#as always read more added not to clog your dashboards!

[heywriters]

how to make a tumblr post (and get notes!)

Have never seen any post discuss these exact things, so i'm sharing my insights with y'all*

Use images. They don't have to be good or spectacular like this extremely coherent thing I just made. They just need to catch the eye break up dashboard monotony.

The gif search feature is an unreliable wild card at best and a NSFW eye gouge at worst, but it gives credit to the op of the gif

If you're an artist your whole post is your images, so skip to the links and tags section of this post because the rest won't help much.

-> Image Descriptions

When making a post that contains images, hover over an image and click the meatballs icon in the lower right corner of the image. Click "update description" to add a description. It isn't always necessary, but it is very courteous for a variety of accessibility reasons.

-> Text

Break up your text. Run-on sentences are standard here, lack of punctuation too, you can really do whatever you want, but avoid massive blocks of text. unless you've got a really incendiary opening line and the entire center of that granite chunk of text is actually comedy gold, hard-hitting tumblr journalism, or one of those zany confessional posts that can be followed up by the drive thru meme

break up

your text.

and go light on the ALL CAPS. save it for emphasis or when you're feeling very unhinged or saRcAStiC y'know how that goes, i don't need to explain it. this site has a very dry tone to its posts so caps are rare. also periods

Bullet points and numbered posts are good and fine. The "Chat" post option is used less often these days, but different groups found uses for it so it sticks around.

Titles Matter

they help break up text and put people at ease. they are best for informative, mature posts but can make you look like a square in more relaxed conversations. sometimes they are also great for emphasis in a comedic sh*tpost (censorship is entirely up to you, btw. you don't have to censor much on tumblr except titties and genitals).

Tumblr automatically shortens long posts now, but etiquette asks that you tag #long post if you want to avoid clogging up someone's dash. It don't matter too much though, this is the "color of the sky" site, so get used to posts being too long

That being said "READ MORE" is a fantastic feature. Use it when you want some level of privacy like "hey, only click below if you want to hear about my problems" or "click below to read my 18+ fanfic." Read more is also great in case you want to delete something forever. If a reblogged post has a read more, but op deleted the og post, that content is gone (readmore has to be on the og post at time of posting for this to work, btw; edits to og post do not span all reblogs)

the other bells and whistles like colored font or italics are helpful in improving text, but we don't really rely on them. every mode of looking at this site alters those aspects somehow so we often ignore them

-> Links

Hint: People don't want to click links. We don't know where they're taking us. Most of us are on our phone and don't want to open another tab or leave the app to go on the browser. We're cozy here on Tumblr and do not wish to be whisked away (unless it's a rickroll)

Don't leave the link thumbnail to do all the work, like so

add a little sneak peak info, maybe your favorite line from the article or a reason why it's important for people to know the info on the other side of that link. Sell it!

When you're adding a link into a list, i.e. no large thumbnail just a line of text leading you to another site, try not to copy/paste the link as is

"https://......"

No one wants to click on that it's gross and scary. It's screams "meh, i'll click later if i feel like it." If the build up to the link is too good to resist ("if you want to save the orphaned puppies here's the link") then that http mess is sufficient.

Otherwise, dress your links up a little by including the title or a description of what the link goes to:

Or, if it's an informal post where you're just popping info in to back up whatever insane thing you just said, just write something like "link here" or "(x)" and hyperlink it.

-> Tags

artists, writers, and other creators: leave a tag on your creative content that makes it easy for blog visitors to see it all at once. e.g. "My work" and we click on that while on your blog and see only your works

You can have up to thirty tags on any post. All will make your post show up in searches and followed tags (it used to be only the first five tags that got you traction). However,

Please. Do not tag everything you can possibly imagine being relevant to your post because

It's called tag spam and it's against TOS

Everyone here hates that

No one is going to check all those tags ever. Someone might search one five years from now and accidentally find your post hanging out in the ether and they'll still ignore it.

Your imagination is wicked tiny because I guarantee the perfect tag is going to be something indecipherable and seemingly niche.

Follow popular tags (or at least be aware of them)

If yours is an off-the-cuff post and you don't have time to find out what a niche group is into then wing it, sure, idc. this is also the shitposting site do whatever you want

Don't put your hate in the fan tags. This is the unapologetically-like-dumb-things site and your negativity is not wanted. You can still complain, just avoid tagging to get the attention of the fans of whatever you're complaining about. That enables pvp and even nonfans will know you deserve the backlash

-> Audio & Video

clickable by nature because we all love noise and moving images so there's no special way to share posts like this. just post them with good tags and maybe a one-liner, and they'll sell themselves

Tip: it's nice to add descriptions to these too but it isn't common

Protip: if the audio is the best part of the video (e.g. a baby burps REALLY loudly and it's hilarious) please caption or tag "Unmute!"

-> mkay bye

that's all i can think of right now. will update later if i remember something

---

*this is year eleven of my time on tumbles and i studied marketing in college for like six of those years and have been applying that bupkis to tumblr ever since. every post i see that gets no traction and every lovely artist that goes nowhere on here bothers me so deeply and i sincerely want y'all to succeed <3 <3

+ If you find this helpful and want to support my blog, I have a ko-fi!

+ If you're concerned about my mental health from being on Tumblr so long and want to contribute to my "get better" fund, I have a ko-fi!

[legilimensims]

time for yet another coping session ✨ i'll be mean and feefees will be hurt.

i'll try to be brief but ask my bestie and she'll tell you that where i'm concerned brief = 20 minutes ranty audio message.

nah this is gonna be long and i'm not even adding a read more cut. i don't care if i clog your dashboard. stuff needs to be said.

it's funny how i wake up in the morning feeling blue and devastatingly dejected because of the orange bozo being reelected, and as the day goes by i get angrier and angrier until i reach spitting mad levels. i'm angry because i feel betrayed. as an admirer and a defender of president biden (it's not a secret) i feel enraged at how he was treated. how he was betrayed by his electorate.

everything good biden did these past 4 years is gonna be undone because you stupids let the criminal rapi*t win. AGAIN. this is what i can't comprehend. you guys chose to reelect the guy you fired in 2020 because he was a disaster - you elected biden to rescue the country, he DID...and now you brought the old guy back?? the guy you had to save the country from??? after everyting biden did to save your ungrateful asses??? like wtf man. the stupidity, the logic escapes me. make it 👏 make 👏 sense 👏.

i'm mad and i'm not even american, i'm italian. so you'll probably be like "girl why do you care? what's it to you?". well there's a whole world outside of the USA, MAGA is an international movement and many italians embrace that ideology and idolise trump, far-right politicians currently in power included. this means i'm gonna be directly fucked by the result of this election for a multitude of reasons. for example, the right to abortion in italy has been at constant risk, the ultra catholic prolife associations are up giorgia meloni's ass (our fascist PM) and they are salivating at the prospect of a trump no exceptions 50-state abortion and contraception ban so they can replicate it here.

i have spent these past 4 years in the cesspool that is now twitter/x fighting extreme far-right propaganda, italian MAGAturds, fake news, russian propaganda, the 2020 big lie...only to now have trump in power AGAIN, with his slimy couch-fucker VP jd vance, fecking marjorie taylor green possibly in homeland security? the woman who 4 years ago tried to impeach biden even before he was sworn in office??? jewish space lasers marjorie? that uneducated, conspiracy nut blonde TWAT?

i've CONSUMED myself for us as a collective, for a better propaganda and conspiracy-free world. nobody made me do it, i chose to because I CARE. i've fact-checked disinformation into oblivion. for 4 years. and this is what i get. the party with a president who tried to overturn an election and incited an insurrection to stay in power, is back in the white house. everything i and others did was for nothing. you legitimated the big lie. you legitimated january 6th.

i get my fecking trump wannabe salami-kisser VP dressing up in a black dress suit with a red tie as an omage to his orange yam jesus, to mock the opposition. women getting r*pe threats on social media. after everything this is what i get. it's their gloating that i can't stand. my ego can't take it. people are gonna die and they're gleeful about it because they have defeated the "woke virus" and "owned the libs" and the "zecche comuniste" italian for "communist ticks" it's a dispregiative for left-wingers. all achieved with YOUR HELP.

and don't even start with "but the gRocErY pRiCeS and iNfLaTiOn and palestine" nah fuck you. with trump everything is gonna be worse and you actually had the balls to risk the lives of women, of immigrants, of the lgbtq+, and the bpoc community, ukrainians & palestinians, for what...for putin's puppet's false promise of cheaper eggs and gas? for "teaching the dems a lesson"? fuck 👏 you 👏 all the way to HELL.

i've always said that the left will be its own ruin, both in the usa and in italy and i keep being proven right, and the problem lies in us the electorate. time to stop blaming our own dem parties and start to realise that being a left-winger is hard, that the left has many nuances and this means we can't always get everything we want and we gotta compromise. when you have a fascist political candidate on one side and a not so perfect but competent and decent candidate on the other, you don't like them, but the other guy is a FASCIST...you have to compromise. you didn't and you've made the same mistake the italians made two years ago.

those on the right are lucky they have no such problems, they only need to hate everyone who isn't a white, cis, straight, christian individual (man) and they'll all ride in the sunset together forever.

instead of playing the blame game and saying that you were forced to not vote/vote another/if only it was another canditate/if only this/if only that blah blah excuses excuses, start to man-up and accept the responsibility of your shitty self-sabotaging choices.

you've fucked around and you'll find out, enjoy and appreciate joe biden & kamala harris whilst you still have them in the presidency, you ungrateful backstabbers. you've had it so good these past four years and don't even realise it.

and just to be clear, i do believe there was fraud in this election. numbers not numbering, musk and russia interference and all of that, but i don't wanna be a conspiracy turd. hence this ⬆️

time for bed so i'll leave you with a quote:

"Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable. We all get knocked down, but the measure of our character is how quickly we get back up" - Joe Biden.

time to fight bitches.

[shiroganeryo]

D.Gray-Man Tag 2!

I got tagged by my friend Violet (@14thexorcist) again to hop into the part two of this little game she made, and there are few things I love more than babbling about DGM, so let’s go!

The rules are to tag 4 people but, since I'm late to do this, I won't tag anyone this time. However, if you see it and want to do it, feel tagged by me! Here's the blank post.

⭐ What’s your favorite manga page/panel? That's quite the hard pick, every chapter and arc have something of amazing and remarkable in them. There are many moments I love hence many favorites on this matter, but thinking of what moves my heart, I can easily pick two pages without having to think twice.

From The 225th Night: Visiting A.W. - CALL 2.

This moment made me very happy; it was the first time we saw Allen smiling in a long while. I personally love the interaction he has with Johnny in this; it's full of warmth and relief. Seeing Johnny hug him so fondly like this as he smiles makes me smile. The visuals are beautiful as well, as expected from Hoshino-sensei's artwork.

From The 230th Night: Saying Goodbye to A.W: Torchlight and Tearstains

I love everything about this page and its middle panel. The parallel between current Allen and dog Allen is perfectly set as a mirror image; the two of them are looking at each other, and both their right hand and paw are on top of the grave. In my opinion, this is where Hoshino's genius shows. She's great at giving us meaningful representations with simplicity and subtlety.

⭐ What’s your favorite chapter? I can remember at least one thing I love in every chapter, so let's narrow down the options! Currently, my favorite one is The 226th Night: Searching for A.W. - Live Man + Dead Man. Being honest, I love the whole A.W arc. We get a lot of insight on Allen and witness his growth (emotionally); I also love the part Johnny, Kanda and Link are playing in here. We also get hints towards the truth about Nea.

But this chapter in specific has some of my favorite lines as soon as it starts. Quoting the official english translation: "I can return from that beautiful place, so like heaven... taking the only path there is.

The voice that calls me... It connects me to this world. It is a bond... and a summons.

That... is 'Home'!"

We begin with such a strong and meaningful message and metaphor about the bonds that keep us around, that tie us to the ones we love. The message is clear and powerful, it literally gives me chills. And then, the next thing we see is Allen realizing he's back from Nea's conscience's world and showing, for a second, his ultimate relief in being back. This moment is so rewarding to me, and extremely important to his development. We all love Allen for how human he is, and seeing how afraid he was, it becomes ten times more rewarding. His weaknesses make him palpable and strongly moves our heart; we take in the moment as if it happened to us, as if we were back to a loved one's arms after being lost and alone for so long ourselves. I also love Tiedoll's participation in this chapter! The scene on which the Maker of Eden forms the wagon underneath Allen and Johnny is amazingly drawn!

⭐ Do you have a favorite volume? Without a doubt, it's Volume 3. The Rewinding City arc is still one of my favorites, it hadn't been mentioned yet only because it can't compete with the feelings and plot lore overload we get from the latest chapters hahah. But this arc was the first that made me feel that tingly, warm feeling in my heart. I loved Miranda on the spot and I could see myself on her. It made me so happy to see her finally getting her "thanks", the realization of that moment sank in as hard for me as it did for her. So this spot goes on to the volume that introduced Miranda and her arc!

⭐ Do you like Mana or Nea more? That's hard to answer, as I'm rather lukewarm about both. I'd say I like Nea more because what we see from him is what he has always been; while Mana, on the other hand, has many facets.

We have Mana from when he was younger, Mana from when he was travelling with Allen, and the current Mana that is the Millennium Earl. I do love the Mana Allen met, that I can say for sure! But I'm still waiting to see how he was when younger, if he was any different or not, to decide how I feel about him "as a whole".

So, for the time being, I'm picking Nea. He is fun to see going about, I gotta be honest; it would be nice if he didn't need Allen to be erased to do so, though.

⭐ What’s one thing that you like and dislike about Hallow? If I can be so bold, I'll start saying that what I dislike the most about Hallow is how much slander it gets from the fandom LOL

By all means I understand it delivered a subpar quality, but I don't think it's as terrible as everyone makes it seem. The OG 2006 anime also had a lot of flaws, ranging from adaptation issues (the novels, Lenalee existing in random places, Cross being uncharacterized, Allen being dumbed up for appeal) to small animation choices that were a little poor.

I also agree that Hallow's pacing was rushed, however, it's still not fair comparing both adaptations when one of them had 103 episodes and the other had only 13. It's alright to appreciate both, acknowledge the hard work put into them and I wish people realized that more often.

With that out of the way, I'd say that's basically what I dislike about it. I do have criticism on the animation and things like this, but none of that made me enjoy Hallow less; the things it proposed to cover, like the Artificial Exorcists arc and the Seed of Destruction arc were amazingly done in my opinion. Even if the animation got a little wack in several moments. I do agree it's sad that we didn't get a Zombie arc adaptation, but starting on that note would be... weird, to say the less. So while I regret it, I understand the decision.

Now on to what I like the most about it: I'd say it's the new color palette. Some people say it's too bright, and I totally get it, as I can't bear too much brightness myself! But the new colors are more appealing to me, and as much as I love the OG 2006 anime, at times I thought the colors were too dark/blurry, it was a little hard to see.

Still on that note, I love how Allen is looking in Hallow. Crown Clown now has a glowing effect to it, and it looks awesome in dark scenes! I also love how they didn't make Allen's hair extremely white, but a more natural tone. His white eyelashes are also really pretty.

⭐ What’s your favorite piece of DGM merch? These keychains!

Just look at how cute they are! There are many pieces of merch I like, especially if we take into account the art books, but the bocchi-kun keychains make me want to get them all!

⭐ Follow up question: what’s a piece of merch that you wish existed? I'd love it if we had figures of most of the characters. We got figures for Hallow and they're awesome, but I'd love a figure of Miranda, for example. There was no Lenalee figure as well, and even if I didn't get one of her for myself, I bet it would look awesome!

As always, this got super long, but if you read until here, I wish you have an awesome day! Thank you for reading on 💞

[psylunari]

Even more AO3 tips and tricks by psyluna

Here’s another collection of tips for AO3 users. The first post is here. You can skip to the section you want to read, it’s not sequential. In order, you’ll find tips for: 1) Posting and formatting; 2) Filters; 3) Site skins; 4) Popular tag meanings; and 5) A few Alternate Universes (AUs). The last section is more fic-related than AO3-related. Enjoy!

PDF version here.

♥ Posting and formatting ♥

You can save a story or chapter draft. AO3 keeps it for up to 30 days if not published.

AO3 does not automatically save what you write on the chapter text box. You have to press “Save as draft” for that. If your browser crashes or refreshes, or just about anything happens, it is gone. It’s highly unadvisable to write fic directly in that text box. The website tells you that all the time, but so will I: always keep a copy (or two, or three) of your work.

You can backdate a story if it was originally posted years ago. You cannot date your story for a future day, though.

Queuing chapters for automatic posting is still unavailable as of 2022-11-13.

Changing the posting date to “today” without any changes or updates is considered rude and unnecessary. People will search via tags and pairings anyway, and some won’t even check the most recent, especially in big fandoms.

There might be formatting issues copying text from Google Docs and pasting on AO3, even with the Rich Text option. Here is a fix. Follow the instructions and you’re good to go.

Also from Google Docs: sometimes, copying and pasting directly will add extra blank paragraphs on your chapter. One fix is to add spaces between paragraphs on the Docs file. Select your whole text, click the “Line and Paragraph Spacing” option on the toolbar, click “Add space between paragraphs”. Copy the chapter, paste on AO3.

Here’s another way to fix the undesired blank paragraphs.

Posting “works” that go “help me find this fic, I forgot the name” is a violation of the Terms of Service. Help requests are not fanworks, and AO3 doesn’t archive those. Do not post them, and you can report them if you ever come across one.

Not all works with low/no word count are against the Terms of Service. Some are fanart, podfics, or chatfics coded with CSS. Yes, you can post those on AO3.

♥ Filters ♥

Filtering in the tags you want is already effective, but so is filtering out. Set the “Include” and “Exclude” options on your filters for the results you want.

Type otp: true on the “Search within results” box if you’re looking for fics with only one pairing. Useful for rarepair readers and excluding ships written as background couples.

If your fic is on hiatus/discontinued, don’t mark as complete. Adding [on hiatus] or [discontinued] to the title/summary is better

Having trouble with multifandom one-shot collections clogging the search? You can skip some by excluding crossovers.

Sorting by kudos gives you an okay lead, if you’re new to a fandom and don’t know what to read. However, kudos count isn’t a quality meter, it’s a popularity meter. Some fandoms have juggernaut ships taking over 50% or more of the fanworks, and other pairings lean on the ignored side. Others are written divinely, but are unlucky, unknown, or just niche.

Alternatively, sort by bookmarks to find fics with returning readers.

♥ Site skins ♥

There are four official site skins: Default (white/red), Low Vision Default (white/red with increased font size), Reversi (dark mode), and Snow Blue (white/blue). You can change easily to one of them via the “Customize” section on the bottom left of the page.

There are many public skins available to use and/or modify. Go to your Dashboard → Skins → Public Site Skins to check out the options.

There are even more skins posted as works (yes, you can also post those). Copy the CSS, “create” a skin, paste on the text box, save, and apply, no coding required.

If you’re well-versed in CSS, you can make your own skin or modify a preexisting one. It’s a pain if, like me, you have no idea what you’re doing, but doable with time and patience.

When trying to create a skin, some preexisting CSS will not conflict with others, so you can mash them together no problem.

I highly recommend using Notepad++ for editing CSS.

♥ Popular tag meanings ♥

Dead Dove: Do Not Eat: “what it says on the tin”. If there is a tag for [thing], you’re going to find [thing] in the fic. Usually found in fics with controversial content, but not restricted to them. Serves to reiterate taking the tags seriously. More on Fanlore.

No Beta We Die Like Men: “fic posted without beta reading”. Might have variations, replacing “men” with the name of a character who dies, or something else like “no beta we die like my grades”. More on Fanlore.

Character Study: “work exploring a character in-depth. More on Fanlore.

Canon Compliant: “agrees and follows canon”. More on Fanlore.

Canon Divergence: “disagrees with/diverges from canon”. More on Fanlore.

Fix-It: “tries to repair ‘damage’ done by canon content”. More on Fanlore.

Aged-Up Character(s): “character(s) are depicted as older”. More on Fanlore.

Slow Burn: “fic with slow development, usually romantic”. More on Fanlore.

Hurt/Comfort: “a character is in pain or emotional distress, while another character takes care of them”. More on Fanlore.

Found Family, aka Family of Choice: “two or more characters treat and/or consider each other as family, even if not blood-related”. More on Fanlore.

Bunny Farm Escapee: “a plot bunny the writer has tried to contain from becoming a fleshed-out fic, but couldn’t, and this is the result”.

Long Live Feedback Comment Project: refers to the Long Live Feedback initiative.

♥ A few Alternate Universes (AUs) ♥

Check this list for many more!

Soulmate: two or more characters are connected or fated to meet. The nature of that connection varies, from having the same birthmarks to hearing the other person’s thoughts. They might be a perfect match, or just forced to be a pair by chance. In some stories, bad things could happen to them, or the world, if they don’t get together.

Coffee Shop: characters work in a coffee shop and/or are regulars there.

Omegaverse: characters have different biology from regular humans. Your mileage may vary as to how different, but in summary, there are three subcategories (alpha, beta, omega). They involve some “canine-like” things, like being in heat, even cisgender men.

No Powers: characters who have powers in canon don’t have them here.

All Human: characters who are non-human in canon are human here.

Flower Shop & Tattoo Shop: characters work on one or the other in nearby shops.

Wrong Number: characters meet by texting or calling the wrong number.

Fake Dating: characters pretend to be in a relationship.

Hanahaki Disease: one or more characters are affected with a disease that makes them cough flowers when in love with someone. Usually, they’ll be cured if their object of affection reciprocates their feelings. If they’re unrequited, they might die by suffocation, or undergo surgery to remove the source of the flowers, blocking them from ever loving again.

Pen Pal: characters meet and/or talk by exchanging letters.

Opposite: characters’ personalities and/or backstories are swapped.

Reverse: characters change roles, like heroes to villains and the other way round.

Hope you’ve learned something new! See ya.

[hepalien]

Ao3 Tips and Tricks

So I thought I would make a post about some cool stuff you can do with Ao3 and userscripts, and some tips I’ve learned from setting them up for myself! I promise it's not hard, though this is a lot of info. I'm happy to help if I can.

What You’ll Need:

First, you will need the Tampermonkey extension for your browser (depending on what browser you use, Greasemonkey is the equivalent). On Android, you can even run Chrome extensions on mobile with Kiwi Browser! It is easiest to configure the scripts on your desktop and then sync to mobile with Tampermonkey’s cloud sync feature or by exporting the configured scripts and importing in your mobile browser (I will explain how to do this later in the post). If you use any of the tweaks I outline below, be sure to backup your scripts in case your settings are lost.

Once you have Tampermonkey installed, you can get scripts from GreasyFork. The inimitable @flamebyrd also has some great scripts and bookmarklets and has been incredibly helpful while I figured all this out.

Find a script that looks interesting, click on it, and then click “install this script.” Pretty straightforward. Once you have it installed, you can go to Tampermonkey to configure it (only necessary for some scripts) by clicking on the Tampermonkey extension icon in your browser (under the three dot menu in Kiwi) and clicking “dashboard”, then clicking the edit icon next to the script you want to configure. When you’re done, click File->Save.

Scripts and instructions under the cut

Some of my favorites:

Flamebyrd’s Incomplete Works script - fades out WIPs on works listings, and displays the work stats (wordcount, chapters, etc) in red on single works to make it more obvious that they’re WIPs as you’re browsing:

Flamebyrd’s Ao3 to Pinboard bookmarklet/script - if you click the bookmarklet while on a work’s page, it opens the Pinboard save screen and prefills the title, tags, description, word count, etc, and adds ?view_full_work=true&view_adult=true to the URL so Pinboard’s archiver will archive the complete work and not the adult content warning screen (note that Pinboard still cannot correctly archive works locked to Ao3 users, so you may want to download them as a backup. I’ve asked him about fixing that.), based on your selections when configuring the bookmarklet on the linked page. If you use the userscript, it adds a button to the works listings page so you don’t even have to open the work to save it:

I tweaked this script so that it only grabs the first pairing tag, since I don’t typically care about secondary pairings and they were clogging up my Pinboard tags. It’s a simple fix (though I know nothing about coding so I had to do some googling and inspect-sourcing; kinda proud of myself tbh):

Just change this part of the script

if ( options.relationship_include ) {

- $(".relationships a.tag", $work).each(function () {

To this

if ( options.relationship_include ) {

- $(".relationships a.tag:first", $work).each(function () {

I also found this cool mobile-optimized Pinboard bookmarklet called Pincushion and combined it with Flamebyrd’s script. Everything works except the auto-tagging, but I’ve reached out on GitHub to see if he can help (according to Flamebyrd, there’s no tag field ID attribute to map to). However, this bookmarklet has tagging autocomplete features that make it easy to tag manually. For example, if you type “steve 21st” it will suggest “steverogersvsthe21stcentury” rather than having to type out “steverogersvs…” in order for it to autocomplete like it does on the regular Pinboard bookmarklet. I actually have two buttons set up (which you can see in the next screenshot) - Flamebyrd's to quickly grab the tags and close without me having to do anything, and then the Pincushion one to quickly edit the tags. If anyone's interested, I can explain how to do that.

To combine Pincushion with Flamebyrd’s script (so it works from the Ao3 works listings page as mentioned above), simply change this part of Flamebyrd’s script:

t = t.split(" ").join( options.space_replacement );

var pb_url = "https://pinboard.in/add?url=" + encodeURIComponent(q) + "&description=" + encodeURIComponent(d) + "&title=" + encodeURIComponent(p) + "&tags=" + encodeURIComponent(t);

void(open(pb_url, "Pinboard", "toolbar=no,width=700,height=350"));

To this

t = t.split(" ").join( options.space_replacement );

var pb_url = "https://rossshannon.github.io/pincushion/?user=YOURUSERNAME&token=YOURAPITOKEN&url=" + encodeURIComponent(q) + "&description=" + encodeURIComponent(d) + "&title=" + encodeURIComponent(p) + "&tags=" + encodeURIComponent(t);

void(open(pb_url, "Pinboard", "toolbar=yes,width=600,height=700,left=50,top=50"));

You’ll need to get your API Token from your Pinboard account and plug it in where it says YOURUSERNAME and YOURAPITOKEN (number part only) above.

FanFictionNavigator - mark fics as Like/Dislike/Mark/InLibrary, highlight with colors based on which option you select, hide/show based on category, like/dislike author and highlight with color. Only you will see how you've marked things.

You can tweak the colors for the highlighting by configuring the script (I find the default colors make the text hard to read because I use the Reversi skin on Ao3 for white-ish text on a gray background). I also changed it so that when I click “hide likes” it only hides liked fics and not liked authors (i.e. hides fics I’ve read, but not unread fics by authors I like), changed the color of the like/dislike/etc links to match the highlighting color and to show up better, and changed the way it highlights authors (I think the default is bold/strikethrough which doesn't really catch my eye. I changed it to highlight the author name in red/green):

Here are my configured scripts if you’d like to use them instead of tweaking yourself (you need to install both):

FanFictionNavigator

FanFictionNavigator - Colors

Note: Your settings for this script will sync via Tampermonkey but not your data (i.e. fics you’ve liked/marked/etc). If you ever switch between browsers, you’ll need to go to your Ao3 Dashboard and click FFNOptions, export your data, then go through the same process to import it into the new browser.

AO3: Kudosed and seen history - highlight or hide works you kudosed/bookmarked/marked as seen. If you want to use this with FanFictionNavigator, you’ll need to turn off “highlight bookmarks” from the settings under the “Seen Works” dropdown that gets added to your Ao3 navbar or FFN’s colors won’t show. Again, data doesn’t sync between browsers but you can copy it from the dropdown settings. However, it pulls your kudosed and bookmarked fics from Ao3 itself, so that will always show. It's just seen/skipped that doesn't sync:

Ao3 download buttons - adds a download button to the works listings page so you don’t have to open the fic to download it. However, it also doesn’t play nicely with FFN’s colors, so I’m using AO3 Review + Last Chapter Shortcut + Kudos-sortable Bookmarks script which also has a download button that works with FFN (a small down arrow next to the author name). The download button doesn’t work as-is from that link, so here’s my tweaked version based off of this comment. You can configure what format you want it to download by default in the script. There’s also a tweak in the comments to fix kudos-sorting, but it overloads Ao3 and you get a “retry later” error for a few minutes when you try to open Ao3, so I don’t recommend it. I don’t know if any of the other functionalities of the script work because I don’t use them, but it looks like there are tweak suggestions in other comments you can try:

I was using Ao3 Replace Words to replace words in fics that bug me but I realized it wasn’t working on mobile, so I’m using zensurf instead which is not Ao3-specific but works basically the same way. If you want to limit it to just Ao3 (so it doesn’t change words on non-fic sites), just add this

// @include http://archiveofourown.org/*

// @include https://archiveofourown.org/*

Above this line

// ==/UserScript==

(function() {

You can // @include other fic sites like ffnet that way too.

AO3: Links to Last Chapter and Entire Works does what it says on the tin, but the creator was kind enough to give me a code snippet to add that makes the “E” (for Entire Work) appear next to all works and add ?view_full_work=true&view_adult=true to the work URL so that I can easily right-click and share to Instapaper and have it be saved correctly (not just the first chapter but the whole work + not the content warning screen for NR/M/E works). Here is the script with this tweak applied:

I think those are the only ones that I’ve done special tweaks for. Here are some others that I find useful that either don’t require any configuration, or should be pretty straightforward to configure and are explained on the script page.

AO3 author+tags quick-search - doesn’t require configuration

Generates quick links from AO3 fics to more by the same author in the same fandom (or character/pairing/any other tag):

Remove leading spaces in AO3 - doesn’t require config

Removes the leading indents for paragraphs in AO3 works.

Ao3 Only Show Primary Pairing - you have to enter the pairings you want in the script, and you can change how early in the sequence they must appear before the work is hidden. Also works with character tags.

Hides works where specified pairing isn't the first listed. Hidden works show a placeholder that you can click to unhide:

AO3: highlight tags - have to enter the tags you want highlighted, as well as the color you want. It matches case so you may have to enter both “Dog” and “dog”, for example.

Configure tags to be highlighted with different colors. This makes a tag more obvious to your eye when browsing. I use it to highlight things I’m wary of in red so I don’t miss them and start reading a fic I might not want.

AO3: Tag Hider - configure how many tags you want to see before it hides them

Hide tags automatically when there are too many tags. Add hide/show tags button to browsing page and reading page.

AO3 Remove Double-Spacing - no config

Removes awkward double spaces between paragraphs on AO3. Doesn’t smush together paragraphs that have a single line break - it leaves those alone.

ao3 series collapser - no config

Collapse works that are later than part 1 of a series. Leaves a placeholder so you can uncollapse if you want to see it.

AO3 Blocker - no config, but you enter what you want to block from the added navbar dropdown in Ao3

Fork of ao3 savior; blocks works based on certain conditions. I find this simpler to use than Ao3 savior.

FYI there are also style scripts for Pinboard on greasyfork and userstyles.org (this site is slow af for some reason, so be patient while it loads). I use show unread bookmarks more clearly and Modern Pinboard Style (basically a dark mode). Neither require config unless you just want to tweak the settings to your liking. To install to Tampermonkey from userstyles, scroll down to “Install style as userscript”.

I also use these extensions in Kiwi:

Ao3rdr - Adds a star rating system (pictured in some of the screenshots above) to Ao3 works that only you can see. This one will sync your data between devices if you use the cloud sync option, which I recommend so you don’t lose your data if something happens to your device or browser.

Dark Reader - not really necessary for Ao3 if you use Reversi skin, but does make all browser pages dark mode if you want it on sites other than Ao3.

Speaking of Ao3 skins, I have another one set up in conjunction with Reversi that shows all the fandoms on a user’s profile, rather than having to click “expand”:

Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I found this. To set it up yourself, go to your Ao3 -> Dashboard -> Skins -> Create Site Skin, fill in the Title (has to be unique), and paste the code below in the CSS box:

#user-fandoms ol.index {

padding-bottom: 0;

text-align: center;

}

#user-fandoms ol.index li {

display: inline;

margin-right: .5em;

line-height: 2.15em;

}

#user-fandoms ol#fandom_full_list {

padding-top: 0;

padding-bottom: 1.5em;

display: block !important;

}

#user-fandoms p.actions {

display: none;

}

Then hit Submit -> Use. There are ways to hide or highlight various elements (ships, characters, blurbs, work stats, etc) on a works listing page using skins on Ao3. This is getting long so I’m not going to go into that, but I’m happy to help if you want to try it. It’s very easy.

Once you have everything configured on Tampermonkey on your desktop, you can migrate it to your mobile device in one of two ways:

Option 1: Go to Tampermonkey settings and change Config Mode to Advanced

Go down to Script Sync and select your preferred cloud service and save

It will ask you to log in to said cloud service

Install Tampermonkey in Kiwi and do the same thing

Wait for it to sync (this can be slow)

It should sync any changes you make moving forward, but again, it’s slow

Option 2: go to Utilities and check all 3 checkboxes under general (include script storage, include Tampermonkey settings, include external script resources)

Either export to your preferred cloud service or

Export as a zip file, move it to your mobile device, go to this same screen and import

I would recommend exporting as a zip for a backup even if you don’t use it to migrate your scripts

You can unzip and upload individual script files (.js) on this page if you ever need to reinstall a single script with your settings instead of all of them

Let me know if you run into any issues and I can try to help! The script writers are also super nice and helpful if you reach out to them. Yay fandom!

[equestrianwritingsstuff]

Fire on Fire by Sam Smith for the plot?

In Love With the Flames

I had a few ideas for that one, but I decided on this. It is not edited, as I don't have the patience to edit something this long. But who knows, maybe someday it will get done. Anyway, I hope you like it and I will be adding this song to my workout playlist.

I also apologize for the lenght. I cannot to the "Continue Reading" or something like that on a phone. So I also apologize for clogging up your dashboard if you aren't interested.

Warnings: character deaths, enjoyment of people in pain/dying, alcohol use, bar setting, two characters in-love (nothing inappropriate, just hugs, kissing, and "flirty" behavior), fantasy politics (with government of my own making), public shaming, assault and magical attacking/whump

~

Supervillain let out another blast of burning fire, allowing it to make contact with the glass building without any remorse in their veins. Actually, it made them happy, listening to all the screams and hollers of the civilians down below.

"That is an unfortunate mess," a voice spoke behind Supervillain. Supervillain whirled around, hands up and ready, only to be met with the fascinating face of Villain. Villain, the most gorgeous being with deep emerald eyes that illuminated even the darkest souls, also had their hands raised. Their own fire lapped on their fingers, waiting to meet its mark.

But the fact that Villain was a threat did not register in Supervillain's thoughts. No, they could not take their own hazel eyes away from the pure beauty that was encased in the said threat's face. The way their soft brown hair bounced as they sauntered over to the supervillain and the way their pink lips added to the tanned tone of their skin. It was a sight, but also a distraction from Villain's intent.

"What do you want Villain?" Supervillain asked, hoping their voice was quivering from the fact that Villain was so close.

"That was a movie theater," Villain replied, their lips turning up as their nose crunched. Supervillain felt theit heart flutter and their breath catch in their throat. No one ever mentioned that Villain was also so adorable.

Supervillain shook their head and linked their fingers behind their back, gazing at Villain for a split second before saying, "If you want to see a movie so bad... My house nine o'clock. Tonight."

"I worked there. Now I'm out of a job."

Ohhh, crap. Supervillain inwardly swore at themselves and took of a fighting stance. There was no way that Villain came here just to plan their future date.

Villain attacked first, sending a fireball directly at Supervillain's head. Supervillain dodged, heart racing. Villain was aiming to kill.

Supervillain shot out their own fire, barely missing Villain's mane. Gosh... that hair. Supervillain froze, it was eye catching. It was-

A fierce fireball smacked Supervillain in the chest.

The supervillain went down, hitting the cold ground with a thud as their skin and clothes melted away. Black spots danced along Supervillain's vision as they felt themselves sinking further into the ground.

"Oh my gosh!" Came a short squeal and the next thing that Supervillain saw was Villain's face. Smug, but mildly concerned. Supervillain, anticipating an attack, arched their back weakly, straining to push away, but Villain placed a hand on their least damaged shoulder and shoved them back down.

"Where does it hurt?" Villain asked, their voice taut with care.

"No where, but cold," Supervillain slurred, dipping their head to the side. Their eyelids dropped and any thoughts of their situation disappeared into thin air.

"Stay with me, okay?" Villain brushed some snowflakes off of Supervillain's face. They didn't realize that it has begun to snow. Before Villain scooped up the supervillain, they murmured, "I will take care of you. Deal?"

And that was the last thing Supervillain heard before they succumbed to sleep.

Six months later...

"The heroes have infiltrated the Villain Agency. I believe- Uhh Supervillain, this is kinda important..."

"What was that?" Supervillain pushed Villain slightly away and looked at their henchman. "Cleary nothing important."

"Boss. The heroes are taking over. We need to do something, not-," Henchman looked between the two giggling lovebirds. "Not flirting with your significant other in a bar."

Villain looked up, then Supervillain. Both with a childish look on their face that Henchman only hoped was due to the alcohol.

"If," Supervillain brought their glass to their lips and took a long sip. "If this was so important, dear Henchman. Then why did we meet in a downtown bar?"

"Because you told me to meet here."

"Oh."

"Yeah, now let's talk about this before the situation gets worse. Sending troops out will possibly-"

"We'll handle it Henchman. Okay?" Supervillain stood up and lifted Villain to their feet. "Dance?" They asked Villain and led them to the center of the bar where a crappy band was stringing its guitar and beating on their drums.

Henchman sighed and collected their papers and left the couple to do who knows what.

"I love you, Supervillain," Villain murmured the next day as they approached the Hero's Base. They were holding hands, the fire lapping greedily at their fingertips as it intertwined with each other. Two killers, one fire... it all equaled terror. Pure villainous terror.

"I love you too," Supervillain reached over and landed a kiss in Villain's brown hair.

Both then looked at the Hero's Base. The whole building seemed to be made of glass- a warm sense of deja vu- but everyone knew that the walls were made of the strongest iron injected with power reflectors. It was practically a bunker, made to withstand bombardments.

"Ready?" Villain looked up with their daunting emerald eyes and half-smirk. Supervillain's confident demeanor faltered. They couldn't lose Villain, yet they also couldn't defeat the heroes without them.

"Promise me you'll live and then I am ready."

Villain smiled even wider, "Of course. I'm more worried about you." And with that light-hearted warning, Villain broke the hold on Supervillain's hand, stepped back, and began to blow up the Base.

Supervillain did the same thing, adjusting the aim of the fire to hit Villain's stream. It added strength and power to the blow, causing the outer glass to shatter.

Supervillain and Villain won that fight and won the national headlines.

Villain ran down the stairs the next morning to see Supervillain making breakfast and coffee. They triumphantly held a newspaper.

"The nation's greatest supervillain and their counterpart, Villain, blows up the Hero's Base," Villain read eagerly. "Reports say that the duo attacked in the morning a week after the heroes took over the Villain Agency. These killer's locations are unknown, so please watch yourselves as they could be lurking."

"Give me that," Supervillain snatched the paper, their tongue running over their lips like a snake. After reading it, they started to pace. "We could use this."

"Use this?" Villain scoffed, but their green eyes betrayed their excitement. They always loved their partner's ideas. "How?"

"How does campaigning sound?" Supervillain asked with a flashy smile.

"Campaigning?" Doubt tugged at Villain's voice.

"If you read further, you little naive idiot," the term was used teasingly, so Villain made a playful face. "Our lovely nemesis, Hero, survived the onslaught and is currently running for mayor."

"Mhm. I read that, but didn't deem it important. After all, Hero is basically in charge of the city without the title."

"But we aren't. We have ten thousand men and women underneath our feet, Villain, but Hero has fifty thousand with backup. But we could change those odds, my dear," Supervillain stepped towards Villain. "With a little campaigning, delving into the art of blackmail, and a well-planned assualt to the face of city... Honey, would you like to be mayor?"

"That," Villain wrapped their arms around Supervillain and brought them into a hug. "would be amazing."

"Just amazing?"

"Perfect, my mistake."

"Greetings citizens of the city," Supervillain's voice boomed through the auditorium. Thousands of civilians gathered below Supervillain's feet listening to the villain speak. But none of them knew that the charismatic speaker was Supervillain.

"This city," Supervillain glanced at their glowering foe, Hero, who was sitting with their hands neatly folded in front of them. "is on the brink of downfall. Crime rampages though the streets like rats. Murders, robberies... All under Hero's administration. The city is not safe when both petty and large crimes are not dealed with. For example, only a few weeks ago, the Base was completely demolished and yet the culprits have not been taken into custody. Do you realize the danger of that situation-" Supervillain coughed to hide a chuckle. "The pure impudence of it. We allow v-villains-" another cough. "to, uh, hmf sorry, must have a small cold brewing. Uh, let's see where was I? Ah yes, we allow villains to control us. Manipulate us. They take advantage of Hero's weakness and mold it into a weapon of choice and disaster. We are not safe. I repeat we are not safe."

Supervillain's gaze drifted to the figure, who was quite literally shimmering with rage, next to them. Actually, quite literally, the hero's hands were encassed in a golden wispy glow.

"That it why I introduce to you-" Supervillain tapped some buttons into the electric table they were sitting at. "The City Improvement Plan!" Cheers rang throughout the crowd, centering on a cluster of well-known punk Villains. Supervillain froze. They knew. Those villains must've recognized Supervillain's voice and- Supervillain snuck a peek at Hero. The hero's face was not only glistened in sweaty rage, but also had a smug look of realization on it.

"Okay, so, uh..." Supervillain couldn't concentrate. Not with the tall body of Hero standing up and speaking into a walkie-talkie. They readjusted their mask self-consciously. Was it weird to be wearing a mask? Supervillain looked back at Hero who wss now conversing with a couple guards. They were wearing a mask as well...

Gosh, they were staring for too long. The crowd was watching them, waiting for their next statement.

"The City Improvement Plan will remove unqualified people from office-" Supervillain started breathing deeply as two tasers caught their gaze. "And replace them with well-trained officer trained specially by my own partner, Civilian." Villain's fake name rolled off Supervillain tongue like sour milk.

"Civilian has been trained for high combat situations and has even fought many villains on a day to day basis."

Hero started stalking up to them, the tasers following them. Supervillain gulped, their fingers brushes against the botton on their collar. The only way to reach Villain.

They pressed, feeling the familiar vibration against their collarbone. Within seconds, the villain landed right next to Supervillain. The crowd gasped.

"Hello!" Villain leaned over, crossing their legs behind them as they spoke into the microphone. "My name is Villain. I happen to be Supervillain's boyfriend/girlfriend. Today, we have a fabulous show for you." Villain swung around, wrapping their arms around Supervillain's neck and whispered into their ear, "After today, we will also be called sinners." Supervillain furrowed their brow and hugged Villain back, confused.

Villain pushed away, and swung their arm. A wall of fire lit up on the stadge. No one could get in or out.

Hero rushed forward, their water power in hand, and tried to douse Villain with a good wave, but they dodged and hooked Hero with their leg. Within five seconds, Hero was on the ground with a wire threatening to break off all airflow.

While Villain was occupied with taking Hero down, Supervillain faced the two guards. Each had a taser ready to stike at them at any given chance. So, seeing the immediate danger, Supervillain blasted the tasers out of there hands. The guards instantly ran at them with the intention to strangle.

Supervillain was knocked to the ground pretty easily with the weight of the two burly- yet, insanely muscular- guys pressing against their shoulders.

Villain glanced over to see their partner struggling. Quickly, they punched Hero in the face. Once... twice... a third blow did it, leaving Hero completely motionless on the ground.

Villain then took the liberty to yank one of the guys off of Supervillain and threw him through the raging fire. The screams did not end.

Supervillain pushed the other guy away, flipping onto their feet and gave him a good burn across his chest- similar to one that Villain gave them a half year before. With a contented grunt, Supervillain landed him next to his writhing buddy.

Both Villains turned to Hero, narrowing their gaze. The hero had just began to stir. Not wasting anymore time, Supervillain rushed over and finished Hero off with a swift cut in their throat.

They flew away right before the fire wall burned out- not even waiting to hear the horrified gasps.

The couple worked like that. Rampaging through cities and killing, burning, and maiming.

"They don't follow any rules."

"Out of control."

"Ruthless, merciless..."

Rumors spread like wildfire, hitting all the nation's broadcasts and newspapers. There was a nationwide curfew as well- no one knew when the villains would pop up and strike.

They were slowly taking control of the world, just like Supervillain promised, through fear and domination. Schools started to host army troops to protect the children. Men and women alike started to get drafted and began to train- focusing any powers they held on fight and enchancing strength in those not blessed with magic. The world was in chaos, orbiting around the sun that was Villain and Supervillain's fireball.

Yet, even as the world slowly sunk to its knees, the villainous couple was having the time of their lives.

Planning for their future.

Supervillain and Villain were taking a romantic walk in a rose garden one evening. The sunset was a pallette of pastel colors- pink, green, orange, you name it. They circled around a tranquil pond with growing waterlilies and ducks happily quaking to their young.

Suddenly, Supervillain spun Villain around. Once again, hazel eyes met emerald, but this time it was of love, not hate.

Supervillain bent down onto one knee and revealed an diamond ring. Any pedestrians wouldn't even guess that the proposing couple was the world's greatest murderers. No one.

"Will you marry me, Villain?"

"Yes," Villain squealed and dragged Supervillain to their feet.

"You are supposed to let me put the ring on your finger..." Supervillain's voice trailed off as Villain kissed their new fiancé.

"I don't care," Villain teased and rested their head against Supervillain's shoulder.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

[yiqiie]

wangxian fic rec list pt.2

you can find part one here!

as usual, this will be kept under a keep reading so it doesn’t clog up the dashboard. i actually reblogged my original post and added to it then accidentally deleted it but i have a crap ton more recommendations anyway! there’s a lot of angst in this list because apparently i love putting my heart through a meat grinder 

there are some heavy fics included this time, but i really wanted to include some that explored the issue of mental health and recovery, especially in these difficult times, so make sure you look out for the TW if those fics aren’t your cup of tea 

since tumblr’s new update prevents posts with links from appearing in the tags, i would really appreciate if people could reblog so anyone who needs a fic rec can see this! 

notion summary page: here (i only put my favourites in this tumblr list, so if you would like even more recommendations, please read the notion summary for basically all of my bookmarks on ao3) 

something to make your heart ache

tempo rubato by @spodumene 

angst, fluff, smut, multi-chaptered, modern au 

guys when i say this fic changed my life i really mean it i think i binged it all within a single night and luckily the last chapter came out the next day and i literally was beside myself with excitement; it is heartbreaking and so beautifully written, i keep going back to read it again and again it’s just THAT good 

complementarity by @besanii​

angst, fluff, multi-chaptered, cql au

i’ve always been a fan of beth’s works (if anyone wants to screech with me about her shattered mirror’s fic I AM HERE) but this was so much angst i literally felt my heart cave in on itself like it was actually painful holy shit she is such a compelling writer and this is one of my favourites even though it HURTS ME 

and here comes the summertime by ribena 

angst, fluff, multi-chaptered, modern au 

LWJ PLS USE YOUR WORDS FOR ONCE this is peak lwj being a dumbass guys i really can’t with this boy but this is such a cute fic of wangxian falling in love and you can really see how they genuinely go from being two people who have no chance of being anything to SOULMATES 

总有一天; a place to hide (can’t find one near) by yiqie 

angst, trauma, modern au, trigger warning: suicide 

this fic rec is gonna kick off some of our heavier recs for the list; yiqie is definitely one of my favourite ao3 writers and i am really excited for the next update of this fic, it deals with some really important mental health topics and it doesn’t shy away from the reality of how scary things can be. i’ve personally been thinking a lot more about mental health in general during my time in isolation and it’s gotten me to reflect more on my own wellbeing as well. this is beautifully written, and obviously it’s not going to encapsulate everyone’s personal experience but i think it’s a great step in recognising that mental health is real and something we should be looking out for

there’s no promised goodbye here by @yuisakii​

angst, fluff, trauma, modern au, trigger warning: mental health

i saw this fic on twt and i thought it was gonna be a short cute wholesome fic about wangxian being broken up but not really bc wwx is dumb BUT this turned out to be so much more and i’m so appreciative; it portrays not a perfect relationship but one that is under the works and one that will undoubtedly require much more work in the future but it’s reality and it’s true and i think that makes it beautiful, there are discussions of mental health and how that affects relationships and how people learn to put themselves back together again with love and support and i think that’s the best part of this fic 

take yourself home by ribena 

angst, fluff, trauma, multi-chaptered, modern au, trigger warning: suicidal ideation 

this was a surprising fic i didn’t expect it to be as heavy as it was but it was beautifully handled and it’s so important to me to see mental health depicted in different ways; everyone deals with their problems in a different way and someone is struggling could seem objectively like they’re doing okay and i think it’s great that there’s a fic that recognises that, this also gives a little spotlight on the things that people use to try and cope with their wellbeing, it could be the smallest thing but a lot of the time that’s all it takes 

some things go forward by everythingispoetry 

angst, fluff, trauma, multi-chaptered, modern au, trigger warning: medical recovery 

this is a little lighter but i think this is one of the most important; the journey to recovery from any medical condition isn’t something to be taken lightly and i think this fic deals with almost everything that it will encapsulate, it’s a beautiful story that deals with the ups and downs of medical recovery and how you really need to learn to forgive yourself for maybe not being able to do everything you previously wanted to, it’s a hopeful story which is also so important because there is always hope for you no matter what 

something to soothe your heart 

you’ve ruined my life (by not being mine) by @nothing-but-color  

fluff, light angst, smut, multi-chaptered, modern au

guys this fic is so beautiful omfg it’s so CUTE and i think it really nails some of the characterisation it really sets up their relationship so well and it delves into some other issues of wangxian’s parents being uh not great parents lmfao but it’s just cute and wholesome and wangxian discovering the joy of being in a relationship 

this river runs to you by sundiscus 

fluff, light angst, yearning, modern au 

DRAGONS AND MAGIC GUYS HOLY SHIT this was a fic i just sat down and binged in like probably an hour and it’s SO GOOD, the plot, the characterisation, the amount of thought and care that went into developing this was so good and it’s beautiful guys truly a wonderful fic 

heliotrope (eternal love) by avenqelic 

fluff, light angst, modern au 

flowers and their meanings need i say more???? this was so wholesome and wwx is such a dumbass but we love him for it and there’s so much yearning and pining in this it’s almost angst but it’s not bc there’s so much SOFT content in this we love it 

lay us down (we’re in love) by mme_anxious 

fluff, modern au 

guys this is just a short wholesome cute fic to soothe your heart from all the angst i’ve put in this list IT’S PERFECT domestic wangxian will always trump everything as much as i love putting my heart through the works and this is just pEAK wangxian content 

it’s you, it was always you by myung 

fluff, light angst, cql au

guys wwx is such a dumbass but he’s a bby and we love him and this was such cute wholesome barely there angst content AND THE PINING wangxian are so dumb but we love them for it this was just something to truly soothe my heart as the heading suggests so yes pls read this after all the angst 

with absolute splendour by @veliseraptor​

fluff, light angst, yunmeng bros, cql au 

THIS IS THE FIC I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN WAITING FOR guys jc being an angry grape wanting to plan shijie’s and wwx’s wedding is genuinely the content i have always wanted and i’m always so sad that there’s like barely any of it but this fic captures it PERFECTLY and it’s the yunmeng reconciliation i have been praying for 

the dragon’s bride by jaws_3 

fluff, light angst, light smut, beauty and the beast au 

lwj bby you need to learn to use your words bc then THIS HAPPENS but guys this was such a cool take on beauty and the beast au and it’s pretty spectacular wangxian are DOMESTIC HUSBANDS before they are even husbands but the writing was breathtakingly good so yes pls read this 

anyway, here’s wuji by @kakikaeru 

fluff, light angst, post-cql, focus on lan jingyi 

okay this is more background wangxian BUT THIS FIC IS SO GOOD, the next one in the series (focussing on jin ling) is also spectacular so pls read them both, but guys LAN JINGYI BEST BOY and he’s in love omfg wangxian being overprotective adorable husbands looking after all their children is just what we LIVE for 

something to make you laugh 

i get religion real quick 'cause you're looking so divine by so_shyy

fluff, humour, modern au

guys wangxian being a chaotic mess but wwx being even more of a pining dumbass bc of hospital drugs is PERFECT i have probably read every single version of the cliche ‘husband waking up stoned after surgery’ but guys it’s so much wholesome content and amazing in every single way 

life, drama and action by akai__hana

fluff, social media, modern au 

whenever i have an angsty fic that makes my heart go eek i reach for this fic bc it’s a reminder that WANGXIAN IS HAPPILY MARRIED WITH A SUN THANK YOU and they are living their best lives as husbands in every life so this is just so cute short and wholesome we LIVE for this content 

besieged by @ariaste 

fluff, light smut, humour, post-cql 

another fic for reaffirmation that wangxian are being overprotective husbands and our bby a-yuan is not really a baby anymore and it’s just so DOMESTIC and such good content and we really love every single reminder that wangxian are just happy and together and they’re SOULMATES okay 

worth the entire universe and more by @xiellian​

fluff, humour, modern au

this was fcking hilarious guys i read it right after one of my angsts and it’s just SO WHOLESOME wwx you’re so dumb we love you so much but you’re truly dumb also lwj bby pls use your words this was such a cute concept and just a pinch of domestic wangxian i needed in my day 

a quest (for kisses) by @xiellian​

fluff, humour, post-cql 

ANOTHER DOMESTIC WANGXIAN FIC guys i can literally picture this happening bc wangxian are insufferable and are hellbent on letting the whole entire world know they are IN LOVE and that they ARE SOULMATES and we forgive them bc they ARE 

[luna-rainbow]

you know i love your takes and love reading through your post notes to see the convos, but it's a lil iffy how you ignore some folks when they make really excellent points. you do you i guess.

Thanks for dropping by. (I know there’s a couple more asks sitting in my inbox that I’ll try to get to soon, sorry guys)

You’re right there’s been some very good stuff added in the notes. I’m not sure what the etiquette is to be honest, I kinda treat it as an open forum because I see people discussing with each other in the notes all the time without my input and I just sit back and enjoy the cerebral exchange. I don’t always have anything to contribute especially if things have been eloquently said, and I always feel a bit awkward about clogging up people’s dashboards with reblogs of my own posts, so I try not to unless I have something to say (I also tend to waffle too much so I am consciously trying to limit how much I post). Could I maybe suggest that if you wanted my input specifically you could @ me or drop me an ask/a line, because I tend to assume the notes are just nonspecific rambles (as mine tend to be when I tag onto other people’s posts…sorry!)

Also for anyone who cares, sorry I’ve been a bit absent recently because I do have a full time job that’s suddenly got a lot busier in the last few weeks, and I’ve been wanting to put together something for Whumptober.

PS: it’s times like these where I wish there’s a like button for a specific comment (rather than the post), because there’s been some good stuff people have added that is already so well said that I don’t have much to add.

[kafenetwork]

NETWORK RULES — KAFE

In order to be a member you must read the following rules to maintain a safe, wholesome environment for all.

— BASICS

The net works on queue 24/7.

Your blog has to be mostly active, although we do not require daily interactions.

We do not expect you to be active every single day, always posting something, but if at any point you go on hiatus please let us know and we will always wish you well! we expect that you are at least active a few times a week.

If you are inactive for 3+ months, meaning you post no content anymore, we will automatically terminate your membership from the network with no further explanations.

Respect admins and members for we are all humans with busy lives and we cannot produce content at the snap of your fingers. here, we support and appreciate the efforts of all content makers.

If you are a member and change your url at any time please message any of the admins so that it can be updated.

Feel free to message the net for any problems!

— MEMBER GUIDELINES

If accepted on the net you’re free to tag your original work with #kafenetwork! Include the tag in the first 5 so we can see it and reblog your content.

Tag only original content!

This is a safe space for everyone. No hate or harassment will be tolerated.

Do not plagiarize or steal.

If found bullying or harassing other members the admins will remove you from the net without further explanations. Same goes if found guilty of stealing or plagiarizing the work of others.

Read the faq before sending an ask.

For any issue regarding the network or a member please contact us! We are always here to help.

Please do not spam the net, the admins or the members.

— AVAILABLE GROUPS + SOLO ARTISTS

Groups and solo artists that are accepted for the network: 

BTS

Seventeen

GOT7

Ateez

Monsta X

TXT

NCT

Stray Kids

EXO

SuperM

The Rose

Day6

The Boyz

Twice

Red Velvet

Loona

Blackpink

Itzy

Everglow

Sunmi

Somi

IZ*ONE

Chung ha

Eric Nam

— CONTENT RULES 

If using photographs from fansites, please give credit

Content from fansites that have broken big hit’s rules of privacy and respect for bts will not be accepted. If unsure of who is under this list please message the network.

We do not reblog anything with inappropriate images (such as nudity and anything that is potentially triggering).

If posting a series of photos we ask that they be formatted side by side and not singles (posts like this are too long and clog up the dashboard). 

— WRITING RULES

Anything written over 500 words must have a ‘read more’ break.

Fics must have a genre and any warnings clearly placed. Warnings need to be added for anything minor and major. In doubt? Message the network for confirmation.

If there is no obvious genre listed we will not reblog the fic. Simply stating the au is not enough, we need the following (fluff, angst, smut, comedy, etc). 

ALL time stamps MUST have a genre listed unless it’s less than 100 words. Anything longer must have a genre included.

Any NSFW content must have a ‘read more’ break with clear warnings

Sensitive topics that can be harmful to the reader, involving domestic violence to in depth descriptions of mental health issues are not permitted. The same applies to the prompt team. If you are unsure, please message the network.

Keep in mind that we have minors that read the content that is shared on this blog. With this in mind, we require all of these guidelines to be followed. They are not something you sometimes follow. We may be lenient with some aspects but anything that is harmful needs to be clearly defined.

Please read below the list of things we will never reblog: 

Pedophilia 

Incest

Abuse (domestic violence, rape, verbal, emotional).Romanticizing of mental issues or of any triggering/sensitive topic

Violence/gore (if heavily explained..read further for what we do allow)

Smut involving the members under the legal age. The network has stated 18 to be the legal age (if the story involves them in high school and there is smut of them as minors, this is not permitted). 

Smut involving the said member with a minor (under 18).

Non-consensual smut or where there is no verbal proof of consent.

Clearly include any and all warnings, no matter how small, for it allows our readers to feel comfortable and prepared for the content. Fics such as these will be clearly tagged by us.

Minor/major death of a character is permitted with appropriate tags (if unsure please message the net). If the death is far too gruesome and mentioned in depth, we will not reblog this to our network.

Violence/gore is allowed (only to a certain extent). Anything too gruesome and questionable will not be reblogged.

If any art (including fansite photos, gifs and moodboards) are used that are not your own, please give credit to the original creator.

We do not reblog content with inappropriate images (such as nudity and anything that is potentially triggering).

Present work that is your own, if you use one of our written prompts make it known and give credit to the network.

Fake texts are allowed as long as the images are posted side by side and not as singles.  

keyword is caffeine 

[mdzsnet]

Mobile F.A.Q

GENERAL

What is this blog for? — This network was created with the aim of bringing content creators who adore and support MXTX’s novel Mo Dao Zu Shi as much as we do together. We hope to become a reliable source for curious passersby and new fans. If you're a content creator and you are interested in joining as a member, check out our application page here! What happens after I join the network? — Once you've gone through an application round and have been accepted into the network you will be able to start using the #mdzsnet tag on your creations. We check this tag twice every day and reblog our members' content from here. In addition, we will host some events here and there to keep the network active and interesting.

Where did you get the information on the unofficial birthdays? — We've used multiple sources of information, which are listed below;

1. Xiao Xingchen → From his official Wiki page. 2. Nie Mingjue → From this Amino post. 3. Xue Yang → From this Tumblr post.

APPLICATIONS

Am I allowed to apply with a sideblog / multifandom blog? — You are allowed to apply with a sideblog or a multifandom blog, we only ask that you post a minimum of 40% MDZS related content, this includes original content as well as reblogs. If you don't reach that quota, you won't be accepted into the network.

What's up with the 40% MDZS related content rule? — This rule was established to make sure our members actively blog about MDZS when applying to the network. This does not mean multifandom blogs cannot apply to the network, it does mean that if you only post about MDZS once in a blue moon it might be a better idea not to apply to our network.

Do I have to be a content creator to join? — Yes. We ask that only content creators join our network, seeing as we are focused on spreading MDZS content made by MDZS content creators on Tumblr.

Why haven't I been accepted into the network? — If your application to the network was not accepted, it may have been because:

1. Your blog doesn’t have a minimum of 40% MDZS related content. 2. You have edited content from someone else without permission and / or proper credit. 3. You have reposted content from other content creators without their consent.

We do not condone any form of reposting / stealing of others’ content and / or disregarding the crediting policies of fansites. Whilst going through our applications we do look out for these and if we find you to have done any of these it is likely you will not be accepted. However, you may re-apply in the next round. If we find your blog meets all the criteria in your second application, we will accept you into the network.

MEMBERSHIP

Why am I not on the members’ page / have I been removed from the members’ page? — If you have not been added to / have been removed from the members’ page, it is most likely because;

1. Your application has not been finalized yet. 2. You are no longer following the network. You will have to follow us and send us a message to be added back to the members’ page. 3. Your blog is inactive. 4. You have remade your blog. If so, you will have to re-apply in the next round. 5. You have been given more than two warnings for violating the network rules. 6. You are bullying / harrassing another member of this network and / or you have made a rude comment about another member. We do not condone this kind of behaviour. 7. You have made a rude comment about MXTX or any of the cast of the live action. This network is here to love and support all things MDZS and will not condone any malicious comments towards the writer or any of the cast. This does not include constructive criticism.

Can I use the #mdzsnet tag if I'm not a member of the network? — No, we would prefer you don't use the tag if you are not a member of the network. It makes it incredibly difficult for the admins to find our members' content and it clogs up the tag as well.

But I've seen you reblog non member content before. — The network currently reblogs three types of content;

1. Member content tagged with #mdzsnet. 2. Non member content posted for events tagged with #mdzsnet. 3. Non member content that gets reblogged onto our queue blog's dashboard by our members.

So I'm allowed to use the #mdzsnet tag for network events even if I'm not a member? — Yes . Members and non-members alike are allowed to use the #mdzsnet tag for network events. Once the event is over our tag is only to be used by our members.

My username has a dash in it (e.g. user-name) but I’ve noticed that you reblog my content with a dot in my username instead (e.g. user.name), why is this? — Basically Tumblr has this dumb thing where if we tag your content with #@user-name the tag will not show up on our blog and lead to a “Not Found”-page. To avoid this, we have taken to replacing the dash in your username with a dot and tag it as #@user.name so that people can search for your content on our blog.

POSTS

How come the network always likes my content but never reblogs it? — Our network runs on a queue limited to a specific amount of posts to ensure it stays active. There will be other posts queued before yours so it might take a few hours before your content will be reblogged onto the network. The queue has been made so that if it's full, it will release one post subsequently every hour. If we have liked your post it means we have added it to our queue and it will be reblogged shortly. If we, by chance, miss one of your posts, refer to the next question.

I used the #mdzsnet tag yet my content isn’t being reblogged or liked. What happened? — Your content won’t be reblogged for one of two reasons;

1. Your post(s) did not show up in the tag. Make sure that you use the #mdzsnet tag within the first five tags otherwise your content won’t show up for us when we search them. If after one week we still haven’t liked your post, send in a link of said post and we will have it queued as long as it abides to our rules.

2. Your post(s) has / have violated the network rules. As stated in our network rules, if we catch you reposting / stealing content and / or disregarding the crediting systems of fansites we will not reblog your posts. If this is the case, you will receive a warning message from us. We give out a maximum of two warnings before you will be removed from the network. We do NOT reblog NSFW content, with the exception of NSFW fanfictions as long as they are under a “read more”.

3. You are not a member of the network. We only reblog posts tagged with #mdzsnet that come from our members because we are a closed network. Non-members who tag their content with #mdzsnet will get a DM asking to refrain using our tag.

4. Refer to the next question.

What are the requirements my post has to meet for it to be reblogged onto the network? — If your post includes any of the MDZS adaptations or the cast of the live action and if it meets the requirement of being original content (i.e. not stolen / reposted), if it does not include content that the original owner has not given permission to be edited (i.e. fantaken pictures or videos, scans, etc.), if it does include content that isn’t yours but it is credited properly and according to the original owner’s wishes, then the network will reblog it. There may be some occasions where we find a post is a bit vague in its direct relation to MDZS, or where we consider it more of a personal post than fandom content (text posts specifically). We may not reblog such posts if we don’t find them suitable for the network.

I saw a repost of my work / someone else's work, what do I do? — First of all, thank you for coming to us. Reposting is a serious matter that should be handled accordingly. Here's the steps you need to take:

If it's your work that has been reposted you can fill in Tumblr's misattribution form. As the original creator of the reposted content, you are the only one that is able to fill in the form. After you fill in the form Tumblr will look into the reposted content and take it down if they find it violates their community guidelines.

If it's someone else's work that's being reposted, let them know! As stated above only the original creator of the reposted content is able to fill in Tumblr's misattribution form so you will do them a great favor by letting them know.

ASKBOX

Can't find the answer to your question? — If you still haven't found the question to your answer, please contact us through our askbox. We will not answer questions addressed in the F.A.Q above. Keep in mind that off-anon questions take priority and will usually receive a faster answer. If you want a question to be answered privately, include either an asterisk (*) or "(private)" at the end of your ask. Check this tag for previously answered questions.

[turnaboutimagines]

Hello, it's been a month and I want to check up on you if that's okay? How are you? I hope you're doing okay. I also want to tell you that you're my favorite writer, and you pushed me into writing again and wanting to make my own imagine blog, although it's for a different fandom. That's just how much I love your writings. You are also very kind and friendly! I adore that part of you, too. I hope you have a good day and stay safe! -minus point anon

Hello!  It’s perfectly okay and I apologize for the novella you’re getting in response, haha.  But it’s been a while so I feel like talking a bit more about it is good.  I hope you’re doing okay, too, minus point anon!  Along with all the other members of the Turnaboutimagines anon family and anyone reading this.  💚

Just gonna put this under a cut for courtesy because I am a Rambler™️.  ( ´▽` )ﾉ

(RIP to Tumblr desktop users, but there’s a read more glitch rn where the Read More goes in the ask and not your response alksdjfsdlkjf.  It looks fine on mobile.  If anyone knows a workaround please lmk!  I don’t like clogging up people’s dashboards :”D)

Before I get into what’s been going on with me, I just want to say that I’m really happy to hear that you’ve started writing again!!!  :D  That’s fantastic and I really hope you’ve been having a blast with it and that you have a great time with your blog, too.  Writing is one of my favorite things to do, so it always makes me happy to hear I’ve helped get someone else either into writing or back into it.  ;w;  So, thank you for telling me!!!  It made me smile.  Sharing writing is always a bit scary, but it’s very worthwhile. 💙

But I am... getting on.  This year is really one thing after another and my mental health hasn’t been great, I’ve been having some depressive symptoms pop up again and am doing teletherapy.  But we also have a terminal illness in the extending family right now along with an aunt having a severe mental health flare-up.  It’s been pretty stressful.  ;;;  However, I finished my first year of grad school strong (lowest grade was a 98%!), so that’s some silver lining, at least...  :”)  The reason why I vanished about a month ago is that I’ve had severe burnout from writing for my classes and was also just highly stressed by the format switch since I did not have the skillset for learning online.  ;;  I’m only now starting to gather up the energy to be more present online again now that school’s out of the way.

I would like to apologize to the people who sent me messages and wanted to talk in the meantime.  ;w;  I really appreciate your messages and I’d like to respond, but I’ve barely been able to talk with my three friends.  It’s just ;;; even little things are a lot for me right now.  I thought that I’d have a better social battery than this, but I simply do not and it sucks.  I do plan on responding eventually, but it may take me a while.  ;;;;;

My creative battery is still utterly drained and while I wish I was the kind of content creator who could keep feeding you guys new pieces and banging out requests during all this free time I have.  But I’m not.  Writing takes a lot of energy for me and I’m just barely getting on with the essentials right now.  Video games are the one non-draining thing I have right now, so I’ve been playing a lot of ACNH....like a lot.

I don’t know when I’ll be back over here (hopefully sooner rather than later!  I miss it terribly ;;m;;), but I’ll be responding to the other asks in my inbox when I do.  I like to keep this blog pretty streamlined for writing.  :>  Sorry in advance for sitting on some asks for a while.  ( ´▽`;;)

However, for those of you who enjoy Animal Crossing or just want to check in on me from time to time or maybe send conversational asks (that I may be slow responding to, but I’ll do my best!!! (ง'̀-'́)ง), you can find me over on @ad-nayseam!  It’s an AC/personal sideblog attached to this account and I’m going to try and at least reblog or post something over there on a regular basis.

Anyways, this is it for now, pals.  I dunno how long this hiatus will last, but I really do hope to be back as soon as I can get my writing energy back.  This blog is such a joy to run and I love writing for AA.  ;;w;;  Thank you all for reading my content, sending in requests, and being patient with me this year.  It’s really made Turnaboutimagines such a joy to run and I hope to come back with more content for y’all soon!!!  Please stay safe in the meantime and take care.  💚

- Hattie

[artificialqueens]

Tree House Kisses, Chapter 29 (Adorney) - Scorpio and Veronica

A/N: Click here for previous chapters. xoxo!

Chapter Summary: The summer continues as Courtney tries to face her feelings, and Adore finds a place where she is fully accepted.

TW: gay slurs (used by gay people)

Chapter 29: The Game of Love

Music blasted through the Delano’s household, vibrating the walls; Adrian was enjoying his summer break on the couch, stuffing his face with junk food and playing video games, while Adore and Courtney lazed around upstairs.

Courtney lay across Adore’s bed, a pillow snuggled to her chest and a smile stretched across her face as she watched her best friend dance wildly around the room in a ripped t-shirt and boy-shorts, headbanging and letting loose to the music.

“C’mon Court,” Adore yelled, launching on the bed, jumping up and down as she sang along to American Idiot at the top of her lungs.

Courtney laughed as she tried to stand, legs wobbling against the unsteady bed. She grabbed Adore’s hands and the two of them bounced around the bed, fingers intertwined, singing at the top of their lungs. And when Adore jumped backward off the bed, missing the landing and falling back on her butt, Courtney followed after.

The two girls lay on the floor, chests heaving, giggling and reveling in the moment. Courtney rolled over, nearly on top of Adore; the sun shining through Adore’s window highlighting big hazel eyes and a bright smile staring up at her. Caught in the moment, Courtney reached out to brush her dark hair out of her face, running her fingers through the untamed mane; causing Adore’s heart to go into overtime.

“You’re so beautiful,” Courtney smiled. “How do you do it?”

Adore just barely heard her over the too-loud music, but she did. She scoffed playfully, then sat up, willing herself not to ruin the moment.

“Thank you. I call it, jelly stains from breakfast on an old DeBarge shirt that used to belong to Angie and I haven’t washed my hair in three days.” Adore stood, extending a hand out to Courtney who gladly accepted it, rising to her feet.

Adore turned to walk away, but was tugged back by Courtney. She laughed when big green eyes blinked at her expectantly.

“You look beautiful, too, Court. A true princess,” she said, then proceeded to spin Courtney around.

“Thank you,” Courtney curtsied, giggling, slightly dizzy. She knew that she was acting like an idiot. It had been like this all summer. Adore had made it perfectly clear, over and over, that she didn’t want to cross any kind of boundary with her, but suddenly, Courtney didn’t care anymore, and words were tumbling out of her mouth recklessly. “And you could be the rebellious princess from the neighboring kingdom. Who refuses to marry the prince that her parents wants her to because she fell in love with me- even though I’m not exactly your type.” Courtney smiled, stepping closer, playing with the frayed ends of Adore’s shirt.

“Courtney…” Adore started. But when the song changed to The Game of Love, the entire mood changed in the room.

Courtney pulled Adore into something between a waltz and a salsa, singing along to the music.

Courtney let her hands settle on Adore’s hips as she led the dance. Adore quickly relaxed underneath her touch, giggling as she tried her hardest- and failed- to not step on Courtney's feet.

“You’d have to get a few dance lessons before our wedding though,” Courtney said lightly, trying not to push too much, and Adore tripped, flustered.

Courtney pulled Adore closer, closing the small gap between them. She watched as Adore’s eyes looked everywhere else but her. Suddenly it felt like she had swallowed a handful of dry sand as thoughts of closing that space and pressing her lips to Adore’s replayed over and over in her mind, while they moved around the room. She decided to test the waters, heart pounding.

“And... at the end, we’d kiss and the crowd ‘d go wild…”

Courtney spun, before “falling” into Adore’s arms. She leaned toward her, eyes fluttering closed, Adore’s warm breath on her face, but before their lips could touch, Adore snatched away from her, sending the blonde with arms flailing to the ground.

“I-I, I’m gonna grab a snack. Do you want anything?” Adore asked. She headed to her door quickly, heart beating rapidly in her chest as her mind swam with a million thoughts and questions. First and foremost: why did Courtney always fuck around like that? Didn’t she know that this wasn’t a joke?

“Um, some water,” Courtney sat up on her knees, nails digging into her thighs as she tried to keep a straight face, not wanting the hurt of rejection all over her face.

-

“I read that this is supposed to be sooo good for our skin,” Fame hummed as she brushed the cinnamon and honey mixture over Violet's face.

“If this breaks my face out more, I'm gonna murder you,” Violet said, twitching her nose at the slight tingling. “Is it supposed to… feel like this?”

“Yep, we're burning off all the dead skin and bumps and stuff that's clogging our pores.” Fame said as she watched Violet’s nose twitch again. “It's gonna sting at first but it's supposed to go away. Then we're gonna put aloe vera on our faces after, to soothe the skin.”

Violet huffed, but continued to let Fame spread the mixture on her face.

“So… how’re things going…you know, with Patrick,” Violet tried to sound casual.

“Uhm…” Fame bit her bottom lip. “Actually, we uh…we broke up.”

“What? When?”

“Last night,” Fame said, a hint of sadness in her voice.

“Oh. Do you want to talk about it?” Violet asked, reaching over, placing her hand over Fame’s, thumb rubbing her soothingly.

“No, I'm fine. A night with you is all I need,” Fame gave her a soft smile and Violet felt the familiar butterflies in her stomach start to flutter. Just when Violet thought she was immune to Fame’s antics, the blonde did something to remind her why she fell in the first place.

It was weird because the two were so different. Violet was eyerolls and scoffs, difficult to get to know and smart comments. Fame was kisses on the cheek and stroking hair away from someone’s face. She always talked about positive thinking and the future and everything the world had to offer.

They were nearly polar opposites.

When Violet first fell for Fame, she convinced herself that she had just found someone with similar interests in vintage fashion and old movies. Then she told herself it was just admiration, but Fame was beautiful inside and out and soon it was impossible to deny the truth. Loving Fame was the easiest thing Violet had ever done; it was getting over her that caused Violet trouble.

Violet scrunched her nose, trying to ignore the growing burn all over her face as she searched to find the perfect words to comfort Fame.

“Well, everything happens for a reason. It's probably for the best, yeah?” Violet finally got out.

Fame shrugged as she mixed more of the ingredients in the bowl for herself.

“We can go to the store and get a bunch of snacks,” Violet offered. “And then maybe watch Rear Window or All About Eve? Plus, I'll let you try that hairdo you've been wanting to, on me… if you want.”

Violet smiled, hoping she’d be able to brighten Fame’s mood. Blue eyes raised to meet hers, a smile spreading slowly across her face.

“Yeah, a movie, snacks and cuddling sounds just about perfect.”

Violet nodded, reaching forward to grasp Fame’s wrist, giving her a reassuring squeeze, before tears blurred her vision and she realized that her eyes were watering.

“Shit, this shit really burns, Fame. Like, fuck.” Violet squeezed her eyes shut.

“That means it's working. It should fade soon.” Fame assured the brunette.

Seconds later, Violet was scrambling off the bed and running to Fame’s bathroom, unable to take the burning licking across her skin.

Fame chased after her into the bathroom, scouring the shelves for a gentle cleanser to hand over.

Violet bent over the sink, first splashing cold water on her face and then using the cream cleanser to wash it off, whimpering and whining the entire time. Fame found a clean towel and stood by nervously, hoping she’d be okay—and not too angry.

Fame grimaced as she finally raised her head, turning the water off.  

“Here,” Fame said, shoving the towel into her hands. “Pat. Don't rub.”

Violet did as instructed. When she pulled the towel from her face, her usually pale skin was red as a tomato.

“Fame… what the fuck,” Violet said through her teeth, leaning forward on the counter to examine her face.

“It doesn't... look that bad,” Fame said hesitantly.

Violet’s head snapped towards Fame, her dark eyes narrowed into slits.

“Kristen Mikkelson-Gutierrez, look at my face!”

Fame jumped at the sound of her birth name, shifting back nervously. “I'll go get the aloe… to help soothe your skin.”

-

Wind whipped through Fame’s old beat-up station wagon as it sailed down the 5 freeway towards San Diego and the gang’s very first Pride celebration. Excitement was palpable in the car as the music blasted through the speakers.

Violet sat in the passenger seat, feet propped on the dashboard, smacking away any hands that dared touch the radio. Pearl and Adore sat in the middle, snacks scattered across their laps, hair flipping and playfully serenading each other, while Willam and Trinity were in the back gossiping and adding more glitter to their eyelids.

“Someone pass me the peanuts,” Violet reached back without turning around. Pearl and Adore, lost in their performance of ‘Hollaback Girl,’ failed to respond. Violet lowered her sunglasses and glared at them both. “Hey! I’m talking to you, assholes! Pass the fucking peanuts!”

Adore stopped singing. “Jeez, Vi. Way to get into the spirit.”

“I don’t like being ignored.”

“Bitch gets cranky when she’s hungry,” Willam piped up from the back.

“Shut up. I’m borderline anemic.”

“Once, when we were 12, we were at a Nutcracker rehearsal that ran long and she nearly knocked some girl’s tooth out to steal her Cheez-Its,” he reminisced with a sigh. “Good times.”

“I needed them more than her!” Violet screeched.

“Alright, can you please calm down?” Fame asked. “I’m trying to drive.”

“They’re picking on me,” Violet whined, fluttering her lashes at Fame.

“Everyone be nice to Violet. Remember today is about love!” Fame lectured.

“Just turn up the radio,” Pearl requested, shaking her head and making a goofy face at Adore.

“Let me hear you say, this shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S!” Adore sang.

“Who wants a rainbow tattoo?!” Trinity asked, leaning over the seat.

“Ooh cute!” Adore craned her neck to look at the selection of temporary tattoos that Trinity held out for her.

“Aren’t you dykes glad I have a straight cousin who thinks of shit like rainbow tattoos?” Willam slung an arm around Trinity’s shoulder. “She’s so smart.”

Trinity laughed. “Glad I can prove my value here.” She carefully cut out the tattoo that Adore chose and wet some paper towels with a water bottle, pressing it to her cheek.

“You know we love you, Trin,” said Pearl.

“Okay, then try to slip Violet this CD I made,” Trinity murmured. “That radio station is very hit or miss. Use your charm. And cleavage.”

“I got you, girl,” Pearl whispered back.

-

“Where should we sit?”

“There’s a good spot!”

“Yeah! Lead the way!”

The group made their way through the crowd to a sunny spot on the curb where they could see the parade, holding hands, anticipation building for the fun to begin.

“Omigod, it’s so hot and it’s only 10 am,” Violet whined.

“Can you please quit bitching, bitch? We literally just got here,” Willam said, thumping her on the arm.

“Yeah, seriously,” said Pearl. “Fame, give her a juice box or a granola bar or something.”

“Good idea.” Fame dug in her bag and handed Violet a Nutrigrain bar. “Here, babe.”

“I’m not a child.”

“Well, your blood sugar is low and you’re being a brat again, so…”

Adore laughed, as Trinity hugged her around the waist.

“Are you excited? Our first pride!” Trinity sighed.

“I’m actually super excited,” Adore admitted.

“Look! I see a float!” Fame exclaimed, clapping her hands. “Omigod it’s so pretty!”

“Omigod!” Violet mimicked her in a mocking tone, earning a shove from Pearl.

Trinity nudged Willam with her elbow. “Bill, look up from your phone, the parade is starting.”

“Yeah, I know, but I’m trying to message this trick I got lined up later…”

“Whore.”

“Yup.”

-

The group held onto each other as they dipped and squeezed through throngs of people, on their way to the festival.

“Fuck!” Adore cried out, stopping suddenly.

“What’s wrong?” Fame was the first one to turn around, Violet bumping into her shoulder.

Adore shrunk in embarrassment as people surged past them on all sides. “My...strap broke,” she admitted, showing them where her top was hanging down.

“Aw, shit!” Trinity sympathized.

“Is that all? Who cares?! Throw on a rainbow lei and let’s keep moving!” Willam said, rolling his eyes.

“I like the way you think, Belli!” Peal laughed, high fiving him.

Violet had already stepped forward and was busying herself tying Adore’s top back together, fashioning into a sort of asymmetrical halter.

“Thanks, Vies.”

“Finally, all my years of ballet costume malfunctions can be put to good use,” she said.

“Violet, what are you doing? This is homophobic!” Pearl complained.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“It’s Pride!” Pearl exclaimed. “Her tits obviously wanted to come out! Why can’t we just let them be out?!”

Violet rolled her eyes. “Pearl…”

“What?”

“Shut up.”

“Oooh, that looks cute!” Fame said, draping her arm over Violet’s shoulder and nodding approvingly.

“Super cute!” agreed a nearby muscle queen. “Can you make one in silver?”

Violet scoffed, but Trinity and Fame turned and flashed bright, friendly smiles.

“Hi!” Trinity said, holding out her hand. “Are you guys heading to the festival?”

“We are, gorgeous!” he said, kissing her hand and then offering her an arm. “Come on!”

-

Adore’s heart burst with joy as she danced, hair flying, surrounded by her friends, in a sea of exuberant strangers. She twirled and laughed, watching Trinity get lifted into the air by her new muscle queen BFF.

Even Violet was having fun, finally, arms around Fame’s shoulders, shimmying to the music.

“Omigod, look!” Fame squealed, grabbing Pearl’s arm. A group of sequin-covered, stunningly gorgeous drag queens were making their way through the crowd to the stage.

“Daaamn,” Pearl replied. “Hey Will, you should really try doing that with your...where’s Willam?” She looked around, puzzled, realizing that the blonde had vanished from sight.

“He said he’d be back in like an hour,” Trinity said, giggling as her dance partner dipped her low.

“Are we sure that’s the smartest-“

“Ugh, no one cares!” Violet groused, taking Pearl’s hand and spinning her around. “Just dance, you idiot!”

Adore laughed, wrapping her arms around Fame’s waist and tilting her head to the sky as a shower of rainbow confetti rained down.

-

“Thanks!” Adore took some change from the tattooed woman with turquoise hair in the food truck, turning to Pearl with a grin. “How rad is her hair?”

“Pretty rad.”

“Do you think I could pull off hair that color?”

“Totally! You’d look badass. Do it.”

Adore giggled, twirling a lock of hair around her finger and leaning against the truck while they waited for the food to be ready.

“So...I haven’t heard you talk about your ‘secret girlfriend’ in awhile. What’s up with that? Everything okay?”

Pearl grimaced. “Yeah, I uh, think that’s sort of over.”

“Sorry,” Adore said. “I didn’t mean to be a buzzkill.”

“No, it’s okay. I mean we’re cool and all. But...like, she’s not out. Which was fine, I wasn’t trying to push her. But, so we could never do anything in public, because, obviously. And at her house, we had to keep a safe friendly distance. And she was really worried about her family catching on, so it was very…”

“Unsatisfying?” Adore asked with a smirk.

“I mean I get it. I'm not trying to judge her. But for me, I just feel weird using the word ‘girlfriend’ when she won't even walk down the block with me to 7-11 for nachos.”

“The horror.”

Pearl laughed. “Hopefully we’ll stay friends. She’s really cool.”

“So...got your eye on anyone else?” Adore raised an eyebrow.

“I dunno...maybe…”

“Violet?”

Pearl scoffed. “Yeah, no. I mean, as much as I love Fame, I really don't want to live inside of her asshole. So I think I'll pass on that one.”

Adore burst out laughing. “Copy that.”

Pearl brushed a strand of hair from Adore’s eyes. “How come you and I have never hooked up?”

Adore rolled her eyes.

“Seriously! You're so cute…” Pearl grinned charmingly, wrapping her arms around Adore’s waist. “I love this blue lipstick.”

“Get offa me, you horny bitch,” Adore shoved her away, giggling.

-

“You could have gotten killed,” Fame lectured Willam, as the car pulled out of the parking lot. “You should never have run off like that!”

“Eh, it was fine,” Willam laughed. “Chill out, half breed.”

“Yeah, whatever. Eventually he’ll just end up dead in an alley or have his organs stolen and then he’ll learn his lesson,” Violet said nonchalantly.

“Jesus, Vi. You’re so morbid.” Trinity thumped her on the shoulder.

“I can take it,” Willam assured her. “I got some great dick. Well worth the drive down here.”

“You mean Pride with your best friends wouldn’t have been worth it?” Adore pretended to be offended.

Willam snorted. “Shut the fuck up, you goddamn lesbian.”

Adore kissed Willam on the cheek. “I love you, too.”

-

Courtney peered into her fridge, looking for something to eat more out of boredom than hunger, when she noticed the lights from Adore’s tree house. She grinned and shut the fridge, skipping happily out the door towards Adore’s backyard.

She paused briefly to knock on the trap door, just to make sure she wasn’t interrupting any kind of illegal or debaucherous behavior.

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Come in!” Adore’s voice sang out.

She pushed open the trap door and hoisted herself inside, deflating a little when she saw Violet, but perking up at the warm welcome from Adore and Pearl, who helped her inside.

“Heyyyyy!” Adore cooed, coughing a little, passing a joint to Violet. She was wearing a flower crown and rainbow stickers, overall looking sunburned and happy. Pearl and Violet were decked out in similarly festive attire, all of them covered in glitter and confetti.

“Hi. Wow, you guys look...awesome. Where were you today?” Courtney knelt down beside Adore, reaching into the bag of chips in her lap.

“San Diego Pride,” Adore answered, smiling sleepily.

“Shit, I think there’s glitter in my bra,” Pearl said. “Oh god, it’s everywhere...”

Violet and Adore dissolved into a fit of giggles. Courtney blinked for a moment, an emptiness tugging at her.

When Adore turned back to her, Courtney frowned, asking, “Why didn’t you ask me to come?” She regretted the words the second they left her lips, recognizing the way they must have sounded.

Of course, Violet was the one to reply first, throwing out a snarky, “Maybe she didn’t want a clingy parasite glued to her the entire day!”

Courtney tried to mask the grimace that flashed across her face, deliberately avoiding Violet’s eyes. It was bad enough that she could feel that smirk, those beautiful dark eyes flashing with laughter. Adore reached for her hand, shaking her head.

“It wasn’t like that! I just...didn’t think it would be your thing.”

“You didn’t think rainbows and glitter would be my thing?” Courtney asked, trying to make her voice light.

“...fair point,” said Adore. “I’m sorry, I just-”

“Rainbows and glitter? Wow. Way to miss the entire fucking point of Pride, dude,” Violet sneered.

“Hey Court, catch!” Pearl tossed over a few strands of colorful beads, rolling her eyes at Violet in the process.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” Pearl smiled.  

Courtney touched a sparkly rainbow tattoo on Adore’s cheek.

“Well...did you have fun?”

“Best day ever!” Violet interjected, earning a groan and a shove from Pearl.

“Oh please. You complained the entire time.”

“It was really cool,” Adore told Courtney with a sleepy grin. “You’ll come next year. I heard LA is way more fun, anyway.”

Courtney nodded, heart fluttering slightly. Adore was still holding her hand, thumb running over her knuckles lightly.

“Ugh, just what we need. A straight bitch to babysit.”

“Omigod, shut up, Violet!” Pearl was now sitting on top of her.

As the two of them struggled, Adore looked up at Courtney with laughter in her eyes, shaking her head slightly. “Animals,” she mouthed, and Courtney giggled. “Come here,” Adore then whispered, pulling Courtney down to snuggle against her.

Courtney knew that it was probably the alcohol, or the weed, or having spent all day in the sun - or maybe some combination, that was making Adore so uncharacteristically affectionate in front of her friends. But in that moment, she didn’t care. She leaned against her shoulder and let warmth wash over her, safe and happy. Pretending, if only for now, that this meant something more.

[louhazpride]

hey Pai!! how are you? still thinking about Hate To Smoke, and i'm kinda fascinated to know what other people's writing processes are, so i'd love to know more about your whole experience writing it, if you want 💕

Hi E!  I’m doing great!  Well, if you don’t take into consideration that I’ve been reading instead of studying today 🙃  Ask me tomorrow and I’ll probably be hating myself haha

I’d love to tell you about my writing process!  I’ve added it under the break, so it doesn’t clog up the dashboard!

My writing process is a little different for each fic, but for the most part, I always try to plan what I am going to write.  Writing without a plan is almost invitation for disaster for me.  I would never actually finish the fic or I’d go in a million different directions.

For Hate to Smoke, I started out writing the first scene in mid-March.  After that, I wasn’t really inspired to write on it so I added it to my WIP folder.  I didn’t actually think I’d ever finish it.  In June, I posted the teaser to see if people would be interested in reading it, and I was pleasantly surprised!  

I spent about a week just trying to outline and I wrote the scenes out of order based on what I was inspired by.

The laser tag scene was originally meant for a different fic, but I felt that it fit perfectly with their banter and it gave a great setup for the ending.

The first draft was ~7K words, and the scene of Harry bumping into Louis on the stairs was never part of the original fic.  You can thank @deludedandlostcause for her help brainstorming how to make that happen 😂  Also Louis hiding under the bed was a last-minute addition after I received feedback from my first beta.  

I honestly have no idea where the other 6K words came from.  I’m still shocked at how long it ended up being.  But overall, I realized that I love having people to brainstorm with.  It makes the whole writing process easier when I can bounce ideas off of someone else.

[davidthetraveler]

Hey, for the October Prompt List: Maybe Moon?

One Small Step

Characters:  Logan, Roman, Patton, Virgil, Dr. Emile Picani, Thomas Sanders, Joan Stokes, Talyn

Pairings:  Logicality, Prinxiety

Trigger Warnings:  Homophobia Mention

Squick Warnings:  Giant/Tiny Content, Fantastic Racism

Word Count:  1923

Read it on AO3

***********************

If you’d like, you can send me one of @hiddendreamer67‘s October Giant/Tiny prompts, and I’ll write a fic for it.  Or, if you’d prefer, you can also send me two sentences and I’ll continue them like they’re a fic.

***********************

With a muffled hiss, the hatch of the capsule opened.  For a moment, nothing happened.  Then a figure in a suit, bulky and white, began to awkwardly make its way out.  Slowly, it maneuvered its laden form through the opening and onto the ladder to begin its descent.

Carefully, it made its way down the ladder, pausing only twice in its otherwise slow yet deliberate movements.  Once, to remove the covering of the plaque set into the ladder, meant to be left behind to commemorate this moment.  And once more, just before finally stepping down onto the dusty surface.

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

The astronaut slowly lowered himself all the way down onto the surface, turning to begin exploring the surface of this distant sphere as the narration continued overhead.

“Though many have continued to debate this quote, both in its heard and scripted versions, the truth of its message is without question:  that this achievement, only made possible by the collaboration and cooperation of people of all walks of life, was a celebration of humanity at its greatest.  For with this single act, we proved that nothing could be beyond our reach, so long as we worked together for the betterment of all.

“And while it may have been the first, we truly hope that will not be our species’ last great first.”

Logan concluded his narration, closing the binder with the speech as he did so.  There was a pause, and then the classroom erupted in exuberant cheers.  As they continued to applaud, Patton came up between Logan and the desk, just as Virgil stepped out from behind the diorama to join Roman, who had since removed his helmet.  The four boys, two normal sized humans, and two tiny humanoids, bowed to their classmates as the teacher came forward, clapping his own hands in appreciation.

“Well done, boys,” Dr. Picani announced, continuing to applaud.  “A truly well planned and excellently designed presentation.  I know I still need to do a final scoring for your grade, but I don’t think any of us doubt that you will have earned a most excellent mark for this assignment.”

The four boys exchanged proud smiles, Patton going so far as to wrap Logan in a hug as Roman side armed Virgil and kissed his forehead, much to the smaller boy’s good-humored frustration.  Finally, they settled down enough to head back to their desks, Logan carrying the diorama and Patton following with their two tiny project partners held on his open palm.

“Now, considering how much time we have left in class, I believe we’ll stop there and pick up with the presentations tomorrow.  Feel free to talk amongst yourselves until the bell rings.”  With that, Dr. Picani returned to his desk to begin grading the written reports for that day’s batch of presentations, and the students all began to chat loudly as they packed up their bags for the final bell to release them to go home.

“You did so good on that, Lo-lo,” Patton squealed, giving his boyfriend another hug after setting Virgil and Roman down on the double desk the four of them shared.

Logan rolled his eyes at Patton’s embrace, but the blush on his cheeks betrayed how much he was actually enjoying it.  “Perhaps, but had you not helped me by providing some of the more...emotional phrasings, I do not feel my report would have had the same impact on our audience as it did.  And that’s not even mentioning the most exceptional work you did on the diorama.”

“Well, I had a little help on that from Virgil.  He really has quite the eye for detail.  I mean, just look at the amazing job he did with the space suit.”

Now it was Virgil’s turn to blush.  “It wasn’t anything special.  And it wouldn’t have mattered if we didn’t have the best actor in the school to play our astronaut.”

“What can I say?  I was inspired by your excellent design sense, My Chemically Imbalanced Romance.”  Roman bowed toward Virgil with a flourish, causing the other boy to snort and shake his head.  But the coy smiles the two were exchanging betrayed the real love behind the banter.

“In any case,” Logan injected, “I would be truly surprised if we failed to receive at least an A on this project.  And now that it is complete, we can focus on other matters.”

“Like what we’re doing this weekend!” Patton exclaimed.  “We are still on to go see the new Spider-Man movie, right?”

“As long as we’re going to the theater on Main Street,” Roman pointed out, working himself out of the suit with a little help from Virgil.  “On our last date night, Virgil and I went to one on Beta Avenue, and their tiny section was an absolute nightmare.  Bad sound, horrible view, and the snacks were stale at best.”

“I told you we shouldn’t have gone to an older theater,” Virgil chided him.  “It’s obvious they had to retrofit that section in, and they only did the minimum needed to comply with the anti-discrimination laws.”

“Why didn’t you report the situation to the management?” Logan asked.

“We did.  The owner didn’t even bother to try sounding sincere when he apologized for the conditions.  Stupid bigoted baby boomer.”

The thought of the generation that had fully embraced the idea of the “Pet Tiny”, to the detriment of the entire tiny race, spurred the group into silence as they packed up their supplies.

Soon enough, the bell rang to dismiss them for the day.  Around them, their classmates made their way out, with the humans heading for the door and the tinies boarding the in-school tram to head to their special locker area.  But Roman and Virgil made no attempt to catch the tram.  Instead, they each clambered onto one of their deskmate’s hands.  And with that, the four of them headed out.

With the buzz of excitement at the end of another school day, even if it was still just Thursday, Patton and Logan had a hard time keeping their hands steady enough for their companions to ride smoothly.  But they managed to keep them secure as they waded through the crowds of students clogging the hallways.  And soon enough, they were out the front door and heading for the parking lot.

Just before they reached Logan’s car, they heard someone calling for them from behind.  The pair turned, and the four of them waved and called out to their friend Thomas as he rushed to catch up, his hands full with his own pair of tiny friends.

“Hey, did the presentation go well?” he panted, trying to catch his breath.

“Indeed,” Logan replied.  “I believe it went over quite well.”

“We were fantastic,” Roman added.  “Especially me.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” Virgil quipped, smirking at Roman’s indignant reaction.

“I just wish you could have seen it,” Patton pouted.  “It’s too bad you couldn’t have had the same history class with us this year.”

“Yeah, but you know they only give AP Chemistry first period, which means if I’m going to be in Theatre, my only other option’s last period.”

“Which makes so much sense,” muttered the beanie-wearing tiny in Thomas’ right hand.

“They do have a point,” the other tiny with the multicolored hair in his other hand added on.

“Well, at least you three are still together for that class,” Roman conceded.  “Virgil and I are really missing you in first period.”

“Yeah, the other techies have nothing on you two,” Virgil commented, causing Joan and Talyn to blush at the compliment.

“Well, we’ve got to get going,” Thomas interjected.  “We’ve still got to finish our own presentation on the Million Tiny March.”

“You’re not finished?” Logan queried, eyebrows quirked in obvious exasperation.  Thomas shrugged in embarrassment as Joan cackled and Talyn frowned over at their datemate.

Logan rubbed his eyes in frustration, but before he could start lecturing them about proper time management, Thomas suddenly blurted out, “Well, gotta go, great to see you all, see you tomorrow!”  And quick as a flash, he and his partners escaped to his car and were gone.

“Relax, Lo-lo,” Patton cooed, rubbing Logan’s back to calm him down.  “You know they’ll get it done in time.  They always do.”

Logan sighed, but nodded in resignation at Patton’s words and turned to unlock his car.  Once inside, Logan and Patton placed Virgil and Roman down on the dashboard next to the tiny seats Logan had had installed for them.  And with the four securely buckled in, they set off for home.

As they passed through the various separated and integrated neighborhoods.  The four couldn’t help thinking about the implications of their project’s message, especially in regards to their own personal experiences with prejudice and bigotry.  Thomas’ mentioning of the March had reminded them of their struggles.  Logan and Patton’s relationship hadn’t exactly been seen as a very positive thing when they’d come out to their parents, though the two couples had eventually come around.  And there had certainly been a few bullies who tried to drum up homophobia around the two, though to very little success.

But that was nothing compared to Roman and Virgil’s own experiences.  The Equal Rights for Tinies movement had only barely succeeded in getting its Equal Rights Act passed before the two of them were born.  Virgil had almost been born in captivity in the testing lab with his mother, his father having been killed months earlier at the National Mall Riots.  Roman’s own parents had only been free because their owners had been swayed to support the movement, and they had been released into a tiny relocation program.

But even now, almost two decades after the passage of the act, there was still so much bigotry toward tinies.  So many older people still saw them as lesser beings, and even those who accepted them into society still treated them as second class citizens.  It was just not fair.

“Do you think they’ll ever really accept us as equals?”

Roman’s question caught them all off guard, especially Roman, who hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud at first.  There was an awkward silence as he and Virgil exchanged worried, tired looks, and Patton opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to think of something to say.  Finally, Logan spoke up.

“I think they will.”

The other three turned to him.  He wasn’t smiling, but his neutral expression seemed to radiate a determined confidence in what he was saying.

“I believe that they will accept you as equals.  Perhaps not the older generations, though there are many examples of those who have embraced the idea of Equality.  But I believe that we the younger generations have.  And even if they might be in power now, they are inexorably the past, and we are the future.  And as far as I am concerned, that future looks pretty bright.”

Patton beamed at his boyfriend, and reached over to hold his hand, which Logan reciprocated with a small smile.  Roman and Virgil smiled at him before turning to each other to share a hopeful kiss.

“Thanks for that, Logan,” Roman called back after breaking the kiss, still staring lovingly into Virgil’s eyes as the other stared back.

Logan nodded in reply as the cabin lapsed back into silence.  But this time, it wasn’t brooding or tense, but filled with a hope for the future that no amount of bigotry could extinguish.

[redxwail]

I am being a bitch today and adding few more rules since lately my dashboard is making me cringe so hard and I want to avoid unfollowing people that I actually wanted to RP with. 

Rule #1 - Spam

I hate, hate, HATE seeing my dashboard all clogged up by pictures, gifs, other unrelated shit, especially if the spam comes from specific blogs only. I am not telling you to stop doing what you do - it’s your blog. All I am asking you is if I follow you, please have a decent tag system. My semi-spam tags are: / / 𝒯𝑒𝒶 𝒲𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒬𝓊𝑒𝑒𝓃 ♡ ⁽ ᵐᵒᵒᵈ ⁾ and  / /  I’m One In A Million ♡ Don’t You Agree ⁽ ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵘʳᵉˢ ⁾. These are two tags I use to post most unrelated/related posts to my blog that might or might not be considered spam for some people. If you hate that I post shit, block those tags. So, what I am asking is to have something similar so instead of unfollowing you, I block the tag.

On that note I will remind you that I do not tag NSFW. This is a mature blog and I will neither tag it or put it under (read more). However, I will tag trigger warnings. 

Rule #2 - Quality

There is a decent amount of roleplayers whose main language is not English. I have nothing against that because English is my third language and I learned most of English here on Tumblr roleplaying with people. What I am against is people using a translator to directly translate text from their language to English. I can always tell when someone is translating the whole text. I get even more annoyed when someone says that they’ve been roleplaying for 9+ years and I can clearly see that they're using a translator to create posts. Don’t be that person. 

Do use translators to translate words you don’t know. Add Grammarly as an extension to your web browser for better grammar, it will also fix misspelled words and let you know that you are building a sentence wrong. Use Thesaurus for finding synonyms. Cut your posts using New Xkit (editable reblogs).  

Rule #3 - I made you feel uneasy.

If I ever make you feel uneasy with a reply, don’t be scared to message me either here on Tumblr or on Discord: redxwail#4032

I never ever want to make you feel anything but good while we are roleplaying together. I tried before to put Lydia in some frames when I write here, but it would always end up with a huge writer's block for me.

I sometimes see people fearing forced ships on them, but this would never be a case while writing with me unless we have talked about shipping my stupid daughter with your gorgeous character. It all s also stated in my rules about shipping. Other than that, if she’s being flirty around your character, it’s just her being her with no motives underneath. I am kind of a sucker for no strings attached and friends with benefits kind of posts.

So, if I write something that makes you feel even a tiny bit “NO” - message me. I love talking with people behind the character. We can always figure things out and fix whatever there is to fix.

[atombombbagel]

Companions carrying injured Sole to safety

HELLO! So like I said I’ve managed to actually finish a reaction and although it may not be the best, I’m rusty af. Also, anything over a thousand words is going to be under a keep reading thingy and that is only because I don’t want to clog up peoples dashboards. :) Hopefully it is good enough and ENJOY. :)

1 request down and about 144 to go. 

Cait: “Find Cover!” Caityelled as a small hand grenade was tossed by the enemy in the direction of herand Sole. The grenade bounced off the ground a few times before coming to a halt,landing next to Sole’s feet. Sole only had a few seconds to react, swan divingto safety behind an old pile of sandbags. Small bits of debris and bits of rubbleflew into the air as the device exploded. Cait quickly shuffled to her feet, immediatelylooking around for Sole, who she found in a matter of seconds. She rushed totheir side.

“That looks nasty there Sole,”Cait commented as she looked at Sole’s ankle, it was red and twisted out ofplace. “Can yer move it?” She asked and Sole shook their head wincing. “Don’t chaworry, I got yer.” Cait carefully lifted Sole up and carried them into a nearbybuilding, away from the enemies that had given up on fighting them. Cait slowlyput Sole down on an old worn chair before going off to find a box to prop Sole’sankle onto. Sole tilted their head as they looked at Cait in disbelief.

“What are ye lookin’ at?” Caitasked, examining Sole’s ankle a little closer.

“You’re a lot stronger thanyou look.” Sole laughed which caused Cait to playfully punch Sole in the arm.

“Yeah. Appearances aren’t everythingyano. I could kick yer ass easy,” She joked. “Now stay still and let me patch yerup.”

Curie: Sole carefullystepped across the old wooden planks that lined the upper floor of a decrepitbuilding. Curie had suggested to Sole that together they should find a fewmedical supplies for the growing settlements. But they’d had no luck, untilthey stumbled upon an old, abandoned raider den.

“Bingo!” Sole exclaimed,pleased with themselves as they handed the various chems and medical suppliedto Curie so she could put them in her bag.

“Wonderful,” Curie agreed.What a great find, these supplies would be more than enough for a fewtreatments but Sole being, well Sole, they didn’t want to leave any of thebuilding unchecked.

Sole reached for the door knobto what appeared to be a closet, only when Sole opened the door, they were greetedto a small swarm of hatched bloatflies. Startled, they flew into Sole’s facemaking them stumble back and step on a rotten floorboard. The board creaked loudlybefore giving way and snapping in half, sending Sole through the floor.

“Oh no!” Curie gasped turningback and hurrying down the stairs in which they’d came up. She flew through thedoor and over to Sole’s side. “Your leg madam/ monsieur!” Curie knew it wouldbe unsafe to treat Sole’s leg here so she somehow manged to pick Sole up cradlingthem in her, apparently strong arms, which definitely left Sole speechless to saythe least. Curie backtracked to one of the houses they’d already cleared out,making sure to help Sole to the best of her ability.

Danse: Danse pressed hisback against the wall as he avoided countless laser rifle shots from a handful ofgeneration 1 institute synths. He tactfully reloaded his weapon before peakingaround the wall to fire a few shots at them. He looked to his left, where Solewas standing, when he noticed one of the synths had snuck up behind the two ofthem.

“SOLE!” he shouted but as Solewent to look over at him they were hit over the back of the head by the synth holdinga shock baton. Danse fired at the synth, blasting its head off and turning itto dust. Danse then continued to kill the remaining synths before dashing toSole’s side. He quickly picked up Sole and hurried back to the police stationwhere they would be safe from any danger.

Sole woke up to Scribe Haylenwrapping a bandage around their head. They gazed up at Danse, who was standingwith his arms crossed, a worried look etched on his face. His eyes lit up whenhe noticed Sole had woken up. He moved closer to the mattress Sole was lyingon.

“How are you doing soldier?”He asked, kneeling beside Sole, inspecting their head. He smiledsympathetically.

“I’m fine,” Sole said beforeadding, “How did I get back here?” Danse scratched the back of his head.

“I carried you back after youwere hit,” he explained.

“Thank you.”

“We’ve got to stick together,”Danse said with a smile.

Deacon: “Do you hear that?”Sole asked as they cautiously down at the ground with furrowed eyebrows. Deaconstopped in his tracks as he tried to listen to whatever Sole was referring to.He shrugged and shook his head. Sole shook it off, continuing towards theirdestination. Sole stopped once again. “I swear-” Sole was cut off when theywere knocked to the ground after being attacked from below. A mole rat had burrowedits way out of the dirt and had sank its teeth into Sole’s leg. Sole winced inpain, falling to the ground as the mole rat continued its attack on them.Deacon reacted quickly, kicking the mole rat off Sole, before shooting it inthe head.

“Frickin’ little bugger,” Solecried, clutching their bleeding leg. Deacon scooped Sole up in his arms.

“That looks pretty nasty,” Hecommented.

“It is!” Sole whined, makingDeacon let out a little chuckle.

“Don’t worry I’ll get you backto base. You’re going to need a couple of shots for that one.” He laughedagain, causing Sole to groan.

“You’re not helping!” Solehuffed, crossing their arms.

Hancock: A loud siren alertedHancock and Sole who were both chilling on the sofa inside Sole’s home. It wasn’tvery often they got to spend time just relaxing, there was always something todo. Sole quickly jumped to their feet, rushing to the front door to see whatall the commotion was about. The crackling noise of gunfire broke out andHancock grabbed his gun, following Sole into the heat of the fight.

A small group of raiders hadsomehow grown the balls to try and attack Sanctuary. Hancock watched from afaras Sole went to finish off an enemy only to be shot by a second raider who hadbeen hiding behind a stack of tires. In a burst of anger Hancock shot at theman in the burlap sack mask, his face exploding along with fragments of his mask.Hancock killed the other raider, overkilling her when he sent the butt of hisgun through her face. He turned to Sole, assessing their injuries with his eyesbefore leaning down and picking Sole up.

“Fucking assholes,” Hancockmuttered to himself taking a very injured Sole back into their house. He put Soledown on their bed. “Stay here until I get back. Do you understand?” It wasn’t reallya question, but more of a demand, he knew what Sole was like. He was going to finishoff all those goddamn raiders before he’d come back and patch up Sole. Nosurvivors, not for this.

MacCready: MacCready pulled the trigger of hissniper rifle, his bullet flying through the air, landing between the eyes of alarge super mutant. He cocked the bolt back, lining up another shot. He smirkedas he watched the clueless super mutants through his scope. Sole, who was standingnext to MacCready, stepped forward accidently slipping on a muddy patch ofgrass. They fell on their ass and slid down the hill, on the way down Sole hadhit their knee on a rock. Sole had also alertedthe super mutant group, but Mac was more worried about sole then the mutants.

“You blew our cover,” hewhisper-yelled, hurrying down the hill to Sole’s aid. The super mutants whereapproaching them but instead of fighting MacCready knelt down letting Soleclimb onto his back. He stood up with a groan, Sole was heavier than theylooked, either that or is was down to MacCready’s scrawny arms. Although it wasslippery, Mac made his way up the muddy bank, completely evading the buff greendudes. MacCready was tired but Sole was enjoying the piggy bank.  

Nick: “How badly did theyget you?” Nick asked, crouching down beside Sole. He reached forward examiningSole. “Looks rough kid,” he added when he noticed the slashes and scratchesacross Sole’s waist.

“It hurts like mad” Solefrowned.

“I bet. Look, I don’t know ifI’ll be much help with this old thing,” Nick joked referring to his exposedmetal hands. Sole laughed for a moment before grimacing in pain, clutchingtheir side. Nick helped Sole off the ground, wrapping their arm around the backof his neck. Nick slowly walked Sole to a secluded building away from the feralghouls’ corpses that had attacked them. He gently put Sole down onto an old woodenchair.

“Take this,” Nick handed Solea stimpak, offering a sympathetic smile as they infected it into their side. Itwasn’t so much carrying but more of a friendly helping hand.

Piper: “How did I let yourope me into this.” Sole sighed with a huff, looking over at Piper who wassmiling widely to herself.

“The gift of the gab,” Shereplied. “Now hush.” Piper lifted her index finger to her lip to silence Sole.If they were too loud, she couldn’t capture the picture she wanted. She’dwanted it for days, a picture of Yao Guai, caring for its cup. Piper quicklysnapped the shot, the bright flash of the camera alerting the animals. As anyprotective mother would, the Yao Guai growled moving closer Piper. Sole grabbedher sleeve and initiated for them to run the hell away from the angry beast.

As they were making their quickgetaway Sole stumbled over, nearly bringing piper with them, Piper bent downand picked up Sole by there are, wrapping it around her neck as she tried topull Sole along.

“God you weigh a tonne,” Shejoked, hurrying along. Piper tried her best to carry Sole to safety, not evenresiding the mutated bear has given up chasing them. She dropped to the ground.

“Hey!” Sole shouted as theyhit the floor with a thud.

“I’m sorry, but you’re heavy.”She laughed before offering Sole her hand to help them up from the ground.

Piper offered her shoulder onceagain, carrying a hobbling sole to a clinic.

Preston: “We’re trapped!” Soleobserved in a panicked tone. Preston and Sole had been chased by gunners into asmall two-story house.

“No where to run now!” one ofthe gunners taunted as they approached the narrow staircase. Unfortunately, itwas too narrow to escape from. Preston smashed one of the already brokenwindows with the stock of his laser musket, clearing the rest of the glass forthem to escape.

“General! This way.” Prestonnodded his head towards the window before he climbed out onto a garage roof,stepping carefully on the weathered tiles. Sole climbed out next, walking overto the edge of the roof. It was safe enough for them to jump down. As Sole wentto jump down they lost their footing, slipping off the roof and landing ontheir leg. Preston immediately jumped down after them and didn’t even hesitateas he lifted Sole into his arms.

“It looks broken,” he said sadly.All Sole could do was let out a groan, unable to muster up any words. Preston didn’teven wait for the gunners to catch on, he ran as fast as he could, clutching Soletightly to his chest. He had to get them some help.

X6-88: “I detect enemymovement nearby,” X6 announced, holding his gun steadily in front of him. He’salways ready before the fight even starts. Sole followed him around a cornerwhere they were ambushed by three brotherhood soldiers. X6 managed to fight offand kill two of them but that wasn’t before the third manged to knock Sole tothe ground.

Sole struggled to get thesoldier off them, wrestling about. Sole yelled out as a stinging pain ripped upthrough their leg. The soldier had managed to get out a knife and plunge itinto Sole’s leg. X6 hit the soldier in the back of the head with his gun, knockingthem off Sole and onto the ground. The soldier clutched his head as he writhed abouton the ground. A single laser shot, ended the soldier and X6 focused hisattention back to Sole, who had also been squirming around in immense pain.

Without saying anything X6picked sole up and threw them over his shoulder. Although it wasn’t the bestway to carry an injured Sole, it’s the thought that counts, right?