#carlotta sugrue-dupain

[queer-cosette]

20 questions for fic writers!!

Thanks for the tag @private-bryan!! :D

How many works do you have on ao3? 45

What’s your total ao3 word count? 715,982

What fandoms do you write for? Heathers, Les Misérables, Total Drama, Derry Girls, Miraculous Ladybug, Equestria Girls, Rainbow High, and Monster High, plus a few original pieces (mostly poetry).

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? mArinette (Miraculous Ladybug), today I woke up wanting to kiss you (Total Drama), Cute Boys With Short Haircuts (Miraculous Ladybug), Mistlejoke (Miraculous Ladybug), and More Adventurous (Miraculous Ladybug)

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? I do my best to - I'm a very anxious person so responding to comments feels a bit like pulling teeth, but if I get one really nice comment on a fic I'll usually reply to it and then while I'm still riding that high reply to all the other ones too.

What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Posted, probably vivere sine dolore est (Miraculous Ladybug). Planned, a tie between Max Kanté and the Murder on the Startrain Express (Miraculous Ladybug), and The Mystery Solvers of Derry (Derry Girls).

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I write a lot of fluff, but I think the most cathartic payoff happy ending has to be The Dark Gate (Les Misérables).

Do you get hate on fics? On one fic, my most popular and yet most controversial - mArinette. It's the curse of writing for a big fandom - about 10% of all fandoms are assholes, so the bigger the fandom, the more assholes there are.

Do you write smut? If so what kind? Yup! I was born on the run (but I'll die holding you're hand) and Waitin' on the Sunrise are both Heathers smutfics - the kind that's fluffy, emotional, and trauma-healing (hey, fandom looks for what it didn't get in the source material!). Weirdly, I'm less self-conscious about letting my IRLs read my smutfics than I am about letting them read the fantasy epic stuff.

Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve ever written? Are we counting fusion here? Putting the characters from one fandom into the plot of another is kinda my jam! Memorable ones include mArinette (Miraculous Ladybug Easy A AU), On Se Sent Comme Par Magie (Les Misérables Winx Club AU), Max Kanté and the Murder on the Startrain Express (Miraculous Ladybug Poirot AU), and The Mystery Solvers of Derry (Derry Girls Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated! AU)

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Hopefully not!

Have you ever had a fic translated? Not by someone else - I've translated a Monster High fic - Ginny MacFerrouson: Profile and Diary - I wrote in Scots to English, but haven't posted the translation yet.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Not unless you count goofing around in google docs with @deinde-prandium discussing the possibility of writing a Miraculous Ladybug RENT! AU. I once wrote several snippets of a multifandom Hogwarts AU with an IRL friend, but I'm kind of a control freak who even struggles to relinquish control to a beta reader, so co-written works from me are probably unlikely.

What’s your all-time favourite ship? Right now it's JDonica (Heathers), but other favourites include Marisette, Enjoltaire, and Courferre (Les Misérables), Jerin (Derry Girls), Sunflash (Equestria Girls) and Duncney, Gidgette, and DJxDawn (Total Drama).

What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? Right now a lot of fics have had to be put on the backburner while I deal with my ongoing JDonica brainrot, but the one that I'm doubtful of ever going back to is probably 10 Times Carlotta Sugrue-Dupain Got Very, Very Angry. It's a shame, because it was a fun writing exercise for an OC, but she's developed a lot since I posted it, so I doubt I'll ever go back to it.

What are your writing strengths? According to my beta reader for On Se Sent Comme Par Magie, readability, emotional connection with the characters, and engagement with the plot. Ignore the small piece of dust in my eye...

What are your writing weaknesses? Endings. I am so bad at coming up with endings. Usually I try to write the ending before I write the beginning, because if I don't do that, I suck so bad at coming up with an ending.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? Here's the thing. English is my second language, my first being Scots, which has a somewhat different spelling system, and 44 of my 45 published fics are in English. I've written bits and pieces of dialogue in French for Miraculous Ladybug and Les Misérables fics, but I mainly use an online translator for that. I don't take issue with other people doing it - sometimes a story requires it, y'know?

First fandom you ever wrote for? Published? Total Drama. Ever? When I was six I wrote fanfiction of a two-part wildlife documentary about whales because the first part ended very tragically and I wanted a happier story. The adventures of Spermy the Sperm Whale (I was six, ok?) was handwritten and illustrated on a little paper booklet and is probably in my attic somewhere.

Favourite fic you’ve ever written? On Se Sent Comme Par Magie, the six part Les Misérables epic!fic set to a Winx Club AU. It's like my beloved child. I've been writing it since 2017 and it's responsible for most of my AO3 word count. And you don't have to know anything about either fandom to read it! My beta reader doesn't. I'm the Will Smith meme pointing to it.

Tagging @deinde-prandium, @theladyfae, @multimousenette, and @hanaasbananas!!

[whalemiraculousau]

A really funny concept to me in this AU is Chat Noir being allowed to choose a temporary wielder and immediately going “This may just be the responsibility Carlotta needs in her life!” which can lead in two directions:

Option A: Carlotta panics and yells “No, thank you!” and runs as fast as she can in the other direction because if Carlotta is using a different Miraculous and Cachalotte doesn’t show up, her identity is blown and the only way to avoid this is to scream and act irrationally terrified if it ever comes up again.

Option B: Carlotta panics and accepts the Miraculous and is 100% a grumpy bastard the entire time so they are never tempted to make her a temporary wielder again.

[whalemiraculousau]

Carlotta: I have no idea what it's like trying to get Marinette out of bed to do something she doesn't want to do because I've never tried

Carlotta: If she's anything like me, it won't be pretty

Carlotta: She once kicked me in the face and knocked out one of my teeth BY ACCIDENT

Carlotta: I'm terrified of what she would be capable of if it was on purpose.

[whalemiraculousau]

Viperion: Apparently sperm whales have the biggest brains on the planet.

Viperion: I'm beginning to doubt this, however, as I've just spent nearly twenty time loops failing to prevent Cachalotte from attempting to open a locked metal door by using her head as a battering ram.

[whalemiraculousau]

Part 2 of my earlier post (which will not let me reblog it)

Carlotta: *playing violin for the class at idk a party or something*

Lila: You know, Carlotta, I met Lindsey Stirling last month and she let me play her violin. Said I was a real natural.

Carlotta: *immediately handing over her violin* Play it.

Lila: Excuse me?

Carlotta: Play this violin right now.

Lila: I don't know -

Carlotta: One song won't hurt.

Lila: But what about my arth-

Carlotta: Keeping your wrists active is very good for early-stage arthritis.

Lila: I just don't want to upstage you!

Carlotta: Considering that this party was thrown for you to celebrate something "heroic" you "did", I'm fine with that.

Lila:

Carlotta: I can keep this up all night, bitch.

[whalemiraculousau]

Principal Damocles to Carlotta's parents: Normally we would let an incident like this slide with detention, but given your daughter's track record...

Élisa: Carlotta, what's this in your file about staging lightsabre battles on the mezzanine and disrupting the fencing club?

Carlotta: I had a permit for that.

Juan-Miguel: It says here you had a note in your own handwriting that read "I do what I want".

[queer-cosette]

Miraculous OC: How Carlotta Sugrue-Dupain has developed since I last posted about her

I was inspired by @gale-of-the-nomads‘s post about his character Arséne Manachot! Only this ended up a lot longer than his post because I am Wordy.

Description:

As Carlotta: Carlotta got the Dupain height; she’s 5′11 with waist-length dark brown wavy hair with shorter curls around her face that is always very well-kept. She has very naturally tanned brown skin and is covered in freckles from head to toe. She’s curvy and has toned calves and biceps; she’s an excellent swimmer and got her scuba-diving certificate as soon as she could. Her eyes are dark brown with blue flecks, giving them a violet appearance in certain lighting. She’s covered in small scars from various old injuries and treats them like a badge of honour; her favourites are the one on her right cheek and the one on the left side of her chest from her collarbone to the bottom of her ribcage. She's very near sighted; she suffered CRAOs (Central Retinal Artery Occlusion) in both eyes as a small child and has spent some periods of her life (months at a time) mostly blind in both eyes. She only bothers wearing glasses in class though. She dresses almost exclusively in crop tops, knee-length cargo shorts, and converse. She always wears stripy knee socks. She has piercings in her right eyebrow, the left side of her nose, her tongue, and her belly button, and often wears sparkly earrings.

As Cachalotte: Her hair is up in a high ponytail with a white ribbon that sticks up like a whale spout. She has a single purple highlight, and her ponytail is tied near the bottom so the end splits like a whale tail. She wears a black leotard with attached gloves, silver fishnet tights, and black thigh-high boots with purple soles. On top she wears a grey sleeveless zippered vest with a long coattail that ends in a whale tail; it has purple lining and the bodice is decorated with two thin white stripes. She also has small purple shoulder pads styled to look like Sperm Whale fins and doubling as extra armour. Her Miraculous is a silver S-shaped hairslide made to look like a whale’s blowhole, and is decorated with five violet gems that turn black when not transformed. Her mask extends down over her cheeks to hide her scar; it’s grey with a black stripe across the top and black eyelids.

Personality:

Carlotta is deeply caring about those important to her; she would throw herself in harm’s way to protect her loved ones without a second thought. She doesn’t tend towards thinking things through; she is wild and impulsive and stubborn, and only thinks about the immediate future rather than any consequences. In spite of her caring nature she can be extremely selfish on occasion.

She gets along well with most people; she’s good at making stories funnier than they actually were (even if they’re disgusting) and has a very infectious laugh. Despite coming from a fairly wealthy family (they have a yacht) she’s grown to dislike ostentatious shows of wealth, and her only real personal splurges are a nice skateboard (she loves skating) and her beloved purple electric violin.

Speaking of, she loves music! She plays violin well and is a pretty good singer. She loves Spanish pop music especially. She’ll often sing with her little sister Génevieve, and harmonise with her. Génevieve’s the really good singer though; the whole family expects to see her in an opera some day.

Siblings! She has three younger ones: Génevieve and Juan-Miguel Jr (twins four years younger than her), and Victoire, who is thirteen years younger than Carlotta and nine years younger than the twins. Besides singing with Génevieve, Carlotta dotes on Victoire and shares a sense of humour with Juan-Miguel (the family joker), but like all sibling relationships her friendship with the twins is either ‘I’ll help you hide the body’ or ‘don’t even breathe at me’. Being older, with the twins being each others’ natural playmate, Carlotta’s closest family friendship is with her paternal cousin Marinette, who is only three months younger than her. Since Carlotta moved from Asturias, Spain to Paris, they hang out pretty often and Carlotta is quickly integrated into the class group.

Carlotta’s fatal flaw is her single-mindedness; when she’s set her mind to something she’ll go through hell to get it with no regard to her personal safety or often the feelings of others. Marinette, Tom, Sabine, and Carlotta’s own parents (Juan-Miguel Sugrue and Vivienne Dupain) are the exceptions to Carlotta’s disregard; she’ll stop if they tell her to. Recently, there are two more people Carlotta has started listening to - Luka Couffaine and the whale Kwami Klikk.

As Cachalotte, she started out as a bit of a Dark Knight: a protector in shadow, who tries to work behind the scenes to reach justice - unfortunately, she was oblivious to City Justice and Law Justice, and more concerned with settling personal scores. Then after a few incidents involving some classmates, Marinette clocked onto her identity and told her to cut out her bullshit or she would personally hand the Whale Miraculous back to the Guardians. Since then, Cachalotte has aided Ladybug and Chat Noir when she thinks they need it, and approaches battles with her normal singlemindedness that becomes utter focus on the situation at hand.

The Guardians have yet to try and retrieve the Whale Miraculous; they believe it to be lost forever at sea. The truth is, a thousand years ago the previous wielder drowned, and the Miraculous became lodged in a living Sperm Whale’s tooth. The Miraculous unintentionally caused the whale wild longevity until it became dislodged a few months ago, and the whale beached in England. Carlotta’s father, as one of the leading cetologists involved in the unbelievable discovery of the thousand-year-old whale, sent it to María as a gift, not realising what it was.

Powers and Abilities:

As Carlotta:

Carlotta is fairly powerfully built for a girl; while she’s no professional weightlifter she can hold her own in a fight against even a faster or more agile opponent. Being a sibling has taught her to wait for the moment to strike to deliver the most powerful blow. She’s also sharp-minded and good with noticing and remembering details in stories, personalities, and habits (actual visual details, not so much). She’s deeply informed on cetology, top of the class at general biology, and pretty good at motion physics. In fact, there are few school subjects besides chemistry that Carlotta doesn’t excel at. When it comes to sports, she’s an amazing swimmer, beyond average at strength sports, above average at gymnastics, and a fast runner. (But she falls apart at sports that require good aim or precision such as basketball or fencing.) She’s also a very good skateboarder, although not great at tricks beyond ollies and going down stairs. With decent lighting and reasonably large text, she’s a fast reader.

As Cachalotte:

Carlotta’s strength, flexibility, agility and speed are upgraded, like all Miraculous wielders. Her style of fighting is similar to her civilian style - fists, kicks, and waiting for the right moment to strike. She rarely uses her weapon to aid her in a fight except to get where she wants to go; originally the Whale Miraculous came with a harpoon gun, but since Cachalotte has no need for one (and also, given her love of whales, rather dislikes the thought of using it) it upgraded into a grappling gun á la Kim Possible. It matches her costume, with a fin-styled purple handle, a grey gun with zig-zagging white stripes, and a silver grappling hook that, like Ladybug’s yoyo and Queen Bee’s spinning top, has an infinitely long and unbreakable string. She prefers to dodge an attack rather than deflect it. 

Special Ability: “CODA!”

Echolocation. To use, the user must think of what they wish to find in the fight - the weak point, the area their opponent will be next, their opponent’s power source - even the best path for the user to use themselves. In use, the user’s eyes glow purple and they see the thing they want to find highlighted in purple light, invisible to anyone else. The glow only appears for ten seconds maximum, and at its weakest (if the user is badly injured or as an adult after multiple uses) only three seconds.

Whale Add-Ons:

Qualities unique to the Whale Miraculous include mega-upgraded pain tolerance, resistance to air/water/magic pressure, and super-long-range hearing, only beaten out by the Rabbit Miraculous.

Klikk

Carlotta’s beloved Sperm Whale-themed Kwami companion. She is the Kwami of Lost Things. Klikk is rather mischievous, and can tend to encourage some of Carlotta’s more reckless behaviour (like, um, the time Cachalotte ran headfirst at a brick wall to see if she could leave a human-shaped hole like in a cartoon) (spoiler alert: she couldn’t and broke her nose) (which made Carlotta very glad she did it as Cachalotte and not as Carlotta like originally planned) but ultimately gives pretty good advice when María needs it. Transforms at the words “Klikk, Flukes Up!” and detransforms with “Klikk, Flukes Down!”. Klikk likes to hide in Carlotta’s hair, and despite loving physical contact, Carlotta refuses to let people touch her hair for Klikk’s safety. Klikk enjoys Blue Planet, cuddles, and deep-fried calamari.

[whalemiraculousau]

Carlotta Sugrue-Dupain moodboard

[whalemiraculousau]

Marinette: Carlotta once told me that part of making things right is accepting that some people won't want to forgive you, and true maturity is understanding that they don't ever have to.

Marinette: It was really profound, but she ran head-first into a stop-sign ten seconds later so the effect was ruined a bit.

[whalemiraculousau]

Marinette: trying to get Carlotta to get out of bed in order to do something she doesn't want to do is a bit like trying to get a raccoon out of an air vent

Marinette: there's a lot of scrambling for cover and avoiding lights and general screaming and occasionally biting

Marinette: except now the raccoon is six feet long, knows swear-words, and has the opposable thumb-ability to resolutely cling to the headboard no matter how hard you are pulling her legs

[whalemiraculousau]

She is Smol and Sad

[whalemiraculousau]

Emotional headcanon time:

Carlotta tries to keep some form of anger simmering under the surface all the time so if Marinette wants a break and needs to feel hurt or sad or bitter then she can hang out with Carlotta and Hawkmoth will be more attracted to Carlotta's vengeful anger than Marinette's sad anger. Carlotta doesn't know Marinette is afraid of being Akumatized because she's Ladybug; she's under the impression that Marinette fears the loss of control and free will. So does Carlotta, come to that, but Marinette is more afraid, so Carlotta stays angry to protect her, because protecting the people she loves from their fears will always be more important to her than protecting herself from her own fears.

[whalemiraculousau]

Adrien: So, how was 3 hours on the road with Carlotta driving?

Marinette: Well, she picked the perfect soundtrack for the motorway. Really summed up the vibe in that car. 'Highway To Hell' followed by 'Psycho Killer'.

Adrien: That bad?

Marinette: Today I learned about loopholes for traffic laws I didn't even know existed until now.

[whalemiraculousau]

The Universe in which Cetology is Lila's undoing

Alya: Lila! Have you met Carlotta? She's new!

Lila: Hi, Carlotta! Oh, it's so nice to meet you! I bet we'll get along great! It's so nice to meet someone who travels almost as much as I do!

Alya: You know, Carlotta's parents are world-class Cetologists!

Lila: Really? That's so cool! You know, I have a bit of an interest in Cetology myself -

Carlotta: Really.

Lila: Yes! I've even met the man who named the field.

Carlotta, who knows full well that Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre died in 1804: What's a cetacean, Lila?

Lila: What?

Carlotta: Spell 'cetacean'.

Lila: Um

Carlotta: Name one species of cetacean.

Lila: Well

Carlotta: I got all day.

[whalemiraculousau]

Carluka/Viperalotte/Viparlotta/Lukalotte

I’m actually so fond of Carlotta and Luka as a ship.

skateboarder girl and bmx boy

violinist and guitarist

dumb-of-ass-pure-of-heart and quiet-introspective-sweetie

the boy with power to turn back time and the reckless dumbass he has to keep saving from herself

Cachalotte: hey Viperion I’m going to run at this brick wall and see if I can leave a me-shaped hole like in a cartoon

Viperion: you already did. you broke your nose.

Cachalotte: but what if in this timeline it works?

Viperion: I was hoping this was the timeline where you actually listen to me when I tell you it doesn’t turn out well

potential for another lovesquare either way

or even better, one where they’re both equally in love with each other’s alter egos

Luka who finds Carlotta bright and sparky but Cachalotte delightfully stupid-cute and cute-stupid

Carlotta who is enamoured with kind, quiet Luka but also finds her heart racing in the presence of confident, collected Viperion

also purple (Carlotta/Cachalotte) and turquoise (Luka/Viperion) look nice together, that’s the colour of my bedroom

borderline-self-incert-OCxcanon-character pairings are so therapeutic tbh

[whalemiraculousau]

Alya: What happened in here?

Carlotta: I call it 'a flaming trail of Awesome'.

Marinette: I call it 'Carlotta is not allowed in the kitchen any more'.