So… What’s Next?

tumblr is being a little punk but I think I can finally post this

(The lengths I go to for you, Marketable Clay Figure Carapace)

(Edit: Added more purple.)

The original design had a pretty strong base, I just needed to add a bit more of Alya’s signature “practical journalist vibe”. (Like the renaming of her blog) she won’t be called Lady Wi-Fi, as she isn’t specifically motivated by just Ladybug. The new name we have is Network, but if you have any other suggestions, I’m all ears!

Not quite Miraculous: The Series art (as Marinette and Adrien aren’t ever going to wield the mouse and snake respectively in MTS), but I decided to try drawing Multimouse and Aspik in the MTS-ish artstyle. (I’ll be real, giving Marinette the red mouse eyes was a large part of my motivation for making these two. That, and Aspik’s snake cloak.)

Also idk if I should have included this on the main post or not, but the main reason why Alya doesn’t approve of Ladybug at first is (along with her not liking secret identities) she feels that Ladybug’s Miracle Cure/Miraculous Ladybugs are causing the city to become more complacent, expecting everything to get fixed rather than trying to protect themselves. Just like Chat Noir’s Wildcats lend credence to Alya’s concerns over his destructive potential, Marinette eventually having to give up the Miracle Cure kinda prove Alya’s point, even if she’s still wrong about wanting to expose them. (MTS has a lot of conflicts where both sides have a point/there isn’t a clear “bad guy” in the argument.)

Alright, breaking out of my procrastination bubble to finally do:

Alya MTS!

As per usual, the four categories:

1. General Info

2. Personality

3. Key Relationships

4. Character Growth

1. General Info

I kinda feel like I should preface this with a massive “hear me out”, because her character goes in a VERY different direction from most Alyas.

Not only does she only become Marinette’s best friend at the end of season 2 (as both characters have a lot they need to do first), but “Alya the fangirl” isn’t really a part of her MTS character. She still runs a blog, but it probably won’t be titled “The Ladyblog” (which is sad, because that name is ICONIC), because she focuses on the two heroes pretty equally, and doesn’t want to seem “unprofessional”.

Basically, we took the “Alya is sometimes presented as the practical voice of reason character” and “Alya initially wants to find Ladybug’s identity”, along with the MTS LB and CN getting into some mishaps early in their career, and made her much more skeptical and critical of the heroes. She doesn’t think the safety of the city should be placed in the hands of two strange teenagers (she especially doesn’t trust Chat Noir, since his power is pretty dangerous and he’s pretty reckless with it at first) and wants to find out all of their secrets. Is she in the right? Not completely, but she isn’t 100% wrong to have criticisms of the heroes either.

She fills a pretty interesting role in the earlier portion of the show, where she is technically an (initial) antagonist to the heroes, but isn’t a bad person (in fact, she’s fairly altruistic), as a contrast to Chloe (Marinette’s initial civilian antagonist) and Felix (Adrien’s initial civilian antagonist) who are more morally grey/not concerned with doing “the right thing”.

This is also a bit more of a minor note, but while Alya’s family still moved to France from Martinique, they did so much earlier than they did in the original, (likely when Alya was around ten), so she has lived in France for a few years now.

2. Personality

As I mentioned, this iteration of Alya is a bit more grounded, and tries to be logical and mature. She cares a lot about morality, ethics, and safety, with helping people being her top priority. Her fixation on the truth extends to this, as she believes that knowledge is the only way people can take care of themselves. She’s still very passionate, but tries to direct her energy into trying to be a “legitimate journalist” and often forgets to just let herself be a kid.

Her viewpoints do lack a bit of nuance at first, as she doesn’t realize how important secrets can be, and can get a bit too caught up in her own judgments (in hindsight, MTS Marinette is a lot more understanding than her canon counterpart due to her new backstory, while MTS Alya is kind of the reverse). It’s worth noting that a lot of Alya’s more intense traits are amplified by her fear. Having your city bombarded with demon butterfly possessed supervillains with your only source of protection being mysterious animal-themed teenagers with overwhelming power isn’t very good for your mental health.

Because of these fixations, she often struggles with the more “normal teenager stuff” like friendships and romance. Her blunt nature also makes it difficult to socialize, but her earnest, loyal, honest, and slightly awkward demeanor make her quite endearing once you get to know her (this might not be completely essential to one’s understanding of her character, but MTS Alya likely falls somewhere on the autistic spectrum).

3. Key Relationships

Marinette: These two have occasionally crossed paths in their more recent years (Nora would frequently take Alya with her to the same gym Kim and Marinette go to together), but never really noticed each other until now. Alya mostly sees Marinette as the kind but nervous girl who sits next to her, and is especially worried about her safety after Alya realizes that her “new best friend” Lila is bad news. Marinette is still pretty nervous about Alya finding out she’s Ladybug (although she’s stopped trying to find out the heroes’ identities at this point). After the two (unknowingly on Alya’s part) take down Lila and stop her villainy, the two become proper friends. Marinette helps Alya get more accustomed to the more casual aspects of being a teenager, and Alya helps Marinette begin to recover from her friendship issues. They help each other let their guard a bit more, despite both being such high strung individuals.

Nino: Unlike the original show, Alya and Nino never have a romantic relationship (no hate on DJ-WiFi, the MTS iterations of their characters just aren’t compatible romantically; believe me, we tried!) but do form a strong bond nonetheless. They do get to a rocky start (as Nino mistakens Rena Rouge for Volpina and tries to take her down as Carapace), but after better understanding each other, they team up and build a friendship. Nino makes Alya realize that she doesn’t have to be responsible for everything 24/7, while Alya shows him the importance of putting more effort into things (besides his brother and heroing). Their differing personalities balance each other really well, and while they aren’t hero partners (Nino’s a lone turtle), they work really well as a team.

Chloe: They start off with a small rivalry (which I alluded to in my Chloe post), but quickly form a common enemy. That, alongside Chloe’s arc about caring for others as an actual hero, and Alya’s arc about being more patient with others, and they have a lot to offer each other. For these reasons (and then being the only two heroes with public identities), they are a superhero duo much like Ladybug and Chat Noir. Though Alya gradually accepts Chloe’s dramatics, she doesn’t tolerate her slacking off or making things about herself during an active threat to the city (has the energy of “she’ll fix herself if she knows what’s good for her”). That being said, she does come to enjoy Chloe’s peppy nature and (surprising) ability to be supportive. (However, Chloe’s attempts to get Alya to take “spa days” with her and “treat herself” are met with a mixed reception!)

Lila: Fox versus Fox, Lila and Alya are full-on archenemies. It starts out with Alya simply getting slightly off-putting vibes from Lila, but when she discovers she’s Volpina (after managing to obtain her miraculous that got lost in a fight), she does everything in her power to get her exposed. Likewise, Lila is doing everything she can to get her miraculous back and ruin Alya’s life while she’s at it. Lila coming off as a sweet girl with a lot of friends while Alya’s initial hostility to the heroes and accidentally jarring personality do stack the odds in Lila’s favor, often leading to severe consequences, but Alya is eventually able to team up with the other heroes to take her down. Though Lila is taken into custody, she manages to escape with a dangerous vendetta against Alya…

Other key relationships include her family (particularly Nora and her mom), the heroes (duh), and Zoe.

4. Character Growth

Her main arc is pretty apparent by now. She generally needs to learn to not jump to extreme conclusions when she doesn’t have all the information, as well as be more accepting that people have their reasons for not sharing everything. The two main sequences that help her learn this are her Alakumatization and the Lila/Volpina experience.

Alya gets akumatized when an akuma she captured (attempting to study it to find more about the source of the problem) escapes and corrupts her. She also tries to end the akumatization when Hawk Moth orders her to potentially endanger civilians, but his control over the miraculous (and her) are too strong. After being deakumatized, Alya is a bit more careful in her investigations, and a lot more willing to hear the heroes out (while Alya doesn’t remember being an akuma, just the knowledge that she was corrupted, and the video footage of her as a villain is enough to rattle her).

When dealing with Lila, Alya tries to take the direct approach, both in trying to publically confront Lila for her crimes and by telling the city that she’s the hero Rena Rouge. This inevitably backfires when Lila manages to use her manipulation to avoid being found out and getting Alya in trouble instead. Lila also teams up with Hawk Moth to target Alya’s family, even managing to get Alya akumatized into Vixen Vermillion at her lowest point. She does overcome this, and becomes a lot more tactical with her knowledge in the future. (Alya’s development into tolerating secrets is completed when she finds out that Nino is Carapace, but keeps his secret). She’ll also rename her blog to “The Miracle Blog” after forming a proper respect and camaraderie for the other Miraculous heroes, and shifts from trying to expose or criticize Ladybug and Chat Noir to simply posting any relevant information needed to keep the public safe (which she was doing in the first place but now it’s more of a focus).

Alya also gets the smaller character progression of relaxing a little more, both because she feels safer with her fellow heroes and due to her new friendships helping her appreciate the smaller things in life.

Conclusion:

And that’s a wrap! I know that she might seem a bit odd for an Alya, and her slightly more difficult tendencies may make it seem like we don’t like her very much, but not only was the shift away from her original character intentional (we realize how different we made her), it was not meant to salt on her in any way. On the contrary, we wanted to give her more of a story as her own character, not basing her entire life to revolve around someone else (heck, sometimes she feels like the deuteragonist to Ladybug and Chat Noir’s co-protagonist statuses!). This is particularly what I mean when I said that us rebooting the characters often drastically changed up their original personalities and roles (like many reboots do). Not to hate on what they were, but to tell a different story.

After this I’ll probably explain the new Tikki and Plagg personalities, roles, and development. Then maybe explain the MTS Love Square after that. Thanks for staying patient everyone!

(One more thing: I’m also releasing Alya’s akuma design shortly after this post, so if you enjoy seeing character designs, I’d recommend checking it out!)

Ik I should be working on the next character notes (it’s between Alya or Chloe, but I’ll probably pick Chloe because I want to release the notes for Alya alongside the akuma design I’m working on for her) but:

New clay figure?!?!?!

sketches be upon ye

This is going to be an… interesting post, since this character technically doesn’t exist in MTS, but I designed him based on headcanons about what he’d be like if he did. It’s everyone’s favorite problematic baby bird boi, Mr. Felix (insert middle names here) Graham de Vanilly *redacted*!

(And no, I don’t consider him to be the same person as Felix Agreste or any other sort of Felix based on the PV. I know that he’s supposed to be the same, but they are just so different to me, you gotta understand!)

Headcanon(s) time: In MTS, any sentis created by the broken peacock miraculous would turn out slightly different from what the user intended. Fortunately, I imagine Felix GDV was created when the miraculous wasn’t broken enough to impact how he’d turn out mentally, but he was created looking how he looks above in his natural form and would have to put in a great deal of effort to look more human. (Similarly, using the peacock miraculous wouldn’t have been enough to slowly kill someone, just make them really sick for a few weeks to months, so when the terrible Mr. Fathoms died, it was not illness related and he was most likely very justifiably murdered by our queen Amelie.)

I’ve also got a few headcanons on what his dynamics would be like with the characters of MTS (including the other Felix who would be his cousin just like Adrien, but those two wouldn’t be sentisapiens for story reasons), but this post is probably already long enough as is. Who knows, maybe I’ll make more art of this silly little guy in the future!

Outlined and colored! Felix having blatant favoritism, Adrien (with his slightly messy hair <3) defending his twin, and Félix leaving all of fricks he was supposed to give at home.

To make up for my inability to answer most of the miracle box questions I’ve been getting (which is mainly because I still haven’t figured out all of the lore yet, my bad guys!) I’m posting a few silly sketches of the kwami I have drawn:

It’s mostly Plagg and Tikki with a single, mentally disturbed Barkk (I think I was trying to draw her at a certain angle and then just stopped because it looked funnier that way.) Also a few attempts at drawing Flicc, the firefly kwami! (Also the bracelet that Zoe is wearing is not a miraculous, but some random accessory.)

Not the villains being closer to the magical girl aesthetic than the heroes… 💀