Story Trivia: Destiny's Dance

⚠ MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS ⚠

• Destiny's Dance was the very first Miraculous fanfiction idea that I ever came up with.
• The storyline was inspired when I noticed that Marinette's eye colour matched none of her parents', which caused me to joke that maybe she was secretly adopted. The idea then began to spiral from there. 
• The nightmare Marinette experiences where she follows a trail of blood was inspired by a level from the video game, Max Payne, which traumatized me as a child after my dad played it in front of me.
• The dancing lessons from the chapter 'Two Left Feet' were inspired by the dance lessons that I was forced to take in high school. I share Marinette's clumsiness, so I was a notoriously bad dancer. 
• At the time of planning and writing, Master Fu's 'grave error' had yet to be revealed. I had always interpreted it to mean that he had once made a mistake in choosing a miraculous holder (which I suspected to be the peacock, so I was half right), and this is also what led to the development of Nina. Of course it was later revealed that Master Fu's mistake was cheating during one of his challenges and unleashing a sentimonster that destroyed the temple.
• Coming up with the powers of the peacock miraculous was difficult. Its powers had yet to be revealed in the show, and while researching, I found that the symbolism was often similar to that of the butterfly, so I figured that its powers would work in a similar way to that of the butterfly miraculous. The eyes of the peacock feathers then also helped inspire the idea that maybe it was some sort of hypnotizing power.
• Gabriel possessing the peacock miraculous was something that had been suspected in the fandom for a while, and this was a fact I was incredibly convinced of after seeing a peacock shaped brooch in his safe. This is what made me incorporate this aspect into the story, though at the time, there was no hint that the miraculous was broken. 
• I also incorporated the fan theory that Emilie was once a holder of a miraculous. Though I added my own twist by having it be the butterfly miraculous rather than the peacock one like everybody was suspecting. 
• At the beginning of writing and publishing chapters, for some reason my computer kept autocorrecting the word 'kwami' to 'qwami' which I would then have to go back and correct a million times. It was really annoying. 
• The complex storyline of Marinette's family was something I created due to the fact that we have hardly had much background information on Marinette's family in the show - especially at the time of writing. Most of the mysteries of the plot seemed to be centred around Adrien, and I wanted Marinette to have a turn so to speak. 
• I hate the way I have written the character Leon. I wish that I'd developed his character a bit more and I feel like his role in the story is very forced. 
• Originally I had planned for Master Fu to be killed, but ultimately changed my mind. 
• An idea for a sequel was in the works, and the outline of the story was all planned out, however, I decided to abandon the idea in favour of other projects. I felt like a sequel maybe would have been a bit too much, especially given that the storyline would have been very similar. In my opinion, a sequel should be a continuation of the story, not a repeat. 
• I would often plan, write and make notes on this story when I was bored during my lectures at university. 
• Destiny's Dance was the first fanfiction that I had written in years after 'retiring' back in 2016. Needless to say, I was very rusty. I was just finally coming out my long period of depression and was finally showing an interest in my hobbies again, and becoming obsessed with books, anime and TV shows just like I used to. 
• Like with most of my fics that involve Chat Noir, my boyfriend, Jowy Avilon, helped me come up with most of the puns in the story. 
• The story is still technically in the process of being edited, it's just taken a backseat compared to a lot of the other projects that I'm working on at the moment. But I do hope to finish some point soon and have all of the chapters also uploaded onto AO3. 
• I was still fairly new to the fandom when I published Destiny's Dance. I remember enjoying the first season after my boyfriend suggested we watch it after seeing screenshots and posts everywhere about how good it was. It wasn't until season 2 began that I became completely obsessed and became inspired to write fanfiction about the show. 
• Writing this story is what finally helped me fully come out of my period of deep depression - it gave me a sense of purpose again and something to focus on. 
• The story was originally going to be called 'Kismet', but I decided that was too cliché. Plus, way too many other fanfictions out there also had that name. 
• As well as being inspired by many people I have met in real life, the personality and story of Nina was loosely inspired by the character, The Dark Queen, in the movie Mirrormask.  
• The story was originally rated M, but I lowered it down to a T rating when I figured that I was being too paranoid rating it that highly. 
• Destiny's Dance is my second most viewed and reviewed story behind Madness Within.

Story Trivia: Madness Within

⚠ MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS ⚠

• 
  The story was originally inspired by the fanfiction trope of Chat Noir having sided with his father and turning against Ladybug. This was a favourite trope of mine to read at the time. 
• I came up with the full idea for the story while daydreaming during a lecture when attending university. 
• Mental health was always going to be a huge theme from the start. I noticed that it was often inaccurately represented in a lot of fics with characters experiencing quick recoveries. I wanted to write something that was more realistic and true to life as I often pondered over the emotional and mental trauma that would come with being a superhero. 
• The first chapter/scene I originally imagined and planned out was the chapter 'A Night Out'.
• Originally, the story was going to be written purely from Chat Noir/Adrien's point of view, but ultimately decided against this due to also wanting to explore Marinette's point of view. 
• This story is by far the most popular of my work of all time on both FanFiction and Archive Of Our Own. 
• During the initial planning stages, as hard as it is to believe, Madness Within was only supposed to be around ten chapters long. 
• Quite a few of you managed to correctly figure out the drug that Marinette's drink was spiked with during the club chapters. The symptoms Marinette was experiencing lined up with the consumption of ecstasy. 
• A lot of the descriptions of anxiety attacks and depression are based on my own experiences with these issues. 
• There have been a few times that this story seemed to cause some controversy. The first was during the beginning where a lot of people disagreed with my depiction of mental health, and the second was when I posted the final chapter and people started sending me abuse over deciding to split the story into three parts, as well as my update schedule. 
• The chapter 'Just a Normal Day' was based on the idea of the 'normal factor' where victims of trauma tend to remember the events leading up to a traumatic event in intense detail. 
• The storyline of Alya's obsession with finding out the truth about Ladybug wasn't pre-planned. That ended up taking on a life of its own as I was writing. 
• I was writing notes for this story in the middle of my university graduation ceremony. 
• A lot of the music by Ana Johnsson that inspired this story was what I used to help me get myself through my own depression episodes. Ana Johnsson is my favourite singer, and her song, Burn, which was the main inspiration song for this fic, is my favourite song of all time.
• The most reviewed chapter was chapter 38 with 103 reviews upon release. 
• The story was originally rated T, but due to the themes involved, it was later changed to an M.
• The scene where Marinette's scars are revealed to Adrien was also one of the first scene ideas that I had for this fic. It was inspired by a scene in the movie, Goodnight Mister Tom, where abuse marks were revealed on one of the character's backs.     
• At one point, I lost all of my notes to this story. I'm not the most organised person... 
• I was VERY hesitant to publish this story at first, very nearly keeping it as a private project.
• If I was in Marinette's shoes, I would not be able to forgive Chat Noir for what he did and the way he has been since. 
• So far, Madness Within is the longest story I have ever written at 244,133 words.
• Madness Within was my first fanfic to reach the 1000 reviews milestone. This is something I have never even come close to achieving before. 
• There was originally supposed to be a Russian translation of the story in the works, but the writer who was supposed to translate it suddenly vanished. They sent me a link for the translated version, but FanFiction broke that link and I have been unable to get in contact with the writer since. 
• A lot of Chat Noir's puns in this story were created by my boyfriend and fellow writer, Jowy Avilon, since he considers himself a pun expert.
• The scene where Chat Noir blows up the microwave while making soup was loosely inspired by a real event that happened to me. Only for me, it was scrambled eggs instead of soup. 
• At one point I made a joke about the story being over 100 chapters long, and so many people took it seriously that it was chaotic and exhausting explaining to everyone that it was just a joke. 
• There was an error with Trixx's pronouns in this story. In the English dub of the show, Trixx sounded female to me (even though I know they don't have genders, just preferred pronouns), so I mistakenly used female pronouns. It turns out that Trixx actually uses male pronouns. 
• Upon the release of the episode Chat Blanc I had a lot of people making jokes about how I unintentionally, yet accurately, portrayed Chat Noir when everything is finally revealed to him. 
• Madness Within was my first fanfic to achieve recognition in the AO3 LadyNoir Feed. 
• Madness Within is currently being made into a physical book by keysmashcharlie as of May 2021. They have kindly agreed to be my editor and beta reader of the series.
• The cover was created by marichatness, one of my Tumblr followers who has also done many other pieces of fan art of this story, all of which can be found on my blog.

Story Trivia: Amicus

⚠ MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS ⚠

• 
  The idea for Amicus was first conceived while I was watching a documentary about the abuse of children within institutions run by the Catholic church. 
• 'Amicus' is Latin for 'friend'.
• A lot of the religious activities in the story come from the ones that I was forced to practice as a child. I was raised Roman Catholic, so I'm very familiar with the faith and activities. Though every church could be different.
• Sister Katherine, or 'Sour Face', was loosely inspired by a few teachers at my primary school. There was one teacher of mine who was always grumpy, miserable and sour looking, and the fact that Seras was her favourite abuse victim was inspired by me being a favourite abuse victim of one of my teachers. Though I would like to clarify that I was never beaten (though she came close lol). My experience was more psychological abuse. 
• The statue of Jesus that Seras stared at in chapter one is based on a real statue that existed in a church that I attended as a child. It was pretty gory, and I used to stare at it for entire sermons as it freaked me out. 
• The injuries that Sour Face receives in chapter six was part of a small personal revenge of mine. When one of my cousins was in care, she would be beaten on the head with a hairdryer to a point where she now suffers from seizures, so that scene was my own way of getting hypothetical justice. 
• Inspiration from the story also came from my analysis that Seras and Alucard actually had pretty similar backgrounds. Both had rough childhoods and lost their parents at a young age, and both had to survive in a world of abuse, neglect and betrayal. It made me wonder what it would be like if Alucard was by her side during this stage of her life. 
• The main song inspiration for this story is Black & Gold by Sam Sparro. Pay close attention to the lyrics and you'll probably make a lot of the connections. 
• In chapter three, Alucard states that he was once 'Orthodox.' This was a branch of Christianity that Vlad III (the Impaler) followed for most of his life.
• The song that Seras sings in chapter two is called, It's a Long Way to Tipperary. This was a song about homesickness (by an Irishman living in London), and was often sung by the British army during both world wars. This is also why Alucard comments on its familiarity. During the wars, he would have heard the soldiers singing it. 
• In chapter 6, what Alucard mentions about Latin is true. In modern times, we don't know how the words were officially pronounced. It could be completely wrong for all we know.