(no subject)

[soc_puppet]

The saddest ML plunny I have ever considered writing: The one where Miraculous wielders get stuck with Modified Fruits Basket Hug Rules. (Nuclear family member hugs are now okay, but all other hugs are out regardless of participants' gender/assigned sex; Adrien is slightly glad for the excuse to start enforcing boundaries with fans and Chloe other people, and as for the rest, well. He can't miss what he never had. Marinette, meanwhile, is hugging her parents as much as she feels she can get away with, and she didn't exactly think she had a chance with the cute new boy at school, even if he did give her his umbrella. And if hugs between Cat Noir and Ladybug are kind of weirdly intense whenever they happen, neither of them is taking questions about it.)

The next-most-sad plunny currently in the hutch: The one where Ladybug figures out that the kiss cure from Dark Cupid can work every time Cat Noir gets hit with an akuma's power, but is sure it will only ever work one way, because Cat Noir is not her True Love, and she isn't going to get Innocent Civilian Adrien Agreste tangled up in this if she doesn't have to.


You can tell the first one is sadder because it hasn't made me cackle horribly even once, while I cackled over the second just typing up the summary.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

1) ♥

2) ...does he know about this

[soc_puppet]

1) Marinette absolutely had a mini-crisis over whether to take the Miraculous or not based on "ability to hug people"; it also heavily influenced her decision to continue being Ladybug rather than force the No Hugs Rule onto anyone else. (She has another mini-crisis over giving Alya the Fox Miraculous for similar reasons. Does she really think Alya is the right person for the job, or does she just want to be able to hug her best friend? And are either of these worth Alya giving up her ability to hug non-family and non-heroes over? (How long the no-hug effect lasts when a person no longer has a Miraculous is something she hasn't tested...))

2) Well. She had to tell him something after the first time she kissed him out of an akuma-blast after Dark Cupid. He knows that her kisses can snap him out of an akuma's powers, but she isn't telling him who she Truly Loves, so he's just planning to try anyway if it ever comes down to it. ...With her permission, of course. Inasmuch as she is able to grant it, during whatever hypothetical circumstances. (I'm thinking Reflekta, myself.)

Related fic: Magic Works by ANebulaDarkly:

Nearly a year after the original incident, Marinette has an epiphany about last year's Valentine's Day chaos. Yes, the only thing that conquers hate is love.

But that kind of magic only works if it's *true* love.

(I came up with mine independently and was rather surprised to see someone working on such a similar premise, let me tell you. I think it's different enough that I'm okay, though, and it's really heart-wrenchingly good, besides.)

[alexseanchai]

1) Whereas Adrien may or may not have listened to that bit of the user manual at first but certainly did not think to care when he learned it, because who ever hugged him anyway? Poor poor touch-starved kitten.

Alya, if she accepted, was probably suffering in silence for ages and Marinette was suffering watching her suffer. Nino, same. In fact I bet they broke up for a while over it. Wonder if Alya revealed herself to Nino before Heroes' Day because she already knew about Carapace and she just couldn't take it anymore? Either way those two promptly became massive PDA 24/7, yes?

...Chloé.

Wait shit. Pre-Mayura, Gabriel!

2) :D

[soc_puppet]

1) Adrien definitely didn't hear that part before transforming; it only came up after when he was declaring his love of Ladybug to Plagg. "Good thing you fell for her, then," says Plagg, and Adrien's stomach drops (though not as far as it might) as his kwami explains the no-hugs rule.

I'm torn on whether or not Marinette would bully Fu and/or the kwamis into letting her and Adrien reveal themselves to Alya and Nino, because they definitely have their figure-it-out moment before passing on any more Miraculouses. (Current ending is planned for and partially written as right after their mutual accidental-hugging-in-public reveal.) That would absolutely be fantastic sequel fodder, though.

Chloe is... complicated. And also I haven't given much thought to how things go for her in this. I think the No Hugs rule doesn't apply when they're suited up? So LB and CN probably wouldn't have had any sort of press conference about it or anything. Not sure if Pollen would have told her, or if CN and LB would've had to catch her to let her know ASAP. (Even if they are out to Nino and Alya, though, they are not telling Chloe. Even Adrien agrees with this; he's starting to like this 'boundaries' stuff.)

Again, it's not like Gabriel was hugging many people anyway, and it's also good incentive for him to have given Emilie the Peacock Miraculous back in the day. I'm also planning that "not turning into an animal when someone not related to you or another Miraculous holder hugs you" is one of the Special Skills that Miraculous users can learn over time/with experience/possibly help from the book, like not detransforming five minutes after using their special powers. (It's high on Adrien's priority list to learn to hold off literally turning into a cat for at least an hour or two at a time, because his excuses for not being in touchy-feely photoshoots are running out quick, especially now that he has a girlfriend.)


2) You see where the cackling comes in, I trust ;3c

[alexseanchai]

I had a thought about Gabriel, actually. Like. Whatever his relationship with Nathalie is, it canonically does not rule out physical affection altogether.

But here, pre-Mayura, Gabriel isn't getting that from her. Not even a little. (I'm not sure whether to believe Gabriel and Nathalie are canonically sexually involved, but I feel like it's important to note that this AU's definition of "hug" probably has heavy overlap with a lot of definitions of "sex", or anyway is likely to roadblock a lot of wielders wanting to have sex.)

So what if—and he may not consciously realize all his motives here; I'm thinking he is as usual more motivated by his own feelings than his son's—he makes up for that with more physical affection with Adrien? Both of them are very glad of the "immediate family" out, because that reveal would be Awkward, and Gabriel probably still doesn't hug Adrien often and Adrien probably still doesn't initiate hugs ever...but all the times Gabriel's hugged Adrien on screen in canon (which is to say, in canonverse, sum total) add up to significantly less than all the times Gabriel's hugged Adrien in the same time frame here.

Now consider another thought I've been having. That scarf in "Bubbler". Does Marinette sign her work, or just her designs? Because unless that scarf has detail only visible up close, I do not think she designed the scarf. She only made it. So all the fics where Adrien figures out she made it because he finds her signature? Not this scenario. He has no way to learn it isn't from Gabriel unless Gabriel, Nathalie, Marinette, or Alya tells him. But he probably knows enough about the processes involved to identify it as handmade...which means Adrien thinks Gabriel spent a couple-few hours knitting him a scarf. And yeah, he was probably multitasking, but he definitely wasn't doing any work that needed his hands for that time. Which means this scarf is the embodiment of a [distressingly] significant increase in the year's total of hours that Adrien knows Gabriel spent thinking about Adrien.

Canon Adrien has probably given Gabriel a hell of a lot of undeserved credit because of that scarf.

This Adrien, who is actually getting physical affection from his father when neither of them just got creamed by an akuma? He's probably a lot less willing to consider the idea that anything his father is or is not doing that hurts him is a problem of his father's making. Father's busy, that's all. He'll pay Adrien attention when Adrien proves he's good enough to deserve it.

...oooh, that's an even more worrisome spin, if this Gabriel is (intentionally or otherwise) using hugs as rewards or denying them as punishment. I don't think canon Gabriel is doing that, but canon Adrien already has a problem with being desperate for parental affection...

OOH. And how would Nathalie becoming a wielder then impact the Gabriel [&|/] Nathalie dynamic? And would that impact the Gabriel & Adrien dynamic?

[soc_puppet]

(I'm not sure whether to believe Gabriel and Nathalie are canonically sexually involved, but I feel like it's important to note that this AU's definition of "hug" probably has heavy overlap with a lot of definitions of "sex", or anyway is likely to roadblock a lot of wielders wanting to have sex.)

So the definition of "hug" in Fruits Basket is kinda super weird? It's basically "chest-to-chest contact and possibly also chest-to-back contact counts as hugging". Which means that a certain amount of sexytiems in this setup would more-or-less be following the Standing/Leaning/Sitting/Laying Down improv routine (pick # per # of players).



Your scenario, while startlingly and horrifyingly plausible, goes waaaaay beyond my personal Angst Writing Tolerance line. I'm leaning towards "it's possible to learn to keep from transforming when hugged" for myself, but if/when I get the fic up and posted, you are absolutely authorized to write a divergence/AU/your own version of it with the scary stuff in.

[alexseanchai]

cool cool cool

(when in fuck did I become an angst writer?)

[soc_puppet]

(...I mean, did you want me to float an actual answer to that, or...?)


PS I've added a bit more to the Furuba Hugging Rules WIP. I need to tweak some transitions, but I think it might be getting pretty close.

[alexseanchai]

It was rhetorical but also I'm curious?

*pokes*

[soc_puppet]

Short version, because you relate so well to Adrien, figuring out Adrien's issues and how to help him deal with them is helpful to you, and angst is the most helpful medium for you to do it in.

Alternately (or additionally), I'm armchair psychoanalyzing and need to sit in a corner and think about what I've done.

(I, meanwhile, am absolutely using this fandom as an escape and an attempt to pretend there's at least one world where everything has a chance of turning out mostly well for everyone involved, and can't I just live there for a while?)

[alexseanchai]

Both entirely plausible hypotheses

(preach)

[soc_puppet]

(Ah, to be transported to a world where I, as a Magical Girl-ish-type-person, could be certain that Love as an ideal could save the day, and that I would always have a very clear bad guy to beat (and if I didn't, I could turn around and figure out the real bad guy pretty quickly), and that otherwise my only major problems would be romantic that would inevitably end in my favor... *...deliberately uses the Chloe icon*)

[alexseanchai]

mm-hm yup

[soc_puppet]

1) Here, have the super duper extra rough draft that's been sitting half- to two-thirds written for over nine months!

[alexseanchai]

OH RIGHT

[soc_puppet]

Lol 😂