Applications are open for the Miraculous Ladybug Lovesquare Remix Challenge! This event is designed so participants can reimagine a previously written fanwork utilizing a different side of the Lovesquare. The event will be split into two subevents: The Dance and The Buffet. The Dance will resemble a more traditional Remix Challenge with authors being randomly matched to remix another’s work, while The Buffet will feature additional fics that can be remixed by anyone. Applications are open June 23 - July 21!
✮ Dance-Writer Sign Ups
✮ Buffet-Writer Sign Ups
✮ Buffet-Fic Sign Ups
✮ Beta Sign Ups
In case of any questions, check out our F.A.Q., Rules, or send us an ask!
Did I maybe go overboard on the @mlsquaredance event? Idk what to tell you - I was too busy having fun to realize how deep I had gotten!
I plan to post 1 a week for the duration of the event, so the real question is, which remix should I post first?
Originals & tags linked here:
When You Let A Ladybug Cure Your Bellyache by wyomingparmesan (@wyomingparmesan)
Close Your Eyes by jennagrins (@jennagrinsoverml)
A Bad Dream by walkingonthestars (@hamsternamedmarinette)
how fair you were in summertime by MissNoodles (@ladyofthenoodle)
but princess, wishes do come true by MiaBrown (@miabrown007)
Midnight Snack by Papillon10 (@valiantlyjollynightmare)
A Fair Trade by sariahsue (@sariahsue)
Full Exposure by MissNoodles (@ladyofthenoodle)
Thank you to @ccboomer, @rosekasa, @wield-the-mighty-pen, @sunshinemarauder, and @ladyofthenoodle for beta reading these remixes! It was a pleasure working with all of you!
There's only one week left until the posting period of our remixes starts! From our dance writers, you can look forward to remixes to the following fics:
✮ you're all that i want (when you're lying here in my arms) by @jennagrinsoverml
✮ The right side of his face by @hamsternamedmarinette
✮ Mint To Be by @coffeebanana
✮ A Friend Like That by @trainsinanime
✮ A Miraculous Reveal by @kasienda
✮ dared not to remember your name (you found me anyway) by @chocoluckchipz
✮ cherry lip balm by @rosekasa
✮ Hamster (Adrienette April 2022) by @aanabear2803
✮ pretty lady, look at how he's smiling by @ladyofthenoodle
✮ Friendly Presents and Sickly Kisses by @wyomingparmesan
Remixed from A Bad Dream by walkingonthestars (@hamsternamedmarinette)
beta'd by @wield-the-mighty-pen
Read on Ao3 or below!
Adrien woke suddenly, shirt and sheets clinging to a layer of sweat, and breath coming in short, desperate gasps. His mouth tasted like blood and he couldn't move, not at first.
Slowly, his body caught up with his mind, and he was able to sit up and gather his breath. But the taste in his mouth lingered, and the panic that began in his gut crawled through his chest and up his throat, even as he tried to swallow it down.
He glanced down at his hands where he gripped the bedsheet as tightly as he had gripped Ladybug’s lifeless body in his dream. His silver ring glinted in the moonlight, its destructive power belied by its plain, unassuming band.
Normally, the power of Chat Noir was a comfort, a taste of freedom, but tonight the sight of the ring on his finger turned his stomach into a new set of knots. He yanked the ring off and hurled it into the darkness of his bedroom. He heard it clink against the floor, bounce against the wooden slats, and roll onto the rug somewhere beneath his couch.
Even without the weight of the ring, his panic wouldn’t fade. His heart still pounded like a hummingbird caught in a bramble. He could even feel thorns tearing into his chest.
He reached for his phone, certain that if he called Marinette now, he would feel better. He didn’t have to tell her what he dreamed about; he only had to hear her voice and lose himself in her passion and drive. He would only have to ask her what she was working on, and in thirty minutes, he would feel set right.
But he couldn’t bring himself to call her. His thumb hovered over her image for a moment before he finally at least managed to text her. Nothing demanding, nothing vulnerable. Just a simple, Are you awake?
She probably was. She was probably finishing homework or a design or a costume piece. But the night stretched on, and Marinette did not reply. And Adrien’s panic still pulsed through his veins.
Adrien climbed out of bed and pushed open one of the grand window panes. The cool evening air provided some relief. He leaned against the smooth glass and tried not to think about how many nights he had slipped away in Chat Noir’s guise. He would go out as Chat again sooner or later, but right now it didn't feel safe.
As he leaned against the window and drank in the night with heavy, long breaths, a familiar sound drifted into his room. A rhythmic thwip and spin that he knew too well.
Ladybug was nearby.
He listened to her drop and recall her yo-yo with a rhythm as consistent as his own long, heavy breaths. In and out together, like every inhale of his breath ended in the clutch of her hands. What was she doing? And where was she?
He looked across the grounds of his family’s manor but saw nothing out of place. It certainly sounded like she was above him.
Adrien climbed onto the roof of his house and found Ladybug pacing as she flicked her yo-yo back and forth, catching it perfectly on every recall—until she saw him just as she jerked her wrist back. The yo-yo sailed past her unprepared palm and smacked her in the face.
Ladybug hadn't changed much since the day that Adrien had first put on his miraculous. She’d grown more confident in her abilities and more trusting of others, of course, but he had always seen those strengths in her, even when she hadn't seen them in herself.
He was the one who had changed. He still felt the familiar twinge of longing in his chest when he looked at her, but his heart didn’t sing the way it once had. His world didn’t light up just because she smiled at him. Those feelings were with someone else now.
Someone who didn’t seem interested in answering her phone.
Adrien pulled himself up onto the roof. It wasn’t as easy of a climb without the help of Chat Noir’s power as he might have liked, but he managed it. He couldn’t quite bring himself to stand up, though, opting instead to sit on the narrow stretch of flat roof. He knew that if he did fall, he would not be able to call on Chat’s power to help him. “What are you doing up here, Ladybug?”
“Nothing! I mean—patrolling!” Her voice was a little too high and a little too fast as she manually wound her yo-yo back together. “Just patrolling, you know, normal superhero things! Because that's what I do. As a superhero. Patrol.”
“And did you find anything dangerous on my roof?”
“All safe and sound! So I'll be moving on…” But as she turned, she tipped her head to one side and looked at him properly. It was a look Adrien had always adored, had even fallen in love with once. There was a puzzle turning through her head, and she was determined to make sense of it.
“What are you doing up here?” Ladybug asked, as if it had just occurred to her that maybe climbing up onto the roof in the middle of the night was not normal for most people.
“Nothing,” he said, and leaned back on his hands as he stared up at her. It was so easy to remember why he had fallen in love with her when he saw her in the moonlight like this. The worry that creased her brow was so familiar. She’d done nothing but look worried these last few months, and that worry had not eased, not even since Hawk Moth’s defeat. It couldn’t, not with the butterfly miraculous still missing.
His own heart shuddered at the thought, but he tried to keep a small smile on his face. “You really don't have to worry about me, Ladybug. But I appreciate you coming out to check on me.”
She stammered on an excuse, but she couldn’t seem to find the words to deny that was why she had really come.
The last time they had talked, she had told him how his father had died fighting Hawk Moth, and she’d given him his parents’ wedding bands. She hadn’t offered him any details, other than to tell him that his father wanted Adrien to remember the best of him. That small wish belied a mountain of complexity that Adrien wasn't quite ready to dig through.
He’d tried to press her for details as Chat Noir, but she’d been tight-lipped, even with her partner.
When Ladybug gave up floundering for an excuse, she sighed and dropped to her knees beside him. “You really are alright, though?” The way her brow furrowed beneath her mask reminded him of the girl who had stood on top of the stadium and panicked her way through their very first fight. It reminded him of Marinette working through a difficult project.
Adrien ran his hand through his hair and looked away. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, though fine was probably not the best word to describe the complexity of his feelings. When she didn't say anything else, he felt compelled to fill the silence. “I just had a bad dream. Needed some fresh air. But I already feel safer, knowing you're right here,” he added hastily, though it was a half-truth at best.
Seeing her alive and breathing was a relief, but the knowledge that he could still hurt her pricked against his skin like a bed of needles.
She reached for his hand, something soft and sad blooming in her eyes. Adrien resisted the urge to pull away.
“Nightormenter was hard on all of us,” she said. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t do more to stop him sooner—”
“I keep having it.” His heart stuttered as her fingers brushed the space where his ring should have been. “I keep dreaming that I’ve been akumatized. That… I hurt you.”
Her fingers inspected the pale strip of skin left behind by Chat Noir’s band, but her eyes remained focused on him. “I won’t let that happen.”
“In my dream, the world is destroyed. And the moon is split in two from whatever power Hawk Moth gave to me—”
Her breath hitched in her throat and she squeezed his hand. “I—” she bit down on her lower lip and looked at their hands laced together. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and guarded. “Sometimes, I dream that there’s an akuma to end the world, too.”
“And what do you do in those dreams?”
“I fight—well, I run. And I try to save him.”
“Him?”
“My… partner.”
“You dream about Chat Noir getting akumatized? What happens?”
“Well, the world ends—but you don’t have to worry. Hawk Moth is gone now.” Her hand drifted up to his face and his heart stuttered in his chest in an entirely new way. She brushed his cheek and said, “I won’t let anything happen to you, okay?”
But he was more concerned about her. “Ladybug, when the world ends in my dream, you’re dead in my arms.”
She leaned in closer. An earlier version of Adrien might have leaned in, too.
“No one’s going to akumatize you,” she whispered.
“I think part of why it’s so terrifying is that I… I’ve never been akumatized before.”
But instead of reassuring him again, something in her eyes flickered, like panic, and she pulled away. She squeezed his hand once before letting go.
“I promise that I’ll protect you, Adrien.”
As Ladybug got to her feet, Adrien’s heart pounded in his chest. “Wait—”
He stood and reached for her. His hand closed around her wrist even as his feet slipped against the slick roof tiles. He used her firm weight to keep his balance. “Ladybug, what aren’t you telling me? What was your dream about?”
But she refused to turn and look at him. He had only the tight coil in her shoulders to tell him that she was keeping something from him.
“I dreamed that my partner knew my name.” Her voice was so soft, Adrien had to strain to hear it. “And somehow that knowledge led him to become akumatized, and he destroyed the world. And he destroyed me. But it was just a bad dream.” Despite her attempt to soften the terror of her words, she sounded on the brink of tears. “There’s no more Hawk Moth,” she continued, “and I’m going to recover the butterfly and make sure that there are no more akumas. And everything’s going to be okay, Adrien. I promise that everything’s going to be okay.”
She tried to pull away, but Adrien was afraid to let her go. He wanted to ensure that everything was going to be okay, too, and he could do that as long as she was here at his side, and as long as he wasn’t wearing his ring.
He struggled to find breath for his words, but in the barest whisper, he managed, “And how do you trust your partner after a dream like that?” He wanted to know how he was supposed to trust himself.
She hesitated, and Adrien saw suddenly just how strongly mistrust still lived in that tight space between her shoulders. She didn’t trust Chat Noir, and it was no wonder she had grown distant even before she had taken on the responsibility of being the Guardian.
“We keep our identities secret from each other,” she said, “and for good reason. We trust each other because we have to. I don’t blame him for Hawk Moth taking advantage of him—” She hesitated, then amended: “I don’t blame him for a dream I had where Hawk Moth took advantage of him. You shouldn’t blame yourself for a bad dream, either.”
Adrien swallowed hard. He wanted to trust her words, to trust her promises. But it was so hard when there were still secrets between them. He couldn’t blame her for keeping parts of herself from him, though, especially not when he now had a glimpse of why she was so adamant about keeping her secrets.
“Good night, Adrien,” she said, and pulled her hand away.
His feet slipped out from under him and he fell. Before he even had a moment to panic, before he even quite registered that he was falling from his own roof, Ladybug’s yo-yo was around his waist. But she didn’t pull him back up. She lowered him down to his own window, and once he was safely inside, he heard the thwip of her line being tossed then a zip that faded out into the night.
She’d protected him. She’d promised that she would always protect him. He had to trust that somehow, she’d protect him from being akumatized, too.
He used his phone’s light to find his ring under his couch and slid it back onto his finger as he collapsed into bed. Sleep, though, was a distant thought. His mind turned his conversation with Ladybug over in his head, like a music box wound to its tightest coil. Did it matter that they had both had the same dream? Why had she been so upset when he’d mentioned that he had never been akumatized before?
His phone buzzed in his hand and Adrien answered it without thinking, only to be pleasantly surprised when Marinette’s face filled his screen.
“Hi,” he smiled.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t see your text,” she said. “I’m definitely awake! I mean, obviously I’m awake. And you’re awake! I mean, of course you are, because you texted me! Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, and at least in that moment, at least as he looked at Marinette, it was true. “Yeah, I’m okay. I just had a bad dream.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I think I just want to forget about it. Tell me why you’re up so late.”
Eagerly, Marinette launched into a story about her design for a new fashion contest that Tsurugi was putting together to help rebrand Gabriel. She went over her drafts, the lines, the colors, the textures. Adrien could have fallen asleep listening to her talk, like her monologue was his own personalized lullaby. And maybe, if it had just been a phone call, he would have. But the way her eyes lit up when she talked made his world too bright for sleep. He was content to watch and listen. At least for now, Marinette was protection enough. He was never going to be akumatized as long as he had her.
Posting period is here! Head out to our AO3 collection to browse the fics written for the event! You can find the fics these remixes were inspired by linked to each of the works as well. Don't forget to check back later, as our writers have until the 1st of December to post their pieces.
We hope you'll enjoy reading both the new and the old fics alike. Happy reading!
There's only one week left until the posting period of our remixes starts! From our buffet writers, you can look forward to remixes to the following fics (and maybe more!):
✮ When You Let a Ladybug Cure Your Bellyache by @wyomingparmesan
✮ Close Your Eyes by @jennagrinsoverml
✮ A Bad Dream by @hamsternamedmarinette
✮ how fair you were in summertime by @ladyofthenoodle
✮ but princess, wishes do come true by @miabrown007
ML Square Dance — Rules and Application Guidelines
Welcome to the Miraculous Ladybug Lovesquare Remix Challenge! This event is designed so participants can reimagine a previously written fanwork utilizing a different side of the Lovesquare. This event will be split into two subevents: The Dance and The Buffet. The Dance will resemble a more traditional Remix Challenge with authors being randomly matched to remix another’s work, while The Buffet will feature additional fics that can be remixed by anyone. You may participate in both events if you desire.
Requirements for all participants:
Must be age 13 or older
Must have a Discord account
The Dance: Matched Participants
In order to participate in the Dance as a writer, you must have:
At least three published works under 10k that center around the Lovesquare
At least two of those works must be completed
At least one of those works must be SFW
Participants will be randomly assigned another participant's work to remix, and one of their own works will be remixed by someone else assigned to them. Matching will be completely random aside from being able to opt in or out of being matched with someone who has NSFW fics. You will have the option to choose from the 3 fics your Dance Partner offered and will be expected to complete the fic by the posting period.
If you cannot complete your assigned remix for any reason, please reach out to a moderator as soon as possible so we can find a pinch hitter.
If you complete yours early and want to do more, you are welcome to pick up as many additional fics as you like from the Buffet, but we ask that you finish your Dance first.
The Buffet: Free for All Remixing
In addition to the Dance, we are offering a Buffet of fics to remix for writers who do not meet the qualifications to be matched or who prefer not to be matched. The Buffet Line will be made up of fics offered by both Dance and Buffet writers. If your fic is on the Buffet, there is no guarantee any of your work will be remixed, but you are also not obligated to remix a fic. All participants accepted to the Buffet may claim any fic to remix, but only one person may claim each fic. Once you complete your remix, you are welcome to come back for seconds. Buffet participants may also volunteer as pinch hitters for the Dance.
In order to participate in the Buffet as a writer, you must have at least one posted, complete fic. This fic does not have to be Lovesquare or even Miraculous, we just want to see that you can complete a fic. You do not have to put any fics up on the Buffet to participate.
To be eligible for the Buffet Line, your fic must be publicly posted and centered on Lovesquare. You will have the option to allow NSFW remixes if you desire; fics that are already NSFW will be offered on a separate Spicy Buffet line.
For the Buffet only, comics will be allowed in addition to fanfiction. The comic must have enough of a plot that it can be remixed into a fic and vice versa; single frame art pieces and short humorous pieces do not qualify.
Betas
Betas will be screened as part of our application process. You will be given a short passage to edit to demonstrate proficiency in spotting basic SPAG errors. If accepted as a beta, you will have the opportunity to respond to writer requests. Once you have agreed to beta for a writer, you must follow through or you will not be eligible to participate as a beta or writer in the future.
Posting Guidelines
Fics that are remixed must be a minimum of 1,500 words.
Fics must be centered on the Lovesquare and must be centered on a different side of the Square than the original fic.
Non-Lovesquare pairings that involve Adrien or Marinette may be mentioned but their presence should be minimal and cannot be endgame; side pairings are allowed but should not be the focus of the fic.
When posting your final piece, you will need to select ‘This work is a remix, a translation, a podfic, or was inspired by another work
If you ignore any of the rules regarding what you cannot remix or change in a work, we will not add your piece to the AO3 collection and we will not promote it as part of the Remix Event.
Your piece must be posted during the posting period to be eligible for future iterations of the event. If you post after the period ends, we may or may not promote your work.
You may discuss your fic and match during the writing process, but please be kind and mindful of how you discuss other author’s works.
This is not a gift exchange and the way someone chooses to remix your fic may not align with your preferences. Likewise, you may remix a fic in a way that does not align with the original author's preferences and they are not required to interact with your remix.
If someone writes things that do not align with your preferences, you must still be respectful to both the person who remixes your work and the person whose work you remix.
You do not have to approve a link to the remixed work on your own work.
