Vipertex

how would you feel if this was the actual direction the show took with lila? i have doubts about them making her older than she appears to be (are they allowed to do that? i'm starting to think they could) but your fic is literally like. the best backstory for her i could ever ask for. so! YEAH!

Thank YOU, this made my whole week 🥹 The Act was a very self-indulgent project for me so hearing it landed as the Lila backstory for someone means everything.

As for the show actually going this route; realistically, no, and honestly it shouldn't. The fun of writing a fanfic about Lila as an adult con artist is that it lets you go full noir/thriller with her with no age-appropriate softening. But that's precisely why it wouldn't work in canon. An adult Lila still nursing a "crush" on a 14-15 year old Adrien is not only kinda dark for a kid’s show, but it’s also a completely different (and way more disturbing) character dynamic than “insecure liar who wants attention.” The show needs Lila's awfulness to stay legible to an actual child audience, which means she has to stay a peer, age-wise, no matter how monstrous her methods get.

That said, I don't think they'd ever reveal her as canonically older than she looks either. It's not really the kind of twist the show's format supports; it'd retroactively reframe every scene she's had with the other kids. So I think The Act gets to have its cake and eat it too specifically because it's a fanfic. I got to make her a fascinating culpable adult predator-adjacent figure and then have Harlow call her out for exactly that, without the show ever having to reckon with putting that in front of kids.

"I know what you are wondering : What does she want? Where does she come from? Who is she? Truth to be told, not sure she even knows herself". 👀👀👀

So either orphaned or kidnapped and kept in the dark at a very young age. Amnesia would be another possibility.

Either way, she may not know her own origins.