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Miraculous Prompt: Resigning With Grace (And Spite)

You know what I want to see?

A common trend in a number (not all, but still quite a few) Miraculous salt fics is that the class forces a vote for a new Class Representative and Lila ends up winning. This is always used as a major blow for Marinette, full of angst and hurt feelings that Lila turned everyone against her and no one trusts her anymore. Sometimes this also eventually results in Lila ignoring her duties and/or putting them off on Alya, with the class giving barely any notice until it’s far too late. Usually long after Marinette has transferred to a different school or class and far long after the class should have started to notice the complete lack of any progress or even effort on Lila’s part in following through with any of her claims.

So much like the “torn notebook” plot, I’d love to see this turned on its head. Because reasonably speaking, the Class Rep position is actually harder than it looks and involves a lot of planning, coordination, requests to the school administration, and just a whole load of busywork to get anything done. And most people don’t realize that.

So let’s go with the general concept: The class have been taken in by Lila, following her like she’s hung the moon and believing her lies about Marinette being a “bully”. Adrien does nothing to help. And all of her now former friends completely neglect to notice all the ways Marinette has been going well out of her way to help them, both as a friend AND as the Class Rep.

Then eventually, under Lila’s manipulations, the class figures that since Lila is so awesome, she could do a much more amazing job as the Class Rep than Marinette. She could call in favors to set up awesome trips, bring in celebrities she knows for little Q and A sessions, and use her great skills to set up great events like the school dance! Surely anything she is involved in would be a hundred times better than what Marinette could come up with! Ignoring, of course, that Lila doesn’t HAVE to be the Class Rep to actually help in any of those things, but salt fics in general and even the show itself as a whole haven’t exactly shown the classmates to be smart unless they specifically are needed to be for one reason or another.

Thus the class demand from Ms. Bustier that they do a new vote for Class Rep. And of course the rest of the class insists they want it to be Lila.

Lila of course gasps and puts on an act of being surprised and completely unaware they were planning this, how wonderful they are to consider her for such an important role, and while making less than subtle jabs at Marinette in any number of ways (her “bullying”, her “inability to handle the role”, etc). All while sending secret smirks at Marinette when she thinks no one is looking.

Contrary to everyone’s expectations, Marinette doesn’t get upset. She doesn’t get mad or despondent. She’s not even hurt. Instead, she smiles.

Lila thinks she’s trying to hide the pain. The class is uncertain. Adrien is worried. All of them were thinking Marinette would respond quite poorly to being ousted from her position.

In actuality, Marinette just had a whole lot of weight taken off her shoulders.

It is either at this point or the next day that Marinette drops the bombshells. All of them. At once. In the form of a multitude of papers and documents on Lila’s desk.

These papers include a booklet of all of the Class Rep’s responsibilities, including regular daily/weekly meetings, tasks, duties, assignments, and of particular note: the process to go about arranging any of the number of things the class was wanting Lila to do. They also include forms. Forms upon forms. Some in triplicate. All empty and requiring Lila to fill them out.

Field trips? School dance? Any special events? They have to be requested and approved by the school board. And each one has to have a set budget and detailed plan prearranged before they will be approved. Meaning the Class Rep’s job is to contact the places, get the dates and times for reservations as well as the cost, and ensure safety and adequate personnel to man the events.

Not only that, but these events cost money. Money that the school has no reason or desire to shell out. So that requires student-planned and operated fundraisers. Which also require planning, locations and times for the fundraiser to be run, details of what they’re intending to do to earn money, forms to fill out, and a request to the school board for permission to do.

While Marinette had been the Class Rep, she’d already had all of this planned out to a T. The necessary fundraisers. School trips. The school dance. Even entertainment for the dance, which was a shame, since she had made arrangements for Jagged to come play the music for the night. The documents had been filled out, signed, and every line dotted. The only thing left to do had been to go to the school board and convince them…requiring a meeting with all parties that had to be scheduled and conveniently enough, had actually been arranged for that very week.

And no, Lila isn’t going to get by on Marinette’s plans.

Since Lila and the class insisted the liar already had better plans lined up than anything Marinette could come up with, Marinette happily steps aside and tells her to go for it.

In fact, she has such faith in Lila’s abilities, she’s going to step aside and let her shine. By taking all the arrangements she’d made for the class and cancelling every single one of them. So she starts calling people, all the different groups and agencies and businesses involved in these plans to apologize and retract her reservations. Maybe even going so far as to do so in front of the class as proof.

The high end hotels she had already made reservations with? Cancelled.

The popular museums and tourist sites she’d reached out to? Cancelled.

The transportation needed to get to those places? Cancelled. 

The caterer she had been working with to set up food for the dance? Cancelled. 

Then she calls up Jagged, on a video call in front of the entire class, apologizes for wasting his time, and cancels his appearance at the dance.

Oh, and the fundraisers? They were all going to be bake sales. With contributions from the Dupain-Cheng bakery to be used as products FOR FREE. So the kids running the fundraiser would have gotten a net profit automatically since it IS Marinette’s parents’ bakery. But since Marinette isn’t the Class Rep anymore, she doesn’t have to run it or work out any special arrangements with her parents to get the goodies to sell off (which she reminds the class would be at a loss to her parents, no less). And no, Tom and Sabine aren’t going to extend Lila the same deal.

And let’s not forget, there are the forms that Lila has to fill out to get permission for any of it. The multi-paged, mind-numbingly evil forms that no normal person can make sense of. And she has to fill out ALL of them.

All are things she had worked out ahead of time. All were needed to arrange any of the special events the class wanted. Now Lila is going to have to do it all herself, and no, Marinette isn’t going to help her with any of it.

Because, after all, they said themselves that whatever she’d planned won’t be nearly as great as what Lila can come up with.

So Marinette sets the pile on a paling Lila’s desk, cheerfully tells her that from here, it’s all Lila. And proceeds to thank Lila for taking the job off her hands since now that she’s no longer the Class Rep, she’ll have more time to finish her commissions and devote to her gaming.

“Thanks, Lila! I couldn’t have asked for a better replacement.”

Guys, I'm re-reading the outline for one of my books (my favourite book, that I've been writing for YEARS), and this is so funny to me.

'She smiles a strained smile, and goes to bed. The next morning she makes a plan where she decides to pretend to have a Talent, in plants. This is not a good plan.'

I LOVE IT, I LOVE MY PAST SELF

BOTH!!!!!!

Super off my normal topic, but we just got the release date for the Wisdom Saga in EPIC and I needed to pull this thought out of my brain. Turing EPIC into an animated movie would do the songs so much more justice in terms of their original composition and the lack of limitations to portray the characters in the most detailed way.

That👏 being 👏 said 👏

I would die to see a live Broadway performance of EPIC! Orchestral versions of all the songs? The live vocals? Being able to drop little easter eggs about all the memes the community has made along the way on stage? AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION?

YES PLEASE

Wouldn't you like...?😎🎵

I just found the funniest font ever

Like. What is this. Why is this. Who is the target audience of this?

Percy Jackson AU where Luke is reincarnated Odysseus, Thalia is reincarnated Penelope, and Percy is reincarnated Telemachus.

Meeting each other again is the happiest moment of Luke and Thalia's new lives.

Luke and Thalia both loving Annabeth as their daughter, but still mourning the son they think they'll never see again.

Luke, recognizing Percy as Telemachus instantly, is overjoyed and simultaneously devastated because Thalia will never know their son is alive (Luke weeping with joy when Kronos tells him there's a way to save Thalia).

Percy, who's had deja vu regarding the whole missing dad thing his entire life, does NOT recognize Luke as Odysseus and is having a rough time, Athena please help him (Annabeth makes for an acceptable substitute).

Luke, staring horrified at the trident hovering over Percy's head, because not only did he just frame his son for stealing Zeus' lightning bolt, but his son is now the son of his most hated enemy. Luke would happily splay Poseidon's guts out on the rocks again if it meant getting Thalia back. Poseidon who killed his men, who turned him into a monster, stole his son.

EVERYONE go read "in the family of things" by @deadchannelradio right now ♥️ two guys at the zoo what will they see. ID in alt text!

Marinette's House

During Miraculous Ladybug, Marinette is often put down for being a baker's girl and a poor girl amongst her millionaire peers but then I looked at her home and thought to myself, "Aren't homes with more than two floors expensive? Especially if they include a walkable balcony?" Which led me down a road of frustration as I couldn't find the concrete cost of the bakery it's based on nor the house prices in any arrondissements.

However, I decided to make a poor man's attempt at an estimate with what I could find on the internet that wasn't advertising the real life bakery it's based on, Instagram posts, or the prices of baked goods.

I will explain my workings out below the "read more", but be warned of questionable reasoning and less than accurate findings. Please don't take this post as fact as I know I'm far from the truth.

Warning: maths ahead.

Since you've consented to read my shenanigans, I'll attempt to explain my thought process.

Since I couldn't find the cost of the IRL bakery, I searched for the Average Home Price in Paris. Results:

$1,150 per square foot.

A start, more than expected and in dollars, but a start. So, what's the dollar to euro exchange?

0.96 euros to 1 dollar.

We'll save that for later, but good to know for now. Next, since it's a bakery, I searched for the Average Sized Bakery:

At least 800 square feet, ideal being 1,200 square feet.

Alright, that gives us a boundary for the lowest and highest result with leeway for head canons. So, how many floors is the Dupain Cheng bakery? This is to know how many times we multiply the floor space. From top to bottom:

5F: Rooftop balcony

4F: Marinette's room / attic

3F: Living Room and kitchen

2F: Tom and Sabine's room

1F: The Bakery Itself

So five floors. For my sanity I didn't include the stairwell extension from the 1st to 3rd floor, not how the attic curves in, I'm taking excessive liberties to stop myself weeping. Now comes the maths of it all, starting with the smaller possibility.

$1,150 × 800 = $920,000 per floor.

$920,000 × 5 = $4,600,000 altogether.

A steep number, it shocked me as well the first time I calculated it, then I remembered that was the smaller guess, the larger being:

$1150 × 1,200 = $1,380,000 per floor.

$1,380,000 × 5 = $6,900,000 altogether.

Both well in the millions, to my shock, then remembered about the dollar to euro exchange rates so bunged those through a calculator to reach the following results:

€4,416,000 for the 800 square feet

€6,624,000 for the 1,200 square feet

Still in the millions. I'm still reeling from the final results of all this. I nearly forgot why I started looking for the cost of Marinette's house while looking at the numbers.

Ok, Marinette's family is absolutely loaded if they could afford to live in the bakery if someone considered my numbers, whether they rent or purchased the building outright, they're still wealthy regardless.

For being "a normal girl with a normal life", Marinette sure is oblivious to the wealth she walks on.

I'm not going into detail about the cost of her hobbies or the trip to Shanghai, those can be separate posts I can make as I recover from how her house may cost millions.

I kept thinking back on the gift delivery scene near the beginning of Cat Blanc and wondered how long it took for Marinette as Ladybug to deliver her present. So I found the episode on the Miraculous Ladybug YouTube channel and made notes on when events occurred by pausing and writing down the timestamps. There may be a second or two difference as I paused manually on my phone but I hole my point stands regardless.

2:38 - Ladybug enters Adrien's room and admires the trophies, foosball table, video games, desk, then lays on his bed.

2:56 - Cuts to Adrien arriving home after winning a fencing tournament (I forgot this part of the episode existed)

3:14 - Cuts back to Ladybug sniffing Adrien's pillow. I thought it went from her laying on the bed straight to the pillow but having the Adrien section makes the whiplash even worse.

3:20 - Ladybug puts the present on the bed and goes to leave.

3:23 - She remembers she forgot to sign the gift.

3:27 - Ladybug begins signing the gift.

3:34 - Ladybug leaves through the window as Adrien opens the door and sees her leave.

The scene is 56 seconds long, which is how long Ladybug was in Adrien's room. Let's be generous and say the Adrien segment happened simultaneously, so 56 seconds becomes 38 seconds. Of those 38 seconds, 18 of them were dedicated to Ladybug meandering around Adrien's things. If Ladybug hadn't acted like a creepy fangirl and just signed and left the gift, she could've left without anyone ever knowing she'd been in Adrien's room.

The entirety of Cat Blanc happened because Ladybug chose to ogle at her classmate's room that she'd been in multiple times before.

I'm most likely stabbing at an old wound, but I'm pretty sure this was the breaking point for a lot of people regarding Marinette's character as a whole due to her actions in this episode.