#translesbo

nell's main recurring villain is my friend shayan's oc MOSQUITO MAN who is a bum loser with no powers named tyler goodman. he got a bit squished by the bug once when ted was fighting some villain or another and was in a coma for a while (6 months? idr) and vowed revenge but by the time he was out of hospital and ready to strike back he found out that the blue beetle was already dead... so he just bothers nell instead. he's got some annoying tricks up his sleeve such as his innovative Itch Spray but he's not really very threatening... mostly just a bit pathetic

her call to action came about when she was interning at kord industries and discovered (completely accidentally) that her weirdo boss used to be a superhero. out of the kindness of her heart she brought this information to him, mostly in the interests of saying Hey dude i dont actually gaf but you should maybe work on your opsec if i could figure this out. and after some misunderstandings where ted thought she was threatening him, she ended up being one of the few civilians who were in on his secret identity. ted was retired at the time but he dipped back in and out of the game over the following years despite the advice of friends like nell & barbara... ted saw a bit of himself in nell and offered to teach her the ropes, which she accepted on the condition that she emphatically did not want to be the next blue beetle. she's very independent that way LOL but really there wasn't a specific Event that precipitated her becoming ladybug, more just that she's got a drive to do big things and make the world better & she tends to think that she knows how to do that. having ted as a mentor was a good foot in the door though

it's kind of hard to be an active superhero and not be aware of the more magical stuff going on in the world but it's not really the kind of stuff he deals with in his day-to-day... he isn't like hardline atheist magic-denial or anything but it does stress him out to not understand the parameters of a situation & being out of his depth and having to ask for help is something he finds deeply embarrassing... so he doesn't engage with it much on principle. he also doesn't like space cuz the feeling of zero gravity makes him feel nauseous