Story Trivia: Madness Within

 CONTAINS SPOILERS!

 

• The story was originally inspired by the fanfiction trope of Chat Noir having sided with his father and turning against Ladybug. This was a favourite trope of mine to read at the time. 
• I came up with the full idea for the story while daydreaming during a lecture when attending university. 
• Mental health was always going to be a huge theme from the start. I noticed that it was often inaccurately representated in a lot of fics with characters experiencing quick recoveries. I wanted to write something that was more realistic and true to life as I often pondered over the emotional and mental trauma that would come with being a superhero. 
• The first chapter/scene I originally imagined and planned out was the chapter 'A Night Out'.
• Originally, the story was going to be written purely from Chat Noir/Adrien's point of view, but ultimately decided against this due to also wanting to explore Marinette's point of view. 
• This story is by far the most popular of my work of all time on both FanFiction and Archive Of Our Own. 
• During the initial planning stages, as hard as it is to believe, Madness Within was only supposed to be around ten chapters long. 
• Quite a few of you managed to correctly figure out the drug that Marinette's drink was spiked with during the club chapters. The symptoms Marinette was experiencing lined up with the consumption of ecstasy. 
• A lot of the descriptions of anxiety attacks and depression are based on my own experiences with these issues. 
• There have been a few times that this story seemed to cause some controversy. The first was during the beginning where a lot of people disagreed with my depiction of mental health, and the second was when I posted the final chapter and people started sending me abuse over deciding to split the story into three parts, as well as my update schedule. 
• The chapter 'Just a Normal Day' was based on the idea of the 'normal factor' where victims of trauma tend to remember the events leading up to a traumatic event in intense detail. 
• The storyline of Alya's obsession with finding out the truth about Ladybug wasn't pre-planned. That ended up taking on a life of its own as I was writing. 
• I was writing notes for this story in the middle of my university graduation ceremony. 
• A lot of the music by Ana Johnsson that inspired this story was what I used to help me get myself through my own depression episodes. Ana Johnsson is my favourite singer, and her song, Burn, which was the main inspiration song for this fic, is my favourite song of all time.
• The most reviewed chapter was chapter 38 with 103 reviews upon release. 
• The story was originally rated T, but due to the themes involved, it was later changed to an M.
• The scene where Marinette's scars are revealed to Adrien was also one of the first scene ideas that I had for this fic. It was inspired by a scene in the movie, Goodnight Mister Tom, where abuse marks were revealed on one of the character's backs.     
• At one point, I lost all of my notes to this story. I'm not the most organised person... 
• I was VERY hesitant to publish this story at first, very nearly keeping it as a private project.
• If I was in Marinette's shoes, I would not be able to forgive Chat Noir for what he did and the way he has been since. 
• So far, Madness Within is the longest story I have ever written at 244,133 words.
• Madness Within was my first fanfic to reach the 1000 reviews milestone. This is something I have never even come close to achieving before. 
• There was originally supposed to be a Russian translation of the story in the works, but the writer who was supposed to translate it suddenly vanished. They sent me a link for the translated version, but FanFiction broke that link and I have been unable to get in contact with the writer since. 
• A lot of Chat Noir's puns in this story were created by my boyfriend and fellow writer, Jowy Avilon, since he considers himself a pun expert.
• The scene where Chat Noir blows up the microwave while making soup was loosely inspired by a real event that happened to me. Only for me, it was scrambled eggs instead of soup. 
• At one point I made a joke about the story being over 100 chapters long, and so many people took it seriously that it was chaotic and exhausting explaining to everyone that it was just a joke. 
• There was an error with Trixx's pronouns in this story. In the English dub of the show, Trixx sounded female to me (even though I know they don't have genders, just preferred pronouns), so I mistakingly used female pronouns. It turns out that Trixx actually uses male pronouns. 
• Upon the release of the episode Chat Blanc I had a lot of people making jokes about how I unintentially, yet accurately, portrayed Chat Noir when everything is finally revealed to him. 
• Madness Within was my first fanfic to achieve recognition in the AO3 Feed. 
• Madness Within is currently being made into a phsyical book by keysmashcharlie as of May 2021. They have kindly agreed to be my editor and beta reader of the series.
• The cover was created by marichatness, one of my Tumblr followers who has also done many other pieces of fan art of this story, all of which can be found on my blog.

 

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