#the pose is from one of those draw your ot3 memes

[ask18thcenturyrussia]

[ 1,150 FOLLOWERS SPECIAL ]

[polyshipweek]

One Month to Polyship Week!

Expanded Prompts: Day 1–2

April 16 & 17

Road Trip: Send your polycule on a journey! This could be a literal road trip — car snacks, squabbles over the aux cable, weird roadside attractions — or something more fantastic. "Road" trip in space? Sailing around the world? Four metamours on a quest to find their missing shared partner? Maybe you wanna draw the squad flying down the highway while crammed into a minivan! Go wherever the road (or the prompt) takes you!

Sedoretu: Maybe you're a long-time Ursula Le Guin fan, or maybe you just read some sedoretu fic or bemusedlybespectacled's primer and got inspired — either way, assign some moieties and see what happens. You can play it straight or mix it up: Maybe your characters are the "wrong" genders or moieties to form a sedoretu. Maybe your polycule has too many members to fit the pattern. Maybe they're a Morning couple looking for a set of lavender marriages with a nice Evening couple. Have fun with this classic framework!

5+1 Things: A classic fanfic trope that lends itself especially well to polyship shenanigans! 5 different dates + 1 group night in, perhaps. Or how about five times Character A got pranked + one time they pranked the rest of the polycule? This trope also pairs well with an Outsider POV — something like 5 times Character A saw their crush kissing someone + 1 time they got a kiss!

Visual Prompt — OT3 Pose Meme: Aren't mcnuggyy's poses just the cutest? Draw one or combine a few or tell us the story of how your polycule got into this position. Remember to tag @/mcnuggyy when you share your creations!

Huddling for Warmth: Another classic trope that's even better polyam style! Perhaps they've gotten trapped in an ice cave on a dangerous expedition. Or they could be getting cozy in a Canadian shack as a surprise blizzard rolls through. Or maybe there's just that one member of the polycule who always seems to be freezing. Whatever the case, bundle those blorbos up!

Second Chances: Get your heartstrings ready for tugging with this prompt! What happens when your partner's new partner is a familiar face? How does the squad support Character A when that person who broke their heart blows back into their life? Whether it's a breakup-makeup story, a surprise encounter with an old flame, or a missed connection that comes back around, this prompt is all about how your polyship navigates trying to start again.

Missing Scene / Epilogue: Sometimes canon just leaves the perfect amount of space for a story. Whether it's a moment of intimacy, a messy argument, or a hilarious and heartwarming get-together, this prompt asks the questions: What happened when the narrative wasn't looking? And what comes after happily ever after?

Visual Prompt — View from Above: Are they posing for pictures, or exhausted after a battle, or maybe out stargazing? It doesn't have to be this exact stock photo pose, just give us a bird's-eye view of the crew!

The ao3 collection is now open for submissions, and we'll start revealing the fics on April 16! We'll be watching the #PolyshipWeek23 hashtags, and you can also @ us when you post for reblogs and retweets. Remember that text prompts can be art prompts and visual prompts can be story prompts — whatever inspires you, we can't wait to see what you come up with!

Masterpost & Guidelines

[gojaimas]

Chapter 36 Comments

MageofDuality: “Ya’ know I’m actually feeling sorry for Gwen. I ship her and Ben don’t get me wrong and Lucy is great both as a test to them and herself but geez the way she is just hammering this whole thing on Gwen subtly like a mastermind in the shadows is a bit much.”

Lucy sort of realized that this chapter. Gwen ended up really hurt by the whole thing, and Lucy felt terrible about it.

csgt: “About Lucy "testing" Ben, I'm still not sure if she was more interested in seeing him passing or failing XD I really enjoyed these scenes”

Haha, the best tests are the ones which will make you happy regardless of the outcome!

csgt: “PS: you have an OC named 'Nathan' who has a crush on Gwen, and I also have an OC named 'Natan' who has a crush on Gwen. I'm pretty sure you didn't read my fics so you didn't know that, it's just a big coincidence, but I was quite surprised to see that name popping up here XD”

Oh wow, that is a coinidence. I named Nathan after a kid I knew in middle school who was particularly bad at talking to girls.

Phildev: “I'll admit, I was thinking that adding Lucy as a legitimate love interest was gonna go poorly. But having Gwen temporarily out of the equation allowed this to flow very well!”

Thanks! I think I write characters best as pairs. Seeing Ben and Lucy having their own dynamic while away from Gwen for a bit definitely showed off their chemistry.

Guest: “Lucy is such a babe. Perfect story. Perfect plot.”

Everyone enjoys the Lucy scenes for the...plot.

Jagcity: “I've also been wanting but forgetting to ask about your thumbnail for the story. It's amazing and seems to reflect a lot of their qualities from your story!”

Thank you! I drew it some time last year without any particular scene in mind. It was part of my practice with drawing characters using poses from a reference photo of different characters. For that one, I used this pic of Oreki and Chitanda from Hyouka:

haha.plogue: “Isn't it supposed to be year 5 of the month of January?”

No, the years are measuring time from their first summer trip. Year 1 began in September after the summer trip ended. The story isn’t currently taking place in the year 4 AD.

Guest: “If this ended benxgwenxlucy it will be creepy” Guest: “AHHH they both go well together with Ben I don’t know who to ship just end it with a threesome lol”

You guys wanna talk?

Guest: “That comparison of similarities between the Ben and Gwen in denial of their feelings was brilliant.”

Haha, and people said the Julie arc would never amount to anything.

Guest: “Also, this is the first time I’ve actually seen Lucy feel a little hurt that Gwen was Ben’s main priority because she was just as much as a shipper as the rest of us. She’s precious. Hope she gets a happy ending.”

Lucy is so great. I feel bad making her feel bad. But at least she's still happy about Ben and Gwen making progress.

Guest: “the way you executed why they started hating each other from the flashbacks was brilliant. It was even never explained in the original series as far as my knowledge.”

Yeah I don’t remember them ever explaining it either, so I made it the way I imagined it. Just some stupid misunderstandings with both of them being too proud to stop fighting back.

Guest: “Lucy is my waifu”

This is the best comment I’ve ever received.

Guest: “Thank you Gojaimas for making Bwency a thing, they had so much potential in the original series, especially during their dance”

Oh I didn’t invent Bwency. It’s been here for years: http://thegreatbentennyson.tumblr.com/post/101398479772/lucyxbenxgwen-is-my-ot3

Guest: “Like Lucy giving Ben the nostalgic feeling of his connection to an alien life of any shape or form, you just made me pick up my DS and play Pokémon.”

Ah, Pokémon. The original nostalgia. I like to imagine Ben, Gwen, and Lucy all play Pokémon too. Ben’s favorite Pokémon is Charizard, Gwen’s is Espeon, and Lucy’s is Pachirisu.

Guest: “Is the title I wanted what I saw that day a reference to Ben seeing Lucy shirtless? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)”

I take it back, this is the best comment I’ve ever received.

Car-54: “Regarding Ben, I'm starting to suspect that he has already realized his feelings for Gwen. We just aren't seeing his thought process. He keeps quiet because he assumes that she would be repulsed by the revelation.”

Ben’s basically never been comfortable expressing any emotion other than happiness or anger, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to say he could hide something like that.

Jagcity: “Not really too important but just curious, is the watch and locket real gold or just gold plated? I'd imagine they both used up a fortune of their allowance on those gifts, especially Gwen.”

The lockets and the watch aren’t really gold. They’re likely not even gold plated. They’re probably brass or something else that just looks like gold.

Fan of you: “Your story has surpassed Little Moments in terms of reviews. Slowly we'll get to the favorites and follows too haha.”

I actually just messaged shadows59 yesterday. Apparently he’s been reading my story, so I had a pretty big ‘senpai noticed me’ moment. So shadows, if you’re reading this, and I know you are, my story has more reviews than yours. I only need 180 more follows and 563 more faves until I’m better than you. Take that!

Guest: “you know that daily struggle meme where there’s two buttons and you’re sweating on contemplating which one to press, that’s how I feel rn except one’s Bwen and the other’s Bency. I don’t know why people are referring their ship name as Bwency. That sounds like all of their names combined.”

It is all of their names combined. People are shipping all three of them together. Here’s Lucy’s daily struggle from last chapter:

Guest: “I can literally Google this story or your name and it shows up on the front page, that’s how much exposure you’ve got. Saves my lazy ass the time to go to fanfiction and search it up.”

Sweet! I wonder if anyone outside of fanfiction.net has heard of my story.

Guest: “this is my favourite K-drama”

Yeah but the manga was better.

Guest: “Gojaimas you’ve got goddamn talent you’d be a worth opponent 1v1 me Rust last kill trick shots noscopes only, let’s have a go inside the boxing ring since that’s the YouTube trend now apparently but more importantly, battle me to the death in Dance Dance Revolution.”

No. We must settle this like men:

Guest: “Gojaimas you didn’t reference “Love Me” by Katy Perry when Gwen wanted to hold Ben’s hand I’ve lost all hope”

FUCK! I missed another one! Guys, nobody tell Katy Perry. She’d be pissed.

Guest: “am the only one who would also smash Lucy in her sludgepuppy form? She’s literally like Mystique (Jennifer Lawfrence’s version) from X-Men.”

I mean, that depends. Are we talkin' this:

Or this: