#all i see is the love hexadecagon

[cloudshapedpatch]

A Very In-Depth Analysis of All 63 Miraculous Love Square Ships

Due to the absurd number of alias’ our two protags have, in actuality, it’s not a love square, its a love hexadecagon (a 16 sided polygon).

Basically, there are six categories we can organize all these ships in, and they are Adrinette, Ladynoir, Marichat, Ladrien, All At Once (also known as Post-Reveal), and Other. Once we group them together in this fashion, it’s a lot easier to comprehend.

[ID: a sixteen sided polygon. On each corner is a picture of a character’s face. In order from the top right, clockwise: Marinette, Ladybug, Lady Noire, Multimouse, Dragon Bug, Biker Bug, Princess Justice, Chat Blanc labeled ‘NT’, Chat Blanc labeled ‘AT’, Bananoir, Cardboard Noir, Snake Noir, Aspik, Mister Bug, Chat Noir, Adrien. Many lines connect these faces, in orange, pink, green, blue, grey, and purple. End description.]

Now, trying to understand this monstrosity would be next to impossible (I’m getting a headache just looking at it, and I made it!) so I’ve graciously explained below the cut.

Firstly, we’ll discuss the 16 characters included in this mess. Secondly, we’ll address and review the main four Love Square ships. Lastly, I’ll explain the Other and the All At Once ships. { For simplicity, I’ll always name a ship as (Marinette Alias) / (Adrien Alias) }

Our Characters:

Besides our classic civilians and heroes, I’ll include Princess Justice and the two forms of Chat Blanc: Alternate Timeline (AT) and Normal Timeline (NT). the Alternate will refer to the timeline only seen by Bunnyx, in which the reveal happens over the beret. The Normal will refer to the timeline in which Bunnyx takes Ladybug to Chat Blanc to fix him.

Ships List

Ladynoir:

This easily has the greatest number of ships, coming in at 24 total. These are very straight forward. Wanna spice up your Ladynoir fic? Go ham on one of these variants:

Ladybug / Chat Noir

Ladybug / Mister Bug (although impossible, but intriguing)

Ladybug / Snake Noir

Ladybug / Cardboard Noir

Ladybug / Bananoir

Ladybug / NT Chat Blanc

Lady Noire / Chat Noir (see: ladybug x mister bug)

Lady Noire / Mister Bug

Lady Noire / Cardboard Noir

Lady Noire / Bananoir

Lady Noire / NT Chat Blanc

Dragon Bug / Chat Noir

Dragon Bug / Mister Bug

Dragon Bug / Snake Noir

Dragon Bug / Cardboard Noir

Dragon Bug / Bananoir

Dragon Bug / NT Chat Blanc

Biker Bug / Chat Noir

Biker Bug / Mister Bug

Biker Bug / Snake Noir

Biker Bug / Cardboard Noir

Biker Bug / Bananoir

Biker Bug / NT Chat Blanc

Marichat:

Coming in second place for most varieties is the (maybe not so ironic anymore?) ship, Marichat, at 17 versions. This set is also really straight forward:

Marinette / Chat Noir

Marinette / Mister Bug

Marinette / Snake Noir

Marinette / Cardboard Noir

Marinette / Bananoir

Marinette / NT Chat Blanc

Multimouse / Chat Noir

Multimouse / Mister Bug

Multimouse / Snake Noir

Multimouse / Cardboard Noir

Multimouse / Bananoir

Multimouse / NT Chat Blanc

Princess Justice / Chat Noir

Princess Justice / Mister Bug

Princess Justice / Snake Noir

Princess Justice / Cardboard Noir

Princess Justice / NT Chat Blanc

Adrinette:

Our classic blush ship is nearly unique, the only ship quite like it is the hypothetical Princess Justice / Adrien. It’s an interesting ship to think about; how they might interact. This can easily veer into Ladrien territory, however. In what little we saw in canon, Marinette starts to take her earrings off immediately in the episode ‘Ladybug’. If Adrien were to connect the dots (or if she says outright, “here hawky, have my miraculous”) then it would easily become a Ladrien dynamic.

Ladrien:

With a more normal amount of ships, there are 6 (or 7, as mentioned above) combinations of these two dorks with this unique relationship:

Ladybug / Adrien

Ladybug / Aspik

Lady Noire / Adrien

Lady Noire / Aspik

Dragon Bug / Adrien

Dragon Bug / Aspik

All At Once (aka, Post-Reveal):

These ships fall into this category because both parties are aware of the other’s identities. The ships in this category are simply Alternate Timeline Chat Blanc ships:

Marinette / AT Chat Blanc

Ladybug / AT Chat Blanc

Lady Noire / AT Chat Blanc

Multimouse / AT Chat Blanc

Dragon Bug / AT Chat Blanc

Biker Bug / AT Chat Blanc

Princess Justice / AT Chat Blanc

Other:

These 7 ships are a bit more complex that the others. In this category, one (or in some cases, both!) parties are aware of the other’s identity, but the party in question does not know the other person knows their identity. Confusing, I know, but you’ll see.

Marinette / Aspik

At first glance it’s Adrinette or Marichat, but Marinette knows Aspik is Adrien, but she’s not supposed to know that. So she must pretend she doesn’t. This creates a unique dynamic.

Multimouse / Adrien

Similar to the above ship, Adrien knows it’s Marinette under the mask, but again, he isn’t supposed to know that, so he must pretend he doesn’t know, causing him to act differently then he normally would.

Multimouse / Aspik

Double trouble, since they both know but aren’t supposed to. Yikes.

Princess Justice / Aspik

Essentially the same as Mari / Aspik, she’s just akumatised.

Biker Bug / Adrien

Biker Bug / Aspik

These 2 ships are really problematic because it all dwindles down to how much media coverage the fight with Feast got. It happened at night and doesn’t seem to be mentioned by anyone in Paris ever, and the only witnesses were the late night bus driver and André Glacier.

If Feast was broadcast to the masses, then these would be Ladrien ships.

But if Feast was not broadcast, then Adrien/Aspik would have to pretend Biker Bug is just a girl in motorcycle attire until told otherwise, and therefore falls under the Other category.

Princess Justice / Bananoir

This one is classified as Other, but in reality it is a Marichat ship until otherwise proven Princess Justice is Ladybug. This could happen easily, if she were to give up her miraculous or verbally confess.

Thus concludes the 63 Ships of Marinette and Adrien.

TL;DR: Marinette and Adrien and all their alias’ create a hexadecagon of different combinations, with a total of 12 different dynamics.

[jupiterminingcorporation]

@serenity-made-visible The Hillview really is a great plan, and i think you'll love it once you've put your personal touches on it. Maybe something that doesn't have echoes of the past isn't an entirely bad thing?

I do really like the Hillview, I just have a built-in urge to go with the quirky and think outside the square - literally! 😉 My practical brain does see the advantages of the regular house over the hexadecagon, though, because the design being smaller then the round house I grew up in is somewhat less convenient for furniture placement, although I did photoshop it to figure out how to make it all work.

The other way I have to pay homage to Dad in my new home is to buy some furniture that I found that reminds me of some stuff that Dad made for a commission that we ended up with. The shop it was meant to go in tried to lowball him on the price, so he took his creations and noped out of there. 😂 And in my writing room I'll be paying homage to my Gran by having her actual furniture that my Grandfather made for her.

[shockinghocking]

Czeching out Prague and Hungaring for Budapest

Prague was as beautiful as everyone says it is, perched on the Vltava River, filled with ridiculously picturesque alleys and bridges and stuffed full of Baroque, Gothic and Renaissance features.  We stayed in a nice warm hostel not far from the Old Town Square with its famous Astronomical Clock. The clock was installed in about 1410, with the council of Prague so impressed by it they ordered the clockmaker blinded so he could never recreate his work.  He stuck it to them by throwing himself off the tower into the clock, breaking it.  No one was able to fix it for 100 years!

Not to be outdone in morbid legends, the Baroque St James’ Basilica in the Old Town was a highlight - hanging by the alter on a chain is a mummified arm, allegedly dating back 400 years.  The story goes that a thief attempted to steal something from the alter, at which the statue of Mary reached down and clamped onto his arm.  No one could get her to release her grip, so it was sawn off and displayed for all to see as a lesson learnt the hard way! Terrifyingly, it was carbon dated a wee while ago and it was only 200 years old... which means it’s a disembodied arm totally unrelated to the poor old thief.  God only knows where the church got an arm from.

But we were suitably disinclined to nick anything from the enormous collection of glitz and gold.

Next on the list was the Jewish quarter, with wonderful synagogues (the Jewish population was devastated in WWII, but there’s a long Jewish history in Prague) and checking in with Kafka appreciation statues on the way.

We also walked over the famous Charles Bridge, dotted with beautiful baroque statues, with incredible Gothic towers at each end.

By the next morning we weren’t just fighting with ghost stories and hordes of tourists but with a big snow storm that had come in overnight.  We were chilly in the extreme, but couldn’t complain as far as the picturesqueness scale went! 

We headed back over the Charles Bridge to the Castle District of Prague - Hradčany - which is newer, but almost as beautiful as the Old Town. And, of course, the castle: the biggest ancient castle in the world, with construction beginning just before the year 900 and the architecture encompassing every European style of the last millennium.

And if we thought that the myths and legends surrounding Prague were creepy, we had another thing coming when we went to the Sedlec Ossuary, a short train ride from Prague in Kutna Hora...  Basically, the churchyard was a very fashionable place to be buried (thought to include soil from the Garden of Gethsemane) and later became the site of mass graves during the plague.  When the church was extended, thousands of skeletons were dug up and the family in charge asked a local woodcarver to do something creative with them.  What resulted is an unbelievable display of an estimated 70,000 skeletons.  The two centrepieces are a chandelier made of at least one of every bone in the human body, and a perfect replica of the family’s crest, complete with a skeleton crow pecking at a skeleton head.

Oh, and the woodworker even left his name, just to make sure his great work was attributed to him.  And what better media in which to write?

Having whet our appetite, we headed for lunch in the nearby village, where we dined on local beer and deep fried goodies at the Bohemian beerhall.

The next day, we bussed back to Erlangen, ready to pick up the van, get the snow tyres on it and boost all the way to Budapest.  

She was rearing to go, that’s for sure!

With all that automobile admin sorted, we got on the road and pulled up at the apartment of Orsi, who had done an exchange at Auckland University - we’d met in the library, bonded over our passion for Whittaker’s berry biscuit choc and next thing we knew, she’d been our flatmate for six months! We were planning a big few days partying with her in Budapest, and she did not disappoint. 

Budapest, which clusters on low hills and on islands in the blue Danube, was probably the most beautiful city we went to in all of Europe.  It was just so stunning...!

Budapest (which it became on unification of Buda, Obuda and Pest in tghe 1870s) has been a city since the Celtics, and has been home to the Romans, the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottomans, the Hungarians, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Soviets and now the Hungarians again!  This patchwork history means it is stuffed full of Renaissance, Gothic, Byzantine, Baroque, Classical, Neoclassical, Romantic, Art Nouveau and Soviet architecture, all packed cheek by jowl.  It’s an incredible town in which to be a tourist, with the most beautiful central city in Europe, outstanding nightlife, thermal springs and a beautiful (and functional) old metro system.  It’s even better when you have a local guide!

Having crossed the famous classical-style Chain Bridge into the Castle District of Buda, we set off exploring.

To really get a feel for it, one requires a stop for some medieval activities in the Castle courtyard and some delightful snacks.

Next to pop into the ridiculous Gothic Matthias Church, dominating the waterfront.

That’s just the start though! Why not add the spectacular FIsherman’s Bastion with seven towers (representing the seven Hungarian tribes that settled the area and a panoramic view of the Danube, the Pest side of Budapest, the Chain Bridge and Margaret Island.  

Next was a warming bowl of Hungarian goulash - a dish I ate once ate so much of as a child that I made myself throw up.  I love goulash.  Managed not to hurl from the excitement this time.

And finished up for the evening with a spot of tea and cake at the incredible Bookstore Cafe, on the second floor of a bookstore that used to be an ornate department store.  Distractingly glitzy frescoes!

And what for it but to get outrageously drunk at Orsi’s apartment and then hit the town in Budapest’s infamous ruin bars! Found in the old Jewish district of Budapest, which was largely left to decay after WWII, Romkocsma (as the Hungarians call them) are abandoned factories and industrial spaces that have been set up with stages, dance floors, bars and lounges.  They are decorated in crazy “I’ve plundered all your grandma’s weird furniture, covered it in graffiti, added some machinery and stapled it to the wall” kind of way and are sooooo funnnnnn.  We started in Szimpla Kert, the original ruin bar that started the whole trend, which is an enormous multistory sensory overload.

We turned it up a notch and headed to Hello Baby, a schmancy nightclub in a 19th C palace with a glass roof and huge bubbles glowing overhead.

After a seedy wake up the next day, we faced a chilly morning and headed to Hősök tere (Heroes Sq in English) to ogle at the cenotaph and the colonnades with their 14 figures of Hungarian history. They’re Hungarian kings, great military men and dudes who rallied the peasants - in post-independence replacement of the Habsburg emperors who originally featured.

Then the fabulous pink and gold St Stephen’s Basilica (which houses the “incorruptible” right hand of St Stephen, the first king of Hungary), featuring an eerie choir practice. 

Of course, we couldn’t miss out on another Hungarian favourite for dinner - hortobágyi palacsinta, which is savoury crepes filled with veal.  Yum! 

Well rested, we packed in a massive day the next day.  We started with a tour of the neo-Gothic Hungarian Parliament building, one of the oldest parliament buildings in Europe and currently the biggest building in Hungary.  

Yeah, she’s no Beehive. Completed in 1904 - with half a million precious stones set into the building - and housing the Holy Crown of Hungary and the hexadecagonal (sixteen sided) central hall, only small portions of the mammoth building are used by the unicameral Hungarian parliament today.  

Outside is the terribly moving Holocaust memorial, in memory of 3,500 people (800 of whom were Jews) who were killed by the “Arrow Cross” militiamen in 1944: having been told to remove their shoes and stand on the banks of the Danube, they were shot, fell into the river and carried downstream.

We headed to the Great Market Hall for lunch.  A beautiful 19th C building, it has butchers, fishmongers, veges and pickles in the basement, pastries, spices and breads on the ground floor and souvenirs and eateries on the top floor.

Bring on the langos!

With our tummies sufficiently bloated with sour cream, cheese, bacon and deep fried bread, we were ready for the famous neo-Baroque Széchenyi Medicinal Bath, the largest thermal bath in Europe and certainly one of the most excellent pools we have ever been to! 

The next day we went on a little roadie to the area known as the Danube Bend (for reasons that are obvious when you look at a map. We started in the cute little town of Szentedre, a cute, artsy riverside town where we ate more langos by the river.

Next, we headed to Esztergom to see the colossal basilica of the same name - it’s 114 metres long!  Look, there’s me!

From there we headed onward to quiet, leafy Visegrád (which translates to Highcastle) where we we were treated to an incredible sunset view of the Danube.  In that perfectly European way that is so strange to New Zealanders, the land on the other side of the river is Slovakia, a different country!

Beautifully, we shared the view with an Hungarian puli, the adorable (if slightly weepy-eyed) Hungarian dredlocked herding dog.

After a tasty Danube-bend dinner and beer, we headed back to Budapest to do some more partying with Orsi, this time with some live music aboard a boat in the river.

And some pizza on the way home!

And, ending on that high note, the next day we jumped the river to the country we’d been looking at through the sunset the evening before - Slovakia!