#sl:sabrina

[zoe-oneesama]

They might let you sit with them...but probably not.

Scarlet Lady AU Style Princess

Reference:

Eniola Abioro and Yuka Mannami by Daniel Clavero for Elle US January 2020

Models Eniola Abioro and Yuka Mannami don the best designer looks of Spring/Summer 2020 from Dries Van Noten, Burberry, Hermès, Marc Jacobs,

[zoe-oneesama]

The Heroes of Scarlet Lady Season 5 +One Purple Tigress

Ko-fi | Patreon

[zoe-oneesama]

If you don't mind, how about a compilation of your fav pics of Sabrina? I really love the way you draw her, you art really gave her that dorky and nerdy style, and the way you incorporated her into your story is genius!

I want to include more of her snarky face

Bonus Vanisher

[zoe-oneesama]

I'd rather you dont include Delmar actually. I dont like how they handled him and Sabrina. Basically, Sabrina only got importance when she got a love interest, she only got development when she found "her man". Which is obviously uh, no. Since you already plan to be developing Sabrina yourself (right?) Delmar is unneeded. Plus his design is just "filler character" anyways

You do have a good point. Canonically it does push the idea that you can’t really change or rescue yourself until you find L O V E. It’s hard to get too hype for him when we’ll never know what they were going to do with him or Sabrina in the end since it’s a dropped plot line.

However, Sabrina will be changing herself without Delmar or any love interest needed, so I’m not opposed to her meeting him further down the line once her arc is complete. The main issue for me is doing it organically since I have NO plans on going to New York, thus the idea to be an after credit scene.

[zoe-oneesama]

Do you have any advice on planning out and writing fulfilling character arcs?

I'm not that new to writing (but I seem to fall flat when writing character arcs), but I'm working on improving stuff like this so I'm looking for some good advice

I guess the advice I can give is start simple and then branch out? Start with the character you want to focus on and decided what their starting position is and where you want their ending position to be in - you know, what you want their arc to be in the most basic terms. Then you can start adding details, like “What’s going to happen to my character to make them change? How many things are going to need to happen to get from start to finish?”

If you take your character’s personality, drives, and goals into mind, they can lead you into what feels the most natural to get them from Point A to Point B. 

My process for Scarlet Lady is a little different than starting from scratch because I have canon episode to go off of so it’s a little easier to plan ahead but like, what I mean is...

Well, this gets a little into spoiler territory but let’s look at Sabrina’s arc as an example since we’re most of the way through it. Mild Spoilers Below:

I knew from the get go that with Chloe being Worse Than Canon, I needed to save Sabrina, but I wanted it to be a personal growth decision. So I mapped out Sabrina’s arc as Chloe’s BFF -> Becomes Independent of Chloe.

From there I could flesh out the details. What would make Sabrina start to doubt Chloe? What would make her feel safe enough to leave her? What would be the final straw to change Sabrina’s opinion from doubt to hate and send her over the edge? With these in mind I could map a course.

Of course I have the episodes to go off of and Rogercop seemed like an obvious starting point for beginning Sabrina’s descent, but I have to remember canonically it didn’t bother Sabrina that much so I have to include Chloe hurting Sabrina in smaller ways before that to make it really hit Sabrina hard. I also knew from Evillustrator that Sabrina would never fully leave Chloe if she didn’t think she’d have a safety net to catch her (in the form of someone new to latch onto) so I needed to plant scenes before the Breaking Off point that showed Sabrina that other people would be there for her. 

Then to make it more of an arc instead of a straight line I looked at episodes I could put between Rogercop (The Episode that begins the arc) and Vanisher ( The Episode that ends the arc) to intensify Sabrina’s feelings. So I put Darkblade right after Rogercop to reinforce Sabrina’s negative feelings and then Reflekta to have Sabrina start standing up for her herself. All so the moment when she breaks things off with Chloe doesn’t feel like it came out of nowhere. 

[zoe-oneesama]

I only have one question about Scarlet AU!Sabrina... will she and Marinette become friends?

While in my heart I want to jump up and say YES! I think there are better options for Sabrina. One thing I would personally like to see Marinette develop is a backbone when it comes to her friends. Alya herself says she just can’t say No to people, and while I admire that Marinette feels compelled to help everyone, Sabrina’s gonna need someone to tell her how it is.

That’s why, oddly enough, I think Alix would be a good fix for her. Or Ivan. Or both. Sabrina’s going to have a long road ahead of her. She’s been marked as Chloe’s friend, so people like Nathaniel are not going to welcome her with open arms. They’re going to be suspicious and doubtful that she’s making a change and not just playing a long con. 

In addition, she has a lot of behaviors to unlearn. When she was claiming Marinette as her best friend, the first thing she wants to do is to tell the teacher on Chloe and do Marinette’s homework.

Telling on the teacher is justified. If someone doesn’t do the work in a group project, they shouldn’t get credit. That part by itself and isolated makes sense. But it is indicative of a bigger problem. Sabrina’s still running on mean girl logic. The best way to ingratiate herself to her new friend is to attack her new friend’s enemy. That’s all she’s known with Chloe.

And doing Marinette’s homework. Along with mean girl logic, she’s running on sidekick/assistant/slave logic. That the only way to be accepted is to do favors for people. 

What I’m getting at is that Sabrina needs someone who’s a strong enough personality to tell her when she goes too far but also be chill enough not to judge her. She needs someone who’s gonna put their foot down and say You don’t NEED to do things for me, I’m not gonna kick you to the curb! 

Alix doesn’t like Chloe, so she and Sabrina could at least get some of their frustration out by trash talking her, but Alix has a very laid back “can’t be assed” attitude to things she’s not interested in, so if Sabrina gets out of hand and reverts to bullying tactics with Chloe, Alix could shut it down. I also think Alix wouldn’t be appreciative or even happy with Sabrina trying to do her work for her, so she’d shut that down too.

That’s just my personal opinion, maybe once she’s been reconditioned and can make more healthy relationships, she and Marinette can be friends. But Marinette might be a little on edge to start with and Sabrina might just be remembering all the awful things she’s done to Marinette thanks to Chloe’s influence, so it might be uncomfortable on both ends for a while. Sometimes the most respectable thing you can do is just go your own way.

[zoe-oneesama]

Hmm... maybe Sabrina could become friends with Alix? I know that they were originally going to be in a trio with Chloe to reference Totally Spies, so it’s just a thought. Alix could be a good pair with Sabrina after she’s separated from Chloe completely, given that Alix is tough, stubborn, reckless, and self-confident while still being kind and grateful as well as supportive and affectionate towards her friends. It could be a good segue into Sabrina becoming friends with everyone else too.

Once Alix thinks you’re cool, you’re in.

That’s a good idea, since she’d probably gravitate towards girls for friendship first and Alix is the only one besides Alya who has a word to day against Chloe. (Alya sees so black and white she might take a lot of convincing to give Sabrina a chance). Starting out that could be what Sabrina needs, someone to tell it to her straight but also call her out if she starts dipping into old habits, whether that be mean habits like laughing at people’s plight, or subservant habits like trying to win people over by doing too many unwanted favors.

Alix has a LITTLE bit of a mean streak (like…a teasing streak) so it would help Sabrina not be COMPLETELY out of her element, but also teach her to rein it back and be more chill.

This could also lean towards Sabrina hanging with Kim and Max and bonding with the other organized nerd about how ridiculous their competitive friends are.

[zoe-oneesama]

I feel something of a headcannon for your SL Au. Alix and Sabrina have a gearhead and a nerd/jock relationship: With the pocketwatch she got on her birthday, Alix is a secret egghead and has an eye for detail. Sabrina, having to carry Chloé, large books on her back and push heavy objects (not to mention learning self defence from her father and helping fixing his police equipment) makes her a good mechanic/ engineer for heavy machinery.

We all assume that Sabrina is very book smart for doing her homework twice, but we don’t actually have canonical evidence of this. And for most of Chloe’s schemes, she has to be talked through what to do. But like you said, she does canonically carry large book stacks (at least I think she does? I’m having some vague memory of that, I hope I’m not confusing fannon with cannon) so you’re probably not far off!

It’s also not a stretch that Alix would be into such things. The side/background characters aren’t fleshed out enough for my tastes, so we don’t know things like what subjects Alix excels at and what she likes, so it’s completely possible that she’s really good at magic and fiddles with everyday objects to figure out how they work. It does appear that when she’s into something (like sports) she puts her whole focus on it.

In such a case, I can see Alix encouraging Sabrina into sports (which Chloe might’ve conditioned her to think is gross and not worth her time) which could be another outlet for Sabrina’s pent up aggression. I can also see Sabrina helping Alix do research for the things she’s tinkering with.