight. Just saying.)

Yes, I'm aware that was a really long sentence. Wordy bitch don't care. 😂

This would also require Su Han to be less of a dick, but there you go. Fix those things, and the godawful speech about "I can't help disrespecting your feelings because my own are so strong," and I would be nicer to Adrien. Give him some narrative accountability instead of acting the spoiled brat.

Oh yeah and also fix the speech where the rich white male supermodel teen icon tells Nino that asking out girls is easy. I've never forgiven him for that. And have him apologize in Frozer for letting his feelings get in the way of teamwork and leaving LB in danger without backup.

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Are you still watching Miraculous? If not, what was the last episode you've seen?

I'm not actively watching. Something about the way their mouths work in the new animation was really weird for me. I'm slowly getting over it watching clips here and there and I might actually watch some of it eventually, but we'll see. Life is only getting more busy rather than less (I got a part-time job! I've been a SAHM for the last 10 years and it's definitely an adjustment, but also nice to realize the 10 years before that weren't a fever dream and I am actually a highly competent human being. Also I am SO glad not to still be in my previous profession; I still follow a few professional blogs and so many posts about how to incorporate AI have me convinced it is not a good place to be right now.)

🤔 I'm not 100% sure where I stopped. I know I didn't watch all of season 5. I think I got to Jubilation and then I kinda gave up. I keep meaning to watch just to know what's going on, but I just haven't had the desire and the time coincide. I have a general idea of what's happening, I've watched clips here and there.

My general conclusion has largely been that the writing team is committed to giving the fans what they ask for, in the worst possible way. Like the monkey's paw of fandom wishes. The stuff you want to see happens in such a way that you regret ever asking for it. 😂

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List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! get to know your mutuals and followers 💜

The LBSC disco. Love y'all. Even when I'm on a horrible dry spell and contribute nothing but memes and plunnies and an absolutely insane number of instagram reels you have probably already seen. 😂

Pilates class. It's expensive and I'm always sore afterwards but it's a couple of hours a week when I literally cannot think about anything except exactly what I am doing in the moment.

Brainstorming ideas/tossing plunnies. It's so much fun to just spitball ideas without any real pressure. Actually writing the story is work but just brainstorming is a lot of fun and can get really silly. Also a reason to love the disco.

Getting packages. Love getting things, even when they're things I've ordered myself and they're boring stuff like new chains for the toilet. I just enjoy getting stuff in the mail. 😂

A clean room makes me happy. Actually cleaning it sucks, and I hate it. But I do really enjoy the like, one day of walking into my clean room before it gets covered with clutter again, because I have many hobbies and am always in a hurry. 😂

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What would you think if an evilized villain (maybe a wishmaker-like villain or maybe even a villain that's unrelated to the butterfly miraculous) caused Chloe and Zoe to switch bodies somehow, and nobody fully understands what's going on, so Zoe (in Chloe's body) is taken by Audrey back to New York, despite Zoe desperately trying to explain things. But Chloe enters a fugue state (heavily due to trauma caused by the neglect of her parents) and genuinely thinks she's Zoe, and is even able to recall many of the things Zoe did due to being in Zoe's body. The class thinks “Zoe's” change in behavior is due to the psychological effects of method acting, since “Zoe” is playing Chloe in Astruc's new movie, but they gradually convince “Zoe” to let them help her relearn how to be “herself” again. Meanwhile, in New York, Zoe is trying to get back to Paris, but when she gets there, “Zoe” thinks she’s there to try to hurt Marinette.

Eventually, after listening to “Chloe”, Marinette starts to suspect that “Chloe” might be telling the truth, so she decides that she must test “Chloe” and “Zoe”. She fakes being in danger to see how they react. “Zoe” reacts slightly faster than “Chloe”, so Marinette comes to the conclusion that “Chloe” is lying and that “Chloe” has an evil and manipulative plan. Marinette thinks that “Chloe” must have picked up a few tricks from Lila, because she thinks no version of Chloe could possibly react faster than Zoe when it comes to protecting her. So Audrey takes “Zoe” back to New York again to “correct” her after “Zoe” fails to convince anyone of the truth.

12 years later, “Zoe” gets seriously injured after fighting a villain when Ladybug isn’t around, which causes “Zoe” to not have long to live. Then Ladybug accidentally stumbles upon the truth about “Zoe” while trying to help “Zoe” using magical powers. Ladybug decides that the moral thing to do is to switch Chloe and Zoe back to their original bodies. Once Zoe gets her body back, she blames Chloe for her impending death and for leaving her with 12 years of torment, while Chloe got off scot free. When Lila gets defeated, Zoe steals the Butterfly Miraculous to get her hands on Ladybug and Catnoir’s miraculouses, hoping to “make things right”. Zoe gets defeated by the heroes (including Chloe) and Ladybug manages to cure Zoe’s injuries. 

I think it sounds like you're really interested and have a pretty fleshed out idea, and you should try writing it! If you're trying to get someone else interested in writing it, you'll be better off looking for someone who's actually interested in Chloe or Zoe. I'm not, so all I really think is "sure, you could do that."

Good luck!

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Hello!

I love your lukanette works (I literally scrolled thru the tag and then your account😆💜💜💜💜💜)!

Besides sending love, I wanted to ask if you were a part of a Lukanette server, and if that server is accepting newbies. (I thought I recalled something about it in your fics but I read at least 500k words of lukanette in the past 2-3 days so specifics evade me🙈).

Thank you for sharing your fics, and have a good day/night!

I know you found it but in case anyone else is looking, here is the link to the @lovebugs-and-snakecharmers server!

Thank you for your kind words, I'm glad you enjoyed my work!