The Path of Lila's Karma
is a Miraculous Ladybug fanfic by Lmrpirate. It is Recursive Fanfiction to both Karmic Backlash and The Karma of Lies, though ultimately, it's a Deconstruction Fic of the latter.
During Karmic Backlash, Lila Rossi has successfully stolen the Miraculous from Marinette and used them to ruin her life, before continuing to use them for her own success. But while in one story this lead to her untimely death at the hands of one of her victims, in another she used the Rabbit Miraculous to find out her death and prevent it with a Sentimonster substitute.
From there, she discovers the true horror that's been running the universe for a long time. And she decides that if this force was so willing to let her mother suffer and allow her to succeed for so long, then why not take his power for herself...
The Path of Lila's Karma contain examples of:
- Adaptational Intelligence: in Karmic Backlash, Lila was eventually murdered by someone whose life she tried to ruin. In this story, she thinks ahead and uses the rabbit Miraculous to look into the future. This lets her see her own death coming and she figures out a way to avert it.
- Adaptational Karma: The coworker who ruined Mrs. Rossi's career and evaded all consequences for that and his corruption, along with all the connections he used to accomplish that is put inside of Karma's pocket dimension as a sacrifice for the wish alongside Mariana, doomed to never die and forced to watch the girl he unintentionally helped corrupt rule the world with an iron fist. Like everything else, it's seen as Disproportionate Retribution.
- All for Nothing:
- Karma's entire gambit hinged on Adrien no longer wanting anything to do with Plagg, Marinette becoming a slave to the Order and Lila to die, eliminating all his unneeded pawns and bring the Order down again later without anyone being able to bring it back. Now that Lila is the ruler of the world, all of Karma's schemes have come crashing down now that all the Miraculous in the world are in the hands of someone far worse than any of the Miraculous Guardians ever were.
- Discussed by Lila when she states that Karma's reasoning for having Adrien become penniless and despised to possibly murderous degrees by the whole world because he was allegedly putting Marinette in danger of being Akumatized and causing Hawkmoth to succeed was illogical. She states that it would've likely been better if Gabrial had gotten the Miraculous since he likely wouldn't have changed the world nearly as much as Lila did when she made the Wish. As such, Adrien, Marinette, the class and Marinette's new friends all suffered from the Karma induced hatred by the masses, only for Lila to win anyway and render all their suffering and potentials for redemption pointless.
- And I Must Scream:
- Marinette, Karma and the Kwamis are the only ones who retain their memories and personalities after Lila makes her wish, with the former two having augmented versions of her control collars that allow them to keep their self-awareness unlike everyone else who wears them. Unfortunately, due to the rules of the Miraculous and the collars' ability to force people to commit whatever action Lila wants from them, they're still forced to be Lila's slaves to the point where they're not able to speak unless she allows them to.
- Lila's wish sacrificed her mother's corrupt co-worker and Mariana in order to bring Karma to the real world, trapping Lila's would-be killer and the man who set the events that caused Lila to become a con artist in the first place into Karma's pocket dimension where they're unable to die and are forced to watch as the real world gets ruined by Lila.
- Berserk Button: Downplayed, but Lila states that the only people she hates more than overly moral people who get in her way are those who pretend to be those people when they're really as hateful, greedy or cruel as Lila is. It serves as motivation for her to enslave Karma and gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
- The Corrupter: Karma is shown to be this as he has the ability to brainwash everyone in the world on mass and is responsible for Adrien's entitlement, Marinette's cruelty, the class's obsession with Lila and Marinette's new friends equally unhealthy devotion to her, as well as the nigh psychotic hatred that the Parisian public had/has towards all parties involved. Lila even calls Karma "the epitome of a social curse".
- Create Your Own Villain: Karma sets up Lila to be his Unwitting Pawn, from the moment he allowed her mother to take the fall for her co-worker's corruption to letting Adrien and Marinette take the fall for her crimes, before setting her up for her own death. Unfortunately, Lila would find out her intended fate, leading her to discover the wish and take control. Karma breaks down in realization that his spite has set up the worst possible monster to take over.
- Cruel and Unusual Death:
- Lila looks into her future and witnesses her being stabbed to death Mariana when the girl suffers a psychotic break after learning about all that Lila has done. Lila then forces a Sentimonster copy of herself to go through it in her stead in order to expose Mariana bringing a weapon to court and to make her look delusional.
- Karma is forced by Lila to sentence a 7-year-old boy to be publicly disemboweled for 3 days, complete with blood packs to keep him from bleeding out beforehand.
- Darker and Edgier: Even more so than Karmic Backlash was to The Karma of Lies. In Karmic Backlash Adrien is finally proven innocent of being his father's accomplice, Marinette's former class no longer have their own bad reputations, Lila dies, meaning she couldn't hurt anyone anymore and Marinette's new "friends" were saved by Adrien Shaming the Mob into backing off from them. In The Path of Lila's Karma however, Lila makes a wish where she gains everything at the expense of everyone else in the universe while all the other characters are either shown or implied to have become her slaves while she dishes horrible punishments onto people just to satiate her love of hurting other people. In the end, it's outright stated that there's no hope and that the universe is permanently doomed.
- Deconstruction Fic:
- If Karmic Backlash deconstructs Karma as a misfiring and disproportionate force that can easily backfire on Marinette, and it's other Recursive Fanfiction Karma and Reality questions Karma's existence outright, then The Path of Lila's Karma portrays it as a spiteful force that manipulates anyone into either vicious agents of "justice" or unsympathetic Asshole Victims for his goals. Lmrpirate outright describes Karma in The Karma of Lies as the manifestation of Cartoon Addict's spite towards the show.
- It's also a deconstruction of
how salt fics tend to reduce the characters to cruel jerks that they never were in canon unless the writer likes them enough. Karma is the epitome of this due to his ability to brainwash people on mass, including the Kwamis, into becoming cruel jerks who advance his goals.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Karma's reasoning for why Adrien deserved his initial punishment was because Adrien's lack of action regarding Lila's bullying were putting Marinette at risk of Akumatization. Lila shoots this line of reasoning down with multiple counter arguments on why it was a completely stupid reason to ruin Adrien's life for.
- Karma also decided to allow the coworker who ruined Mrs. Rossi's career continue unimpeded along with the connections he used to crush her chances of climbing the ladder of her embassy. Since that incident was what caused Lila to become the Manipulative Bitch she was in The Karma of Lies, Karma deciding not to punish said coworker or protect Lila's mother is what started the whole mess to begin with.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- The reason that the events of The Karma of Lie happened in the first place, leading to Marinette's classmates turning on her and inevitably their lives getting ruined. It was because Marinette brought back the Order of the Guardian and reversed the death Karma bestowed upon them through Feast.
- The horror of Lila's reign is demonstrated when she subjects a an under 7-years-old boy to a three-day long death by public disembowelment just because he touched her clothes.
- Downer Ending: Lila gets away with everything and is the undisputed and nigh-invincible ruler of the new world, and Karma is forced to recognize that he's responsible for the whole mess as his power is used to serve her sociopathic whim.
- Eye Scream: The first wound that Mariana inflicts onto Lila when she looks into her immediate future with the Rabbit Miraculous is to stab her through her eye.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Karma is essentially the overall true villain of the Miraculous world, not only manipulating the minds and behavior of various characters in the previous stories but also setting up the entire show by manipulating Master Fu into creating Feast and set it out to devour the Guardians, which would lead to Gabriel and Emilie finding the Butterfly and Peacock Miraculous.
- Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: Karma dismisses Plagg and the Black Cat Miraculous as useless in saving people in favor of the Miraculous Cure and thinks the world would be better off without them. Though since he can't get rid of Plagg without incurring the wrath of the other Kwamis, he instead sets up Plagg's wielders like Adrien to be corrupted and set up for horrifying downfalls which has apparently happened 7 other times.
- Happy Ending Override: Serves as one both to the original Karma of Lies (which ended with Marinette and her friends having hit the Karmic Jackpot and with Lila terrified thanks to Ladybug's warning of her final fate) and to Karmic Backlash (which ended with Adrien and the class having salvaged their lives and with Lila dead). In this story, the only winner is Lila; neither Marinette and her friends nor Adrien and the class get happy endings.
- Heel–Face Brainwashing: Lila thinks back to how unlikely it was for Chloe to have reform in time to join Marinette in the Karma of Lies, especially after what she did in Miracle Queen, as any redemption should have taken months or even years. She suspects that Karma had twisted Chloe's mind as it had with so many others.
- Immortality: Lila's Wish includes making herself immortal in the new world.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Played for horror. Karma, after countless years of bringing misery to others, gets what he deserves… the problem is that the rest of mankind becomes collateral damage.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Karma, after thousands of years of manipulating human minds and behavior for his own twisted agenda, is ultimately brought to justice and pulled from the safety of his pocket dimension... except this is Played for Horror as the deliverer of justice is Lila herself, who uses his power to make the already toxic world worse than before.
- More than Mind Control: Part of Karma's brainwashing is him using suggestion in order to warp the minds of those he intends to use. Examples are when Marinette felt like Karma was telling her that it would be a good idea to scare Lila with her bad future and when Plagg admits that he ended up having thoughts about Adrien needing some "discipline" in a similar way to what Gabrial thought about any action that his son did that he didn't like.
- My God, What Have I Done?: After Lila's TheReasonYouSuckSpeech against him, Karma pieces everything together and realizes just how badly he failed to truly uphold justice and how he doomed the world at large. The story ends with him being forced to continue giving disproportionate punishments towards innocent people while crying uncontrollably.
- Oh, Crap!: Marinette, Tikki and Plagg get one when they're discussing how Karma works and Marinette claims that she felt like Karma was guiding her actions in The Karma Of Lies, causing Tikki to piece everything together. Plagg takes it the worst of all when he realizes that he was manipulated into behaving like Gabrial when he says that he felt like Adrien needed some "discipline".
- Recursive Fanfiction: To Karmic Backlash, which was already recursive Fanfiction for The Karma of Lies. The difference is that Lila survives her death in the former which set things to be worse overall.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Marinette realizes with dread that her fear of getting Akumatized thanks to Lila manipulating her classmates is what allowed Karma to manipulate her mind instead.
- Sentient Cosmic Force: Karma is revealed to be a sentient and conscious entity, though it's described more as a manifestation of spite rather than true karmic justice. Lila brings it forth in physical form by trading its place with Mariana and Mrs. Rossi's co-worker.
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Lila's evil is shown by her using brainwashed slaves to serve her in the new world.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: She also turned Adrien into an obedient boy-toy in which she fulfils her sexual desires with while forcing Marinette to watch as it happens (thankfully only mentioned and not shown).
- Shout-Out: During her "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Karma, Lila brings up the Persona series and how Shadows are typically the manipulation and exaggeration of people's darker thoughts and emotions. She outright describes Karma as the Shadow of People's Spite by the games' context.
- Wham Line: When Lila is nearing the end of her "The Reason You Suck" Speech towards Karma, she belts out her new self-dubbed title:Lila: "I AM THE ''SUPREME''!"
