[id for the first photo: similar to the second photo, but the fire is labelled “all the stuff i have to do” and the phone is labelled “fanfiction”. /end id.]
Nico loved this middle part of summer. First the Tanabata Festival, Maki, glorious and gorgeous in a vintage yukata, playing silly games, eating festival foods, leaving nail marks holding Nico's hand while staring in open mouthed awe at sparkling, spreading fireworks. And Nico's birthday. Always a party or a trip somewhere so private Maki could thoroughly spoil Nico with all of her favorite indulgences. Then there would be their cooler evenings camping in the mountains away from the increasingly oppressive heat of the closed in city geography of Tokyo. And Maki would relax. Actually slow down, spending time stargazing, heading for the beach and the annual Muse beach volleyball tournament. And then, after everyone else left, at the helm of their motorboat, skipping over waves, the wind tussling her hair into crazy sexy combinations Nico would tangle around her fingers during long, loving, light filled, private evenings. Nico, woman of a thousand plans, never completely relaxed but joining Maki in these summer shenanigans was as close as the fast rising idol industry executive let herself.
Maki secured the awning in its place, fully open and extended out from the camper. Then she began to pull chairs out of their storage nook. Nico saw a slight wince cross Maki's face and was IMMEDIATELY at her wife's side, opening a chair, smoothly easing Maki into it, tenderly adjusting a throw over Maki as a signal that the restless redhead should stay put.
"I'm not an invalid."
"Let Nico fuss."
"Nico-chan…"
Nico kissed Maki on the forehead, "You're growing a whole person. Let Nico fuss."
After a sigh, Maki smiled, perhaps a bit smugly, leaning her cheek into Nico's hand. She'd spent years waiting for Nico to want this next step to a family.
"Can you grab me a coconut water?"
"Sure." Nico had the cooler out. "No weird juice cravings? Hanayo says Rin wants natto and yuzu ramen all the time."
"Yick." Maki shivered, her face drawn up into a sour expression. Rin was a couple more months along than she was. Natto and yuzu was a phase Maki would happily skip.
Nico dug through cans and juice boxes, looking for coconut water. "Tastebuds do change. Mama would like all this weird stuff, especially with Cocoa. Maybe you'll go off tomatoes."
"Nico-chan!"
Nico chuckled at the indignation in Maki's voice. "Are you tired?"
"A little. The nausea while driving was new."
"Nico can make you ginger tea."
"This is nice." Maki held the can Nico handed her to her chin, rolling it up and down her cheeks, enjoying the cool, feeling the relief of the condensation against her overheated skin. Grinning, she watched Nico comically swatting at a pair of gnats.
"Don't kill them. Bugs are biodiversity."
Nico glared at Maki as the gnats continued their attentions.
"Think of them as fans." Maki giggled.
Nico rolled her eyes, continuing the camp set up.
#######
"I can't believe you got Tsubasa to agree to a season of Camping Idol." Maki stretched out her legs, full of a delicious grill master Nico dinner.
"Tsubasa's pragmatic. She saw the boost the Bokeh Blossoms got from the first season. And Anju's a Yuru Camp fan." Nico kicked her heel into the dirt, "Why are you talking to Tsubasa?"
"She wanted my advice on what songs to prepare acoustically." Maki didn't like the way Nico's face had tightened. Tsubasa couldn't resist pestering Nico in ways Tsubasa found amusing and Nico found irritating. Time for a subject change and some flattery. "Camping Idol was a brilliant way to reopen Idol House post Covid. The acoustic sets really made comfort content for the fans. So many posted their own covers. You really hit a home run, Nico-chan."
Nico could share credit with some people. "When Honoka brought that guitar to our camp out that year, everyone had so much fun with the campfire singalongs. Nico knows a good thing when she hears it."
"And the s'mores were a hit."
"Does Maki-chan want a gooey and delicious dessert?"
"Maybe later." Maki paused, then grinned boldly. "Right now, I want to look at you."
The firelight caught all the sharp angles of Nico's profile, highlighting a beauty that Maki thought could never look aged. Like a statue carved flawlessly out of pale cream marble, but with the heart of a volcano pulsing inside.
Blunt honesty was one of Maki's best moods but Nico was sometimes caught off guard, suddenly shy to speak.
Maki had more to say. "I remember taking pictures of everyone. You looked so good in the firelight, singing, listening. You glow with music."
Receiving unabashed praise from her music genius of a wife also gave Nico a glow. "You see Nico like no one else does."
"I just know how wonderful Nico-chan is."
"But your conversation with Umi and Honoka really gave Nico the idea."
"And you knew how to make it work."
Nico swatted at a mosquito whose shrill buzz had joined the evening, "And now we'll get to watch Tsubasa fight off biting insects. Nico won't mind."
And that tone was back. "Nico-chan, there was never…"
"Nico knows. Tsubasa just got Maki songs before Nico."
"That was a long time ago. Let's forget about it." Maki deliberately rested a hand on her abdomen. "We know I do my best creating with you."
Nico shifted her chair closer, everything but Maki suddenly out of focus, "We are the best team."
"Number one in the galaxy."
Nico let out a long sigh, "So when do we tell everyone else about our little star?"
"Soon."
"You won't be able to hide it much longer. Rin looks like she's swallowed two basketballs."
"And she's nearly exploding from keeping our secret." Maki laughed.
Nico leaned down, talking to Maki's stomach. "You already have a best friend waiting, little one. And so many aunts and and an uncle."
"And grandparents. My parents might already have guessed." They'd been anxious for news, calling Maki more frequently than ever.
"And your Mama and I are going to be so happy to watch you grow and get stronger."
"Soon." Maki whispered, a promise as she willed a protective warmth from her hand deep inside enough to reach their baby.
Nico took her free hand, fingers squeezing tightly, a silent promise to stay by her side through anything they might face.
"Look up at the stars, Love."
Infinite gems scattered across the midnight black of a moonless night. A mix of breathless wonder and driving curiosity had pulsed through Maki since her first nights on these mountains, in awe of the universe her parents had opened up to her. And since their first meeting, Maki staring at this odd, pretty stranger who seemingly feared no one, Nico had led Maki even deeper into infinite wonder.
Nico's voice was soft, a tender tone new to Maki's ear, "Next year, we'll have our own tiny, starstruck cutie for you to share the constellations with."
Maki had so many stories to tell. And to experience, watching new eyes that she hoped sparkled with Nico's boundless dynamism while they wondered at fresh adventures.
"Sing us a lullaby, Nico-chan."
Nico sniffled so softly and her gesture was so quick that no one else would have caught that she was wiping away a tear. Then she began to hum the first song Maki had learned on her flute, the Edo Lullaby.
"Sleep, baby, sleep,
Oh, my baby, sleep,
How lovely, how lovely,
How nice you are!"
A/N: Well, I'd been wanting to write a Nico and Maki waiting to find out if they were pregnant under cherry blossoms but it kept getting angsty. Then I remembered that Idol House was kinda taking place parallel to the orderly progress of time and it'd been a more than a year since I'd posted a story. So I thought Nico might be ready for sharing Maki and parenting. Plus, as we know, I'm a raging sentimentalist, it's Nico's birthday and I can think of no better present for our favorite Number One Idol than one where she gets the family she's always meant to be part of. So happy birthday, Nico, Thanks for the inspiration.
enough reclaiming slurs, I think in 2023 we should reclaim nascar. they banned the confederate flag on all properties & their stance on lgbtq+ isn’t just performative bc in 2013 they fined a driver 10k for using a homophobic slur, condemned indiana in a statement for an anti lgbt law, and partnered w carolina’s lgbt+ chamber of conference in 2022. nascar was founded by anti-cop moonshiners/bootleggers who drove suped-up fords to out-run the police. #yaaascar
This one started as a drawing in my sketchbook, and then she blossomed into a digital painting 🌸 Still on my lifelong quest to paint the roundest, chunkiest, most squishable roses.
“If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself—as men have done to women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation—you may hate it, or deify it, but in either case you have denied its spiritual equality, and its human reality. You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality.”
Ursula K. Le Guin "American SF and The Other" in Science-Fiction Studies 7, 1975.
how manual wheelchair users move (explainer for non-users)
frequently when i’m out and about with someone walking, they can’t anticipate what path i will take and therefore they’re in my way pretty frequently. this is fine! i can politely ask them to step to the side. but it makes me think about how little non-wheelchair users understand the way wheelchair users move. as someone who used to walk everywhere, it was an adjustment period for me to figure out how to navigate the world in a chair. here are some things that didn’t occur to me so that you don’t cut off your friend right as they’re building momentum to go up a ramp 😆
for context, i use an active manual chair. the world is very different in a power chair. even among active manual chair users, there is a huge diversity in physicality and strategies for getting around. this is a general guide that i think will apply to most manual wheelchair users. i’m starting super basic and getting more complicated as i go.
———
1. manual wheelchairs are a momentum game. it is very easy to maintain speed and direction. but speeding up, slowing down, or turning, is hard. one thing this affects is if we’re on a wavy sidewalk or other twisty-turny walkway, that is a pain in the ass and i am taking as straight a path as i can.
2. wheelchair users also have to pay attention to the slope and condition of the pavement, so our path somewhere will be different than yours, even if we’re taking the same route to the same place. for example, i usually have to go down slopes straight, not diagonally, to avoid tipping over sideways. one area this affects is crosswalks. many intersections have one curb cut for both roads you could cross, which means i will go down curb cuts to a crosswalk as if i am aiming for the middle of the intersection.
your path in orange, mine in blue. to you it seems indirect, but to me it’s the path of least resistance.
i also will be building speed in the second half of the crosswalk. this is a much easier way to tackle a ramp. if i approach with momentum, i won’t have to drag myself up the slope once i get to it.
3. building momentum and maintaining it is only half of the job. the other half is stopping. manual wheelchairs cannot stop on a dime if they’re moving with any kind of speed. if i tried to stop immediately when going downhill, i would fly out of the chair. so don’t walk right into the path of a wheelchair in motion and then stop! i will have to turn to the side very quickly and hope i don’t tip. i can’t tell you how often parents pushing strollers will stop their stroller directly in my path and then get offended when i am alarmed and turn sharply to avoid hitting their child. from their perspective, i was being careless and going “too fast.” in reality, normal walking speed takes a few feet to slow down from and stop.
4. in terms of slope. see this street in san francisco?
i can’t go down this street, it’s way too steep. i would give myself friction burns on my palms trying to control my speed. if i was in a situation where there was no avoiding this street, like in an emergency, i would be breaking my straight-slope rule and zig-zagging in the middle of the road.
this would require several zig-zags back and forth, more than the four that i drew. i also could not go up this road other than with this method. up or down, i risk tipping over sideways if i’m not careful.
4. in a similar vein, consider terrain. slopes with grass or carpet take huge amounts of energy to get up. this grassy hill isn’t insurmountable, but it would take me like thirty minutes to get up there. honestly i would probably go backwards, because it’s easier to pull yourself up a slope than push yourself.
other types of terrain can be completely immobilizing, though. this decorative gravel pathway is beautiful, and inaccessible to me. my casters (front wheels) simply will not go through that.
5. in terms of walkways and obstacles. if there’s a deep gap in the pavement lined up the way i’m going, and it’s, say, an inch wide, that is an obstacle for me. my casters are one inch wide, and my back wheels are an inch and a half. i’ll get stuck in it like a train on a track.
i have to straddle this, even if it means being too close to the middle of the sidewalk and preventing us from walking side by side.
similarly, if a crack is greater than an inch high, i’m gonna wheelie over it. at two inches, i have to. a wheelie may require a change in speed, either faster or slower depending on the person.
i have 4 inch casters, so a lip as little as 2 inches will stop me in my tracks. a lip as little as one inch, hit with any speed, can knock my casters out of square. casters can get knocked out of alignment pretty easily depending on the chair. i’d rather not have to pull out an allen wrench and a level, so i’m gonna wheelie.
this happened when i hit about a 1.5” lip on a pavement crack when i was going downhill at maybe 3mph.
6. putting it all together. see how diagonal this crack is?
this is another situation where i have to go straight relative to the slope. because that crack is wide, it will probably also require a wheelie. if i tried to approach that straight relative to the sidewalk, my left caster would get up the slope, i’d wheelie, then my right caster would land in the crack. i have to go this way.
(also lol at the trash can blocking the curb cut)
these are just a few things to keep in mind when walking about with a wheelchair user! ofc the best strategy always is just to listen when someone asks you to move out of their way 😆 but i think being able to anticipate movement a little better will help it seem less random. feel free to ask any questions!
sam wilson is incredibly well adjusted which is why its so easy to ignore that he's crazy. sam wilson goes on a morning run and eats a balanced breakfast and goes to therapy. he also only talked to steve like twice before agreeing to kidnapping a government agent with the help of stolen flight technology.
August 2026 is AU-gust here at the Prompt Foundry!
Alternate Universe takes on our favorite stories—be they shows or books we love, or tales of our creation—can be a delightfully fun way to explore what makes those stories tick, what makes those characters who they are, and what in them is important to why we enjoy them.
On the other side of the coin, some settings and scenerios are popular for AUs because there's something special about that environment or situation that really tickles our brains, and it can be fun to figure out how to fit different characters and their contexts into that world.
So let's run through the multiverse and play with some AUs!
Feel free to combine different days’ prompts with each other, or combine them with other events, like last year's March of the Blorbos! Draw, paint, sculpt, sing, write fiction, write poetry, write academic analysis—use your OCs, your favorite characters from media, your own experiences, whatever tickles your fancy.
If you use this list, please tag me here @thepromptfoundry, I’d love to see what you create!
Respond to as many prompts as you want or as interest you, don’t worry about missing or skipping any, or posting your work after the day the prompt is assigned to. Remember, this is supposed to be fun!
If you have any questions or musings, check our FAQ, and if you don’t find your answer, shoot me an ask.
Plain text list below the cut:
1 Coffee Shops
2 Superheroes
3 Genderbent Characters
4 High Schoolers
5 Androids and Robots
6 Steampunk
7 Vampires
8 Werewolves
9 Soulmates
10 Professors and Academics
11 Actors Behind the Scenes
12 Professional Sports
13 Cozy Farm Life
14 Rock Stars
15 Pirates and Sailors
16 Merfolk
17 Elemental Powers
18 Faeries
19 Circus Arts
20 Post-Apocalypse
21 Externalized Souls (Daemons)
22 Libraries and Bookshops
23 Mob Bosses
24 Swords and Sorcery Fantasy
25 Hanahaki Disease
26 Arranged Marriages
27 Starships and Space Travel
28 Catpeople
29 Good Guys Gone Bad
30 Bars and Bartenders
31 Time Travel
was on the wikipedia page for charleston red rice and i noticed the photo they used was blurry. i went to the talk page to see if this was brought up and stumbled upon this banger of a conversation
The fact that Everything Everywhere All at Once has the main character see that if she hadn’t gone to America with the man that would be her husband she would’ve lived a glamorous life of fame and fortune and her husband would’ve gone off and gotten very rich on his own rather than living together in an apartment over a laundromat struggling with finances every day and where so many movies would’ve framed that choice to go off together as a mistake, shown their alternative lives as some sort of “see? It wasn’t worth it” and had them “escape” to that “better” universe in the end, it instead all culminates in the line “Just so you know, in another life, I would’ve been really glad to just do laundry and taxes with you” changed my wholeass life
2087
tangentwithtanner
andulkaphoto
