Sailing With Mari (Other Marinette Ships from Miraculous Ladybug)

Paint you the World (Nathaniel x Marinette)

Marinette and Nathaniel sat in the back room of her studio, it use to be a meeting room, but she like to meet with clients in her office so she turned it into a break room and let her artist friends borrow the space too. Though today neither of them were doing art, Nath had his graphic book spread out on the table. He'd gotten rejected by yet another publishing company. "I just don't understand Mari, nobody wants my book." He sighed and sat on one of the many bean bag chairs in the room. 

"Did this one at least give you a reason?" Nath refused to let her read it, so she couldn't really argue for or against his book. 

"They all give me the same reason Mar, they all hate the ending." He gives another frustrated sigh and goes and starts to collect the pages of his book, whatever work he thought about doing, he'd clearly changed his mind on. 

"I know you don't want me to see it, but can you ay lease tell me how it ends? Maybe I can offer a reader's perspective?" She sits on the other end of the to make it clear she's not going to force him to show her anything. 

He takes a deep breath, stops sorting. "The story focus on three main characters, the hero, the villain and the 'damsel in distress'. Except, the damsel in distress is the main character. Which they all love, they like that is focus on this girl who lives in a world plagued by supper villain attacks, it makes the read feel relatable to the Parian struggle and a good way to look back and not forget. Rather than focusing on the hero role again, it focuses on the fear we all dealt with. The hero and the villain both have civilian identities and the villain is a redeemable character as a civilian, the reader doesn't know he's the villain, he's a minor antagonist for the hero in the hero's civilian life and he is the girls love interest because she sees him as redeemable so there for the reader does too. The hero is her best friend and he's in love with her, as a hero he flirts with her and makes a show of saving her. She suspects him, so does the reader. Anyway, as the story progresses and during the final battle both hero and villain identities get revealed to the girl, the villain loses the girl's heart is broken and the hero doesn't get the girl." 

"Oh, so they want a happy ending where the girl goes with the best friend?" She quirks an eyebrow.

"No, they actually want the villain to give up his ways for the girl. But I just don't think that's realistic. If you change for someone else that change isn't real, what if they break your heart? Do you keep the change? Or go back to your olds ways only worse now because you're jagged?"

"I can see that you took inspiration from our heroes." she smiled, her life as Ladybug had inspired so many people's art. She kinda loved it. 

"Ya and those two didn't get a storybook ending, defeating Shadowmoth wrecked their relationship. Even hero's don't get happy endings all the time." he sugged and sighed. 

"Is this gonna be a one-off or did you have a trilogy in mind?" She'd never heard him talk about whats his next project would be, though writing a book was likely harder than planing sewing projects,

"Duology, actually." He put his copy back in his envelope and sat with Mari. 

"Do you include plot points for the second book then? So they can see the point of your ending?" He gave her a look that said duh. 

He poked her nose, "Of course I do silly, they just want me to change the course of the book entirely." He rolled his eyes. "And I won't do it." he sighed and looked away, "This would have been so much easier with Marc and I's book." 

"I'm sorry." That was all she felt like she could say. 

"Mar... we've been over this, it really wasn't your fault." He put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a light hug.