#someday I might actually finish designing the bee akuma

[sandradoodles]

Hi! i just started reading your confessions comic and i am OBSESSED!! and i didnt want to spam you by rbing all of your posts so i am going to write my Thoughts here :3

First of all i just wanted to say how much youve improved over the course of making this comic!! the lineart is so much Smoother and neater, the shading is so PRETTY, i love how youve done the backgrounds, whether you actually draw them or put flowers or something else behind the characters, and the layout looks so much more proffesional and puts the focus on the right things!! ALSO your anatomy has improved sm and i love all the wild expressions!!

Also i LOVE the teal colouring with pink accents, its such a pretty combo and its kinda like your trademark now!!

And obviously the whole story is so GOOD. i love how you cranked up the Idiot Meter to 1000000 bc YEAH theyre IDIOTS!! I loved the whole Clownbug part with ladybug discovering chats in love with marinette and being ANGRY abt it, its one of my favourite flavours of love square, and pt 6 of the comic was also SO entertaining!! miscommunication my beloved <3

I also love the first panel of pt nine, its just so pretty!! and ofc the shenanigans with the design contest, it feels v realistic and you absolutely NAILED mari's character!!

And the bee miraculous akuma is GORGEOUS!! it looks v menacing but also rlly cool and i would KILL to see the full design

i also love the way you showed marinettes progress with the jacket!! the montage of them bonding and working on the jacket is so cool <3 (and the shoulder gag is rlly funny lksdjhghjkgfdkjh)

FINALLY the jacket itself is just. BEAUTIFUL. the design on the back is absolutely stunning, and i love how you incorporated the miracle box and roses (did mari draw inspiration from chat? 👀👀) and the pink inside is so cute!! and the paw mark w marinette's signature!! (also i see you have a weakness for bomber jackets and you are RIGHT they ARE the pinnacle of fashion)

and buttercup reveal my beloved!! the blush!! the awkwardness!! the wild expressions and gestures!! i LOVE IT!!

also, i love all the small details!! like how you shaded marinettes palms as hearts, its so cute! <3

Anyways im just REALLY exited to see where youre going with this comic!! <3

omg omg omg okay I woke up to this, immediately read it FIVE TIMES IN A ROW, and have spent all day trying to figure out how to reply to so many lovely compliments 😭😭😭

THANK YOU SO MUCH OBVIOUSLY it means the world that you read every part and then took the time to type this up! This comic is such a labor of love for me and I'm always trying to work in a lot of fun and cute little details/moments so when people notice and point out those things it makes my heart SWELL WITH JOY. (If you like the hearts on her palms, part ten has some hidden hearts as well heehee)

When I started this my only goals were to scratch my lovesquare itch and get comfortable drawing again after being out of the habit for years. I had, idk maybe ten followers and did not expect anyone to read it or that I would actually manage to draw more than five parts or so AND NOW HERE WE ARE lol. I am so happy that you can see an improvement in the art, not just in how the characters are drawn but stuff like backgrounds and the visual storytelling as well. I hope to get better and better with each part!

Reading your comments about the characterization makes me wanna screech with happiness because I LOVE. THESE. IDIOTS. SO MUCH it is ridiculous!! RIDICULOUS! And as much as I adore leaning into them being incredibly stupid, it is important to me to show how much tenderness lies at the heart of their interactions. They are so, so stupid because they’re so, so sweet. Confessions is very much “journey over destination” because I just want to indulge in as much insanity, humor, awkwardness, confusion, affection, devotion, and partnership I can manage to tease out of their relationship in one story.

The color palette btw was a complete and total happy accident! Sometimes a thing works because you put lots of thought and effort into it, and sometimes a thing works because you fell on it. The color palette is an example of the latter but THE JACKET is an example of the former, haha. The amount of time it took to develop not just the meaning of it but literally the physical design (gotta look like something Marinette might actually make, gotta be something that I can draw a bunch of times, gotta be something that [spoilers redacted], gotta be something that fits over Chat’s shoulders, gotta be something that actually looks good, omg.) I have a whole post about it already but still more to say because I always have more to say! this is so much rambling I’m sorry

One of the big challenges I’ve had in trying to make a comic is figuring out how to balance what to say, what to show, and what to imply. The jacket is first and foremost exactly how Marinette presents it, a means to hopefully reach Adrien and deliver the card from his classmates. The specifics behind the design are more implied. Marinette pours a week of blood sweat and tears into creating this jacket, and as far as Chat Noir sees, she is single-mindedly focused on that task. But we all know she’s ALSO carrying the responsibilities and concerns of being Ladybug. Losing the Miraculous is obviously like... the biggest thing, a terrible and invisible weight that she carries alone!

Except not, because Chat Noir is there. He’s there for Ladybug, he’s there for Marinette, he’s a constant presence in her life and his support allows her to move beyond the shame and horror of losing the Miraculous. Marinette embroiders the symbols of the stolen Miraculous centered around the ladybug and surrounded by irises (sorry they aren’t roses!), and it looks like a topical show of support for her local superheroes; Ladybug embroiders the symbols of the stolen Miraculous centered on the ladybug and surrounded by irises and it’s a promise to her city that she’s going to get them back. (That she stitches the symbol of the cat in the left-hand side of the lining so that it zips over the wearer’s heart might mean something too but that was... more subconscious.)

ANYWAYYYYYYYYYYY I hope that my long-winded rambling comes across appropriately as a sign of JUST HOW THRILLED I am to have received this beautiful thoughtful ask. Hopefully the behind the scenes talk was fun to read haha. I am so honored and I hope you continue to enjoy the story!!

[bugaboosandbees]

Rally to the Queen

Okay. I know that I shouldn’t be starting anything else new, and I definitely won’t start actually writing this until I finish with my Reine Ruse AU, but I ended up getting so attached to my Bee!Kagami design (and so salty about Onichan!Kagami) that I ended up with a whole slew of headcanons about a post-Riposte Bee!Kagami Kagaminette AU.

I call it Rally to the Queen.

Here’s what goes down.

This takes place immediately after Riposte.

Marinette still feels really bad about judging the point wrong. She talks to Adrien to ask how Kagami is doing. He says that he thinks that she’s okay now, but Kagami was totally exhibiting some behaviors that he recognized as the son of a largely absent parent with absurd standards. He doesn’t have the time he’d like to have to check in on Kagami, so he also tells Marinette that it sounded like Kagami was under a lot of pressure at home and was afraid of her mother judging her for losing the fight.

Marinette, of course, feels terrible and her patented Dupain-Cheng-family we-must-adopt-everyone genes kick in, so she decides to track down Kagami’s home address to apologize formally and to make sure that Kagami’s mom knows what really went down.

When she gets there, she’s flustered and awkward as usual but good-hearted and although Kagami’s mom initially is not thrilled about the weird intrusion, she doesn’t hate Marinette.

Since she’s there, she and Kagami end up chatting either that day or some other time. Marinette mentions that she’s looking forward to trying out for the fencing team again the following year to learn aside Adrien and Kagami.

Kagami realizes that she took the only spot on the team. She’s not the sort to feel bad about this and wouldn’t normally, but Marinette was being so kind and she’d actually tried to stand up to her mother for her, so she offers to give her fencing lessons. (Maybe she covers it up as extra practice for her as she’s not really much of a touchy-feely person.)

Anyway, Marinette starts going to Kagami’s house once a week for fencing practice. She always brings fresh baked goods. I don’t think Kagami has many friends, especially with how intense we’ve seen her family to be and being so new to Paris, so she might not really know how to deal with Marinette’s brand of friendship at first.

They become really good friends. I actually think they really would if they spent any sort of time together in canon without misunderstandings and Adrien and sometimes somewhat suspect writing in the way. They are both determined, powerful young women with hearts of steel and an unstoppable drive towards something that they’re very passionate about. They’re both straightforward and value honesty and dislike liars. They would be an UNSTOPPABLE team.

I don’t think Sapotis happens in this AU. There’s no salt against Alya here, but I think it would be reasonable for Marinette avoid giving a miraculous to her best friend no matter how much she’d like to share being superheroes with her. This is because Alya is shown in season one especially to be very adamant about revealing Ladybug’s identity. This was even the main goal of her akumatized form, Lady Wifi. Marinette loves Alya deeply, but I think that there would be reasonable doubt there about whether or not Alya would be able to keep her own secret or if she would use her position as a sometimes-superhero to discover more about Ladybug. We’ve seen in canon that Marinette obviously hates lying to her best friend, so I think it’s reasonable to think that she wouldn’t manufacture a situation where she had to do so even more.

Also, even though Anasai technically took place before Queen’s Battle, just go with me here and assume it didn’t and that Style Queen was the first akuma that Ladybug needed help with. We know that she picked the Bee miraculous in Style Queen and, as Marinette is good friends with Kagami already in this AU, she definitely sees how much this miraculous would play to her friend’s strengths. They also fence together all the time, so Marinette knows how Kagami fights and wouldn’t have to learn a new teammate’s style in the middle of an already complicated fight. Since Kagami isn’t Alya, she wouldn’t already be at the Effiel tower and wouldn’t be turned to glitter by Style Queen, so Marinette would be able to safely get the Bee miraculous to her.

Ladybug and Mitsubachi are a deadly combination. Style Queen never stood a chance. Everything goes pretty smoothly and Ladybug is able to get the Bee miraculous back from Kagami without incident. (That being said, Marinette is a flustered bi mess and totally fumbled once or twice in the fight because damn, Kagami makes a deadly and attractive superhero.)

And because I’m a sucker for redeeming Chloe I am physically incapable of leaving her out of this AU. Oops, lol. Without Queen Bee, the Queen’s Battle arc would definitely have some pretty substantial changes. Chloe’s mom would still be being pretty awful and Chloe wouldn’t have gotten her hands on the Bee miraculous. She’d still have to be upset enough to get akumatized over her mom (so Gabe wouldn’t give up being Hawkmoth (also, he’d have only just learned that the Guardian was in Paris so that might be another incentive)) but she wouldn’t become Queen Wasp because she was never Queen Bee in the first place.

Instead, she becomes a different sort of version of @imthepunchlord ‘s Princess Amour akumanette concept. She just really wants to be loved. Maybe instead of having a Chat Noir “knight” as the akumanette had, some ladybug merch of her’s would hold the akuma and turn into a version of Ladybug that would help and protect and validate Chloe as her knight. After LB beats this akuma, she has an honest talk with Chloe that night because she could see that Chloe was really struggling and, despite their very checkered past couldn’t help but wanting to help.

Ladybug gives Chloe some advice and Chloe does her level best to live up to it in her day to day life. It’s a long hard road and it doesn’t come easily, but every once in awhile Ladybug will drop by and knowing that her heroine is proud of her gives Chloe the push she needs to change for the better.

I should also mention that I’m switching the places of the fox and peacock miraculouses in this AU. If we’re still working with the headcanon that Mr. and Mrs. Agreste used the miraculouses that Gabe has, it makes sense that they’d have the butterfly because everything we’ve been lead to believe indicates that it was a good fit for Mrs. Agreste. That being said, what we know of the Peacock makes no effing sense for Gabe. He’s creative, crafty, and not above playing dirty. That man is a fox through and through, you can’t change my mind. Therefore, Fu has the peacock and the fox is the damaged miraculous sitting in the Agreste safe.

This is relevant, I promise.

So, Ladybug and Chat Noir have worked with Mitsubachi quite a few times. She fits pretty effortlessly into the team dynamic but is definitely with Ladybug in taking the job super seriously and not always being down with Chat’s attitude.

Kagami and Marinette are still hanging out. Kagami is falling for Marinette and Marinette is falling for Kagami, but Marinette had confided in Kagami earlier about her crush on Adrien, so Kagami thinks that Mari is still in love with Adrien and Marinette doesn’t think Kagami would be interested in her, so there’s an awful lot of mutual pining going on.

Hawkmoth is escalating and Fu approves of Kagami after testing her himself, so she gets the Bee miraculous on a permanent basis.

With the extra help, it’s a while before Ladybug’s lucky charm calls for another hero, but, when it does, she needs the peacock. Maybe she was going for Alya with this one, but, being the Ladyblogger, Alya has already gotten herself into the conflict and trapped by the akuma. As she’s looking around, Ladybug spots (lol, get it?) Chloe trying to get Sabrina and some other people to safety, consequently getting trapped or something. She goes to save Chloe, and when Chloe thanks her, she starts to wonder. Chloe has taken a good, hard look at herself and really improved in the past few months. She’s not perfect yet, but no one is. And, you know what? Getting the Ladybug miraculous went a long way towards making her a better Marinette. Mind made up, she offers the Peacock to Chloe and a new hero appears. (I’m thinking of naming Chloe’s peacock form Tirisi or Vindex -- Greek or Latin for (roughly) defender/protector/champion. See my rant on why the peacock miraculous’ powers make sense for my reasoning.)

Chloe gives the miraculous back when Ladybug asks and keeps working to improve herself so that her heroine might someday trust her again. (She loved being able to have the power and agency to connect with and help others -- she really loved feeling strong enough to save others and is starting to feel more confident that she can save herself.) She doesn’t spill her identity and becomes a reliable second-string hero when Ladybug’s lucky charm demands her presence.

Eventually turtle!Sabrina will also come into this AU because she really, really deserves her own character development. (And @mystery-vixen ‘ s design and art and @pyrepyro ‘s art for Turtle!Sabrina is the cutest shit I’ve ever seen in my life.) Maybe it’s some sort of Anasasi situation where Chloe’s in trouble and Sabrina is doing her level best to rescue her as a civilian, idk. (For turtle!Sabrina I was thinking Bouclier or Jadeite, unless you guys have ideas?)

Anyway, eventually, everyone has their miraculouses permanently. (This probably happens after Gabe and Natalie break out the fox.) Endgame is Kagaminette and Chlobrina, two sets of deadly wlw protecting Paris along with the bi disaster Chat Noir who is 100% willing to THROW THE FUCK DOWN with anyone who doesn’t respect the ladies of the superhero team. Chat Noir totally gets along with the whole squad, by the way. Between the four of them, the ladies are great friends and life coaches to our cat boi and help him work through what unhealthy attitudes he has in a respectful and caring way. They adopt him and are always hugging Chat or even just lightly resting a hand on his shoulder since they discovered he was touch-starved. (Especially Ladybug and Tirisi. All four would cut a bitch for that boy, but they’re the most touchy-feely.)

(Eventually snake!Luka joins the squad and he and Chat Noir get together and it’s just a giant group of badass queer superheroes kicking ass and protecting Paris.)

They eventually beat Hawkmoth and Adrien and Luka become the next Guardians (They’d do a great job, fight me). Marinette and Kagami are too busy for that anyway. They got married and Marinette started the world’s most successful fashion line while Kagami set some sort of ridiculous record for the number of gold medals a single person can win in fencing. Chloe and Sabrina get married and (because of Chloe) end up adopting a ridiculous amount of kids that they care for and love unconditionally.

Happily Ever After and The End. :)

Thanks for listening to my rant!