Ms. Bustier's homeroom class welcomes a new transfer student, Lila Rossi, who wows them all with her stories. However, they soon come to realize that most of her stories are fake. Figuring she just wanted to fit in, they agree to tell her that she can just be herself around them, but Lila turns out to have other ideas...
The Kill The Lights-verse
is a Series Fic by Storygirl 000, taking a different spin on a classic salt fic plot.
kill the lights, kill the actor, kill the actress contains the following tropes:
- Entertainingly Wrong: After figuring out that Lila was making up her stories, the class suspects that she was trying to fit in since a few classmates are celebrities (like Adrien and Chloé) or personally known celebrities (like Marinette and Rose). When they offer her the chance to start over, Lila proves them dead wrong.
- Redemption Rejection: When Lila returns, the class tells her they know about her lies, but tell her that they can start over if Lila can stop her past behavior and let them know the real her. Lila dismisses them as worthless and transfers to Ms. Bonaparte's homeroom class instead.
- Spotting the Thread: All it takes for the class to figure out that Lila was telling Celebrity Lies is to talk to each other about her stories and realize the inconsistencies.
you turned out to be the best thing i never had contains the following tropes:
- Deconstruction Fic: Takes apart the common Salt Fic plot where the class turns on Marinette for a stranger and she in turn ends up befriending other strangers who subsequently shun her old friends. Besides the class admitting their faults for not believing Marinette, Lila plays the role of the heartbroken transfer student that was bullied by her own classmates and makes her new class her Unwitting Pawns against Ms. Bustier’s class. Each student in Lila's new class is also an Expy of a member of Bustier's class — or, more accurately, how they commonly get portrayed in salt fics.
- Ms. Bonaparte is a counterpart to Ms. Bustier, and she horrifies the other teacher with her willingness to let her students get away with their bullying (and let Lila specifically manipulate them and herself). For bonus points, seeing how her counterpart behaves leads to Bustier having a My God, What Have I Done? moment over how she treats her own class and seeking to rectify that.
- Vin is Alya's counterpart, running a tabloid-like news site about Ladybug and Chat Noir, taking Lila's word at face value, and being stubborn enough to refuse any criticism or attempts to get him to see the truth. Alya's quick to dismiss his articles as nothing more than lie-driven clickbait.
- Zero is Alix's counterpart (and Kim's, though they never meet), being the student that's quickest to resort to physically bullying anyone (e.g. tripping Alix and Nathaniel) who supposedly harmed Lila and insisting it's "justice".
- Newton is Rose's counterpart, being Lila's victim when she pulls the salt fic-typical Fake Charity scam. The author also compares him to Max, claiming to be a genius yet being dumb enough to fall for Lila's claims (e.g. refusing to listen to Rose when she points out Prince Ali doesn't support this supposed charity).
- Finally, Trixie is Adrien's counterpart, being the only one who knows Lila is lying but refusing to expose her for risk of akumatization and dismissing her lies as "harmless". When Adrien points out that his friends are getting harmed by them, she simply tells him that they're used to the pain (being Hawk Moth's most frequent victims), so it doesn't matter.
- Discard and Draw: In chapter 2, it's revealed that after their identities were outed in "Miracle Queen", the temporary heroes have swapped their Miraculouses with each other to continue to defend Paris. For example, Alya now wields the Snake Miraculous, Luka the Fox, and Kim the Turtle.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Implied with Plagg, with both Adrien and Tikki telling him that murder is off the table when dealing with Bonaparte's class (though it turns out he does have a non-murder solution).
- My God, What Have I Done?: Bustier is horrified and guilt-stricken when she realizes how similar she's been to Ms. Bonaparte in regards to how they each treated their class' resident bully.
- Shout-Out:
- Ms. Bonaparte's students are all named after the main characters of I.N.K. Invisible Network of Kids.
- Lila's scam in chapter 4 involves saving the fake Xinjiang Blinking Spotted Suckerfish, a reference to a different scam pulled in Regarding the Sink.
- Side Bet: Rose and Juleka bet on whether or not Lila's clothes drive charity will end with her wearing said clothes. The next week, Lila is wearing her ill-gotten gains and Rose agrees to pay for her and Juleka's next date.
