a-sea-with-no-shores

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

nobody wants to write 6-8k heartwrenching introspective one shots that rehash the events of canon but insert romantic moments between characters that make the inevitable conclusions of canon even more painful anymore.... all they know is abo, modern au and lie

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

Announcing the May Trope Mayhem Prompt List for 2025!

May Trope Mayhem is a multi-fandom/original creation event open to writers, artists, and creators of all kinds! Our creators have shared their favorite tropes, and we’ve put together a list of 31, one per day through the month of May. We encourage creators to join us for this month of fun tropey mayhem.

Our goal is to promote motivation and help with habit building, so we’re encouraging authors to keep their ficlets under 1,000 words, artists to stick to making just a sketch, gif makers to only do a single image, etc., as applicable to whatever you’re making.

This event is primarily held on Tumblr, but you’re welcome to participate anywhere Duck Prints Press has an account (you can see all our current platforms here) and we’ll keep our eyes on our tag everywhere!

How can you participate? It’s easy! There’s just a few simple rules:

write a ficlet or a poem, create art, make a gif, or create any other content that you want, aligned with the prompt for the day!

post your correctly tagged fills to Tumblr, and we’ll reblog them! We’ll reskeet works on Bluesky, retoot those on Mastodon, you get the idea. Note: we do not use Twitter.

you must tag warnings such as gore, MCD, sexual content, etc., so that people can make informed decisions!

please also tag fandom and ship, so people can find what interests them!

we ask that you put the tags at the top of your post, so they’re easy to find.

if you write more than 1k words and post the whole text on Tumblr or wherever, please use a read more if the platform allows.

if you create something with NSFW content or potentially triggering material, please put the entire work under a read more.

Ping us (duckprintspress) or tag your creations “#may trope mayhem” and so we can find them! We’ll reblog all fills that follow the above rules and are posted between May 1st and June 8th, 2025. Posting starts May 1st!

If you post to AO3, you can also add them to our collection there!

You don’t have to sign up for May Trope Mayhem, just post your fills. You don’t have to be a member of the Press nor do you have to be following us. You don’t have to be part of a specific fandom. We’re open to all ships, genres, formats, ratings, kinks, etc.! You can post whatever properly tagged content you want. You don’t have to post fills on the corresponding day, though we ask that if you’re creating for a day that hasn’t happened yet, please wait for that day to post.

Participating in May Trope Mayhem? Want to chat fandom, books, creation, and more? Join our Book Lover’s Discord Server!

This is a low-pressure event, held in good fun, and we look forward to seeing what you create!

MAY TROPE MAYHEM Prompt List Text Version:

Fairy Tale Fusion

Bachelor Auction

Stowaway

Superhero x Supervillain

Inherited Blessing or Curse

Tiny Adorable Eldritch Horror

Love Triangle to Polyamory

Wardrobe Malfunction

Body Guard Character

Fake Dating

Ghost Love Interest

Idiots to Lovers

Unresolved Sexual Tension* (*resolved)

“Who did this to you?��

Character is Conveniently Unrecognizable in Glasses

Breaking the 4th Wall

Time Loop

Wing Grooming

Accidental Summoning

Language Barrier

The House is Alive

Pet Acquisition

A+ Parenting

Mentor and Mentee

Amnesia

Body Swap

Royal x Knight

Second Chance with a Former Love

Identity Porn

Accidental Baby Acquisition

Magical Familiar

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

why cant characters be little freaks. why cant they be a lil weird. must all characters be nice and well adjusted? must they all have healthy emotional regulation and a firm handle on their mental health? can they not be a lil fucked up? a lil off putting? is it a crime for a character to be, dare i say it, annoying?

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

my most toxic reader trait is that whenever someone writes a few minutes for an action that could not possibly have taken more than thirty seconds I picture it, get upset, and change it to a few moments in my head before I can continue

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

FANGS OF FORTUNE - “Playing dirty, huh?”

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

do you know what period cdramas need more of? warrior nuns. I will be taking no further questions at this time but if you think about it for 0.98 seconds you will realize that I'm right

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

Stop shaming people for their body count

Who cares how many people she's killed so long as you love her and she looks pretty with blood on her face.

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

im making this its own post actually

found family is "i have endured the fucking horrors with these guys. i would both kill and die for them. i would rip my own bones out to make splints to heal theirs. there is no name for the bond we share"

found family is NOT "this guy is so dad-coded and these guys are so sibling-like and—"

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

WIP THURSDAY

no gods no masters no linear time, here's a lil heihua for your nerves:

“Why might I be in Shanghai?” he asks Xiu Xiu. 

“Investor meeting, hostile takeover of that horrible Huawei ripoff you’ve been eying, sightseeing, my birthday,” she rattles off.

“Your birthday is in June,” he says.

“Can’t hurt to try,”  she responds. “Who do you want to meet?”

He hems and haws and tries to divert her attention to the politics of who will be at the Spring Gala broadcast this year–their favorite chestnut is how you can’t fuck your way to the Zheng Yici, though that hasn’t stopped Yang Tong from trying–but she’s not falling for it. 

“Some of your worst work,” she says. “Tell me. You’re so embarrassed that it must be that horrible girl with the bob.”

“It is not,” he says. Mikaela is a Chaebol daughter who likes to fuck him athletically in between buying pilates studios and stalking her half-brother. It’s nice, sometimes, to be reminded that your family drama could be worse. 

“She’s insane,” Xiu Xiu says. “She’s a flat earther, Hua-ge.” 

“It’s never come up,” he says, dry, and Xiu Xiu sighs. “Besides, it’s not remotely relevant. We aren’t going to marry.”

“Oh, God,” she says, serious. “So this one is fiancee material?”

Xie Yuchen feels all the blood drain from his body in a staggering rush as he imagines entering the formal, fossilized sitting room of the Jiumen elders and introducing Hei Xiazi as his wife. 

“No,” he says, with such vehemence that Xiu Xiu laughs maniacally. 

“Wait, let me try and guess,” she continues, and he is in no mood to go down the list of carefully coordinated public and private date candidates that he often has trouble pulling to mind outside of their asigned rendezvous. 

“No,” he says, again. 

“Alright, then, who?” she asks.

“It’s not important.”

“Wow. So, hideous and poor.”

Xie Yuchen hisses. 

“Fine, just send me a picture.”

The only picture of Hei Xiazi that Xie Yuchen has is of him taking a selfie with Xie Yuchen’s phone after they escaped Tamutuo, his thumb in the frame and the majority of the picture obscured by his sun-blistered cheeks and shit eating grin. That phone got destroyed in another cave venture but he’d backed it up and when he was feeling particularly pathetic he would open the subfolder with this picture and the only others he’d ever found, which were at a blurry distance and scrubbed from internal reports about early 70s military maneuvers or, more recently, CCTV footage of him robbing a corner store. It was easier to just bite the bullet.

There’s a full minute of silence after he says who it is. Xie Yuchen hates the face he can feel himself making.

“He’s really not so bad,” he hears himself say. 

“Woof,” Xiu Xiu says. “I can’t believe I’m rooting for Mikaela.” 

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

A single word of 'dawn' awakened me. The day breaks. Thank you for turning my dark night into a dawn.

大梦归离 · Fangs of Fortune · 2024

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

Fangs of Fortune + text posts

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

honestly I don't think the existing fic for Fangs of Fortune is messed up enough

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

your regular late season fangs of fortune episode:

A Beautiful Man, Weeping: what if I killed myself

his beautiful companions: no no sweet baby. sweetheart. do not do that

A Beautiful Man, Still Weeping: i'm killing myself to save the rest of you

his beautiful companions: no. we will kill ourselves instead.

a different beautiful man: uhhh technically if Beautiful Man killed himself it would solve Problem X.

character b (also a beautiful man but that goes without saying): if you tell Beautiful Man about this I will skin you alive

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

Fangs of Fortune 𓆩𓆪 Zhuo Yichen & Zhao Yuanzhou's umbrella sword dance

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

WEN KEXING: did u kno ur photo is in on the wikipedia page for The Worst YE BAIYI: no U WEN KEXING: NO U YE BAIYI: NO U!!! ZHOU ZISHU: what did I ever do to deserve thi–oh, right

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

Mysterious Lotus Casebook post-canon fix-it fic || Fangs of Fortune post-canon fix-it fic: they're the same picture dot gif

(spoilers)

Canon: Young Murder Prodigy Gentleman who was taught a lost art by a fey significantly older man with a death wish vows to find him even though he's probably dead.

Post-canon fic: Sadder and wiser, Young Gentleman searches alone or with Death Wish Man's sometime enemy/longtime counterpart, who has known him both longer and better than Young Gentleman (who, by the way, was previously nearly killed by Sometime Enemy). Their relationship to each other and to their memories of Death Wish Man changes as they search.

Meanwhile, Qiao Wanmian Wen Xiao the character played by Chen Duling, who had an ambiguous love connection to Death Wish Man, is mostly beatifically absent or serves as an occasional plot device/bringer of emotional revelations, cries frequently, and sometimes (this is a very rare Pokemon) grief-fucks one or the other of them.

[a-sea-with-no-shores]

disco lotus casebook! half light is a very di feisheng skill.