So, my Miraculous Ulysses AU.
I was genuinely surprised how many people responded to this (which is like… ten, but still). Thank you everyone, @furryhamlet in particular. I don’t know how serious I am about this, but does anybody really?
First, let us take a moment to establish the main similarities between Ulysses, a modernist masterpiece by James Joyce, and Miraculous Ladybug, a (debatably metamodern?) kids show:
puns;
the revolutionary new trope of main hero having a dead mother and the resulting father issues (never done before or after);
farts and bathroom humour (more prevalent in Ulysses, of course).
I think everything is quite clear.
And now, without further ado, Miraculous Ulysses AU:
It’s still Dublin, it’s still 1904, but now there’s also magic. And superheroes.
Stephen Dedalus has a black cat miraculous; Buck Mulligan has a bee miraculous; Simon Dedalus has a butterfly miraculous (not because I think it suits him, but because someone has to); Leopold Bloom is the guardian, but he doesn't do a very good job; Molly is often Ladybug, but it's not like she cares a lot.
All of them, of course, have different names for their alternate personas, but I'm not clever enough with names and not skilled enough with English language. Let's just say: Simon doesn't bother; Bloom comes up with a name for every person he gives a miraculous to, but none of them use those; Stephen has a million names, all very deep and clever, but the only one that stuck is whatever Mulligan mockingly called him that one time; and I don't know what's Bee!Mulligan name is, but it's inappropriate for general audiences.
I’ll have some placeholder names to make it easier for myself. Stephen may remain Chat Noir (he would probably name himself after a cabaret, at least to honour his teenage rebellion against church); Simon Dedalus can be Moth Daddy; Buck is… idk, Hornet? Hornet will do.
May Dedalus, Stephen’s mother, died not from cancer but from the misuse of the damaged peacock miraculous. After her death, Simon started akumatizing people into villains. He’s aware of the wish, but at this point it’s mostly about revenge to Chat Noir.
(Chat Noir might be the one who damaged the peacock miraculous in the first place, but it never said outright.)
He, of course, doesn't know anything about his son being Chat. Stephen, however, knows everything about his parents, but has no idea what to do with this information. It's a source of his resentment, but he can't bring himself to properly sort out his feelings.
Mulligan and Stephen know nothing about each other’s alternate identities. Stephen is friends with Mulligan mostly because his father doesn't want it. He actually resents Mulligan a lot, but is sympathetic towards Hornet because sees him as someone similar to him, someone who could actually understand his world-view and take it seriously. Chat spends some efforts to turn Hornet to his side but to no avail. Mulligan, on the other hand, thinks Chat Noir is a pretentious prick, but has a lot of genuine admiration for Stephen, even though he hides it under the layers of sarcasm and cynicism, as he doesn't want to be seen as weak. And that is your love square, everybody.
Hornet starts out as an independent party, but at some point begins working for Moth. Naturally, Simon finds out his identity and that’s the main reason he doesn’t want to see him anywhere near his son.
It’s Bloom who deals with the most akuma emergencies. He often recruits different dubliners to his side, but almost none of them stick to the job. Chat helps time to time, even though this help is often incidental, and he’s a lot more interested in Hornet shenanigans. Bloom is aware of Chat, but they never have time to properly talk to each other. Bloom wants to meet him; Bloom is searching for him.
The guardian duties tire him a lot. Bloom inherited the miracle box from his father with three miraculous already missing. Later he lost the fourth one, the bee miraculous, which he considers his greatest mistake. His relationship with Molly is not that great either. She used to regularly take a role of Ladybug, but after her singing career took off, she started losing interest. Nowadays Bloom often gives the ladybug miraculous to other women. Gerty is one of them.
Boylan is there somewhere. There’s probably an episode where he gets akumatized and Bloom and Molly are the ones to deal with it (very awkward for all parties).
Just so you know, the masturbation scene is still there.
There are a lot of Odyssey themed akumas. For instance, local back-seat political expert The Citizen is turned into Cyclops.
There was one person Stephen tried to tell about Chat Noir. A few years ago, before his run off to Paris, he tried talking to Cranly about the ring. He immediately got excited about the possibilities, insisted he and Stephen could work together as a superhero team. Stephen tried to explain himself, but ultimately saw that Cranly wouldn't ever understand. He brushed the whole thing off as a joke and never returned to it. At some point, Stephen thinks he should reveal himself to Mulligan, but then remembers Cranly and decides against it.
Haines’s dream about panther hunting is still there and now it cuts even deeper.
There’s a Chat Blanc type episode. It’s called Pangur Bán and it’s about the horrifying alternate reality of Stephen staying in Ireland (it’s not that bad, actually, but Stephen has a meltdown).
Ultimately, Stephen finds out Hornet is Mulligan. That's what seals his betrayal to Stephen, so there is nothing he could do but go to the brothel and get drunk. What led him to this discovery is that during their last encounter Hornet reused one of Stephen's aphorisms only Mulligan could know at that point. (He also grossly misquoted it and twisted the meaning.)
It’s in the brothel that Bloom recognizes Stephen (who is severely drunk at this point) as a son of his friend and saves him from the trouble he’s about to lead himself into. That’s when he notices the ring and realizes that Stephen is Chat Noir.
Bloom is happy beyond belief. He’s finally met someone he could share his guardian duties with. He buys Stephen some food and lets him sober up a bit, afterwards he invites him to his home and proposes a plan. Stephen could live in Bloom’s house with a better, more stable job. Bloom could share all his guardian knowledge with him, so he could better control his powers. They could work together as a team to finally bring Moth and Hornet to justice and end all this mess. Finally, Stephen could become the next guardian and have a miracle box all to himself. He responds to this with silence. Bloom apologizes and says he understands it’s a lot to take in, so he tells Stephen to think on it until morning.
Bloom falls asleep near his wife, full of hope for the future.
Before dawn, Stephen leaves Bloom’s house with his ring and his wallet. He plans to spend his last money on a ticket to France.
Before we end, a few things about an ideal media format for this AU:
It’s an animated tv series, at least 3 seasons long.
The style and quality of animation varies drastically from episode to episode, sometimes suddenly changing in the middle of one. There are at least 9 studious working on this, the communication between them isn’t great.
It all takes place in one day, 16 June 1904, but the viewers can’t tell that for sure until the last episode. This revelation might frustrate them at first, but once they’ll look back, they realize it kind of makes sense, as there is hardly any change of weather or time of day during the vast majority of episodes.
Unfortunately, it will be very hard to look back at, as all the episodes are aired out of order.
The series is broadcasted in many countries, each of which has its own order of episodes. And none of them has a full translation. Actually, nobody can have a full translation, until the thing becomes public domain. Until then, there are only automatically generated and machine translated subtitles. And fansubs, I guess.
Not to mention it gets banned really quickly in a lot of places.
The fans lose their mind, trying to establish continuity. There are multiple theories and theme tables to make sense of it all. The meaning also can change drastically, depending on the order you watch it in, so there are full-blown fandom continuity wars. People go mad. People die. It feels like a fever dream.
But once it all put together?
Absolute masterpiece.
Thank you for reading. Sorry for any mistakes or awkward English.
Was this necessary? No. Will I stand by it? Well, yes I said yes I will Yes
