Image description: A comic or infographic illustrated with a blue cartoon owl. The text is dark blue, with some important parts in red.
In the preface, the owl is wearing several gag shop accessories: a joy buzzer, a squirting flower, and glasses that have a fake nose. The owl says, “Hello! Now that April Fool’s is around the corner, here’s 5 things I ask of you not to do.”
In the first one, the owl gets startled by another owl popping out of a computer screen. This says, “One. Don’t send screamers. Seriously, don’t.”
The second one shows an owl flirting with another owl. This says, “Two. Don’t play with people’s feelings. Examples:
“Don’t fake ask someone out.
“Don’t fake hate/be angry at them.
“Don’t lie that something bad has happened to someone/something important to them.”
The third one shows an owl wearing a bandage on their head, and a hospital IV drip attached to their wing. This says, “Three. Don’t fake an illness. Especially terminal and/or incurable ones.”
The fourth one shows an empty dotted outline where an owl has been. This says, “Four. Don’t pretend to leave, break up, or fake suicide.”
The fifth one shows an owl reading a newspaper with their feathers all fluffed out in distress. This says, “Five. Don’t spread malicious fake information: fake virus threats, fake tragic events, or fake celeb deaths.”
The final panel has a close-up on the owl’s face with their eyes glowing red, yelling, “Seriously, don’t be a butt!”
I'm not sure if I will finish this out or not, especially since I typically don't write angst, ever, but here. Have some Marinette-flavored angst inspired by the fic, It Started With Sleepovers.
=====
She's just so tired of it all.
She has so much love to give, and no one wants it.
No one she desperately wants to give it to does, anyway.
Clearly, there was something very wrong with her if she could ruin something so universally desired as love.
=======
She’s not stupid. She can feel the subtle thrum of negative energy running through the entire apartment when she goes over to their place to visit. With her anxiety disorder, it’s sometimes difficult to tell when there is an actual problem or just the illusion of one produced by the part of her brain that obviously hates her, but she can still feel it. That thread of tension that pulls taught the moment she crosses their threshold. And, depending on what is (or isn’t) said, it gets wound tighter or looser, but never falls slack. Not completely.
Sometimes, it gets pulled so tight, she’s sure it will snap if there is so much as one more deep sigh.
The source of those is usually Nino.
Alya insists it’s nothing, that Nino is fine, but, again, she isn’t stupid. She knows something is amiss. She just can’t figure out if it’s something real, or perceived.
She can’t figure out what she did that made someone she’s known since they were barely more than babies pull farther and farther away from her.
Especially since it's the same person who got locked in a cage at the zoo during an akuma attack right before he was going to ask her out on a date, and came out of that same cage with a new, different girlfriend in tow a few hours later.
=====
It starts with the treats she brings. Or, it's probably truer to say that's when she notices. She can’t quite pinpoint when it began, but at some point, she realizes Nino has stopped partaking in the things she brings along to share with everyone. At first, she thinks it might be that his tastes have changed, so the food changes, too. She adds more savory things to go in with the sweet, just to shake things up a bit.
As time passes, she realizes it doesn’t really matter what treats she brings. Nino is almost never around to eat any.
She can’t help but wonder if that’s by design, nowadays. His absences. She shakes off the feeling, certain that she’s worrying over nothing. Nino is just busy, like all of them are now that they’re grown.
Adrien usually offers to make sure Nino’s portion never goes to waste, anyway, so all’s well that ends well, she supposes.
=====
It’s not until Nino makes a point of leaving as soon as she arrives for five straight visits that she wonders if perhaps she does have a real reason to worry.
She stops wondering after Adrien brings a box of croissants from her parents’ bakery one evening, and Nino polishes off four in one sitting.
She stops bringing anything to share at all, after that. One less thing to worry about forgetting, or making her late, she figures. At least less food goes to waste if she just lets someone else bring the same things she would have.
No one else ever changes the ribbon on the box, though, when they pick up pastries from Tom & Sabine's. No more subtle tributes to the fox and the turtle in the form of orange and green satin. Just the standard plain, but pretty, white ribbon her mother chose years ago.
Probably better for maintaining the bakery's branding, anyway.
She quietly cancels the order of replacement ribbon from her phone while she's locked in their bathroom.
So, I realized much too late that I did not put a warning up in the author's notes of this thing that the original story (not mine), It Started With Sleepovers, has NSFW content within some of it's chapters. (Note: The author is very good at giving content warnings ahead of each chapter, so no worries on that front.)
That being said. . .GG, past me. Way to go. 🤦♀️
So, that's my bad, and I'm sorry if my screwup caused anyone any distress. 💚
I'm not sure if I will finish this out or not, especially since I typically don't write angst, ever, but here. Have some Marinette-flavored angst inspired by the fic, It Started With Sleepovers.
=====
She's just so tired of it all.
She has so much love to give, and no one wants it.
No one she desperately wants to give it to does, anyway.
Clearly, there was something very wrong with her if she could ruin something so universally desired as love.
=======
She’s not stupid. She can feel the subtle thrum of negative energy running through the entire apartment when she goes over to their place to visit. With her anxiety disorder, it’s sometimes difficult to tell when there is an actual problem or just the illusion of one produced by the part of her brain that obviously hates her, but she can still feel it. That thread of tension that pulls taught the moment she crosses their threshold. And, depending on what is (or isn’t) said, it gets wound tighter or looser, but never falls slack. Not completely.
Sometimes, it gets pulled so tight, she’s sure it will snap if there is so much as one more deep sigh.
The source of those is usually Nino.
Alya insists it’s nothing, that Nino is fine, but, again, she isn’t stupid. She knows something is amiss. She just can’t figure out if it’s something real, or perceived.
She can’t figure out what she did that made someone she’s known since they were barely more than babies pull farther and farther away from her.
Especially since it's the same person who got locked in a cage at the zoo during an akuma attack right before he was going to ask her out on a date, and came out of that same cage with a new, different girlfriend in tow a few hours later.
=====
It starts with the treats she brings. Or, it's probably truer to say that's when she notices. She can’t quite pinpoint when it began, but at some point, she realizes Nino has stopped partaking in the things she brings along to share with everyone. At first, she thinks it might be that his tastes have changed, so the food changes, too. She adds more savory things to go in with the sweet, just to shake things up a bit.
As time passes, she realizes it doesn’t really matter what treats she brings. Nino is almost never around to eat any.
She can’t help but wonder if that’s by design, nowadays. His absences. She shakes off the feeling, certain that she’s worrying over nothing. Nino is just busy, like all of them are now that they’re grown.
Adrien usually offers to make sure Nino’s portion never goes to waste, anyway, so all’s well that ends well, she supposes.
=====
It’s not until Nino makes a point of leaving as soon as she arrives for five straight visits that she wonders if perhaps she does have a real reason to worry.
She stops wondering after Adrien brings a box of croissants from her parents’ bakery one evening, and Nino polishes off four in one sitting.
She stops bringing anything to share at all, after that. One less thing to worry about forgetting, or making her late, she figures. At least less food goes to waste if she just lets someone else bring the same things she would have.
No one else ever changes the ribbon on the box, though, when they pick up pastries from Tom & Sabine's. No more subtle tributes to the fox and the turtle in the form of orange and green satin. Just the standard plain, but pretty, white ribbon her mother chose years ago.
Probably better for maintaining the bakery's branding, anyway.
She quietly cancels the order of replacement ribbon from her phone while she's locked in their bathroom.
“I’m so glad for Mari, though! I was so worried she got COVID, so the negative result was a relief!”
Adrien practically choked on his saliva and then proceeded to quickly turn around and face Alya with an astonished gape. Relief filled his entire being from head to toe as his mind fumbled with what to say next and his traitorous, confusing heart rejoiced within his chest. So of course, he spoke without thinking.
“It was just a covid test!? Really?!”
.
He didn’t expect the instant silence that spread across the entire class like a fog, everyone now looking at him as if he suddenly grew two heads or something just as bizarre. That was until an unholy smirk naturally found its way on Alya’s pretty face and she leaned forward to the sunshine boy like a little fox who was up to no good.
“Yes, it was just a covid test…what did you think it was, Adrien~?”
Or, Adrien mistakes Marinette’s negative covid test for something else…
For those who haven't yet heard, SARS-CoV-2 found me. Again.
Everyone else in the household has repeatedly tested negative, so at least there's that.
I'm quarantined in a room clear across the house from everyone. While that's rough on the brain (and the heart, because my kids so badly "want Mommy back"), we can at least hope this course of action will make it so they all stay uninfected.
And don't fret; I am fully vaccinated. I shudder to think how bad this would be were I not. The 2017-2018 flu season immediately comes to mind. That season was especially brutal, and given all of us here are asthmatics, we would have been hospitalized and on ventilators had we not received our flu shots (and in my case, the pneumonia vaccine). Prior to the beer virus, that was the last time I recall 80k+ people dying due to a disease in a single year. (The AIDS epidemic notwithstanding, of course. That is a different ball of wax entirely, especially since I was literally a Baby Gay(tm) at that time.)
At any rate, now you know why there have been no Maniacal May Project Updates. Just been too weak to post. 😋
So you may have noticed I haven't been posting recently - I had to go on hiatus from writing stories as my mental health was suffering a lot. I wanted to post a chapter and put a message on it to let you all know that I was going on hiatus, but I didn't get there.
I'm doing okay for the moment but I need time. I do hope to get back into it soon, although it probably won't be for a couple of months.
Once I can navigate around the plethora of glitches Tumblr has been experiencing of late, I will link to the kind folks who created and shared May event prompt lists so that dorks like myself could use them for their tomfoolery.
Until then, these reports are comprised of nothing but anecdotes and hearsay, friends.
Forty-three. (43).
That’s how many prompts I wound up with once all the scattered index cards were gathered up and straightened out.
Forty-three writing prompts. Created from at least four separate prompt lists.
This is either my best idea ever, or the thing that finally does me in.
Without further ado. . .
The List, (in no particular order):
Witch/Swamp/Rest
Race/Piano/Seasons/Pear-fect (perfect)
Comedy/Slime/Eggstra (extra)/ Qualitea (quality) Time
Vampire AU/“You don’t believe in ___? But you’re a MERMAID!”
Seashells-Fossils-Pretty Stones/Balcony/Apple of my Pie (eye)
As some of the folks I hang with in the MLB fandom may recall, I looked at all the fandom events for the month of May, and my brain just sort of. . .blue-screened.
Full-on, “LunaWriter.exe has stopped working.”
There are/were just so many. And I want to do them all.
But, I am a dysfunctional adult with responsibilities, and just enough maturity to realize that participating in all the May events separately was a recipe for burnout. So, I decided I wasn’t going to do any of them.
Or, at least. . .I wouldn’t be doing any of them on their own.
Let me explain.
:readmore:
Since I couldn’t choose between all the events this particular fandom had planned, I decided to do something a tad unconventional.
I took several prompt lists for every May MLB event I could find that was scheduled, and put each prompt from each list on it’s own individual index card. Afterward, I split the pile of cards into two stacks. I then cleared the living room, and handed a stack to each of my children (of which there are two, in case anyone was unaware).
I tasked them with standing on the couch backwards, and tossing their respective stacks of index cards over their heads and behind them. All without looking.
Then came the fun part: Any and all cards that had landed on top of, or even just touching each other, had to stay together when picked up.
And thus “Luna’s Maniacal May Project,” was born.
This sucker, should I manage to finish it, likely won’t be posted until the very end of May, if not long after the month of May has ended.
Is this course of action kind of nuts?
Yes.
Do I care?
. . .Not today, but ask me again as the month goes on.
As some of the folks I hang with in the MLB fandom may recall, I looked at all the fandom events for the month of May, and my brain just sort of. . .blue-screened.
Full-on, “LunaWriter.exe has stopped working.”
There are/were just so many. And I want to do them all.
But, I am a dysfunctional adult with responsibilities, and just enough maturity to realize that participating in all the May events separately was a recipe for burnout. So, I decided I wasn’t going to do any of them.
Or, at least. . .I wouldn’t be doing any of them on their own.
Let me explain.
Since I couldn’t choose between all the events this particular fandom had planned, I decided to do something a tad unconventional.
I took several prompt lists for every May MLB event I could find that was scheduled, and put each prompt from each list on it’s own individual index card. Afterward, I split the pile of cards into two stacks. I then cleared the living room, and handed a stack to each of my children (of which there are two, in case anyone was unaware).
I tasked them with standing on the couch backwards, and tossing their respective stacks of index cards over their heads and behind them. All without looking.
Then came the fun part: Any and all cards that had landed on top of, or even just touching each other, had to stay together when picked up.
And thus “Luna’s Maniacal May Project,” was born.
This sucker, should I manage to finish it, likely won’t be posted until the very end of May, if not long after the month of May has ended.
Is this course of action kind of nuts?
Yes.
Do I care?
. . .Not today, but ask me again as the month goes on.
for your writing purposes, a group of writers from the miraculous fanworks server have created a list of ridiculous adrien excuses for you to use. you may also use it as writing prompts.
Nothing quite like seeing your main blog get shadowbanned when you didn't actually violate the ToS to motivate you to make a new Tumblr purely out of spite.
