#btal

Saw a picture of a cat that has so much gremlin energy and then it snowballed into this meme. These two are hilarious. I missed drawing them in color... Though seeing them side by side, I'm thinking of making Shizuke's hair as Ladybug more black. It makes for matching visuals with Blair as Chat Noire, what with the hair and the suits' colors getting somewhat inverted.

"Why don't you love me?!"

... Is what she probably meant between the barbed words and the arrows she shot.

Childhood:

Pre-Origins (a year before main story):

Season 1/BTAL:

Season 2/N2CATS:

"Hey, Plagg. Just out of curiosity but... You remember how she looked, right?"

"... Do I resemble her?"

What does she mean by DESTROY???

English is truly Shizuke's second language... Either that, or he knows his girlfriend is a gremlin and probably doesn't mean it in an R18 kind of way. What else could she mean by "destroy him"? By process of elimination, she means it literally, right?

Blake is the only one who truly understood. How can he not? The sounds of gaming just a wall away kept him up til 3am.

Based on this:

Trying to get back into art on my last hours of freedom. Decided maybe I should just stick with some low commitment pieces for now like portraits of OCs that I haven't drawn in a while.

Introducing, Keagan's older sister, Octavia Eleanor Aurelio-Ashworth. She first officially shows up in Episode 4: Slumber, but before that, she's been mentioned a couple of times as a fencing champion. She is definitely the golden child between herself, Keagan and Leo, having both talent and drive to be the best... Is that all there is to her?

In terms of relationship dynamic with her younger brother Keagan, they do care about each other but there's this awkward distance between them - it's a contrast between Fiona who's always squabbling with her older brother Gav but they're somehow fairly close and know each other fairly well. Part of which may be due to her boyfriend... To the point Keagan got akumatized over it... it's... it's a stupid reason and that's what made Scorch all the more tragic for Keagan... but this awkwardness is also due to Octavia catching most of the pressure as the mayor's first born, and their father being a highly accomplished guy who everyone is needling for a weakness. She opted to excel and shine bright as having her be the focus of the public would mean there's less pressure that would trickle down on Keagan. It didn't work, but Keagan could appreciate the effort (probably figured that out from reading her diary lol Keagan is definitely nosy enough to do that).

She's a lot like her father in that aspect where they're both academically and athletically smart but when it comes to expressing their love for their younger siblings, they're both drawing blanks. It's kinda lucky for her that Keagan isn't the envious sort like Leo that he's open to reconnecting with her to try to understand her better instead of resenting her for being the golden child. Time will tell if she and Keagan can ever fix that bridge but there's hope as neither of them actually want to burn that it down.

Role-wise, she's kind of like Nora to Keagan's Alya if that makes sense. Octavia is primarily reputed as an athlete though her take on it is more feminine. Fiona and Shizuke both have a lot of respect and admire her, but they both would get shy about talking to her about personal stuff and keep a polite distance - which is, again, in contrast to how they're like with Fiona's older brother who they're close enough to mess with his stuff and annoy.

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.

Nothing too major so I don't have to bother with the previous arts I've already made. Just making his hair more blue and his skin tone lose that warm undertone for a more pinkish white that Marinette has, maybe even give him blue eyes but that's gonna take some back tracking.