Voyance is a complete Miraculous Ladybug fanfic written by lpofdestiny
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Taking cover during the latest Akuma attack, Alya stumbles into the shop of a tarot reader who claims her cards are always right. Word spreads and soon everyone is visiting Voyance to get a reading done.
Takes place shortly after the end of Season 2. A meta character analysis in the form of a story.
Can be read here.
Now has a sequel called The Fool's Journey.
Voyance and The Fool's Journey provide examples of:
- Alpha Bitch: Chloe is in typical form during her chapter.
- Bait-and-Switch: At the end of chapter 9, Madame Magda mentions having a date. Chapter 10 reveals she meant a 'date with destiny' by meeting Hawk Moth when he comes by expecting her to be gone.
- Celebrity Power: Downplayed and in-universe. Madame Magda uses the fact that Adrien came to her for a reading to drum up business.
- Contrived Coincidence: Justified considering that neither Chloe nor Gabriel would have sought out Voyance of their own volition.
- Crystal Ball: Madame Magda has one, but she freely admits it's just a prop.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: The entirety of the Hawk Moth reading. Despite being confronted by a supervillain willing and capable of outright murdering her, Madame Magda spends the entire time alternating between ripping his motivations apart and trying to redeem him. It's telling that although Hawk Moth technically gets what he came for, he's the one leaving cowed and impotent.
- Do Not Go Gentle: When Lila gets akumatized in the sequel and seems impossible to beat, Bunnyx goes to get a reading done. Madame Magda advises a special relationship spread on how to deal with an enemy. The spread has two possible endings of the relationship: Peace or Chaos. The reading overwhelmingly advises the latter.
- Double Meaning: Many of the cards. Sometimes even getting into Triple Meaning or more.
- Dramatic Irony: The reader is often able to see hidden meanings in the tarot cards that the characters cannot due to their knowledge of everyone's secret identities.
- 11th-Hour Ranger: Madame Magda herself is loaned the Monkey Miraculous in the climax of The Fool’s Journey.
- Foreshadowing: In-Universe mostly, but the nature of the cards to have multiple meanings allows many, many hints to the characters of things that the readers are already well aware of.
- The Fool: No surprise that the trope's namesake shows up, but it does so in its true capacity as both the beginning and the journeyer of the Fool's Journey, which is represented by the Major Arcana. Madame Magda tells Adrien during his third reading that the Fool's Journey is also known as The Hero's Journey, meaning The Fool is also The Hero.
- Fortune Teller: The Original Character Madame Magda is one. Though she insists her cards hold the real power, she is in fact very good at what she does, showing equal ability to read both the cards and her customers.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Madame Magda is very frank with her opinion of Hawk Moth and his so-called "justifications" for his actions.Madame Magda: You became Hawk Moth not out of necessity, but out of self-interest. This is evident in how you operate. You have no qualms with putting innocent civilians in danger. You indulge in power plays. You gloat. It's high time you call a spade a spade, Hawk Moth. You weren't pushed into villainy — you chose it.
- Good Feels Good: Madame Magda seems to be of this opinion and likes to try and steer her customers in that direction if she can.
- Gotta Have It, Gonna Steal It: Late in The Fool’s Journey when Marinette returns the deck to Madame Magda, Madame Magda reveals that the deck has a long history of this even admitting that this was how she came to have it in the first place.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The denouement chapter reveals that Madame Magda's presence in Paris and this series is due to the cards predicting an even greater villain than Hawk Moth who will come into possession of the Butterfly Miraculous.
- The Hero's Journey: Referenced as an alternate interpretation of The Fool's Journey, which is represented by the Major Arcana cards. In Natalie's reading, it is revealed that the order of the Major Arcana cards can lend additional meaning to a reading when multiple cards in close sequence appear at once.
- Ignored Epiphany: Both Gabriel and Natalie straight-up ignore the advice their reading provides despite the fact that it really is good advice for their situations. Gabriel gets another as Hawk Moth in chapter 10, as his cards are advising him to give up supervillainy and he instead concludes that he needs to make more use of his influence as Gabriel to bolster his efforts as Hawk Moth.
- Ineffectual Loner: The cards warn Hawk Moth that in refusing to accept aid in his quest to revive Emilie, he is closing himself off to perfectly valid methods of attaining his goal that don't require him to terrorize Paris.
- Insistent Terminology: Madame Magda often reminds others that the cards can only provide guidance and that the future they foretell is ever mutable.
- Internal Reveal: In chapter 10 Hawk Moth lets slip that the Ladybug and Cat Miraculouses are capable of granting a wish when used together. Madame Magda quickly deduces that such a powerful boon comes with an equally hefty pricetag.
- It's All About Me: Gabriel, to the point that the card in Natalie's Unrequited Love reading that shows why her relationship with Gabriel is doomed is the Four of Cups, which (among other things) stands for self-absorption.
- Madame Fortune: Madame Magda.
- Manipulative Bastard: Gabriel, to the surprise of absolutely no one.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
- Madame Magda's deck of cards that she does readings with is never wrong. However, despite this fact, they are never shown doing anything overtly mystical unless you count the fact that they apparently thwarted Chloe's attempts to stack the deck.
- Madame Magda herself may count. She seems to be a normal person to all perception, but she also has more than a few quirks that would make sense if she herself was supernatural in some way.
- This gets taken up to eleven in Hawk Moth's reading as Madame Magda manages to play him like a fiddle from beginning to end with a number of cases where things would make sense if she had magical abilities without ever making it clear if she does or not.
- The sequel finally reveals that the cards are a non-linear object removed from the timestream meaning they exist in all points of time simultaneously. This trait prevents time-travelling hero Bunnyx from scrying on them and freaking her out, which becomes part of an implied complex meta Batman Gambit by the cards to draw her into a reading.
- Meta Fiction: As stated in the blurb, each chapter is essentially a character analysis done in the form of a tarot reading.
- New Age: Voyance is often described this way, often by characters being disdainful of it.
- No-Sell: Hawk Moth has a plan to akumatize Madame Magda by stealing her special deck (the one that's never wrong). She thwarts this by foreseeing the theft and calmly resigning herself to it, meaning there's no strong emotions for Hawk Moth to work with.
- Power Crystal: Madame Magda has some for sale. They're likely just mundane baubles though.
- Psychological Combat: Outright stated in one chapter to be the modus operandi of the Knight of Swords, which has come to represent Hawk Moth fairly frequently.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Hawk Moth sets out to steal Madame Magda's tarot cards in Chapter 10. He technically succeeds, but gets his entire life dissected by the fortune teller and completely fails to drive her to akumatization for his trouble.
- Sacred First Kiss: In Chapter 16 of The Fool's Journey, Adrien is forced to trade his first kiss to Lila for a tarot reading that will confirm whether she is in possession of Madame Magda's tarot cards.
- Schrödinger's Canon: The reading for Natalie is very much this due to her lack of canon characterization at the time of writing, and the author readily admits as much.
- Schrödinger's Gun: Some of the things Madame Magda does that progress the plot of the story could easily be either accidental or deliberate depending on which way you tilt your head and squint. It's often not clear which it was even afterwards.
- Screw Destiny: Madame Magda readily reminds others that if they don't like the future the cards foretell, they have the power to change it.
- Ship Tease: Between Madame Magda and the Gorilla of all people. Dubbed
'Magdorilla' by commenters. - Tarot Cards: Madame Magda's method of fortune telling involves them.
- Tarot Motifs: All over the place. In fact, each of the characters who get a reading has at least one card assigned to them that best fits their personality.
- Alya is represented by the Page of Swords, indicating new ideas, curiosity, thirst for knowledge, and new ways of communicating.
- Marinette/Ladybug is represented by the King of Wands, indicating natural-born leaders, grand visions, and long-term success.
- Chat Noir is represented by the Knight of Wands, indicating energy, passion, inspired action, adventure, and impulsiveness.
- Adrien is represented by the Queen of Wands, indicating courage, confidence, independence, social butterflies, and determination. Unlike Ladybug, he gets two separate cards for each of his personas to better reflect his Secret-Identity Identity issues.
- Nino is represented by the Page of Cups, indicating creative opportunities, intuitive messages, curiosity, and possibility.
- Chloe/Queen Bee is represented by the Knight of Cups, indicating creativity, romance, charm, imagination, and beauty.
- Gabriel is represented by the Knight of Swords as both himself and Hawk Moth, indicating ambition, action-oriented thinking, drive to succeed, and fast thinking.
- Nathalie is represented by the King of Pentacles, indicating wealth, business, leadership, security, discipline, and abundance.
- Wang Fu is represented by the King of Cups, indicating his exceptional judge of character.
- Madame Magda herself is represented by the Queen of Cups, representing her immense insight.
- Kagami in the sequel is said to be represented by the Queen of Swords, indicating honesty and astuteness.
- Alix/Bunnyx also gets the King of Cups representing her wisdom and understanding.
- During the above's reading Lila is represented by The Devil, representing that while she seems to have a great deal of power and corruptive influence, most if not all of it was given to her by her adversaries and she has far less real power than it seems.
- Tarot Troubles: Played with. The cards don't actually predict anything, they give guidance.
- Alya's reading forces her to acknowledge her shifting priorities regarding finding Ladybug's secret identity and the possible conflict with her readers should she learn and decide to keep it from them.
- Marinette's love reading subtly warns her that she can't solve her relationship issues until she finds out Adrien is Chat Noir.
- Ladybug and Chat Noir's success reading hints at Hawk Moth's motivations and relationship with Chat Noir.
- Chat Noir's relationship reading hints at his own and Ladybug's insecurities.
- Adrien's reading helps him resolve his identity issues and again hints at his relationship with Hawk Moth.
- Nino's reading helps him deal with his issues regarding his failure to protect Alya during "Mayura".
- Chloe's reading deals with the root of her issues regarding her own self-improvement and her mother.
- Gabriel's reading tries to warn him about the dark path he's treading regarding his relationship with his son and his obsession with bringing back his wife as Hawk Moth, but his desires are too distorted for him to do anything but plug up his ears and go "lalalala" at the prospect of self-reflection.
- Nathalie's reading tries to warn her that her unrequited love for Gabriel will only cause her pain. Like Gabriel himself, she refuses to heed the tarot's guidance.
- Hawk Moth's reading warns him that his actions as Hawk Moth are holding him back from succeeding in his goals and suggests that there are avenues he has not pursued as Gabriel Agreste that he could.
- The final chapter reveals that Madame Magda had come to Paris after a reading that predicted a terrible villain. The entire plot of the preceding chapters was due to Madame Magda attempting to arrange events so she could confirm or discount Hawk Moth as the predicted villain. At the end, she has confirmed that Hawk Moth is not the foretold villain.
- Villains Act, Heroes React: Directly stated by Madame Magda in Chapter 17 of The Fool's Journey, and noted to be a reason why evil tends to have the edge over good.
- Wrong Genre Savvy:
- Gabriel, full stop. Most prominently shown when Madame Magda draws the King of Pentacles during his reading and informs him that it represents a steady, reliable, and competent presence in his life; Gabriel immediately deludes himself into thinking it represents Emilie when any reader who knows the full extent of his personal situation would connect it to Nathalie. His second reading outright states that his supervillainy is actively hindering his ultimate goal, but he continues to ignore this.
- In the sequel, Lila does a spread allowing him to 'talk' to his future self. He manages to misinterpret everything and conclude a course of action directly counter to what his future self would actually advise.
