times are hard for dreamers

I’m Em! I like musicals, webcomics, and Miraculous Ladybug. she/her.

[emmalylis]

Hi there! I’m Em, better known as emmalylis (SFW) and gremdark (NSFW) on AO3. I post about my WIPs for the latter at @grem-dark.

If you’re here, it’s probably because of my ongoing longfic Owning The Mask, my series of short Miraculous Ladybug rare pair fics, or my writing for the Miraculous Kinkmeme (NSFW).

Here’s a list of the fics I’m proudest of writing. I put it together in 2022, but it’s still pretty accurate. Reclists of my all-time favorite fics by other people are here (Miraculous), here (book fandoms), and here (everything else).

If you’re curious why I abruptly disappeared for a few years, here’s a post about that. I’m healthy enough to participate in fandom now, but expect me to be slow to respond to asks and DMs.

Come talk to me! Anon is on as long as y’all behave.

[lliveonthesunn]

every other week, my mom would make a giant pot of vegetable soup. she'd pack half of it in a tupperware and take it to her best friend's house. they both had three kids whose ages aligned. they'd lock us out of the house and go through each room, finding every piece of dirty laundry and then spend the afternoon keeping the washer and dryer running, folding and putting away each load while gossiping.

every alternate week, her best friend would come to our house with a tupperware full of chicken spaghetti. they'd stick us in front of a tv with a stack of disney vhs tapes and go through each room, finding every dirty dish, and then spend the afternoon at the kitchen sink, washing each dish by hand while gossiping.

it wasn't always soup and spaghetti and laundry and dishes. but it was almost always a meal and a chore. here is a night you don't have to cook dinner. here is a chore you can cross off your list. and here is a day you don't have to spend alone. because really food and friendship and a feeling of accomplishment are what we all need most.

[batrachised]

"slow burn" not in the sense that the couple takes forever to get together but in the sense that it takes the author 84 years to write and post the next chapter so that a relatively short 8 chapter fic feels as fast-paced as the hollowing of the grand canyon

[batrachised]

let it be known that I finished the fic this post was about and not to brag but it only took two years

[anna-scribbles]

waiter!! 100 more nino episodes, stat! waiter! waiter come back

[mollyringle]

In light of a certain T E R F-authored HBO series getting more press lately, may I remind you that now is a GREAT time to leave that series permanently behind in your past and never speak of it nor look at it again. To fill its place, here are a ton of better stories you can read: LGBTQ+ friendly books featuring magic, witches, wizards, fantasy, and the like! I could've gone on and on with even more slides honestly—I love this genre, and there are SO MANY fabulous books out there. Please branch out and explore, and give these authors some love. They have earned it (unlike some others we are not naming). (And yes. My books too. Though I did not put them in this graphic set.)

[unusual]

Japanese is an incredibly fun and rewarding language (if you’ve ever wanted to learn it for ANY reason, most importantly including the “silly” reasons) but the fearmongering and capitalist intervention involved in the language learning process have given it a reputation as an “impossible task” for English speakers, leading to confusion and dkn learners and weird pessimist attitudes about the whole thing. In this thread I will explain how to effectively learn and retain Japanese. This is a tried, tested and true method; probably 99% of all people who try to learn Japanese give up, but everyone I’ve met who has tried and stuck with this has been at or above N3-N4 after 6 months or less including me

[unusual]

You can teach yourself Japanese for free if you have a little free time every day and a computer

1. Drill yourself on hiragana and katakana. These are the phonetic building blocks of Japanese, think of them as equivalent to english letters. This site is a good resource in general. Once you have a solid grasp on this, DO NOT LINGER HERE; move to step 2. You will master kana later.

2. Download Anki. This is a flashcard service. They have a paid app if you’re willing to invest for it, but if not, they have a mobile website (create an account and sync it with your computer).

This is the deck you’re going to download. Import it to Anki and do this every day. I have learned the hard way (twice) that skipping this is bad. If you become overwhelmed, you can change the number of new cards and reviews by clicking the cog next to the name of the deck!

3. Cure Dolly (Youtube, grammar) + transcript. She has kind of a posh accent, you might want to turn subtitles on. Watch a few videos when you feel like it but most importantly set up 4 and 5 as soon as possible

4. Yomitan (must have) is a browser extension that functions as a pop-up dictionary. you need to install dictionaries for it to work. here are some dictionaries you can use with yomitan and explanations of what they do

5. READ. DO NOT LET YOURSELF GET STUCK BEFORE THIS STEP. JUST READ!!!! Most people who fail to learn Japanese do so because they are afraid of not being ready to move on, which is counterproductive. Just read. When you were a child did you spend years on vocab and grammar before reading? No I bet you did not. Pick something to read and learn what you don’t already know by reading in Japanese.

Jiten.moe has a list of novels and visual novels that you can read on your computer sorted by difficulty. So does jpdb. There’s also this document. There’s also this document. Hey look this website is cool too

For visual novels: download LunaHook. It “hooks” to your VN and allows you to use Yomitan on words you don’t know. Turn off the translation feature, it does nothing to help you learn

For literary texts: ttsu e-reader supports epub and htmlz files.

You can also learn Japanese by watching anime, but it’s a little more convoluted and requires a lot more patience.

For manga, utilize Mangatan, but I don’t recommend this right out the gate because when you’re first learning sentence structure you’ll want something with complete sentences.

Set your computer up for mining vocab before you start reading. Once you finish your kaishi deck, you can drill your mining cards (I didn’t do mine until after finishing kaishi because it was too much).

Most importantly: reading is going to be hard at first. It is going to piss you off. You need to muscle through with this because this is where the bulk of your learning will happen. After a while you will just feel like reading because you love reading! Try not to pick something too hard for your first read, but if you’re interested in the story you might be able to muscle through something a little tougher.

Remember to consult yomitan and cure dolly where needed, that’s what it’s there for. As you can see I am quite normal about the Japanese language, so if you have any other questions or need help with anything else feel free to shoot me an ask and I will get back to you promptly. Japanese is not your enemy and it is not impossible. It is your friend

[lunius-art]

H2O just add water but it's 40 year old office worker Dave

[hanpancakes]

I just want Dave to feel appreciated…. 🥺

[mistpodfics]

Three Witches written by Emmalylis | @emmalylis

A Miraculous Ladybug Podfic read by mistbornhero for 🎃 pod-o-ween 👻 for the prompt 🧹 coven 🧹

At a ruined castle under a full moon, Alya, Marinette, and Kagami gather to summon the spirit of Chat Noir

Podfic Length: 11:35 minutes

[pentapoda]

Every time someone comments on my old fic, i feel like I'm an old actor getting paid residuals. Appreciate you, old-fic-commenters. Key source of emotional income, tbh.

[dykeselfcest]

ok I'm like. "I'm not a bad bitch and this isn't savage." well like. true. but this feels like it is just like some cursed combination of "I'm just too soft for all of this" and a derisive attitude toward rap culture

[emmalylis]

Made me think of this.

[mattgrayyes]

Having seen Juggling Lab go full meme on here, it’s reminded me that Tom and I did a juggling tutorial on The Park Bench *checks notes* seven years ago!

It’s relatively straightforward to learn, you don’t need any prior knowledge or skill, you can get there through practice alone.

Before I could juggle, my hand-eye coordination was terrible. Since learning it’s now only bad!

[cipheramnesia]

I feel less like I am going crazy after stumbling into a radfem doing out in the open organized spam reporting / callout campaigning, gloating and reporting "success stories." It was like a little refreshing reminder that feeling isolated and lost isn't some inexplicable breakdown of organization, but more like an ongoing campaign of shit-stirring from the same place it always comes from. Anyway had a little block party over it.

[cipheramnesia]

Although like, if there's someone really openly organizing harassment of trans femmes by mass reporting them as spam. You know what. What would be hilarious.

[cipheramnesia]

She's having a hammer car explosion style shit fit as the prompt, so to speak. Though if I get my account smashed in the next month or so, you'll know who done it.

[cipheramnesia]

Not suggesting anything but it's just really interesting to see that there's one radfem poster who has 100% got trans accounts deleted, and she specified it was by organized mass reporting them as spam - not harassment, etc. Like, that mass spam reporting of individual accounts is confirmed to work. And her individual account, y'know, is like, if it was deleted, it's 100% guaranteed that one of the causes of trans femme blog deletion would be removed, since she's organizing those kinds of campaigns, and posting instructions on how mass reporting accounts as spam can get them deleted. It's like, interesting information.

[cipheramnesia]

I think I've added a thousand new blocks in the past hour, rare to find one blog so openly organizing to get blogs removed by mass reporting one blog as spam where I don't need to look at anyone's posts - I know anyone who liked or reblogged the account is supporting harassment.

[cipheramnesia]

There's a lot of interesting mechanical parts to a large amount of harassment from a small group. Like, one person with a shorter reach, for example, the person doing the trans femme spam reporting, can have almost her entire circle of followers blocked in, well, about an hour. Because that changes the difficulty of spam reporting, it cuts down the participants.

If your circle is larger, it gets more difficult to cordon things off. However, there is a degree of social pressure that impacts the spread of these things. Radfems are a good illustration of this, because we know they are notorious for deliberately misrepresenting trans people as violent (indeed, in their eyes being transgender is enough to be considered violent), pretenting obvious fantasy or hyperbole is literal truth, treating consenting sexual behavior as violence, and so on. Basically, we know radfems lie about trans people, sex workers, and kink. The resultant social pressure means that calling out to harass a trans femme is unlikely to spread beyond radfem circles, although they're fond of sending anons to trans blogs to stir up shit, as well as once in a rare while sock puppeting harassment. So, that limits the spread and you can do an easy containment.

On the other hand, if information is put out by a person with a larger following, or spread by an extremely influential person, it might get past its limitation to radfem tumblr, and be taken as reliable, which is a reason why We Don't Share Callout Posts. That said, an informational post about how to leverage the harassment strategies used by radfems against trans people is the type of information that is not a callout, and doesn't not incur the same sort of negative social pressure as siding with a hategroup. Indeed, in many ways such a post would almost feel like it's important to share, as the amount of online harassment and blog deletion of trans femmes on tumblr is widely known. A generally progressive leaning social media site like tumblr might even want to blow up the post notifications, so that it would hit mass propagation, and make it impossible for the radfems running the harassment campaign to cordon it off. Especially with one radfem blog being so open about calling for people to mass report one blog as spam, and get trans femme blogs deleted, using a tactic that really anyone could use, even as a way to put a guaranteed stop to someone who has by her own proclamation got trans femme blogs taken down in that very way.

I mean a post explaining that, if it went viral, that would make it very difficult to keep harassing trans people.

[thegothicalice]

Wore a couple modified shirts recently and someone asked “how?” so my illustrator background made me draw this because work was slow ✂️ Featuring examples at the end— drawn in Procreate.

[emmalylis]

So Battleship fics are out, and I’m working my way through them. Expect more rec posts, but for now please check out this hot, delightful sugar mommy Cindarella retelling my friend wrote. Mind that E-rating; there’s more than a bit of steam to it.

are you gonna be my girl? by Anonymous

[grem-dark]

Listen. Listen. What if Gabriel and André explored each other’s bodies (TM) at university, never talked about it or defined the relationship, and then slowly drifted apart after they met the women they would go on to marry (and change their favorite parts of themselves for)

What if that’s why Gabriel has so much disdain for André and his terrible marriage and his malleable ethics?

Gabriel and André should be exes. I rest my case.

[into-september]

Gabriel and André should be the world's most toxic marriage so that Adrien and Chloé get to be siblings for real, Adrien gets a loving father and Chloé gets someone who won't hesitate to dicipline her

[hiimcanadia]

Your AO3 bookamarks are...

All private

Mostly private, some public

Pretty evenly private and public

Mostly public, some private

All public

Voting ended onJul 8, 2025

I've always kept my bookmarks private, not because I'm embarrassed or I'm putting negative comments in them or anything, just because if I have the option to keep extra information about my habits hidden on an account that anyone could find I will almost always take it

However I've seen some people say that not having public bookmarks is "suspicious" or "not respecting the culture of ao3". So I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on this and see how many people are in the same boat as me lol

[surlifen]

NO ONE knows how to use thou/thee/thy/thine and i need to see that change if ur going to keep making “talking like a medieval peasant” jokes. /lh

They play the same roles as I/me/my/mine. In modern english, we use “you” for both the subject and the direct object/object of preposition/etc, so it’s difficult to compare “thou” to “you”.

So the trick is this: if you are trying to turn something Olde, first turn every “you” into first-person and then replace it like so:

“I” →  “thou”

“Me” →  “thee”

“My” →  “thy”

“Mine” →  “thine”

Let’s suppose we had the sentences “You have a cow. He gave it to you. It is your cow. The cow is yours”.

We could first imagine it in the first person-

“I have a cow. He gave it to me. It is my cow. The cow is mine”.

And then replace it-

“Thou hast a cow. He gave it to thee. It is thy cow. The cow is thine.”

[some-stars]

This is perfect and the only thing missing is that when “thy” comes before a vowel it’s replaced by “thine”, i.e. “thy nose” but “thine eyes.” English used to do this with my and mine too (and still does with a and an).

[fremedon]

The second person singular verb ending is -(e)st. In the present tense, it works more or less like the third person singular ending, -s: 

I sleep in the attic. Thou sleepest in the attic. He sleeps in the attic.

I love pickles. Thou lovest pickles. He loves pickles.

I go to school. Thou goest to school. He goes to school.

The -(e)st ending is only added to one word in a compound verb. This is where a lot of people make mistakes:

I will believe it when I see it. Thou wilt believe it when thou seest it. He will believe it when he sees it.

NOT

*thou willst believest it! NOPE! This is wrong

If you’re not sure, try saying it in the third person and replacing the -(e)st with -s:

*He will believes it when he sees it. ALSO NOPE! 

In general, if there’s one auxiliary, it takes the -(e)st ending) and the main verb does not. If there are multiple auxiliaries, only one of them takes -(e)st:

I could eat a horse. Thou couldst eat a horse. He could eat a horse.

I should go. Thou shouldst go. He should go.

I would have gone. Thou wouldst have gone. He wouldst have gone. 

You can reduce the full -est ending to -st in poetry, if you need to drop a syllable:

thou sleepst, thou lov'st.

In some common words–mostly auxiliary verbs, or what you might have learned as “helping verbs”–the ending is always reduced:

I can swim. Thou canst swim. He can swim.

Sometimes this reduction takes the last consonant of the stem with it:

I have a cow. Thou hast a cow. He has a cow. 

Or reduces the -st down to -t:

I must believe her. Thou must believe her. He must believe her.

I shall not kill. Thou shalt not kill. He shall not kill.

However! UNLIKE the third-person singular -s, the second person -(e)st is ALSO added to PAST TENSE words, either to the past stem in strong (irregular) verbs or AFTER THE -ed in weak (regular) verbs: 

I gave her the horse. Thou gavest her the horse. He gave her the horse.

I made a pie. Thou mad’st a pie. He made a pie.

I wanted to go. Thou wantedst to go. He wanted to go.

This is different from the third person!

*He gaves her the horse. He mades a pie. He wanteds to go. SO MUCH NOPE!

It’s not wrong to add -(e)st to a long Latinate verb in the past tense, but it’s unusual; it’s much more common to use a helping verb instead:

I delivered the letter. (Great!)

Thou deliveredst the letter. (Not wrong, but weird)

He delivered the letter. (Great!)

I did deliver the letter. (Normal if emphatic, or an answer to a question; otherwise, a little weird.)

Thou didst deliver the letter. (Great!) 

And a couple last things:

1.) Third-person -(e)th is mostly equivalent to and interchangeable with third-person -s:

I have a cow. Thou hast a cow. He hath a cow.

I love her. Thou lovest her. He loveth her.

I do not understand. Thou dost not understand. He doth not understand.

HOWEVER! Third-person -(e)th, unlike -s but like -(e)st, can, sometimes, go on STRONG past-tense verbs:

I gave her the cow. Thou gavest her the cow. He gaveth her the cow.

This never happens with weak verbs:

*He lovedeth her. NOPE NOPE NOPE!

And even with strong verbs, from Early Modern (e.g., Shakespearean) English onward, it’s quite rare. But you will see it from time to time.

2.) In contemporary Modern English, we invert the order of subjects and auxiliary verbs in questions:

Will I die? I will die. 

Has she eaten? She has eaten.

If there’s no auxiliary, we add one–do–and invert that:

Do you hear the people sing? You (do) hear the people sing.

In Early Modern English, this process was optional, and mostly used for emphasis; all verbs could be and were moved to the front of the sentence in questions:

Hear ye the people sing? (Or singen, if we’re early enough to still be inflecting infinitives.)

Do-support was also optional for negatives:

I don’t like him. I like him not.

Thou dost not care. Thou carest not.

She does not love thee. She loves thee not.

3.) Imperative verbs never take endings:

Hear ye, hear ye!

Go thou and do likewise!

Give me thy hand. Take thou this sword. 

4.) Singular ‘you’–that is, calling a singular person by a plural pronoun–arose as a politeness marker; and ‘thou’ fell out of use because it eventually came to be seen as impolite in almost all contexts. In general, once singular ‘you’ comes into use, it is used for addressing

people of higher social status than the speaker

or of equivalent status, if both speakers are high-status

strangers

anyone the speaker wants to flatter

‘Thou’ is used for

people of lower social status than the speaker

family and intimate friends

children

anyone the speaker wants to insult

It is safer to ‘you’ someone who doesn’t necessarily warrant ‘you’ than to ‘thou’ someone who does.

5.) And finally, that ‘ye’? That’s the nominative form of you–the one that’s equivalent to ‘I’ or ‘we.’ 

I  → thou → he/she/it  → we → ye → they

Me → thee → him/her/it → us → you → them

My → thy → his/her/its → our → your → their

Mine → thine → his/hers/its → ours → yours → theirs

Any time you’re using ‘thou’ for the singular, the second person plural– ‘y’all’– declines like this:

ye:  Ye are all a bunch of weirdos.

you: And I love you very much.

your: This has been your grammar lesson.

yours: This grammar lesson is yours. 

[muchtooold2]

If you want a book series where the formal you and thee/thine/thou is used super accurately (and to an emotionally devastating effect in certain parts), I cannot recommend the Goblin Emperor and its sequel series The Cemeteries of Ámalo strongly enough.

[esoanem]

Also worth noting that thou is still used in parts of the North of England, where it’s typically tha, thee, thy (or also tha), and your'n (or your’s), and typically takes the same verb forms as the third person singular (i.e. “tha eats”, “tha ate”, “tha walked”, “tha is”, “tha has” etc)