The Queen of Mean AU
is a series of five Miraculous Ladybug fanfics by Unmasked Again.
After being shunned and betrayed by all of her friends thanks to the machinations of one Lila Rossi, Marinette Dupain-Cheng has had enough. She's past being sad or upset, and now she's just angry at how little all her friends valued her. How easily they gave her up for someone who had nothing but a few tall tales. How cruel they were when excluding her from activities and blaming her for the unpleasantness in the classroom.
So she's decided to get even. To make them suffer just as she did. And to refuse their entreaties when they come crawling back to her. The everyday Ladybug who filled up the class with sunshine and kindness is gone. Only an ice queen remains.
The stories are:
- Queen of Mean: Marinette kicks off her plans by releasing a devastating video as Ladybug which eviscerates the Ladyblog and ruins Alya's reputation, then exposes all of Lila's celebrity lies with statements from the celebrities in question.
- Worse Than the Devil: With the class in turmoil after Lila's exposure, many of its students hope that Marinette will help them, but Marinette refuses to even consider it. She also decides to kick off the next part of her plan: revealing to the class that Adrien knew Lila was a liar but said nothing.
- Made Me Do: Marinette meets up with Felix at a modeling shoot and befriends him, then rejects her former classmates once again when they pester her later.
- Sorry Not Sorry: Marinette replaces the other Miraculous wielders, including Chat Noir, with a team she actually trusts.
- I Forgot: As time goes on and Marinette continues to grow away from her old classmates and closer to her new friends, she realizes she's not even thinking about her former friends anymore, and she looks forward to the day when she'll forget them entirely.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Villainy:
- Marinette acknowledges that she's no longer really a hero, but that doesn't stop her from seeking to destroy the lives of those who wronged her.
- This trope also applies to Tikki, who in the show usually encourages Marinette's kindness but in this story eggs Marinette on to lash out at those who hurt her.
- Alpha Bitch: This is what Marinette ultimately becomes; a beautiful, popular Manipulative Bitch who uses her newfound connections to torment the classmates who had turned on her.
- Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: After Marinette implements her plans, she not only makes nice with Chloé but talks approvingly about how Chloé is an incredibly mean and cruel person.
- Celebrity Lie: Lila plays this straight; Marinette inverts this by actually meeting the celebrities the class idolizes and then having Chloé bring the meetings up in class. The students know she's telling the truth, but unlike Lila, they known Marinette won't introduce them.
- Chemically-Induced Insanity: In "Sorry, Not Sorry" one of Marinette’s acts of revenge is to give Master Fu a concoction that induces immediate senility and sends him to an asylum.
- Crossover: Marinette and Chloé get to hang out with The Avengers, including Tony Stark and Peter Parker, at one point.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: Marinette is repeatedly analogized to a cruel queen who won't hesitate to destroy anyone who hurts her.
- Gone Horribly Right: Marinette's plan to completely destroy the Ladyblog almost worked perfectly, but it managed to maintain a few defenders because Marinette had also exposed Lila so totally that some people were willing to defend Alya on the grounds that she had just fallen into a notorious sociopath's web of lies and so hadn't really meant to do anything wrong.
- Ice Queen: After starting her plans, Marinette becomes one of these, joined by Chloé. They reject all the efforts of their classmates to apologize and make nice, and instead leave them to suffer for having trusted Lila.
- It's All About Me: One of the reasons Marinette replaces Chat Noir is that he starts refusing to fight akumas unless Ladybug agrees to date him.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Tired of Fu's inability to rein in the useless and sexist Chat Noir, Marinette slips him a magic potion that destroys his mind. She leaves him with memory loss and dementia in a retirement home.
- Original Character: One of the new heroes Marinette recruits wields the non-canon Lion Miraculous, complete with an original kwami.
- Real-Person Fic: Marinette and Chloé begin modeling after Marinette cuts the class out of her lives, and it's mentioned that they get to hang out with popular celebrities at the shoots. Bella and Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Beyonce, and Jay-Z are mentioned by name (though Chloé admits they only waved to Beyonce from afar).
- Rejected Apology: Marinette rejects all the efforts by her former friends to make nice with her, making it clear she's done with them and she'd rather just hang out with Chloé and her other new friends like Luka, Kagami, and Felix. The trope is played with a bit in that Marinette claims to accept the apology but immediately says she won't forgive them, making it clear she didn't accept it in any meaningful sense.
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: After adopting her new 'ice queen' persona, Marinette lets her hair down and begins dressing in all black, deliberately using fancy and expensive clothes that make her look like a supermodel to emphasize just how amazing she is (and how much the class lost by abandoning her). She redesigns her Ladybug uniform too.
- Song Fic: Each fic in the series is named after a different song, with the lyrics from these songs woven into the text in a fairly natural manner.
- Sudden Name Change: The new Fox Miraculous holder is named Blanche Renarde in Sorry (Not Sorry) and Icefox in I Forgot.
- Summer School Sucks: Lila is forced to attend summer school after Marinette uses Chloé to inform the Italian embassy, including Lila's mother, of Lila's lies. Given how much school Lila skipped for no acceptable reason, even Lila can't wriggle her way out of that punishment.
- Vengeance Feels Empty: Marinette ultimately realizes that her revenge isn't satisfying for long, and rather than continuing to delight in the misery of her former friends, she resolves to just move on and forget about them.
